If not us then who ?
The National Front is ahead of all other parties, with a total of more than 6 million votes nationally. Everything has been said - and rightly so - about the overwhelming responsibility of the Socialist Party in this catastrophe. Unquestionably its security and racist policy, going as far as proposing to withdraw [French] nationality, has banalized and legitimized the discourse of the far right, while its systematic destruction of political rights and social protection has succeeded in provoking despair among workers, unemployed, pernsioners and casualized workers, those who were called the « people of the left ».
The PS has collapsed to the point of outright disappearance in the second round in many regions. We can say it had it coming coming and that it’s only electoral justice, justly deserved punishment for betraying so many hopes, ignoring so many promises. The PS does not represent in any way the most popular classes. So be it ! But who does now represent them ? Or more exactly what collective, organized force(s) make it possible to both express anger at social injustice, build solidarity to resist exploitation and oppressions, to keep alive the hope of a better future, the consciousness of the collective power of the oppressed and exploited and trust in this power to change the world ? The answer is simple and dramatic : no party worthy of the name !
Nevertheless, thanks to the torn shirt of a Human Resources Director, workers’ anger breaks out standing proudly, refusing to bow its head. Nevertheless a school can build a rampart of mobilization around a migrant child threatened with expulsion. Nevertheless every day, thousands of union and campaign activists keep alive solidarity. Neverthless, mobilization for the climate is proposing another system, detoxified not only of fossil fuels but also from commodity alienation ... Yet ... Yet all this energy, this intelligence, has no adequate political force. To build it, to build together a new political representation along with a new emancipatory project, this is the urgent challenge.
Christine Poupin
Editorial of l’Anticapitaliste (NPA, France)
Regional elections : the left and right open the road to the worst, the world of labour must respond
This statement was issued by the NPA Executive Committee on the evening of the first round of the regional elections, which saw the far right National Front top the poll in six of thirteen regions, and the governing Socialist Party in only two.
Tonight, the rate of abstention is once again enormous : almost one voter in two considered that the elections and the parties that presented themselves are not a solution to the social crisis, economic, political. However, the result of high abstention should not obscure the central and disturbing political fact of the first round : the breakthrough nationwide National Front which leads in almost half of the major regions.
In the context of post November 13 attacks, the far right profited from a situation where the left in charge, clad in its military and security uniform, has been implementing social destruction since coming to power in 2012, is chasing in the wake of an increasingly more radicalized right and uunder pressure from the noxious ideas of the National Front.
Left and right outbidding each other never ceases to fertilise the soil for the flourishing today of the ideas, and maybe tomorrow the policies, of the worst enemies of the working world and popular categories
The fight against the FN is inseparable from the fight against security, racism, militarism, anti-social policies wherever they come from, in the first place when they come from those who govern. In the coming weeks, it is in the street and the mobilizations in defence of democratic rights and solidarity, against social regression, that we have to start the fightback
NPA, Montreuil, December 6, 2015