The French people have spoken in a way you do not like, but it is democracy, what is your problem?

Yeah right. The map of electoral politics isn't that far removed from any other country in the West. It is a map that is dominated by mainstream, bourgeois parties who pander to the interests of the ruling elite and big business. When the ballot is taken it is not the ordinary Joe in the street who talks, it's MONEY which talks.

Look at the 'main' choices on offer: Chirac - Jospin - Le Pen. In other words, a pile of shit, a pile of shit, and, er, a pile of shit. This is not democracy, it's a sham.

Luckily there's more, much more to what is going on at the moment than what happens at the ballot box. A battle looms, and it will be won where all such battles have been fought - on the street.

WE HAVE A WORLD TO WIN. LONDON, PARIS, ROME, BERLIN!

People are giving up on the ballot box and trying to find a different expression of our frustration at the fact that there are other alternatives to capitalism but that they are not even discussed - basically if you don't vote for capitalism (sometimes offered in several different hues) then you're an anarchist and are dangerous. Well so be it - we ARE dangerous TO THE RULING SECRETIVE BUSINESS POWER "AXIS".

I hope the demonstrations in France grow and grow over the next few days.

I feel that Mayday here is going to be several times the size of last year and that we won't be waiting a year for the next one.

European elections throughout Europe are turning to the right, but a revolution of peaceful, enlightened people is taking to the streets and demonstrating that there is a real desire for alternatives.

One thing I hope is that we will not be pushed into violence - or we will all end up back at square one.

funny thing is ,or not so funny, we have been down this road before.Germany before the second world war gave up on democracy.Capitalism failed end result Hitler! people always move to the right in politics when scared, we require REAL education in this country, history as been forgoten.

Electoral systems look good on paper, but they always end up with bush's/chirac's/blairs --
People have no interest or even concept of big pictures, only thier petty lifestyle, along with the petty beliefs associated. Also the degree to which they choose a politician seems coincide with their degree of affluence, or quite simply how the politician presents themself on camera.
Jospin gets labled a pile of shit, well perhaps thats because he came off as boring, and nothing more.. that's the real nature of politics.. faulty from the start(the masses)

Far as I can see, the party that wins elections tends not to be the party with the 'best' (ie most popular) policies, but the party which has the best propaganda, and which can lie most convincingly: hence Thatcher and Reagan (pretending to be leftist, freedom-loving candidates in the run up to the elctions), Bush (pretending not to be a tory), and the BNP and NF, both in England, France, and worldwide, getting increasing vote shares despite a strong negative reaction from the public when their true policies are discussed.

And of course, how do you get good propagandists and good liars? You buy them. How do you get money to buy them? You take 'donations' from big business, in return for being nice to them later on.

Last couple of comments completely endorse my earlier remarks.Trouble is how do we get out of this depressing and repetative version of politics.The rights view is easily understood because of its reactionary nature and requires no real thought process.however the lefts view requires education and a more understanding response from people,it all really depends on political and historic education,which does not exsist at the momment, appart from a over enthusiastic media coverage of ancient history as presented by the tv companies.To give a example, recently the Royal family was discussed during a history lesson at my eleven year old sons School,when he asked why the French people had no monarch the teacher stated that she did not know the answer.It was left to me to explain about the French Revolution and its consequences.We need to be far more serious about the role of education.

The question has to involve the definition of democracy. The choice between Chirac and Le Pen is equivalent to that between New Labour, Tories etc vs the BNP. Less than 1/2 the French people bothered to vote due to the lack of a cogent alternative to mainstream/extreme candidates who have no relationship with the majority of people, and offer no answers. Bourgoise democracy is not true democracy, but merely a veneer for the wealthy to cover their rotten system and con us into their nasty game. Real democracy demands real choices.

In this country Blair & Co have betrayed their base support and allowed the BNP to make some progress. The BNP are Nazis. I shall be in Oldham tonight campaigning for the Socialist Alliance. It will be a disaster if the BNP win a seat in Oldham, Burnley. Bradford etc in May.

The spirit of resistance and a vision of a different word have been evident on the streets of Rome, Barcelona, Genoa, Prague, Paris, London, Washington, New York, Seattle and much more.

Another world is possible, and it's not fascism but international socialism. The present system produces wars, starvation and poverty for the majority of the planet in a world of plenty.

As the socialist Rosa Luxembourg famously stated, "It's either socialism or barbarism". She hadn't seen the gas chambers or nuclear weapons in her lifetime.

THERE IS A WORLD TO WIN - OUR WORLD!

AndyC

God, the left is pathetic. You got your asses kicked by a fascist scumbag in France, and all you do is whinge about how it's all so unfair. Every time the left fucks up, it's somebody else's fault - that's for sure! Maybe if the fringe left wasn't splitting votes this wouldn't have happened. Maybe if the left put together a united, progressive front with concrete proposals for a more progressive France, this wouldn't have happened. But no. It's Blair's fault, it's the media's fault, blah blah blah. I know it's not our fault, because we on the left never do anything wrong - we're perfect! We weren't outwitted or outwitted by the right - we were robbed! Democracy is a sham! Take to the streets! Blah blah blah!

chris

The Socialist Alliance have issued a statement on the French election result; follow link if interested:

The argument appears to concern two versions of democracy,on the one hand representative democracy as exsists within our Parliamentary system, and the alternative version direct democracy.The second of these two versions appears to me the most attractive,as direct democracy encourages full participation of the population, power in this system tends to be decentralised,policy options more democratic and open.Furthemore direct democracy broadens the political and economic debate inculcating people who would not usualy be involved in decision making.To adopt the system described above would entail wholesale change within our plitical system, furthermore the elimination of the present political and economic elites would eventually be assured.The failure of the present democratic system involves both apathy and a lack of altrnative politcal and economic ideas, and a largely propagandistic agenda on the part of the present main stream media.Additionaly the political elites follow a path set out by corporations only interested in monetary rewards, true Athenian democracy appears to be the only logical alternative.

The argument appears to concern two versions of democracy,on the one hand representative democracy as exsists within our Parliamentary system, and the alternative version direct democracy.The second of these two versions appears to me the most attractive,as direct democracy encourages full participation of the population, power in this system tends to be decentralised,policy options more democratic and open.Furthemore direct democracy broadens the political and economic debate inculcating people who would not usualy be involved in decision making.To adopt the system described above would entail wholesale change within our plitical system, furthermore the elimination of the present political and economic elites would eventually be assured.The failure of the present democratic system involves both apathy and a lack of altrnative politcal and economic ideas, and a largely propagandistic agenda on the part of the present main stream media.Additionaly the political elites follow a path set out by corporations only interested in monetary rewards, true Athenian democracy appears to be the only logical alternative.

Blagh, blagh and fucking blagh; Do something then you dickhead. Sniping is easy - get your arse up to Burnley/Oldham or shut the fuck up.

This is all very metaphysical, by which i mean we have plenty of explanations after the fact, but little deeper anaylsis of why indeed exactly what is going on, not just in France but even across the continent (even in GB, unless the latest labour party scheme to monitor 3 year old kids for latent criminality isnt 'fascism'? )
Instead, i put it to you that what we see is a kind of POST fascism, whereby residual facsist tendencies which have been hanging around since the general defeat in 1945 are being revived, but by some OTHER force, which itself is part of the revival of capitalism witnessed since the collapse of the USSR and chums in 1989-91.
Nothing I say should be seen as a defence of this condamnable man Le Pen.

Are Le Pen's policies actually worse than the Howard government's in Australia? Maybe Le Pen's real crime is that he is not part of the political elite. As you can see, the full force of the system is coming down on him as it does whenever someone from the left begins to be a threat. You're either in or you're out. It does not matter what your politics are, if you're out you must stay out no matter what happens.

Politicians have been playing the race and immigration card for years, knowing full well that it's a phoney problem; it's a problem they can blow up and exploit for their political ends (populism and distraction -- the economy is bad not because of political mismanagement, it's all the fault of the immigrants). Why should we be suprised when this lie gets out of hand now and then?

The real story in France (and here) is that the electorial process is bogus. It's a game specifically not designed to respond to the will of the people. It's designed to manufacture consent and to ensure that whoever passes through the elective gates is one of the elite. It's always possible to ensure that at least one elite candidate gets through into the second round out of whoever is there in the beginning. This allows the establishment three weeks to really get to work and destroy the candidate who doesn't belong, as they are now doing, rightly or wrongly (rightly in this case, although that's not my point).

One simple change to the system would be not to have a fixed term for the presidency. You could have a constitutional law which says that a petition of, say, ten million voters behind a single name would automatically cause an election run off between that person and the sitting president at any time. Consequently, whenever the electorial system made a "mistake" and elected an unpopular candidate, this mistake could be rectified.

Unfortunately, this would also make it possible to remove an elite member president because such popular petitions are much harder to control than a staged election. They can manage democracy so long as it happens on precicely one day every five years. If it can blossom at any time, that's a little difficult.

So the crap electorial systems of the world continue to clank on on the basis that "they work", ie the elite know how to manage them, and the people believe -- somewhat irrationally -- that they produce legitimate results.

Just one tiny, tiny pointette: the majority of French voters chose candidates well to the left of not only Le Pen (which goes without saying), but Chirac. Frankly, the Left is more than entitled to "whinge" at the result - and they have the support of millions. No passeran!

...because the system of voting has 16 candidates, yet only 2 get through to the 2nd round! Surely this is crying out for single transferable vote! (Though direct democracy, workers' council-style, would be better).

That way, you can vote for who you really want to get in (so you can vote for a candidate from the real left, not the pretend left of the socialists/labour), and if they get knocked out, your vote gets transferred to your next preferred candidate. Since 17% wanted Le Pen, but probably 83% certainly didn't want him, STV would have left him totally floundering.

And STV would allow small but popular parties to grow - the Lib Dems in the UK is a prime example. They don't get as many votes as they ought to since they often have no chance of winning the seat. And also they got 20% of the vote at the last election, but less than 10% of the seats... hmmm, something's amiss there...

The left needs to have one platform, even with the Socialist Alliance in the UK that hasn't worked since the Socialist Labour Party didn't join, and the Socialist Party recently walked out because they failed to get their demand of 'local platforms'. And if people think that their vote will actually count for once, rather than it just being a bloody game, then maybe people would actually think about the issues, and consider a little more carefully who they vote for.

As the Mirror said, the BNP in the UK are all illiterate, outcast, mumbling fools - if they did ever actually get any power, then the electorate would see what a bunch of halfwits they are, and never go near them again. And if their policies were actually submitted to scrutiny, then they would be pulled apart piece by piece.

This result does not indicate a resurgence of the right in Europe, all it shows it that the French Presidential electoral system is shite, and that the mainstream politicians had better start actually doing something other than licking the arse of corporations, else they might get a nasty surprise from their populace.