France: NO TO THE UNION SACREE BEHIND THE SOCIALISTPARTY!
ICP | 02.05.2007 17:47 | Analysis | Social Struggles | Workers' Movements | Liverpool | London
"A victory for democracy", "the French people have rediscovered the path to the polling booth", "the workers renew their ties to the government(al) parties", these are some of the comments which demonstrate the bliss of the media with the result of the first round of the elections. Beyond partisan contingencies, bourgeois political commentators are resoundingly joyful that the increasing tendency towards abstention and the discrediting of the political system which has been increasing for years underwent a "crushing rebuttal".
The polling booth rather than the street, ballots rather than Molotov cocktails, this slogan of diverse collaborationist, pacifist and reformist associations and parties achieved a straightforward success last Sunday, showing that electoral illusions are quite alive and that the democratic mystification still functions.
The polling booth rather than the street, ballots rather than Molotov cocktails, this slogan of diverse collaborationist, pacifist and reformist associations and parties achieved a straightforward success last Sunday, showing that electoral illusions are quite alive and that the democratic mystification still functions.
The upcoming second round of presidential and legislative voting will be used to diffuse the electoralist intoxication in ever-increasing amounts, according to which the vote is the (only) way to make things change, the only means to oppose the attacks by the bourgeoisie — or at least to ‘weigh in’ on the policy pursued by the leaders of the country.
Down with bourgeois democracy!
The bourgeois democratic political system is actually based on a double lie: the lie according to which all citizens who are “free and equal in right" have at their disposal the same little parcel of political sovereignty, whether they are the owner of a multinational or an unemployed and at the end of their benefits worker; and the lie according to which the State (with all its political, legal, repressive etc. apparatus) is an "impartial" institution above all classes and which serves all citizens.
Actually capitalist society is divided into classes with opposed interests, divided between two poles between which gravitate intermediate social layers: the dominant class of the small minority of those which appropriate all the riches — the capitalists — and the great mass of those who have nothing — the proletarians, obliged to sell themselves to the bosses in order to live.
The State is above all the organ for the defence of the capitalist mode of production and the political domination of the bourgeois minority. Thanks to the various official institutions, with the preponderant means of communication in the hands of the capitalists, as well as with the weight of the collaborationist organizations bought off by the bourgeoisie: "the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class" (Marx): in other words, these are the bourgeois forces which fashion "public opinion" and determine the alleged "free will" of the individual voter.
But in spite of their economic and political domination, the capitalists can only prevent antagonisms between exploiters and exploited that do not lead to open struggles, confrontations during which the exploited, on the basis of the concrete experience of their collective force, can emancipate themselves from their subjection to bourgeois forces.
For the capitalists as for their reformist servants clinging to the maintenance of their privileges in the existing system, it is thus essential to divert young people and the proletarians away from the only realistic and effective way to defend themselves, open struggle; to avoid putting the national capitalism in difficulty, and to prevent a defensive struggle that could lead to a frontal war against the bourgeois order. This is why at the time of the struggles against the CPE, the chief of the Socialist Party of Holland declared that the CPE would be applied since the law had been voted and that the only thing to do was to await the next elections. The young people and wage-earners did not listen to him and by their combativity they obliged the government to withdraw this measure which had been voted for (even if the trade-union ‘leaderships’ succeeded in stopping the movement before it went further)!
Long live the Class Struggle !
In 2002, a formidable opinion campaign, carried out by just about all the media, all the parties, all associations, had brought the voting sheep back en mass towards the ballot boxes in order to support the bourgeois politician, swindler-in-chief, Chirac.
Today a campaign of different opinions but also totally disastrous wants to ensure the success of a new swindle: reinforcement of the PS as an alternative to the ‘Sarkozyist’ right-wing. After having succeeded in bringing back to the polling booths not few workers and young people from the working population who had previously turned away, this campaign seeks to create, behind the candidate manufactured by the media, a gathering around the PS in the name of ‘anti-Sarkoskyism’. When Bayrou declared that "powerful interests" were behind the standpoint of "Le Monde” in favour of the presence of Ségolène Royal in the 2nd round, he undoubtedly did not allude only to the Lagardère group, but to the most influential sections of the bourgeoisie which have been preparing this solution for many months.
In effect, in a situation where French capitalism encounters important difficulties on the world market, all the capitalists insistently demand the acceleration of the attacks against the workers, more clearly calling into question the "social rights" conceded formerly (and Bayrou, Royal as well as Sarkozy agree on this point).
But the bourgeois leaders know that proletarian reactions to new attacks are inevitable; since they are not able to prevent them, they need a sufficiently strong party on the left to control them and to channel them in an inoffensive way. Because of the deliquescence of the Communist Party and immaturity of the electoralist far left, only the S.P. can act as a barrier of the capitalist order. This is the fundamental objective of the anti-Sarkozy united front backing the PS: not to obtain the more-than-improbable electoral victory of Royal, but to reconstitute on the left a sufficiently solid anti-proletarian force to maintain calm on the social front.
The union in progress around a party which (with its accomplices of the so-called "Plural Left": CP, Ecologists), served French capitalism and imperialism with great fidelity in the more than a quarter century since the election of Mitterrand and which promises to serve it better still; this union which is advocated by the shameless electoralist far left, must be fought by all those which want to really defend the interests of the workers and to resist the bourgeois order.
No support to Reformist and Bourgeois Organizations !
It is necessary to refuse the coarse trap of the anti-Sarkozy union: the adversary is not this or that bourgeois politician, because bourgeois politicians of the left as well as of the right, are only executants of capitalist interests; it’s not out of spitefulness that Sarkozy wants more repression and more anti-workers measures, but because he openly and loudly voices the capitalist demands - while Royal agrees with them but in a sober way.
The adversary, it’s precisely the bosses, the capitalists, the bourgeoisie, i.e. the capitalist system which use the left or the right in turn to hoodwink the proletarians and to repress them; the adversary it’s the bourgeois State and its political system with all its bought politicians, including the ones who recommend the eternal dead-end of the "less evil", of the supposedly "realistic" policy of compromising with the class enemy.
The only solution, the only realistic way is that of the rupture with social-liberalism, with collaborationism; is that of the desertion from the electoral ditch to return to the terrain of open struggle, of the intransigent class struggle against the capitalist interests.
No to the union sacrée behind the SP! No to the electoral circus!
Neither Sarkozy, nor Royal!
For Anti-capitalist Class Struggle!
INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST PARTY
Correspondence:
Editions Programe, 3 rue Basse Combalot, 69007 LYON FRANCE
Down with bourgeois democracy!
The bourgeois democratic political system is actually based on a double lie: the lie according to which all citizens who are “free and equal in right" have at their disposal the same little parcel of political sovereignty, whether they are the owner of a multinational or an unemployed and at the end of their benefits worker; and the lie according to which the State (with all its political, legal, repressive etc. apparatus) is an "impartial" institution above all classes and which serves all citizens.
Actually capitalist society is divided into classes with opposed interests, divided between two poles between which gravitate intermediate social layers: the dominant class of the small minority of those which appropriate all the riches — the capitalists — and the great mass of those who have nothing — the proletarians, obliged to sell themselves to the bosses in order to live.
The State is above all the organ for the defence of the capitalist mode of production and the political domination of the bourgeois minority. Thanks to the various official institutions, with the preponderant means of communication in the hands of the capitalists, as well as with the weight of the collaborationist organizations bought off by the bourgeoisie: "the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class" (Marx): in other words, these are the bourgeois forces which fashion "public opinion" and determine the alleged "free will" of the individual voter.
But in spite of their economic and political domination, the capitalists can only prevent antagonisms between exploiters and exploited that do not lead to open struggles, confrontations during which the exploited, on the basis of the concrete experience of their collective force, can emancipate themselves from their subjection to bourgeois forces.
For the capitalists as for their reformist servants clinging to the maintenance of their privileges in the existing system, it is thus essential to divert young people and the proletarians away from the only realistic and effective way to defend themselves, open struggle; to avoid putting the national capitalism in difficulty, and to prevent a defensive struggle that could lead to a frontal war against the bourgeois order. This is why at the time of the struggles against the CPE, the chief of the Socialist Party of Holland declared that the CPE would be applied since the law had been voted and that the only thing to do was to await the next elections. The young people and wage-earners did not listen to him and by their combativity they obliged the government to withdraw this measure which had been voted for (even if the trade-union ‘leaderships’ succeeded in stopping the movement before it went further)!
Long live the Class Struggle !
In 2002, a formidable opinion campaign, carried out by just about all the media, all the parties, all associations, had brought the voting sheep back en mass towards the ballot boxes in order to support the bourgeois politician, swindler-in-chief, Chirac.
Today a campaign of different opinions but also totally disastrous wants to ensure the success of a new swindle: reinforcement of the PS as an alternative to the ‘Sarkozyist’ right-wing. After having succeeded in bringing back to the polling booths not few workers and young people from the working population who had previously turned away, this campaign seeks to create, behind the candidate manufactured by the media, a gathering around the PS in the name of ‘anti-Sarkoskyism’. When Bayrou declared that "powerful interests" were behind the standpoint of "Le Monde” in favour of the presence of Ségolène Royal in the 2nd round, he undoubtedly did not allude only to the Lagardère group, but to the most influential sections of the bourgeoisie which have been preparing this solution for many months.
In effect, in a situation where French capitalism encounters important difficulties on the world market, all the capitalists insistently demand the acceleration of the attacks against the workers, more clearly calling into question the "social rights" conceded formerly (and Bayrou, Royal as well as Sarkozy agree on this point).
But the bourgeois leaders know that proletarian reactions to new attacks are inevitable; since they are not able to prevent them, they need a sufficiently strong party on the left to control them and to channel them in an inoffensive way. Because of the deliquescence of the Communist Party and immaturity of the electoralist far left, only the S.P. can act as a barrier of the capitalist order. This is the fundamental objective of the anti-Sarkozy united front backing the PS: not to obtain the more-than-improbable electoral victory of Royal, but to reconstitute on the left a sufficiently solid anti-proletarian force to maintain calm on the social front.
The union in progress around a party which (with its accomplices of the so-called "Plural Left": CP, Ecologists), served French capitalism and imperialism with great fidelity in the more than a quarter century since the election of Mitterrand and which promises to serve it better still; this union which is advocated by the shameless electoralist far left, must be fought by all those which want to really defend the interests of the workers and to resist the bourgeois order.
No support to Reformist and Bourgeois Organizations !
It is necessary to refuse the coarse trap of the anti-Sarkozy union: the adversary is not this or that bourgeois politician, because bourgeois politicians of the left as well as of the right, are only executants of capitalist interests; it’s not out of spitefulness that Sarkozy wants more repression and more anti-workers measures, but because he openly and loudly voices the capitalist demands - while Royal agrees with them but in a sober way.
The adversary, it’s precisely the bosses, the capitalists, the bourgeoisie, i.e. the capitalist system which use the left or the right in turn to hoodwink the proletarians and to repress them; the adversary it’s the bourgeois State and its political system with all its bought politicians, including the ones who recommend the eternal dead-end of the "less evil", of the supposedly "realistic" policy of compromising with the class enemy.
The only solution, the only realistic way is that of the rupture with social-liberalism, with collaborationism; is that of the desertion from the electoral ditch to return to the terrain of open struggle, of the intransigent class struggle against the capitalist interests.
No to the union sacrée behind the SP! No to the electoral circus!
Neither Sarkozy, nor Royal!
For Anti-capitalist Class Struggle!
INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST PARTY
Correspondence:
Editions Programe, 3 rue Basse Combalot, 69007 LYON FRANCE
ICP
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