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French Left Gets Hot To Trot
Two of France's extremist parties have formed an alliance in an attempt to make the far left a viable political force for the first time in thirty years.
Lutte Ouvrière (Worker's Struggle), a shady Trotskyite sect led by media darling Arlette Laguiller and the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire (LCR) will campaign for next year's elections under one banner.
The LCR's spokesman Olivier Besancenot, like Laguiller, ran in 2002's presidential elections, in which the mainstream Socialist Party candidate, Lionel Jospin, was forced into third place by the far right's Jean-Marie Le Pen. Many of Jospin's supporters have complained that extreme left 'spoiler' candidates bore more responsibility for his humiliation than Le Pen's Front Nationale.
The far left counters that under Jospin, France's Socialists were too cosy with the EU and big business.
In any case, yesterday's spoilers are hoping to become tomorrow's supreme leaders.
The youthful Besancenot has been groomed as a talented media operator. The new party is purging itself of neolithic left terminology: While both groups remain committed to replacing democracy with the 'dictatorship of the proletariat', they no longer couch it in those terms. (It is not clear what they intend to do with the revolution's opponents).
The new organisation is cheered by opinion polls which suggest that it can count on at least nine percent of votes. Another 22 percent said they might vote for the group.
According to the Independent, a performance even approaching this would severely damage France's Socialists and Greens, to say nothing of the traditional Communist Party, which has seen its support wither to fewer than three percent of voters.
Despite dismissing the group as 'sectarian', France's mainstream left is worried. The Socialist Party has traditionally relied on alliances with Greens and even Communists to put it in power (a Socialist-Green alliance currently runs Paris' town hall). This has worked satisfactorily for all parties, particularly as France's conservatives have a self-imposed ban on making deals with the far-right to win power.
However, the new party may not be so accomodating. It is directly targeting the pink-green alliance, and is attracting the support of voters disillusioned with France's high unemployment and flatlining economy.
Anger at baby steps towards economic liberalisation, most particularly prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin's pension reforms may find an outlet in the Trotskyite alliance.
Many of its supporters work in France's enormous public sector, target of some modest reforms, while the Independent provides the comforting thought that the LCR draws much support from revolutionary teachers. LCR and Lutte Ouvrière supporters played a prominent role in anti-reform protests in the spring - the previous year, they played a role in mass protests against Le Pen's election success.
France's increasingly politicised young may find a home in the new party. Young people dominated the anti- Le Pen marches, and the numerous anti-Iraq war, anti-Israel and anti-globalisation protests of the past two years have had strong youth contingents.
The alliance may be attractive to young activists because of its anti-establishment appeal. France's mainstream parties have traditionally drawn their leaders from elite schools - Arlette Laguiller is a former bank clerk while Olivier Besancenot is a postman.
Furthermore, it is difficult to draw a line between slogans on Lutte Ouvrière posters and grafitti denouncing capitalism in the corridors of Paris' metro system. The far left must have been delighted by a grafitti blitz in October, in which advertisements in almost every Paris metro station were vandalised by anti-capitalists.
It is unlikely that the EU will punish France should it choose to elect anti-democracy campaigners, as it did when Austrian voters elected a far-right party. In any case, the forthcoming constitution will reduce national governments of whatever stripe to the status of pressure groups.
Even so, the rise in support for extremists does the EU little good: Both parties oppose the EU constitution, and pundits suggest that French president Jacques Chirac will think twice about calling a referendum on the constitution if he looks likely to lose it.
France faces an interesting year.
