French elections
"No agreement" - Lutte Ouvrière
A letter from Lutte Ouvrière about the Parliamentary elections.
Following the LCR’s proposal for an agreement to divide up seats in the forthcoming 2002 Parliamentary elections, we reprint from Rouge Lutte Ouvriere’s response, and the subsequent reply of the LCR <<click.
Dear comrades,
Chirac’s triumphal plebiscite complements the politics the government of the plural left in the worst possible manner
While the results of the first round of the Presidential elections showed clearly that Le Pen would be very decisively beaten solely by the votes of the right, the whole of the left set to work pumping up the windbag Le Pen and in the name of a fight against a claimed fascist threat, prostituted itself for free to Chirac.
This was a deliberate choice on the part of the left leaders in order to avoid any discussion about the causes of the loss of 2,488,534 votes for Jospin and 1,672,456 votes for Hue, i.e. a total loss of 4,160,534 votes.
By brandishing the threat of Le Pen’s election to the Presidency of the Republic, which it knew perfectly well could not happen in today’s context, in evoking a non-existent fascist danger, the left parties have sought, on the one hand, to conceal the reduction in their vote among the popular classes, and on the other have transformed their own retreat into an advance for Le Pen.
But their pressure was enough for you to surrender although you succeeded in not saying Chirac’s name! You carried a resolution which took two or three readings in order to satisfy each of your tendencies. Through opportunism by adaptation to the milieu which surrounds you, you joined the holy alliance around Chirac.
Your hypocritical call for a demonstration on the evening of the 5th May in order to wash your hands of your vote during the day doesn’t change anything.
Your contribution to Chirac’s election was derisory. Independently of your appeal, a large part of the far left’s electorate would have undoubtedly given in to the pressure to vote for Chirac.
But the fact is that in a situation which required telling the truth to the popular classes whether we are listened to or not, you chose to lie to them, at the behest of the Socialist, Communist, and Green Party leaders Hollande, Hue, and Mamere.
You brought your minuscule support for a Chirac vote by presenting it, despite your denials, as a roadblock to Le Pen.
You will understand that in these conditions we will not respond to your proposals which would imply at least a certain political agreement. And we do not wish to endorse an attitude as opportunist as yours.
As for your allies, for the agreement is supposed to extend to others than yourselves, let’s not even speak about them. You are not even sure of being able to convince them to participate in an agreement between the LCR and LO.
There is therefore no question of making out that our respective politics are neighbours while they are opposed.
While posing as activists for far left unity, against that which you call Lutte Ouvriere’s "sectarianism" – one word which you haven’t stopped repeating during the campaign which in the context created by the calumnies against us which struck a particular chord – your proposal was in any case hypocritical.
In numerous places, indeed, representatives including central representatives of your organisation have already designated the LCR candidates in the legislative elections.
In some cases candidates have been announced in every constituency in a department, while your were talking to us about dividing up departments between us.
What credibility can we give a proposal for dividing up when all the evidence shows that you have begun to choose.
Therefore each of us must defend their own politics and then the meaning of the votes will be clear!
With our revolutionary greetings.
Georges Kaldy and Francois Duburg.
Our responsibilities - LCR
The response of the LCR to LO
Dear comrades,
Again you respond to a proposal from the LCR for unity by refusing to entertain it. However, we are in a situation which should have made you perceive the necessity for far left unity.
Our two candidates Arlette Laguiller and Olivier Besancenot gathered around 10% of the vote. That gives us a major responsibility in order to respond to the hope this created.
We would have been able to confirm and consolidate the April 21 vote by putting forward a single candidate in each constituency who supports the main points of a programme which breaks with past politics, in front of the youth and the wage-earners.
The right will present united slates of candidates, the governmental left too. With your refusal only the far left will be standing in competition with each other.
The main pretext you give is our position on the May 5 vote. You reproach us for having participated in a "republican front" by calling for a vote for Chirac, but the reality is different.
We called for a fight against the far right in struggle, as well as at the ballot box. We called for a vote against Le Pen. We were present on all the demonstrations.
It is like trying us for witchcraft to confuse our position with that of a "republican front". It is an insult to imply that the LCR would be associated with a plebiscite for Chirac.
Young people and workers wanted to resist the far right danger. It was absurd to oppose this movement, as you did.
>From April 21 onwards you minimised the danger of Le Pen; you did not immediately call for demonstrations as Olivier Besancenot did.
We think that even in a difficult situation the solution is always found in collective mobilisation. The proof of this was shown on May 1.
The workers shouldn’t be taken for idiots: two million demonstrators on May 1 were not fighting against a "phantom of the operetta", as you wrote in Lutte Ouvriere, but against an ideology which is spreading into neighbourhoods and workplaces and which repels them, more than it does you.
In the street no republican front vice inhabited their consciousness.
We asked you a question about the Parliamentary elections which you have not answered: are you prepared to call for a vote, not for the right, but for a Communist, Socialist, or Green Party candidate against a fascist?
You also raised again the question of our "partners", i.e. those who find themselves within the framework of the "100% left" unity against the right and the policies of the left in government.
Is the very idea that others, who are not members of our organisations, but close to our ideas, should wish to participate in this union so insufferable? With the support of 10% of the electorate, should LO and the LCR only discuss between themselves?
Then one must perhaps find the more boring explanation of your rejection in Lutte Ouvriere of 26th April, where G. Kaldy writes that:
"In all the elections where there are no other stakes – as there could be for example in certain situations the possibility of electing Parliamentary representatives – the presence of several far left candidates … is not a disadvantage but a blessing."
Behind this lies a very specific conception of unity; you only conceive of it when it useful to gain elected positions. In no other case do you understand the necessity.
For our part we think that the political situation is so specific and so grave that the unity of the left of the left is urgent.
We will pursue this policy, at the time of the Parliamentary elections and afterwards, despite your current refusal.
We have never proposed to you a single party. We evidently have differences. But we do not have "opposed orientations" as you write (why not a "class break" between us while you’re at it?).
Our two organisations have fought the politics of the plural left. We have proposed to you to take steps forward together, in order to give back hope to millions of young people and wage-earners who look to us.
You have again lost an opportunity. Despite your sectarianism, we will not abandon our desire for unity.
Fraternally
The secretariat of the LCR Political Bureau
Web sites: LCR , Lutte Ouvrière