A reply to SWP's Chris Harman
The June edition of the SWP’s Socialist Review carries a rather vitriolic attack by Chris Harman on the LCR (French section of the Fourth International) over its call for a vote against Le Pen (and thereby for Chirac) in the second round of the recent presidential elections. Chris Harman insists that this was the political equivalent of support for the treacherous popular front in France in the 1930s.
To compound such a ridiculous allegation he then goes on to compare the policy of the LCR with the call by German social democracy (the SPD), in the presidential elections in Germany in 1932, for a vote for Hindenburg against Hitler.
This reflects a rather sterile approach to the application to political principle, taking it out of its context and repeating it by rote.
The popular fronts of the 1930s involved strategic alliances with sections of the bourgeoisie, and bourgeois parties, as a conscious alternative to promoting the mass actions of the working class.
But how can the mass popular slogan of the French presidential election "vote for the crook rather than the fascist" be seen as an alliance (strategic or otherwise) with Chirac or the RPR? To ask the question is to answer it.
Chris Harman goes on to imply that a vote for Chirac would sow illusions in him.
But how can "vote for the crook rather than the fascist" or having yourself sprayed with disinfectant, as many did, after voting for Chirac, be seen as sowing illusions in him?
It makes no sense. And these were the actions, and slogans, not just of a few left voters but the mass reaction of millions of people who were determined to cast a vote against Le Pen as well as confronting him on the streets.
How does this compare with the vote for Hindenburg in 1932 – which was, by the way, a three-way contest between Hindenburg, Hitler, and the German Communist Party (KPD)?
Not at all. The issue then was to strengthen the KPD as a bulwark against Hitler.
The SPD called for a vote for Hindenburg as a conscious alternative to the mobilisation of the working class to stop Hitler – who was choosing his moment to seize power. He already had a party of a million people and a private army of 400,000 storm troopers, and could only be stopped by mass action.
The working class were deprived of the most effective way of stopping Hitler – which was a united front of the SPD and the KPD – by both of those organisations.
The SPD relied on the parliamentary process and the KPD regarded the SPD as ‘social fascists’, as a part of their third period line, and ruled out a united front on the basis that there was no difference between the SPD and the Nazis.
When the KPD failed to stage an uprising against the rise of Hitler to the Chancellorship Trotsky declared the Comintern dead and unreformable, and called for a new, Fourth International.
In the very different conditions of France in 2002, did the LCR propose a vote against Le Pen in the ballot box as an alternative to mobilising the working class?
Quite the reverse! The LCR was the first to call for demonstrations against Le Pen, and they were the most consistent mobilisers of them. Its call was first to get onto the streets, and only secondly to vote against Le Pen in the ballot box.
The LCR was responding to a situation which was created by the choices thrown up by the peculiarities of the French electoral system. This produced, in effect, a referendum on Le Pen, since only way of voting against him was to vote Chirac, or as the spontaneous response of millions put it, for the ‘crook against the fascist’.
With no reformist candidate to vote for, the left were faced with a choice: either vote for Chirac against Le Pen – and be accused of supporting a right-winger – or be seen by the mass movement on the streets as being indifferent to Le Pen getting a higher share of the vote and being strengthened by it.
What Chris Harman misses out is the political dynamic of those mobilisations, which culminated in 2million on the streets on May Day, or the shock to French society of Le Pen reaching the second round. It produced the biggest demonstrations in France since the Liberation, even bigger than 1968.
To tell the hundreds of thousands of young people who were pouring onto the streets that they should then abstain at the ballot box (as LO did and as Chris Harman advocates) made no sense at all.
Why demonstrate on the streets in huge numbers … and then strengthen Le Pen by giving him a higher percentage of the vote in the ballot box? As Chris Harman acknowledges, the size of the Le Pen vote mattered, even if he was bound to lose.
In fact Chris Harman contradicts himself on this point. He argues firstly that there was no need for the left to vote against Le Pen because there was no chance that he could win: but he then goes on to say that the size of the vote against Le Pen was important, and criticises LO for implying that it was not.
The effect of the mass campaign and the second round vote was to contain Le Pen’s rise in popularity. He got 18%, against 82% for Chirac. Thus despite a hugely high profile for two weeks as a second round candidate, he failed to raise his vote. In fact it fell by 1%, although due to the much higher turn out he got 500,000 extra votes.
A higher percentage of the vote for Le Pen, 25-75 for example, or even 30-70, would have strengthened the far right, both in France and across Europe. It would have been a defeat for the working class. Those standing on the side lines were therefore seen as abstainers from an important aspect of the struggle, suggesting that they thought that the outcome of the ballot did not matter.
Of course Trotskyists do not vote for bourgeois candidates or for bourgeois parties without exceptional reasons. In the second round of the Parliamentary elections the LCR adopted a different position – since the dynamics are different, and the stakes were not so high and the issue of Le Pen becoming the President of France was not posed.
Consequently where FN candidates got through to the second round the LCR called for a vote for the left candidate with the best chance against them.
It is not true, however, that Trotskyists never vote for bourgeois candidates or bourgeois parties. Social democratic parties are bourgeois through and through, but we vote critically for them, because of their working class base which we want to relate. We support them, as Lenin and Trotsky said, "as the rope supports the hanging man". The left were "supporting" Chirac in a similar way.
Thus in the second round of the French presidential elections it was in the best interests of the working class to mount mass demonstrations on the streets against Le Pen – and then defeat him at the ballot box by the biggest possible margin.
Some people who argue for an abstention point to the reactionary programme of Chirac, and suggests that to vote for him is to take responsibility for it.
But this same logic that would have prevented the left from voting for Jospin had he got through to the second round, or indeed voting for any social democratic party in Europe. It would certainly prevent a vote for Blair or New Labour in Britain.
Now it is also being suggested that the victory of Chirac in the presidential elections (and the left’s vote for him) was responsible for his success in the Parliamentary elections. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The defeat of the Socialist party in the Parliamentary elections was for exactly the same reason as Jospin was defeated in the Presidential elections – traditional voters turned away because of his and the Socialist Party’s record in government.
The Parliamentary elections were always going to be a mirror image of the presidential elections. The collapse of the centre left was compounded by the unpopularity of ‘cohabitation’.
What the mass campaign against Le Pen did achieve was greatly to strengthen the left and the radical movements in France. The task now is to consolidate that new strength into a new unity of the left, which can build on what has been achieved.