Credibility and division
Our (the LCR) candidates got 1.25 % of the vote (1.64 % in the areas where we stood), 320,594 votes in total. Lutte Ouvriere got 1.19 %, 304,100 votes. The Lambertists who stood 193 candidates got 0.30 % and 81,597 votes. The total of 2.76 % is far below the 10.44 % the far left got in the Presidential elections, but it is necessary to compare like with like.
In the legislative elections in 1997, the far left received 2.2 %. Thus there is a progression because of an essential revival of militancy that made it possible to present a much more significant number of candidates.
This militant dynamism has not been able to find a unitary framework that would have enabled it to resist the political pressure that was exerted in these elections by their antidemocratic character. It is a lost opportunity
We were not able to meet the challenge to maintain the momentum of the presidential elections. But the far left confirmed that it has become a national political force with weight.
If there has been a failure, it is relative and must be analysed within the framework of the former relationship of forces and their evolution. The division of the far left, vis-a-vis the extreme right and the governmental right, was deeply felt by many of our voters.
"The reflex of the useful vote on the left" was also a pressure as Le Monde noted. The absence of candidates who were well known in their areas was certainly a factor – as was shown, in reverse, by the excellent result of 5.47 % for Olivier Besancenot.
>From this point of view, the results of the legislative election indicate the relationship of forces: the dynamism of the far left was not enough to compensate for the weakness of its local base. Only a daring policy aimed at regrouping the forces that were breaking with the parties of the plural left, would perhaps have made it possible to compensate for this handicap. It was for this reason that we proposed an agreement with LO.
However, LO preferred confrontation when it could have taken initiatives itself. LO thought it could use the presidential elections to confirm its supremacy on the electoral front because of the popularity of Arlette Laguiller and then to appear like a new party with candidates in every constituency in the legislative elections. This reasoning is not concretised.
The issue was not that LO called for an abstention in the second round of the Presidentials, because it was the first round votes for Olivier that showed the error of their reasoning. This electoral re-balancing between our two tendencies corresponds to an affirmation of the need for unity, openness and democracy. The aggressive and moralistic way in which LO defended their position underlined the problem.
In the great majority of districts where we were in competition, our score was slightly higher than LO. This re-balancing operates within the same working class and popular electorate, indicates clearly a will for openness and transparency, a need for renewal corresponding to the major social and political evolutions.
New responsibilities
This re-balancing between LO and the LCR must be understood in the context of developments since 1995, when Arlette Laguiller, for the first time got more than 5% in the face of the eruption of the vast movement of November-December.
These were the first two great demonstrations of a revival of social conflict and rupture with the parties of the governmental left. This revival has limits but it was also confirmed at the political level by progress of far left - as well as by the growth of the social movement in all its forms.
LO is wrong footed by this evolution. It is too used to present itself as a minority opposition in the face of the Socialist Party, the Communist Party and the trade-union bureaucracies: it does not know how to relate to the new social movements. On the contrary, it tends to retreat into itself.
At the moment when social democracy is becoming neo-liberal, and where Stalinism is collapsing, the construction of a new working class and popular force is the order of the day. The results of the presidential and legislative elections must be assessed in this light.
Today it is necessary for us to take the initiatives necessary to contribute to the emergence of such a force by taking support from militant realities. These elections were based on the relationship of forces created by twenty years of the ruling class offensive. But they cannot only be read through the distorting prism of electoral results. These are only indications.
Things are less unfavourable in the world of work than it appears. They show primarily the shift between the potential forces of the social movement and its militant reality, and consequently our tasks. It is time for debate, and assessment and through this the formulation of a policy for the battles ahead and a regroupment of those who are the breaking with the parties of the governmental left.
(From Rouge, weekly paper of the LCR - Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire)