Tag Archives: French Presidential Election

What is bourgeois democracy?

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Most of Europe is involved in a proxy war against Russia, costing billions of Euros and untold lives; untold because the personnel involved were not supposed to be in Ukraine in the first place.  Who voted for the war?

This question sums up bourgeois democracy.

This has not prevented many on the left enthusiastically supporting it.  This left, which normally would not dream of calling a strike without a ballot, has given a blank cheque to its ruling class and its state.  Rather than demand a vote in order to debate the purpose and objectives of the war, they have simply endorsed it and called for it to be supported more vigorously.  I doubt the idea of a debate and vote even crossed their minds, not least because they don’t have an alternative anyway.

The justification, ironically, is that Ukraine is a ‘democracy’ and Russia is not; even though the current president of Ukraine is no longer an elected leader, since his period of office has expired, while the President of Russia actually won an election, for what it’s worth.  In the last few days Zelensky has tried to concentrate even more power in his hands by sacking around half his cabinet.  That opposition parties and media are banned in Ukraine matters not a jot to these people while Russia’s elections are regarded as a sham.  Let’s think about that for a minute and consider recent elections in the ‘democratic’ West as a comparison.

First, we have the new Labour government in Britain, elected with an enormous parliamentary majority by only 20% of the electorate on the basis of not much more than not being the Tories.  Starmer and his colleagues did their best not to commit to any specific policies and have quickly broken promises that they did make – on energy prices and austerity.  No doubt, further measures will confirm this course.  The widespread opposition to genocide in Gaza, reflected in support for some independent candidates, could find no reflection in the choice of government as both Labour and Tories support it.

Second, we have the most powerful bourgeois democracy in the world in which counting the money is a better guide to who will win than the polling of support for the various policies that the candidates claim to support.  The US is possibly even worse than Britain in terms of the vacuum of debate on what exactly parties will do when elected, whether anything they say can be believed and is not just a catalogue of lies.  For every Donald Trump and Kamala Harris we have a Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer.  The main appeal of each candidate is aversion for the other.

When the usual mechanisms for making sure the ‘right’ candidates are selected fail these are ditched and the men and women with money and political power step in to make the ‘right’ selection.  After months of primaries and the votes of millions – 14.5 million in fact – the Democratic grandees and apparatchiks stepped in to ensure that Genocide Joe would not be the Presidential candidate.  In this he was simply the subject of the same machinations that ensured he was the candidate in 2020 instead of Bernie Sanders, who was judged too left wing regardless of the popularity of his policies or of himself.

Even the proponents of bourgeois democracy worry that all this is not sustainable, while certain sections of the left cling to it all the more firmly the more rotten it becomes.  In an opinion piece in the Financial Times, a contributing editor noted that Kamala Harris has given only one media interview and even that not by herself – ‘she seems to think that if voters understand what she will do as president, they will be less likely to support her.’  It notes the irony that, while claiming to defend democracy against the “existential threat” to it posed by Trump, the failure to do what you say you are going to do means that ‘rather embarrassingly, you will be the one undermining the system of representative government.”

The argument of socialists is that bourgeois democracy – “representative government” – is a sham.  How could it be otherwise in a system in which the means of production are controlled by the capitalist class, including the means of communication – of producing ‘the news’ and disseminating it, and the state machinery through which government policies are implemented – thorough its top personnel and the economic structures through which policies can be allowed to work or alternatively are throttled.

A final example of bourgeois democracy in action is in France, where the defeated Emmanuel Macron, having prevaricated for two months, has announced that Michel Barnier has been chosen by him to be Prime Minister.  Despite the New Popular Front having won a plurality of the votes he has selected a leader from the right wing Les Républicans, which won only 6.57% of the first round vote.

The leader of France Insoumise, Jean-Luc Mélenchon has declared that “We’ve been robbed in this election”. It is normally the largest formation that is permitted to form an administration but such normalities are always disregarded when the political establishment thinks that it faces some sort of threat, especially from the left.

The real anti-democratic nature of this move by Macron is not so much the abuse of this Presidential mechanism but what the employment of this power signifies.  The elections were a decisive rejection of Macron and his policies, reflected in the vote for the New Popular Front and in the rise of the far right Rassemblement National.  Yet Barnier was selected preciously in order to confirm and continue these policies.

The front page of the Financial Times explained that the purpose of Macron’s choice was to ‘find a candidate . . . who would not seek to undo his pro-business reforms.’  The fraudulent nature of the far right alternative to mainstream capitalist policies was revealed by the response of Marien Le Pen who is quoted as ‘cautiously’ welcoming the appointment and saying that “Barnier seems at least to meet one of the criteria we’d demanded . . . and be able to speak with the Rassemblement National.  That will be useful as compromises will need to solve the budget situation.”

An analyst from one of the think tanks that litter the capitalist political environment stated that his appointment would ‘help in France’s bid to reassure markets over the economy and public spending’.  “He’s a safe pair of hands known to market participants, known to Europe and the domestic political elite within France”, adding that he would be expected to ensure that ‘Macron’s labour and pension reforms would remain intact.’

So, there we have it.  An overwhelming vote against Macron’s policies is turned, or is attempting to be turned, into an administration that will ensure their maintenance.  It is not the clear wishes of the electorate that must be counted but that of the ‘markets’ – national and international capitalism – and the ‘political elite’ that counts.

For all the hypocritical cant about ‘democracy’ we have yet another example of how bourgeois democracy is democracy for the bourgeoisie.  For the majority, including the working class, democracy does not extend beyond occasional visits to the polling booth in which meaningful choice has often been removed, or when it has not, constitutional devices are employed until these too are insufficient whereupon more forceful measures are employed.

Mélenchon is reported to have called for protests against this subversion of the popular will, demonstrating that, for the working class, democracy can only be enforced and guaranteed by its own actions.  What this action cannot do, however, is democratise the state itself, which is the instrument of the political elite and the markets – the bourgeoisie and capitalism.

The resort to protest is testament to where power for the working class arises and where it must be advanced – in the organisation and mobilisation of the workers themselves.  Elections can measure its strength and level of politicisation but only the workers own organisations can form a democratic alternative to the political elite, the bourgeois class and its state.  This in turn demands that the organisation of the working class movement itself must be democratic, but until some current socialists stop supporting capitalist war in defence of bourgeois democracy they will have nothing but a reactionary role to play in building up the workers own democracy.

An exchange of views on the French Presidential election

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The following is a short exchange of views on Facebook on the French Presidential election which is taking place today:

LMcQ – See if you can guess which candidate’s leaflet has three explicitly racist pledges.  I’m struggling with this “they’re as bad as each other in the final analysis” line of argument.

Sráid Marx:  I don’t think that’s the argument being put. What about – how will Macron defend workers against fascism (or however one wants to characterise the FN) by implementing an austerity offensive against them, pushing them even further into the pursuit of bad alternatives (like FN)? And how will you explain to them that when you said they should vote for this offensive you didn’t actually mean you supported this offensive. I seem to remember we have been here before with a Le Pen and some geezer called Chirac and voting for the less worst alternative has just brought us to here. At what point, or how bad, would the lesser alternative have to be before you said – stop! The workers cannot lend support to those who simply prepare the way for the fascists and who you must at all times regard as your enemy. And if this is a frightening prospect to you that is only because your only defence ultimately is your own strength and this you cannot delegate – and certainly not to shits like Macron!

RM: Macron is an immediate short term defence against fascism simply because he is the only possible non-fascist outcome at this point. Everything starts from the present. The Chirac argument here is interesting. Yes, voting Chirac to defeat le Pen brought us to ‘now’ but that is surely a better option than to be looking back after 15 years of fascism in power!

Sráid Marx:  Everything starts from when it starts, which at any point in time is usually not the present. Today the weakness of the workers’ movement arises from its failure to successfully oppose austerity and build its own alternative political position in the past. This weakness is not addressed one iota by voting for Macron, in fact it is set back and will always be set back as long as the Macron’s of this world win and the likes of a Le Pen can be waived in front of us to get everyone to vote for the lesser evil. We know this because, as I said, it has happened before. An immediate defence against fascism? But the present passes into what we view now as the future and we will be weaker because we believed that Macron is some sort of defence. If he is one at the election then by definition his success is also a continuing defence, or do we only oppose and fight him unless there is an election. At what point do we say that workers must create their own alternative and cannot support the politicians and policies that brought us to this horrible choice? That is the political choice that we must take; that it is not on the ballot paper is more than unfortunate but that is the case nevertheless. Having our political choices determined by electoralism is not the way forward but is often a trap.

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SD: In an election which can only have one of two outcomes the alternative to the lesser evil is the greater evil.

Sráid Marx: Of course you are correct, but the question is whether the lesser EVIL is actually too high a price to pay.

F-CL: Well, if you don’t go with the lesser, surely the question is, is the greater evil too high a price to pay?

Sráid Marx:  Yes, a very good answer. But it still leaves you with the option of determining that both evils cannot be endorsed and that the elections leave you with no acceptable choice and to reject the choice given to you. Or do you believe that in all elections one must vote and endeavour to find the lesser evil?

F-CL:  It depends on circumstances … if there is a real, public abstain campaign and a refusal to vote can be seen to have meaning in the election then I think not voting could be the best option. And having “None of the above” on the voting paper – so you can actually show rejection of all – would be good (in fact, I think we should have a policy of including this option in all votes). But in my experience it is very rare for this to be the case, and going for “None of the above” would encourage people to not maximise the opposition to the greater evil, so even if “None” were an option I think I would usually come down in favour of lesser evil

The other alternative justifying not voting is for the candidates to be as close to as awful as each other to make any differentiation pointless. But this awfulness also involves assessment of the perceived consequences of who gets voted in. Even if Macron and Le Pen are close to each other (in fact I don’t think they are), Le Pen getting in would boost the far right far more than Macron would and you have to take that into account as well as the politics of the candidates

SD:  Surely the issue is about which outcome leaves the working class best placed to fight. In almost all circumstances the working class and the oppressed are going to be able to resist a lesser evil better than they could resist a greater evil, otherwise it wouldn’t be a greater evil.

Sráid Marx:  Not if they are disarmed politically by believing their class enemy is in any sense their protector against reaction. Workers must be taught again and again that they share interests as a class and not with liberals or other bourgeois figures.

SD: That’s quite a big if that you have inserted there. You think it is possible to convince people threatened by the rise of the FN to abstain, yet you don’t believe it possible to convince people that voting for a lesser evil still means they need to organise against that lesser evil?

Sráid Marx:  First I think that the threat that they will most likely face is Macron and his reactionary agenda and a vote for him is a statement that ‘it could be worse’! If such a view is justified in the election – why not afterwards? Fighting the FN is not the only issue in this election. In fact the rise of the FN is due to the policies now being pursued by Macron, policies that the FN say they have an alternative and a left that simply wants to fight the FN and votes for Macron and his policies makes their pretence all the stronger. The message for an active abstention is that you cannot rely on a simple vote to stop the FN, that the FN will get stronger if everyone else rows behind Macron and his reactionary policies and only the FN is seen to stand against them all the way. It’s a message that if you hate or fear the FN there is no solution but your own activity and a workers’ alternative to the policies that Macron will pursue, which the FN will feed off and attempt to continue to grow from.

SD: But “active abstentions” don’t actually exist, except in the heads of ultra lefts who try to comfort themselves that doing nothing out of sectarianism is a political act. Voting or not voting won’t make an iota of difference as to whether people fight back after the election. It just might be slightly harder to do so with an FN president.

Sráid Marx:  Let’s assume for one moment you are right – this would still not justify support for Macron, nor would it invalidate the objections to such support. But while living in Belfast I have seen a number of active abstention campaigns where leafleting, postering and canvassing were all carried out to encourage abstention. It is not even a merely ‘ultra-left’ notion – the greatest number of posters I ever saw in an election in West Belfast was when the Provos wanted an abstention when Bernadette McAliskey stood for the European parliament and the republicans still opposed participation in Brit elections. As to whether voting will affect how people will behave after the election, it must be clear that a working class vote for Macron will strengthen him. It would really be a sort of ultra-leftism to believe workers will vote for a bourgeois candidate but mobilise against him the day after, on the understanding that he is the lesser evil. Of course I have seen a similar view that they would immediately mobilise against a Le Pen victory dismissed, although you only claim it might be slightly harder.