Tag Archives: New Popular Front

A New Popular Front for Ireland? (3 of 3)

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A final argument in support of the New Popular Front approach is to argue that the key task of the day in the class struggle is to stop the far right, and this the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) has done.  How else was it to be done in the circumstances?

One way this has been put is to say that:

‘If the left had not voted for Macron candidates in the second round, it would have meant an overall majority for Le Pen. Just listen to the relief expressed by ethnic minority people on TV in the Republic Square last night. They were terrified at a Le Pen government moving aggressively against so-called bi-nationals. Stopping a Le Pen government makes a real difference. Counter-posing mass struggles or street mobilisations as an immediate solution to defend black or Arab people is just demagogy.’

Let’s get some things out of the way first – ‘Just listen to the relief expressed by ethnic minority people on TV in the Republic Square last night’ is not enough, not nearly enough, to join that fear and then surrender political principle and independence.  If this is a guide to the rationale then it is woefully weak; the fight against the far right will be advanced by militant action based on socialist politics, not fear driving the working class into the arms of the main bourgeois parties and through them the French state. Were the far-right an immediate fascist danger it would be because this state, and its political class, had decided that fascism was required, in which case allying with this class in order to preserve the current state would be an obvious disaster. 

Let’s note the admission in this article of the price paid for this ‘success.’  First, that the NFP propped up the Macron bloc to the extent it could, and ‘we should not forget her (Marine le Pen) group topped the vote share, and the increase in her party’s seat tally is still historic.’  In other words the far right still gained and the main bourgeois parties that paved their way received protection by the intervention of a ‘united left’.  These are the circumstances that facilitated the rise of the far right previously, that precipitated the crisis, and which – despite the NFP ‘success’ – still. persist.  A ‘success’ which reproduces the threat at a potentially higher level is not a success.

So, what about the claim that the need for ‘mass struggles or street mobilisations as an immediate solution to defend black or Arab people is just demagogy’?  Well, since right now mobilisation and struggle will continue to be necessary, seeking these is clearly not demagogy and do not cease to be of primary importance because there is an election.  What about the NFP not being counterposed to these steps?

Well, since the NFP has failed to achieve a majority there will be no governmental programme that will offer an alternative to either the main bourgeois parties or far right and there will be no governmental endorsement of the physical or legal protection of black or Arab people.  The NFP is not going to mobilise workers to protect them as it isn’t going to organise workers defence groups to defend itself.

The failure to win governmental office may cause some demoralisation – or at least demobilisation – of NFP supporters, especially if the whole cobbled together alliance breaks up and erstwhile allies denounce each other for the failure. Even if this proves not to be the case the need for a robust alternative to be built will be no clearer or nearer to creation by it being asserted that forces like the SP, Communist Party and Greens will lead it.  They will not. An alternative to them will remain to be created but cannot if the priority becomes an alliance with them against the far right. Acceptance of the NFP argument would mean that the far right would have achieved the removal of an independent socialist left, one not wedded to defence of the French state and bourgeois democracy.

What about the claim: ‘Key point: Without the formation of the NFP, no defeat of Le Pen.’  The argument is that had the left decided not to unite it may have been unable to weaken the far right as much as it did, but the argument also entails the strengthening of the Macron bloc as just as necessary to this outcome.  It could therefore equally be argued that supporting this bloc from the start through an alliance in the first round of voting might have achieved the same result.

That this would obviously be rejected then as now can only be because this mainstream right was not and is not an alternative to the far right that could be supported – except that it then was supported.  Why not in the first round if was acceptable in the second?

Some appreciation that there would be a day after the election should have prevented support for the Macron bloc in the second round, a bloc that they now claim they do not support in power today; except this is precisely the argument against the whole NFP project.  The fancy that it is about stopping the far right, and that this is what matters, dissolves when the election is over and you’re back to square one. Short cuts do not take you to your destination.

In so far as the creation of left unity did evoke enthusiasm and activity it is an exercise in misleading and miseducating those who became active: that their activity on behalf of a cobbled together programme and alliance of forces without any real socialist alternative is a step forward.  Support for this alliance will not withstand its fracturing, and at worst lead to yet another round of claims that what is needed is left unity of those who are ultimately united only in acceptance of the French capitalist state and not to any working class alternative.  It is not enough to be ‘active’ – the political programme that you struggle for is decisive in whether it advances the working class cause.

The article referenced states that ‘this week the big issue is what next’; surely a question that should have occurred to the supporters of the NFP beforehand, but which then elicits the observations that the NFP is set for splits, and its left under Melenchon is not a democratic alternative.  One starts to wonder why it is necessary to argue against a ‘united left’/NFP when even those who support it admit it isn’t actually united and isn’t very left?  Why would socialists want to continually repeat this failure?

As for the far right itself, the article notes that: ‘although the RN has been pushed back, their position has still been strengthened compared to the previous parliament. An unstable period with no majority and various stitch-ups means they can frame it as the caste ganging up on the true defenders of French identity. So, it could still provide them with plenty of space to build their forces.’  In other words, the far right may continue to advance while the left fails to hold together because it substitutes opportunist electoral alliances for working class struggle – for the building of a stronger working class movement.

Building a stronger working class movement out of what exists and arming it with socialist politics – that recognises the independent interests of the working class – is the alternative.  This does not rule out agreements or temporary limited alliances with others opposed to the far right, but it rules out subordination of socialist politics to a cobbled together alliance that supports the main bourgeois parties and the state.  Agreement must be based on a refusal to do so, and if such agreement is not achievable then any other more limited agreement must be based on concrete actions.  Where no agreement can be reached this does not exclude participation in specific joint activity and mobilisations while retaining an independent policy.

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If we return back to Ireland, we also return to the working class movement as it is, one that has been wedded to social partnership with the main bourgeois parties and Irish state for over a generation, for so long it is no longer discussed.  The trade unions are politically dead, and its bureaucracy is in bed with the state because it provides them with a comfortable home.  The massive growth of the working class has been driven by multinationals, but the leadership of the unions has a policy of not building the movement within them.  The Irish left has given up challenging this situation and while it will support individual strikes etc. it has no campaign against the bureaucracy.

Without a revitalisation of the working class movement the (genuine socialist) left in Ireland will remain weak, and while much of what exists of it is unusual in that it claims to be Marxist, the actual politics it argues is not very different from left social democracy.  What is broadly called the left hasn’t grown in twenty years as the table below, taken from this site, illustrates:

It could reasonably be argued that the Irish Labour party isn’t left because it has always allied with Fine Gael to get into office, but one could say something similar about the Greens and we know that Sinn Fein’s whole strategy is the same today.  Excluding them would not change the picture of a failure to grow, although what it would show is that the label ‘left’ is pretty meaningless.

Creating a working class alternative will not start by cobbling together any arrangement of these in an Irish New Popular Front that will be neither left nor very popular either.  As an electoralist initiative it fails on even electoralist grounds.  For the pragmatists these last three posts could have been ignored and only the table above provided to make the argument, but that’s the problem with the Irish left: it’s primary weakness today is political not electoral.

Back to part 2

A New Popular Front for Ireland? (2 of 3)

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– Demonstration against the extreme right in the presence of the new Popular Front – 15/06/2024 – France / Paris – Place de la Nation a Paris, manifestation contre l extreme droite. PUBLICATIONxNOTxINxFRAxRUS OlivierxDonnarsx/xLexPictorium LePictorium_0293005

Supporters of the New Popular Front in France start from the view that the task of the day is to defeat the far right while in Ireland it is to defeat the mainstream right.  In the first, alliance is made with the mainstream right and in the latter with the non-mainstream right that still parades a certain amount of fake radicalism.  Since neither the mainstream right or its fake radical opposition will break from capitalism the left makes compromises that it really can’t deny because it has accepted that the task is to defeat the far right, in the case of France, or the main right wing parties in the case of Ireland.  Since it is the mainstream right that has facilitated the rise of the far right in both countries the left has allied itself with the cause of this rise in France and discredited itself as an alternative.  In Ireland, the logic of the proposed policy is the same but simply lags behind France in its development. This is all pretty straightforward.

The following problems arise.  In order to create a left majority, the idea of ‘the left’ is expanded to include anyone opposed to the far right/mainstream right who proclaims itself as in any way left or socialist.  This includes those who have been in government and who have attacked the working class when they were there; for example the Socialist Party (SP) in France and Sinn Fein in Ireland. 

Since the world is full of parties with socialist or communist in their name that are anything but, it is necessary to know how to determine who exactly is a socialist.  In the case of the SP and Communist Party in France this is relatively easy – they have been in government and made it clear that they will defend French capitalism.  In the case of Sinn Fein, they have also been in office and present themselves as the most enthusiastic defenders of the institutions that are the product of a ‘peace process’ set up by British and US imperialism.  Sinn Fein’s claims to socialism are threadbare to non-existent.

Acceptance of any of these parties’ bona fides means that you join rejection of any coherent definition of socialism, ally with parties that defend capitalism and thus all of its consequences, and means that you then cease to offer genuine socialist politics. This is not because you have proposed some joint action for a specific purpose but because you propose to enter into a government with them with the pretence of a radical or socialist programme. This is not a policy you can turn off and on, becoming true to your claims in-between. This is not a slippery slope you can climb back up, but a result of the slippery slope you have already descended.

The use of words such as ‘radical’ or ‘left’ to justify alliances that cannot be described as socialist, as if there was something other than socialism that offers adequate answers and promises a different society, is one illustration. One consequence is that being on the ‘left’ becomes decisive over being socialist, with the latter robbed of any distinct meaning; all necessary because you have admitted that there is a task more important than fighting the capitalist system and socialism. This task, or ‘stage’, amounts to defending the so-called democratic version of capitalism from the far right, or ending years of the mainstream parties in office without ending the system they represent, as if they were the problem and not an expression.

The far right in France, and main bourgeois parties in Ireland, are here to stay in the foreseeable future, so the argument that there should be an alliance between the ‘left’ and the mainstream bourgeois parties in France, or a ‘left’ in Ireland that includes Sinn Fein, will hold as long as they do. This means that uncompromising opposition to both is fatally undermined and the rationale for an independent socialist alternative is permanently suspended.

The fundamental problem is therefore that the task of organising and politicising the working class to defend its own separate interests as understood by socialists is subordinated, if not entirely dispensed with, in order to defend a particular form of capitalist rule in France, while in Ireland it is to pretend that the latest generation of ‘radical’ nationalists are a genuine alternative to the rule of their historical equivalents.

We see this again and again in the politics of the ‘lesser evil’ – in relation to the war in Ukraine as well as opposition to the far right.  It is not an accident that the New Popular Front in France and united ‘left’ in Ireland support the imperialist war. The view that the separate organisation of the working class under socialism is the only safeguard against the far right is forgotten.  The view that the prime task is not to defeat the far right or replace one bunch of nationalists with another but to advance this organisation and politicisation is opposed.

Attempts are made, in relation to both France and Ireland, to claim that the policy of a popular front is part of, or at least not incompatible with, this sort of organisation but the alliance with fake-socialists and mainstream bourgeois parties makes such claims impossible to sustain.  This is fundamentally because of the second problem with the whole idea, which is that these left fronts are not about the mobilisation of the working  class but an electoral alliance.  The mainstream bourgeois parties might tolerate temporary expressions of mass support for an alliance with themselves but will never support an independent mobilisation of the working class, because this would have to involve opposition to them to be genuinely independent.

In France the previous Socialist Party government of François Hollande used the state to attack French workers mobilising against its anti-working class policies.  Sinn Fein has no tradition of independent working class organisation and even during the height of mass participation in the struggle against British rule in the North, when it wasn’t trying to manipulate it and subordinate it to its armed struggle, it repeatedly went behind the back of the mass struggle to negotiate in secret with the British state.

Today, People before Profit repeatedly declares that it supports ‘street politics’, and that while ‘a shift left will strike fear into the hearts of the establishment and the very privileged elite . . . . Our best defence against them is mass mobilisation from below on the real issues and injustices faced by ordinary working people.’  Supporters of the NFP in France point to the mass demonstrations in support of the NFP as showing the compatibility of mass struggle with electoral alliances.

Paul Murphy argues that ‘to overcome their opposition and actually implement the ecosocialist change necessary to resolve the crises faced by people would require a left government basing itself on people-power mobilisation from below.’  In reality, street politics, pressure from below, and ‘mobilisation from below’ in support of a left government are all precisely acceptance of the subordinate position of the working class to a left alliance and a left government.

A current within People before Profit put it well when it said that ‘Electing former traitors to disappoint workers is not a good strategy. Thinking that any amount of protest “from below” can make these snakes anything other than what they are is magical thinking.’   This applies to Ireland as much as France.

Paul Murphy stated that ‘I lost count of the number of times people said to me during the recent election that no matter who they vote for, nothing seems to change. I can’t blame them.’  However, instead of arguing that voting for an alliance that will include Sinn Fein is the answer he needs to explain to workers that the only way to change society is for the working class to do it itself, certainly not to promise that he and his organisation will to do it for them.

The whole article by Murphy makes it clear that radical change, sometimes even called socialist change, is to issue from a left government, to come down from on high with all the benefits of its manifesto to be acclaimed by a grateful working class; forgetting all the lessons of history and all the teachings derived from it by Marxists.  Governments don’t rule, classes and their states rule.  This is why Marxists call for workers ownership and control and a workers’ state, not a bunch of left politicians surrounded by the levers of office to be used through a capitalist state and bound by and to the economic power of the capitalist class.

Promising to achieve the change set out by PbP from a left government is actually worse than the misadventure of the NFP in France.  In France the excuse is that the enemy is at the gate, even if it fails to realise that its other enemy is inside the gate with it.  In Ireland, PbP are promising not only that it will thwart the far right but will transform Irish capitalism as well – and with Sinn Fein!

Sinn Fein has demonstrated with its new policy of opposition to the accommodation of refugees that it will continue moving to the right, which PbP can follow by pursuing its ‘left unity’ or reject by tearing up its electoralist strategy and looking for an alternative. The new SF policy is really a two-fingers to its proposal and flushes any pretence it could be part of any genuine left project down the toilet.

‘Street’ politics, ‘pressure’ and ‘mobilisation from below’ of a top-down project to deliver radical change for the working class is not new. It is not the working class achieving its own emancipation.  It is the working class being employed to support someone else doing it for them; feeding it the illusion that the capitalist state is the vehicle for its delivery.  It makes its activity subordinate to the politics of the left alliance, just as in France today the working class is subject to the machinations within the NFP and the vetoes of discredited politicians such as Holland, once so decisively rejected he didn’t bother standing for President a second time.

The alternative of independent working class organisation and action is not difficult to understand.  It is very difficult to achieve, but then liberation and emancipation by the state is impossible.  Sinn Fein is not going to become a genuinely socialist party and the Irish civil service is not going to deliver an Ireland of equality and working class power.  No amount of PbP TDs will make it happen.  The history of class struggle across the world is littered with self-declared socialists who promised to deliver for the working class but didn’t understand that what they promised could only be delivered by the working class itself.

Back to part 1

Forward to part 3

A New Popular Front for Ireland? (1 of 3)

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It’s not often that in politics you get to carry out an experiment that will tell you what will happen if you propose to take a certain course of action, but that is what we have with the proposal for the Irish Left to copy the creation of the New Popular Front in France.

People before Profit have proposed that a left pact that includes Sinn Fein should stand as an alternative alliance to the current Fianna Fail and Fine Gael government that will seek a new government mandate later in the year.  Its TD Paul Murphy has explained that a new mandate ‘would be a ‘disaster’, further ‘ratchet up’ the ‘scapegoating of asylum seekers’ and ‘embolden the far right even more.’   In this, the left should ‘take inspiration from the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) in France.’

There are so many issues with this it is difficult to know where to start; but let’s start with the most obvious.  In France the NFP was put forward as a way to stop the election of a far-right government of the Rassemblement National (RN).  This has involved an electoral alliance of the NFP with the main French bourgeois parties in which left voters were asked to vote for these parties where they were placed second in the second round of voting. Just like in Ireland, this alliance claims that it has been the policies of these parties that has helped incite and support the far right in the first place.

So, in Ireland, an alliance with the main bourgeois parties in France is held up as the example to follow in order to defeat the same main bourgeois parties in Ireland.  It might be claimed that this is not what is meant by copying the NFP example but that is only true if you ignore the politics involved, and politics is what it’s all about.

At a very basic level the proposal is all about what you are against and not what you are for, a common charge against the left by the right that the left continually confirms.  The far-right offer an alternative, even if it is reactionary and built on lies, while the main bourgeois parties offer the status quo, which includes all the powerful and hegemonic political, economic and ideological forces in Ireland and the world.

When faced with the slender possibility of presenting its own alternative government following the elections the hastily constructed joint platform of the NFP in France has been no help; the main point was purely negative – to allow the creation of a pact that would stymie the far right.  The NFP includes the very parties who led to the collapse and discrediting of previous left governments composed of the Communist Party and Socialist Party.  The former is now a shadow of its former self while the latter has been allowed to climb back up from its utterly discredited rule between 2012 to 2017 under President François Hollande, also back from the dead and part of the NFP.

With stopping the far-right as its prime and overriding purpose, there can be no objection to further capitulation to the main ‘centrist’ parties, which suffered the biggest defeat in the elections and to which the majority of the French public is bitterly opposed.  Now, along comes the united left to form an alliance to prop it up.  While the left in Ireland portrays the French elections as a victory for the left it ignores that this was a victory (of sorts) of an alliance with these discredited bourgeois parties, which have an effective veto over the formation of any new government.

What now remains to be determined is the exact configuration of the caretaker government cobbled together from the fragments of the NFP and bourgeois centrists before the next presidential election in which the far-right will then again claim to be the only real alternative to the rotten establishment.  Such are the fruits of short term surrender of principles, or opportunism as it has long been known as.

The relevance to Ireland is clear enough.   The left alliance proposed by People before Profit only has the remotest credibility because it must contain Sinn Fein, so this party must be called ‘left’ because it can’t be called socialist, which shows how this is a purely relative term, loaded with ambiguity and therefore dangerous in application.

The political experiment I alluded to at the start of the article also relates to the fact that Sinn Fein is already involved in a coalition government in Ireland, and with one of the most backward and reactionary parties in Europe.  What’s more, the DUP and Sinn Fein seem to get along famously, with differences not over fundamental policy but just how the sectarian pie is carved up between them.

The Stormont regime is a now a byword for disfunction and incompetency, but these are just expressions of its sectarianism.  This sectarianism has made it easy for Sinn Fein to join with the DUP in imposing austerity while trumpeting the fact that it is now the leading party in the whole rotten edifice.  Widespread acceptance of this arrangement has been possible mainly by portraying the North as a place apart with different rules that don’t apply in the rest of the country.

People before Profit thinks it can form an alliance with Sinn Fein in the South, telling it that its project of a coalition with Fianna Fail (FF) or Fine Gael (FG) would face a veto on any radical change.  It has sought to persuade SF that its attempts to make this work have failed, including its overtures to convince FF & FG that ‘you were not advocating a radical left programme’, and its ‘reluctance to clearly oppose the government’s scapegoating of asylum seekers.’  Yet this is the party that PbP portrays as ‘left’ and a vehicle for radical change!

It’s not even that PbP is promoting this with its eyes closed – blinkers maybe – but even the most blinkered can’t ignore the hypocrisy of Sinn Fein and its talking out of both sides of its mouth; one of the reasons its vote fell so far from expectations in the recent local and European elections.

Everyone knows that Sinn Fein was expecting to be in government after the next general election, with the prime candidate for partner being Fianna Fail, one of the evil twins that are the target of PbP and which it regards as the over-riding priority to defeat. If this strategy, its record in Stormont, its promise of good behaviour, and its failure to challenge the scapegoating of asylum seekers; if all this is not enough to expose the real character of Sinn Fein then we must ask the question – what compromises are PbP prepared to make for an alliance with it?

If there are none, is this because the joint platform will be so anaemic, the politics of SF and PbP are so similar, or because the priority is to get FF and FG out so it doesn’t matter?  If there are compromises to be made, what are they?

Forward to part 2

French elections: when Left unity is not such a good idea

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The second round of the French parliamentary elections on Sunday will determine whether the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) of Marine Le Pen will be able to win enough seats to form a majority government or perhaps do so in coalition with others.  Stopping this has become the priority for the French left, which has united in a New Popular Front, recalling that of the original in the 1930s.  It consists of La France Insoumise (LFI) led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the Socialist Party (PS), the French Communist Party (PCF), Greens and the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA).

To secure the defeat of RN, third placed candidates of the NPF have pulled out in favour of Emmanuel Macron’s bloc of supporters.  Left unity against the far-right has thus also meant arms-length unity with the discredited Macron Presidency.  While this alliance has placed opposition to RN as the key issue, his defeat has been the stand-out message of the results.

The growth of the Rassemblement National and vote for the New Popular Front demonstrates that the people have given their verdict on Macron’s increasingly arrogant, unpopular and discredited Presidency.  By withdrawing in his favour the NPF has accepted fundamental agreement with him, or rather, agreement on fundamentals.  The unity achieved means that this encompasses almost all the left, from the utterly discredited Socialist Party to the New Anti-capitalist Party, which proves that its anti-capitalism is purely rhetorical, never mind socialist.

The Left has once again chosen what it considers the lesser evil on the basis that parliamentary elections are the litmus test of politics: that which will ultimately determine your political stance.  When the choice has to be made, this Left has decided that there is no such thing as an independent working class politics separate and opposed to all varieties of capitalist political movements.  The lesser evil is indeed evil, one that the Left has embraced just as the majority of the French people have rejected it.  Marine Le Pen can now argue that only she is implacably opposed to what the majority has also decisively rejected.

Support for the discredited ‘Republicans’ of Macron’s Ensemble is justified by the threat of the far right and the idea that liberal bourgeois politicians are principled and reliable defenders of bourgeois democracy.  This means that the Left has embraced the primacy of defence of this democracy, with its dependence on the power of the capitalist state; the influence of money and capital over political decision making; the exclusion of any sort of economic or social democracy; and the acceptance of the capitalist system, with all its inequality, oppression and violence.

Were the Left seeking to protect the limited democratic rights allowed by this democracy, that permit the working class to more freely organise, it would have understood that the weapons required to defeat the far-right lie not simply or mainly in parliamentary elections, but in the organisation and political mobilisation of the workers’ movement.  Such a political mobilisation of the working class is opposed by its ‘republican’ allies.  If, or when, the choice comes down to a militant working class or the far right these republican defenders of ‘democracy’ will ally with the far right against it.

The Left’s political opportunism, the surrender of political principle for short term advantage, in this case the possible defeat of far-right Rassemblement National, will not make up for its subordination to the republican friends of capitalist democracy and the exposure of the feebleness of its opposition to the discredited and unpopular Macron Presidency.  The policy of short term gain fails to recall the observation that the long term for the opportunist is just a long series of short terms.  Lesser evil follows lesser evil . . .

The New Popular Front naturally forms its alliance on the basis of supporting the French imperialist contribution to the war in Ukraine, the provision of weapons to Ukraine and of French troops within the war zone – calling them “peacekeepers” changes nothing.  Its programme fails to denounce the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza, and of course fails to call on French workers to stop the delivery of arms to the Israeli state.  As we have said, the political mobilisation of the working class movement is not part of its policy.  If it were Macron and Ensemble would be repudiating its assistance. The NPA project of an alliance with bourgeois democracy requires a bourgeois programme.

There is nothing very much new in this New Popular Front, the Left in France has been supporting the lesser evil for a long time, each time delivering another iteration; a lesser evil groundhog day, or déjà vu all over again, as it may be put.  Starting with the 2002 Presidential election run-off between right-wing candidate Jacques Chirac and the neo-fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen, the Left responded by endorsing Chirac as a defender of democracy against Le Pen. It was such a success we are here again with the Left defending the establishment while the far right adopts the mantle of opposition.

That this policy is a clear failure should by now be obvious, but that would be to mistake the purpose of the policy, which is not to promote independent working class politics but to maintain bourgeois democracy and to be the Republic’s loyal opposition.  Such a policy puts this left in opposition to the working class and makes it prey to the contradictions of capitalism, which currently involve imperialist war in Ukraine, genocide in Gaza, the militarisation of France and the bill for it to be paid by its workers.

The New Popular Front is unwilling to challenge capitalism, supports imperialist war, restricts itself to vacuous moralising when faced with genocide and will shatter itself when the bill is forced upon French workers.  The logic of its position is to join the discredited bourgeois forces inside a government, which would bolster the credentials of Rassemblement National and demoralise its own supporters, as some of its constituent parts have already done.  It will no doubt go down singing its lack of regret as it repeats the failed policy of the 1930s original.