The NPA congress gathered this weekend in Saint-Denis with 210 delegates, representing the 2013 members of the party. The platform A received 91 votes, or 6.21%, the platform B 711 votes, or 48.50%, and platform C 664 votes, or 45.29% (thus, a difference of 47 votes). It was held a few months after the NPA as a whole led the NPA’s presidential campaign, a campaign that contributed to a new militant influx towards the NPA. In a year more than 500 activists – youth and workers – have joined the ranks of the party.
Despite these gains, part of the outgoing leadership of the NPA chose to leave the congress before any vote, including the decisive votes on the party orientation. They have chosen to lead a policy in the direction of the NUPES and its main component the France Insoumise. This was started in the 2021 regional elections in two regions, Nouvelle Aquitaine and Occitanie, and reiterated in the 2022 legislative elections. The decision to separate the party was done by a minority of the party, 100 votes out of 210 delegates, and this vote was all done behind closed doors. The few separatists of the outgoing leadership have chosen to try to explode the party in defiance of the democratic vote of the militants who, however, in their elective assemblies, had voted in majority for an explicit motion in favor of « continuing the NPA », or by voting in majority for platforms that refused the split, including our platform C. This platform has an important majority in the youth sector of the NPA, in many professional branches (transportation, post office, automobile…) and in important departmental federations (Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Bordeaux, Rouen…).
This choice is irresponsible, especially since the national and international situation demands that revolutionaries tighten their ranks and put forward perspectives of revolutionary emancipation for the youth and working class. The necessity to regroup rather than divide. But the NPA will continue, despite the departure of its main spokespeople. We, the delegates of the platform « Actuality and Urgency of the Revolution », who have collected almost half of the votes of the party, assume this responsibility towards the whole of the NPA, its committees, its federations, and its branches, whatever the votes at the congress. Monday we will hold the different meetings of all the governing bodies of the NPA.
We call on all the militants of our party, those with the majority who expressed they were against the split, to continue building the NPA with us. And beyond that, with us, out of internationalist responsibility, to fight against the fragmentation of the far left and of the revolutionary movement on a global scale. The NPA has always conceived itself as a pole of regroupment of revolutionaries, to build the revolutionary party of the working class.
Here in France, working class is confronted with an all-out offensive by employers and the government. Employees, including the most precarious, the unemployed, pensioners and the disabled are being hit very hard. With inflation exceeding 6% on an annual basis, salaries are being cut back a little more each day, and the working class is being promised harder times to come. For many, this means going hungry and cold, without electricity and heating this winter. At the beginning of 2023, the price of public transportation, freeway tolls, postage, etc., are all announced to rise. Furthermore, the government is launching its attack on pensions by, among other things, raising the legal retirement age.
This autumn has already been marked by a large number of mobilizations and strikes, for wage increases, scattered and isolated but nevertheless determined. On October 18th – a day of national strike and mobilization in support of the strikers of the refineries but also in rage against Macron and his government who wanted to requisition them – showed that an explosion of anger was possible. There is an urgent need to prepare mobilizations and their generalization, the only way to change the balance of power and to push back against employer and governmental attacks. The demands are for an increase in salaries and pensions of 400 euros net per month for all, no income below 2,000 euros and a systematic alignment of salaries with price inflation, for a full pension with a maximum of 37 and a half years of contributions and from the age of 60. It is a question of imposing that work be shared between all – to work all and to work less -, without any reduction in salary, with, on the contrary, salaries that follow the cost of living. The urgency to obtain these vital demands is fueled by the anger in front of the increasing degradation of the conditions of health, education, transportation, as well as in front of the ecological damages which degrade the daily life of the working class and of the youth. These demands for a better life, which is not sacrificed to profits, will be obtained by the class struggle, by an overall response from the working class and not in the institutions. It is neither in a parliament, nor in a meeting room that the working class will be able to win victories. There will not be, as the FI defends, capitalism with a human exterior, nor a citizens’ revolution through the ballot box. We reaffirm the necessity and the possibility of building a revolutionary party, because pushing back the bosses and eventually wresting power from them will not be done through elections. In the immediate future, the NPA will prioritize the construction of mobilizations, with all those, and there are many of them around us, organized politically, in trade unions or in associations, and even more of them unorganized, who will want to move in this direction. We will be demonstrating in the NPA’s contingent at the December 18th Solidarity March, which we call on everyone to join us.
Faced with the rise of the nauseating currents and ideas of the far right, nationalist and racist positions, widely taken up by the right and the government itself, faced with the war and chaos towards which capitalist society is leading us, we have a particular responsibility towards our social class. This responsibility is to help it to have confidence in its own power to fight on its own ground and to break with institutional illusions. The working class shows its power to block all of society when it goes on strike. The proletariat has the power to block all of society; but even more importantly, it can reorganize all of society if those in struggles push further and organize themselves to lay the foundations of a new society.
The international situation also calls on our responsibility. Strikes and waves of strikes are breaking out in various countries, including England. More generally, we are witnessing an unprecedented wave of large-scale social protest. In 2019, less than ten years after the Arab revolutions of 2011, we have seen a resurgence of mass protests: in the four corners of the globe and now in Iran and China. They come on top of the massive struggles of women for the right to abortion and against gender-based and sexual violence, the struggles for LGBTI rights, the struggles of the youth, and even the less youthful, for climate and against racism.
At a time when the real dangers of militarization and authoritarian regimes against the working class are looming, and even more so when important opportunities are being presented to our class just about everywhere in the world, it is time to bring a revolutionary pole to life. To regroup these forces, minority but nevertheless very real, who are organizing for the revolutionary overthrow of the system. A capitalist system that has only ever accumulated evidence of its failure to satisfy the needs of humanity; for example, among the eight billion people, a majority is kept on the brink of survival.
We address the youth and the working class, revolted by the capitalist system of exploitation and the misery it creates, wars and oppression: join us for its overthrow and let’s all together bring to the forefront the actuality and the urgency of the revolution !
