Platform 1 : For a world without borders and bosses, urgent revolution! Building the NPA-R as a tool for a pole of revolutionaries Text II – Internal situation

Publication le 20 décembre 2024

Votes (CPN) : 40 in favor, 0 against, 1 abstention, 5 NPPV (do not vote)

Crisis of the bourgeoisie’s political institutions,
employers’ offensive,
social and political mobilization and revolutionary intervention

Macron-Le Pen: a beautiful alliance for employers

1. The hardening of the bosses’ offensive, the accompanying authoritarian turn, increased competition between imperialists and the bourgeoisie’s obligation to anticipate and repress any dissent, are the central elements of the political crisis in France. The Barnier government is the fiercely anti-worker, but institutionally fragile and probably transitory, political palliative found at this stage by the bourgeoisie. It’s the official alliance of the right and far right, the only possibility for the Macronists to hold on to power, with all that this implies in terms of reinforced pressure from the Rassemblement National on the institutional terrain. This pro-business combat government, as in other European countries, puts the far right increasingly in charge, in effect. That said, we are in a context where mobilizations – this year scattered but persistent – show that the crisis can also be the one caused by workers, and the part of youth who feel themselves to be in the camp of the exploited and oppressed, and their protest in the streets and work and study places.

War, militarization and the rise of authoritarianism

2. Imperialist France is keen to modernize and develop a hypertrophied army despite its declining economic weight. Against a backdrop of rising inter-imperialist tensions on the one hand, and protests against the colonial or neo-colonial presence on the other (West Africa, the West Indies, Kanaky), militarism is being reinforced. The army’s budget is being increased, the arms industry is being developed, and mobilization propaganda, including the SNU¹, is making a comeback. The announcements and measures that serve to « accustom » workers, and also young people, to this policy are a continuation of the repressive policy that young people in working-class neighborhoods or populations in the colonies have long been paying the price for, with the murder of Nahel in Nanterre, or the heavy-handed repression in Kanaky and Martinique. This rise in authoritarianism goes hand in hand with an avalanche of anti-social and anti-democratic measures, against the right to education, or against any challenge to unconditional support for the State of Israel – ideological blanketing, equating any expression of solidarity with Palestine with anti-Semitism, bans or restrictions on demonstrations, etc.

Contested employer and government policies, but in dispersed order

3. Since the massive mobilization in defense of pensions in 2023, struggles have been ongoing, even if none has been massive enough to change the course of things. For the right to abortion and against violence against women; in solidarity with migrants; against the extreme right, especially in high schools. There has been the farmers’ movement to make a living from their work; demonstrations in support of the Palestinians and Lebanese; teachers’ strikes and the mobilization of parents in working-class neighborhoods against social sorting at school; walkouts and strikes for wages, working conditions and today, especially, against redundancies. These are uncoordinated and therefore unaware of the strength of their unity, but they create opportunities for revolutionaries to intervene.

When protests against exploitation, racist policies or for basic democratic rights spread to French imperialist colonies such as Martinique, Mayotte or Kanaky-New Caledonia, the bourgeoisie deploys its armor and thousands of police and military personnel, imposing curfews and deportations. This repressive escalation will be used against any mobilization that might worry the bourgeoisie. Although solidarity mobilizations are currently weak (although support for the struggle of the Kanak people is being expressed in the context of the Palestine demonstrations), we are trying to strengthen them and help to assert an internationalist consciousness, that of confronting a common enemy, French imperialism.

4. Today, these fronts of struggle involve only small minorities, but they generate discussion far beyond. They are elements of politicization and help to fuel the questioning of bourgeoisie policies. One of our tasks is to show that what these contests have in common is that they reveal the responsibility of capitalism and to express the capacity of workers’ and young people’s struggles to open up new perspectives.

The far right on the rise

5. The last elections were marked by an unprecedented rise in the RN vote: after coming out well ahead with just over 31% in the European elections, i.e. 7.7 million voters, it garnered over ten million votes and 34% of the vote in the first round of the Legislatives. In the end, the RN failed to win a majority of elected representatives (21%), due to the logic of withdrawals, which corrected to its detriment the two-round, single-member constituency system, usually rigged in favor of the leading party. Beyond any illusions about those on the left who gave instructions to vote for Macronists, or vice versa, many voters simply wanted to express their rejection of the far right and its racism by whatever means, and so much the better. But beyond the immediate relief felt at the end of this electoral marathon, the fact remains that the RN increased in the number of votes. This rise in strength was marked by a liberation of speech on the part of RN voters, and even by racist attacks, both verbal and physical, during the legislative campaign. These attacks, some of them extremely violent, give an idea of the consequences that the RN’s accession to government would have on the daily lives of foreigners, or those perceived as such. Some groups did not hesitate to pull punches, here and there. In certain regions in particular, our comrades in workplaces have been confronted with the assertive affirmation of this vote of support for the ideas promoted by the extreme right, particularly their racist and xenophobic aspects. Faced with this change of mood, we must not hesitate to take part in mobilizations against the extreme right, as we did between the two rounds of the legislative elections, with our own slogans. We might also have to initiate them..

6. By choosing Barnier as Prime Minister, Macron has sought to identify the political staff, the reactionaries among the reactionaries, who would not be subject to an immediate vote of no confidence from the RN’s elected representatives. Within this government, the new Interior minister Retailleau is playing the same tune as the old one Darmanin: running behind the RN’s program, both to avoid no confidence and to please far-right voters with their racist prejudices and hatred of Macron. While the implementing decrees for the Immigration law were published just before the resignation of the previous government , Retailleau announced his plans for a new law, which would criminalize immigration even further, call into question state medical aid, etc. This initiative was greeted with condescension by the RN, who were waiting to see whether the law would go far enough for their liking. Paradoxically, it is on the social front that the RN is pretending to challenge the government, by claiming to propose a bill to repeal the previous pension reform. A veritable charade, but one that was enough to sow discord on the left. A situation that keeps sowing illusions on all sides, both about the RN’s alleged social program, and about all the parliamentary tricks that would dispense us from taking up the fight again.

7. In the face of this noxious atmosphere, we must continue to denounce the pro-business nature of the RN’s program. Many RN voters are quite clear-sighted on this point, but fall for the « national preference » argument, and are willing to admit that the bosses are getting richer and the workers poorer, but are convinced that if it weren’t for immigrant workers, there would be a few more crumbs for the French… We must continue to explain that attacks on foreign workers are attacks on the working class as a whole. The same immigrant bashers get on famously with the wealthy bourgeoisie in the Gulf or in one African country or another, sharing with them the profits of overexploitation and the poverty of the workers there. And it’s only together that we’ll be stronger, not by allowing ourselves to be divided.

The left or the NFP of all the withdrawals

8. We’re not going to go back to 2022 and Mélenchon’s scores, since the European elections have in fact reshuffled a few cards. The left-wing parties had gone their separate ways in the European elections, all aiming to challenge the others for leadership in the 2027 presidential elections. It was former Sarkozy supporter Glucksmann, head of the PS list, who achieved a breakthrough, that has its limits. While we all know working-class people who wanted to vote « left » by voting Glucksmann, we can’t really talk about a return to favor for the PS in working-class circles: it’s more a piece of the small- bourgeois centrist electorate that has moved away from Macronism and is looking for a new leader on the left, quite to the right in fact, but above all against LFI.

9. The dissolution of the National Assembly interrupted the competition and forced the birth of a new electoral left-wing union called the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP), in an attempt to resuscitate past illusions and prepare for future betrayals… First cold shower: the union received the support of François Hollande, who bears particular responsibility for the rallying of many workers to the RN vote, out of disgust with his policies. Then the NFP, lacking the means to counter the RN’s scores on its own, had no other electoral choice but to rally to the Macronist « center », which effectively called Bardella to power after seven years of leading his policies… The Republican Front was resurrected.

10. Many of our colleagues and friends played along with the so-called roadblock: whatever it took, we had to block the RN’s path. And the cascade of withdrawals in the second round was the last straw: withdrawals for Éric Woerth, Xavier Bertrand, former right-wing ministers under Sarkozy, or Élisabeth Borne and Gérald Darmanin, outgoing Macronist PM and Interior minister… Our ex-comrades from the NPA-L’Anticapitaliste, who joined the NFP as a satellite, thus stuck to LFI behind the PC, which stuck to EELV (Greens) and the PS in an NFP of all withdrawals in favor of the right and Macron… The latter finally appointed a Barnier government, which now includes the RN in the « republican arc ». Woe betide anyone who hadn’t understood that the Republican front was at this price.

Ensuring political independence for the world of work, at the ballot box…

11. The NFP, like its ancestors, has helped to lock in an institutional framework and ensure the rallying of all parties to the exploiters. If an NFP government had come into being (under the aegis of a recomposed PS, in fact), it would have been to align itself, as it has always done, with the most « realistic » policy, against the workers, as Lucie Castets, the then put forward PM candidate for the left, has announced. We put forward revolutionary candidates to propose a choice of class independence.

12. Our call to vote in the 2e round for the LFI or PCF candidates was a response to the need not to call for a vote for this NFP project, without giving credence to those around us who claimed to be fighting the policies of previous governments by voting RN. We didn’t know what the outcome of the vote would be, and we were surprised to see the NFP come out on top. It was also a way of addressing those left-wing activists – almost exclusively from the PCF and LFI – with whom we militate in many struggles. We don’t put all left-wing parties, and especially not their voters, in the same bag.

13. Let’s note in passing that the demonization of LFI goes hand in hand with many of the excesses and concessions to the far right: whether it’s François Ruffin’s arguments criticizing LFI for allegedly appealing to a community vote that would reject the good French left-wing voters of the Somme, or the accusations of « anti-Semitism » that are not actually aimed at LFI but at its supposed voters in working-class neighborhoods.

14. Our problem is not to make prophecies, and even less to brandish « we told you so ». On the contrary, at each stage of this never-ending parliamentary crisis, we need to show what the politics of this Left are. It promised an alternative to Macron with an NFP that put the PS back in the saddle. It only blocked the RN by saving Macron. That’s why we didn’t call for the demonstrations to beg Macron for an NFP government, which many trade union structures joined. If we did show up, it was with our own slogans, to combat the illusions of those demonstrations.

… and especially in the struggle!

15. For the social and trade union left is nonetheless very « political » when all union leaderships follow the lead of the Republican Front, defending the NFP program, which falls short all the same of the most basic demands of the working world. Far be it from us to put a programmatic precondition on struggles and the precise objectives that workers might set themselves. But, on the other hand, to make the satisfaction of each demand conditional on a « law », a parliamentary majority, or even a new dissolution of the Assembly and a NFP government, would be to subordinate struggles and the balance of power they never fail to modify to the institutional perspectives of an electoral left. This is what left-wing elected representatives, as well as union leaders like Sophie Binet (CGT), are defending in front of factories threatened with closure, in struggles against redundancies and job cuts.

16. Against them, we are trying to show that workers have allies other than parliamentarians of all stripes. Struggles will only be able to impose their demands if they generate their own balance of power by reaching out to other workers and trying to get them involved. These struggles will confront the « social and political » left with a choice: either support them, or fight them.

In a context of occurring struggles, the existence of revolutionary organizations able to seize the opportunity to express themselves in them on a political terrain, and even to take their leadership in certain sectors, would be favorable to the development of our ideas. For it is collective struggles alone that will restore workers’ confidence in emancipatory ideas, in the strength of the world of work, and in the need to organize and coordinate. We will always support unity of action on specific, struggle-driven objectives, in order to increase the balance of power . A preoccupation with a « united front » may lead us to seek alliances with all or part of the organizations, militants, activists or sympathizers of the « left », « reformist » or otherwise, on condition that these alliance frameworks leave us complete freedom of propaganda and intervention with regard to our temporary allies. For it is also this propaganda, our ideas and our freedom to put them forward and discuss them, in our workplaces or in our neighborhoods, that will be decisive in the way we fight the far right and the venom it propagates, including in the working class.

Electoral campaigning: a necessity for the broad affirmation of a class-independent policy

17. In 2024, our organization ran two election campaigns: one for the European elections, scheduled on the institutional calendar, which we had therefore been able to anticipate, and another, unplanned, after Macron’s surprise dissolution of the National Assembly. Our list at the European elections , under the name « Pour un monde sans frontières ni patrons, urgence révolution! » (For a world without borders and bosses, urgent revolution!), asserted itself as a mouthpiece for the anger and struggles of the exploited and oppressed on a continent where the vast majority of the population is fighting for survival, while the big capitalist groups are gorging themselves. We defended the need for all workers to unite in the struggle to wrest the means to live in dignity, and our radical opposition to the « fortress » Europe that all the political parties serving the bourgeoisie have been helping to build for decades. We have combined the denunciation of a deadly capitalist system with the need to overthrow it, so that another society free of misery, exploitation and oppression can see the light of day, explaining that no institution, no political force that accommodates a class-divided society can be the ally of the working class for such an objective. Hence our total independence from the institutional left, including the reformist La France Insoumise, which defends a program compatible with the maintenance of capitalism. We would have liked this campaign to have been a joint effort by various far-left currents, and we approached Lutte Ouvrière with this in mind, but they declined our proposal.

18. After securing the financial resources needed to ensure that our professions of faith reached the 48 million voters, our campaign mobilized the entire organization at national level for several months, making 81 candidates, workers and young activists visible, as well as a collective of spokespersons. We spread out beyond our usual geographical spheres, organized dozens of meetings and met with an outpouring of sympathy, measurable also by the success of our financial campaign. Admittedly, our score was very modest, due to the very high number of lists and difficulties in breaking through in the media, but this collective effort, a year and a half after the NPA’s fifth congress, enabled us to represent the continuity of a communist, revolutionary and internationalist political current in this election, for whom elections do not change life, but offer the opportunity to popularize on a much wider scale the urgent need to put an end to capitalism.

19. Then we had to respond to the urgency imposed by the dissolution of the National Assembly. In spite of the rushed deadlines imposed by Macron and the financial obstacle, it was impossible to pass our turn completely, in the name of the general interests of the workers, against the danger of the extreme right, against the door that Macron was opening wide for it, but also against the illusions sown once again by an institutional left that has always governed against the workers. That’s what we managed to do in 29 constituencies, putting forward these watchwords: « Against the far right, through our struggles and our strikes, put an end to 40 years of anti-social and racist policies, from both right and left ». Everywhere else, we called on people to vote for Lutte Ouvrière, and our campaign clip relayed this widely.

20. We renewed our proposal made at the time of the European elections to Lutte Ouvrière to run jointly, this time, given the tight deadlines, in the form of shared constituencies. To our regret, LO once again refused, but we contributed to the de facto existence of a revolutionary pole in these elections. Where we had candidates, we were able to organize public meetings, cover the official billboards with our posters, go out and meet the population in markets and workplaces, and propose to those, particularly many young people, who had been close to our organization for several months, to campaign alongside us, in an atmosphere that was tense due to the rise of the extreme right, but also conducive to political discussions. The fact that we presented candidates strengthened our capacity to participate and intervene, on our own political bases, in all street mobilizations against the extreme right or in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

21. The far-left’s scores were low , but essential in the maintained expression in our class of the understanding that, in order to put an end to the far-right and all the policies serving the bourgeoisie, we will definitely not be able to rely on the government left. The far left presence in the elections has made it possible to defend revolutionary ideas to a large extent among workers and young people who are becoming politicized. We need to give ourselves the means to be more widely present at the next elections, which are likely to be early: it is on this condition that our call to Lutte Ouvrière for joint candidacies, and to other revolutionary currents who would really give themselves the means to run, could end up bearing fruit.

Workplace interventions

22. The employers’ offensive continues, and will continue for as long as struggles fail to shift the balance of power . Struggles do exist, but they are more often than not dispersed by sector, by company, or even by category, site or department. The movement against pension reform in 2023 was the last general movement to affect, to varying degrees, all sectors of the working world. To date, it has failed to win the battle against the extra two years. The fact that, two years on, all the opposition parties in the A Asssemblée are still calling for its repeal – even if they see it as an electoral maneuver – , is indicative of the political depth of this movement. Wage strikes were relatively numerous in response to inflation. They partially limited the loss of purchasing power in the private sector, and obtained some compensation in the form of bonuses in the public sector. Reactions to the intensification of exploitation in the form of permanent reorganization, job cuts and restructuring of all kinds are limited to a local scale. The wave of redundancies affecting the automotive sector in particular, but also far beyond, will mark the coming months.

23. With few exceptions, these movements, whether partial or general, were led by union apparatuses. Their policy of class, corporatist and nationalist conciliation, reinforced and institutionalized by the so-called « social dialogue », has favored the fragmentation of workers’ reactions. Even the movement against pension reform, to which all the confederations have called, has been cleverly separated from the many strikes underway for wages. The policies of the trade union leaders at the head of the movement largely explain the defeat of the demands. Despite their numbers and determination, this policy consisted in keeping the struggle within the straitjacket of the parliamentary calendar and sowing institutional illusions. Whether on wages yesterday or redundancies today, the union apparatuses are careful not to attempt to unify struggles, which would give them a political character. Instead, they play their role as the « intermediary bodies » the bourgeoisie needs to maintain social peace , encouraged by the latest structural reforms (representativeness, CSE²) which aim to transform the ever-dwindling number of elected representatives into class collaboration professionals.

24. In all mobilizations, however embryonic, we are concerned with wresting leadership from the union apparatuses. Whenever possible, we promote the self-organization of workers in struggle in decision-making structures they can control: mobilization committees, general assemblies, interprofessional general assemblies, and as soon as possible, strike committees or coordinations. This is what we tried to do, wherever we are active, in the 2023 movement, and despite the limits due to the fact that the sectors on renewable strike were too few in number, even compared to 2019. This is also what we’re trying to do in partial movements such as wage strikes in the private sector, where comrades have set up strike committees – and then, whatever the outcome of the demands, the political experience of the workers who take part is multiplied tenfold. As early as the preparatory phase of a mobilization, experiments in grouping (such as those we’re carrying out on redundancies, including by projecting ourselves onto companies in struggle where we’re not present directly) or of the « mobilization committee » or « GA of sector in struggle » type (such as the « social work meetings ») are important first steps. It’s up to workers to decide on everything, and above all on their own struggles – and to revolutionaries to defend their policies and get them adopted in self-organizing structures.

25. This type of workplace intervention is central to our ability to influence the situation to the best of our ability. This priority is combined with the concern to intervene in the workplace with the same method on all directly political themes, such as the fight against sexism, racism, ecological struggles, access to education or for Palestine (for example with « Soignants pour Gaza » – “Healthcare workers for Gaza”). To carry out these interventions in class struggles in the broadest sense, we need to develop our presence, i.e. make it a priority to build groups of militant communists in workplaces. These groups need their own means of directly political expression – such as a company press in the form of an NPA-R bulletin. We are systematically active in the trade unions, where we defend the ideas of class struggle and workers’ democracy as opposed to the trap of « social dialogue ». We seek to take on the responsibilities that correspond to the weight of our ideas and our militants, with the concern of not giving in to the logics of the apparatus. In all struggles, our concern is not to limit them to the union framework, but to ensure that they are everyone’s business, led by the workers in struggle themselves (general assemblies, strike committees, etc.). All our interventions aim to popularize the points of a combative program of demands and the prospect of an overall riposte, a general strike, workers’ power over their own struggles, a foretaste of their power over the whole of society.

1 Service national universel – General National Service. A long-time project of Macron : a mimicry of a military service for high schoolers aiming at “promoting French values” and “strengthening social cohesion” (translator’s note).
2 Socio-Economical Councils, the new structure of official worker’s representation prescribed by law after Macron’s 2017 labor law reform.