by The Presidential and Legislative Elections in April and June unexpectedly gave birth to a New Left Alliance, NUPES
By Francis Sitel, Laurence Boffet and John Barzman
On the weekend of December 9 to 11, the NPA (Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste – New Anticapitalist Party) in France went through a split. A majority and a minority statement can be found here. We hope this article – written before (and independent of) the NPA Congress – helps to clarify the opportunities and challenges for the Left in France at the moment and provides some background for this development. This article is part of our next print issue, Reform & Revolution #10. Subscribe to our magazine to get it delivered to your mailbox in early January! – R&R
The 2022 election season began with the presidential contest in April and continued with parliamentary elections in June. The left entered the field divided and with little prospect of change. But as grassroots pressure for unity mounted, things changed fundamentally in time for the legislative round.
As he did in 2017, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the left populist-style organization La France Insoumise (“France Unbowed”, LFI), chose to run alone in the presidential elections of 2022. He ruled out any negotiated agreement with the other left-wing and ecology candidates, even though their campaign proposals differed only on minor points.
In the last two weeks of the campaign, Mélenchon pulled far ahead of his left and green competitors, with 22 percent of the votes cast (7.7 million votes). But as those who called for serious unity negotiations had feared, this was not enough to enter the second round. While well ahead of the other left and green candidates, he stood 1.5 percentage points behind the far-right Marine Le Pen (23.2 percent, 8.1 million votes) who thereby qualified for the second round against Macron.
This article was first published in our Reform & Revolution magazine #10. Get a subscription and support Reform & Revolution – a Marxist Caucus in DSA!
It became obvious a united left could have forced a run-off between center-right president Macron (who got 27.9 percent in the first round) and the left. Instead, the far-right candidate Le Pen was able to present herself as the main alternative to the ruling policies in the decisive second round.
Mélenchon had to react fast. It was clear that in the ensuing legislative elections, given the electoral system, a divided left would have been condemned to near extinction. The LFI leader, therefore, proposed to all left-wing and ecology parties, including the Socialist Party (PS), an alliance in which all candidates would run under the same label and on a broad anti-liberal program (liberal, in France, signifying the pro-capitalist policies pursued by the three previous presidents, Sarkozy, Hollande, and Macron). Thus was created the New Popular Ecological and Social Union, NUPES. The tactic paid off, with the left gaining 147 seats, as compared to 78 in 2017, and Mélenchon’s LFI taking the lion’s share of elected officials. However, the popular vote for the left only increased slightly (between one and two percent) as abstentions remained very high. In contrast, the far right won a big victory, about 23 percent of the vote and 89 seats.
Outgoing president Macron failed to win the absolute majority in parliament that he thought his presidential victory guaranteed. Forced to make do with only a relative majority, he now has to negotiate constantly with the opposition, especially the conservative Les Républicains (LR). This is a very unstable situation, unheard of in the Fifth Republic (the electoral and political regime established by De Gaulle in 1958).
Both poles of the parliamentary field, the left-wing NUPES and the extreme right-wing party Rassemblement National (RN) are faced with the challenge of responding to the many impending crises and preparing a successor that appears capable of taking the reins from the badly scarred Macronist government. The question is which of the two will appear to the workers and their allies as the most capable of taking up this challenge.
“Dégagisme” – “Dump the Recent Leaders”
The 2022 elections are the culmination of a process of polarization in French society between a radical left and a radical right. The traditional center, the so-called “parties of government” ensuring the “alternation” of “responsible” leaders, was diminished and transformed as large sections of the PS and LR leadership shifted to Macron’s movement, and millions of centrist voters to the radical wings and abstention. LR’s unpopularity dates back to the defeat of LR president Nicolas Sarkozy by François Hollande (PS) in 2012 and was confirmed in subsequent elections. The collapse of the PS (sometimes called “Pasokization”, referencing the absorption of its Greek sister party by Tsipras’ Syriza in 2015) soon followed as Hollande adopted severe anti-worker and anti-democratic measures (attacks on labor law, pensions, and dual citizenship). In 2017 Macron benefited from this ensuing mood of “dégagisme” (which can be roughly translated as “dump the recent leaders”), but the same discontent brought him down in turn in 2022.
His initial project of reformatting not just the political field but society itself – detailed in his programmatic book “Revolution” and subtitled “reconciling France” – has failed. His first five-year term was marked by a succession of major crises: social mobilizations on labor law, pension reform projects and climate issues, the Yellow Vests revolt, then the Covid pandemic, police unrest, and finally the war in Ukraine. Obviously, under extreme stress, the neoliberal model has shown its limits, and this has fueled radicalizations at both poles of society, but without the emergence of a credible and coherent response to today’s multiple challenges.
Given these conditions, Macron’s re-election as president, with a second round vote of 58.6 percent for him against Marine Le Pen’s 41.5 percent, represented a real success at the end of April, but one that he overestimated, oblivious of the millions of left voters who cast a ballot against Le Pen, rather than for him, and blind to the backlash against him that was brewing in the legislative elections two months later.
NUPES – an Opportunity for the Left
NUPES is an electoral alliance between all the forces of the left and ecologists, with the exception of a big part of the old PS, on the right, and smaller parts of the left including the NPA, Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste, and fragments of social movements that are either loosely involved or not at all. For example, NUPES so far does not formally include trade unions and civic associations in its structure.
The coalition was hastily put together against all odds, since the alliance that it embodied, despite numerous citizen initiatives for unity that met with a significant response, had proved impossible as recently as the presidential election. At that time, the left appeared seriously weakened with its electoral level at a historical low, or very divided, in particular on international issues, including the war in Ukraine, and incapable of doing the necessary work of re-foundation.
Mélenchon’s position of strength coming out of the presidential election allowed him to make a complete political turnaround and propose unity to all, on his own terms, although granting that each official partner party, PCF (Communist Party), EELV (Greens), and PS, was allocated enough winnable seats to have a parliamentary group with 15 deputies minimum).
NUPES made it possible to avoid an electoral disaster for the whole left. And it is a source of great hope for the “people of the left” because it has shown that unity is possible on a globally radical basis. There is a strong rank-and-file sentiment in favor of unity. This could allow unitary frameworks to appear at the local level, responding to a real aspiration on the left. If some local realities point in this direction, until now each institutional party jealously preserves its interests, and is wary of the risk of hegemony by France Insoumise and Mélenchon.
One can consider that NUPES will maintain itself at the parliamentary level, though not without difficulties. But its challenge is to sink roots locally, in citizen and unitary collectives, and join or even give the initial impulse to social mobilizations. Right now, we are far from the perspective of a new party going beyond the existing cleavages, as was the initial project of the NPA, for instance.
The Long Road to a New Left Party
Mélenchon’s authority after the presidential election was key to bringing the left together. However, he has often been an obstacle to building roots in working-class struggles and communities.
Within his loose but top-down LFI, a debate has started on how to develop democratic structures, how to decentralize the movement dominated by his closest lieutenants in Paris, how to build a network of local headquarters and community hubs, trained teams of marshalls, educational sessions, and how to develop cadre in the sense of more experienced leaders of the movement who can build a stronger organized force. This is not what Mélenchon and other elected officials of the France Insoumise movement want, their immediate goal being access to the government. Against dissident views expressed by often more experienced comrades and organized currents, Mélenchon’s followers are tempted to use the primitive libertarian prejudice that demonizes card-holding members of organizations as “encartés” (meaning implicitly card-carrying robots applying a “party line”). Alternatively he may use one affiliated organization against another (Parti de Gauche, PG, and Parti ouvrier indépendant, POI, for instance). In addition, once they are elected, members of Parliament tend to want to lead the movement. However, if LFI is to become a permanent class-struggle force, it needs to have democratic structures and move beyond a movement focused on elections and controlled essentially by one person, Mélenchon.
Beyond LFI and its successive front groups such as the Union Populaire, there is NUPES. The alliance has the potential to develop into a force active at the grassroots, in neighborhoods, trade unions, and communities. It could be a framework for the left to come together in struggle without denying political differences. Again, Mélenchon only appreciates NUPES if he can control it; a good part of the Communist Party fears competition from NUPES and sees the alliance as an electoral and occasional one, and the PS and EELV are hesitant about it.
The Way Forward for the Radical Left
On the radical left, there’s a debate on how to relate to NUPES in general. For example, after being offered to be a part of NUPES, the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA) declined to join the electoral alliance.
The NPA was launched in 2009 based on the electoral successes of radical candidates like Olivier Besancenot (who received 1.5 million votes – 4 percent – in the first round of the 2007 presidential elections). Its supporters then hoped to build a new, more radical party that would be able to challenge the political domination of the left by the PS, whose program and practice had become neo-liberal. That hope led the LCR, a Trotskyist group with around 3,000 members, to dissolve into the NPA project.
But that proved to be a will-o’-the-wisp. In its place, the vast space opening up on the left of the PS was occupied by former PS minister Mélenchon, first with his “Left Front” (an alliance of his own new Parti de Gauche, or PG “Left Party”), the PCF and Ensemble!, and later with his France Insoumise alone.
Unfortunately, the NPA did not see the need to relate to and collaborate with this newly developing broad anti-liberal left. It reached around 10,000 members early on after its launch but then lost more and more ground as the broader anti-liberal left advanced. Instead of a qualitative transformative expansion (“transcroissance”) that justified the dissolution of the LCR, the last few years have seen multiple departures from the NPA and thedegradation of its internal climate.
In April and May, the NPA was confronted with the possibility of joining NUPES. In the end, despite much discussion, this perspective was discarded, chiefly because Mélenchon’s offer in terms of eligible positions was mediocre and the presence of the PS within NUPES was considered an insurmountable obstacle.
Mélenchon’s inclusion of the PS in NUPES is indeed a two-sided sword. On the one hand, many workers still look at the PS at least as an electoral, somehow left expression of their hopes. On the other hand, after years of neoliberal policies under PS president Hollande many other workers and youth have completely broken with this party and are searching for an alternative. One should note also that the present PS is what is left after at least one-third of its leadership and structures abandoned it in favor of the more openly neo-liberal Macron coalition.
NUPES gave left parties the opportunity to run together in the elections while retaining their freedom to dissent. Thus, for example, the PS could be criticized and a political alternative promoted. The NPA could have chosen – and, in our view, still can choose – this road, thereby helping to build a class-struggle force within the regrouping on the left.
In our view, the task now is to make the new united formation enduring and active, and capable of responding to the challenges of the situation. That is, to achieve what neither the NPA nor the Left Front achieved between 2009 and 2017. The radical left has an active role to play in this project to move it further toward the left and build its roots in working-class struggles and movements.
Francis Sitel, Laurence Boffet, and John Barzman live respectively in Paris, Lyon, and Le Havre, and are members of Ensemble! Mouvement pour une Gauche Alternative Ecologiste et Socialiste.
Francis Sitel
Francis Sitel lives in Paris and is a member of Ensemble! Mouvement pour une Gauche Alternative Ecologiste et Socialiste.
John Barzman
John Barzman lives in Le Havre, and is a member of Ensemble! Mouvement pour une Gauche Alternative Ecologiste et Socialiste.
ensemble-le-havre.eklablog.com
Laurence Boffet
Laurence Boffet lives in Lyon, and is a member of Ensemble! Mouvement pour une Gauche Alternative Ecologiste et Socialiste.
