Fri Mar 29, 2024
March 29, 2024

Against Bourgeois and Reformist Candidatures, the IWL-FI Calls to Vote for Philippe Poutou (NPA)

By International Secretariat.
 
On March 18 began the French presidential campaign. The first round will take place on April 23. The elections happen in the middle of a major political and institutional crisis affecting directly the parties alternating in power for decades: the traditional Gaullist right-wing, headed by François Fillon, and the Socialist Party (FSP), headed by Benoît Hamon. Both parties are torn, and the FSP also faces a deep process of breakdown. All surveys indicate a major electoral defeat.
The financial crisis is directly linked to the European Union’s, the project build by big capitals since 1945 in association with U.S. imperialism. The EU, facing growing popular rejection, commemorates the 60th Anniversary of the Treaty of Rome in its worst moment, with a crisis that threatens its very existence, specially after the Brexit and Trump’s election.
The great European capital, initially hounding the periphery like Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Spain, has now been forced to attack central countries of the European imperialism, starting by France, which is currently submersed in a decline process regarding German imperialism. This is the true meaning of the Labor Code reform of Hollande-Valls, oriented to change the standard of exploitation of the French working class, what has caused major strikes and big demonstrations that faced strong police violence.
Nationalist-imperialist extreme right-wing of the Front National (FN), racist and xenophobic, aims to channel the crisis of the FSP and the traditional right-wing. The candidature of Marine Le Pen defends an anti-immigration alternative harsher than Hollande’s, as well as a referendum to take France out of the Euro-zone, while deploying strong social demagogy marked by racism and chauvinism. Marine Le Pen is currently in the first place according to the surveys, and she will almost certainly get to the Second Round. Electorally, she competes mainly with Macron and Jean Luc Mélenchon, the candidate whose expectation of vote is growing more and more, and who has the most crowded electoral events.
 
Macron, former banker and Minister of Hollande, is the candidate of French and European financial capital, and he counts with the support of the right wing of the FSP.
Mélenchon, former minister of the Socialist Lionel Jospin, is the head of La France Insoumise [Unsubmissive France], supported by the Communist Party. He identifies with the “new European left” of Podemos, the Portuguese Bloco de Esquerda, Die Linke and Syriza. Like all those forces, it does not pose the rupture with the EU but “a modification of the Treaties”. Its program, with a clear nationalist line, does not defend any structural measure against bankers and big capitalist groups. It proposes moderate reforms and a Constituent Assembly to re-fund the VI Parliamentary Republic. It also defends the exit from NATO and the inclusion of abortion right in the Constitution. It claims to be the bearer of the “Citizens’ revolution”.
There are two candidates to the left of Mélenchon: the university professor Nathalie Artaud, from Lutte Ouvrière, and the Ford worker Philippe Poutou, from the Nuveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA), who presents a program whose main points are prohibition of layoffs, reduction of the work-shift with no wage reduction, defense and enhancement of public services, and social appropriation of key sectors of the economy. He also confronts racism and police violence. His program, however, is partial regarding the denounce of French imperialism and it is not clear about the repudiation and exit from the EU.
Despite this, Poutou’s candidature offers, unlike the rest of the European left-wing, a supporting point to oppose the bourgeois and class collaboration candidatures, as much as to cluster workers and social activists, as seen during public electoral debates.
Thus, the IWL-FI calls to vote for Philippe Poutou on the next presidential elections.
**
Translation: Sofia Ballack.
 

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