France

Lutte Ouvrière et Ukraine: deux articles

Merci à Yves Coleman et Ni patrie ni frontières pour la traduction de ces articles. Thanks to Yves Coleman and Ni patrie ni frontières for translating these articles. Lutte ouvrière et le droit à l'autodétermination de l'Ukraine Dale Street [ In English ] «Il était une fois, dans un pays lointain appelé l'Union soviétique, les Ukrainiens et les Russes qui vivaient heureux ensemble. Mais ensuite, de méchants bureaucrates ont détruit leur pays. Cela a donné aux généraux de l'OTAN, qui étaient aussi cruels que les bureaucrates, la possibilité de s'emparer de nouvelles terres. Vladimir Poutine a...

Different debates on Ukraine at Lutte Ouvrière fête

Should socialists be in favour of a military victory for Russia in Ukraine? Or should they take a “dual-defeatist” position (opposing both sides), saying it is really a war between NATO and Russia?

Macron, Mélenchon and June

On 7 May Jean-Luc Mélenchon launched his slate for France’s 12 and 19 June National Assembly elections, NUPES, the New Ecologist and Social Popular Union, with a rally of 1,500 in the Paris suburb of Aubervilliers. The slate will have a common platform, not yet published, but featuring a rise in the minimum wage, a price freeze on some basic goods, a restored wealth tax, reducing pension age towards 60, and green policies. It shares out constituencies between Mélenchon’s own La France Insoumise, the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, and the green EELV. Its proclaimed aim is to force...

Kino Eye: A Popular Front film, 1936

The recent French elections have revealed a left that is in chaos. In 1936, much of that left united in the “Popular Front”. It was riddled with contradictions, and short-lived. Trotsky was scathing in his analysis. Yet one aspect of the Popular Front was a flourishing of films with a left orientation. Many film directors, gathered in the Groupe Octobre, sided with the Popular Front. The best known was Jean Renoir, who directed The Crime of Monsieur Lange in 1936. Amédée Lange (Rene Lefevre) is a writer who works for a publishing company owned by the loathsome Batala (Jules Berry) who is...

France: prime minister vs president?

France votes in parliamentary elections on 12 and 19 June. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the former Socialist Party minister who was the leading leftish candidate in the presidential poll on 10 April, is campaigning with posters for “Mélenchon prime minister”. Mélenchon failed to make it to the 24 April run-off, where Emmanuel Macron defeated Marine Le Pen 58.5%-41.5%. His slogan is unlikely. But not absurd. The 1958 French constitution gave most power to the president, and implicitly assumed that the National Assembly voting would be close enough to presidential voting for an Assembly majority for...

Union convoy for Ukraine

A first trade union convoy to Ukraine will set off from an international union network conference in Dijon, France, on the weekend 23-24 April. The left-wing French union confederation Solidaires (France has several different “TUCs”) says that the convoy will be run by Solidaires with the left-wing union confederation CSP Conlutas from Brazil and a left-wing union grouping in Poland, OZZ Employee Initiative . “Our comrades from SUD rail [the rail unit of Solidaires] continue to play a leading role... Our aim is to get our initiative known as distinctly trade-union even if it uses, via the SNCF...

France: grim choices on 24 April, an urgent need to rebuild

The second round on 24 April 2022 of the French presidential election will, as in 2017, be a run-off between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen. The first round was Macron 28%, Le Pen 23%, both scores slightly up on 2017 (24%, 21%). In 2017 Macron won the second round easily (66%-34%), but this time polling predicts a much tighter run-off. Marine Le Pen's movement, now called the Rassemblement National (National Rally), is a direct continuation of the street-fascist groups of her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in the 1970s. Over the decades Jean-Marie Le Pen and then Marine Le Pen worked to soften...

An active tactic, or shrugging?

Below Martin Thomas argues that the left should advocate a vote for Emmanuel Macron to block Marine Le Pen in the second round of the French presidential election on 30 April. Katy Dollar puts another view here . In 2017-18, Workers’ Liberty debated what tactics would have been best in the second round of that French presidential election. We had promoted the revolutionary-left candidates in the first round. A majority concluded by favouring those French leftists who had voted for Macron against Le Pen on the second round, coupling that with a push to mobilise the left against Macron. To my...

Best to call for a blank vote

Below Katy Dollar argues the left should not advocate a vote for Emmanuel Macron in the second round of France's presidential election on 30 April. Martin Thomas puts the alternative view here . In 2017, we debated what tactics in the second round of that French presidential election. A narrow majority supported supporting liberal centrist Macron. The comrades who led that turn stated it was an exception. The minority argued it would open a door to further opportunism. In the debates around the 2020 US Presidential election, Martin Thomas, who’d initially proposed the Macron line, tried to...

Letter: blank votes in France

Katy Dollar ( Solidarity 632 ) argues that a blank vote would have been the best way for the left to achieve a profile in the 24 April run-off of the French presidential election. France, unlike Britain, pays some attention to blank (and spoiled) votes, and they were used to some effect in the 1969 presidential election. The run-off was between Alain Poher, a candidate of France's loose miscellany of "centre" groups (currently organised as MoDem), and the Gaullist Georges Pompidou. The Communist Party, which had scored 21% on the first round, called for blank votes, and they went up from 1.3%...

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