Local Elections Show
Results of Mitterrand's Class Collaboration
The French local elections in March became an important test of the political relationship of forces in the sharpening class struggle since the victory of the left in the Presidential elections in May 1981.
The voting, held in half of the country's cantons, took place in two rounds, on March 14 and 21. Candidates winning more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round were elected; in other seats a "run off" second round was held.
Of 2,014 seats at stake, the left won only 8l6, gaining around 50 percent of the vote, compared to 54 percent at the time of the Presidential election. Some important areas, however, were not electing local councillors, including Paris.
This article, reviewing the outcome of the elections, is taken from the April 1982 issue of Critique Communiste, monthly review of the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire (French section of the Fourth International). The translation is by IV.
After the second round of the local government elections, the balance sheet is indisputable. The moral capital that Mitterrand, the SP, and the CP enjoyed after the May 10, 1981, elections is diminishing. Cries of victory are being raised by the Giscardian (liberal bourgeois) and Gaullist right, the political representatives of big business. They see these elections as a first step toward regaining control of the government.
The right is hoping to end the "interlude" opened by the May 10 election, because it considers that it is a natural law that it should hold the government, just as it is that the capitalists should have the economic power.
By claiming to be a "majority" after the March local government elections, the bourgeois parties are implicitly recognizing that the SP and CP were a majority after the last local government elections in 1976: At that time and after the successive elections that followed, Mitterrand and Marchais (the CP leader) were more modest than Pons (Gaullist) and Lecanuet (Giscardian)
It is true that the important thing about the local government elections now is that for the first time in six years the SP and CP were outvoted by the right. In the working-class districts, their vote went down as the rate of abstention went up. In the rural districts, there was a swing toward the bourgeois parties, the RPR and the UDF. (I) Contrary to what a lot of the commentators are saying, there is one underlying cause for both developments.
both blue- and white-collar workers cannot see much of a change in the ten months since May 10. They do not see any shortening of the unemployment lines; any change in pay, which is falling behind prices; or any change in working hours, are taking back more with their left hand than the one-hour cut in the workweek that they are supposed to be giving with
Moreover, before these latest elections a sizable layer of small peasants and small-business people, victims of the capitalist trusts and credit institutions, shifted away from the bourgeois parties and toward the SP and the CP. Now a lot of them have gotten the unfortunate impression that "the left isn't any better than the others, " and that they have been swindled.
The SP and the CP are still blaming the difficulties on the legacy of Giscard, the "inertia" of unemployment, and the behind-the-scenes sabotage of the bosses. The premier, Pierre Mauroy, talks complacently about the seven-year term Mitterrand has ahead of him and about "establishing a measured pace" of reforms. These are the notions that promote the passivity and stolidity that marks his government.
This sort of talk is echoed in the trade-union movement, where various leaders speak and act as if May 10 had settled everything, as if there were nothing to do now but to roll up your sleeves and march ahead "at a measured pace, "since "now
" Prudence and patience are becoming the watchwords.
The local elections were a clear reminder that this is not the real state of affairs. Arsituation in which the working-class parties have a majority in parliament, where a CP-SP cabinet heads the government, and where these traditional workers parties are feeling the pressure of millions of workers anxious for change, is a situation fraught with contradictions that are likely to become explosive very quickly. No, this government is not a stable one!
Last June, Jospin, the SP general secretary, said that he was proud of the government's success in maintaining "ambiguity." A lot of SP members, often well-intentioned ones displayed knowing smiles, indicating that they thought they could advance "tranquilly" to challenge capitalist power, and--why not?--establish socialism. But at its congress in Valence the SP adopted a policy of seeking compromise between the "political authorities" and the holders of "economic power, " that is, the bosses. The SP leaders explained that this had to be done.
The government is following the Valence policy when it treats the capitalists and bankers with kid gloves, when it bestows handsome presents on them in the attempt to convince them to invest and to put their money on an upturn. At the same time, it tries to give the appearance that it is meeting democratic demands, often symbolic ones, such as the abolition of death penalty, the suspension of the Peyrfitte law (2), or the abolition of maximum se-
But these democratic reforms are quickly pushed into the background when the interests of the capitalists dictate a resumption in building nuclear power stations and anti-nuke demonstrators are clubbed in Chooz, when layoffs continue and the workers who sit-in to oppose them are cleared out by the
The real power remains in the hands of the capitalists, and day by day they are wearing out the government, chipping away at its credibility. They are careful not to break off their dialogue with the government but to get it, of its own accord, to take the decisions that suit their interests. To this end, they are making full use of the economic levers they control and the key posts they occupy in the state apparatus.
The ordinances on the workweek are the best example of what is happening. Mauroy claimed that he was resorting to issuing these ordinances in order to speed up changes that were being blocked in parliament by the right. In fact, these measures were dictated and applied by the national
Within the SP, some people will certainly defend the "truce" (3).If the changes 1. Rassemblement pour la Republique, Rally for the Republic, the right-wing Gaullist party led by Jacques Chirac; Union des Democrates Francais, Union of French Democrats, the liberal Gaullist party of 2. This law reduces the traditional protection of defendants in court cases and gives the police additional powers for sur3. A social truce, the formula that Mitterrand and the government use in calling for class collaboration.
had been more radical, they will say, the rejection at the polls would have been greater. This argument reflects a failure to understand the depth of the old government's policy, which is what produced the surge of votes for the left on May 10 and June 2l. It represents a failure to understand that the SP-CP majority was elected to carry out a different sort of policy, to do away with austerity and unemployment. That was also the attitude of the "moderate voters, " long vulnerable to the crudest anti-Communist propaganda, but who came to understand that they had been hoodwinked by Giscard and Barre.
These moderate voters were ready to give the left a blank check to do something. They expected real transformations, not face-lifting reforms. By refusing to move decisively, the SP-CP majority has kept the petty bourgeois layers in the straitjacket imposed on them by the capitalists
The fact that Mauroy and Marchais did not get these moderate working-class or petty-bourgeois votes does not mean that the government has to find a better balance between those who think that the changes are too rapid and those who think they are not rapid enough. In fact, it lost both the moderate and the more radical voters for the same reason--it does not seem to have the necessary will to take on the capitalists.
However, it would be too much to expect the SP and CP leaders to draw the lessons from the local elections. That would mean that they would base themselves on mobilizing the workers, that they would attack the profits of the capitalists and challenge the laws of capitalism by outlawing layoffs, for example, and nationalizing plants abandoned by their owners, such as the Bella doll factory in Perpignan or Elastelle in Puy. They would challenge the EEC economic agreements dictated by workweek to 35 hours withou: etting the bosses take a penny off the wi kers wages.
These are realistic steps. but the SP anc the CP are not prepared to take them, any more than they were in 1936 or in 1945, or than their political counterparts were in Chile in 1972.
The May 10 victory belongs above all to the workers. Leaving it in the hands of Mitterrand and Marchais means letting it be taken away. A force has to be organized in the country that will say loudly and clearly that this is no time for a truce. More than ever, the capitalists have to be forced to pay in order to meet the workers demands. The local elections were a warning. The policy of concessions to the employers can only lead to defeat. It is action for real change that will create confidence and mobilize people.
In the coming months, the LCR will the trusts. They would immediately cut the i strive harder to build such a force.
and driven them back toward the right.
by Christian Picquet