The agony of the 'left' government
THE MARCH 16 parliamentary elections will be a major watershed, since the "left" government that came to power in May 1981 has become largely discredited, and a power.
Facing a crucial political test, the major workers' parties are continuing policies that have paved the way for a disastrous setback for the French working people in the March 16 parliamentary elections. And most of the far left groups have not shown any capacity to rise to the challenge of offering an alternative to the large numbers of working people disillusioned by a "left" government applying a capitalist austerity policy.
Five years ago, the defeat of the right was greeted by jubilant crowds, almost like a liberation. Today the parties that won in 1981 seem headed for defeat in the midst of resignation, cynicism and passivity on the part of working people and aggressiveness and a new radicalism on the part of the right.
The Communist Party, which hoped to escape from its traditional ghetto by its alliance with the social democrats and a role in government, finds itself confined to a smaller space than ever. Its supreme ambition seems to be not to fall below 10 percent of the vote, about half its traditional share, in particular not to fall below the vote of the ultrarightist, fascist-like National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen, which might get about 10 per cent. To try to hold its vote the CP has failen back on its old methods of bluff and sectarianism.
The Socialist Party's supreme ambition, on the other hand, seems to be just to get a big enough vote to force the bourgeois parties to bargain with it.
"In fact all the big parties are only concerned about the post-1986 period," Alain Krivine wrote in Rouge, No. 1189, the paper of the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire (LCR - French section of the Fourth International).
"The only debates that interest the Socialist Party leadership are 'cohabitation' (the coexistence of a right-wing parliamentary majority and a socialist president), participation in
International Viewpoint 10 March 1986 tough right is in position to regain government or opposition.
"The SP's only goal is to lose as few votes as possible so as to remain a power in the country that cannot be gotten around. The ambitions of the CP are even more modest. What its chairperson, Georges Marchais, wants to do is stop the decline in votes and membership and sweep its record in the government under the table."