[Marxism] Richard Greeman on the French elections

[Einde O'Callaghan <einde@xxxxxx>]

Posted in full as it's not available on-line yet.

-------

Round One of the French Presidential Election

by Richard Greeman

Confused about this Sunday’s French Presidential Election?  Not to 
worry, so are French voters – to the point where nearly half are still 
undecided. The choices are complex, and with forty percent in the 
‘undecided’ column, polling results are meaningless, manipulated 
extrapolations. It’s gotten to the point where French people are 
actually asking me, a foreigner, whom to vote for on the first round! 
How indeed to choose among twelve bona fide candidates, all of whom are 
visible – however briefly -- on the TV news?

On the far-Left side of the menu we have three Trotskyists, a Communist, 
a Green, and the heroic anti-globalizating peasant, José Bové. On the 
far-Right, Le Pen, the perennial neo-fascist menace; the Vicompte de 
Villiers representing traditional aristocratic landed property; and the 
Hunting-Fishing-Tradition Party of small landed property. In the Center 
of the menu, we find the three main items likely to survive into the 
runoffs. On the Center-Left an attractive female Socialist (Ségolène 
Royal), on the rabid Right, a scary Interior Minister (Nicolas Sarkozy) 
and on the Center-Right, an opportunistic spoiler named François Bayrou. 
This electoral menu presents  a true embarras (‘embarassement’) of 
choices, and today’s Libération editorial expresses embarrassment how 
‘folklorique’ France must look to us Anglo-Saxons. I should not be so 
embarrassed. I’m sure Blair and Bush agree in dismissing the French 
system as a ridiculous throwback, but a throwback to what?  Could it be 
to democracy?

Coming from the U.S., the first thing I admire in the French system is 
this: the simple fact that people here get to vote on Sunday – the day 
when folks with jobs and kids to balance can get to the polls. After 
that, I like that fact that voter registration here is permanent and 
that French voters get to elect their President by direct ballot, not 
indirectly through an elite, corruptible Electoral College. Speaking of 
corruption, the French paper-ballot system prevents election-day fraud 
by the party in power, although the first electronic machines are being 
tested – and protested – this election. I also appreciate that the 
French Presidential campaign doesn’t last for two years or consist 
mainly of raising hundreds of millions from billionnaires expecting 
favors. I also like it that France may soon be governed by a woman who 
is not ashamed of being photographed in a bikini or of being the unwed 
mother of four children (the father is a Socialist Party 
colleague-cum-rival).
I also admire France’s pluralistic multi-party system, a secular system 
where God is not on the ballot and where only the crackpot Right 
candidates feel obliged to go to church. It permits opposition views to 
be heard in the media and gives direct expression to the needs and 
ideals of various social classes. Today’s France remains true to her 
reputation among Marxists and political sociologists as the ‘model’ 
bourgeois republic in which contending classes in society express their 
interests in explicitly political ways.

Recently, the French system has allowed for the development of a rather 
significant anti-neocapitalist movement to the left of the ‘official’ 
Left – a coalition of neo-liberal Socialists, Communists and Greens 
which presided over mass privatizations of public services when last in 
power. The new far-Left movement cristalized two years ago around 
opposition to a proposed neo-liberal  European Constitution, which 
strongly supported by both the Right and the official Left in a vast 
‘Yes to Europe!’ media campaign including endorsements by sports and 
entertainment stars. On the ‘No!’ side, all the little Left parties, 
unions and ecological groups mobilized their troops, pulled in lots of 
outside support; and mounted a nationwide grass-roots campaign. Exactly 
two years ago ( in April 2005), the ‘No’s’ came up with an upset victory 
in the Constitutional Referendum, and the euphoria of that 
anti-neo-capitalist majority, started making plans for a common far-Left 
electoral front.

Too good to be true! As usual, the Left blew it. José Bové would have 
been an obvious united candidate, given his media recognition and his 
independence from any of the rival sectarian parties. But Bové was 
unwilling to swear off any possible future alliance with the Socialist, 
which was unacceptable to the purists.  So we now have six rival 
far-Left candidates, all agreed on the same platform: block OMG’s, block 
the construction of the new Nuclear super-reactor, block the closing 
profitable plants, roll back the privatization of public services, tax 
the corporations, restore lost employee retirement rights, rebuild the 
schools and hospitals, give basic rights to immigrants. Despite this 
sectarian fiasco, it is still predicted that Bové, the Trotskyists, and 
the CP will together attract about 12% of the votes this Sunday – such 
is the strength of articulate opposition to aggressive, neo-liberal 
capitalism in France.  In my mind, a single far-Left candidate would 
easily have attracted twice the number, a percentage which might 
conceivably have pushed an anti-capitalist party into the second round 
and make Bové (or someone like him) a credible threat as President – 
based on the April 2005 majority. A Utopian dream, of course, but also a 
nightmare for the French Establishment credible enough to serve as an 
effective break on the resurgent Right. Alas, given the cynicism, 
defeatism and pettiness of French Left party politics (aptly described 
by Lenin as “parliamentary cretinism”) such a popular front remains a dream.

Which leaves us back at the original question, whom to vote for Sunday? 
 Elyane, my Provençale Significant Other, whose parents came from the 
peasantry and joined the working class after WWII, is naturally torn 
between between a worker candidate and a peasant. The worker is Olivier 
Besencenot, the handsome, articulate, obviously sincere thirty-year-old 
Trotskyist letter carrier, the leader of the far-Left pack. The peasant 
is José Bové, the radical sheep-farmer famous for his non-violent 
opposition to the French Army, his role in organizing of the Peasant 
Federation, his appearance (complete with Roquefort) at the Seatle 
anti-World Trade Organization protests and his courage facing serious 
years in jail for complicity in the destruction of  unlicensed 
Genetically Modified crops. Both are a credit to the classes they 
represent. Besensnot lives on his €1250 Euro ($1600) a month postman’s 
salary and has been grudgingly given a two-month unpaid leave to 
campaign. He’s knows his stuff, yet talks like someone his age, not some 
Marxist political robot. On the other hand, Bové, the 
international-minded peasant leader, campaigns in the suburban cités 
(projects) where he is warmly welcomed by Black and Arab voters who 
appreciate his pro-immigrant politics. These are the suburbs the racist 
Sarkosy can’t campaign in, having insulted the people there by calling 
them racaille (scum) during the youth riots two years ago and 
threatening to clean them out with a pressure-hose.

Elyane has not yet decided whether to vote for Bové or Besencenot on 
Sunday, but she is determined to exercise her republican right to vote 
for someone she believes in the first round, since she’ll be obliged to 
vote against the worse of two evils in the second round anyway. On the 
other hand, France is ready for a woman President, and the Socialist 
Ségolène Royale is an extremely attractive candidate who has a chance to 
win.  The Socialist rank and file chose to nominate her, precisely 
because they thought she could win the Presidency in a modern, personal, 
U.S. style campaign. She entered the race in December slightly ahead in 
the polls over Sarkosy, the inevitable candidate of the Right. You would 
think that the disappointed male hopefuls and their followers in the 
Socialist Party would then have rallied to their charming female 
candidate while hoping to occupy Ministries during her future five-year 
term.

Wrong! The male-chauvinist Socialist politicos all walked away from her 
campaign –  even the father of her children, Party Chair François 
Hollande – leaving Royale hanging out in the cold!  Alone, inexperienced 
as a national figure, Royale made a few, very few, gaffes in foreign 
affairs. Of course she should have been flanked by SP specialists and 
accompanied by her prospective Foreign Minister ready to answer the 
tough questions during her first journey abroad. The critics jumped all 
over her, and she lost her lead in the polls. Abandoned, she faced 
hostile media: governement-controlled media influence by Sarkozy’s party 
and right-wing private media recently bought out by two giant 
pro-Sarkozy defense contractors, Lacordère and Dassault. In one TV 
interview I chanced to see, Royale was being hectored, interrupted and 
cross examined by an anchor-woman, yet she kept her aplomb and answered 
every barbed question adroitly, with a smile. Royale has Hillary’s 
smarts, but exhibits much more humanity.

Yet far from supporting their valiant female champion, the so-called 
‘éléphants’ of the Socialst Party have continued stabbing her in the 
back. Her official Economics Advisor, Besson, loudly quit her campaign 
and then wrote a critical biography of her. Yesterday, former Socialist 
Prime Minister Rocard undermined her campaign by calling for a defeatist 
first round deal with the ‘Centrist’ Bayrou. The male rats are leaving 
the Socialist ship they did their best to sink in order to form a 
Center-Left ministry with Bayrou. Will this opportunistic manoever work?

I have the impression the French are tired of this worn-out ‘political 
class’ of  recycled professional male politicians, all petty 
opportunists jockying for position. They yearn for renewal. Sarkozy 
offers them economic renewal in the scary prospect of  bringing 
Bush-Blair style competitive market capitalism to France. Royale 
promises a renewal of the social contract, the French eqivalant of the 
New Deal and Fair Deal. Never mind that her promises are mere gestures. 
French people, especially women, long for a kinder, gentler capitalism, 
and many see Ségolène as a nurturing mother. Royale has consciously 
based her campaign on the feminist practice of ‘listening’ to people 
through town meetings and committees. This morning’s Libération shows 
her campaigning in a Carrefour supermarket, where she stood up for the 
rights of the cashiers, subject to low pay, difficult hours and now the 
threat of being replaced by machines: “Salaried women are the 
proletarians of today. 70% of poor workers are women, while job-cutting 
CEO’s retire with multi-million dollar golden parachutes.” Never mind 
that Royale’s proposed raise in the minimum wage amounts to nothing.

There are also pragmatic, realistic reasons why French voters might be 
tempted to support the Ségolène Royale on the first round. It would be 
far better to have her face Sarkosy in the second round, rather than the 
fake Centrist Bayrou – an opportunistic Catholic Right-wing former 
Minister of Education, famous for giving State financing to the 
Parochial schools and privatizing the republican secular public 
education system. I, personally, would far prefer to live in France for 
the next five years under her Presidency then under an authoritarian, 
racist, power-freak like Sarkozy, and I think that she would have a 
better chance of beating him on May 6 than a recycled reactionary creep 
like Bayrou.

In any case, the open secret of this Presidential campaign is that 
Sarkozy scares people and that nobody in France is supposed to 
notice.The only Frenchman not scared unafraid of him is Le Pen, whom 
Sarkozy enraged by taking over his issues. Scaring people is Sarkozy’s 
modus vivendi. Like Richard Nixon, Sarko operates a ‘hit-list’ of his 
enemies, including honest critics in his own party who suddenly get the 
ax after some slight. Like Dick Cheney, Sarko is vindictive and uses 
fear to censor the least personal criticism the media. For example, he 
got his ally Lacordère to fire a careless editor who reprinted a report 
from the U.S. media about Sarkozy’s wayward wife – a taboo subject -- 
seen galavanting in N.Y. with her chevalier servant. Only Le Pen dares 
to allude to the humiliating public cuckoldry of France’s diminutive, 
vain, vindictive macho Minister of law and order.

More seriously, the media did not react for more than ten days to 
Sarko’s latest racist outburst. In a published interview in Philosophy, 
France’s top cop declared that pedophilia and teen suicide were 
inherited, genetically-programmed forms of devience that neither 
education nor social action (nor apparently Divine Mercy) could correct. 
Nor do interviewers ever ask Sarkozy about his monomania, his violent 
rages and his frequent use of outrageous language against colleagues and 
adversaries alike. The Interior Minister even scares President Chirac, 
blackmailing his former mentor and late rival into silence with the 
threat of prosecution on corruption charges. Yet interviewed off the 
record, mainstream French statesmen and journalists are seriously 
concerned about Sarkozy’s unstable egomania, his lack of culture, and 
his inhuman power-drive; some see him as a dangerous populist, a 
potential Louis Bonaparte. France’s closest neighbors are also scared of 
him. The Belgians are closely watching the French race on tinterhooks, 
and Le Soir of Brussels declared Sarkozy “dangerous.”  This fear is 
shared by Spanish President Zapatero, who has openly declared for 
Ségolène Royale. Here in France, Blacks, Arabs and other immigrants are 
justifiably scared of Sarkozy’s proposed “Ministry of French Identity 
and Immigration,” as are young people, old people and other vulnerable 
or non-competitive citizens. In my opinion, Sarkozy is arguably worst 
than Bush. Could I add more?

So who would you vote for this Sunday?

Conclusion: France may be an untidy democracy, but it’s nice to have 
choices.

________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism