No Earthquake in France

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Counterpunch, May 8, 2002

No Earthquake in France,
Nobody Dead
by James Masterson

(clip)

How interesting, then, that, in response to what is probably the last
campaign of an ageing fascist, who has never been in government, so many
commentators have sought to convey the utterly false impression that there
are Nazis on the march in full uniform the length and breadth of
France--regardless of the fact that large numbers of these sad people are
too old to march very far, too fat to fit into tunics and too confused to
form up in lines. How interesting, too, that these commentators have failed
to convey any impression of what it is like to be (for example) young,
black and poor in any of the "advanced" liberal democracies today, at the
mercy, not only of sporadic criminal attacks by individual racists, but of
sustained and perfectly legal attacks by racist institutions. Again, who
stands to gain most from attempts to frighten people into trusting the
elite once more, regardless of that elite's hypocrisy, corruption and
cynicism?

The fact is that, in France as elsewhere, elections, even when they are as
hyped up as the Chirac/Le Pen contest was, can do little to alter the
consistent process of intellectual and moral degeneration that has
characterised mainstream politics across the West for the past three
decades. Democracy as such is not under threat from fascists--though ethnic
minorities certainly are. The greatest threat to the limited and distorted
forms of democracy that characterise the West comes, as ever, from
corporate power, which has no need to cultivate fascists as long as it can
find, and finance, mainstream politicians, journalists and academics
willing to do its bidding. As for what happens when any of these groups
attempts to defy corporate power, the name of Salvador Allende may yet ring
some bells.

So much for the 12-16% of French voters who, probably to their own
bemusement, attracted so much international attention. What then of the
other 84-88%? On the one hand, only a few among the mainstream commentators
pontificating about the first round even deigned to notice that, while a
little over 26% chose either Chirac or Jospin, 33.9% plumped for candidates
other than Chirac, Jospin or Le Pen. The performance of the three
Trotskyist candidates, and the continuing death throes of the Parti
Communiste, did attract the attention of a few self-consciously "leftist"
journalists, but only as an excuse to write nonsense about the
"self-indulgent" splintering of the French left--as if Stalinists and
Trotskyists ought to unite, either with each other or with Jospin, and as
if doing so would have made any significant difference. However much
respect one may have for the clarity and intransigence of some of the left
sects in France, who put the truly self-indulgent infantilism and
academicism of most British "Marxists" to shame, it is absurd to pretend
that their electoral record says anything more than that they still form an
isolated and ineffective minority. Blaming such vilified and marginalised
groups for the stupidities of the system that has kept them isolated is
just one more example of the mauvaise foi of so many "social democrats",
who still yearn for the kudos of appearing to be radical while enjoying the
rewards of being sycophantic.

full: http://www.counterpunch.org/masterson0508.html

Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org