Socialist Action /April 2001
Municipal Elections in France:
SP Wins Paris Mayoral Race While Revolutionary
Left Makes Gains
By XAVIER ROUSSELIN
PARIS-For the first time in history, Paris has
elected a Socialist Party mayor. That is the most spectacular result of
the March 11-18 municipal elections in France.
But this event should not overshadow two other
developments that are going to weigh heavily on the political situation
over the next year-the defeat of the ruling left coalition in many provincial
cities and the rise in the vote for radical left slates.
Paris voted left. This city, ruled by the right-winger
Jacques Chirac for 22 years, up until the day he was elected president of
the republic, has been known as a bastion of the right. It is a rich city
inhabited by rich people. And now it has changed camps.
The bourgeois commentators see this development
as a result of the "Bo-Bo" vote, that is the vote of the bourgeois
Bohemians. These are voters who would be considered "middle class"
in the United States.
In Paris, these voters (generally young people
and salaried public sector workers) shifted to the left. Fundamentally,
they were sick of finding it harder and harder to live in Paris because
of real estate speculation.
They wanted a livable city where the boulevards
are not transformed into highways. They wanted the city to be run in such
a way that the bulk of tax revenues ($4.5 billion) go to improve public
services, and day-care centers first of all.
They also wanted an end to the scandals; the outgoing
mayors have been falsifying voter lists and paying officials of the ruling
rightist RPR party with city tax money.
This rejection of the right at the local level
was repeated in several large cities, such as Lyon (France's second largest
city) and Dijon, the capital of Burgundy. It shows that under the pressure
of the crisis, a part of the bourgeoisie's own social base is beginning
to radicalize.
However, elsewhere in France we saw towns run by
the Socialist Party won by the right. More than 30 cities governed by the
SP or the CP were captured by parties of the right (Strasbourg, for example.)
Working-class cities such as Le Havre surprisingly were held by the right.
This result is explained fundamentally by the fact
that the right mobilized in force, while the poorer sections of the population
stayed away from the polls. This development indicates a profound dissatisfaction
with the government's policy among working people. The ruling coalition
has been pursuing a policy that most resembles that of Blair and Schröder,
its Social Democratic colleagues in Great Britain and Germany. It has been
privatizing at full tilt, following a policy that threatens the interests
of the working people.
The example of the 35-hour week is indicative.
Cutting the workweek to 35 hours with a cut in pay should have been an important
social advance. But the Jospin government decided to take advantage of the
cut in the workweek to systematically introduce "flexibility,"
challenging the workers' past gains.
Thus, while the unemployment rate has declined
about 20 percent in the last three years, this is because of the expansion
of part-time and marginal jobs in all their various forms.
So, only a year before the next presidential elections,
the left voters, the poor strata of the population, sent a serious warning
signal to Jospin. Unless he changes his policy, unless he shifts to the
left, he may lose the upcoming election and leave the presidency in the
hands of the right for five more years.
The increase in the vote for the radical left slates
is a clear indication of the search for an alternative to the government's
policy. The Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire (LCR, French section of the
Fourth International) now has 25 city council members throughout France.
In many working-class cities, our slates got not inconsiderable scores.
In the Rouen suburbs, the LCR got 10 percent in two towns, Canteleu and
St. Etienne du Rouvray.
In the Bordeaux metropolitan area, the LCR elected
six members of the city council members in several different towns. In Clermont
Ferrand, a big working-class city in central France, the LCR got more than
8 percent of the vote. In Vitry, one of the historic bastions of the Communist
Party, the LCR got 8.6 percent of the vote and elected two city council
members.
However, the LCR was not the only gainer from this
shift toward the radical left. Lutte Ouvriere, which out of stupid sectarianism
refused to run joint slates with the LCR, got equally good scores
In a working-class city in northern France, LO
got 20 percent of the vote. In a CP bastion in the Paris region, La Courneuve,
LO got more than 10.7 percent. And the Workers Party (Lambertists) also
got significant votes in some towns.
Overall, despite its division, the radical left
made a breakthrough. In St. Denis, in the Paris suburbs, the archtypical
CP stronghold, the LCR got more than 5 percent of the vote and two seats
on the city council. LO got 6 percent, and also two seats on the city council.
And the Workers Party got 2.3 percent. A united slate could have gotten
more than 15 percent!
This rise of the far left goes hand in hand with
a crisis of the Communist Party, which is more and more torn between the
dissatisfaction of its social base and its involvement in the government.
Its electoral decline opens big possibilities for revolutionists.
The question that arises now is whether the radical
left can unite behind one candidate in the upcoming presidential elections.
It is possible now to get a vote far higher than the 5 percent that Arlette
Laguiller (LO) got in 1995. A score of such a magnitude would be a powerful
reinforcement for the workers' resistance to the bourgeoisie's offensive.
Socialist Action /April 2001 |