Macron’s ultraliberal and authoritarian five-year term is coming to an end and there is a high probability that he will be re-elected on April 24 as President of the Republic. The rejection of its pension reform, the movement of yellow vests, the pandemic and Russian aggression in Ukraine will have marked the country’s political life against a background of growing precariousness and social injustice. The probability of this re-election therefore depends neither on real popular support nor on political stabilization ensuring continuity.
In 2017, Macron was elected on the discredit of the outgoing socialist president, François Hollande (of whom he was the Minister of the Economy) and on the total fiasco of the candidacy of the right-wing party LR to which the victory seemed nevertheless acquired four months before the election. Cultivating the most traditionalist and homophobic wing of the right-wing electorate, the candidacy of François Fillon had won for Les Républicains (LR), facing the favorites Sarkozy or Juppé, but a scandal of fictitious jobs and misappropriation of public funds revealed a few weeks before the election completely reversed the scenario. For the first time since the presidential election by universal suffrage in 1965, the right was not present in the second round and a newcomer without a party, Macron, stole victory from the two main institutional parties.
An overhanging presidentialism
The French political regime is, in fact, a strict presidential regime with a concentration of executive power in the hands of the president and an almost automatic influence of the latter on the Legislative Assembly. Indeed, the latter is elected, in a two-round uninominal majority ballot, a few weeks after the election of the president. This has ensured for twenty years a “breath effect” and the systematic election of a large majority of candidates supported by the newly elected president, of an assembly which, in the absence of any proportional representation, crushes its opposition. This was still the case in 2017 when, almost without the existence or establishment of a party, La Républiqueen Marche – the movement created by Macron to lead his campaign – succeeded in obtaining, ex nihilo, 349 seats out of 577. In addition,
It should also be emphasized that if Macron was elected (after having only collected the votes of 18% of those registered in the first round) by taking abusive advantage of the wave of clearance and by playing on the discredit of the previous PS and LR governments, this discredit meant that the elections of 2017 also marked a growing disavowal of the political system as such. With 34% abstentions and blank votes in the second round, it was the lowest turnout in the presidential election by universal suffrage since it was set up in 1965. The same was true for the legislative elections, which followed with over 57% abstention.
Macron therefore succeeded in 2017 in a balancing act on quicksand, essentially capturing a left and center electorate in the first round and winning the second round thanks to an anti-Le Pen vote. This exercise materialized in his government team, recycling former ministers and officials of the PS and the right. For five years, PS like LR will remain paralyzed by a liberal policy quite similar to that which they would have carried out in government.
On the other hand, En Marche will have been unable to extend this balance of power, created for the presidential and legislative elections, to the whole of the institutional system which remains largely marked by the weight of social democracy, the Sarkozyist right and a lesser scale of the National Rally. Macron and En Marche will not have succeeded in winning a single election in five years: beaten in the 2019 European elections by the National Front, winning no town halls of cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants in 2020, only a small handful of elected councilors and no presidency in the regional elections of 2021. Because, even with a major crisis as national parties, the establishment in local and regional institutions remains very largely the prerogative of the LR current and social democracy, and behind the Rassemblement national. En Marche has no local presence and Macron has clearly refused to transform it into a political party. The spokespersons of En Marche are, in fact, the ministers. Moreover, it is the government spokesperson, Gabriel Attal, who is at the same time Macron’s campaign spokesperson.
In recent months, numerous reports [1] have confirmed with figures what the working classes have been experiencing in concrete terms since the start of the pandemic: the widening of inequalities, the rise of social misery on the one hand, in the face of a rise in the enrichment of the great fortunes on the other . This social situation led to the movement of yellow vests in the fall of 2018, posing social and democratic demands. At the same time, the hospital world was mobilizing against the misery of resources and wages in the face of a policy of attrition, of bed and hospital closures. And a few months later, the trade union movement as a whole was mobilizing against a new pension reform aimed explicitly at making people work longer while reducing the amount of pensions.
Pandemics, states of emergency and social control
The Covid pandemic froze most social mobilization activity from the spring of 2020, sparing Macron further social confrontations. Unfortunately, the rise of precariousness has not been frozen. The most precarious populations have been the most affected by the pandemic and unemployment, the loss of purchasing power has been the daily life of millions of men and women. And at the same time, if the government suspended the pension reform for a time, it implemented, in the midst of a pandemic, an unemployment insurance reform aimed at making 2.3 billion in savings on the benefits paid to the unemployed. his. Similarly, no measures have been taken to allow the public health system to be financed to the extent of needs, worse, cost restriction plans have not been suspended: 5,700 full hospital beds and 25 hospital establishments were closed in 2020. These are just a few examples in the social field. In the field of democratic freedoms, Macron, in five years, passed 7 new draconian laws, covering the rise in police violence in working-class neighborhoods and during demonstrations. The state of health emergency and the health and vaccination passes have led to the explosion of social control.
If Macron avoided knowing the disavowal experienced by his predecessors Sarkozy and Hollande, it is only because he took advantage of the pandemic to avoid and stifle any political debate, in the name of the state of health emergency, confinements, obstacles put under the pandemic to social activities and popular gatherings.
The crisis of the PS and the Republicans
Moreover, leading a neoliberal policy in the extension of the two previous five years (those of the PS and the UMP, today LR), these two parties will never have been able to distance themselves or mark a real difference with Macron on the essential questions. Neither of these two parties represents an alternative vis-à-vis the policy pursued by Macron and they hardly garner the support of the main capitalist groups and their media, which largely support the current management of the state. This situation is a factor of deep crisis in these two parties which results in the marginalization of their two candidates in this election, marginalization which even goes to an abyssal position of fall for Anne Hidalgo, official candidate of the PS. Thus Macron will undoubtedly succeed in keeping the polarization of a good part of the left-wing electorate and even of an undoubtedly growing part of the LR electorate. Indeed, faced with the inability to stand out from Macron on the real management of capital affairs, the Republicans chose to plebiscite, during the first round of their primary, the two candidates asserting the profile closest to security issues. and racist from the extreme right. Valérie Pécresse was finally appointed, leading to several defections of officials joining Macron. in the first round of their primary, the two candidates asserting the profile closest to the security and racist themes of the far right. Valérie Pécresse was finally appointed, leading to several defections of officials joining Macron. in the first round of their primary, the two candidates asserting the profile closest to the security and racist themes of the far right. Valérie Pécresse was finally appointed, leading to several defections of officials joining Macron.
A failed presidential campaign
On the eve of the Russian aggression against Ukraine, Macron had imagined a second part to evade any debate on his balance sheet and social issues: the rotating presidency of the European Union failing France, he intended to stage as the “main” European leader, guaranteeing the French presence at the international level. This scenario was dramatically accentuated with the invasion of Ukraine, Macron giving himself the image of a leading negotiator with Putin, despite France’s weak economic weight in the region. Thus, in recent weeks, Macron has once again imposed a situation where, far from appearing as a presidential candidate, he presents himself as the Clemenceau of our time, protecting the country in times of war, and as president in office, awaiting his second term and having no time to waste in an election campaign in which his re-election would be automatic. This campaign skipping translates into Macron’s refusal of any debate with the other candidates. He thus avoids any assessment of his five-year term, but this also has the obvious effect of accentuating the gulf between this election and the daily concerns of the working classes. Macron is therefore himself playing the popular disinterest card for this election. This does not prevent him from outlining the new attacks planned for a second five-year term: raising the retirement age, questioning the rights of the poorest beneficiaries of the RSA, new reform in National Education, among others.
Social crisis and abstention
For the moment in silence, apart from numerous demonstrations against the health pass in 2021, the pandemic and its management by the government will have seriously deteriorated the living conditions of the working classes, accentuating the disinterest, rejection or growing hostility. vis-à-vis a class political system which, far from protecting, ignores suffering and aggravates it. This has obviously been amplified by the explosion in food and energy prices in recent months. The greatest probability is that all of this will first translate electorally into a new and sharp increase in abstention in this election.
The popular electorate will therefore make abstention their first choice in a few days. But this situation also reflects a rejection and a deep crisis of the institutional left, exacerbated during this presidential election. French social democracy is paying a high price for its conversion to social liberalism. Hollande will himself have served as a springboard for Macron, a good part of the traditional socialist electorate will surely once again choose to vote for him.
Mélenchon and institutional lefts
From then on Mélenchon, draping himself in the presidential costume, will have appeared in this campaign as the lifeline of the institutional left. With his “Popular Unity” campaign framework, he also sought to capture the voices of social movement activists who seek an alternative to the social-democratic impasse, but without opening up the slightest prospect of building a force anti-capitalist unitary (see the article by Patrick Le Moal, February 27, 2022, [2] ). Renewing a campaign quite similar to that of 2017 when he had come close to 20% of the vote, he now only owes the maintenance of his electoral credibility to the electoral collapse of the PS in this election (Anne Hidalgo being credited with less 3% eight days before the 1sttour) and the lack of visibility of the Greens candidacy (Yannick Jadot, credited with 4 to 5%).
But all this leaves unanswered a question-already asked after 2012- which goes beyond this presidential election: in a social situation which will further deteriorate with the effects of the war in Ukraine, how can the exploited and the oppressed act and organize? Because the result of the failure of social democracy is that social emergencies do not find answers if we do not bring into play the balance of power of social mobilization, if we do not attack to the capitalist system. The split of the institutional left between three candidates, not to mention Mélenchon, its inability to find a common framework even for confrontation during this campaign clearly reflects the difficulty of publicly confronting these questions, of leading a public debate on the causes of the failures past government experiences.
These are indeed concrete responses to satisfy the fundamental social needs of the working classes. Moreover, the social emergency today goes hand in hand with the democratic emergency in the face of authoritarian excesses aggravated by the pandemic, and also with the climate emergency, forgotten with the war in Ukraine and the race for fossil fuel supplies, despite the irresponsible headlong rush of a system that is out of breath.
The meaning of the campaign of Philippe Poutou and the NPA
Asking these questions clearly, putting forward proposals to meet the demands of the day, will have been the meaning of the campaign of Philippe Poutou and the NPA for this presidential election.
Torn from the force of militancy, to overcome the barrage of 500 signatures of elected officials, deliberately ignored by the media for months, the Poutou campaign will nevertheless have found an important echo, as evidenced by meetings with packed halls, often beyond their capacity and the most optimistic expectations of activists. The other important element is the interest that this campaign meets among young people and, in particular, those who have participated in climate, feminist mobilizations, those against police violence.
These young people are looking for tools, ways to act now, unitary perspectives. This question will obviously be asked again at the end of this election with the worst prospects for a new Macron five-year term. Even within the forces of the social movement, this debate could not take place during the pandemic. The goal of the Poutou campaign was to try to contribute to this, to advance the need for a plan B for the radical left after the presidential election on April 24, to highlight the anti-capitalist emergency.
The two main choices during this election will unfortunately be, within the working classes, that of a significant abstention and too many votes cast for the National Rally. This situation will therefore forcefully pose this double requirement: to respond to social emergencies and lay the groundwork for an anti-capitalist, social and political front of action, capable, within the working classes, of sweeping away reactionary and racist solutions in order to advance a perspective of social emancipation. It’s a big challenge. This should require rapid meetings to lay the groundwork for collaboration, frameworks for debate and coordination between social, political and trade union forces to find rapid ways of action around a common emergency program.
Courtesy Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
[1] OXFAM https://www.oxfamfrance.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Rapport_Oxfam_Inegalites_mondiales_Davos_170122.pdf
Observatory of inequalities https://www.inegalites.fr/IMG/pdf/rapport_sur_les_inegalites_2021_-_l_essentiel_-_c_observatoire_des_inegalites.pdf
[2] ESSF (article 61625), Presidential election (France): On the candidacy of Jean Luc Mélenchon http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article61625
Leon Crémieux
Leon Crémieux is an activist of the Solidaires trade-union federation and of the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA, France). He is a member of the Executive Bureau of the Fourth International.
