#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #FRANCE #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) France, OCL: RIGHT-LEFT-THERE IS NOTHING TO PASS by Courant Alternatif (ca, de, it, fr, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 " The traditional right/left opposition of the institutional arc which had

structured parliamentary political life for more than a hundred years had become
less and less perceptible over the years. So much so that the alternations built
on this break have gradually lost their raison d'être. ---- It is not showing
great sagacity to note that, for decades, the political offer of the left
resembled that of the right. If, in the speech, there remained some traces of its
origins in the labor movement, once in power, the policies carried out were those
which the bosses and the bourgeoisie needed. There was a time when the latter saw
an advantage in letting the left fly the plane to take unpopular measures with
less risk of popular backlash.
 From "knowing how to end a strike" in 1936, to the "turn of rigor" in 1983 and
the "social-liberal turn" in 1974, this left represented first by the SFIO, then
by the PS since the congress of Epinay in 1971, had long since proven to
employers that it ran no risk by entrusting him with the keys to the truck.

Back to basics

The common point of all the tendencies born at the end of the 19th century within
the labor movement, socialists, anarchists, communists, trade unionists, was to
destroy capitalism and to establish a society without classes or State. A first
cleavage very quickly took place concerning the strategy to achieve this. On the
one hand, the revolutionaries considered that it was necessary to bring down the
bourgeois state by a practice of clean rupture with the institutions and to work
towards more or less insurrectional moments in which the different components of
the proletariat rose up against the existing order: a revolution. On the other
hand, the reformists (the socialists) believed that a long march was needed
through state institutions to transform them into an interventionist state for
the benefit of the weakest.
A second cleavage divided the revolutionaries who were divided between the
Marxist-Leninists according to whom the old bourgeois state should be temporarily
replaced by a proletarian state led by an eponymous party, and the revolutionary
anarchists who understood the revolution as the immediate destruction of the
state and the unmediated takeover of social organization by all populations.
The anarchists immediately placed themselves outside the parliamentary game and
remained there, while the Marxist-Leninists, on their side, very quickly took
pleasure in it (the CP - communist party).
SFIO/PS and PC thus formed the parliamentary left which gradually abandoned the
objective of its beginnings of abolishing capitalism. It was no longer a question
of using the elections to gain power and carry out reforms in favor of the most
deprived by means of an interventionist State, thus opposing a supposed liberal
right which, for its part, considered that the State intervention should be
limited to sovereign functions and let capitalism regulate itself.
But the opposition between interventionist state and liberal state turned out to
be only a decoy so that the voter perpetuates the system by having the impression
of playing a leading role. We have seen the left taking the most liberal measures
in favor of business and recently the right trampling on liberal creeds to save
the economy soldier. Macron's five-year term is a glaring illustration that
economic doctrines are only nuances that only engage those who believe in them
and who do not weigh heavily against the interests of Capital. In a few days,
faced with the Covid crisis, it was an omni-directive state which, to save trade,
unearthed the billions that were previously unobtainable to hire caregivers. The
runoff was, very temporarily, set aside.

It is now over the short term that the managers of capitalism must move from one
doctrine to another to respond to random situations, so that the classic
alternations based on the right/left divide for a longer time long are no longer
appropriate, especially as the spectacle given by the two major parties with
their alleged differences has become increasingly mediocre and discredited in the
light of past experiences. Their bureaucratic rigidity has made them unfit to
adapt quickly to current events in order to claim any effectiveness in the
defense of the system, without falling apart. After having played a useful role,
they are no longer indispensable to the bourgeoisie.

National unity, capital unity

The time is no longer for the spectacle of alternation, or even cohabitation, but
for prospects of governments of national unity, as has sometimes happened in Germany.
PS/PC and the various avatars of Gaullism, worn out and discredited in public
opinion, as we have seen, were incapable of achieving this national union
demanded by employers and their organizations. Their history having been built on
the myth of their opposition, they could hardly appear as a hope transcending
their own interest for that of the nation.

It is this impossibility of the old parties to play the card of national unity
which offered a boulevard to Macron and LREM to appear as a force going beyond
the right/left divide. A new charismatic leader and new faces is also what made
the success of Les Insoumis and Mélenchon. We note in this regard that the
parties which were no longer led by their founder have collapsed. The heirs have
given way to creators of new lines, and we can put the RN in this camp as Marine
le Pen has been able to build herself with an image of refusal of her father's
heritage.

However, there is a catch!

To face the turbulent times ahead, the bourgeoisie needs a calm but firm conduct
of affairs. The major industrial restructurings have been carried out without too
many revolts, we must continue with the pension reform project. And for that, in
fact, nothing better than a national union built around the demonization and fear
of a supposed extreme left and a real extreme right, by staging a centrist
management of a good father and full of common sense.
But then, a national union, to be more than a slogan, must be based on a more or
less majority reality in the country. Which is not the case. Everywhere you can
read or hear that there are three blocks around Le Pen, Macron and Mélenchon.
However, these three blocs are, at the electoral level, of equal importance and
represent 90% of the votes; which means that the necessary national (or patriotic
or even popular) union that the three are calling for can only be a minority,
which makes it rather bad for a large gathering. But above all the problem is
that only observers who only consider political life through that of the parties
and parliament see only three blocs, when in reality there are four with that of
the voluntary and conscious abstainers . And it's not nothing,
Consequently, the national union built on the corpse of the right/left opposition
runs the risk of being, too, only a pitiful spectacle already discredited. Let's
not be the prompters of this theater of dupes.»

JPD

  http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article3217
https://awsm.nz/?p=13411
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