New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA) election meeting in Paris: The dead end of the pseudo-left
By
Alex Lantier
9 June 2017
Major political crises remorselessly reveal the class character and orientation of the various political tendencies.
The current situation, characterized by a growing rift between US and European imperialism following Donald Trump’s election, Brexit and the collapse of France’s Socialist Party (PS) government, is rapidly exposing the petty-bourgeois orientation of the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA). The organization is horrified by and angry at French workers’ growing radicalization and disillusionment with the political establishment.
This is what emerged from the NPA’s meeting on the French legislative elections held Tuesday night in the Paris suburb of Villejuif, featuring Alain Krivine, the former student protest leader in May-June 1968 and long-time head of the NPA, the leading section of the international Pabloite, anti-Trotskyist movement. Krivine delivered an embittered tirade, during which he berated workers for not supporting the trade unions and the NPA and claimed there was a broad shift to the far right among the masses.
Krivine’s role lends his remarks particular significance. He is not merely a well-known politician in France, but the senior spokesman for all the NPA’s middle-class Pabloite allies who broke with Trotskyism and developed as part of the student radicalization of the 1960s. These elements have long played a key role in what passes for the “left.” They not only helped build the PS in France and government parties such as Brazil’s Workers Party, Rifondazione Comunista in Italy and Podemos in Spain, but worked closely with Germany’s Left Party and the International Socialist Organization (ISO) in the…