NPA tacitly backs the French ruling elite’s campaign for Macron vote
By
Johannes Stern and Alex Lantier
6 May 2017
The class gulf separating Pabloite New Anti-capitalist party (NPA) and the Parti de l’égalité socialiste (PES), the French section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), could hardly be sharper. While the PES calls for an active boycott in the second round of the presidential elections to mobilize the working class against both candidates on an independent revolutionary perspective, the NPA intervenes to subordinate workers and youth to the banker Emmanuel Macron.
In the main election statement published on its web site, the NPA declares: “Marine Le Pen and the FN [National Front] are a mortal danger for the collective rights and the social movements. They want to suppress and ban social opposition, demonstrations, and trade unions and social opposition. This means even greater divisions of the oppressed between Frenchmen and foreigners, heterosexuals and LGBTI. It threatens women’s rights.”
While it admits that Macron is “the most direct representative of the free-market policies pursued over the last 30 years,” it adds: “We understand the workers and youth who vote for Macron in order to block the National Front.”
This is a cowardly evasion of fundamental political responsibilities raised by the historic crisis in France. Seventy percent of voters are angry at the choice between a neo-fascist and a representative of extreme austerity and European Union (EU) militarism; a poll of supporters of defeated presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon showed that two-thirds of them reject support for either candidate. Yet the NPA gives no indication of what workers should do to oppose an election that gives voters the…