The French Presidential Election and the Prospects for Peace

Jean Luc Melenchon  leads an alliance of the French Communist Party and other movements on the left. The movement seems to be gaining ground in the French election campaign which is alarming the Zionist right, hence the article in Canada’s leading right wing tabloid posing as a newspaper, the National Post.http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/its-not-just-the-far-right-gaining-traction-in-france-against-all-odds-a-communist-soars-in-election-polls

A more reliable read on what is happening is L’Humanite’s English web page.  http://www.humaniteinenglish.com/

What is happening in France could be significant for politics in Europe and open the path to a more vigorous struggle for peace and against the reactionary EU-NATO alliance.  

Melenchon seems to be attracting sections of the youth. A careful read would indicate that the alliance is also the most direct response to the Euro-skeptics as represented by Le Pen.

The left alliance is calling for withdrawing from NATO and renegotiating France’s membership in the EU. It has a good position on the struggle of the Palestinians. The alliance calls for nationalization of the banks and challenges the autocratic presidential system in France that dates to the De Gaulle era.

Sylvia and I were in the GDR in 1968 attending the 150 Anniversary celebrations of the birth of Karl Marx, May 8^th 1818 just as the student working class uprising in Paris took place in May 1968. De Gaulle and the military surrounded Paris with tanks out of fear of revolution. There was a revolutionary situation and there was much debate at the time as to why the French Communist Party was unable to lead it to a higher level. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/protests-mount-in-france

What is happening today is a far cry from those days in 1968. However the events unfolding in the French election deserve the close attention of all those who consider peace and socialism as indivisible. The revolutionary traditions of the French people and working class run deep and the anti-fascist heroism of the French Communists in WW2 is well known.

The last time I looked and my information may now be out of date, France was the third largest in the amount spent by European monopoly imperialist states on the military after Britain and Germany. France continues  to be a powerful nuclear armed imperial power in the post-colonial era with French finance capital heavily involved in neo-colonialist exploitation of Africa and the French military is routinely employed to protect French capital including regime change interventions.

A return of the left to French electoral politics is encouraging and will strengthen the militant labour and peace forces.

Putin’s Russia appears to be engaged with Malcon,http://globalnews.ca/news/3227855/french-presidential-candidate-taunts-donald-trump-offers-refuge-to-us-scientists-entrepreneurs/ a candidate of a section of monopoly capital in France, who has made some anti-Trump statements and about the importance of renewing the French Russian relationship. That would indicate some joint interests between French and Russian finance capital that will alarm US interests and their EU allies.  That is inter-capitalist politics and more evidence of the instability afflicting ruling elites in all of the G7 NATO states.

For those of us who consider that what the working class, the overwhelming majority does as primary in capitalist politics, the events unfolding in France bear scrutiny. If the unexpected should happen that Melenchon can make it to the run-off stage of the election it would be as a result of a shift in working class voters and would set European politics on the boil.

The leader of the French Trade Union  movement appears to be anti-communist which would suggest that the once mighty Communist led French trade union movement is now in the hands of the right wing social democrats and will support Hollande socialists.

Right wing social reformism is nothing if not predictable.

The CLC supports the NDP,  the AFL-CIO supported Hillary Clinton and the French TU supports Hollande. Jeremy Corbyn is being pilloried by the right wing in the Labour Party for condemning the US missile attack on Syria. Bernie Sanders was ousted by the Obama-Clinton cabal with the support of the AFL-CIO.

When an avowed left leader comes to the fore in France openly allied with the Communist Party we should look at that situation from a clear eyed working class standpoint.

Don Currie Editor FOS