Virginia de la Siega is a comrade with a long and rich militant history in Trotskyism, especially in the Morenoist current. She joined the Argentine PST in the 1970s, militated under the military dictatorship and then in the old MAS. Settled in Paris for many years, she was a militant of the NPA since its foundation and then of the CCR, from which she was separated due to her differences over the war in Ukraine. As part of a series of interviews with militants of the revolutionary left in France, and knowing her wide experience, we asked Virginia about her opinions on the current political situation in that country.
What is your view on the electoral results of the presidential and legislative elections?
Let’s start by saying that the elections, especially the legislative elections, show two alarming phenomena. The first, very serious, is the normalization and the disproportionate growth of the extreme right. The second, which comes from much earlier, is the massive abstention. These are two different phenomena, but when they appear together they seem related.
Abstention is not a new phenomenon. It had already been 28.4% in the first round of the 2002 presidential election, when the Socialist Party candidate, Lionel Jospin, who obtained 16.2% of the votes, was eliminated in the first round in favor of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the National Front (FN) candidate, who obtained 16.9%. It should be recalled that the FN is an extreme right-wing, negationist, anti-immigrant and fascist party. Le Pen senior thus reached the second round against Jacques Chirac, the candidate of the institutional right who obtained 19.9%. Le Pen was crushed in the second round on the basis of a mass popular mobilization and what is known in France as the Republican Front. After the experience of World War II and the history of collaboration with the Nazis of the Vichy regime, an agreement was reached between all the parties, including the reformist left and in which parties such as the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR), section of the Fourth International (SU) and predecessor of the NPA participated. Faced with a possible electoral triumph of the extreme right, all the parties of the system would call to vote in the second round for the candidate in the best conditions to defeat it, whether he/she was of the left or of the right. On May 5, 2002, with an electoral participation of almost 80% (in France, voting is not compulsory), Chirac was elected with 82% of the votes cast.
In 2017, abstention in the first round was 22.2%. After a right-wing government so unpopular that Sarkozy lost re-election in 2012, and a socialist government whose management was so catastrophic that Hollande, the outgoing president, could not stand for re-election in 2017, it is not strange that the first round was co-opted by two candidates with parties that presented themselves as “outside the system”. Emanuel Macron was the leader of a party hastily created with defectors from the institutional left and right. Marine Le Pen was the president of the FN, now renamed National Rally (RN). The television debate between the two turns showed an unprepared Le Pen against a Macron (former executive of the Rothschild Bank and former Minister of Economy in the Socialist government) in a “statesman” version. Faced with the “Le Pen danger”, the Republican front worked in full force: all parties called for a vote for Macron. Unlike in 2002, there were neither mobilizations against the RN nor did people consider it useful or necessary to vote against him. Abstention in the second round was 25.4%. Macron won the election with 66% of the votes cast.
For the 2022 elections, Macron gambled on repeating the duel with Le Pen. France Insoumise (LFI), the reformist-radical left led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, was rising in the polls. On the grounds that the Republican front would protect him from Le Pen, Macron began the demonization of Mélenchon and the “far left.” On the night of the first round, Mélenchon was once again prevented from reaching the second round by just over 420,000 votes. The results of the rest of the left (PCF, EELV and PS) were pitiful. Once again, the institutional left and right called to vote for Macron. If the abstention of the first round was high (26.3%), that of the second round (28%) added to the null and blank votes gave a total of 34.2%. Macron won with 58.6% of the votes cast, against 41.5% for the RN. Again, not only were there no mobilizations against the RN, but the increase in its votes between 2017 and 2022 is alarming.
And we come to the legislative elections. The “news” in this election was that the institutional left (LFI, PS, EELV, PCF) decided to run united. Faced with its failure in the presidential elections, the traditional left realized that if it did not want to disappear it had to accept the LFI’s call for unity. Thus the NUPES (New Popular Ecologist and Social Union) was organized: an electoral agreement that would allow the parties of the institutional left to continue to exist in the National Assembly. The campaign slogan was “Mélenchon Prime Minister”. In France, if the president does not have a majority in the National Assembly, the majority party in the National Assembly imposes the prime minister. In such cases, the president is left with some powers such as defense and foreign policy issues – only he can push the nuclear button – but for the rest, as they say here, “he grows chrysanthemums”. In France there were three periods in which the institutional right and the PS and its allies shared the government: two under Mitterrand (1986-1988 and 1993-1995) and one under Chirac, in which the right “cohabited” with a PS prime minister (1997-2002).
Abstention in the first round was enormous: 52.5%. Against all its expectations, the government was astonished to see how an unusual number of NUPES and NR candidates reached the second round. In this context, when for the first time there was a risk that a large number of RN deputies would enter the National Assembly, Macronism did not give an “official” voting slogan. They put an equal sign between the RN and LFI. Their argument was: it is dangerous to vote for LFI against the RN candidates, because if she wins the majority in the National Assembly she will have Mélenchon elected Prime Minister. The Republican front exploded into pieces. In the local duels, the right, as was known to happen, voted for Macron’s candidates. And they voted for those of the right. As the slogan did not extend to the NUPES candidates belonging to the PS, EELV or the PCF, numerous candidates from those parties were elected. But in the cases of the duels between RN and LFI candidates, both the right and the Macronists did not vote. Abstention in the second round was huge: 53.8%.
Marine Le Pen entered the National Assembly at the head of a bloc of 88 parliamentarians boasting of being the largest opposition bloc, since the NUPES, which has 151 deputies, is a front of parties (76 of LFI and 75 of its allies of the institutional left).
Despite his maneuvers, Macron lost his absolute majority in the National Assembly. He lacks 39 deputies to pass his laws, and will have to look for them in the opposition benches. On top of that, the government can no longer apply Article 49.3 of the Constitution, which allows it to adopt a bill without a vote only three times a year: to approve the budget, the financing of social security and one more text, whatever it may be.
In this situation, and given that all parties (except the secretary general and deputy of the PCF, Fabien Roussel) rejected the call to form a government of national union, the margins of maneuver of Macronism are limited. One possibility with which Macron played and plays is the dissolution of the National Assembly. But if he does so less than a year before the election, he runs the risk of being even more in the minority. So far he has negotiated the first bills with the most like-minded sectors, such as the institutional right (The Republicans, LR) and the RN. The RN promised, and so far delivered, to be a “responsible” opposition.
Why do you say that abstention and the growth of the far right are two different phenomena?
Because until now it was unthinkable, by action or omission, to allow the extreme right to reach the presidency or, en masse, the National Assembly. Demonizing “the two extremes” (RN and LFI) was a political decision of Macronism and LR in the face of the electoral phenomenon that is the NUPES. They wanted to prevent the hatred of the popular sectors towards Macron and his policies from being channeled towards it, and especially towards its “organizing” force: LFI. And they did so even knowing that they ran the risk of strengthening the extreme right, as in fact happened.
Abstention is something else. It is a sociological-political phenomenon. A little explanation is needed here. Between 2000 and 2001, as a result of an agreement between Chirac and his socialist prime minister, a constitutional reform was first carried out and its organic law was voted the following year. The objective was to take advantage of the fact that the legislative and presidential elections would coincide in 2002 to reduce the duration of the presidential mandate from seven years to five, and to invert the electoral calendar so that the presidential elections would precede the legislative elections by a few weeks. From now on, there would only be elections at the beginning of the government, that is, once every five years. The objective was to reaffirm the primacy of the presidential election and to transform the legislative elections into a “confirmation” of the vote for president in order to avoid future cohabitations. The result of this compromise was the loss of interest in democratic debate. Before the reform, there were two legislative elections in the same presidential term, which gave the possibility of changing the balance of power. If abstention had already begun to manifest itself in the 90’s, as a consequence of the neoliberal consensus that eliminated the interest in voting for the right or the left, after this reform and the 2001 law, it did not cease to grow.
The 2002 elections were elections with contradictory results. Why did people abstain? The reformist left was totally divided. Jospin, the PS candidate and Prime Minister, campaigned saying to anyone who would listen: “My program is not socialist”. Imagine the confusion in the head of a socialist militant or even a trade union militant with a minimum of class consciousness. The traditional socialist electorate asked themselves why go to vote. Those who still went, gave their vote both to the former partners of the PS of the “plural left”, which totaled 12.9% of the votes, and to the extreme left. The 2002 election was one of the best for LO (5.7%) and for the LCR (predecessor of the NPA) which obtained 4.25% of the votes.
Now, these are the political reasons. The sociological question is: who abstained in 2022? Analyses show two sectors. One abstentionist sector, and this is a widespread phenomenon in all “advanced” countries, is young people between 18 and 35 years old.
The other abstentionist sector are the socio-professional categories among which the NUPES obtained the majority of its votes: workers in services, transport, health, energy or commerce, all those who were working on the front line during the pandemic. These are workers earning less than 1,250 euros per month or between 1,250 and 2,000. The industrial workers, who are also mostly abstentionists, when they vote they mostly vote for the RN and not for the NUPES.
Is there any explanation for the abstention of young people?
Let us agree that a legislative election where almost 54% of the voters and more than 70% of the youth abstain is alarming.
Why do young people abstain? During the campaign for the second round of the legislative runoff, Mélenchon, whom all polls gave as the favorite politician of young people, launched an appeal to them on Twitter, “70% of those aged 18-35 did not vote in the first round of the legislative elections. Move a little!” Abstention was even higher in the second round: 71% among 18-24 year olds and 66% among 25-35 year olds.
Who are these young people? They are what sociologists call emerging adults. They are those who are suffering the full consequences of the systemic crisis of capitalism that began in 2007-2008, from which we never emerged. And which is now aggravated by the two years of pandemic, the war in Ukraine (which shattered the illusion that thanks to the EU in Europe we would have eternal peace), and the consequences of the environmental crisis, which are now impossible to deny. Although it is not possible to generalize, the majority of young people disbelieve in the forms of political-party organization. They prefer to join organizations such as Alternatiba, Extinction Rebellion or act in the Black Blocs. They are part of the autonomist movement, which, regarding the amount of people involved, in France is much stronger than Trotskyism. So they are suspicious of political-party forms of organization, but not of all types of organization. There is another sector that has retreated into individual action, horizontal “activism”, the politics of DIO (do it ourselves), which thinks that they are going to change the world individually, adopting more “ecological”, more “human” lifestyles, more in relation to the environment and marching from time to time for a slogan or signing a petition. But the sectors that mobilize are looking for something different from what is on offer in the market. They distrust the traditional political organizations, but they are available for other politics than that of the apparatuses.
And it must be said that the central problem is that French Trotskyism, from LO, the LCR-NPA, to the POI and the POID have been incapable of making a single proposal to mobilize this new generation. To this we have to add the terrible delay we all have in the reconstruction of the workers movement “on a new class axis”.
The mobilizations of Nuit debout! as well as the yellow vests or the marches organized by Justice for Adama in the midst of the pandemic have shown that the youth are ready to confront the repression of the Macronist police, and to lose an eye, a hand or a foot with the courage and bravery that the youth have shown in all generations. There is a great space for a political organization of a new type that, starting from what the youth feel and propose, comes to organize them around anti-capitalist politics and for socialism. They are there in expectation. That this space exists is proven by the nearly 500 young people who attended the Summer University organized by the CCR/RP, the group expelled from the NPA. Will they succeed in founding a new party? That is the whole question. But at least they are trying.
In this situation, what role does the organized labor movement play?
First of all, it must be said that both the unions and the French reformist left are responsible for this situation. For workers in general, the governments of the traditional parties that have succeeded each other in the last 40 years have pursued neoliberal policies and have been one worse than the other. This is the reason why Macron, an unknown candidate, at the head of a party invented in an office, won the elections in 2017, and did it again in 2022, with the vote of the right, of the pensioners and in the second round of the institutional left frightened by the RN phenomenon. Facing him was an extreme right-wing candidate who presented herself as “the only anti-system candidate”. For the industrial workers who are unemployed in the North of France – a region that was a stronghold of the PCF and the PS – who were betrayed by the institutional left and right governments, there were two options: not to vote or to vote for Le Pen. It must be understood that voting for the RN in these conditions does not mean that they are convinced fascists. They are people who are looking for a way out. We know that it is a wrong way out, but let us agree that neither the unions nor the parties of the anti-capitalist left presented obvious alternatives. The terrible thing is that, in the absence of a way out, the vote for the extreme right continues to rise.
A measure of the interest generated by unions is that as of 2019, the date of the latest data, union membership stands at 10.1%, the majority of whom are workers over 40 years of age and state employees. Only 2.7% of young people are affiliated to one of the various trade union centers (CFDT, CGT, Solidaire and FO). For decades, the CGT, hegemonized by the PCF, was the absolute majority. Today the CFDT, the reformist central whose policy is that the strike is the last resort, is the majority in the country in the private sector.
If the CFDT attacks the CGT it is because, it says, that the latter calls for a strike and takes people to the streets instead of negotiating. The CGT, on the one hand, does call for strikes and organizes marches, but its objective is to “pressure” the government and the employers, showing them what they can do, in the hope that they will “soften up” and agree to sit down at the negotiating table. For example, every year they call for a march or a day’s strike in September, at the beginning of the working year. This year, for good measure, the CGT calls for an interprofessional strike day for a wage increase on Thursday, September 29, together with the Union Syndicale Solidaire (a minority union sector, but in general more combative and democratic, despite its rapid bureaucratization) and other unions that have joined the call. And they add in their call that this demand should be “part of a long and lasting mobilization”. The workers, in jest, call these calls a day of “rank and file”, because they only serve to make them lose a day’s wages and have no continuity. The CGT is a heavy and bureaucratic structure, incapable of leading a national struggle, as was already demonstrated in the strikes against the railroad and pension reforms. The tough sectoral strikes, which I can assure you continue to occur, are isolated and are often left in the hands of the intermediate or rank and file leaders of the local unions.
To give you an example, the last big battle that French workers fought against Macron was against the pension reform. It was the strongest strike movement since 2010 and the most important since the ’80s. The reform of the pension law was the lighthouse reform of Macron’s first five years. According to the bourgeoisie, the reason why they had elected him. With the exception of the MEDEF (the business central) and other employers’ associations, nobody agreed with the reform. All the trade union centrals, with the exception of the most reformist, united to form the Intersyndicale. Starting on December 5, 2019, the number of workers marching in each mobilization grew day by day. There were marches in which they put as many as a million people on the streets. The rate of strikers in all specialties of the railroads, the subways (subways and buses), national education, EDF, public service and health was very high. The transport workers were at the forefront of the struggle. Finally, when the Christmas vacations arrived, the leadership of the CGT and the CFDT called for an end to the strike. The subway and railroad workers refused. Meeting in assembly by workplace, they voted to continue. Paris was at a standstill. There was only minimal subway and bus service so that people could get to and from work. Mobilizations and strikes continued well into January, with brutal police repression. On January 10, after 37 consecutive days of strikes (the first such strike since 1987) and a new day of national demonstrations, Edouard Philippe, the Prime Minister, announced the “provisional” withdrawal of the compulsory retirement age, the point for which the CFDT supported the mobilization. The CFDT and the MEDEF declared themselves satisfied. The Intersindical, together with the student organizations, called for new strikes and mobilizations until the law was withdrawn in its entirety. But we were already at the beginning of the pandemic and the movement was beginning to decline. The government threatened to pass the law using Article 49.3. That led the Intersindical to make a new call for a strike. But we were already facing Covid-19 in all its splendor. The confinement and the anti-pandemic measures, added to fatigue, ended the movement. But not before Macron had to agree to withdraw the law “temporarily”.
Another mistake of the trade union organizations was their attitude towards the phenomenon of the yellow vests. No trade union leadership attempted any kind of rapprochement, even though their ranks included members who mobilized at the traffic circles at the exits of cities and towns, and in Paris. They are thus one of those responsible not only for the exhaustion and disappearance of this movement, but also for allowing the extreme right to wreak havoc in their ranks. Unity between the labor centers and the yellow vests would have changed the situation in the country during the strikes against the pension reform. This was demonstrated during the strike by the spontaneous participation of different groups of yellow vests in the assemblies of the subway workers in various neighborhoods of Paris.
What is clear is that there is a new proletariat that is different from the one these centrals knew. This became evident at the end of 2019. The strike against the pension reform made a new vanguard of young union leaders emerge in sectors such as transport and railroads, commerce, and energy. It is a very young vanguard, formed by the sons, daughters, granddaughters and grandsons of the immigrants from the French colonies who arrived from the ’50s and ’60s. It is not the “male and white” proletariat they are used to in the CGT or in the traditional unions. They have their own codes. They live in the working-class neighborhoods around Paris and the big cities. They are the sectors that were not only at the forefront in the last struggle against Macron, but were on the front line during the pandemic. The pandemic was a brake on the movement that began in 2019. We will have to see if after two years, this one resumes. But we must also take into account that it is a very young workers’ movement, fragmented, precarious, and, above all, that has a latent class consciousness that allows it instinctively to confront the union bureaucracy. To make this consciousness take shape and express itself consciously is the great task of the revolutionary left in this country.
And the French far left?
The parties of the anti-capitalist left, like the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) or the Workers’ Struggle (LO), to name the two best known, have also shown themselves incapable not only of channeling these phenomena, but not even of understanding them. While it is true that bourgeois elections are not the most favorable terrain for revolutionaries, the percentages of votes for the extreme left were very low: 0.77% for Philippe Poutou (NPA) and 0.56% for Nathalie Arthaud (LO). With several thousand militants, LO is the largest Trotskyist organization in France. The great hope that was the NPA was frustrated in the egg as a consequence of an incapable leadership and a demagogic policy of followership towards the reformist sectors which entered en masse and then left for greener pastures such as LFI, which assured them deputy positions. The NPA is the clearest example of the failure of the policy of broad parties without ideological delimitation promoted by the majority leadership of the Unified Secretariat of the Fourth International. Now, the majority tendency of the NPA, linked to them, is in the midst of a sectarian turn. First it eliminated a sector of the left wing, the CCR, and now, in the next congress it wants to eliminate all the left tendencies, for the sake of applying a “democratic centralism” which never existed in the LCR, the section of the SU which was the predecessor of the NPA.
How to get out of this situation?
It will be very difficult and we will have to be very patient. We have to rebuild everything. We have to rethink everything. We need a new type of party that makes the synthesis between our experience, that of the youth and that of this new trade union vanguard that is emerging in France. We have to explain what we understand by socialism, and that it has nothing to do with the idea spread by Stalinism. That this anti-democratic and anti-worker variant was a nightmare led by bureaucrats who had no problem in transforming themselves, later, into capitalist oligarchs. It is necessary to re-impose the idea that social classes exist and that they are at war. And we must be aware that we, the workers, as Warren Buffet said, are losing this war. We need to overcome the fragmentation into which capitalism plunged us in its senile stage and unite as a class on the basis of our common needs and objectives if we want to fight this war in better conditions.
With respect to the youth, I agree that there is no Planet B and that the situation is serious. But not so serious that we say there is no future. There is a future for our young people and for their children, but it will depend on their willingness to fight against this capitalist system that is annihilating us. And that doesn’t just come from signing online petitions, or going on marches or going on strike. All of that has to be done. Strike and mobilization are the primary methods of struggle of our class. But in addition, we have to organize to fight and to last because the struggle is going to be long and hard, and we come from far behind. And for that a party is necessary.
In that sense, the tragic thing about the situation in France is that the best propagandist of what should be a society on the road to socialism is Jean-Luc Mélenchon. But he uses it to divert his followers towards a dead-end parliamentary variant, in an organization that is a formless magma, without congresses, without tendencies or meetings, where everything is discussed but nothing is voted, and everyone, apparently, “does what he wants”. Very democratic in theory, but the reality is that the big decisions are taken from above by Mélenchon and his entourage, without accountability to anyone. It was perhaps for this reason that a large part of the youth and workers, who smell hypocrisy from miles away, although they approved of his program, did not vote for him.
What do you think of the economic and environmental crisis? What measures should be applied?
I am not an expert on environmental change or what measures to take. There are very serious people on the left who are dedicated to that. What I do say is that we cannot buy the story of the governments of advanced capitalist countries. The solution is not to find ways of producing energy to replace fossil fuels in order to continue living as we do now. The electric car – presented as the solution to reduce pollution in European and Yankee cities – leads to the destruction of the environment and the extinction of Latin American communities living in the places where lithium, rare earths and other minerals needed to produce them are extracted. And let’s not even talk about where they are going to put the lithium batteries when they need to be replaced. That is going to make the same problem that there is now with nuclear waste from nuclear power plants in a plus, plus, plus version. The most ridiculous thing of all is that these cars, in order to work, need electricity produced by gas, coal, oil and atomic power plants, which will have to work even more, polluting even more the atmosphere and the environment. It is the height of absurdity that Olivier Veran, the official spokesman, tells us that we must unplug the wi-fi to save energy and at the same time advertise the electric car because it “takes care of the environment”! The solution is not more electric cars to replace the current diesel or gasoline ones: it is to have free and reliable means of common transportation so as not to need a car. But fundamentally, it is to produce only what is necessary and redistribute the existing wealth so that we can all enjoy an acceptable standard of living and allow our poor planet to recover. But none of this, which is simple common sense, is possible within the capitalist system, which needs to permanently increase production in order to exist. That is why this cannot be solved with intermediate measures. As Negra Sosa sang when I was young: “He who does not change everything / changes nothing”.
What is the state of the discussion about the war in Ukraine in France?
For me it is a painful subject, because it led me to the break with the CCR, with which I was expelled from the NPA last year. Curiously, the NPA, which kept some of its Trotskyist reflexes, has a moderately correct position, even if it leans a little to the side of imperialism. The CCR, on the contrary, adopted a campist position, which could have some justification in the case of its “head office” in Argentina, but not here in Europe. I can understand that the countries which have suffered in their own flesh the interference of Yankee imperialism, like Argentina and all Latin America, have a campist position: the enemy of Yankee imperialism is my friend. This leads them to swallow Putin’s lies that Ukraine is a creation of Lenin, is full of fascists and is a pawn of NATO in the world chess game. But beware, understanding does not mean justifying. As I heard a Ukrainian anarchist soldier say philosophically in a documentary when he was asked about this, “what the Third World countries have to understand is that if for them imperialism is Europe and the USA, for us [and I add: the same as for all of Europe that lived under the Stalinist boot] imperialism is Russia”. If this is not understood, it cannot be understood that those who are helping Ukraine the most, especially in proportion to their means, are the countries of the East, such as Poland and the Baltic countries. Nor that the movement of solidarity with the Ukrainian people is strongest in the former “Soviet” republics, as in Belarus itself. That does not mean that I am in favor of the sanctions that the imperialist countries have imposed on the Russian people. Because it is not the “oligarchs” who suffer. They are insured. They may lose a yacht here or a fund there. But the suffering is put on the Russian people, and all because U.S. imperialism has the vague hope that this will provoke an uprising against Putin. The only thing that can provoke that is the defeat of Russia in this war of “choice” that Putin is waging.
Then, my position, for what it is worth, is the position of “classic” Trotskyism: before the invasion of an independent country by the imperialism that dominated it for centuries, we are on the side of the oppressed nation. That does not mean that we support Zelensky, who is a bourgeois leader who is taking advantage of the situation to pass anti-worker and repressive laws. But we do support the struggle of the Ukrainian people who are taking up arms against the invader. We do not ask our imperialist governments for arms for Ukraine. We know that those arms come with a commitment tied to them by Zelensky and the Ukrainian bourgeoisie and that those commitments are made on the basis of repressing and subjugating the Ukrainian proletariat during and after the war, whoever wins it. But we are in favor of the Ukrainian people demanding weapons to defend themselves from whomever they want. Whether it is NATO, the European Union or the U.S.A. The position that “to stop the war we must prevent them from continuing to give arms to Ukraine”, raised by a sector of the European anti-war left that claims to be pacifist, is pro-Putin campism that does not want to say its name. For me, the only possibility of a lasting peace is the victory of Ukraine over the imperialism of the Russian Federation. And do not tell me that “a victory of Ukraine strengthens imperialism”: a victory of Ukraine will strengthen the Ukrainian people who will demand an account from their bourgeois leader, Zelensky, for having used the war to push through the measures that curtail their freedoms and rights, and to hand them over bound hand and foot to European imperialism. A victory of the Ukrainian people will encourage the most progressive of the opposition to Putin in Russia. A victory of the Ukrainian people will strengthen the struggles of all the subjugated peoples against their various imperial powers.