ANOTHER LEFT IS POSSIBLE: The Protests in France and the New Anti-Capitalist Party

by Nathan Rao from Socialist Voice Originally published in Rabble.ca 8 April 2009 It would be wrong to see the massively successful protest actions in France [March 21] as distant and exotic, of no particular relevance to us here in Canada. With the economic meltdown heralding a new political era, and with most of the country's Left and social movements still stunned and disoriented following their embrace of the misguided and failed Liberal-led coalition plan, the French experience is instructive and inspiring.

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France: Capitalist crisis and mass strike set scene for NPA

by Sam Wainwright

from Green Left Weekly

14 February 2009

On the weekend of February 7-8, over 600 delegates and as many observers attended the founding conference of France's New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA), held at la Plaine-Saint-Denis in the working class suburbs to the north of Paris.

Less than a week before, on January 29; around 2.5 million people took to the streets across the country as part of a nationwide strike against the efforts of the government of Nicolas Sarkozy to foist the burden of the capitalist economic crisis on to working people.

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See also France: Towards the foundation of a New Anti-Capitalist Party

A shift of position

by Liam MacUaid 8 April 2009 It’s not often that a leading figure on the far left sets out to “express my disagreements in some humility” and admits to having “shifted my own position”. Alex Callinicos may be starting a welcome fashion in the current issue of International Socialism. As part of an ongoing discussion with Panos Garganas and François Sabado about the connection between broad parties and revolutionaries he says that the evolution of the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA) in France altered some of his views. Let’s all keep our fingers crossed and hope that this rethink eventually leads him to appreciate the difference between the united front and the wholly owned party subsidiary (Unite against Fascism, Globalise Resistance…). The near universal malady of the Anglophone left. In a certain sense the details of the discussion are not as important as the fact that it is happening. All the formations which have emerged to the left of Social Democracy in recent years have been very distinct and comparing one with another can be as productive as comparing apples with shoes. The LCR has been able to launch the NPA on the crest of a wave of struggles with an explicitly anti-capitalist programme. On the other hand Die Linke has a large group of members from the PDS tradition who are likely to be less receptive to a message of not sharing power with Social Democracy. One of the things that gives this debate in Britain a real urgency is the response of the unions to the loss of 4500 jobs at the Royal Bank of Scotland. It’s “truly devastating” was how they summed it up. There is no hint that they can do anything about it, no suggestion of the workers taking charge of the bank. The absence of an authoritative combative political leadership is taking a heavy toll on the British working class and while it is right that much of the left is building solidarity with struggles such as the one at Visteon that is insufficient. A political response which transcends selling a couple of papers and maybe recruiting a striker for three months is what is required. Some faltering steps are being taken. The No 2 EU campaign has its deficits. Wilfully excluding the SWP because of the Lindsey dispute; a tenuous commitment to internal democracy and some infelicitous phrasing in its propaganda among them. Nonetheless a major union with a record of fighting is contesting an election in opposition to Labour. That’s a big positive and maybe it will be a catalyst for a realignment after the elections. Add to this the fact that Respect still has an electoral base in some parts of the country and the Socialist Party have a habit of getting people elected and the outlines of a new formation appear. That is the significance of Alex Callinicos’ article. It reminds us that the discussion may have been muted recently but that it is still necessary. Under much more favourable circumstances a new party is emerging in France but it has been demonstrated that it is possible to launch a modestly successful project in Britain too. If one were to take a single aspect of the NPA that can be transplanted across the Channel it is its inflexible approach to internal democracy born from an understanding of the necessity of meaningful political pluralism. That is the one thing that is absolutely universally transferable.

Revolutionary paths: a reply to Panos Garganas and François Sabado

by Alex Callinicos from International Socialist Journal, Issue: 122 31 March 2009 The responses in the previous issue of International Socialism by Panos Garganas and by François Sabado to my article “Where is the Radical Left Going?” are very welcome.1 As their articles bear witness, the condition of the radical left in Europe is quite diverse. Though I have disagreements with some of the things that both have to say, these differences are quite minor. We in the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) are enthusiasts for the New Anticapitalist Party (Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste, NPA) that Sabado and his comrades in the now dissolved Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (LCR) have played a key role in launching. I also recognise the significance of the realignment that is bringing together the Greek Socialist Workers Party (SEK) and the other far-left organisations allied in the Anti-Capitalist Front (Enantia) with the New Left Current (NAR), the most important recent breakaway from the Communist Party. I also express my disagreements in some humility: the disastrous recent experiences of the radical left in Britain do not exactly set up any of the participants in these catastrophes to preach to their comrades elsewhere in Europe. As will become clear, the debate, and the concrete development of the NPA have shifted my own position. A new model party? The most important point to emerge from the discussion is that the general term “radical left formations” encapsulates two quite different types of organisation, even though they are both a product of the radicalisation of the past decade. There are those cases where the level of class struggle and the political traditions of the left make it possible for revolutionary Marxists to unite with others who regard themselves as revolutionaries in new, bigger formations. So far the only example where this has come to fruition is the NPA, whose founding principles, as we shall see below, are in a broad sense revolutionary. Then there are other cases in which the most important break is by forces that reject social liberalism but have not broken with overt reformism—Die Linke in Germany, the Partito della Rifondazione Comunista (PRC) in Italy under both its old and its new leadership, Synaspismos in Greece and some elements in the Left Bloc in Portugal. Both Garganas and Sabado argue that radical left projects should follow the first model, basing themselves on a clearly anti-capitalist platform, rather than on an “anti-liberal” platform that targets neoliberalism and not the capitalist system itself. They justify this partly by pointing to the negative experiences of centre-left coalitions such as the plural left government in France in 1997-2001 and the Prodi government in Italy in 2006-8. Garganas also argues that significant sections of workers and young people are not attracted to “the traditional reformism of the past”.2 What seems to me valid in these arguments arises from the different paths taken by the class struggle and by the workers’ movement in various parts of Europe. France and Greece are the European states that have seen the most intense social struggles in recent decades. Indeed, in Greece these have been so sustained and so fierce (think of the huge wave of rioting by young people that swept the country in December 2008) as to create, in relative terms, the largest radical left in Europe. Moreover, these are both societies with strong Communist traditions where social democracy has only succeeded in establishing itself as the dominant force on the left in recent decades and on a fragile and contested basis. In these conditions, seeking to build parties of the radical left on an anti-capitalist programme makes perfect sense. It remains the case, however, that these parties will still have to grapple with the problem of reformism. One of the main lessons of the history of the workers’ movement is that the development of the class struggle, by drawing new layers of workers into class-conscious activity, will tend to expand the base of reformist politics, since seeking to change the existing system seems, initially at least, an attractive halfway house between passive acquiescence in the status quo and outright revolution. Thus if we consider the great revolutionary experiences of the past century, the Russian working class, after the overthrow of Tsarism, gravitated first to the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries, not the Bolsheviks. In Germany, thanks to the ingrained experience of reformism and the relative weakness of the far left, it was the Social Democrats and the Independent Socialists who were the first main beneficiaries of the revolution of November 1918. Nor are these experiences confined to the imperialist countries. Consider how the Brazilian Workers Party, which Sabado’s comrades in the Fourth International helped to build in the belief that it was a non-reformist organisation, has become, under the Lula presidency, a pillar of social liberalism. The implication of these historical experiences is not the fatalistic conclusion that the mass of workers will never break with reformism: on the contrary, the Bolsheviks achieved, within the space of a few months, majority support in the Russian working class, and the German Communists were able to win over the bulk of the Independent Socialists and build a mass workers’ party. Nevertheless, these cases show how reformism remains a strategic problem for revolutionary parties far bigger and better socially implanted than the NPA, SEK or the SWP. A major driving force in the development of the new radical left parties is the experience of social liberalism. After Tony Blair, Lionel Jospin, Gerhard Schröder and Romano Prodi large numbers of workers and young people are looking beyond the “old house” of social democracy. But it doesn’t follow that they have broken with reformism as such. Indeed, so tight has been the embrace between recent centre-left governments and neoliberalism that some tendencies on the far left (the Committee for a Workers’ International, for example) argue that the British Labour Party, the German Social Democratic Party, the French Socialist Party and their like can no longer be regarded as reformist parties. I think this view is mistaken—apart from anything else it ignores the fact that large sections of the working class continue to vote for these parties, partly out of habit, partly for fear of the even harder neoliberal policies of the traditional bourgeois parties. But the sharp shift to the right by mainstream social democracy that gives this view whatever plausibility it possesses creates a large space to the left of these parties that is ideologically diverse and open to various political currents.3 It should be added that the revolutionary Marxist tradition, which both the Fourth International and the International Socialist Tendency have tried to continue, is not exactly a mass force at this precise moment in time. Sabado says this is because it “is more than 30 years since the advanced capitalist countries experienced revolutionary or pre-revolutionary situations”.4 That’s true. It is also true that, whatever achievements the LCR or the SWP can claim, we have not led mass workers’ struggles of any kind, let alone (as the Bolsheviks did) a successful socialist revolution. Moreover, we have to struggle with the incubus of Stalinism. None of this is a reason for liquidating the revolutionary Marxist tradition, but it does imply that we cannot hope in the short term to regroup the radical left on a platform that simply reproduces the strategic conceptions developed by revolutionary Marxists. That does not mean that these conceptions are simply irrelevant—a point that I return to below. What does this mean concretely? The situation in France has allowed Sabado and his comrades to launch a party three times the size of the LCR whose programme, while in some respects remaining strategically open, nevertheless explicitly calls for a revolutionary break with capitalism. Conditions differ elsewhere. Thus in Britain and Germany we confront workers’ movements in which social democracy has been deeply entrenched to the extent that it is often assumed that the two are identical. This is why the emergence of Die Linke in Germany is such a historic development. Sabado acknowledges that it is “a step forward for the workers’ movement” in Germany,5 but this recognition is rather grudging and he prefers to accentuate the negative, stressing the “left reformist” character of the project, the weight within Die Linke of the ex-Stalinist PDS and so on. All of this is true enough, but it ignores the fundamental fact that, for the first time in decades, the decay of social democracy has produced a serious breakaway to the left. Of course, Die Linke’s politics is left reformist: what else could it be given the balance of forces in Germany? Elsewhere the process of decomposition is so far advanced that such major splits are unlikely. As I noted in my original article, this is the problem that we are grappling with in Britain. The chronic, historic weakness of the Labour left would not matter so much if their ideas were not still supported by millions of people (as is indicated by the immense popularity Tony Benn enjoys well into his eighties). The continuing influence of reformism constrains us in different ways. Respect was doomed ultimately by its failure to bring about a major split in the Labour Party. But, even so, Labourism continued to make itself felt. If the SWP had, in the negotiations that led to the formation of Respect in 2003-4, insisted on the kind of anti-capitalist platform championed by Garganas and Sabado, the project would have been stillborn (or would have gone ahead without us). As it was, it was hard enough to have the word “socialism” included in the coalition’s title (via the acronym forming the name “Respect”). Were we wrong to have gone ahead on a weaker platform of opposition to neoliberalism, racism and war? Absolutely not: despite the ultimate outcome, it was right to have tried. But human beings make history not in circumstances of their own choosing, and an explicitly anti-capitalist party was not on the agenda in Britain then. Similarly it is not on the agenda in Germany today. Does that mean that our comrades in Marx21 are wrong to throw themselves enthusiastically into building Die Linke? Again, absolutely not. They are right to seek to try to develop Die Linke in the most militant and dynamic way possible. Sabado takes a cheap shot at Marx21, accusing it of “a relativisation of the critique of the policies of the leadership of Die Linke on the question of participation in governments with the SPD”.6 Fortunately, this misrepresents the real situation. Our comrades take a principled position of opposition to participation in centre-left governments. But what they refused to do, before the formation of Die Linke, was to allow the wrong policy of the PDS in participating in social-liberal state governments in Berlin and elsewhere to be used as a pretext, as it was, for example, by the local Committee for a Workers’ International group, for attempting to prevent the creation of the new party. Were they wrong about that? Would it have been better if what Sabado recognises as “a step forward” hadn’t taken place? Once again the question answers itself. Even where circumstances permit the formation of a party on a stronger programmatic basis, this does not mean the problem of reformism goes away. Sabado mentions the case of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a leader of the French Socialist Party (PS) left and a key figure in the campaign against the European Constitutional Treaty in the 2005 referendum, who has now broken away from the PS with the aim of creating a “French Die Linke”. Sabado asks, ‘Should we support him and join with him in his proposals and projects for alliances with the French Communist Party, which maintains the perspective of governing tomorrow—with the PS?”7 Of course not. The balance of forces in France allows the anti-capitalist left to relate to Mélenchon from a position of relative strength. But nevertheless his break with the PS is a significant one, which exposes the disarray of the reformist left in France in the face of Nicolas Sarkozy’s victory in the 2007 presidential elections and the attractive power of the NPA embodied in the person of Olivier Besancenot. The development of the NPA may generate more breaks, not just in the PS but in the Communist Party as well. The NPA will have to know how to relate to such openings in a way that involves more than just offering the choice of joining the party or engaging in “classic” united fronts on specific issues. For all the excitement it has generated, the NPA will be quite a small force (albeit significantly larger than the LCR) on the French political scene and in the workers’ movement. This will limit its capacity to lead in any real upsurge of social struggles. Realising the NPA’s very great potential will require a willingness to intervene in the broader political field and sometimes to make alliances with other political forces, some of which, in the nature of things, will be reformist. Having said that, I think the NPA’s founding congress was probably right to have rejected an electoral pact with Mélenchon in the European parliamentary elections in June 2009. The NPA is the stronger force and it is important that it demonstrates and builds up its independent electoral force as quickly as possible. There is nevertheless a danger implicit in Sabado’s argument and sometimes explicit in what other comrades in the ex-LCR and in Fourth International sections when they say that the NPA should serve as a general model. This is encouraged by Sabado’s dismissive attitude towards what the forces immediately to his right do. Thus he pours cold water on the defeat of the forces allied to Fausto Bertinotti, the former general secretary of the PRC and architect of its disastrous participation in the Prodi government, at the last party congress. I wonder if this is helpful to Sinistra Critica, the left breakaway from the PRC that is led by Fourth International members. It might be if the correct perspective for Sinistra Critica were to build a hard revolutionary propaganda group that needed to inoculate itself against pressure from bigger, more right wing forces. But if Sinistra Critica is to act as a catalyst to the development of a stronger radical left in Italy, it needs to attend carefully and relate to what is going on inside the PRC. It is surprising that Sabado barely mentions the Left Bloc in Portugal, which (despite the prominence of Fourth International members in its leadership) is plainly pursuing a different approach from that of the NPA, as is reflected in its membership of the European Left Party, founded by Bertinotti and now dominated by Die Linke. The variety of circumstances we face in Europe make it a mistake to treat any party as a general model. It was a mistake for the leadership of the Scottish Socialist Party to offer themselves as a model and a mistake to the extent that we offered Respect as an alternative model. The NPA has, I believe, a much more promising future ahead of it, but it would be a mistake to make it a general model either. In stressing the importance of the specific circumstances I am not relapsing into a kind of national pragmatism. No, we operate in the context of a common field of problems that allows us to draw comparisons and learn from each other. Moreover, we share the aim of building large revolutionary parties. But it is still necessary to engage in a concrete analysis of the concrete situation in different countries. Revolutionaries and the radical left This brings us to the famous formula, coined by John Rees, that radical left parties should be seen as “united fronts of a particular kind”. Sabado attacks the formula at length, and it became clear in the debates that the SWP has had about the lessons of the Respect debacle that quite a lot of SWP members do not like it either. The formula is in fact an analogy, which involves comparing things that are different yet involve important similarities. A radical left party is unlike a “classic” united front in that it is based on a broad programme rather than a specific issue. The Stop the War Coalition is directed against the war on terrorism, not wars in general, let alone the capitalist system that generates them. Respect, by contrast, sought to connect that war with a range of other issues and to win electoral support on the basis of a political programme that sought to address them all. But a radical left party is like a united front of the classical kind in that it brings together politically heterogeneous forces. This is partly a consequence of the relatively open character of such parties’ programmes, which generally finesse the alternatives of reform or revolution (though this not true of the NPA). More profoundly, however, it reflects the character of a period in which it is possible to draw people from a reformist background into parties of the radical left where revolutionaries play an important role. The programmatic openness (what Sabado would call the “incomplete strategic delimitation”) of these parties reflects the recognition that it would be a mistake to make membership conditional on breaking with reformism. This stance is correct, but the price is a degree of political heterogeneity. Before considering the implications of this reality, let me say a couple of things about Sabado’s specific objections to the formula. He asks, “Didn’t this conception of ‘a united front of a particular kind around a minimum programme’ contribute to disarming the leadership of the SWP in its relationship with George Galloway, for whom Respect had to sustain ‘alliances with Muslim notables who could deliver votes’?”8 In the first place, “around a minimum programme” is Sabado’s own addition, presumably to highlight the contrast with the NPA. But in fact the degree of strategic delimitation (to put it more simply, of political hardness) in a party’s programme is a relatively open question. Whether or not it is anti-liberal, anti-capitalist, or indeed full-bloodedly revolutionary depends on the basis on which it is possible to unite real forces in an alliance that is both principled and sustainable. Did the fact that the SWP leadership saw Respect as a united front disarm us in dealing with Galloway? Not at all. Sabado’s suggestion doesn’t make much sense, since the united front conception is likely to make one attentive (over-attentive, he says elsewhere) to the tensions within the party. Moreover, as a matter of simple historical fact, growing tensions developed between the SWP and Galloway as early as the summer of 2005. The mistakes we made were arguably to compromise too much and certainly to conceal the seriousness of the conflict from all but a small minority of immediately affected comrades till much too late. But we were quite right not to follow the Scottish Socialist Party model of a unitary broad socialist party and liquidate the SWP. Had we done that it would have been much harder to salvage anything from the train wreck. To some degree, avoiding that catastrophic mistake was a consequence of using the united front formula, since a united front requires the existence of an organised revolutionary pole of attraction. Sabado also elaborates on a suggestion in his earlier piece that to “consider an anti-capitalist party in a united front framework can also lead to sectarian deviations. If the united front is realised, even in a particular form, might we not be tempted to make everything go through the channel of the party, precisely underestimating the real battles for unity of action?”9 Once again this suggestion does not make very obvious sense. Why should we imagine we are engaging in one united front at a given time? In the past decade the SWP has been engaged simultaneously in a range of united fronts—Respect, Stop the War, Unite against Fascism, Defend Council Housing, and Globalise Resistance. In the majority of these we work alongside people from a Labourist background. Having defended the formula of a united front of a particular kind, I must concede that it does not fit the NPA very well. The party’s founding principles declare, “It isn’t possible to put the state and its current institutions in the service of a social and political transformation. These institutions, geared to the defence of the interests of the bourgeoisie, must be overthrown to found new institutions at the service and under the control of the workers and the population.” The principles add: The logic of the system invalidates the pretensions to moralise, regulate or reform it, to humanise it, whether they are sincere or hypocritical. At the same time, the logic of the system helps to create the conditions of its overthrow, of a revolutionary transformation of society, by showing daily the extent to which it is true that wellbeing, democracy, and peace are incompatible with private ownership of the major means of production.10 So Sabado is right when he says that the NPA is a revolutionary party, in the broad sense of seeking the overthrow of capitalism from below, although he acknowledges that “this definition is more general than the strategic, even politico-military, hypotheses that provided the framework for the debates of the 1970s, which were at that time illuminated by the revolutionary crises of the 20th century”.11 In other words, the NPA has “a strategic programme and delimitations but these are not completed”.12 Sabado justifies this in the following terms: “The examples we can use are based on the revolutions of the past. But, once again, we do not know what the revolutions of the 21st century will be like. The new generations will learn much from experience and many questions remain open”.13 Now, of course, there is an important debate to be had about how much of the strategic inheritance of the revolutionary Marxist tradition remains relevant today.14 And it is also true that revolutions always comprise a decisive element of the unexpected and the novel. In that very general sense “we do not know what the revolutions of the 21st century will be like”. But it does not follow from this that we start at what Daniel Bensaïd has called a “strategic degree zero”.15 The “revolutionary crises of the 20th century” contain certain strategic lessons. They confirm that the overthrow of capitalism requires the forcible overthrow of the capitalist state, that this process presupposes the development of organs of workers’ and popular power into a challenge to the state, and that a revolutionary party must seek to win the majority of the workers and oppressed to this objective. Not simply do Sabado and his comrades agree about this, but much of its substance is affirmed in the NPA’s founding principles. There are also other subsidiary lessons that are important, for example, those developed particularly by Lenin in Left-Wing Communism, namely that the conquest of the majority requires revolutionaries to be active in the mass organisations of the working class, even though these are normally under (at best) reformist leadership, and in fights around partial demands, which require, among other things, pursuit of the united front tactic. And there is the complex set of issues related to the struggle against imperialism and national oppression to which the first four congresses of the Communist International devoted much valuable discussion. Then there are the lessons of the experience of Stalinism. These do not simply reaffirm the fundamental truth that socialist revolution can only succeed if it is based on a more advanced form of democracy than that offered by liberal capitalism. They also imply the rejection of what Leon Trotsky called “substitutionism”—in other words, strategies that seek to bypass the task of conquering the majority by, for example, relying on a guerrilla vanguard to seize power (here there may be a disagreement with Sabado and with Olivier Besancenot given the latter’s espousal of a 21st century Guevarism). And then, less a matter of strategy than of its analytical presuppositions, there is Marxist political economy, the whole body of analysis of the development of capitalism, its specific class structures and its interlacing with imperialism that is essential if we are to begin to comprehend what a socialist revolution means in the 21st century. It would be the worst kind of dogmatism to imagine that this body of strategic lessons and analyses begins to define exhaustively the nature of revolution today. Many questions do indeed remain open. Nevertheless, the strategic heritage of revolutionary Marxism remains in my view an indispensable reference point today. Sabado and I are agreed that it should not define the programmatic basis of the NPA and parties like it. But I think that, in reality, we also agree that this heritage should be available to the members of the NPA and should help shape their debates on its future strategy and tactics. The real problem is how practically to achieve this. In my original article I argued that it is necessary for revolutionary Marxists to form an organised current or to retain their own autonomous party organisation within radical left formations. Sabado agrees that this is sometimes the correct option but argues that it would be wrong in the case of the NPA for two reasons. First, “there is the anti-capitalist and revolutionary character of the NPA, in the broad sense, and the general identity of views between the positions of the LCR and those of the NPA”.16 Second, “in the present relation of forces, the separate organisation of the ex-LCR in the NPA would block the process of building the new party. It would install a system of Russian dolls which would only create distrust and dysfunction”.17 These are good arguments in the concrete context of the formation of the NPA. It is at once a qualitative expansion and transformation of the old LCR, and one that retains a substantial continuity at the level of both politics and leadership with the new organisation. Moreover, the relative weight of the ex-LCR within the new party means that if its members were constantly caucusing separately this could create a dangerous “them and us” climate. The problem of being a big fish in a small pond is something that the SWP grappled with inside Respect, and, though it was absolutely correct to maintain our independent organisation, this evidently was not a recipe that guaranteed success. Sabado is also probably right, at least in the short term, that “it is not very probable, with the present political delimitations of the NPA, that bureaucratic reformist currents will join or crystallise”.18 Nevertheless, the problems I set out in my original article remain. The more successful the NPA is, the more liable it will become to reformist pressures from within and without. Negotiating these pressures will often be difficult and will require a demanding combination of political clarity and tactical flexibility. More broadly, the whole experience of revolutionaries in the face of mass struggles since at least 1848 is that these can pull militants in different directions. Old arguments about ultra-leftism, the temptations of centrism, syndicalism and abstentionist purism of the Bordiga sort, the problems arising from the relationship between exploitation and oppression (for us the key issue in the debate about the veil), are bound to arise. This means that those who come from a revolutionary Marxist background have to be putting their own arguments within any anti-capitalist party. As Antonio Gramsci pointed out, spontaneity always involves diverse elements of leadership: the question for the new party is how these diverse elements will determine the party’s response as urgent strategic and tactical decisions have to be made. Of course, revolutionary Marxists have to avoid imposing their ideas in a top-down manner on others or turning every meeting of the NPA into a sectarian row. But they also have to find ways of organising themselves so as to articulate their arguments in a way that can win others in the new party to them. Hence Panos is right that “it is necessary to maintain revolutionary organisation as a source of education and political initiatives that pushes the rest of the left forward”.19 The complication is that the NPA has carried over much of the revolutionary substance of the old LCR. Nevertheless, at the very least, there is a pressing need for political education that makes available, in an open and critical way, to the non-LCR members of the NPA the theoretical and strategic heritage of revolutionary Marxism. The very welcome merger of the excellent Marxist theoretical journal ContreTemps with the LCR’s journal Critique Communiste is a recognition of this necessity, but a good journal cannot substitute for the much broader process of education and debate that is required.20 These reservations are secondary to my recognition of the importance of the venture on which Sabado and his comrades have embarked. We wish them good luck. Their success will be ours as well. Grappling with the same set of problems and discussing and working together, we can learn from each other. I regard these exchanges as a contribution to this process. Notes 1: Sabado, 2009; Garganas, 2009; responding to Callinicos, 2008. 2: Garganas, 2009, p154. 3: Garganas mentions one of these currents, autonomism, when he writes, “Young people may be more influenced by autonomists rather than ‘left Labour’ ideas”-Garganas, 2009, p154. This is plainly true in a number of European countries. But it is important to recognise that, precisely because of the autonomists’ evasion of the problem of political power, their ideas can often fit quite well with versions of reformism. This is shown by, for example, the collusion between autonomists and the right wing of the altermondialiste movement at the London and Athens European Social Forums, and the use of autonomist rhetoric by the PRC leader Fausto Bertinotti to conceal his shift to the right. See, for detailed discussion of this issue, Callinicos, 2004. 4: Sabado, 2009, p149. 5: Sabado, 2009, p144. 6: Sabado, 2009, p146. 7: Sabado, 2009, pp145-146. 8: Sabado, 2009, p146. 9: Sabado, 2009, pp146-147. 10: “Principles Fondateurs du Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste”, February 2009, http://tinyurl.com/NPA2009 11: Sabado, 2009, p148. 12: Sabado, 2009, p148. 13: Sabado, 2009, p149. 14: For two contributions to this debate, see Callinicos, 2006, and Callinicos, 2007. 15: Bensaïd, 2004, p463. 16: Sabado, 2009, p152. 17: Sabado, 2009, p152. 18: Sabado, 2009, p151. 19: Garganas, 2009, p155. 20: One implication is that the review Que faire?, initiated by IST supporters inside the LCR, which emerged as a valuable venue for discussion in the lead-up to the launch of the NPA, can still play a useful role in the new party, provided that it continues to conceive itself as a catalyst for wider debate open to militants of all and no tendency. References Bensaïd, Daniel, 2004, Une Lente Impatience (Stock). Callinicos, Alex, 2004, “The Future of the Anti-Capitalist Movement”, in Hannah Dee (ed), Anti-Capitalism: Where Now? (Bookmarks). Callinicos, Alex, 2006, “What Does Revolutionary Strategy Mean Today?”, IST International Discussion Bulletin 7, January 2006, www.istendency.net/pdf/ISTbulletin7.pdf Callinicos, Alex, 2007, “’Dual Power’ In Our Hands”, Socialist Worker, 6 January 2007, www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=10387 Callinicos, Alex, 2008, “Where is the Radical Left Going”, International Socialism 120 (autumn 2008), www.isj.org.uk/?id=484 Garganas, Panos, 2009, “The Radical Left: A Richer Mix”, International Socialism 121 (winter 2009), www.isj.org.uk/?id=513 Sabado, François, 2009, “Building the New Anticapitalist Party”, International Socialism 121 (winter 2009), www.isj.org.uk/?id=512

Building the New Anti-capitalist Party

by François Sabado from International Socialist Journal, Issue 121 2 January 2009 Alex Callinicos’s article1 in the most recent issue of International Socialism shows well the changes that have taken place in the radical left in recent months. The characteristics of the situation, and in particular the deepening of the crisis of the capitalist system and the social-liberal evolution of social democracy, confirm that there is a space “to the left of the reformist left”. This space opens up possibilities for the building of new political formations or for initiatives such as the conferences of the anti-capitalist left,2 processes that require clarification. Certain experiences involve a diversity of currents. Although the political frontiers between these currents do not always appear clearly, the question of support for, or participation in, centre-left or social-liberal governments is a fundamental dividing line in the politics of alliances or regroupment. There are not only “paths that diverge”, but different politics and distinct projects. When Callinicos evokes “more positive experiences” in connection with Die Linke in Germany and the New Anti-capitalist Party (Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste, NPA) in France, he is, in fact, speaking of two different projects. In the case of Die Linke we are dealing with a left reformist party. This is a party integrated into the institutions of the German state. The great majority of its members come from the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS)—the party of the bureaucracy of the former East Germany. Die Linke is a party that has come out in favour of a common government with the Social Democrats (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, SPD) and, finally, a party whose project comes down to a “return to the welfare state”. Admittedly this party also reflects, in the west of Germany, a movement of radicalisation of certain sectors of the social movement, a step forward for the workers’ movement. But revolutionaries should not confuse these processes with the leadership of Die Linke, its reformist policies, its subordination to capitalist institutions and its objective of participation in government with the SPD. The NPA on the other hand presents itself as an anti-capitalist party. It is a party whose centre of gravity revolves around struggles, around social movements and not parliamentary institutions. The founding characteristic of this party is the rejection of any alliance or participation in government with the centre-left or social liberalism. The NPA does not stop at anti_liberalism. Its politics are directed towards a break with capitalism and the overthrow of the power of the ruling classes. In each case we are confronted with political formations—there are delimitations, programmes, policies—but they are not the same ones. Anti-capitalist party or united front of a particular kind? Also we cannot share Callinicos’s characterisation of the new formations of the radical left as “united fronts of a particular kind”. The Socialist Workers Party’s (SWP) conceptions were formulated by John Rees as follows: “The Socialist Alliance [the precursor of Respect] is…best seen as a united front of a particular kind applied to the electoral field. It seeks to unite left reformist activists and revolutionaries in a common campaign around a minimum programme”.3 This conception, originally linked to the British experience, was generalised as “the SWP’s conception of the nature of the new formations of the radical left”. We disagree with this conception. To use the term “united front” for the building of a party or a political formation really is a novelty. The united front is a response to the problems that are posed by the united action or the unification of the workers or of the social movement and of their organisations. The united front and the building of a party are two distinct things. An anti-capitalist and/or revolutionary workers’ party, over and above its precise definition, is a delimited political formation, on the basis of a programme and a comprehensive strategy of conquest of power by and for the workers. An anti-capitalist party cannot be the organic expression of “the whole class”. Although it must seek to constitute “a new representation of the workers”, or the convergence of a series of political currents, it will nevertheless not make the other currents of the social movement, or even the organisations that are “reformist or of reformist origin” led by bureaucratic apparatuses, disappear. The question of the united front remains posed. Why should we not consider anti-capitalist parties within the framework of the united front? Because, if that were the case, it would amount to regarding these parties as a simple alliance or unitary framework—even of a “particular kind”. This would mean underestimating their construction as a framework or mediation necessary for the emergence of the revolutionary leaderships of tomorrow. To consider the NPA as a united front would amount to “toning down” its political positions to make them compatible with the realisation of this united front. For example, we do not make the unity of action of the workers’ and social movements conditional on an agreement on the question of government. Is that a reason for the NPA to give up or even relativise a battle on the question of government? No, we do not think so. The NPA made the question of government—the refusal to participate in governments of class collaboration—a decisive delimitation of its political combat. This example obviously demonstrates, but we could also evoke other examples, that the NPA does not fit in a united front framework. We want to build it as a coming together of experiences, activists and currents, but especially as a party. To regard it as a “united front of a particular kind” amounts to underestimating the battles that are necessary in order to build a political alternative. This conception of “a united front of a particular kind around a minimum programme” led the leadership of the SWP to reproach the leadership of the LCR with having “a negative and sometimes ultimatist attitude towards the collectives”,4 when the LCR was putting at the centre of its political battle the refusal to take part in a government with the leadership of the Socialist Party (Parti Socialiste, PS). With hindsight, does the leadership of the SWP still think that these reproaches were well founded? And today, when Jean Luc Mélenchon, one of the organisers of the socialist left, leaves the PS while maintaining the continuity of his reformist conceptions, his positions on participation in or support for the Mitterrand and Jospin governments, and declaring that he wants to build a “French Die Linke”, what should the attitude of revolutionaries be? Should we support him and join with his proposals and projects for alliances with the French Communist Party, which maintains the perspective of governing tomorrow—with the PS? Or should we take into account his break with the PS, have a positive approach to unity of action with his current but not confuse the building of an anti-capitalist left with the building of a left reformist party? Once again, yes to unity of action—as we demonstrated at the time of the No campaign in the European Constitution referendum—and yes to debate, but we should also realise that differences on the relationship to representative institutions and the attitudes concerning the question of government separate the electoral alternatives and the projects of building parties. The building of a French Die Linke, in relation to the history of the revolutionary movement and to what has been accumulated by the NPA, would constitute a retreat from building an anti-capitalist alternative. When a whole sector influenced by the anti_capitalist left has distanced itself from the leaderships of the traditional left, to constitute a new left reformist force would represent a step backward for the workers’ movement. We would once again involve this sector in “reformist manoeuvres”. Concepts such as that of the “united front of a particular kind” could then disarm us in defining a clear policy towards this type of current. This concept, which underestimates the strategic range of the differences on the questions of government and representative institutions, throws light on some of positions taken by the International Socialist Tendency5 on international questions. It can explain, in the policy of your comrades in Germany, a relativisation of the critique of the policies of the leadership of Die Linke on the question of participation in governments with the SPD. In the same way, we can also note the indulgence of the IST towards the new leadership of Rifondazione Comunista in Italy. At the last congress of Rifondazione a “left” reaction by its members put the partisans of Bertinotti6 in a minority. However, the policy followed by the new leadership is in continuity with the historical positions of Rifondazione, and continues to endorse the policy of alliances with the Democratic Party7 in all the regional executives governed by the centre-left. Lastly, didn’t this conception of “a united front of a particular kind around a minimum programme” contribute to disarming the leadership of the SWP in its relationship with George Galloway, for whom Respect had to sustain “alliances with local Muslim notables who could deliver votes”? To consider an anti-capitalist party as a united front framework can also lead to sectarian deviations. If the united front is realised, even in a particular form, might we not be tempted to make everything go through the channel of the party, precisely underestimating the real battles for unity of action? The anti-capitalist party must combine the party activities of a party and an orientation of unitary action, because we have not forgotten, contrary to what Callinicos suggests, that reformism continues to exist, that the movement of the workers has divisions and differentiations, and that it is necessary to intervene to draw it together, to unify the workers and their organisations. Once again, the united front, in all its varieties, is one thing. Building a political alternative is another. The latter is the choice of the NPA. What kind of revolutionary party? Callinicos tries to catch us out by explaining that, although the NPA is an anti-capitalist party, it is “not a revolutionary party in the specific sense in which it has been understood in the classical Marxist tradition”. Let us discuss the classical Marxist tradition, which is extremely rich in its diversity. Within this history the degree of strategic clarification, on principles and organisational tactics, and not forgetting the various interpretations of this or that revolutionary current, there are several models. It is true that the NPA is not the replica of the revolutionary organisations of the period after May 1968. Anti-capitalist parties such as the NPA do not start from general historical or ideological definitions. Their starting point is “a common understanding of events and tasks” on questions that are key for intervening in the class struggle. Not a sum of tactical questions, but the key political questions, like the question of a programme for political intervention around an orientation of class unity and independence. In this movement there is a place and even a necessity for other histories, other references coming from the most varied origins. Does that make it a party without a history, a programme and delimitations? No. It has a history, a continuity—that of class struggles, the best of the socialist, communist, libertarian and revolutionary Marxist traditions. It situates itself in the revolutionary traditions of the contemporary world, basing itself, more precisely, on the long chain of French revolutions from 1793 to May 1968, via the days of 1848, the Paris Commune and the general strike of 1936. The NPA is also a type of party that tries to answer the needs of a new historical period—which opened at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century—and the need to refound a socialist programme faced with the combined historical crises of capitalism and of the environment of the planet. Faced with such challenges, the NPA affirms itself as a revolutionary party rather in the sense given by Ernest Mandel: What is a revolution? A revolution is the radical overthrow, in a short time, of economic structures and (or) political power, by the tumultuous action of broad masses. It is also the abrupt transformation of the mass of the people from a more or less passive object into a decisive actor of political life. A revolution breaks out when these masses decide to put an end to conditions of existence that seem to them unbearable. It thus always expresses a grave crisis of a given society. This crisis has its roots in a crisis of the structures of domination. But it also expresses a loss of legitimacy of governments, a loss of patience, on the part of broad popular sectors. Revolutions are, in the end, inevitable—the real locomotives of historical progress—precisely because domination by a class cannot be eliminated by the road of reforms. Reforms can at the most soften it, not suppress it. Slavery was not abolished by reforms. The absolutist monarchy of the ancien regime was not abolished by reforms. Revolutions were necessary in order to eliminate them.8 It is true that this definition is more general than the strategic, even politico-military, hypotheses that provided the framework for the debates of the 1970s, which were at that time illuminated by the revolutionary crises of the 20th century. Anti-capitalist parties such as the NPA are “revolutionary” in the sense that they want to put an end to capitalism—” the radical overthrow of economic and political structures (thus state structures) of power”—and the building of a socialist society implies revolutions where those below drive out those above and “take the power to change the world”. They have a strategic programme and delimitations but these are not completed. Let us recall that Lenin, against even part of the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, changed or substantially modified his strategic framework in April 1917, in the middle of a revolutionary crisis. He went from calling for the “democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants” to the need for a socialist revolution and the power of the workers’ councils. Certainly Lenin had consolidated over the years a party based on the objective of a radical overthrow of Tsarism, on the refusal of any alliance with the democratic bourgeoisie and on the independence of the forces of the working class allied with the peasantry. And this preparatory phase was decisive. But many questions were decided in the very course of the revolutionary process. Many things have changed compared to the period after May 1968 and more generally compared to the whole historical period marked by the driving power of the Russian Revolution. It is more than 30 years since the advanced capitalist countries have experienced revolutionary or pre_revolutionary situations. The examples that we can use are based on the revolutions of the past. But, once again, we do not know what the revolutions of the 21st century will be like. The new generations will learn much from experience and many questions remain open. What we can and must do is to solidly base the parties that we build on a series of strong references, drawn from the experience and the intervention of recent years, which constitute a programmatic and strategic foundation. Let us recall them: an anti-capitalist transitional programme which combines immediate demands and transitional demands—a redistribution of wealth, the challenging of capitalist property, social appropriation of the economy, class unity and independence, a break with the economy and the central institutions of the capitalist state, the rejection of any policy of class collaboration, the taking into account of the ecosocialist perspective, the revolutionary transformation of society… Recent debates have led us to make our conceptions of violence more precise. We have reaffirmed that “it was not the revolutions that were violent but the counter-revolutions”, as in Spain in 1936 or in Chile in 1973, when the use of violence aimed to protect a revolutionary process against violence from the ruling classes. So in what respect does the new party constitute a change compared to the LCR? It must be a party that is broader than the LCR; a party that does not incorporate the entire history of Trotskyism and that has the ambition of making possible new revolutionary syntheses; a party that is not reduced to the unity of revolutionaries; a party in dialogue with millions of workers and young people; a party that translates its fundamental programmatic references into popular explanations, agitation and formulas. From this point of view, the campaigns of Olivier Besancenot9 constitute a formidable starting point. It must also be a party that is capable of conducting wide-ranging debates on the fundamental questions which affect society: the crisis of capitalism, global warming, bioethics, etc; a party of activists and adherents, which makes it possible to integrate thousands of young people and workers with their social and political experience, preserving their links with the backgrounds they come from; a pluralist party that brings together a whole series of anti_capitalist currents. We do not want a second LCR or an enlarged and broader version of the LCR. To make a success of the gamble we are taking, the new party must represent a new political reality, following in the tradition of the revolutionary movement and contributing to inventing the revolutions and the socialism of the 21st century. Avoid reformist temptations: build an anti-capitalist party! In spite of these delimitations, Callinicos remains sceptical: “The LCR’s solution to the problem seems to be to install a kind of programmatic security_lock—commitment to anti-capitalism and opposition to centre-left governments. But this is unlikely to work: the more successful the NPA, the more it is likely to come under reformist pressures and temptations.” Why such fatalism? Why would the development of the NPA automatically lead to reformist temptations? It is necessary from this point of view to consider the difference between a “spontaneous trade unionism”,10 to take up a formula of Lenin, and reformism as a political project and organisation, and even an apparatus. This “spontaneous trade unionism”, although it can form an environment favourable to reformist ideas, can also, faced with the increasing alignment of the reformist apparatuses to capitalist politics, move towards radical anti-capitalist, even revolutionary, positions, especially when the capitalist system is entering a phase in which it is reaching its historical limits. It is logical, if we build a popular, pluralist, broad, open party, that this party will come under all sorts of pressures. If it did not, that would be abnormal. But why should these pressures be expressed in crystallised reformist positions? There is and there can be a tension between the anti-capitalist character of the new party and the fact that workers, young people, even a series of personalities, join the new party quite simply because they seek a real left party, starting in particular from the interventions of Olivier Besancenot. These new members can indeed be combative but full of illusions. This is the case with every mass party, even one that is in a minority. That is when it will be necessary to discuss and educate. That implies even more the need for a strong content to the political responses of the NPA and the careful maintenance of the radical character and the independence of the party. In the same way, if these parties want to play a part in the reorganisation of the social movements, they must be pluralist. Many sensibilities must find their place in their ranks, including “consistent reformist” activists and currents, but that does not automatically mean that the problem is posed in terms of struggles between the revolutionary current and crystallised reformist currents that would have to be fought. The key question is that all the currents and activists of the NPA, over and above their positions on “reform and revolution”, put the class struggle at the centre and subordinate their positions in representative institutions to struggles and social movements. Of course, we cannot exclude the hypothesis of a confrontation between reformists and revolutionaries. But it is not very probable, with the present political delimitations of the NPA, that bureaucratic reformist currents will join or crystallise. In a first historical phase of building the party the role of revolutionaries is to do everything they can so that the process of constituting the party really does give birth to a new political reality. That implies that revolutionaries avoid projecting the debates of the former revolutionary organisation into the new party. As soon as the NPA has taken off there will, of course, be discussions, differentiations, currents. Perhaps certain debates will correspond to cleavages between revolutionary perspectives and more or less consistent reformism. But even in these cases, the debate will not take the form of a political battle opposing a bureaucratic reformist bloc to the revolutionaries. Things will be more mixed, depending on the experience of the new party itself. A revolutionary current in the NPA? Here too there is no model. In many anti-capitalist parties there are one or more revolutionary currents, when these parties are in fact fronts or federations of currents. This is the case of the militants of the Fourth International in Brazil in the “Enlace” current.11 Without organising themselves as political currents related to the national political life of these parties, certain sections of the Fourth International can be organised through ideological associations or sensibilities. This is, for example, the case of the Revolutionary Socialist Political Association (Associação Política Socialista Revolucionária) within the Left Bloc in Portugal and of the Socialist Workers’ Party (Socialistisk Arbejderparti) within the Red-Green Alliance in Denmark. We can also find this type of current in other broader organisations or parties. This schema does not work for the NPA. There are fundamental reasons for this. First, and fundamentally, there is the anti_capitalist and revolutionary character of the NPA, in the broad sense, and the general identity of views between the positions of the LCR and those of the NPA. There are and there will be political differences between the LCR and the NPA, with a greater heterogeneity and diversity of positions within the NPA, but the political bases under discussion for the founding congress of the new party already show political convergences between the ex-LCR and the future NPA. Also, even though the NPA already constitutes another reality than the LCR, even though it is the possible crucible of an anti-capitalist pluralism, it is not justified today to build a separate revolutionary current in the NPA. There is also a specific relation between the ex-LCR and the NPA. The ex-LCR represents the only national organisation taking part in the constitution of the NPA. There are other currents, such as a fraction of Lutte Ouvrière, Gauche Révolutionnaire, communist activists and libertarians, but unfortunately there are not, at this stage, organisations of a weight equivalent to that of the LCR. If that had been the case, the problem would be posed in different terms. In the present relation of forces, the separate organisation of the ex-LCR in the NPA would block the process of building the new party. It would install a system of Russian dolls which would only create mistrust and dysfunction. Finally, the NPA does not come from nowhere. It is the result of a whole experience of members of the ex-LCR and also of thousands of others who have forged an opinion in a battle to defend their independence with respect to social liberalism and reformism. There is thus a militant synergy within the NPA, where revolutionary positions intersect with other political positions coming from other origins, other histories and other experiences. Only new political tests will lead to new alignments within the NPA, not former political attachments. It is an unprecedented gamble in the history of the revolutionary workers’ movement, but the game is worth the candle. We will advance as we walk… Notes 1: Callinicos, 2008. This comment by François Sabado of the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (LCR) is an edited version of the translation by Murray Smith. 2: For instance, the conference “May 1968-May 2008” held in Paris earlier this year. 3: Rees, 2001, p32. 4: The “collectives” were the bodies that drove the successful No campaign in the French referendum on the European Constitution in 2005. 5: The international grouping of the which the SWP is a member. 6: Fausto Bertinotti led Rifondazione into a disastrous coalition with the centre-left in Italy. 7: The Democratic Party is a grouping of centre-left currents formed in 2007. 8: Ernest Mandel, “Why are we Revolutionaries Today?”, La Gauche, 10 January 1989. 9: The LCR’s candidate in recent presidential elections and its most well known figure. 10: Lenin used the phrase to evoke the spontaneous trade union reaction or the feeling of workers who wished to defend conditions in the workplace. 11: A current within the Brazilian Socialism and Freedom Party (Partido Socialismo e Liberdade). References Callinicos, Alex, 2008, “Where is the Radical Left Going?”, International Socialism 120 (autumn 2008), www.isj.org.uk/?id=484 Rees, John, 2001, “Anti-capitalism, Reformism and Socialism”, International Socialism 90 (spring 2001), http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/isj90/rees.htm

ANOTHER LEFT IS POSSIBLE: The Protests in France and the New Anti-Capitalist Party

by Nathan Rao from Socialist Voice Originally published in Rabble.ca 8 April 2009 It would be wrong to see the massively successful protest actions in France [March 21] as distant and exotic, of no particular relevance to us here in Canada. With the economic meltdown heralding a new political era, and with most of the country's Left and social movements still stunned and disoriented following their embrace of the misguided and failed Liberal-led coalition plan, the French experience is instructive and inspiring. France has just gone through another day of mass strikes and protests against the hard-Right government of president Nicolas Sarkozy. The protest action is hugely popular in opinion polls and comes on the heels of another successful but smaller day of action on January 29, a victorious six-week general strike on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe that spread to other overseas colonial territories and the proliferation of radical protest actions among students and in a number of workplaces -- all in the context of growing job losses and a deepening financial and economic crisis. 'France's Thatcher' on the defensive Not long ago, Sarkozy was widely hailed in Anglo-American circles, from the Blairite 'centre-Left' across to the Bushite and Harperite neo-conservative Right, as the French Thatcher -- the man that would usher in the 'normalization' of French society by at long last breaking resistance to growing inequality, job insecurity, privatization and cutbacks. And yet, a mere 18 months into his mandate the swaggering and obnoxious Sarkozy is now stumbling in the face of the resilience and scale of popular resistance. Though still very far from being defeated, Sarkozy and the neoliberal project more generally are on the defensive in France, a country at the heart of the global capitalist and imperial order. This has not failed to raise a few eyebrows in other European and western capitals, where the fear is that developments in France will serve as an example for workers and young people in their own countries. Further stoking these fears is the fact that Olivier Besancenot -- the 34-year-old postal worker and spokesperson of the newly created New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) -- has consolidated his position as by far the most popular opposition figure in the country. For several months now, polls have ranked him well ahead of the leader of the nominally social-democratic Socialist Party (PS), Martine Aubry -- and even further ahead of the PS candidate in the 2007 presidential elections, Segolene Royal, and centre-Right leader Francois Bayrou. Besancenot recently even earned the unusual distinction of being the only left-wing and working-class figure to be named to the Financial Times list of 50 people 'who will frame the debate on the future of capitalism.' New Party, New Politics for France's Left As its name suggests, the NPA has an explicitly anti-capitalist profile and its program calls for a revolutionary transformation of the country's political institutions and property relations. It is an activist party, with a growing base of more than 10,000 members across the country involved in local organizing efforts and broad activist campaigns and the internal work and debates of the NPA itself. The party brings together former members of the largest surviving (and now 'self-dissolved') organization of the 1968-era far-Left (the 'Trotskyist' LCR), a wide array of experienced and previously non-party-affiliated trade-union and social-movement activists, a new generation of radicalized students and youth and a significant layer of people of all ages for whom the party is their first political experience ever. It is quite easily -- certainly within the industrialized world at any rate -- the most dynamic and radical example of attempts at fashioning a left-wing alternative to the increasingly discredited policies and institutions of neoliberalism and capitalism. Relevant to Canada's Left? This is all very heady stuff. So heady, in fact, that it is tempting to see these developments in France as distant and exotic, of no particular relevance to our own work and debates here in Canada. That would be unfortunate. To be sure, there are important differences between the context and relationship of forces in the two countries. For one thing, today's protest movements are at least in part an extension of those that have shaken France since late 1995; and the initiative to found the NPA was taken only after a long, complicated and occasionally rancorous debate between the various political and social-movement forces involved in these movements in one way or another. It will certainly take time and a significant upsurge of protest and resistance in Canada before these kinds of debates get any kind of traction beyond the margins of political life here. Fundamentally, however, the strategic lay of the land in the two countries is not so dramatically different. Whatever the fate of Sarkozy's cabinet in the face of the present protest movement or of Sarkozy himself in the 2012 presidential elections, the NPA are under no illusions that there will be a serious breakthrough for anti-capitalists in the short term. Even in France, the relationship of forces and rules of the institutional game are firmly stacked against such an outcome. The NPA understand that they are just now entering a long period of rebuilding working-class and anti-systemic movements and of developing a new vision and strategy for enduring radical change. This is something the party's program describes as '21st century socialism,' tipping its hat to the Bolivarian revolutionary process under way in Venezuela and other Latin American countries. What are the broad lessons we can take away from the French experience? For one thing, the protests and strikes, and the organizing that made them possible, show that resignation, panic and 'everyone for themselves' are not the only possible responses to the onset of economic hard times. While people will often respond in a conservative and individualist manner at the onset of a crisis, there comes a time when they realize that systemic issues are at play and that only broad, collective action and political alternatives will do. For another, the party and trade-union organizations of the traditional Left are too weakened and compromised by years of adaptation to neoliberalism and dependence on positions in parliament and the state to respond to the challenges thrown up by the hard-Right and the economic crisis. While rightly associated with a range of measures of socio-economic progress, the post-war mediations between the organized working classes, their party, trade-union and social-movement representation and the state itself were never ideal; but after 25 years of neoliberalism they have ceased even to be operative for some time now. In France, repeated waves of mass protest and organizing over the past 13 years have failed to halt the traditional Left's drift toward the Blairite 'centre-Left.' As the Right and ruling elites toy with various ineffective solutions to the crisis, the forces of the 'centre-Left' will be quick to latch on to the handful of 'stimulus' and ersatz 'Keynesian' measures that are thrown into the mix to artfully declare a major breach in the neoliberal fortress. So the crisis is just as likely to deepen the rightward trend of the traditional Left and 'centre-Left' as it is to push these forces in a more radical and combative direction. The new days of action in France provide further confirmation of this analysis. While they could not have occurred without trade-union unity at the top, this unity 'from above' came about in response to pressure 'from below' and simultaneously acts as a trammel on the further development of the current movement. The pressure 'from below' has itself been the result of a surprising and noteworthy development -- the confluence of a substantial segment of public opinion with radical sectors scattered across traditional and new trade-union groupings, local workplace and activist campaigns, the student and international-solidarity movements and the relatively small party-political organizations of the radical Left. How a 'radical Left' can get a wide hearing And this brings us to the particular significance of the NPA. It is as much a product of this surprising confluence of forces as it is a vital ingredient in ensuring that the present unity and momentum are not lost in the face of hard-Right intransigence and 'centre-Left' weakness and perfidy. In other words, the debate on political strategy and organization now occupies centre stage; and the main lesson of the NPA's undeniable success is that a radical-Left political project can both receive a sympathetic hearing and play this strategically essential unifying and galvanizing role, on condition that: 1. Its message consistently targets the systemic origins of the crisis and identifies those responsible for bringing us to the brink of economic and ecological calamity. 2. It contains an iron-clad commitment to the broadest unity 'in the streets' of all forces willing to oppose the right-wing agenda, overall and on an issue-by-issue basis. 3. It confidently enters the electoral, institutional and media fray but strikes a position of defiance and strict independence on the question of electoral and governmental agreements and alliances with the forces of the traditional 'Left' and 'centre-Left' (not to mention centre-Right forces such as those around Francois Bayrou in France and the Liberal Party here in Canada). These forces are beyond redemption as any kind of credible vehicle for popular aspirations and seek to govern at all costs -- in practice along lines that vary only slightly from those of the Right and hard-Right. 4. It prioritizes work among those sectors of the population and country ignored or abandoned by the traditional institutions of the 'Left' and 'centre-Left.' The NPA has, for example, made a priority of organizing in the working-class and immigrant areas that have been hit hard by neoliberal structuring and were the backdrop of the banlieues revolt of late 2005. This is why the topics of racism and the precarious work imposed on young people figure prominently in the NPA's internal discussions. 5. It aims to be a grassroots force, rooted in the actual struggles and debates of workers and young people, eschewing any kind of elitist, rigid and hyper-activist model of organizing and transformation, throwing its doors wide open to seasoned activists and interested newcomers alike, while creating a democratic and transparent framework for collective discussion, decision-making, action and the drawing of balance-sheets. 6. It takes a long-term approach to its project of social and political transformation and understands that we are in an extended period of resistance and development of alternatives to capitalism and imperialism. While history and politics always have surprises in store, especially in a period of deep crisis such as now, the relationship of forces is too unfavourable, and the vision of an alternative too weak, to expect major breakthroughs on an institutional level in the near term. Better to understand this and get down to the serious work of organizing and rethinking than to feed technocratic and armchair illusions about quick fixes and imminent elite-level 'paradigm shifts.' A new generation's New Left Finally, the protest movements in France and the birth of the NPA inaugurate a new chapter in the life of the international radical Left, especially when viewed in tandem with the developments of recent years in Latin America. The fact that the main figure associated with events in France was born in the mid-1970s also signals the emergence of a new generation of radicals. We had a whiff of this trend during the wave of anti-globalization protests ushered in by the Battle of Seattle in 1999. But now it appears to be asserting itself much more forcefully, with a larger and more receptive audience than the one that existed just a short time ago. This, too, is a tremendously important and encouraging development. Nathan Rao attended the founding convention of the NPA in Paris earlier this year. He lives in Toronto and is a supporter of the Socialist Project. He welcomes comments at natrao99@gmail.com.

France: Towards the foundation of a New Anti-Capitalist Party

by Grant Morgan 28 November 2008 An informative article about the formation of France's New Anti-Capitalist Party appears below. It is penned by respected French socialist Pierre Rousset, a leader of the left since the 1968 student revolt and general strike which almost overthrew the De Gaulle regime. After an outline of decades of failed attempts at bringing about "radical left unity" in France, Rousset outlines the apparently successful rise of a broad left party over the last 18 months. He points to a key element in this success: a bottom-up (rather than a "top-bottom") approach which taps into a general yearning for an independent left challenge to the Socialist Party, France's equivalent to the New Zealand Labour Party. It seems there are important similarities (as well as differences, of course) between the political situation of France and New Zealand. In New Zealand, a bottom-up strategy of "going to the masses" with a plan to protect the people from economic crisis by rolling back the market may well be the formative impulse for the rise of a strong broad left party.

Towards the foundation of a New Anti-Capitalist Party

by Pierre Rousset from LINKS - International Journal of Socialist Renewal The political impact of the New Anti-Capitalist Party (Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste or NPA) process is quite important. In a number places, this new political party in construction is already de facto replacing the French Revolutionary Communist League (Ligue communiste révolutionnaire or LCR)and is very active.

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France: Capitalist crisis and mass strike set scene for NPA

by Sam Wainwright from Green Left Weekly 14 February 2009 On the weekend of February 7-8, over 600 delegates and as many observers attended the founding conference of France's New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA), held at la Plaine-Saint-Denis in the working class suburbs to the north of Paris. Less than a week before, on January 29; around 2.5 million people took to the streets across the country as part of a nationwide strike against the efforts of the government of Nicolas Sarkozy to foist the burden of the capitalist economic crisis on to working people. The idea for the organisation was publicly proposed in August 2007 in the wake of the country's presidential and legislative elections by Olivier Besancenot, the presidential candidate of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR). Since then 465 regional committees in support of the project were launched and over nine thousand people have joined. Besancenot's score of 4.7% surpassed that of the once mighty French Communist Party's (PCF) candidate, and with his engaging and straight talking style established his party as the most recognised and authentic anti-capitalist voice in French politics. Widely rated as France's most popular politician, "the Postie" as even the media call him recorded a 54% satisfaction rating in the latest opinion polls, his highest since the election. Besancenot's strong showing in the last two presidential elections was the immediate catalyst for the formation of the NPA; however its origins lie more deeply in important transformations in French politics over the last decade. Firstly beginning with a massive public sector strike in late 1995, there have been regular waves of struggles by French workers resisting the attempts by the employers and governments to impose the worldwide model of cut backs, casualisation and privatisation. While these struggles have been defensive and only partially successful, they have been sufficient to keep alive the traditions of struggle, left wing ideas and renew layer after layer of activists. Despite the massive rejection of the cut-back agenda by the working class, the traditional or "institutional" parties of the left have faithfully tried to implement the neo-liberal austerity program. The working class fight-back used to put something of a brake on the Socialist Party (PS), but it is now increasingly embracing the Tony Blair model. Furthermore the PS has very effectively drawn both the PCF and the Greens into its web, offering them cabinet posts (when it is in government, and still at the regional level); and electoral deals in return for their support. Their integration into PS governments has eroded the PCF's once significant base among blue collar workers and in the case of the Greens, their image as something as fresh and radical. In fact without the PS electoral deals both parties would struggle to win any national deputies. In this context the LCR tripled in size since 1995 to over three thousand members and already regrouped nearly all of France's far left, save some very schematic and dogmatic groups. It also started to develop a significant base in some of the country's industrial heartlands that had once been the sole domain of the PCF. However the LCR recognised that there existed a much wider audience for a resolutely anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, pro-worker and pro-environment political force; including many people from different political traditions such as former members of the PCF, and even more people without any previous political identification. The NPA is an attempt to reach out to those people. To guarantee the success of the NPA the LCR decided it had to completely dissolve into it; firstly to demonstrate to the rest of the NPA membership that it would be one united party of equals, and secondly to allow for new and fluid debate to take place in the new organisation. As long time former leader of the LCR Pierre Rousset explained, "One of the worst things the LCR could bring into the NPA would be its old debates." On February 5 the LCR, born of a fusion between a current of French Trotskyism and some of the leaders of the student protest movement of May-June 1968, held its last ever congress. Alain Krivine, a central leader of May-June 68 and founder of the LCR who did time in prison when the organisation was banned in the early 70s, was joined by other members of his generation at the front for an emotional rendition of the Internationale at the congress close. But the tears did not last long. The next day as the NPA congress began delegates spontaneously rose to their feet to chant "All together, all togetherŠGeneral strike!" before getting down to the practical business of adopting the raft of founding principles, policy and structures needed for the new party. As was predicted the new party decided to retain its provisional name. Plenty would admit that it was not perfect; it does not express what the party is for and how long can it keep calling itself new? However the name has already started to stick and has a resonance in a country where there are already parties carrying the name socialist and communist who are not anti-capitalist! Exciting as much interest, especially among the capitalist media, was the NPA's policy regarding possible electoral alliances in the upcoming elections to the European parliament. While these are conducted on a proportional basis, a ticket has to cross the 10% threshold to qualify for representation. Neither the NPA, the PCF nor the newly formed Left Party (PG) are likely to get this by themselves. As primarily electoral organisations both the PCF and PG were frantic that the NPA agree to deal. Congress delegates were presented with two counter-posed positions regarding the European elections. The position presented by the commission established for drafting policy on the matter declared that the NPA should be open to running on a joint ticket with these parties (and others) but on the basis of first reaching agreement on some basic common policy including an agreement not to take posts PS pro-capitalist administrations. However the PCF, while it tries to distance itself from the PS come election time, is addicted to the trappings of office and it's quite unlikely that it will break from this orientation. An amendment from members in the Clermont-Ferrand region proposed that the NPA accept in principle a joint ticket with the PCF and PG, with the precise basis of the agreement to be worked out later. However the amendment was overwhelmingly rejected, only winning the support of 16% of the delegates. For commentators in the capitalist media this was proof of the NPA's "immature" refusal to accept the "responsibility to govern". Is this a sign that the capitalist media may turn against France's favourite postman and try to transform him from charming idealist into dangerous villain? Already there has been an aborted attempt to tar him with a bogus allegation of workplace harassment. Last year listening devices were discovered in Besancenot's home. The boss of company that imports taser guns is currently being tried over the affair! Besancenot couldn't move around the conference without being followed by a media pack, yet the same media then try to diminish the NPA as little more than a media creation at his whim. However the NPA is moving rapidly to broaden its image and promote its other spokespeople. In any case the capitalist media may well find that the regeneration of the anti-capitalist left has surpassed such intrigue as the economic crisis deepens hardening opinion against the Sarkozy government. Sam Wainwright is a Co-convenor of the Socialist Alliance in Western Australia and attended both the LCR and NPA congresses as an invited observer.

France: Towards the foundation of a New Anti-Capitalist Party

by Pierre Rousset from LINKS - International Journal of Socialist Renewal The political impact of the New Anti-Capitalist Party (Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste or NPA) process is quite important. In a number places, this new political party in construction is already de facto replacing the French Revolutionary Communist League (Ligue communiste révolutionnaire or LCR)and is very active. In June 2007, the LCR launched an appeal for the constitution of a New Anti-Capitalist Party. In June 2008, 1000 delegates met in Paris to give a national-scale dimension to a process which started from the bottom. At the beginning of November 2008, delegates from some 400 committees gathered again to discuss three documents: programmatic references, political orientation, statutes and functioning of the NPA. Around 10,000 activists are presently engaged in the founding process of the NPA – three times more than the total membership of the LCR. On November 6, 2008 it held its first public meeting in Paris with more than 2000 participants. If everything goes as planned, on January 29, 2009, the LCR at its last congress will decide on its own dissolution. The following days, January 30-February 1, 2009, at its first congress, the NPA will be constituted. So far, so good. What is striking is how fast this overall process proceeds. It obviously answers a political need. This need, this opportunity, has been felt for sometime already, but, in the last 10 years, all previous attempts to build a qualitatively broader anti-capitalist party in France failed. To overcome these failures, the LCR decided to try something new – so new it even never envisaged it before. What then is “new” in the process of constitution of the New Anti-Capitalist Party? After all other scenarios failed… Because of the key role played by the LCR in the launching of the NPA, it maybe useful to look back on how this organisation in the past saw the building of a socially broadly rooted revolutionary party. I speak here from the experience of my “fading away” generation (the May 1968 one) which is no longer “in command” in the LCR or the NPA, but whose historical legacy has to be taken into account precisely to analyse what is “new”. I’ll present our past “visions” it in a very brief, simplified and schematic way. My generation created new, dynamic, radical organisations in the 1960s – but, in France, we remained very small. In the late '60s-early '70s, we thought we had no choice because key class confrontations were to come soon: the new revolutionary party had to be built quickly, in the heat of the crisis, through intense activism. In the mid-'70s, we had to admit that the pace of history would be much slower than expected and that the mass-based revolutionary party will have to be built in the long run. The LCR never thought this party would simply be the result of its own quantitative growth. It had to be the outcome of a much broader process of “recomposition”, restructuring of the left and labour movement. We envisaged three main scenarios: 1. First schema: the radicalisation of whole sections, of wings, of existing mass working-class parties (the Socialist party -- SP -- and the Communist Party -- PCF). We can maybe say that this schema was shaped in Italy with the creation of the Party of the Communist Refoundation when the old CP became social-democratic. But it was not the case in France. The main split from the SP (around Jean-Pierre Chevènement) became “left-nationalist” and declined, becoming irrelevant. The long-lasting crisis of the PCF never gave birth to anything looking like what happened in Italy. Our “old left” proved incapable of rejuvenating, even in part. 2. Second schema: the launching of a new radical working-class party by the trade unions with the participation of existing revolutionary groups. That is the “Brazilian schema” – the original foundation of the Workers Party (PT) – or, more recently, the South Korean process: the KCTU trade union centre has backed the creation of the Democratic Labour Party (DLP). In both cases, the trade union movement was still “young”, having reorganised itself after a period of military dictatorship. In France, the main trade union centres (CGT, CFDT, FO) show no such dynamism. 3. Third schema: two or three significant political groups join together to build a new party. This happened in Portugal (Left Bloc) or Denmark (Red-Green Alliance). It was the simplest and the most “credible” of all scenarios – but it nevertheless did not work in France. Contrary to the LCR, the two other main far left organisations coming from the 1960s radicalisation have never been interested in rallying various radical forces around a common political project (unlike in Portugal, for example). An important political opening existed nevertheless after the victory in 2005 of the “no” in the referendum on the draft European (neoliberal and militaristic) constitution. A powerful aspiration for political unity in the “left of the left” then expressed – but failed after two years of intense negotiations involving a range of currents going from the PCF to the LCR. This last attempt ended in bitterness and harsh polemics between components of this two-year process on who was responsible for its ultimate failure. But rather than looking for culprits, it is better to reflect on why the three above-mentioned scenarios failed in France in spite decades of successive attempts. In, again, a very schematic way, I would like to underline the following factors: The “old” political and labour movement does not anymore have the potential to rejuvenate a radical left. The social roots of the SP have changed and its “social-liberal” orientation expresses the depth of its integration into the bourgeois society. The PCF has never truly addressed the issue of its Stalinist past and now finds itself electorally and institutionally hostage of the SP: for years now it has been in crisis – and it is unfortunately a “crisis without dynamism''. The three main trade union confederations (CGT, CFDT, FO) are too bureaucratised. This does not mean that individuals (even many) or local activist teams from the “old” labour movement are not and will not join the NPA or another radical left party – indeed, quite a number are! But it means that, unlike what we hoped in the 1970s-1980s, it will not be enough to “recompose” (“restructure”) the traditional labour movement. It has to be remoulded in a broader way –– which is something much more complex! The “new” trade unions (Solidaires…) and social movements have a much greater radical potential. Many of their activists are reacting positively to the call for the NPA. Some members of their leaderships did engage in the attempts to build, in 2005-2007, political unity in the “left of the left”. But the relationship between social movements and political parties remains in France very uneasy. The independence of trade unions and mass organisations is today a very sensitive issue – and mostly for good reasons given past experiences! Radical parties such as the NPA have to show in a consistent way their usefulness and their readiness to keep respectful relationships with “mass organisations”, for a new mutual dynamics to better shape in the future. 'Left of the left' It is difficult to describe what the French “left of the left” is made of, because few of its components are politically well delineated. The PCF is by far its biggest component but is in deep crisis. The LCR is by far the biggest component of the “far left” involved in unity processes. Then there are smaller political organisations, informal networks, local teams, individual activists or “personalities”… the whole constituting a “milieu”, broader than a coalition of parties. There are many reasons explaining why the 2005-2006 attempts to build unity around common electoral candidates ended in fragmentation. But there is one major political issue which has to be kept in mind here: the relationships with the Socialist Party, electoral alliances and governmental participation. This is a key issue in a number of countries where electoral blocs and governmental participation has been or will be a concrete choice for the radical left: Brazil, West Bengal, Italy, Germany, Portugal, the Netherlands. In France, the electoral system is very undemocratic: to have any chance of being elected to parliament, one needs the backing of the SP (on the left) – which is not given for free. Weakened, the PCF needs all the more to negotiate an agreement with the SP to save its electoral positions. Those who want to ally with the PCF have to accept it. But for the LCR (and others), the task of the day is to strengthen a radical left pole able to incarnate an alternative in the left to social-liberalism – which implies a total independence from the SP. That has been and remains a major political line of demarcation. Late 2006, the LCR seemed very isolated within the “left of the left”. Early 2007, for the presidential election, Marie-George Buffet run for the PCF, Olivier Besancenot for the LCR and José Bové for some other components of the “left of the left”. Besancenot’s campaign was politically very dynamic and he got more than 4% of the votes. There was no such dynamics in Buffet’s campaign and she got less than 2% (a historically low figure for the PCF!). Bové’s campaign was politically confused and had little impact. In spite of his own personal notoriety, he hardly got more than 1%. After two years of intense debates on orientation, the presidential election was a real political test for the “left of the left”. It gave new responsibilities to the LCR. The new responsibilities of the LCR With the success of its political initiative and electoral campaign, the LCR found itself at the centre stage of the “left of the left”. The question was thus: what to do of this success? The LCR had the responsibility to take an initiative quickly, for the existing momentum not to be lost (as happened in the past). In mid-2007, even after the political test of the elections, there was no possibility to reach an agreement with other significant organisations for launching a new anti-capitalist party. With no “top-bottom” unity call possible, the LCR decided to impulse a “bottom-top” process – something which it never envisaged before. Everyone ready to participate in the creation of a new anti-capitalist party clearly independent from the SP was invited to join local committees for the NPA. The network of committees would constitute the foundation of the new party. It was clear that there was an open political space for a radical party qualitatively broader than the LCR to emerge. This was in part shown by the extraordinary popularity of Olivier Besancenot. Olivier is a very good candidate and spokesperson. This is not mainly a “media” phenomenon. Being a postie, he is not seen as a professional politician but as a “co-worker” (“one of us”). He is young, and the youth can also identify with him. Last but not the least, he is politically very consistent: when at 27 years old he first ran in a presidential campaign (in 2002), he was totally unknown but already a member of the political bureau of the LCR. In TV forums, he usually smashes politically professional politicians and members of the government. People love it! One reason why the LCR has been able to take the initiative of launching the NPA is often overlooked. Its leadership has been renewed. Today, all the historical “figures” of the LCR have stepped out of the politbureau (but remain active!), and the national leadership is now mostly composed of cadres in their 30s and 40s. This seems not to be the case for most other organisations. It is a very important issue because of the radical change of political generation, which occurred since the 1990s. On one hand, the LCR renewed its membership and cadre network. On the other, the LCR remains an organisation framed by its origins – the 1960s-1970s' experience. So it both can and must impulse the creation of a new party, rooted in the present generation outlook. The NPA as a NEW party For the LCR, the aim is not only to build a bigger, stronger party. It is to help the creation of a truly new one. There has been a radical change of period, with the disintegration of USSR and with capitalist globalisation. And there has been a radical shift in generation: present activists do not have the same references and the same background of historical experiences than the “1968” ones. The combination of the two radical changes (period and generation) has deep consequences in the way politics is lived. For sure, it is important to keep alive the political experience of the past decades, the many lessons of the past century (imperialism, Stalinism …). How then to build anew without losing our past? By passing the legacy of the LCR on a new party. By bringing also into this new party the best of other revolutionary traditions of the past century – from various Marxist or libertarian traditions, from feminist and eco-socialist movements, etc. By giving to the new party the social roots of trained mass cadres, while broadening its social implantation with the recent experience of the Global Justice Movement and the wave of resistance in populous suburbs, among migrants, etc. By allowing also the new party to speak the political language of the present generation. The will to build with others a broader anti-capitalist party is not new for the LCR, it aimed at it for several decades! What is new is the decision to impulse a “bottom-top” process and, most importantly, to fully integrate the change of period and generation in the vision of the new party. Unfortunately, the LCR is presently the only “big” (everything is relative) component of the “left of the left” engaged in the NPA process. The other concerned political groups are much smaller. The danger then was that the LCR would remain “the party within the party” after the foundation of the NPA. To avoid that, drastic decisions were taken. LCR members are usually in minority in steering bodies of the de facto existing NPA. And the LCR should dissolve itself the days before the founding congress of the NPA. The NPA has to become a political and social melting pot, to shape its own identity. It is presently easy to reach political agreements within the NPA process and there is nothing divisive today as the “nature of USSR” (to take an example) was for the “left of the left” in the 1970s. But there are strategic issues with little concrete answers (how to disarm the bourgeoisie?). The NPA will have to consolidate its programmatic foundations through its own experience. It will take time. The road ahead is unknown. The decision to dissolve the LCR is of course a risky one. But it would be even more risky not to take this risk. We have to seize the present opportunity: to miss it would probably be very costly for the whole “left of the left”. The NPA must not be seen as – and must not be – an “enlarged LCR”, but a qualitatively newer party. The process is well engaged. Thousands of people who were never member of a party before are involving. Many coming from the PCF or other organisations are joining too, as well as grassroots activists. If the launching of the NPA end of January 2009 is a success, some political components which are presently not ready to unite with the LCR may change their mind. But it may be better to wait for the end of January 2009 and the founding congress of the NPA to evaluate the long way we’ll have come – and the long way still ahead. This article first appeared on the website of International Viewpoint, magazine of the Fourth International. It will appear in a future issue of Amandla. Pierre Rousset is a member of Europe Solidaire Sans Frontiers (ESSF). He has been involved for many years in Asian solidarity movements.