French socialists lose momentum
French socialists lose momentum
This has been taken from Permanent Revolution http://www.permanentrevolution.net
If the latest polls are anything to go by, Ségolène Royal is fast losing her chances of becoming France’s first woman president. Nicolas Sarkozy, the candidate of the right and current interior minister, is 10 points ahead of the Socialist Party’s candidate, at 55%, and likely to beat Royal in a second round run-off, writes Christina Duval.
Last weekend in Villepinte, a suburb north of Paris, Royal unveiled the Socialist Party’s presidential programme. Since then her campaign has been floundering badly. Not only has she to contend with falling support in the opinion polls, but also with a party apparatus which is clearly not behind her – last week Eric Besson, a leader of the Parti Socialiste (PS) and advisor on the economy, resigned his leadership position for “personal reasons”.
The programme outlined at Villepinte represented an attempt to mobilise the PS around her campaign, by straddling the two main trends of thought within the PS, the social democrats and the social liberals. However, as is normally the case with such compromises, Royal suceeded in pleasing no one. Despite a nod in the direction of the left, with measures such as free health care for the under 16s, free contraception for young women under 25, and a program of social housing, underpinning her speech was the oft-repeated appeal to accept and embrace business, presented as the risk-taking creator of jobs, to whom the French should be grateful.
Fortunately, her call to put an end to endless conflict will be roundly ignored by the French working class who regularly appreciate the need to withdraw their labour against attacks by the government and employers.Royal announced other measures which are mere sops rather than serious responses to social injustice.
None go anywhere near to dealing with the growing inequality that French workers and youth experience. In response to the burning problem of low wages, she proposed, a minimum wage of 1500 Euros gross (£1000) with no calendar set for its introduction.
Unemployment is to be dealt with by a conference of “social partners” – a powerless taking shop – which is unlikely to put an end to the continued state subsidies that employers receive whilst continuing to sack workers. For the education sector, more classroom assistants are promised, rather than investing in more teachers. For the youth, Ségo promised an “allocation d’indépendance”, a financial benefit, of no fixed amount as yet, in exchange for taking part in some form of training and actively seeking employment (i.e. being ready to take on any job, no matter how bad the conditions and pay), and the creation of 500,000 jobs for youth, the details of which are unclear. These “emplois-tremplins” are likely to imitate similar initiatives in socialist held regions of France, which, whilst they are permanent jobs (unlike the proposed Contrats Premiere Emplois or CPE which brought hundreds of thousands of youth out into to streets last year in protest), are nothing more than subsidised labour for the employers – only 10% of the wages in current “emplois tremplins” are paid by the bosses.
Royal made no mention of privatisation or the attacks on public services, which French workers have been taking to the streets against. Nor did Royal deal with the thorny question of pensions. Such omissions were conscious, since her speech was designed to appeal to bosses and workers alike…. by being vague. However, clearly the privatisations and attacks on public services will continue under a Royale presidency. How else will the meagre reforms outlined above be financed? In fact, Royal hinted as much when she pledged to put an end to “waste” in the public sector to release the funds necessary for her reforms. Her attacks on the “Jacobin”, centralised state and the need to encourage “civic responsibility” as opposed to state dependency are straight out of Blairite New Labour. Though, as workers in the UK know well enough, when it comes to the law and order side of state responsibility, the reverse is true for these half-hearted socialists.
In the absence of a united candidate arising out of the recent and ongoing struggles of French workers and youth, capable of raising demands that challenge the economic and political power of the French capitalist class, workers are faced with a PS candidate standing on a barely left reformist platform as their only rampart against the right.
The key task for the working class in such a situation is to create the organs of struggle necessary to take on whichever President they are saddled with, and in doing so take the next steps to create a workers party capable of uniting workers and youth around a programme of working class power.
This has been taken from Permanent Revolution http://www.permanentrevolution.net
If the latest polls are anything to go by, Ségolène Royal is fast losing her chances of becoming France’s first woman president. Nicolas Sarkozy, the candidate of the right and current interior minister, is 10 points ahead of the Socialist Party’s candidate, at 55%, and likely to beat Royal in a second round run-off, writes Christina Duval.
Last weekend in Villepinte, a suburb north of Paris, Royal unveiled the Socialist Party’s presidential programme. Since then her campaign has been floundering badly. Not only has she to contend with falling support in the opinion polls, but also with a party apparatus which is clearly not behind her – last week Eric Besson, a leader of the Parti Socialiste (PS) and advisor on the economy, resigned his leadership position for “personal reasons”.
The programme outlined at Villepinte represented an attempt to mobilise the PS around her campaign, by straddling the two main trends of thought within the PS, the social democrats and the social liberals. However, as is normally the case with such compromises, Royal suceeded in pleasing no one. Despite a nod in the direction of the left, with measures such as free health care for the under 16s, free contraception for young women under 25, and a program of social housing, underpinning her speech was the oft-repeated appeal to accept and embrace business, presented as the risk-taking creator of jobs, to whom the French should be grateful.
Fortunately, her call to put an end to endless conflict will be roundly ignored by the French working class who regularly appreciate the need to withdraw their labour against attacks by the government and employers.Royal announced other measures which are mere sops rather than serious responses to social injustice.
None go anywhere near to dealing with the growing inequality that French workers and youth experience. In response to the burning problem of low wages, she proposed, a minimum wage of 1500 Euros gross (£1000) with no calendar set for its introduction.
Unemployment is to be dealt with by a conference of “social partners” – a powerless taking shop – which is unlikely to put an end to the continued state subsidies that employers receive whilst continuing to sack workers. For the education sector, more classroom assistants are promised, rather than investing in more teachers. For the youth, Ségo promised an “allocation d’indépendance”, a financial benefit, of no fixed amount as yet, in exchange for taking part in some form of training and actively seeking employment (i.e. being ready to take on any job, no matter how bad the conditions and pay), and the creation of 500,000 jobs for youth, the details of which are unclear. These “emplois-tremplins” are likely to imitate similar initiatives in socialist held regions of France, which, whilst they are permanent jobs (unlike the proposed Contrats Premiere Emplois or CPE which brought hundreds of thousands of youth out into to streets last year in protest), are nothing more than subsidised labour for the employers – only 10% of the wages in current “emplois tremplins” are paid by the bosses.
Royal made no mention of privatisation or the attacks on public services, which French workers have been taking to the streets against. Nor did Royal deal with the thorny question of pensions. Such omissions were conscious, since her speech was designed to appeal to bosses and workers alike…. by being vague. However, clearly the privatisations and attacks on public services will continue under a Royale presidency. How else will the meagre reforms outlined above be financed? In fact, Royal hinted as much when she pledged to put an end to “waste” in the public sector to release the funds necessary for her reforms. Her attacks on the “Jacobin”, centralised state and the need to encourage “civic responsibility” as opposed to state dependency are straight out of Blairite New Labour. Though, as workers in the UK know well enough, when it comes to the law and order side of state responsibility, the reverse is true for these half-hearted socialists.
In the absence of a united candidate arising out of the recent and ongoing struggles of French workers and youth, capable of raising demands that challenge the economic and political power of the French capitalist class, workers are faced with a PS candidate standing on a barely left reformist platform as their only rampart against the right.
The key task for the working class in such a situation is to create the organs of struggle necessary to take on whichever President they are saddled with, and in doing so take the next steps to create a workers party capable of uniting workers and youth around a programme of working class power.
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