LCR to launch ‘anti-capitalist’ party in France
Posted on Wednesday 22 August, 2007
Filed Under Trotskyism
The Ligue communiste révolutionnaire is going ahead with plans to launch a new and broader far left party in France.
Local assemblies will be convened before the end of 2008 to discuss the question and organise the founding conference, according to a story in Le Monde republished here [in French].
Incidentally, the French Trots – who had 2,900 members in January – claim substantial growth, with 1,200 new members since the recent presidential elections, in which LCR candidate Olivier Besancenot polled just over 4%.
Reportedly, the planned new formation is to be ‘anti-capitalist’ rather than revolutionary, and distinguished from the rest of the anti-neoliberal left both by greater independence from the Parti Socialiste and a refusal to participate in running institutions.
I’d need to know more about it before passing a definitive judgement, and will try to talk to some of the comrades when I spend a few days in Paris next month. I’m presuming that the LCR will reserve its right to constitute an organised revolutionary tendency within whatever emerges.
But I don’t think the idea is necessarily tactically wrong or unprincipled. However, my guess would be that certain regular readers would beg to differ.
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12 Responses to “LCR to launch ‘anti-capitalist’ party in France”
The thing that killed the Respect initiative almost from its inception (all right, one of the things) was the refusal of the SWP to see it as an independent entity and to develop a healthy relationship with it by dissolving itself into it and refounding itself within it as an open tendency. Its not possible to ride two horses in these circumstances so I hope the LCR recognise that and don’t make the same mistake.
It’s true that the SWP was very proprietorial with Respect and used its house style Stalinist-influenced methods to deal with opposing political positions. The LCR takes an utterly different approach and often publishes a range of dissenting views in Rouge. That alone suggests it could be a healthier creation. Another quirk of the LCR is that they try to avoid having skiving self publicists as their public representatives.
Hope they don’t allow the SWP in. Look to Scotland if they need any persuassion. I would never work with the SWP again, individuals in the trade unions because you have to but as an entity – never.
Sounds like good news. I hope it can be repeated here.
A very bad idea that given that the working class in France is not on the offensive but rather on the defensive and facing the prospect of significant atacks by Sarkosy. Given which there is little possibility of important new forces flocking to this ‘new party’.
I note further that the French affiliates of the SWP are already within the LCR.
How is the LCR funded?
Let’s hope it doesn’t all end in larmes
This is a very good initiative and I wish it well. The Sarkozy neo-liberal attacks will need an organised response from left organisations and the broad swirl of independent leftists. They have at least one advantage over the English left.The LCR is a democratic organisation and is used to internal and external debate. The internal rigidities of the SWP mean that rank and file members are often just given the line.This means that, when they are working with others in campaign or within Respect, they “give the line” and find it awkward or even irrelevent to engage in political discussion to win people to their ideas and even to learn something!
How is the LCR funded?
With damned, red gold from Moscow! Oh, wait, no… Er, CIA? Saudi oil money? How about membership subs and income from publications?
And – let’s be fair – the LCR gets state funding, on the same basis as all other French political parties, on a formula based on vote share.
I thought the threshold for state funding was 5%, which the LCR fell short of?
Both the LCR and Lutte Ouvrier got EU money when they were represented in the European Parliament 1999-2004.
The majority of the Ligue are on a high after they got more than the PCF in the Presidentials. But note well, as Prinkipo says, they didn’t get enough (5%)to get the cash for their campaign funding. Hence the constant appeals on their site for dosh.
The idea that the LCR – if you know them – are going to be the self-announced core of a new all-embracing left party in France is frankly ridiculous.
The fact is that the Ligue has never been able to shake off the fact that it – like our own dear IMG – is a rite of passage for a certain kind of brilliant left intellectual, who is handsome and beautiful to boot (er, sorry I was straying there, writes Coatesy, ex-IMG, whose cell of seven in central London contained two LCR types).
Okay, unrelentingly boring and intense lefties on their way to being lawyers, members of the Parti Socialiste or journalists (hence the Le Monde report – it’s stuffed with ex-Liguers).
Does Dave imagine for one minute that Lutte Ouvriere and the PCF are going join this body?
Of and I hear that Bove’s mates are not pleased with the Ligue.