France is headed into a major political opening for the working class and youth. The battle for the April 2027 presidential election is underway.
After ten years as ‘president of the bosses’ attacking living standards, term limits bar Emmanuel Macron from standing again. For now, the capitalist class has no viable successor among the fragments of France’s traditional parties – the result of their hated austerity regimes. Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his anti-austerity formation, La France Insoumise (LFI), are placed to contend for an historic victory. So is Marine Le Pen of the right-populist National Rally (RN).
The mood is angry but complicated. A staggering 91% are unhappy with the state of things (Ipsos, 13 September). ‘Worry’ and ‘uncertainty’ are the dominant feelings; just 17% feel ‘hope’. Le Pen leads polls on around 33% but Mélenchon is making headway. A majority across the spectrum want “real social and political change”. A key task is not just to present a programme promising improved living standards, but convince the disengaged, and those looking to the dead end of the RN, it could be implemented.
Mélenchon has pledged a “government of rupture”. Bringing the retirement age back down to 60, raising the minimum wage, linking pay to inflation, rent controls, 200,000 social homes a year, price controls on staples. Public ownership of the main energy, utility, airport and motorway companies. Rebuilding lost industry and agriculture. A huge emphasis on “ecological planning” – after this year’s wildfires and food contamination scandal – to include transition to 100% renewable energy.
How? Higher tax on corporate profits, 90% tax on income above €400,000, repudiating 18% of government debt, defying obstructive European Union rules, and redrawing the French constitution.
Despite the popularity of such policies, especially on the cost of living, Mélenchon has consistently high disapproval ratings. The whole capitalist establishment, their media especially, is relentless in trying to discredit LFI. But more than any specific attack, it is the breadth and ferocity of the bosses’ opposition that can have deeper effects on consciousness. A key factor will be serious doubt that Mélenchon’s offer could survive that in office.
This can disaffect those beyond his current base. But it also motivated many supporters at this year’s AmFis, LFI’s annual summer school, questioning how to prevent sabotage. Anticipating this, the schedule included subjects like France’s 1936 Popular Front government, and the Allende, Pink Tide, and Syriza ‘governments of rupture’. Unfortunately, few if any lessons for 2027 were drawn from those heroic struggles and defeats.
Notably absent – from any title among over 130 discussions, at an event attracting 10,000 to its Sunday rally – was François Mitterrand’s first presidency. Initial sweeping reforms under mass working-class pressure in 1981-82; a relentless capitalist fightback; high inflation and debt costs; investment strikes; capital flight; legal manoeuvres. By 1983 the project was essentially defeated. Successive governments have gradually unwound it’s very important surviving reforms ever since.
LFI proposes a mixture of limited public ownership within key sectors, and “popular control” – local communities having direct say over private business (and the state). The vision of popular control is loose; a powerful start would be collective, representative structures drawing in workplace groups. The question of ownership is also presented loosely, almost as irrelevant – this is a mistake. The rupture needed is with capitalism, towards socialism.
Mélenchon would nationalise the big three energy firms, for example: to pool their resources, coordinate a green transition – and control prices to fight inflation. But there is no proposal to support his price controls in the big supermarkets with public ownership. Would popular control mean a running battle with Carrefour’s owners hiking other prices, refusing to sell, or other sabotage? And what would stop ‘compliant’ bosses using their profits, including those snuck past the taxman, to fund other economic or political sabotage? Nationalisation.
Merging existing public banks to better direct state investment is another LFI proposal. Most of the finance sector would remain private but more heavily regulated. Mitterrand nationalised nine-tenths of the banks (and one-third of industry) and that was not enough to break the bosses’ resistance. Nationalisation of the whole banking and finance sector, under democratic control, would give more resources against attacks like investment strikes and bond market ransoms.
But nationalising all the biggest companies that dominate the economy – including banking and finance, public services, and the CAC 40 mega-corporations – plus any firms refusing to comply, would eliminate the biggest complications to popular control. It could facilitate a truly democratic and ecological workers’ plan for the economy.
Among other crucial measures would be capital controls, which Mélenchon has called for previously – Mitterrand enacted them too late to prevent capital flight. And consciously appealing to workers internationally to support the new government and replace their own, limiting the ability of other capitalist classes to interfere.
The capitalist state will not lightly accept even Mélenchon’s current policies. Its bureaucratic setup is designed, in the absence of serious pressure, to block many of them. Mélenchon is correct to call for mass mobilisation both before and after the election to force these questions.
After multiple rounds of coordinated national strikes against Macron’s pension cuts resulted in frustration, the working class is looking to the political plane. But there is no artificial separation. The capitalists fear the consequences of Mélenchon’s election far more than his programme, which at present would curtail their profits but leave their system intact. He would be encircled from the get-go. But his victory would electrify millions of workers and youth. Even partial gains would cause the appetite to grow with the eating, and blockages provoke furious struggle.
The campaign would be greatly aided if trade unionists could connect with LFI in a democratic, structured fashion. The relationship between Mélenchon and the union leaderships is fraught. Even if leaders refuse though – it would be harder for them to act against Mélenchon or his supporters if he made a bold public appeal for their members to get involved in big numbers.
In turn, trade unionists – and many others – are likely to respond best to an offer of democratic involvement. LFI has no democratic structures, governed de facto by its parliamentary group. Unconvinced voters could easily feel sceptical for this reason too: Mélenchon says he’s for us to control society – but he doesn’t even trust us to control LFI?
The voluntary ‘Action Committees’ that carry out election campaigning in each area would be the natural places to receive delegates, debate programme, candidates and tactics, and elect representatives to regional and national bodies. Mélenchon is mistaken to disagree with building such a party, but supporters could begin regardless. A mass party of the working class and youth would transform struggle in France.
Le Pen, meanwhile, offers divide and rule writ large. Her ‘national priority’ doctrine would put French citizens first for social housing, public jobs and certain benefits – while continuing harsh austerity. Her base is built on the despair and alienation of downtrodden working-class voters in left-behind areas.
Most of the capitalist class consider Le Pen too destabilising – but if no better candidate emerges, could well swing behind her. In a run-off with Mélenchon, that would be certain. Even now, fear of an RN government will ramp up pressure for ‘unity’ against her at any cost. But the cost can be precisely strengthening the right.
One trap is abandoning key parts of a pro-worker programme, damaging the consciousness of layers looking to struggle, in the name of ‘unity’ or ‘numbers’. LFI has largely avoided this. But its alliances have often crumbled facing important issues, like proposing a prime minister in 2024’s triply hung parliament.
The previous coalitions LFI led, NUPES and the current New Popular Front (NFP), involved the pro-capitalist Socialist Party (PS), the Greens (LE), and the Communist Party (PCF). The PS in particular recovered excessive electoral weight and potentially ‘left’ sheen through NFP, due to disproportionate allocation of safe seats. This will have miseducated some layers as to its real significance and role – a second trap.
A third trap is cutting off an appeal to the working class just by association with parties that have betrayed them. This is true of the PS above all. It is welcome, therefore, that the new alliance LFI is seeking looks to have an improved basis. LFI national coordinator Manuel Bompard told Tribune that only LE and the PCF have been invited to join the ‘New Popular Alliance’, jointly campaigning for a Mélenchon presidency.
The best starting point for defeating Le Pen is LFI, the largest and most combative left grouping, making a clear, socialist appeal to the working class as a whole – in programme, in campaigning on the ground, and in a principled, class approach to alliances. But if a Mélenchon presidency is the result, the fight will have only just begun.
James Ivens