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Vest
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Bernard Weiner
Time Out! A Pause for Longer-Range
Thinking
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Kucinich
Standing
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April 24, 2002
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A20
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the Propaganda Battle
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I,
George:
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Absenteeism and Le Pen
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May
Day, 2002
French
Presidential Elections 2002
What is to be Thought?
What is to be Done?
by Alain Badiou, Natasha
Michel, Sylvain Lazarus
What happened above all was Jospin's electoral
defeat and Chirac's very weak performance. That's the point to
leave off from, because Le Pen's score is only its consequence.
Will it still be said, then, ("earthquake,
"shame", etc) that this is a numbing event? Unforeseen,
yes. But not outlandish. Le Pen has been a major elections professional
for twenty years. And the fact is he did not get many more votes
than usual.
Those ravaged by astonishment, by fears
and tears, ought to consider this: parliamentarism is a way of
conceiving politics in which 25% of all people can vote for Le
Pen, just as they can for anyone else. Le Pen is certainly uniform
to the others on any number of points, and not visibly eccentric.
Le Pen is an important man in French parliamentarism, this is
the truth. The only news is that he's made it into the runoff
vote of a presidential election. It's about why this has happened,
and this alone, that the causes have to be examined.
First of all, the parties. The RPR (Rassemblement
pour la republique), the PS (Parti socialiste), the 'gauche plurielle'
('plural left' coalition government, consisting of Greens, Socialists
and Communists). Chirac and Jospin. Should they be absolved?
Should we forget? Should we be rallying behind their panache
as if it were suddenly whitewashed by the success of the old
Vichyite, the old racist, the old anti-Semite, Le Pen?
As for us, faced with the downfall of
minds, the suffocating effects of fears, communalism and cowardice,
we know that in politics there's only firm resolve on the principles...
What do we call a 'political principle'?
To hold to a few maxims, until the end and without letting up,
on points considered fundamental about the situation people are
being subjected to. We hold that these maxims have to be made
into the rule of organized thought and action. That battle be
waged with respect to what they defend, in the sense of a collective
process determined to change the situation.
After all it must be said that we see
no sign whatsoever of any kind of firm resolve on principles
amongst any of the members of the 'plural left', let alone the
RPR.
What we've seen over the past 35 years
is the absence of principles, which has set the stage for the
downfall of minds. Le Pen is only harvesting, within the official
framework of elections and parliamentarism, what has invariably
been sown by successive governments.
Let's give a few specific examples.
1. Under Mitterand, Mauroy (Prime Minister:
1981-1984) and Fabius (PM: 1984-1986), with the complicity of
the PCF (Communist Party), any political reference to the word
'ouvrier' (worker) has been doggedly destroyed. The word 'immigrant'
has been used explicitly to take its place. Le Pen's been said
to 'address the right problems'. Any working-class utterance,
any consideration of factories, has been rejected. The 'modern'
bourgeoisie's opinion has been the alpha and omega of all political
discourses put together. Beregovoy (PM: 1992-1993) did more to
liberalize the financial system than did any of his rightwing
predecessors. Jospin has privatized more companies than Juppe
(PM: 1995-1997). All have torn the public sector asunder. All
have 'modernized' relentlessly. None have cared the least for
people's lives, even less for what they could be thinking about
it all. It's foolish to be whining about the return of the 'populist'
stick. When did you care, dear downcast rulers, about people
and their backbone: the worker? To this bourgeois indifference,
to the cult of finances camouflaged as 'modernization', let's
oppose this principle: no modern progressive politics without
a redrawn and rewritten reference to the figure of the worker.
It's for having liquidated this principle, ever since May 1968,
that the PCF has vanished. We've got to buckle down to the practical
reinvention of the worker figure.
2. In France, there are hundreds of thousands
of people of foreign origins--working and living here--most of
whom are working-class. Under Mitterand, Mauroy, Fabius, Rocard
(PM: 1988-1991), Beregovoy, Balladur (PM: 1993-1995), Chirac,
Juppe, Jospin, with the agreement of the entire 'plural left',
the question of having the State regularize workers has been
made into a question of 'security' and the police. They've been
referred to as 'stowaways'. Detention camps have been created.
The right of asylum has been wiped out. Regrouping of family-members
has been severely limited. The 'Chevenement law' was passed.
In exchange for having a simple piece of paper allowing you to
come and go freely, it demands official 'proof', which can't
be given obviously, of ten years (ten years!) of continual presence
on French territory! Following which you complain about the Front
National's success? Let's start by not imposing its policies,
then! To all of this, principles must be opposed which, for five
years, have been those of the Assembly of 'sans papiers' worker
collectives (those can't live or work legally in France) residing
in the foyers, and of the Organisation politique*: Whomever lives
and works here belongs here. Worker foyers are fine. But: unconditional
regularization of all 'sans papiers' workers.
3. What made Juppe fall in 1997? Who
brought Jospin to power? It was the major December 1995 strike
and workers' movement; with the latter: the energetic action
of 'sans papiers' workers at the Saint Bernard Church sit-in,
combined with intellectuals intervening (alas, all too briefly)
against the Pasqua laws. Yet the movements' opening out to parliament
is still fallacious. Jospin has no principles. He did not regularize
the 'sans papiers'. Nor did he bear in mind the vague and powerful
watchword--"together"-- that had thrown millions of
people onto the streets in 1995. Did he protect the public sector?
Did he reform the schooling system? Did he give the city back
to the mass of those who try to live there by re-industrializing
and re-urbanizing the so-called 'suburbs'? Not in the least.
All he did was pass a law on the 35-hour work week, very useful
indeed for the leisure time of white-collar employees, but a
law that subjects workers to the "flexible" good-will
of bosses, disorganizes their lives and, by and large, lowers
their real salary. And he struck up the 'security' serenade,
as did all the official candidates. To that, we've got to oppose
the following principles: the city's for everyone. One child
= one student. Readable and stable work hours. One must be able
to earn a salary with dignity.
4. Every successive government since
Mitterand has invariably supported the Americans in their increasingly
violent, imperial and cruel ventures. The war against Iraq, the
war against Serbia, the war against Afghanistan... We ask: what
about the basic principle of national independence and international
justice? We're thrilled to see such fiercely devoted defenders
of liberties abounding against the old Vichyite. But we'd like
them to extend their concern to just a slightly vaster horizon.
It isn't coherent to raise the standard of a revolt of souls
against Le Pen while the same soul sees nothing wrong in approving
someone like Bush (as reactionary, on all fronts, as the Front
National) and his war, or Sharon (as brutal in his colonial wars
as was parachutist Le Pen in his own, in Algeria). Are we to
understand that deliberate and delicious liberties are good at
home (save for the 'sans papiers' workers, naturally), but that
elsewhere the militarist galley is the rule? Against all of that,
let's proclaim these principles: complete independence with respect
to American ventures. Dissolution of NATO. Attentive sympathy
to the current political process in Chiapas. A land and a State
for the Palestinians.
There's no mystery. Without respecting
these basic principles, without major political battles organized
in complete independence according to these principles, political
life gets sinister and the downfall continues. Abjection is never
far away. It's only a little more probable today. And its ties
to the electoral system and parliamentarism are increasingly
evident.
We believe that no principle of real
democratic politics can be consistently implemented by any party
or parliamentary group.
These democratic principles regulate
our own action, in complete independence. This is politics without
parties. It's what we call policies made from the people, and
not from positions of power.
Giving strength to such politics in the
troubled times now opening up--that Chirac and Jospin have opened--
is certainly the only durable and efficient means for committing
oneself against the worst. Sobbing, 'I'm ashamed', 'Le Pen, you're
done for,' and the republican quaver are completely useless.
Giving a life, a life of thought, of action, of organization,
to politics of an entirely different kind is the great affair.
Possible? No problem. Immediately.
Alain Badiou
holds the Chair in philosophy at the Ecole normale superieure
in Paris. His most recent work in translation is Ethics:
An Essay on the Understanding of Evil (Peter Hallward,
translator), (Verso, 2001). Sylvain Lazarus's most recent
work in French is L'anthropologie du nom, (Editions du Seuil,
1996) Natasha Michel is a writer. She has published extensively
in French. The three are members of L'Organization politique.
Translated for CounterPunch by Norman
Madarasz.
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