Le Monde: Rebuilding the Left

Despite the relative majority obtained by the New Popular Front during the legislative elections, the French political scene remains marked by divisions and uncertainty. Let us be clear: the gains made by the left in terms of votes and seats are in reality very limited and reflect insufficient work on the programme and on the structures. Only by resolutely addressing these shortcomings will the left parties be able to overcome the upcoming period of turbulence and minority governments, and one day obtain the absolute majority that will allow them to govern the country in a sustainable manner.

The programme adopted by the NFP a few days after its dissolution certainly had the immense merit, compared to the others, of indicating where to find the resources to invest in the future: health, training, research, transport and energy infrastructure, etc. These much-needed investments will increase sharply in the future and there are only two ways to finance them. Either we accept the entry into a new cycle of increasing socialisation of wealth, driven by higher taxes on the most fortunate, as the NFP proposes. Or we reject any tax increase out of ideology, and then rely on private financing, synonymous with inequalities of access and more than dubious collective effectiveness. Driven by staggering private costs, healthcare spending is approaching 20% ​​of GDP in the United States, a disastrous indicator.

The amounts mentioned by the NFP could, however, have been frightening: around €100 billion in taxes and new expenditures over three years, or 4% of GDP. In the long run, these amounts are not excessive: tax revenues have increased in Western and Northern Europe from less than 10% of national income before 1914 to 40-50% since the 1980s-1990s, and it is the rise of the welfare state (education, health, public services, social protection, etc.) that has enabled unprecedented growth in productivity and living standards, whatever conservatives of all eras may have said about it.

The truth is that there are great uncertainties about the timetable and the order of priorities for a left-wing government to come to power. While the demand for social justice is strong in the country, the mobilisation of new resources remains a fragile process from which citizens can withdraw their support at any time. In fact, until it is incontrovertibly demonstrated that billionaires and multinationals are finally being put to work, then it is unthinkable to ask anyone else for additional efforts. However, the NFP programme remains too vague on this crucial point. This is all the more problematic because the left-wing governments of recent decades, lacking a sufficiently precise programme and sufficiently strong collective ownership, have always found themselves giving in to lobbies as soon as they came to power, for example by exempting so-called professional assets and almost all the largest fortunes from the ISF, with the consequence that revenues are ridiculously low compared to what they could and should be. To avoid repeating these mistakes, it will be necessary to involve civil society and trade unions in defending these revenues and the social investments that accompany them. In these matters as in others, slogans cannot replace in-depth work and collective mobilization.

We have similar difficulties with pensions. It doesn’t make much sense to adopt as a slogan that everyone can retire at 62 or even 60, when everyone knows that there is also a condition of contribution duration to obtain a full pension in the French system. A slogan like “42 annuities for all” would make it easier for the country to understand and would clearly say that people with higher education will not retire before they are 65 or 67, while at the same time insisting on the unacceptable injustice of the 64-year pension period of Macron’s reform, which requires, for example, those who started at 20 to contribute for 44 years.

We could multiply the examples. It is good to announce the elimination of Parcoursup, but it would have been even better to describe precisely the alternative, fairer and more transparent system that will succeed it. It is good to denounce the Bolloré media, but it would be better to commit to an ambitious law to democratize the media and challenge all the power of the shareholders.

Let us also mention the proposal to give workers one third of the seats on company boards. This is the most profound and authentically social democratic reform of the NFP programme, but it would benefit from being placed within a broader framework. To enable the redistribution of economic power, it would be necessary to increase the number of seats in large companies to 50%, while limiting the voting rights of the largest shareholders and committing to a real redistribution of assets. Rather than wallowing in superficial rhetorical radicalism, it is time for the left to re-describe the alternative economic system to which it aspires, while acknowledging that things will be done in stages.

On all these issues, only collective work will make it possible to move forward, which requires the creation of a genuine democratic left-wing federation capable of organising deliberation and resolving disputes. We are far from that: over the last few years, the LFI has never stopped wanting to impose its authoritarian hegemony on the left, like the PS of old, but worse, given the refusal of any voting procedure by the rebel leaders. But the left-wing electorate is not fooled: it knows well that exercising power requires above all humility, deliberation and collective work. It is time to respond to this aspiration.

Via The World