Communism Lives In The France Unbowed

On November 18th, 2023, we published an address to clarify the presence and sensibility of many communists who have joined the France Unbowed, whether or not they had previously been members of the PCF, as communism is nobody's property. This new edition contains the essentials of the old, but given the accelerating political situation following the European Parliament elections, the dissolution of the National Assembly, legislative elections, and an uncertain government, it was necessary for us to update our appeal and clarify these new developments.

On Personal Commitment in the Revolution

Communism has long inspired millions. At times it has generated a simple sympathy, a curiosity, an attachment to its ideals. At other times it has led people to engage in political activity, to join groups that claim for themselves communist ideology. And also, at other times, communism has provoked political disengagement born of disenchantment. But what lay at the heart of this movement toward communism? It is the idea that this society is not good enough, that it must change, that we cannot live well while misery abounds on every side, that we cannot save the planet without saving it from the predation of the reigning economic system. There is an aspiration for a common accord, a common life, common rights, and a common project of becoming truly human. And this aspiration corresponds well to the meaning of communism: the real movement that abolishes the existing order to free a better one to emerge.^[1]

Communism is not only an ideology, but has given rise to political parties that concretely work to transform society. This is what I call "communist politics". This communism no longer exists in the PCF, but lives in the France Unbowed. And we, the Unbowed Communists, we are its militant materiality. That is the hypothesis of this address.

The PCF Has Passed On, The France Unbowed Has Taken Up

The PCF was once a force for transformation. It pushed our society towards human flourishing. With the Popular Front, it imposed on capital a better redistribution of the wealth produced by the working class. During the Resistance, it joined in the fight against Nazism and construction of a program to wrest from Capital the control of many common goods implemented after the war like social security and decolonization—a commitment that the Socialist Party (PS) would later betray.^[2] At the same time, the PCF developed "municipal communism": a period where public goods like pools, gyms, and theaters were built; where patronage of the arts was part of the political agenda.^[3]

And capitalism adapted—it counter-attacked. It internationalized exploitation, escaping the national conflicts where social struggle threatened it. Capital financialized, especially in France, looking to sell off whatever of value it could find in our lives. It increasingly separated citizens from economic decisions, following Margaret Thatcher's infamous dictum that there is no alternative to capitalism (TINA).^[4]

The PCF failed to understand the strategic consequences of this evolution in capitalism. We could say that the Party ceased to be Marxist because it failed to concretely analyze the society that generated these developments.

The movement of May '68 constituted the first global opposition to capitalism and the PCF confronted the question of how to take power in France. It had a strong position, and decided to propose to the rest of the French left a common program and to unite in action to advance this program. The content of this program was heavily marked by the statist and productivist approach to social transformation, and under-estimated the need for popular intervention in the process of change. This union of the left at the beginning of the 1970s was made with a Socialist Party that had been reduced to a mere 5% of support in the presidential election of 1969, notably due to the political weakness of its position on colonialism.

When the balance of power shifted in favor of social democracy, this form of alliance cracked. Left-wing governments beginning in 1983 progressively began to agree with the right on economic policy. This deviation led to its ultimate ignominy of the presidency of François Hollande who, on assuming office, declared he would construct "Supply-Side Socialism", totally forgetting every popular demand.

The French Communist Party lay on its sickbed in this liberal delirium. The people understood that they had nothing to gain from this left.^[5] Macron euthanized it with his "at the same time", his centrism that accomplished nothing for the left except to drag socialist voters to the right. The PCF drowned in nostalgia for the past, in its fixation on maintaining left unity at any cost, in abandoning the cause of social transformation in favor of saving its electeds—an objective that has little to do with revolution and the general interest of the people.^[6]

Does this mean that communism has disappeared from the French political scene as it has in other western countries? No, not in France: Jean-Luc Mélenchon rescued it.

The Peoples' Era and Communism

I know how many attacks these words expose me to, but why is Jean-Luc Mélenchon singled out for opprobrium? Before he is burnt, may we at least consider the facts? Of course Mélenchon's objective was not to save communism per se, but as he himself has said, to preserve in France a force of the radical left capable of transforming society.

By writing The Peoples' Era in 2014—a revolutionary theory for a "citizens' revolution"—Mélenchon performed a Marxist analysis of contemporary capitalism and its crisis. He redefined the notion of "the people", those for whom revolution is now necessary. He shed light on the objective necessity to break with the capitalist order. This break, this politics of rupture, is perfectly communist. And this is the heart beating in all the work of the France Unbowed: to unite the people around a program of rupture.

The fact that many communists quit the PCF to join the France Unbowed is nothing but the logical consequence of these facts, and is confirmed by their gesture, their choice. The Unbowed inspired them to believe that there is always a way towards revolution. If we do not want to live in this society of injustice, discrimination, and destruction of all living things, where can we go today in France other than the Unbowed who alone and  concretely both in theory and practice affirms that it is impossible to continue living in this system and that we must break with it?

All the communists who quit the PCF to join the France Unbowed did not quit communism, they joined together where they recognized that they could continue living and struggling. They were nothing but loyal to their deepest commitments. And they found communists from different backgrounds: Marxists of various stripes or even those simply attached to the social and human project of the common good. To what end can we who declare ourselves communists, to what end can we be useful in the strategic development of the France Unbowed? It seems to me that it is in the question of relating to the people and relating the people to social transformation.

It is impossible to transform a society without the conscious action of the people themselves.

The record of the Soviet Union clearly demonstrates this. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union wanted without a doubt to achieve the good of the people, but it never demanded the people to participate or even consult on what route to take. The Party killed all individual initiative in the social construction of its system and collapsed, like the Berlin wall, without external intervention.

Given that in the October Revolution the soviets themselves were means for the people to make the revolution, the installation of the singular Party over and against the soviets robbed the people of their liberty.

In France, the history was different. The question of the Revolution was treated differently by the projects of the Communist and the Socialist parties. Each party was marked by its relation to the wider world: the former linked to the USSR and the latter to European social democracy. We could say revolution opposed to reformism, but neither Soviet communism nor European social democracy were capable of achieving a society that satisfied the people. The question of overcoming capitalism remains before us but all this history of the various left factions in France allows us to better understand that the fundamental question is of whether to even attempt an overthrow, or merely to accommodate ourselves to this system. Today, there is one left of rupture and another of accompaniment. The choice between these two cannot be done except by the conscious intervention of the people. The presidential election of 2022 was a first attempt, but a greater one remains to be made.

The Citizens' Revolution: The Left's New Political Project

The electoral victories of the united left were won on the basis of alliances in which social democracy dominated, at least from 1981 when François Mitterrand surpassed the PCF. Despite several social and democratic advances, the social-democratic program never attacked the foundation of the capitalist system which generates endless discrimination, poverty, precarity, and ecocide.

And the people learned a simple and obvious lesson: right and left are the same, they advance the same politics. The citizens' revolution advanced by Jean-Luc Mélenchon turned all this over with a thundering "Drive them all out!" Through the three presidential campaigns of 2012, 2017, and 2022, the new political project carried by Mélenchon as candidate gathered momentum: 11%, 19.5%, and finally 22% of the vote. Each time the political program carried by these campaigns gave the people hope and a radically different political discourse, a break with the left of the past.

But we did not win, and so the people have not experienced the putting into practice of our political alternative at their service and in defense of our planet.

Yet in 2022, during the legislative elections that followed the presidential campaign, Mélenchon once again politically innovated and proposed the New Popular, Social, and Ecological Union (NUPES). This new union of the left allowed for a sole candidate in 577 constituencies, something never seen before. This union was founded on the basis of a program of rupture with the existing order, a program that enumerated 650 concrete proposals.

Of course, this was all possible thanks to the new balance of power created by the presidential election: 22% for the radical left, 4.6% for the Greens, 2.3% for the PCF, 1.7% for the PS. This balance of power was not acceptable to the parties of the old left even though they were all able to maintain their presence in the National Assembly. And so they multiplied their attacks against the France Unbowed in the name of breaking the NUPES.

They pretended that their agreement was merely about the division of districts! And their signature under the program of 650 proposals, that meant nothing? In a way, a few months after the vote, they told their voters, "our deal was just to get some candidates elected." Again, the legacy parties of the old left repeated the same error that led to mass disaffection: "they think only of themselves!" How can we explain this approach? Certainly the interests of each party were at stake. But how can we avoid questioning the sincerity of their commitments, given that they signed onto a program that rejects compromise with the status quo and yet their political practice for years has been to make concessions and compromise with the powers that be? Did they really believe that it was possible to break with the system?

In fact, it is the overall revolutionary project of the France Unbowed that they cannot accept, because it contains an implicit criticism of everything that these parties have done for the last forty years. And it is Jean-Luc Mélenchon in particular that they cannot stand, because he incarnates everything that they have renounced in their political careers. Call it the revolution or the general interest—it's the same thing. And likewise it is the Unbowed Communists who provoke the opprobrium, the at times hateful reaction of members of the PCF; they do not reproach us for leaving their party, but for assuming the revolutionary role that the PCF abandoned. It is not for nothing that secretary Roussel refused to withdraw his candidacy for the presidency in 2022 and acted a spoiler—preventing Mélenchon from facing Macron in the second round by a narrow margin. Roussel could not accept that the France Unbowed succeeded where the PCF failed.

To Govern France Today

The NUPES sequence is reproduced today with the New Popular Front (NFP).

The nature of the attacks against the NFP confirm that, first of all, the political line that is in question. For the right wing of the Socialist Party—roughly 49% of their ranks—the salient quality of the prime minister should not be the resolute application of the program they were chosen to advance, but their capacity to build a stable governing coalition to the right of the NFP. To be clear, as Lucie Castets said July 25th on BFM TV: there are no "left" Macronists. The aforesaid coalition is therefore clearly a governing alliance with the right.

And how could such an alliance be justified? Is the idea that we could do a little something social-ish, for example? A little ecology? A little humanity towards migrant workers, perhaps? No, after years of workers' struggles that never won grand victories at the national level, there is no more room for popular concessions in the capitalist system. Today the criminalization of union activity and the repression of every social movement that contests the social order has replaced the captains of industry who said from time to time, "you gotta cut them some slack."

Is the justification that these right-wing Socialists are trying to oppose the far-right National Rally (RN)? If so, this is a horrible approach: the only way to oppose the rise of the RN is to change the political course of the last decades. A recent study of far-right voters showed how the hatred of immigrants has been assumed not on the basis a rejection of all foreigners, but because it seems politically easier to expel foreigners than to attack the power and privilege of the rich and corporate interests.^[7] And so it is clear what remains for us to accomplish: to show that it is possible to govern differently and respond to real needs. But to do so requires presenting a corresponding program, to bring it to a vote, to try and apply it, and to call on mass mobilization to bring it to pass.

This is, put simply, democracy. And this democracy requires that the people are at every step the actors of social transformation. Indeed, our positive example is the original Popular Front where the PCF, without participating in the government directly, encouraged strikes. Their popular demands led to major social victories. We want to avoid the negative example of 1981, when left-wing political leaders asked the unions not to go on strike so as not to interfere with the ministers' actions.

The Presidential Election

Hold the line. Without popular intervention, no change is possible. What we have described above concerning the legacy parties of the old left shows that they are incapable of maintaining a left coalition for political change. These parties cannot reason other than as actors on the stage of the National Assembly and therefore they want to govern at any price. They look for compromises and alliances with the right. This is why they denigrate the France Unbowed. They prefer, for example, to complain about the internal negotiations of the NFP than to decry President Macron's rejection of universal suffrage.

Carole Delga, a leader of the Socialist right-wing, tweeted something interesting: she said that "the violent expulsion of some Unbowed leaders and the egotistical obsession of Jean-Luc Mélenchon with the presidency sacrifices the emergence of a progressive left that could be credible in the eyes of the French people." The reality is that the calamitous term of Socialist president François Hollande led the Socialist candidate in 2022, Anne Hidalgo, to get less than 2% of the vote. This surely has nothing to do with "egotistical obsession." Therefore, the presidential elections of 2027 are not at all the present objective. And we could say the same for the Green Party (EELV) after their results in the European elections. This explains the constant, personal denigration of Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

Let us consider the question of the balance of power within the coalitions we have participated in. We could understand that the NUPES appeared unbalanced to some. But the NFP is different, and yet the Socialist Party acts like it is the strongest member of the coalition and can therefore suspend the radicality of the program in the name of unprincipled compromise. The France Unbowed has never been an obstacle to unity. We gave one hundred more  constituencies to the PS in 2024 than we did in 2022. We were the first to announce the evening of the first round that we would withdraw our candidates systematically wherever necessary to prevent the RN from winning. We withdrew all our proposals for prime minister, supporting the PCF proposal of Huguette Bello and finally the PS proposal of Lucie Castets.

And despite it all, the France Unbowed is blamed for chaos and "brutalizing" the political scene. Let's take a little detour and consider the vocabulary deployed in this discourse, words like "brutalization" and "appeasement".

I would like to begin with praise for the communiqué published on July 24th by the Association for the Taxation of financial Transactions and Citizen's Action (ATTAC) that called for the immediate nomination of a prime minister from the ranks of the NFP and for President Macron to "stop brutalizing democracy." What a beautiful use, at least for once, of this word. Just as well Frédéric Lordon rendered the word "appeasement" when he explained that in bourgeois society the only form of appeasement possible is "bourgeois appeasement". One can easily imagine a big boss demanding workers to stop their strike in the name of appeasement, assuring them that they don't need to strike to gain a pay raise.

Now let's return to the core issue.

In effect, the only politician truly brutal is President Macron, who draws on the most dictatorial aspects of the Fifth Republic. He alone rules the land. He issues orders whenever he pleases, trampling even over his own ministers. He alone dissolved the National Assembly. He cares nothing for the result of the election that he himself called. He accepts the resignation of a government and demands that they continue to govern. He affirms that, a priori, it is not possible for a prime minister to question what was done before his nomination—speaking obliquely about raising the retirement age to 64. This reinforces the theory put forward in The Peoples' Era: because the presidency in this system holds all power, change can in fact come by winning the presidential election. This includes putting an end to the Fifth Republic.

This theory has nothing to do with "egotistical obsession" with the presidency. It in no way impedes any other left political initiative from winning, as has been demonstrated by Mélenchon's steadfast support for the NUPES and NFP. But we have seen that the parties of the old left understand that it is difficult to constitute an absolute majority in the National Assembly without compromising with the right. The rules of the presidential election are different and the importance of this election, understood to be decisive, opens the door to electoral participation for those who unfortunately don't usually vote. To gain such a decisive and transformational victory, it is necessary to work first of all with the support of the people.

The False Excuses

Once again, the parties of the old left cannot publicly admit their will to compromise and exclude the "extremists" from their coalition, especially since François Hollande's disastrous term remains a painful memory. And so the PS, PCF, and EELV decided to systematically attack the man and the movement who have for ten years rebuilt the radical left and opened the possibility of an alternative to liberal power. They chose a scapegoat.This man talks too loud, tweets too much, he is hegemonic, obsessed by the presidency, remember? They even called him an antisemite. Let us remember first of all the man who has suffered these unjustified, disgraceful insults. He talks too loud?

What does it mean to say that "the police kill", for example? How should he have said it, "there are some young men who have died in neighborhoods the same moment that police interventions occurred... but we do not know if there is some legitimate cause, etc."? Truly, is there a problem with the police in this country or not? International courts of human rights have denounced French policy in this matter, and we know well that in the Yellow Vests, urban uprisings, and mass union mobilizations the only way the powers that be could push their agenda was through repression and curtailing free speech. And so at the end of this fruitless debate, when Mélenchon concluded that "we must totally reform the police", finally no one complained about his tone because they knew he was right.

Hegemonic?

Nothing compelled the France Unbowed to propose a political agreement for the legislative elections of 2022, an accord which allowed the legacy parties to maintain their presence in the National Assembly—hardly an evident outcome. Nothing, that is, but the conviction that a majority was possible to actually address the needs of the people. Nothing again obliged the France Unbowed to propose a unified electoral list for the European elections with a Green leader, without asking for any more deputies in return. We already mentioned above how we maintained a consistent and solid anti-RN line in the legislative elections. And if we are going to speak of hegemony, frankly, must we not remind those who complain today of what life was like in the era when the Socialist Party dominated the left? None of this makes sense.

Antisemitic?

This is without a doubt the most disgusting accusation, excuse me for I cannot find another word to describe it. What case has been brought? What judgment can confirm this accusation? Some have claimed that, by his denunciation of Islamophobia, he "sides" with Muslims against Jews. They cannot see the world except through the lens of warring religions.

But in general it seems that with these accusations, these attempts to render invisible the far-right government of Israel  which wages colonial warfare for decades and for months has massacred tens of thousands of people in Gaza without any justification. The "March for the Republic and Against Antisemitism" organized by President of the Assembly Braun-Pivet and President of the Senate Larcher on November 12th, 2023 mark the summit of this public opinion operation to, as CGT Secretary Sophie Binet put it, whitewash the antisemitism of the party of Le Pen.

The Socialist Party: Back to Hollande

If we want to advance the cause of popular union, we must clarify the nature of the difficulties posed by our potential partners. If the Socialists' charge of antisemitism is really unfounded, we must consider what they really stand for on the international scene. Concerning Palestine, they were slow to call for a ceasefire, initially calling for a "humanitarian" ceasefire. This demonstrates their Atlanticist position and pro-American orientation. It's not for nothing that in February 2000, the Socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin called Hezbollah's cross-border raid "terrorist" while Gaullist president Jacques Chirac merely denounced it as a "blunder". Frankly, we have the impression if the roles were reversed, had Jospin been president and Chirac prime minister, that France would have followed the USA into the war on Iraq. And if Nicolas Sarkozy is the first president in French history who broke with the French diplomatic tradition of supporting the construction of a Palestinian state, François Hollande, his successor, hastily continued the same line—abandoning the defense of popular self-determination and respect for UN resolutions.

International relations cannot be founded on anything other than law, lest they be merely partisan alliances of convenience in what the United States calls the "clash of civilizations."^[8] Certainly, on this question the program of the NUPES clarified who was for and against leaving NATO. But all who signed onto the program agreed to respect UN resolutions and reject the concept of the "clash of civilizations". As a matter of fact, today we can see signatories have not stayed true to their word.

In French politics, we're all familiar with the Socialists' reservations concerning retirement at 60, changes to labor law, the use of lethal weapons against protesters—in fact, concerning all the issues that have been the subject of laws or decrees during François Hollande's term, particularly the El Khomri and Cazeneuve laws. The “right to visit” invoked by Jospin with regard to François Mitterrand's record no longer exists.

Olivier Faure's leadership of the PS today is in question, he appears to be a prisoner of his opposition. The party congress he convened in 2022 did not “settle” on a political line, and ended in endless compromise everywhere. His opposition is composed of many regional and departmental “notables”. They have no interest in winning the presidential election. They are only concerned about their parochial power, and are probably more worried about a possible Unbowed victory, which they believe would destabilize them. They sometimes present their local alliances as the best means to rebuff the RN, but in Occitania, Carole Delga has in no way prevented the RN from conquering many formerly Socialist constituencies and municipalities. Valérie Rabault, former president of the Socialist group in the French National Assembly, was also recently defeated in the 2024 legislative elections in Tarn-et-Garonne.

The Green Confusion

The EELV are more complex, as their organization is not unified ideologically overall: their unity is on the importance of ecology alone. It is not for nothing that they recently changed their name to be "The Ecologists". But what is their objective? Bring together all the partisans of ecology whether left or right? In any case, they entertain a confusing ambiguity. There is already a "political ecology" tendency within their party who oppose the proponents of green and liberal compatibility. Unfortunately, capitalism is driving us to the destruction of our planet. Are they willing to recognize this? The question remains theirs to answer.

Marine Tondelier called for a united left candidate in the 2027 presidential elections, and we must recognize that for her it must have been difficult to accept, after Yannick Jadot's poor showing in his presidential bid, the virtual impossibility of an Ecologist presidency. The low score of the Greens in the European elections doubtless reinforced this decision. Concerning coalitions, the Ecologists do not want the Unbowed to become too powerful but they also know that they have nothing to gain from the Socialists. This led them to reject Socialist attempts to marginalize the Unbowed within the New Popular Front.

The Republic of Roussel

What can we say of Fabien Roussel? It's fair to observe that, compared with the rest of the NUPES or NFP, he's the most consistent in signing agreements that he calls into question a few weeks later in order to promote alliances with at least the liberal left, if not worse. In his last presidential campaign he distilled the elements furthest from what we would call communism.

His participation in the protests of police unions who demanded control over the judiciary was already quite a statement, and his attitude towards the Yellow Vests and urban uprisings is hardly reassuring. When Roussel waxes on about steak, good wine, and barbecue, some in the PCF might forgive the image of a good-ole-boy a bit removed from politics. When he opposes the France that works to the France on welfare, he is utterly removed from any Marxist thought and therefore the conquest of capital by the working class.

But when he broke with the Palestine solidarity movement and marched with the far-right "against antisemitism", we can understand why many in the PCF no longer could follow him. They were simply horrified. His defeat in his own district demonstrated that his approach does not actually win over the far-right. The electorate prefers the genuine article.

There is unfortunately no solution within the PCF to change anything. Those who declare their disagreement with Roussel, those who resemble the Unbowed but decide to stay within the party because they believe they can play the democratic game within and form a new majority do so against all evidence. The party-form shows here its uselessness, and condemns the minority to express its disagreement which never moves the party line. It is for this reason that we invite members of the PCF suffering under this situation to join us as communists in the France Unbowed.

The PS, EELV and PCF must question their posture of "neither nor". Jean-Luc Mélenchon's readiness on the eve of the first round of the legislative elections to announce at 8 p.m. that Unbowed candidates would strategically withdraw to prevent the RN from winning forced everyone else to do the same, to the point where the media, in their commentary between the two rounds, stopped equivocating the far-right and far-left. Of course, the President's decision to join this anti-RN front prompted this change in attitude. But the media didn't wait long after the elections to re-launch the "neither nor". Will our left partners take responsibility for encouraging this discourse and friendly fire?

The Fascist Menace

This question is even more important given the gathering strength of far-right ideas in our country and around the world. Macron played the sorcerer's apprentice by dissolving the National Assembly the same night that the RN surged at the ballot box. Put bluntly: many of us thought at that moment the President was handing France to the far-right. The ghost of Italy approached. Yet again, the political intelligence of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the France Unbowed foiled this possibility: firstly, by building up the New Popular Front; secondly, by systematically withdrawing candidates in the second round. This caused the defeat of the RN.

We were greatly relieved to see the French people refuse to be governed by racism, exclusion, and hatred of the other. We should never forget that great refusal. But the RN still got 10.6 million people to vote for them in the first round of this election. The threat remains that they could come to power on their own or with the help of the right. The far-right does not gain ground because of some intense campaign of Marine Le Pen—the comedian on TF1 each night does well to present her lounging in the sunshine with a cocktail in hand. The RN has nothing to say or do: it is the right in power who are principally responsible for the rise of the far-right.

Interior Minister Darmanin debated Le Pen and found her a bit "soft" on law and order! Edouard Philippe, the former Prime Minister, plans a special law and exceptional measures targeting Muslims in France! The Senate has voted to abolish public medical aid and social benefits for foreign families residing in France for less than five years! All these proposals are contained in the RN program. Since September 2023, Sarkozy has publicly called for the normalization of Le Pen as a "republican" figure.

And at the demonstration on November 12 in the streets of Paris, the entire political class marched in a procession where Le Pen and Zemmour took center stage alongside two former Presidents of the Republic and four former Prime Ministers. No, not the whole political class! The France Unbowed did not march. And the strongest trade unions and associations did not march either!

The CGT took a position at that time, as it did when the National Assembly was dissolved, which changed the situation. Its campaigns to denounce the social deception of the RN are important, and its commitment to the NFP was a further step forward in bringing together within the union those who have not always voted the same way. Between the two rounds of the legislative elections, Macron rallied to the barrage against the RN. Votes on the organization of the National Assembly confirmed this barrage. But the position of the right is fragile, it wants to try and keep power but more than anything it fears the Unbowed, its unified initiatives on the left, its steadfast resolve to enact a radical social, ecological and democratic program.

At the time of writing, Macron has still not called on Lucie Castets to form a government. The substance of his attitude must be made clear: he cannot accept a government that would go back on the measures he has previously taken concerning retirement, unemployment reform and wages, and he cannot accept that all these measures be financed by taxing the rich and distributing the wealth produced in our country in a different way.

And so he must isolate the France Unbowed and fight it relentlessly. Will the leaders of the PS, EELV, and PCF take up his discourse concerning the "neither-nor" or accusations of antisemitism? They have a weighty responsibility. We might modify a bit the words of Frantz Fanon to tell them: "when you hear bad things about the Unbowed, prick up your ears, they're talking about you". In truth, there is no alternative to this government and its policies without the France Unbowed. Be warned, today the line "anyone but Mélenchon" could drag us into the abyss.

The Demands of Capital

But let us return and review the great chain of causes. The rise of the far right is first and foremost a necessity today for those who govern. I'm talking, of course, about financial capitalism. It demands ever-greater exploitation, ever-greater financial and short-term profitability. This mad race is exhausting the planet and all humanity. It is profoundly changing our lives, our modes of production and distribution, our relationship to work and our affective relations.

This mad race is generating more than just discontent, all over the planet, whatever the hemisphere. But for how long can capitalism impose its law? One thing is certain: in many Western countries, right-wing parties can no longer muster a majority to carry out this policy. And this underpins the need to build coalitions between the right and the far right, so that together they can manage the interests of capitalism. This is the order of the day in our country, where the right alone can no longer muster a majority.

To achieve this, they need an ideological consensus on a shared worldview. Macron excels at this: his credo is “decivilization”. All fascist thinking begins with this: characterize the situation as one of decadence, and rally everyone to the cause of fighting it.

The conflictuality of class relations disappears. You want work? “Cross the street!" And individual victimization is constant. Remember the President's remarks during the COVID crisis, when he reproached “the complacency of the French people”. Pétain said the same in 1940: “Our defeat came from laxity. The spirit of enjoyment destroys what the spirit of sacrifice has built up”. For the spirit of enjoyment, Macron has found the equivalent: we need to abandon “abundance”. Such empty, moralizing discourse is a scam—it hides who is the judge of moral values. The concept of the “clash of civilizations” is the best example: where is the good and where is the evil?

In reality, their formula is: “What's good for the United States is good for the world”. But for how long? In politics the only moral lesson to heed ought be: “I say what I do and I do what I say”—in short, the exact opposite of how the old left operated. But the aforementioned moralist discourse pollutes political debate with a whole series of presuppositions that take us far from the revolutionary struggle.

For example, I have already mentioned the problem of appeasement. It amounts to denying any relationship of conflictuality in our society, and thereby disarming the people, since everything is supposed to be simple, common-sense, “trust us”, “don't worry, we'll take care of everything”. Similarly, the antisemitism campaign aims to adopt a moralism in place of a political judgment on the relationship between two states, where one occupies and massacres the other. And what can we say about Macronist discourse on the rearmament of our country, which equates the possibility of waging war on the ground in a country with pro-natalist policy?

Continue Building Hope

To depoliticize public life is to prepare the nation for fascism. Laval—who presided over the Vichy government—did he not claim to be non-ideological, simply a pragmatist? On the contrary, we want to inspire hope in all our fellow-citizens. Yes, politics can be done in service to life. Class warfare is difficult, but we can win. 105,000 marched in Paris "against antisemitism" at the behest of the right and the old left—that's not really so many. And of course the people did not turn out because they saw that the RN was present.

Popular mobilization is strong when it comes to defending what is the basis of popular unity, namely the social republic. 2,500,000 turned out for the large demonstration against the reform of the retirement age. Young people and working-class neighborhoods mobilized strongly both in the European parliamentary elections and during the legislative elections. Our position on Palestine was felt as a need for solidarity with a people denied their identity, victims of a colonial war and an unbearable massacre. But the Palestinians have also become for many the symbol of all those who are excluded and discriminated against. The social basis for a change in society still exists; it has not disappeared since the 2022 presidential vote. With it, we must build a victorious movement.

Popular Union

Only popular unity can assure this victory. In other words, the mobilization of social movements is indispensable to the success of the revolution. These can be said to be independent of political parties yet always coordinating political action with the left as far as the exigencies of social transformation demand. Today unions win at the workplace: pay raises, for example. Unfortunately, at the national level they have lost major battles. Consider the case of the retirement reform: the unity of the unions was not enough to win. Syndicalists should reflect on their strategy and tactics: it must be the lack of substantive unity with political actors that was missing. And we must also consider new forms of struggle. The debate has already begun. Specifically, we must confront the question of the new production processes that are hard to immobilize and how to oppose the accumulation of profits "come what may". We must neither hinder nor presume to plan social explosions. We must prepare to accompany and assist them. Misery is on the march all across France, how long can we stand it?

The second problem to work out is what political formation can win. The impasses inside the NUPES and the NFP clearly reflect an unwillingness on the part of our partners to accept the idea that the strongest force in the radical left today is the France Unbowed. Without veering into sectarian infighting, we must draw attention to how hard it is for these formations to admit that the time has come to leave the old left behind.The best way to proceed is simply to act in concert concerning concrete demands both nationally and locally. Avoid forming local committees on the pattern of national ones if their composition brings together the same figures that stymie effective action nationally. Establish hubs where the Unbowed can politically build, struggle, and reflect with those around them. We must remain open to those with personal, ecological, socialist, or communist commitments yet do not find themselves in the same political orientations or national organizations.

We should not proselytize but sincerely and substantially debate. With the Unbowed Communists I have had the opportunity to visit the departments of the Eastern-Pyrenees and Aisne where I discussed communism with various comrades. We talked about my convictions and proposals, but I did not tell them to join our association—we discussed ideas. And still, several comrades parted with a remark, "Perhaps I am a communist after all." These exchanges were mutually enriching and inspired confidence in our capacity to build together.

When it comes to concrete action, the form often called "gaseous" of our local action groups forces us to decide and act as we see fit in service of our common cause. There are problems with what some laud as the "democratic" form of internal organization. We do not want to adopt the same structures that lead to the status quo, we want to serve the general interest of our fellow-citizens. When it comes to democracy, some try and argue that since we call for a democratic Sixth Republic that we must build our movement using the same structures. But these are two different projects: the work of a state and a revolutionary movement are necessarily different. In the latter, diversity is respected as enriching but must always be put in service of our common action. Our situation is difficult, but there are still strong social forces in France. The rejection of the RN on July 7th demonstrates this. These social forces can count on an organization and program preparing a new way forward for a social republic that alone can guarantee liberty, equality, and fraternity.

Do Better

To make a revolution, we must continually return to the Real and study its evolution. It's hard not to salute Jean-Luc Mélenchon's theoretical contribution to left-wing philosophical and political thought, the term “left” here naming what has always been the popular choice for the refusal of the right. How long has it been since we've seen politicians who think about the world and its contradictions and propose a way forward? For a long, very long time. I'm convinced, as I said earlier in this text, that the real hatred expressed towards Jean-Luc Mélenchon by people who claim to be on the left stems from the fact that they see in him the very embodiment of all they have renounced.

In his latest book, Do Better, the introduction of the notion of the “noosphere”, for example, reflects on the evolution of knowledge in our society: its storage, dissemination, and appropriation. The noosphere is the domain of human mental activity. The digitization of human knowledge and its interactive use allows everyone to contribute to it, and the growing number of human beings on our planet of human beings on our planet offers dizzying prospects for the development of knowledge and know-how, which should make it possible to organize the possible development of human activity on our planet.

These reflections build upon those of The Peoples' Era which already innovated an analysis of the essentially networked character of contemporary life and social reproduction. In all areas of our lives, capitalism can be contested and checked by the construction of movements that put the human collective before private interests. This requires a constant evolution of revolutionary strategy and an ongoing intellectual, personal, and collective labor beyond petty career ambitions.

The Communist Contribution

And we communists, we too have an essential work to perform in service of our movement. Take for example the ongoing debate concerning our understanding of work: many on the left and also on the right are raising questions. I recall a book written by Lucien Sève called Marxism and the Theory of Personality. Although I read it long ago, I remember a critical lesson: to understand who we are personally, we must consider our schedule. Work takes at least a third of all our time alive.In this debate again we confront vapid, moralizing discourses about work. Sarkozy promoted the ideology of merit and reward. But what can we say to those who call themselves leftists and render judgments about those who work and those who do not, weighing their worth? Thank the unemployed and those who are killed on the job—an expression not merely symbolic. Thank those who work boring jobs, the underpaid, the precarious, and immigrants kept in France by the bosses' need for labor. It's time, on the other hand, to learn from the changes we've seen in people's relationship with work since the COVID crisis.

Remember "quiet quitting", or "the great resignation"? All those jobs deserted because they were too life-consuming and poorly paid, all those jobs that were once the object of a commitment to the general interest but are now losing their meaning given the general deterioration in the collective working conditions? All those managers and employees who aspire to leave the big cities to buy houses in the countryside and work from home? Do we need to name these jobs? Restaurant workers, nurses, teachers, young graduates in ecocidal industries, etc. All this demonstrates the aspiration of workers to have greater autonomy and mobility, to choose for themselves their work, and the confrontation of that aspiration with the contemporary reality of the bosses' constraints and control.

We propose, both as communists and as promoters of the program The Future in Common, an expanded and professional social security. The point of this scheme is to create new conditions that enable the worker today to master their professional mobility and tomorrow quite simply their own life. This means that every worker's livelihood must be permanently guaranteed, specifically through social security payments when they find themselves unemployed. This expanded system will free them to choose a course of education that enhances their qualifications, so that they can move into more fulfilling professions and find themselves in a better position vis-à-vis the employer when negotiating a new job contract.

Of course, the collective management of this right should be the responsibility of workers' representatives and their trade unions, within the framework of a new branch of the social security system. This would make it a collective right. Employers will pay—this will represent a new push in the balance of power between workers and bosses—and they will become implicated in this scheme together with the state and the workers themselves in the creation of a vast plan for training up new, beneficial, and non-outsource-able jobs required by the coming ecological transformation. This kind of new mass education and training is necessary if true mobility is to be realized. This proposal is just one example of the contribution we communists can make.

With Confidence

We are among those who believe that capitalism is not an insurmountable end. We will build an alternative to this society founded on the exploitation of man and nature. The peoples' history is not one for the profiteers to tell. Our time is not doomed, it is uncertain. Do not forget that the New Popular Front was able to win in the face of the rising far-right in France and across Europe. Victory is not possible unless we recall that the people must constitute themselves as the people. What are we referring to? Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote: “It would be good to examine the act by which a people becomes a people, for this act [...] is the true foundation of society”, and for him it was of course the “social contract”, i.e., the act by which each individual agrees to alienate himself into the community, to become a “citizen” and a “subject” subject to the law. But of course, this is only possible if the law is drawn up by everyone. This was the very purpose of the Estates General of 1789, when all social classes came together for the duration of the proceedings, erasing their differences to build a “social contract” that would be accepted by all, because it was built by all. This is how we define what we call the “general interest”.

In a way, the Yellow Vests movement has reproduced this process of constituting a “people” on its own scale. From a political point of view, everyone noted the diversity of those who gathered on the traffic circles, but gradually, as the movement progressed, and as soon as they tried to draw up a list of demands, it very quickly resembled our The Future in Common program. Everyone noticed this, with the re-introduction of a wealth tax and a minimum wage that would allow people to live, for example. The traffic circles weren't enchanted—once people got thinking together about the general interest, they came together on life-changing objectives.

To attack and overcome capitalism requires the development of new economic and social rules that enable the satisfaction of needs rather than the pursuit of profit. Of course, this is a difficult undertaking, but what is certain is that it is impossible to transform society without the people taking up the task. This is one of the deepest convictions of the Unbowed Communists. In our action groups, we always want to talk and do politics with as many people as we can, because we are convinced that it is in this complex human alchemy that the revolution can prevail.