Disaster in France-What Must Be Done Now

[Shane Mage]

>On Sun, 21 Apr 2002, Shane Mage wrote:
>
>>  But there is no time at all for delay.  The French Left must pick
>>  itself up off the floor and get back in the ring within the next
>>  two or three days. 
>
>Three points: (1) Jospin and the PS are hardly Leftists. They're neolib to
>the core, though cagier than the Thatcherites about hiding it.

This is an example of the sectarianism I warned against. In fact
the only real "neolib" candidate, Alain Madelin, got a whopping
3.6%

Shane Mage


>(2)
>France's Presidential electoral system is almost as archaic as the US, and
>should be tossed on the scrapheap. (3) Le Pen's vile irrationalism is the
>product of two decades of brutish austerity by the architects of
>Maastricht monetarism. Even at the height of the 1990s expansion, French
>unemployment never fell below 9%.
>
>Bourdieu, thou shouldst be alive at this hour. He would've been totally,
>utterly unsurprised, and would've insisted that the French ruling class
>*needs* someone like Le Pen, in order to secure its legitimacy.
>
>-- Dennis