Time to read Dimitrov!
The danger of fascism remains everywhere under conditions of bourgeois democracy.
Not just in abstract. People get killed. The whole political spectrum lurches to the right.
As the arithmetic shows, groups to the left of Jospin (who was not particularly 'Third Way' compared to Blair and Schroeder) appealed to 14% of the voters. They were dominated by Trotskyists, who are not interested in how to win an electoral majority against the right. Jospin was only a few percent behind Chirac. But why should ultra-leftists stoop to consider electoral arithmetic! Their only goal is to prove themselves more correct than the next group.
The fruits of sectarianism!
As Lenin pointed out to the "lovers of ostentation", "one must be able to calculate the relation of forces and not help the imperialists make the war against socialism easier for them". "But our 'Left' Communists - who are also fond of calling themselves 'proletarian' Communists, although there is very little that is proletarian about them and very much that is petty-bourgeois - are incapable of giving thought to the relation of forces, the calculation of the relation of forces. This is the main point in Marxism and Marxian tactics."
(Left Wing Childishness and Petty-Bourgeois Mentality. May 1918)
People will die from attacks by the right as a result of this idealism.
Chris Burford
At 21/04/02 19:16 -0400, Shane wrote:
>The French presidential election's first round today produced
>a catastrophic result for the traditional parties of the Left.
>Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin got fewer than 16% of the
>vote, 1.5 points less than the fascistic nationalist Jean-Marie
>Le Pen and 4 points behind Chirac. Eliminated from the May 5
>runoff ballot (only the top two from the first round stay on
>the ballot), Jospin announced his withdrawal from political life.
>The French Communist Party's leader, Robert Hue, got a
>minuscule 3.5%, a fitting reward for his consistent support
>for Jospin's centrist policies throughout the five-year rule
>of the "Gauche Plurielle" cabinet. In contrast, the three
>Trotskyist candidates got more than 11% of the vote-about
>6.5% for Arlette Laguiller (Lutte Ouvrière), 4.5% for Olivier
>Bésancenot (Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire) and 0.5%
>for Daniel Gluckstein (Parti des Travailleurs). The other two
>major leftist candidates, Noel Mamere (Verts) and Jean-Pierre
>Chévenement (Mouvement des Citoyens) each got slightly
>more than 5%, while Christiane Taubira (Radicaux de Gauche)
>less than 2%.
>
>The lesson of this electoral disaster is clear--the immediate need
>for the broadest United Front of the Left on the basis of a militant,
>aggressive program. There must be no rallying behind Chirac
>"to block Le Pen." That would be like supporting Hindenburg
>"to block Hitler." The alternative is union behind a write-in
>candidate for the second round, whether or not French electoral
>law permits such votes to be counted. The indicated, indeed the
>only thinkable, candidate is José Bové, who is not only a principled,
>militant, totally independent leftist, but also, and by far, the
>most popular political figure in France. Bové might well win a
>majority on May 5, and in any case would be positioned to
>lead a united Left to victory over the discredited Chiraquiens
>in the June parliamentary elections and thus force the
>resignation of Chirac (whatever happens, Le Pen will certainly
>not be elected on May 5).
>
>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. Victory is more than possible, but not if
>*anyone's* sectarian posing gets in the way.
>
>Shane Mage
>
>"Thunderbolt steers all things."
>
>Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64