Larzac anti-globalisation conference throws French left into crisis

[Euphen]

Larzac anti-globalisation conference throws French left into crisis
By Alex Lefebvre
3 September 2003

The massive turnout at the Larzac anti-globalisation conference in August—perhaps as many as 300,000 people—highlighted the isolation of the French government of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin. The right-wing regime, elected by a comfortable majority last June, faces growing popular opposition on many fronts.

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However, the Larzac conference agenda and anti-government sentiment not only threaten the French right, but also the Socialist Party, which pursued a reactionary privatisation and austerity agenda in 1997-2002, when Lionel Jospin was prime minister. The PS rarely showed its face during the massive strikes and demonstrations of May and June 2003 against the Raffarin pension cuts, and when PS representatives did appear they were loudly booed. At the Larzac conference, this sentiment found expression when a group of conference attendees tore down the PS stand and literature table.

This event merely exacerbated the Socialist Party leadership’s fears that an organised movement, or “radical force,” would emerge on its left. On August 11, the official head of the PS, François Hollande, applauded the Larzac conference for “contributing to the renewal of the left” but criticised the Confédération Paysanne for “dangerous populist or Poujadist excesses.” This was a reference to the 1950s right-wing populist demagogue, Pierre Poujade, whose movement of farmers and shopkeepers staged violent protests. However, the comment was widely interpreted to be an attack on Bové and his “civil disobedience” tactics.

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There is a profound objective significance to the reaction of the various “left” groups in the face of the powerful popular response to the Larzac conference. They are on a different political trajectory from the masses of French working people. Despite the growing unpopularity of the PS, revealed by its April 2002 electoral rout and its estrangement from the social movement, the “far left” takes actions primarily aimed at preserving good relations with this discredited leadership. At the same time, the attempt by the “far left” to reconcile this position with their “left” participation in the social movement becomes ever more difficult. The aftermath of the Larzac conference is a serious warning to the French working class: between the discredited “left” establishment and the discontented population, anxious to drive Raffarin out, the radical “left” has chosen.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2003/sep2003/left-s03.shtml

[Dirk39]

1. If it only would work...

to isolate the corrpupt and opportunistic former "left" or "social-democratic" parties in Europe, revealing them as the right-wing neoliberal idiots, they have become. In Germany, it seems, a lot of people are very desperate, but they are still so "brainwashed" and narcotized by the hidden conservative and capitalist counterrevolution that happened during the last decades that they simply don't see any alternative to the neoliberal, anti-democratic counterrevolution that took place. In Germany, the former Greens, are the most opportunistic and corrupt party that ever was part of a government since the Nazis.
As much as I disliked the non-voters most of my live, I stopped voting 10 years ago, it doesn't make any sense anymore and there is no alternative.
Hello from Germany,
Dirk