by Despite the relative majority obtained by the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP, left-wing alliance) in legislative elections, the French political landscape remains marked by divisions and uncertainty. Let’s be clear: The left’s gains in votes and seats are actually very limited, and reflect insufficient work on both policy and structure. It is only by resolutely tackling these shortcomings that the left-wing parties will be able to get through the period of turbulence and minority governments that lies ahead, and one day obtain the absolute majority that will enable them to govern the country on a long-term basis. The policy platform adopted by the NFP a few days after the dissolution of the Assemblée Nationale did have the immense merit, compared to the others, of identifying where to
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Despite the relative majority obtained by the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP, left-wing alliance) in legislative elections, the French political landscape remains marked by divisions and uncertainty. Let’s be clear: The left’s gains in votes and seats are actually very limited, and reflect insufficient work on both policy and structure. It is only by resolutely tackling these shortcomings that the left-wing parties will be able to get through the period of turbulence and minority governments that lies ahead, and one day obtain the absolute majority that will enable them to govern the country on a long-term basis.
The policy platform adopted by the NFP a few days after the dissolution of the Assemblée Nationale did have the immense merit, compared to the others, of identifying where to find the resources to invest in the future: health, training, research, transport and energy infrastructures. These essential investments are going to increase sharply, and there are two ways of funding them. Either we proclaim that we are entering a new cycle of increasing socialization of wealth, driven by tax increases on the wealthiest, as proposed by the NFP, or, out of ideology, we refuse any tax increase at all, thereby putting ourselves in the hands of private funding, synonymous with inequality of access and a more than dubious collective efficiency. Boosted by staggering private costs, health spending is approaching 20% of GDP in the United States, even as the indicators are disastrous.
However, the amounts mentioned by the NFP may have frightened some: around €100 billion in new levies and expenditure over the next three years, or 4% of GDP. In the long term, these amounts are not excessive: Tax revenues have risen in Western and Nordic Europe from less than 10% of national income before 1914 to 40-50% since 1980-1990, and it is this rise of the social state (education, health, public services, social protection, to name a few) that has enabled unprecedented growth in productivity and living standards, whatever the conservatives of any era may have said.
The fact remains, however, that there is considerable uncertainty as to the timetable and order of priorities for a left-wing government coming to power. While the demand for social justice is strong in the country, the mobilization of new resources remains a fragile process from which citizens can withdraw their support at any time. In concrete terms, until it has been incontrovertibly demonstrated that billionaires and multinationals are finally being made to contribute, it is unthinkable to ask anyone else to make an additional effort. The NFP policy platform remains too vague on this crucial point.
This is all the more problematic given that the left-wing governments of recent decades, lacking a sufficiently precise program and sufficiently strong collective ownership of it, always found themselves caving in to the lobbies as soon as they came to power, for example by exempting so-called professional assets and virtually all the largest fortunes from the ISF [wealth tax], resulting in revenues ridiculously low compared to what they could and should be. To avoid repeating these mistakes, we need to involve civil society and trade unions in defending these revenues and the social investments that go with them. On these and other issues, slogans are no substitute for hard work and collective mobilization.
Similar difficulties are encountered on the question of pensions. It doesn’t make much sense to adopt the slogan of retirement for all at 62, or even 60, when everyone knows that the length of contribution to obtain a full pension is also a requirement in the French system. A slogan like « 42 years of contribution for all » would be better understood by the country, and would make it clear that people with higher education will not retire before 65 or 67, while insisting on the unacceptable injustice of Emmanuel Macron’s reform raising the retirement age to 64, which forces, for example, those who started working at 20 to contribute 44 years.
There are many examples. It’s all very well to announce the abolition of Parcoursup, the portal that has handled university applications since 2018, but it would have been even better to describe precisely the alternative, fairer and more transparent system that would replace it. It’s all very well to denounce Vincent Bolloré’s media, but it would be even better to commit to an ambitious law to democratize the media and challenge the all-powerful shareholders.
There’s also the proposal to give employee representatives one-third of the seats on company boards. This is the most far-reaching and genuinely social-democratic reform in the NFP program, but it would benefit from an even broader framework. To enable the redistribution of economic power, we would need to go as far as 50% of seats in large companies, while capping the voting rights of the largest shareholders and committing to a genuine redistribution of wealth. Rather than wallowing in rhetorical radicalism, it’s time for the left to get back to describing the alternative economic system to which it aspires, while recognizing that things will happen in stages.
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On all these questions, only collective work will allow progress, which requires the creation of a genuine democratic federation of the left capable of organizing deliberation and settling disputes. We’re a long way from that: In recent years, La France Insoumise has constantly sought to impose its authoritarian hegemony on the left, in the manner of Socialists of yesteryear, only worse, given the refusal of any voting procedure on the part of LFI’s leaders. But the left-wing electorate is not fooled: It knows full well that the exercise of power requires above all humility, deliberation and collective work. It’s time to respond to this aspiration.