http://lastingfuture.blogspot.gr/

Left Europeanism cannot answer the rise of the Far-Right!

France is facing the aftershock of the results of the first round of the municipal elections. There are many reasons for the impressive rise of the far-right National Front: the tragically right-wing neoliberal policy of the Hollande government; the inability of the Front de Gauche to have a coherent tactic, mainly because of the insistence of the French Communist Party on collaborating with the socialists in many cities; increased rates of abstention mainly by disappointed socialist voters; the long-term political investment  of the National Front on feelings of ‘insecurity’, on xenophobic reactions to immigration and on presenting itself as ‘anti-establishment’.

However, these aspects, despite their obvious importance, tell half the story. Another aspect is that in a country like France, which is facing the reality of the crisis of the Eurozone and is going to adopt austerity measures in order to maintain its role as part of the ‘core’ of the EU, and in which opinion polls monitor a 40% rejection of the euro, there is no actual challenge to the euro and the European Union from the Left! 

With the exception of the position of the Parti de Gauche in favour of a ‘disobedience to EU treaties and directives’, the important work of intellectuals such as Frédéric Lordon or Cédric Durand, and some voices in the left tendencies within NPA, most currents of the Left, from the Communist Party to the Far Left are not presenting a clear position in favour of the exit from the Eurozone and a rupture with the European Union process, opting instead for varieties of the ‘Struggle for a democratic and social Europe’ position. In a conjuncture marked by the authoritarian mutation of the European Union, the imposition of a condition of limited sovereignty  and the growing distance between economic and political elites and the citizenry, the Left’s insistence in the fantasy of a ‘democratic’ EU also enables the Far-Right to present its reactionary and racist ‘patriotism’ as a defence of popular sovereignty.

This strategic crisis of the Left is not limited to France. All over Europe, the refusal from the part of most tendencies of the European Left to articulate a political line against the European Union, leaves open a crucial space for the Far-Right to project her own reactionary version of ‘Euroscepticism’. Despite, the growing resentment of great segments of European societies against the neoliberal, undemocratic and aggressive character of the European Union, despite the increased hostility against the euro as a single currency, despite the growing disbelief against the EU as such, most parties of the European Left make no particular effort to transform these feelings in a anti-EU, anticapitalist, progressive discourse. Consequently, a political void is created which the Far-Right is currently trying to fill. A Euroscepticism of the Left is urgently needed!

Today fighting for the exit of the eurozone and potentially the European Union  represents neither ‘isolationism’ nor ‘national-chauvinism’. It is the necessary condition to fight the systemic violence of globalized capitalism and the embedded neoliberalism of the ‘European Integration’ project. it opens up the way for a renewed socialist project, a new social and economic paradigm based upon collective participation, democratic planning, self management, social control of public goods. Consequently, it offers the possibility to regain democracy and popular sovereignty in the sense of the collective decision and struggle of the people, defined as the alliance of all those that, one way or the other, depend upon selling their labour power to survive. This can help forging a different sense of community and popular unity in sharp contrast to the both the cynical and hypocritical investment in xenophobic nationalism, by both the Far-Right and pro-systemic parties.