French Election: The Decline Of The Far Right and The Marginality Of The Left

 

In 2017 Emmanuel Macron beat Marine Le Pen in the presidential elections. Macron just beat Le Pen once again in the 2022 elections, and handily so. Like last time this year's elections have gotten eyes on the far-right. Le Pen's party, National Rally, is a far-right, anti-immigrant, conservative party of the type of politics we've seen in North America and Europe since 2016. Candidate Eric Zemmour split the far-right vote with Le Pen, running a campaign even to her right, arguing the white nationalist conspiracy that Muslim and African migrants are replacing white Christian French nationals. As such many saw this election as another indication of the far-right drift in global politics. However, I see it as part of a trend in the decline of the far-right globally. 

In 2016 we all bore witness to a phenomena dubbed "global Trumpism". Candidates and parties around the world sprang up in electoral politics which scapegoated minorities, particularly migrants and refugees. What not as many of us have noticed is that since 2019 this resurgent right has experienced serious defeats. Trump failed to get a second term as president and provoked a riot at the capital building, Germany's AFD did poorly in the country's recent elections, and Pedro Castillo beat Fujimori in Peru's elections. If one looks closely at Le Pen and Zemmour's campaigns the reality was actually very embarrassing. Zemmour only had about 8 percent of the working class vote and Le Pen a bit over 20. 

French voters actually didn't care about Muslims and Africans living in France. They cared about climate and cost of living. Zemmour came in 4th in the first round of voting under the left-wing candidate Melenchon. Le Pen had actually softened National Rally's message since 2017, with local National Rally officials in Northern France approving the construction of a mosque capable of holding 1,400 people. None of this is to suggest that the far-right are being defeated everywhere, but rather to paint a picture of a populist far-right that has been driven back in it's quest for ascendence on a global level. 

Why is this happening? Well, it's because of the politics the far-right are pushing. Conservatism is always somewhat hard to sell. It comes with the message of "we and our children will do well, but you and yours won't". So even if Trump, AFD, Le Pen, and Zemmour could appeal to disenfranchised white voters to take their nations back, they had to build platforms against thousands of people whom the white Europeans and Americans were to take their nations away from. Not many of those people, obviously, will be voting for the populist far-right in elections. Trump failed to get a second term mainly because women and minorities descended on the polls to get him out. The other reason is that the right is plagued with the same inability to achieve it's goals in office that the left is. Even if Trump cracked down on immigrants, he certainly wasn't able to help the victims of deindustrialization who voted for him.

This certainly is not to say that the far-right's decline implies success for the left. The story of the electoral left since the beginning of the 21st century has been loud, but small sections of global society, often small sections of national societies, backing left wing candidates, often with the outcome that those candidates lose. This is what happened to former Trotskyist Melenchon's campaign. He came in third, but didn't make it to the second round. Before the 80s the left could boast of having parties in power all over the world and when they weren't in power they at least set the agenda that the right would have to play by. Neither Bernie Sanders, nor Jeremy Corbyn could ever hope to achieve that level of success. It's also not to say that the far-right poses no threat. Zemmour's militant base isn't just going to disappear, and neither is Trump's still rabbid cult of personality on the American right. 

Let's set the bigger historical picture. In the modern world there have been three ideologies that have been most influential and significant; conservatism, liberalism, and radicalism. Conservatism wants to limit the amount of progressive change that takes place to as little as possible. Liberalism wants to concede some progressive change, but slowly and in a limited manner. Radicalism wants as much progressive change as quickly as possible. From the mid 19th to the late 20th centuries liberalism was the dominant ideology. It pulled the other ideologies into it's orbit and made them sign on to it's platform of slow and limited change. 

According to this program people were to become citizens of states which would grant them political rights under those states. However, racism was used to exclude certain groups from full citizenship status. Welfare schemes and concessions to organized labor allowed a redistribution of wealth on a world-scale without fundamentally altering the hierarchical division of labor that sustains capitalist society. This was primarily made possible by the fact that communist parties in the east, socialist parties in the west, and national liberation movements in the south had taken state power. They signed on to the liberal program by offering their populations these concessions while promising them that more fundamental change was coming down the road. 

In 1968 there was an uprising around the world, led often by students, which challenged this "old-left", the radical movements which had taken state power. The partisans of 68 said that the old-left was bluffing when they said that more fundamental change was coming. This undermined the faith populations had in the old-left, and thus in the liberal political order. In addition, a crisis of overproduction in the world-economy which took place in the 70s created a decline in real production that made the concessions, both political and economic, too expensive. 

The 68 revolution and 70s economic crises overthrew liberalism and made it just another ideology among others. Radicals and conservatives were both freed to pursue their unique programs in ways they weren't before. 'Trumpism', or populist conservativism, is one aspect of this conservative resurgence since the end of the last century. The conservatives are pursuing their agenda with their new found freedom and running into various obstacles. So are the radicals. I will not be giving strategic advice to the conservatives since I'm a radical. For us radicals, however, we need to start realizing that elections won't do it. New Deal Democrats and Socialist Parties gained more power in elections in the last century than any left, or center-left parties/candidates have since the beginning of this one. 

They could do this because the increase in real production in that period meant strong centralized political structures for the capitalist world-system (e.g. the state), which meant widescale faith in using those structures to change society. Since these structures exist to reproduce capitalism, the electoral left, along with the revolutionary left, only ended up allowing for capitalism's expansion by extending concessions to the population in exchange for their political faith. Given the decline in real production and post-68 skepticism of the ability of states to provide meaningful social change, even this limited and illusory success isn't possible today. This is why both Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn failed and why the Latin American Pink Tide gave way to far-right politics on the continent. 

We need to do what Anarchists have been telling us to for 200 years. We need to abandon the state. If we don't we will end up with more Pink Tides, more Bernie Sanders's, more Corbyns, and more Melenchons. Making a loud, but globally small and ultimately futile electoral stink won't bring fast and far-reaching progressive change. The state was never of any use to us, and it is even less so today. 

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