HAS Less than a week apart, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and François Ruffin presented, in different ways, two electoral strategies for the left. On the sidelines of a demonstration criticising Emmanuel Macron’s refusal to appoint Lucie Castets to Matignon, the leader of La France Insoumise (LFI) crudely explained to activists the interest in concentrating energies on a particular segment of the popular electorate, that of the neighbourhoods. Breaking his ban on the LFI, the Somme MP François Ruffin denounced this interpretation. “space” AND “quasi-racial” working classes, replacing the class-based approach that constitutes the historical identity of the left. In contrast to this segmented approach, it advocates the reconquest of all working classes whose divorce from their political family has been recorded for a long time.
Between the lines, it would be a question of rediscovering a lost paradise, that of the union of the left in the 1970s between the Socialist Party (PS) and the Communist Party (PCF), during which these two formations captured a large majority of the popular vote. In the second round of the presidential elections in 1981, François Mitterrand obtained 72% of the votes of the workers and 62% of the employees who went to the polls.
In the 1980s, mass unemployment, closely linked to the acceleration of deindustrialisation, precipitated the fragmentation of the world of work while weakening the trade unions, until then the preferred vector of left-wing politicisation of these social strata. The transformation of the dominant value system in the West, as demonstrated by the increasingly central place given to individual development and freedom of choice, makes the traditional call of the left for solidarity and mutual aid less audible.
Hemorrhage
By quickly resigning itself to implementing a policy of austerity in the name of the limitations of liberal globalisation and the construction of Europe, the Left in power is seriously eroding its popular base. The PS was not worried about this haemorrhage before the traumatic defeat of Lionel Jospin in the first round of the presidential elections on 21 April 2002. The warning launched during the campaign by former Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy, who recommended that the Socialist candidate not consider the term “worker” like a “bad word”is void: only 13% of them give their vote.
The bitter break between Jean-Luc Mélenchon and François Ruffin should not make us forget that the former has long been a supporter of the strategy of reconquest advocated by the latter. In 2005, the Mélenchonist movement For the Social Republic signed a joint motion with the supporters of Laurent Fabius on the eve of the PS congress held in Le Mans in November. Gathering support for a no to the European Constitution, the text calls for a reconnection with the “Popular France, that of workers, employees, small farmers and artisans who see their status and existence deteriorate”.
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