France: Regroupment Appeal

Appeal from the LCR congress for the regroupment of the anti-capitalist Left

The Ligue Communiste Révolutionaire (LCR) is one of two large organisations on the Trotskyist left in France. The other is Lutte Ouvrière, whose best known leading figure is Arlette Laguiller. The LCR have agreed to enter into an electoral agreement with the LO for next years regional and European elections. They have also issued the following appeal which was adopted by an overwhelming majority at the 15th national congress of the LCR held in Saint-Denis from 30th October to 2nd November, 2003.

Together, we fought intransigently in defence of workers rights in the spring of 2003. Together, we have fought against unending imperialist war. Together we have fought against capitalist globalisation, against turning the whole world into a commodity and for the new internationalism incarnated by the anti-globalisation movement.

We are faced in France and on an international level with an offensive against the rights of peoples and of workers, with a headlong rush towards the destruction of the resources of the planet, with a state of permanent war aimed at maintaining the hegemony of the great American and European powers.

The 21st April 2002 demonstrated the existence of an unprecedented social crisis and a loss of support for the traditional parties, who are responsible, each in its own way, for the liberal offensive and for mounting social insecurity. Once again the National Front gained from this social crisis. The far Left began to appear as an alternative to the parties of the traditional Left. The movement of May-June 2003 against the Fillon Law proved that workers could forge another path than that of submission to the law of profit: the path of a redistribution of wealth in the interest of the mass of the population., of a society that would make the satisfaction of human needs its priority.

Together, we refuse to let our struggles and our hopes be subordinated to a new governmental alliance with the social-liberal Left or to any perspective that means just managing the capitalist economy and institutions. Against the Right, the National Front and the MEDEF, the political alternative can only be a government that bases itself on the mobilisations and the democratic organisation of the people, a government applying a social emergency plan.

The LCR addresses itself to all those who want a left alternative that breaks with all the policies conducted by the social-liberal Left as well as by the Right. We want to say to them that we are ready to unite as of now with all those who are willing to, of course to develop struggles and mobilisations, but also to build a new broad, pluralist political force, radically anti-capitalist and resolutely democratic.

Such a regroupment within the same party is necessary and urgent in order to act together around the main questions that we are faced with and that can in our opinion be summed up in a few points:

• opposition to imperialism, to war, to capitalist globalisation ; to the law and order policies that trample on our democratic rights and institutionalise a violence which aims to perpetuate the marginalisation of those who have the most precarious conditions of existence;
• basing ourselves on the anti-globalisation movement, on the social struggles of workers, the unemployed and young people against the bosses and the governments; basing ourselves on the movements that are combating a productivist model of development that is endangering humanity and our planet, on the movements who proclaim loud and clear the demand for democratic control over choices of development and of production, on the movements that reject the discrimination and the daily violence suffered by women at work and in their personal life;
• refusal to submit to social-liberalism, to the policy of running the institutions of the state in the interests of the minority who own all the wealth, to capitalist Europe, its treaties and its projected Constitution;
• the perspective of a break with capitalism, of a workers' government backed up by popular mobilisations; of undertaking a radical transformation of society that will enable social needs to be satisfied ; the economy must cease to be under private ownership and become the property of all.

This project is addressed to all those who are looking for a political alternative in the interests of working people:

• to the three million electors who gave their vote to the far Left in May 2002, to social, trade union and community activists;
• to communist, socialist and ecologist activists, to currents coming from the traditional Left and from local and regional groups who are looking for an alternative to the sell-outs of social-democracy;
• to the organisations of the far Left, especially to Lutte Ouvrière with whom we propose to conduct the coming regional and European election campaigns.

Following on from the forums we initiated a year ago, we are proposing that, starting from now, we should organise wherever possible, on the level of towns, departments and regions, conferences for an anti-capitalist left.

We propose that these conferences are jointly organised by all those who are ready to do so, individuals, organised anti- capitalist collectives or currents, on the basis of appeals indicating clearly the perspective of a broad pluralist regroupment for a new force that breaks with capitalism. Conferences for debate and action, they could be the starting point to put forward together political responses, measures that break with the logic of capitalism, social and democratic emergency measures.

Finally, we propose that these initiatives should converge at the end of 2004 in a national conference which would represent a step forward towards the formation of a new anti-capitalist, feminist and ecologist political force, a force that would fight against all forms of oppression.

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