Alex Callinicos on the French Presidential elections
'The immediate challenge is to beat Sarkozy, who won the best vote of any right wing candidate since 1974. Opinion polls put him well ahead of Royal in the second round on Sunday week. Besancenot has called on the 1.5 million people who voted for him to help turn the second round into "an anti-Sarkozy referendum for all those who plan to resist his policies. The issue isn’t to support Ségolène Royal but to vote against Nicolas Sarkozy." Congratulations and good luck to him and his comrades!'
Labels: Europe
posted by Snowball @ 9:52 pm
4 Comments:
A somewhat one-sided comment by Alex Callinicos on the French presidential election. In French election heralds more battles to come (Socialist Worker, posted 24 April 2007), Alex Callinicos correctly congratulates the LCR on an excellent campaign. He also declares that "A heavy responsibility rests on the LCR to overcome the political fragmentation to the left of the Socialist Party and to create a powerful and united radical left." Coded language perhaps to remind the leadership of the Ligue that its record so far on building a new anticapitalist force, or even making its own organisation more 'habitable' to newly-radicalised anticapitalist militants' (to paraphrase a famous expression of Tony Cliff) has been, let's say ... abysmal ? "But that is a task for the future" (i.e. after the 2nd round of the election on 6 May) he adds. I'd say that lets Krivine and company off pretty lightly.
Callinicos' offf-hand remarks about the "so-called" unitary campaign of José Bové on behalf of the "rump" of the antiberal committees are also less than balanced. I'm writing my own, probably equally unbalanced, verdict on the election which readers of my blog Le Poireau Rouge will soon have the privilege of seeing. Watch this space.
Thanks Colin - I look forward to reading your analysis of the French election. Those who live in London might be interested in the following forum:
London KING'S COLLEGE LONDON EUROPEAN STUDIES
> FORUM ON FRENCH PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
>
> Wednesday 2 May
> Stathis Kouvelakis
> (King's College London)
> Philippe Marliere
> (University College London)
> Jim Wolfreys
> (King's College London)
> 5pm, Room 1B22, Strand Building, King's College London, Strand WC2R 2LS
> All Welcome!
You can now read my article on the first round of the French presidential election on the blog Le Poireau Rouge http://le-poireau-rouge.blogspot.com It's entitled 'Radical left vote falls in French presidential election'. I'd welcome comments. In the meantime virtually the whole of the serious left is calling for a vote against Sarkozy in Sunday's 2nd round.
"Coded language perhaps to remind the leadership of the Ligue that its record so far on building a new anticapitalist force, or even making its own organisation more 'habitable' to newly-radicalised anticapitalist militants'...." I guess that's because people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
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