Renée Fregosi is a philosopher and political scientist. Last published work:
French still an effort… to remain secular!
(Ed. L'Harmattan, 2019).
Léon Blum's speech at the Congress of Tour at the end of December 1920 resonates strangely a century later, as if the protagonists change but the roles remain almost unchanged.
Thus, the radicalism of active minorities still torments the left.
To the partisans of adherence to Lenin's 21 conditions and to his international rule, Blum said: "
You think, taking advantage of a favorable circumstance, to drag behind your vanguards the non-communist popular masses, unaware of the exact object movement, but maintained by your propaganda in a state of sufficiently intense passionate tension
”.
To read also:
Éric Zemmour: "In a century, socialism has not changed"
The Islamo-leftists today side with the Islamist offensive by believing to instrumentalize it (although they are useful idiots) and by theorizing Islamophobic, indigenist, decolonial victimization, while the black-blocs infiltrate as for them the union processions as they rotted the demonstrations of the yellow vests.
Both verbal and physical violence, erected in self-defense of the people, is adorned with a "
revolutionary
"
aura
and knowingly raises the tension in a destabilizing strategy within a seriously fragmented and traumatized society.
Now the democratic left, despite its confusion, thinks softly what Blum proclaimed loud and clear in the face of the Bolsheviks: "
this tactic of the unconscious masses, trained unwittingly by the vanguards, (...) we cannot admit it
" .
Moreover, many are the disappointments of the Socialist Party who are not satisfied with the world as it is - badly.
Although disillusioned, even desperate by politics, they also know that without a democratic political party action can only be erratic and ephemeral at best, at worst lead to authoritarianism.
So, with more or less enthusiasm, some turn to the environmentalist parties.
THE left remains a powerful fantasy while history and the present never cease to show us the existence of several lefts and globally, of "two irreconcilable lefts"
But it is doubtful that the ecological project can, as it stands, face only from the question of imminent threats to the environment (moreover very real) both the power of the current capitalist system, more globalized and financialized than ever. in history, the dangers of new authoritarianisms and in the first place of Islamist totalitarianism, and demographic and migratory pressure.
And this a fortiori if their ecology is mixed with racialist, indigenist, neo-feminist ideology, and participates in the tyranny of “
minorities
”.
Because socialists and environmentalists too often remain prisoners of the totem pole of the Union of the Left.
Converted into a plural left, THE left remains a powerful fantasy while history and the present never cease to show us the existence of several lefts and globally, of "two irreconcilable lefts".
Leon Blum said to Tour: "
to be brothers in the difference, everyone must want it, otherwise no fraternity ... but the Communists reject us so we can do nothing with them
".
To read also:
"White privilege", "Assimilation", "Chevènementisme": When the "At the same time" is transformed into a big gap
And contrary to what one generally thinks, the rare moments of electoral and / or governmental union between socialists and communists, far from demonstrating the possibility of the reunification of the left, proved quite the opposite.
For it was only under the tactical injunction of Stalin (1936) and / or under cyclical pressure (1945, 1981, 1997) that the Communists agreed to thwart in a momentary political alliance their deep conviction that the Socialists were “
social traitors
”, “
social fascists
”, “
lustful vipers
” to be crushed as soon as possible (as the Bolsheviks in Russia did with the revolutionary socialists and the anarchists between 1918 and 1921).
Philosophically, ideologically, politically, two major currents of social transformation stemming from the labor movement have been clashing since the 19th century and their opposition was structured at the time of the split of the SFIO in Tour: a democratic, progressive conception (“
not to not
”), liberal (in the political sense of the term), versus a centralizing and avant-garde, brutal, authoritarian conception.
New alliances could be forged both in the face of the Islamist offensive and in the face of the challenges of hyper-financialized monopoly capitalism
As Blum recalled: “
when the Party enshrined in its statutes that freedom of discussion was complete, that the press was free, it was not vague democratic notions introduced into our socialist constitutions, it was a rule taken from the 'very essence of what the Socialist Party should be
'.
"
The proportional representation is not a political measure intended to give a part of government to such or such minority, it is the guarantee of the freedom of thought in the Party
".
"
What about the action of this Party?
What was she in her form?
It was an action of popular education and public propaganda
”.
However, despite the obvious economic and social catastrophes of collectivist communisms and the humanitarian catastrophes of dictatorial regimes claiming to be communist, as gigantic as those produced by fascisms, the "
revolutionary
"
aura
still persists, even weakened within the democratic left. .
And the “
revolutionary
”
ideological pressure
of Bolshevism and its successive avatars constitutes a historical constant preventing a true social democracy in France.
To read also:
"The republicans of the left must not despise the republicans of the other bank"
If the project of a renewed social democracy in view of the new challenges of the current stages of capitalism can emerge, this could therefore only be done after an assumed break with the doctrinal drifts, the practices of alliances and the political actors who have implemented them for four decades.
However, a small window of opportunity may be opening today.
As Blum thought in the face of the rise of fascist and warlike perils, new alliances could be forged both in the face of the Islamist offensive and in the face of the challenges of hyper-financialized monopoly capitalism which is undermining the industries and social fabrics of the old continent. .
"
There are circumstances where, even in a capitalist regime, the duty of national defense exists for the socialists: the hypothesis of a marked aggression
".
So, "
at this moment, there is a more pressing question than whether socialism will be united or not
", he told Tour.
So, structured by a "thought of the south" as recommended by Albert Camus, democracy will be able to persist in doing its best, refusing to build a deadly perfection.
The notion of "
Class Front
" was adopted by the Socialist Party in 1973 to dress at the time the strategy of Union of the Left.
But in fact this class analysis of modern society imagining a vast common front of united economic, social and cultural interests, does it not rather encourage the construction of a broad alliance of all those who, in a resolutely democratic and republican perspective, aspire both to the safeguard of Western universalist humanism and to the reconstitution of a local productive apparatus while respecting a national system of social protection?
Ignoring revolutionary injunctions and anathemas stigmatizing the middle way, shouldn't the "
moderates
" of the left finally forge a solid and fruitful alliance with the "
moderates
" of the right to put an end to political impotence?
So, structured by a “
thought of the south
” as recommended by Albert Camus, democracy will be able to persist in doing its best, refusing to build a deadly perfection.