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The Left should not vote for Macron His aggressive agenda has crippled the working class

Marx he ain't (LEWIS JOLY/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Marx he ain't (LEWIS JOLY/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)


April 22, 2022   7 mins

On May 6, 2017, the day Emmanuel Macron was elected president of France after trouncing Marine Le Pen, he made a promise to the French people: that the country would never again see a “far-Right” candidate reach the second round of the presidential election. Fast forward five years, however, and Macron is once again facing off against Le Pen. And this time, it’s bound to be much closer, with the incumbent polling at 55% to Le Pen’s 45%.

For Le Pen to narrow that gap, she must win over at least some of the 22% of voters who opted for the “Left-populist” Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the first round of the election. Yet Mélenchon’s position on the matter is clear: “We must not give a single vote to Le Pen,” he stated on the evening of the first round, in what amounted to a de facto endorsement for Macron. In a letter to his supporters, he clearly said that he believes the outgoing president to be the least-worst option on the table.

However, not all his voters are of the same opinion. As Alexandre, a 36-year-old who voted for Mélenchon in the first round, told BFMTV: “I am fundamentally, ideologically on the Left and I am deeply humanist, but I will vote for Marine Le Pen.” He is not alone in holding such a view: according to polling firm Elabe, a third of Mélenchon’s voters are likely to vote for Le Pen in the second round.

But we shouldn’t be surprised that a good number of Mélenchon’s supporters don’t agree with their leader that Macron is the lesser evil. Throughout his presidency, Macron has relentlessly pursued an aggressive neoliberal agenda that has dramatically worsened the conditions of the French working class, while hugely benefiting the country’s wealthy elites and corporate giants — slashing taxes for the rich and for big business, reforming the labour code to benefit employers, cutting back on welfare spending, and pursuing the “marketisation” of every area of French society.

As one French economist put it: “Macron is the candidate of the richest 1% or even 0.1%.” This is more than just a figure of speech: in his eye-opening book Crépuscule, French writer and activist Juan Branco chronicles how France’s most powerful oligarchs and media moguls literally “groomed” Macron from an early age, using all the money and influence at their disposal to help him become the country’s youngest president. It proved to be a worthwhile investment: in recent years, France has seen the greatest increase in the number of millionaires after the United States, with the richest 1% now holding 20% of the country’s wealth and seven billionaires owning more than the poorest 30%Meanwhile, the living conditions of the most disadvantaged have worsened, and the number of French people in poverty has increased.

As if this weren’t bad enough, when France’s underclasses took to the streets to protest the president’s policies of top-down class warfare, giving birth to the Gilets Jaunes movement, Macron responded with frightening police violence, worthy of the world’s most repressive regimes, which caused protestors to lose at least 24 eyes and five hands.

The protests only came to an end because the outbreak of the Covid pandemic offered Macron, as other leaders around the world, the perfect excuse to roll out draconian and authoritarian policies of social control, which, as Toby Green and I have documented, have hurt the working classes the most. As Serge Halimi, director of Le Monde diplomatique, recently stated, Macron’s is “France’s most ‘illiberal’ presidency of modern times”, having exploited the fear of insecurity, terrorism, Covid-19 and now the war in Ukraine to “favour an anti-democratic ‘shock strategy’ aimed at “govern[ing] by fear”.

And the future for the ordinary French isn’t looking any brighter, if Macron’s electoral manifesto is anything to go by: more tax cuts for big business, raising the retirement age to 65, forcing recipients of in-work benefits to work more than 15 hours a week, and returning to Maastricht’s strict budgetary rules (i.e. more austerity). As Halimi notes: “A second term for Macron would be especially dangerous for the working class as he is unable to run for a third. Without the restraining influence of a future election”, there would be little standing in the way of Macron’s authoritarian neoliberal project.

All of which begs the question: why would a socialist like Mélenchon want to see him remain in power? To most leftists, not just in France, the question is likely to appear provocatively rhetorical: well, because the alternative — Le Pen — is obviously worse. But is it? Or is it simply a case of Left-Pavlovian reaction to the sound of her name? Mélenchon’s arguments echo the conventional wisdom among French leftists and socialists: Le Pen’s economic agenda is just as bad — i.e. neoliberal — as Macron’s, while her “cultural” agenda (on issues such as immigration) is much worse.

It would be a pretty reasonable argument — if only it were true. The notion that Le Pen and Macron’s programmes are equally bad from a left-socialist perspective is simply false.

Le Pen has castigated the “neoliberal” logic of many of her competitor’s proposals — particularly the tightening of the conditions for the recipients of in-work benefits and the raising of the pension age, both of which Le Pen has consistently opposed. Indeed, it is frankly difficult to see how anyone in good faith could describe Le Pen’s electoral manifesto as neoliberal. If anything, it is a moderate redistributive programme of Keynesian orientation based on state interventionism, social protection and the defence of public services. Its measures include the strengthening of public services such as hospitals, widespread reductions in VAT, wage increases for healthcare workers and other sectors, tax exemptions or free transport for young working people, the construction of 100,000 social housing units per year, the renationalisation of motorways, and a tax on financial wealth. Nothing particularly radical — but neoliberal it certainly ain’t.

It’s no surprise that an in-depth study of Le Pen’s manifesto by the Centre for Political Research at Sciences Po, one of the largest and most influential centres for political science research in France and definitely not a lepéniste bulwark, concluded that her political programme is firmly “to the Left of the economic axis” — far more so than Macron’s agenda. Interestingly, the study also showed that Le Pen’s electorate shares her Left-wing economic outlook: high confidence in unions, distrust of large private companies, refusal to reduce the number of civil servants. Overall, an overwhelming majority of Le Pen’s supporters agree with the idea that “one should take from the rich to give to the poor”.

Indeed, it’s painstakingly obvious that Mélenchon’s own economic manifesto has much more in common with Le Pen’s than Macron’s. Yes, Mélenchon’s programme has a stronger emphasis on wages and workers’ rights, as is to be expected, but the overall orientation is similar. Mélenchon and Le Pen have also both been very critical of Macron’s “vaccine passports”, promising to repeal them if elected. And the two leaders share a similar aversion to globalisation and to the European Union in particular — of which Macron is a staunch supporter. They also both support France’s withdrawal from NATO.

The biggest difference between the two concerns immigration. While Mélenchon’s manifesto calls for “welcoming immigrants with dignity”, Le Pen wants to “regain full control of immigration” — by tightening the rules for acquiring French nationality, granting priority access to certain social services to nationals and deporting delinquent and systematically unemployed foreigners. She has also taken a hard stance against Islamic radicalism.

Now, one may very well not agree with these policies, but demonising them as “fascist” — as many on the Left now do — is simply ridiculous. After all, the notion that a state should prioritise the well-being of its own citizens would have been considered self-evident up until not too long ago — even among Left-wing parties and voters, as Sahra Wagenknecht, former leader of the radical-Left German party Die Linke, notes in her latest book Die Selbstgerechten (“The Self-Righteous”).

But more importantly, is Macron really that better than Le Pen in this respect? As Pauline Bock wrote in The Guardian, Macron himself has adopted a very “tough stance on immigration that saw police officers destroying refugees’ tents in Calais… paying homage to the ‘great soldier’ Marshal Pétain… and giving interviews to far-Right magazines”. Indeed, facing Le Pen on a TV show in February 2021, Macron’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, even accused her of being “too soft on immigration”.

So it seems that most of Mélenchon’s (and the French Left’s) arguments for choosing Macron over Le Pen don’t hold up to scrutiny: the former is incomparably worse — i.e. more “Right-wing” — than Le Pen on the economic front, and arguably almost as bad as his rival, from a standard “progressive” standpoint, when it comes to the treatment of immigrants. Regardless of what one may think of Le Pen — I’m not a fan and if I lived in France my vote would have gone to Mélenchon — it seems pretty clear that the French working class would be much worse off with a second Macron term.

Ultimately, this whole affair really encapsulates why the Left-Right cleavage no longer makes much sense. No country exemplifies this better than France — the place that invented the concepts of Left and Right in politics in the first place. For not only have nominally Left and progressive parties radically shifted to the Right in economic terms and abandoned class politics in favour of identity politics, while at the same time nominally Right-wing parties have moved to the Left on the economic spectrum. But even where political parties have challenged the traditional Left-Right dichotomy — and Macron, Le Pen and Mélenchon have all insisted, in their own way, that Left-Right politics are over, with the latter going to great lengths to “de-neoliberalise” Left politics — these labels continue to prove very hard to shake off.

This is ultimately why a socialist like Mélenchon still can’t bring himself to choose “Right-wing” Le Pen over nominally “progressive” Macron, even though the former’s economic agenda is much more Left-wing. It also explains why Macron will likely be elected for a second term, with dire consequences for the French working and middle classes.

Of course, Le Pen’s voters would probably face the same dilemma if Mélenchon were running against Macron. But this only proves how the Left-Right cleavage has become a smokescreen destined to make it virtually impossible to mount any serious challenge to the status quo. So long as political parties and voters continue to attach greater importance to the increasingly meaningless labels they give themselves, rather than to the policies other parties and voters actually support, any prospect of toppling the likes of Macron is likely to be thwarted — much to the delight of the ruling classes.

***

A previous version of the article contained an erroneous statistic (“a third of France’s wealth reportedly now in the hands of just eight billionaires”) taken from the French state-owned international radio broadcaster RFI


Thomas Fazi is an UnHerd columnist and translator. His latest book is The Covid Consensus, co-authored with Toby Green.

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Graham Stull
Graham Stull
2 years ago

This is the best article on the French presidential so far published on UnHerd. Really thought-provoking and a truly interesting perspective. I am hoping and praying – not so much that Le Pen wins, but that Macron (and all the globalist elitism he represents) is defeated.

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
2 years ago

A good read – and the increasing mis-use of right/extreme-right is really a global phenomenon now.
In relation to the intellectually lazy members of the older generations, this misuse is a handy political tool, but younger folk (those who are actually interested) must consider the typical use of these expressions pretty absurd.

Last edited 2 years ago by Ian Barton
Terence Fitch
Terence Fitch
2 years ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

The dichotomy of ‘older/younger’ is pretty intellectually lazy and pretty absurd. As you say yourself, labels don’t help much and only mask issues.

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
2 years ago
Reply to  Terence Fitch

I didn’t word my comment clearly.
My sentiment was that it is convenient for some MSM outletsto scare older folk who have lived through genuine “far right” times with headlines inappropriately using the term – unless those older folk dig into the “lack of evidence”.
Most young people have not had access to grandparents that fought the genuinely far right, so don’t understand that it’s a misuse in the first place.

Last edited 2 years ago by Ian Barton
Kon Trary
Kon Trary
2 years ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

There are certainly a lot more people still around who have lived through “far left” times.

polidori redux
polidori redux
2 years ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

1

Last edited 2 years ago by polidori redux
polidori redux
polidori redux
2 years ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

Really Ian? I am pretty old and I have been muttering for years that the mis-use of left, far-left right, far right and our old favourite, fascist, is commonplace, and almost invariably evidence of non-thinking (lazy thinking is too generous a term).The young are at least as guilty as the old in this regard.
My advice to French voters is to go on electoral strike until the candidates lose their last vestiges of credibility. It probably won’t work (political parties have hides like elephants), but you won’t be any the worse off for trying.
I have started to practice what I preach.

Last edited 2 years ago by polidori redux
Jeanie K
Jeanie K
2 years ago
Reply to  polidori redux

Today’s best comment.
Also, I was going to post to the effect “NOBODY should vote for Macron, nor for anyone else.

Tom Watson
Tom Watson
2 years ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

A way of translating it into British politics occurred to me – Macron/Le Pen/Melenchon = Blair/Farage/Corbyn. Imagine your preferred one of those three got knocked out and it was a choice between the other two. Helps you see why a lot of (in this case) Melenchon’s voters will likely abstain or stick with the ‘progressive’ – tribal loyalties are strong.

Drahcir Nevarc
Drahcir Nevarc
2 years ago
Reply to  Tom Watson

Good comparison.

Last edited 2 years ago by Drahcir Nevarc
Andrew F
Andrew F
2 years ago
Reply to  Drahcir Nevarc

I don’t think so.
Whatever Farage’s economic programme was it was surely not on the left?
Dislike of EU and mass immigration, especially from 3rd world countries, was his programme.

Brian Burnell
Brian Burnell
2 years ago
Reply to  Andrew F

Nonsense.
His programme could be summed up in just these words. “The unalienable right of people to govern themselves.”
As the courageous Ukrainian people are showing us now.
Were I French, my vote, despite my lifelong ideological leanings to the left, would be for Le Pen.

Vyomesh Thanki
Vyomesh Thanki
2 years ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

Mélenchon doesn’t consider himself ‘far right’; Le Pen wouldn’t label herself ‘far left’. I’m not sure labels are misused. What is true is that what far left and far right believe in today has changed. See this article which accurately provides details of the development of the far right in France, and to give agency names individuals and outlines their beliefs: ‘History of far-right movements in France’ –
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_far-right_movements_in_France

Stephen Walshe
Stephen Walshe
2 years ago

Which of the top five candidates in the presidential election were Muslim and minority ethnic voters most likely to support? Mélenchon of course: the proportion of his vote which came from the the traditional French working class was very low. Le Pen’s position on immigration is a red line for most of Mélenchon‘s supporters, which made it impossible for him to fudge his recommendation on how to vote in the second round, regardless of her economic policies. The old Left – Right divide in French politics is entirely redundant now, even if Thomas Fazi refuses to face the fact. Separately, one doesn’t have to be a fan of Macron to question whether raising the retirement age to 65, and requiring recipients of in-work benefits to work more than 15 hours a week, is really crippling the working class.

Last edited 2 years ago by Stephen Walshe
George Wells
George Wells
2 years ago
Reply to  Stephen Walshe

In that case immigration has successfully split the working class. Divide and rule.
This is why race is consistently advanced as a focus of politics – anything to keep the plebs focused on something other than money.

David McDowell
David McDowell
2 years ago
Reply to  George Wells

And capitalism has understood and exploited that

polidori redux
polidori redux
2 years ago
Reply to  David McDowell

Capitalism doesn’t hsve a mind and cannot understand or exploit anything. You should attribute agency only to people.

David Simpson
David Simpson
2 years ago
Reply to  polidori redux

Alright then – “capitalists (or neo-liberals) have understood and exploited that”

polidori redux
polidori redux
2 years ago
Reply to  David Simpson

Anyone in particular, or do you only talk in cliches?. Remember, he who talks in cliches ends up thinking in cliches.

Red Reynard
Red Reynard
2 years ago
Reply to  polidori redux

And he who looks for a specific tree fails to see the forest, pr.
We can all recognise trends without the need for detailed inspection of the minutiae.
All the best.

polidori redux
polidori redux
2 years ago
Reply to  Red Reynard

Meaningless.
All the best

Adrian Maxwell
Adrian Maxwell
2 years ago
Reply to  polidori redux

Super contribution PR, thanks. Dont give up, there are a million nits to pick.

Liomar Marques Júlio
Liomar Marques Júlio
2 years ago
Reply to  George Wells

Except that migrants are usually pretty worst off than natives/educated/burgoise even when both are poor.
In some ways migrants and racial minorities are the new reserve army of capitalim.

Last edited 2 years ago by Liomar Marques Júlio
Francis MacGabhann
Francis MacGabhann
2 years ago

It’s like buying a watch for the designer label rather than for how well it tells time. Ultimately, it’s a remarkable tribute to the power of branding, especially when we remember that fascism is a leftist philosophy.

Last edited 2 years ago by Francis MacGabhann
Michael James
Michael James
2 years ago

Exactly. When Hitler became leader of the Nazis he adopted a red flag in imitation of the Communists, but put a swastika on it. A policeman observing the early Nazi parades called the movement ‘a second red army’. The Nazis welcomed the many defecters from the Communist Party since they had already been trained in totalitarianism.

Last edited 2 years ago by Michael James
Liomar Marques Júlio
Liomar Marques Júlio
2 years ago

No, fascism is not a leftist movement. Most fascists cling to the capitalist elite, and subdue the workers.
And Hitler was deeply anti-communist, and anti democracy. He even talked about both as Jewish things.

Sue Whorton
Sue Whorton
2 years ago

The gilets jaunes in my area were not just underclass, whatever they are. They were retired teachers and nurses and shopkeepers. The organization of traffic blockading the supermarket car parks on the first Monday of the protest in our area was masterly. Commerce was stopped but emergency vehicles had dedicated lanes.

R Wright
R Wright
2 years ago

Not a single socialist who’d actually read any of Karl Marx would die on the hill of cultural conservatism when there are redistributive economic policies on one side and not the other. These are some of the most castrated, cowardly leftists imaginable.

Martin Smith
Martin Smith
2 years ago

What passes for ‘the left’ these days hates the working class.

Last edited 2 years ago by Martin Smith
David Simpson
David Simpson
2 years ago

Unfortunately this requires the most important constituency in France, the apathetic, to sit up, pay attention to the arguments, and vote. They probably won’t. Sadly.

Rod McLaughlin
Rod McLaughlin
2 years ago

Nobody should vote for Macron. I’m certainly not going to.

Justin Clark
Justin Clark
2 years ago

The late Antony C Sutton suggested that instead of there being a straight line with (far) left communism/socialism on one side and (far) right capitalism on the other, that it’s actually horseshoe-shaped – and they are closer than you think. If true, I think the centre of that horseshoe is for Freedom & Liberty because left and right both want to control. Just my 2c.

Charles Hedges
Charles Hedges
2 years ago
Reply to  Justin Clark

I think the divide is between those who are individuals who support themselves financially and are capable and willing to defend themselves verbally and physically( the yeoman archer-owned land and volunteered his services for money ) and help others and those who lack the abilities and are prepared to surrender to the Collective or Herd. The Individual has the money and means to stand up to and defeat the bully. Do you prefer to be a hungry master or comfortable serf?The Collective or Herd can be Nazis, Communists, Islamic extremists, Roman Catholic Inquisition or any theocracy.
The Collective is normally run by lower midddle class types ( lawyers, journalists, writers, etc) who form a a clerisy. The clerisy resent their lack of status and salary which is a result of their lack of spirit. The Clerisy have a great insight and understanding of spite, cruelty, resentment,cowardice, venality and sloth and manipulate people by using their good nature to control them. The Clerisy persuade the murderous members of criminal underclass to aquire status by the murder,torture and rape of those who oppose them or today social media. Examples of use of murderous members underclass were the criminals released by the French Revolutionaries during The Great Terror, The Cheka used by Lenin, SA by Hitler, Red Guards by Mao and Revolutionary Guards by Khomeini,

Art C
Art C
2 years ago

Macron is a histrionic boy tyrant who has thoroughly destroyed trust in French democracy and frequently restricted personal liberties to a level seen only in full-blown totalitarian societies. When not bullying large sections of the French public he seems to enjoy sneering publicly at them. The only choice for ordinary people, including Mélenchon supporters, is to vote for Le Pen or not vote at all. The latter plays into Macron’s hands: a necessary component of faux democracy is a sizeable number of pliable pawns; ask Putin! A vote for Le Pen would mean giving her the chance to prove she is more illiberal than the incumbent. I very much doubt she would succeed.

Kathleen Stern
Kathleen Stern
2 years ago
Reply to  Art C

Macron and Trudeau, both pretty boys ‘eduacted’ by Schwab to appeal to voters as harmless and liberal.

Madli Kleingeld
Madli Kleingeld
2 years ago

I see no mention of Putin factor ??

James Chater
James Chater
2 years ago

So, Le Pen maybe be ‘lent’ many votes by people (particularly amongst younger voters) who hope and pray she doesn’t satisfy her ‘core’ ultra-nationalist supporters if she were to win? This is what people want apparently, or are prepared to tolerate, or risk – Division.
Closer to home. Yes, as long as the unapologetically divisive keep slipping in, democratic politics (properly ‘democratic’ in the historic, political-philosophical sense) slip away.
‘Left’ & ‘Right’ still seem pretty reliable to me, though in this era it seems age demographics do play a larger part.

Last edited 2 years ago by James Chater
Art C
Art C
2 years ago
Reply to  James Chater

If you want to talk about Division you’re way behind the game. Macron has been sowing division for 4 years already. That’s precisely why we are where we are!

Michael Launer
Michael Launer
2 years ago

A contrary opinion: you may think Macron is bad for France, but Le Pen will be disastrous – not only for France, but for EU unity. Should she win, the West can kiss off Ukraine forever and then have to deal with an emboldened Russia. Not a good prospect.

Liomar Marques Júlio
Liomar Marques Júlio
2 years ago

The big problem is that Le-Pen plays by the Putin book. She will tell anything to win an election, and then make sure this was the last fair election you had.
She simply isn’t trustworthy.

Andrew Langridge
Andrew Langridge
2 years ago

Immigration is not as important to voters as commonly believed. In Britain, according to YouGov, twice as many people think that the economy and health are more important than immigration.

Kathryn Dwyer
Kathryn Dwyer
2 years ago

I loved your book with Toby Green on Covid and clearly you make many excellent points in this essay particularly the uselessness of the terms left and right. Should it now be “the very rich and super rich and the rest” ? However, I can only be grateful that almost no-one with a vote in France will take the slightest notice of the exhortation to not vote Macron from reading this essay!
For many presidential elections now it’s been a vote for “the least bad” and nothing has changed this time. As a fairly new French citizen I take it all extremely seriously and abhor the “white” vote which is in effect an abstention, noted only by the fact you bothered to vote at all and so counted as some sort of gesture.
The fact is, if too many of Mélenchon’s voters vote “blanc” tomorrow is not a done deal

Kon Trary
Kon Trary
2 years ago

The French system makes it implicit that the winner of the second round is only the first choice of those who voted for the eventual winner in Round One. This should be made explicit in both rounds by changing the ballot to something like:
▢ I don’t want any of these candidates; but the least objectionable choice is:
▢ Candidate “A”
▢ Candidate “B”
▢ Candidate “C”
 ▢ Candidate “D”
Voters could just check the “least objectionable” box; or the “least objectionable” box and one candidate. Then the position of the electorate would be clear when all the results were published after the vote was completed.

Last edited 2 years ago by Kon Trary
William MacDougall
William MacDougall
2 years ago

Interesting article, but the closeness of far left and far right is not new. Mosley was a former Labour Party Minister. Mussolini was Editor of the Socialist Party newspaper. Laval was first elected as a Socialist. And Hitler called himself a “Socialist”…

Michael James
Michael James
2 years ago

I thought unemployment had fallen considerably under Macron. Perhaps that doesn’t count if the French prefer Le Pen’s policy of national bankruptcy.

Last edited 2 years ago by Michael James
Martin L
Martin L
2 years ago

The only difference between Marine Le Pen and her father is that she is a lot more shrewd than he was and she doesn’t spout off the more extreme views of her party. Claiming that the far right is the true friend of the working classes is the same tactic as used in 1930s Germany. It depends on the ‘othering’ if vast swathes of people and must be defeated! Do we learn nothing from history?