Speaker – Fred Leplat
Tuesday 19th May 7.30pm at Bennetts Bar, Bennetts Hill, Birmingham City Centre.
In early February, the 3,000 strong LCR (Revolutionary Communist League) dissolved itself and launched the NPA (New Anti-Capitalist Party) with 10,000 members and 450 branches across France. One of its best known members is Olivier Besancenot, a 32 year old postal worker and twice candidate in the Presidential elections.
The creation of the NPA is linked to the global economical crisis: capitalism is sinking into a very deep and historical crisis which is not just a financial crisis or a simple failure of the neoliberal regulation. Ordinary people are threatened to be the victims of a crisis caused by the banks and the corporations. Mass redundancies, high cost of living, and the destruction of public services are the first steps of this attack. A fight-back has started with a one-day general strike in France on the 29 January with 2million in the street, followed by an even bigger turn-out on the 19 March.
Despite the threat of redundancies, there is a growing mood to resist. Company bosses threatening closures and job losses risk being locked up in their offices by workers such as at 3M/Post-it. This is not unpopular as only 7% condemn this action while 40% believe it to be entirely justified!! And the broadly victorious six-week general strike against the high cost of living the French Caribbean island of Martinique has provided ideas about how to win.
The NPA will be on the frontline of mobilisations, strikes and demonstrations and for the regrouping of the Left. The NPA proposes an emergency program to stop workers from being made to pay for the crisis which includes the nationalisation of companies creating redundancies , a 300 Euro increase in all wages and pensions, a minimum wage of 1500 Euro a month, the abolition of the VAT and a rent freeze.
In order to encourage the resistance and promote such this anti-capitalist program, the NPA makes it clear that there needs to be a political perspective that is not linked to the Socialist Party, which is a similar party to New Labour. The NPA has proposed a common front to the Communist Party and the Party de Gauche (Left Party – a recent split from the SP) to fight together the forthcoming European and French regional elections, as well as to promote the resistance to the neo-liberal attacks.
The creation of the New Anti-capitalist Party is a significant stage in a long process that began with an appeal in August 2007 by the former LCR for the regrouping of all anti-capitalist activists whatever their past political traditions. For French revolutionary and anti-capitalist activists, building the NPA as a broad party is a genuine challenge. Of course, the NPA is in no sense a model for other countries, but it is an experience which is of great interest to socialists in Britain and which deserves our support.
Part 1
Part 1
