Revolutionary Communist League (France)
93100 Montreuil
(May 2008)
The Revolutionary Communist League ( Revolutionary Communist League ) was a Trotskyist party in France that existed from 1974 to 2009. They broke up in February 2009 to merge into a new company, called the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste ( New Anti -Capitalist Party ), one no longer exclusively Trotskyist party.
History and programmatic
The LCR was founded in 1968 as the Ligue Communiste under the leadership of Alain Krivine, Daniel Bensaid and Henri Weber French section of standing in the tradition of Leon Trotsky's Fourth International and has been wearing a short-term ban 1973 ( after which they briefly Front Revolutionary Communist League - FCR - called ) the present name.
For the revolting youth, which triggered a veritable national crisis in May 68 in France, the traditional French Communist Party ( Parti Communiste Français) was unattractive due to their bureaucratic- authoritarian structures and their orientation to the parliamentary road to socialism; the PCF in turn distrusted the " petty-bourgeois " radicals deeply and tried the incipient solidarity, especially young workers with the student revolt even suppress. In this situation, were able to gain influence in the modern Left, Maoism and Trotskyism.
The Brussels by the Secretariat of the Fourth International and its leading theorist Ernest Mandel represented, relatively flexible and less dogmatic interpretation of Trotskyism exerted a strong appeal to intellectuals. Trotskyism is consistently internationalist, but did not justify the bureaucratic regime in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Mandel's direction allowed (in contrast to versions of Trotskyism, the only pure workers' revolutions accept ) a critical solidarity with revolutions in the Third World ( China, Cuba) and showed significant sensitivity to new issues outside the purely economic antagonism between labor and capital ( Feminism, ecology, etc. ). The Fourth International was always trying to spread a revolutionary alternative to capitalism and Stalinism.
Despite the spectacular performances with which the predecessor organizations of the LCR made a splash in 1968, these efforts were unsuccessful for a long time. In the 70s and 80s, they did not reach an edge of existence beyond. After 1990, the LCR began to gain in importance. The collapse of " real socialism " in Eastern Europe broke with the traditional " pro-Moscow " Communists of the PCF from a deep disorientation. Although prepared for the situation in which well each alternative to capitalism was seen as discredited, first though the LCR difficulties, although these always took an extremely critical relation to the defunct states of the East. She could but better recover from the crisis than the tending to parliamentary reformism PCF. The LCR was very active in the anti-racist and anti-fascist movements against the right-wing Le Pen Many of its members participated in the building of the new left-wing trade union movement Union Syndicale Solidaires, as grassroots and Covenants of the labor movement aspiring environmental, feminist and anti -racist initiatives alternative to the as bureaucratic classified unions, especially in the field of public service gained significance.
Choice Politically put the LCR during the 90s mainly on alliances with the other successful Trotskyist party LO ( Workers Struggle, Workers Struggle). The LO has long focused solely on time factory and trade union work and could in this way gain a base in the working class, especially in the crisis-ridden industrial regions, in contrast to LCR. Her charismatic spokeswoman Arlette Laguiller gained growing popularity in presidential election campaigns. Between LO and LCR reveals fundamental differences could not be overcome. The LCR is their social composition ago a party of educated middle classes. Your fan base is, unlike the LO, less from the traditional industrial working-class background, but mainly of wage earners in the public sector, health and education, substandard and proletarianized intelligence and a politically active youth.
2002 entered for the LCR of the hitherto unknown 27 -year-old Olivier Besancenot as a candidate for the presidential election and scored a sensational 4.3 percent of the vote (about 1,450,000 votes). ( The long-known Arlette Laguiller of the LO came to 5.7 percent. ) Besancenot has studied history, works at the post office as a letter carrier and is an activist of the left alternative postal union SUD- PTT. He is undoubtedly a typical representative of the LCR environment: young and not established socially, despite high education.
The LCR, which currently has an estimated 3,000 members, aims at the formation of a new, larger organization of anti-capitalist left, and has therefore addressed to both the LO and at the PCF flow of refondateurs ( founders ) offers for a merger. These efforts have so far failed because the refondateurs not want to separate from the PCF and the LO only on strictly Trotskyist base is ready for a new formation, which contradicts the more open objectives of LCR.
In the first round of the presidential election of 2007, the LCR candidate Olivier Besancenot reached with 1,498,581 votes ( 4.08% ), a result similar to 2002. A sought by LCR "anti- neoliberal unit candidacy " was due to differences between the in the discussion here about forces involved ( including the PCF) was not achieved and some prominent LCR members as the economist Michel Husson then left the party or called as Christophe Aguiton on the election of José Bové.