Who remembers that Jean-Luc Mélenchon is a Trotskyist? And besides, who remembers the Trotskyists, these far-left activists who left their mark after May 68? And its most radical (and secret) movement: the Lambertists? Laurent Mauduit, co-founder of Mediapart, and Denis Sieffert, former director of the left-wing weekly Politis – both ex-Trotskyists – publish a fascinating Trotskyism, secret stories (Les petits matins, 2024) on the origins of this movement where many well-known politicians cut their teeth. The authors also delve into the setbacks of La France insoumise and its leader who, they believe, has never broken with this movement known to be violent and authoritarian.
Lionel Jospin (secretly), Jean-Christophe Cambadélis (publicly), Jean-Luc Mélenchon (for a time) and even Edwy Plenel… If we were a conspiracy theorist, we would say that the Trotskyists have invested many elite circles, don’t you think? don’t you?
Laurent Mauduit: We must also not forget the historian Benjamin Stora… Indeed, it is better not to fall into conspiracy because Trotskyism is above all the history of a generation, that of the sixties and seventies. We were twenty years old at the time, fighting American imperialism in huge demonstrations against the war in Vietnam; we denounced the crushing of the Prague Spring by the USSR, the Stalinist bureaucracy in power in Moscow. It was the Trotskyists who led the fight for the release of Leonid Pliouchtch, a mathematician and Soviet dissident whom Moscow had interned in a psychiatric asylum in 1972. In the history we have lived through, there have therefore been beautiful pages, but fewer in number than the dark pages: it must be said. We took stock.
Denis Sieffert: We are children of 1968. And the leadership of the Trotskyist movement in which we were active, the OCI, kept repeating that May 68 was only the dress rehearsal for a revolution that was sure to happen. The time was that of “the imminence of the revolution”, which was the driving force behind our commitment. But our enthusiasm did not allow us to appreciate that this movement, claiming to embody anti-authoritarian socialism, was in reality very undemocratic.
A youthful mistake?
Denis Sieffert: No, no regrets! Because the times brought us to this kind of political engagement. We were anti-Stalinists, very hostile to the PCF under the leadership of Moscow. Trotskyism is a current with a very high level of militant training, with a pronounced taste for History, that of the French Revolution and the Commune above all. So we learned a lot there, even though we later broke up. And then, what does Trotskyism mean today, at a time when the Wall is no longer, when Stalinism has disappeared?
The second part of your book focuses on the heirs of Trotskyism, and in particular the first of them, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who, you write, takes up the whole disastrous method…
Laurent Mauduit: There were two major branches in Trotskyism: the Communist League where there was a lively debate and which would much later give birth to the NPA that we know today. The other branch is the Internationalist Communist Organization (OCI), very influential in certain unions at the time, notably the UNEF. The OCI, where we come from, like Mélenchon, wanted to be much more authoritarian in its functioning. The decisions depended on one and the same person: Pierre Boussel, known as Lambert, founder of “Lambertism”, this movement where Jean-Luc Mélenchon cut his teeth. It was a Leninist movement. Both of us broke with the OIC in the 1980s because we considered it imperative to return to the democratic question. Today, observing LFI, we have the impression that Mélenchon has preempted the legacy of Lambertism and has a relationship with democracy as distended as he. At the OCI, Lambert carried out purges; at LFI, Mélenchon removes from the self-proclaimed management executives who have fallen into disgrace. In either case, in Lambert’s Trotskyist party governed by democratic centralism as in Mélenchon’s “gas movement”, the activists have no say or cannot take part in decisions. Mélenchon reminds us of Lambert and what we broke up with. How can we still tolerate in France the persistence of a political movement which has no elected leadership? There can be no parenthesis in democratic processes. Contrary to what Trotsky asserted in his pamphlet Their morals and ours, The end does not justify the means. The means must be in line with the end. Neither god nor Caesar nor tribune, that also applies to LFI.
“There is no more Fifth Republic than Jean-Luc Mélenchon!”
Denis Sieffert: Mélenchon was a Trotskyist for a short time in his life, just four or five years. But he kept many of the stigmata of this militant youth: the same language tics, and often similar behavior. He even made the closing speech of the POI (the heir to the OCI) last year, which became his praetorian guard responsible for intimidating and hitting those who would criticize the leader too much. We saw it at the time of the Quatennens affair, on the site Worker Information (movement journal, Editor’s note), where they write: “Adrien is coming back, the working class needs you.” And like many Lambertists, Mélenchon has a very mechanical relationship with History, he believes that the future is often the repetition of the past. Look at how he approaches the latest social movements, whether it’s the yellow vests or the latest battle against pension reform: he constantly sees them as the harbinger of a revolution, but it never arrives. He lives in hope of a future that never comes.
So he would be the Lenin of our time?
Denis Sieffert: Let’s say that in many ways, there is a small Leninist aspect in his behavior, as was the case for the OIC. The greatest proof of this is its constant hegemonist temptation. In his eyes, when Nupes was doing well, only LFI counted and he assumed the right to decide in place of the other partners. We saw this at the time of the pension reform when, with an authoritarian tweet, he called into question what the unions had decided and what his political partners wanted. He believes his movement is the enlightened vanguard of the left. The paradox is that he has always made a very fine and elaborate criticism of Bonapartism, as was also the case with the OCI, he says he is fighting in favor of the Sixth Republic but, in fact, he does not There is no more Fifth Republic than Jean-Luc Mélenchon!
Laurent Mauduit: Democracy is dying because of this system of permanent coup d’état which Mélenchon also uses and abuses. The lack of collective, debate, internal democracy, its authoritarian hegemonism, contribute to consolidating its glass ceiling as much as that of the left today. The other aspect of his behavior that attracts attention is his way of renewing the generations of his movement. He has sidelined the oldest, those who carry political weight, count in the media, express criticism against him, and replaces them with younger ones, who owe him everything, have less political experience, nor memory and can be malleable. This is his “Lenin promotion”. Some of these young people do not know the twists and turns of long history, the history of their own leader… An amnesia that he himself cultivates. Because Mélenchon often varies. Which LFI deputies remember that he voted for the Maastricht Treaty, that he was the minister of one of the governments which privatized the most, that at the dawn of the 2002 presidential election, when several demonstrations are getting organized, he called for calm so as not to weaken Lionel Jospin?
He also has, you write, “a weakness for strong men”. For what ?
Denis Sieffert: On the geopolitical aspect, it’s true. Stigmatizing, not without reason, American policy, he starts from the dangerous principle according to which the enemies of his enemies are his friends or in any case that he must be gentle with them. He has thus always provided, at a given moment, support or shown indulgence towards autocrats if not dictators. He was pleased that Vladimir Putin was helping Bashar al-Assad get rid of the rebels. He supported Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela who still had the army intervene in Parliament. And this “campist” position is also the one defended by the POI, whose deputy Jérôme Legavre was the only parliamentarian not to vote for the motion in support of Ukraine. This distended relationship that Mélenchon maintains with democracy does not bode well for the president he would be.
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