Danny Trom revisits the unprecedented electoral agreement on the French left, which has united the Greens, Socialists and Communists under the aegis of “La France Insoumise” [Unsubmissive France], an anti-system party whose leader, Jean-Luc Melenchon, came in third place in the last presidential election. The alliance, called the Nupes[1], stands to win up to 200 seats in France’s parliamentary elections, the second round of which occurs this Sunday. Trom reflects on what lies behind the strange name of “France Insoumise” and the social and political imaginary that such a word carries. This is an opportunity to point out the risk of what could well have been a “submission” of the entire left to Melenchon’s “insubmission.”
The fact is apparent: “La France Insoumise” [Unsubmissive France] has achieved hegemony on the left. Perhaps it is time to stop for a moment and notice that this party has a curious name. It implies that there are two France’s, one unsubmissive (insoumis), the other submissive (soumis); one docile, the other raucous. But unsubmissive /submissive to whom? This is difficult to determine, and extraneous with regard to a name that divides the whole of France into the two porous camps of the insoumis and the submissive. But one thing is clear: those who provoke the division cannot be included in this divided totality that saturates the space. The “subjugators” are out of the picture. The agent of division is, in short, only an excluded third party to which France either submits or rebels. We do not know who they are, nor where thru are. So we can immediately see how LFI [Acronym for “La France insoumise”] departs from the historical tradition of the left, which has thought of social space through the complementary pairs in tension: “capitalist/proletarian,” “bourgeois/worker.” These names are class positions in a describable structure. Polarity implies qualifying their relations. The capitalist owns the means of production and extorts surplus value; the proletarian owns nothing and sells his labor power. However, the mass of the rebellious is amorphous and indefinite. It is difficult to grasp through it any polarity that could be politicized in terms of justice or injustice.
At this point, one is a bit lost, but one is nevertheless assured of having left the world structured by the left/right polarity. And indeed, the France insoumise/soumise produced by the LFI, if we are to believe Mélenchon’s words, is composed of “people.” When he speaks to France, it is to them that he addresses himself. For a former Marxist, this is cruelly lacking in precision. Only a few eccentrics, jealous of their singularity, will exclude themselves from the “people.” This is very convenient, since the loss, for those who seek votes, is very negligible. However, logically, there must be agents against whom France insoumise rebels and to whom France soumise submits. Who are these agents of submission? They remain unnamed. They appear as a phantom class, open to any ad-libbing. The place is vacant. The old classes hated emptiness, everyone had to be inside the polarity. LFI is courageous. The emptiness does not frighten it; the party exploits this. All manner of fantasy can fill the void. Its very name signals their welcome. Hence the wide open door to conspiracy and antisemitism.
The name LFI thus opens onto a scene where the operator of the division of France must necessarily be external, elsewhere, foreign to the people, and yet acting, in the way that occupied France splits into French people subjugated by and resistant by the occupier. Thus also subjected/rebellious vis-à-vis the occupier. The imaginary summoned by the name LFI is that of national liberation. There is an agent from whom we must free ourselves. It is not here that a relation must be analyzed in order to be transformed, it is not a system of relations that one wants to modify; it is an enemy that must be targeted. But for that it would be necessary to designate it with clearness for lack of overcoming it. But, precisely, LFI does not do this. One often wonders about the meaning of the word populism. The answer is at hand: to transform relations of objective interdependence into a war of all, of all the people, those who are insoumis and those who are still submissive, against those who dominate.
The legislative elections bring the deviations this left to the heart of political strategies. And this leads to a push for clarification. In Le Monde, speaking about the dissidence that has been organized in the Socialist Party, we read: “A political agreement made by Olivier Faure, the first secretary of the Socialist Party, with the France Insoumise (LFI), which, according to them, dishonors their party by placing them in an unbearable submission (…).” To which the first secretary of the PS retorted, “There is no submission to the insoumis.” The voter of the left, and everyone concerned about the future of the country, is then obliged to ask the question: what can it mean that one does not submit to the insoumis? Not to submit to those who do not submit – double negation obliges – can possibly mean that one submits. But it could also mean something else: that we will not let ourselves be locked into the logic of submission, if the hope for the Socialist Party to recover from the debacle is to be found in its recomposition within a united left, on a platform that is sufficiently broad to allow us to hope that social democracy will be able to recover in the years to come. The future will tell if this is possible, and the future is uncertain. This is a risk that must be taken. One thing is certain. It is that LFI will not fail to take advantage of the first option: claiming that in the spirit of the double negation resistance to rebellion amounts to endorsing submission. The good news is that so far LFI does not yet have a monopoly on understanding the meaning of words. Not submitting to insubordination does not necessarily mean being submissive. It just means not to submit to the one who asks for it, no matter if this “one” is called “La France insoumise” or “Venus in Furs.” It remains then to carry this other proposal: insubordination to insubordination does not imply submission. It is there that a space for thought opens up. The populist spirit will not be present there. Not being an insoumis will not mean being soumis. Discussion will occur absent such an accusation.
Danny Trom
Notes
| 1 | Nupes is the acronym for “Nouvelle Union populaire écologique et sociale” [“New Popular Ecological and Social Union”] |
