After years of retreat and opportunism and consequent loss of support and influence, the French Communist Party (PCF) is showing signs of life. Aligned with smaller parties in the Left Front (Front de Gauche, FG), the PCF has rallied around the presidential candidacy of Jean Melenchon for the forthcoming first round of French elections. The latest polls show Melenchon with over 14% of the prospective voters, ahead of all other candidates excepting Hollande (PS) and Sarkozy (UMP).http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ml2day-recent?d=yIl2AUoC8zA (http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ml2day-recent?a=UCmPlS6bzU4:jCRU6Ed9pTA:yIl2AUoC8zA) http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ml2day-recent?d=qj6IDK7rITs (http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ml2day-recent?a=UCmPlS6bzU4:jCRU6Ed9pTA:qj6IDK7rITs) http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ml2day-recent?i=UCmPlS6bzU4:jCRU6Ed9pTA:F7zBnMyn0Lo (http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ml2day-recent?a=UCmPlS6bzU4:jCRU6Ed9pTA:F7zBnMyn0Lo) http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ml2day-recent?i=UCmPlS6bzU4:jCRU6Ed9pTA:gIN9vFwOqvQ (http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ml2day-recent?a=UCmPlS6bzU4:jCRU6Ed9pTA:gIN9vFwOqvQ)
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ml2day-recent/~4/UCmPlS6bzU4

More... (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ml2day-recent/~3/UCmPlS6bzU4/is-the-french-communist-party-back-1362.html)

Is this a fair estimation?



A Comment on "Is the French CP Back?"

The French presidential campaign has given a new focus to a revitalised left in France, and one that has a different shape.

The various Trotsykite formations, whose media-blessed campaigns put them in front of the PCF's Marie-George Buffet in the last presidential election, have vanished from sight and poll below 1%. Much the same has happened to the ecologist candidate, while the anti-globalisation movement, which had some minor electoral traction, has also vanished.

A lot of this is due to the personality and political style of Jean-Luc Mélenchon who has put himself at the head of a remarkable convergence of different streams of anger and resistance and who has dug into the support of both the middle of the road Socialist Party and the populist and racist National Front.

There was a great deal of suspicion in the PCF (Parti Communiste Francais, French Communist Party) about the candidature of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Part of this was grounded in his uncertain record as an ex-Trotskyite, former Socialist Party minister, and a former but now repentant advocate of the European Union.

Part of it was grounded in a suspicion that rightwing elements in the PCF leadership wanted to dissolve the party into an amorphous "Left Party" and they saw the alliance of the PCF and Mélenchon's Party of the Left (Parti de Gauche) – itself a breakaway he led from the Socialist Party – as the embryo of this liquidationist trend.

In the internal party ballot the leadership had to pull out all the stops to defeat proposals to run a strong and militant Communist rather than back Mélenchon. The leadership did defeat the proposal, but not comfortably. But French Communists – especially the left – are a dogged and mostly disciplined lot and they have loyally backed the decision.

Although the Front is made up of the Parti de Gauche, the Gauche Unitaire (a breakaway from the Trotskyite NPA) and a number of smaller formations, it is the 100,000 strong PCF which is the organisational core of the electoral machine. Probably one in three or more PCF members are either locally elected representatives or trade union delegates and it is the only party that is present in every working class community and the only one that has a national network of enterprise-based collectives.

The trend represented by Robert Hue (who only gained election to the Senate with Socialist Party support) has been on its way out of the PCF for some time and is heading in the direction of the Socialist Party rather than some new formation.

http://mltoday.com/subject-areas/commentary/a-comment-on-is-the-french-cp-back-1375.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ml2day-recent+%28Welcome+to+MLToday.com+%7C+Recently+Added+Content+%7C+Please+Subscribe+to+Our+Feed%29

Is this a fair estimation?

I read this with some interest but don't have any personal knowledge of whether it is accurate or not. It would be interesting to be able to follow someone who was on top of the situation there.

I read this with some interest but don't have any personal knowledge of whether it is accurate or not. It would be interesting to be able to follow someone who was on top of the situation there.

I know the French situation pretty well and while the article captures a great deal, it is complicated.

The French Party, alongside the Italian and the Spanish, was the center of Eurocommunism. The PCF was regarded as perhaps the least opportunist of the three but that was mainly because it was the least hostile of the three to the Soviets. On issues of revisionism, it led.

The spark was not only ordinary opportunism and the impact of European postwar prosperity. It was also because the PCF was the French anti-Nazi resistance during WW2 and carried the mantle. Opportunism was presented as the only way to maintain the broad base and deep loyalty this inspired.

On the other hand, the PCF has always been the voice of the working class in France. The CGT, the key trade union confederation in France, is PCF. Because there is so much to conserve in the remaining base of the party, many comrades have remained stubbornly in the party and clung to the "old ideas". What people have argued for at The Bell (a fight from the "inside") is a reality in France and there is genuinely much remaining that is worth fighting for (and not just by the graybeards). This loose trend was vastly strengthened by the general strikes of 2 years ago.

There has not been a broad rejection of opportunism yet. That is a struggle which takes much time and effort (as in Greece)... but, things have moved and the PCF is no longer the lap dog of the Socialists (calling the PS "compromised" is very charitable - they make PASOK look left-wing and anti-imperialist).

The article still shows some wishful thinking but the movement so far is real.

Here is the interview of Melenchon to l’Humanité Dimanche

http://www.humaniteinenglish.com/spip.php?article2009


I think it is very clear what we are dealing with. The same ol' socialdemocracy in a new package. The socialdemocratic rhetoric is present: The markets vs the politicians, the participation of the CP in the government with the good socialdemocrats (the bad socialdemocrats are neoliberals), taxation for the rich (which is coincidentally the moto of bourgeois politicians these days), cooperation with bourgeoisie against the far right-wingers (a popular moto of socialdemocracy during the 80's and the 90's), demonization of the neoliberals and the greedy right-wingers, appeals to French patriotism (because the French bourgeois class must not be harmed more and they have to keep the capital inside the country), vague proposals about a better, humaine, capitalism green energy, immigration and human rights and ofcourse support for EU and EU organizations (which the good socialists and the communists will turn them into a useful tool for the working class to satisfy their needs, lol). It is exactly the eurocommunist platform. As Anaxarchos said, there is no movement yet. And there isnt a movement yet because no one wants one.

The article still shows some wishful thinking but the movement so far is real.

I knew he was blue skying it to some extent in the article, but these kind of trends can snowball too..

How the Front de Gauche has been winning the French working-class vote | David Hearst


Whatever happens on Sunday, Jean Luc Mélenchon's alliance has made its mark on French politics – and is here to stay
The cherry blossom is out in force in a small street on Paris's southern outskirts. Well it might be, because it is here in an old shoe factory that the political sensation of France's presidential election has been stitched together.
The headquarters of Jean-Luc Mélenchon's campaign is known as The Factory. One visit is enough to convince you that there is more to Mélenchon's rise in the polls than the man himself. He is difficult to typify. He talks to people who think they belong to the modern world, but about subjects they are not used to hearing in an election like this – history, France, culture – why they inherited the welfare state they have.
The former Socialist senator is not just a firebrand on the stump. He is also everyone's favourite professeur de fac, a real instituteur républicain. But Mélenchon, the candidate who speaks his mind, is not enough to explain the rise of the Front de Gauche, a coalition of seven parties of which by far the strongest are the communists. Mélenchon's own party, the Parti de Gauche is dwarfed by it (10,000 members compared with the communist PCF's 130,000).
Irrespective of how it does on Sunday in the first round of the presidential election, it harbours serious long-term political ambitions. It already thinks it has won one national election – the referendum on the doomed European constitution. This was in 2005 and the year in which Mélenchon broke Socialist party ranks, sacrificing a comfortable career as a senator over this issue. Although what was later to become known as the Lisbon treaty was little more than a compendium of previous treaties, in the left's eyes it institutionalised a concept of Europe that put free-trade principles guaranteeing an internal market above a Europe defending social and trade union rights.
Mélenchon campaigned for a no vote, and got it. Brussels did not accept no for an answer and when the constitution was downsized into a more humble treaty, it was to the French parliament, not to the popular vote, that it turned for approval. For the French far left this still counted as a victory, because they had recaptured this form of Euroscepticism from the far right.
The next stop on this political journey was Germany and the founding congress of Die Linke, which was formed out of defections from the SPD and the dissolution of the former communists. Raquel Garrido, in charge of the front's international relations, said: "The European social democratic movement had an historic opportunity in 1989 to rebuild something that was both democratic and socialist. And they failed. So what we had on our hands was a double responsibility – to build something after the failure of state communism and the European social democratic movement."
It took them two more years to organise their split from the French Socialists and get the communists on board. From then on they have risen steadily in national prominence, first at the European parliamentary elections in 2009 when they got five seats in Strasbourg, and then the French regional elections. When they started their presidential campaign on June 29 last year, they decided to go big – large open-air rallies that had more the feel of Tahrir Square than a sedate and controlled indoor rally designed for television. Their slogan, "Place au Peuple", was a pun in that it means both "make room for the people" and the "the people's square", but after Mélenchon appeared on national television, that is literally what his rallies became. More than 100,000 people crammed into Place de la Bastille in Paris, and similar scenes were repeated in Nantes and Toulouse.
After these shows of force, both Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande felt they had to organise mass open-air rallies themselves. But the Front de Gauche was not really targeting them. They decided early on to go for Marine Le Pen, Jean-Marie's daughter who had transformed the Front National into a modern far-right party.
It has been a deadly battle. After a television duel in which Mélenchon destroyed Le Pen's credentials as a feminist, particularly on the issue of abortion, the Front National went back to its far right roots, plucking one of their heros out of the air. He is Robert Brasillach, a fascist who advocated that Jewish children should be sent to the camps with their families. He was the only journalist to be executed after the libération at the end of the second world war, but as he did not kill anyone, he is honoured to this day by Le Pen as a victim of conscience.
The Front National's fortunes have wavered, and recently they have been going up in the polls into third place. But the Front de Gauche is unwavering in its intention to recapture the working-class vote. Garrido said: "We really need the extreme right to go back into their box. This would be one of the real transformations of this campaign. If we go in front of the Front National, France would go back to what it really is, a very mixed country with a high rate of mixed marriages, its own republican culture and tradition." Whatever happens on Sunday, the Front de Gauche is here to stay.
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http://www.thebellforum.com/showthread.php?t=72087

This is interesting tactics. Front de Gauche, instead of going after the Socialists, which seems the intuitive thing to do, attack the 3rd place far right party. Other than performing a public service how does this work for them? I can only speculate, one thing is they show they are tough, certainly a plus compared to the wretched Socialists. I'm thinking that you shake loose a section of the far right that is more interested in radical answers than the specific right wing cant. Dunno how that sort of thing would work in this country given the duopoly. Undoubtably something of the sort is needed to break the hold of the right on the South and other rural regions and perhaps after such an operation is up and running it might not be as hard as it seems. As things stand there is no radical alternative other than the right, but how can you do this without an organization? It seems that if you can separate the material concerns from the racist/libertarian explainations that there might be some fertile ground.

Well, that didn't work so well....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/22/french-presidential-election-hollande-le-pen-sarkozy?newsfeed=true

So what does the Front do now?

Well, that didn't work so well....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/22/french-presidential-election-hollande-le-pen-sarkozy?newsfeed=true

So what does the Front do now?

It is weirder than that. Mélenchon was a "charisma candidate", in some ways related to American Idol and Facebook strategies (and thus in step with the "likes" and twitter followers in another country). It was a very strange "quick-fix". Now that the RIGHT is back in a big way, we have to rally to prevent the triumph of the "true reactionaries", etc...

You get dizzy going around this circle again and again.

It is weirder than that. Mélenchon was a "charisma candidate", in some ways related to American Idol and Facebook strategies (and thus in step with the "likes" and twitter followers in another country). It was a very strange "quick-fix". Now that the RIGHT is back in a big way, we have to rally to prevent the triumph of the "true reactionaries", etc...

You get dizzy going around this circle again and again.

I wonder how many Likes the Holocaust denier has, way more than Melenchon apparently. What he needs is more retweets

There is no shame in getting bad results in elections. What is shame is for a CP to become the tail of bourgeois parties. Melenchon will support Holland, the "socialist" candidate. As it was predictable the motto of the CP is the formation of a wider progressive alliance against the neoliberalism of "Merkozy" and against the far-right wing extremists. Few years ago, the French people was asked to vote for Chirac against Lepen, now the French people is asked to vote for the socialdemocrats in order to get rid of Sarkozy. These glamourous eurocommunists are the pawn of bourgeois parties. They dont want a genuine workers movement because they wont be able to control it. They want a disorganized working class so they can surrend it to the hands of bourgeoisie in every election.

There is no shame in getting bad results in elections. What is shame is for a CP to become the tail of bourgeois parties. Melenchon will support Holland, the "socialist" candidate. As it was predictable the motto of the CP is the formation of a wider progressive alliance against the neoliberalism of "Merkozy" and against the far-right wing extremists. Few years ago, the French people was asked to vote for Chirac against Lepen, now the French people is asked to vote for the socialdemocrats in order to get rid of Sarkozy. These glamourous eurocommunists are the pawn of bourgeois parties. They dont want a genuine workers movement because they wont be able to control it. They want a disorganized working class so they can surrend it to the hands of bourgeoisie in every election.

Meh, shouldn't believe what I read in the papers, huh? You're probably right, though I see no excuse for it. Push the Socialists left with rhetoric perhaps but withhold support, organize and hit the streets whenever propitious. It's gonna suck regardless, especially for the immigrants.

Meh, shouldn't believe what I read in the papers, huh? You're probably right, though I see no excuse for it. Push the Socialists left with rhetoric perhaps but withhold support, organize and hit the streets whenever propitious. It's gonna suck regardless, especially for the immigrants.

Well, the things is that the field of all organized fight isnt the elections or the public rhetoric or the media. It is the real society where the people are working and living. You hear these days the word "hegemony" too often especially from leftists who are advocating a leftist unity of all "progressive forces". They are saying that the United Left (which includes even the sell out socialdemocrats or even the "honest right-wingers") could impose its radical agenda and achieve hegemony in society by forming a wide coalition of all progressive parties. Hegemony this, hegemony that, they are repeating like broken record the same Gramscian term although they conviniently forget that Gramsci described the term "Hegemony" using military vocabulary. H Hegemony cannot be achieved by bowing down to the terms of socialdemocray or by playing along with bourgeois parties. They are better than us in this game, they are more experienced in this field. It is their playground, they have all the money, the experts, they newspapers, the journalists. The bourgeois are trying to -and have succeeded in many countries- to dislodge the political fights from the real society to the virtual world of media and internet. Only a disciplined, organized proletariat with strong and viable unions can achieve superiority in all fields, can drag the pettit bourgeois and farmers behind the working class and impose the radical political agenda to other political forces who are working together with the workers. The Socialists cannot change. They are enemies of the working class, they are bourgeois and supporters of the Capital. A CP must show to the workers the true nature of the bourgeois beneath the names and tags of the parliamentarian bourgeois democracy. Communists work for the complete destruction of the State mechanism not for its reformation.

Well, the things is that the field of all organized fight isnt the elections or the public rhetoric or the media. It is the real society where the people are working and living. You hear these days the word "hegemony" too often especially from leftists who are advocating a leftist unity of all "progressive forces". They are saying that the United Left (which includes even the sell out socialdemocrats or even the "honest right-wingers") could impose its radical agenda and achieve hegemony in society by forming a wide coalition of all progressive parties. Hegemony this, hegemony that, they are repeating like broken record the same Gramscian term although they conviniently forget that Gramsci described the term "Hegemony" using military vocabulary. H Hegemony cannot be achieved by bowing down to the terms of socialdemocray or by playing along with bourgeois parties. They are better than us in this game, they are more experienced in this field. It is their playground, they have all the money, the experts, they newspapers, the journalists. The bourgeois are trying to -and have succeeded in many countries- to dislodge the political fights from the real society to the virtual world of media and internet. Only a disciplined, organized proletariat with strong and viable unions can achieve superiority in all fields, can drag the pettit bourgeois and farmers behind the working class and impose the radical political agenda to other political forces who are working together with the workers. The Socialists cannot change. They are enemies of the working class, they are bourgeois and supporters of the Capital. A CP must show to the workers the true nature of the bourgeois beneath the names and tags of the parliamentarian bourgeois democracy. Communists work for the complete destruction of the State mechanism not for its reformation.

Oh I wouldn't expect the Socialists to really change but if you can call them on their faux-socialist program it seems that either you reveal their lies or force them to make more empty promises which can be thrown in their faces later. Not much else to do under the circumstances except of course building party support.

From the Place de Stalingrad

Translation from the sound track of the video by DailyMotion. and from the blog of Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

You are so many here! My friends, the first estimates we have been given, insofar as they are reliable, permit us to draw some lessons. The first lesson forced upon us is that our people are fully determined to turn the page of those "Sarkozy years".

The total vote, on the right, all components of the right wing included, is less than it was in 2007. But the far right is at a high level. So we were correct to concentrate our campaign on the analysis and radical criticism of the proposals of the far right. We had good reason to do that, and if we had not done so, perhaps the results this evening would have been even more alarming. They are alarming!

So it is the moment for me to say that we felt ourselves alone at certain moments in this battle. One candidate imitated me, the other ignored me. And we carried on our backs the essential of that combat. Shame on those who preferred to fire shots at us, rather than to help us! Remember forever the names of those who refused this combat, who preferred to relay, against us, the lying and anti-communist arguments of the far right.

At this hour, it is the score of the Front de gauche that holds in its hand the key to the final results. Thus it is all of you, and not me, for sure, who will decide the outcome, because, in truth, we have been the only new political force, the one such force that has managed to break through and was born in this election. It is we, henceforth, who have the keys to the final result.

I call on you, in clear conscience, fully to assume that responsibility, not bothering yourselves with all the commentaries, impressions, those petty games of divination. I invite no one to abandon themselves to these diversions. And I say again very clearly, at this hour, in clear conscience, there is nothing to negotiate! Our engagement needs no authorization, no coaxing, to unfurl itself in all its force.

I call on you to mobilize around the rendezvous that are offered to you. On the first of May, May Day, behind the unions and the working class in combat, our camp, our political family, the world of work and of labor’s demands. I call on you to join together on the sixth of May, to beat Sarkozy.

I ask you not to drag your feet. I ask you to campaign as if it were to help me, myself, to win the presidential election.

Ask for nothing in exchange, just an act of your own conscience. Why?

The battle that we wage is not a personal battle, not even a battle in a single country, it’s a question of turning the table, in order to reverse the tendency that, in Europe, keeps all the peoples under the same yoke of the Sarkozy-Merkel axis. We must break the yoke in France.

This is what we will do. And because we are going to do it, then, it will be crystal clear, indisputably, that it is we who make the decisions, henceforth, on the Left, and in the country.

Let’s raise ourselves up to the level of the power that was given to us by our assembly. Let us continue, calmly to march along our path. Because, I say it to you that, ineluctably, we are going the way of History, and History is coming our way. Ineluctably, the solutions we have defended, in essence, that of sharing the wealth, and of changing the regime, will be forced on the agenda by the shocks we can see coming.

No matter who will be elected president of the republic, the powers of finance are already determined to attack the French people. And so, no matter who is in the saddle, will have no other choice but to surrender, or to resist. And when the word is "resist!", there is no other force but ours.

(Cries of "Resistance!, Resistance!" from the assembly.)

Keep your hearts warm with the satisfaction of a job well done. Never forget the images of the force of your gathering. Never again allow yourselves to be scattered and dispersed!

In one stride, we have advanced into the pack at the front of the race [1]. With the next, we will achieve the definitive conquest of power, through the ballot boxes, and democracy.

Long live the Republic, long live the working class, long live France!

http://www.humaniteinenglish.com/spip.php?article2022

Looks like Nikos nailed this one, just as predicted.

Such sophistry would get ya thrown out of the Roman Senate, and that's a pretty low bar. "We're rough and tough and poised to kick some ass and by the way ya really gotta support those sorry-ass Socialists because Sarkozy is evil incarnate." It will be telling if the French Communist Party walks from the Front.

Better said:


Statement of the GS of the CC of the KKE, Aleka Papariga, on the French Presidential Elections

23/04/2012

The French elections, their results in the first round and what is being prepared for the second round are an important lesson and confirm the reasons why the KKE refuses to participate in the front of the so-called anti-memorandum forces and the so-called left forces. When a communist party, when a labour movement assimilates the protests of the popular masses into a left alliance which accepts the negotiation exclusively within the European Union and the social dialogue with the monopolies, then there can only be one outcome which is what we can now witness in relation to the second round in France: For the people to be led in turn to vote either for the liberal party or for social-democracy and for radicalism to be undermined and blunted and for conservatism to spread.

It brings to mind the second round of the French elections, when everyone voted for Chirac so that Le Pen would not be strengthened. Today they are being called on by the French left, as it is called, to vote for Hollande so that Sarkozy will not be president. With this line of reasoning the movement will always be defeated and especially in a crisis period when the labour and people’s movement must surge forwards.

http://inter.kke.gr/News/news2012/2012-04-23-gallia

With this line of reasoning the movement will always be defeated and especially in a crisis period when the labour and people’s movement must surge forwards.

This is what our own CP should know, but doesn't. Thank god for the KKE...

Fuck Mélenchon! He supported French imperialism's criminal bombing of Libya last year. As far as I am concerned, he is a war criminal just like Sarkozy and Obama. In fact, the only half-way decent candidate in the entire election was actually Marine Le Pen (http://english.pravda.ru/history/20-03-2012/120828-Marine_Le_Pen-0/), which goes to show just how pathetic the so-called "Western left" really is! Check out these quotes from Diane Johnstone's Disillusion With the Euro and Europe (http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/24/disillusion-with-the-euro-and-europe/):


Among the leading candidates, the only clear anti-war policy is that of Marine Le Pen, who favors immediate withdrawal from both Afghanistan and the NATO command, describes the current French government policy of supporting the Syrian opposition as “totally irresponsible”, calls for recognition of a Palestinian State and opposes threats to bomb Iranian nuclear sites, which have not been proven to be military. And she adds: “As far as I know, no nation which has atomic weapons has ever asked for permission from anyone, neither the United States, nor France, nor Israel, nor Pakistan… Must we then plunge the world into a war whose extent we will not control because certain foreign counties ask us to?”

Marine Le Pen is regularly stigmatized as “racist” for her desire to reduce immigration. But which is worse: refusing entry to Muslim immigrants, or bombing them in their home countries?

[...]

This applies notably to Marine Le Pen, whose social program was designed to win working class and youth votes. Her “far right” label is due primarily to her criticism of Muslim practices in France and demands to reduce immigration quotas, but her position on these issues would be considered moderate in the Netherlands or in much of the United States. Even she stressed that the immigration problem, as she saw it, was not the fault of the immigrants themselves but of the politicians and the elite who brought them here. The main tone of her political message was resolutely populist, attacking the “Paris elite”. Demagogic, yes, often vague and playing fast and loose with statistics, but a model of reason compared to the utterances of the “Tea Party”. Her political challenge was to hold onto her father’s ultra-conservative constituency while wooing discontented low income voters. She apparently won more working class votes than Mélenchon.

Well, Melenchon himself had shown his intentions and his policy very clearly before the elections. Beneath his leftist rhetoric, opportunism thrives. Melenchon's interview (http://www.humaniteinenglish.com/spip.php?article2009) was very enligtening. All the old slogans are present: abandonement of class warfare, reformations through peaceful political actions, the revolution is impossible, participation in bourgeois governments, political collaboration with the petty bourgeoisie, the State is a mechanism independent from economy (politicians vs markets etc) etc. His majesty, the eurocommunism in all his glory. And as Comrade said, "Western Left" is really pathetic.


No matter who will be elected president of the republic, the powers of finance are already determined to attack the French people. And so, no matter who is in the saddle, will have no other choice but to surrender, or to resist. And when the word is "resist!", there is no other force but ours.

(Cries of "Resistance!, Resistance!" from the assembly.)


In one stride, we have advanced into the pack at the front of the race [1]. With the next, we will achieve the definitive conquest of power, through the ballot boxes, and democracy.

I am sure the capitalists are panicking right now in front of the unstoppable army of radical voters armed with ballots and pencils which Melenchon prepares for the next battle in 4 years from now. I almost saw Maximilien in Place de Stalingrad!

Only now it dawns on me that Melenchon was doing the same thing as CPUSA, my only excuse being that I was consentrating on the electoral gamemanship. Oughta know better, too much benefit of the doubt.