The Lutte Ouvrière party is a world apart. A perfectly binary world, where exploiters and exploited, bourgeois and proletarians, oppressors and oppressed are opposed. It takes a bit of goodwill – and patience – to give up nuance and moderation for a day, but you get used to this childishly simple scheme fairly quickly.
Children, moreover, get used to it right away. “I killed Macron! trumpets a six-year-old child, who prides himself on having knocked down a caricature of Emmanuel Macron with a catapult. A little girl, just before him, had “knocked out” Gérald Darmanin and Élisabeth Borne, under the tender gaze of her father, who confessed aloud to having “never been so proud” of her. His daughter, however, missed Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, Marine Le Pen and Bernard Arnault, “oppressor” in chief. She will try her luck again.
In the park of the imposing Bellevue castle, in Presles (Val-d’Oise), everyone begins to dream of the big night. It is the annual union of “proletarians” from all countries (Belgium, Spain, Germany, etc.). Finally, with one nuance: only “proletarians” who are able to pay the modest sum of 25 euros can join the festivities…
Since the first edition, in 1981, the Knowledge Carrousel has been the main attraction of the festival. Several films are shown on a chosen theme; this year it was “Class Struggle and Democracy”. We learn, for example, that the Athenian democracy was not really a democracy and that democracy today is only a myth, a “screen behind which the exploiters hide”. You had to think about it. The Paris Commune and the October 1917 Revolution are, unsurprisingly, praised – these are, you understand, “true democracies”.
The BATX (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent Xiomi), these Chinese Internet giants which represent the equivalent of Gafam, Huawei and BYD, the Chinese leader in electric cars, are undoubtedly, in his eyes, SMEs. And the “researcher”, whose name we tried, in vain, to add, without laughing, that “Chinese companies are not motivated by the pursuit of profit”. We pinch ourselves. No one in the audience seemed surprised by this nonsense. They must be used to it.
After all, this same audience will no doubt attend another conference, scheduled for Sunday at 9 p.m.: “Ukraine: no to NATO in Ukraine, no to the withdrawal of Russian troops”. When asked about this subject, Pierre, a Trotskyist activist in Belgium, gives us the discourse of the Kremlin: the responsibilities would be shared and the West would have wanted it. We shorten the discussion.
One can’t help but imagine what Leon Trotsky, who inspired the creation of Lutte Ouvrière – LO, for the regulars – and whose memory is summoned to every aisle, would have thought of all this. Besides, does this holiday resemble the ideas that the thinker of “permanent revolution” defended before he was assassinated in Mexico City on August 21, 1940? It is permissible to doubt it.
Strolling through the alleys of the park, it is striking to observe that we come across more young “bourgeois” than historical Trotskyist militants. They correspond exactly to the profile of the “bourgeois mélenchonistes” so well described by Saïd Mahrane – those with whom we spoke actually vote more for Jean-Luc Mélenchon than for Nathalie Arthaud, the candidate of Lutte Ouvrière in the last presidential election.
They enjoy the benefits of reviled capitalism and claim to break with “ultra-liberalism”, despite being its staunch promoters. They came by bus from Paris, consumed heavily on the spot and took a “selfie” in front of the portrait of Karl Marx, with their state-of-the-art iPhone. Others, won over by the rural setting of Presles, buy a few flowerpots. One even wonders out loud, “Don’t they have Uber Eats here?” ! “No, we’re 30 kilometers from Paris, there’s nothing here!” a “comrade” replies. It cannot be invented.
This festival offers an annual shot of adrenaline to these “revolutionary bourgeois” who, in the evening, will return to the sore neighborhoods of the capital. All these beautiful people leave singing “The International” in the bus. When they get home, they’ll probably relieve their hunger by ordering something on Uber Eats. What would Trotsky say…
