FRANCE is in a deep systemic crisis of the kind that has punctuated its history with violent eruptions. We index them by the years in which they took place from 1789 onwards.

The panicked election for the National Assembly called by President Emmanuel Macron following his party’s humiliation in the European elections, means France in three weeks could have: a fascist prime minister, or a prime minister on a left programme that bosses are screaming is “anti-capitalist,” or no prime minister plus chaos in the government. All with eruptions on the street bigger than those already taking place. Hundreds of thousands protested at the weekend against Marine Le Pen and her far-right National Rally (RN) that topped the European election.

Polling for the legislative election is volatile. The RN is at about 32 per cent. Macron’s liberal-centrist party on 18 per cent. The main opposition to the right is from an alliance of left and centre-left parties, the Popular Front, drawn up last week. It has 28 per cent.

The two-round system means it is very difficult to predict the final outcome of the 577 constituencies on July 7. At the moment the Popular Front bloc is likely to be in the run-offs that day in over 500 seats.

A great fear is descending upon the capitalist class in France. Just a week into the election campaign it is a crushing blow to Macron.

His dissolution of parliament was to exploit the shock in the country by dragooning people behind him in new elections, relying on the fact that a higher turnout would deliver an anti-RN majority. Half the electorate, 24 million, did not vote two Sundays ago.

It was also aimed at shattering the parties of the left. They had a successful pact two years ago for the assembly elections. The alliance broke down afterwards, with the centrist forces attacking the left especially for its good positions on supporting the Palestinians and opposing the Ukraine war. Their separate votes were only one million behind the RN in the Euros when totalled.

If they were standing against each other in parliamentary elections, Macron calculated they would largely fail to enter the second round and would have to back his candidates.

The reverse is happening with the formation of the Popular Front. It is the fruit of the cynical “Republican Front” that Macron continued from his predecessors. For three decades it has meant the forces of the centre — usually of the conservative right — pressuring the left to fall into line at the ballot box in the name of stopping the far right.

Never any struggle in society to oppose fascism. Always using it as a scarecrow to try to shore up the crumbling centre.

It brought diminishing returns. At the last two presidential elections the leading figure of the radical left, Jean-Luc Melenchon, refused its logic while presenting a policy that cut against Le Pen rather than dancing a duet with her. It was to say “not a single vote for Le Pen” but also to insist on the independence of the left.

That ensured in the legislative elections in 2017 and 2022 the left maintained itself as a pole in official politics and blunted the far right advance.

It has meant that now, it is not an electoral front tying the left and working-class parties to the liberals, conservatives and capitalists that is opposing Le Pen. It is a front of the left — with Macron outside and relegated — with a pro-working-class politics that can bite into the support Le Pen has been allowed to accrue. All in a campaign that is not separate from the trade union and civil society called demonstrations against racism and fascism but is in fact commingled with it. The potential for popular organisation in neighbourhoods and workplaces is as great as when the French referendum of 2005 went against the neoliberal EU constitution. 

This is cracking the political system and revealing its underlying class interests. Last week the leader of the main conservative party, The Republicains (LR), shockingly announced he was for an electoral pact with the RN. Eric Ciotti then locked out the rest of the leadership from the national offices.

They expelled him. A court overturned it. There is a civil war and meltdown of what was the grand legacy-party of De Gaulle. It was already eclipsed by the RN cutting first into its base and then its personnel.

It has been a victory for Le Pen’s deep strategy of a long march through the institutions while her party core retains the traditions of French fascism.

RN found its results in 2017 disappointing, despite getting to the presidential run-off. A split in September saw the departure of key Le Pen adviser Florian Philippot who had pushed policies to appeal to left-wing workers. 

Le Pen switched to focusing upon getting conservative backing. Her populism was reduced to virulent racism and authoritarianism. The traditional right had no problem with that. Macron was moving in that direction anyway.

Thus the “detoxification” of the RN is not just about disavowing its fascist roots and tweaking policies such as over single mothers. Only 40 per cent say it is a threat to democracy compared with 75 per cent 30 years ago.

It has crucially depended on the political centre moving to the right, and on assurances in word and deed to capital and conservatism that it is no threat to bourgeois France.

Last week Macron’s finance minister appealed to big business to back the president’s party as the expression of French capitalist and state interests.

The business confederation Medef said (naming no parties) that it opposed “anti-business” measures like higher taxes or higher spending. But it did not endorse Macron.

Various industry associations and corporate bosses indicated that they were prepared to engage with the RN on the basis that it may win. RN is in favour of Trump-style tax cuts for the well off and super-wealthy. Its nativist welfare policy also means cuts for workers. It has abandoned cutting VAT on essential items that would help ordinary people.

Last Monday the Moody’s agency warned of downgrading France’s credit rating. It has a debt of £2.8 trillion. If such a shot across the bows was meant to help Macron by promoting him as a safe pair of hands against economic recklessness, it didn’t.

It is, however, being deployed against Melenchon and the Popular Front rather than Le Pen. An executive of a major French corporation told journalists at the weekend: “The RN’s economic policies are more of a blank slate that business thinks they can help push in the right direction.” But, “the left is not likely to water down its hardline anti-capitalist agenda.”

Worries about whether sufficient welfare cuts can really be pushed through to fund tax cuts for the rich. But violent opposition to redistribution and taxing the rich. Those are the concerns of big business.

They are a reason why Le Pen has broken into the traditional right and “propertied classes” with their historic anti-communism.

It is that old right base that is the core of the growth of the RN in “France profonde” — provincial France outside of the cities and fabled as holding to a “traditional culture.” From that core it has been able to wrap around itself wider layers in the places where the high-speed trains don’t reach, investment never comes and the common people remain the butt of elitist caricatures.

The left’s base largely is in the cities and larger towns. That is especially so of Melenchon’s France Unbowed (LFI). It came first in multiracial suburbs like Seine-Saint-Denis near Paris, which also saw turnout up at the Euros. LFI is the main political expression of solidarity with the Palestinians and opposition to war and racism in France.

What the offer from the Popular Front is not, unfortunately, is a programme of anti-capitalist rupture. It is a quickly-put-together pact, straddling revolutionary forces through to moderate social-democrats, including a failed former president.

Forming a pact with a minimal programme means compromises. The right of the Popular Front would like to impose further watering down on the left during this campaign, with the threat of breaking the alliance, over Palestine, for example. But at the joint big rally in Montreuil on Monday night there were Palestinian flags throughout the crowd.

It is an enormously dynamic situation. As party leaders negotiated the Popular Front pact last week hundreds of young people gathered outside the building demanding unity. It was a historical echo of February 1934 when in response to the far right attempting a coup, worker militants of the communist and socialist parties insisted via street action on the formation of a united front in response.

There followed four years of political turmoil and struggles. Advances were made but also halted as the Popular Front of that time (which included the equivalent of Macron) cut workers’ gains to the cloth capitalism in crisis would provide.

Matters are hugely open in France. The capitalist class and those middle layers who tail it have already declared war on a left government if one were formed, and an accommodation with a fascist prime minister if that is the outcome. 

There is struggle in the streets tied to an insurgent election campaign. We must hope that the radical left can do better in this situation than we have done before. 

Le Pen can be stopped. The left can shift the balance of class forces in France — at the ballot box, in the streets and in the workplaces and neighbourhoods.