THE rough outcome of the French presidential election was the differentiation of the French nation into three distinct electoral blocs.

President Emmanuel Macron is the figurehead of the nominally centre right, wedded to neoliberalism, the Atlantic alliance and the EU, often socially liberal but invariably invested in the the property-owning myths and trickle-down idiocies of modern capitalist ideology.

Macron assembled a media-managed machine to incorporate the neoliberal elite and thus rendered both the traditional Gaullist party, now rebranded as Les Republicains, and the Socialist Party (PS) redundant as instruments for the rule of capital.

Facing him in the second round was a far-right, nationalistic bloc, the largest element led by Marine Le Pen, which marries traditional right-wing positions — anti migrant and Islamophobic — with elements of hostility to capitalist globalisation.

It retains a distinct if diminishing hostility to the EU, combined with a populist criticism of state bureaucracy and a mannered rhetoric about crime, unemployment, social welfare and unemployment. It attracts, in some regions, quite substantial numbers of workers.

To this can be added a section of the rich, including in the newly distinguished electorate of Eric Zemmour — a deeply reactionary racist, often anti-semitic, sometimes Catholic traditionalist tendency with some idiosyncratic contemporary quirks.

The third bloc, assembled for the “presidentielles” around the candidature of Jean-Luc Melenchon, mobilises many of the long traditions of the republican left, has the support of many trade unionists and relies for the achievements of its electoral goals on alliance with the communists (PCF), a heterogeneous left, including remnants of the PS, and the Ecologists (EELV).

This disaggregation and reassembly of the French political landscape is distinguished from what went before in that, for the first time in modern France, the extreme right polled higher than the left.

The far right has advanced and the left — defined in the broadest way possible to include the PS — polled 12 per cent less in 2022 than in 2002.

The strategy employed by the French ruling class has always been to avoid a clear confrontation between labour and capital.

The two-stage electoral system gives salience to the the principle of the so-called “vote utile” — the useful vote which in previous presidential election narrowed the choice offered voters of a fascist (Le Pen) or a crook (the corrupt Gaullist Jacques Chirac).

This time round, when the choice was between a remodelled Le Pen and the neoliberal Macron, the bid to marshal left-wing and working-class voters behind the Establishment was markedly less successful.

The entire political class is coming to terms with the brutal fact that the traditional contours of post-war politics have eroded. For the left, especially the communists, this is rooted in the erosion of many of its traditional bastions in the mining and heavy industry regions.

For the right, it is in the failure of its existing political institutions to guarantee the continuity of bourgeois rule.

The French demographer Emmanuel Todd concluded that the expansion of the higher education system, combined with the sharp deindustrialisation in French society, has resulted in a restratification in which proletarianised graduates are less co-opted into the traditional securities of the educated while a more marginalised sector of deskilled workers without further education or training comprise an even more subordinate stratum.

In his analysis of the presidential election, the French pollster Jerome Fourquet argued in the Guardian that the old left/right political divide no longer caters for a socioeconomic landscape that will continue to pit the winners and losers of the new order against each other.

He argues that in the French presidential contest, the country’s two “clans” found their respective heroes.

In doing so he inverts a materialist analysis of the political situation to imply that the logic of the election system itself determines the character of the social formation.

A better model would suggest that, rather than reflecting reality, the election processes and the “utility” of the two-stage system to the maintenance of bourgeois hegemony, the election result failed to give full expression to the complexity of French society and, at the critical moment, disenfranchised an enormous social bloc.

Melenchon seizes on this truth to argue that the legislative elections are a third round of voting and he invites the French to make him prime minister in “cohabitation” with President Macron.

With a newly minted agreement this week between La France Insoumise, the Greens, the communists and the PS, this project is launched.

From Melenchon’s standpoint (it is necessary to personalise this analysis because France Insoumise, by design, lacks the formal structures and representative institutions of either traditional bourgeois parties or the democratic centralism of the revolutionary party) the two-round system in the legislatives has considerable utility.

For the left to emerge with a plurality in the second round, two things are needed — first, the left must present as broad a united front as is achievable and, second, the full spectrum of the right-wing electorate — from the voters of Le Pen to those of Macron — must remain fragmented beyond the first round.

A key factor is the very large number of abstentions and null votes, mostly comprised of workers and the poor and those most deeply alienated from the political system.

The left has limited purchase on the unity or otherwise of the right, while the prospects of left unity have been the subject of intense debate, sharp polemics and much megaphone diplomacy.

In the liberal media and in some ultra-left circles and, naturally, among the more middle-class insoumise, there is criticism, most sharply directed at the PCF and less trenchantly against the PS, Greens and two of the Trotskyist groups, for their insubordination in presenting candidates in the presidential election (and thus, it is claimed, depriving Melenchon of a position in the second round).

In the early stages of the PCF’s campaign its candidate Fabien Roussel’s polling figure rose from 1.9 per cent to near 5 per cent, eclipsing Ann Hidalgo, the PS mayor of Paris, and matching Yannick Jadot of the Greens.

In the end all three were squeezed as left voters responded to the chance of supplanting Le Pen. But it was Roussel’s rise that spooked La France Insoumise.

A newly robust PCF pointed out that it was not Roussel’s 800,000 tally that prevented Melenchon taking the number two spot but rather his failure to appeal to the 13 million abstentions.

The context was important. Anger against Macron was high, the growth of the Le Pen/Zemmour axis raised concerns but Melenchon’s candidature, while achieving real growth in the cities, especially university cities, lost out in smaller towns and rural areas.

Comparing Melenchon’s results circomscription by circomscription between 2017 and 2022 shows an increase of 700,000 votes in 539 constituencies and a loss of 300,000 votes in 275.

Melenchon’s original proposal, that the left as a whole enter the legislatives with a common list of candidates constituted on the basis of the votes its component parts achieved in the presidentielles, remains controversial because it translates the votes he accumulated because of the “vote utile” into a plural left in which the contribution both in votes and effort of this left fails to find a reflection.

The PCF said that it wanted “a coalition of forces without hegemony and a common label which reflects the expression of our diversity.” 

On the eve of May Day the PCF called for “a joint meeting of our four political parties,” the PCF, the Ecologists, the PS and the most open of the Trotskyists in the Nouvelle Parti Anticapitaliste and excluding La France Insoumise.

The negotiating position of La France Insoumise was, of course, rather quickly modified.

A fraternal embrace between Melenchon and the PS leader Olivier Faure on May Day didn’t quite produce agreement and Monday saw the Ecologists agree a New People’s Ecological and Social Union with La France Insoumise and accept, out of the 577 constituencies, 100 theirs to fight unchallenged from the left.

Beneath the surface camaraderie the tensions between the communists and Melenchon exist, not simply because of the La France Insoumise leader’s often contemptuous, not infrequently hostile and occasionally disreputable dealings with the PCF, but because of quite substantial policy differences that reflect their different social bases and their orientation.

There is also the long and bruising experience the PCF has of entering electoral agreements with the PS, even forming governments, surrendering critical political positions for the sake of unity and then suffering from association with the inevitable compromises with capital.

The PCF remains the best-organised force in the working class. It has well-established positions in local government, the unions and the social movements and a presence in all departments.

With much of its revisionist and “Eurocommunist” currents having departed, the positions of the previous leadership were defeated at the party congress and a more combative mood among the party militants resulted in Fabien Roussel’s accession to the leadership.

The consequence is a stronger assertion of the party’s identity, an uptick in activity and a firmer orientation towards workers.

Melenchon’s problem, and thus the problem of the left as a whole, lies in the narrowness of his programme The Future in Common, which appeals more to an urban graduate middle stratum and imperfectly to the concerns of the unemployed, the low-paid, even the world of industry and technology.

To some extent this has been overcome with the new electoral agreement. Yesterday, on the anniversary of the 1936 Popular Front, l’Humanite reported that under the influence of the communists, the programmatic basis of this agreement was fleshed out with numerous social, anti-liberal and ecological proposals including a rise in the minimum wage to €14 (£11.80), retirement at 60, a guarantee of “autonomy” for young people and a price freeze on basic necessities.

The PCF national council endorsed this New Popular Ecological and Social Union with 120 votes for, 25 against with 13 abstentions. This gives the PCF 54 constituencies to fight.

The broader and more disciplined the unity achieved the more likely that Macron, already elected on a minority vote, will be forced to deal with a national assembly and a prime minister that stand opposed to neoliberalism and would legislate in the interests of working people, that is willing to disregard EU diktat and refuse its treaties and unwilling to accommodate US interests over French and European concerns.