Perry Anderson described France Insoumise’s April 2017 presidential campaign as “an impressive feat.” Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s rallies gathered huge crowds, and he was widely recognized as the winner of the televised debates. In the final weeks of the campaign he achieved a spectacular increase in his support. Despite this major advance, Mélenchon came in fourth place, after Emmanuel Macron, the Front National’s Marine Le Pen, and François Fillon, the candidate of the conservative Les Républicains. In the parliamentary elections that took place in June, France Insoumise (FI) obtained seventeen seats, an insufficient number to have any real influence in parliamentary negotiations. Macron’s party La République En Marche secured a majority in the National Assembly, while Les Républicans came in second place. [...]
In this context, France Insoumise has at least three major resources that it can rely on while building itself as the main opposition to Macron and his neoliberal policies: Mélenchon’s charisma; the enthusiasm aroused by his presidential campaign; and the party’s parliamentary presence, which grants it a certain media visibility. FI intends to oppose Macron both in parliament and the streets, which also means using its platform to call for protests. The first test for this strategy arrived last September, when the party called a demonstration against Macron’s labor reform, which deepens the liberalization of labor relations and slashing of labor rights promoted by former president François Hollande. The protest was a success (around 100,000 people took part in the march) but it was not enough to stop the so-called XL labor reform, which was eventually approved in November. This raised the question of where the formation would go next. [...]
At the same time, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his collaborators have created a new kind of political organization, which they refuse to call a party. Indeed, France Insoumise’s membership is flexible and there are no elected decision-making structures. This organizational model raises questions. Who, then, makes the decisions? How legitimate are France Insoumise’s present leaders? How much power do militants have? These questions recall the insights in American activist Jo Freeman’s 1970 essay “The Tyranny of Structurelessness.” Freeman argued that the absence of formal decision-making structures in political organizations is “a way of masking power,” and put forward a set of principles for promoting democracy which are applicable both to social movements and parties, such as the circulation of tasks, the distribution of authority among a wide array of individuals, and the accountability of leaders to the people who have elected them.
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