The Left in Europe - Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung

paign at the national and European levels. A key point of their programme
is participatory democracy. Their aim is to vote Barroso out of office as
Chairman of the EU Commission and ensure that the responses to the present
crisis also take account of ecological and social questions. They denounce
the policies of such corporations as Total, Elf Aquitaine, etc. Other
key elements of the election campaign are European housing policy, ecology,
democracy issues, migrant rights, etc.
Founding of a new anti-capitalist party
France
The Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA) was founded on 7 February 2009
as the successor to the Revolutionary Communist League (Ligue Communiste
Révolutionnaire, LCR). The NPA has 9,000 members and sympathizers,
including representatives of Lutte Ouvrière (LO), the Friends of Jean-
Marc Roullian, the founder of “Action directe” (a civil disobedience organization),
activists of the José Bové Committee, ecologists, anti-growth
activists and anti-globalists. Most are political novices united only by their
joint struggle against Sarkozy’s policies. The NPA’s key political demands
include a break with capitalism and complete independence vis-à-vis the
SP.
The NPA no longer sees itself as a Trotskyite party, nor as a continuation
of the LCR, and will not remain in the Fourth International. Whether it can
really separate itself from it ideologically and organizationally remains to
be seen, especially as half of the new leadership comes from the old LCR.
In view of the current crisis, which is seen as a “generalization of capitalist
globalization”, its founding principles point to the necessity of a break with
the capitalist system through the revolutionary transformation of society.
The goal of the New Anti-capitalist Party is a system of collective organization
or association in which the free development of each individual
is the condition of the free development of all. It draws upon the class
struggles of the socialist, communist, libertarian and revolutionary traditions,
and its founding principles speak of a socialism for the 21st century
that will be free from exploitation and oppression, racism and any form of
discrimination, not least that of women.
Although socialism questions the very idea of private ownership of the
means of production, profits first have to be redistributed in the form of pay
rises, increased pensions and minimum social standards as an urgent response
to the immediate needs of those hardest hit by the crisis. The necessary
revolutionary break has to take place as part of a mobilization for a
different Europe. The resolution on the 2009 European elections speaks of
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