La Cause du Peuple – Le Pen, ineligibility, and bourgeois corruption

We hereby share an unofficial translation of an article published by La Cause du Peuple.

On March 31, the Paris Criminal Court issued a 152-page ruling finding the main leaders of the National Rally (RN) guilty of embezzlement of public funds at the European level. Nine MEPs and 12 parliamentary assistants were given various sentences, but it was Marine Le Pen who made the headlines with her infamous “ineligibility,” a ban on standing for election for five years… that is, until 2030, well after the next presidential election in 2027.

Le Pen’s ineligibility and what it means politically

All the bourgeois media and political parties were in an uproar after this announcement. It is indeed big news in a country that knows that the only election that matters is the presidential election. Le Pen, leader of the most reactionary fringe of the French bourgeoisie, was clearly the expected candidate, in a first round that was a foregone conclusion and a second round against one of Macron’s umpteenth avatars. And on March 31, that scenario went up in smoke.

But the jubilation of the other bourgeois parties was not universal: Bayrou said he was “troubled,” while Mélenchon claimed that political defeats should take place before the people and not before judges. Why? Quite simply because these gentlemen have, to a greater or lesser extent, similar cases hanging over them or their political allies. Because what the RN has been accused of is not cheating by taking public money to pay its staff; everyone does that! It is mainly for having done it badly, covered it up badly, and not being in power! There are many arrangements between friends in politics: the European Parliament, which is today’s enemy, was yesterday’s friend of Marine Le Pen: when it came to regularizing the salary of her bodyguard Thierry Légier, she declared that the EU had accepted a small salary arrangement.

The bourgeoisie is therefore divided between the embarrassment of some, who are afraid of suffering the same punishment, and the disgusting triumph of others, who are no strangers to dirty tricks but are now taking advantage of a great opportunity created by the legal elimination of a political opponent. But in reality, these two attitudes are two sides of the same coin: that of a class whose fundamental principles have been unraveled and turned against themselves, and where politics has become a court intrigue, whether in the justice system or the palace.

The campaign for 2027 has already begun. The RN and its allies are continuing to back Le Pen’s candidacy, as she is the only figure with any stature. Bardella is waiting in the wings. The acceleration of the date of the appeal to one year before the election (summer 2026) is concrete proof that justice in France is not the same for everyone, that in addition to the absence of equality in fact before the law, there is no longer equality in rights either. Let’s go, those of us who have had our driver’s licenses confiscated or who are facing legal proceedings against our employers, let’s demand an acceleration of the trial! They will laugh in our faces. But if your name is Le Pen, your wishes are granted! The far-right politician does not even expect to be cleared in this case; she simply wants to strike a deal with the court to avoid being barred from standing for election, at least until 2027.

Thus, those who believe that Le Pen’s legitimacy or political future are now in ruins and that they will be able to play vultures over her corpse are playing a dangerous game. The RN retains its purpose and its parliamentary leader. In the eyes of the masses, it is not the integrity of the other elected officials in relation to Le Pen that emerges strengthened from this affair, but rather the disgust for the “all-rotten” politicians and the distrust of bourgeois justice.

This is a very uncomfortable question for the entire bourgeoisie, both right and left, and one that is often misunderstood: is the French justice system independent of bourgeois politics? Is there justice above the classes?

The German revolutionary Friedrich Engels, in a letter to Conrad Schmidt, explains how bourgeois law and a judicial institution develop in capitalist countries, periodically entering into crisis between the codified principles of law and the class it serves: “In a modern state, law must not only correspond to the general economic position and be its expression, but must also be an expression which is consistent in itself, and which does not, owing to inner contradictions, look glaringly inconsistent. And in order to achieve this, the faithful reflection of economic conditions is more and more infringed upon. All the more so the more rarely it happens that a code of law is the blunt, unmitigated, unadulterated expression of the domination of a class – this in itself would already offend the “conception of justice.” Even in the Code Napoleon the pure logical conception of justice held by the revolutionary bourgeoisie of 1792-96 is already adulterated in many ways, and in so far as it is embodied there has daily to undergo all sorts of attenuation owing to the rising power of the proletariat. Which does not prevent the Code Napoleon from being the statute book which serves as a basis for every new code of law in every part of the world. Thus to a great extent the course of the “development of law” only consists: first in the attempt to do away with the contradictions arising from the direct translation of economic relations into legal principles, and to establish a harmonious system of law, and then in the repeated breaches made in this system by the influence and pressure of further economic development, which involves it in further contradictions (I am only speaking here of civil law for the moment).”

Thus, the associations and unions calling for people to rally in support of the court decision, or the activists celebrating Le Pen’s defeat, are mistaken: they do not understand that the legal crisis has become a political crisis. They believe that justice still wears the mask of impartiality. But this mask has fallen. That is why only a few hundred people throughout France responded to the call to “defend justice.”

The ineligibility of those who steal from the public purse is a fine principle defended in words by the entire bourgeoisie: who has not seen the archives of Le Pen calling for a life sentence, declaring that only the FN had never stolen? But as Engels said, there is today a contradiction between economic relations and legal principles, and now that this is really affecting a section of the bourgeoisie, the system is breaking down. This is all the more political in France, where the parquet (i.e., the prosecutors) is not independent but directly subordinate to the Ministry of Justice, and therefore to a political authority. What proletarians, whatever their morals, would instinctively side with a prosecutor? Not many!

Widespread corruption and the role of bourgeois justice

Thus, what is revealed by this court decision is not a legal matter, or only superficially so. What lies behind it is another episode in the political crisis triggered by Macron’s restructuring of the bourgeois state, which has spread to all political institutions since the dissolution of the National Assembly.

The bourgeois justice system is therefore not an arbiter above the political melee; it is itself subject to the general crisis facing French imperialism, which is embodied in the tremors shaking the entire state under the pressure of the masses (the battle for pensions, the great neighborhood revolts for Nahel, etc.) and its own contradictions.

The exposure of the justice system before the masses for what it is, i.e., a political institution of the bourgeoisie, therefore logically produces two ambivalent results. On the one hand, it reinforces the contradiction of a section of the masses against the bourgeoisie as a whole, because we see that the top echelons of the state and even the justice system are dripping with corruption, and that is the main thing. It is perfectly normal that the majority of the masses who hate Le Pen’s politics should be happy about her conviction, just as they would be happy about the misfortunes of any reactionary.

On the other hand, secondarily, the masses who vote for the RN see this as a crude maneuver to prevent Le Pen from running, and their opposition to the “system” is strengthened. But the RN cannot capitalize on these results, and it knows it: its pathetic rally at Place Vauban in Paris was not a mass movement, and it dreams of being the Party of Order, so it cannot stir up the fury of the masses. It is its true nature, arch-reactionary, that dictates this line.

Let’s take a good look at what is happening in France: we live in a republic of convicts, where former President Sarkozy is facing seven years in prison, where Le Pen has embezzled millions, where the secretary general of the Elysée, Kohler, refuses to go to the Senate to be questioned about a health scandal involving the Nestlé monopoly. Yet none of them are locked up in prison, while the rioters of June 2023 are serving their sentences for rebelling. This is a reminder that the bourgeois state is not there to serve the people. It is fundamentally a machine for repressing the poor. But in saying this, we are not going beyond what the bourgeoisie say when they want to cut budgets and reduce the state to its regal (or “royal”) functions of army, police, and law. No, for Marxism, the bourgeois state is also, for the bourgeoisie, an immense opportunity for private enrichment, a machine at their personal service.

Marx described France as follows in the 1840s: “Since the finance aristocracy made the laws, was at the head of the administration of the state, had command of all the organized public authorities, dominated public opinion through the actual state of affairs and through the press, the same prostitution, the same shameless cheating, the same mania to get rich was repeated in every sphere, from the court to the Café Borgne to get rich not by production, but by pocketing the already available wealth of others, Clashing every moment with the bourgeois laws themselves, an unbridled assertion of unhealthy and dissolute appetites manifested itself, particularly at the top of bourgeois society – lusts wherein wealth derived from gambling naturally seeks its satisfaction, where pleasure becomes crapuleux [debauched], where money, filth, and blood commingle. The finance aristocracy, in its mode of acquisition as well as in its pleasures, is nothing but the rebirth of the lumpenproletariat on the heights of bourgeois society.“

We can clearly see how this shows, in a much more developed form today, the widespread corruption that reigns in France nearly two centuries later. The imperialist bourgeoisie at the top of the State trades personnel between the public and private sectors in order to amass fortunes and make deals: everyone knows Macron’s past as a banker, Alexis Kohler, mentioned above, left the Élysée last month for Banque Société Générale, and there are plenty of other examples. When you are not in power, like all opposition parties, you content yourself with paying fake assistants with funds from this or that parliament or town hall, embezzling a few millions. All parties are guilty of this, but we live in a society that does not recognize white-collar crime!

Everything is turned on its head: the figurehead of the French bourgeoisie at the beginning of the Fifth Republic was De Gaulle, an incorruptible military man, above the parties, above the law, at the head of a state of bureaucrats and civil servants. That was the official image. Of course, there were the dirty dealings of the SAC (Service d’Action Civique, a secret Gaullist militia), but politicians had to play by the rules. Now, at the end of its reign, the French (and European!) bourgeoisie openly admits its corruption, because it has made it legal and regulated it. It is the very matrix of the bourgeois state. So, a conviction for Le Pen? It doesn’t make her any more dishonest than Macron or Philippe.

The real workings of the bourgeois State machine

When we look deeper into the matter, we quickly realize that the crisis is not one of the “rule of law” or the “republic of judges,” to use the nonsense we have been served by various parties. Only petty-bourgeois prejudice can take the law as the heart of the matter. No, this is indeed a political upheaval of a bourgeois class in the process of tearing itself apart. The fundamental contradiction in our society is that between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat of France, and it is this contradiction that drives everything else, including the opposition between factions of the bourgeoisie.

The political crisis that has been developing for several years into a crisis of regime is indeed the product of class struggle, because the masses no longer consent to live “as before,” their daily situation is deteriorating, and their mobilization of thousands in all forms and at all levels is worrying the bourgeoisie. Anti-people policies are multiplying because the clock is ticking. The French imperialist bourgeoisie is obsessed with preparing for war. It must restructure as quickly and decisively as possible, believing that it can ward off the crisis by rushing headlong into the most reactionary policies possible. In this game, Le Pen’s collusion with Russia does not currently represent the majority of the French bourgeoisie, although it does have a historical economic and social base.

The French bourgeoisie is a reflection of its economic base. For its representatives who are fighting in the parties, the crisis is a period of opportunity, with the ultimate prize being the top position in the state. Before 2027, there will be the 2026 municipal elections, where local petty kings will battle it out; this will serve as a rehearsal before the real battle for the throne. But like a basket of crabs, by eliminating each other and exposing their scandals and shenanigans, they only serve to throw mud on the entire electoral and parliamentary farce.

In summary, the following should be remembered from the Le Pen affair:

1. This is not a legal crisis, and we must not join in the panic-stricken fears about “Trumpism” and the criticism of “political” justice by Le Pen and others. Bourgeois justice is revealing itself for what it is because there is a contradiction between the principles of law and the concrete economic situation of French imperialism. This episode of the crisis is therefore political. We must not blindly defend bourgeois justice, but reveal its class character.
2. The bourgeoisie is tearing itself apart for the exclusive domination of one faction over the state in order to accelerate the reactionary march toward internal and external war. Whatever Le Pen’s personal future may be, the RN will play its role in serving the reactionarization of the bourgeois state, both in opposition and in power. This corresponds to the declining situation of the French big bourgeoisie at the national and global level.
3. Corruption and embezzlement are the real economic basis of all bourgeois politics and of every parliamentary party in France, from the lowest levels to the highest echelons of the state. Monopolies, whether state-owned or private, have their men at the head of the state.
4. The masses reject the bourgeois state, and every scandal fuels their anger. The RN cannot mobilize the masses with this anger as long as it wants to take over the Fifth Republic rather than attack it.

The proletariat of France is not discovering the corruption of the bourgeoisie with the eyes of a newborn; it has been aware of it for decades, and it is a well-established political culture. But its illusions about the bourgeois state are fading as it sees in the facts every day the real action of the power of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat and over the country as a whole. Increasingly, the rejection of politicians corresponds to a rejection of the bourgeois state, that is, a rejection of the bourgeoisie. There is no political class in France, there are bourgeois politicians, just as there are financiers and journalists. Some transform themselves into others, hats are exchanged, and the only constant is that the situation of the masses worsens while others get richer. There is now a huge field of action opening up every day to openly denounce all the lies of the ruling class and to fan the embers of every revolt against arbitrariness with the fresh wind of socialist revolution. It is the only force capable of destroying the infernal machine of the bourgeois state and rebuilding on its ashes a new, incorruptible power: the dictatorship of the proletariat.