A growing anger is sweeping the streets of France. The mass mobilisations and general strikes of the last two months have made it clear that an overwhelming majority of French workers and citizens strongly reject the pension reform proposed by President Macron. But the pressure from the street is so strong that the political regime has entered an existential crisis, transformed into an uprising that takes on the same revolutionary overtones as in May '68. The strength of the working class in action is so great that the question of power, of who is really in charge in society, has been put on the table in all its clearness. It is the time for boldness: not only the pension counter-reform must be swept away, but Macron must be overthrown and we must struggle for socialism, workers' democracy must be won.
The situation is making the ruling class founder. Even members of parliament from Macron and other right-wing groups, faced with the risk of losing their seats in the next elections, had to speak out against the reform, pushing the government to adopt the Bonapartist line of bypassing the National Assembly and passing it by decree. With their decision, Macron and his group, La République en Marche, have been crystal clear: this so-called moderate "right", disregarding the opinion of the working-class majority, has confirmed that they are nothing but the lackeys of their masters, the oligarchs of finance capital. But their "solution" has only served to add fuel to the fire of rebellion.
Mass mobilisations and general strikes over the last two months have made it clear that an overwhelming majority of French workers and citizens reject President Macron's proposed pension reform.
Macron narrowly defeats the parliamentary no-confidence motion but is being defeated in the streets
Two motions of no confidence against the government of Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne were voted in the French National Assembly on Monday afternoon, 20 March. One was tabled by the fascist National Rally and won only its own votes. The second, tabled by a small centrist group, and supported by La France Insoumise, fell 9 votes short of victory.
The motion of on confidence is the only mechanism provided for in the French constitution to reverse a government decree. By linking the rejection of the decree to the inevitable fall of the government, Macron was sure that he would succeed in pushing through the pension reform. This has been the case, but Macron's institutional victory has had no effect in stopping the mobilisations from developing. If he and the French bourgeoisie imagined that his victory in the motion of censure would provoke an ebb in the workers' rebellion, they would be disappointed.
The French working class has had plenty of experiences in recent years that have helped it to understand the true nature of the capitalist state and its institutions. The big mobilisations and waves of strikes in the wake of the 2008 crisis, the student struggles of 2016 against the labour reform promoted by the socialist government, or the uprising of the Yellow Vests two years later, did not achieve their objectives, but they served to educate a wide layer of the masses.
The 2016 labour reform, which laid the foundations for the casualisation of youth employment, was also approved by government decree, just as Macron's pension reform is now. The majority unions, CGT, CFDT and FO, kept up their mobilisations for a few more weeks but quickly argued that, since the reform decree had already been approved, the battle had to be raised in the judicial arena. Little by little, the pressure eased until demolarisation spread through the movement.
Macron has overcome the motions of censure but this has had no effect in stopping the mobilisations from developing.
Years later, these same unions, with the same leaders, can no longer preach resignation in the face of the government decree: they are forced by the unbearable pressure of the movement to accept the extension of the indefinite strikes and reluctantly call to maintain the struggle and paralyse the country until the reform is withdrawn. That it was passed by decree, that the motions of no confidence have failed, it,according to the CGT, "changes nothing". This is the dialectic of the situation: the class struggle also seeps into the big trade unions and becomes a terrain where revolutionaries have a lot to say. Disregarding these facts by adopting a sectarian attitude towards them only leads to the most sterile marginality.
As in May 1968, the French trade union leaderships are acting under the compulsion of the gale on the streets and have realised that an attempt to retreat to manoeuvre with legal and institutional actions at this point would inevitably lead to their being overwhelmed by the immense scale of the movement, expressed forcefully in the multitude of demonstrations and spontaneous strikes already taking place with or without their assistance. The workers and youth uprising is becoming more widespread, more determined and more conscious.
The French working class and youth have learned that behind the parliamentary, democratic and republican mask lies the stark dictatorship of finance capital. But they have also learned that only by relying on their own forces, by their direct action, by blocking production, transport and the whole productive life of the country, will they be on the path to victory. This is the impetus that has forced most reformist trade union leaders to go much further than they would have liked, and than they could ever have imagined.
Next Thursday, France will experience its ninth general strike, although in the days leading up to it the indefinite strikes have not only not ceased but hardened. The refinery strike and the Paris street cleaning strike point the way to Macron's defeat, successfully facing all the pressures to call them off. Undoubtedly, this Thursday will be a historic day in which the French working class will openly challenge the power of the capitalist state. Here is an unforgettable lesson for all the sceptics and charlatans, many of them self-styled Marxists, who question the power of the general strike and its central role in raising the socialist consciousness of the masses.
A revolutionary programme and strategy to achieve victory
Faced with the impossibility of appeasing the streets, Macron and his government have resorted to the most savage police repression, a high-risk option, and which so far is only playing the role of inflaming the will to fight and the indignation of the population.
Next Thursday, France will experience its ninth general strike, although in the days leading up to it the indefinite strikes have not only not ceased but have hardened.
The struggle against pension reform has reached a crucial point. If the great revolutionary outbursts of the French working class after the First World War, in 1936, or in 1968 could be neutralised by concessions and agreements with the reformist leaderships of the workers' movement, who did not hesitate to betray and sabotage the revolution, the present situation is somewhat more complex: there is no Stalinist party with authority among the masses, the PCF is not even a shadow of its former self and its pathetic appeals to "recompose the republic" fall on deaf ears, the PSF is destroyed, and the deep crisis of French and European capitalism augurs a strong resistance to making concessions to the working class. The financial meltdown that has just entered the scene is preparing a new wave of cuts and austerity policies to finance a new bailout of the profits of the capitalist elite.
The dynamics of the battle are also reflected in the appeals of France Insoumise and its leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon. With reformist roots, the left group is the channel through which much of the aspirations of the masses in struggle are being expressed. Mélenchon's calls to take the motion of no confidence to the streets through mobilisation, his decision to organise a resistance fund already approaching half a million euros, his youth organisation's encouragement of university occupations and his MPs on the front line of the picket lines is no mean feat. It is clear that these actions encourage the movement and help it to have confidence in its strength. Now it is a question of the thousands of trade union and youth activists and FI activists acting with the utmost boldness and proposing a way to transform everything from the bottom. It is not a question of accepting crumbs, nor of limiting the struggle to pension reform, as the trade union bureaucracy insists. It is the dictatorship of finance capital which hides behind "parliamentary democracy" that is responsible for the suffering of the French people. It is time to advance the struggle in the only possible direction: towards the socialist transformation of France.
Relying on the assemblies in the workplaces, schools and universities, in the working class neighbourhoods, relying on active mobilisation in all the places where daily life takes place, the time has come to occupy the workplaces, factories and companies, the universities and the high schools, and set up a network of action committees, democratically elected and revocable at any time, coordinating on a nationwide scale to lead and organise the indefinite general strike, which is essential to oust Macron and his policies, and to lay the foundations for a genuine workers' democracy.
The institutions of the capitalist state have proved useless in defending the rights of the working-class majority and the people, and now the institutions of a genuine workers' democracy must be created, to break the backbone of financial power and fight to expropriate the banks and monopolies to put them at the service of the welfare of all. A government of the working people, constituted from the action committees and accountable to them for all its decisions, is the alternative to the chaos we are experiencing in France and throughout the world.
The institutions of the capitalist state have proved useless in defending the rights of the working majority and the people. It is necessary to advance the struggle in the only possible direction: towards the socialist transformation of France.
The struggle against the pension counter-reform reminds us once again that there is no wall between economic and political demands, that labour strikes can be quickly transformed into political strikes that put the bourgeois order on the ropes. They remind us precisely of the principles of revolutionary Marxism, of the validity of the ideas of the great thinkers of communism, such as Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin and Trotsky, as well as of the great value of the general strike as a revolutionary instrument.
In France today, the cause of the workers of the whole world is at stake. A victory of its working men and women, of the French youth, will open the way for the masses of all Europe, of all continents, to put an end to this rotten and ruthless system.
Long live internationalist solidarity with the French working class and youth!
Down with Macron, down with police repression, freedom for all those arrested!
For the indefinite strike and the occupation of the work and study centres!
For workers' and socialist power!
