Across Europe, the anger against rising prices, crumbling services and the lack of prospects for youth has exploded into mass struggles.
In France, the movement of high school students, first of all in the working-class suburbs of Paris, certainly lit the spark, triggering a movement that then spread to the universities as well. But another key date in the movement was 29 September, the date of a well-supported one-day public sector-strike including teachers, firefighters, healthworkers, and civil servants.
All of these struggles are linked together by their roots in the crisis of French capitalism – reflected in the deteriorating state of underfunded public services, especially in health and education, and with the Government planning a further €54 billion of public sector cuts for 2027.
The other main factor driving the anger underlying the movement is the high cost of living with the prices of fuel, food and transport rising beyond what many workers and working-class families can afford. Redundancies and lay-offs are also spiralling upwards -with over 300,000 job losses in 2025 alone. Unemployment is also rising, especially for the youth, and what work can be found is often under extremely precarious conditions.
The Youth Movement
The movement began with the high-school students organising protests or ‘blockades’ outside their schools, complaining at crumbling buildings, timetables that forced them to spend exhausting hours at schools, then only to find that the algorithms of the highly selective ‘Parcoursup’ university selection system, leave many without their preferred choice and enrolled on courses that they don’t really want to be on.
It’s not an accident that the movement began first amongst working-class high school students before spreading to the universities themselves, where students are also facing budget cuts, inadequate resources and cuts to student grants. The background of the genocide in Gaza and other international struggles had already politicised many young people too – and is of course the context from which the call for a Europe-wide youth strike on 20 November has also arisen.
High school teachers also played a good role too in many areas, coming out onto the blockades to try and protect their students from heavy-handed police attacks – which have been a feature of the movement from the very start – firing tear gas and riding motorbikes into crowds of youth, with injuries mounting, including young people who have lost hands and eyes as a result.
One of the issues which we are trying to raise amongst the students is that the tactic of blockades – of picketing schools is not sufficient – not all students want to join in actions that end up with confrontations with the police, nor is there an opportunity to meet, discuss tactics and build the movement to involve wider numbers.
We are calling for mass meetings – building on the tradition of General Assemblies – not just organising via WhatsApp – and for the election of action committees that can organise the struggle democratically and build regional and national coordination of the movement.
17 October
Saturday 17 October was another step forward for the movement, when demonstrations were called across France, originally against the cost of fuel, building on the movement of the ‘Gilets Jaunes’/’Yellow Vests’ from eight years ago. But now, thanks to the wider movement that had recently erupted, the demonstrations took on a much wider significance, size and broader demands – from the youth about education, against racism and police violence - and from workers calling for action against price rises and demanding salary increases.
Working-class youth and families turned out in huge numbers – around 800,000 across France – many carrying home-made placards – official trade union delegations still being fewer in number than they should have been.
From the get-go – as I was there to witness – the riot police were clearly determined to attack and provoke – firing volleys of tear gas into the square where the Paris demo. was assembling for example, even into the middle of the orchestra that was playing. Of course, youth did respond with fireworks and some were also clearly intent on getting their own revenge if they could. While the march itself – 100,000s strong marched off peacefully and noisily northwards, some stayed behind – along with anarchist elements – to do battle with the police, and there were running battles in the streets, and some vandalism and looting too – not without the helping hand of agents provocateurs, some of whom who were filmed caught in the act then running back to the police lines from where they had come from.
The politicians had obviously pre-prepared for this with President Macron and the right-populist Le Pen all condemning the violence, blaming it on the left, with a significant element of racism thrown in too, with right-wing politicians blaming Blacks and Muslims for the attacks – which also may have been behind a drive-by shooting in a part of Paris with a large North African community a few days ago.
Repression fails
But the demonstrations on the following Saturday – last Saturday the 24th October – showed that the strategy of police and state repression and divide-and-rule has failed in its objective. Despite many cities banning demonstrations and ongoing police attacks – in some cities like Lyon aided by fascist gangs – a word we don’t use lightly but in this case correctly – attacking demonstrations, again hundreds of thousands marched. The momentum of the movement has not been broken and it is Macron and the French bosses that have been left floundering, trying to find a way to hold back the movement. In the last few days they have announced some small reforms in education that they hope might satisfy the youth – but I think it is too little too late.
Nevertheless, the situation means that there does also need to be a serious discussion about strategy – and to explain to the angriest youth that attacks on the police and shops do not bring forward the movement. In fact, they can risk cutting across it, with many youth and workers wanting to distance themselves from it – however much they hate the police and Macron – because they are struggling to build a united movement for a better world, and understand that to defeat the capitalists and the ultra-rich will require a serious movement, a victory that cannot be won in street battles with a heavily armed police force. Unfortunately, of course, some of the left groups idealise rioting as a ‘revolutionary tactic’, whereas we understand that the real power to defeat the capitalists comes from the organised power of the working-class, above all through using the weapon of strike action. The responsibility therefore falls on the trade unions – and the left parties which I will come on to – to take a lead and show the way forward with mass strike action – as well as through stewarding marches to defend them against police and fascist attacks and to prevent counter-productive actions, including the efforts of police agents-provocateurs too.
5 November strike
The important news is, with the pressure of the movement building below them, then the trade union leaders have called for what will effectively be a 24-hour general strike on 5 November, with all the different union federations calling on their members in both the private and public sectors to take strike action on that day (and in France, there’s none of the anti-union legislation we face about needing to go through strike ballots and so on).
That date had originally been called as something that was deliberately a little distant but, far from the movement ebbing in the meantime, it has only increased – meaning that 5 November will now be the next significant step up in the movement, again linking workers and youth, but this time with the trade unions taking the lead officially.
Gauche Révolutionnaire, the French section of the Committee for a Workers’ International are using the time before the strike, when schools are on half-term holidays, to try and mobilise the biggest possible turnout on 5 November, both through our own members and by putting pressure on the union leaders to do so themselves.
Our latest leaflet raises the demands for:
• Higher salaries now: An immediate €300 increase, no income below €1800
• Indexation of wages to prices
• Significant price cuts and price caps.
• No redundancies! A job for everyone!
• For high-quality public services: major investments in all public services (education, hospitals, etc.) including widespread recruitment of new staff
• Enough of capitalist theft: for nationalisation under workers' control of the key sectors of the economy (energy, big supermarket chains, finance, transport)
We are also calling for mass meetings to be called in every workplace to build for the strike, to organise picketing and rallies on the day of the strike, but also to discuss what should follow next – and we are raising that the unions should call for 3 consecutive days of strike shortly after the 5th, to escalate the action further.
The Presidential Elections, Mélenchon and LFI
Of course, the mass movement is also changing political consciousness which, as globally, has been lagging behind the real objective crisis of capitalism. And the main political force on the French left is undoubtedly La France Insoumise (France Unbowed), the movement led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, whose supporters have been active on the demonstrations and building support for his stand in next April’s Presidential elections.
The French capitalists are growing increasingly concerned that they have no reliable candidate standing with the direct backing of the French capitalist class. Macron is not allowed to stand again and their alternatives Edouard Philippe – a previous PM under Macron, or Glucksmann of the Parti Socialiste – are still under 20% in the polls. The two front-runners are Mélenchon and Le Pen. In the French system, this could lead to a two-candidate run-off between these two in May – although nothing can be taken for granted. Under the pressure of a mass movement, even though le Pen is presently way ahead in the polls, nothing could be entirely ruled out.
The French capitalist class will of course fall behind Le Pen if they have no alternative but a right populist is not a reliable choice for the capitalist class as Le Pen will also come under pressure to be seen to be doing something for the working-class – even if on a racist and divisive basis.
GR, the French section of the CWI, have been active as an organised current within LFI since its inception in 2016. We are calling for LFI to not restrict its activity to just electoral campaigning but for it to use its position to take a lead in building the mass movement.
I deliberately described it as a movement, rather than a Party, because Mélenchon has long organised LFI on a top-down basis with similar methods to that used by some of the other new Left formations like Podemos in Spain, or, in its brief existence, by Your Party in Britain. The movement is run top-down without real democratic elected representative structures in which members can get6 involved and feel part of a genuine workers’ party.
If you have read the articles we have carried in Socialism Today, you’ll know that Mélenchon is undoubtedly politically far ahead of say Corbyn, but still has significant weaknesses. His ‘French’ take on events stresses the ‘people’ rather than the ‘working-class’ – combining the bourgeois demands of “citizens” of the French bourgeois revolution with the ‘postcapitalist’ ideas that the working-class no longer has the power that it had. Of course, it’s true that the hollowing out of industry in much of Europe has helped undermine working-class consciousness and organisation but the working -class retains its potential power to halt capitalist society – as 5 November can help demonstrate.
Mélenchon has the advantage that, for now, his policies have not been tested – unlike say Podemos in Spain oy Syriza in Greece. In fact, there may even be a section of the French capitalists that are willing to see him elected, if only to then take him on through economic sabotage – just as they did with Mitterrand in 1981 – the former SP President elected on a left-reformist program who then retreated and carried out the cuts demanded of him by the bosses. In this scenario, of course, a program for nationalisation of all they key sectors of the economy, including the banks, for workers’ control and management, for the opening of the books of capitalist firms and capital controls, would all be vitally important – and of course these are already issues being discussed by the most politically advanced sections of the movement.
No comments:
Post a Comment