The following resolution was adopted by the National Conference of Gauche Révolutionnaire (CWI in France) over the weekend of 23-24 March 2024.
Since the end of the Covid-19 crisis, the capitalist world economy has not recovered growth or market stability. Global growth remains weak. The World Bank forecast in December 2023 for the global economy to grow by 1.7% in 2023 and 2.7% in 2024, with a marked and widespread slowdown.
The economic outlook for developing countries has deteriorated in 2023. They have been revised downwards for 95 per cent of the advanced capitalist countries and for nearly 70 per cent of the economies of the neocolonial countries. The first four years of the 2020s saw some of the lowest growth rates in three decades. The whole of Europe will soon enter recession after Germany and the United Kingdom.
External debt continues to grow and the burden of interest is increasing, especially in poor countries. This has been the main effect of the “inflation-fighting” policies put in place by the central banks of the advanced capitalist countries. Inflation itself is mainly linked to the profits of large companies, whose shareholders are stuffing themselves, to make up for the losses of Covid and in anticipation of a new wave of the crisis. Energy prices have risen massively following the privatisation of the sector and are not coming down quickly. Global debt has exceeded $300 trillion, or 300% of global GDP! This debt is unpayable. It is a perpetual pretext both to cut state budgets and attack workers, and to keep the IMF and other creditors under their thumb. According to the World Bank, as of December 2023, nearly 700 million people around the world live in extreme poverty, on less than $2.15 a day. We advocate debt cancellation, along with the public ownership of the entire banking/finance sector. This will continue to be an important demand to bring into anti-imperialist struggles.
International trade is always subject to uncertainty. Supply chains are regularly disrupted or broken. Since 2010, merchandise trade levels have stagnated. International uncertainties, linked to the war in Ukraine, and, for the past five months, the military offensive of the State of Israel on Gaza, add an even greater level of instability and increase global risks. This has been permeating all aspects of the economy for several years. And the capitalists cannot solve their crisis. A new speculative bubble has been able to develop around artificial intelligence in two years, sending stock markets soaring. For example, the AI champion, the company Nvidia, has experienced an extraordinary stock market surge, with an increase of 15,752% since 2015! Next to it, the GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft) are “small players”.
France is among the champions of dividend payments. On March 7, 2024, the Paris stock exchange exceeded 8,000 points, a record. Since the March 2009 low, the CAC-40 has risen by 219%. The dividends allocated for 2023 – which will be distributed in 2024 – cumulatively amount to €67.8 billion (compared to €67.5 billion in 2022). Above all, these coupons are supplemented by €30.1 billion (€24.6 billion in 2022) of share buybacks. Stellantis, which has massacred the production tool and the work of auto workers, is just behind Total in the lead. And Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares is the highest paid of those in the CAC 40: €36.5 million in 2023!
These share buybacks by the companies themselves are skyrocketing. It is a way for a company to redistribute funds to its shareholders. Since the same value of the company is divided by a smaller number of shares, the value of each share increases mechanically. In addition, this shareholder remuneration, in several countries, is less taxed than the payment of dividends. Increasingly used by companies – in 2022, share buybacks carried out by 425 of the largest listed companies in Europe reached a record €161 billion – at a macroeconomic level, this also confirms the monopolistic tendency of capitalists with the concentration of capital. This is how we find ourselves today with eight billionaires who alone own half of the wealth of all humanity (report of the High Council for Equality)! There has never been so much wealth on a global scale and yet 2.1 billion people still do not have access to safe drinking water, a situation that threatens the lives of 200 million people a year. The number of working poor has increased in recent years. In France, according to INSEE, 15% of the population lives in poverty, including one million workers. But in the face of these growing inequalities, the working class is not standing idly by.
The climate crisis is growing with increasingly visible and terrible consequences for populations: droughts, fires, floods, earthquakes, etc. These effects are reinforced by the over-exploitation of natural resources and by the energy-intensive and polluting production managed by the large capitalist groups whose sole purpose is profit. This destructive logic of capitalism has no borders. State policies that prided themselves on regulating pollution or being environmentally friendly are more or less abandoned. But it has always been an issue for the biggest capitalist powers to create and maintain markets (carbon emissions, electricity, etc.) for the profits of their national bourgeoisie in the face of instability and capitalist crises. That is why the only solution is a break with the capitalist system, for the democratic socialist planning of production according to resources, capable of meeting needs while preserving our environment.
As in the past, and for the last 15 years after the subprime crisis, in the absence of workers’ organisations and combative programs, mass mobilisations, even pre-revolutionary or revolutionary situations develop, and then stop temporarily. Instability remains, but repression becomes increasingly widespread. This is the case for Senegal, Tunisia, Burkina Faso, Sri Lanka, Nigeria… In some countries, situations of decay and social disintegration are on the rise, such as in Haiti, where gangs are developing while there is almost no state. Coups in the Sahel are not doing anything good for workers, youth and the poor masses. Their general passivity – even if there is support for the idea of removing the imperialist economic domination of the former colonising powers – testifies to the lack of hope that coup regimes or juntas will bring about an improvement in their lives.
New periods of explosion and mass struggles are the order of the day, because nothing that drove the workers, youth and masses onto the streets has been resolved. Given the depth of the capitalist crisis and the tensions in world relations, any regime that limits itself to the framework of capitalism is doomed to be a crisis regime. In contrast, as in Senegal, we defend the need for a united front of workers, the poor and the oppressed and mass mobilisations. In order to take the lead and thus pave the way for socialist revolutions, it is vital that the working class everywhere equips itself with its own organisations, independent of pro-capitalist forces.
Ukraine
The war in Ukraine has been going on for the past two years. It reflects and feeds geopolitical tensions and tactical recompositions on a global scale. During the March 2022 UN vote that demanded the withdrawal of Russian troops, out of 193 countries, 5 voted against and 35 countries abstained (including 20 African countries) But the war is gradually transforming geopolitical relations within Europe and the European Union. Russian imperialism is resisting, and Putin’s power is resisting, by ossifying itself more and more. The repression and stifling of opposition is strong, as underlined by the death in prison of Navalny, a figure of the liberal bourgeois opposition to Putin’s mafia oligarchic regime. At the geopolitical level, a kind of headlong flight of Putin’s power increases the risks of the possibility of further armed conflicts and tensions. Sweden joined NATO on March 11 and has reinstated military service, Finland is on a war footing and so are the Baltic states.
NATO member countries puff out their chests but have limited unity. The possibility of Trump’s re-election next November adds to the uncertainty. The conflict in Ukraine itself is deepening political strife and support for Zelensky appears to be fraying. A key to ending the conflict remains the mobilisation of workers and youth in Russia against Putin and against the war.
It is in this context that we must analyse Macron’s vindictive stance within the EU, which is multiplying “warmongering” declarations. He is seeking to position himself as a leader against Scholz in Germany, who is weakened. Macron is also weakened after his risky statements in terms of Middle East policy that have caused an international outcry.
Macron’s “warmongering” stance is also aimed at opening up new markets for French arms manufacturers, who have almost doubled their exports in ten years. France is now the world’s second largest arms exporter, ahead of Russia. The French state’s €3 billion military agreement with Ukraine, signed in March 2024 for 10 years, aims to seize the opportunity of slowing down US “aid” to Ukraine, with the construction of factories directly on site (to allow maximum profits with low local wages).
Even in times of war, Zelensky’s government has enacted neoliberal anti-working class laws that restrict workers’ rights and banned a number of left-wing organisations. The call for “national unity” hides the enrichment of those at the top of society through the exploitation of the overwhelming majority.
For socialist revolutionaries, the struggle in Ukraine against foreign aggression cannot be separated from the need for the Ukrainian working class to build a movement that can abolish capitalism and replace it with public ownership of the main pillars of the economy and socialist planning, including for reconstruction.
It is neither a Marxist socialist approach, nor a step towards a solution for the people to say: “the solution to the war lies in a negotiated settlement”. It would be a settlement agreed between the ruling classes on both sides, which at best might bring some respite from the bloodshed, but would not be a real or lasting solution. Nor is it a Marxist approach to say “support for the Ukrainian resistance” without ever saying on what forces or on what class basis this is done. On the contrary, this a-classist approach condemns the working class to remain under the domination of its bourgeois oppressors. Capitalist interests, the dictatorship of profit, land claims, exploitation and repression of minorities would remain. It is not a question of calling on capitalist representatives to decide which capitalist class should have control of Crimea, or the Donbass, or anywhere else, but of making it clear that the people of these regions should have the right to decide democratically their own future, without coercion: the right to self-determination. Capitalism is incapable of guaranteeing this right to anyone.
Workers in all countries of the world, including Russia and Ukraine, cannot trust the actions carried out at home or abroad by the capitalists of their country or the government representatives of these capitalists. What is on the agenda is the building of democratic socialist organisations based on the working class, completely independent of capitalist interests, and the building of solidarity between these organisations at the international level.
- Stop the war, immediate withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine!
- No escalation of war, no to sending weapons!
- For a mass movement in Russia to kick Putin out!
- No trust in the capitalists of NATO, the EU and Zelensky
- Right to self-determination for all peoples
- No cuts to our public services or our rights to fund wars
- Let us demand campaigns organised by the trade unions and workers’ parties with mass demonstrations and solidarity actions against the war.
Gaza
Since October 2023, a new conflict has opened up in the Middle East. Hamas’s deadly attacks on October 7, particularly against Israeli civilians, offered Netanyahu a golden opportunity to emerge from the major political crisis that threatened to remove him with a massive movement against him. And secondly, it allows the most despicable ultra-reactionary forces to wage an ideological and physical offensive against the Palestinians. Their goal is to annihilate as many Palestinians as possible and to make the possibility of a Palestinian nation-state unrealistic. The Israeli army sees soldiers turn into monsters like the soldiers of the colonial armies in Indochina, Algeria or Vietnam.
The conflict is now spreading across the Middle East with the conflict in the Red Sea following attacks by Yemen’s Houthis, impacting the Suez Canal trade route. Netanyahu’s massacre in Gaza is aimed at annihilating the Palestinian presence in the Gaza Strip. And to prevent any return to it.
Now, the end of the conflict is conditional on future plans for Gaza. It is the imperialists who want to impose these plans. The U.S. is considering setting up a new pseudo-Palestinian Authority. In the West Bank, the Abbas-Fatah government has resigned, a hallmark of American imperialism, which wants a new Palestinian Authority controlling the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (emptied!). Their new pawn, Mohammad Mustafa, is a director of the Palestinian investment fund and a former member of the World Bank. The government of Israel also wants to take control of the Gaza Strip’s gas resources.
For the imperialists, the regimes of the Middle East or for the current Palestinian leadership, the creation of a Palestinian state is not the responsibility of the Palestinians themselves. Fatah and Hamas are only leading the Palestinians to defeat by collaborating with imperialist forces and local reactionary regimes.
The anger of the masses against the management of the territories under their control is growing. It is growing among all the people of the Middle East against their rulers. Only an independent struggle of the workers and youth of Palestine will make it possible to organise en masse against war, land dispossession and for the right to self-determination. The Israeli workers, on the other hand, must break with the policies of the ultra-reactionary bourgeois in power. Only united action around the slogans of peace, demands for social justice and guaranteed democratic rights for all, including the right to self-determination, against war and capitalism, opens up a future of possibilities in Israel and Palestine, and beyond, in the entire region through a socialist confederation of the Middle East.
Europe
The European Union is also in a particularly tense situation. The two main forces, Germany and France, are not only in economic crisis, with Germany in recession, but also in political crisis: the governments of Scholz and Macron have particularly low support among the population, and the classic political parties of the bourgeoisie are weakened. The crisis is also social because a growing part of the population is contesting their policies (farmers, strikes, war in Gaza, etc.).
The European elections in June 2024 come in this particularly unstable context. The austerity policy has been officially relaunched by the European Commission to push for more deregulation, privatisation and the destruction of what remains of public services and collective protections. This policy was overwhelmingly rejected. But the absence of a clear, anti-capitalist and socialist class political alternative gives the populist far-right the opportunity to take electoral advantage of the crisis.
What game is Macron playing?
The new Macron-Attal government established in January-February 2024 does not shine by its originality. It is a government of capitalists, of high-ranking state officials who have alternated between the private sector and the senior civil service. Half of the ministers are millionaires. The government is clearly on the right, especially in economic terms: liberalisation of labour, austerity in budgets, “knowledge shocks”… After the forced passage of the pension counter-reform, he is attacking in all directions, as is Macron’s disruptive style of rule. In fact, it’s a sprint race. Macron and the capitalists know that social anger is growing and that its explosive character is strong. In an attempt to buy time, Macron’s tactics are increasingly based on a very systematic repression of the organised labour movement and trade unionists, and always on anti-racist, anti-war and environmental mobilisations.
From time to time, the government tries to take advantage of an event to improve its image for a while. This was the case in the attempt to recuperate the World War Two resistance figures of the FTP-MOI. Like Hollande with marriage equality, Macron uses the right to abortion, finally accepting its inclusion in the constitution, to appear progressive. The same goes for the right to die with dignity.
In the end, Macron directly represents the interests of big capital in France, a capitalism that is in retreat and has lost markets (especially in Africa and the Middle East). These permanent oscillations and the absence of an international strategy for France (diplomatic as well as military) illustrate well the short-termism of its policy. Everything suggests that Macron has no program and that he governs the country as the capitalists govern their companies: with great reversals and authoritarianism. There is certainly an element of this, but it also reflects the crisis of capitalism and the weakness of the ruling class, which runs around like a headless chicken, with no confidence in the prospects for the stability of their own system.
The Bonapartist character of Macron’s power is particularly pronounced, a trait shared by many of the world’s ruling adventurers. This is a reflection of the political and economic crisis. A fraction of French capitalists relied on this authoritarianism to brutally enforce their policies. The government headed by Élisabeth Borne, in power for only a year and a half, accounted for one-fifth of all uses of Article 49.3 of the French constitution, that allows the bypassing of parliament, since 1958. Macron’s warlike speech, with his “we are at war” during Covid, the Wuambushu operations in Mayotte, the sending of ships to Gaza and the South China Sea, the threats to send soldiers to Ukraine, etc. are a reflection of this. But this does not make Macron’s power a strong and stable one, quite the contrary. For his second term, he has even less support among the population outside part of the bourgeois right-wing electorate. By default, he embodies the camp of the bourgeoisie, but his policies strain class contradictions throughout society and maintain them at an explosively high level.
All the political forces, from the classical right to the bourgeoisified Socialist Party (PS), are struggling to formulate a policy other than the one promoted by some of the big French capitalists that Macron represents. Proof of this is the slump in Les Républicains and the “Macron-compatible” candidacy of the PS in the European elections with Raphaël Glucskmann.
This impression of navigation by sight must not make us lose sight of the objectives that guide the capitalists in France: to increase the super-exploitation of workers and youth, to install zones of influence and flagship sectors such as luxury, energy and armaments, and to try to break up the sectors that are not sufficiently open to the market that are still, in part, the public sector. Only conscious action by workers can stop this process.
Working Class, Levels of Consciousness and Struggles
The mobilisation in the face of the pension counter-reform in 2023 ended in failure. The struggle, which was certainly long, was not strong enough to make the government back down, nor to exhaust the workers who entered the movement of successive strikes without a plan. The use of clause 49.3 got the better of the protesters, and confusion about its failure persists for the lack of a collective balance sheet among those mobilised, especially with the new union members who had joined during the battle.
At the beginning of 2024, we can feel the class struggle simmering. Instability is also marked in this area. Given the anger and attacks that the bourgeoisie is planning, including a new labour law, there will be collective reactions. We can already see this among the working class in the private sector. As every year, strikes over wages and around the Mandatory Annual Negotiations (NAO) lead to movements. Some are victorious. The defensive nature of “merely” catching up, even partially, of what has been lost with inflation is obvious. In the public sector, municipal employees, mainly low-paid category C, are also mobilised on salaries and bonuses. Education is mobilised against the latest attacks and the issue of budget cuts announced in February-March is a major subject of concern and anger, especially in the hospital civil service.
The unionisation rate has not changed too much, around 10% since the 1990s (8% in the private sector and 18% in the public sector). And despite employer and government attacks, workers are largely unorganised in the workplace, especially young people (2.7% of those under 30 are unionised). It was during specific battles over working conditions that new layers joined a trade union movement that was still largely based on very small industrial sectors.
Over the past three years, employers have intensified their attacks on traditional sectors such as rail transport, energy (petrochemicals, gas, electricity) and the automotive sector (Stellantis, Renault). Automotive suppliers are subject to regular waves of layoffs, strongholds of the CGT. Specific attacks everywhere have sought to undermine organisation in companies and groups of union activists, which were once solid and sometimes combative. They have struggled to get back on their feet, despite significant struggles in recent years, with the absence of a programme from the union leaderships contributing a lot.
Unrest among the youth
Young people, heavily impacted by COVID, have not found their way back to the struggles. High school students are subject to the government’s repressive measures, from the start of the school year on clothing (abaya), then with the generalised SNU ‘national service’, and the reform of middle school which introduces selection to enter high school. The prospects for young people from working-class and working-class families are harsh. The feeling of a world that is being shattered at the international level, as well as Macron’s warmongering offensive that wants to “rearm” everything, is creating uncertainty and anxiety but also a feeling of waste among young people that is leading to anger and already to mobilisations among certain layers, especially of immigrant origin on international issues for the moment. But the atmosphere is political among the youth as well, and this shudder reflects the general restlessness and explosiveness.
For the environment and climate, the mobilisations are taken up by a small portion of young people but remain very limited. The same is true for some young people, especially women, who are mobilised against sexism. Mobilisations exist but are weak in number and intensity. The inclusion of the right to abortion in the constitution did not give rise to a massive demonstration to claim it as a victory for the women’s rights movement. And the mobilisations of March 8, 2024, reject Macron but do not carry perspectives to say: abortion is in the Constitution, let’s now snatch the necessary means and the reopening of closed family centres and family planning.
The issue of the fight against war and Macron’s threat of war against Russia is of great concern. But young people are relatively helpless in the face of ongoing wars. With the massacre in Gaza, a whole section of young people, especially from North African and Muslim families, are very aware. Some young women participate in street mobilisations, but most expressions remain on the individual ground and networks. No anti-war collective or committee has really taken shape in universities or in a city or region.
The racist politics of the ruling class and the far right
One of the factors that blocks the possibilities of developing struggles in France is that of racism. The government is making full use of racism, especially against North Africans and black Africans, against Muslims, as the main weapon of class division. The Darmanin law – named after the Minister of the Interior – illustrates this. The bourgeoisie (even if it is divided over methods) needs racism in this period and the usefulness of the hyper-precarious workforce of migrant workers. Another objective is to reduce wages in so-called strained sectors that cannot find employees who accept poor working conditions and pay without flinching.
In a class society, the dominant ideas are always those of the ruling class. In the current situation, with the crisis, the bourgeoisie is increasingly betting on reactionary, racist and anti-migrant ideas to continue to divide the majority of the population who are becoming more and more resistant to the ruling power.
The National Rally (RN) positions itself even more centrally, thanks to the government and the bourgeois media that make these issues the central themes of their propaganda. It is becoming more and more established as an option for the more classical bourgeoisie and for the right on a number of points. On Europe, Jordan Bardella, president of the RN, asserts a more “reformist” line, no longer mentioning the end of the EU but defending a renegotiation of the treaties (a change even compared to their 2022 program), knowing how precious this institution is for the French capitalists. They are moving forward, both by trying to distance themselves from Macron, and by taking care to mask or modify the most divisive elements of their program. This is what motivated their abstention during the symbolic vote in the Assembly on France’s support for Ukraine (Mélenchon’s France Insoumise, LFI, and the Communist Party, PC, having rightly voted against) while Marine Le Pen is known for her support for Russian oligarchs and fascists of all kinds in Eastern Europe in particular. The RN is a right-wing populist party with fascist elements gravitating around and within it. The far right and small fascist or fascist groups are active, feeding on the degraded social and political situation. All the currents of the extreme right are enjoying the political vacuum on the side of the working class.
The French right is itself divided on the degree of racism and hatred of Muslims to be developed, with Macron on the one hand and the RN on the other doing the job. Their political fragility and the lack of cohesion of the bourgeois parties is still a fact of the period, especially since Macron single-handedly fulfils the immediate objectives of certain currents of the big bourgeoisie.
Faced with the particularly difficult situation of workers and young people and with inflation still high, the organisations of the left and the workers’ movement do not have a program or structures capable of organising all or even part of the struggle against Macron, Attal, Darmanin and the capitalists.
The interest in socialist ideas and revolutionary organisations is rather positive. In France as worldwide, the majority of the world’s population can no longer stand this system. But the ruling classes, which have very limited support, remain in place. As anger grows and deepens, the absence of independent political expression by workers and youth on a broad scale becomes more gaping. Its necessity must be at the heart of the discussions of the serious forces of the workers’ movement and the combative left.
France Insoumise (LFI)
Politically, since Macron came to power, France Insoumise still remains the only force on a large scale that resists aspects of the offensive of the bourgeois parties and their representatives. It has the merit of rejecting racism, police violence and war in a context where the rest of the left is closer to ‘national unity’ and the republican front, as the demonstration on Sunday, October 12, 2023 illustrated. It also has the merit of denouncing the aberrations of the capitalist system, particularly in economic and environmental terms.
However, neither the programme nor the structures of LFI allow a layer of radicalised or more conscious young people and workers to progress politically. The good reflexes of not allowing oneself to be divided exist but the reasons given for having them are fallacious, they would be “the true republican ideas”. They are not proposed as demands and approaches of the working class in the face of the enormous offensive of the bourgeoisie. As a result, workers, especially those from immigrant backgrounds and working-class neighbourhoods, partly support the FI but do not see it as a tool for daily struggle.
The limits of Mélenchon’s and LFI’s program are very numerous. To be against the massacre in Palestine and to continue to defend UN resolutions, or the fact that Macron could do a different policy, is to send people to the wall. It doesn’t politicise. Mélenchon’s theory of “non-alignment”, of a new alliance of countries, such as Modi’s India, China’s CCP, and Putin’s Russia and its oligarchs, totally obscures the fact that these countries are capitalist and their leaders reactionary.
According to this logic, the only way out that LFI and Mélenchon point to is that of elections and ‘citizen revolution’ through the ballot box and in popular mobilisations. While class conflict is at a high level, LFI’s response is the political impasse carried by the reformists.
After the failure of the NUPES left-electoral front, the FI will attempt to revive the People’s Union around the upcoming European elections. The list includes individuals from other ex-NUPES groups, a Palestinian woman against the war (Rima Hassan), trade unionists (such as Anthony Smith), and members of neighbourhood associations. It is not certain that the People’s Union will develop because it is designed, above all, to be an electoral front and not a militant force that is built.
The possibility of waging a combative campaign against Macron and the bourgeois European institutions with the People’s Union material will surely be very limited. Posters urging people to register to vote show this. The worst being “racists vote, and you?”, which succeeds in dividing workers among themselves instead of emphasising worker unity against racism as a solution to social problems.
So programmatic boundaries are a big problem, as are the real possibilities to organise locally, discuss and produce material. The People’s Union convention of March 16, 2023 was more of a media event than a moment in the internal life of LFI (as other conventions may have been a little bit a few years ago) allowing us to feel the “temperature” in the movement and to make our position more public. We voted against the text submitted for consultation in December and we abstain on the names on the list that will be published even before the campaign programme is presented.
On a large scale, however, LFI, after its 7.7 million votes in 2022 and recently, the vote on the constitutionalisation of abortion, the positions against the Darmanin law and against the war in Gaza make LFI the only opposition force on the left that has a broad (even if vague) class base and thus constitutes the main point of support against Macron and the other bourgeois parties of the Socialist Party (PS) and the Greens/Ecologists (EELV) through the right and the far right.
The weakness in class consciousness, i.e. the central role of workers in capitalism and its overthrow, is significant. The extremely confused consciousness demands a great deal of flexibility in slogans and elements of explanation in order to develop our revolutionary socialist program. But when young people and workers take ownership of it a little more, it becomes enlightening to understand the world we live in and therefore how to transform it. Our task is to show the value of using our program to intervene decisively in today’s world; and to strengthen it by joining the construction of the revolutionary party so that this program can become that of the mass of the working class and youth.
