President Macron’s party was beaten in the European Elections in France. It was an anti-Macron referendum that resulted in a victory for the far right Le Pen’s party Rassemblement National (RN) in an election with little participation and a divided left. Macron then dissolved the assembly thinking it would be successful to find him a new majority with the right and a party of the Socialist Party (PS) and the Ecologists (EELV). He lost the parliamentary elections again because he is hated for his anti-social, pro-rich policy. A new left-wing electoral agreement was promoted by La France Insoumise (LFI) under the name of Nouveau Front Populaire (with the PS, EELV and the Communist Party). The agreement had a limited agenda, not calling into question the policy of serving capitalists. However, the NFP agreement called for the repeal of the 2023 pension reform, for wage and pension increases, and against war. Macron’s side thus came in third place in the first round, then in the second round. The NFP alliance obtained a relative majority thanks to an electoral mobilization of young people and workers that resulted in a participation-record, especially in working-class migrant areas.
The withdrawal in most cases of NFP candidates against Macron candidates has reduced the number of RN MPs. But nothing is resolved because it has not made it possible to clarify on what political programme we can beat the RN and Macron. And it also provided more MPs for Macron’s party than it should have. The NFP coalition at first did not have an absolute majority and Macron did not respect the tradition of appointing a prime minister from the strongest political force. It’s an unprecedented political crisis under the 5th Republic.
A very fragile economic situation
France is no exception to the global economic slowdown. It is stagnating and will soon return to recession. It is now borrowing at a higher rate than Greece. Inflation has fallen to around 2%, but wages have stagnated, and consumption is declining. Small businesses close by the hundred. There are thousands of lay offs in the automotive sector and jobs induced in subcontracting despite the profits of large groups like Stellantis. Further relocations and closures are expected in other sectors. Approximately 100,000 jobs are currently at risk. The only sector that relocates and works is armaments. France has become the second largest arms seller in the world. This also explains some of Macron’s positions on the ongoing wars that French capitalists have no interest in stopping.
Macron : “always more for capitalists!”
In this more than uncertain economic and political situation, the French capitalist ruling class do not even want to see the NFP programme applied. Yet it does not represent a great danger with some neo-Keynesian measures of redistribution and preservation of public services. Macron took advantage of the Olympic Games to not appoint a new government. He passed anti-social decrees and continued his policy of breaking public services. He then appointed Barnier as head of the government. Macron had, for this, the agreement of the National Assembly that will not vote a motion of censure against Barnier and wait for the presidential election of 2027. The new government is mainly composed of classical right-wing personalities with anti-abortion, homophobic and racist views. Barnier’s party, The Republicans, won only 5% of the vote. But they are there to carry out a policy of austerity even if there is a new dissolution of parliament in June 2025. Barnier announced an unprecedented budget cuts plan of 60 billion euros in 2025, 20 billion of which will be supported by ministries and local authorities. There is also Suppression teaching posts under threat, a proposal by the Court of Auditors to eliminate 100,000 territorial posts (!), closure of post offices …
A deficit due to Macron’s gifts to the capitalists
Macron and Le Maire, the former economy minister, have a very bad record and pretend to discover a record deficit at 6.1% and a debt of more than 900 billion. All this because of the gifts from Macron: corporate tax reduced from 32% to 25%, abolition of the wealth tax. The CAC 40 made €146 billion in profits in 2023 and the 500 biggest fortunes in France totalled €1228 billion or 45% of GDP. In recent years, they have also organized a massive transfer of VAT (tax on all purchases about 20%) to replace the exemptions from social contributions made to bosses. This allows, while giving gifts to the bosses of power, to take control over the finances of the Social Security (unemployment insurance fund, pension and sickness managed in a joint manner since 1945). The same is true for local communities, which will become even more dependent on the central state. But this causes 100 billion less revenue for the state budget. The blackmail to the deficit that they themselves have dug will be there again to justify the hidden privatization of public services by lack of financing or their disappearance.
What resistance to Macron; what are the unions doing?
The movement against pension reform in 2023 was unprecedented in terms of its duration and form. No lessons have been learned by the leadership nor in unions either on the left. We have had a full year of 2024 with almost no national day of strike or action. It is the mobilizations for Gaza and the European elections that have remobilised a layer of young people and workers. Facing the Barnier government, a single budget mobilization date was proposed by the CGT on 1 October. It was not successful because there was no campaign to build the strike and a plan of struggle of the management of the CGT. Worse, the CGT management was pleased to have obtained a 2% SMIC increase in November when it was supposed to happen in January. Nothing was won. Faced with the austerity budget, the trade union leaders say they do not want to create more instability and want to win concrete things for workers. How?
Unlike the trade union leaders, we should call for a new day of inter-professional workers’ strike and build it around a plan of struggle crescendo and workers’ demands.
– Against all redundancies, for a common struggle of the workers concerned!
– No to the disappearance of public services, health, and education
– Against the ending of the rights of the unemployed
– For the renationalisation of privatized companies that close sites or production, such as Sanofi, under the control and management of workers
The danger of the Rassemblement National
The absence of conscious intervention by a part of the workers and youth against Macron has allowed the RN to profile as an opposition, in the absence of struggle. This part of the right and some capitalists want a harder policy against workers by dividing them on a racist basis. In the last elections and in the government formation game, the RN has given up all these social promises. During the previous mandate, the National Assembly also voted with the Macronists against the social measures of the left but this is not yet visible enough on a mass scale because the RN is also favoured in the media. They also proposed a new law for retirement. A retirement at 62 instead of 64. It is a scam because with 42 years work insurance required as they propose no one can leave at 62. And they want to finance this by attacking social security and immigrants. It is a major task to expose the RN in the class, including among the youth, even if the left remains a majority.
For a united front against Macron, Barnier and the capitalists!
Anger is immense among workers even if it cannot find a way to express itself and there may be defeatism in some workers’ organizations. Unity is needed but cannot be done on any programme. The NFP is not the right answer. The PS and EELV have accepted this alliance to block the RN for a time, keep their deputies and to have a label of ‘left’ for the municipal elections of 2026 despite being bourgeois parties. Moreover, the PS refused to support the institutional process of impeachment of Macron (that has failed), carried out by LFI, in order not to create a greater political crisis. The PCF has also chosen not to rely on the contradictions and weakness of the Macron government, favouring their stability. This is a problem in view of the weight of this party in the CGT union and the workers’ movement. Logically, there is little enthusiasm among the workers who voted for NFP and who remember Hollande. On 7 September, at the initiative of LFI, there were large demonstrations against Macron. But the atmosphere then declined with the impossible prospect of impeachment; unions that did not clearly call for it and did not link it to the mobilization of October 1. Today they prepare for the upcoming elections more than organized resistance to the devastating policy of Macron/Barnier, supported by the RN.
We need a united front of all the unions and parties (especially LFI and the PC) that are on our side to win against Macron. A united front that allows us to fight together and that brings a programme of rupture with capitalism that is lacking to build our struggles.
France Insoumise should call for a new mass workers’ party
Since Macron came to power, France Insoumise is the only political force on a large scale that opposes racism, police violence and war and denounces the aberrations of the capitalist system in economic and environmental terms.
Young people and workers joined France Insoumise this year to fight against the RN and against the war in Gaza. A part of the Insoumise activists want to see a movement triumph in France against Macron, RN and capitalists. And they see no other way out, especially after the vote theft in the last general elections of June-July 2024. Except that the programme carried by LFI is limited to the idea of a citizen revolution through the ballot box, supported by mass mobilizations. The polarization against LFI and the persistence of a sustained political intervention in this particularly unstable political situation will increasingly subject LFI to strong contradictions and strategic choices. It would be the basis for the construction of a party of mass of workers for socialism in France. But none of the leadership of France Insoumise nor Melenchon want to make this choice.
The task of conscious militants of the workers’ movement, of combative trade unionists, as well as of France Insoumise, Communists and revolutionary organizations should be fully devoted to pushing the working class and young people with it to intervene decisively in today’s world as a class. The Gauche révolutionnaire members, French section of the CWI, are oriented in this unprecedented period in the unions and towards the young people to build the revolutionary Marxist forces necessary to play a decisive role in this process of reconstruction of the workers movement on the basis of struggle for a genuine socialist programme – to finish with Macron Le Pen and the capitalists!
