James Ivens, Socialist Party national committee member reports from Paris:
Over a million workers and young people protested in cities and towns across France on 23 March. This enormous day of action was provoked by the latest stage in the government’s campaign against pension rights, and especially its use of undemocratic constitutional powers like ‘Article 49.3’ to force measures through against parliamentary and public opposition.
President Emmanuel Macron’s unprecedented TV appearance the day before poured more fuel on the flames. His prime minister, Elisabeth Borne, had just survived two no-confidence motions by the skin of her teeth, the first by just nine votes. Macron made no pretense of an attempt to conciliate. Rather, it was a flat insistence that the counter-reform will go through come hell or high water, no matter who opposes or how.
The demonstration in Paris comprised 800,000, by the estimation of the CGT union federation. Blocs of striking workers packed the streets on two huge converging march routes, interspersed with big groups of students.
Gauche Révolutionnaire (CWI France) members marched with 30,000 in Rennes, 25,000 in Valence, up to 20,000 in Nancy. 10,000 marched in Montélimar – a town of just 40,000 inhabitants!
Slogans opposing Article 49.3, demanding Macron get out, and that the pension age return to 60, dominated the protest. One demonstrator carried a giant papier-mâché bin containing a papier-mâché Macron.
Refuse workers have been on strike for weeks in some areas, most of all in Paris. Great mounds of uncollected rubbish bags loom over street corners. No smoke rises from the incinerator chimneys. The public sector is the most represented in the strike wave and on most demos for now – rail, education, sanitation, electricity, public services. The private sector is also involved, including in private-sector public services, and very significantly the oil refineries with their record profits.
Chants also rang out through the Paris crowds for a general strike. This is necessary, and could certainly overturn Macron’s attacks. But the question is who can organise it and how.
Union leaders have consistently been pushed by the anger from below to call coordinated actions and further strike days. But there is no planned, pre-announced programme of action. This is badly needed, to show both the movement and the bosses that the unions are in it to win it.
A new generation of strikers is now learning the methods of working-class struggle. Picket lines are rare but reappearing. The tradition of ‘general assemblies’ at workplaces to discuss demands, tactics and how to spread the strike also needs to regrow. A Gauche Révolutionnaire member and union rep at a Paris lycée (secondary school) has shown what is possible with these methods, bringing big numbers out on strike and leading discussion on strategy and politics.
Mass workers’ party
Pickets at an incinerator in Paris expressed the view that the traditional parties all stand for the same thing. It’s true! There is no mass party where the working class can discuss a programme to solve society’s problems and struggle together to beat the capitalist politicians. Gauche Révolutionnaire members have found the escalating movement in 2023 is becoming more open to these ideas than in previous years.
Yet in many areas, the union activists and left political activists are the same people or work closely together. The need for such a party requires wide discussion in the workplaces, on picket lines and at general assemblies.
In many areas, university and lycée students joined the marches in much bigger numbers than yet seen in this year’s movement. A Gauche Révolutionnaire member at Inalco university in Paris was with a contingent of just a dozen students on the previous strike day – but left with a group of 100 on 23 March. Still more significant were the dozens of Paris lycées blockaded by students for the first time, often alongside striking teachers.
Young people are angry on multiple issues. The cost-of-living crisis and increasing state repression affect all parts of society. Macron has also pushed through anti-working class university selection procedures, and attempted to extend a version of national service. The government recently postponed the latter to try to avoid provoking occupations and blockades by young people – showing that fighting back gets results.
This is the generation which entered secondary education under Covid, and had yet to raise its head following the experience of lockdown. Students too are relearning the traditions of struggle of the French workers and youth, bringing great energy with them. But many more are still to join the movement. One lycée student told us he hadn’t because it seems it’s only about pensions – and he’s not alone in thinking this. More and more students understand that this struggle is about fighting for their own future. It’s important the movement extends its demands to encompass all the big issues facing workers and young people, to draw more in.
The anger is palpable throughout society. If passion alone could stop Macron’s attacks, it would have done so. But without serious organisation to channel all these currents of struggle towards a conscious strategy of escalating action with a broad programme of demands, the outcome is an open question.
In the meantime, frustration is rising. The fire-setting and vandalism of a small minority was more of a feature on 23 March, which the state is using to increase repression. In Rennes, Brittany, demonstrations were banned in the city on 25 March. Unprovoked attacks by the police are already more of a feature. One striking teaching assistant in Rouen lost her thumb to a rubber bullet.
Macron had virtually no public support to start out with. He has less now. Whatever the outcome of this battle, a new generation is quickly learning the lessons of struggle and has no choice but to fight on issue after issue. Things will not be the same again. But right now, the battle over pensions is still very much alive.
‘Popular initiative referendum’ won’t strengthen the struggle
Some parties, like the PCF (Communist Party), are actively campaigning for a ‘popular initiative referendum’ – a poll of the population to advise parliament. The trade union leaderships, and left political leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, have also called for it. But this proposal does not strengthen us at all. We don’t need to show that we are in the majority to oppose this attack on pensions and Macron’s other policies. So why put the power to decide back in the hands of the government?
The state institutions are on the side of Macron and the government. Everything they do is to try to prevent our victory. Even if we manage to collect the nearly five million signatures needed, there is nothing to force the MPs to pass our opinion into law. We need to inflict a major defeat on them, on a par with the one Macron wants to inflict on us. And it is only through mass struggle, discussion and organising ourselves politically that we can achieve this.
Strike and organise to kick out Macron!
The following is an edited extract from the special bulletin distributed by Gauche Révolutionnaire, CWI France during the 23 March strike
We need to develop the movement on pensions as a rallying point to get rid of Macron and his policies. Power is being challenged. It’s time to take the right to decide on our lives out of the hands of this government and the capitalists. In this context, quite logically, many workers and young people look at the parliamentary activity of the left alliance, NUPES, with sympathy.
Even some who are further from the struggle see that the far-right RN, under its guise of opposing the pension reform, does not support the movement at all and, on the contrary, opposes the strikes, hoping to capitalise on the anger later, while frustrating the movement today.
A government truly at the service of the workers would have to come from the struggle, its trade union and political organisations. It would be necessary to discuss widely what programme is capable of competing with the capitalists and getting them out of the way. It would therefore be a question of not settling for a programme that accepts capitalism or of forming a coalition with the PS (ex-social democrats) and EELV (Greens), who are complicit in carrying out policies like Macron’s in local government.
Instead, we need a government that defends our interests as intransigently as Macron’s defends those of the capitalists – a government that has a firm programme against the capitalists.
We need new elections. But utlimately the current institutions favour the rich and give us no control over those we elect. We need a government that defends the interests of workers and pursues policies to meet the needs of the people, with democratic and environmental planning of the economy.
Elected officials should be recallable, and paid the average worker’s wage. Those who are leading the current struggle, with the support of the parties that oppose capitalism, and trade unionists and youth activists, should form the basis of a new government.
Such a government would need to renationalise privatised public services, and put the major sectors of the economy under public ownership, under the democratic control and management of the workers and the population, especially finance, energy, transport and distribution.
The hundreds of billions of euros from the wealth of the ultra-rich and the profits of multinationals and tax evasion should instead be used to provide jobs and housing for everyone. This would set in motion a real transition to a socialist economy, free of private ownership of the means of production and exploitation.
But today, workers and young people do not have a mass party to fight for such a class programme. So, in the course of the struggle, all this must also be discussed between strikers, activists, trade unionists. From now on, a broad and public discussion is needed between the forces rejecting capitalism in order to form a political united front against Macron and the capitalists.
Strengthening the struggle and more broadly the organisation of workers and young people, proposing a programme for socialism, this is the objective of Gauche Révolutionnaire.
