On 8 September, as expected, French prime minister François Bayrou lost a confidence vote in France’s National Assembly. Meanwhile, a groundswell from below grew towards a day of strikes and protests across France on 10 September. The following editorial, translated from French, was published by Gauche Révolutionnaire (Revolutionary Left – CWI in France) in a special supplement of their paper, L’Égalité, on 3 September.
The mobilisation that led to 10 September is shaking the government. Calls for strikes are multiplying. The desire to unite and fight is growing among workers. Pressure is mounting in the trade unions for our side to engage in a showdown with the capitalists and their government. All unions are now calling for a strike on 18 September.
The end of François Bayrou as prime minister opens yet another page. A new chapter of political crisis that calls on us to unite and say: ‘Macron, that’s enough’. A massive workers’ struggle has the potential to oust him and his entire policy of serving the capitalists and the ultra-rich, uniting to replace him with a government that defends the interests of workers and the majority of the population. To pursue such a policy, a government with a firm programme against capitalism will be necessary.
President Macron and Bayrou thought they were being clever when they announced the 2026 budget at the beginning of the summer. But their 44 billion euros of cuts and the theft of two full days’ wages from workers, far from provoking the resignation they expected, lit the fuse. Even though this year the dire figure of six million unemployed was reached, if there is enough work to make people work two more days, it means there is work! We need jobs for all the workers who are deprived of them, instead of making workers toil ever harder with wages that do not allow us to live, and pay for energy and rents that keep rising!
With Macron, it’s always the workers who pay. But we remember that the country’s 40 largest companies made 150 billion euros in profits last year. And in the first half of this year alone, 72 billion euros. They make all these profits because they exploit workers more and more.
The vast majority of the population can no longer stand these policies, which are worsening social conditions and making society increasingly violent and unjust. We are right to revolt. Nearly three out of every four people in France are in favour of Bayrou’s fall. Perhaps even more significantly, 67% of people want Macron to resign. It’s an entire policy that is rejected, not just the prime minister (especially given the rate at which they succeed one another)!
Where did 10 September come from?
The 10 September mobilisation began somewhat spontaneously with a petition and on social media. Initially, it was mainly about taxes (à la gilets jaunes – the ‘yellow vests’ movement) but it quickly expanded to include protests against budgetary measures – particularly the elimination of two public holidays – and the working and living conditions of the majority of the population.
Even though it’s spontaneous, it doesn’t come out of nowhere. Attempts to resist and fight are constant. This summer included. There were two million signatures against the Duplomb law (allowing use of a banned pesticide) tailored for agribusiness capitalists. The movement against the genocide in Gaza has never stopped; demonstrations continue everywhere, and so does the general revolt, growing with the genocidal violence.
France Insoumise (‘France Unbowed’, led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon) played an undeniable role. It has continued to agitate for the need to oust Bayrou – applying constant pressure, with eight motions of censure filed, and a very clear call to strike on 10 September and build the fight to oust Macron.
At last, 10 September comes after two years in which the trade union bureaucracy has not called for a single national day of collective strike action. All of these elements combined find expression in this first day of national struggle. There’s a feeling that the struggle is rising, in the face of those in power who are afraid.
Budget, salaries, working conditions: same fight
The 10 September was quickly seized on by workers to assert their own demands. In several sectors, calls for strikes have emerged. This is particularly thanks to the combative trade unions and trade unionists who are fighting to build the strike in their company, locally in their city, or in their entire sector. Things are moving every day and the struggle continues to build.
The calls are for specific demands: against low wages in the private sector, understaffing in hospitals or in education, against layoffs, as in metallurgy or commerce, against new attacks, as on unemployment benefits or in energy, and so on. All these demands are linked to the rejection of the budget because they reject the same political stance.
A united front of workers to stop these policies
What lies ahead isn’t a fight to stop the 2026 budget or ‘just’ over the two public holidays, etc. What is wanted, is the reversal of all the attacks that have been inflicted on us. The movement against pension reform showed that a fight limited to the withdrawal of one measure can’t win. There is enormous pressure for a united front of workers against all of Macron’s policies. That’s what needs to be built.
The strike will be all the more powerful because it unites all workers. In discussions, at work, in general assemblies, let’s discuss our demands. This doesn’t divide us. On the contrary: it strengthens us, it shows that we are determined to build a struggle that will win concrete improvements.
Gauche Révolutionnaire calls for:
- Not a single euro in budget cuts, let’s get back the gifts given to the bosses and the profits of the top 40 companies. Let the capitalists pay for their own crisis!
- Hands off public holidays! For reduced working hours without loss of pay or ‘flexibility’, until there is no more unemployment
- A decent wage: plus €300 salary increase now for everyone and an increase in the minimum wage
- No to the high cost of living! For lower prices and price freezes
- Decent housing for all, lower rents and requisition of empty homes!
- Pensions at 60 years old maximum and 37.5 years of contributions. Hands off the pay-as-you-go system!
- Zero job cuts! For the public ownership of companies that lay off workers, under the control and management of workers
- Massive hiring of staff and budget increases in public services! Stop commissioning to the private sector: public services are not about making money
Strengthen the balance of forces: for three days of strikes in a row!
10 September varied across locations, but it is a first strike. What is needed is for it to demonstrate potential and create momentum on which to build the pressure. A first strike necessarily means that the next stage must be bigger. Otherwise, our strength won’t be demonstrated; and that’s what is needed to broaden the strike. So we must raise our voices.
The unions have already decided to call for a one-day strike on 18 September, this time inter-union, then some strikes on 23 September. This is not a strategy. What is needed, is for the strike on the 18 September to be a three-day strike, public-private all together. Including a Saturday, because many people work on Saturdays, especially in sectors that are suffering from particularly low wages, imposed part-time work, and thousands of layoffs, such as retail, who those not working on that day could go to support.
21 September is already a day of mobilisation globally against war. It fits in with the movement against Macron. Enough is enough with stealing from workers and destroying our public services for the armed forces and the profits of the war industry.
By building on the momentum of 10 September, the greatest number of workers can join the struggle, discuss their demands and how to build the strike movement and defeat Macron. And a three-day strike could serve as an ultimatum: if the demands are not met, if Macron does not back down, then on 23 September an unlimited national strike will be called. This is the kind of strategy with which the movement’s strength could be built to be equal to the attacks and the establishment power we face. It isn’t a blueprint, but proposals that Gauche Révolutionnaire brings to the debate in the struggle.
A movement armed with a plan will also give young people the impetus they need to join the struggle, to come and demonstrate with us… It’s not anger they lack, it’s confidence and a demonstration of the strength of workers to change things. A strength that is never greater than when we’re on strike, because that’s when we show who really makes society go round and raises the question of who should lead it.
Goodbye Bayrou, now let’s get rid of Macron!
Bayrou’s departure is a virtual certainty. The French capitalists are desperate to survive the global crisis of their system, and they are counting on Macron to attack workers and save their profits.
We don’t yet know what manoeuvres Macron will use to continue with his policies: dissolve the National Assembly now, or later so that the legislative elections coincide with the municipal elections; delay by keeping a resigning government in place to draw up the 2026 budget (and quietly issue a bunch of decrees, as Bayrou did until 8 September).
The only thing that’s certain is that Macron’s power is weaker than ever. And a weak enemy is easier to fight. This political crisis is a good time to assert our interests: let’s build and expand the fight together to oust Macron!
What government to pursue what policy?
Objectively, the situation already raises the question of power, but in the discussion, only the capitalists and their defenders have a voice.
Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella’s far-right National Rally party wants to, once again, appear to be in opposition. Even though Bayrou could only be installed thanks to their approval, they have basically validated his entire policy. Without mentioning the racism of Gérald Darmanin (Justice minister and member of Macron’s Renaissance party) or Bruno Retailleau (Interior minister and member of the conservative Gaullist party Les Républicains), Le Pen and Bardella have always been in favour of destroying public services and cutting wages. Clearly showing whose side they are on, they immediately distanced themselves from the movement of 10 September, precisely because the strike put a workers’ response on the agenda.
The PS (French Socialist Party) is showing its hand. Its leader, Olivier Faure, after saving Bayrou’s skin on numerous occasions, sees himself as Macron’s prime minister and is already promising 14 billion euros in budget cuts and reassuring the capitalists: we will indeed “reduce spending” (and therefore continue to destroy public services) and give 10 billion euros to businesses. And they promise that they will not resort to Article 49-3 (an article of the constitution allowing the government to force through bills without parliamentary approval). As if we could believe them! We have no confidence in these people to pursue a different policy.
And unfortunately, elsewhere in the workers’ movement there are also those who justify their own defeatism and lack of confidence in workers and who play no role in the current political situation, claiming that the fall of Bayrou changes nothing, or that the slogan ‘Get rid of Macron’ is not workers’ business.
But it is not nothing that a government falls because of a movement that has not yet even begun. It is not for nothing that Bayrou organises his departure himself because the idea of a strike is rising! It is absolutely workers’ business who is in power, because our camp needs a political response to the political and economic crisis. It is a political battle that we are waging.
Confronting capitalist interests
So, the movement and workers themselves must ask the question of what kind of power we want, for a government of our own that pursues policies to satisfy the needs of the majority of the population. This means challenging the interests of the capitalists, the most fundamental of which is that they own all or almost all of the main sectors of the economy.
A government that will renationalise privatised public services; that will put into public ownership, under the control and democratic management of workers, the companies that lay off workers; but also that will create public service monopolies, also democratically managed by workers and users, by nationalising the major sectors of the economy, which will operate to meet needs and not make profits.
Those who are leading the current struggles, with the support of parties that oppose capitalism, trade union and community activists, and young people, will be able to form the basis of such a new government.
We need a party too!
The struggle that is opening up poses these perspectives. But they are absent from the political debate. Why? Because our camp, workers and youth, does not have an independent political voice. We too need our own party!
Not a fake party of careerists and bureaucrats, no, a real party of workers and youth, a democratic, mass party; a living, democratic organisation, to debate collectively, and to organise to defend a firm programme against the capitalists. This would be the best way to defend a perspective of our own government; to take political and economic power out of the hands of the capitalists and put an end once and for all to their nightmarish system, by establishing socialism.
Down with capitalism!
Macron personifies capitalist arrogance and contempt so much that he is at the heart of everything. Through him, it is the capitalist system itself that is being called into question: exploitation, the dictatorship of profit, and everything that goes with it – inequality, racism and division, the absence of democracy, war. This system has no human face. It must be overthrown. The fight for a socialist economy free from private ownership of the means of production and exploitation is the order of the day.
Gauche Révolutionnaire invites all those who wish to mobilise with us to do so, so that these perspectives are widely debated. Strengthening the struggle, strengthening the political consciousness and organisation of workers and youth, proposing a programme to end capitalist barbarism by building socialism – this is what we are fighting for.
- Since the article was first published, Macron has appointed a loyalist, Sébastien Lecornu, as prime minister. In an attempt to cut across the movement, he has promised to row back on plans to cut bank holidays. Strike are set to go ahead 18 September
