A-Infos (en) Italy, UCADI #189 - The French crisis (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Thanks to the Olympic break, Emanuel Macron was able to use a good 60 
days to hypothesize an impossible government for France and, at the end 
of unprecedented consultations, not foreseen by the French legal system 
but not excluded either, monsieur le Président pulled out of his 
magician's hat a reject of Gaullism, to entrust him with the role of 
prime minister: Michel Barnier, a 73-year-old, an old tool of community 
politics, a lifetime in institutions, both national and European. A 
parliamentarian for seven legislatures (five as a deputy and two as a 
senator), he has held ministerial roles for four times in the 
Environment, European Affairs, Foreign Affairs and Agriculture.

His political career has developed entirely in the neo-Gaullist 
centre-right: he moved from the Rassemblement pour la République (Rpr), 
(the conservatives loyal to Jacques Chirac and critical of Valéry 
Giscard d'Estaing's line), to join, in 2002, Nicolas Sarkozy's Union 
pour un mouvement populaire (UMP) and in 2015 he joined the new party, 
Les Républicains (LR), of which he tried to win the primaries to become 
the presidential candidate in 2022, but lost the nomination: a failure!
Despite his many failures in national politics, Barnier is known in 
Brussels for having been appointed Commissioner in 1999, in the 
Commission chaired by Prodi, with responsibility for Regional Policies, 
renamed between 2010 and 2014 in the Barroso Commission, Commissioner 
for the Internal Market and then interim head of Industry.
to conclude his career in Brussels as the EU's chief negotiator for 
Brexit implementation from 2016 to 2021.
Macron hopes that the prime minister's personal connections in Brussels 
will allow him to negotiate a difficult budget law, dealing with the 
infringement procedure for excessive deficit opened by the Union against 
France. He will have to present the 2025 budget law to the National 
Assembly by October 1, with a
deficit that could reach 5.6% in 2024 and reach 6.2% next year. The 
government has three thousand billion euros of debt on its shoulders, so 
it will not have any room for maneuver, and will be called upon to carry 
out a thankless task. His government will enjoy the support of Macron's 
Center, which emerged in pieces from the vote and went from 245 to 168 
seats, and the support of not even all the elected members of his party, 
Les Républicains: overall, a number of votes far from the 289 that 
guarantee the majority of the National Assembly. Therefore, to reject or 
approve any measure, the Prime Minister will need the support of Marine 
Le Pen's 163 MPs, who will grant their external support, considering it 
a viaticum to strengthen the chances of their leader for the 2027 
presidential elections, who, apparently, will not compromise herself 
with an unpopular management of power, but will still draw every 
possible benefit from it.
The fact remains that with his choice, Macron, after having benefited 
from the support of the anti-fascist prejudice to obtain the desistance 
in the second round, and in some cases even the support of the left - 
which allowed him to elect many of his deputies - with this decision he 
has dropped the exclusion clause against the Le Penists. Technically, 
the prime minister does not need a vote of confidence from MPs to 
formally assume his duties, but it is likely that the new prime minister 
will still ask the Assembly to approve his programmatic lines in the 
coming days. At that point, we will see, numbers in hand, whether 
Macron's political strategy will really be successful for the time being.
What is certain is that former prime minister Gabriel Attal, from his 
own party, but who at the time criticized the choice of early elections, 
does not miss an opportunity to mark his distance from the Elysée and 
declares that Barnier, even if he enjoys Macron's trust, must not take 
the votes of Macron's parliamentary group for granted and will have to
earn them. Furthermore, the popular mayor of Le Havre, Éduard Philippe, 
of the center-right, in open and clear defiance of Macron has already 
announced, three years in advance, his candidacy for the 2027 
presidential elections.
The left, for its part, is crying out for a betrayal of democracy, 
declaring that a theft has been committed against the majority of voters 
and their representatives. Jean-Lu Mélenchon, leader of the left-wing 
party La France insoumise , the most voted of those that make up the 
NFP, accused Macron of betraying the election results, stressing that 
the Républicains , the party of the president-elect, was one of those 
most defeated at the polls. Therefore, the head of state has "stolen the 
elections from the French people". François Hollande, (Socialist Party), 
stigmatized the pact of desistance between Macron and the radical right 
wing of Le Pen, stating that Barnier's nomination occurred because the 
Rassemblement Nazional endorsed the operation by promising not to vote 
no confidence in him in the Assembly. Hence the request for a vote of 
censure by all the oppositions because "Michel Barnier has neither 
political nor republican legitimacy".
In these conditions, the left-wing forces have only one way, that of 
taking the conflict to the streets and this is what they began to do on 
Sunday 9 September with demonstrations involving more than 300,000 
people throughout France, 160,000 at the Paris march. On 1 October, the 
strike was repeated by the CGT, which was followed by initiatives by 
other unions and parties: the strategy of continuous demonstrations that 
has characterized France since November of last year and throughout the 
previous winter and autumn is back.[1]

Class struggle in France

The French crisis, that of Macronism, is not only political and 
institutional, but has deep structural roots.
Emmanuelle Macron, in the eyes of the colonial elites and the French 
bourgeoisie still involved in the management of assets and investments 
in what were the colonies in the Francophonie area , is at fault for 
having lost control of what remained of the French colonial empire. 
Because of her failed foreign policy, the Chinese and Russians have 
taken over from the French in these territories (Mali, Niger, Central 
African Republic, etc.) taking control of the remaining French 
investments, which has had an impact above all on the supply of nuclear 
fuel necessary for the French energy industry which is characterized by 
the presence of a large number of nuclear power plants. Precisely this 
loss which coincided with the explosion of the oil and gas crisis 
following the interruption of relations with Russia was one of the 
unconfessed and unspeakable causes for which Macron has decidedly sided 
with Kiev in the Ukrainian war.
This failure of colonial politics has contributed to shifting support 
and consensus from the economic, cultural and social class components it 
expresses and the elite and middle class level to give their 
representation to the radical right. We must acknowledge that the 
bourgeois bloc that brought Macron to power in 2017 has definitively 
entered into an irreversible crisis. It was characterized by support for 
neoliberal reforms as premises for possible progress of this social 
bloc, based on meritocracy, technocracy, innovation, individualism, 
social climbing, bourgeois hedonism, just as Tony Blair and Matteo Renzi 
did. This bourgeois bloc could have worked, from a political-electoral 
point of view, if these promises of social ascension had been shared, 
believed and obtained, at least by a part of the middle classes, as well 
as by the privileged classes that constitute its hard core and main 
beneficiaries.
: Instead, it has happened that, even if it is true that the wealth of 
the privileged and apical classes has increased in an immeasurable way 
and the differences in wages and income have increased beyond all 
measure, determining an imbalance that sometimes embarrasses the most 
enlightened and prudent among the members of the privileged classes, the 
natural allies of this process, namely the middle classes, have become 
greatly impoverished, as it would have been said once, proletarianizing 
themselves from the point of view of income, even if not from the point 
of view of social feeling and an ideal class position. A profound 
frustration has arisen which pushes those who belong to it to social 
selfishness, to look for those responsible for their degradation in 
those who are different, in migrants, in the poor, in the marginalized.
In this situation, they are strongly attracted by the right-wing bloc 
which, precisely because it was formed within the liberal universe, is 
convinced that neoliberal reforms are inevitable, but instinctively 
possesses a more acute perception of the risks of downgrading these 
reforms entail. These risks are felt by the lower-middle classes, those 
who are one step above poverty; those who ask for a form of protection 
compatible with the idea that, in any case, there is no alternative to 
the neoliberal horizon.

Paris September 9, 2024, 160,000 in the square

However, in a world that cannot question the privileges of the richest, 
in the far-right bloc, protection must be built by acting against 
immigrants, against insecurity, against threats to "identity" but also 
against those who are below: this is why the Rassemblement National 
supports those welfare measures that still exist in France, which 
however can only work by reducing the number of beneficiaries and 
excluding migrants and the incapable. This is what has actually happened 
in recent years in France and will happen even more tomorrow, thanks to 
the Macronian policies that the right is committed to making structural.
On the other hand, the flexibilization of work, tax cuts for large 
companies, the suppression of 'ties and snares', have not produced the 
feared benefits or the increase in social mobility. Macronian recipes 
have not worked; on the contrary, a large part of the middle classes now 
feels this set of reforms as a threat, breaks away from the bourgeois 
bloc and moves towards the far-right bloc and yet remains in the same 
neoliberal universe, within the framework of the same ideology that 
characterizes the "bourgeois bloc".
Outside the neoliberal universe, a left-wing bloc has formed in France, 
around the idea of a break with Macron's reforms, which is fighting to 
repeal the pension reform, which in terms of taxation wants the taxation 
of profits and a wealth tax on large fortunes, wants the strengthening 
of the welfare state and services, the relaunch of public health, an 
acceptable pension system that respects the quality of life, the 
relaunch of the public education system. It is therefore natural that 
this social bloc is an adversary for the elites, for the bourgeois group 
and for the far right that, while formally opposing Macron, promised 
that upon coming to power it would continue his policies. To counter a 
left-wing government, as the voters asked, the natural shore was Le Pen 
and Macron used it fully. This does not mean that the bourgeois bloc and 
the far-right bloc are now fused together; simply, the state of weakness 
of the social bloc that brought Macron to power corresponds to the 
specular strengthening of the one that supports Marine Le Pen.
In the aftermath of the elections the three political and social blocs 
were substantially equivalent, now the bourgeois bloc has greatly 
weakened, while the far-right one has strengthened. The Barnier 
government represents a rebalancing within the neoliberal universe, 
within which the balance has now clearly shifted all the way to the 
right. On the other hand, Le Pen and Macron have a common adversary: the 
left-wing bloc that formed around the idea of a break with the reforms 
and the neoliberal worldview.

Alliances and political program for the left in France

To constitute an alternative to the right and the Macronian bloc, the 
left must start by demonstrating that growth does not come from private 
innovation and social individualism, but from collective negotiation 
that is not incompatible with the guarantee of sufficient profit margins 
for businesses, and therefore every effort must be made to bring social 
conflict to the streets and especially to the workplace, demanding 
higher wages, better working conditions and simultaneously intensifying 
the never-ending battle for pensions and the strengthening of welfare, 
putting health and education first.
It is the left's task to explain to the country that it must deal with 
the definitive liquidation of colonial waste that France could use to 
obtain resources to be used at the same time as a positional rent for 
privileged classes and a source of financing for state finances. From 
here a new structure of resources and management of public accounts, a 
different, more careful distribution of income that must take into 
account the characteristics with which the population is distributed 
across the territory and therefore the different needs that arise from 
this structure.
The consensus of the left cannot come only from the cities and the 
productive classes employed in industry and services but there also 
exists, especially in France, a widespread rural world, a world of the 
suburbs that is finding growing difficulties due to the progressive and 
inexorable reduction of services on the territory. The "abandonment" of 
the countryside and the territory by public services is a widely 
documented fact. The localization of the distribution on the territory 
of health services, public offices and even of the structures for 
controlling public order and the simultaneous increase in costs for 
increasingly private transport, because the public service is lacking 
and withdrawing, have increased the cost of living for rural 
populations. A massive and unprecedented movement like that of the 
"yellow vests" had taken charge of these demands, supporting completely 
different and specific economic and social demands. The criticism of the 
contempt and arrogance of the state leaders for these problems, the 
desire to be able to live with dignity, the fiscal injustice, the 
intolerance for the snares and bonds imposed on farmers by the common 
agricultural policy, must induce the ecologists, as a component of the 
left, to take charge first of the existing discrepancies in politics 
towards the peasant and rural world. The rural peasant and working 
classes remain the archetype of the "object class" that must instead be 
aggregated as one of the essential components of the social left, 
representing its interests and social demands.
Rebuilding a credible left-wing policy means taking charge of the 
growing increase in accidents at work and deaths at work, of the social 
and psychological discomfort resulting from the activities and hours 
required for work performance, and from the conditions of work 
organization. In preparing its program and its government proposal in a 
credible way and so that it is supported by the inhabitants of the 
cities as well as those of the countryside, the left must take charge of 
unifying the interests of the social block of which it wants to be the 
interpreter and supporter, also by categorically posing the problem of 
rearmament and war.
What the left cannot afford is to leave to the right the rejection of 
conflict and war, and therefore it must unequivocally pronounce itself 
in favor of peace immediately in Ukraine as in the Middle East, for a 
responsible and friendly policy for the Francophone area in Africa, the 
only proposal that can try to recover the ground lost in this area in 
favor of China in Russia, rejecting the muscular confrontation for 
hegemony conducted through the supply of armaments to Ukraine, if not 
with the well-disguised sending not only of weapons, but also of 
mercenaries.
The left must remind itself of the lesson of history that teaches that 
war has always been desired, supported and fueled by the ruling classes 
and that it is always the people who pay the price with mourning and ruins.

[1]France goes to the left , Newsletter, Political Growth, n. 187 July 
2024; France at the crossroads, Newsletter, Political Growth, n. 186 
June 2024; France: government coup , Newsletter, Political Growth, n. 
169 March 2023; France: a new cycle of struggles?, Newsletter, Political 
Growth, n. 15 October 2010 .

The Editorial Staff

https://www.ucadi.org/2024/09/28/la-crisi-francese/
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