A-Infos (en) France, OCL CA #358 - Should Public Services Be Destroyed? (ca, de, it, pt, tr) [machine translation]

In this period of austerity, where everything that provides a safety net 
for the working classes—including public services—is being sacrificed in 
the name of budgetary discipline and the intransigence of the markets, 
it may seem paradoxical to criticize public services. And yet, the aim 
of this article is to show that public services belong to the very world 
we want to destroy.

Definition(s)
There are many definitions of public services. Here, I will use the one 
that limits them to services provided to the population of a country in 
the name of the general interest, managed by the State, theoretically 
without distinction or discrimination, and financed in part or in full 
by collective contributions (taxes, etc.). We readily think of schools, 
hospitals, transportation, energy, waste management, and mail, but also 
of a number of services provided by various public administrations 
(prefectures, courts, town halls, water distribution, employment, etc.), 
sometimes subcontracted to private or semi-public operators, but managed 
by the administration through calls for tenders, specifications, or by 
holding a majority stake in a privatized company.

The boundaries of what constitutes public services depend on political 
stances and the perceptions of the actors themselves (the "public police 
service"), the country in question (the United States is not renowned 
for the development of its public services), and the historical period 
(the public authorities of the Ancien Régime oversaw far fewer sectors). 
A certain ambiguity sometimes persists between these services and the 
traditional sovereign functions of the State (internal and external 
security, justice, currency, finance). The example we will primarily use 
here is that of "French-style public services."

The role of the public education service, detailed by one of its providers
A brief history of French-style public services
According to P. Sommermeyer (1), public service is inseparable from the 
Civil Service and its body of civil servants. After 1945, many civil 
servants, particularly at the highest levels, supported Vichy. The new 
government, headed by De Gaulle, wanted a loyal administration. 
High-level administrators, trained in the schools that would become 
Sciences Po and the École Nationale d'Administration (ENA), were 
recruited for this purpose. Independent of parliamentary maneuvering, 
they would be closely aligned with the State. The Civil Service would be 
jointly managed by unions in joint bodies. Following compromises with 
the very powerful Communist Party (PC), the civil servant status was 
created. Before the splits between Force Ouvrière and then the National 
Education Federation, Maurice Thorez, General Secretary of the Communist 
Party, devised a single statute that strengthened the control of a 
hegemonic CGT (General Confederation of Labour) subservient to the 
Communist Party over civil servants. The concept of public service was 
already present in this statute, because for Thorez, civil servants 
should be "servants of the Nation."

This statute, which at the time represented a considerable portion of 
the French workforce, contained various features that remain very much 
in place today: a hierarchy of categories (A, B, C), corps, ranks, pay 
grades, and joint management of the workforce by unions. In exchange for 
their recognition by the State, the unions collaborated with the employer.

Meanwhile, Marcel Paul, Minister of Industrial Production, secured the 
nationalization of the energy sector and the creation of a statute for 
electricians and gas workers. As with the SNCF (French National 
Railways), the statutes governing workers in these companies contained 
guarantees that aligned them with those of civil servants.

Finally, alongside these civil servants, there are the elite corps of 
graduates from engineering schools (Ponts et Chaussées, Mines, Institut 
National Agronomique, etc.) tasked with revitalizing production in a 
France in need of reconstruction. Internal solidarity among alumni, the 
meritocratic system of competitive examinations, and an undisputed 
technocratic role in regional planning decisions have made them a 
veritable caste within the state, dedicated to managing certain public 
services.

The Work of Public Services
The class interests of the rank-and-file public service workers (the 
postman, the electrician, the gas worker, or the schoolteacher) are 
diluted by the general interest they are supposed to represent, by union 
co-management, and by the ambiguous status of both managers and those 
they manage. These factors have nonetheless made it "an efficient 
machine, both in its service activities and in defending its employees."

But what exactly does this “efficient machine” do? While public services 
do indeed provide services to the working class (mail, energy, 
education, healthcare, etc.), “for hundreds of thousands of people in 
France today, public service also means teachers who humiliate and 
socially sort you, inquisitorial social services that cut off your 
benefits for the slightest incorrectly filled-out document, monthly 
checks at the employment office, fines on public transport, and police 
checks. (2)”

Furthermore, defending “our public services” implies that we have a say 
in how they are run. This demonstrates a lack of understanding of the 
history of their establishment, as described in the previous section, 
and of the technocratic implementation of nuclear power plants (3), 
highways designed for car dependency, or “the development of the TGV 
high-speed rail network, financed in part by the gradual closure of 
unprofitable lines (1)” and freight transport.

Therefore, at a global level for the State, it is a matter of entrusting 
these sectors with the task of managing everything that enables the 
training of workers, their healthcare, transportation, the circulation 
of goods and flows (internet, energy), etc., that is to say, what 
Marxists call the reproduction of labor power and the circulation of 
capital.

The public security and public order service intervening in Lille in 2023
General interest = interest of capital
“The general interest” is therefore nothing more than the normal 
functioning of capitalist society, its routine made up of exploitation, 
domination, hierarchies, and control. “For society as a whole is 
precisely subordinated to the demands of the reproduction of capital: it 
is according to these demands that it has been shaped; the maintenance 
of its order is precisely what the reproduction of capital dictates; by 
regulating social activity, it is the reproduction of capital that it 
regulates.” (4)

Historically, in the second half of the 20th century, we can better 
understand why the State agreed to co-manage with a group of workers who 
were well-represented in unions and potentially united and militant: 
“After the Second World War, it was necessary to rebuild and modernize, 
[…] the national productive apparatus was the priority; the issues of 
housing, health, and education were necessary conditions for supplying 
capital with a mass of skilled and able-bodied labor. (2)”

Public services are thus a historical modality of French capitalism (and 
we find the same thing to varying degrees in other core capitalist 
countries during the same period), a compromise between capitalists, 
represented by the State, and workers, represented by the Communist 
Party/General Confederation of Labour apparatus, to keep the economy 
running. This was a stage in the relationship between capital and labor, 
known as the Trente Glorieuses (Thirty Glorious Years), during which 
growth and productivity gains for capitalists were linked to a 
(relative) improvement in the living conditions of the French working 
class (for in the colonies, it was a different, bloody story). This 
compromise is illustrated not only by co-management but also by the 
financing of these services, partly drawn from the profits of employers, 
who, through this choice, believe that the state is more efficient than 
the market for the reproduction of capital.

Public services: a class analysis
If defending public services ultimately means defending capitalism (or a 
past stage of it), then the militant ideology that overwhelmingly calls 
for their expansion within social movements may seem surprising. 
However, upon closer examination, the class composition of public 
service workers and the ideology associated with them provide part of 
the answer.

The dual role of public services, functioning, so to speak, for both 
capital and labor, makes their workers potential allies of the two 
social poles of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, and therefore 
capable of representing a general, average interest. Furthermore, public 
services operate with a workforce that is (increasingly less) shielded 
from the market, and thus less likely to be suspected of defending its 
immediate self-interest, unlike private companies. Finally, many of 
these workers (and especially a dominant fraction within the public 
services, both in terms of numbers and ideology: teachers) are recruited 
through competitive examinations, often hold degrees (or are trained 
internally), and/or have access to union and political party 
representation. These are characteristics that Alain Bihr associates 
with a class playing an intermediary role in relations of exploitation: 
the capitalist managerial class (5), and with its “natural” political 
outcome: the seizure of state power through social democracy. Hence the 
historical flattery of the left towards civil servants…

The status, the social position attributed to those who perform a task 
deemed to be of general interest, creates a separate class whose own 
interests may conflict with those of the service recipients. Hence the 
corporatism in the struggles ("public-private"), even the more or less 
conscious authoritarian management (6), and the limited substantive 
criticism offered by unions in these sectors regarding the functioning 
of public services, except to deplore their shortcomings or underfunding…

Implementation of the public nuclear energy service dialogue at the 
Creys-Malville demonstration in 1977
Communists and anarchists, all behind public services?
The political perspective of the left, defending and expanding public 
services, stems from a social logic of interests. However, it is the 
product of a specific and bygone historical period, that of the Trente 
Glorieuses (Thirty Glorious Years) and its now obsolete capitalist 
principles (strong growth, full employment, a relatively favorable 
balance of power for workers, mass organizations, etc.). Each period of 
capitalism produces, among the exploited, its own forms of resistance 
associated with particular perspectives and utopias.

In the 20th century, in fact, the structures of worker 
representation—parties and unions—relied primarily on the “bastions” of 
large private companies (in the automotive industry, for example) and 
the civil service. The capitalist restructuring that began in the 1970s 
targeted large concentrations of workers, even before the civil service, 
leading to a sharp decline in the utopian vision of a working class 
empowered by production (rather than reproduction), its left-wing or 
far-left aspirations, and its utopia of generalized labor—Soviet-style 
for some, self-managed for others.

While it's easy to understand why authoritarian communists, worshippers 
of the state, embraced the uncritical defense of public services, the 
debate remains open among libertarians. The Paris Commune and the 
federation of communes remain the touchstones for anarchists, and many 
frown upon the inclination of some toward "libertarian public services," 
which they see as a covert revival of the state. Marianne Enckell 
recounts the debates within the Anti-Authoritarian International (7), 
following the Paris Commune. While all shared the desire to "restore to 
each member of the social body their effective sovereignty," the Belgian 
César De Paepe, a statist, proposed "a single and supreme direction of 
the public administration" and "the direct or indirect participation of 
all" in these services, whereas Adhémar Schwitzguébel countered with the 
continuity of the revolutionary association of "groups of workers" who 
"mutually secure the gains of the Revolution" by means of "federation 
pacts [...] for the organization of production, exchange, circulation, 
instruction and education, hygiene, and security." And James Guillaume 
sought to prevent the "special personnel" of these services from 
becoming a bureaucracy by recruiting them "freely from among the workers."

Public transport workers moving about on a regional train in Bourg-en-Bresse
“If you want to build ideal cities, first destroy the monstrosities (8)”
This debate continues today, as evidenced by the “already-there 
communist (9)” ideas for extending public services to all production 
through social security, proposed by the Wage-Workers Network. While 
these ideas are largely confined to reformist intellectual circles, they 
sometimes resonate with the ideology of waning social democracy found in 
social movements.

Criticism of public services is not currently popular. Sociologically 
speaking, this is understandable (see above). However, for those who 
genuinely wish to organize to put an end to capitalism and the state, 
and who place themselves within an anti-authoritarian revolutionary 
tradition, the debate must be raised.

The easy way out, as with any other constitutive concept of capitalist 
society, such as science, democracy, or law, is to consider public 
services as imperfectible, and thus to absolve current public services 
of their shortcomings by postponing their full realization. If one 
considers public services as a tool of state organization serving the 
reproduction of capital, this argument falls apart. Nevertheless, 
abandoning the cheap utopia of public services does not resolve the 
eternal question of how production will be organized in a communist or 
anarchist society, nor how current struggles might take this direction (10).

At a time when many legitimate struggles aim to defend public services, 
or those aspects within them that promote emancipation and oppose market 
expansion, let's try to see what a dissenting voice and a perspective of 
radical critique might look like within these struggles. First, workers 
in these services often fall into the trap of defending the means of 
production (SNCF) and "public service missions" (schools), which 
condemns them to inaction. Conversely, alliances between workers and 
users sometimes produce interesting prospects for transcending these 
limitations, as when EDF workers cut off power to the powerful and 
restored it to the excluded. Secondly, political currents critical of 
public services, advocating autonomy in the production and reproduction 
of human life (self-managed health centers, clandestine abortions of the 
Movement for the Freedom of Abortion and Contraception), free access 
(mutual aid societies for fraudsters), neighborhood solidarity in the 
face of the charity of social services (the Resistance in the Suburbs, 
then the Immigration and Suburbs Movement), and open, polytechnic, 
versatile, and popular education (libertarian athenaeums) are all 
sources of inspiration for moving from the state-run public sector to a 
revolutionary commons. Thirdly, the technocratic management of public 
services (particularly transportation and energy) is made necessary by 
the staggering growth of the techno-industrial complex at the foundation 
of modern economies. The desire to produce without a state, without 
bosses, without productivity, and without money implies dismantling this 
complex in order to regain control of production.

Marx said, regarding the Republic, in the French context of the Third 
Empire (11): “All political revolutions have only perfected this 
machine, instead of breaking it […], the parties [considering] the 
conquest of this immense edifice of the State as the principal prize of 
the victor.” Neither public services nor the State belong to the world 
we desire. Let us give the final word to Marianne Enckell. “The message 
is simple: the institutions of the new world are not created within the 
old.” (7) »

zyg, February 2026

Notes

(1) Civil Service, Public Services, a French Exception, Pierre 
Sommermeyer, in Refractions, Anarichist Research and Expressions No. 15, 
Winter 2005
(2) Spring 2018: On Social Movements and the Defense of Public Service, 
AC, carbureblog, April 2, 2018
(3) See the OCL brochure An Overview of the History of the Anti-Nuclear 
Movement in France, as well as the numerous articles on the subject in 
these pages
(4) “The First Age of Capitalism,” Interview with Alain Bihr, Ivan Segré 
- published in lundimatin#248, June 23, 2020
(5) Class Analysis. What to do with capitalist regulation?, Courant 
Alternatif no. 320, May 2022
(6) See the article The Debacle - Elements for a Materialist Analysis of 
the September 10 Movement, Sans Trêve, September 21, 2025 and its 
critique in Courant Alternatif no. 354, November 2025, September 10: Who 
and What? Reflections on the “managerial class”
(7) Here at the Congress of the Federalist International in Brussels in 
1874. The question of public services before the International: 
federalism and autonomy, Marianne Enckell, in Refractions, research and 
anarchist expressions No. 15, Winter 2005]
(8) Taken from the song The Triumph of Anarchy, lyrics by Charles d’Avray
(9) The “already-there communist” of the Wage-Working Network, Courant 
Alternatif No. 349, April 2025
(10) Three recent works address this question: For a Revolutionary 
Anarchism – Wall by Wall; Utopia 2021 – Léon de Mattis; Uprising – 
Mirasol. See a review in Courant Alternatif No. 315, December 2021
(11) The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Karl Marx, 1852

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