On Saturday December 8, a new day of mobilization by the “yellow vests” took place in Paris and other French cities. Their fight had already forced the Emmanuel Macron administration to take a step back on the fuel price increase (demand with which the process began). Although he had promised not to retreat and he had attempted to stop the movement with repression.
By: Alejandro Iturbe
After the first triumph, the fight continues. Harsh confrontations took place on Saturday with the impressive repressive apparatus deployed by Macron around the country. It included 90,000 police officers, armored cars, and previous intimidation operations, like the raids in the occupied high schools. Reports informed around 40,000 to 120,000 yellow vests around the country, with focus in Paris. Repression and confrontation led to 130 wounded and 1,000 under arrest.
Macron’s defeat on the fuel price issue led to great weakening of his administration, which had entered office a year and a half ago with high voting and great popular support. Therefore, he attempted to appear tough to stop this bleeding, and to stop a forced renunciation.
It is hard to foresee the course of the immediate situation in France since several alternatives are posed. Even more so, when this analysis is done from another country, based on journalistic information and some “ground truth” reports. Surely, there will be imprecise information to be corrected in the following weeks, and elements that will further develop. We will present the combination of elements currently taking place in this article.
Yellow Vests
The process and the speed with which it spread surprised the country and the world. Actually, it had been building up in social networks for several months due to fuel price increase: 18% so far this year (year inflation is around 2%). The deeper framework is impoverishment, slow but permanent, of on growing sectors of French society.
The last increase announced by the government (hidden behind “ecological reasons”) was the trigger. “The fuel thing was just the last drop”, stated a farmer from Craponne-Sur-Arzon, a commune in south France [1]. In the small inland cities, the merchants, the truck drivers and farm workers joined the farmers. They began to block streets.
This reached Paris and other great cities, where it was pushed by small proprietors (like taxi drivers), and essentially, by young “precarious” workers. “One finds everything here, people like us: workers and self-employed, and people with small businesses”, said Justine, a 69 year old retired woman, left wing militant [2]. Some days of mobilization joined 300,000 people (a third of Paris).
We may define it as a mobilization of the toiling masses, uniting different sectors impoverished by French imperialist capitalism. This is a greatly progressive process. All around a basic program: decrease of fuel prices, increase in wages and for the end of dismissals, taxes on the rich, welfare action by the State, etc. There was also a clear questioning of the Macron administration, and in general, of the V Republic regime, even explicitly in the demands and slogans of some sectors.
This type of mobilization has been taking place in several countries around the world, with similarities and specificities. We may mention the Popular Assemblies in Argentina (2201/2002), the Spanish Indignados (2010), Occupy Wall Street (2011), Geração à Rasca in Portugal (2011), the June demonstrations (2013) and the teamster strike (2018) in Brazil, etc. With all their contradictions, these are very progressive demonstrations that often have (or may have) great influence in the weakening of governments and democratic bourgeois regimens, just as a positive dynamic in class struggle.
One of the most important elements is the radicalization of action methods of impoverished middle sectors in an anti-capitalist dynamic. With this, they undermine the traditional social bases of these regimes. For example, they threw excrement on the National Assembly and they walked around a guillotine, remembering the 1789 French Revolution.
Therefore, we revolutionaries must support and push these mobilizations. We must actively intervene to propose the enrichment of their program and the incorporation of the working class organized with its struggle methods. This is the only way to dispute the leadership and the dynamic of the process from reformist sectors, who wish to limit its scope, and from far right currents, who wish to grow on this process.
What Side are You On?
The yellow vests have no centralized leadership, but several “leaderships” that come together in mobilizations. This made it difficult for the government to set up a negotiating table to neutralize the struggle. This diversity was also expressed in the struggle methods. Some sectors posed to sustain a “pacific” protest (which is impossible given the repressive operation of the government) while a very broad vanguard faced repression and often made it retreat.
There was also a calling to form the “green vests” to participate in the demonstrations against the fuel price increase, but with a “green agenda” against pollution due to fossil fuel. We are not against this element, but in the context of this struggle, it opened space to the government’s arguments, and it actually divided the mobilization and confrontation against Macron. There were also far right leaderships and expressions of xenophobia and male chauvinism in some blockages. However, they were rapidly isolated and stopped by the protestors.
The action of these sectors (for example, Marine Le Pen sympathizers) was favored by the hesitating standing (or contradictory) of the so-called left wing (a confusing term today). The Socialist Party of ex-President François Hollande divided and took no public standing. Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Left Front first remained quiet and after several days (as its sympathizers actively participated in the demonstrations), it went on to support them. The New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) first “hesitated” and then went on to support and intervene, but from an essentially “green” perspective. The great labor federations were absent. Even the CGT called a mobilization for wage increase, in a cleat attempt to divide and weaken the main process. (The mobilization ended up being very small).
The yellow vest process begins to replicate in Belgium and Spain, and there are similar callings in Portugal. History has taught us that when the French people struggle, this struggle influences the world.
There are many things left to analyze. The slow decadence of French imperialism that serves as framework of the impoverishment of the sectors leading this process. The need of all bourgeois governments to carry out harsher attacks. The difficulty of French imperialism of defeating its workers and its people (and the recurrent struggle processes this generates). The crisis of the bourgeois institutions of the V Republic, the debate with most of the left about how to answer these processes (and more in general, about the supposed “reactionary wave” in the world)… We will attempt to approach these in a following article.
Here we want to insist. Before this type of mobilizations growingly produced by class struggle, “we revolutionaries must support and push these mobilizations. We must actively intervene to propose the enrichment of their program and the incorporation of the working class organized with its struggle methods”. We are enthusiastic. The workers and the people of France are taking the path of their best traditions: the 1789 French Revolution, the Paris Commune (1871), the defeat and expulsion of the Nazis (1944), the French May (1968)…
We would like to end by thanking the comrades of Tendency Claire from the NPA for the reports and analysis that they have provided, and point out or general agreement with them and their proposal on how to intervene in this process.
Notes:
[1] http://agendapublica.elpais.com/hombres-blancos-con-chalecos-amarillos/
[2] Idem.
[3] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ6Bpfx_I8E y https://litci.org/es/menu/mundo/europa/francia/clima-insurreccional-toda-francia-amplifiquemos-organicemos-la-movilizacion/
Paris on Fire
