With French president Emmanuel Macron at a record low level of popularity, he faces the prospect of losing his third prime minister within a year – as prime minister Francois Bayrou has called a confidence vote on the government’s budget plans on 8 September in the National Assembly.
Intent on serving the interests of the capitalist class, Macron – having only a minority of MPs in the National Assembly – wants to push through an austerity budget to further attack workers and make ordinary people pay the price of the deep crisis in which French capitalism finds itself, using the pretext of France’s public debt, the third-highest in the eurozone after Greece and Italy. Meanwhile, profits of the big corporations have been at a record high and the super-rich have been accumulating ever greater wealth.
Macron, widely viewed as the ‘president of the rich’, now faces having to try to find yet another prime minister and government line-up, or the more unlikely prospect of calling a general election.
With a groundswell currently developing towards a mass mobilisation of strikes and demonstrations on 10 September, Gauche Révolutionnaire, the CWI in France, published an initial statement, translated from French below.
Bayrou has already lost, let’s bring down the politics of Macron and the capitalists!
The Macron-Bayrou government planned to take advantage of the summer to push through more than 40 billion euros in cuts to public services and the elimination of two public holidays… but it backfired! On the contrary, it reawakened immense anger against their policies that serve the capitalists.
The call for mobilisation on 10 September quickly turned into a call for strikes in several sectors. These strike calls put forward specific demands: against understaffing and low wages, as in hospitals or the energy sector; against layoffs, for example in the metal industry; but also against ‘reforms’ such as in public broadcasting, or for recipients of unemployment benefit. All these demands are going together with a rejection of Bayrou’s budget.
The government is on edge. In 2024, a day of strike action that was being built to take place on 5 December, laid the conditions for the 4 December motion of censure in the National Assembly that brought down Michel Barnier as prime minister. Today, the government is even weaker. Faced with the growing threat of a national strike, it is Bayrou himself who is organising his possible fall by calling a vote of confidence on Monday 8 September in the National Assembly, two days before the mobilisation. Clearly, for the government, this is an attempt to cut across the movement.
Build a strike movement to remove Macron and his politics!
The day of strikes on 10 September concerns all workers and must take forward all our demands. It is in the interests of all of us to make it as massive as possible, for as many as possible to strike, to walk out together, and to gather outside our workplaces, demonstrating along with young people. Trade unions in companies, public services, etc., as well as national union confederations, should mobilise for this; it is the most effective way to defend the interests of workers and the population against the policies of Macron and Bayrou.
The impending strike frightens Macron and the capitalists. Bayrou’s fall is not certain, and it is by building the strike and ensuring its success on Wednesday 10 September that we will increase the pressure and begin the fightback.
Three consecutive strike days should be organised very soon after 10 September. In that way, by building on the momentum of an initial mobilisation, the largest possible number of workers could join the struggle, and discuss their demands and how to build the strike action and defeat Macron. As the threat of a single day of mobilisation and national strike action is starting to lead to the fall of the government, it shows how a massive and determined strike lasting for several consecutive days can succeed.
Given the weakness of the government and the widespread hatred of Macron, the potential exists to bring down Macron and stop all the pro-capitalist policies. The National Rally party (RN) led by Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, the right, the Macronists, and Francois Hollande’s Socialist Party (PS), all advocate policies that move in the same direction: they support budget cuts, the destruction of public services, wage-cutting policies, and so on.
It is workers who have the key to the situation, by entering into struggle en masse, by organising to remove Macron, and by debating the need for a government that truly serves workers and the majority of the population, stemming from our struggles and our organisations, instead of a government that serves authoritarian and racist capitalists.
Come to discuss and mobilise with Gauche Révolutionnaire up until 10 September and beyond! Against Macron, against capitalism, and for socialism, join us!