The statement below is a supplement to L’Egalite, the newspaper of Gauche Révolutionnaire (CWI France) being distributed on demonstrations in France today.
Young people and workers: on November 5th and beyond, let’s intensify the struggle
The mass mobilisation that began among school students is taking root. It is stirring and encouraging all sections of young people and workers. Together, more than 2 million demonstrators marched on Saturdays 17, 24 and 31 October: the potential is enormous! The strike on 5 November could open a new phase.
More and more young people and workers understand that only organised mass action can defeat Macron and his capitalist policies. Now is the time to build a mass strike movement!
For over a month, hundreds of thousands of young people have been engaged in struggle with seriousness and determination. The first school student mobilisation, reinforced by a massive staff strike, took place as early as 31 August in Mayotte. After the thousands of deaths and the devastation caused by Cyclone Chido in late 2024, Macron had dared to tell residents that “if it weren’t for France, they would be 10,000 times deeper in the shit”. School students and workers decided to stand up together against the unacceptable. In early September, school students and staff also took part in a massive strike in French Guiana.
Deep anger
The anger that had been simmering for so long has boiled over. The mobilisation spread like wildfire through schools, driven by a powerful demand for justice, including among young people from better-off, even privileged, backgrounds. Study conditions, the state of buildings, unbearable timetables, constant selection through continuous assessment and Parcoursup, the online university application process: everything is being challenged!
Universities quickly joined the movement, in solidarity with schools and against budget cuts. Every public university in France began the 2026 academic year with a budget deficit. The attacks on education and universities by successive governments are directly responsible.
Social and economic conditions, youth unemployment of over 21% and accumulated injustices are fuelling this anger. For two years, political polarisation has been intensifying, particularly among young people, in response to an increasingly unjust society and to war, especially since Netanyahu launched the military offensive and genocide in Gaza.
Racism: the bourgeois parties and the RN unite to divide
A growing section of young people, particularly in working-class neighbourhoods, can no longer tolerate the repression and racism organised by Macron: systematic police interventions, racial profiling, regular killings and propaganda against young people, particularly targeting Black people, Arabs, Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim. Rejection of the RN is widespread on the demonstrations. The racist attack in Trappes on Friday 23 October, where a racist gunman shot-dead a 26-year-old-man and injured several others including a 12-year-old girl, was a horrific illustration of this racism.
The bourgeois parties – the Macronists, the right and the RN – use racism and stir up hatred against Muslims to try and prevent workers and young people from uniting against Macron’s policies. Every day, the RN shows more clearly that it serves the capitalists, just like Macron: it opposes wage increases and legislation for women’s and children’s rights, and endorses attacks on unemployed people and those in insecure work.
Through the struggle, fewer and fewer people are being fooled: they see that the RN is pro-capitalist, anti-poor and anti-worker. Since the movement began, these parties have condemned the struggle, young people and the trade unions, revealing whose side they are on: the capitalists’.
Rejecting a 100% pro-capitalist policy
For ten years, Macron’s policies have had just one aim: to enable big business owners and shareholders to make the greatest possible profits amid the capitalist crisis by intensifying the exploitation of workers. The ultra-rich have also become considerably richer thanks to tax measures that contribute to the organised theft of the wealth produced by workers. The RN agrees 100% with these economic policies.
We work more, with fewer staff and ever greater pressure; unemployment and insecure work are increasing; food, housing and travel keep getting more expensive. Our social security contributions are diverted, while unfair taxes fund multinationals and “aid” to big business more than public services. The movement is profoundly political: it expresses a rejection of the capitalists’ dictatorship over society and the economy, embodied by Macron.
The baton…
Faced with their determined struggle, Macron once again has only repression to offer: hundreds of young people injured or maimed by police weapons — a hand blown off at 14, an eye lost at 16 — more than 10,000 people taken into police custody since late September, curfews and demonstrations banned in city centres. Macron even claims the right to decide who is “legitimate” to demonstrate!
In the bourgeois media, propaganda demonises the mobilisation and reduces it to damage and confrontations. Destruction and looting remain the actions of a very small minority. This violence is counterproductive: it alienates some workers and young people, who fear repression. It is neither a political strategy nor a means of attacking the ruling class. No bourgeois has ever been frightened by a broken window. A strike by employees, on the other hand, really does hit the capitalists and their profits. The government itself bears primary responsibility for the violence and the deterioration of the situation.
… And the crumbs
The government’s announcements show its contempt for school students. It promises 28 pupils per class, when there should be a maximum of 20. On Parcoursup, it announces an “overhaul” by 2028 — without that meaning anything at all. Student unions are demanding 250,000 additional places in higher education; the government announces 15,000, after cutting 12,700 in two years, without specifying whether these will be in the public or private sector. At the same time, it wants to raise university fees again. Every announcement serves the same objective: ensuring young people are paid as little as possible and exploited as early as possible.
School students are right to continue the movement, but the pressure is increasing. How can we build a struggle capable of inflicting a major defeat on Macron? The 2027 budget provides for at least €54 billion in cuts to public services, while giving the military an extra €6.5 billion. The government will force it through, probably by ordinance, without a vote or any opportunity for MPs to amend it.
Young people and workers: let’s unite! Let’s build a mass strike movement!
We must broaden the struggle to all young people and workers to build a mass strike and defeat Macron. What is still missing to shift the balance of forces is the mass, organised entry of workers into the struggle. Experience shows that governments are stopped when workers mobilise, organise and sustain strike action.
There is no shortage of issues to fight over: the high cost of living, working conditions, public services… There are many strikes over pay, working conditions and redundancies, but they often remain isolated for lack of a genuine trade union plan of struggle. The potential exists to change this.
The struggles against racism and for the climate are also gaining greater resonance and potential thanks to this revolt. Fundamentally, it is the same struggle against the capitalist system and the rule of profit. Bold demands can unite people widely and feed discussions in strikers’ general assemblies:
- Real resources for education: a maximum of 20 pupils per class, no selection or university fees.
- An immediate pay rise of at least €300 for everyone; no income below €1,800.
- Reduce prices and rents, then freeze them.
- Abolish VAT, the CSG social contribution and unfair taxes; introduce steeply progressive taxation.
- End budget cuts and recruit massively in public services, according to needs democratically determined by elected committees of workers and service users.
- Stop job cuts and privatisations; no redundancies and no workplace closures.
- Nationalise the largest companies — in energy, distribution, retail and transport — and the banking system, under democratic workers’ control and management, in conjunction with the wider population.
12–13–14 November: for three consecutive days of strike action!
A majority of workers support the school students’ demands, but do not yet see the role they can play or how to act effectively. The strike on 5 November is a joint strike across all sectors: it must be a beginning, a first show of strength.
Three consecutive days of strike action, with mass demonstrations on 12, 13 and 14 November, can open up a genuine mass struggle against Macron and the capitalists. They will allow us to strengthen our position, go from workplace to workplace and multiply general assemblies in workplaces, schools and universities. These assemblies can discuss the next steps in the mobilisation and draw up demands specific to each workplace, alongside common demands for workers and young people.
This collective organisation will strengthen links between the public and private sectors, between workers and young people already mobilised, and with those who are not yet involved. We need joint general assemblies, open to everyone, with delegates elected by assemblies in striking workplaces, schools and universities, and local and national coordinating bodies.
Rebuild fighting trade unions!
Since the mobilisations against the attacks on pensions in 2023, successive attacks and governments have met with resistance that has fallen short of what is needed. The leaders of the trade union confederations have proposed nothing, resulting in three “blank years” without a call for everyone to strike together. Fighting workers and trade unionists have opposed this, proposing to build a united struggle and strengthen the workers’ side.
Yet the current struggle reveals the need to organise. With thousands of workers supporting and joining the movement, and the political discussions it generates, there is an opportunity to rebuild genuine fighting trade unions: instruments of struggle against capitalist exploitation and the dominant ideology, including within the unions themselves.
Out with this capitalist regime!
Macron is a political adventurer serving big capitalists exclusively. He has only contempt and authoritarianism to offer. He would rather put half the school students and trade unionists in police custody and govern by ordinance than concede anything more than crumbs or leave office early. That is why he is brandishing the threat of a state of emergency. But, as Mike Tyson says: “Everybody has a plan… until they get punched in the face”!
Millions of us are in struggle because we can no longer stand Macron’s policies, but also because the movement expresses, among young people and the workers who support it, a demand for policies that serve our interests and needs. This demand comes up against the capitalist system, which is based on exploiting the vast majority for the benefit of a minority and is incapable of meeting the population’s needs.
Young people and workers: let’s inflict a political defeat and knock this regime out!
A massive and determined strike movement can force a government to retreat, even one as hardline as Macron and his capitalist clique. Young people and workers must be politically stronger and as organised as those in power. We need a perspective: what should replace Macron, and what kind of power, serving whom? The political organisation of workers and young people is central.
Within the movement, among young people and in working-class neighbourhoods, support for Mélenchon and La France Insoumise is considerable. LFI is seen as the leading force supporting and building the movement, resisting Macron’s policies for ten years and denouncing the devastation caused by capitalism. The Insoumise wave in last March’s municipal elections and the international situation are fuelling the idea of a change in power, six months before the presidential election.
In this situation, a mass strike can bring forward a political voice independent of the bourgeois parties: the right, the RN and the Macronists, but also the Socialist Party of Hollande and Glucksmann, which likewise serves bourgeois interests. A majority of those in struggle know it is necessary to call for a vote and campaign for LFI against the capitalists and their parties. But they also know this will not be enough: that is why they have entered the struggle.
We need a strong political organisation to organise ourselves
The call to organise within the movement and in the weeks ahead is crucial. It must be advanced more firmly and collectively. A genuine party should mobilise in the streets and outside workplaces, help workers and young people join the struggle, and prepare them for political battle around a fighting programme that breaks with capitalism.
We need a real party to fight Macron, the capitalists and the RN. La France Insoumise and Jean-Luc Mélenchon should take the initiative and launch such a party, bringing together workers and young people who want to end capitalism, Insoumise supporters, communist activists, fighting trade unionists and young people in struggle. United around a programme for a break with capitalism and for a socialist society, we would be much stronger in resisting the capitalists’ attacks and fighting back.
The perspective of a government serving workers
We need a government as determined to defend the interests of workers, young people and the majority of the population as Macron and Le Pen are to defend the dictatorship of the capitalists and the ultra-rich. Such a workers’ government should emerge from the forces fighting Macron, the RN and the capitalists today: first and foremost, elected representatives of young people’s struggles and fighting trade unionists, but also representatives of our organisations such as La France Insoumise, and communist activists.
To end capitalism, let’s fight for socialism!
We have had enough of the dictatorship of exploitation, inequality, racism, the oppression of women, war and environmental destruction. Capitalism drives all of this, and only a genuine mass socialist revolution, led by workers, can overthrow it, in France and throughout the world. Gauche Révolutionnaire, together with our international organisation, the Committee for a Workers’ International, is building the current movement while fighting for militant trade unions and to build a mass party of workers and young people. At the same time, we defend our programme for such a revolution: one that establishes a society in which all the means of production are nationalised, under democratic public ownership, and which operates to meet needs rather than to make profits. That society is socialism. Join us in this struggle!