France: in the name of political ‘stability’

Thanks to the support of the Socialist Party (PS) and the National Rally (RN), François Bayrou – leader of the liberal Democratic Movement – has succeeded where previous Prime Minister Michel Barnier's government failed: they have approved a budget.

[Originally published in French at marxiste.org]

In its class content, this budget is no different from the one prepared by Barnier. It is a programme of severe austerity, with attacks on the oppressed and exploited – all to the benefit of the big capitalists.

To justify their vote, the leaders of the PS and RN claim to have obtained ‘concessions’, and even won ‘victories’. This is laughable. Compared to the budget that was rejected last December, Bayrou’s budget has simply robbed Peter to pay Paul. Sometimes it is simply fleecing Paul in a different way. For example, the attack on sick leave in the civil service has changed in form, but not in content: sick civil servants will still be paid 10 percent less. Everything else is the same.

The character of this budget is so blatant that the leaders of the PS and RN prefer to insist on a more fundamental justification for their actions: they have chosen political ‘stability’. In so doing, they are in tune with the French ruling class, which also dreams of political stability, provided that it guarantees the defence of its class interests. That is exactly what the current government – the umpteenth government of the rich – is doing, with the support of the PS and the RN.

The role of trade union leaders

Outside the National Assembly, the Bayrou government also enjoys the decisive support of the national leaderships of the trade unions. Instead of organising the fight against this government, the union leaders are working to ensure its survival.

This is very clear in the case of Marylise Léon, General Secretary of the French Democratic Confederation of Labour (CFDT). In an interview with Franceinfo on 4 February, she too welcomed political ‘stability’. While she was forced to admit that “socially, it's an unfair budget”, nonetheless: “it's a good thing that there is political continuity”, “stability”, and “that we can finally get out of this stagnation, because there are huge expectations in the working world”, expectations for which “there are still no answers”, which has generated “a lot of impatience”.

Marylise Léon was forced to admit that “socially, it's an unfair budget”, nonetheless: “it's a good thing that there is political continuity” / Image: Jla95, Wikimedia Commons

Let us summarise the stages of this lamentable rhetoric: 1) the workers are ‘impatient’ to get answers to their ‘expectations’; 2) not only does Bayrou's budget fail to meet these ‘expectations’, it is ‘socially unjust’; 3) the essential thing, however, is ‘stability’, ‘political continuity’, thanks to which the workers can hope that the same bourgeois government will meet their ‘expectations’ in the future, instead of meeting those of the ruling class.

If this eminent trade union bureaucrat makes such absurd and contradictory comments, it is because the crisis of the regime forces her to do so. She is up against the wall, forced to defend the capitalist regime – even if it means talking nonsense.

The position of the leadership of the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) is not as openly in line with the interests of the ruling class. In general, Sophie Binet and her comrades avoid publicly extolling the virtues of political ‘stability’. But by agreeing to take part in the farce of the ‘conclave’ to discuss pension reform, from which nothing positive can come for our class, the CGT leadership is playing a not insignificant role in the (relative) stabilisation of the political situation – to the benefit of the capitalists.

Admittedly, in a press release published on 4 February, the CGT leadership “calls for an increase in the number of struggles to reverse the balance of power and force the government to abandon its harmful plans”. But this is very general and does not commit us to anything concrete.

In the current context, the role of the CGT leadership is not to call vaguely for ‘more struggles’ – before locking itself up for three months in a ‘conclave’ with the cardinals of the bosses’ union, Medef. Its role should be to propose a serious plan of action to build mass mobilisations, on the streets and in the workplaces, with the aim of overthrowing the government of the rich – who have distributed €100 billion in dividends to themselves in 2024 alone – and of replacing it with a workers’ government.

The limits of France Insoumise

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of La France Insoumise (FI), is therefore right to denounce the “active collaboration” of “the entire media-political-union officialdom”, without which “Macron would not last eight days”. But the FI leadership also bears some responsibility for the current situation.

The PS would not be in a position to support the Bayrou government if Olivier Faure (PS) et al. had not been saved from a complete electoral shipwreck by Mélenchon and his comrades. PS rode on the coattails of coalitions with FI in both the May 2022 and July 2024 elections. Without the life raft of the electoral coalition with FI, PS would have seen its parliamentary representation wiped out. As always, left reformism (FI) has proved incapable of breaking with right reformism (PS, the Greens and the Communist Party). The former needs the latter, as an intermediate link, if it is not to break with the capitalist class itself.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his comrades should throw all their strength and authority into preparing a massive mobilisation of workers and youth / Image: ActuaLitté, Flickr

In addition, it is not enough to criticise the support of the ‘trade union officialdom’ for the Bayrou government, in passing, in a blog post. We must draw practical conclusions. Instead of locking themselves up in the Palais Bourbon and confining their ‘struggle’ against the government to the National Assembly, the FI leaders should systematically explain to the workers that they have nothing good to expect from parliament. The workers must prepare for major struggles outside parliament, and trade union activists must put pressure on their leaders to pursue these tactics. 

At the same time, the FI leadership should take action without waiting for permission from Marylise Léon and Sophie Binet. Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his comrades should throw all their strength and authority into preparing a massive mobilisation of workers and youth.

Instead, the leaders of the FI are preparing… for the municipal elections in March 2026! Given the urgency of the situation, and in particular the 300,000 jobs threatened in industry and retail, the electoral and pre-electoral campaign of the FI leaders is largely irrelevant. This was shown by the huge abstention rate in the Villeneuve-Saint-Georges by-election, in which 60 percent of registered voters did not turn out, despite this election’s media prominence.

Despite all its mistakes, the FI retains a mass base of support among the most exploited and oppressed sections of the population. Its meetings – such as the one recently held at the Jean Jaurès university in Toulouse – attract thousands of people. The FI's potential is considerable, but its leaders are squandering it by refusing to break with the right wing of reformism and to engage in a real struggle – outside parliament – against the French capitalist regime. This is one of the central contradictions of the current situation.

At this stage, the Revolutionary Communist Party does not have the forces required to make up for the deleterious moderation of the leaders of the FI and the CGT. But we do have the firm programme and ideas of revolutionary Marxism. This is our decisive advantage and the guarantee of our future success. The experience of the class struggle will eventually convince millions of young people and workers that the only way to put an end to social decline, poverty, unemployment, oppression and all the scourges of capitalism is to overthrow the system, expropriate the big capitalists and reorganise society on socialist lines. This is why we are calling on the ever-growing layer of people who have already understood this to join us.