The question of violence

Submitted by ICConline on

For the past month, the state and its compliant media have been bombarding us with disinformation, lies and omissions, in order to better justify their policy of repression. There is no end to the speeches and images designed to demonstrate the supposed monstrosity of the movement in France, which is portrayed as nothing but chaos and destruction. So: we must strike hard – both literally and figuratively – to ensure that everyone returns to their place in the ranks of the exploited class.

As for the university and secondary school students, through their forceful demands and thoughtful reflections, they are simply calling for decent learning conditions and a dignified future for all… and yet it is this that is labelled as ‘irresponsible behaviour’!

State terror

We are experiencing this violence first-hand. Whether on the ground at the demonstrations, or through eyewitness accounts and videos on social media. That torn-off hand, that attempted drowning, that strangulation, that orchestra gassed, those heads bashed in, those head injuries, those eyes damaged or lost altogether, those fractured fingers, those multiple holes in the body caused by shrapnel from crowd-control grenades, these cases of suffocation, these blackouts, these cries of bewilderment, their filthy, vile insults, their intimidation, their unlawful arrests, their ram-raiding vehicles, their provocations… all of this is, in a way, within each of us. So we scream. We scream in pain, we freeze in terror, we vomit with rage in the face of all these monstrous, unjust and unspeakable acts!

And this is not confined to the streets but continues in police stations and courts, where young people spend hours in police custody or holding cells, sometimes in appalling conditions, as at Bobigny Magistrates’ Court[1]. The vast majority are ordinary kids, whose only ‘crime’ is to come together to demand the right to a future. Summary hearings follow one after another – a mockery of justice – in response to the ‘firmness’ orders of an Interior Minister who knows nothing but repression.

And in our minds, one question: but why? Why does demanding teachers deserve such repression? Why should demanding a future be enough to justify the terrorisation of children and parents?

Why?

– Because capitalism is at an impasse. After decades of crisis, the state has no room for manoeuvre: every euro spent on schools, universities or healthcare is a euro missing from the funds needed to sustain the competitiveness of the national economy and to finance war and its weapons. Overcrowded classrooms, unfilled teaching posts and dilapidated universities are not management errors. They are the result of a system that has nothing left to offer young people but a future of precariousness.

– Because students are constantly striving to take control of their general assemblies and extend the movement to workers. Because the student movement carries within it the seeds of deeper reflection amongst the working class, and the state cannot tolerate this. So, to prevent any spread of this reflection and consciousness, the bourgeoisie is deploying its entire arsenal, centred on a policy of terror – a policy that extends from the streets to the courts and culminates in the media.

Thus, during the first blockades, the first demonstrations and the first university occupations, the state cracked down, used tear gas and applied pressure with its heavily armed robocops to ‘clear’ public spaces. In reality, it is primarily to clear the space of all critical thought and organisation; it is to instil fear in order to discourage people from fighting back; it is to ban access to any gathering place to prevent any collective reflection. No reflection or discussion is possible at school blockades or demonstrations: they cordon off the area, they use tear gas, they beat people with batons. There is no space for general assemblies because the bourgeoisie has learnt its lesson and is not making the same mistake as in 2006, when students held their general assemblies inside the lecture theatres[2]: it closes the universities and disperses the students with charges by the CRS.

And when this whole arsenal proves insufficient, the state has other tricks up its sleeve. Is there no one to smash a shop window or throw the first stone? Then it is the police themselves who will start, to better justify the repression[3]. Behind them, the most disoriented amongst us – those filled with rage and despair, those who want to act ‘right here, right now’ – will follow along fruitlessly, venting all their anger by smashing things or hurling abuse at the police.

And since all this propaganda was not enough to discredit the movement, the state deliberately encouraged the looting on 17 October by leaving shops unprotected, by knowingly under-staffing police presence on the streets, and by allowing looters to act, even though calls to smash things were circulating across all social media platforms.

Nihilistic violence

Let’s be clear: smashing, looting, setting fires and attacking so-called symbolic sites leads nowhere. This violence serves only to lend credibility to the crackdown and to obscure the genuine thinking taking place within the movement. In a contest to see who can strike the hardest, the state will always win. And that is precisely why the media are endlessly replaying these images of destruction! To broadcast images of destruction rather than reflection and demands; to broadcast the image of a mindless youth rather than a youth united in solidarity and thoughtful; to broadcast looting rather than the desire to extend the struggle to the workplace.

“The class violence of the proletariat cannot be terror because its raison d’etre is to do away with terror…The proletariat cannot resort to the organisation of pogroms, lynchings, schools of torture, Moscow Trials, as methods for realising socialism. It leaves these methods to capitalism, because they are part of capitalism, they are suitable to its ends and they have the generic name of TERROR. Neither terrorism before the revolution nor terror after the revolution can be weapons of the proletariat in its struggle for the emancipation of humanity”.[4]

The violence of our class

So, is there nothing to be done? Must we bow our heads whilst waiting for the next blow from a club to our ribs? Let ourselves be beaten without reacting?

Are we doomed to endure the endless trade union protests?

Absolutely not! “The proletariat’s “invincible force resides not so much in its physical and military force, still less in repression, but in its capacity to mobilize the whole mass of the class and to integrate the maj­ority of the non-proletarian labouring classes and strata into the struggle against capitalist barbarism. It resides in the development of its consciousness and its capacity to organize itself in a unified autonomous way, in the firmness of its convictions and the vigour of its decisions”.[5]

This does not mean, however, that we are pacifists: the bourgeoisie will never voluntarily relinquish its power, and the working class will one day have to confront it. But the class violence of the proletariat has nothing in common with smashing a shop window or throwing a stone at a line of riot police. It is, first and foremost, massive and collective: it is not the affair of a minority acting on behalf of others, but the expression of the strength of the whole. It is conscious and decided upon by the bodies through which the struggle organises itself (assemblies, committees). It is neither revenge nor an outlet: it does not seek to humiliate or punish, for it is not directed at individuals but at a system: capitalism. Finally, it always remains subordinate to the aim of the struggle: to expand the movement as widely as possible, enabling it to go as far as possible in its demands, its slogans and its methods of action. Conversely, violence that isolates, that drives away those who are still hesitant to join the movement, and that provides the state with the pretext it has been waiting for, serves the enemy, whatever the intentions of those who resort to it. This is why the proletariat’s primary weapon is not the cobblestone, but its consciousness and its organisation.

Let us make no mistake: terror is the weapon of the bourgeoisie; democracy is but a mask placed over the dictatorship of capital. Our weapon, as the working class, is that of reflection, solidarity and the massive expansion of the movements of struggle. This is what the student general assemblies have been constantly emphasising for the past month. And that is where their true strength lies. That is precisely what frightens the bourgeoisie. These general assemblies, this self-organisation, contain the seeds of tomorrow’s struggles, both in France and internationally. That is why they are being silenced in the media.

Richard, 24 October 2026

 

 

[1] At the Bobigny court detention centre, 84 people, including 20 minors, were crammed in during the night of 21–22 October. There are only ten mattresses available there. The cells are freezing cold and unsanitary: rubbish, bottles of urine… Some are too small for the number of people inside, others too cramped to lie down. Three minors were found literally shivering with cold at 6 am.

[3] There is a growing number of videos showing police officers disguised as ‘young people’ throwing things, smashing property, provoking others and inciting confrontation with the police.

 

[4] Terror, Terrorism and Class Violence, International Review 14

 

Rubric: 

Social movement in France