ICC online public meeting

The students’ struggle against the CPE in 2006 serves as an example to the working class in every country.

Lacking the means to bring production to a standstill through strike action, the students were shrewd enough to play their cards right from the outset. Taking advantage of weak trade union leadership, they made use of the vast lecture theatres to organise daily General Assemblies open to all. Characterised by genuine political life—in stark contrast to the fake, stifling trade union General Assemblies—these genuine workers’ General Assemblies enabled the students to unite and assert the need for solidarity across sectors and between generations.

Whilst the trade unions were determined to isolate the students, the latter succeeded in organising demonstrations that attracted large numbers of workers, reaching as many as 1.5 million demonstrators across the country on 18 March 2006. Keen to avoid at all costs the movement spreading to the entire working class, the government was forced to back down.

The students’ strength lay in their application of the working-class principle of self-organisation, through vibrant General Assemblies and calls for unity, solidarity and the extension of the struggle. These lessons are worth reflecting on in the run-up to the struggles that lie ahead. In 2006, this victory was short-lived because the working class was still reeling from the bourgeoisie’s ideological campaigns claiming that the class struggle had ended following the collapse of the USSR in 1991; it had, so to speak, lost its class identity. Today, it has not yet recovered and is hampered by the miasma of capitalist decomposition. But the lessons of 2006 will finally bear fruit as rearmament policies and attacks on working conditions are fuelling workers’ discontent everywhere.

This is an online meeting in English, to be held on Sunday 13 September 2026 at 2pm UK time. If you want to take part, write to [email protected]. Meetings in other languages will also be held on the same weekend, some of them face to face. For further details, consult the different language pages on our website. 

For further reading, see International Review 125, 

Theses on the spring 2006 students' movement in France