The young generation of the working class rejects a future of poverty and war

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The high school and university student movement in France has grown to spectacular proportions, rapidly spreading across the whole country. Since mid-September, hundreds of secondary schools have been blockaded. Students quickly joined the protests, soon followed by hundreds of thousands of demonstrators of all ages, outraged by the repression being meted out to teenagers. This movement forms part of an impressive series of struggles across the world and heralds a profound shift in the social climate, a prelude to future massive struggles.

Anger that knows no frontiers

The anger of high school pupils and students is by no means a ‘French exception’, as the media around the world keep repeating at the top of their voices. On the contrary, it is an expression of the struggle of the international working class and of the growing refusal, among the younger generations, to accept the future of misery and war that capitalism has in store for them:

  • On 1 October, secondary school pupils in Liège took to the streets, inspired by events in France. The protests then spread to Mons, Charleroi and Brussels. On 9 October, a major demonstration against austerity brought together people of all ages in Brussels.
  • In Turin, on 5 October, secondary school pupils occupied two schools “against school-barracks, racism and war”, with the slogan “do as they do in France”. Secondary school pupils in Rome followed suit in “solidarity with French students”.
  • In Madrid, against a backdrop of widespread anger over the housing crisis, teachers and pupils will begin an indefinite strike in the state education system on 14 October. Andalusia is preparing an education strike for 11 November.
  • In Germany, more than 45,000 secondary school pupils went on strike again on 25 September, in around a hundred towns and cities, against the new compulsory military service. A call for an international youth strike against war and militarism is circulating for 20 November.

These struggles are not isolated from the rest of the working class: in Germany, 175,000 automotive workers have demonstrated this year against job cuts; British railway workers are stepping up their strikes; Airbus workers in Spain fought for three months through general assemblies over wages; Chilean copper miners at Centinela walked out on 7 October, in tandem with the student mobilisation; Bolivian miners and teachers brought part of the country to a standstill in the spring; in Argentina, demonstrations against austerity are continuing one after another. And the list goes on.

All these struggles are diverse, and are sometimes even entangled in forms of action and slogans that lead nowhere. But they show that, everywhere, a new generation refuses to foot the bill for the crisis and the sacrifices demanded by the war economy. A generation that is beginning to realise that capitalism no longer has a future to offer them. Their fighting spirit is that of the entire working class.

After decades of passivity, the working class is raising its head on an international scale. Since the ‘Summer of Discontent’ in 2022 in the UK, followed by the massive struggle against pension reforms in France in 2023 and the car industry strikes in the US, mobilisations have multiplied in many countries. And the whole world has its eyes fixed on the high school pupils and students who, today, are showing us the way.

From repression to general assemblies

It all began in mid-September at a secondary school in Créteil, where several teachers, a social worker and a school psychologist were notably absent. Within two weeks, more than a thousand secondary schools had been affected. Pupils are denouncing the shortage of teachers, overcrowded classes and overloaded timetables, dilapidated buildings, and the arbitrary nature of the Parcoursup university admissions system. Behind these still-confused demands, which also express solidarity with teachers pushed to their limits, lies a much deeper anxiety: that of a future marked by precariousness, unemployment and injustice…

The state’s response has been of unprecedented brutality: LBDs, stun grenades, water cannons…[1] The full arsenal of repression has been unleashed upon the young people fighting back. More than 6,500 arrests since the end of September! As of 5 October, there had been 5,060 people taken into police custody, 87 per cent of whom were minors, whom lawyers describe as having been insulted, beaten and terrorised. In Tours, a 16-year-old schoolboy lost an eye. In Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône, a 14-year-old boy had his jaw broken. In Lens, a 15-year-old teenager had his hand torn off by a grenade. In Dunkirk, a police vehicle went on a wild ride through the middle of a gathering of school pupils. The government is threatening parents with making them pay for the damage and is drafting a ‘rioter-pays’ law that would make demonstrators liable for up to 10,000 euros, without having to prove they were responsible. These are not ‘excesses’: this is the policy of a state that seeks to terrorise an entire generation into falling into line.

Faced with the scale of the crackdown, on 6 October, a veritable human tide poured into the streets: 450,000 demonstrators according to the trade unions, including 100,000 in Paris.[2] Sixth-formers, university students, striking teachers, parents, workers from all sectors: people of all generations took to the streets, firstly in solidarity with the mistreated sixth-formers and to voice their outrage. Fearing the situation might spiral out of control, the government made a series of minor tactical concessions: scrapping the planned enrolment fees for BTS certificates and preparatory classes, suspending the use of stun grenades (for high school pupils only), a ‘reassuring’ speech by the Prime Minister and, as its sole response to the demands, the derisory announcement of 3,024 substitute teachers (on precarious contracts!).

The following days revealed both the difficulties and the maturing of the movement. On 7 October, after three weeks of blockades, many secondary school pupils – still very enthusiastic and combative but inevitably inexperienced – were at a loss as to what else to do. With a few exceptions, such as in Nantes or Rennes, students struggled to get together: university authorities closed the campuses, and the police dispersed gatherings and general assemblies, as at the Sorbonne.

But on 8 October, whilst tens of thousands of young people were still demonstrating spontaneously, general assemblies were held in the open air at the Place du Panthéon, then on numerous campuses in Paris, the suburbs and the provinces.

The fighting spirit is immense and the radical nature of the language exceeds that of the movement against the CPE in 2006: there is talk of war, of the rotten society being prepared for us, and of revolution. The trade unions are criticised for negotiating behind the movement’s back. Above all, the general assemblies adopt motions to seek solidarity everywhere: in secondary schools, other universities and among workers. A wave of militancy and reflection is sweeping through the general assemblies. Even Assas, a law faculty with a reputation for conservatism, is blockaded, and a thousand students are singing ‘The Internationale’.

Two major trends are running through these general assemblies. One, the activist wing, wants to step up the blockades, confront the police and “take Matignon”[3]. The other seeks to broaden the struggle.

On 9 October, the motion – adopted the previous day – to extend the struggle to the workers’ movement was circulated from general assembly to general assembly. The Jussieu assembly adopted it as its own, approved a leaflet to that effect and removed all reference to the “taking of Matignon”. It even voted to end the blockade of the university, realising that it was being used as a pretext to close it down: it is better for it to reopen, so that students can move from lecture theatre to lecture theatre to win people over and increase their numbers.

At the time of writing, the movement is at a crossroads: either it becomes bogged down in confrontations and supposedly radical actions, or it unites around common demands and takes charge of its own extension through the general assemblies.

A struggle of the working class

This is not a movement of ‘young people’ in general. The school pupils and students taking part in the struggle are, for the most part, the working class of tomorrow – or indeed of today, since many students already have one foot in the world of work, doing hard, precarious and poorly paid odd jobs. Many in the general assemblies define themselves as workers.

The class nature of this movement is evident first and foremost in the solidarity: between schools in city centres and the suburbs, between major cities and small towns, and in the demonstrations where secondary school pupils, university students, workers and parents worried about their children’s future have gathered in droves. It is written on the cardboard placards: “Those who sow misery reap anger!”, “High school pupils today, precarious workers tomorrow: no thanks!” Overcrowded classrooms, staff shortages, cut-throat competition: these are the same attacks, in different guises, faced by workers in hospitals, at the post office, in shops, in distribution or in factories. It is evident in the rejection of war at a time when military budgets are skyrocketing and social spending is being slashed to pieces: “Billions for schools and healthcare, not for bombs!”, “International youth against war”. Finally, it is evident in the challenge to the system itself: “Let’s change the system, not the climate!”, “Capitalism’s broken, young people’s futures are broken”. This generation feels it has nothing to expect from a capitalist society with no future.

In this mobilisation, references to the Paris Commune and May ’68, internationalist slogans, and the omnipresence of the idea of revolution in general assemblies and demonstrations bear witness to a profound shift in mindset.

Taking the struggle into our own hands and extending it

The bourgeoisie has learnt the lessons of the past. In May ’68, it was taken by surprise, unprepared. In 2006, the government—itself somewhat taken aback—withdrew the CPE as soon as the movement, which had opened its general assemblies to workers, threatened to spread to workplaces. [4] Today, the ruling class is closing universities to prevent students from gathering, allowing blockades to go, provoking and using batons to drive young people onto the terrain where it is at its strongest: confrontation with the police, who have the weapons, the manpower and the courts on their side.

“Young people hate the police”, read many placards: the outrage is legitimate and solidarity in the face of repression is necessary. Mobilising en masse and in solidarity against police violence is essential. But reducing the struggle to a confrontation with the police allows for neither regrouping, nor discussion, nor persuasion. This leaves the field open for the state to repress, divide and isolate.

Blockades are another trap: they empty the places where we could gather (such as lecture theatres), scatter our forces rather than bringing them together, and turn those we should be winning over against the movement. When isolated, a movement is doomed to defeat. A closed university means one less general assembly, one less way to unite, to stand strong against the state, against its police, against its media that toe the line!

Isolation also comes through political traps. Matignon denounces a “manoeuvre organised by LFI and its far-left proxies.” Yet, if Mélenchon calls on the ‘rebellious’ elected representatives to ‘intervene’ against the police, it is to better trap the movement in the dead end of confrontation with the cops. With six months to go before the presidential election, the LFI is positioning itself as the ‘protector’ of young people and sending its elected representatives, wearing their tricolour sashes, to stand in front of the blockaded secondary schools. Louis Boyard, former president of the UNL secondary school students’ union — who had already launched a ‘blockade challenge’ back in 2023 — is calling for the blockades to ‘spread’… the blockades, not the struggle towards the workers! And when LFI calls for “banning weapons of war” from demonstrations, it is calling for more measured repression, not a challenge to the repressive apparatus of the state which it aspires to lead.

The government and the capitalist left agree on the essentials: to confine the struggle to a confrontation between ‘young people’ and the police, to mask its class nature and to prepare to channel it towards the ballot box. In Spain, Pedro Sánchez has, moreover, just called a snap election for 29 November in order to capitalise on the momentum of the housing struggles.

Twenty years ago, faced with the traps set for them, another generation showed the way. In 2006, the struggle against the CPE – that rubbish contract designed to make young people’s lives even more precarious – forced the government to back down. The students had taken their struggle into their own hands: their general assemblies, sovereign and open to all, did not allow the trade unions to decide for them. They had realised that isolation would be their undoing. The general assemblies therefore sent massive delegations into workplaces. They called for demonstrations on Saturdays so that workers could join them: millions took to the streets. And in the face of police provocation, the general assemblies refused to respond with pointless violence, which would have divided the movement and hindered solidarity and critical thinking. It was not a few smashed bus shelters that made the government back down: it was the active extension of the struggle to the entire working class, for whom the debates and decisions in the general assemblies were the beating heart.

The strength of secondary school pupils and students, therefore, lies in reaching out to other sectors of the working class. The general assemblies are right to be wary of the trade unions: it is up to them, and them alone, to keep the struggle in their own hands and maintain control over it. Sovereign and open to all (secondary school pupils, students, staff, workers, the unemployed, pensioners), they are the forum where we discuss and decide together, by a show of hands. They can elect delegates who are accountable to them and can be recalled at any time; vote on calls for solidarity and carry them out through mass delegations to other secondary schools and universities, hospitals and workplaces. With demands that concern all the exploited: a rejection of precarious work, a rejection of stagnant wages, a rejection of job cuts in both the public and private sectors, and a rejection of an austerity budget that hits the entire working class…

Solidarity across generations and across borders is invaluable, but it is not enough: in the struggle (and afterwards) we must also prepare for the future. We must understand why the future is blocked: the crisis, war and the destruction of the planet are not the fault of any particular government, but the product of a capitalist system that is on its last legs. The revolution we speak of in the general assemblies cannot be decreed by ‘taking Matignon’, and the prospect of a revolutionary wave is still a long way off, hampered by immense obstacles. But it can only be the conscious and mass effort of the global working class, which is preparing for it through struggles, their extension, debates and collective reflection. The general assemblies that voted to seek solidarity amongst workers have shown the way. It is up to the proletariat of all generations to take up this cause!

WH and EG, 10 October 2026

 

[2] Given the huge crowds in many towns and cities, these figures are most likely an underestimate.

[3] The Hôtel Matignon is the official residence of the Prime Minister of France

[4] See ‘Theses on the spring 2006 students' movement in France’ in International Review 125

 

Rubric: 

School and student movement in France