Reflections on the ICC public meeting of 18th October 2026

We publish here the reflections by an ICC sympathiser on the online public meeting we held in English on18 October. We agree with its approach and think it is a very useful contribution to future discussions about the significance of the current movements of proletarian youth. 

 

The previous meeting had been held to mark the 20th anniversary of the movement in France against the CPE and to draw out the lessons for the future. It provided the foundation for the meeting of 18th October.

The presentation and interventions of the ICC were measured: recognising what had been achieved and its potential to develop, placing it within the evolution of the class struggle in recent years but recognising its weaknesses and the potential for it to subside. The leaflet published by the ICC is blunt in its assessment of the difficulties facing the movement, particularly the retreat into particular demands relating to individual settings on the one hand and into violence and spectacular actions that isolate and divide the movement on the other. The most serious weakness has been its failure to draw in workers in large numbers.

There was agreement about the class basis of the movement, recognising not only that the school students who initiated the action are not only, largely, the children of the proletariat and future proletarians themselves, but also that the demands they are raising over the lack of teachers and the sub-standard facilities are rooted in the material situation of the working class. This could have trapped the movement in immediate, reformist demands and made it vulnerable to absorption into bourgeois politics  but it looked beyond this to the bleak prospects of this generation and recognised the systemic issues underlying it. It showed the same approach in practice by opening out to other school and college students, to their families and to the working class as a whole.

The recognition of the class nature of the movement in France is not shared across the milieu. One comrade intervened to criticise a recent article by the ICT  that accused an unnamed group of the communist left of presenting “the youth” as a “new revolutionary subject”. The comrade suggested this was aimed at the ICC. Whether or not this is the case, the argument shows a misunderstanding of the class basis of the movement. The article is right that the category youth includes individuals from different classes, but the truth is that, not only in schools are the majority of pupils likely to be from the working class, especially in those parts of Paris where the movement initiated, but today the same also holds true for universities and colleges thanks to the massive expansion of tertiary education. Higher education is no longer the preserve of the upper classes and teachers are now firmly part of the working class. The ICT (or rather its affiliate Groupe révolutionnaire internationaliste that wrote the piece) risks making the same mistake, with less justification, as those who in 1968 initially saw nothing but students in a petty bourgeois movement. It fails to consider the context of the deepening crisis and worsening conditions of the working class as a whole, including its children. Nor does it take account of the evolution of the class struggle over recent years, especially the subterranean work of the old mole that interlinks and strengthens the open expressions.

There was a recognition that the events in France are part of wider developments, in Spain, Italy, Germany, Albania, India and America. They underline the growing unwillingness of the working class to accept its situation, even its inability to do so if it is to maintain its living conditions today and any hope for tomorrow. This development is uneven with the risk of being diverted into interclassist struggles, such as linking up with the revived Yellow Vests movement in France. This was underlined by a comrade from Austria who reported that the movement has not developed there while another reported that in Portugal the attempt to create a movement by professional militants not only failed for lack of a real base in the working class but ended up avoiding discussion and fell into legalism. A comrade in America reported that the events in France were unknown there. 

Such heterogeneous development is to be expected as the working class struggles with the weight of the entire period since 1989. Today’s struggles only gain their full significance when seen in this context.

The mass assemblies are the most important aspect of this movement, as they were in 2006. They link to the long history of class struggle, stretching back not only to the obvious, such as the Soviets of 1905 and 1917, but also to the great open-air meetings of the Chartists and forward to Poland in the 1980s. There are many differences of course, but what links them is their role in both cohering and opening the movement; in providing the means to both organise and to politicise. They are not a panacea. As a comrade who spoke at the previous meeting of their experience in 2006 said, they are hard work, exhausting even for those who take part. 

This leads to the question of the role of revolutionary organisations in these events. The ICC reported how its interventions were well received, with 10,000 leaflets being distributed, the press being sold and resolutions proposed by comrades being accepted by the assemblies. I expect there will be further articles published but it would be especially interesting and informative to hear in more detail about how the ICC worked in the assemblies, how the assemblies were organised, the ethos animating different ones, the way the comrades intervened, how they dealt with the reception they received whether positive, negative or uncertain. One comrade from America talked about having leaflets to distribute about the movement in France, but learning from the lessons of the interventions to the assemblies strikes me as even more important because such understanding will contribute to the ability and confidence of comrades to intervene themselves in the future.

Comrade Maher contributed to this part of the discussion when he referred to the need for progressive movements to offer leadership to the spontaneous movement. I find this formulation problematic since firstly, it implies a separation between the working class and the revolutionary minorities it creates and, secondly the term ‘progressive movements’ implies there are non-revolutionary, and non-proletarian forces capable of contributing to the class struggle. On the first point, the ICC has long argued, correctly in my view, that revolutionary organisations are the product of the working class and their role is help develop the consciousness and organisation of the working class and not to act as a general staff or any kind of omniscient leader. On the second point, in this period there is nothing progressive in any faction of the bourgeoisie. Perhaps I have misunderstood the comrade’s meaning, so it would be worth clarifying this with him.

The question of violence has come to dominate reporting and discussion of the movement, especially since the weekend of 17th and 18th October, so it was important this was addressed. The bourgeoisie is trying to drown the movement in violence above all to blot out any possible influence it might have on the understanding and confidence of the working class. So, it was essential that the meeting was clear that the bourgeoisie initiated the violence by beating, arresting, blinding, and maiming children.

This strategy had several arms:

- to directly hurt and intimidate the students taking action so that they never forget and never rise up again;

- to enable the further mobilisation of the police and repressive state forces and justify their extension both to send a message today and prepare for tomorrow;

- to mobilise the most despairing and disaffected part of the population to create a spectacle for the cameras and media; 

- to divide the working class between supporters and opponents of the violence. In this the left had a particular role of saying the concerns are legitimate but the violence not, while the right used the opportunity to reinforce its message of law and order;

The investigations into police excesses are merely a fig leaf, a means to distract, an opportunity to take sides and prolong the spectacle.

As the ICC argued several times, the movement is at a crossroads. The two-week school holidays and the exhaustion of many students may take the steam out of it. The unions and the parties of the bourgeois left may succeed in absorbing it in amorphous, tame demonstrations while the far left encourages meaningless stunts and at its extremes continued violence.

The crossroads the movement has reached is not only about whether it can retain its coherence by continuing to spread beyond students and local issues to the whole working class, but also whether it can politicise by recognising its common immediate and historical interests. References to the Commune and to 1968 are positive signs but not enough.

A strength of this meeting, in continuity with previous ones, was its international nature with comrades from various parts of the world sharing information and perspectives.

 

PW 25/10/26