The Bayrou government has fallen and former Defence Minister Lecornu has been appointed in his place. But the attacks will continue! With the next government, whether right-wing, left-wing or populist, redundancies, austerity measures and exploitation will continue to intensify. In France, as everywhere else in the world, the bourgeoisie can only multiply large-scale attacks to make the working class pay the price for the bankruptcy of its system, squeeze our working and living conditions to defend the interests of national capital in the increasingly brutal chaos of international competition, and finance the gigantic growth of its military arsenal.
Brutal attacks and growing anger in the working class
These attacks, unprecedented in decades, are not specific to France. Far from it! All over the world, the bourgeoisie is imposing budget cuts and job insecurity. Driven by deep anger, a sense of injustice and rejection, workers around the world are rejecting austerity: massive demonstrations and strikes in Belgium since January, a ‘historic’ strike against layoffs at Stellantis in Italy last autumn, an ‘illegal’ strike for wage rises by Air Canada employees' in July, repeated strikes at Boeing since the end of last year, not to mention other movements around the world that confirm that the working class has regained its fighting spirit and is seeking to oppose the attacks of the bourgeoisie.
While Belgium has been one of the European countries most affected by protests against sweeping austerity measures in recent months, it is now France that is seeing a sharp rise in social tension. With or without Bayrou, the planned attacks are particularly violent: health, education, transport, sick leave, unemployment and pension benefits, minimum social benefits... The entire working class is under attack! And the bourgeoisie knows very well that anger is immense and that the working class will not let these serious attacks go unanswered. Discontent has not subsided since the struggle against pension reform two years ago, because the bourgeoisie has failed to instill the idea that we are defeated. The announcement of the Bayrou plan and the brutality of the measures have rekindled this anger. The working class can only fight back.
Faced with this combativeness, the bourgeoisie prepared itself, setting every possible trap and exploiting all the difficulties encountered by the proletariat in developing its struggle and regaining its class identity. In this respect, the struggles underway and to come in France, and the ideological traps set by the bourgeoisie, are rich in lessons for the entire world proletariat.
The trap of ‘popular’ movements
In May, a ‘citizens' collective’ appeared. Originating from far-right or populist groups (around the slogan ‘Nicolas is paying’), it initially rode the wave of populist rejection of trade unions, parties and institutions. This movement of 10 September, which received widespread media coverage, called for the country and its economy to be brought to a standstill, for a boycott of everything and anything: the use of credit cards, bank terminals, shopping in supermarkets, school...
During the summer, the populist component of the collective largely melted away in the face of public outcry and, above all, workers' anger following the announcement of Bayrou's plan of attack. With massive support from left-wing and far-left parties, this movement was relegated to the background, propelling left-wing forces to the forefront, from the Parti Socialiste to La France Insoumise, including the Parti Communiste Français and the Trotskyists of Révolution Permanente (with trade unions more or less distancing themselves), which at the same time led to a significant reorientation of the movement's demands towards a more ‘working-class’ agenda (calls for strikes and demonstrations in particular).
Admittedly, this movement is an expression of anger and militancy. Admittedly, workers are present, undoubtedly in the majority. But what is emerging, at the time of writing, is an inter-classist movement, as we saw in 2018 with the Yellow Vests, a movement in which ‘the people’ rise up against ‘the elites’.
Behind this type of rhetoric lies a real trap. For in this type of movement, the working class, the only force truly capable of shaking the bourgeoisie and opening up the prospect of overthrowing bankrupt capitalism in the future, is reduced to impotence. Why?
By promoting such a movement extensively during the summer, the bourgeoisie sought to dilute the demands of the working class among those of the middle classes. Dissolving the working class into the ‘people’ means removing it from the social scene and hindering the development of its own autonomous struggle. Instead of leading the movement and imposing its own slogans (on wages, working conditions, precariousness, etc.), the 10 September movement is being used to try to drown the working class in demands that are totally foreign to its interests, those of the petty bourgeoisie and small business owners (bakers, artisans, taxi drivers and small farmers) on ‘tax pressure’, ‘excessive charges’, ‘stifling regulations’, etc.
The danger of democratic mystifications
This type of movement also makes the proletariat particularly vulnerable to mystifications about bourgeois ‘democracy’. It is clear that the movement of 10 September did not lose its ‘citizen’ and ‘popular’ component at all during the summer. On the contrary, with the emergence of citizens' assemblies and the persistence of anti-Macron slogans, the left has continued to use this movement to weaken the working class. The left-wing parties are constantly harping on about the prospect of a new Prime Minister and new elections that could bring in a more socially-minded government, enable ‘the rich to pay their fair share’ and ‘redistribute wealth’... as if bankrupt capitalism could reform itself and bring about greater ‘social justice’, as if exploitation in a system that is on its last legs could be more ‘fair’! This was very clear in the citizens' general assemblies, where there was much talk of ‘overthrowing Macron’, ‘direct democracy’, ‘tax fairness’, etc.
And all this, we are told, could be imposed by taking to the streets on 10 September! The bourgeois establishments, left-wing parties and trade unions have been selling us this nonsense for years: Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, PS and LFI in France... behind the rhetoric, it is always austerity that they apply when they are in power!
Leftist groups, particularly Trotskyists, are not to be outdone in spreading the poison of democratism: Révolution Permanente, through the pen of its spokesperson Anasse Kazib, attacked the CGT union federation (which refused to support the 10 September movement): “When the far right, behind slogans such as ‘it’s Nicolas who pays’ and its calls not to strike, openly boycotts 10 September, we must fight hard to convince as many workers as possible by supporting them”. As for Lutte Ouvrière, much more ‘radical’ (and devious!) as usual, it considers the call for 10 September to be “confusing”... without denouncing the democratic campaign and promoting illusions about the ‘fair distribution of wealth’.
Behind the call to ‘block everything’, the trap of isolation
The central slogan of the 10 September movement, “let's block everything”, is also, under the guise of radicalism, a trap set for the working class. The ‘blockade of the economy’ is a weapon constantly used by the trade unions to disarm the proletariat. While workers in struggle need to seek the solidarity of their class brothers, to extend and unify their movements as much as possible, ‘block everything’ means seeking to lock workers into their companies, into their sectors, behind their picket lines. Instead of huge autonomous and sovereign general assemblies, open to all and bringing together proletarians across corporatist divisions, allowing the class to feel its own strength in a vivid way and develop its collective thinking, workers are locked behind the barricades of their companies. This desire to isolate the proletariat has gone as far as calling for ‘generalised self-confinement’, i.e. staying at home, completely atomised!
This is not the first time that the bourgeoisie has put forward such a tactic. In 2010 and 2023, when there were massive movements in France against pension reforms, the trade unions locked refinery workers and railway workers into long blockades, dragging them into exhausting movements, separated from the rest of their class. These movements caused divisions between those who wanted to continue blocking roads and striking, and workers who were forced to return to work and found themselves without petrol or public transport.
The mass strike of 1980 in Poland was very different: workers used the means of production not to lock themselves in besieged citadels, but to spread the struggle. Trains ran to take strikers en masse to rallying points and mass meetings. Within two months, the country was (in reality, not in fantasy) completely paralysed.
The need for a class response
Anger and the will to fight are present among workers, even if very real weaknesses still appear in terms of recognising their class identity, and the bourgeoisie exploits these weaknesses to divert their militancy towards inter-classism. The working class can counter this diversion by drawing on its historical experience, such as that of Poland in 1980, May 1968 in France, or more recently the movement against the CPE in 2006. The strength of a class movement lies in the ability of workers to take charge of their struggle, to extend it as widely as possible to all sectors, and even to all countries! Sovereign and autonomous general assemblies, mass delegations, and the broadest possible discussions are the best weapons of the workers’ movement. Such weapons are very different from citizens' assemblies, which aim to exert ‘popular pressure’ on the government through street protests. The workers' assembly, by contrast, seeks to develop class struggle and solidarity, the only terrain that can force the state to retreat and, tomorrow, overthrow bankrupt capitalism.
In such a dynamic, workers will inevitably clash with the trade unions, those false friends of the working class, the true state watchdogs of the bourgeoisie. Their role is to control the struggles, divide the workers, sector by sector, company by company, and prevent any takeover or extension of the struggle. Moreover, the trade unions are already planning a series of actions aimed at organising division and ideologically controlling workers' anger. After an inter-union meeting to ‘organise the mobilisation’, and the launch of a collective petition to say ‘no to the Bayrou budget’, a mobilisation is announced for 18 September, with the possibility of a day of protest on 3 October... All this, with the endless and demoralising trade union marches, each behind their own banner, without debate, with loudspeakers blaring to prevent any discussion.
The struggle on a class terrain, using the authentic weapons of the proletariat, cannot simply be decreed. Above all, it requires an immense effort of collective reflection. It is not an easy path, but it is the only one that can offer humanity a future. To do this, wherever the most militant workers can, we must come together, discuss, debate, reclaim the experience of our class and prepare for future struggles.
It is not by trusting the professional saboteurs of struggles, the trade unions, nor by trusting some ‘collective’ aiming to bring all classes together in a call for a ‘boycott’, nor by trusting the bourgeois political parties and their parliament, that the working class will be able to defend its revolutionary perspective. The bourgeoisie knows full well that the world proletariat is regaining its combativeness in the face of attacks and is reacting massively, that minorities of combative workers will emerge from the struggles, will want to discuss how to fight, will understand that the left and the trade unions condemn us to powerlessness. This is what it fears most today and what it is trying to ward off, using France as a testing ground.
TG, 9 September 2025