URC (Union for Communist Reconstruction)

Major economic groups in France, such as Auchan, Michelin, SociétéGénérale, Valéo, Forvia, etc.: the cascade of social plans that use state money to pay companies and lay off workers has been relentlessly hitting workers and intensifying since the last quarter of 2024. This wave comes after a year marked by a massive struggle against

pension reform in 2023, forcing the government to make use of Article 49.3 of the French Constitution, which allows the Prime Minister to pass a bill without a vote in the National Assembly. This article has been used more than 20 times by Macron’s government to push through its reactionary reforms.

The radicalization of attacks on our social gains has therefore been met with a radicalization of the working class, and more broadly of the people, which in turn has led to a radicalization of the ruling class’s attacks on workers. The concrete reality has blown apart decades of ideological propaganda aimed at disarming the labor movement and, more broadly, the social and democratic movement.

In recent years, three massive popular social movements have made it possible to analyze the organization of the dominated class as well as the fascistic methods employed by the ruling class. These are the Yellow Vests movement, the massive demonstrations against the murder of young Nahel Merzouk, and the movement against pension reform.

The first movement, the Yellow Vests, mobilized the precarious section of the workforce employed in companies on the one hand and in intermittent work on the other. It also mobilized social strata in rapid decline. With little union organization and wage levels that make it difficult to sustain a strike, these sections of the working class and, more broadly, the popular classes are revolting by occupying public spaces, blocking roads, and organizing themselves.

The revolts in working-class neighborhoods following the murder of young Nahel Merzouk are affecting the entire country. Despite the mainstream media’s desire to depoliticize these revolts, they highlight young people’s concerns about a bleak future, growing precariousness,

widespread impoverishment, and deadly police practices. More and more people are seeing the state for what it really is: a tool serving the ruling class and its profits.

In France, the pay-as-you-go pension system is based on solidarity: every euro contributed is immediately used to pay the pensions of current retirees. The reform imposed by the government via Article 49.3, which raises the legal retirement age from 62 to 64, has met with strong opposition. More than a million people have demonstrated across France against this measure. In response, the unions called for renewable strikes in many sectors.

The ruling class and its servants in government did not underestimate the significance of these three intense movements of class struggle. They responded with massive repression. They also perfectly analyzed the weaknesses of the workers’ camp, which remains fragmented, with each segment of our class camp entering the struggle separately.

The process of fascistization (with the normalization of state violence against social movements, increasingly frequent attacks on democratic rights, racist campaigns of division instigated at the highest levels of the state and relayed daily by the media, and right-wing and left-wing politicians trivializing the ideas of the far right, etc.) has accelerated considerably, indicating that part of the ruling class is now seriously considering resorting to fascist power in the short term.

As Bertolt Brecht said: “Bourgeois democracy in crisis feeds fascism.”

Finally, all the class confrontations of the last five years are unfolding against the backdrop of a crisis of hegemony of the Western imperialist camp, which is facing the rise of multifaceted resistance from peoples, states, and countries (the development of China and emerging countries, the deployment of the alternative dynamic of the BRICS, patriotic coups in West Africa, resistance to destabilization in South America, etc.). This has led to an increase in localized wars caused by imperialist aggression and an acceleration in preparations for a generalized war. The dominant imperialist capitalist class, always seeking to maximize its profits, is pulling out all the stops to spread the poison of “sacred union”by creating an internal and external enemy (Muslims) in its preparation for a third world war.

The process of fascistization and its acceleration also respond to this international dimension.

The national and international are thus two facets of the same reality.

Macron and the process of fascisation

A few months after his election, Macron resumed his attacks on workers’ social gains at the start of the 2017 school year. He did so through a series of five decrees abolishing the CHSCT (health, safety and working conditions committees). The CHSCTs, which represent workers and are responsible

for prevention and responding to issues related to health, safety, and working conditions in private and public sector companies, were an essential tool for prevention in the workplace. Their abolition is clearly part of a policy of rolling back workers’ rights: even as working conditions deteriorate in all sectors,

workplace accidents skyrocket, France is the European country with the highest number of workplace accidents, this is a deliberate attempt to eliminate or weaken those involved in prevention, removing employee representation bodies, reducing the means of action available to trade unions, particularly delegation hours, individualizing negotiations within companies, facilitating dismissals, etc. It should be noted that the main members of the CHSCTs were employee representatives trained in occupational health and safety prevention. Created at the end of the Second World War as one of the major social achievements of the post-war period, the CHSCTs represented the real arena for class struggle within companies. It was precisely this dimension of worker counter-power that led the so-called “socialist”governments to abolish them. The abolition of CHSCTs This time, it is not only the living conditions of employees that are under attack, but also their means of defense. This is nothing less than the greatest challenge to labor law since 1945.

While the national protests against the decrees are once again bringing people together, they are far from matching the momentum of the previous movement. Massive job insecurity, the “minimal”opposition of the FO (Syndicat Force Ouvrière) union, the objective support of the CFDT (French Democratic Confederation of Labor) to Macron, the limitations of repeated national strike days, etc., all these factors are paralyzing the struggles, even though social anger has never been so strong and the demand for radical action is growing. This is evidenced by the long strike by the SNCF (SociétéNationale des Chemins de fer Français) in the spring of 2018 against the introduction of rail competition and the end of hiring under the railway worker status. Rail competition is a direct result of the European Union bourgeoisie’s commitment to abolishing the public sector monopoly on national territory: competition is open in the postal and telecommunications sectors, gas and electricity distribution, and rail transport.

It is precisely the scale of this challenge that explains the government’s intransigence despite the extent of the financial losses. The movement ended without succeeding in stopping competition, but it served as a learning experience for many workers. In December 2019-January 2020, rail workers went on another long strike, this time against pension reform.

This strike was the largest in the history of the SNCF. During the same period, the RATP (Régie autonome des transports parisiens) experienced an indefinite strike that lasted 45 days.

The scale of social anger revealed by these long sectoral strikes was confirmed by the outbreak and subsequent national spread of the Yellow Vests movement from October 2018 until the lockdown in March 2020.

The movement was unprecedented, with the only precedent being the much more localized and short-lived “Red Caps”movement between October 2013 and June 2014, which shook Brittany. While the trigger was the introduction of a “heavy goods vehicle tax”in the form of “eco-tax gates,”the real cause was the increasing number of bankruptcies among small businesses and small farmers. This movement revealed the process of impoverishment that now affects not only the working classes but also the middle classes.

The Yellow Vests movement is marked by the diversity of its participants, for whom this struggle is, for the vast majority, their first experience of activism. Many communist and Marxist-Leninist activists, as well as CGT activists, have participated in this movement without identifying themselves as members of any particular organization, in order to build a class-based discourse rooted in the material reality of workers, in the face of fascist elements attempting to infiltrate the movement. It is precisely this spontaneity that explains why the only common points among the participants are, on the one hand, opposition to Macron and, on the other, the demand for greater social justice, i.e., a different distribution of wealth.

Despite the ideological vagueness, these two common points express an awareness of the damage caused by neoliberal policies over the past four decades. The Yellow Vests are the spontaneous reaction of those who have found themselves marginalized from the world of work and who are experiencing social decline due to widespread impoverishment and precariousness. We are therefore witnessing a movement of proletarians: temporary workers,

unemployed people, retirees, self-employed workers, artisans, etc. This is why it was wrong to present this movement as a Poujadist movement manipulated by the far right. Of course, the far right was present—especially at the beginning, in an attempt to exploit the protests—but the social nature of the movement was popular.

Despite the diversity of the participants, they shared a precarious existence, suffering from economic fragility, of which single-parent families are a striking example. The sociology of the participants and supporters of the Yellow Vests reveals that the working classes were not mistaken about the social and political significance of the movement, unlike certain union and political leaders who did not hesitate to label it Poujadist.

In December 2018, a CEVIPOF survey concluded that the working classes overwhelmingly supported the movement: 74% of workers, 81% of private service personnel, and 71% of unemployed people who had never worked. At the other end of the spectrum, only 33% of managers and engineers supported the movement. Although weaker than that of the working classes, support among the middle classes is also high: 62% of civil service managers and 65% of private sector technicians ¹.

The increase in fuel taxes was therefore only the straw that broke the camel’s back in terms of raising awareness among those sacrificed by imperialist globalization.

 For them, the violence of impoverishment is compounded by a feeling of class contempt on the part of the right-wing and “left-wing”politicians who have ruled the country for four decades. Macron quickly realized the danger posed by the momentum of such a movement. This is evidenced by the police violence deployed, which, while not new, was unprecedented in its scale and systematic nature.

 “Kettling”techniques were frequently used, as were explosive grenades, crowd control grenades, and LBD ball launchers. In other words, the so-called “forces of order”did not hesitate to use military equipment.

The human toll bears witness to this state violence, which until then had been reserved solely for riots in working-class neighborhoods, such as in November 2005. As early as December 2018, Amnesty International warned of the number of injured and seriously injured: 1,407 protesters, including 46 seriously injured, according to official figures².

A year later, in November 2019, the NGO estimated the number of injured at 2,500 and referred to “massive and indiscriminate repression.”³For its part, AFP reported 23 people blinded during the movement, with no convictions of the perpetrators five years later.⁴

Mass repression also took the form of arrests and legal proceedings: 11,203 people were taken into custody between November 2018 and July 2019, of whom only 5,962 were released without charge; 20,280 people were found guilty of “contempt of public authority”in 2019 alone.

The same techniques of repression and violence were repeated during the great pension battle of 2023 and during the repression of the revolt in working-class neighborhoods following the assassination of Nahel in Nanterre in the summer of 2023. At its peak, the former brought together nearly 3 million people in demonstrations. The second was the most widespread in the history of revolts of this type.

All large and medium-sized cities were affected, as well as many small towns. The number of participants is estimated at 500,000 according to official figures. The repression resulted in 3,651 arrests and 380 often severe prison sentences. In less than a decade, all segments of the working class took action with increasing radicalism—but separately and at different times. This separation allowed the ruling class to curb each of these movements, but also made it quickly aware of the dangers of a potential general uprising.

It was this realization that led to the shift of part of this class towards fascism (symbolized by the billionaire Bolloré) and the government’s adoption of the racist themes of the far right to prevent the working class from realizing that they had common interests.

This process of fascistization is therefore not a reversal of the Macron government, but its evolution in a situation of crisis of legitimacy and representativeness. Once again, Brecht’s lesson is proven true: “Fascism is not the opposite of democracy, but its evolution in times of crisis.”“

1 Luc Rouban, ”Barometer of Political Trust,” CEVIPOF, La Note No. 2, January 2019, pp. 1-2

2 Amnesty International, France: Excessive use of force during the Yellow Vests protests, December 1, 2018, available on the Amnesty website

3 Amnesty International, Yellow Vests in France: a worrying assessment, November 19, 2019, available on the Amnesty website

4 AFP dispatch of November 8, 2023

The need to unite the working classes

The rise of social anger in all segments of the working classes and a radicalization of the struggles we are witnessing. We are seeing periods of ebb and flow of varying lengths, but these do not call into question the intensification of the class struggle. The latter is taking place against the backdrop of the crisis of French imperialism in Africa, which has been further exacerbated by the demand by several Sahel countries for French troops to leave. Between its threatened neo-colonial superprofits and an increasingly radical social movement, financial capital as a whole feels the urgent need to divide the working classes by any means necessary in order to prevent convergence. For part of this capital, the shift towards a fascist path has already been made. This gives rise to the vital need to unify the working classes, unity never being a starting point but the result of common struggles. It also gives rise to the need for a structured, offensive trade union offensive, drawing on the lessons of the great struggles of recent years.

The trade union movement can play the role of unifier of the working classes, if it sets this as its objective. Finally, it highlights the need for a broad anti-fascist front capable of responding to a fascistization that can only accelerate. For all these tasks, we need more than ever an organized communist movement capable of promoting the need for class unity everywhere in order to resist and to bring about the conditions for a social revolution in the long term.

The dialectic between economic and political class struggle

Contradictions within social democracy

“Goodbye 1945, let’s reconnect our country to the world! The French social model is the pure product of the National Council of the Resistance. A compromise between Gaullists and Communists. It is high time to reform it, and the government is working on it. […] Civil service status, special pension schemes, social security reform, joint management… everything that was put in place between 1944 and 1952, without exception… Today, it is a question of leaving 1945 behind and methodically undoing the program of the National Council of the Resistance! “

With these words, spoken in 2007, Denis Kessler of the MEDEF (French Business Confederation) clearly indicated what monopoly capital is making successive governments do, especially since the conversion of social democracy to liberalism, initiated by the Socialist government, flanked by the leadership of the PCF (French Communist Party), under the leadership of François Mitterrand. The right-wing social democracy of the labor movement has mutated into the left wing of capital. For clarification, MEDEF: The Movement of French Enterprises is a French employers’ organization founded in 1998. MEDEF is responsible for the dismantling of the Labor Code, the relentless rise in the retirement age, industrial relocations, the de facto freezing of wages, and the massive decline in “producing in France.”

While resistance from workers and the people delayed the systematic destruction of the CNR, this turning point accelerated monetary integration in the EU—first through the Maastricht referendum and then through the Constitutional Treaty (TCE). The victory of the popular class NO vote led to a qualitative leap in the process of differentiation between the union rank and file and the leadership, and within the PS (Socialist Party), thereby undermining the PCF’s follow-the-leader policy.

It is essential to remember that it was within the National Council of the Resistance (CNR) that all the forces of the Resistance fighting Nazism and collaboration united during the Second World War. This united front was not content with armed struggle alone: it also had an ambitious social project, formalized in its 1944 program, which included strategic nationalizations, the creation of universal social security, and the establishment of a solidarity-based, interprofessional, and intergenerational pension system, all of which were the founding pillars of what would later be called the “social gains”of the postwar period.

 It should also be noted that the European Constitutional Treaty (ECT), although clearly rejected by the French people in the 2005 referendum, was ultimately imposed on us by force, notably through the Treaty of Lisbon, which incorporates the content of the Constitution.

 Democracy for the ruling class ends where its interests begin. This democratic betrayal paved the way for a series of European measures that accelerated the deindustrialization of the country, trivialized precarious work, and gradually dismantled social rights. Since then, large sections of the population, faced with deteriorating living conditions and contempt from the elites, have gradually become radicalized.

From that point on, fascism, organized within the National Front (now the National Rally: RN), gradually capitalized on the discontent and despair of large sections of the working class. This strategy has been greatly facilitated by the major private media outlets, owned by fascist and ultra-Catholic oligarchs such as Bolloré, who have set up a vast propaganda machine designed to divide the working class, stigmatize migrants, and isolate the militant forces of the left. In 2021, a poll by the Journal du Dimanche indicated that the RN’s influence within the police force had already reached 30%. Today, in 2025, several studies estimate this rate to be between 55% and 60%.

The cycle of social struggles in all their diversity has accelerated this process of rupture, particularly with the anti-liberal collectives, then the Front de Gauche (FG) and La France Insoumise (LFI). These various anti-liberal, anti-fascist, and anti-war fronts are the expression of popular resistance ranging from trade union bases, social revolts such as the Yellow Vests and Red Caps, working-class neighborhoods, anti-war, anti-racist, and anti-fascist movements, etc.

These conjunctural fronts reflect the impact of the increasingly radical social struggles of the social classes that are victims of the socially devastating offensives of capital. Objectively, LFI appears to be the most radical expression of scattered inter-classist popular resistance. Hence the need to forge the anti-capitalist wing of the anti-liberal, anti-fascist, and anti-war fronts on the ground of struggle.

The need for communist reconstruction The PCF’s tailism/submission to the PS has accelerated the social democratization of its leadership, which at each stage of its evolution has led to departures from the PCF. After the resistance of the 9 under the leadership of Jeannette Veermeersch in the early 1980s, the defeat of the socialist camp in Europe in 1989/91 precipitated the reformist “mutation”of the PCF, which gave rise in the mid-1990s to the Communist Coordination, then in 2000 to the Rouges Vifs network, the PRCF, RC, ANC, etc.

Renewing the revolutionary tradition of the French section of the Communist International as an independent political expression of the working class is the stated objective of these communist resistance movements, both internal and external to the PCF.

The crisis of bourgeois democracy and its current fascistization is both a consequence of the systemic crisis of the imperialist capitalist mode of production and the decline of the imperialist hegemony that has dominated humanity since the 15th century. It is also a crisis of the alliance of European bourgeoisies subject to the Atlantic alliance dominated by US imperialism. This decline of imperialism in general is bringing about social regression, fascistization, and wars, the barbarity of which is illustrated by the genocide in Palestine committed by the Zionist Israeli state with the complicity, including repressive fascist complicity, of our governments.

Accelerating the process of communist reconstruction on the basis of unity of action in the field of struggle has become imperative if our national proletariat is to establish itself as the only real political force capable of restoring our sovereignty against the choice of vassalage to the EU and/or NATO by our imperialist bourgeoisie.