Around one million people took to the streets of France this Thursday, according to figures from the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), in protest against President Emmanuel Macron and his austerity policies. This was the second major mobilization in recent days, after the relative success of the Bloquons tout! (“Let’s Block Everything!”) movement’s call for strikes and blockades last Wednesday, September 10.
The appeal for last week’s mobilization had spontaneously spread online, before actions were organized through popular assemblies held in many French towns and cities. Bloquons tout! had called for the blocking of France’s transport routes in protest against the austerity budget presented by then prime minister François Bayrou.
The massive police deployment last week (with eighty thousand officers, a record number) dismantled the blockades, but more than two hundred thousand people participated in the mobilization — a considerable success for a movement that had not existed just a few months earlier. Even though the original call was launched by a small nationalist group, they were not involved in the organization of last week’s protests, where the Left had the most prominent role.
The most combative unions (the CGT and Solidaires) had supported the September 10 call. Yet, the Intersyndicale, which brings together all the major workers’ organizations, decided to call its day of mobilizations for this Thursday, September 18. By then, Bayrou and his budget had already been defeated in the National Assembly, he had been forced to resign, and Macron had appointed a new prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu. However, the French responded to the unions’ call, convinced that the new prime minister would change nothing about Macron’s policies. In fact, Lecornu has begun negotiating a new budget based on Bayrou’s, which envisioned €44 billion in cuts to social spending while increasing funds for the military.
The success of the September 18 demonstrations, in which Bloquons tout! activists also participated, shows the depth of discontent with Macron’s policies and of the political crisis that has gripped France since 2022. According to a recent poll, more than seven out of ten citizens reject the austerity budget, and 64 percent demand Macron’s resignation — an unprecedented situation in a strongly presidential republic, where the head of state’s direct electoral legitimacy is usually considered untouchable. The question now is how far this emerging cycle of protests can go — and how it might transform a political situation today blocked by Macron’s determination to cling to power and to his anti-working-class policies.
The union mobilization this Thursday was similar to many other recent big days of protest in France. The participation was considerable but not record-breaking: after all, during the movement against the pension reform of 2023, the CGT estimated that up to 3.5 million people had taken to the streets in a single day, in the largest demonstration in French history.
The strike this Thursday considerably disrupted the Paris metro — with entire lines closed — commuter trains, and some branches of the public sector, such as education, with schools of various levels shut down. However, there was only sporadic participation in the private sector. This is the usual pattern of strikes in France: although legally all workers have the right to strike, few exercise it in private companies due to employer pressure, low union presence, and the weak culture of worker struggle there.
The novelty of the September 18 mobilization, as compared to the movement over retirement benefits two and a half years ago, lies in the current political context. The 2023 strikes took place shortly after Macron’s reelection as president, when he still had the biggest camp in the National Assembly behind him. This made it easier for him to push through his pension cuts despite majority public opposition. Now, Macron is as weak as a president in France can be: he has only a feeble minority government, and his prime ministers are toppled one after another by a parliament in which the far right and the various forces of the Left dominate.
Moreover, a feedback dynamic is emerging between Bloquons tout! and the union movement. The unions — especially the CGT, the second largest by membership and the main reference point in most cycles of mobilization — have learned from their mistakes with the Gilets Jaunes (“yellow vests”, in reference to their high-visibility protester uniform).
That movement, which arose spontaneously in 2018, blocked France’s roads weekend after weekend for months and organized massive demonstrations in front of the president’s Élysée Palace and the National Assembly, directly challenging power instead of respecting the usual routes of union marches. This is a symbolic detail — but one that carries weight in France.
The Gilets Jaunes did manage to force Macron to take some measures to improve the purchasing power of the working and middle classes — a greater success than the few concessions obtained by the union movement against the pension reform of 2023. The unions barely supported the Gilets Jaunes, worried about the presence of far-right elements and the lack of union control over the mobilization. This time, CGT and Solidaires gave legal backing to the sector-specific strikes this September 10 and celebrated the success of the Bloquons tout! movement.
At the union demonstration in Paris this Thursday, the presence of Bloquons tout! activists was felt. Alongside the more radical trade unionists, they demanded that union leaders call for an indefinite strike that would truly pressure economic and political power, instead of the usual succession of isolated strike days and demonstrations — a failed strategy in the 2023 pension reform movement. Yet it is also clear that there is no red button that union leaders can press to decree an indefinite general strike. In fact, it is difficult for them even to convince the majority of workers to go on one-day strikes.
It is possible that the interaction between the radicalism of Bloquons tout! and the unions’ mobilizing capacity, in a climate of regime crisis, may foster more massive and radical forms of protest capable of truly pressuring Macron. Although there were noteworthy demonstrations in small towns on September 18, it is not clear yet whether the new movement will be able to integrate the popular sectors from peri-urban and rural areas, who took to the streets with the yellow vests but are so far underrepresented in the current cycle of mobilizations.
The new prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, is expected to fail in his attempt to negotiate a new budget with the right-wing Républicains and the center-left Parti Socialiste. If Lecornu is also censured by the National Assembly — as were his three Macronite predecessors — the president may be forced to call another round of early parliamentary elections.
Polls show a situation similar to that seen in the last such contest in summer 2024: Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National would win unless the left-wing parties were to unite again, which could allow this camp another victory. The problem is that relations between France Insoumise (the main left-wing force), on the one hand, and the Socialists and the Greens, on the other, are at their lowest ebb. While France Insoumise’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon demands Macron’s resignation as the only way out of the crisis, the Socialists and Greens remain intent on seeking impossible agreements in parliament. These parties are trapped by an institutional logic whose limits have become evident over the past year: the majority of citizens and even of deputies in the National Assembly want one thing, but the Macronite government has the institutional power to do the opposite.
That is why ever more voices are speaking of a “regime crisis”: the highly presidential Fifth Republic founded by Charles de Gaulle is exhausted. Macron has taken to the extreme the political logic of recent French presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande: both imposed unpopular neoliberal reforms (cuts to pensions and public spending, labor liberalization) using public debt as an excuse, accompanied by tax giveaways to the rich and big corporations. Both, like Macron, managed to push through most of their reforms despite majority public opposition, outraged by the explosion of inequality in recent decades. Just during Macron’s governments, the five hundred richest French people have doubled their wealth, which had already grown under Hollande’s presidency. The feeling is growing that the political system is rigged in favor of the elites and impermeable to the popular will, which has translated into increased support for the Rassemblement National, the main beneficiary of protest votes.
Nevertheless, recent protests have managed to center the political debate on tax justice rather than far-right themes. On talk shows, immigration and insecurity are no longer the main topics, replaced by discussion of proposals such as the “Zucman tax,” a 2 percent levy on the wealth of the ultrarich that would affect only 1,800 people across France and raise €5 billion annually. This is a very moderate proposal, but one with the power to highlight the scandalous level that inequality has reached, fueled by the policies of recent presidents. The Rassemblement National — which did not vote in favor of the Zucman tax in parliament when given the chance — is uncomfortable in the current context, where its insistence on blaming migrants for the country’s problems sounds eccentric.
The political and union organizations of the Left, together with the popular assemblies born out of Bloquons tout!, face the challenge of moving the silent majority of French society from resignation to active rebellion. This is the part of France that rejects Macron and his policies but does not trust in the usefulness of protesting — an understandable belief, given the frustrating track record of protest movements of recent decades. A wave of mobilizations strengthened by broader layers of the population and disruptive protest methods (mass and prolonged strikes, transport-route blockades, etc.) would significantly increase the pressure on Macron. His resignation is unlikely, as he seems determined to cling to power until the 2027 presidential elections. The hope is that France’s revolutionary tradition can bring surprises.
The mobilizations will at least place the Left in a more favorable position for the 2027 electoral contest. The victory of a candidate to the left of the Parti Socialiste — be it Mélenchon or someone else — would likely spell the end of the presidentialist Fifth Republic and the calling of a constituent assembly. Such a prospect would suddenly open up all the political possibilities that have been closed off by Macron’s one-man rule.
But to get there, many stages remain. That starts with an intensification of mobilizations — and avoiding a Rassemblement National electoral victory. Such a risk is today hardly to be excluded.
Great Job Pablo Castaño & the Team @ Jacobin Source link for sharing this story.
