FRANCE was gripped by a nationwide strike yesterday with schools closed and trains grinding to a halt as workers walked out in anger at a planned pension reform that would push the retirement age up by 2 years to age 64.
Eight of the biggest unions in France had called for a ‘first day of strikes and protests’ but the nationwide action also won the support of unions long considered to be ‘moderate’ and has the overwhelming support of French workers and middle classes who reject the reform that the French government insists is vital to prevent the state pension system from going bust.
Thousands of people gathered in demonstrations in Paris, Marseille, Toulouse, Nantes, Lyon and throughout the country to defend their hard fought pension rights with the unions insisting that the pension system should be financed by increased taxation of the super-rich and more payroll contributions from the employers.
State pensions are a crucial issue for French workers and this latest proposed attack by the minority government headed by President Emmanuel Macron has sparked the massive outpouring of anger.
Simon Legendre, a member of the CFE-CGE union that represents white collar workers, told the press: ‘Inflation, working conditions, pensions …. people are fed up with all this and that’s why we think many will join us.’
The French working class, along with workers in Britain and throughout the world, is indeed fed up with having its wages and conditions slashed and is taking action.
Before yesterday’s national action, French doctors struck from January 2nd to 8th, with thousands of demonstrators marching to the Health Ministry in support of their demands for better working conditions.
Macron has been desperate to keep social tensions in check through spending tens of billions of euros to ‘soften the blow’ of electricity and gas prices and keep inflation low.
But now the game is up, and the French economy is in no position to keep this going in the vain hope that France can somehow be protected from the ravages of the world crisis of capitalism with its soaring food and energy costs and a debt-fuelled inflationary crisis that is drowning the capitalist system.
Macron’s response to the one-day national strike and protest was to order 10,000 police on to the streets, as the veneer of ‘helping’ the working class is abandoned in favour of returning to the brutal repression that marked Macron’s previous response to the ‘Yellow Vest’ protests over cost of living increases that swept the country before the pandemic.
The ‘social tensions’ Macron was keen to keep in check are now exploding onto the streets with unions promising massive and continuous strike action until he backs down.
But the reality is that Macron, like Sunak or any of the political parties that run capitalism, is in no position to back down.
The days of compromise between the working class and the bosses and bankers have gone and today capitalism can only survive by waging a class war to smash the unions, destroy all the hard-won rights of workers in order to drive them back to the conditions of the 19th century.
World capitalism is on its last legs, kept going only through massive debt and with no way out but to wage war on the working class at home to make it pay.
At the same time, it is driven to waging war against Russia in the Ukraine and preparing for war against China, with the aim of weakening these degenerated and deformed workers states to restore capitalism.
The working class in France, Britain, Europe and the US are not prepared to accept being driven into poverty and destitution to save a bankrupt capitalist system while being told they should be grateful for paying the cost of imperialist wars.
Immediately the working class must demand the trade union leaders end all pretence that compromise is possible and organise the massive strength of the working class in general strikes to bring down their governments and then go on to take power by bringing in workers governments and socialism.
Only the victory of the world socialist revolution can end this war on two fronts by consigning capitalism to the dustbin of history where it belongs.
