FRENCH bourgeois rule was plunged into a massive crisis on Wednesday when MPs voted to kick out prime minister Michel Barnier’s administration after just three months in office, making it the shortest government of France’s Fifth Republic since it was founded in 1958.
Yesterday, Barnier handed in his resignation to president Emmanuel Macron.
Macron appointed Barnier as prime minster to ensure parliamentary stability and boost the powers of the president at a time of complete turmoil and collapse in the French political system.
Macron, who constitutionally remains in power until 2027, now faces a veritable tsunami of demands from French workers to follow Barnier out of the door.
Barnier was appointed as prime minister following the disastrous snap general election Macron called in June this year.
This election, Macron believed, would result in a victory for his centre right party enabling it to push through massive cuts to wages and workers’ rights, demanded by the bankers to bring down the massive French national debt.
France’s debt has reached a record 3.228 trillion euros – 112% of French GDP, the total wealth produced by the country – and is spiralling out of control.
Macron’s election plan backfired with the left wing NPF coalition, led by Jean Luc Mélenchon, winning 193 MPs, Macron’s centre-right party with 166 and the extreme right-wing RN led by Marine Le Pen winning 142 seats.
With no party big enough to form a government on its own Macron relied on the support of the RN to carry out the class war on workers demanded by the European Central Bank (ECB) and the IMF to cut the French national debt.
Barnier was appointed by Macron as prime minister to push through a budget for next year that involved cuts of 60 billion euros (£50 billion) in government spending and increases in taxes.
With French MPs rejecting this budget Barnier made a last ditch attempt to win over the RN and its fascist supporters by pledging not to cut medical and tax breaks for their base in the French middle class, while cutting entitlements to refugees and asylum seekers.
This did not prove enough for Le Pen’s RN who clearly feared being wiped out by the wave of opposition from the mass of workers to a budget that Barnier had forced through by decree.
The CGT, France’s Confederation of Labour Unions, reacted to the collapse of the government calling for strikes and street demonstrations across the country.
A CGT spokesman said national strikes would be held across all sectors including schools, hospitals, airports and town halls.
Next Monday, unions have already organised a national strike amongst dockers, followed by rail workers coming out in an indefinite strike from next Wednesday.
The entire French bourgeois government has collapsed while the working class is exerting its strength demanding that Macron be removed as president.
This raises the burning issue of what will replace the bourgeois government of Macron and Barnier?
The leadership of the CGT along with the left social democrats, will doubtless be calling for Macron to go and fresh elections to form a new government.
The ECB and IMF will be demanding that any future government carry out the same, or even more vicious austerity attacks on workers to bring down the national debt.
What is clear, is that this demand by the bankers for workers to pay the cost of the capitalist crisis cannot be achieved through the old bourgeois democratic political way. It demands that the ruling class impose a dictatorship over workers to force them to accept being driven into the gutter to ‘save’ a bankrupt capitalist system from collapse.
This immediately poses to the working class in France, Europe and the UK – who face exactly the same issues – using their strength to replace capitalism and going forward to workers governments and socialism. The urgent requirement today is the building in France and across Europe of sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International to organise the working class to take power and go forward to the victory of the European socialist revolution.
