Thanks to the Olympic break, Emanuel Macron was able to use a good 60
days to hypothesize an impossible government for France and, at the endof unprecedented consultations, not foreseen by the French legal system
but not excluded either, monsieur le Président pulled out of his
magician's hat a reject of Gaullism, to entrust him with the role of
prime minister: Michel Barnier, a 73-year-old, an old tool of community
politics, a lifetime in institutions, both national and European. A
parliamentarian for seven legislatures (five as a deputy and two as a
senator), he has held ministerial roles for four times in the
Environment, European Affairs, Foreign Affairs and Agriculture.
His political career has developed entirely in the neo-Gaullist
centre-right: he moved from the Rassemblement pour la République (Rpr),
(the conservatives loyal to Jacques Chirac and critical of Valéry
Giscard d'Estaing's line), to join, in 2002, Nicolas Sarkozy's Union
pour un mouvement populaire (UMP) and in 2015 he joined the new party,
Les Républicains (LR), of which he tried to win the primaries to become
the presidential candidate in 2022, but lost the nomination: a failure!
Despite his many failures in national politics, Barnier is known in
Brussels for having been appointed Commissioner in 1999, in the
Commission chaired by Prodi, with responsibility for Regional Policies,
renamed between 2010 and 2014 in the Barroso Commission, Commissioner
for the Internal Market and then interim head of Industry.
to conclude his career in Brussels as the EU's chief negotiator for
Brexit implementation from 2016 to 2021.
Macron hopes that the prime minister's personal connections in Brussels
will allow him to negotiate a difficult budget law, dealing with the
infringement procedure for excessive deficit opened by the Union against
France. He will have to present the 2025 budget law to the National
Assembly by October 1, with a
deficit that could reach 5.6% in 2024 and reach 6.2% next year. The
government has three thousand billion euros of debt on its shoulders, so
it will not have any room for maneuver, and will be called upon to carry
out a thankless task. His government will enjoy the support of Macron's
Center, which emerged in pieces from the vote and went from 245 to 168
seats, and the support of not even all the elected members of his party,
Les Républicains: overall, a number of votes far from the 289 that
guarantee the majority of the National Assembly. Therefore, to reject or
approve any measure, the Prime Minister will need the support of Marine
Le Pen's 163 MPs, who will grant their external support, considering it
a viaticum to strengthen the chances of their leader for the 2027
presidential elections, who, apparently, will not compromise herself
with an unpopular management of power, but will still draw every
possible benefit from it.
The fact remains that with his choice, Macron, after having benefited
from the support of the anti-fascist prejudice to obtain the desistance
in the second round, and in some cases even the support of the left -
which allowed him to elect many of his deputies - with this decision he
has dropped the exclusion clause against the Le Penists. Technically,
the prime minister does not need a vote of confidence from MPs to
formally assume his duties, but it is likely that the new prime minister
will still ask the Assembly to approve his programmatic lines in the
coming days. At that point, we will see, numbers in hand, whether
Macron's political strategy will really be successful for the time being.
What is certain is that former prime minister Gabriel Attal, from his
own party, but who at the time criticized the choice of early elections,
does not miss an opportunity to mark his distance from the Elysée and
declares that Barnier, even if he enjoys Macron's trust, must not take
the votes of Macron's parliamentary group for granted and will have to
earn them. Furthermore, the popular mayor of Le Havre, Éduard Philippe,
of the center-right, in open and clear defiance of Macron has already
announced, three years in advance, his candidacy for the 2027
presidential elections.
The left, for its part, is crying out for a betrayal of democracy,
declaring that a theft has been committed against the majority of voters
and their representatives. Jean-Lu Mélenchon, leader of the left-wing
party La France insoumise , the most voted of those that make up the
NFP, accused Macron of betraying the election results, stressing that
the Républicains , the party of the president-elect, was one of those
most defeated at the polls. Therefore, the head of state has "stolen the
elections from the French people". François Hollande, (Socialist Party),
stigmatized the pact of desistance between Macron and the radical right
wing of Le Pen, stating that Barnier's nomination occurred because the
Rassemblement Nazional endorsed the operation by promising not to vote
no confidence in him in the Assembly. Hence the request for a vote of
censure by all the oppositions because "Michel Barnier has neither
political nor republican legitimacy".
In these conditions, the left-wing forces have only one way, that of
taking the conflict to the streets and this is what they began to do on
Sunday 9 September with demonstrations involving more than 300,000
people throughout France, 160,000 at the Paris march. On 1 October, the
strike was repeated by the CGT, which was followed by initiatives by
other unions and parties: the strategy of continuous demonstrations that
has characterized France since November of last year and throughout the
previous winter and autumn is back.[1]
Class struggle in France
The French crisis, that of Macronism, is not only political and
institutional, but has deep structural roots.
Emmanuelle Macron, in the eyes of the colonial elites and the French
bourgeoisie still involved in the management of assets and investments
in what were the colonies in the Francophonie area , is at fault for
having lost control of what remained of the French colonial empire.
Because of her failed foreign policy, the Chinese and Russians have
taken over from the French in these territories (Mali, Niger, Central
African Republic, etc.) taking control of the remaining French
investments, which has had an impact above all on the supply of nuclear
fuel necessary for the French energy industry which is characterized by
the presence of a large number of nuclear power plants. Precisely this
loss which coincided with the explosion of the oil and gas crisis
following the interruption of relations with Russia was one of the
unconfessed and unspeakable causes for which Macron has decidedly sided
with Kiev in the Ukrainian war.
This failure of colonial politics has contributed to shifting support
and consensus from the economic, cultural and social class components it
expresses and the elite and middle class level to give their
representation to the radical right. We must acknowledge that the
bourgeois bloc that brought Macron to power in 2017 has definitively
entered into an irreversible crisis. It was characterized by support for
neoliberal reforms as premises for possible progress of this social
bloc, based on meritocracy, technocracy, innovation, individualism,
social climbing, bourgeois hedonism, just as Tony Blair and Matteo Renzi
did. This bourgeois bloc could have worked, from a political-electoral
point of view, if these promises of social ascension had been shared,
believed and obtained, at least by a part of the middle classes, as well
as by the privileged classes that constitute its hard core and main
beneficiaries.
: Instead, it has happened that, even if it is true that the wealth of
the privileged and apical classes has increased in an immeasurable way
and the differences in wages and income have increased beyond all
measure, determining an imbalance that sometimes embarrasses the most
enlightened and prudent among the members of the privileged classes, the
natural allies of this process, namely the middle classes, have become
greatly impoverished, as it would have been said once, proletarianizing
themselves from the point of view of income, even if not from the point
of view of social feeling and an ideal class position. A profound
frustration has arisen which pushes those who belong to it to social
selfishness, to look for those responsible for their degradation in
those who are different, in migrants, in the poor, in the marginalized.
In this situation, they are strongly attracted by the right-wing bloc
which, precisely because it was formed within the liberal universe, is
convinced that neoliberal reforms are inevitable, but instinctively
possesses a more acute perception of the risks of downgrading these
reforms entail. These risks are felt by the lower-middle classes, those
who are one step above poverty; those who ask for a form of protection
compatible with the idea that, in any case, there is no alternative to
the neoliberal horizon.
Paris September 9, 2024, 160,000 in the square
However, in a world that cannot question the privileges of the richest,
in the far-right bloc, protection must be built by acting against
immigrants, against insecurity, against threats to "identity" but also
against those who are below: this is why the Rassemblement National
supports those welfare measures that still exist in France, which
however can only work by reducing the number of beneficiaries and
excluding migrants and the incapable. This is what has actually happened
in recent years in France and will happen even more tomorrow, thanks to
the Macronian policies that the right is committed to making structural.
On the other hand, the flexibilization of work, tax cuts for large
companies, the suppression of 'ties and snares', have not produced the
feared benefits or the increase in social mobility. Macronian recipes
have not worked; on the contrary, a large part of the middle classes now
feels this set of reforms as a threat, breaks away from the bourgeois
bloc and moves towards the far-right bloc and yet remains in the same
neoliberal universe, within the framework of the same ideology that
characterizes the "bourgeois bloc".
Outside the neoliberal universe, a left-wing bloc has formed in France,
around the idea of a break with Macron's reforms, which is fighting to
repeal the pension reform, which in terms of taxation wants the taxation
of profits and a wealth tax on large fortunes, wants the strengthening
of the welfare state and services, the relaunch of public health, an
acceptable pension system that respects the quality of life, the
relaunch of the public education system. It is therefore natural that
this social bloc is an adversary for the elites, for the bourgeois group
and for the far right that, while formally opposing Macron, promised
that upon coming to power it would continue his policies. To counter a
left-wing government, as the voters asked, the natural shore was Le Pen
and Macron used it fully. This does not mean that the bourgeois bloc and
the far-right bloc are now fused together; simply, the state of weakness
of the social bloc that brought Macron to power corresponds to the
specular strengthening of the one that supports Marine Le Pen.
In the aftermath of the elections the three political and social blocs
were substantially equivalent, now the bourgeois bloc has greatly
weakened, while the far-right one has strengthened. The Barnier
government represents a rebalancing within the neoliberal universe,
within which the balance has now clearly shifted all the way to the
right. On the other hand, Le Pen and Macron have a common adversary: the
left-wing bloc that formed around the idea of a break with the reforms
and the neoliberal worldview.
Alliances and political program for the left in France
To constitute an alternative to the right and the Macronian bloc, the
left must start by demonstrating that growth does not come from private
innovation and social individualism, but from collective negotiation
that is not incompatible with the guarantee of sufficient profit margins
for businesses, and therefore every effort must be made to bring social
conflict to the streets and especially to the workplace, demanding
higher wages, better working conditions and simultaneously intensifying
the never-ending battle for pensions and the strengthening of welfare,
putting health and education first.
It is the left's task to explain to the country that it must deal with
the definitive liquidation of colonial waste that France could use to
obtain resources to be used at the same time as a positional rent for
privileged classes and a source of financing for state finances. From
here a new structure of resources and management of public accounts, a
different, more careful distribution of income that must take into
account the characteristics with which the population is distributed
across the territory and therefore the different needs that arise from
this structure.
The consensus of the left cannot come only from the cities and the
productive classes employed in industry and services but there also
exists, especially in France, a widespread rural world, a world of the
suburbs that is finding growing difficulties due to the progressive and
inexorable reduction of services on the territory. The "abandonment" of
the countryside and the territory by public services is a widely
documented fact. The localization of the distribution on the territory
of health services, public offices and even of the structures for
controlling public order and the simultaneous increase in costs for
increasingly private transport, because the public service is lacking
and withdrawing, have increased the cost of living for rural
populations. A massive and unprecedented movement like that of the
"yellow vests" had taken charge of these demands, supporting completely
different and specific economic and social demands. The criticism of the
contempt and arrogance of the state leaders for these problems, the
desire to be able to live with dignity, the fiscal injustice, the
intolerance for the snares and bonds imposed on farmers by the common
agricultural policy, must induce the ecologists, as a component of the
left, to take charge first of the existing discrepancies in politics
towards the peasant and rural world. The rural peasant and working
classes remain the archetype of the "object class" that must instead be
aggregated as one of the essential components of the social left,
representing its interests and social demands.
Rebuilding a credible left-wing policy means taking charge of the
growing increase in accidents at work and deaths at work, of the social
and psychological discomfort resulting from the activities and hours
required for work performance, and from the conditions of work
organization. In preparing its program and its government proposal in a
credible way and so that it is supported by the inhabitants of the
cities as well as those of the countryside, the left must take charge of
unifying the interests of the social block of which it wants to be the
interpreter and supporter, also by categorically posing the problem of
rearmament and war.
What the left cannot afford is to leave to the right the rejection of
conflict and war, and therefore it must unequivocally pronounce itself
in favor of peace immediately in Ukraine as in the Middle East, for a
responsible and friendly policy for the Francophone area in Africa, the
only proposal that can try to recover the ground lost in this area in
favor of China in Russia, rejecting the muscular confrontation for
hegemony conducted through the supply of armaments to Ukraine, if not
with the well-disguised sending not only of weapons, but also of
mercenaries.
The left must remind itself of the lesson of history that teaches that
war has always been desired, supported and fueled by the ruling classes
and that it is always the people who pay the price with mourning and ruins.
[1]France goes to the left , Newsletter, Political Growth, n. 187 July
2024; France at the crossroads, Newsletter, Political Growth, n. 186
June 2024; France: government coup , Newsletter, Political Growth, n.
169 March 2023; France: a new cycle of struggles?, Newsletter, Political
Growth, n. 15 October 2010 .
The Editorial Staff
https://www.ucadi.org/2024/09/28/la-crisi-francese/
_________________________________________
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