We have rarely seen spontaneous dates of mobilization emerge in the middle of summer! Yet this is what happened with September 10, and the meetings that were held in many cities in the middle of August, bringing together dozens or even hundreds of people. Anger is clearly brewing, but the weight of the defeats of recent years, the loss of bearings, weighs significantly on the possibilities of its expression in a collective movement.
In spite of everything, the latest movements have brought lessons that give hope for a convergence of different forms of struggle for this autumn. It is this convergence, linked to the question of the level of consciousness and the unification of our class, that we must work hard in the days and weeks to come if we want to hope to shake the current government. Raising the question of power is both a necessity to solidify the movement and presents great difficulties in view of the relationship of the vast majority of the left to the institutions, the divisions that run through it, and the fragmentation of the revolutionary left. The double task of revolutionary militants is to contribute to the organization of the movement and to carry political perspectives that allow it to go as far as possible.
From 10 to 18 September – building the links to start the strike
The spontaneous emergence of 10 September gives hope that the deep anger that exists within the working classes will once again be expressed in modalities close to that of the {Gilets jaunes} movement, but by taking advantage of the clarifications in terms of class made during this mobilization. Very quickly, the networks bearing the date of the 10th were cleansed of elements expressing far-right ideas. This is positive from a political point of view, but it cuts us off from a part of the population that is under the influence of the RN and to whom the movement will have to turn to get it on board, hoping to bring it back to the side of social progress in action.
The 10 September movement can congratulate itself on a first victory, even before it has taken place: the departure of Bayrou! In reality, the reason for this departure is the erosion of his government, which had no chance of passing the budget: he therefore preferred to scuttle himself in an attempt to reshape the political balances before the vote on the budget and try to defuse the movement. The mobilized sectors have therefore made a change of objective, demanding the departure of Macron; but the movement was clearly not strong enough for that.
In the wake of this, the inter-union date of the 18th is a positive element to give perspectives. This day is the expression of the combativeness of a part of the population which partially covers that mobilized for the 10th. The aspiration for unity is very strong among the workers, with behind it a just concern, that of being numerous in order to win. The call for a strike, signed by the CFDT and the CFE-CGC in addition to the more combative organisations, is the expression of an exasperation that affects the less conscious fringes of the workforce (the intermediate layers that are not very combative and the layers that are not very organised); the unanimity in contesting the government's choices reinforces the legitimacy of the opposition to this austerity policy. As mistrust of the trade unions has receded during the last movement against the pension reform, we can hope that the people mobilised on the 10th will see the 18th as a possible continuation and that the most radical elements will join in.
It is a question of combining the modes of action that we have already experimented with, while hoping that this movement will surprise us and also invent new forms. We must not oppose anything but raise the question of effectiveness in building the movement. From this point of view, radical actions, sometimes minoritizing, can be a brake on the spread of the movement, especially since the government will not hesitate to instrumentalize their supposed violent character and to implement ferocious repression. We must face the difficulty of building the strike in the current context of the dislocation of the working class and be aware that blockades cannot replace it. Converging towards the common goal of building the movement requires that the different backgrounds meet in real life, beyond the activists whose permanent concern is this. Where the unions went to meet the {Gilets jaunes} – or vice versa – links were forged that are precious today. We must understand these different modes of action as the expression of the heterogeneity born of the organization of work, consciousness and experiences.
Behind the slogan “let's block everything!” some hear blockades of traffic routes or symbolic places. We must convince people that to really block the functioning of the country is to block its economy. This may partly involve blocking the circulation of goods, but above all it is necessary to attack the production of wealth itself in order to dispossess the ruling class of its power in production. This Marxist conception is the basis of the battle we are waging for the strike, the renewable strike, the general strike. Despite the evolution of the organization of work (precarity, unemployment, subcontracting, teleworking and so on), the majority of the population, and the proletariat by definition, is forced to work to live. Work, the production of wealth, remains at the heart of the system and it is therefore impossible to get around the question of stopping production, and therefore of the strike. Moreover, it is in the strike that demands directly linked to the division of capital and labour can be elaborated and a system that is not based on exploitation can be drafted.
That said, the modalities of organisation of the proletariat are far from always taking the form of strikes in factories where a mass of workers was concentrated. The nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries, with a much less structured working class, saw barricades and riots, but they were linked to a massive interruption of work. Let us point out that in this period the proletariat was in the process of structuring, of massification, whereas today we are in a sequence of global destructuring. As a result, the forms of mobilization are also evolving in a direction that could bring us closer to those of the nineteenth century, more territorialized, for example, around new labour exchanges, around living spaces, as the {Gilets jaunes} movement has shown.
At the beginning of this movement, the challenge remains there: to block the country, by all means, of which the strike is the most essential.
From the 10th to the 18th and after, build the movement and its self-organization!
Unfortunately, it is likely that the pace of the movement will be much more fluctuating than we might wish. This was already the case in the case of pensions in 2023 or the {Gilets jaunes, which were spread over several months, with spaced dates and yet surprising rebounds and continuity. If the inter-union group calling for the 18th continues, it is likely that it will only meet on the evening of the mobilization or, at best, the day before to propose a date that is not before the end of September/beginning of October. We must manage to use these intervals between two major inter-union and inter-professional dates to build the movement in depth.
For this to happen, there must be self-activity on the part of the workers, the population, the youth on a broad basis. It is therefore necessary to build frameworks for self-organization, to mobilize union structures on a daily basis and as close as possible to the places of work, life and study. These frameworks should make it possible to broaden mobilization, to homogenize the level of consciousness, the modalities of action, to elaborate demands, to train, to do popular education, to occupy the social and political terrain.
Intermediate forms of mobilization may emerge: torchlight demonstrations, Saturdays, support concerts, debates/educational events with intellectuals and so on. Making banners, inventing slogans and songs, producing leaflets... are constituent elements of militant action and must be disseminated as widely as possible in periods of mobilization, as opposed to periods without movement when this know-how is withdrawn into organizations. But we must keep in mind that the objective remains to blockade and strike. So, these activities must be oriented in this direction: to massify, to homogenize, to build strikes and blockades. We must fight in a proactive way against leftist and substitutionist tendencies linked to the disconnection from the realities of the mass of the population from a part of the people available and involved on a daily basis, including some of the activists of certain far-left organizations.
To this end, general assemblies in the workplace, and their coordination in interprofessional assemblies, are essential tools. Whether they are initiated by the trade unions or emerge from more leftist sectors, as long as they are open and non-sectarian towards one sector or another, they will be useful. We can influence this by promoting their implementation because the NPA-A is often at the junction of the different milieus.
We have seen many examples of such structuring over the last few decades.1 1995, 2003 of course, but also in Le Havre with its inter-union association at the origin of the inter-professional general assembly, the blockade of the city and the publication of a daily bulletin throughout the 2010 pension mobilization.2 The movement against the CPE among youth as well (2006). Or in a different form, the support for the long and massive railway workers' movement in 2018, which led to demonstrations called by associations, unions and political organizations on 26 May3, the “Marées populaires” (People's tides).
But unlike the movement that started this autumn, the previous ones were based on specific demands: rejection of a pension reform, the rail reform, the CPE... This makes it possible to build on a very broad social base but in return offers a way out to the government. The slogans for the resignation of ministers only emerged during the movement, in the confrontation crystallizing an also limited awareness of a government at the service of the ruling class. That said, despite the emergence of such slogans in the recent mobilizations, the bourgeoisie being determined to take back everything it can, governments have emerged from it without even revising their plans, except, partially, in 1995, during the struggle against the CPE and on the airport of Notre Dame des Landes. This autumn, the mobilization is already starting with a much more general slogan, on the budget and indeed on the demand for Macron's departure.
A social movement that is already political
A social movement on such a position was bound to emerge sooner or later in the period of major political crisis we are experiencing. In an article in Mediapart published on 5 September4, Romaric Godin sets things straight about the sources of the polycrisis we are experiencing. The current stage of capitalism obliges the bourgeoisie to significantly increase the pressure on the planet and the popular classes. This is the meaning of all the confrontations of the last few years, from the pensions to the Gilets jaunes (Yellow Vests), through the farming world, the struggle against the mega-basins or the revolts of the popular neighbourhoods. The lack of room for manoeuvre for the ruling class prevents it from giving in and requires the use of violence, including to the establishment of a fascistic state if necessary.
This exacerbation of the contradictions of the system is refracted in the institutional political forces: the rise of the far right and symbiosis with the right, the rise of the left of rupture, the collapse of the centre. The Macronist camp is at the end of the line: the appointment of Lecornu is an illustration of this. What happens on the institutional side is intrinsically linked to the economic situation and is impacted by what happens in the streets, as we experienced in the electoral sequence of the legislative elections of June 2022 with the Nouveau front populaire (NFP). The social movement that is starting is the counterpart in the street of the popular upsurge, facing the danger of the far right and challenging the policies of the Macronist government. It is also thanks to this that the popular movement of the 10th was able to be so left-wing.
We must therefore already think about the political perspectives and address all the forces of the radical left. In fact, institutional deadlines will be imposed on us, as was the case with the vote of confidence on 8 September decided by Bayrou, and as may happen in the coming weeks with the vote on the budget and the Social Security financing bill before 31 December, or a possible dissolution of the National Assembly. Although these deadlines seem to bring us back to the heart of politicians’ politics, they will reveal the contradictions that exist within the political class. It is imperative to integrate them into our mobilization agenda to use them as a point of support, awareness, and clarification of class cleavages. This is what we did around the use of 49.3 in 2023. The pressure exerted by the mobilization will be decisive in the institutional deadlines and could be a foretaste of what elected officials under the control of the workers and the people would be like.
In this context, the aspiration for both trade union and political unity is essential. It interests us, obviously because it is necessary to win, but also because it is constitutive of a process of homogenization of the class, of (re)construction of one's own consciousness. Similarly, the anti-racialist, feminist, LGBTI dimensions, solidarity with the Palestinian people, are essential elements to unify the class in this social and political battle that is opening up.
Lenin defines a “pre-revolutionary situation” in a pithy formula that can shed light on the dynamics of the current period: “A pre-revolutionary situation breaks out when those at the top can no longer go on, those at the bottom no longer want to go on, and those in the middle switch to those below”. The stakes are all the more crucial because the far right is today an option that the bourgeoisie could choose to maintain its power. The question of the shift of “those in the middle” is at the heart of this battle. In this shift, the struggle against oppression is likely to play a fundamental role in aligning the interests of those who suffer them with the only class capable of creating the conditions for their disappearance. Everything is tied together in this period, class struggle, struggle against oppression, democratic struggle, in a global war that inevitably experiences accelerations and slowdowns. We are clearly in a phase of acceleration both in France and in the world, as evidenced by the ongoing wars, the genocide in Gaza, the uprisings in Tibet and the Philippines
We must chart the course of an overthrow of power under the pressure of the mass movement. The absence of recent victorious mass struggles in France, the defeats of recent decades but also the repeated failures to seize power weigh heavily. Whether we think of Allende's Chile, the Arab Spring, the victory of the PT in Brazil, none of these options allows us to trace a clear path to overthrow capitalism. The lack of concrete experiences leads to the burial of the awareness of the strength of the social movement, of the strike and of self-organization5 on the one hand, and the absence of a political project and a strategic perspective prevents us from projecting ourselves and setting in motion an emancipatory dynamic. As a political organization, in parallel with the activity of each activist in his or her environment to build the movement, we must try to elaborate answers to this second part of the problem.
There is therefore a need for a propaganda activity of the party, complementary to mass intervention and agitation. To make the link between the two, we are in the habit (if we can say so) of putting forward the slogan of “workers' government.” It is both a follow-up to “Macron out!” but also the formulation of the political transition. This propaganda must be part of the mobilizations and expressed in unitary confrontations (public debates, meetings and so on) that allow us, by polemicizing with the forces of the radical left, to address the masses. It is the struggle we are waging within the class to win hegemony against the reformists.
François Sabado, a leader of the Ligue communiste révolutionnaire, wrote in 20056, quoting the resolutions of the Communist International: “The workers' government can emerge from the mass struggle, but also from an electoral victory. It is the result of a generalized social and political crisis when the institutions of the old state apparatus begin to disintegrate, but have not yet been destroyed. [...] the slogan of workers’ government is not the slogan of parliamentary combinations, it is the slogan of a massive movement of the proletariat completely freeing itself from parliamentary combinations with the bourgeoisie, opposing itself to the bourgeoisie and opposing the idea of its own government to all bourgeois parliamentary combinations”. The reality of a government's dynamic of rupture will be demonstrated in its ability to take charge of the essential measures of the period by confronting the ruling class to implement them: repudiating the debt, increasing wages, putting private sectors such as banks and large companies under control, breaking with the dynamic of rearmament, positioning themselves alongside peoples under occupation and so on.
Because optimism of the will goes with pessimism of the intellect, we ask ourselves if this question is really on the agenda... But in the end, it doesn't matter because in any case it is necessary to have in mind the global perspective in order to respond to extremely heterogeneous levels of consciousness. It is necessary to offer immediate activities to those who are committed for the first time, to lay the foundations of the coordination of the movement to the trade unionists who are consciously building it and finally to go on the perspective of social change with the most conscious fraction to broaden the base of those who want to go all the way, that is to say to the point of raising the question of power.
The current state of the crisis of capitalism puts on the agenda concerns similar to those of a pre-revolutionary period, despite the weakness of our class in terms of organisation and consciousness and because of the social and ecological emergency. We can take up what Leon Trotsky wrote in 1938 in the Transitional Programme: “The strategic task of the next period—pre-revolutionary period of agitation, propaganda and organization—consists in overcoming the contradiction between the maturity of the objective revolutionary conditions and the immaturity of the proletariat and its vanguard (the confusion and disappointment of the older generation, the inexperience of the younger generation).
It is necessary to help the masses in the process of the daily struggle to find the bridge between present demand and the socialist program of the revolution. This bridge should include a system of transitional demands, stemming from today's conditions and from today's consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat.”7 The task is immense but it is exciting and if we do not succeed again this time, we will start again!
September 14, 2025
- 1
‘1995-2003-2010: lessons from three major mobilisations’, Yann Cezard, 19 December 2019, L'Anticapitaliste. https://lanticapitaliste.org/arguments/social/1995-2003-2010-les-lecons-de-trois-mobilisations-dampleur
- 2
‘Returning to the social movement in Le Havre,’ Steph and Thomas, December 2016, L’Anticapitaliste magazine. https://lanticapitaliste.org/node/23528
- 3
‘Popular tide and wave of strikes against Macron: 26 May in the streets and then we continue,’ Christine Poupin, 24 May 2018, L'Anticapitaliste. https://lanticapitaliste.org/actualite/politique/maree-populaire-et-vague-de-greves-contre-macron-le-26-mai-dans-la-rue-et-apres
- 4
‘At the root of the political impasse: the economic crisis,’ Romaric Godin, 5 September 2025, Mediapart. https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/economie-et-social/050925/la-source-de-l-impasse-politique-la-crise-economique
- 5
Sociologist Baptiste Giraud published ‘Re-learning how to strike’, PUF 2024.
- 6
‘Transitional approach, united front, workers' government,’ (French) Friday, 30 September 2005, François Sabado. https://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article527
- 7
Transitional Programme, Trotsky, 1938. https://www.marxist.net/trotsky/programme/p2frame.htm?minimum.htm