April 29, 2024 editorial of the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) in France, translated from French
This week, working men and women will be marching to put forward their demands against capitalist exploitation and all that it engenders. It has to be said that, once again this year, capitalism is showing that it only brings disaster and misery for the majority of the population: between wars and massacres in the four corners of the globe, ecological disasters, racist and sexist oppression… Yes, it’s urgent to put an end to this system!
Not a day goes by without a new attack…
In France, the government at the behest of the capitalists announces a new attack almost every day. After the 20 billion euro (about $20 billion) budget cuts to public services, which will fall primarily on the poorest, after a new reform of unemployment insurance to further reduce the length of time unemployed workers receive benefits, after the “knowledge shock” to introduce “level groups,” i.e. social tracking of pupils from secondary school onwards, it’s now the turn of low-income housing tenants. According to the government, eight percent of low-income housing households are “too rich”! How about that! And Carlos Tavares, who earns 100,000 euros a day and is CEO of Stellantis, a company with 18 billion euros in profits, isn’t he too rich? What about all the capitalists and other big investors in this country?
Workers and young people are not standing idly by!
Fortunately, struggles are also multiplying. In education, teachers and parents continue to mobilize against social tracking, with strikes, “deserted schools,” school occupations… Last week, employees of Keolis Argenteuil-Boucles de Seine walked off the job to demand a four percent pay rise. And while layoff announcements are multiplying in the chemical industry (at ExxonMobil and Sanofi), in the automotive sector, workers at MA France Aulnay, a Stellantis subcontractor, are on strike against the threat of closure of their plant, bringing three Stellantis factories to a standstill.
In the universities, young people are mobilizing against (French President) Macron and his government’s support for Israel’s massacre of Palestinians. On April 24, students at Science-Po in Paris decided to occupy university premises to demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, as thousands of students in the United States are currently doing. They’re right! Because the massacre in Gaza is a social war. If all the major powers support Netanyahu, it’s so that order reigns against the poor, just as they subcontract the rounding-up and imprisonment of migrants to dictators.
In the face of state repression: intensify mobilization!
And that’s exactly why the executive is worried, and why Attal (French prime minister) and his cohorts are pulling out their repressive arsenal. After the CGT Nord (a union federation in the North of France) general secretary was given a one-year suspended prison sentence for “apology for terrorism,” because he dared to support the struggle of the Palestinian people, Mathilde Panot, president of the LFI (“France Unbowed”—left of center) group at the National Assembly, and Rima Hassan, LFI candidate for the European elections, were summoned to the police station.
The government is worried that these mobilizations will spread and converge. The best way to combat repression is to use our mobilizations and struggles to change the balance of power against the capitalists and the governments that do their bidding.
Because our interests are common throughout the world, from Palestinians to French workers, and so are our struggles: that’s what May Day is all about! And all workers can say it loud and clear by voting for the slate presented by the NPA-Révolutionnaires (New Anticapitalist Party-Revolutionaries) in the European elections, led by Selma Labib and Gaël Quirante!
