November 10, 2025 editorial of the New Anticapitalist Party-Revolutionaries (NPA-R) in France, translated from French.
Listening to deputies debate the budget, you’d think we — the people who keep this society running — were to blame for everything: workers supposedly living off the “generosity” of the healthcare system, retirees taking it easy instead of dying on the job, and consumers held responsible for wrecking the planet. The rich and the bosses, meanwhile, claim to be “creating jobs” — even as they fire people by the thousands. And of course, there’s no chance they’ll be asked to contribute, even symbolically, to balancing the budget!
Shein: just one tree in the capitalist forest
From fashion and luxury elites to politicians of every stripe — from the Socialist Party and [President] Macron’s camp to the far right, and even the Communist Party and the Greens — all are lining up to denounce Shein, the Chinese online retailer that’s just opened a store inside Paris’s BHV department store.
Shein embodies the worst of capitalist society: the brutal exploitation of workers, the mass production of cheap disposable junk that trashes the environment, a showcase for dangerous counterfeits and even pedo-pornographic products. They’ll stop at nothing to make a profit.
But for the politicians and capitalists leading this crusade, Shein’s real crime is simply being a Chinese competitor in the trade war. Decathlon and Uniqlo exploit Uyghur forced labor, Total plunders and pollutes entire countries across Africa and Asia — French bosses use the same methods as their Chinese counterparts but still want to play the victims.
Social war on the poor
The hypocrisy couldn’t be clearer. Several politicians — including close allies of Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, who sports Dior jackets worth over £3,000 — have launched a collective called Une autre mode est possible (Uamep – “Another fashion is possible”), supposedly to “raise awareness” about responsible consumer habits. As if we were the fools for buying cheap clothes!
The same people are getting ready to pass a budget that will dig even deeper into our pockets. Farandou, the Minister of Labor and former CEO of the railway public company, wants to scrap the Christmas bonus for RSA recipients (Revenu de Solidarité Active, a French welfare benefit) without children: “The generosity we’ve known for decades may have reached its end,” he says. And now, in the name of fighting debt, a new bill plans to “regulate” bank overdrafts!
The RN (far-right National Rally party) is Macron — only worse
As always, these provocations against the working class go hand in hand with demagogic attacks on foreigners: cuts to housing benefits, tougher rules for obtaining and renewing residence permits. The government is adopting all of the National Rally’s measures. And that doesn’t stop the far right from going even further — proposing a budget with even more anti-worker, anti-poor, and openly racist measures.
Facing class contempt: time to end exploitation!
Big business drains both people and the planet. It gives the orders to racist politicians and organizes wars of plunder for resources across the globe. Yet it dares to lecture the very people who create its profits! We are the ones who work — it should be up to us to decide what to produce, and how, in harmony with the environment. “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs,” said Karl Marx at the dawn of the workers’ movement. Only collective struggle can bring an end to exploitation and the oppression that comes with it.
