Class Struggle in France in 2025

Searching for a Breakthrough

John Mullen

November 21, 2025

doi.org/10.63478/AIQKBVJ1

The slow moving but deep political crisis in France has been heating up since September. President Emmanuel Macron’s fourth Prime Minister in eighteen months is stumbling along and could fall soon. Several huge days of action with mass strikes and “Blockade Everything” mobilizations, and the record unpopularity of Macron, contribute to the ongoing unravelling of Macronism.

The situation opens up important questions for left activists, such as the potential and limits of left reformism, the role of trade union leaders, and the tasks of Marxist activists.

The state of play is characterized by a certain paralysis on both sides of the class struggle. On the one hand, the ruling class has not managed to crush any major section of organized workers, nor to demoralize the workers’ movement, and it can now—in 2025—no longer stabilize a governmental system to continue imposing austerity. On the other hand, the trade union leadership has put a brake on workers’ revolt. Every time a mass workers’ movement rises up, the leadership’s conservative stance has prevented a major breakthrough on our side and led to the loss of defensive battles that could easily have been won. The rise of the radical left party, the France Insoumise, has brought hope, but there are innumerable obstacles and pitfalls. Encouraged by endless media fabricated panics about migrants and Muslims, the far right is riding high in opinion polls while whole sections of the traditional right are now thinking that alliances with fascism are the way forward. Moreover, steamroller smear campaigns against the radical left are moving up a gear. Mass involvement, discussion, education and agitation must be at the center of our plans.

Political crisis

In 2022, Macron won a new term as president in a second round runoff against fascist candidate Marine Le Pen of the National Rally (RN), with many voting for him only to keep the far right out. Ever since, Macron hoped to continue his mission of decisively accelerating neoliberal austerity. By “making France competitive” he hoped to win his place in history as the Margaret Thatcher of France.

This was taking place in the context of rapid political polarization. We saw a sharp rise in support both for the far-right National Rally (which won 8.1 million votes in the first round, and 13.2 million in the second), and for the insurgent radical left Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the France Insoumise party (“France in Revolt,” which won 7.7 million votes in the first round).¹ Meanwhile, the parties which had most often been in government obtained record low scores, including the Socialist Party candidate who polled only 620,000 votes and the traditional right Republicans who got 1.7 million.

In the next election cycle, Macron’s “centrist” grouping of allies won only 245 of 577 seats in the parliament, so had to constantly find votes from the traditional right to be able to pass legislation. In 2024, frustrated with this situation, the president called snap elections. All the polls predicted there would be a far right Prime Minister after these elections—and it has since come to light that Macron himself tried to facilitate a far right victory by asking traditional conservatives to stand down in the event of any threeway, second round contests.²

Fortunately, the most dynamic antifascist election campaign in decades—led by the radical left France Insoumise and accompanied by voter registration drives—managed to push the far right National Rally into third place, in as far as the number of seats in the National Assembly is concerned. The parliament, after these July 2024 elections, was then divided into three groups. The largest was the left alliance (193 MPs), dubbed “the New Popular Front” (although not corresponding to what Marxists usually call a “popular front”).³ This included the France Insoumise, the Communists, the Ecologists and the Socialist Party. Its radical program—presented as 150 or so priority policies—included pledges to raise the minimum wage by 14 percent, end homelessness, dismantle the most violent police units, and end arms sales to Israel.⁴

The second largest was the center right bloc, Macron’s grouping with his immediate allies with 166 seats. Macron had lost 86 seats in parliament compared with the previous result. This left in third place the far right National Rally, with 123 MPs plus 16 allies who had broken away from the traditional Right.

Since then, President Macron has been running an antidemocratic circus. Instead of appointing a Prime Minister from the left-wing alliance that is the largest single bloc in the assembly, he has appointed a series of center right PMs. The first two, Michel Barnier and François Bayrou, each stumbled along for a few months. They relied on the fact that the far right National Rally (with 123 MPs) and the generally socially liberal Socialist Party (with 68 MPs) would, in the name of “stability, ” withhold their support from a vote of no confidence against the government. A no confidence vote in the National Assembly would topple the government which, with Macron running out of options, would undoubtedly trigger new parliamentary elections.

When Bayrou lost a vote of confidence in September 2025, he was replaced by Sébastien Lecornu. In early October, the new PM Lecornu named his reactionary team of ministers, only to resign just fourteen hours later, in the face of already sharp rows within the cabinet’s ranks. Frantic talks among party leaders ensued until, in a clownish move that stunned commentators, Macron reappointed Lecornu to the position of PM on October 10. The latter quickly cobbled together a team of ministers with even fewer political principles than the previous gang.

To avoid an immediate vote of no confidence, Lecornu made some small concessions to the left while maintaining all the essentials of a vicious austerity budget. The proposed budget, presently debated in parliament, would cancel the indexation of retirement pensions to inflation, make huge cuts to the health service, and increase the yearly military budget by over 6 billion euros totaling 54 billion.

The left bloc in parliament is made up of four significant forces. The France Insoumise with 71 MPs, founded ten years ago, forms the centre of gravity for radical left politics inside and outside of parliament. It has plenty of aspects that Marxists object to (elements of left patriotism, for example), but represents class revolt across France at least as well as Zohran Mamdani does in New York. Then there is the Socialist Party, with 66 MPs. Since the 1980s the Socialist Party has been in government for a total of twenty-four years, during which time it has gradually moved to the right. The vicious neoliberal labour reforms it pushed through in 2012–17 destroyed its electoral base: in 2022 the Socialist Party candidate got less than 2 percent of the votes in the first round of the presidential elections. Since then, it has been trying to revive itself, temporarily joining the left electoral alliance as part of this process.

The Communist Party (17 MPs) is a party in decline. Under the leadership of Fabien Roussel, the party is in search of a space to the right of the France Insoumise, who it often sees as an enemy. The Greens with 38 MPs have left moments and less left moments, but are very much in a left moment right now: since the overwhelming victory for leftist Marine Tondelier to the party’s leadership, the Greens have been more prepared to ally with the France Insoumise and have concentrated on linking ecology and social justice.

The trade union leadership has put a brake on workers’ revolt. Every time a mass workers’ movement rises up, the leadership’s conservative stance has prevented a major breakthrough on our side and led to the loss of defensive battles that could easily have been won.

One of the concessions Lecornu made to the Socialist Party as PM was to propose suspending the process of raising the retirement age and of increasing required years of work necessary to benefit from a full pension. If voted through by the parliament, the process will be suspended until after the presidential elections in 2027. This “suspension” of the pension reform, while wholly inadequate and widely seen as a trick, represents a political humiliation for Macron, who had claimed a definitive victory for this very long battle over his flagship policy; the concession could encourage the present social movement to push hard for a proper reversal of this attack. Watching Macron’s public consolation of right wing politicians whimpering over this threat to their long, noble crusade to reduce our retirement pensions was grimly amusing.

The proposed suspension of the pension reform gave the Socialist Party leadership the excuse they wanted to abstain from the vote of no confidence on October 16, and thus they abandoned the New Popular Front. The no confidence motion subsequently put forward by the France Insoumise (alongside the 17 Communist MPs and the 38 Greens) received 271 of the 289 votes needed to overthrow the government. A subsequent no confidence motion put forward by the fascist National Rally got 144 votes.

However, it is unclear how the suspension will be presented to parliament and there remains every chance it will be bundled up with social budget cuts. For the time being, the new government is stumbling along, with the risk that the Socialist Party might rejoin the revolt, leading to snap legislative elections. This is looking less and less likely as, a month later, in mid November, Socialist Party MPs voted for the first half of Lecornu’s annual budget.

The SP leadership faced protest about their decision to save Macron, even from inside their own party. Seven of their own MPs voted with the France Insoumise in October, and the SP youth organization called for all MPs to vote no confidence in Lecornu. The SP leadership are motivated by both a desire to show the capitalists that they are moderates who love stability and by a fear that snap elections now would lead them to lose support to the radical left and facilitate the coming to office of a far right government.

Lecornu’s proposed concessions to the far right include increasing the tax paid by people who are asking for residence permits from 200 to 300 euros, and introducing a silly new “integration test”—previously only applied to people asking for nationality—for anyone applying for long term residency. Applicants will have to show their knowledge of the history of secularism, the role of the three branches of government, the main stages of European integration, and a load of other things that many locals do not even know. This is just grandstanding to please the far right.

Meanwhile, a BFM opinion poll showed early September that 64 percent of citizens would like President Macron to resign. A further major opinion poll in early October showed that only 14 percent of citizens have a positive view of president Macron.⁵ The radical left has proposed the impeachment of the president for failing to respect the results of the last democratic election.

International capital is tempted to punish the French state for not squeezing French workers harder. In early September, Fitch international credit ratings downgraded France from AA- to A+. In October, Standard and Poor followed suit. These new ratings are heavily used in propaganda by the right wing as “proof” that defending pensions and public services is simply being unrealistic and living in a fairytale land.

Wider chaos

This crisis in governmental stability as it pursues austerity is part of a wider chaos. As in other developed countries in recent decades, French capitalists have enlarged the share of national wealth going to shareholders and reduced the share going to workers, through both intimidation and legislation in multiple areas. They have facilitated this by using warmongering, racism, and particularly Islamophobia, to dissuade people from uniting to fight back. The left media venue Fakir calculates that over the last eight years in France the total supplementary amount given to the rich and to corporations by the government has been 377 billion euros. This includes their gains from the abolition of the wealth tax, the installation of a ceiling on company taxes, and the reduction of the higher bands of income tax.⁶ According to the economics journal Challenges, the total wealth of the top five hundred richest people in France has gone from 300 to 1,100 billion over the last fifteen years; meanwhile the number of poor people in France has gone from eight and a half to ten million over the last five years.⁷

Nevertheless, in France the capitalists have been less successful than in many places. Huge social movements, sometimes winning, sometimes losing, have slowed down the march of neoliberal austerity. The number of strike days in France per thousand workers was 171 in 2023 and 161 in 2019. That number has been below 65 only once over the last ten years.⁸ These numbers are generally five to ten times higher than comparable figures for the United Kingdom and the United States (although around 2022 there was an upturn in strike days in both states).⁹

There has been a generalization of political class consciousness in France after the mass political strikes of 1995, 2006, 2010, 2013, 2019 and 2023 (against attacks on pensions or on labor protection legislation) and the popular revolts of 2005, 2018 and 2024 (against police violence or rural poverty). Much to the confusion of bourgeois journalists who could not fathom the idea of solidarity, it was quite common to see people on the streets defending labor rights or pensions who were not themselves personally affected.

Popular slogans and songs in the mass demos illustrate this class solidarity. Ten years ago, we had “Social Security belongs to the workers: we fought to get it and we’ll fight to keep it!”¹⁰ More recently, the streets resounded with the following song: “Here we are, here we are! Although Macron doesn’t like it, here we are! For the honour of the workers and to build a better world, although Macron doesn’t like it, here we are!”¹¹

If we compare France with, say, Britain, in areas as different as pensioner poverty and education policy, we see that French workers have had some success in defending their positions. University education is still close to free in France, compared to ten thousand euros a year in the United Kingdom, while pensioner poverty is a third of that in the United Kingdom.¹² Although various attacks on union workplace rights have gone through—for example, the reduction of powers of elected workplace health and safety committees and the reduction of facility time allowed to elected staff representatives—trade unions still have considerable protection and rights in France. Bargaining coverage through the system of “conventions collectives” is double what it is in the United Kingdom, and nine times what it is in the United States.¹³ Legal protection of union representatives and strikers remains fairly solid.

As in other developed countries in recent decades, French capitalists have enlarged the share of national wealth going to shareholders and reduced the share going to workers, through both intimidation and legislation in multiple areas. They have facilitated this by using warmongering, racism, and particularly Islamophobia, to dissuade people from uniting to fight back.

In the public sector, under twenty percent of workers are members of a union, and in the private sector less than ten percent. However, trade union influence is far wider than these misleading figures suggest. Millions of nonmembers nevertheless vote for and are represented by union candidates for health committees, company councils, regional wages councils, and other such bodies. These bodies negotiate locally, regionally, or nationally on health, safety, bonuses, promotions, transfers, working hours, wages minimums, and pay scales. Agreements signed by trade unions on these bodies apply to all workers, union and nonunion alike. Whether or not the workers involved are themselves union members, many workers see union members as activists, organizers and advisors whose job is to support individual workers and lead various fightbacks. It is very common for nonmembers to join strikes called by a union.

The French ruling class has chipped away at many rights and services, but has not managed to break the spirit of the workers’ movement by destroying the organization of a key section, as Thatcher managed to do with the miners in 1984, or Reagan with the Air Traffic Controllers in 1981. The very fact that, at the beginning of his presidency in 2017, so many commentators spoke of Macron’s desire to be “the French Margaret Thatcher” shows that we have not yet had one.

Trade Union and Movement Fightback

The fightback in recent years against the drive to give ever more of our wealth to the billionaires and place profit before the planet has been multifaceted and revealed itself through traditional workers’ movements, green direct action campaigns, and innovative citizens’ mobilizations (such as the Yellow Vests and the “Blockade Everything” networks). Although the new citizens’ networks have their importance, the workers’ movement is the key actor.

The question of retirement pensions has been a key point of conflict with the state. Throughout 2019, huge strikes and mobilizations succeeded in blocking the government’s plan to raise the retirement age and move to a new points-based national pension scheme, which would have been infinitely easier to privatize further down the line.¹⁴ Instead of the present system—in which pension rights are a proportion of previous wages and the funds are secured by present workers and employers contributing a percentage of salary to fund the retirement of older people—Macron’s proposed reform would have each employee accumulate points, the value of which could be regularly revised by the government. The move from there to a disastrous reform like the one in the United Kingdom—which made retirement pensions an individual, rather than collective problem—was evident, and the prospect made millions furious.

When the COVID pandemic hit, Macron, frightened by the mobilizations and happy to have an excuse to save face, preferred to shelve the proposed reforms. After much hesitation, he reintroduced an attack on pensions in late 2022. The new reform was less ambitious: the points system to set the stage for privatization was abandoned, the “special” more favourable schemes won by some groups of workers with strong unions were no longer to be abolished for staff presently working, and the standard retirement age was to be raised more gradually from 62 to 64 (rather than 65 as initially planned).

The campaign to defend retirement pensions in 2023 saw a dozen huge days of action with mass strikes and an array of creative acts of resistance.¹⁵ But this was not sufficient to stop Macron; even though a majority of the population supported the idea that the movement should go further, the trade-union leadership’s reluctance to call a general strike, allowed Macron to push through the two year lengthening of the working life by using an authoritarian clause of the French constitution that allowed him to avoid a vote in parliament.¹⁶

As mentioned above, this attack on pensions may be suspended. In the past few weeks, trade unions have mobilized against both the pension reform and the maximum austerity budget proposed. A trade day of action led by the trade unions on September 18, 2025 saw mass strikes, as did a follow up day on October 2. A further day of mass strikes has been called for December 2. Opinion polls showed 56 percent of the population “supported” or “sympathized with” the strikers in October, compared with 25 percent who were opposed. Teachers, hospital workers, energy and bank workers, bus drivers, and local government workers struck. Many factories were closed, and fourteen universities were blockaded. In Paris there were no trains except during rush hour and well over a million demonstrators protested. Students joined the protests en masse. “The State budget will be decided in the streets,” read one banner.

But the union leadership was in no way up to the job. After the success of September 18, rather than building on the dynamic, union leaders said they would give the government five days to respond, before calling a further day of action. But days of action every couple of weeks tend to dissipate combativity: there were fourteen of them in the huge and eventually unsuccessful movement of 2023! In late October the joint declaration of the national union leadership broke all records in uselessness. It concluded:

Our organisations call on workers and their unions to keep up the pressure and their demands through actions in companies, services and administrations, through various initiatives, the setting up of information meetings, general staff assemblies, etc. The organizations have already agreed to meet again very soon.¹⁷

The leaderships’ statement did not fix a date for future strike action. Workers were simply told to do what they could locally, whereas a national acceleration of the revolt was required.

The French ruling class has chipped away at many rights and services, but has not managed to break the spirit of the workers’ movement by destroying the organization of a key section

In any case, the present showdown with the government had been predicted for many months, but no preparations at all were made by the national leaders for serious strike action. While the level of anger was sufficient to build toward a general strike, no such building happened. Some federations such as the CGT (General Confederation of Labour) and Solidaires are more combative than others, such as the CFDT (French Democratic Confederation of Labour). Tragically, the most combative federation leaderships concentrate their efforts on persuading the least combative to join the days of action, rather than building for a grassroots explosion. A national coordinating committee, the intersyndicale, meets after each day of action to mull over the future of the movement. Because of the compromises reached behind closed doors in the intersyndicale, the whole strike movement moves, in practice, at the speed of the least combative organization—however inspiring the radio interviews by CGT leader Sophie Binet might be.

There are some signs of challenges to this leadership strategy within the trade union movement. For example, Unité CGT, a publication from the left wing of the CGT union federation was calling the intersyndicale “the headquarters of defeat” in mid October: “we need to reject the strategy of one day strikes whose only aim is to kill off the movement,” it wrote. Many other groups of workers attempt to bypass the conservatism of national leadership through town and regional meetings of grassroots networks. These are quite common and can help build combativity. Nevertheless, there is the danger of the influence of a sort of anarcho-syndicalist conception that “we don’t need the national leaders.” The fact is that the national leaderships retain overwhelming legitimacy, both in the media and in public opinion, and grassroots organizing must be combined with vigorous campaigning on the theme “we pay these leaders’ salaries: we demand they organize a fight!” Lobbying rallies outside the intersyndicale meetings would be an excellent move.

Macron is also concerned about other forms of citizens’ mobilization. In recent years there have been a series of direct action campaigns on green issues, including a successful campaign against a new airport which was planned at Notre-Dame-des-Landes in the West of France and continuing mass campaigns against industrial-scale water retention projects (which penalize small farmers).

But it was the impressive Yellow Vest mobilizations that took place between 2018 and 2020 that really humiliated Macron and inspired so many people.¹⁸ The very recent “Blockade Everything” initiatives have led people to hope for a repeat of the mass enthusiasm of the Yellow Vests.

While the Blockade Everything mobilizations—which emerged around a social media call with unclear origins—remind us of the Yellow Vest movement, there are a number of important differences. The Yellow Vest movement was concentrated in small towns where political party and trade union structures tend to be much weaker. The far right initially tried to win influence within the Yellow Vest movement, but slow and effective work by trade unionists and left activists eventually made this impossible, and the movement moved leftwards. The government’s deployment of violent repression on a level unseen for decades and the movement’s vocal opposition to police violence encouraged this leftward shift.

The new Blockade Everything mobilization is not as strong in smaller towns, and the mobilization is not as massive as the Yellow Vests yet. An inspiring mass of actions aimed at bringing down Macron were called by the Blockade networks on September 10. Dozens of motorways were blockaded, including ring roads around Paris, Bordeaux and Lyon. High schools, factories, hypermarkets and universities were barricaded, while 280 decentralized rallies were held across the country.¹⁹ The Paris rallies were particularly noted for the crowds of dynamic high school students. It is interesting to note that from the beginning, Marine Le Pen and the far right have distanced themselves from the blockade option.

The left-wing bloc

All political parties are in crisis here. A strong left reformism in the shape of the France Insoumise, made possible by the rise of political class consciousness and the weakness of revolutionary organizations, is playing a very positive role. Nevertheless, considerably more Marxist input into debate would be useful.

The main change in France on the left in recent years has been the rise of the France Insoumise, whose most popular speaker, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, stood at the presidential elections in 2017 (getting 7 million votes) and 2022 (where he gained 7.8 million votes).²⁰ The team around Mélenchon has succeeded in building a mass organization, with thousands of local Action Groups resting on the idea of “a citizens’ revolution” defending a radical left program. The program takes climate emergency seriously, insisting on the need for a radical transformation of society (100 percent renewable energy and 100 percent organic farming are among their proposals). The program aims at “a stable job for every citizen,” a “revolution in the tax system” raising money from those who have it, and “cancelling the public debt.” It proposes the imposition of maximum salary in each company, a sharp increase in the minimum wage; the indexing of all wages to inflation, price freezes on basic food products, and guaranteed basic amounts of water and electricity free for every household, free nurseries, and the lowering of the voting age to 16. The full, crowdsourced program includes 831 measures, far too many to list here.²¹

The France Insoumise leadership has not caved in on those issues that usually pull reformist groups back into line: police violence, Palestine, and Islamophobia (this last point is a historic weakness of the French left). When the working class suburbs of France exploded in response to yet another racist police murder caught on video–of Nahel Merzouk in 2023—the FI insisted on speaking of a “revolt” and not of “riots.”²² Jean-Luc Mélenchon declared “The [media] guard dogs [of the establishment] are ordering us to call for calm. We call for justice!… Suspend the police murderer.”

Mélenchon is the first national politician to put the fight against Islamophobia front and center in his speeches. Among young people and poorer sections of the population, support for the FI is strong and may be rising.²³

With a very few notable exceptions, the revolutionary left has not reacted appropriately to the new mass reformism, despite the fact that the France Insoumise allows people to join its action groups while being members of other left organizations.²⁴ Many groups see the FI as unwelcome competition, so they stand in elections against the FI and almost never organize debates with its representatives. The worst join in the smear campaigns against Mélenchon.

Because of the compromises reached behind closed doors in the intersyndicale, the whole strike movement moves, in practice, at the speed of the least combative organization

The center of the France Insoumise strategy is to win elections and oppose the dictatorship of profit from within the government. Marxists are very familiar with the massive force capitalists can mobilize to stop such a government from achieving its aims, as well as the impressive means to stop the radical left from ever getting into government in the first place. To me, getting fully involved with this movement “for a citizens’ revolution” while maintaining our indispensable role of pushing for political clarification seems to be the way forward.

Bardella, Le Pen and the other fascists

In this crisis, the far right National Rally and its fascist cadre are not so much “waiting in the wings,” as is sometimes said, but rather comfortably seated in armchairs stage right, sipping cocktails while waiting for a chance to move centre stage. The organization has been trying hard to gain respectability and to appear as a normal party of government. On October 23, the RN published its own “alternative budget.”²⁵ They do not propose to tax the rich and would cut social budgets by tens of billions of euros. Their proposals include deporting unemployed people without French nationality, ceasing France’s agreed contribution to the European Union, and making huge cuts on investment grants to regional governments. They promise not to impose the wealth taxes presently under discussion. Their “alternative budget” is, in fine Trumpist style, stuffed with lies and incorrect calculations. It is aimed at reassuring racists and capitalists that their priorities are central. Little surprise then that, with the help of the Macronists, two RN members were elected among the six vice chairs of the National Assembly (the lower house of the parliament) in early October.

Opinion polls these days show that 30 percent of people declare they would vote for the far right candidate Bardella if the presidential election took place today.²⁶ Although the election campaign of 2024 showed the rapid progress the left can make in a very short time and in defiance of pollsters’ predictions, a far right presidency under Bardella is obviously an important danger. Another poll in late October showed that 47 percent of French people thought the National Rally was capable of governing the country.²⁷

The mass media assists the continuing rise of far-right influence through its daily foregrounding of “the problems” of immigration, Islam, government spending, and the Palestine movement. In a vain hope to undercut the far right, the government regularly launches campaigns against Muslims, which of course reinforces the fascists. In 2021, the minister for Higher Education denounced the (apparently huge) influence that “Islamo-leftists” enjoyed in the universities. In 2023, the government launched an official campaign against the wearing of North African tunics by high school students, claiming it was a way for Muslim fundamentalists to infiltrate education (Muslim headscarves are already banned in high schools).²⁸ The France Insoumise are right to repeat their slogan “Macron and Le Pen—more of a duet than a duel!”

An alignment between moderates and radicals on France’s right seems much more likely than on its left. While the soft left Socialist Party is ever more reluctant to ally with the radical left France Insoumise and often joins in the smear campaigns against it, the leadership of the traditional Right is divided. However, according to Jean-François Copé, a leading voice in the Republicans, “an overwhelming majority of activists [in the Republicans party] want an alliance with the National Rally.” As the political crisis continues, a governmental alliance between the fascists and the right after the next elections is a real risk.

Antifascist mobilization was huge during the election campaigns of June and July 2024. The result was a tactical victory for the antifascists: Bardella’s bid to be Prime Minister failed despite predictions of the polls. The National Rally is very strong in parliament, but very shaky on the streets and in its local party structures. There have not been mass, far right demonstrations for decades—no doubt because the RN leadership, working hard at detoxifying its image, does not want street fights that would make its hardcore nazi supporters visible.²⁹

A major weak point of the French left is that antifascist mobilization outside of election campaigns is fairly rare and is generally local in focus. There are excellent local examples of antifascist activity, such as last May’s rally in Paris and a rally early September in Bordeaux against Bardella’s mass meeting.³⁰ However, left organizations have not made stopping the National Rally from building local structures and cultural presence a national priority. Large numbers of left activists tend to believe either that Macron’s government is fascist (making a particular focus on the RN unnecessary) or that presenting a left alternative in government is the only way to undercut fascist influence (making mass direct action to stop fascist organizing unimportant).

This neglect of antifascist action has not always been the norm. Back in the late 1990s, the campaign Manifeste Contre le Front National’s policy of mass “democratic harassment” had considerable success.³¹ Mass demonstrations were called in front of far right meetings, and particular attention was paid to protesting against those politicians of the traditional conservative parties who thought the time had come to ally with the neofascists for electoral purposes. The campaign inspired a generation of young activists and severely frightened “respectable” right wing patrician politicians. One of the results was a split in the Front National (as it was called at the time), which caused severe damage in fascist ranks. We need to bring back mass democratic harassment of the National Rally.

Conclusion

Clearly we are only at the beginning of a deepening crisis. Marxists will need to be dynamic and flexible, working with wide layers of people while constantly looking for spaces to debate fraternally about revolution and reform, fascism and antifascism, trade unionism and class action. The new, mass, insurgent left reformism in the form of the France Insoumise is a very positive development. It would be tragic if Marxists continued to see it primarily as unwelcome competition, rather than as a chance to fight arm in arm and work things out together.

Given that the France Insoumise allows dual membership, I do not see any reason why revolutionaries should not join FI action groups (and some of us do) but even those who feel they have reasons not to do this should put ten or twenty times more effort than currently on working with the organization and debating with the FI on a dozen questions which have been ignored.

Class Struggle in France in 2025

Searching for a Breakthrough

John Mullen

Political crisis

Wider chaos

Trade Union and Movement Fightback

The left-wing bloc

Bardella, Le Pen and the other fascists

Conclusion

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Class Struggle in France in 2025

Searching for a Breakthrough

John Mullen

Political crisis

Wider chaos

Trade Union and Movement Fightback

The left-wing bloc

Bardella, Le Pen and the other fascists

Conclusion

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