The capitalist profit system’s ongoing and profound failure to provide decent education to working-class youth has triggered mass rebellion in France, an uprising that demonstrates the radical power of the international working class and the necessity of communist revolution. Workers have joined massive and militant high-school-student-led protests that began two weeks ago, and the estimated 450,000 who marched on October 6 make this the largest protest in the recent history of the country.
Students throughout France are fighting back against proposed budget cuts and worsening learning conditions. Teachers have joined them, parents have formed front lines between their children and police (Reuters, 10/6). Over 6000 have been arrested, the vast majority being minors. The demonstrations began in the suburbs outside of Paris spreading to cities including Dijon, Lyon, Strasbourg, Lille and Marseille. By October 5 half of France’s high schools were shut down.
Students are standing up against ever-increasing budget cuts and demanding more teachers and resources and lower class sizes amongst other things. The French government under President Macron has plans for a budget “savings” of 54 billion euros while increasing war spending (Outlook India, 9/30). The plan includes freezing public sector wages, most pensions, and cutting healthcare benefits.
France is facing a serious budget squeeze in 2027 because two costs are rising at the same time: military spending and the cost of servicing its debt. “The ministry projected debt interest costs would rise to €74.2 billion in 2027 from €64.8 billion in 2026, while defence spending would increase by €6.4 billion in line with France’s military programming law (Reuters, 07/26).”
The world’s bosses have only one plan for the future of working-class youth: a demand for more sacrifice – including our very lives – amid ever expanding imperialist war for control of profits, resources, labor and markets. The international communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) applauds the anger, fightback and working-class unity shown in this fight, and strives to give rebellions like these revolutionary leadership and direction. The capitalists will always choose to pay back the banks and spend money for war instead of providing the working class with basic needs. A system like that does not deserve to exist. Instead, workers around the world deserve and must fight for communism; a system where workers’ needs will always be the priority.
The Spectre of 1968
As workers are moved to join this student uprisings it begins to echo 1968, where students sparked a general strike that ten million industrial and government workers joined and shut down the country. Workers around the world took their leadership and followed suit. They showed the power the working class can have but they didn’t go far enough – the mighty struggle was surrendered to revisionists and liberals and didn’t overthrow capitalism. And so almost 60 years later here we are again, still fighting for crumbs the capitalists throw at us.
Presently, the repression is ruthless. Pepper spray, thousands of arrests and police violence is the answer the French government has for these young people. In one video shared on social media, a teenager was shot in the face with a tear-gas grenade at almost point-blank range by a policeman (CNN, 10/2). Another had his hand blown off by a grenade (Guardian, 10/7).
While some teachers have sided with student protesters, others have taken a stand against them with reports of 78 education workers injured while defending school property from angry youth (Le Monde, 10/5). Yet several French teacher unions called on their members to stand with students to hold before-school rallies on October 6th (InfoOccitaine.fr, 10/3) This stark choice for educators - to stand with students against fascist repression - will be presented again and again, as the future capitalism has in store for us all is one of worsening living and working conditions.
It’s validating to an outlook of mass antiracist and revolutionary class struggles that the current school protests originated in the suburbs to the north and east of the capital Paris. These working-class suburbs, known as the banlieues, historically housed migrant workers and their families from Africa and Asia following World War II. The lower-income banlieues still are home to many migrant workers to this day, a re-settlement for some of the millions displaced globally from capitalist-caused climate disaster, famine, and war each year.
In the summer of 2023, there was another mass rebellion in the Paris suburb of Nanterre over the police murder of a 17-year-old named Nahel from North Africa. What’s crucial to the development and growth of the current student protests is that they unite with the struggles against racist state terror and inequality – the likes of which stole Nahel’s life and so many others – to form a broader multiracial movement under the leadership of Black workers, whom PLP recognizes as a key revolutionary force.
Two roads: Continued capitalist misery or communist revolution
“They want to divide the young people into good and bad protesters,” said Omar Slaouti, a high-school teacher in Argenteuil, a northwestern suburb of Paris. “If there were no trash cans on fire, the government would not have stepped back and become aware of the issues at stake (Reuters 10/6).”
This teacher’s analysis of government awareness as a sort of victory is misguided, but his embrace of student militancy is the stuff that revolution is made of. The ruling class wants schools to be factories for compliant labor and nationalist ideology, preparing students to accept racist genocide, endless war, and permanent climate crisis as inevitable. We in PLP understand that communists must fight to make schools sites of struggle, clarity, and preparation for a world beyond capitalism.
Capitalism can never satisfy the aspirations of youth for equality and productive, meaningful lives. The only solution to the problems of the education system is a new system where workers organize society around our needs, not around the profits of the bosses. Only communism can solve the problems of capitalist education.
No matter who gets elected next year, Le Penn’s openly racist party or the budget-cutting-liberals, bosses will choose to increase war spending on the backs of workers and our children.
You cannot vote in fundamental change, change the international working class deserves. We need to organize to smash capitalism and bring forth workers’ real power: communism.
