France – LCDP: On October 17, We’re Back in Action!

We hereby share an unofficial translation of a call published by La Cause du Peuple, on October 16.

Tension in the country has been extreme for months; it is the result of a long process that has seen a succession of popular movements becoming increasingly radicalized. French imperialism, in crisis, is crushing the proletariat and the working classes with all its might, driving them inexorably toward revolution. The tendency toward revolution is the dominant one, but as a contradictory force, the tendency toward fascism can only develop in these historic moments. Since the Yellow Vests movement in 2018, the uprisings have become deeply politicized: each time, the political question – the question of power – resurfaces. Faced with a sick regime totally subservient to the power of capital, the class question returns to the heart of the debate.

The friction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie – long stifled by the chloroform of consumerism – is reemerging with all the greater force precisely because it had been denied to the very core. The truth appears all the more cruel to the masses because everything has been nothing but a lie for the past 40 years. The proletariat exists; the middle class is not a class; Parliament is useless; the government rules by decree; politicians are thieves; the President is an elected monarch who is accountable to no one; and more than ever, all policies are designed to serve a minority far richer and more powerful than the nobility of old. In short, bourgeois democracy is nothing but a lie; on the contrary, it is a true dictatorship serving the minority of exploiters.

The situation in the country is therefore extremely unstable and requires the masses to block the bourgeoisie’s offensive. Macronism, now in its twilight years, clearly lends itself to this.

Above all, we are seeing a succession of sector-specific popular movements. The most visible include firefighters, farmers, and high school students; but there are also many others whose scale is downplayed by the media monopoly, primarily the strikes that are multiplying in the industrial sector. The situation is simple: a large part of the country is becoming impoverished, as real wages decline under the weight of inflation directly linked to the wars of aggression waged by imperialism, such as in Ukraine or Iran.

This is the substance of the revolutionary trend that has been building for months; its form is Macronism in an advanced state of decay, which – through its policy of restructuring French imperialism – has profoundly destabilized society with a series of anti-people reforms. The forced restructuring of the old bourgeois system is driving a process of reactionary consolidation, the most visible manifestation of which is the suppression of all popular movements through the use of batons, grenades, tear gas, systematic imprisonment, the dissolution of organizations, political trials, maimings, and deaths by the dozens – affecting in particular the most oppressed proletariat and all forms of dissent. A veritable war against the working classes is unfolding –a policy aimed solely at attempting to thwart the development of the class struggle.

The revolutionary trend is expressed today primarily through the history of the national class struggle, for which the Great Bourgeois Revolution of 1789 remains the defining reference point. Despite all the limitations of its bourgeois character, the French Revolution called upon “the People” – the majority – to overthrow the established order through revolutionary violence. The recent call to storm the Bastille, the guillotines, Marianne, and “La Marseillaise” – a battle hymn unleashing its full revolutionary potential in the face of the cops – stand in direct opposition to the depoliticization of national symbols by the old and rotten Republic of the Well-Off. It is with a historic revolutionary significance that some are calling upon the People on October 17 to put an end to the Contemporary Era. The Contemporary Era is the reign of the triumphant Bourgeoisie; it will come to an end with the world socialist revolution –this is the profound truth of our Era.

October 17 must continue to exacerbate the crisis of this rotten, anti-people old regime. The masses have never been more adept at “disrupting public order”: the year 2023, with the Great June Uprising, showed that the guerrilla strategy – whose essence is movement – is the only way to defeat the French technique of “maintaining order.” The regime’s greatest fear is losing control over “law and order” and the return of the streets to the People. The September Movement, despite all its limitations, showed that with more people involved, the regime would have found itself in a catastrophic situation: every cop in France and Navarre was mobilized; they had no reserves left. The current high school student movement reveals the immense weakness of all these detachments of armed men who, through their acts of reprisal against the People, are cutting themselves off more and more from society. In 2018, the all-out repression succeeded in its goal, but times have changed. Millions of French people can no longer stand by and watch their lives continue to fall apart without doing anything.

The strategy for October 17 must be one of saturation: we have numbers, mobility, determination, and history on our side. Block the flow of people and goods in every direction; paralyze the heavy and relatively static police apparatus with the agility of the insurgent groups’ movements; repeat this endlessly, without tiring; this is the path to an October 17 that, even if it is not October 17 itself, will be a new step toward the Socialist Revolution. Fire is regaining its prestige and making the bourgeoisie tremble; the Pétroleuses are making their grand return, and so much the better. It was through fire that the People overthrew the old feudal system, burning down castles and seigneurial archives containing the documents that legitimized that odious domination. Fire, at every historic moment, is the expression of the People’s just demands.

It’s clear that we don’t know what will happen on October 17; perhaps things won’t live up to expectations, but it doesn’t matter: whatever happens, it will mark a new development in the class struggle in France. The ruling classes and their political lackeys hope that the presidential elections will finally stabilize France after Macron’s reign, but all signs point to the opposite. It is therefore necessary for all those who no longer want this world, to transform this moment – which legitimizes injustice, inequality, corruption, and the deprivation of freedoms – in short, the dictatorship of the bourgeois class – into a new phase of instability. Elections within the bourgeois framework are nothing more than Versailles-style mechanisms; under the Fifth Republic, they serve only to legitimize the permanent coup d’état against the legitimate aspirations for Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.

On October 17, 2026, let us vigorously advance the struggle for dignity led by the high school student movement and its vanguard, the proletarian youth. Let us organize in the countryside, in the cities, in the neighborhoods, in the factories, and everywhere the flame of revolt is smoldering, with a single slogan: LET’S SHUT EVERYTHING DOWN. The time for revolt has come; it is just, and it embodies the dignity of reality. Let’s go all the way to bring down the despicable King Macron, his puppet Lecornu, and postpone the electoral farce.