The Meaning of the June 9 Elections in France

No to Reactionary Politics!

Out with Macron!

Workers’ Unity!

Workers Tribune front page: “Macron – I don’t exclude intervening in Ukraine”

Hundreds of thousands of workers, young people and supporters of democratic rights are demonstrating across the country to express their refusal to see the far right come to power.

Yes, we need to block the way to Bardella and Le Pen-Ciotti. To do this, we need to do away once and for all with Macron and his politics, the politics that paved the way to the right wingers.

On June 9, Macron was massively rejected. He lost two-thirds of the votes he had received two years earlier. Macron represents 7% of registered voters. He is in the minority. From a strictly democratic point of view, Macron has to go.

Yet he stays. And on July 8, the day after the legislative elections, he’ll still be there. That’s how the Fifth Republic works. Macron calls for a vast a vast coalition, which he would lead, that would exclude “the extremes of right and left”. Or he could be part of a coalition of national unity led by Bardella, as Marine Le Pen has just proposed. Or, then again,he could be in a government of cohabitation with the “New Popular Front”. Whatever the case, Macron will remain as president. In defiance of democracy, he will continue to preside over the Council of Ministers meeting on July 10. That is how things work in the Fifth Republic of France.

The Constitution makes Macron head of the armed forces and guarantor of France’s “international commitments”. On June 13, at the NATO summit, he declared, regarding the dispatch of military instructors and the delivery of Mirage 2000-5s to the Ukraine: “Nothing has been called into question. Things are advancing as decided.”

This is not acceptable. Democracy demands that Macron, who is in a minority and rejected by the country, be ousted, because in the Fifth Republic, the President has all the power. Of course, all cohabitation governments are not equal. A Macron-Bardella cohabitation government with racists, semi-fascists, enemies of the working class, enemies of women’s rights, enemies of workers’ rights, will in all areas seek to worsen the reactionary policies of previous governments. That is why it must be blocked.

However, will a cohabitation government between Macron and the “New Popular Front” be able to take the radical measures required by the situation if Macron, supported by these institutions, retains all the powers in his hands?

The “New Popular Front” has published its program. It proposes measures that call for a break with current policies, namely, the repeal of the retirement pension reform and the unemployment insurance reform. But there is one measure that is conspicuously absent: the confiscation of the 413 billion euros of the military programming law.

This is logical, given that the “New Popular Front” has pledged to continue supplying arms to the war in Ukraine. Yet France, within the framework of the European Union and NATO, has already devoted tens of billions of euros to financing the war in Ukraine. As have the Biden administration, the European Union and NATO countries, which have poured hundreds of billions of dollars and euros into this war.

This war is a veritable vacuum cleaner, sucking up hundreds of billions, all devoted to destroying, ravaging, prolonging the war and enriching the gun merchants. And the program of the “New Popular Front” proposes to continue this in the name of “the urgency for peace”.

How is this to be understood? How can we imagine that a government of the “New Popular Front”, in cohabitation with Macron, can satisfy the needs of schools, hospitals and public services if it continues to spend billions on the war in Ukraine? How are we to understand this willingness to continue delivering arms for this bloody conflict? How can we understand that nowhere in this program is France’s membership in NATO or the European Union called into question, while the challenge to the Fifth Republic is deferred to a very distant future?

This is not possible! The workers and young people of our country reject war. They want no part of it. That’s why, for our part, we’re continuing our tireless campaign to say: not one penny, not one weapon, not one soldier for the war in Ukraine.

Even with a “New Popular Front” majority, Macron will want to pursue – because the Constitution gives him the power to do so – his reactionary reform of national education, called “the shock in learning and knowledge”, or his anti-worker reform of unemployment insurance. As President, he will want to pursue his anti-worker policies on every front, against Social Security [single-payer healthcare – Tr. Note] and for the liquidation of social housing.

That’s why today, mobilized by the hundreds of thousands to block the path of the far- right, we have a duty to say: Responding to the needs of working people means not only blocking the path of the far-right, but also ousting Macron and bringing down the institutions of the Fifth Republic, born of the military coup of 1958. That’s because these institutions have only one function: to enforce the dictates of the capitalist class.

The “New Popular Front” claims to be committed to a break with the past. Millions of workers and young people in our country aspire to a real break with this regime, that of the capitalists and exploiters. This is what was expressed on June 9 in the wake of the great class movement that saw millions upon millions mobilize with their organizations against the pension reform plan. This is what will be expressed once again on June 15 in towns and cities across the country.

To satisfy the demands of the greatest number of people, it’s not enough to evoke a “break” in a text, we have to put it into practice: oust Macron, sweep away the institutions, convene a Constituent Assembly through which the people can set up a genuinely democratic regime. In short, to set up new institutions capable of responding to the demands of working people and not, as is the case with the Fifth Republic, at the whim of a small minority of exploiters, profiteers and speculators who always prevail over the will of the majority.

The situation is urgent. Millions of workers and young people are mobilizing in demonstrations, but also in their workplaces, assemblies and strikes. Legitimate demands are linked to the urgent need to oppose the rise of the far right.

On June 30 and July 7, not a single vote must go to the racist and reactionary far right! Not a single vote for the right-wing allies! Not a single vote for Macron and the parties in his coalition, all of whom are paving the way for the worst possible reactionary policies!

The time has come to build an authentic plan for struggle which, in unity, will bring together workers and organizations, a coordinated plan linking the demand for the satisfaction of every demand to the overall fight for democracy and workers’ rights. A fightback plan that clearly sets itself the goal of ousting Macron, finally putting an end to the Fifth Republic and establishing a genuinely democratic Republic, the Workers’ Republic.

This objective will not be achieved by the bureaucratic combinations of the apparatuses. It will require the action and mobilization of millions and millions. It is to help this movement that the Workers’ Party submits these proposals for discussion. To prepare and organize for the battles ahead, young people and workers alike, come together and strengthen the ranks of the Workers’ Party.