After the relief, what has to be done ?

The RN (far rightwing party) did not pass, huge relief, we can take a breath. We escape, for at least a while, one more step in the official hunt for migrants, for LGBT+, for antifascists... The racists and the fascists, CNews and Hanouna, Valeurs Actuelles, and Europe 1 (media and ultra-reactionary far-right person) are pouting while they campaigned for Bardella (leader of the RN) without the slightest restraint, at least some good news.

But we all know that this is just a respite, and that just before it wasn’t “Care Bears” heaven. Not one of us believes in the bright future of a Popular Front government which would respond to our legitimate aspirations, whether it is wages, pensions, democracy or equal rights. They need to stop, all these politicians, from taking us for fools, from trying to make us dream of "one solution, elections and good laws, trust us !".

No but hello, what !

What have we seen since Sunday evening July 7 ? Above all, a shabby, pathetic spectacle, shenanigans, unprincipled alliances where convictions go into the trash over the hours "to avoid the worst", where, for example, there were calls to vote for Borne (Macron’s former prime minister) or Darmanin (Macron’s minister of repressive forces) for a so-called "Republican Front". Where there is obviously no parliamentary majority but where the left tries to make us believe that it can govern and apply its program in full. Where Macron’s regime clings to power by all means, even the most rotten, even though it is disavowed.

In reality, who really cares about our votes, about the masses of proletarians in cities, countryside or neighborhoods with or without official papers, about poverty, precariousness ? “You voted ? That’s good, now trust us, we’ll take care of you”.

But, when will we be able to get out of our minds that our fate depends on the ballot box ? While each government, from the right to the left, only prepares the next one, always worse - it is enough to make balance of the 50 years past.

That’s parliamentarism. Choose once every five years those who will decide our path for us. Without even having the slightest idea of what we are experiencing : from the FI (left wing of reformism) to the RN (far rightwing party) via Attal (nowadays Macron’s prime minister), we no longer count the elected officials who do not have never worked in their life and who find themselves earning 6,000 euros per month from one day to the next.

We are a long way from the Paris Commune (1871) with elected officials who can be recalled at any time, under permanent control of voters, paid at the level of the salary of an average worker...

Where do we stand, actually ?

1. The RN is beaten, it’s a good thing and a respite.
2. The heart of the story is the management of capitalism in crisis, in the globalized economic war. This is a good, somewhat trashy formula, but it says what it means : politicians can promise what they want, capitalism imposes its laws, even on all the most radical reformists like the NPA (New Anticapitalist Party – trotskyist party) at random. The French imperialist bourgeoisie is embarrassed and worried. She wants neither the measures of the RN nor those of the New Popular Front. Beyond the little political manipulations, it seeks a political consensus to maintain its domination in order to guarantee its development. But through contempt, divisions, attacks and repression it has only reaped instability, and the Yellow Vests have been there. And it is all the more important in the international context, the ecological crisis, the economic crisis and the military crises, when destruction is everywhere before our eyes. It’s going to take a little time for it to settle and it’s still very confuse.
3. The NFP (the New Popular Front) promises us the moon, is massively mobilized in this so-called "Republican Front", swears today with its hand on its heart "the entire program and nothing but the program of the NFP", as if it was not entirely reformist. As if they had the means (195 elected seats out of 577 in parliament), they played the electoral card until the end, they sold us dreams, they brought together abstainers from the depths of popular neighborhoods. All the reformist parties up to the NPA, joined by the CGT (left wing French union), are all in it to sell us "social progress", "capitalism with a human face" around a few reforms reduced to the essentials by leaving all the annoying subjects aside, such as ecological demands, the capitalist economic crisis and its inevitable constraints or imperialist wars... They really take us for morons ?? We have no illusions about this bogus program and those among us who voted only did so to get a moment of respite. And we are very far from a worker and popular uprising which could take advantage of the situation to score points on the social level, like the former Popular Front in 1936.

The future for us, the proletarians

It’s a mess right now, but let’s make no mistake, we’re not immune. The immediately present danger is racism, nationalism, patriotism in all flavors, the poison of division which ferments in different forms in all parties. We have seen anti-immigrant laws, but we have also seen the strengthening of protectionism. We have seen the explosive development of anti-Semitic, islamophobic and horribly racist attacks, the rancid foundation maintained by the accumulation of political speeches, anti-immigrant laws, and media in the pay of Bolloré (far right billionaire).

Even the right-thinking positions of the reformist left, led by the CGT, who staunchly defend the regularization of undocumented immigrants but on a case-by-case basis, according to the needs of the French economy.
In the period to come, the fight against division, for complete equality of all rights, against all racism will be at the heart of the battles. To strengthen our camp, whatever our nationality, our religion and the color of our skin.
A fight that will be extended to all homophobic, sexist and patriarchal discrimination, for universal and anticapitalist equality against our common exploiters. The future will also be the resumption of the fight for employment, against restructuring, precariousness, hardship, unemployment, the ecological fight against the capitalist destruction of nature, against toxic chemicals, the fight for all workers interests, without trying to be reasonable, to reconcile with a “system” which is not ours.

Either we take our affairs in hand, in complete independence from this parliamentary system, from this political backwater of the right and the left, or we will suffer new defeats, with a prospect of Marine Le Pen (the real boss of the RN) in 2027. We’ve avoided the worst in 2024, but the worst may still be to come… As the saying goes, if you don’t want to worry about politics, politics will worry about you !
What if we took care of it together, on truly struggle, truly worker and revolutionary grounds ?