France’s Sports Ministry is set to suffer a 6% cut in its budget. Athletes, coaches and sports lovers spent the weekend voicing their disagreement. If it’s implemented, such a reduction will have drastic consequences: the number of people on the ministry’s payroll will halve as 1,600 jobs will be cut. Needed renovations of sports facilities won’t be made, equipment won’t be renewed, some facilities will have to close earlier due to lack of staff and many amateur sports clubs will have problems operating properly. Several athletes have rightly exposed a system which prioritizes sports where medals can be won, leaving next to nothing for general sports programs open to all.

This government’s decisions are brutal and destructive not only in sports but in all sectors of social life including essential ones like education and health care. The government is currently preparing to get rid of 3,600 jobs in all areas of the education system.

These job cuts will affect middle schools and high schools even though, according to the official figures of the Ministry of Education, 40,000 extra students are expected to register each year from now until 2021. The government is knowingly sacrificing the education of future generations and young people in working-class neighborhoods will be hit the hardest.

While presenting his “Plan for Health Care” a few days ago, President Macron dared to declare:  “Our health-care system isn’t suffering from a lack of resources”. In retirement homes, public hospitals and psychiatric wards, health-care professionals have protested over the past few months precisely because the situation is disastrous. In hospitals, patients have to wait on stretchers in hallways for lack of available beds. There isn’t enough staff anywhere and necessary medical equipment is lacking. In retirement homes, the staff don’t have the time to properly care for seniors, while private retirement homes are reaping millions in profit.

For years, successive governments have put health-care institutions on a strict budget. By forcing public hospitals into debt, they have handed them over to the bankers, who rake in large amounts of money that should be used to treat patients.

Macron’s “Plan for Health Care” is based on the restructuring of health care services without any extra funding. The current government is pursuing the same policy as its predecessors with the same disastrous consequences.

Access to quality health care and education should be a priority because they correspond to some of our most basic needs. Not only is providing quality health care and education essential for us, but the future of society in general depends on it. The fact that our needs are being neglected more and more goes to show just how destructive and parasitic the capitalist system has become.

As the economic crisis deepens and the markets stagnate because of mass unemployment and growing poverty, capitalists are turning more and more to the sphere of finance to continue to make huge profits. The entire economy is infected with the parasite of finance which has in turn infected the whole of society by imposing its logic of making as much profit as possible as quickly as possible in all areas of social life.

In many countries, governments are also affected by the financial burden of the debt. They devote an increasing part of their budget to paying back public debt to the detriment of essential public services.

Here, in France, Macron is following in Sarkozy’s and Hollande’s footsteps, catering to the interests of industrial and financial magnates like Arnault, Bouygues, Dassault, Peugeot, etc. And he doesn’t skimp when it comes to satisfying their appetites. No, he gives them billions in tax breaks and handouts of all sorts. Like his predecessors, Macron is applying the anti-working-class policy that the capitalist class requires of governments in all countries.

Millions of workers are suffering from tougher exploitation, unemployment and the worsening of their living conditions so that the capitalists can increase their wealth and arrogantly flaunt it. In the meantime, the entire society is paying the price of the deterioration of social life in general and is threatened by the next financial crisis which is bound to be worse than the one in 2008.

Capitalism is an irrational and uncontrollable system. It must not be allowed to drag society into bankruptcy. Putting an end to capitalist madness means overthrowing the bourgeoisie and expropriating the big capital-owners. The only social class that has the strength to do so is the class of the exploited.