The second round in the French presidential election will oppose, once again, Marine Le Pen to Emmanuel Macron.

Both are enemies of the working class, as their references show.

Marine Le Pen has never been in power, which earns her a good point in certain working-class circles, disgusted by the betrayals of the left-wing parties when they were in office. But behind Le Pen’s cajoling words to win the votes of the popular electorate, she is part of the bourgeoisie, a defender of capitalist society.

Her party is heir to the partisans of French Algeria and the OAS¹, and fascist groups with connections in the police and the army gravitate around it. They are mortal enemies for the workers, ready to serve as auxiliaries to the state apparatus of the bourgeoisie in case of intensified social strife.

Le Pen's anti-immigrant demagogy already aims to divide the workers, to set them against each other and, in this way, to weaken them.

If she were to come to power, she would exercise it in the interests of the richest, like all her predecessors, but in an even more authoritarian and reactionary way.

Opposite her, there is Macron, the former banker, a representative of his social class to the point of caricature, with his open contempt for workers and the poor, his disdain for anything that does not come from the upper spheres. His references are his years at the Élysée Palace. All of his "reforms" have been blows to employees, pensioners and the unemployed.

With a cynicism that borders on sincerity, he promises the working classes blood and tears.

Macron poses as a bulwark against the rise of the far right. He’s lying. His five-year term has strengthened the extreme right. The hatred of Macron in the working classes has pushed the most disoriented voters into the arms of Le Pen. The re-election of Macron will not make the fascist forces disappear, on the contrary! They will find a reinforced vigor that will push Macron more and more to the right.

The workers do not have to support their future oppressor with their votes!

I thank the voters who gave me their vote. They have thus expressed their consciousness of belonging to the workers' camp. Even if they are in a minority, this electorate has shown that the revolutionary communist movement is still present, that women and men continue to defend the social revolution program: overthrow the big imperialist bourgeoisie dictatorship over the world and replace it with the democratic power of the workers who today are exploited and oppressed.

In the second round of voting, the working-class electorate is caught between a rock and a hard place.

For my part, I refuse this choice and I will cast a blank vote to reject both Macron and Le Pen!

Whoever the winner is, there is no need to be discouraged or to lower our heads. On the contrary! The strength of the workers is not in the ballot box but in their own struggles. They must be aware that they will have an enemy at the head of the state.

The crisis of the economy is worsening day by day, accelerated by the ongoing war in Ukraine and all its consequences, such as the surge in speculation. The capitalist economy is sinking into chaos and the working classes will inevitably be the victims.

Our proletarian sisters and brothers in Ukraine are dying today under the bombs; those in Russia are also suffering a war they did not want and in which they have no interest. The poor masses of the African continent are being pushed to starvation by soaring food prices.

But we must tell ourselves that this is also the future that the big bourgeoisie has in store for us here in France, one of the richest countries on the planet.

Our future does not depend on the masquerade of an election, even a presidential one. It depends on the capacity of the poor masses to react effectively to the social war that the big bourgeoisie is waging against them. In this struggle, the decisive role belongs to the proletariat, to those who make the economy work and society function, and who are also the only ones who can change it.

Only the workers' struggles will make the bosses, the big bourgeoisie and their politicians back down. Our future depends on all of us!

Nathalie ARTHAUD