After two months of negotiations that turned into a political farce, we’ve ended up with a right-wing Prime Minister – much to the bosses’ satisfaction – and Marine Le Pen in a position of strength! Macron has appointed the LR (The Republicans) Michel Barnier with the assurance that the RN (National Rally) would not overthrow him immediately. The interim leader in Matignon is consequently at the mercy of Le Pen. We can therefore expect a tough policy particularly towards the immigrant fraction of the working class.

Michel Barnier won't have to force himself! His resumé includes 50 years’ loyal service to the bourgeoisie in French and European institutions. As a candidate in the right-wing primary for the 2022 presidential election, he advocated for retirement at 65, the suspension of unemployment benefits after turning down two ‘’reasonable’’ offers, a moratorium on immigration…

So Barnier will attack workers with the support of Le Pen and Bardella. Those two are seizing the opportunity to show how responsible they can be, endlessly repeating that they are not in favor of blocking things or of instability. The RN is showing its true colors – another support for the bourgeois system!

The leaders of the New Popular Front – the largest group in the Assembly but that is a long way from having a majority – have been ousted from power by Macron. They’re crying about democracy being denied and some of them are even accusing Macron of betraying the Republican Front by deferring to Le Pen.

But it’s this Republican Front that is truly deceitful: the NFP stood down and called on the left-wing electorate to vote for Macron’s clique, for the right wing and even for MPs like Darmanin and Borne. It duped people into believing that those politicians would be a barrier to the rise of the extreme-right wing and that they were, somehow, on the right side of that barrier.

The left is responsible for this deception. It propagated this illusion only to obtain a few more elected representatives, knowing very well that Macron was catering to the RN – and that his immigration law was a carbon-copy of the RN’s policy!

From the left to the far right, we find the same politicians: opportunists ready to change sides and to ally themselves with those who, only the day before, they designated as their worst opponents.

What all these politicians have in common is that they place themselves within the framework of the capitalist organization of society, i.e. under the domination of the big bourgeois families who control the bulk of the economy through their industrial and financial trusts. And they all claim to be ‘loyal managers‘, which always means serving the interests of the Arnault, Peugeot, Mulliez, Dassault families.

This is why, whatever their politics, no single government has ever forbidden big business from closing a factory or laying workers off or has ever forced it to increase wages. And that’s just the way things are: you can't be on the bosses’ side AND on the workers’ side, on the exploiters’ side AND on the side of the exploited, on the side of those who lay workers off AND on the side of the workers who are laid off.

To defend their interests, workers need to build a party that is ready to confront the capitalist class, its greed and its law of profit. That party won’t be yet another gamble by politicians doing the bidding of big business in the Élysée or Matignon, but a party of workers who are aware that big business holds our lives in its hands, and that we can only push it back by our struggles and the balance of power that we impose.

This party must be founded on the conviction that the big bourgeoisie is a parasitic, irresponsible class. That it must be overthrown because it’s leading workers and society to ruin and war – as we can already see – in many parts of the world. It’s not just a matter of grabbing a few crumbs from the bourgeoisie, forcing it to give us back two years’ retirement pension or making it pay a little more tax: we must prevent it from affecting us by taking away its power.

Because workers don’t feel capable of it right now, it’s not a well-established idea that workers can influence things from where they stand, get organized, start fighting and consider running society instead of the rapacious bourgeoisie and the upstart politicians.

But if there is one thing, just one, that a party on the side of the workers must do, it is to popularize this idea, because there's no other way to get humanity out of the barbarity into which it is currently plunging.

Nathalie Arthaud