Barnier is a loyal servant of the bourgeoisie. He’s set himself a mission: to replenish public funds off the back of the working class by imposing a really harsh austerity drive.
Since being appointed Prime Minister, Barnier keeps repeating that, with a public debt of more than 3,100 billion euros, the country’s financial situation is “catastrophic” and “unacceptable”. But for billionaires like Bernard Arnault, the Hermès and Bettencourt families, everything is just fine, thank you!
The former received four minimum wages per minute from LVMH dividends in 2023. The Hermès family’s fortune increased by 17 billion euros. You could almost call Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, the boss of L'Oréal, a small-time winner, with an increase of “only” 7 billion euros this year.
While public debt has increased by 1,000 billion euros since 2017, the fortune of the 500 wealthiest people has more than doubled, from 450 billion to 1,200 billion euros. And this is no coincidence! The public coffers have been emptied because Macron lowered taxes on the richest people and showered their industrial and financial groups with all kinds of aid and subsidies.
There is a direct connection here: public coffers are emptied into the private coffers of major trusts and the big bourgeoisie. And this has been going on for a long time. The big bourgeoisie has always considered the state coffers as its own. When it asks for exemption from social contributions, it’s granted! When it asks for money to invest or to conduct research, it gets the money!
The ACCOR group, in association with LVMH, is having a luxury ship built in the Atlantic shipyards (in Saint-Nazaire). Because this ship has three sails, its project has been granted, in the name of decarbonization, 31 million euros in public aid.
The ACC (an alliance formed by Stellantis, Mercedes and TotalEnergies) battery gigafactory that set up in Pas-de-Calais, has received 1.3 billion euros in aid, while the combined profits of these three vast companies amount to more than 50 billion euros.
Competitiveness, employment, French production, decarbonization… Any excuse is good enough to shower millions and billions of euros on firms that are already wealthy.
Big capitalist groups don’t need all that money but hospitals, education and public transport do!
The right, the left and the far right are all calling out Macron's policy which has caused the debt to shoot up, but when they’re running a region, a département or a town, they are the first to serve those they call investors and to do them favors. Even if it means going into debt, for the benefit of the financiers, who are the main beneficiaries of the debt since they collect almost 50 billion euros in interest every year.
Rather than talking about debt, we should be talking about the plundering of public coffers by a handful of privileged individuals, with the complicity of politicians whatever political side they’re on. They must give the money back!
Today, the government is pretending to tax the richest people through an exceptional tax on households earning more than 500,000 euros a year and on the largest capitalist groups. Does it mean that those who have made a deficit of 1,000 billion euros in eight years would contribute around 20 billion euros and the remaining 98% would be paid by pensioners, the sick and the unemployed?
No way! Big business is 100% responsible for the state deficit, and it's up to them to foot the bill to the last cent! We must reject any retrograde steps, whether it's freezing retirement pensions, raising electricity prices or cutting social security and public services.
Two million pensioners live below the poverty line. They count every euro they spend and are forced to delay or limit their heating and healthcare bills. Millions of young and not so young people, without a private health insurance, don’t see a doctor. The shortage of staff in hospitals is dramatic. Should we accept that things get worse tomorrow, at a time when private clinics, laboratories and other capitalist sharks are making an incredible amount of money from healthcare?
How many services will be closed and replaced by call-management systems if the government slashes the public service workforce? How many public buildings and railway lines will be abandoned?
The money is there, and we need to take it out of the coffers of the big bourgeoisie. This will not be done by squabbling in the National Assembly. Only workers can really undermine the bourgeoisie’s plundering policy, by regaining awareness of their interests and their collective strength.
Nathalie Arthaud