By deciding on the dissolution of the National Assembly, Macron has put its future composition in our hands. Hated as he is by the working class, he could lose his majority to the Rassemblement National (RN) or the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP)¹. The field is therefore wide open.

Both claim that the victory of their opponents will plunge the economy and the country into catastrophe. But for workers, employees and anyone with an insecure job, their everyday life is already a catastrophe.

It's already a catastrophe when you can't fill your shopping cart anymore, when you've reached the point of only heating your home to 16 degrees and can't use your old car any longer because the tank is empty. It's a disaster for those who survive on a meagre disability pension and for those who don't even have a 1,000-euro retirement pension after a lifetime of hard work.

It’s also a catastrophe for people who live in neighborhoods that have turned into poor people’s ghettos and who can't even rely on the state schools and hospitals that have been left to deteriorate. And then, people are surprised when, after being turned out of school, young people get involved in all sorts of trafficking.

So, yes, we do need change! But it won't come from the future government and its politicians. As soon as they get to power, even those who pretend that they represent workers, break their promises and serve the big bourgeoisie and its anti-worker policy. Each time workers have pinned their hopes on them, they have been disappointed, betrayed and left helpless.

Mitterrand, Jospin and Hollande all governed as if they were right-wing, leaving workers to be laid off, exploited and unemployed. And the RN will do exactly the same thing.

Even before he’s in power, Bardella is aligning himself with what the bosses want. For him, retirement at 60, a promise made by Le Pen in 2022, is out of the question. And repealing retirement age at 64 is no longer on the agenda. But the RN will do what it can to make a misery of the lives of immigrant workers, those who get up really early to do the hardest and the most poorly paid jobs. It will pit workers against each other so that big business can continue to gorge itself on profits made off our backs.

The only way to defend our interests and our living conditions as workers is to get involved. If we don't want to be betrayed again, we must make our claims heard. We must demand that the wealth and enormous profits we produce be used for our wages, our pensions and our living conditions, rather than to increase the fortunes of a handful of privileged people who are useless. Yes, workers need to get organized to express the demands that would change their lives.

For a week now, every politician, Attal included, has been saying that they will increase our purchasing power. They are lying through their teeth. Not one of them has any intention of confronting the big bourgeoisie which feeds off the misery it creates here and in poor countries by exploiting workers.

We are facing another crucial problem: the threat of being dragged into war. On this particular point, all the parties likely to govern have the same program and will pursue the same warlike policy as Macron. Workers need to know what's going on behind their backs!

We need to keep a close eye on all those politicians who keep changing sides. We have to be ready to ask them to justify themselves. We’re the ones who need to take action ourselves. It starts with choosing from among our fellow workers, representatives who are like us, who face the same problems as the rest of us and who are committed to the interests of the working class.

That's why, in these elections, Lutte ouvrière is nominating candidates in virtually every constituency. If there were even just one MP on the workers’ side, he or she would be the eyes and ears of the working class.

Voting for the Lutte ouvrière candidates means voting against both Bardella and Macron, and also expressing our distrust of the servants of the bourgeoisie who claim they belong to the left wing. Voting for them is to affirm that there is no supreme savior.

The workers themselves will change their fate and society by regaining awareness of their own strength and taking the path of collective struggles.

Nathalie Arthaud