Editorial. Attal, Barnier, Bayrou… same fight – Editorial by Fabien Gay – December 20, 2024

By Fabien Gay, director of Humanity

Since Covid 19, our country, like the world, has seen the multiplication of crises which pose serious threats to our humanity. Climate crises with the acceleration of increasingly violent so-called natural events, such as Cyclone Chido which ravaged Mayotte, without forgetting the torrential rains which devastated the Valencia region. Social crises with waves of layoffs everywhere and a European industry which is suffering from the price of energy but also from the financial strategies of large groups.

However, the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few has never been so strong and the distribution between capital and labor never so unfavorable to workers. They are suffering from frozen wages, but also from inflation, the war economy and now the talk about debt. The proponents of the interests of capital are in action, calling for “responsibility”, “stability” to impose a new cut in “state spending”. By this, mean fewer public services, less reimbursement in health, but also going back to the thirty-five hours “to work more”, or even in the future introducing a share of capitalization in pensions. For them, the break with liberal and austerity policies is scary. The stakes are high: overaccumulating wealth to the detriment of living things and nature.

This capitalist system in crisis everywhere encounters resistance: here as on the other side of the Atlantic, people are rising up so as not to sacrifice their agriculture, their industry, their lives for yet another free trade treaty which will only benefit 'to multinationals. Here as elsewhere, a youth refusing the inevitability of war, because they are always the first sent to the front, rebels against imperialism, colonialism or the genocide underway in Gaza. Here as everywhere, exhausted workers, exhausted by this system, refuse the lowest social price and competition, which wear out their health.

In France, capital has relied on President Macron for seven years to work for its sole interests. But in the face of resistance, this capital wants to go further, faster, stronger to unravel our social model, to put an end to all the elements of protection of the people. And he is ready for a new turn of the austerity screw, including security and why not tomorrow, racist. Milei in Argentina or Meloni in Italy do the job well.

Since the dissolution, President Macron has denied the massive rejection of his policies, expressed at the polls. At all costs, he will use all political “combinations”, flirting with the limits of the Constitution, to maintain his political course: Attal wrung out, Barnier censored, welcome to Bayrou le Béarnais. His induction speech showed that he will not change course. Don't count on him to repeal the pension reform, increase wages and pensions, save our industrial jobs… It will be debt, debt, debt.

And if that means dealing with the far right again to ensure its survival, he will do it. As a reminder, he sponsored Marine Le Pen in 2022 to be a candidate for the presidential election. Whoever “twisted” the president’s arm to go to Matignon will definitely make sure to ask for a return of favor.

Faced with this new coup against the popular will and the choice of the ballot boxes on July 7, the forces of the left and ecology must organize themselves and rely on the current social movement, which It is appropriate to expand and mobilize to thwart the Elysian plans.