So, there are major protests across France, protesting Macron’s policies. Macron has raised fuel taxes and removed worker protections, among other things. He is a neoliberal’s neoliberal, who believes in free labor markets (a.k.a. markets where workers can be easily fired, made to work overtime, and so on.)
His popularity rating is 20 percent, there is no chance that he will be re-elected, and he is unlikely to give in to any protests–both because he is a true believer and because his future is assured if he pushes through as much destruction of France’s social state as possible. He will be rewarded by the rich.
Some of the protests have been somewhat violent (I am not all that impressed by property violence as “terrible”), and, of course, the French police have brutally beaten many protestors. It always amuses me to watch the so-called brave surrounding a man to kick him while he’s down. Any man who participates in such a beating outs himself as a coward, the same as any man who tortures someone who cannot resist.
While it seems unlikely, it wouldn’t bother me if the current French state was overthrown.
More likely, what will matter is whether La Pen or Melenchon (who is a real left-winger) wins the next election. Hopefully the French are not so stupid as to vote for another pretty neoliberal.
Little that has been done by Macron, or other neoliberal twats, cannot be undone if a government is elected with a mandate to do so.
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Herman
I remember how happy my liberal friends were when Macron beat Le Pen because she was seen as the French Trump. Now there is a good chance Le Pen will win the next time around with an even angrier electorate behind her. Again, the problem is that for millions of French people life is getting worse. Much of the populist wave hitting the West is coming from peripheral regions that have been left to rot. Christophe Guilluy points this out in the case of France.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/02/france-is-deeply-fractured-gilets-jeunes-just-a-symptom
The lesson here is you cannot continue to kick people when they are down and not expect them to get angry and fight back. Calling them deplorables or hillbillies or whatever is not going to help but will just make them angrier. Telling them that they just need to move or retrain in a handful of currently hot fields won’t work either since that has been the mantra for decades and has not worked.
It will be interesting to see if Mélenchon and the French left can get it together and win instead of ceding the role of champion of the people to Le Pen and the populist right. It will also be interesting to see if Macron-style liberals will torpedo Mélenchon in the same way neoliberal Democrats torpedoed Bernie Sanders thus opening up a clearer path for the right to win.
Repeated Meme
A state using force to enforce its policies is outrageous and unconscionable.
Always. Sometimes. Maybe. Or maybe not. I’m lost here. Mandos?
Hugh
Barring revolution or defection of Macron’s coalition partner, the next elections for President and the National Assembly aren’t scheduled until 2022. Macron’s election was the result of the bankruptcy and collapse of France’s traditional parties. I think what is surprising is just how fast he hit his sell-by date. But he is hardly alone in this. Look at Merkel, May, and Trump. Crap leaders, crap parties.
Tom
26% turnout in the French Presidential Election of 2017. US Election had 51% turnout in 2016. Turkey had near 90% turnout in 2017.
Is it any wonder France is burning, its people have given up on Democracy and don’t have anyone worth a damn to turn to.
I see a bloody conclusion to this mess. Unlike Syria though, the French Military is far smaller and has less weapons in depots and NATO States will rapidly intervene to prevent a full blown civil war temporarily. But the crackup is clearly starting.
Mandos
Sometimes, obviously. Depends on the force and the policy. Are you invoking my name to suggest that violent policy enforcement is never outrageous and unconscionable? Never subject to moral judgement on a case by case basis? That all use of state force is legitimate? Is that why you’re lost?
Mandos
Merkel took several mandates to hit her “sell-by” date. Trump may very well not have reached his yet. Surprisingly, the jury is even still out on May.
Macron has followed the pattern of Hollande, because Macron replicates the failures of the Grande École model of elite social reproduction. This plagues to some extent all the parties in the French system, even the supposedly “anti-establishment” ones. The original meritocracy.
Ché Pasa
Dunno about that.
Macron has been stunning in his overt betrayal of the French electorate. And he’s worked tirelessly on behalf of the financial interests that have been his biggest cheerleaders all along. How much of what he’s done can be undone simply because a different team is elected to power is a question with perhaps an unpleasant answer.
Part of what’s been going on amid the supposed rise of populism is the reinforcement and acceleration of the implementation of neoliberal goals and objectives. We see it daily with Trump, but it goes on throughout the neoliberal universe. It may not be the endgame, but it’s getting closer, and the losers, as always, are the rabble.
The Paris uprising has a ways to go before it either peters out or declares itself victorious. Macron’s ploy — which seems to involve “dialogue’ and temporary financial inducements to favored worker-segments, together with an increasingly harsh crackdown on the “gilets jaunes” leading to more bloodshed — may work. Whether he’s reelected with his coalition doesn’t really matters. What matters is that nothing be allowed to interfere (too much) with the looting, pillage, and suppression/repression of les petites peuples no matter what.
Willy
…assuming Grandes écoles is a meritocracy. As I’ve said before, I know PhDs who appear to have almost completely lost their minds. Hubris-caused retardation surely cannot explain it all.
Yellow jackets? If I was a working frenchman, I’d be making tee-shirts with pictures of guillotines. More to the point. But of course, that might make the PTB that much more “state force”.
Tom
Yellow Jackets won. French Government is halting the tax hike. Once the Guillotine Graffiti went up, they knew it was cave or die.
Tal hartsfeld
“Free Labor Markets”
Free for whom? Not workers or employees.
Freedom for those who are already in control and not in need of any additional freedom.
Ché Pasa
Interesting how la crise Macron is being interpreted within and outside France. It all depends, it seems, on one’s political ideology. Either he’s not been neoliberal/fascist enough, or he’s far too neoliberal/bankster to even understand what the problem is.
A view from thousands of miles away like mine can’t be comprehensive and may well be wrong, but Macron may have set himself and his party up for these crises. Perhaps they were inevitable in any case. The point being that les gilets jaunes have a raft of issues extending well beyond the fuel tax increase, and almost all of them have to do with the increasingly punishing austerity measures being imposed throughout France and Europe by the high and the mighty without regard to the interests and/or well-being of the rabble.
Among other things.
Macron seemed at one point to be willing to ‘consider’ these things on the basis of favored segments of the working class but apparently he was overruled, and the fuel tax increase was simply suspended and the gilets jaunes were told to desist forthwith — with an implied ‘or else.’
Obviously, it’s a Guillotine Moment.
Will the Fishwives march on the Elyseé next Saturday??
Hugh
I agree with Tal hartsfeld. Free markets are never free. The question is always who is running them for whose benefit.
“Peuple” is aways masculine and usually singular. “Le petit peuple” means “the little people” as in fairies. Just “le peuple” conveys the sense of “ordinary people” as opposed to the “classe dirigeante,” the ruling class. You can also use “les classes populaires” in general or “la classe ouvrière” for working class. The French tend to be more specific. So as in the French wiki on the gilets jaunes, they talk about “Sociologiquement, les manifestants sont principalement issus des villes périphériques et de la ruralité, et représentent les classes moyennes, ouvriers, petits salariés, indépendants et retraités, se sentant méprisés par des élites urbaines qu’ils estiment déconnectées des territoires.”
Tom
Now the French Truckers are announcing an indefinite strike at 2200 on Sunday to pile on the pressure. That would shut the nation down rapidly.
different clue
The visible non-docility of the French makes me remember an article I once saw (and can no longer find thanks to various search engines having become search-prevention engines) was about
why Americans, especially American workers are so docile under abuse.
One very simple background forcefield-matrix reason was this . . . France had National Health Care for all its citizens. So they could demonstrate or riot or etc. without losing their health care.
Whereas health care in America was largely job-dependent. No job = no health care = you die. That fear was/is enough to keep Americans deeply obedient under abuse right there. It is probably a reason the Authorities oppose National Job-Irrelevant Health Care in America. A tool of obedience-enforcement would be lost.
I suspect the French authorities agree with that analysis. NaCap recently had either an article or a comment about how the French authorities are working to stealth-privatise the French health care coverage system. Make it cover “85% of everything” and make all people in France buy the “other 15% worth” of coverage. Then slowly load more coverage into the “your taxes already paid for this” into the ” you buy this privately” part. The endpoint is supposed to be fully privatised and profitised Health Insurance. When the French Authorities reach that happy goal, then in France too , no job will= no money will= no insurance will= you die. That should teach the French some obedience.
Tom
There is now a move to launch a vote of no confidence in Macron’s leadership. The Left-Wing Parties are united and trying to snag some more support from the Right-Wing to bring down Macron’s Government.
Tom
Macron is ordering a crackdown now and deploying more Gendarmie across the nation. Social Media is rampant with videos of police just attacking protesters and non-protesters indiscriminately.
Man, this is escalating fast.