On December 5, French President Emmanuel Macron was dealt a major blow. His government, led by Michel Barnier fell as it faced a no-confidence vote after only three months in office—the first such development in over 60 years. The President has been left suspended in mid-air, unable to form a stable government and facing deep unpopularity among the French people. Macron used the re-opening of Notre Dame Cathedral as a chance to whip up a sense of ‘national unity’, and to project strength by hosting talks between Trump and Zelensky, but none of this can paper over the real situation. The institutions of the French ‘Fifth Republic’ are in a deep crisis, and the French capitalist establishment cannot find an easy way out.

Roots of the political crisis

This political crisis is fundamentally rooted in Macron’s own deep unpopularity, and in particular the mass opposition to his austerity agenda. His hated pension reform, raising the retirement age from 62 to 64, faced mass opposition on the streets, and was only passed following an authoritarian decree. Unsurprisingly, the “centrist” bloc led by his Renaissance party faced an embarrassing result in June’s European elections, which was only compounded in the ensuing legislative elections which followed. Macron had intended to use the elections to sideline both the left and Le Pen’s far right Rassemblement Nationale (RN), opening the door to governing with the support of the establishment, but his plan backfired. La France Insoumise (LFI) the left-wing formation led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon responded by assembling the New Popular Front (NFP)—a legislative bloc led by LFI and consisting of a wide range of forces, including the Socialist Party, French Communist Party and a wider array of left, centre-left and liberal parties. Although no bloc commanded a majority in parliament following the elections, the largest was the NFP.

But rather than appointing the largest party’s nominee as Prime Minister (as is the convention), Macron has stubbornly refused. Although this has caused paralysis in the National Assembly, Macron would clearly prefer to answer to his capitalist backers, who are terrified of even the prospect of any pro-working class reforms. The limited set of policies put forward by the NFP—including scrapping the pension reform, a small increase in taxes on the rich and a raise in the minimum wage—are clearly too much to stomach for his backers.

Instead, Macron chose to appoint Barnier as Prime Minister, whose party Les Republicains only won 7% of the vote in the previous election. Barnier’s net contribution over his time in office was to try and force through a mixture of deeply reactionary social policies and an austerity budget which would have amounted to €40bn in cuts to key services.

A motion of no confidence, tabled by the NFP was put forward and, at the last minute also voted for by Rassemblement National leading to 331 Assembly members voting to bring Barnier down. While Macron painted this as the far-right and ‘far-left’ collaborating to bring the ‘center’ down, the reality is that RN only voted for it on a last minute basis, fearing that were they seen to be continuing to prop up a hated unrepresentative government, this would have blunted their populist appeal to Le Pen’s growing base.

Cracks in the NFP begin to surface

The fact that the NFP was able to deny Macron a majority, to seemingly block the rise of the RN (at least for now) and to do so with a basic set of progressive policies has been held up by many internationally as a model for the left to emulate. However, while recognizing the NFP’s success, it is also necessary to take a closer and more critical look to chart a clear way forward.

Recent weeks have shown the deep and increasingly irreconcilable contradictions inherent within the front. LFI, the biggest and most powerful force in the bloc has correctly stuck to its line of clearly opposing Macron, correctly refusing to meet with the President and demanding his impeachment. The rhetoric of the Socialist Party, the Communist Party as well as others like Les Ecologistes (Greens), meanwhile, has moved towards accommodation with Macron and a willingness to concede the alliance’s program for the sake of propping up a government without Macron’s resignation.

This basic question: whether to prop up Macron or to bring him down, whether to firmly oppose his agenda or to concede to it, is a fundamental dividing line for the struggle in France today, and one that reveals the disconnect between fundamentally different types of parties.. For a time the ‘centrist’ forces within the NFP were compelled to follow Melenchon’s lead, however reluctantly. But it has become clearer that the NFP will going forward be increasingly hampered by the presence of what are ultimately parties of the establishment. After all, the Socialist Party still has prominently in its fold figures like Francois Hollande, whose austerity agenda led to the implosion of Socialist Party in the 2010s. The Socialist Party, alongside Place Publique, the party of prominent figure Raphael Glucksmann, outright defend the capitalist market economy. These forces were always going to be unreliable ‘allies’ of the left at best.

Threat of the right

Mélenchon and other leading figures in LFI have so far taken a clear position of opposition to this conciliatory tendency. Mélenchon took to X (formerly Twitter) to boldly state “We won’t be part of it!” Meanwhile Manuel Bompard, LFI’s National Coordinator explained in more detail:

“We will not sell out the program on which all the deputies of the New Popular Front were elected to participate in a government. We will not govern with the presidential parties and the traditional right when we have just censored their program. The steps taken in this direction by the Socialist Party, proposing for example to abandon the repeal of retirement at 64 to participate in a government, are their own.”

This is clearly a correct stance to take. This situation also speaks to the huge pressures that the parliamentary left in France will continue to come under. Even if these sell-out parties end up leaving the NFP, this will be necessary to maintain a clear position—no compromise with the Macronists or their anti-working class policies! This is not just necessary as a part of building the necessary struggle of trade unions and social movements to fight Macron’s agenda, but also to stop the rising forces of the racist far-right.

If the NFP were to mix its banner with that of the hated political establishment and tone down its opposition to austerity, this would without doubt lay the basis for the RN to grow much more rapidly, giving them space to monopolise the ‘anti-establishment’ vote. These are lessons which also apply to the left internationally, and serve as an instructive warning. In the United States for example, the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders and the DSA, who adopted a ‘strategy’ of tailing Harris, Biden and the Democrats simply created the basis for Trump to take power, since the ‘left’ became associated with the hated Democratic establishment.

The long-held ‘Republican Front’ tactic, whereby parties of the left advocate votes for mainstream bourgeois candidates in order to block the far-right from taking power, is in reality wearing thin and losing its effectiveness. Since the 2002 Presidential election, when a record 82% of voters united to block the neo-fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen from taking power, the far-right has continually grown stronger. Jean-Marie’s daughter Marine Le Pen has sought to make her party more acceptable to the capitalists, attempting to moderate her tone and more overtly distance itself from its neo-fascist past. Meanwhile she has falsely posed as a defender of workers, small businesspeople and farmers, speaking about opposing neoliberal attacks on “the French.” Faced with this opponent, it is no longer feasible to think uniting with the mainstream establishment parties who have generated so much opposition will be effective any longer.

In fact, far from acting as a block on the far-right, Macron has in fact time and time again tried to legitimise the reactionary, racist ideas of the RN, normalising them further and adopting the essence of their programme. Macron and Barnier for instance oversaw the appointment in September of Bruno Retailleau to the Interior Minister. Retailleau, appointed to appease the RN, over his time in office has overseen increasing Islamophobic and anti-migrant policies, such as the banning of the abaya (a dress worn by Muslim women) in schools.

The only way to stop the far-right and bring a stop to their rise is through mass anti-racist struggle and the independent mass action of the French working class. The solution does not lie in the parliamentary assembly, but on the streets and in the workplaces. It lies in mass struggle to counter the racists, as well as union mobilisations and strike action to defend the interests of all workers, whether French-born or migrant.

To defeat Macron & his agenda, turn to the streets!

Despite the pension reform now being in law, the French working-class and trade union movement remains a mighty force. It showed its potential strength and power on the protest strike day on December 5 called by the CGT (French union confederation). 200,000 public sector workers (especially in the education sector) and their supporters marched through Paris saying no to the Macron-Barnier government’s austerity agenda. Likewise significant actions have taken place on the French railways against privatization, as well as high-profile campaigns against job losses in the car industry.

Equally inspiring have been the mass protests against patriarchal violence and rape in French society. These mobilisations, including thousands in Paris on 25 November came out onto the streets following revelations of the horrific abuse endured by Gisèle Pelicot at the hands of her violent, misogynistic husband and his accomplices. This, and all progressive social movements should be stepped up and united in a struggle to bring down Macron.

Events have shown that sectoral strikes and token 24-hour days of action will not be enough to really transform the situation. To do this, unions should coordinate their strike dates, with a clear plan to escalate the fightback, up to and including a political general strike to force Macron and his cronies out.

This should be tied to demands which can unite all workers in struggle, including not just bringing the pension age back down to 62, but for massive taxes on the super-rich and public ownership of key industries. Where companies threaten redundancies, unions should demand and fight for them to be nationalised, under democratic workers’ control, and for a transition to socially useful green services, technology and industry. The big shareholders who profited from misery shouldn’t get a cent in compensation.

But this fightback also needs a political expression, which must be the role that LFI plays going forward. Despite mobilising and supporting the movement against the pension reform last year and anti Macron protests this year, LFI’s parliamentary figures have since then tended to rely excessively on parliamentary manoeuvring. While motions of no confidence, impeachment and left-wing amendments in the Assembly can play an important role, it is simply not enough.

LFI needs to urgently turn to the streets and the workplaces, using its resources and profile to initiate and build struggles—whether that be the unions, climate movement, and movements against sexism. Opening up and democratising LFI has to be a crucial part of this. As things stand, LFI has very little organised input by the party’s rank-and-file membership. There are a claimed 400,000 supporters of LFI, with a number of ‘groups’ organising in the communities, but these are mostly autonomous from the party machine and have no vehicle through which they can control their leaders and make policy. Regular democratic decision-making conferences, with debates and free discussion to decide LFI’s strategy and programme are necessary. To face up to the tasks of this period, LFI needs to relaunch itself as a genuine mass party which workers, fighting trade unionists and youth, feminist and climate activists can not only support, but join and control—a party to call their own.

Ultimately, resolving French capitalism’s deep crisis means the need to fight for a workers’ government, expropriating the enormous wealth of the capitalists and putting France’s wealth to the benefit of the workers, poor and exploited, as part of an international struggle for socialism. LFI has correctly called for a ‘rupture’ with the institutions of the broken Fifth Republic. ISA argues that this must mean a socialist revolution, which replaces the exploitation and poverty of capitalism with democratic and sustainable planning for people and the planet.