By Gérard Florenson

Resignation and immediate recall of Prime Minister Lecornu, government crisis, mobilizations and struggles; what’s the situation in France? What are the possible political outcomes?

King Macron is naked. In France, as in other countries, the press, flabbergasted by the speed and conditions of Lecornu’s resignation, is wondering whether he still has a small chance of surviving politically this new failure. As the old saying goes, “those at the top can no longer govern as they used to”, but if we analyze the situation more finely, there is an obvious crisis at the top of the State, but at this stage, despite the strength of social protest, employers can still “govern as they used to”, advance their pawns and impose most of their demands, even if local struggles may force them into partial setbacks, or concessions in terms of wages or employment. Strikes, blockades and demonstrations have shown the determination of many workers and young people, but it will take more, the mobilization of more sectors of the working class, to break the momentum of social setbacks. This obviously calls into question the methods of “struggle” used by the trade union leaderships, who are in the process of rehashing their betrayal of the movement against pension reform, and putting forward the sole demand of “genuine negotiations”. With such adversaries, capitalists have nothing to worry about…

How will the situation evolve in the near future? We’re not soothsayers, and we’ll leave the speculations to enlightened political scientists, but as we’ve just pointed out, the employers will do everything in their power to keep a government at their service. As for the rest, barring an outbreak of class warfare that would sweep them all away – and which both “left-wing” politicians and union bureaucracies will do everything to avoid – there are three short-term outcomes.

The first is Macron’s resignation and new presidential elections. The formula appeals to some potential candidates, starting with Jean-Luc Melenchon, who already sees himself at the Elysée, but this outcome is highly unlikely. Macron is hanging on to his job. He doesn’t care about his popularity rating. He’s ready for any combination, any cohabitation to remain President. And apart from LFI and two former prime ministers with personal ambitions, no one is seriously calling for him to step down. LFI reiterates its illusory demand for Macron’s destitution within the framework of the institutions, which is simply a supposedly radical posture. As Marine Le Pen is temporarily ineligible, she has no interest in early presidential elections. The Socialist Party has made offers of service, and what’s left of the New Popular Front is simply asking Macron to appoint a left-wing prime minister in the name of democracy and the traditions of the 5th Republic!

But it is above all the trade union leaders who are protecting Macron by wanting to confine mobilizations to the terrain of demands alone, without calling into question the president’s power, at a time when the majority of the population rejects him.

The second possibility was that Macron, having made up his mind that it would be impossible to form a stable majority, would dissolve the National Assembly; a logical but risky solution, which could lead to a result almost identical to the current composition of parliament, with perhaps a slight setback for the NFP due to its divisions, and very probably a collapse of the “President’s parties” to the benefit of the Republicans and stability for the far right, if the polls are to be believed. But new elections against a backdrop of social unrest could bring the system’s parties, including the Rassemblement National, into disrepute, and result in a massive abstention that would strip the new assembly of all legitimacy. Dissolution has its supporters on both the right and the left, but “those down below don’t want to be governed like they used to be”, and are tired of parliamentary jousting and other role-playing.

Macron chose to postpone the dissolution by looking for a Prime Minister who was far enough to the right to buy the neutrality of the Rassemblement National, but not too fascist to be accepted by the so-called centrist deputies, or even to appeal to the PS’s sense of responsibility and thus avoid censure. This solution would have met the expectations of the MEDEF, which would be satisfied with a strong government and dreams of a Meloni for France, and which does not want repeated elections. But it’s impossible in the current assembly, as no combination can count on a sufficient majority. By keeping Lecornu, Macron can just hope to gain a little time, perhaps a few days before a motion of censure, which to be a majority vote presupposes that the whole left votes for it, in identical terms to that of the far right. This brings us back to a dissolution opening the way to an alliance between the so-called Republican right and the Rassemblement National, a formula that has been tried and tested in various countries.

As mentioned above, we’re not soothsayers. On the other hand, it is clear that none of these institutional solutions meets the needs of workers and young people, and that it is on our own terrain, that of the class struggle, that we must act to put an end not only to Macron and his teams, but to all the employers’ parties, to the major capitalist groups pulling the strings, to exploitation and all forms of oppression. The development of struggles since September 10 shows that this is possible if we succeed in forcing the union leaderships to put their forces at the service of the class struggle, to abandon pseudo-concertations and other round-table discussions, and to confront management and government.

We need to hit the same nail on the head, together, and mobilize around an emergency plan based on essential demands. Jobs, wages, social protection, public services, the fight against job insecurity and discrimination – all these demands must be spelled out and quantified by workers and the general public in companies, workplaces and localities, and we must impose them through our struggles (every serious social advance has been won through struggle). We need to force union leaderships to take up and defend this plan, and to do this we need to set up and coordinate our struggle committees everywhere, starting from the ground up.

It’s in the experience of fighting together to defend our living conditions and break the bosses’ resistance that we’ll forge the conviction that the only way out of the catastrophes that threaten us is through a workers’ and people’s government, born of the struggles and accountable to the working people.