France - October 2, 2026

With the advance of the student movement's struggle…

State workers, public service employees and teachers are also fighting in the streets across France

Out with Macron!

Open the road for worker-student unity!
For the return of May 68!
Open the road for the Commune!

On September 29th, public sector unions across France called for a day of strikes and protests. Nearly 200,000 demonstrators took to the streets in 170 cities, with approximately 30,000 in Paris. In Marseille, Toulouse, Lille, Bordeaux, Lyon, and Orléans, the streets were filled with thousands of protesters. In Nantes, a banner read: “Enough with low wages!” and “France is burning, and your firefighters are burning with her .” The widespread strike by state employees and teachers, along with various other demonstrations, was in protest against the rising cost of living, fuel price increases, and the wage freeze announced by the government in its new 2027 budget.

In Paris, state employees, teachers, and students marched. Firefighters joined the demonstration to express their anger over their arduous work during a summer in which they were sent to the front lines to fight fires caused by a heat wave without adequate resources. They are demanding the creation of new jobs and a reorganization of emergency services, among other demands.

Meanwhile, high school students continue to block access to their schools and colleges in cities across the country. These protests have been taking place at school gates for a week now. They are demanding better classroom conditions, as classrooms are overcrowded, and the hiring of more teachers.
As usual, riot police responded to the school blockades with brutal repression: beatings, tear gas, and even firing tear gas canisters at students' heads. One student suffered a split lip and another a perforated eye. On September 29, there were nearly 40 arrests and 10 people injured, including students and school staff. Despite this terrible repression, the students' struggle is spreading and is supported by families and educators. A prime example of this is the fact that teachers at a high school on the outskirts of Paris formed a human chain to protect students from the police.

With over 400 high schools occupied and hundreds imprisoned…
The student movement is not leaving the streets

Defeat the class-collaborationist policies of the trade union bureaucracies!

The fight is not over. As we write this, clashes with the police and street battles are erupting across France. High school students are the vanguard. The truth is that education in the imperialist France is shattered.

State employees, education workers, transport workers, etc., continue their struggle, and even some metallurgical and chemical sectors, as expected, made their hatred and rage felt.

The organizers of the strike and protests on September 29th were the CGT, CFDT, FO, UNAS, FSU, Solidaires, CFE-CGC, and FA-FP, a broad coalition of unions that today are merely trying to pressure the government and threaten to isolate the student movement.
The task of the moment is to establish coordinating bodies for workers in struggle and the radicalized student movement.
Just like in the French May of '68, we must reach out to the heart of the working class—the very one the trade union bureaucracies are trying to tie the hands of to keep them from entering a decisive struggle—so that a mass counter-offensive can rise up, capable of sweeping away the miserable imperialist Fifth Republic and its anti-worker government!
On September 29thday of struggle, the leaders of the Communist Party and the social democratic wing of the main labor unions declared that with these actions they hoped to pressure the government regarding the presentation of the 2027 budget on October 1st. And “send a message to the presidential candidatesAs always, they are throwing cold water on the workers' struggle only to end up—as usual—at a negotiation table with whichever government is in power, where they surrender all our conquests.

The bureaucracy wants to contain the onslaught of the masses…The only way forward is to trample over it, setting up united-front organizations for the political struggle of the masses. Enough with collaborationist bureaucracies! Make way for self-organization! Make way for worker-student struggle committees! Make way for direct action and worker and popular self-defense!

The Fifth Republic throws its crisis onto its working class and empowers the police to murder workers and poor people who take to the streets to demonstrate for their demands

France is in a brutal arms race to compete for spheres of influence and natural resources worldwide— a matter that will be settled with gunfire against the other imperialist powers. This is demonstrated by the fact that the Macron government has just announced it will send soldiers and ships to Saudi Arabia under the pretext of curbing rising gasoline prices, which are also impacting food prices. This situation of aggression by the Fifth Republic and its path toward inter-imperialist confrontations is being silenced by the entire reformist far left, which is only preparing to intervene in next year's presidential elections, as if we were in times of peace.

The Fifth Republic needs to save 54 billion Euros, according to its 2027 budget. And it will do so over the bones of the working class, freezing pensions and the wage index for public sector employees, as well as housing allowances, while not giving migrant workers their rights. Hospitals and schools are in a deplorable state. Meanwhile, the French bourgeoisie distributed 61 billion Euros this year among the shareholders of major companies, in addition to the 211 billion Euros given annually in subsidies. There is plenty of money for these bloodsucking capitalists and butchers of the French imperialist bourgeoisie! So, make the capitalists pay for the crisis!
The Macron government has declared war on the French working class, which is why they just passed a law giving the police license to kill at demonstrations. They want to discipline and crush the working class in order to launch larger military offensives. The Bonapartist state is being intensified against organizations and activists who demonstrate for the rights of the Palestinian people, and they are even trying to dissolve far-left parties.

In France, as in the Spanish State, Italy, and Germany, the collapse of Maastricht and the imperialist European market hit hard.

The working class is fighting back

Facing the brutal attack launched against them, the French working class is once again rising up alongside the students. This is also happening in Germany, the Spanish State, Italy… The working class of the countries of the imperialist Maastricht is increasingly positioning itself for a counter-offensive.

The crisis and dislocation of the European Union leads, on the one hand, to the rearmament of imperialist bandits and a deepening of their attack against colonial and semi-colonial peoples who compete with the US in the global economy…
On the other hand, a huge process of mass radicalization and polarization is sweeping across all of imperialist Europe.

In the Spanish State, people have taken to the streets in protest against evictions and forced removals. Workers and the poor are threatening to revive the "Republic of the Indignados" and confront the infamous regime of the monarchy and its government.
In Italy, a super exploited working-class youth, left outside the unions by the labor bureaucracies and labor aristocracies, has entered the struggle. Alongside their own demands, they have taken up the fight in defense of the Palestinian masses and against the genocide of Trump and Netanyahu as their own.
The spark that lit the flame for the Italian youth was the Genoa dockworkers, who called for a refusal to ship war materiel to the fascist Zionist state of Israel.

The German proletariat has begun to resist the brutal attack of the capitalists of mass layoffs, as it happens with the struggle of the IG Metall workers. The youth is taking to the streets by the thousands across Germany rejecting compulsory military service.

The French youth struggles, who are the vanguard and foreshadow new leaps in the mass struggle, are part of the torrent that runs through the bankrupt imperialist Europe of Maastricht, corroded also by strong inter-imperialist disputes.
Faced with these radicalization processes that have begun, big imperialist capital is starting to test, with proto -fascist movements, as it cannot be otherwise, the conditions for fascism and civil war against the masses.

The future of the "old world" will be defined by the class war that has also begun again in France.

As we have said, the French working class, a key detachment of the European workers' movement, has entered the fight alongside the Spanish State, German and Italian proletariat.

The crises of the European imperialist powers, which are fiercely competing for the world market with US imperialism and for business with China and Russia, are being addressed with enormous investments in arms, while it is the proletariat that pays the price with the collapse of retirement benefits and pensions, and with the brutal crisis in health and education.
Today, students in France are complaining that garbage is not being collected at their schools. Rats are everywhere and high school students have to study among them.
The families of the French upper bourgeoisie treat the youth, the children of the exploited, as they treat the youth of the colonies and semi-colonies that they plunder and super-exploit.

As it could not be otherwise, the states and regimes with their right hand begin to establish Bonapartism and proto-fascist movements, just as we announced above, which put on the agenda in every workers' uprising the struggle to conquer self-defense committees and the workers' militia, to crush any fascist attempt before it raises its head.
Europe has already experienced this tragedy. Only the proletariat, through revolution, can prevent it.

The infamous and bloody Bonapartist Fifth Republic of France, which massacred the peoples of the Middle East and Africa, now threatens to murder the workers and rebellious youth who enter the fight, while redoubling the brutal police repression against those who fight, imprisoning more than 3,000 mobilized workers and secondary school students.
Reformists are turning a blind eye. The traitors in the union leadership are looking the other way. But the order of shoot to killat any mass uprising is already in effect in France.

The struggle to build the workers' militia is a task for all unions, strike committees, and rebellious youth to defend all demonstrations of workers and students who take to the streets.
Dissolve the police and repressive forces! Immediate freedom for all imprisoned for fighting!

From Portugal to the Russian steppes: One single working class!
Therein lie the forces to crush imperialism, expropriate the expropriators of the people and plunderers of the entire world, and resume the path of socialist revolution in the 21st century.

The student movement in France is not abandoning the streets of Paris or the rest of the country. They are fighting for their demands in defense of education. This is a task for the entire French working class.
The struggle of the student movement to converge with the workers' movement is the task of the moment. It is the path that opened up to the French May of '68, despite and against Stalinism and other treacherous union bureaucracies.

Open the road for May 68!
Down with the imperialist Fifth Republic! Out with Macron!
To crush fascism, we must defeat imperialism!

In the imperialist Europe of Maastricht: the enemy is within!
Migrant workers are the heart of the European proletariat… They come from the oppressed peoples plundered and robbed by imperialist bandits. Their children are already part of the French student movement.

As in Italy, the French workers' and students' vanguard must take up, as part of their demands, the fight to end the fascist state of Israel, whose genocide, initiated by Biden, Macron, and other imperialist bandits, has already massacred more than 350,000 Palestinians in Gaza alone, while hundreds more are found dead under the rubble every day.
The fight against fascism, which awakens thousands of young people and workers to struggle in Europe, must begin by embracing the struggle of the Palestinian people.
Open the road for proletarian internationalism!

For worker-student unity!
Make way for the Paris Commune throughout France!
Make way for the revolution!

Editorial Committee of “The International Workers' Organizer”