PARIS — One after another, the speakers in Parliament have denounced President Emmanuel Macron and his revolutionary plans, calling them “cynicism” and a “flagrant crime.” Outside, hundreds of protesters shout their fury. Other demonstrators, invoking a long French tradition, have called for his head.

But it’s all theater, for now. The weeks of strikes that began in December and stretched into the New Year against Mr. Macron’s plans to overhaul the French pension system have fizzled, even if the anger has not.

Mr. Macron, the youthful investment banker turned politician, now nearly three years into his presidency, is poised to win his latest battle. His government is hoping that his plan to eliminate France’s 42 different pension schemes and merge them into one will pass the lower house of Parliament, where his party has a lock, by mid-March, and that it will be enshrined in law by the summer. It would change France deeply, like his other programs.

The real question now for the president and his country is: At what cost or benefit to France, now and in the future?