OB

We should note from the outset the way that the conflict has been covered in the press and the response it has received from the political class. The mobilizations and the movement’s activists have produced a class arrogance from the elite, similar to the contempt we saw in France during the referendum on the European Constitutional Treaty in 2005.

Now, in the face of this, we are witnessing a real politicization of the people. In France right now, there are tens of thousands, and maybe hundreds of thousands, of people in the process of becoming politicized in record time.

The challenge for us, on behalf of the organized social and political movements in France, is to stand with this movement so that it has the most anticapitalist expression possible. However, we cannot deny the reality of our times, including the maneuvers and the attempts by the extreme right to capture it.

This is a real problem, and there is no use denying that this is part of the scenario. Therefore, the coming together of the yellow vests and social movements — which is being organized from below, at the local level — is a very important element in response to the manipulative attempts of the extreme right.

The determination, radicalism, combativeness, and vigilance of hundreds of people, the barricades in the Champs Élysées — all this recalls memory of an underground history of revolution and of general strikes in France.

It also reminds us of the defeats of the traditional workers movement of the last fifteen or twenty years. Over those years, the level of confrontation didn’t go beyond a certain point, and many believed our more radical history had disappeared from collective consciousness.

But the reality was different. Even people who have not participated in these mobilizations are aware of the impasse facing traditional forms of struggle.

We may also be witnessing an attempt to resolve the underlying problems, to create a relationship of forces that can win, by looking for a shortcut that relies on radical actions. That is, hoping that certain forms of action might, in and of themselves, solve the deeper problems.

But there are no shortcuts. If we want to push back Macron, we must organize greater numbers — we must surpass the size of the current mobilizations. We will have to break the glass ceiling that has so far limited the scope of participation, even for the yellow vests.

Today, we are facing a problem that we are very familiar with in France during these last years. We have seen hundreds of thousands of people participate in mobilizations, but they fail to go further.

The novelty of the yellow vests is that 70 percent of the population supports them. We are witnessing a scenario similar to the one we experienced in France in 1995, a dynamic we defined as a “strike by delegation” — meaning that 10 percent of a union mobilized to take action, while another 70 percent was willing to support them.

What we need is to transform the minority taking action into collective action. This is the only way to really push back Macron.