Anibal: The Civil Unrest in France

Social resentment explodes in the suburbs where thousands of young people are scraping by as best they can, between unemployment and job insecurity, legal and illegal shenanigans, with a hatred of the police that they have earned by repressive effort, trigger-happy, haughty. 

Among the proletariat with regular work there is no mobilization, and it doesn't seem to be expected for now. The unions protest about the "excesses" and demand legal reforms and change in police behavior from the Macron government. As of yet and as far as we know, the unions are not calling for anything particular.

The bourgeois political left also speak of "excesses", of racism and marginalization, and are calling for  the kind of democratic demonstrations which occurred two days ago and the one scheduled for Saturday, in addition to the relatives of the murdered youth, NGOs and elements of the religious denominations which exist in these slums. The government says that so much violence and looting is unacceptable, and that this state murder is an individual case, a police officer who will be investigated and tried for recklessness … bla bla bla. The state has deployed 40,000 troops in the face of proliferating clashes, the burning of warehouses, looting of shops, attacks on town halls and institutional headquarters, some police stations, a local prison where they took detainees … the number of arrests is rising and has already passed 600. 

The hatred of degraded conditions of existence, of a capitalism which cannot live up to the mystified model of "social ascent" effective for everyone and which keeps a reserve army of labor crammed into miserable neighborhoods, the tedium of a half-hearted life with no future to look forward to, it all adds fire to streets of Paris. On the television, the mass intoxication of the media declares that this misery is nothing new, to talk about films like La Haine and praise its director who, together with the bourgeois left, declare themselves saddened by what has become of France.

Without a massive proletarian response against capital, with a powerful and self-controlled mass strike outside the demos-union channel, these kinds of eruptions will be repeated, and after a few days they will fade away. Action against the enemy is limited above all to the police, who have the manpower and means, training and experience to spare and the potential to lose without opening a way for the future other than the repetition of the clashes. Autonomous calls for action are spreading through networks, but the essential nucleus of the proletariat, which can paralyze the productive and distribution apparatus as a measure of strength and to gain momentum and fighting capacity, is missing and failing.

Aníbal

30-6-2023