By Donald Donato
According to the narrative repeated
by most news sources, the “Gilets Jaunes” (Yellow Vests) uprising began
‘spontaneously’ on Saturday, November 17, when approximately 300,000 activists,
incensed by a heavy regressive tax on fuel, began a series of roadblocks and
protests which snowballed across France.
Weekend demonstrations continued
Saturday, November 24, and by the following weekend, glass was broken, cars and
some buildings were set ablaze. Although the hundreds of thousands of
protesters were overwhelmingly peaceful, Molotov cocktails and police brutality
have taken the headlines.
As a bold gesture of political
punctuation, graffiti calling for French President Emmanuel Macron’s
resignation was spray-painted around the enormous base of the Arc de Triomphe
in central Paris. But the real story of growing social inequality, government
austerity, and lowering taxes on the super-rich, began many years ago—in 1983
to be exact.
After former Socialist President
François Mitterrand was elected in 1981, he attempted to jerry-rig a Keynesian
economic policy. Facing mounting pressure from international financial
institutions and large capital interests, the franc was devalued three times
between 1981 and March 1983.
Mitterrand’s introduction of
austerity measures, which were then termed “tournant de la rigueur,” catered to
these powerful interests and kept the franc in the European Monetary System
(EMS). This piece of economic and social history is key to understanding that
it was then, in 1983, that wages were no longer indexed to prices, taxes were
increased, and subsidies to state-owned companies were slashed. Both directly
and indirectly, these policies underpin some of the most important grievances
held by the November 17 movement.
Ironically, it was a “Socialist”
president who introduced the neoliberal model of state finance and economic
policy which has bled French workers and small businesses dry to this day.
Mitterrand, for all his dirigiste grandeur, introduced deeper neoliberal
“reforms” than even center-right presidents like Giscard d’Estaing had ever
dared. It was thus 35 years ago that the seeds of the current Yellow Vest
rebellion were sown.
Politically, working-class support
also shifted in those years. Through the 1970s, it was the French Communist
Party (PCF) which largely represented working-class French. After the
Mitterrand presidency, the PCF had been marginalized, leaving workers to their
own devices—some gravitating to the far left, others to the right.
This social and political tectonic
shift began as a direct result of the Socialist Party’s economic policies of
the 1980s, which failed to understand, let alone address, the so-called “new
poor,” whose numbers were unmistakably growing. It was then that the infamous
banlieues, poor suburban areas of large French cities, began to be neglected
and lose touch with the rest of society. Immigrant communities became more and
more socially and economically isolated. Workers were left pointing their
fingers at one another.
It has been a very long and painful
march for French workers, students, and pensioners. Decades of sustained
right-wing attacks on everything from social services to dwindling support for
students has taken a heavy toll on the average working family.
Within this context, November 17 was
anything but spontaneous. It was the logical next scene in the theater of the
absurd which has played out in French politics for a generation. Had it not
been for the leadership of one of the nation’s largest trade union
confederations, the CGT, neoliberal “reforms” would likely have moved quicker
than they did. Over the years, large (and very large) walkouts, strikes, and
work stoppages have fought the right-wing economic agenda with everything they
had. But it took a regressive tax for a large swath of the fabric of French
society to put the pieces of the economic conspiracy against them together. The
result has been nothing less than explosive.
Beginning last May, with an online
petition against the proposed fuel tax, the November 17 movement began to take
root in social media, culminating in the planned blockages which set off a
rapid and multiorganizational collaboration resulting in the largest public
protests in France since 1968.
If the fuel tax protests were the
ignition for the Yellow Vests to explode in popularity across the country, low
wages, regressive consumer taxes, and President Macron’s devotion to shelving
the progressive income tax on the wealthy, all combined to create a mass
movement of outrage and outright rebellion against the government’s neoliberal
policies—and the capital which stands behind them.
To put on a Yellow Vest today in
France is to give a middle finger to the deteriorating social and economic
establishment begun in large part by Mitterrand’s Socialist Party and
intensified by subsequent right-wing governments.
As Macron, his ministers, and
financiers wring their hands in the gilded palaces of the French Republic and
squeeze the Yellow Vests ever more violently in the grip of paramilitary police
forces, the lines of this decades-long battle harden. When all is said and
done, however, Macron is not the enemy or the cause—he is merely the agent of
capital whose cost can no longer be borne by French society.
Well before November 17, the
720,000-strong Confédération générale du travail (CGT), along with the even
larger Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail (CFDT) and still other
trade union federations, have been fighting a series of attacks by the
government on everything from pensions to cost of living adjustments, education
to the environment. Contrary to misinformation repeated even by news sources
such as National Public Radio, the CGT and other labor confederations have been
at the center of organizing the large marches and protests throughout the
country.
According to a recent CGT
communiqué, Prime Minister Édouard Philippe did not want to see or hear
warnings issued by the trade union confederations months ago related to
injustices the Yellow Vests now seek to be resolved. After the first three
weeks of social anger, in a bid to calm what is quickly becoming an all-out
rebellion, the government announced measures to get out of the conflict and try
to calm the situation.
One measure offered by Macron
himself is to suspend the fuel tax altogether. Too little, too late. The mass
movement of workers, students, and pensioners realize the government’s proposed
measures are not likely to allow a majority of the population to make ends
meet, and so the protests have grown.
The future of France will likely be
played out in the streets over the coming weeks and months. (IPA Service)
Courtesy: People’s World
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