Nuit Debout, France’s massive mobilizations against a proposal to dismantle the country’s labor code, has drawn comparisons to similar international movements — Occupy, Turkey’s Gezi Park, the movement of the squares in Greece. This wealth of experience helps us look at Nuit Debout and its prospects going forward.

Stathis Kouvelakis, a member of Greece’s Popular Unity, who was active in the 1980s as a member in France’s Communist Party (PCF) and later the Ligue communiste révolutionnaire and Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste, has been following the situation in France closely. Here, he speaks with Révolution Permanente editor Emmanuel Barot and columnist Damien Bernard about the “authoritarian statism” of France’s government, the competing tactics and ideologies of the movement against the proposed Labor Law, and what lessons can be drawn from the experience of Syriza in Greece.