“We need to work towards reinforcing the subject,” a man in the waning days of middle age replied, ending a brief digression on Jacques Lacan and how capitalism thrives on the plane of desire. “That may be a bit complicated, but I just wanted to share that with you all.”

Seated on lawn chairs around one of the smaller wooden stages sprinkling the campgrounds of La France Insoumise (LFI)’s summer meetup, dozens of activists had gathered to hear Clémentine Autain MP lead a discussion on the question “What is essential?” There was more than meets the eye in this debate, especially for the embattled LFI — a left-populist movement which has weathered a turbulent four years as the main progressive opposition to President Emmanuel Macron.

LFI had been formed back in 2016 as a political outlet for the discontented, at a time when both French and European politics were reorganizing around the failure of third-way social liberalism and its growth model. The strategic bet: bring the “people” — the collective trampled-upon of the post-2008 world — onto one side, and array them against the “caste” and the “oligarchy.” Throw out all the shibboleths about a post-ideological consensus, but veer away from fights over immigration and multiculturalism. Tap into the fundamentally antagonistic and conflictual nature of politics by confronting head-on the dizzying inequality and misery produced by financial capitalism.