Emmanuel Macron has pushed through a rise in the pension age despite vast protests. In a televised address on Monday night, he said he’d “heard the anger” in the streets — yet his government’s new budget plans promise further attacks on France’s social model.
Next year’s French election looks like it’ll be dominated by right-wing discourses around identity and immigration. Former Socialist candidate Benoît Hamon tells Jacobin how the Left can put inequality back on the agenda and win.
Last week, France’s left-wing parties tabled the no-confidence vote that felled conservative premier Michel Barnier. Now the Parti Socialiste threatens to break from the left-wing alliance in favor of a coalition with Emmanuel Macron and the center right.
For François Mitterrand, France's atrocities in Algeria were stepping-stones to power.
The yellow vests protests aren’t just a clash between Paris and France’s left-behind provinces. Emmanuel Macron’s fuel tax lit the fuse of a far wider sense of inequality.
It's been a year since Emmanuel Macron was elected. His “start-up presidency” is a liberal dystopia.
Emmanuel Macron’s government lost its majority this June, and now relies on strong-arm tactics to push through its agenda. This week’s budget debate showed the government’s weakness — and the possibility of blocking its assault on France’s social model.
Across France, workers are insisting that they be allowed to make masks and ventilators rather than continue with business as usual. Their initiatives show that when workers, not stock prices, decide what’s being made, production can serve the needs of society as a whole.
French workers’ top electoral choice isn’t Marine Le Pen, but abstention. To mobilize their support, the Left needs to look beyond the workplace alone — and answer a deeper mood of alienation.
Four centuries before the storming of the Bastille, the French peasantry rose up in a great revolt known as the Jacquerie. France’s ruling class drowned the revolt in blood and demonized all those who took part in it.
French students face a critical juncture in their fight against Emmanuel Macron. But the movement’s real strength may lie outside the campus.
This weekend’s European elections saw a swing to the right, including big gains for anti-immigration parties. In most cases, far-right forces have abandoned calls to leave the EU — but they are increasingly able to set the bloc’s own agenda.
Pamela Anderson spoke to Jacobin and philosopher Srećko Horvat about the protests in France, the crisis in the European Union, and her own activism.
On November 5, 2018, eight people were killed in Marseille when two buildings collapsed. The site remains a scar on France’s second city, and local residents are still waiting for someone to be held accountable for the deaths.
On Friday, veteran liberal François Bayrou was announced as Emmanuel Macron’s new prime minister. Macron has again formed a government without a majority in parliament — and its planned budget cuts seem likely to face fierce opposition.
Every few months, French president Emmanuel Macron appoints a new government, without his prime ministers ever winning a real base of support. The fundamental problem is the president himself and a dogmatic austerity agenda, which most French people reject.
Ahead of the recent French elections, pundits widely expected voters to punish France Insoumise for its strong pro-Gaza stance. It didn’t happen. Around Europe, left-wing voters are galvanized by parties who defy the pro-Israel mainstream.
In the years after Karl Marx's death, Friedrich Engels wrote that a rising socialist movement could now advance by means other than violent insurrection. This didn't mean an embrace of existing institutions — rather, it meant recovering the mass democracy experimented with during the French Revolution.
After the New Popular Front won July’s French elections, it nominated Lucie Castets for prime minister — only for Emmanuel Macron to ignore the result. Castets told Jacobin how the left-wing coalition can build on its progress and stop the lurch to the right.
Across the political spectrum, many believe the threat of communist revolution made the 20th century’s social democratic reforms possible. In fact, the Cold War’s hostile environment divided the Left and excluded communist parties from government.