French imperialism, out of Ukraine !

French imperialism, out of Ukraine, and if it goes there, let us wish for its defeat, because the main enemy remains the Capital of our own country, and its social-patriotic lackeys !

President Macron’s speech

In his address to the French people on March 5th, President Macron pretended to give us a history lesson, but above all wanted to frighten us :

The United States of America, our ally, has changed its position on this war, is offering less support to Ukraine, and is leaving its future uncertain. At the same time, the same United States of America intends to impose tariffs on goods from Europe.

(...)

It has to be said, we are entering a new era.

The war in Ukraine has now lasted for more than three years. From day one, we decided to support Ukraine and sanction Russia, and we were right to do so because it is not only the Ukrainian people who are bravely fighting for their freedom, but also our own security that is threatened. If a country can invade its neighbor in Europe with impunity, then no one can be sure of anything anymore.

So, is Macron going to declare war on Russia to reconquer Ukrainian territories within its 1991 borders, as journalists from all the mainstream media outlets claim ? No, quite the opposite. In his speech, contrary to appearances, Macron doesn’t speak of war, but of peace ; he implicitly endorses the new borders conquered by the Russian army.

All initiatives that contribute to peace are a step in the right direction, and I want to commend them this evening. We must continue to help the Ukrainians resist until they can negotiate a lasting peace with Russia, a peace that is good for themselves and for all of us.

What French troops would do, therefore, is police the new borders, consolidating Russian imperialist conquests :

Peace in Ukraine may also require the deployment of European forces. These forces would not fight today, nor would they fight on the front lines, but rather, once peace is signed, they would be there to guarantee its full implementation. Starting next week, we will convene in Paris the chiefs of staff of the countries that wish to assume their responsibilities in this regard. This is a plan for a solid and lasting peace.

For politically aware workers, the situation is clear. The "new era" didn’t begin last week, last month, or last year, nor with a Trump speech or Macron’s March 5th address to the French people , but with 2008, with the stagnation and collapse of capital under its own weight. It was during this collapse of capitalism that the inevitable prospect of a march toward world war took shape.

The second stage, a consequence of the first, was the US desire to prevent German industry from accessing raw materials from Russia, all of which were linked to China’s pool of cheap labor. The unification of Eurasia would create a competitor to the US. The US’s enemy is not Russia itself, but, as in 1941, the unification of Europe behind Germany, which only military maneuvers could prevent.

The peace between Putin and Trump fits this scenario : US imperialism opposed Russian imperialism, which wanted an alliance with Germany, by preventing this alliance and forcing Russia to ally itself... with the US. The US thus humbled German and French imperialism. The US humiliated Germany by destroying the Nord Stream gas pipeline, and it humiliated the French bourgeoisie by allowing them to be expelled from Africa.

The grand Russian and African dreams of German and French imperialism are over, but to keep them in its service and perpetuate their divisions, the US is proposing to these second-tier imperialisms, relegated to third-tier status, that they themselves oversee the wasteland that Ukraine has become—a new Berlin Wall on a national scale—in order to seize raw materials. As in Africa, each country will send its armies to "protect a mine" from the local population and for the benefit of a multinational corporation.

The fiction of "defending Europe against Russia" is refuted by the fact that Australia is invited to participate in the mess, as if Russian troops were threatening Australia !

It is this "Africanization" of Ukraine that Macron, representative of French imperialism, calls a "new era".

Aggressive and militaristic French imperialism

The French army, whose official role is to "defend the country," has only done so once, historically, when it was the army of the social and political revolution, an army of volunteers commanded by 18-year-old generals ! Otherwise, it has only waged wars of conquest against peoples, such as the Napoleonic Wars, colonial wars, world wars, neo-colonial wars, and new imperialist wars like those in Yugoslavia, Lebanon, Libya, Ukraine, etc. In none of these wars has it defended the people against foreign armed aggression and, on the contrary, has always been the instrument of armed aggression against peoples.

The most famous examples are the French army making a pact with its so-called German enemy against the revolutionary people of the Paris Commune of 1871, the French army supposedly tasked with "liberating Alsace and Lorraine from the Prussian yoke" and which crushed the people of these two regions under bombs, the French army of 1940 which did not fight against German fascism, which ended up making a direct pact with it and will eventually pretend to have always fought in the camp of Anglo-American imperialism, etc…

Today, it is an army that pretends to fight dictatorships in all corners of the world, from the fascist dictatorship of Milosevic in Yugoslavia (which France actually supported) to the dictatorships of Romania, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Mali, Chad, Central African Republic, etc., only to establish even bloodier dictatorships when it actually succeeded in overthrowing a dictator.

No people were liberated by the French army, and many peoples still suffer the horrors inflicted upon them by the French army, including the million deaths of the Algerian people, the African continent brutally enslaved, and Indochina. The current government, which glorifies these acts of barbarity (see Retailleau-Bayrou’s stance on Algeria), will not change our minds.

Although imperialism has lost its colonial wars, particularly in Africa and Indochina, it continues these wars in its colonies in the Antilles, New Caledonia, and Réunion, among others…

Although France’s armed imperialism has recently been expelled from many African countries, it continues in others and is trying to expand into Europe under the pretext of Russian imperialism.

In any case, more than ever, imperialism is the fusion of the interests of big capital and the capitalist state.

Expelled from Africa, increasingly unwelcome in Romania, unceremoniously kicked out of Georgia, discredited in the Balkans, mistreated in the West Indies and New Caledonia, bypassed by its American master regarding Ukraine, ridiculed on the European stage (the EU’s signing of the treaty with Mercosur – deadly for French agriculture but favorable to German industry – despite the unanimous opposition of the French parliament proves it !), decadent French imperialism is becoming all the more aggressive on the international stage as well as on the domestic stage.

The war in Ukraine : a boon for the French state, unable to pay its debt

The downgrading of French imperialism from 2nd to 3rd place by the USA has one advantage for our imperialism : it can temporarily avoid financial bankruptcy.

Because just a few weeks ago, ministers looked down on workers with a haughty and stern expression, repeating that public spending had to be reduced to pay off the debt. They implied, in passing, that healthcare spending was one category of this public expenditure, whereas social security is funded by wages, not taxes.

These politicians are now proclaiming that our country’s survival no longer depends on cutting public spending... but rather on exploding it ! This is for the military, therefore, once again at the expense of "social spending." The war economy option allows the French state to increase its debt and subsidies to major French corporations to "defend our sovereignty," with the guarantee of the European Union and the tacit agreement of the rating agencies. The fear of war, of Russian tanks in the Place de la Concorde, aims to save states from bankruptcy, allowing them to remove any ceiling on their debt. Bankruptcy is rebranded as a "civilizational project" ! Certainly, the vague threat from Russia is as real as the ogre brandished before children, but dozens of journalists (France Info, France Inter, etc.) are handsomely paid to frighten us. But let’s remember that in his speech on March 5th, Macron declared "peace" to Russia !

Above all, military spending is unproductive. Private companies may receive billions in the short term, but the crisis of capitalism and the lack of truly productive, large-scale investment will persist. The prospect of proletarian revolution is the only alternative to imperialist wars.

Social patriots in the style of Glucksmann

Macron’s calls for a war economy have sparked enthusiasm among left-wing politicians like R. Glucksmann, who declared : "If we give free rein to Putin’s aggression, a full-blown war is possible." It was in 1914 that the Socialist Party (PS) gained access to government positions, when L. Blum launched his career as chief of staff to Marcel Sembat, who was appointed Minister of Public Works in Viviani’s "Sacred Union" cabinet on August 26, 1914.

Positions, careers, lucrative sinecures, that’s the reward for social democrats like Glucksmann who support French imperialism.

In 1934, Léon Blum’s Socialist Party (PS) formed a political alliance with the Stalinist Thorez of the Communist Party (PC), at the very moment when Stalin was exterminating millions of Ukrainians through an organized famine, which the Ukrainians themselves have since dubbed the Holodomor. Thus, the French Stalinists and social democrats have Ukrainian blood on their hands, yet they are the ones who now urge us to support the war economy under the guise of helping the Ukrainians !

The social-patriots, the agents of the French imperialist bourgeoisie, are to be denounced today, just as Lenin, Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg denounced them in 1914.

Down with the social patriots ! is a slogan to be popularized in the working class.

The new Jouhaux

Since social patriots are historical enemies of the working class, so too are the so-called revolutionaries who fail to denounce them. In 1914, alongside the Socialist Party, the top brass of the CGT joined the Sacred Union. L. Jouhaux, a CGT leader, the equivalent of S. Binet today, became "commissioner to the nation".

One of the worst successors to L. Jouhaux is the European Network of Solidarity with Ukraine (RESU), primarily driven by Solidaires, which acts as a mouthpiece for NATO within the French labor movement. Three parties in France claim to be more or less followers of Lenin and Trotsky : Lutte Ouvrière (LO), the NPA-R, and Révolution Permanente (RP). The spokespeople for these three parties are members of Solidaires, appointed as delegates. However, in their media appearances, they neither denounce nor mention Solidaires’ involvement in this RESU !

When N. Arthaud, in her editorial of March 10, denounces the political left, she "forgets" to denounce the trade union left of Solidaires and the CGT, because her spokesperson is part of it :

From the National Rally to the Communist Party and La France Insoumise, all parties approve of the shift to a war economy. The left has abandoned all reference to class struggle and, like the right, claims allegiance to General de Gaulle and his sovereigntism.

The trade union confederations are exonerated ! Yet, S. Binet regularly declares that "we" must be an industrial power that must be sovereign in the face of the USA. She is the worthy heir, along with Solidaires, of Jouhaux, a yellow card at the head of the main French trade union organization.

Down with the fake revolutionaries of LO, NPA-R and RP, JP Mercier, G. Quirante, A. Kazib, pseudo-revolutionary guarantors of the socio-patriots !

Conclusion

The aggressiveness of French imperialism on the territory of Eastern Europe is a corollary of its defeats in Africa, of its weakening in New Caledonia, Mayotte, and the Antilles.

It is not a Russian invasion that our capitalists fear, but the financial bankruptcy of the French state. Let us answer them : No to a war economy, to military or pseudo-military spending, to public subsidies for private interests, all in the name of war !

The main enemy of the French people is within their own country ; it is not Russia, it is big capital represented by Macron and his socio-patriotic lackeys like R. Glucksmann, JL Mélenchon, S. Binet or the Stalinist Roussel !