Yellow Vest movement of September 10th in France

Yellow Vest movement of September 10th in France

Thermidor (July 19-August 18) 2025 : Those below no longer want to, those above no longer can

The world’s ruling classes are concerned about the convergence in France of several crises : social crisis, political crisis, financial crisis, institutional crisis, crisis of confidence, etc. because such a convergence signifies a revolutionary risk.

How can revolutionaries judge whether a situation is pre-revolutionary or revolutionary ? Thanks to Lenin, Marxists have three criteria that have never been denied until now, the first two of which are :

The fundamental law of revolution, confirmed by all revolutions and especially by the three Russian revolutions of the 20th century, is this : for revolution to take place, it is not enough for the exploited and oppressed masses to become aware of the impossibility of living as before and to demand changes. For revolution to take place, it is necessary that the exploiters cannot live and govern as before. Only when "those below" no longer want to and "those above" can no longer continue to live in the old way, only then can revolution triumph. This truth is expressed in another way in these terms : revolution is impossible without a national crisis (affecting both exploited and exploiters). Thus, for a revolution to take place, it is necessary : ​​first, to ensure that the majority of workers (or, in any case, the majority of conscious, thoughtful, politically active workers) have fully understood the necessity of revolution and are ready to die for it ; then the ruling classes must go through a governmental crisis which draws into political life even the most backward masses (the sign of any true revolution is a rapid tenfold, or even hundredfold, increase in the number of men capable of political struggle, among the working and oppressed masses, hitherto apathetic), which weakens the government and makes its prompt overthrow possible for the revolutionaries.

Lenin (1920)

How is the September 10 movement a sign of a pre-revolutionary situation ?

Those above can no longer

According to non-Marxist revolutionaries (NPA, RP), or pseudo-Marxists (LO), for reformists in general (PC, LFI, PS), those at the top would be doing very well. From the CFDT, to the CGT and Solidaires, from the PC and LFI to the NPA and Lutte Ouvrière, we hear the refrain of André Bergeron (General Secretary of F0 from 1963 to 1989) : "There is grist to the mill." The capitalists are rich, the rich in general are getting richer and richer, it is the sharing of the cake that is unfair : let us ask for our share.

Tell a pseudo-revolutionary from LO, the NPA or the CGT that capitalism died in 2008 : he will respond with a contemptuous air : don’t worry about them, they are doing very well . This "awareness" of the inequality of the distribution of wealth, which claims to be a revolutionary awareness, hides a total ignorance of the dynamics of a mode of production, a concept on which Marx based his vision of things, as we read from the first paragraph of his work "Capital".

The tax farmers "were doing very well" in 1789, richer than ever ; yet their future fate, the guillotine, was sealed, because in 1787 the feudal pact between the nobility and Louis XVI had been broken : those at the top could no longer. It is the accumulation of capital that is the heartbeat of Capital. Over-accumulation, which incidentally provides pocket money for capitalists, has as its fatal corollary the inability of Capital to valorize itself through production. In 2008, public debt took over from private debt to save the capitalists as rich, but if the machine seems to be starting up again, it is only an illusion. Without the printing press, Capital collapses.

The French government’s debt is not a problem in itself : French banks are happy to pile up debt securities in their vaults. These securities are considered the safest, and are a license to speculate. The French debt exceeding 100% of GDP is significantly lower than the more than 200% in Japan, which nevertheless remains very relaxed about the banks. The problem with this debt is that it creates fictitious capital in the financial sphere, and capitalists are not socialists : they are ready to fight among themselves. And if the free-for-all begins like in 2008, it’s the beginning of the end, because it’s pieces of paper that fill the financial sphere.

Contrary to what we are told, the default of a State (bankruptcy), unlike the case of a company, is not very serious, especially if this State is rich. The French bourgeoisie knows this, which, having barely come to power, nouveau riche, loaded with money thanks to the expropriation of the Church, the seizure of national assets... put its State in default of payment in 1797. This date is little known, it could give ideas to the proletariat of France. So where does the problem come from today ? The euro is the continuation of the Deutschmark, but for 20 countries which are not all Germany. For Germany, its currency is undervalued, while for other countries economies like that of France, much less exporters of industrial products, it is overvalued. But devaluation is prohibited, the budget deficit and the debt therefore compensate for this imbalance. But the EU rule limiting this deficit to 3%, and a state’s debt to 60% of GDP, threatens to bring French capital under German control. Japan does not have these two constraints. Banks like Société Générale and Crédit Agricole are in danger of collapsing when these settling of scores begins ; they have recently fallen on the stock market. Without the protection of the French state, a bank like Société Générale would have already disappeared. But those who try to devour them will also be affected by the backlash, because they are fictitious capitals that are corrupting the entire financial system.

In 1797, the French bourgeoisie submerged the last feudal lords, or the naive purchasers of assignats. But today, it faces its much more powerful German, American, and British "sisters." Increasingly fictitious capital, rivalry between imperialist vassals of the USA—these are the contradictions behind the debt that make it explosive.

French banks are not looking at the Agence France Trésor with a "severe but fair" eye, as they would reprimand an over-indebted worker : on the contrary, they are begging the French state to maintain this lever of public debt that allows them to exist, in the face of their competitors. Among the 10 largest banking institutions holding French debt, 9 are French.

This first condition of Lenin is well fulfilled, although the so-called revolutionaries (LO, NPA, Solidaires) constantly shout that capitalism is doing well, thus politically disarming the workers, deceiving them about one of the fundamental characteristics of the current period.

Those below no longer want

The overwhelming success of the anti-Duplomb petition, the resonance of the calls for September 10, are symptoms of this state of affairs. Nothing has changed, yet everything seems to have changed, in the relationships between exploiters and exploited. Since the Yellow Vests, Covid, there are thousands, tens of thousands, how many ? September 10 will perhaps reveal it. Doing what ? It’s hard to say, as the BFM journalists lament. Discussing, reflecting, meeting, acting, boycotting, sabotaging (trains, electricity, etc.). Dozens of calls preceded the one on September 10, but this one circulated, benefiting (it’s hard to say for what reason) from the immediate echo of the major media. General meetings closed to journalists are taking place, and union leaders feel obliged to send their local branches to organize their own assemblies at the sub-prefecture level, whereas in large movements like 2023, it was the prefecture UDs that were enough to supervise the movement. But these union apparatuses have no hold over the real activists of the September 10 movement, so discredited and hated are they.

The union leaderships are rejected, despised for their failure in 2023, their permanent "conclaves" are at best sterile, at worst bearers of betrayal. The parliamentarians are vilified, they are seen as millionaires in the service of billionaires. Bayrou organizes his own departure, without asking for anything more, before the September 10 movement asks him to give up his "severance bonus" of 50,000 euros, his company car for life, etc.

Although this "rejection of politicians" is not new, the objective basis constituting its driving force is new : the difficulty of millions of people to survive, to feed themselves, to care for themselves. A Yellow Vest interviewed on the radio summed it up : the middle classes are proletarianized, the proletarians are put on the street. Le Pen and Mélenchon are millionaires, their voters continue to applaud them and elect them, but at the same time, more and more often, like the Yellow Vests, they find themselves in the same assemblies, shoulder to shoulder : they no longer allow themselves to be divided by parliamentary cretinism, but are sketching out a class solidarity. This is the worst danger for the bourgeois state, one of whose mechanisms no longer works : diversion through elections.

Boycott, disobedience, solidarity : the three slogans of the first call for September 10 (replaced shortly after by the more banal one, more easily taken up by the unions : let’s block everything, let’s be indignant) have already been embodied in what we can call the Thermidor movement. Indeed, the calls for September 10 coincide, by chance, with the first day of the revolutionary month of Thermidor (July 19), and around August 18 its first phase ended : the union organizations gradually came out of their silence, reluctantly "rallying" to this call. Mélenchon, who once proclaimed "The (oligarchic) ​​republic is me !", a repentant millionaire, rallies to a movement whose heartfelt cry is : Down with this Republic of the oligarchs !

What will September 10th bring ? It’s anyone’s guess, but it has already given a lot, only the fake revolutionaries, who pretend to want "something concrete" (translation : the green light and Sophie Binet’s blessing) forget to mention it.

This month of turmoil gave genuine revolutionaries the opportunity to come forward, to propose slogans of agitation and propaganda. These two activities traditionally constitute two of the three aspects of their activity, the third being action. Whether action takes shape or not, a month like Thermidor has put questions on the agenda that will remain there until they are resolved.

A revolution in France, whatever it may be, will start again on these bases of this Thermidor because they are finally, without the political distortions, the almost direct reflection in the political superstructure of what is agitating the economic structure : those at the top have transformed Capital into a pure parasite, those at the bottom vomit this Capital and its representatives (billionaires of the CAC 40, millionaire bobos ministers, leaderships of parties, unions, revolutionaries of TV sets who boast of belonging to the union "elite" : JP Mercier of LO, G. Quirante of NPA-R, both working for Solidaires).

Revolutionary parties

Lenin added to these two objective conditions a third condition, this one subjective, so that a revolution not only breaks out, but is victorious : The existence of a force of revolutionary transformation : consciousness, organization of the most mobilized sectors, leadership in short, one or more revolutionary parties to overthrow the established order.

This Thermidor 2025 movement did not see such a party emerge on a national scale, but on the other hand the usual contenders for this role were able to discredit themselves on this scale.

In France, it is in political elections that parties that claim to be revolutionary manifest themselves. Mélenchon admits to sticking to elections ; he is a sincere devotee of bourgeois institutions (the Republic, that’s me !). Parties like LO, the NPAs, RP do in fact the same thing, but claim to do the opposite ; they are the Tartuffes. These parties excommunicate themselves in political elections, but fraternize in union elections on CGT or Solidaires lists.

The task of building a party, unlike the first two conditions of a revolution, is essentially subjective, the excuse of the "period of retreat", of the "lack of consciousness of the workers" is a lie put forward by the false revolutionaries.

A weapon against the September 10 movement : the ultimatums of the pseudo-revolutionaries ordering the workers to go on strike

A current that is hostile to the self-organized movement of September 10, and fights against the realization of this 3rd condition, is constituted by the opportunist extreme left, which puts forward for example the pseudo-revolutionary slogan of "strike at all costs". We can call them the "strugglers" (or lutenists, flautists as their speeches are worthless). For example N. Arthaud and JP Mercier (spokespersons for LO and SUD at the same time !), repeat ad nauseam that we must "fight" : "Only those who fight will make themselves heard !" is the title of this party’s editorial on September 1.

Yes, we agree, but weren’t the storming of the Bastille, the Paris Commune, and the October Revolution of 1917 armed struggles that remain the supreme examples for proletarian revolutionaries ? Strikes played no role in these great days. The proletariat established itself as the ruling class. But instead of preaching these revolutionary examples, LO reduces the struggle to pleasant peaceful strikes for 3 francs 6 sous.

No more slogans of the dictatorship of the proletariat from Blanqui, Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky ! No more dissolution of standing armies and the arming of the people, approved even by Jaurès ! A peaceful and legal strike would be the supreme form of combativeness for the left wing of the union bureaucracies ! But the most abject thing about this idealization of the strike is not this "theoretical error." It is the fact that this slogan is that of bureaucrats in the service of the bourgeoisie who fight the self-organization of the masses. It is the bourgeois state apparatus that orders workers to go on strike under their orders, when it thinks this way it will prevent workers from doing anything else outside the control of the apparatus : Yellow Vest roundabouts, for example. Because a purely reformist strike is not dangerous for the bourgeoisie.

All other forms of spontaneous action, in particular the anti-Duplomb petition and this summer’s assemblies, are denigrated by parties like LO, which act as spokespersons for the union leaderships, under false Marxist airs : " With the strike, workers have the ability to hit the bourgeoisie right in the heart, that is to say, in its wallet, and this is what gives them a more powerful weapon than all the online petitions, boycotts or blockades ." Really ? A worker on minimum wage, by stopping work, will ruin his boss Bernard Arnault ? "Because the great strength of workers is to be indispensable to the big bourgeoisie, to the production of its profits and to the good performance of its stock market prices ." This is the old utopian theory of Bakhounin, fought by Marx and Engels.

But above all, LO, like all false revolutionaries, preaches self-organization that must only begin... after the strike has been called. Workers must obey and strike on September 10, otherwise they are excommunicated as non-combatants, cowards. But they must go on strike without prior preparation for this strike by self-organized general meetings. Yes, if workers spontaneously decided to strike on September 10, revolutionary activists can only support them. But there is no reason to support or even participate in strikes that are not the product of self-organization. Denigrating workers who do not want to strike on September 10 is absurd. A responsible revolutionary party could certainly call for joining a strike movement, but only after counting the general meetings of strikers : so many in this sector, so many in that other have met in general meetings and decided to strike for a given date, so yes, let us organize similar general meetings everywhere and vote to strike. Without this, any call for a strike is bureaucratic verbiage. Lenin and Trotsky did not call for a strike in 1905 or 1917, nor even for revolution, but for armed insurrection, the supreme phase of the revolution.

So, for this third condition of the proletarian revolution to be fulfilled, it is not by artificially waving the rattle of the strike that revolutionaries will make themselves useful. Rosa Luxemburg explained this well in 1905 :

Indeed, let us leave aside the pedantic theory of a demonstration strike artificially staged by the Party and the trade unions and carried out by an organized minority, and consider the living picture of a genuine popular movement arising from the exasperation of class conflicts and the political situation, exploding with the violence of an elementary force into economic as well as political conflicts and mass strikes. Then the task of Social Democracy will consist not in the preparation or technical leadership of the strike, but in the political leadership of the entire movement.

The creation of soviets, the denunciation of the trade union leaderships, agents of the bourgeoisie in the workers’ movement, propaganda directed at the police and the army, the disarmament of the bourgeoisie, the arming of the people ; propaganda and agitation in favor of a socialist revolution, for a socialist society, this is the task that the revolutionaries have not fulfilled on a large scale in France, but to which the movement of September 10 gives them the opportunity to tackle again !