In his speech to the armed forces on Sunday, July 13, Macron used a martial tone: “To defend our freedoms, we must be powerful, we must be feared,” he hammered. And to produce more missiles, more drones, more shells, he announced a further €6.5 billion increase in the military budget over the next two years, double the amount previously planned, while Bayrou and all the ministers are harping on about the need to save €40 billion.
This is not the first time that Macron, whose unpopularity is at an all-time high, has come across as a warlord in an attempt to arouse feelings of national unity and support. But these aren't just occasional speeches. Before Macron, the Army Chief of Staff, General Thierry Burkhard, also took to the front line, listing the many threats facing the country at a press conference on July 11. “I don't want to frighten people,” he claimed, but that's exactly what he was doing! “Russia has designated France as its main adversary in Europe,” he declared, while acknowledging that France was not threatened with “direct and heavy attacks on its national soil”.
What a pack of lies and propaganda! The attacks against us aren’t coming from Putin or any other external enemy. They’re coming from our own governments which have relentlessly attacked and are still attacking pensions, the rights of the unemployed and health reimbursements.
Macron, Bayrou and their ilk dare to pretend they care about our security, when in fact they are attacking our rights and putting people's lives at risk! Subjected for years to budgetary austerity, hospitals and nursing homes are dramatically short of resources. A&E and maternity wards are closing. The public services most useful to the population are being sacrificed.
We saw this again only a few days ago with the fires in the south of France: none of the promises made by Macron in 2022 – to increase fire-fighting and fire-prevention resources – have been kept, and the Canadair fleet is still down to 12 30-year-old aircraft...
Attacks on workers also come from the boards of directors of capitalist companies, who wage social war by intensifying exploitation, laying off workers and driving down wages. Not content with just screwing employees out of their jobs, in recent days employers have proposed measures to reduce the number of sick leave days and the amount of sick pay.
With the help of governments at their service, capitalists help themselves in the state’s coffers and appropriate over 200 billion euros a year – money paid out under the pretext of aid to companies, instead of being invested in health or education.
These are the enemies of the workers, the ones we have to defend ourselves against!
When Macron, his ministers and his generals tell us they’re preparing for war, we should believe them. They won't do it to defend the freedom or security of the population, but to serve, as they do today, the interests of a minority of capitalists, the kings of industry and finance. Appeals to patriotism and national cohesion are designed to condition workers into paying the price of this policy, before serving as cannon fodder in a war that will not be theirs.
Our fate as workers must not remain in the hands of the ruling classes, their governments and their military staffs, who are their fiercest enemies and are preparing to bleed us dry. The future they’re preparing is the one already experienced by millions of women and men plunged into war, in the Ukraine, the Middle East and Africa.
We need to expropriate the capitalist groups, starting with those that produce for the war, and confiscate their profits to spend those billions on hiring in hospitals and schools, building housing, producing medical equipment instead of Rafale war planes! Society must be run by the workers. It's the only hope of escaping the catastrophe into which those in power are plunging humanity.
Nathalie Arthaud