At a time when money is overflowing at the top of society, when the country's 500 richest people have a combined fortune of over 1,100 billion euros, Bayrou is maneuvering to steal 44 billion euros from the laboring classes. He has just announced that he will ask the National Assembly for a vote of confidence on this budgetary issue on September 8, just two days before a day when people are being called to action in various forms. He is thus trying to nip any protest in the bud – a risky bid indeed.

Whatever Bayrou’s future at Matignon may be, we need to fight against this new offensive and all the maneuvers surrounding it. Bayrou’s plan is a declaration of war on all workers.

No, the State's debt is not our debt! Bayrou talks about shared and fair efforts. But extending working hours by suppressing public holidays, adding extra days without pay in case of sick leave, restricting unemployment benefits, reducing access to healthcare and medical reimbursements, freezing retirement pensions, allowances and civil servants’ salaries: it all means attacking workers again and again, whether they're working, sick, disabled, unemployed or retired.

The scheduled attacks are part of a long series, the latest being the raising of retirement age to 64. In this capitalist system in crisis, where competition is increasingly fierce, it’s by attacking workers that the profits of big business can be safeguarded. Today, they want us to work more to earn less. Tomorrow, their political representatives will send us to die on battlefields to secure markets and raw materials for French capitalists.

All these attacks meet the needs of capitalists. Even if Bayrou or Macron get out of the way, the big bourgeoisie will have its anti-worker offensive carried out by other politicians, including those on the left and the far right, i.e., the very same people who today are saying they are ready to censure Bayrou.

It won't be enough to oust Bayrou or Macron. The only way to preserve our right to live is to confront those who give the orders and not just their government minions. It will be them or us, the profits of the capitalists or the lives of the workers who produce everything and make society function!

All those who refuse to be sacrificed must, without delay, get together in their workshops, their departments and their companies. For we must collect our thoughts on what constitutes our strengths and our goals. We must realize who our real enemies and false friends are, and give ourselves the means to lead our own fight, without allowing anyone to manipulate us.

The leaders of the left, from LFI (Unsubmissive France) to the Greens, are relaying calls for September 10, but this is only to divert the fight to the parliamentary arena. As for the leaders of the five big trade union confederations, they won't announce their action plan until September 1, a month and a half after Bayrou presented his intentions regarding the budget. As was the case during the fight against retirement at 64, they want to determine the agenda and keep control of whatever movement takes place.

We must trust no one but ourselves. If we engage in a fight, we must elect our own committees of action in order to control our struggle and its goals.

While Bayrou’s attacks threaten laboring people at large, including small shopkeepers and craftsmen, salaried workers in big companies have a decisive role to play.

The power of the workers is that they produce everything. By going on strike, they can stop the profit-making machine, something that neither online petitions, nor boycotts, nor even street marches, however successful they may be, will achieve.

Employers are laying off workers and the government is stigmatizing the unemployed and those they call welfare recipients. To tackle unemployment, work must be shared between all, without wage loss. As for the high cost of living, wages, pensions and benefits must be increased, and their indexation to prices must be imposed.

All these measures must be entirely financed by employers' profits. To prove that the money is there, we must get rid of business secrecy and opacity, and publish the accounts of companies and their owners.

Nothing will change in society unless the working class confronts the capitalist class, to defend its living conditions and to wrest the leadership of society from these predators.

Nathalie Arthaud