We print below the 6 October 2025 editorial of our sister organisation in France, Lutte Ouvrière, written on the occasion of the "first resignation" of Prime Minister Lecornu... He has now been reappointed and is meant to try once again to form a government. Maybe there will be a second resignation, in which case the much-hated Macron might have to call a new general election and even perhaps resign himself.

    Lecornu was already President Macron's 4th prime minister since December 2024 and his 6th since Macron began his second term of office in 2022! He had only been in office for 27 days and had only just appointed a cabinet - which lasted only 14 hours! It's a record. It certainly "beats" Liz Truss, who was in office for 49 days before resigning - and of course the lettuce, which outlasted her!

    The LO editorial - written after the first Lecornu resignation, discusses the implications this parliamentary fiasco has for the working class. It also points to the recent revolts by the youth worldwide which have overthrown and ousted governments (or nearly done so) over the past two years - in Bangladesh (see the article in this issue), Nepal, Madagascar, Peru, Kenya, Morocco... holding out the hope that ultimately the capitalist system itself can and will be overthrown.

The real power is not in Matignon or the Élysée*

    Lecornu threw in the towel. Does Macron still have a card to play? Will it prevent a new dissolution? In both cases, it will be a game of fools.

    For the true leaders of affairs are neither in Matignon nor at the Élysée. They are on the boards of the big capitalist groups. It is the big shareholders, the multi-billionaires, French and others, who extend their tentacles to exploit workers around the world.

    The theft of two years of retirement, they are the ones who ordered it. The lay-offs, the closures of companies, the wages of misery that are generalised are explained by the lure of gain, by their desire to add billions to their billions.

    Inflation has been the fruit of their policies, because all capitalists have taken advantage of international tensions, supply difficulties, or political changes to raise prices through the roof. The price of a car, for example, increased by 24% between 2020 and 2024! Automakers are complaining about selling less, but they sold them more expensively and maintained their gigantic profits.

    Even the debt of the state that most politicians blame on the sick, pensioners or the unemployed, is the responsibility of the capitalists. For even if these gentlemen have overflowing pockets, they are the first to whine and ask for state help. They have benefited from tax cuts and aid of all kinds. All for a sum that ranges from 211 to 270 billion euros (£183 to £234 billion) per year.

    One of the means of employer blackmail on workers is to shout about "international competition". But they are those who organise it!

    The Shein group, decried because it is Chinese, produces clothes in factories that already work for all the major European brands, Pimkie, Decathlon... The manufacturer Stellantis has allied itself with a Chinese manufacturer, to play both sides. The tomatoes that arrive from Morocco on our stalls are produced by the Azura group, a Franco-Moroccan fi rm that employs Moroccan workers and African day-labourers paid 9 euros (£7.80) a day. French farmers are therefore competing with (very!) French agricultural capitalists!

    These capitalists are always presented as investors who should be thanked. But for them to deign to invest, the state must bring everything to them on a plate: the site, the financing, the trained workers, help for research... They are nothing but the mercenaries of profit and the gamblers of finance.

    They are also responsible for the increasingly nationalist and warlike evolution of society. For it is their interests, their will to plunder this or that region and their desire to access this or that market that fuel rivalries between states. Competition and economic warfare, which capitalist groups have always waged on a national scale, are raging on a planetary scale. This is what plunges more and more people into fratricidal wars.

    The Dassault family has no interest in stopping the war in Ukraine. That the Middle East is a powder keg benefits them. So, this is what truly holds power over our lives, over the economy and over the evolution of the whole of society!

    And this employer dictatorship cannot be questioned by any election, because it is not based on the result of the ballot box. It is based on private ownership of capital. A bourgeois family like the Arnault family, owner of the luxury group LVMH, manages more money than the Minister of Education and the Minister of the Armed Forces combined. This gives it the power to exploit workers not only in France, not just in Europe, but on a world scale.

    As long as this capitalist class has power and dominates by leading the major economic groups, we will move towards ever more inequality, exploitation, deprivation, divisions, crises and wars.

    But we will also see new revolts like those that exploded in Nepal, Madagascar and Morocco. In these countries, the youth of the working classes refuses misery, exploitation and corruption! And they are a thousand times right!

    It is through such social explosions that workers can play their leading role and transform society by expropriating the big bourgeoisie and driving it out of political power. It will then be possible to recast society and pool the immense possibilities it already holds.

    So, let's not expect anything from the institutional and electoral circus. Let us regain confidence in our own strengths, because there is a world to change!

6 October 2025

 

* The Hôtel Matignon is the official residence of the French Prime Minister and the Élysée is the residence of the President.