France’s “yellow vest” protests and the fraud of Mélenchon’s “citizens revolution”
By
Alex Lantier
29 December 2018
The “yellow vest” protests in France and strikes organized on social media in Portugal have unmasked the petty-bourgeois milieu of union bureaucrats and official “left” parties in Europe. The eruption of a movement in the working class against social inequality blindsided them, busy as they were promoting austerity and war in presidential palaces and parliamentary speeches. Having played no role whatsoever in the movement against French President Emmanuel Macron, they are now trying to strangle it.
The Left Bloc (BE), the Portuguese allies of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Unsubmissive France (LFI) party, does not hide its fear and loathing towards strikers and “yellow vests.” BE official Francisco Louçã denounced them: “This is a far-right operation. They are using social media to whip up aggressive politicization in far-right terms.”
Mélenchon, however, tries to influence the “yellow vests,” pompously declaring they have vindicated his populism. On his blog, he writes: “I am jubilant. Current events are, I believe, the confirmation of the theoretical model formulated in my theory of citizens revolution summarized in my book The Era of the People .”
If Mélenchon claims victory in the vapid realm of postmodernist theory, it is because for him, the “yellow vest” movement is in reality a defeat. The class struggle erupted when the “yellow vests,” including tens of thousands of Mélenchon voters, took action independently of the LFI. Masses of workers in France and internationally have received a priceless lesson: that real struggle against the ruling elite requires opposing the anti-Marxist forces that for decades…