No to Macron’s maneuvers to strangle the Yellow Vest protests in France
By
Alex Lantier
27 November 2018
It has been 10 days since a quarter-million people wearing Yellow Vests first protested on November 17 against French President Emmanuel Macron’s plans for a fuel tax hike. The deep opposition provoked by the policies of austerity and militarism carried out by Macron in France and the European Union across Europe, has rapidly come to the fore. Deep social anger against social inequality and the arrogance of Macron, the former banker and “president of the rich,” is building not only among Yellow Vest protesters, but tens of millions of workers.
Despite the violent repression of Sunday’s Paris protest, Yellow Vest protests are continuing and allying with numerous strike movements unfolding at the European level. Port, Amazon and oil refinery workers are on strike and defending roadblocks set up by the Yellow Vest protesters. Their demands—for Macron to resign, for an end to social inequality and attacks on social rights, and against a European army—are taking on an ever more working-class character.
Faced with the eruption of social anger, Macron is slated to speak this evening after discussions with trade unions and NGOs on how to react to the protests. At the same time, the press is trying to impose a “leadership” for the Yellow Vests, a socially and politically heterogeneous movement, to “represent” the protesters in talks with Macron and the state.
These negotiations are a trap for workers and middle-class people in the Yellow Vest movement. Fifty years after the May-June 1968 general strike, there will be no reformist outcome of the class struggle; Macron will give at most only crumbs. The way forward is to reject these fraudulent negotiations…