“General Interest”?

Communiqué from the Parti des Travailleurs (Worker’s Party)

Millions of workers in the State, local authority and hospital civil services on strike, united on their demands despite the (thwarted) attempts to divide them… 200,000 demonstrators united on their demands… General assemblies discussing how to take the movement forward…

Macron said nothing of this in his speech on Thursday evening. But he called for a “government of general interest”.

General interest, 300,000 jobs under threat in the private sector?

General interest, 150,000 public service jobs under threat?

General interest, attacks on Social Security?

Macron announced that all these measures in (the rejected prime minister) Barnier’s draft budget will be included in the draft budget submitted by the next government, whoever it is made up of.

And yet… the Socialist Party says it is ready to take part in a government with the centre and the right wing. La France Insoumise (Unbowed France) is calling for Macron’s resignation and an early presidential election in which its candidate could win. As for the national trade union leaderships, they are cancelling one planned initiative after another with the excuse that there is no government. So they are all taking part in the defence of the anti-democratic institutions of the Fifth Republic.

Of course, Macron must be ousted! But changing for another president will not suffice, the Fifth Republic must be got rid of too! What workers need are new institutions that are in line not with the so-called general interest, but with the interests of the majority, those who have only their work to live on.

There is only one way to achieve this break, the one taken on 5 December: the united mobilisation of workers who themselves decide on their demands and on the means to achieve genuine strike, which will force the government, whoever it may be, to back down.

Join the Parti des Travaillers (the Workers’ Party) and fight for unity, for a workers’ and democratic government, for a general strike to meet all the demands of the workers and their communities.