France – the epitome of capitalism in crisis
As France’s political and economic crises deepen, the gulf between the people, their politicians, and the capitalist system itself widens exponentially. The trajectory toward collapse remains constant, yet the recent upheavals in France’s political system bring the looming inevitability of that collapse into sharp relief.
Let us analyse recent events in France to understand how we arrived here — and the contradictions that expose the insoluble riddles facing the ruling class.
Contradiction One: ‘Democracy’ — But only on their terms
The roots of the latest French political crisis trace back to President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to call a snap election in June 2024. During his first term, beginning in 2017, Macron enjoyed a comfortable parliamentary majority that allowed him to push through his pro-business, pro-EU programme — a euphemism for attacks on workers’ rights and tax breaks for the rich.
That changed after his 2022 re-election, when he lost his absolute majority, restricting his ability to impose further neoliberal ‘reforms’. Seeking to reassert control, Macron gambled on a snap legislative election in 2024 — and lost.
The result was a hung parliament divided among three blocs: a ‘left’ alliance with the most seats but no majority; the far-right National Rally with the most votes but no majority; and Macron’s weakened ‘centrist’ – core imperialist – group. Instead of choosing a prime minister from either the party with the most seats or the party with the most votes, as simple logic or naïve ‘democratic’ ethics would reason, Macron chose Michel Barnier of the traditional right-wing Les Républicains, a party with only a token presence in the Assembly. It was quickly dubbed the “coalition of the losers”, deepening the public’s loss of faith in bourgeois democracy and resulting in growing resentment among many voters from across the political spectrum who felt that Macron’s victory had been a stolen one.
Despite record voter turnout and the ruling class’s rhetoric about democracy in action, the outcome exposed the farcical nature of power under capitalism: democracy is enacted by the ruling elite, for the ruling elite.
Contradiction Two: Political paralysis hampers capitalist expansion
Barnier’s tenure proved the shortest in the history of the Fifth Republic. After a successful no-confidence vote in December 2024 — the first in over 60 years — he was ousted. “At a time when economic growth in France is slowing markedly, this is bad news,” commented Charlotte de Montpellier, chief economist for France at ING Bank (see Liz Alderman, ‘Collapse of France’s government further burdens its weak economy’, New York Times, 4 December 2024).
Just nine months later, on September 8, 2025, Macron’s government fell again when Prime Minister François Bayrou called a parliamentary vote to support his ‘reform’ plan — €44 billion in spending cuts and tax increases directly targeting the working class. Opposition parties across the spectrum united to defeat him, forcing his resignation and deepening the political and economic crisis (see Catherine Porter, ‘French Prime Minister seeks to force lawmakers’ hands on ballooning debt’, New York Times, 25 August 2025).
In a revealing final statement before the vote, Bayrou warned parliament:
“You have the power to bring down the government, but you do not have the power to erase reality. Reality will remain relentless: expenses will continue to rise, and the burden of debt, already unbearable, will grow heavier and more costly” (see ‘French government collapses after PM Bayrou ousted in confidence vote’, Al Jazeera, 8 September 2025).
Whose reality? Whose debt?
The ‘reality’ is a budget deficit exceeding €168.6 billion, or 5.8% of GDP in 2024 — the largest since World War II, and nearly double the eurozone’s 3% limit.
The ‘reality’ is that France’s borrowing costs are now among the highest in the eurozone (see Liz Alderman, ‘Fears of a French government collapse send Its borrowing costs soaring’, New York Times, 26 Aug 2025).
The ‘reality’ is that Macron’s tax cuts for the wealthy reduced tax receipts by 3% of GDP, while his labour ‘reforms’ — designed to make France more ‘competitive’ — merely worsened insecurity without attracting investment.
The ‘reality’ is that these policies widened inequality and, according to Eric Heyer of the French Economic Observatory, cost the state €50 billion annually (‘La situation et les perspectives des finances publiques’, Cour des Comptes, June 2025).
What to do? What to do? A bourgeois conundrum
Needing to appoint yet another prime minister, surely only a fool would enact the same tactics again and expect a different outcome. But time was of the essence. Having lost two prime ministers in under a year, Macron faced a stark dilemma. Mujtaba Rahman of the Eurasia Group noted: “Macron needs to act quickly to appoint a new PM before unrest in parliament and on the streets becomes a revolt against him. He also needs to reassure markets that France can still pass a deficit-cutting budget this year” (see Miranda Jeyaretnam, ‘What comes next for France after another government collapse?’, Time, 9 September 2025)
Thus, on September 9 — barely 24 hours after Bayrou’s resignation — Macron appointed Sébastien Lecornu, his loyal defence minister and the only figure to have served in every cabinet since 2017, as his fifth prime minister since 2022. Such instability, unprecedented in modern France, is more reminiscent of the political chaos of contemporary Britain.
Upon taking office, Lecornu declared that Macron had set him a clear mission: “the defence of our independence and our power, service to the French people, and political and institutional stability for the unity of the country.” There it is again — our. Lecornu, like Macron, represents the ruling elite; it is their power, their wealth, and their stability he is sworn to protect (see Aurelien Breedon, ‘Macron picks loyalist as France’s new Prime Minister’, New York Times, 9 September 2025).
At this point the French farce of French politics became even more farcical. After a mere 27 days in office Lecornu too resigned. He had taken “nearly four weeks after he was appointed to name his ministers. When he finally did so, on Sunday, there was outrage across the political spectrum that the government was almost unchanged from the previous one, which was ousted in a parliamentary vote of no-confidence in September” (David Chazan and Adam Sage, ‘Sébastien Lecornu resigns as French prime minister, The Times, 6 October 2025).
And then, four days later on 10 October, “A week that started with the French prime minister … resigning during breakfast on Monday ended with him accepting to be PM again at supper time on Friday. I was at a dinner with friends. We all screamed, then laughed and refilled our glasses. ‘History repeats itself first as tragedy, then as farce’, said Karl Marx. What about both at the same time?” (Agnès Poirier, ‘Still no final curtain on this political French farce’, The Times, 13 October 2025).
What had made such a volte face possible? The answer: some serious haggling had gone on in the interim. To avoid immediate ouster in a no-confidence vote, Lecornu needed to bring in another party whose votes would give him a majority capable of defeating such a vote. What he and Macron were able to do was to wrench the discredited centre-left Socialist Party away from the “unhealthy embrace of its allies, the raucous radicals of France Unbowed, led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon” (Charles Bremner, ‘Macron’s discarded mentor has the last laugh’, The Times, 15 October 2025). But the price was high: i.e., agreement to freeze until 2028 Macron’s hated rise in retirement age from 62 to 64 – a measure that the bourgeoisie considers to be the best achievement of Macron’s presidency,
Meanwhile, pressure mounts for Macron to call early elections, with both the far-right National Rally and the left-wing France Unbowed party demanding a fresh mandate. Macron’s goal in appointing Lecornu is simple: survive long enough to pass a budget that satisfies financial markets. He has unveiled a budget that features €14 billion in tax rises – and €17 billion of spending cuts! It remains to be seen how far he gets with that.
Contradiction Three: Robbing the poor to fatten the rich
Mainstream economists insist that ‘decisive action’ is needed to resolve France’s fiscal crisis — in plain terms, deeper austerity imposed on the working class. But France’s workers are not as subdued as those in many other Western nations. They remain organised, militant, and ready to fight, albeit for the maintenance of their own relative privilege rather than, at present, truly revolutionary change. Trade unions have filled the streets around the Bastille, demanding that the rich — not workers — shoulder the cost of crisis.
Lecornu inherits a parliament fractured into three irreconcilable blocs — left, centre, and far right — all disagreeing on how to address the debt. To avoid the fate of his predecessors and satisfy the markets’ deadline, he must seek conciliation where none truly exists.
The dilemma confronting all parliamentary parties is how to contain the growing anger of the working class, which correctly demands that France’s crisis be resolved by expropriating wealth from the ruling class. Right now, both the far right and the reformist left pose as allies of the workers while in opposition, yet once in power they will inevitably administer the same bourgeois programme. This is not a question of ‘individual betrayal’ but of the class nature of the capitalist state itself, and the assumed acquiescence in the continuance of France’s relations of financial and imperialist exploitation of its neo-colonies, and ongoing participation in EU and NATO imperialism.
In researching this article, what struck the author most were the contradictions of capitalism at play at every level of France’s economic, political, and social crises. Not that France is unique in this regard: the entire Western imperialist system is on its knees. The more it seeks to obfuscate the real causes of rising debt and deteriorating living conditions of the masses of its workers, the deeper it sinks into the mire.
The immediate task for France’s working class is to organise and stand in unbreakable solidarity to defend living standards and workplace rights. By mobilising across sectors, weakening the power of the state and imperialist interests, and challenging the authority of the EU where it enforces austerity, French workers can protect their conditions, blunt the bourgeois offensive and exemplify to all workers the power they possess when they stand united.
But until the French working-class is galvanised by a leadership with a revolutionary and socialist perspective, one that can change the pantomime of French street politics into decisive revolutionary action, one that will make common cause with the colonised peoples in revolutionary struggle – from Palestine to the Sahel States – a leadership that has deep links to the workers and is in a position, once more, to issue the serious call “Aux barricades, camarades!” – there will be no solution to the crisis.