First, let’s start with a necessary reminder: A year ago, France held parliamentary
elections. Although Le Pen’s “National Rally” received three million 1 more votes, the “New
Popular Front” 2 won the most seats in the second round.
In fact, the New Popular Front lost two million votes between the first and second rounds,
by withdrawing its own candidates in many regions and favouring the party of French
President E. Macron. Consequently, Macron’s party avoided the resounding defeat
predicted by the European election results 3 .
The above picture would be difficult to grasp if one relied solely on the reports from the
mainly “centre-left” press in our country. These reports spoke of a ‘victory for democracy’,
a ‘triumph for the left’ and a ‘barrier to the far right’, while also declaring that ‘France is
teaching us a lesson’ and making other such grandiose statements. Even before the
elections, the formation of the “New Popular Front” was presented to the Greek social
democratic forces as a model, on the basis that “since they were able to put their
differences aside in France and unite against the danger of the far right, they can do the
same in Greece to get rid of the Mitsotakis government”. As expected, the participation
of the French Communist Party was used as an excuse to attack the KKE, with the
familiar argument of “isolation”.
Even less well known —since it refutes many different arguments— is the fact that
Macron is currently governing with the support of Le Pen’s parliamentary group 4 .
This proves three things: first, that the “front” of liberal and social democratic forces
against the far right is unreliable; second, that the “anti-system” stance of the far-right
forces themselves is fake; and third, that the role of Le Pen’s party has been strengthened
after the parliamentary elections, despite the celebrations we mentioned.
Conclusion: The parties that formed the “New Popular Front” under the pretext of
preventing Le Pen ultimately gave Macron the kiss of life he was looking for and the
opportunity to continue governing and implement the same harsh anti-labour and
warmongering policies that had justifiably caused widespread popular discontent.
Moreover, he can now govern with the substantial support of Le Pen, who was the first to
exploit the open field of opposition left to her by these parties for electoral gain, using
plenty of demagoguery! It is truly astonishing that anyone could envy such a political
stance, which could be described as political suicide were it not an intentional service to
the system and its policy of stability.
The French “memorandum”
Let’s return to the present: On 13 July, E. Macron announced a massive increase in
France’s military spending for the coming years, as part of broader military
preparations, the EU’s transition to a war economy and NATO’s decision to increase
each member state’s spending to 5% of GDP.
The very next day, Prime Minister F. Bayrou, citing the large state deficit and the threat
of public debt, announced an equally massive package of cuts in spending related to
popular needs (health, education, social security, etc.), reducing the number of civil
servants, and abolishing two public holidays a year to “boost the economy”, one of
which is the anniversary of the Anti-Fascist Victory. It goes without saying that none of the
parties, newspapers, or websites that celebrated the results of last year’s elections
bothered to ask what “went wrong” once again...

Although Macron and Bayrou’s statements are two sides of the same coin, the pro-
government press in Greece somewhat glossed over the former, but gave great emphasis
to the latter, particularly highlighting Bayrou’s reference to the Greek “debt crisis”, which
it used as a “bogeyman” against the French people to get them to accept the measures.
The message conveyed to the Greek people is more or less “Look what’s happening in
France, remember what we went through here, and count your blessings”. As if it were not
the hundreds of laws implementing the memoranda, which are still in force today –along
with the anti-people measures that were added later– that are creating the surpluses that
the New Democracy government celebrates every so often.
The similarity between the arguments used today by the French government to
blame the people and those used by the governments here during the memoranda
period is striking. ‘We have learned to expect the state to pay for everything’, ‘We cannot
borrow money to pay salaries and pensions’, ‘As a society, we consume too many
medicines’ (!!!) are some of the arguments used today in France, and they certainly sound
familiar. Obviously, they have no problem borrowing money to pay for missiles and tanks...
The truth is that in both Greece and France, the people are always called upon to pay
out of their pockets, sometimes for the debts and deficits created by the policy of
“expansion” in favour of capital, or to maintain the surpluses created by restrictive policies
and, especially under the current circumstances, for war preparation and military
engagement.
It is worth remembering that during the period of the capitalist crisis in Greece, both the
“pro-memorandum” and the once “anti-memorandum” camps repeatedly put forward the
view that the huge deficits, high public debt, etc. were exclusively “Greek peculiarities”,
attributing the crisis to these factors and often linking them to corruption, which they also
presented, to a greater or lesser extent, as “Greek ills”. In this way, they exonerated the
capitalist path of development, despite the fact that all of the above phenomena are
part of its DNA and that its very normal functioning, rather than any kind of “deviation”,
brings about economic crises.
The same is being done today, for example, in response to the agricultural funds
scandal, which the government and the parties of the opposition serving the system
are disconnecting from the womb that gives rise to it, i.e. the EU’s Common
Agricultural Policy, which in recent years has brought farmers out onto the streets en
masse in Greece and France. So, in the end, the same thing is happening, proportionally
speaking, in the capitalist paradises that some people have in mind...
Many of the measures announced by the French government are very similar to those
being promoted simultaneously in our country and in other EU countries, and are also
related to war preparations and the capital’s need for the people to kowtow under these
conditions. At a time when French workers are being asked to work more and be paid
less, in Greece the New Democracy government is preparing to introduce a bill on
13-hour working day, disciplinary measures for civil servants, repression measures
in universities, etc. A similar debate has been going on for months in Germany, while we
remember Chancellor Merz publicly praising K. Mitsotakis for the law allowing a 6-day
working week and stating that “we can really learn from Greece”. This sheds light to the
nature of the much-vaunted “EU normality”, which is praised at every opportunity
by PASOK, SYRIZA, the Course of Freedom, the New Left, etc., accusing the ND
government of “steering the country away from it”, when the problem is that it is doing
exactly the opposite: It is at the forefront of the pan-European anti-labour offensive,
fanatically implementing the EU’s directives.
Hope lies in the struggle of the peoples!

France’s experience ultimately does indeed teach us a lesson, but not the one that some
people claimed a year ago. It shows that the peoples’ hope does not lie with any
“progressive” front of forces of the sinful social democracy, nor with those who
present themselves as “anti-system” while being the system’s most fanatical
supporters. The people have no interest in rushing to patch up the cracks in the
bourgeois political system when they appear; on the contrary, they must seek to widen
them until its final overthrow.
The experiences of both France and Greece emphasize that there is no common interest
between the people and their exploiters, whether in conditions of capitalist crisis or
capitalist growth, or, even more so, in conditions of war preparation. No matter what
propaganda tricks are resorted to in order to convince the people otherwise and burden
them with the costs, this remains true.
From the millions of strikers in France protesting against Macron’s anti-social security
reforms, to the millions of strikers in Greece demonstrating against the crime of Tempe;
from the dockworkers in Marseille to their colleagues in Piraeus, who are preventing the
same war cargo from reaching the murderous state of Israel for use against the
Palestinians, the power that the peoples have in their hands is clear.
By harnessing this great power, the people can not only raise obstacles to this barbaric
policy and organize the movement that will overthrow and clash with the system of
exploitation and war.
They can bring to the fore what is truly contemporary: the conquest of power by the
working class and the construction of socialism–communism.

Notes
1. This is possible due to the reactionary electoral law in force in France. The country is
divided into single-member constituencies, meaning that the votes for parties other than
the one that wins the seat have no effect on the national distribution of seats. In the
second round, the two candidates with the most votes in the first round as well as those
who received at least 12.5% of the votes, go through.
2. An alliance of social democratic and opportunist forces with the participation of the
“mutated” French Communist Party.
3. In the European elections on 9 June, 2024, Le Pen’s party came first with 31.4%,
followed by Macron’s party with 14.6%. This result led to the dissolution of the National
Assembly and the calling of early parliamentary elections by Macron.
4. Since it was appointed by Macron in December, the Barnier government has faced eight
motions of no confidence, none of which have been supported by the MPs of the “National
Rally”.

The article was published in Rizospastis, the organ of the CC of the KKE, on 26–27 July,
2025.