WPRM France: The CPE and the uncertain future facing the youth – what next?-3 April 2006

Following is a leaflet written and distributed by the World People’s Resistance Movement-France (mrpm_ france@yahoo.fr and www.wprm.org) Why have Chirac and de Villepin risked inflaming the whole country over the CPE (youth employment law)? Why do they refuse to listen to millions in the streets and the clear will of the majority of the population? The CPE is the tip of the iceberg of major changes looming over French society. For several generations a kind of agreement has existed in France whereby the working class and the masses of people would accept the capitalist system in return for a certain degree of job security, educational opportunities and social benefits. But this model always excluded an important section on the bottom of the society, and in recent years this section has been growing larger and more desperate, as we saw last November when the working class suburbs erupted. Those who previously benefited from this social pact see the gains of the past being whittled away. For the educated youth the promise that a diploma would mean of social advancement and a secure future has been evaporating. The entire ruling class of France, the Socialist Party included, believes that the only answer to ensuring France’s competitiveness internationally and thus its future is to accelerate these tendencies; this means greater freedom for employers to fire at will, sharpening competition among the people for increasingly few crumbs, increasing inequality and intensifying exploitation. The only difference among the main ruling class parties and spokesmen is how to introduce a more savage and naked capitalism and who will preside over this process. And make no mistake: the rulers are united that this restructuring will require an even heavier boot of the police on the neck of today’s and tomorrow’s victims of the process. While the current movement has begun as a battle to protect current labour laws, it cannot remain for long on that level. Besides, a return to the days of a more benevolent capitalism is not really possible: capitalism in today’s world means inequality, exploitation, wasted lives and broken dreams. It means immense riches for a handful and hardship or worse for most people. Capitalism is a system that has spread throughout the whole world, intensifying the gap between rich and poor in each country and between a handful of imperialist countries including France and the great majority of humanity. Clawing to the top of this basket of crabs is impossible for most and not the future we want to fight for. The revolt of the youth began last November in the suburbs. Since February the bulk of secondary school and university students have powerfully rejected the future that they see diminishing before them. People are furious to discover that the government won’t listen to the cries of hundreds of thousands of youth in the streets and the millions more who support them. The real nature of French democracy – a dictatorship of the capitalist ruling class – is coming into sharper focus, with the help of the club-wielding cops and the scent of tear gas. In times like these people’s thinking can somersault. All that was declared permanent and unchangeable yesterday must submit to a fresh examination by the new generation. It is no longer possible to “outlaw” the questioning of society’s rules and the way it is organised, along with capitalist cultural mottos blaring out to youth to “succeed or die trying”. Older people see their own spirits, buried under decades of “realism”, rekindled by the youth’s declaration of a “rêve général”. Still, the fight around the CPE poses choices for the road ahead: Will the youth return to their daily routines and uncertain futures, slapped down for having dared defy the ruling class? Or will the current upsurge prove to be just the prologue of new rounds of battle that will further shake the whole country and contribute to the fight to remake the world? - end item-