France: Let's be ungovernable!

Post-election statement by Alternative Libertaire

The election of Nicolas Sarkozy marks the victory of a project for social destruction and police repression. He is the candidate most openly favorable to the bosses and to the dominant class and he intends to govern in the best interests of the French employers' federation, the Medef.

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Let's be ungovernable!

The election of Nicolas Sarkozy marks the victory of a project for social destruction and police repression. He is the candidate most openly favorable to the bosses and to the dominant class and he intends to govern in the best interests of the French employers' federation, the Medef.

We need to start preparing right away to counter the attacks to come. And Sarkozy has already clearly indicated his intentions: smashing labour law and the single contract, loosening the 35-hour week, restricting the right to strike, an authoritarian reinforcing of the regime, an increase in harsh "security" measures, repression of working-class districts and an intensification in the hunt for "sans-papiers".

The popular classes and the social and trades-union movements will now be confronted with a true challenge. Faced with a combative government and employers, no credit or confidence can be granted to a Socialist Party confined in its inoffensive and sterile parliamentary opposition, and which moreover shares many of the policies of the UMP [1] (pension reform, expulsion of "sans-papiers", etc.). Workers do not have anything to gain from allowing themselves to be chained to a hypothetical hope of a change of heart by an increasingly right-wing Socialist Party.

If we are to make any gains we will have to struggle for them. The election campaign have been marked by social conflicts (the strikes at the PSA Peugeot-Citroën factory in Aulnay-sous-Bois, Airbus-Eads, etc.) which must serve as inspirations for future fights. But to put a halt to the neo-liberal juggernaut, we need to put an end to struggles without strategy, protests without follow-ups and defend the autonomy and unity of the social movements, free from interference by the agendas of political parties and institutional games.

Alternative Libertaire
6 May 2007

Translation by FdCA-International Relations

[Translator's note:
1. Union pour un Mouvement Populaire. Sarkozy's party, the "Union for a Popular Movement".]