The French president has proposed a controversial higher education reform at a particularly inopportune moment, sparking major protests.
The government’s proposed railway reforms will force yet more traffic onto the country’s overcrowded roads, even as people in the provinces and regions lose mobility, convenience, and time.
For viewers on the left, Pauline’s journey from proletarian champion to xenophobic mouthpiece constitutes a slow-motion horror movie.
Attacking railroad workers as "privileged," the French government seeks to break labor strength as Margaret Thatcher did in Britain when attacking miners. In response French unions and labor are responding with a rare degree of unity.
Only a handful of European states are currently governed by left-wing governments, and several of the traditionally largest left-wing parties, such as the Socialist Party in France, have experienced substantial drops in support. Jan Rovny argues that while many commentators have linked the left’s decline to the late-2000s financial crisis, the weakening of Europe’s left reflects deep structural and technological changes that have reshaped European society, leaving left-wing parties out in the cold.
The author enlivens a type of working-class society where capitalism compensates poor men with the role of tough guy, all in the writer's effort to "bring the left to life."The End of Eddy does so in a style both plainspoken and visceral, using Louis's own childhood trials--like his protagonist much abused as a gay kid in a dead-end factory town --as a window onto the pathologies of a cloistered working-class existence.
Indian farmers - carrying the Red Flag of the Kisan Sabha and the Communist movement - used the technique of the mahapadav (sit in) to stop local governments from operating and to paralyze the state. This forced the neoliberal government to negotiate. Perhaps if the French workers hear about this struggle and its victory, it might inspire them in their own battles against anti-labor laws.
There is no denying it: The last few months have been disastrous for the French left. As the gospel of neoliberalism goes up in flames across the Channel, French voters have handed over the republic to one of its true believers. These will be trying times for the French working class, and really anyone concerned with the country's collective well-being. Macron's electoral success does not equate with a broad democratic mandate for his policies.
Macron is also pledged to another anti-worker ‘reform’: the downgrading of France's wonderful post-WWII Social Security system which includes healthcare, unemployment insurance, retirement, minimum survival income, housing subsidies and welfare for the poor.
French President Macron slams President Trump for withdrawal from Paris Climate Accord. It's not renegotiable.
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