So, Marine Le Pen will run in the presidential election for the RN (National Rally), even though the appeals court sentenced her to three years in prison for embezzling 4 million euros while she was a member of the European Parliament.
After Mélenchon, yet another contender has joined the race. We’ll have to wait several months to find out who will ultimately represent the right and the left, which are still drowning in a flood of candidates. But the electoral circus has begun.
Promises, solemn pledges, and campaign platforms calculated down to the last cent are starting to pour in, set to the familiar tune of “I’ll bring about change”.
What can the presidential election change?
Wars follow wars, each more deadly and barbaric than the last. There’s a chain of disasters – in energy, climate, health and agriculture – that affect one another. For every business that opens, five close. All of this is set against a backdrop of mass unemployment, inequality and extreme poverty – with all the reactionary prejudices, antisocial behavior, and illicit trafficking that these entail.
Everything is falling apart. The billions sorely lacking for hospitals, wages, education, child protection, and the climate transition are being spent on weapons. We’re told that young people are becoming increasingly violent but those in power are telling young people they must prepare for war!
Society and the entire world are hurtling toward the abyss. And it’s not for lack of money or resources, but because the upper class—Arnault, Dassault, Mulliez, Bolloré, Saadé, etc.—are hoarding the billions derived from the exploitation of workers on a global scale. And it is this small minority that stands in the way of a collective, well thought-out, and reasoned organization of the economy and society.
Applying to serve big business
As long as billionaire capitalists dominate, the occupant of the Élysée Palace (the President) will have no choice but to scramble to address the most serious crises—and, above all, make workers pay for them.
This is Édouard Philippe’s explicit plan. But it is also what the RN will do. The closer Bardella and Le Pen get to power, the more they embrace the MEDEF’s agenda. Bardella is, in fact, already dropping the idea of retirement at age 62. As for the investments they promise to make—for example, in climate action—they plan, as always, to finance them by picking the pockets of the poorest. Behind the attacks on the rights of immigrant workers—who are already the lowest-paid and do the hardest work—they’re targeting all of us.
As for Mélenchon, he’s promising to reconcile big business and workers, good wages and dividends, good working conditions and competitiveness. This is impossible. His proposal for a minimum take-home wage of 1,700 euros proves that he is willing to go easy on the bosses… at the expense of workers, who will remain in poverty. As for pretending that we could achieve peace and a clean energy transition without a true revolution of the entire system—that is a lie.
The only way out: workers’ fights to change society
Instead of looking for a savior coming from above, instead of being divided by the choice between this and that empty promise, workers must organize to wage the class struggle until capitalism is overthrown.
The working class is capable of doing what no president of the Republic will ever do: truly confront the bourgeoisie and its system and impose collective leadership and management of society.
Workers produce everything and keep society running. No one knows the needs and problems of the working classes better than they do. So they must take the lead!
The only valid prospect for the vast majority of the population is to found a true workers’ government of working women and men to reorganize the economy and build healthy social relations.
It is these communist, revolutionary, and internationalist ideas that Lutte ouvrière has always defended and that we will continue to uphold during the 2027 presidential election, with me as our candidate.
Unlike those who present themselves as supreme saviors, I will call for the organization and conscious action of the workers to change their fate and the future of society.
Nathalie Arthaud