From Paris - Don Samantha

A student revolution is sweeping France with massive demonstrations, which on October 6, 2026, drew over 450,000 people nationwide, with more than 100,000 marching in Paris alone. Students, unions, and social, democratic, and political organizations supporting the movement joined the mobilizations. The day before, on October 5, 2,000 secondary schools—more than half the country's total—were blockaded, and nearly 90% of the country's universities joined the movement after massive general assemblies attended by hundreds, even thousands, of students. The movement posits the need to establish a workers' and people's government in France as the only real possibility for achieving quality education, but La France Insoumise (LFI) and groups claiming to be left-wing refuse to consider this solution, as they defend bourgeois imperialist democracy.

The capitalist government of Macron and Lecornu brutally repressed the protests, making approximately 6,500 arrests and detentions, of which 1,800 face legal proceedings, the vast majority being minors. But the repression has failed to halt the uprising of France's youth. After two weeks of gradual blockades of high schools and secondary schools, student and teacher unions called for a massive educational strike and insurrection that shook the country. The movement, known as "6-7," culminated on October 6th and 7th, 2026, with over 170 simultaneous marches, paralyzing universities and hundreds of schools in cities like Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Bordeaux, and Lille. It was supported by unions, parents' associations, and university movements, striking against French imperialist capitalism and its government. Long live the struggle of the students and the people of France!

The French people at the head of the world revolutionary wave

The student revolution is led by the poorest young people, immigrants, or those from immigrant families from Africa or the Middle East. It erupted due to demands for substitute teachers, overcrowded classrooms, and deteriorating school infrastructure. These demands were joined by calls to repeal university access platforms like Parcoursup and to create thousands of new places in higher education. Now, they are also demanding an end to arrests and police intervention. The catalyst for the revolution was the mobilization of students and teachers at the Saint-Exupéry Institute in Créteil, in the Parisian suburbs known as the banlieue, who began a strike on September 17, 2026, to denounce the lack of substitute teachers, overcrowded classrooms, and a shortage of resources.

On September 28, 2026, more than 180 educational centers across France joined the movement. By September 30, that number had risen to over 300, and it now exceeds 400. With this revolution, France is at the forefront of the third revolutionary wave sweeping the world, marked by mass mobilizations in Nepal, the "Housing Revolution" in Spain, the defeat of ICE in Minnesota and the "No Kings" movement in the United States, the struggle against the dictatorships of Cuba and Venezuela, popular mobilizations in Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Bolivia, and Turkey, the Houthi victories in Yemen, Iran's defeat of the US and Israel, mobilizations in South Korea, Georgia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Syria, the Palestinian resistance in the Third Intifada, and Operation Vivaldi by the Ukrainian National Liberation Army in Donbas. The revolutions in France, Spain, and Ukraine place Europe at the center of the global class struggle.

An imperialist state in crisis, shaken by revolutions

France is an imperialist state that has been shaken for the last eight years by successive February revolutions—that is, revolutions against capitalism that bring about changes in the political regime and topple governments. However, these revolutions lack a revolutionary leadership, and because they fail to resolve the underlying problems, they recur repeatedly. In late 2018, a fuel tax increase in France sparked the Yellow Vest protest movement, which presented itself as spontaneous, horizontal, and leaderless. It featured massive demonstrations every Saturday, blockades of roundabouts, and mobilizations through social media.

Students are mobilizing to the Bastille on October 8, 2026.

Another recurring February occurred with the powerful mobilizations of March-April 2023 against the Macron-Lecornu pension reform law, which sparked one of the largest waves of strikes and protests in the last 40 years under the slogan " Macron Resign ." Another recurring February was the uprising of July 2023 following the murder of Nahuel M., a 17-year-old French-Algerian youth, at the hands of a police officer, which unleashed a powerful mobilization. Yet another occurred on September 18, 2025, when the CGT (General Confederation of Labor) mobilized more than a million people against the Macron-Lecornu austerity plan, alongside the eight major unions.

These revolutions have shaken the old and decadent French imperialist capitalist state to such a degree that they have caused the fall of five Prime Ministers in four years, an average of one Prime Minister every nine months. Élisabeth Borne, who had taken office in May 2022, resigned in January 2024 due to protests over pension reforms and immigration law. She was followed by Gabriel Attal, who resigned in September 2024, after which Michel Barnier took over, resigning a month later in December 2024. François Bayrou then assumed the position, resigning in September 2025, and was replaced by the current Prime Minister, Sébastien Lecornu, who is on the brink of collapse. This governmental instability in France is a result of the successive revolutions of the workers and the people, which are striking at the regime and the state.

A political revolution against the imperialist state of the oligarchy, the EU, and the ECB

The complaints from high school students about their learning conditions demonstrate the decline and collapse of capitalist France, battered by the global crisis. The crisis hits schools in the poorest neighborhoods the hardest, and the youth revolution is targeting social inequalities under capitalism. " The same public school in Saint-Denis as in Paris !" chant the students of Henri-IV, a school for families with greater purchasing power. At the private Massillon high school in Paris, young people speak of their "privileges" and demonstrate with banners in solidarity with the Paul-Éluard high school in Saint-Denis. This entire movement is generating widespread support, as all opinion polls show that 62% of the population considers the student movement justified.

The students are chanting: " The 6-7 generation repeating May '68 ," while at the University of Rennes, striking students have painted the slogan " Long live the Commune !", a reference to the Paris Commune, one of the first workers' governments in history. The movement's character highlights the importance of the fight against racism and for the protection of immigrants' rights, expressed in the carrying of flags from various African and Middle Eastern countries, alongside Palestinian flags. There is a significant difference between the current movement and the Yellow Vest movement of 2018, which was part of the second wave of global revolutions. The Yellow Vests had an autonomist, anarchist character, hostile to Marxism and political parties.

But now this student mobilization doesn't express hostility toward parties or organizations that claim to be Marxist; on the contrary, it's open to them and is part of the movement for Palestine. We observe the same phenomenon in the encampments in Spain, which evolved from the autonomist and horizontalist 15M movement, hostile to political parties, and now show an encampment in Puerta del Sol led by tenants' unions, waving red flags and Palestinian flags. This demonstrates the existence of a process of maturation and advancement of popular consciousness that is part of the global political revolution, a process of the world's masses breaking with their old, reformist, and treacherous social and political organizations, and a process of self-organization and self-defense, of profound "Sovietization," emerging from the poorest neighborhoods.

A revolution against the imperialist state of the oligarchy, the EU, and the ECB

The revolution in France and Spain is against European capitalism embodied in the European Union (EU), the European Central Bank (ECB), and the IMF— the "troika" that works in service of the Eurozone aristocracy and European capital, which concentrates wealth in the hands of a few. It is against the governments that defend the interests of bankers and corporations that demand France pay the debt bonds issued by European corporations such as BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole, Deutsche Bank, and Barclays. The regime of the Fifth Republic in our country works for the aristocracy of Jean-Laurent Bonnafé, Christian Dargnat, Bernard Mourad , Jean-Paul Chifflet, Frédéric Oudea, Philippe Citerne, the CEOs of corporations, and the billionaire bankers.

The struggle of the students and the people of France is directed against these parliamentarians, civil servants, judges, the institutions, and the government of the Fifth Republic, which serves the aristocrats of the ruling classes—the palace butlers, graduates of the National School of Administration (ENA) , who work for the CAC40, the Bernard Arnaults of Louis Vuitton, Vincent Bolloré of Canal+ and Vivendi, or Xavier Niel of Free. But precisely when the people of France break with their old leadership, such as the French Socialist Party (PS) and the French Communist Party (PCF), and express their discontent through significant abstention and dissatisfaction in the elections, left-wing groups like La France Insoumise (LFI), led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon and belonging to the Progressive International, rush to support the conflict with an opportunistic campaign strategy, calling on the people to once again believe in bourgeois democracy.

We denounce the disastrous policy of La France Insoumise (LFI) of diverting the revolution to the elections

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and other leaders like the mayor of Saint-Denis, Bally Bagayoko, also a member of the LFI, are joining the student struggle not to end the Macron-Lecornu government and fight for a workers' and people's solution. On the contrary, the LFI leaders' involvement in the struggle is to promote expectations and illusions about France's decadent and rotten bourgeois democracy. They approach young activists by saying that if they vote for the LFI in the next elections, there will be changes, which is a deception. This aims to push young activists backward, leading them to believe in elections, ballot boxes, and the imperialist bourgeois parliamentarianism of the Fifth Republic.

La France Insoumise (LFI) is a bourgeois, capitalist coalition, led by bourgeois sectors, that deceives the people by presenting itself as "left-wing ." LFI pursues a treacherous bourgeois and pro-imperialist policy previously implemented by Podemos in Spain, Syriza in Greece, and currently being pursued by Bernie Sanders and the Democratic Socialist Party of America (DSA), headed by Ocasio-Cortez, in the US. All of them are representatives of the Progressive International, a global "progressive" grouping promoted by the imperialist US State Department, which LFI represents in France.

We also denounce self-proclaimed "Marxist" or "Trotskyist" groups that call for support for LFI, such as the official NPA, the Left Party ( Parti de Gauche - PG , Gauches Écosocialistes - GES), or the Independent Workers' Party ( Parti Ouvrier Indépendant - POI), a group with Lambertist traditions that participates in LFI's parliamentary structure. The role of these groups is to give a "socialist" or "Marxist" veneer to a capitalist coalition . LFI did not hesitate to form a coalition with the imperialist Socialist Party of France of François Hollande and Olivier Faure, with bourgeois republican groups, or the Communist Party of France (PCF).

We need to build a revolutionary organization in France, bringing together new activists and experienced cadres and militants who have broken with the old, corrupt organizations of the French left. The student revolution is the best opportunity to advance this task, and from Marx International, together with Marx France, we invite you to join this revolutionary Marxist project that began by supporting revolutions and is now bringing together leaders from around the world for the struggle for Global Socialism.