No trade union, not even the one most sympathetic to the president (CFDT) has condemned the “wildcat” demonstrations. According to the cops, the “wildcat” nights reached a higher level of intensity than the “invasion” of the Gilets Jaunes. On the night of March 23, 2023, 923 fires were counted in the city of Paris alone. Instead of peacefully parading between République and Nation, the latter opted to begin “terrorizing” the bourgeoisie, bringing “fire” to the wealthy neighborhoods in the West of Paris. This strategy of group-action, which moves constantly from one part of the city to another, lighting fires as it goes, is clearly inherited from the Gilets Jaunes. Trade union struggles, with their peaceful marches, have gradually been transformed through the integration of un-waged participants (on March 23, for example, the presence of youth, university and high school students was massive), who have initiated multiple days of “wildcat” demonstrations that took off at dusk into the streets of Paris and other big cities (where they were even more intense). It has made use of several forms of struggle developed by the French proletariat over the course of the last few years, bringing them together, articulating them, and, in so doing, legitimizing their differences. The movement appears to have grasped the political phase change that was provoked, first and foremost, by the 2008 financial crisis and, subsequently, by the war. Let us try, then, to analyze the two poles of this power relation, which is based on force, in the political conditions between 20. The labor-capital compromise has been broken since the 1970s, but the financial crisis and the war have further radicalized the conditions of the confrontation. In the demonstrations, the immediate response has been to say that “we, too, are forcing our way.” Between two opposed wills - in this case, the sovereign will of the State-Capital machine and the will of the class - it is force that decides.

Let’s cut straight to the heart of the matter: following the large demonstrations against pension “reforms,” President Macron decided to “force his way” by bypassing parliament and imposing a sovereign decision to adopt a law raising the retirement age from 62 to 64. For further remarks on the Russia-Ukraine war, see his article “ War, Capitalism, Ecology.” Exiled in France following the repression unleashed in April 1979 against the Autonomia Operaia movement, in which he participated at the University of Padua, he is the author of numerous books and articles on immaterial labor, cognitive capitalism, biopolitics and bioeconomy, debt, war, and what he calls the State-Capital machine. Maurizio Lazzarato is an independent Italian sociologist and philosopher residing in Paris.

Marx wage labor and capital