Emmanuel Macron has led France into a political and social crisis. Whatever the development, his own cycle now includes a profound defeat, at the time when the social explosion forms a new condition.
Emmanuel Macron has variously claimed to be the great reformer of French political life and the one who would shape a new condition where his own version of the “Centre” would replace and transcend previous political dichotomies.
Of course in practice it turned out that “Macronism” was rather a harsh neoliberalism combined with the political aesthetics of a Center that tended more and more towards what we usually call “extreme center”.
A politician in constant conflict with the popular classes
Above all, the birth of a political system where children from the upper social strata, follow the “classic route” through special preparatory high schools and “Grandes écoles”, forming a closed body, cut off from the rest of society, with its own codes and relationships of trust, Emmanuel Macron has often shown his intolerance towards the reactions of the popular classes.
It is no coincidence, after all, that he was repeatedly confronted with major social outbursts. First, with the “yellow vests”, an impressively massive and militant movement, despite its contradictions or reluctance to articulate a more coherent discourse and now around insurance.
And it is no coincidence that in all cases it reacts by resorting to violence and authoritarianism, whether it is the brutal practices of the police – whose personnel embrace far-right views to an impressive degree – or resorting to the profoundly undemocratic practice of Article 49.3 of the French constitution.
Is it Emmanuel Macron’s Twilight?
Emmanuel Macron has many times claimed – on the verge of arrogance – an “Olympian” position, as if he can place himself above everyday life and provide the “vision” that is missing from both France and Europe.
In fact, not only has it failed miserably – as evidenced by the absence of any serious discussion about the future of Europe, or the failure to articulate a different European line on the war – but it is essentially defeated.
In any case, Macron was from the start a politician of reduced legitimacy and limited hegemonic effectiveness. This was shown in the most obvious way in last year’s elections when, on the one hand, he got a particularly low percentage for an incumbent president in the first round (in the second round, his election against the dreaded Marine Le Pen was a given) and, on the other hand, he saw his party unable to obtain parliamentary majority.
The magnitude and depth of his failure and defeat is also reflected in the very fact of his extremely low popularity (which begins and approaches the worst moments of François Hollande) but also in the overwhelming way in which French society disapproves of his insurance reform. Whatever his choice, it is clear that Emmanuel Macron has closed his real political circle.
A social explosion with impressive depth and duration
It is clear that the social explosion rocking France is not simply taking place in response to a two-year increase in the retirement age (again at a younger age than in other European countries).
Insurance again functions in France as a metonym for the welfare state, social justice, redistribution, policies that prioritize social protection.
Against this, a multifaceted explosion is unfolding that has as its cause (and goal) in fact all aspects of this brutal neoliberal “social engineering” that Macron par excellence represents.
And it turns out that the social depth of this explosion is very great, the reserves of grounding in accumulated reservoirs of social discontent rich, and the ability to form alliances “on the street” impressive.
The time coincidence between the great social explosion in France, the very large mobilizations in Greece that followed the tragedy in Tempi, but also developments such as e.g. the very large mobilizations in Israel, despite the great differences and the way they reflect to a large extent particular “local” issues”, does not cease to signal the emergence of a new large cycle of social mobilizations, which coincides with the worrying signs of a potential economic crisis starting from the state of the banking system.
And this is not just a coincidence. Today, the concern about the economic crisis (or the ever-present fear of an imminent and unprecedented ecological disaster) comes to meet with the ever-intensifying crisis of confidence in the political system, but also the ever-increasing insecurity about the future felt by social strata which have been hit recently.
And this sets the stage for major social eruptions and social dynamics that don’t just push, but actually deconstruct the respective political systems, eroding bonds and relations of representation that were already loose in the age of a idiosyncratic mental and digital post-democracy.
And it is these social explosions that underline that despite an attempt to present a series of measures as self-evident and inevitable, societies have another opinion and still support a core of demands for justice, redistribution, social protection, democracy.
This in turn captures the “hegemonic exhaustion” of an entire model of politics that sees the key issue as simply “communicating” a message or narrative, overlooking that societies cannot tolerate a future of precarity, inequality and diminished expectations , essentially waiting for the fuse for an expression of outrage that might surprise communicators and “policy makers”.
The issue of new alliances
Of course, the big question that always arises in such cases is whether and to what extent these dynamics can find a political “translation”. This is not just about whether a discourse will be broadcast that will rally and unite these people who are mobilizing, but also about whether a social alliance can be forged, a social “bloc” of all the disaffected, insecure and wronged and who, despite being the majority of society, are penetrated by various divisions: between different age groups, between popular strata of “native” or immigrant origin, between traditional and new working classes, between educated and uneducated strata. Divisions that are partly also reflected in different political orientations (eg the weight in France of the shift of parts of the “old” working class to the extreme right).
However, it seems that the power of the “street” and mobilization is what enables dynamics of unity. This in part in France was reflected in the yellow vests. What is certain, however, is that we are at the beginning of a new political cycle in Europe, where the presence of the popular factor will be an increasingly decisive factor.
