France Insoumise was created in February 2016 to promote Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s candidacy for president. Its exact form wasn’t fixed at that time. The French, European, and global context helps us to understand, after the fact, why this initiative succeeded: it arose at the intersection of multiple cycles of social and political struggle; it arose as a means of breaking through the impasses of that moment, of advancing the cause of rupture.
What were these cycles? First, there has been a long succession of French social movements against neoliberal reforms. We can simplify by starting with the massive strikes against Alain Juppé’s plan [for welfare cuts] in winter 1995. The “plural left” government of Socialists, Communists, and Greens [from 1998 to 2002] — even if it resulted in some privatizations and other neoliberal reforms — was nonetheless remarkable in European social democracy. First of all, it was an alliance of the Parti Socialiste turning toward its left, not the center. Secondly, the workers’ movement got a reduction in working hours, a unique achievement in Europe at that time.
France’s long cycle of mobilizations was a unique experience in Europe and the West: a vast, combative resistance and critique of neoliberalism.
In the 2000s, there were several impressive mobilizations against neoliberal reforms with strikes, occupations of universities, and massive street protests. In 2003, there was a big strike in national education against François Fillon’s retirement reform. In 2006, there was opposition to the “First Job Contract” bill, finally withdrawn by Dominique de Villepin. In 2010, Nicolas Sarkozy’s retirement reform was fought by 3.5 million workers and students at the height of the struggle, according to union estimates. And we have not even mentioned the largest mobilizations against the financial autonomy of universities and reforms of national education, etc. Even if many of these social movements…
Auteur: Clémence Guetté
