A new book by the French left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon has been hailed for providing a strategy for new radical parties to achieve a citizens’ revolution to end the rule of the capitalist oligarchy. TONY SAUNOIS, secretary of the Committee for a Workers International (CWI), argues that, unfortunately, it doesn’t.
Now, the People! Revolution in the Twenty-First Century
By Jean-Luc Mélenchon
Published by Verso Books, 2025, £12.99
France has plunged into one of its most serious political and social crises since the founding of the Fifth Republic by Charles De Gaulle, established in 1958 after a ‘soft’ coup had installed the former military leader as President. In true Bonapartist fashion, this republic concentrated powers in the hands of the Presidency at the cost of the National Assembly.
The current turmoil is a product of the underlying crisis of French imperialism and capitalism, a central component being the erosion of the social base of all the traditional parties in France – both the left and the right. Macron, in the last two years of his second term, has seen his support base crumble. Recent polls put his standing at no more than 17% and some as low as 7%. This institutional crisis of the Fifth Republic is reflected in the departure of five prime ministers within two years. In the most recent saga Sebastien Lecornu resigned a few days after his appointment only to be reinstated the following Friday. Macron had fatally called elections to the National Assembly in an attempt to firm up his support following the 2024 European parliament elections. It was a miscalculation which backfired spectacularly. The new National Assembly was hopelessly split three ways.
A decisive political factor in the situation is the role played by the radical left La France Insoumise (LFI – France Unbowed) led by the veteran left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon. LFI and Mélenchon are crucial not only in France but internationally. They are currently seen as the standard bearers of the ‘new left’ which is developing in some countries, including by the leadership of the emerging ‘Your Party’ in Britain. It is necessary then for Marxists and politically active layers of the working class to analyse and grasp the nature of what LFI and Mélenchon signifies politically.
Mélenchon’s recently translated book, Now, the People!, outlines how he views the new era of global capitalism. It includes the tasks which, in his view, are now posed – including the character, programme and methods of the new radical left forces.
In this he partly reflects his own political history and the tradition of French philosophy as opposed to the empiricism which has been more dominant in the Anglo-Saxon world. Mélenchon’s analysis of the current era of capitalism and the dystopian future it offers, attempts to give a theoretical justification for the character of the revolution in France and elsewhere, and of the movement he leads, LFI.
Organisational form reflects political content. Therefore, an understanding of the political foundations is essential to grasp the form LFI takes, both for France and elsewhere. As Mélenchon says, this book “is my contribution to these movements of resistance, wherever they may be in today’s globalised world. It puts forward a political theory”.
He correctly argues we need to “fully understand before we move to act”, and that we are now in a new era of global capitalism, something we would not disagree with. What conclusions are to be drawn from this, however, are another matter.
Changing composition of the working class
As one would expect, Mélenchon gives a devastating condemnation of capitalist society. During the Covid-19 pandemic a new billionaire was created every 36 hours while one million more plunged into poverty. Twenty-six billionaires have as much wealth as four billion people! The consequences of modern capitalism on all aspects of life are an unanswerable critique of it as a social system. One can conclude, as he does, that “capitalism is unsustainable”.
Mélenchon poses the need for a revolution. However, there are numerous holes in his bucket. He does not explain the social character of the revolution necessary to replace capitalism. Crucially, he diminishes the central role of the working class in the revolution or what character it needs to assume to defeat and replace capitalism. He wrongly asserts that the struggle between “proletarians and bourgeois has been fought”. Thus, by implication it is over. Historically it has and is being fought, but not yet to a conclusion.
Today, he asserts, is “the era of the people”. This is leading or has led to ‘citizens’ revolutions. The struggle is between ‘them and us’. In this he reverts to the terminology of the bourgeois democratic revolution in France in 1789. Tellingly he takes pride quoting one of his heroes, Maximilien Robespierre, (leader of the Jacobins in the bourgeois revolution) rather than drawing on others, for example, Gracchus Babeuf or the Conspiracy of Equals (1796) which attempted an uprising of plebians against the rising bourgeoisie. He quotes from Robespierre’s speech to the Jacobin Club in 1792: “I am of the people, I have never been anything but that, I want to be nothing but that; I despise anyone who purports to be something more”.
In his only reference to socialism in the book, he claims the ‘citizens’ revolution, “does not mean the old socialist revolution. A term that can longer be mentioned in case anyone gets frightened”. Although he concedes that some of the issues and tasks in todays ‘citizens’ revolutions are the same.
He does not exclude the working class, or deny its existence, but sees it as only one component of ‘the people’. Central to his view is the changed composition of the working class. He points to the growth of the ‘precariat’ and that the working class has become ‘dispersed’. Thus, he concludes, it constitutes ‘the people’ and draws wrong conclusions from this.
At first glance this idea may appear correct given the massive concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the 1% as opposed to the rest of society, the growth of the precariat, and increased exploitation of large sections of the petty bourgeoisie. Yet ‘the people’ is not a homogeneous group. Within it are many layers and varied classes.
The issue is which class within ‘the people’ can play the decisive, leading role to overthrow capitalism, take society forward and establish an alternative social system – socialism. It is the working class, with its cohesion and collective class consciousness. This is the case even when it is in a minority as it was in the Russian revolution. It is the working class, with the support of others exploited by capitalism, that can play this role.
These are critical questions that Marxists must address in this era. It is undeniable that the de-industrialisation that has taken place in most of Europe, the USA and Latin America, alongside the growth of the precariat and the emergence of semi-working class layers from former petty bourgeois sections of society, has weakened, in some countries substantially, the traditional industrial proletariat. This has impacted the political situation and the organisations of the working class, especially the trade unions.
This has been combined with the effects of the collapse of the former Stalinist states, which led to a throwing back of political consciousness of the working class and the ideological collapse of the ‘left’. Apart from a small minority, the idea of socialism as an alternative social system to capitalism has largely been absent.
This has taken place precisely at the time when capitalism has entered a new era of intense crisis and polarisation, its protracted death agony. We have been in a period where the ruling classes have felt themselves unchallenged. This is now changing as recent struggles and uprisings have shown. The ruling classes today are terrified of any challenge to them from the left, even a relatively soft left as currently exists. They fear the potential of the mass movement behind such a challenge, which can threaten capitalism’s interests and eventually its existence. They therefore take every step to attempt to discredit and defeat even relatively mildly left forces for fear of what they may unleash.
Radical left
An explosive but complex situation exists globally. Yet whilst the traditional industrial proletariat has been weakened, a rapid process of proletarianization of large sections of the middle class and petty bourgeois has also taken place. This has been reflected in former layers of the middle class resorting to strike action and other forms of struggle that previously had been the preserve of the traditional working class in general.
However, this process is still unfolding. These newly formed layers of the working class or semi working-class have yet to fully develop and embrace the collective class consciousness and methods of struggle of the working class. From this a socialist political consciousness can develop. The emergence of these layers poses important challenges for the workers’ movement, especially the trade unions, of how to organise them. It poses above all the need to transform the trades unions into fighting combat organisations.
The character of these new layers has been reflected politically. Along with parts of the petty bourgeoisie, they have tended to dominate the new ‘radical left’ that emerged, for example in Podemos in Spain, Syriza in Greece, LFI in France, or the Corbynistas in Britain. This, combined with the character of the leadership of these movements – most of which had previously collapsed ideologically and abandoned raising the issue of socialism – is reflected in the programme and methods of organisation of these movements. In the main they have not actively involved, at this stage, large layers of the organised working class.
These movements are extremely significant and important. But it is essential to recognise their limitations and what their character. They can be a part of the process of rebuilding the political organisations of the working class but are unfinished and it has been, and is, uncertain how they will develop. Some like Podemos or Syriza have in effect been absorbed into mangers of capitalism.
In organisational form they have been more of a ‘movement’ rather than a party. They have not yet been mass workers’ parties with a socialist programme. They have reflected the social character of those involved and the leadership of them. Mélenchon is clear about this. He is opposed to a ‘party’. He defends the building of a looser, more amorphous ‘movement’. This is not something totally new, in France or elsewhere. Amongst some layers in the past the idea that ‘the movement is everything’ has existed – the programme, and how the movement is organised to struggle for it, has been brushed aside as secondary.
This idea of a ‘movement’ rather than a ‘party’ can sound very democratic and is often a reaction to the decay of the old organisations, namely their lack of democracy, careerism, corruption and their selling out to the capitalist order. But movements without real democratic structures can in fact give the ‘leader’ or leadership unfettered powers if the rank-and-file have no means to democratically debate and decide issues while controlling what is actually done. Online plebiscites and comment are not a substitute for real debate and discussion in meetings where a full exchange of ideas can take place.
These trends are a part of the era which has thus far ideologically been dominated by populism, of the left and the right. Through experience of struggle – industrially, socially and politically – this will change. Possibly very quickly. However, the historical processes cannot be truncated, there are no short cuts. Particularly in revolutionary politics.
Political crisis
The in France has many lessons internationally. The recent mass protests and strikes show how Macron’s regime has little social base to rest upon. The new government has been compelled to postpone Macron’s pension reform and survived a vote of no confidence as the Parti Socialiste (PS) split and a section propped it up. For how long remains to be seen. Not surprisingly many commentators now conclude that France is now ‘ungovernable’. In other words, bourgeois democracy is no longer able to provide a stable, reliable government for the ruling class. This is part of a revolutionary process.
The current political crisis is the culmination of an unfolding process in France. The first indication of what was to come was in 2002 when Jean-Marie Le Pen from the far-right Front National (FN) reached the Presidential election run-off. He was overwhelmingly defeated then as millions held their noses and voted for the bourgeois Jacques Chirac to defeat Le Pen, with Chirac winning 82% of the vote in round two. Yet it was a warning. When his daughter, Marine Le Pen of the now renamed Rassemblement National (RN), reached the second round in 2022 she won 41% of the vote!
Yet the 2002 elections were also marked by another aspect of the process. The traditional parties of the French left, the bourgeoisified PS, and the Parti Communiste Français (PCF), were humiliated. The PS scrambled together 16.8% of the vote and the PCF 3.37%! These it must be remembered had been the two solid pillars of the left in France since the end of the second world war. Until the late 1970s the PCF was winning between 20-25% of the vote. In 1980 it still had 500,000 members.
The PCF’s rigid Stalinist programme and methods allowed the PS, after a makeover in 1969, to develop as the larger of the two. By the late 1970s the PS, led by François Mitterrand, had swung to the left forming the ‘Union of the Left’ with the PCF. This alliance swept to power in 1981 with Mitterrand’s election as President on a radical left reformist programme. Amongst other things it promised taking over large sections of the economy and a “rupture with capitalism”. The rupture with capitalism never came. Confronted with a flight of capital, attacks from the bond markets, and a furious campaign by the French bourgeoisie, the government capitulated. It declared a “temporary halt” in its radical reform. Yet ‘temporary’ became permanent and its radical left programme was abandoned. Following this betrayal the PS and the PCF shifted further to the right. Over a period, their historic base of support was eroded, coupled with economic de-industrialisation and destruction of entire communities especially in northern France, once bastions of the PCF.
The international process of the bourgeoisification of the former bourgeois workers’ parties like the PS was accelerated by the collapse of the former Stalinist states in 1989-1991. This eventually resulted in the decimating of the PS and the PCF as the main parties of the French left.
The 2002 election, however, was not only marked by the FN getting into the second round. The thirst for a radical socialist alternative to the left of the PS and PCF was also shown. While the PS was reduced to a mere 16%, eight other left or Green parties combined won 29% of the vote. Amongst them was 5.7% won by the Trotskyist Arlette Laguiller of Lutte Ouvrière, and 4.2% for the USFI French section the Ligue Communiste Révolutionaire, headed by Olivier Besancenot. These forces were however incapable of capitalising on this opportunity due to a combination of ultra-leftism and opportunism and the complex world objective situation which existed.
The FN, and then as the revamped RN, was able to step into the vacuum appealing to some of the most oppressed layers of the French working class, often using rhetoric previously used by the left as well as fostering racism. In the 2017 elections the PS presidential candidate won a mere 6% of the vote. By 2022 this fell even further to a humiliating 2%! Macron capitalised on the situation and took 66% of the vote against Le Pen in the run-off in 2017.
The LFI also gained from the collapse of the PS and the traditional French left. Enter Jean-Luc Mélenchon. He was born in Tangiers, in today’s Morocco, in 1951, of Spanish and Sicilian decent. He moved to France in 1962. There he joined a Trotskyist group, Organisational Communiste Internationaliste led by Pierre Lambert. Yet this does not mean that today Mélenchon ever speaks of ‘socialism’. When he joined the PS he became associated with the Mitterrand wing. Later as the party lurched to the right Mélenchon eventually split and formed the Parti de gauche (the Left Party) in 2009 following the global financial crisis of 2008.
Having taken this move it was a step back to launch the LFI in 2016 not as a party but a ‘movement’, reflecting his idea of a new “era of the people” and the ‘citizens’ revolution. Mélenchon sees revolutionary movements like the Arab Spring, Chile, the Sri Lanka Aragalaya and others, as models of ‘citizens revolutions’. He is right to take inspiration from them as illustrating the revolutionary potential that is present in the new era capitalism is now in. However, he fails to draw conclusions from them. Significantly he is silent about why all of them either hit a wall or were defeated.
Revolutionary processes
Mélenchon divides the revolutionary process into three rigidly separate stages. The ‘destituent’, the ‘instituent’, and finally the ‘constituent’. The ‘destituent’ tears down the old order. The ‘instituent’ establishes ‘the people’ as the main actor and finally the ‘constituent’ creates new institutions to rule. The ‘constituent’ phase of the revolution according to Mélenchon flows from the ‘destituent’ process and ends up calling for a constituent assembly.
The mass revolutionary upsurges he refers to, indeed all revolutions, do unfold through different phases. However, a mechanical, rigid separation of them is not what is involved in a revolutionary process. Each constitute a part of a process. The crucial issue posed however is, whether an alternative power is built to replace the state machine of the old order through which the ruling class ruled. How is capitalist rule to be ended and what social system is to replace it are the central issues posed. What is Mélenchon’s objective – a ‘citizens revolution’ of what and for what? To be successful in ending capitalist rule a revolutionary socialist programme, organisation and party is necessary to advocate the concrete steps needed to achieve that goal.
Mélenchon lays great stress on one aspect of these movements, the emergence of the assemblies in neighbourhoods or localities which took place. These by implication he sees as the emerging alternative power. In some countries like Sudan during the revolutionary movements that began in 2019 committees were established, but they did not link up and become the basis for a genuine workers’ and poor people’s government. In other recent mass movements in Sri Lanka, Chile and elsewhere they were gatherings of neighbours or protesters but did not develop. Mélenchon includes the Gilets Jaunes, the ‘yellow vests’ movement in France, in the same category.
Those developments were important and very significant. Yet they were also unstructured, amorphous, lacking a clear programme and democratic structure. In essence they fizzled out and dissolved. They were not the basis for an alternative state power which could confront and replace the existing state of the ruling capitalist classes.
They were not comparable to the soviets in revolutionary Russia in 1917 or the cordones industriales in Chile in 1972-73. These were elected councils of workers, subject to recall. They were organs of struggle and the basis for a new state to be constructed. Mélenchon conflates two different forms of organisation (or lack of it in one instance), into one. In arguing as he does Mélenchon reveals how detached he is from the recent mass movements and romanticises them – a fatal mistake for a revolutionary. The CWI, in contrast, participated in these many of these recent events and analysed them in detail.
In the revolutionary movements which erupted, in Chile, Sri Lanka and elsewhere in recent decades, the working class was present but not as a consciously organised collective force leading the revolutionary uprisings. The movements were multi-class, often dominated by semi-proletarian or petty bourgeois layers, often with a plebian populist character. This was reflected in the form of organisation and programme they adopted. Of course, this varied in different countries. In some the trade unions played a more decisive role, for example in Ecuador and Tunisia. But the character of these movements, the absence of organisation and lack of a clear political programme, was an important element in all of them. And the failure to overcome these obstacles resulted in all of them eventually hitting a wall or being defeated.
The changed composition of the working class in many countries, the absence of the massive factories upon which the soviets or cordones were based, means that these forms of organisations are unlikely to be repeated in exactly the same way. Others however will need to emerge and be built that can play the same role.
Committees of struggle elected in the workplaces, linking together with community or neighbourhood organisations with a structure of elected delegates subject to recall in some form, will be necessary, and with a revolutionary socialist programme, together with a party of the working class and poor, for any revolutionary movement to be successful and overthrow the capitalist regimes.
However, the structures of the organs of struggle are not enough. A party of the working class and poor is necessary to argue the case for a socialist revolution and the concrete steps needed to achieve that goal in opposition to the pro-capitalist and confused currents that reject such a course. It is necessary to advocate an alternative social system, socialism, and give this content in order to confront capitalist rule. Mélenchon unfortunately fails to do this.
This is one of the crucial lessons to take from revolutionary upsurges which have taken place. Lessons from the Paris Commune in 1871 are instructive of what can possibly emerge. But while Mélenchon refers to 1789, and the Parisian san-culottes ‘sections’ in 1792, he makes no reference to the experience of 1871 when an alternative state did briefly take power. He draws a comparison between the neighbourhood assemblies, the san-culottes ‘sections’, and the soviets in 1917 but they are totally different in composition, role and potential.
The current crisis in France has led the LFI to call for the end of the Fifth Republic and the convening of a Sixth Republic. But France has had 15 constitutions since 1789 and such a call needs to be linked to the idea of not merely a political change to the bourgeois constitution but for a new social system – socialism.
After a devastating critique of capitalism what in the end is Mélenchon’s conclusion? He calls for a break with the existing world order and for a new direction in human history that “does not lock the future into any preconceived model”.
Yet to achieve this a clear alternative social system to capitalism – socialism – is necessary. Capitalism can offer no way forward for society. It is dragging society backwards now with powerful features of social disintegration and decay present. Any new left party needs to include the idea of socialism as part of its objectives and programme. Yet to have it written into its constitution is not enough. It is essential to explain what it means and to fight for it, linking it to the day to day demands and needs of the working class and what programme is necessary to achieve it. To achieve socialism a clear understanding of the role of the working class and all other classes in society, the methods of struggle, programme and organisation necessary to achieve it is essential. Despite the central role that the LFI is playing today, unfortunately Mélenchon lacks clarity on these critical questions as outlined in his book despite the importance of the issues he raises.