FRANCE has been rocked by strikes and protests over attempts by President Emmanuel Macron to raise the state retirement age from 62 to 64.

In a surprise to some, young people have been at the forefront of the protests — recognising that the changes being proposed by Macron will mean that they will need to work harder, for longer and likely for less.

Young communists in France have been instrumental in organising street protests and exposing the neoliberal agenda that forms the basis of Macron’s policies.

Assan Lakehoul is the national co-ordinator of the French young communists, the Mouvement Jeunes Communistes de France (MJCF).

Lakehoul first became interested in politics during the 2012 French presidential campaign.

He told me: “I was then very enthusiastic about Jean-Luc Melenchon, so I decided to join the youth organisation that was campaigning for him.

He said he soon decided it was much more important “to invest myself in a fight for a revolutionary project for society, than in an individual struggle to win an election.”

Lakehoul soon became involved in the MJCF, and the Communist Party of France (PCF), becoming a departmental leader in 2018.

Since 2021, he has been part of the national directional committee, and secretary of the departmental activities.

He told me: “I think my background reflects well the role of an independent youth organisation. From a young age we are given big responsibilities, we manage a group of activists, co-ordinate local campaigns, and organise mass events among other things.

“The MJCF is a very formative space for young people,” he adds.

Lakehoul says that young people in France do not recognise themselves in the capitalist society that is put in front of them.

He said: “We don’t want to be in competition with each other, to do work that has no social interest, to have no say in the way wealth is produced.
 
“The youth are suffering the full force of the contradictions of capitalism.

“A competitive admissions process pits prospective university students against one another, austerity cripples other public services, dashes the hopes of the youth and prevents a whole swath of them from studying the subject of their choosing.

“Precarious contracts that young people in particular are subjected to make for alienating work experience. We fight for a right to free training, to a dignified and emancipatory work environment.”

Lakehoul is convinced that the only way to tackle these issues is for young people to build reliable mass working-class organisations.

“I think that the MJCF and the PCF can be these organisations.

“For that we have to organise ourselves as close as possible to the youth with very structured groups of activists and with campaigns that directly propose answers to the problems of the youth.

“We must also be an organisation that is useful to youth, and therefore develop as much as possible specific gestures of concrete solidarity.

“And we must be an attractive organisation, have disciplined messaging, and develop our link with the press.”

The battle over the pension scheme took a decisive turn last week as Macron instructed his Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne to impose the changes when it appeared the president did not have the votes to win approval for the reforms in the National Assembly.

“We have a government that despises workers,” Lakehoul says.

“Macron always asks the same people to pull up their bootstraps and tighten their belts and it isn’t the bourgeoisie.

“He asks households to lower their energy consumption, while many are unable to heat themselves properly — this is class contempt.

“Food prices are going up, the price of gasoline is going up, everything is going up except wages and pensions.

“And now workers will be asked to work two more years, this is unacceptable. Meanwhile, big business is making huge profits, the rich have never been richer.”

He adds: “We have a class government that is strong with the weak — and weak with the strong, so of course there is enormous social anger in France.”

Lakehoul is not just concerned with building the working-class movement in France.

He says: “I think that we must multiply the links between communist organisations across the world, exchange the problems we encounter in our countries and on our militant practices.”

“We need to enliven internationalism and solidarity between peoples,” he adds.

He sees the campaign for the liberation of Palestine as one of the important campaigns that communists internationally need to prioritise.

“We are leading a campaign for France to recognise the state of Palestine.

“If this campaign was led by young communists in every country, it would breathe new life into our activism!”

I asked Lakehoul to say whether he sees hope for socialism in the future.

“I think that the contradictions of capitalism are more and more clear.

“Inequalities are becoming more and more glaring, war is threatening the balance of the whole world, the planet is on the verge of climate catastrophe. These phenomena have one and the same cause: capitalism.

“Socialism as a project for society and as a strategy of struggle has never been so important.

“However, the ruling classes in many countries have de-politicised the people and the life of their countries, making class consciousness very weak.”

He adds: “We have to revive this class consciousness, to renew commitment to our politics.

“This is our challenge as militants, this is our challenge as communists.”

The battle by the working class in France over the proposed pension changes shows no sign of weakening.

The work being done by Lakehoul and his comrades to deepen the struggle amongst the young could mean the resistance to the neoliberal policies of Macron has yet to even approach its peak.