The French people are taking to the streets — But where is a Communist Party to lead them? By Nikos Mottas Editor-in-Chief of In Defense of CommunismFrance is once again a country of protests, strikes and growing popular anger. Young people are mobilizing against deteriorating schools and an increasingly uncertain future, while workers confront austerity, rising living costs and attacks on public services. The French state finds enormous resources for military expenditure, yet workers and their families are told that sacrifices are unavoidable. There is no shortage of people willing to fight. What is missing, however, is a powerful revolutionary Communist Party, rooted in the working class and guided by Marxism-Leninism, capable of giving these struggles a clear socialist direction. This absence is particularly striking in France. The country of the Paris Commune, the great workers' strikes and May 1968 possesses one of Europe's richest revolutionary traditions. For decades, the French Communist Party (PCF) was a formidable political force, with deep roots in factories, trade unions and working-class neighborhoods. How did a party with such a history end up abandoning the revolutionary principles that once distinguished it from social democracy?
https://www.idcommunism.com/2026/10/the-french-people-are-taking-to-streets-but-where-is-a-communist-party-to-lead-them.htmlFrance, Spain, Belgium, Albania, Brazil, Serbia, India, Nepal, Bangladesh… Reports show activism of many minds, addressing many topics and reaching considerable scale erupting in many places. Education, housing, corruption, jobs, prices, immigration, regimentation, fascism, war, data centers, weather, electoral campaigns, and more. France, Spain, Belgium, Albania, Brazil, Serbia, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and more. What to do? On the one hand, where you are, if it arrives, participate. If it hasn’t yet arrived, try to initiate it. So far, so obvious. But a larger, overarching possibility beckons. Spread the eruption. Enlarge each outbreak. Make it all last. Still obvious. But how? What can turn a temporary eruption that may or may not win some specific immediately focused local aims into a sustained wave of activism that grows, persists a
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