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 and finally wins not only various initially sought aims, but whole new societies in a revolutionized world? Isn’t that the strategic question we must now address? Without persistence we win some gains, but not many. We go a ways, but not far. To achieve more we must expand our efforts from upsurge to persistence. From single issue to multi issue. From public policy to systemic structure. And from shocking on-lookers to rousing and welcoming them. Upsurge alone may win some gains but it will not reach the causal core of society’s problems or potentials. To upsurge is not bad. Upsurges spread activism. To address a pressing issue is not bad. To address pressing issues inspires involvement and grows commitment. To overturn horrible public policy is not bad. To overturn public policies alleviates pain and teaches tactics. All of that counters passivity and fuels momentary hope. But significant victory requires sustained participation. To overturn the causes of contemporary suffering and attain preferred positive alternatives requires contagious persistent commitment.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/10/23/france-spain-belgium-albania-brazil-serbia-india-nepal-bangladesh/Condition of the Working Class in England, by Engels ch11. The Mining ProletariatThe production of raw materials and fuel for a manufacture so colossal as that of England requires a considerable number of workers. But of all the materials needed for its industries (except wool, which belongs to the agricultural districts), England produces only the minerals: the metals and the coal. While Cornwall possesses rich copper, tin, zinc, and lead mines, Staffordshire, Wales, and other districts yield great quantities of iron, and almost the whole North and West of England, central Scotland, and certain districts of Ireland, produce a superabundance of coal.[1]
In the Cornish mines about 19,000 men, and 11,000 women and children are employed, in part above and in part below ground. Within the mines below ground, men and boys above twelve years old are employed almost exclusively. The condition of these workers seems, according to the Children's Employment Commission's Report, to be comparatively endurable, materially, and the English often enough boast of their strong, bold miners, who follow the veins of mineral below the bottom of the very sea. But in the matter of the health of these workers, this same Children's Employment Commission's Report judges differently. It shows in Dr. Barham's intelligent report how the inhalation of an atmosphere containing little oxygen, and mixed with dust amid the smoke of blasting powder, such as prevails in the mines, seriously affects the lungs, disturbs the action of the heart, and diminishes the activity of the digestive organs; that wearing toil, and especially the climbing up and down of ladders, upon which even vigorous young men have to spend in some mines more than an hour a day, and which precedes and follows daily work, contributes greatly to the development of these evils, so that men who begin this work in early youth are far from reaching the stature of women who work above ground; that many die young of galloping consumption, and most miners at middle age of slow consumption; that they age prematurely and become unfit for work between the thirty-fifth and forty-fifth years; that many are attacked by acute inflammations of the respiratory organs when exposed to the sudden change from the warm air of the shaft (after climbing the ladder in profuse perspiration) to the cold wind above ground; and that these acute inflammations are very frequently fatal. Work above ground, breaking and sorting the ore, is done by girls and children, and is described as very wholesome, being done in the open air.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/ch11.htm