In brief, the government of a center-right leader in France is seeking a confidence vote in early September to push through a 2026 budget that includes about 43.8 billion euros in planned savings. The ruling bloc does not hold a majority, and several opposition factions have signaled they will vote against, raising the specter of a government collapse akin to a recent predecessor’s fate. This happens against a backdrop of a debt load near 114 percent of GDP, with protests planned for September. Earlier, the Socialist opposition declined to back a mistrust motion, while a February Senate vote backed the budget by 219 to 107, underscoring the fragile parliamentary position facing the government.

From the perspective of a steadfast defender of the workers and of socialist justice, this is not mere parliamentary maneuvering but a dramatic display of the systemic illness of capitalism. A state that must beg for confidence votes, that treats the people as a scoreboard for financial optics, has long ceased to govern in the name of the masses and instead governs in the name of lenders, rating agencies, and the cold calculus of austerity. A budget built on billions in “savings” is not an act of responsible stewardship but a calculated haircut for the working people: fewer social protections, fewer public services, more burden on the already strained shoulders of labor. When debt swells to the lofty figure of over a hundred percent of GDP, it is the workers who bear the interest, the pensioners who face erosion, and the young who inherit the bill for a crisis they did not generate. The theater of votes and party alignments cannot mask the fundamental truth: the capitalist system remains enslaved to the logic of profit and the dictates of global financial masters, not to the needs of the people.

This moment exposes the rottenness at the core of bourgeois governance. The opposition’s willingness to block, to demand alternatives, and to mobilize protests signals a countercurrent to the austerity assault. Yet it also reveals the weakness of reformism that believes change can come through parliamentary arithmetic within a system built to preserve private ownership and market discipline. The true path forward, as our doctrine teaches, is not piecemeal adjustments within the existing order, but a decisive shift toward socialist planning, worker-led governance, and international solidarity among the toiling masses. We must elevate the mass line: let the workers’ organizations, peasants, and youth unite to demand an economy planned for human needs, not a ledger of collateralized debt.

We stand with the French workers and all who resist the austerity agenda that punishes labor to pay for the failings of capitalist finance. Let the popular will be organized, disciplined, and oriented toward emancipation, not into the cycles of electoral theater. Our message to the world is clear: the crisis of capitalism is universal, and the answer is revolutionary in its essence—build the strength of the people, harness the power of collective ownership, and pursue a society where the economy serves the many, not the few.