Charles Devellennes writes about class, inequality, and political privilege to explain the protests in France.
When pupils [lycéens] at the Lycée Saint-Exupéry in a Parisian suburb of Créteil blocked their school’s entrance on 18 September 2026, no one could have predicted that France was about to enter a period of ebullition. A local dispute could have stayed local, without escalating into class conflict. Or so Macron would have you believe, with his famous ‘who could have predicted?’, pronounced for his 2023 New Year’s wishes after forests raged in the Gironde département in 2022. Macron was ridiculed for this statement – as scientists had long predicted the devastating potential of global warming. Who could have predicted, indeed, that France would burn again in the summer of 2026 from forest fires, and again in the autumn from social unrest? Everyone could, because the unrest directly follows Macron’s unapologetic support for the rich, which, as Warren Buffett famously claimed, are winning the class conflict.
When Marx wrote the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, he sought to explain the events of the ephemeral French Second Republic, from its revolutionary beginnings in a popular revolt in 1848 to its farcical end in the crowning of Emperor Napoleon III after the coup of 1851, through the framework of class conflict. For many, it is perhaps Marx’s least liked work, as it shows how class conflict fails to bring about the revolution, as the peasants overwhelmingly voted for Bonaparte to be the first President of France before he usurped the throne. The class conflict of 1848-51 failed to produce the workers’ revolution Marx had envisioned in the Communist Manifesto at its inception. By 1852, he had to explain why the revolution failed.
While a cursory reading of Marx points to a struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the Eighteenth Brumaire reveals a complex interweaving of social classes and struggles. We see the aristocracy of finance, the industrial bourgeoisie, the middle class, the petty bourgeoisie, the army, the lumpen proletariat, the intellectuals, the clergy, and the rural population all muddying the waters of class conflict. Similarly, today, numerous classes animate the events of the autumn of discontent of 2026.
Even before 18 September 2026, key events shaped the current conflict. It began at a school in Mayotte, a French overseas département in the Indian Ocean. On 17 September, staff at the Lycée Saint-Exupéry near Paris went on strike over a lack of resources and staff. Pupils then organised a protest in solidarity with their teachers, describing unworkable learning conditions in their establishment. Other schools around Paris quickly joined, where pupils described buildings infested with rats, without working toilets, heating, or air conditioning, too few tables, and teachers who were not replaced. The government claimed it had increased the National Education budget, but, of course, the increase was lower than inflation. Macron’s government did invest in education during his first term, but the budget has declined in real terms since 2024. Local councils also manage school buildings and have seen their budgets squeezed, putting double pressure on the education system.
What were the pupils asking for? Teachers, classrooms, and a chance to enter higher education. In other words, their demands were far from those of the May 1968 students. The political background during the last large student revolt in 1968 was red, with a powerful Communist Party and omnipresent trade unions. Today’s political background is brown, with Marine Le Pen of the Rassemblement National, France’s far-right presidential hopeful, consistently polling as the top candidate for next year’s presidential election. The students of 1968 were a minority and an elite, with only around 130,000 going to university each year. Today, this has jumped to 3 million a year, including professional training courses. Pupils now ask for access to vocational courses (Brevet de Technicien Supérieur, BTS) or other short courses, neglected since Macron’s first term in office. Thomas Piketty explained how the crisis of the lycées is directly linked to the crisis of universities. Too few places, along with an incomprehensible selection algorithm on the Parcoursup platform. Pupils who have worked hard to obtain their baccalaureate were often left with no options for their tertiary education.
The most affected were those from lycées poorly rated by Parcoursup, the very ones in Parisian suburbs that erupted into revolt in September 2026. The death of France’s meritocratic ideal explained the frustration. In a country where access to the prestigious schools – the grandes écoles, Sciences Po – is highly valued, many felt the odds were stacked against them. They couldn’t even secure places at the bottom of the ladder – let alone compete for the top. In class terms, it was the revolt of the petits moyens, the lower middle class that was also the locus of the gilets jaunes [yellow vests]. In my Gilets Jaunes and the New Social Contract, I described how this social class, the ‘small or lower middle’, is also the class of small economic means. In French, petits moyens refers both to the lower middle class and to those who struggle to pay their bills at the end of the month. Much like the 2018-20 social movement, the lycéens’ autumn of 2026 is the lower middle class’s revolt. Whereas eight years ago they revolted from the towns of peripheral France, in 2026 they revolted from the suburbs of the metropolis. It is no surprise that the gilets jaunes started their first large protest since 2020 on 17 October 2026, as many immediately identified with the lycéens’ demands after weeks of protests.
Critics point out that there were gratuitous acts of violence around school demonstrations, which culminated in scenes of looting that were shown around the world on 17 October 2026. As with the 1848 revolution, a lumpen proletariat was involved in the revolt. We could see the far-left black blocs, well-known for their anti-capitalist ideology and violent tactics, fighting with the police in the centre of Paris. There were separate groups of looters, in Paris, but also in Marseilles and other towns, targeting businesses abandoned by the police, too busy with the 550,000 demonstrators who were, largely peacefully, walking through the streets of France in parallel to the chaos. But the lumpen proletariat was marginal, and the sentences were immediate. Many were tried on 19 and 20 October, and sentenced to prison in a rare show of efficiency by the justice system. Order ultimately prevailed.
Meanwhile, the bourgeois class happily comments on the events from their 24-hour news networks owned by billionaires. Backed by the financial aristocracy, Macron appeared at the Céline Dion concert on 16 October 2026 alongside Hélène Arnault, France’s wealthiest lady, singing and dancing as the country was in revolt. On 14 July 1789, as revolutionaries took the Bastille, Louis XVI wrote a single word in his diary: ‘rien’, ‘nothing’, referring to the day’s unsuccessful hunt. History will remember that Macron sang while pupils were being repressed. The industrial bourgeoisie, such as Mistral’s CEO Arthur Mensch, has complained about the left’s proposal for a solidarity tax on wealth, which could have paid for decent schools, arguing that his stock had no real value to tax.
Though a pensions reform passed with great difficulty in 2023, it did not affect existing retirees’ income, effectively leaving a class of economically inactive citizens with their privileges. The aristocratic and industrial bourgeoisie could thus rely on high-earning pensioners to bolster their ranks. The retirees, who had voted Macron into power in 2022, formed the reserve army of capital. The petty bourgeoisie, meanwhile, have been the victims of much broken glass, and many people’s livelihoods were ruined during the looting. In parallel, though the army was indeed mobilised on 24 October 2026 without any incident, the militarised police stood in for the army of 1848. The police no longer open fire on protesters with live ammunition. But they still use weapons of war against protesters – the LBD ball launcher, various grenades, tear gas and armoured personnel carriers – and the toll of those injured is rising: 31 maimed or with permanent injuries, according to a neurosurgeon who campaigns against these sub-lethal weapons. One protester died of acute cardiorespiratory failure after he was tear-gassed by police. Time will tell what happened in each case.
Meanwhile, the country watches with angst as the struggle plays out. As in 1848-51, the countryside might tip the balance, and peripheral France is looking more to the far-right than the far-left. But history does not repeat itself, as Marx noted; it first occurs as tragedy and then as farce. If Napoleon I was the tragedy, and Napoleon III the farce, what of the events of 2026? Too early to tell, but Žižek proposes an antithesis to Marx’s dialectic: it will resolve as the absurd. The current class struggle in France is absurd – the country is rich, innovative and hard-working. Yet it cannot pass a budget so pupils can have functioning classrooms and teachers to be workers of tomorrow. 2026 may not end in a revolution, but it seems increasingly necessary.
Dr. Charles Devellennes is a Reader in Political and Social Thought at the School of Economics, Politics and International Relations, University of Kent. He is the author of The Macron régime: The Ideology of the New Right in France and The Gilets Jaunes and the New Social Contract.