France: towards an authoritarian regime

Reprinted from the UK Socialist Website Left Horizons

1 October 2026

By Greg Oxley

The reactionary trap of the “citizens’ initiative referendum”

If the party of Marine Le Pen, Rassemblement National, wins the next presidential election and obtains, alone or with other parties, a parliamentary majority, France will find itself under the heel of its most reactionary regime since that of Marshal Pétain under the Nazi Occupation.

The program of Rassemblement National (RN) poses a very serious threat to all workers — including those who will have brought it to power — on the social, economic, democratic and environmental levels.

The RN’s xenophobic policies are aimed at scapegoating “foreigners”, a category which seems to include, in addition to migrants, all French citizens of Muslim faith or culture. Once in power, the RN will wield the power of the state apparatus to sow division and impose draconian austerity policies. With the guaranteed support of major media outlets, the RN will heap blame on “foreigners” for falling living standards and a range of social problems, to justify repressive and discriminatory measures against them.

Tragically, the left will find it difficult to prevent the RN from coming to power, given its own historical record. Brought to power time after time, on the basis of commitments to the needs of working people, it systematically betrayed the trust of its supporters. Once in government, the Socialist and Communist Party leaders carried out policies in line with the interests of the ruling class on all essential issues. We are still paying the price of these betrayals today.

General rise of nationalism across Europe

The failure of the left in the past does not alone explain the RN’s progress. It is also part of a general rise of nationalist and protectionist tendencies throughout Europe, fuelled by the social and economic consequences of capitalist “globalisation”. But by repeatedly letting down their own social base, the left parties have greatly facilitated the far right’s march to power.

Today, the policy of the Socialist Party (PS) is quite similar to that of Emmanuel Macron. For their part, the parties of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, La France Insoumise (LFI) and the Communist Party (PCF), put forward a wide range of relatively audacious social reforms, and even speak of the need to break with capitalism, without, however, having any serious strategy to achieve this.

If the leaders of these parties had prioritised the struggle against the RN and the right before their mutual rivalry, they would be waging a common campaign around a single candidate, making it easier to mobilise the left-wing electorate. An electoral alliance of this type would not have prevented the expression of political differences between the left parties, where they exist.

As it is, the left will go into the 2027 elections weakened and divided. All is not lost, however. The presidential election and the following legislative elections will only be stages in what must necessarily be a broader and longer struggle.

Even if the elections bring Marine Le Pen to the presidency and give her a viable parliamentary majority, she will face strong popular protest movements, in the streets, in neighbourhoods and in the workplaces. The policies of discrimination and persecution in the RN’s program will lead to very serious consequences, opening up a period of intense social instability and turbulence. 

Social security reserved for the ‘French’

Can we stand aside while state authorities introduce discrimination in hiring, social benefits or the attribution of council houses according to origin, skin colour or religion? Le Pen wants to reserve social security for the ‘French’, to make access to benefits conditional on five years of work in France, and give priority to the French in employment opportunities. She also wants to put an end to processing of asylum applications in France and to withdraw the residence permit of any foreigner who has not worked for a year.

Can we accept the abolition of the right of nationality by birth and the mass deportation of “foreigners” under various pretexts? Beyond the ballot box, massive mobilisation at grassroots level will be the key to resisting and defeating the authoritarian and xenophobic regime that Le Pen wants to bring about.

The referendum, a classic instrument of authoritarian regimes

One of the subterfuges that Le Pen wants to use to support her regime is a so-called “citizens’ initiative referendum” (RIC). She says she will start with a referendum to validate a set of repressive measures concerning immigration, then a second to ban the wearing of the “Islamic” headscarf  in public spaces, including in the street. It should be noted in passing that during her 2012 campaign, Le Pen targeted both the traditional Muslim veil and the Jewish kippah, but today, she only mentions the “Islamic” headscarf.

Historically, the referendum has often been used as a weapon by dictatorial or authoritarian regimes. France has known this since the time of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, who came to power after the defeat of the 1848 revolutionary outbreak. He then proceeded to acquire the status of hereditary emperor through a referendum in 1852! Adolf Hitler, too, used the referendum to consolidate and extend his power, in 1934 and again in 1936.

Presented as the direct expression of “the will of the people”, the result of a referendum is given an almost sacred ‘legitimacy’, but in reality, it is more about how public opinion can be manipulated. A referendum is not a process that allows the dissemination of often complex and nuanced information and informed discussion – that is the basis of real democracy – but one where the establishment and the media mobilise opinion with simple slogans and highly slanted news. A referendum may have the appearance of “democracy” but in reality, it serves to undermine and destroy it.

A more recent example of political manipulation by referendum is the UK referendum on leaving the European Union, which produced an outcome as a result of an agreement between the Tory party right wing and the far right around Farage’s then UK Independence Party. Nothing better summarises the simplistic panaceas of the Brexit campaigners than the message on the side of a bus – “We send the EU £350 million a week, let’s fund our NHS instead“ – a total lie, of course. According to the supporters of Brexit, leaving the EU would stimulate the national economy, free up huge sums for the NHS and improve employment through the expulsion of European workers living in the United Kingdom.

NHS on the verge of collapse

And for what result? Today, the National Health Service (NHS) is on the verge of collapse and Brexit has cut between 6 and 8% off the UK GDP. As for employment, the United Kingdom officially had 1.78 million unemployed in May 2026, an increase of 4.7% in one year. Over the same period, the number of unemployed young people increased by 109,000, according to government statistics. The nationalist claim that the presence of too many “foreigners” was weighing on the economy and the standard of living of the British was nothing but a reactionary lie.

Le Pen is now planning a similar operation on immigration in France. She wants to use referendums to impose a policy of xenophobic harassment against the Muslim population, sanctioned by the “will of the people”. By reducing a cleverly formulated question to a simple “yes” or “no”, the referendum is a political tool perfectly suited to authoritarianism. Le Pen will use it to marginalise the opposition, while adopting the posture of a “democrat”.

We must denounce the populist demagogy of the RN and expose the reactionary trap of referenda. This task is however complicated by the support of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and PCF leader, Fabien Roussel, for so-called “citizens’ initiative” referenda, which they, too, present as a form of “direct democracy”. They probably think that a referendum could impose positive social reforms, without realising that they are a political device that can and will be used against the very interests they seek to defend.

What we expect from the LFI and the PCF is not supposedly “democratic” tricks to validate this or that individual measure or set of measures. In the hands of a reactionaries, this same tool can easily legitimise austerity and the persecution of ethnic or religious minorities. Fabien Roussel and Jean-Luc Mélenchon seem to underestimate this danger.

Asked on BFMTV and RMC in 2019 about the RIC demanded by some of the “yellow vests” (a widespread protest movement in France eight years ago) Fabien Roussel said he was in favour of the organisation of referenda “on all subjects“. Asked about same-sex marriage or the reinstatement of the death penalty, he replied: “But why not? On all subjects, let’s not be afraid! […] Of course, if the French want it! We must not be afraid of debate.”

The left confused on the issue of the referendum

Roussel’ position, like that of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, has not changed since then. Therefore, if Marine Le Pen organises, possibly with a prior “popular” petition in hand, a referendum on “national preference” or the criminalisation of the wearing of headscarves (incidentally just for Muslim women, since for non-Muslim women, a headscarf is merely a fashion statement!), must we now expect Fabien Roussel to answer: “Of course! If the French want it, why not?” And if the vote establishes blatant racist discrimination, will he then advocate respect for the “will of the people?”

The “Citizens’ Initiative Referendum” is a reactionary trap that the left must not support. It must be removed from the programs of La France Insoumise and the French Communist Party.

Rather than making concessions to populist demagogy, we need a left with a program of implacable defence of the rights and freedoms of all citizens, a program of social, economic and environmental reforms to improve living conditions.

And above all, these immediate and defensive objectives must be linked to the need to put an end to the economic power of the capitalist class, to the dictatorship of capital. This can only be accomplished by a massive extension of the public sector, by the nationalisation of all large companies to pave the way for democratic planning of the country’s productive and financial resources for the benefit of society. Only the mobilisation of the youth and workers around a program of radical transformation of society will make it possible to defeat the right, the far right and the ruling class they represent.

[Greg Oxley is the editor of the French Marxist website, La Riposte, which can befound here]

Michael Roberts: Labor's Share

Labor's Share

by Michael Roberts

In a recent post, I pointed out that US corporate profit margins (that’s profits as a share of national income) had reached record levels, 19.4%—the highest recorded in the US since the 1940s!

The converse was the case for labour’s share which had fallen to a new low.

If we measure the ratio of profits to wages in Marxist terms, namely as the rate of surplus value, we find that it has never been so high and thus an important counteracting factor in driving up the US rate of profit (that’s surplus value divided by the stock of the means of production plus employee compensation), particularly visible since the end of the pandemic.

Source: BEA NIPA, author’s calculations

However, these measures of shares of profits and wages in US national income have been challenged by the Tax Foundation. The Tax Foundation considers itself as the world’s leading nonpartisan tax policy think-tank. “For over 85 years, our mission has remained the same: to improve lives through tax policies that lead to greater economic growth and opportunity.”  The TF argues that it is incorrect to use the gross national income measure to gauge the share going to profits and wages.  And contrary to the conclusion above, it is not true that that capital is taking an ever-increasing slice of the economic pie or that labour’s share has fallen from nearly two-thirds in the 1950s to about half today.

Why are these conclusions wrong?  As the Tax Foundation correctly points out, total national income is not made up just of profits and wages received but also from depreciation.  Depreciation is the amount of national income that companies must take into account as investment to replace obsolete and used up machinery, plant and tech etc i.e. not investment in new means of production. So depreciation must be deducted from the profit that companies make from sales. In other words, the share going to profits or wages should be measured against net total income ie after depreciation is deducted.

When this is done, then labour’s share is not at all-time lows, according to the Tax Foundation: “labor’s share is both higher and more stable than the BLS series suggests.” On this net measure of national income, labour’s share was about 69% in the late 1940s, rising to about 75% in the 1970s, and is now 68.3% today – hardly any different from the 1950s. “Labor share, in other words, is not at a “never before seen” level”.

But a closer look at the data and time series provided by the Tax Foundation produces a more accurate conclusion, in my view.  First, let me say that ‘depreciation’ is an accounting deduction from gross profits. It is still value that has been appropriated by capital from the exploitation of labour. If gross profits are reduced by depreciation, so must the value of the stock of fixed assets, so that net profits are measured against the net stock of capital. Ceteris paribus, the rate of profit on capital will thus not be reduced by deducting depreciation from national income.

As for shares of national income, even if we use the Tax Foundation’s measure, the previous claim that labour’s share is at all-time low is nearly confirmed. That figure of labour’s share of US national income at 68.3% in 2026 was still the lowest since 1948 and correspondngly the profits share was also near its highest since 1948.

Source: Tax Foundation calculations

So the claim that labour’s share is at all-time low is only a slight exaggeration and the Tax Foundation is making much ado about not very much.  More important, the graph above reveals that it was at the end of the 1970s that labour’s share peaked.  From the 1980s, labour’s share fell and correspondingly the share going to capital rose.  This was the start of the so-called neoliberal period of attacks on trade union rights and organisation, privatisation, cuts in benefits and public services and the shift of manufacturing jobs to the cheap labour areas of the world. This enabled a rise in the overall profitability of US capital.

Moreover, if I convert the Tax Foundation’s share measures into Marxist categories, the rate of surplus value has risen 57% since 1980 and since the end of the Great Recession by 32%, and since the end of the pandemic by 17%, to reach near the immediate post-war peak.

Source: Tax Foundation, author’s calculations

This increase has been a key counteracting factor to Marx’s law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, leading to a rise in US profitability in the neo-liberal period (1982-2000), then after the end of the Great Recession and in the last five years since the end of the pandemic.

But there is a caveat. The vast bulk of these increased profits have been accumulated in just a few key sectors of the economy.  In the last year to mid-2026, US corporate profits in domestic industry (ie excluding profits made by US companies abroad) reached $4.4trn. That’s up $738bn, a huge 17.7%. 

Of that rise, the finance sector (based on the stock market boom) contributed $185bn, or 25%.  The energy sector (riding high on sharply rising energy prices) contributed $135bn, or 18.2%.  But it was the technology sector (software and hardware) that led the pack, contributing $214bn of the $738bn profits increase, or 29%.  If you exclude finance, and just consider the non-financial sectors, the energy share of the profits increase rises to 24% and tech sector to 39%. So nearly two-thirds of the rise in non-financial sector profits in the last year comes from just two sectors. 

Source: FRED https://fred.stlouisfed.org/release/tables?eid=18673&rid=53

This suggests that if there is any decline in tech profits from a bust in the AI-driven stock market, overall US profitability will dive, triggering a recession. So nearly two-thirds of the rise in non-financial sector profits in the last year comes from just two sectors. 

Reporting of the RAF Fairford arrests blows the idea of a ‘free press’ out of the water

Reporting of the RAF Fairford arrests blows the idea of a ‘free press’ out of the water

When the establishment media deals with issues in which the West’s war industries are most heavily invested, it happily jettisons even the semblance of critical distance from the state

Johnathan Cook Sept. 30 2026

It’s easy to forget that the western media – the so-called “free press” – likes to distinguish itself from media in authoritarian regimes on the basis that, unlike them, it asks critical questions of the powerful, reports facts objectively, and formulates its analyses dispassionately. 

They do propaganda, we do news – or so the western media argues. 

The feverish coverage since five men were arrested in the early hours of Sunday morning close to RAF Fairford in the UK is blowing that claim all too obviously out of the water.

Here are the known facts so far. 

Three white vans, bearing the logo of a genuine fuel transit company, were spotted by a local farmer on the road outside her property as she returned from a party. Police arrived promptly and arrested the men, who were all British nationals in their twenties. 

On Tuesday, it emerged that one of the arrested men actually called the police earlier – seemingly the reason police were on the scene so quickly.

Although the men were initially arrested on explosives charges, no “viable” explosives were found. Although they were arrested on terrorism charges, which allow for 14 days of detention, they were released on bail under normal criminal laws in less than two days. 

Jonathan Cook 2d UK police can hold terrorism suspects for 14 days without charge. Had police any grounds to believe the men arrested outside RAF Fairford had even the slightest terrorism connection, they would not have been released. They'd still be behind bars. But watch the BBC's Daniel Sandford, like every other establishment journalist, desperately try to sustain this as an Iran terrorism story. This isn't reporting. It's… 353 39 130

It has also emerged that the men had several empty “barrels” in their vans, plus one that contained what police described disturbingly as an “accelerant”. 

Actually, that was simply a reference to petrol. The stuff that goes into vehicles to make them accelerate.

Jonathan Cook 14h I'm sure the BBC's Daniel Sandford is scornful of social media users for speculating that the men arrested close to a farm near RAF Fairford were there to steal fuel. Sandford, meanwhile, is still busy helping the security services spin this as an Iran terrorism story – by speculating that an "accelerant" found in the men's vans – that is, petrol – could have been vital to a planned "attack or sabotage". 43 5 13

British prime minister Andy Burnham held a rare national emergency Cobra meeting over the incident. 

Meanwhile, the Trump administration got involved because RAF Fairford, despite its name, is in reality a US air base from which American planes are waging an illegal war of aggression against Iran, with the UK’s blessing. 

US Secretary of state Marco Rubio has said the incident “clearly involves the hands of a foreign actor”. When asked whether Iran was that actor, Trump replied: “It might be.” He added: “I know the answer... I can be very specific, but I'd rather not say.”

According to a report in the New York Times, “American and British intelligence services worked with Israel and Western countries to discover the threats against US bases, including ones in Germany.” [my emphasis]

Despite these sparse facts, the British media have uniformly rushed to a single conclusion: that this was almost certainly part of an Iranian terror plot to target the US airbase and its planes. The only room for debate allowed is whether the five men were witting or unwitting actors in that plot. 

As the Guardian reported in its Wednesday edition, referring to this as a “complex investigation”: “An Iranian link to the bizarre events in the Gloucestershire countryside over the weekend is seen as increasingly likely.”

As a preface, let us note the following: that British and US officials have every interest in trying to hype this incident as an Iranian “terror plot”, whatever the actual evidence suggests. 

Why? Because the US is waging an illegal war on Iran, and the UK is allowing it to do so from British soil. Under the rules of war, Iran has every right to attack RAF Fairford. 

If the British state and billionaire-owned media were actually serving as a truly “free press”, they would be offering the context that RAF Fairford is a legitimate military target and that any attack on it by Iran would not constitute terrorism. 

Of course, none have done so. 

Instead, they have loyally regurgitated the British and US security services spin of a “terror plot” – based on no tangible evidence at all – that paints Britain and the US as the victims of sinister and unwarranted Iranian aggression.

But context aside, an objective, sceptical media – a “free press” – would be reserving judgment on what had happened. It would be asking difficult questions. It would be offering plausible counter-narratives. 

Again, none of this is happening. In the British media, there has been a lemming-like rush towards accepting uncritically the very conclusions that best serve British and US state interests. 

The constant highlighting of a terrorism connection to the arrested men – for which there is no apparent evidence – is precisely the kind of coverage you would expect from state media in an authoritarian regime. This is about whipping up a public mood of fear, not about transparent fact-finding. 

Notably, unlike the British media, the New York Times report does allow for another possibility, even if it instantly ignores it and then joins the British media in treating what evidence there is as proof of an Iranian terror plot. 

The Times opens with a question: “The potential ambiguities – were the men Iranian operatives, petty gas thieves, or both? – added to the confusion surrounding the arrests that the authorities have yet to fully explain.”

“Petty gas thieves”! Men in vans with empty barrels close to a farm in the middle of the night. Is it possible they could simply be criminals? 

In fact, this conjecture has been all over social media since the first reports of the men being arrested surfaced. As new details have emerged, those suspicions have only grown. 

And yet Britain’s “free press” has uniformly ignored this counter-theory in favour of the US and British security services’ narrative. 

Doubtless, British journalists covering this incident would call the idea that this was simply a criminal group caught in the act unhelpful “speculation”. 

But how is their no-more-plausible, and possibly less plausible, theory that this was an Iranian terror plot not equally speculation – if in their case, speculation that happens to be extremely helpful to the British and US security establishments?

There are other theories we could posit too, given the known facts. Israel, which pushed for the original illegal and disastrous war on Iran, has been looking for a way to persuade the Trump administration to return to a full-scale bombing campaign. 

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An attack on RAF Fairford – or the appearance of one – would be an ideal way to pile on the pressure for renewed strikes on Iran. It’s not, after all, as if there are no examples of Israel carrying out false flags. 

If the “foreign actor” of Iran can recruit a gang of petty criminals to unwittingly spark a major security incident outside RAF Fairford, why can the “foreign actor” of Israel not do exactly the same? 

I don’t know what happened outside the airbase. I’m not claiming to. I am keeping an open, critical mind while what facts there are emerge. If only our “free press'“ were doing the same.

There may be those reading this who find the claim that the media in our “democratic” societies is not confrontational to, or at least distant from, the state hard to believe. Such an idea may be new to them. 

That should not be surprising. After all, how did each of us form our foundational view of the world – of who are the good guys, and who the bad – if not from spending a lifetime reading and watching media owned by billionaire-led corporations and the state? 

Since quitting the establishment media myself a quarter of a century ago (I worked for the Guardian), I have dedicated much of my time to identifying some of the most egregious examples of skewed journalism – reporting that consistently presents events in ways that serve not their audiences’ interests but those of the powerful: the corporations themselves; western security establishments; and Israel, the lynchpin of the West’s war industries. 

In such cases, the establishment media readily abandons even the pretence of neutral, fair or dispassionate reporting. It serves as little more than a propaganda factory. (You can read my detailed explanation of how the Propaganda Model works here.)

This has been all too visible in the coverage of Israel’s mass-slaughter in Gaza, a genocide that could not be named as such. 

It was visible in the coverage of Russia’s “unprovoked” invasion of Ukraine that had, in fact, been provoked by Nato for decades, as it expanded across Europe with a clear intention: either to corner Moscow militarily or drive it into a retaliatory attack on Ukraine that would provide an opportunity for the West to bleed Russia on a proxy battlefield.

It was visible in the sustained media campaign of antisemitism smearsagainst Jeremy Corbyn, that rarest, and most dangerous, of things: a leader of a major party who promoted socialist policies for the benefit of the public, not billionaires, and was a vehement critic of Israel long before it showed its genocidal hand. 

It was visible too in the media pile-on against Julian Assange, whose Wikileaks whistleblower platform exposed British and US war crimes while also threatening to destroy the media’s top-down model. Having ridiculed him for claiming asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy for fear Washington would seek to extradite him for exposing its crimes, the media then treated his seizure by British police and incarceration for years in a high-security London prison, while the US sought his extradition for exposing its crimes, as entirely unremarkable, as barely worth reporting. 

I could go on and on. There is consistent pattern when the establishment media deals with the most important issues, the very ones in which our national security states are most invested. Then the media jettisons even the semblance of critical distance from the state. 

RAF Fairford is just the latest example of how, in such critical moments, the media serves as nothing more than the security state’s loudspeaker. 

IRAN'S REVOLUTIONARY GUARDS CORPS (IRGC) JUST WROTE A LETTER TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

I am grateful to Mutari Abubakari for these comments

The IRGC released a 26-page open letter addressed directly to the American public.

Not to the White House, Not to Congress, To the people.

 

The letter was presented at a press conference in Tehran by IRGC spokesman, Brigadier General Hossein Mohebbi. He said the goal was to create "familiarity with Iran's logic."

 

The letter bypasses the U.S. government and corporate media. It speaks directly to Americans, scholars, students and journalists.

 

The IRGC claims Iran won the war.

 

It says the U.S. and Israel failed to achieve their objectives. It says Iran retained operational control over the Strait of Hormuz. It says American warships fled to the Indian Ocean. It says not a single U.S. vessel can dock at the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain. It says U.S. bases in the Gulf "resemble ghost towns." It says Iran achieved this with one percent of the U.S. defense budget.

 

The letter addresses "Death to America."

 

It says the slogan is not directed at the American people. It is directed at U.S. policies of aggression, killing and exploitation. It argues that Iranians and Americans are both victims of the same elite. It calls the White House "the House of Oppression."

 

It traces 73 years of conflict.

 

The 1953 coup. The Shah's rule. The Iran-Iraq War. Sanctions. The downing of Iran Air Flight 655. The killing of Qasem Soleimani. It asks Americans to test that history against what their media has told them. It rejects the nuclear weapons accusation. It calls the claim that Iran is weeks away from a bomb "the great lie of the century." It says Washington has repeated that claim for 25 years while Iran has not produced a weapon. It calls on Americans to close the bases.

 

It says the U.S. has 800 military bases around the world. It asks why. It asks what the purpose is of spending $1.1 trillion on the military budget. It urges Americans to demand the closure of overseas bases, bring troops home, and end military assistance to Israel. It calls on Americans to change their leadership. It says Americans should use their votes to remove politicians it calls corrupt. It mocks leaders who think they can buy support with direct payments to voters. It ends with a religious appeal.

 

The letter invokes Jesus Christ and Imam Mahdi. It speaks of a shared vision of justice. It suggests Americans and Iranians could ultimately stand together. It closes with an offer: 

"We can live together in peaceful coexistence."

 

The IRGC is not talking to the White House. It is talking to the American voter. The letter is a political intervention. It is a call for Americans to question their government, reject its wars, and change its leadership. It is written in English and Persian. It is addressed to scholars, students and media workers. It is meant to be read by the people who shape opinion and cast votes.

 

The timing is deliberate.

 

The war has lasted seven months. Donald Trump's approval is at a record low. Diesel is above six dollars a gallon. The midterms are in November. The IRGC is telling Americans that their government is lying to them. It is telling them that their leaders are enriching themselves. It is telling them that the war is not about Iran. It is about Israel and the defense industry.

 

The letter is a weapon, Not a missile, It is a message to the American voter.