The huge demonstrations in France initiated by school students are impressive and contain a clear rejection of how Macron runs the country and how Le Pen intends to run it. The Palestinian flag has replaced Che Guevara as a unifying emblem of internationalism.

As the most incompetent aspirant rioter Belfast ever produced, who was more of a danger to his own side, it is impossible to doubt the willingness of a section of the young demonstrators to come into direct conflict with the police and their technical ability.

Both La France Insoumise (LFI) and the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA) have correctly refused to condemn the demonstrators. In this clip Phillipe Poutou, a spokesperson for the NPA, repeatedly refuses to play the condemnation game and links the outbursts of violence both to previous protest movements and the injustices in society that enrage people. He says that what we are seeing are movement of direct democracy and he calls for more struggle and mobilisation.

That is all good as far as it goes but it shows that he is running into an analytical brick wall in his desire to remain on the side of the oppressed.

France has a massive petit bourgeoisie. Every town has independent bakers, cake shops, chocolate makers, pharmacies etc many family-owned and employing small numbers of people. But, add them all up and you are looking at millions of people.

Trotsky in his writings on fascism was very insightful about the place of the petit bourgeoisie. He wrote:

“In its mass, the petty bourgeoisie is an exploited and disfranchised class. It regards the bourgeoisie with envy and often with hatred…

… the petty bourgeoisie is incapable of an independent policy (that is also why the petty bourgeois “democratic dictatorship” is unrealizable) no other choice is left for it than that between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat…

It is quite capable of linking up its fate with that of the proletariat. For that, only one thing is needed: the petty bourgeoisie must acquire faith in the ability of the proletariat to lead society onto a new road.”

The task of the radical left is not simply to be on the side of the young people from the schools and housing estates who are on the streets. It also has to offer some form of strategic direction. Trashing a small clothes shop which is probably only just hovering on the edge of commercial viability or a pharmacy is probably fun and a way of expressing a deep-felt rage. From a political point of view, it is not how you convince the potential backbone of a fascist mass movement that the class you aspire to represent has a programme. The small shopkeepers seeing their businesses destroyed will turn to the party that offers order and stability, irrespective of the fact that they represent the big capital which seeks to do the same thing in a different way.

At the moment the right and the far right are loudly banging the law and order drum, imposing curfews and saying that groups like the LFI and NPA are responsible for organising the violence, an obvious nonsense. This rage comes from the lives that many young French people are living, and they are expressing it in a way that has deep roots in French politics. Le Pen’s and Macron’s predecessors collaborated with the Nazis, conducted mass murder in Algeria and threw the bodies of an unknown number of Algerians into the Seine. The rioters are from the tradition that fights against that.

However, a programme to neutralise the attractive power of Le Pen and worse cannot confine itself to unconditional support for the movement on the streets. It has to combine the demands of the youth, the working class and that intermediate class which it must win to their side.

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