The Karl Marx analysis of a political coup that led to the ascension of the president of the French Republic to the emperorship in his essay The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon couldn’t be more prescient today. Big business elites, the press, and the mainstream political parties have conspired to seal the power of a fading executive and to once again pass an austerity budget that, for the second year in a row, no one voted for.
This time, the connivance was done with a slight trick of the hand where the actual president Emmanuel Macron, despised in much of the country, seemed to step aside and not be involved. He supposedly surrendered the reins to his prime minister, who initially swore he would never ram a budget through by decree. But then, after gaining the acceptance of the Socialist party, the dealmaker in all of this, he went ahead anyway and is now invoking section 49.3, which allows the executive to pass a budget without a vote.
This is after already late last year invoking section 47.1 to pass an extreme measure of austerity that cut the health and social services budget by 26 billion euros. That provision, says that if no decision can be reached after 20 days of debate the bill simply passes to the (far more conservative) senate for eventual approval.
The basic right of the legislature from the time of the Magna Carta is the power of the purse. It is being eliminated as the executive sets the terms of an austerity budget, then steps back, “tsk, tsks,” wrings its hands, and says the legislature is simply too messy and the country must have a budget. It will be passed by fiat, granting the government most of what it wants.
Why this impasse? Because Macron, having called snap elections in 2022 lost his bet and instead returned a split legislature, with the largest number of votes going to a coalition of four left parties led by the LFI (France Unbowed) and including the Greens, the Communists and the Socialists. Macron, the former Rothschild banker, then pointedly refused to appoint a representative of the left Prime Minister and instead attempted repeatedly to cobble together a coalition of his own and two other so-called centrist parties (in actuality, center-right) with the right-wing Republicans.
The other large party in the legislature is the RN, the far right, which, in the wake of these maneuvers, is growing in strength every day.
Both the LFI and the RN have been separately trying to bring down what is essentially a lame duck government and return to the polls. But they have now been foiled by the desertion of the Socialists, who now support the government, which does not have the ability to actually pass a budget. It stays afloat and uses undemocratic measures because the Socialists, billing themselves as defenders of stability, refuse to join the other parties of the left in calling for the government’s downfall.
Macron had appointed two right-wing Prime Ministers and has watched both governments brought down by a vote of no confidence. The third PM, the former defense minister Sébastien Lecornu, then returned supposedly chastened by parliamentary opposition and vowed to work with all parties, a vow honored more in the breach than in the observance. In effect, after listening to all parties, he ultimately cut off debate and pushed through the original budget.
After the massive cuts to health care and social welfare in last year’s bill, this budget equally massively cuts funds for both local communities and small businesses, with its authors figuring they have the least access to the centers of power and thus constitute a quieter voice in the deliberations.
Macron, meanwhile, as his popularity continues to recede, has seemingly stepped back from the domestic debate. ceding it to his Prime Minister. Lecornu consults constantly with Macron, but in doublespeak that would make Louis Napoleon blush, describes himself as “free because he is loyal,” with his loyalty being what grants him his freedom.
Macron claims his sole concern with the budget is that much more money be appropriated for “defense,” which, as even Donald Trump accedes, is, in actuality, offense and war. In an acknowledgement of this priority and to accomplish this task, Macron cagily made his Secretary of Defense his Prime Minister.
The media is echoing this charade, with Le Monde praising Macron for stepping aside and The New York Times even more incoherently ascribing his newfound “prestige” to his showing up at the elite economic forum at Davos wearing a sleek pair of aviator glasses, supposedly to cover an eye irritant. The question being, what will happen to his newfound and fragile cache when he takes off the glasses?
It is likely that this government, with more and more power accruing to the executive as it cuts more and more social services in a drive toward war, will stumble along until new elections in 2027. This will mean another year of passing a budget with meager legislative input.
The Socialists, who have enabled this government to survive, are now fearful of going to the polls where the people will enact their revenge and so will keep the government, which has so heartily benefitted the biggest businesses and the richest individuals, in place.
Macron, who, when his reign began, was compared to Napoleon, will finish as the much- diminished Louis Napoleon, with, as Marx says in his essay, his first quinquinnat or five-year term as tragedy and the second as farce.
As with all news-analysis and op-ed articles published by People’s World, the views reflected here are those of the author.
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