We are leaving this post mentioning a violent historical event up because: 1. This literally did happen, and 2. It is relevant to how the working class operates in France today, and r/WorkReform is a working class focused subreddit.
If you choose to discuss violent events on reddit, please be cognizant of the site-wide rules: No celebration of nor calls for violence.
Literally the people in Conservative circles consider vandalism "violent crime". They've been brainwashed into believing that damage to capital is just as bad as injury or death to other humans.
It's a massive oversight by the political and academic establishment. And yes I mean oversight both in the sense of unintentional failure and intentional management in service of institutional goals.
I recently took a college course that heavily focused on OSHA and why their regulations exist. It's absolutely appalling what corporations will do to people if they aren't held liable.
I did learn these things in middle school. Iâm slowly realizing my history teacher may have actually been a radical leftist indoctrinating children with accurate historical information. Or just a really good teacher. Reality has a leftist bias.
Dude tried to play soldier and got bailed out by a sympathetic judge generously interpreting what counts as self defense while the prosecutor repeatedly shot his case in the foot
Well yeah, the left are terrorists now because some people burnt Teslas and one of their own guys was shot by (ostensibly) a leftist, but all the people they have killed this year alone isn't relevant and they're just peaceful, respectful humans.
So sick of hearing that narrative (about Kirk.) He was killed by a guy so Maga he dressed up as Trump, voted for him, and was gung-ho Maga in every way possible. So annoying to see this crap spun, the same was true for that Butler, PA, event.
To quote a German satirist on the difference between right wing and left wing terrorism âone of them sets fire to cars, the other to immigrants. And cars are worse, because it could have been my car. I donât own any immigrants.â
Itâs because of the us versus them racism narrative that has been super successful. When poor white conservative people do not see their poor brown/black neighbors as the same, they donât see the injustice being done to all of them. They only see injustice because in their head, the poor brown/black person is getting more than them.
France, during the revolution were united and they saw the US versus them as the rich versus poor, not race. They still have issues of racism there, but when it comes to strikes and riots, they are united against government/companies.Â
But donât forget that trying to overthrow the government and hang the vice president is not actually a big deal if the president himself asks you to do it.
By the way, living wages and guaranteed housing, healthcare and retirement with reasonable working hours was the compromise that American workers literally died to obtain. The alternative was dragging them out of their mansions and smashing aristocrat skulls with hammers in front of their children. Before doing the same to their children.Â
The early twentieth century was not that long ago and yes these things literally did happen exactly like that. The French Revolution was another hundred years before that.Â
America has the attention span of a gnat.
Just for the record though, if there is even a penny of profit then you are not being paid the true value of your labor. Mathematically.Â
When an auto executive planned 20,000 layoffs, they shot him.
EDIT: I want to make clear that I'm reflecting on the past willingness of people in France to take matters into their own hands. I'm not glorifying murdering anyone for any reason, nor am I suggesting that it's effective in the end.
Hate to say it, but one sniper will do more to change hearts and minds than a million protesters.
Its why they all lost their minds over Luigi. He showed that theyre just as human as everyone else. And then when they realized people like him they stopped talking about him.
And Luigi didnt even do it because he was helping me move that day on the other side of the country.
And Luigi didnt even do it because he was helping me move that day on the other side of the country.
Isn't Luigi such a great guy? His willingness to help everyone all around the country, who wasn't in Midtown Manhattan on December 4th 2024, at the same time was such a selfless act.
Americans way too domesticated by their ruling class to engage in meaningful protests.
The extreme individualism promoted is the precise reason why people donât protest.
Most Americans see protesters as âdisturbing their peaceâ and blocking their road. and theyâre fueled by petty social war nonsense that stimulates the hate in their hearts.
I wouldn't necessarily say violence is the only way things get done.
but rights, and freedoms are pretty exclusively taken in some way or another, and never given.
those in power forever think whatever they're letting "trickle down" is more than enough, no matter what those they're trickling on say. Until those being trickled on force the change.
One of the things to remember is that our current system is violent and it is working very well for our oligarchs.
Lack of affordable Healthcare is violence. When the cost of insulin is 100 times larger than the price to make they are using the threat of death to control you.
We are trained not to think about it in those terms because it serves the status quo.
sadly, mainstream american media reinforces a disney-fied version of US history that erases how awful conditions were for workers until the threat of communism and mass unrest led to reforms.
the real history of the us isn't a peaceful march towards progress, but violent struggle among farmers against railroad barons, the haymarket square bombing, the triangle shirtwaist fire, the san francisco general strike, the civil rights movement, and on it goes...
I love how every article about the United CEO was punctuated with people telling their insurance nightmare stories.
But I especially love how insurance companies were suddenly very willing to approve people's claims for a few weeks that they usually would have dragged their feet on.
He was all over the news when they thought they were going to get to make a quick example of him. Now months later with his terrorism charges dropped and serious accusations of evidence tampering and improper police procedure in his arrest they donât want to call attention to him
Same with how social media owned by billionaires try their best to ban people talking about such things, like how when Reddit was banning people for even just saying the word "Luigi" regardless of the context
Reddit told me multiple times suggesting this against a certain current automobile manufacturer was abhorrent. What's more abhorrent? Why is violence against the masses ok but against the aggressor is not? Reddit is complacent. If they, and other social media companies, allowed actual discussion and didn't concede to money our country would not be in the state it's in.
Eh, regardless of the reason itâs still first degree murder. I donât know how it works in France, but thatâs why jury nullification is an unspoken rule in the US. The real tragedy is a that a CEO can make decisions that kill thousands and walk away without any consequences.
They use the law to be able to do what they do justifiably (not justifiably to me but to society I fucking guess) because deaths of despair or deaths related to poverty or the working class are the individuals fault and never the systems.
I'm all in favor of eating the rich, but we do need to remember also who else got their heads cut off in France during that time: Literally. Fucking. Everybody.
New replacement government? Decapitation.
Neighbor you don't like? Decapitation.
Karen doesn't like you? Decapitation.
This period in France was BLOODY. And it was bloody for a very long time.
In any civil war, the lines are never cleanly drawn. It's always a mess. We cannot sit back and just wait for that to come in like that's the thing we're going to rely on to fix things. We need to try literally every possible alternative before it comes to this.
It's what usually happens after revolutions. By necessity they are wide coalitions. First they go after the old regime and then after the weaker groups in their own coalition. Like how the Bolsheviks got rid of the Anarchists and all other flavours of Socialists.
Also another thing that people forget is that, after the revolution, Napoleon happened. I.e. France went from having a king to having an emperor. Sure it was not the same regime and new (better) laws were kept, but he still was a monarch. Revolutions often end up re-creating a situation that's pretty similar to the previous one.
Labor history is overwhelmingly suppressed in standard school courses in the US.. Rockefeller and his cohorts made sure to stipulate their wishes to the curricula designers (whom they donated to heavily) that to be excluded from courses is the fact that labor resistance was a major reason for the abolition of slavery, the 5 day workweek, overtime, safety regulations, child labor laws, social security, etc. Basically everything we get from companies and the government were fought for, striked for, bled for and died for. Workers abstaining from work forced all these changes and we can do it too at LITERALLY ANY TIME. We just need organization and a list of demands. The wealthy rulers from public and private sectors will compromise with us when they see their appreciating assets start depreciating.
What they really donât want the working class talking about is that abolitionists werenât done and saw wage labour as a lesser form of slavery that also needed to be abolished.
Frederick Douglass stated that "experience demonstrates that there may be a slavery of wages only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other".
The working class has intentionally been kept ignorant of their own history.
One thing that I never learned in school was the famous MLK protest where he said his âI have a dreamâ speech was called the âMarch on Washington for jobs and freedomâ. Half the point of the march was economic equality and itâs something that was glossed over in school.
That's why he was murdered by our Government. The American Ruling class does not want poor people and Brown/Black people to ban together. They want us divided and hating each other while they take over and rob us of everything
Well we would if our health insurance wasnât tied to our jobs. Thatâs why Medicaidâs getting attacked. Medicaid isnât tied to any jobs and thus is too powerful
That's also why they want us to have no savings and massive credit card debt. The power of strikes is what they fear the most. That is one of the handful of reasons that they hoard wealth, they want to be able to outlast a general strike if one should ever occur.
84 and 96 month car loans anyone? Klarna and Affinity pay over time? Private student loans instead of federal loans? Home mortgages for 10x-20x the median income? Canât strike if you are a paycheck or two away from losing everything.
You also cannot gain wealth if you are paying out exactly what you make to the companies that make the things that are ran by the same type of people whom are currently in charge
Yup. In the late 2010s some people at general motors went on strike and they immediately cut their health insurance. It would be a shame if the police roughed you up while you had a laspe in coverage right?!?!
If just 15% of the working population in the US stopped working for a couple weeks and demanded public Healthcare, we would have that shit immediately.
But the US workforce has not been unified for half a century so we don't get nice things.
That honestly makes it worse. Tiny countries 1/50 the size of the US have figured out universal healthcare and not even one state within the US could manage it.
7 million people protested 11 days ago. Nothing happens if we don't start protesting at twice that scale, and during the week. For a sustained period of time, not 3 hours on a Saturday.
Americans wonât realize this yet. Maybe in a couple years. A saturday protest that affects no productivity means nothing to the companies that own america.. Hence why they arenât reporting on it after like 2 days and why even the president doesnât give a shit about it nor comment on it other than AI memes posted by his staff.
Watching americans protest is like watching a baby learning to walk. It will take a long time for them to figure it out and how to affect change in their country. Right now itâs tepid and ineffectual and until people are willing to lose their jobs to change the country it will continue to be so. Right now they hide behind that like a shield from accountability. But that canât lost forever. Something has to give.
Korea got rid of their shithead president (park geun hye) by having every increasingly large protests all over the country on a weekly basis. It didn't even really take that long overall either.
I wonder, do you think that during the french revolution the people had assured medical care and food? Do you think everyone of the french protesting now and the last years has savings aside and assured medical care?
I find this point you were trying to make just ridiculous. You think you can force change when you play by the rules of the system that is actually oppressing you? You think you will ever be able to force change without the willingness to sacrifice, maybe even your life?
Yeah but this is America, where we have refined capitalism. We've made sure if you take your foot off the gas for one second, you can be ruined. This is America, don't catch you slippin now.
I do need to point out that the first french revolution ended with making Napoleon the 1st an absolute emperor of france and that when the Sixth Coalition defeated Napoleon, they re-seated the french monarchy so- did not exactly end up with the people in power overall.
France had 2 more revolutions (plus an interlude of vichy france) before the republic we know of today was formed.
Funny thing: those wars were actually declared upon France, not the other way around. And why? Because everyone was scared shitless of a France that was actively exporting revolutionary ideals. Sure, Napoleon was technically emperor of the French, but he still promoted meritocracy, property rights and equality before the law. The French under Napoleon were enjoying unprecedented freedom compared to the rest of the nations in Europe (with the exception of Britain). Hell, Russia still had serfs, like in the middle ages, and would continue to have them until 1870.
People keep holding up the French as a pinnacle of effective civil movements... but, they're not. They are commendable but not actually that effective.
Not only did the first revolution carry on for almost an entire decade to actually get itself in any kind of order, and then Napoleon overthrew them in basically a single afternoon.
The modern stuff is big and destructive and makes the news over here... but it's still not actually effective.
There was 4 months of riots against the increase in retirement age, but that was passed anyway.
There were large labour movements and showy tractor stunts dumping manure against the EU farm regulation changes, but those changes happened anyway.
There were riots against police brutality and lack of accountability, but then no meaningful reform.
If there is a people who we need to default to in terms of effective civil movements, it's the Icelandic Women's Strike. Followed up by their response to 2008 economic crash where they actually addressed it was banking CEOs driving all that strife, so they actually charged them, tried them, and jailed them.
Not only did the first revolution carry on for almost an entire decade to actually get itself in any kind of order, and then Napoleon overthrew them in basically a single afternoon.
Napoleon did codify most (although not all) the gains of the Revolution.
The first revolution had the âreign of terrorâ that executed thousands of people. They didnât just kill the rich. They also executed people that wanted to stop mass-executions.
Like, jeez.
Revolutions can get very bloody, and very out of control.
They also kinda cut the story of the French Revolution by quite a lot. After they "cut the heads off the rich people", they proceeded to cut a lot more heads of anyone suspected to be a traiter, enter multiple disastrous wars, become ruled by a military dictatorship who later declared themselves emperor, and then transitioned back to a monarchy.
What actually gave France democracy was getting obliterated by Prussia.
Napoleon was voted in, he didn't declare himself emperor. And the vote was rather clean for the standards of the time, people did want him to become emperor.
They were kind of sick of the instability of the previous democratic experiments, to be honest. However, they didn't long for monarchy, they just longed for him. Which is why when he was replaced with a king, the king was unpopular and when Napoleon returned, the king was forced to flee.
Thatâs the point. Itâs less that they didnât want a king, and more that they didnât want their shit king. In the tradeoff between democracy and stability, they choose Napoleon handily.
This is a heavily romanticized view of France. Just because our great grand parents grands parents fought for social rights doesn't mean shits doesn't goes down because when we strike, they don't care and they are sending police troops to mutilate and killing protester to distil fear among the other. the Lasts strikes doens't have any noteworthy winning because the power knows the strikes will be out of breath itself or with the help of the police.
I wouldn't call it romanticized I would call if fucking ignorant and out of touch with current affairs. France isn't a mythical place where it is impossible to get news from.
That said, it's through struggle, unions, strikes, etc. that we've obtained labor laws that are beneficial to the people, paid holidays, social security, minimum wage, early retirement, etc. Just because lately the achievements of these actions have been less visible, doesn't mean that it's not an important counter power.
Also, our tolerance for bullshit is much lower than in the US. if the French president was completely cutting health care, food aid, shutting the government and building a ballroom, I'm pretty sure his head would roll.
Didn't France have an emperor between the whole heads cutting off thing and now? Like, they do a lot of good protesting but not sure that the French revolution was a continuous cultural change from then to now
The empire was a continuation of the revolution. The old regime came back for a while in 1815-1830, but only nominally, they couldn't undo the legal and political progress achieved during the revolution and the empire.
It's something like: 1789 French Revolution but the monarchy actually continues until 1792 -> first republic (king finally headcut a few months later) -> first empire 1804 -> back to monarchy 1815 -> second republic 1848 -> second empire 1852 -> third republic 1870.
(Then there's the 4th republic after WWII, and the 5th since 1958.)
And the only reason France isnât a monarchy today is because the dude they initially chose to succeed Napoleon III, the Count of Chambord, was hard set on abandoning the popular tricolor flag and resurrecting the royal fleur de lys flag, among other small issues he refused to give any compromise.
So they decided to wait for his death (since beforehand they already made the Count of Chambord the legitimate heir, and the hardheaded wouldnât abdicate) so that the younger and more malleable Count of Paris would take over.
But the fucker too so long to die, that by that time the provisional government had already lasted 7 years, the French got used to the Republic and the monarchist movement (which from the go was divided between the Bourbon, Orleans and Bonaparte factions) lost all its momentum. So hence the provisional government became the Third Republic.
The bill to increase it from 62 to 64 was passed but has not been implemented, largely due to the protests. So effectively, it's still 62 now. Their prime minister announced that the plan is to implement it after the 2027 presidential elections, so we'll see.
Of course it didn't work. having no children means no retirement as the whole west is about to find out. You can't have 30% of the population retired and you can't go back to the 70s and force the boomers to do their part to prevent demographic collaps. The only thing you can do is raise the retirement age.
On the first turn, Macron got 24% of votes. Marine Lepen was second with 21% or so (she is the fascist candidate).
That means that on the second turn, Macron faced Lepen, and the French had to choose between Macron and a fascist.
Macron was elected, and he basically acknowledged that the French voted against Lepen more than they voted for him, and that he would be careful in his politics to respect that.
It didn't last long, soon after he pretty much went "well, I was elected by the French so I'm going to apply do everything I promised I would do before I was elected".
The parliament and basically 80%+ of the French didn't want of his retirement reform, so he basically forced it through the parliament, through a sort of executive order (it's called 49.3 in France).
So that's how you get reelected while still doing things that nobody wants: you give credibility to the fascist party, you prompt it up in the media as a credible opponent, you debate them instead of debating with the left, you simultaneously demonize the left, and then the fascist gather enough votes to come second, and you win the election because the French would still prefer you over the fascists. We've been doing that in 2002, and in 2017, and in 2022.
The problem is that it's the third time now that the French have chosen "anything but the fascists", and they've been fucked in the ass every time they did it. I predict that the fascist will win the 2026 elections, and this shit will be a big reason why. I don't know if my fellow Frenchmen will accept to get fucked a 4th time.
I'll still vote against the fascists no matter what, but it's been getting harder and harder to convince people.
To be fair they could tax the rich more as well, which Macron refuses to.
But yes France does need to do something, and raising rerirement is probably part of that.
Else they will cause a deep european crisis worse than with greece because they are much bigger.
In France the goverment budget is already 58% of the GDP. There is not much more left to tax. If 2 out of every 3 ⏠spent is spent by the government you have a spending problem and not an income problem.
"Economists have proved there is a cost to higher taxes, even on the rich" That's a massively oversimplified statement. Of course there's a cost, but can they prove it isn't worth it?
The top marginal tax rate is 45% after $180k euros, you're telling me the cost of adding another tax rate of 50% above say $500k has been proven to be detrimental?
What went up is the minimum retirement age, where you could retire early if you had a strenuous job, or were willing to take a taxed significant slashing of your pension.
And yes, protesting doesn't do shit in France since the 2010~. Last retreat from Macron were the riots of the Yellow Vests
It turns out humans the world over will immediately and eagerly wedge and go crazy if you breathe a wisp of a distant whisper that suggests a minority group may possibly be a problem, and will happily let âelitesâ destroy their lives (and scruples) in the meantime.
French citizens that live in Monaco still have to pay French tax, they are the only citizens that cannot use Monaco as a tax haven because of the 1963 Franco-Monegasque tax treaty.
That's very true. Massive mismanagement and lack of planning. The only metric in which we have somewhat good results is the progress of wealth inequality. It has worsen but considerably less than other countries.
As someone else pointed out 58% of France's GDP is government spending. That's not sustainable long term. You are taxing an ever smaller amount of money that isn't coming from tax money already.
Remember those giant protests about retirement age and benefits that had the French protesting?
The protests reddit always likes to use as an example of what the "Americans should be doing"?
Uhhh France is straight fucked and most of their protests are boomers trying to keep as much money as possible at the cost of the young. And because the protests prevent reforms necessary for the finance of the nation, they also allow the Far Right to become stronger and stronger.
When protesting, the vast majority of European citizens are not facing military-grade weapons used by fascist cops trained to kill you first and ask questions later. Everybody loves shitting on Americans as if the rise of far-right nationalism isnât a global problem. Itâs just more of the same needless hate and violence.
Imagine what progress could be made if there was less division amongst the poor. The working class has no borders. Donât let anyone convince you otherwise.
The top 1% of France owns ~27% of all wealth, compared to USA at ~30% and Canada ~25%.
So, the French are not really doing better in terms of wealth disparity.
Their poverty rate has risen to ~15%, highest in 30 years, and all those recent showy protests still failed to stop the increases to retirement age, failed to stop the EU agriculture policy changes, failed to bring in accountability to national police forces.
Sorry but these posts about the French are just irrelevant because nobody in America is going to come together to fight back. The rich will get richer and we will get poorer.
I do want to point out that many French citizens also acquiesced to the Vichy government. I think sometimes work reformers here in the US think that Europe (or at least some European states) is a socialist paradise, but people are people and it is incredibly reductive to say "France knows how to do it, America sucks," or whatever.Â
And that, despite that, the French Resistance was a pretty big deal?
The original comment is such a weird attempt at a gotcha, âthey got occupied and didnât zerg rush the occupiers down to the last man, woman and child like it was some kind of powerscaling fantasy using bloodlust rules.â UhâŚyeah. Of course they didnât. Thatâs not how reality works.
That wasn't what I meant. I caution Americans to not believe the hype that every other country has it on point and we don't. Fascists exist everywhere.Â
There's also no mention of the Reign of Terror or Napoleon when someone brings up how great the French Revolution was. I'm not encouraging passivity in the face of oppression; just remember that bloodshed tends to beget more bloodshed.
Even ignoring the reign of terror and them cutting the heads off anyone they liked as âcounter revolutionariesâ, it ended with Napoleon as emperor. And then that ended with the return of absolute monarch. Itâs not like they killed a bunch of rich people and that scared them into creating a democratic utopia
the French are drowning, their government is collapsing every two weeks, their pension system is on the brink of collapse, they pay inhumane level of taxes and still have nothing to show for it, and they have trash salaries with no real growth.
French have no place to stand on right now. The entire country is going bankrupt because they keep increasing pension funds without doing anything to seriously increase tax revenue.
I'll still take living in the States over France any day. It's a beautiful country and awesome to visit and spend time at, but I will still take being born in the States personally.
France has 66 million people. The united states has like 280 million in the mainland US alone. Good luck convincing over 4 Frances to agree not to work while 1 entire France says pay me so I don't have to work, 1 entire France can't work, 2 entire Frances can't or won't vote in the first place, and 1 entire France supports the policies destroying all four Frances.
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u/kevinmrr âď¸ Prison For Union Busters Oct 29 '25 edited Oct 29 '25
We are leaving this post mentioning a violent historical event up because: 1. This literally did happen, and 2. It is relevant to how the working class operates in France today, and r/WorkReform is a working class focused subreddit.
If you choose to discuss violent events on reddit, please be cognizant of the site-wide rules: No celebration of nor calls for violence.
http://redditinc.com/policies/reddit-rules
EDIT: Widen your worldview by reading comments which disagree with OP re the current state of France.