France. High School Blockades: By confronting the state and its forces of repression, young proletarians are showing the way forward in the struggles for workers' interests

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High School Blockades: By confronting the state and its forces of repression, young proletarians are showing the way forward in the struggles for workers' interests

The state is, in the final analysis, a band of “armed men” (1). This truth, expressed by Friedrich Engels in his seminal work The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, has been felt firsthand by the thousands of young working-class high school students who, since September 21, 2026, have engaged in a power struggle—often violent—with the bourgeois state, which has found only one response to the students’ demands: the truncheon.

Indeed, while throughout France—and particularly in Île-de-France—high school students, often from working-class neighborhoods, have begun blocking access to schools—to date, nearly 1,000 schools are blocked or are the target of student protests (2)—to demand increased funding for education, the replacement of absent teachers, the hiring of additional staff, smaller class sizes, the renovation of crumbling high schools, the reduction of overloaded schedules, and the abolition of the system designed to select and crush students, Parcoursup, the state chose to reveal its true face rather than wear its mask of propriety and respectability. There is no doubt that the fact that the movement’s main organizers were young working-class people of North African or African descent played a central role in the state’s decision to send its heavily armed militias to take out their frustration on the youth. Mounted police, CRS buses, BRAV-M units, and LBD rounds fired at point-blank range targeting the eyes or jaw—it was indeed heavy artillery that was brought out to subdue a rebellious youth.

The working class and revolutionaries can only rejoice that, in the face of this onslaught of state violence, the working-class youth have responded on equal terms. In contrast to pacifists of all stripes—high school unionists, political leaders, and so-called revolutionary groups (!)—who urge the movement to adhere to nonviolence, respect for hated people and property, and negotiation with the authorities—the vast majority of the occupiers have taken up the gauntlet by greeting the police with mortar shells and cobblestones or by erecting makeshift barricades. At the time of this writing, it appears that 83 police officers and gendarmes have been injured. While these figures have, of course, been blown out of proportion by the media and political watchdogs of capital, they pale in comparison to the figures for state repression. According to the police, more than 5,000 people have been arrested, and there are reportedly nearly 170 injured students. (3) We are already seeing images of young people aged 15 to 18 who have had their eyes gouged out or their jaws broken by LBD rounds. (4) There is no doubt that these images will multiply, given how much the cops enjoy taking their frustrations out on young proletarians.

For let’s not be mistaken: while the demands may seem, at first glance, to transcend class lines—in that they concern high school students as a whole, whether they are the children of the working class, the petty bourgeoisie, or the upper class—it is clear that the low teacher-to-student ratios, dilapidated facilities, and the Parcoursup system—which sorts students into “good” ones destined for preparatory classes, the grandes écoles, and top universities, and “bad” students—who are crammed into overcrowded lecture halls at underfunded universities, or even pushed out of a school that has made it clear to them from the very beginning of their schooling that they do not belong there—are the exclusive lot of high school students from working-class or lower-class backgrounds. The radical nature of their methods of protest—roadblocks, occupations, barricades, and clashes with law enforcement—is further proof of this.

Does this mean that “high school students” have become a new vanguard, alongside “young people,” “women,” “minorities,” “homosexuals,” “transgender people,” “farmers,” and “workers,” all uniformly revolutionary, as the bourgeois far-left splinter groups—whether anarchists, Trotskyists, or Maoists—ceaselessly proclaim at the top of their lungs, and whose caricatured example is provided by the Trotskyist group Révolution permanente? (5) In reality, as we have already had occasion to say on numerous occasions, “youth” does not exist in the eyes of Marxists. (6) Young people, like the rest of society, are divided into social classes, whose interests are far from identical. While they certainly share common traits, their experience of school is radically different depending on whether they come from working-class or bourgeois backgrounds. While for the latter, republican, meritocratic, and culturalist illusions may correspond to a certain reality, the former know exactly what to make of the promises of liberty, equality, fraternity, and social advancement through work, school, and culture. Treated as second-class students from the moment they entered the school system, abandoned by the government, and pushed out as early as possible so they can “enter a labor market” that needs young proletarians who can be exploited and worked to the bone, the republican school system embodies, in their eyes, what it has always been: a massive sham. Given this, is it any wonder that the young people involved in these movements have begun setting fire to school buildings, school buses, and even street furniture? Far from representing blind violence, as certain self-righteous, supposedly revolutionary voices would have us believe, these acts of vandalism reflect an instinctive understanding that the Republic’s empty promises are not meant for them.

If this movement is to be criticized—fraternally but resolutely—it is from the perspective of the risk that this struggle, which began spontaneously and was organized independently of the unions and left-wing parties, may ultimately be co-opted by these false friends of the young proletariat. In high schools as well as in the workplace, the unions act as agents of bourgeois influence within proletarian circles. Whether it is the Union Syndicale Lycéenne (USL) or the Mouvement National Lycéen (MNL), these are breeding grounds for union bureaucrats, stepping stones to the Student Union (7), and appendages of La France Insoumise, or the numerous elected officials from La France Insoumise—such as Representative Denis Boyard, himself a former high school union bureaucrat, or the mayor of Saint-Denis, Bally Bagayoko—all these so-called allies of the high school student movement have the sole aim of steering it onto the dead-end track of nonviolence and negotiation with the government. It didn’t take long, then, for our budding bureaucrats to engage in a polite discussion with the Minister of National Education amid the gilded splendor of the grand ministerial hotels, or for the leader of La France Insoumise—and perennial presidential candidate—to urge the high school students to use “only nonviolent methods of struggle.” (8) At the time, he was simply following in the footsteps of his associate, Bally Bagayoko, who—under the gaze of strategically placed cameras—called on the high school students, in a pontificating tone, to remain calm and reject violence. (9) Certainly, high school violence must not be allowed to reflect poorly on candidate Mélenchon, who must demonstrate his sense of responsibility and his ability to maintain republican order if he wishes to run for the highest office. Alas, the positive reception that the elected representatives of La France Insoumise seem to be receiving at roadblocks and in demonstrations attests to the real danger that the movement will ultimately be absorbed by the bourgeoisie. It is the role of revolutionaries to highlight this danger, without harboring any illusions about the ability of young proletarians to assimilate this political orientation during a period of ebb in the class struggle.

It is also the responsibility of revolutionaries to emphasize the need for proletarian solidarity with this movement. This is not only because their own children are involved, nor is it only because a large portion of the population (6 out of 10 French people, according to polls whose reliability is questionable but which give an imperfect idea of the movement’s resonance in society (10)) considers the high school students’ demands legitimate; it is above all because only the proletariat, by fighting at the level of production, is capable of posing a lasting threat to the domination of capital. While the high school students in the struggle are the children of proletarians and likely future proletarians themselves, they still belong only potentially to this revolutionary subject identified by Marx, whose strength lies in its central position within the productive structure (where surplus value is extracted—the lifeblood of capitalism, without which it can only collapse) and in the daily contact they maintain with their class brothers in the workplace, contributing to an initial awareness of their belonging to the working class—a class whose dual nature is to be dialectically both exploited and revolutionary. High school students are not a new revolutionary force, nor are they a convenient substitute in the face of the relative passivity of the working class—not only in Europe but also in the rest of the world. As Trotsky said about student youth, at a time when they were still predominantly petty-bourgeois, “when the bourgeoisie consciously and stubbornly refuses to resolve the problems arising from the crisis of bourgeois society, and the proletariat is not yet ready to take on this task, it is often the students who take center stage. During the first Russian Revolution, we observed this phenomenon time and again. It has always held great significance for us: this revolutionary or semi-revolutionary activity implies that bourgeois society is undergoing a profound crisis. The petty-bourgeois youth, sensing that an explosive force is building up within the masses, seek in their own way to find a way out of this impasse by advancing the political situation. ” (11) Certainly, the struggle of young people—precisely because of their radicalism and their tendency to be among the first to take up the fight, which is why members of the Socialist Youth such as Karl Liebknecht and Amadeo Bordiga were among the finest revolutionaries—can serve as a spark and precede the awakening of that sleeping giant, the proletariat. But it is doomed to remain futile if it fails to spread to the only revolutionary class, the proletariat. With this welcome reminder that only the use of violence in the face of repression by a state—which, for its part, never hesitates to resort to the most brutal methods to maintain its rotten order—offers any prospect of success in struggles for workers’ interests, the young proletarians have shown the way. It is now up to the proletariat, in turn, to draw inspiration from the lessons of this struggle, thanks to the invaluable and indispensable aid of its class party. “This will not happen overnight; apart from repression, there are still many obstacles to overcome, to avoid renewed efforts to channel the course in another direction, to get rid of false «leftist» or «democratic» friends; but the current spontaneous revolt, by at least temporarily disturbing the suffocating social peace, objectively contributes to moving closer to this perspective.,” we wrote in 2023 on the occasion of the riots following Nahel’s death. (12) This prognosis remains as true today as it was three years ago.

(1) Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, 1884, Chapter 12, “Barbarism and Civilization.”

(2) « Lycées bloqués: le ministre de l'Éducation nationale annonce "un peu plus de 400 établissements" fermés demain », BFM TV, October 1, 2026 : https://www.bfmtv.com/societe/education/

(3) « Blocage des lycées : forte mobilisation, violences et dégradations, mouvement reconduit... Ce qu’il faut retenir de la journée de vendredi », Le Monde, October 2, 2026 : https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/live/2026/10/02/

(4) « Lycéen blessé mercredi 30 septembre à Tours : « Maël a perdu l’usage de son œil » », La Nouvelle République, 2 October 2026 : https://www.lanouvellerepublique.fr/tours/ ; « Blocus des lycées : L’adolescent touché par un LBD dans le Val-d’Oise souffre d’une double fracture de la mâchoire », 20 Minutes, October 2, 2026 : https://www.20minutes.fr/faits_divers/

(5) See, for example, « Un air de Grand Refus », Révolution permanente, October 4, 2026 : https://www.revolutionpermanente.fr/Un-air-de-Grand-Refus

(6) See for example our article « Gen Z Protests: It Is not the “Youth” That Will Overthrow Capitalism, But the Proletariat United Behind Its Class Party », Communist Program Nr. 11, April 2026

(7) The largest student union in terms of membership and votes, having replaced the UNEF—which has now been reduced to a shadow of its former self—and closely aligned with La France Insoumise, which, incidentally, has lent its support to the high school student movement.

(8) « "Cela ne sert à rien de mettre le feu": Jean-Luc Mélenchon appelle les jeunes à n'utiliser "que des méthodes de lutte non-violentes" », BFM TV, October 1, 2026 : https://www.bfmtv.com/politique/la-france-insoumise/

(9) « Blocage des lycées : Bally Bagayoko, maire LFI de Saint-Denis, défend sa présence auprès des mobilisés », Le Monde, October 1, 2026 : https://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2026/10/01/

(10) « 62 % des Français pensent que le mouvement lycéen est justifié, selon un sondage Odoxa », L’Humanité, October 3, 2026

(11) Leon Trotsky, “The Tasks of the Communists in Spain: Letter to Contra la Corriente,” May 25, 1930, available online at marxists.org [in French]: https://www.marxists.org/francais/trotsky/oeuvres/ 1930/05/ 300525 b.htm The underlined passages were added by us. It should be noted, however, that in this letter, Leon Trotsky treats the student protests against the dictatorship of 1923–1930 as if they were “revolutionary or semi-revolutionary” activities, by treating Spain at that time—and especially Spain in 1936–1939—in the same light as Russia in 1905–1917; that is, as if Spain were still awaiting a bourgeois revolution. In reality, one cannot consider that Spain at that time was still awaiting a bourgeois revolution, for it had already taken place, coming to an end—with all its contradictions and limitations—between 1874 and 1876. Leon Trotsky, by characterizing the demonstrations of the student petty bourgeoisie during those years as “revolutionary or semi-revolutionary” activity, was in fact generously attributing to them a characteristic they did not possess.

(12) « France : Riots in the Proletarian Districts. Capitalism is Responsible for Police Crimes, Oppression and Poverty. It is Capitalism that Must be Fought, it is Capitalism that Must be Overthrown! », Proletarian Nr. 20; Autumn-Winter 2023

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