Bret Buganski, “Illinois secession movement grows as 12 more counties back split,” Fox 32 Chicago (Nov. 4, 2026).

On Tuesday, voters in twelve more Illinois counties, along with several Adams County townships, approved nonbinding referendums to explore separating from the state, bringing the total to 45 counties since 2020. The organizers’ grievance is simple and familiar: as one of them put it, “The state legislature tends to not take us into consideration when they’re making their laws.” The votes are only advisory, of course; carving a new state out of Illinois would require the consent of the Illinois General Assembly and Congress—that is, permission from the very rulers these voters want to leave. And Alberta’s roughly three-to-one vote last month to remain in Canada is a reminder that such movements do not win overnight. Still, PFS readers should welcome every one of these votes, for as Hoppe has long argued, in Democracy: The God That Failed and elsewhere, smaller political units must compete for residents and capital and so tend to be less exploitative than large ones. Each referendum chips away at the notion that existing borders are sacred and helps normalize peaceful exit from political arrangements nobody consented to. Who knows—someday the rest of Illinois may simply leave Cook County to govern itself.

Related:

• Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “Small is Beautiful,” Property and Freedom Society (June 7, 2026)
• “PFP268 | Hans-Hermann Hoppe, ‘On Centralization, Secession and the Problem of Self-Defense’ (PFS 2023),” Property and Freedom Podcast (Jan. 15, 2024)
• “‘My Dream Is of a Europe Which Consists of 1,000 Liechtensteins’: Hoppe on SERVUS TV: On State, War, Europe, Decentralization and Neutrality,” HansHoppe.com (April 10, 2022)
• Stephan Kinsella, “Structural Safeguards to Limit Legislation and State Power,” StephanKinsella.com (Jan. 23, 2015)
• Idem, “Pro-Lincoln Libertarians,” StephanKinsella.com (July 7, 2002)

Joshua Sternberg is an enrollment adviser working with prospective participants of Praxis, a college-alternative educational program. A graduate of the program, he got a job in software sales through Praxis.

Thomas F. Walker: Thanks for joining me. Praxis positions itself as a “college alternative.” Why do we need an alternative to college education?

Joshua Sternberg: We need an alternative to traditional college education because there’s a gap in the market that needs to be filled. What college today is really good for is being in a good place to drink with your buddies, go to football games, have a good time for four years, and essentially delay adulthood. The cost of that is that it takes about twenty years to pay off your student-loan debt. The average federal student borrower owes about $40,000, and only about half of bachelor’s graduates land a job that needs their degree within a year of graduating. That’s underemployment, not unemployment. College hasn’t been serving people who are looking to actually get a career started, and that fact is backed by the statistics. That’s what Praxis is here to solve—to equip people to begin jobs. We have an entrepreneur track that helps people start their own businesses. We also have a track that helps people get into a job, and we even guarantee them a job offer if they complete the full program.

Walker: It’s a short, cheap program compared to a three- or four-year college degree, being less than a year. How are you able to deliver that much value in such a short time?

Sternberg: The interesting way to answer that question is to peek into the history of college. The first universities trained people for a few learned professions: the church, law, and medicine. Harvard, the first college in the American colonies, was founded partly to make sure New England’s churches had educated ministers. College was never designed to prepare most people for most jobs. Then, in the forties and fifties, a college degree made you stand apart. In our grandparents’ day, fewer than 7 percent of people had a college degree, so you stood out, and you were special. Nowadays, about 38 percent of people have a college degree, so it’s simply not standing out anymore.

To focus on your question of how we’re able to offer it affordably, it’s because we’re not focused on the fluff. We don’t have a hundred-acre facility; we don’t have a forty-person staff to maintain lawns. Our staff is concentrated on getting you the skills that you need to get a job, so our full program costs $7,500, far less expensive than college.

Walker: How can you guarantee a job? I was also wondering: As well as offering something unique to students that they’re lacking at college, are you also offering something unique to employers that they find college graduates are missing? I know they often find that they have to supplement education in terms of people’s writing ability, mathematical ability, and the like.

Sternberg: I’ll take the employer side of the question first. The struggle that employers face is that people send them résumés like it’s junk mail. Most recruiting employers can tell you how many résumés they’ve looked at, how hard it is to tell them apart, and how little a résumé can tell you about someone. For example, if you say that you have a college degree, that doesn’t help much because it could be an irrelevant degree. It could also mean that you got that degree by the seat of your pants, and you barely studied. Maybe you used AI and Google to answer most of the questions. Obviously, that’s not a blanket statement, but typically a college degree doesn’t help them find out what they want.

At Praxis, we teach a process of proving what you can do. Our students, instead of creating résumés (although that is something you typically have to do), create projects. If I wanted to work for you, Thomas, I would look up your company, I would see what you need and what I could improve. For example, if I wanted to be your social media manager, I would look at all your company’s social profiles, and then I would create social posts, videos, images for Instagram. Then I would send you an email in which I also would attach a video of myself, saying, “Hey, Thomas, I am super enthused about what you’re doing over there, and I think that I can make a huge impact on your social media team. Here’s proof: four posts that I created for you. Feel free to use these, and I think these can make a huge difference in your business.” That’s what we teach our students, instead of the typical résumé, and the reason that we offer a job-offer guarantee is because we’re so confident in that process that we’re willing to stake our money on it and say, “If you don’t get a job offer using this process, we will give you your money back.”

Walker: On your website, you talk a lot about the fact that you teach critical thinking; you “teach people how to think, not what to think.” Can you talk about how that enables your students to decide what they’re passionate about and find lines of work that they will actually be good at and motivated to succeed in?

Sternberg: The traditional school system looks like this: You sit in a class, and you are told to memorize a certain amount of information and certain types of information. There’s not much room to ask questions. We have a lot of great teachers in our education system, but the system fundamentally is that way. On the other hand, we teach our students by doing projects that help with critical thinking. Instead of being told what to do, you’re given a problem. For example, if we need a marketing campaign for a company, you’re taught to think about how to get that done. You’re taught to think things like, “What do people want to see that would get them interested in my product?” “Where can I post these things?” Then you do the work—you actually build a marketing campaign, and you have to use your brain to think and create it from scratch. That’s what Praxis means; it comes from the word praxeology—to do, as opposed to merely theorizing.

Walker: Praxis is Greek for “action,” if I remember correctly?

Sternberg: That’s right.

Walker: How did Praxis start its journey of providing this alternative approach to education? What brought you to where you are today as a company?

Sternberg: The inspiration came from the two entrepreneurs who began the company, Isaac Morehouse and T. K. Coleman. They teamed up about ten years ago because they saw the gap in the market that college was leaving. Because they’re entrepreneurs who love to be on to the next thing, they transitioned Praxis into new leadership, and they started new projects of their own.

We’ve noticed that when people join our program, they become part of our community, and they essentially become ambassadors for what we do. A tremendous number of our students come from referrals from our current alumni. We see Praxis continuing to build that community in the future. For example, in our alumni community just the other day, an alumnus from our program posted, essentially, “Hey. The company that I’ve been working at since I graduated Praxis is looking to hire a bunch of salespeople. Can we get something going?” Even after finishing the program, you get lifetime benefits because you’re part of that network of people who’ve gone before you, who are on your level and are all enthusiastic about improving their careers. We see that scaling into a much bigger community, and we see ourselves being a real problem for college in the future.

Walker: When you talk about a gap in the market, I imagine a situation in which there are some people for whom college is potentially right, such as those who want academic careers. And then there are some who are better off going straight into trades. So, could you give me a sense of the person in between, the one whom Praxis is for? How does someone know whether this is the right path to take?

Sternberg: I love that question, because that’s part of what I do in my job as an enrollment adviser. I talk to parents and kids and help them decide. A couple months ago, I got on the phone with a kid who was interested in going into the medical field. I said, “Go to college.” You really can’t go into that career, realistically speaking, without going to college. So, one of the things that I would advise people is: If you’re considering college, there are websites out there that will help you see the underemployment rate of each degree. Go on one of those websites, look at the degree that you’re interested in, and see the underemployment rate—the odds that you won’t actually be working in that career if you study it. Careers such as chemical engineering and nursing have low underemployment rates, so if you want to go into those careers, if you’re passionate about one of them, I would highly recommend going to college. You’ll probably get a job. On the other side, majors such as liberal arts and criminal justice have really high underemployment rates. If you’re interested in those, I would suggest you take a second look. If you’re looking to go for fun, maybe that’s all right, but if you’re looking to go into a career in that, the odds are against you. So, that’s the first thing I would check. The next is: Are you the kind of person who wants to work outside? Do you like working with your hands? If that describes you, go to trade school. There are a lot of great trades. You can make crazy good money in the trades. The training for those is a lot shorter than college.

For Praxis, I would say, “Are you unsure about what you want to do?” That describes a lot of our people—they just don’t know what they want to do with their futures. If that’s you, Praxis can help you get started in a career in which you start making money, and you have a huge opportunity to get promoted and make more money while you gain experience and work out what you’re interested in doing. I like to use a chess analogy: If you’re in the middle of a chess game, it doesn’t really matter how you got there. All that matters is that you make the best move possible where you are. So, a lot of times for a lot of people, that’s starting to make money and gain skills right now, as opposed to in four years if you go to college. Instead, you’ve had a job via Praxis for four years, and you have a lot of money. So, Praxis is for those people who want to get started making money and for people who don’t know what they want to do next.

Walker: As part of your program, do you provide tools for people to work out what they want to do?

Sternberg: Absolutely. The best way to answer that is to go into how our program is structured. We have two phases. The first is Incubate, and that’s $850. The purpose of Incubate is to help you decide which direction you want to go, and whether Praxis is even right for you. Before you commit the full $7,500, you can commit $850, so your risk is much lower. In those six weeks, you build the habits and skills every career needs, such as networking, taking feedback, and pitching the value you can bring to a company. You can ask yourself, “Is this right for me?” You may well come to the end of it and say, “You know what? College is right for me.” No harm, no foul. You haven’t committed $7,500. If you do go on to Accelerate, the first two months give you hands-on experience in areas of business such as sales, marketing, operations, and customer success, which is different from customer service. Instead of responding to problems as they come in, you own a set of client accounts and work alongside those clients to make sure they’re equipped to succeed. The resource we have that I’m most proud of is that every one of our students gets not just the leadership from our head instructor, but they also get assigned a personal mentor. That’s someone who has gone through the program and graduated a few years earlier and is coming back to give advice not only on how to complete the program, but also on working out what they’re interested in and which direction to go. Incubate builds in time for that. Participants have one-on-one calls with their mentor, and the last week is about reflecting on what they value, what motivates them long-term, and which companies and careers inspire them. That’s super important, helping people decide what they want to do, and it’s something that we put a lot of our resources into supporting.

Walker: Are there any restrictions on who can apply, such as age or location?

Sternberg: Yes. Our audience is 17–25-year-olds. We are meant to be a college-alternative program, so this program isn’t designed for people later in their careers, maybe with twenty years of work experience trying to relaunch into something else. And typically, it’s more of a step back if you have twenty years of experience. We also can’t generally allow people younger than seventeen into the program because it’s hard to offer full-time employment. No one really wants to offer full-time employment to a sixteen-year-old. There are a lot of government rules about child labor. We sometimes make exceptions on either end that mean people can participate in the program, but they may not be able to take advantage of the job-offer guarantee. In terms of location, anyone can join us globally, but the job-offer guarantee only applies to U.S. citizens.

Walker: What’s next for you guys? How do you see either your organization or this college-alternative movement generally growing in the future?

Sternberg: We’ve seen more growth in the last quarter than in the previous couple years, and we hope to see that continue. We hope to see more students coming in, getting passionate about what we do and about building our community. We really believe the reason that more people haven’t decided to go away from college is simply a lack of awareness. There’s a huge social stigma that you have to go to college to be a success. College can help you be a success, but it is not a guarantee. Once more people know about what we do and the options out there—not only Praxis, but other college alternatives, too—we anticipate that colleges are in for a rude awakening in the short term.

Walker: I hope we can move toward a more diverse way of learning because such a large proportion of people going to college is damaging both to people who should go to college and don’t stand out like they should and to people for whom it’s not really the right choice in the first place.

Thanks so much for joining me. Is there anything else you want to let readers know, such as where they can find you?

Sternberg: The best way to stay in touch with us is to follow us on social media. We have regular live webinars in which you can learn more, and you can go on our website and book time with one of our advisers to speak to them for fifteen minutes about your child or yourself if you’re interested, which can help you decide whether Praxis is the right decision for you.

Walker: Thanks very much.

Sternberg: Thank you.

Let’s start with a simple recapitulation of facts, as biased as they may be. Protests in France that began on September 18, 2026, are being driven by widespread student and labour anger over chronic underfunding, staff shortages, and poor infrastructure in the country’s public high schools. A series of demonstrations and blockades by lycée students has been taking place in France and, later, to a lesser degree, in Belgium, Italy, and even Albania. On October 6, the protests developed into a nationwide mobilisation involving students, teachers, parents, and trade unions. Unions estimated that 450,000 people participated nationwide, while the French government put the figure at 250,000. The movement is marked by blockades of high schools, gatherings, and demonstrations. As reasons for participating in the protests, students have cited teacher shortages, overcrowded classrooms, exhausting timetables, run-down buildings, and stress linked to the university application website Parcoursup, as well as classroom temperatures that reached up to 40 °C during the 2026 European heatwaves.

Throughout October, parts of the movement were engaged in violence against police and some management staff, especially headteachers; the French Interior Ministry reported that thousands were arrested. The French government has accused the far left of stirring up the unrest for political gain: the radicalised and criminal minority of the protesters started the violence. Protesting groups and parties, meanwhile, contended that the movement was spontaneous and accused the government and right-wing parties of engaging in conspiratorial thinking. On October 19, a curfew was announced for Place de la République and the streets around Les Halles in Paris, from 20:00 GMT until 04:00 GMT, while the city of Nice imposed a curfew affecting only minors for a similar duration. Lille and three other northern towns – Wattignies, Douai, and Denain – have imposed two-day curfews starting at 18:00 GMT.1 In neighbouring Italy, army units are already deployed in the centre of Milan.

The reactions of the leading politicians are the saddest aspect of the entire affair. Marine Le Pen blamed far-left immigrants and issued calls to restore law and order by all means necessary; Mélenchon issued a series of dubious proposals with no clear idea of how to implement them; and Macron’s public statement was a clear sign of his utter disorientation – a Clintonian “I feel your pain” to protesters, a call for freedom but within the confines of law and order, all this spiced up with an escape from France (a convenient trip abroad when his presence in France would be crucial). Among the utter stupidities, let’s mention just Marine Le Pen’s reiterated demand that the retirement age should be lowered – here is Paul Krugman’s comment:

“You don’t have to be a conservative to see France’s early retirement as unsustainable, especially given that French life expectancy at age 65 is about 87 years of age, 2 years longer than in the US. Thus the fiscal pressure caused largely by France’s very generous government pension plan has led to cutbacks in other spending, notably on education. France is effectively handing over large subsidies to older French at the expense of everyone else. Mass national student demonstrations should come as no surprise.”2

So let’s take a step back and view the protests from a broader perspective: they are to be located in the series of past protests that failed, each in its own way. Exemplary here were the legendary 1968 student revolt and the big gilets jaunes (yellow vests) revolts in 2018. The 1968 protests focused their struggle against what were perceived as the three pillars of capitalism: factory, school, and family. As a result, each domain was subjected to post-industrial transformation: factory work is increasingly outsourced or, in the developed world, reorganised along the lines of post-Fordist, non-hierarchical, interactive teamwork; permanent, flexible, privatised education is increasingly replacing universal public education; multiple forms of flexible sexual arrangements are replacing the traditional family.3 The Left lost in its very victory: the direct enemy was defeated but replaced by a new form of even more brutal capitalist domination. In this way, capitalism usurped the Left’s rhetoric of worker self-management, turning it from an anti-capitalist slogan into a capitalist one. It was socialism that was conservative, hierarchical, and administrative.

The anti-capitalist protests of the ’60s supplemented the traditional critique of socioeconomic exploitation with a new cultural critique: alienation of everyday life, commodification of consumption, inauthenticity of a mass society in which we wear masks and suffer sexual and other oppressions. The new capitalism triumphantly appropriated this anti-hierarchical rhetoric of ’68, presenting itself as a successful libertarian revolt against the oppressive social organisations of corporate capitalism and “really existing” socialism. The final outcome was the growing limitation of the Left to issues of cultural politics – cancel culture and identity politics largely replaced class struggle and visions of a new economic and political order.

The protests of the yellow vests (gilets jaunes) in France signalled the end of this post-1968 pact and the return from cultural politics to particular economic issues. They began as a grassroots movement that grew out of widespread discontent with a new eco-tax on petrol and diesel, seen as hitting those living and working outside metropolitan areas, where there is minimal public transport. The movement has grown to include a panoply of demands, including Frexit (the exit of France from the EU), lower taxes, higher pensions, and an improvement in ordinary French people’s spending power. They offer an exemplary case of the explosion of people’s wrath in all its inconsistency: lower taxes and more money for education and healthcare, cheaper petrol and ecological struggle… Although the new petrol tax was obviously an excuse or, rather, a pretext, not what the protests are “really about”, it is significant to note that what triggered the protests was a measure intended to act against global warming. No wonder Trump enthusiastically supported the yellow vests (even hallucinating shouts of “We want Trump!” from some of the protesters) – he noted that one of the demands was for France to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.

The underlying question here is: when the predominant form of political representation is exhausted, can our political engagement be given new life through a direct awakening of the people? Yes, but the harsh lesson of history is that the difficult point comes afterwards, when the popular enthusiasm has to be transformed into an effective political organisation with a precise programme. With regard to the “chaotic”, leaderless, and decentralised character of the Yellow Vests protests, one can claim that this, precisely, was their strength: they exposed the gap between ordinary experience and political representation. Instead of a clear agent addressing demands to state power and thereby offering itself as a partner in dialogue, we get a polymorphous popular pressure, and what puts those in power into a panic is precisely that this pressure cannot be localised in a clear opponent but remains a version of what Toni Negri called the multitude. If such pressure expresses itself in concrete demands, these demands are not what the protest is really about.

However, at some point, hysterical demands have to translate themselves into a political programme (or they disappear) – the protesters’ demands are the expression of a deeper dissatisfaction with the very liberal-democratic capitalist order in which demands can only be met through the process of parliamentary political representation. In other words, the protests contain a deeper demand for a different logic of economico-political organisation, and here a new leadership is needed to operationalise this deeper demand. I am not afraid to draw here what will be, for some, a terrifying conclusion: we need true leaders to make tough decisions where they cannot be avoided – which group of soldiers to sacrifice on a battlefield, which patient to let die when there are not enough resources, etc. – or, as an old doctor in the TV series New Amsterdam says: “Leaders make choices that keep them awake at night. If you sleep well, you are not one of them.” Paradoxically, the excess that cannot be captured by mechanisms of electoral political representation can only find adequate expression in a leader or a leading body that is able to impose a long-term social and economic project and is not constrained by the narrow period between two elections… Does this sound like universal militarisation? Yes – the forthcoming communism will be a war communism, or there will be none.

The Yellow Vests in France clearly articulated an experience impossible to translate or transpose into the terms of the politics of institutional representation, which is why, the moment Macron invited their representatives to a dialogue and challenged them to formulate their complaints in a clear political programme, their specific experience evaporated. The solution is not for self-organised and mobilised civil society (Podemos, Yellow Vests…) somehow to take over directly and replace the state: the direct reign of the multitude is an illusion; as a rule, it has to be sustained by a strong state apparatus. One should gather the courage and accomplish a Hegelian reversal here: if no political representation can adequately capture what it refers to (the true people’s will, what people really need and want), then this permanent failure indicates that the trouble resides in this very point of reference (what people really need and want).

Remember Trump’s inauguration speech in 2017: “Today’s ceremony has very special meaning, because today we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another, or from one party to another, but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C., and giving it back to you, the people.” Until now, elites were ruling, but: “That all changes, starting right here and right now, because this moment is your moment --- it belongs to you. It belongs to everyone gathered here today, and everyone watching, all across America. This is your day.”4 We should not take these words just as cheap demagoguery but as an indication of what is wrong with the very idea of the direct power of the people.

Maybe what we are witnessing today, with “post-truth” politics, is the end of the entire tradition of a true and authentic people’s will that is then manipulated and misrepresented, but for whose adequate representation we should strive. The way to beat Trumpian populism is not to claim that it doesn’t really stand for the people, that the real people’s will should be allowed to express itself outside this populism. The very fact that people’s will can be “manipulated” in such a thorough way signals its fantasmatic character. Again, in a Hegelian way, the critique of representation should be inverted into the critique of what representation is supposed to represent.

Direct state oppression tends to unite opposition and promote organised forms of resistance, while in “postmodern” societies even extreme dissatisfaction assumes the form of chaotic revolts that soon run out of breath, unable to reach the “Leninist” stage of an organised force with a clear programme. The Yellow Vests protests embodied the weird reversal that characterises today’s global situation. The old antagonism between “ordinary people” and the financial-capitalist elites is back with a vengeance, with “ordinary people” exploding in protests against the elites accused of being blind to their suffering and demands; however, what is new is that the populist Right proved to be much more adept at channelling these explosions in its direction than the Left. Alain Badiou was thus fully justified in saying, apropos of the Yellow Vests: “Tout ce qui bouge n’est pas rouge” – all that moves (makes unrest) is not red. Today’s populist Right prolongs the tradition of popular protests that were predominantly leftist. Yes, tout ce qui bouge n’est pas rouge, but even when it is right-wing populism that bouge, the Left should learn to ruthlessly exploit the crack opened up in the edifice of the existing ideological hegemony by this unrest to promote its own cause.

In contrast to the Yellow Vests, the ongoing 2026 protests have a distinctly leftist tone, which is why this time Le Pen and Trump strictly oppose them, blaming the extreme Left and foreigners; however, to paraphrase Badiou, they ultimately just prove that tout ce qui se présente comme rouge n’est pas rouge. Why not, when the demands are strongly anti-capitalist and only the Left supports them? To understand this, one should take a closer look at Macron’s politics in the last couple of years.

After the 2024 European elections, Macron was caught with a smoking gun, suspending democracy, although he didn’t break any laws but just deftly used the peculiarities of the French constitution imposed by de Gaulle as the founding act of the Fifth Republic’s electoral system. This constitution stipulates that the president nominates the prime minister and the government, which can operate even if they are not confirmed by the National Assembly. It was already Sartre who, for this reason, thought that the Fifth Republic’s constitution wasn’t democratic at all (he even called it a “permanent coup”). The idea was that the French people should be forced to make a choice when they voted, leaving behind that muddled scrum of parties of the Third and Fourth Republics – and if there is no clear choice, the president should directly assert his authority to maintain order and stability.

The 2024 European elections made it clear that French voters didn’t make a clear choice: they didn’t give Macron a chance to forge a clear choice by working to break up the Mélenchon-led New Popular Front while simultaneously drawing in what remained of the Republicans/Gaullists.5 Macron was widely criticised for this, but all parties effectively supported his handling of the situation… No wonder this happened in France, whose political life is full of similar contradictions. Remember the big May 1968 demonstrations, which almost toppled the government (or so it appeared): what was rarely noticed is that these protests took place at the very high point of the French welfare state – never had the standard of living been higher than in the mid-1960s.

In general terms, France is not an exception here: there is a case to be made for enlightened dictatorship – France was just lucky that its constitution allows for the partial suspension of parliamentary democracy. One can just imagine what will happen in Germany if it is not possible to build a government without Alternative for Germany. Take Rwanda, one of the African success stories, with Paul Kagame as its enlightened de facto dictator, who enforced peace between Hutus and Tutsis and brought relative peace and prosperity. If he were to be overthrown, ethnic tension would flare up again in free elections. Western democracy without some limitations is less and less universally applicable, even in the West itself.

So, with all my reservations about Macron’s politics, I think his reaction to the rightist victory came close to an authentic act. Less than an hour after the results were announced, Macron declared the dissolution of the National Assembly and the scheduling of new legislative elections. The announcement caught almost everyone on the back foot – even Macron himself “could not foresee his decision, insisting as late as last month that the EU election had political consequences only for Europe, not France.”6 Macron’s move was risky, but well worth taking: if Le Pen were to win and decide who the next prime minister of France would be, Macron would remain president and retain the ability to eventually mobilise a new majority against the government.

However, with the new elections in July 2024, something totally different happened: not only did Le Pen not get an absolute majority, but her Rassemblement National even finished third, well behind the leftist bloc and Macron’s centrist bloc. The problem was, of course: what to do now? After the defeat of Le Pen, the predominant tone of the comments was best rendered by a CNN headline: “Macron’s gamble has kept the far right out of power, but plunged France into chaos.” The idea was that Macron and Mélenchon (the key figure in the Left alliance) are so far apart politically that no compromise seems possible that would lead to a viable big coalition, so there will be prolonged instability that will certainly unsettle the economy and probably set the conditions for a landslide victory for Le Pen’s Rassemblement National in the next elections. Ominous signs were already emerging – many Jews publicly declared that they would vote for Le Pen since Mélenchon is “sublimely anti-Semitic” (yes, the term was used)…

What we can nonetheless ascertain is that, surprisingly for some, France was not plunged into chaos: for the time being at least, it seemed that Macron’s gamble had paid off, and a semblance of normal life went on without great disturbances – just remember the triumphant Paris Olympic Games. Although this limbo situation with a non-elected government couldn’t drag on indefinitely, it was infinitely preferable to a totally blocked National Assembly that would lead to prolonged political unrest, pushing the country into social and economic chaos. However, it is as if, with the ongoing protests, France is paying the price for the compromises that sustained the appearance of normality in the last couple of years. In short, it is as if the chaos everybody was warning about for years is finally here. Macron has played his last card, and his options are now exhausted – I see no space for another act that would enable a new beginning. The crisis could spread to all of Europe, and we should not even exclude the possibility of a state of emergency extending to many European countries.

The political root of the French crisis is the tripartite division of the political space, which makes a stable political coalition impossible. The old centre is vanishing, becoming marginalised, and the choice between Le Pen and Mélenchon deserves the answer given by Stalin in 1928 when he was asked which deviation is worse, rightist or leftist: “They are both worse!” If Le Pen is elected president, France will become a country of chaos and social tensions since Le Pen will not be able to subdue her enemies; if Mélenchon wins, there will be at least economic chaos. As I see the situation, the problem is that the Left, divided within itself, has no true answer to the crisis, no realistic, consistent programme for coping with the apocalyptic prospects.

Maybe the tensions will get so high that normal elections will be suspended. So I see no direct way out – I hope I am wrong, but I fear I am not. No wonder the crisis exploded in France, where every tough measure proposed by the government is immediately interpreted as a new trick of oppression or exploitation and met with protests. Never has Europe been closer to its self-dissolution than it is now. It is quite probable that the choice will be just between different versions of a state of emergency and that the exhausted silent majority will silently accept some new form of authoritarian rule.

The saddest implication is that both poles in France, Le Pen and Mélenchon, are opposed not only to the European unity that is now needed more than ever but also to continuing support for Ukraine in its struggle against Russian aggression. The logic is clear: helping Ukraine to survive is, for both Le Pen and Mélenchon, a way to spend money that we need to support our own poor… Words matter here: a little while ago, Trump called Zelensky a “dictator” – following his friend Putin, whom Trump has never called a dictator. If the protesters win, this renaming will become our reality – a reality the contours of which are already discernible. After Russia released a retired American teacher who was jailed for allegedly fighting on behalf of Ukraine, US envoy Steve Witkoff praised the decision, calling Mr Putin “a humanitarian”, while also thanking him for a diesel deal that has angered Kyiv’s allies.7 So now we know: the two leaders in the ongoing Ukrainian-Russian war are the humanitarian Putin and the dictator Zelensky…

Let me then conclude with an obvious reproach to myself: what has this pessimistic reading of the ongoing protests to do with a communist vision? My reply: everything, because if the Left does not get rid of the illusions I described in this text, it will deservedly become irrelevant.