December 1, 2025 editorial of the New Anticapitalist Party-Revolutionaries (NPA-R) in France, translated from French.
After Fabien Mandon, the [French] army’s chief of staff, declared that we must be ready to “accept losing our children,” [President] Macron announced the return of the military service as early as 2026—on a voluntary basis.
Designated volunteers: children of the poor and working classes
Ten months of service, room and board, 800 euros (940 U.S. dollars) in compensation and a Parcoursup bonus (the French platform for applying for higher education): this is how Macron presented the reinstatement of the military service. He aims to attract children of workers—young people abandoned by a class-based school system and pushed into forced long unemployment periods and precarious odd jobs. In this class society, it’s always the poorest who are sent to the frontlines. Neither the capitalists nor the politicians who serve them would ever let their own children risk their lives in any of the wars they wage or prepare.
The young soldiers sent out by George W. Bush to invade Iraq in 2003 were also so-called volunteers, but mostly Black or Latino, and especially poor. The same goes for the “volunteers” recruited by Putin’s regime in remote areas of Russia – young people with no prospects—sent to get blown up in the trenches in Ukraine.
Macron and his peers now talk about “defending the homeland” against the Russian enemy. But who can believe that Russia is preparing to attack France? According to the warmongers, we need to defend our “allies” in Eastern Europe… Putin’s regime has indeed proven its contempt for populations by attacking Ukraine. But it’s not the only one on this planet: what about Netanyahu’s genocidal regime? Our warmongers do not talk about preventing him from causing harm; on the contrary, they support him wholeheartedly: is this what “defending our allies” means?
Algeria, Comoros, Libya, Mali, Ivory Coast: the French army is an army of aggression and plunder for the benefit of capitalists
What fairy tale would have us believe the French army is a generous force for world peace? Who believed Bush when he claimed to be invading Iraq to establish democracy and combat terrorism? Who believes Putin when he says he wants to “denazify” Ukraine? Who believes that Trump is fighting drug trafficking when he threatens to bomb Venezuela?
But should we believe Macron’s lies? The French army, whether it is an army of conscripts as during the Algerian War or a professional army as during the intervention against Libya in 2011, is not an army of defense—except of the interests of big capitalist groups around the world such as Bolloré, Total, CMA CGM, Bouygues, Lafarge and so on. How many interventions, all offensive and in no way defensive, has it carried out against the peoples of Asia or Africa?
Neither cannon fodder nor capitalist fodder
The economic war that capitalists call “competition” regularly turns into outright war. So they dress up their thirst for profit as defense of “democracy,” “the rights of peoples,” or some other “duty to intervene.” Moreover, those who are constantly waging a real social war against us—the bosses, shareholders, and bankers—are also trying to conscript us. And they want us, the workers, to pay for this preparation for a possible “high-intensity” war, starting now!
Rejecting the capitalists’ wars means fighting now against increased military budgets and for the expropriation of the big arms companies that profit from them. This struggle is inseparable from the struggle for our interests as workers, because the price society pays for militarism is taken directly from our wages, our pensions, our children’s education, and our health.
As chanted in demonstrations, “Money for hospitals, not for Rafale fighter jets!”
