This article from May 19, 2025 is excerpted from Patrick Le Hyaric’s weekly letter. Click here to read this week’s letter, and here to subscribe to it.
Since the French Revolution made the nation one and indivisible, patriotism has meant subordinating particular interests to the general interest. The high bourgeoisie and the oligarchy have always refused to do so.
Their flag only flies in the winds of speculation and potential profits. Their civility hides behind the reinforced doors of offshore tax havens. Their sense of sharing drowns in the selfishness of lucrative property. Their attachment to the nation boils down to their complaints to governments: tax cuts and increases in public subsidies, the dismantling of workers’ rights—who are the only true producers of wealth.
They, with their diverse professions and commitments, remain loyal to their homeland.They demonstrated this during the Covid pandemic and natural disasters through the dedication of public servants, on construction sites, and in factories and fields. This same commitment drives them to defend national assets, services, and the livelihoods of entire regions when they bravely oppose relocations, layoffs, or the greed of financial funds seizing industrial sectors. They do not hesitate to take control of their companies by building production cooperatives. Usually, hand in hand, ministers and capitalist owners stand against them.
The so-called 'economic patriotism' they keep harping on about is nothing but a black smoke screen to hide the stateless nature of capital..
Yet, large capitalist corporations exist only because of the accumulation gained by squeezing the labor power of generations of workers.The growth of these groups, which have become multinational, was only possible thanks to equipment and infrastructure provided by the nation, the development of industrial zones carried out by local authorities, and the supply of electricity at preferential rates... In a thousand disguised ways, public subsidies flow down to them, taken from their much-hated 'compulsory levies'.
These same groups do not hesitate to squeeze subcontracting small and medium-sized enterprises, whose workers also contribute to the wealth of the clients and financial institutions.
The 'economic patriotism' recited by the capitalist elite and its henchmen is nothing but a fable. The forty largest publicly traded companies conduct barely a third of their activities where they extract the foundations of their accumulation—that is, on our national soil.
And now, just as Trump escalates the wars of capitalism—wars in which all the peoples of the world will be victims—our national giants choose the anti-national camp. Profitable business drives them to cross to the other side of the ocean. Thus, they further dispossess workers—not only of the fruits of their labor but of the labor itself—and increasingly integrate the national means of production into a global imperialist system.
What a disturbing sight! After having swallowed one billion euros in research tax credits over the past ten years, without being able to provide a vaccine during the pandemic and having eliminated one million jobs, Sanofi is going to 'invest at least 20 billion dollars in the United States by 2030' while selling Doliprane to the American fund CD&R.
'We are going to significantly expand our fleet flying the American flag' boasts, without regrets or scruples, the big boss of the global shipping giant CMA-CGM, led by Mr. Saadé, who is also the owner of La Tribune and BFM.Thus, he promised the American president to invest 20 billion dollars and create 10,000 jobs in Uncle Sam’s country. Meanwhile, the group pays no corporate tax to the French treasury and benefits from exemptions on taxes for transported tonnage—equivalent to a 10 billion euro gift. The media he owns can then explain how excessive 'compulsory levies' and 'social spending' are in our country.
Another French flagship company, Schneider Electric, a specialist in digital energy solutions and automation for energy efficiency and sustainability, announces it will invest at least 700 million dollars in the United States by 2027. The materials giant Saint-Gobain announces it will inject 40 billion dollars into building a factory in the state of New York.
At a time when the imperative to phase out carbon-based energies is pressing in the skies and oceans, the oil giant TotalEnergies signs an agreement with the American liquefied natural gas (LNG) group NextDecade to purchase 1.5 million tons per year over a period of 20 years. 'This agreement will help strengthen TotalEnergies’ position as a leading LNG exporter from the United States, enabling it to provide its customers with a competitive supply' loudly celebrated the group’s executive director—who is hastening the planet’s critical condition.
And to strengthen its electric vehicle production capacity, Stellantis is investing 4.1 billion dollars in the United States.
The emperor of luxury goods and champagnes, with a fortune of 199 billion euros, owner of the newspapers ‘Les Échos’ and ‘Le Parisien – Aujourd’hui en France,’ Bernard Arnault was there, with his family, to stand by Donald Trump on the day of his inauguration.He promised to ‘invest more’ on the territory of the imperium. Barely had his private jet touched down on national soil when he was already proclaiming his mantra: ‘I’ve just returned from the United States, where you can feel the wind of optimism blowing over the country. And when you come back to France after spending a few days in the United States, it’s a bit of a cold shower.’ The chill of his shower is measured by what he sees as the overly high social rights of workers and the continued presence of the welfare state, even in its diminished form.
‘Economic patriotism’ is therefore fundamentally at odds with capitalism, which only favors the free movement of capital, speculation that enriches it, and the exploitation of labor that enables ever greater accumulation.In Trump’s multifaceted war – economic, commercial, monetary, and the arms race – the national capital, true to its bad tendencies, does not merely bow down. It participates in Trumpist ambitions and even campaigns for their arrival here, supporting right-wing forces merged with the extreme right.
Meanwhile, the President of the Republic, beneath the gilded halls of the Château de Versailles, shines the light of lies on foreign investments in France. The monarch’s ceremony cannot erase the decline of industrial employment, the social bloodletting at ArcelorMittal, Michelin, Valeo, Vencorex, and so many others.Echoed in unison by the media armada of those fleeing to Trump’s side, E. Macron praises France’s attractiveness, which he sells off by lowering capital taxes, enacting laws that ease economic layoffs, dismantling unemployment insurance, and capping severance pay. The human cost is staggering. The combined reduction in corporate tax and production taxes amounts to 21 billion euros — more than enough to return to retirement at 60.
To let things be would mean allowing a social war against all workers worldwide to intensify, along with the dismantling of our industrial, agricultural, and scientific assets.
The interest of workers, beyond their homeland, is to seek the paths toward a new political and democratic project centered on the social and citizen appropriation of the major means of production and exchange, and to seize control over monetary creation. Only labor creates value. Therefore, only workers, within a communist process, should decide on it, taking care of all living beings—partners of labor in wealth creation—as well as the livability and sustainability of our planet.
Our great Jaurès had warned " 'As men progress and become enlightened, the necessity arises to wrest each homeland from classes and castes to truly make it, through the sovereignty of labor, the property of all'.
Illustration image: 'President Trump Visits the the Louis Vuitton Workshop – Rochambeau', photograph from October 17, 2019 by Shealah Craighead – Official White House Photo (PDM 1.0)
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