PARIS, March 18 — Nearly a quarter million workers marched in 140 rallies across France — 60,000 here and 42,000 alone in Marseilles — under slogans like “Frozen wages, job cuts, enough!” They were protesting the “Responsibility Pact” (read: Profitability Pact) engineered by Socialist president François Hollande who appeared to give a virtual blank check to French bosses. Hollande’s “Pact” would reduce employers’ contributions to social security and place fewer restraints on corporations, including lowering their taxes in the billions.
In 2013, the 16 multinationals listed on the Paris stock exchange made profits of  € 28 billion (USD $40 billion) while receiving a tax credit of  € 1.72 billion (USD $2.4 billion).
The newspaper Le Canard enchainé reported that Hollande wants to finance the “Pact” by cutting another  €10 billion (USD $14 billion) from the government budget, meaning cutting public services and giving the money saved to French bosses.
The demonstrations appeared to be aimed at arousing people to turn out in the coming municipal elections. But for workers to seek solutions to the problems created by capitalism in the system’s electoral process is a losing proposition. The winning alternative would be to destroy that system along with its bosses’ elections and create a worker-run society, communism.
Recent electoral victories of LePen’s fascist National Front and attacks on workers’ standard of living show the need for a communist party to organize the revolution.