Why France Is In the Streets
The Socialist Program with Brian Becker
The Socialist Program
4.7 • 587 Ratings
🗓️ 5 April 2023
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On today's episode Brian and Prof. Richard Wolff discuss the three months of protests and 11 days of strikes in France against President Macron's attempt to roll back residents' full rights to retirement pensions.
Professor Richard Wolff is an author & co-founder of the organization Democracy at Work. You can find his work at rdwolff.com.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Massive protests and a wave of strikes has intensified throughout France as President Emmanuel Macron |
| 0:09.4 | seeks to impose by decree and anti-worker reform, I put that in quotes, of the country's pension |
| 0:17.4 | system. With Macron bypassing a vote in parliament, workers in France have sought to |
| 0:23.4 | shut down business as usual to defend the right to retire with dignity. |
| 0:29.6 | We need a new system. We need a new society. We need to demand that which may have sounded |
| 0:35.7 | impossible even a few weeks ago, but is not only realizable, but an imperative necessity. I'm We are excited to have Professor Richard Wolf join us again for our regular weekly segment, |
| 1:10.4 | where we talk about the biggest |
| 1:11.6 | stories related to the economy, the state of the working class, and the crimes of big business. |
| 1:18.1 | I'm your host, Brian Becker. |
| 1:19.8 | The Socialist Program, this show brings you content three days a week thanks to the support |
| 1:25.0 | of our patrons at patreon.com forward slash the socialist |
| 1:30.3 | program. We appreciate all of your support and encourage you if you're not yet to become a patron today if you enjoy listening or relying on this show or both. |
| 1:42.3 | Richard Wolf is the co-founder of the organization Democracy at |
| 1:45.8 | work. He's the author of many books. The latest being the sickness is the system when capitalism |
| 1:51.7 | fails to save us from pandemics or itself. You can check out all of his work at R-D-Wolf.com. |
| 1:58.8 | That's R-D-W-O-L-F dot com f dot com professor wolf welcome back thank you brian i'm glad to be here we're going to talk about france and we're going to talk about the rising of big parts of the population against the dictatorial methods used by mccrone to shove through this anti-worker so-called reform, again, |
| 2:21.3 | to elevate the age in which workers can retire. But I want to mention a few other things as |
| 2:26.8 | we get started here, Richard. We're recording this show on Tuesday, April 4th. Donald Trump is being arraigned where you are today. |
| 2:37.4 | I believe you're in New York City. |
| 2:38.8 | That's where you live. |
| 2:40.0 | That's true. |
| 2:41.2 | Jamie Diamond, CEO of one of the biggest banks in the country, released his much vaunted |
... |
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