The sharp upturn in class struggle continues in France, with school students and workers demanding more for ordinary people and far less for bankers and billionaires. The Macron government is setting up ever more authoritarian institutions and practices, demanding harsh sentences for those arrested, and mutilating teenagers, while making minor concessions.

The trade union leaderships are calling, mostly half-heartedly, for mass strike action this week. An explosion is possible.

The hundreds of demonstrations on 24 and 31 October were a major victory for the movement. The government’s attempt to scare people off the streets failed. Despite bans and curfews and a solemn presidential speech (“we recommend that people do not demonstrate”), despite invented figures about injured cops and the cost of damage to public buildings, the movement is going forward.

Many were too frightened to go to these protests (two more people were mutilated by cops on the 24th), but more turned up, in an atmosphere of joyous revolt.

Support is flooding in from very varied places: the magistrates’ union, for example, has denounced the “brutality” of police action, a group of Catholic activists published an open letter to their right-wing bishops entitled “We are proud to take part in the uprising”, and the Louvre museum was blockaded last week by Fine Arts students.

I hope a protracted general stroke happens. I would love to see it in the USA.