As the political upheaval, begun at the end of October 2018 in France continues to spread week after week, this essay provides a different reading of it. Rather than provide an explanation of its causes and raisons d’être, it highlights its potential, based on certain more serious trends in the recent history of social movements.
Thus, the message from the yellow vests is that the politics of the Commune, or of communities, is not just a caprice on the part of anarchists and revolutionaries without a revolution. It is a cry from the future which social movements to come will have to answer.
Laurent Jeanpierre is a professor of political science at the University of Paris 8-Saint-Denis and a member of the Centre de recherches sociologiques et politiques de Paris (Centre for Social and Political Research) (CNRS/Université Paris 8/Université Paris Ouest-Nanterre-La Défense). With Christian Laval he edits The Horizon des possibles collection at Éditions La Découverte. With Christophe Charle he edited the three volumes of La Vie intellectuelle en France (Intellectual life in France) (Seuil, 2016).