"Eat The Rich": it's an Aerosmith song, a TikTok trend and a quote, "Let's eat the rich" attributed by Adolphe Thiers to the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
It is also a slogan that flourishes on the placards of demonstrations across France against pension reform.
While the text has been examined for ten days in the National Assembly and the unions say they are ready to "put the country on hold" on March 7, the demonstrations carry different motivations and generations, united by the articulation two watchwords: more social justice and climate action.
"The money goes to the super rich who are killing the planet"
Crossed in a procession, Victoria, 69, claims to devote her retirement "to the fight for the climate, because without ecology, there is no life".
However, it was against the pension reform that the activist marched on February 7.
Blue cap pushed down on her long white hair, glasses on her nose, she brandishes a sign, which proclaims "Always more for the super rich, always less for the workers, the planet, justice, health and public services".
“There is money everywhere, in the form of super profits and super salaries, she denounces in a morning voice with an English accent. The money goes to the super rich who are killing the planet, while the others have to work more and longer all the time. By taxing the rich, pensions like the fight for the climate could be financed very easily. It is obvious, and more and more people are becoming aware of it.
A few meters from Victoria, fifty years younger, Rose has more or less the same speech.
"We live in a productivist society that is killing the planet, and we are asked to provide two additional years of work, to continue to maintain this system", exposes the high school student, while one of her friends agrees.
"My whole generation is green, we no longer have a choice. But I understood that individual actions would not be enough. It's the whole system that should be flattened, so that I can enjoy my retirement. on a livable planet."
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For what future and what society?
In the processions of the demonstrations organized almost every week since the end of January by an inter-union with unprecedented unity, the demonstrators are numerous to hold this speech.
While the Yellow Vests movement began in 2018 with opposition to the carbon tax, making the individual car a social issue to the detriment of its climate impact, the denunciation of inequalities now includes an ecological component.
“It is striking that environmental and social justice issues are increasingly intertwined, observes Édouard Morena, author of “End of the world and small ovens, the ultra-rich facing the climate crisis”, and teacher-researcher in political science at the Paris Institute of the University of London. A form of porosity is visible between these issues, and their articulation inserts them into an intergenerational logic, which ultimately raises a question: what future, what society and what type of climate transition does -we ?".
This is also what Paul, a 24-year-old protester, says, who describes his generation as "heiress of the world".
“The question is the world we are going to be left with, he explains. And that includes both social rights and the climate: everyone must be able to benefit from them, not just the richest. This is why it is urgent to mobilize now, and to put in place more distribution. Pensions are also the question of the right to free time, to get out of the market logic, but that does not no sense if there is no more planet."
Inequalities and greenhouse gas emissions
Far from paralyzing by its ineluctable nature, the climate emergency thus seems to overflow on the social level and to be embodied in the rejection of the figure of the "super-rich".
This indeed symbolizes both, summarizes Édouard Morena, "the unprecedented increase in inequalities" and "greenhouse gas emissions, where the richest have an excessive responsibility, through their lifestyles, such as the use of private jets, but also and above all by their investments in sectors with high carbon emissions".
The latest Oxfam study shows that the concentration of wealth has reached an unprecedented level in the last ten years.
In France, 35% of the wealth produced has thus benefited, according to the NGO, the 1% of the richest French people, while the poorest 50% have only captured 8%.
And this, while the financial heritage of the 63 French billionaires emits as much greenhouse gases as that of 50% of the French population, demonstrates the NGO in another report, published in March 2022 in partnership with Greenpeace France.
Well aware of what is at stake, 200 millionaires present at the Davos Forum wrote a manifesto in January 2023 calling for them to be taxed more.
But if the “question of the taxation of wealth is important, underlines Édouard Morena, we must also wonder about the use to be made of this money. If it is only a question of taxing more the richest to then redistribute money to private actors, that will not change much. This is why it could be interesting to open a debate on the model of society and the type of ecological transition to adopt".
In the processions of the January and February demonstrations, many people seem ready to participate.
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