6.3.4. RESISTANCE EMERGES

UNDER THE OLD REGIME HIERARCHY BY BIRTH WAS REINFORCED IN SO MANY WAYS THAT AN INSULT AMONG THE HUMBLE WAS, "YOUR FATHER WAS A VALET"

Mentalities changed when the economy did. "What gave you all that wealth? You took the trouble to be born," was the key line of a play to which Parisians flocked a few years before the Revolution, when capitalism had became impossible to contain.

Is something comparable happening now? Check the huge number of  protests Global Protest Tracker. Some are reactionary because anti-immigrant. But most are progressive.

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In Paris, recent changes suggest an evolution. This mural made in 2024, which covers a third of a métro platform, defies social conflict's usual deletion, demonstrations are worldwide, and once-apolitical Americans rally at symbolic place de la Bastille... 

 Saint-Denis is the working-class suburb where crowds come for soccer games. 

Dark hues refer to the struggle for the eight-hour day.

Bright ones show the effect of that struggle now. 

    March 28, 2026 / Democrats Abroad

        

An hour after that event a massive demonstration for Gaza took place steps away, on the crossroad where workers built a barricade during their first great revolt:  

La Barricade du Faubourg Saint-Antoine by Gaspard Gobaut, 1848

                -- Musée Carnavalet, not exhibited

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Today the conflict is between the globalized capitalists that the far-right backs and democratic socialists who provide solutions to problems that face us all.

Robert Reich

History that reveals 

the conservative way of seeing the past

and suggests a progressive alternative

is part of that fight.

End of this section.

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The next section,

VI.4.

Fraternity that worked