It’s similar to our approach at Frustration magazine, which I’ve led for a few years. Our subtitle is “the media of the class struggle.” This notion of class war seems central for understanding what’s going on politically — but also in the sense that it determines a big part of our daily lives. I wanted to write a very accessible book. The goal was not to do a book for Marxist specialists, but rather to refresh this framework of the class struggle and apply it to contemporary France. The title came later. I wanted something that was punchy and that would attract attention, including from people who aren’t already convinced of a class-based analysis.

I wanted something used in everyday language. It’s a strong word that gets attention.

The second reason is that it describes the process pretty well. Workplace exploitation is a form of parasitism. The standard functioning of the bourgeoisie — the process that has allowed it to exist and to get rich — is the exploitation of the work of others. They’re feeding themselves through the work of others. I also think it shines a light on the political parasitism taking place in France: the fact that we have a social class that is [dependent on state aid], benefitting from a lot of public money. That’s the case in most capitalist states, but in France, we’re talking about very significant sums of money. We really have a total porosity between the state and French capitalism.

The third reason is there’s the idea of flipping the stigma on this head. The term assistés [a pejorative term for people dependent on aid] and the term parasite are words that can be used by the far right to describe people receiving welfare benefits, or foreigners. The idea was to take this term, empty it of all anti-poor or anti-immigrant substance, and to use it only for the rich.

There’s an article I reference from the Financial Times showing that [around] 80 percent of the wealth of French billionaires is inherited. It’s not surprising! In France, we have a bourgeoisie that is very effective at reproducing itself, where “nothing is left to chance.”

I think it’s particularly effective because it benefits from state tools to do this. The grandes écoles [elite colleges] are an example. There’s this originality in France of having bourgeois education paid for by taxpayers. That’s not the case for every country in the world. [In France], they have these very, very specific, closed-off spaces. I’d say the children of the grande bourgeoisie can only become grands bourgeois themselves.

There are few ways of getting rich in France if you’re not the child of a bourgeois. The fact that the bourgeoisie tries to inspire itself with these stories from US entrepreneurs — which, of course, also have been invented through storytelling of their own — is even more ridiculous in France. That’s just not how it works.

If we’re thinking about television, there are two things. Firstly, there are the social origins of journalists. Journalists tell themselves that they’re neutral and are constantly denying that they belong to a class category.

But what’s also striking is how the biases of social and geographic selection mean that it’s constantly the same people on TV. I’ve experienced it myself. Sometimes I get invited on these shows, and I always find myself in this sort of closed-off Parisian space. All the TV channels are based in Paris. They’re constantly busy, so they invite you at the last minute. Typically, only Parisians can make it! There’s also this kind of convergence of interests between producers who want guests who can speak about everything and nothing, and then this galaxy of think tanks, foundation, and institutions who send them the same people every night to preach bourgeois-friendly ideas. A lot of these think tanks basically exist for this! They don’t do research, they don’t publish studies — they produce people that they pay to send on TV sets.

It plays a huge role. I think the bourgeoisie everywhere find ways to create these closed-off spaces. But in France, it’s greatly aided by the fact that these people are living and working in the same place. I’m always struck by this in TV studios. Maybe these people come from different universes — there could be business executives, editors, journalists, etc. — but they already all know each other! They have this closed-off space concentrated within a square mile or two, generally in western Paris. The French bourgeoisie is very effective because it has these resources that allow it to exercise its domination and ensure its reproduction. Paris is a part of this. Paris is another resource they have to achieve their ends.

This is also a critical response to other types of analytical frameworks. On the Left, these last ten years, we’ve heard a lot about the 1 percent and the 99 percent, what you might call the Occupy Wall Street framing. I think there’s grounds to criticize this, because it doesn’t account for the intermediary groups that maintain the domination of the 1 percent. And then 99 percent of people don’t have common interests.

There’s also this practice of just talking about “the rich” or “the superrich” or “the billionaires.” For me, these terms are focusing only on wealth, which is one of the forms of power for the bourgeoisie, but ultimately one of many.

Talking about “the bourgeoisie” is also meant to show historical continuity. Things haven’t changed that much! Maybe it sounds outdated, but it’s still the same class, so it should be named the same way. Renewing terms just for the sake of renewing them doesn’t make much sense.

On the other hand, with Frustration magazine, when we decided to use the term classes laborieuses, we had to really think about what term to use. In France, the term “people” [often used by the Left] doesn’t allow us to think about class divides, and then the term classe ouvrière is more restrictive. For us, classes laborieuses is the translation for “working class” in English.

There are a couple of ways to think about it.

One is, let’s say, cultural or ideological: How do we reappropriate a discourse of class struggle and cultivate a form of pride in our social backgrounds? This is important to me. There’s class consciousness. But there’s also class confidence. How do we collectively gain confidence and feel strong and legitimate? For me, it’s happening precisely at times like these! I feel like there’s a form of class confidence that’s very strong. People are getting actively involved.

The second dimension is more organizational: How do we organize ourselves as dominated classes to manage to overthrow the bourgeoisie and create a society without classes? That’s still the project behind all this! It requires a pretty stern critique of current organizations. We need to criticize left-wing parties that are dominated by elites and that are very poorly representative of the classes they claim to represent. They’re still taking the lead from the bourgeois republic. They have ultimately little autonomy and are very submissive to the dominant agenda.

Yes, it’s not at all a class-based party. It sees cleavages in terms of ideology. And it’s not infused with this history of class cleavages. Maybe La France Insoumise is more than most, but it is ambivalent on the topic. Sometimes Jean-Luc Mélenchon will have a very republican, very unifying discourse, and sometimes it’ll be more polarizing.

We have this [vision of class struggle] to some extent on the far left, but it’s made up of small groups. There is a lot of criticism to be made of the French far left, which is very, very ineffective because its members are interested, above all, in internal purity. They spend their time splitting. Even if I think they’re ultimately right, they’re very ineffective.

There is also a criticism to be made of French trade unions, which can sometimes be very disconnected from the situation on the ground. Like you’ve said before, they put out strike calls and then see what happens.

All in all, it means workers don’t have organizations that let them truly fight against all these forms of discrimination that they suffer on the job. It’s worth thinking about what kinds of organizations can be adapted to present-day constraints. For example, union meetings that end at midnight every night aren’t possible. People have complex lives and they don’t want to go to annoying meetings. Today, that’s what “getting engaged” means — going to meetings with people who listen to each other talk. Changes are needed.

How can we imagine an organization that’s present at the workplace but also in different aspects of life — and that is able to maintain and strengthen class consciousness? At the moment, this doesn’t exist: an organization that’s present at the workplace but also in different aspects of life — and that is able to maintain and strengthen class consciousness. Right now, we often have social movements that express class consciousness and confidence. But they’re unable, in such a limited time period, to build themselves organizations that allow this consciousness to exist beyond periods of mobilization. For me, that’s one of the things that needs doing.