Analysis of: The battle for Paris: can Rachida Dati fend off scandal to become next mayor?
The Guardian | February 1, 2026
TL;DR
Paris mayoral race pits security-focused right against climate-focused left, but both camps serve capital while housing crisis and privatization threaten working-class Parisians. The real battle isn't left vs. right—it's over who manages neoliberal austerity in Europe's tourist-commodified showpiece.
Analytical Focus:Class Analysis Contradictions Material Conditions
The Paris mayoral election, framed as a dramatic left-versus-right showdown, actually reveals the narrow parameters of political contestation under neoliberal capitalism. Both major candidates operate within a framework that accepts privatization, tourism-driven economic development, and the commodification of urban space—they merely differ on the pace and presentation of these policies. Dati's promise to 'bring back authority' through armed police and CCTV expansion represents the security state's response to social contradictions created by housing unaffordability and economic precarity, while her plan to fully privatize refuse collection signals continued transfer of public services to private capital. The material conditions underlying this contest are stark: Paris faces an acute housing crisis, with families 'priced out of neighborhoods' as Airbnb and tourist rentals hollow out the city. The article's own sources—a former nurse lamenting 'Disneyland for tourists' while supporting the right-wing candidate—expose how working-class discontent gets channeled into reactionary politics rather than systemic critique. Neither candidate addresses the fundamental contradiction between housing as a human need and housing as a speculative commodity. Grégoire's left coalition promises more social housing but within the same capitalist property relations that created the crisis. Dati's personal biography serves an important ideological function, deploying the meritocracy myth to legitimize policies that harm the very communities she emerged from. Her rise from a housing estate to ministerial power becomes evidence that the system works, obscuring how exceptional individual mobility coexists with—and depends upon—collective immobility for the majority. The framing of her candidacy as breaking 'glass ceilings' substitutes representation politics for class politics, while her pending corruption trial for lobbying on behalf of Renault-Nissan reveals the actual class interests she serves.
Class Dynamics
Actors: Municipal workers (refuse collectors, service employees), Property owners and landlords, Tourist industry capital (Airbnb, rental investors), Professional-managerial class voters, Working-class residents priced out of neighborhoods, Finance capital (Renault-Nissan), Police and security apparatus
Beneficiaries: Private waste management companies (via privatization), Property speculators and tourist rental platforms, Wealthy residents of 7th arrondissement and similar areas, Security and surveillance industries (via CCTV expansion), Transnational capital represented by figures like Dati's alleged corruption ties
Harmed Parties: Working-class families facing housing unaffordability, Municipal workers whose jobs may be privatized, Social housing residents facing changed eligibility criteria, Immigrant and marginalized communities targeted by 'law and order' rhetoric, Children affected by school monitoring scandals amid resource constraints
The election presents a contest between different fractions of capital—real estate/tourist industry versus manufacturing/finance—mediated through candidates who share fundamental assumptions about private property and market governance. Working-class Parisians appear in the narrative only as voters or objects of policy ('local workers' favored for housing), never as political actors with independent demands. The 'united left' operates defensively, trying to block the right rather than advance transformative demands.
Material Conditions
Economic Factors: Housing crisis driven by speculative investment and tourist rentals, Privatization of municipal services as debt management strategy, Tourism-dependent urban economy hollowing out local commerce, Climate adaptation costs from extreme heat and flooding, Debt pressures on city finances
The proposed privatization of refuse collection exemplifies the neoliberal transfer of public services to private capital, where profit extraction becomes the organizing principle rather than service provision. Dati's framing—that privatization will 'give city employees more time to sweep streets'—obscures likely workforce reductions and degraded working conditions typical of outsourcing. Meanwhile, the dominance of tourist rentals over residential housing represents the subordination of use-value (homes for living) to exchange-value (properties for investment returns).
Resources at Stake: Public land and social housing stock, Municipal service contracts (waste, security), Urban infrastructure and public space, Control over police apparatus and surveillance networks, Climate adaptation investments
Historical Context
Precedents: Haussmannization of Paris (19th century displacement of working class from center), Privatization waves under Thatcher/Reagan affecting European cities, Post-2008 austerity urbanism across European capitals, Rise of security-focused urban governance post-9/11 and 2015 Paris attacks
This election reflects the broader neoliberal transformation of European cities into nodes of global capital circulation rather than sites of production and social reproduction. The 25 years of Socialist governance being challenged didn't fundamentally alter Paris's trajectory toward gentrification and financialization—the left managed this process with a green veneer (cycle lanes, pedestrian zones) while housing became increasingly unaffordable. Dati's rise represents the exhaustion of this 'progressive neoliberalism' and its replacement by more openly authoritarian variants, a pattern visible from London to Berlin to Barcelona.
Contradictions
Primary: The fundamental contradiction between housing as a human need and housing as a commodity for speculation—neither candidate's platform can resolve this because both operate within capitalist property relations that treat shelter as an investment vehicle.
Secondary: Contradiction between tourist-economy growth and livable neighborhoods for residents, Contradiction between Dati's working-class origin narrative and her service to capital (corruption trial, privatization agenda), Contradiction between 'law and order' policing and the social causes of insecurity (housing crisis, inequality), Contradiction between climate adaptation needs and austerity/debt reduction imperatives
Without a political force willing to challenge property relations directly—through rent controls, decommodification of housing, or expropriation of empty investment properties—these contradictions will intensify. Working-class discontent currently feeds both far-right parties (Reconquest) and abstention, while the institutional left offers only management of decline. The likely outcome is continued gentrification with either a green or security-state aesthetic, accelerating the displacement that generated the crisis.
Global Interconnections
Paris's transformation mirrors patterns across global cities integrated into financial circuits—London, New York, Barcelona, Berlin—where real estate functions as a store of value for transnational capital rather than housing for residents. The housing crisis isn't a Parisian aberration but a structural feature of financialized capitalism, where low interest rates and quantitative easing channeled capital into property speculation. Dati's corruption case, involving alleged lobbying for the Renault-Nissan carmaking group while serving as an MEP, reveals how political elites across ideological spectrums serve as intermediaries for corporate interests in the European political economy. The election also reflects the broader crisis of European social democracy, which governed major cities for decades while overseeing deindustrialization, financialization, and welfare retrenchment. That 25 years of 'left' governance in Paris culminated in a housing crisis and potential far-right victory demonstrates how parties disconnected from working-class organization become administrators of capitalist urbanization rather than alternatives to it.
Conclusion
The Paris mayoral election offers voters a choice between different management styles for the same neoliberal urban project. For working-class Parisians—whether priced out of neighborhoods or facing service privatization—the strategic question isn't which candidate to support but how to build independent political power capable of demanding decommodified housing, public services, and democratic control over urban development. The despair channeled into either Dati's security-state promises or abstention reflects the absence of such a formation. Until movements emerge that can connect housing struggles, labor organizing among precarious and municipal workers, and resistance to gentrification into a coherent political force, elections will continue to determine only the aesthetic of displacement—green cycle lanes or armed police—not its trajectory.
Suggested Reading
- Prison Notebooks (Selections) by Antonio Gramsci (1935) Gramsci's analysis of hegemony illuminates how Dati's biography functions ideologically—her working-class origins legitimize policies that harm working-class people by presenting individual mobility as evidence the system works.
- The New Imperialism by David Harvey (2003) Harvey's concept of 'accumulation by dispossession' directly explains Paris's housing crisis: the conversion of homes into financial assets and the privatization of public services represent ongoing primitive accumulation in urban space.
- Reform or Revolution by Rosa Luxemburg (1900) Luxemburg's critique of reformism resonates with 25 years of Socialist governance that failed to address structural contradictions, demonstrating how parties within capitalist states become managers of the system rather than agents of transformation.