FRANCE
God and the republic
N THE ONE hand are the panegyrics. Hymns of praise to the all-powerful and all-wise president. French TV's satirical Bébête show calls him "God". And, indeed, his popularity is at an all-time high after the Gulf war, ensuring that the "Mitterrand decade" ends on a high note. He is Houdini, always finding a way to extricate himself from his apparent defeats. On May 10, 1981, he transfigured his previous political failures into sure steps on the road to power, and in 1988, when he was re-elected, he sealed his victory over his right wing rival, Jacques Chirac, with whom he had had to "cohabit" for two years, and proved that he was able to govern in the long term.
That is to say, he has seen off the idea that it is the left's destiny to fail. This is a triumph that confirms his solitude. The right has no answer but to re-enter those two old warhorses Giscard and Chirac, while the left, apart from the worn out excompetitor Michel Rocard, can only line up behind one or another of the president's faithful lapdogs, who regard power with the eyes of wolves.
Reality behind the facade
However, others are able to point to a less splendid reality behind this façade.
Wars always reveal truths and after the Gulf war people are asking questions about the real state of France. Mitterrand staked too much on his insistence that "France must keep its place" for the question of what that place is to be ducked now. On the economic level, everything seems to show that, after ten years of austerity, supposedly the necessary purgation that would restore the vitality of the French economy, French capitalism still suffers from the same weaknesses as before. There is a trade deficit which expresses French industry's lack of competitiveness with its direct rivals.
And what of France's international role? The support for the US position in the Gulf war, where France found itself playing second fiddle, the loss of credibility in the Arab world, the growing power of Germany which threatens the perspective of European unification under the joint leadership of Paris and Bonn, are all converging to cause deep anxieties about the country's position and its "rank" in the hierarchy of nations.
The domestic political climate is increasingly envenomed by the nauseating after-effects of the "affairs" that have been a constant feature of the Fifth Republic. Since De Gaulle the end of each presidential reign has been marked by scandals
ON MAY 10, 1991, Françols
Mitterrand had been president of France for ten years. In those ten years, his power, if not absolute, has, apart from two years of "cohabitation" with the right, been undivided.
### FRANCIS SITEL in which money and the morals of the secret service and corrupt police are stirred in together. The Mitterrand regime, which managed to dampen down the "Rainbow Warrior" affair by sacking Hernu, the defence minister of the time, now finds itself facing a rising tide of "affairs", revealing a web of corruption involving the judiciary, the police and parliament.
The common point is the obsessive issue of the fausses factures (forged accounts), that is to say, of the financing of political parties. In the front line of this scandal is the Socialist Party (PS), the president's own party and the pivot of political life. Indeed, the evolution of this party is the other key element in the situation. At its last congress in Rennes, the PS presented an alarming image of a party torn apart by various "presidential stables", , for whom politics is more and more reduced to a matter of pure personal ambition, or even straightforward corruption. Given this party's political role and the climate created by the "affairs", it would be no exaggeration to talk about a politico-moral crisis sapping the authority of the state.
Social crisis takes concrete form
This authority is confronted at the same time by a directly social crisis. Recent months have been marked by a series of developments, which have been brewing for years, but have only now begun to take on dramatically concrete form, in the explosions of violence in several housing estates near the big cities, such as Vaulx-en-Velin near Lyons and more recently at Sartrouville, near Paris. In these cases young people have responded to police provocations with mini-riots, mixing confrontation with the police, the looting of big stores and various forms of plundering. Besides their immediate causes, such events bear witness to the smouldering crisis on these disadvantaged estates where unemployment, social exclusion, racism, and all the various types of misery produced by an increasingly ruthless and inegalitarian society accumulate.
All these factors have rendered the leading circles, socialist or otherwise, with their practice so far removed from their speechifying and with their facile and invariably broken promises, increasingly isolated. The political class, for the most part clustered around the president, is without ideas or projects apart from the pursuit of their private interests. The notable exception is Le Pen on the far right. He is the only one who, in his own sinister way, dares to deal in the currency of political movement.
Dislocation and drift in French society
Such a picture points up the elements of dislocation and drift in some parts of French society. It also underlines the impotence of the political class as a whole, and not only of the PS, even if the latter bears particular responsibility for the situation as the government party. Furthermore this lack of vision coincides with a time of immense historic upheavals, foreshadowing yet greater ones to come.
Over the course of the Mitterrand decade, France has profoundly changed — for the worse. This is not the kind of change which was envisaged by the Union of the Left in the 1970s and which ensured Mitterrand's victory in 1981. In those days the slogans were about "changing the way we live.
The change that has actually taken place, under the weight of the sacrosanct "realism", is that of the surrender of ambitions and hopes. The left, reduced to the PS due to the crisis of the Communist Party (PCF) and the growing marginalization of the far left, has kept power by selling its soul. This balance sheet of May 10, 1991 is a bitter one, but then, the losses have been considerable. All the values that contributed to the identity of the "left", , in the broad sense of the term, have been degraded.
The left, and specifically the Union of the Left with its "Common Governmental Programme", held out the promise, that, as with the Popular Front government of 1936, once in power the parties based on the working class would have to meet the demands of the workers at least in part, and grant new rights. Everybody believed 3 that this would lead to a confrontation May 27, 1991 • #207 International Viewpoint
FRANCE with the bosses which would lead on to new conditions, perhaps enlarging the horizons of the possible.
In 1982-83, with the turn to austerity, this perspective collapsed. When the country's trade balance began to yawn and the franc was threatened, the government, using the argument of the external constraint" and the need to stay in the
European Monetary System, gave way to
German injunctions and accepted the policies proposed by the economy minister
Delors.
This meant the renunciation of the "other policy", the policy of "change". This latter envisaged the relaunching of the economy through consumption, a reconof the domestic quest market by an interventionist industrial policy resting on a considerably reinforced nationalized sector, new rights for workers and so on. Now policy was going to be conducted on the same free market lines as in the other capitalist countries:
a severe austerity policy,
STAND free play for the laws of
ON MY the market, competition
RECORD and profit and thus disinvestment by the state.
At the time this was premerely sented as a
"pause" in the reforms, painful, but temporarily unavoidable measures to strengthen an economy rendered fragile by previous administrations. After the foundations had been strengthened, the campaign would be relaunched. But no one was deceived. This was the funeral of the policy
Mitterrand had promised during his election campaign. The socialist government, then including
Communist ministers, reentered the consensus and engaged in the same austerity policy as all its western neighbours.
Drive to secularize schools ended
This reorganization of Mitterrand's policy would be confirmed in other areas.
The drive to secularize schools ended in
1984 in complete retreat in the face of an offensive by the defenders of private education. This battle represented a great victory for the right, which was able to mobilize significant forces, particularly in
Catholic milieux. It made a double demonstration of its capacity to fill the streets and its ability to inflict an ignominious defeat on the socialist government - and on an essentially ideological question
4 here the economic constrains used to
International Viewpoint #207 • May 27, 1991 justify the austerity policy did not apply.
The same process was followed through in the area of foreign policy. After an ephemerally generous discourse, for example at Cancun, the regime quickly donned the old vestments of French imperialism, with a strong stench of neoimperialism; the Lebanese adventure, the military intervention in Chad, the dropping of the perspective of independence for Kanaky, and so on. The only notable difference with his predecessors, still prisoners of Gaullism, was that Mitterrand gave his policy a clear Atlanticist inflexion; unstinting support for the deployment of US Pershings in Europe, and a much closer working relationship with the US which would reach its apogee during the Gulf war.
This decisive and rapid evolution of the regime is well known, but it is worth adding another key feature of the decade, more difficult to explain and therefore more troubling; the fact that this major turn occurred without any strong working class reaction, nor open crises inside the parties concerned. Despite ups and downs, and a strong wave of struggles in 1986, the curve of working class combativity has inexorably declined in the course of the last decade. The PCF remained in the government and left on tiptoe, refusing discreetly in 1984 to join the new Fabius government. The PS saw its parliamentary group shaken by the amnesty law to the felons of the Algerian war, but absorbed the austerity and the crushing defeat on the schools issue without notable internal divisions. In these conditions, 1982-83 clearly marked the death of the illusion of significant change.
The curve of hope then slumped downwards.
The challenge of cohabitation
This did not stop Mitterrand from successfully taking up the great challenge of the decade; the test of cohabitation. This has allowed him, in an unprecedented exploit, to be reelected after seven years in power to a second presidential mandate.
The lost votes of the workers, the price of broken promises and denials, were compensated for by the votes of the center.
Mitterrand successfully presented himself as the statesmanlike man of the moment, in contrast to an agitated and demagogic
Chirac. Assured of the votes of the left, Mitterrand was able to devote himself to seducing that part of the electorate of the right which represented the true point of equilibrium of his policy.
The fundamental result of the Mitterrand years is, then, the disqualification of the perspective of social change. Today all is bathed in the dull atmosphere of consensus, because this structuring reference is stifled, if not completely ruled out.
According to the line of the government, this adapalon represents progres or ine let in tact to social democracy;
the replacement of the "culture of opposition" by the "culture of government",
, the choice of realism and the responsibility of governing on a long term basis. In short, the abandonment of the ideological illusions of another age in favour of efficiency.
Recall that these ten years have seen the decline of the PCF, a major crisis throughout the trade union movement whose membership has fallen by half, a crisis of the far left leading a good part of it to the edge of extinction. As to the PS, now the biggest party in the country and comfortably ensconced in all the cogs of the bourgeois state, its Rennes congress has shed light on the deep crisis rending it, a situation aggravated by the government's policy during the Gulf war. The "grand design" of which the team around Laurent
Fabius — one of the most prominent candidates for the succession to Mitterrand - speaks regularly deceives no one; the horizon of this party is strictly limited to fratricidal power struggles.
The Greens, who have affirmed themselves as a new force, present something
of an exception in this context of staleness and corruption. If, as in the other European countries, their success can be explained by increasing consciousness on a mass scale of the ecological threats facing humanity, they have also known how to turn to their advantage the disillusionment with institutionalized politics. But, victims of their own electoral success, the Greens could not escape for very long the contradictions linked to the fact that they have become themselves an electoral force of some significance.
Unprecedented crisis of the right
But the right has also experienced an unprecedented crisis during Mitterrand's decade of power. It has proved incapable of overcoming its divisions and redefining its political project. The rightist policy of Mitterrand has deprived it of political space and made it less credible. More seriously, by favouring the emergence of Le Pen's National Front (NF), Mitterrand has driven a stake through the heart of the right. Caught in insurmountable contradictions, it is trapped. If it denounces the racist discourse, it cuts itself off from a part of its own electorate and reinforces the NF. If it takes up the racist theme, which is its natural tendency, without being sure of winning back the voters lost to the NF, it would only reinforce the authority of the latter. If it renounces unity with Le Pen, it is assured of losing a good number of elections, inasmuch as the NF electorate in many cases has become indispensable to a right wing majority, but if it does enter into such an alliance it will experience new divisions, the moderate components finding an alliance with fascists unacceptable.
Such a situation witnesses to the great new political feature of ten years of Mitterrandism; the central importance of this racist and proto-fascist force. Having acquired an electoral audience of more than 10% of the electorate on the basis of anti-immigrant racism alone, the NF, continually denounced by the political class for its populist and anti-semitic excesses, for ita monuliet and anti comitio avnaccad is more and more perceived as a genuine anti-democratic threat.
Thus there is the conjunction of a working class movement in crisis and an increasingly powerful proto-fascist force which reflects profound social realities. The racist anti-immigrant reactions, the agonizing over "national identity", a certain disgust with "professional politicians", , the rancor born of social frustrations... all these decompositions of the social tissue help the National Front at a time when all the traditional reference points of society, political and ideological, are in crisis.
In a society deprived of any perspective of change, the only dynamic force is that kind of anti-change epitomized by Le Pen; for many, the only force to offer a way
FRANCE The right to interfere
DURING a forum organized in Paris at the French Army's School of War on April 12, 1991, Vadim Zagladine, an adviser to Gorbachev, said that in Europe today "the threat of conflict comes more from the internal situa tion in the countries of Eastern Europe, Including the Soviet Union" than from any risk of wars between states.
This came some days after a special European Council where, once again, the heads of states and governments had debated the problems of
"European defence"
The forum at the School of War was then the occasion for Mitterrand to outline the views of the French government on matters of military doctrine, and to furnish some information on the state of discussions inside the European Economic Community (EEC): "the defence of Western Europe can, for the present and for many years to come, be conceived of only in respect of the Atlantic Alliance... It is not a matter of creating a defence organization which will substitute for NATO. Europe as such must not miss ny opportunity to structure itself through a common poll-
Icy and therefore, its own defence"
He added "political union in exterior matters will lead ineluctably to the creation of a military self defence capacity, It is not yet the case. The con-
Editions remain still to be met" Mitterand's caution underlines once again the difficulties and contradictions of the process of European Integration. The transition opening up will see cohabitation between a 'reformed" Atlantic Alliance (some speak of "Europeanizing" NATO, thus reinforcing the weight of the countries of the old continent) and a project of European self defence. The French, whose own military ambitions have never been denied since the 1960s, are obviously more interested than others in the development of a European system of defence (notably starting from the Western European Union) in which they hope to play a leading role, to begin with through its
Industrial implications (see IV 194)
But If Mitterand is being prudent, It Is not simply because, from the diptomatic and political point of view, France and Europe came out of the Gulf war several lengths behind their US "competitor". The main motivation for his apparently paradoxical attitude is the situation in Eastern
Europe. Thus the French president explains: "How many states will tomorrow's Europe be composed of, if each ethnic group wishes to possess the status of a state? How will it be possible then to unite, and what of interim crises, what of wars taking place anew in the European theatre
Which, although local, carry the risk of contagion?"
He went on to evoke "guarantees for minorities" and recalled that "nonInterference stops where non-assistance to a people in danger begins" This clarifies the reasons why the French government believes that it will necessary to continue to take account of the Atlantic Alliance and the role of the United States in Europe. The risks of civil wars, of massive migrations, of endemic national conflicts, all weigh on the debates in the EEC on future systems of defence. And even the debate on the "right to interference" in Kurdistan appears, in the light of such words, as a precedent for a future "right to Interference "In the Balkans or elsewhere; a viewpoint seemingly accepted by Zagladine — Claude Gabriel. * out, however fantastic and disquieting.
However this leaves us with a paradox: at a time of deep instability and depressing developments, and with all the risks these involve, Mitterrand remains solidly in place and political life is anaemic.
To understand how this can be so, the French situation needs to be put in a broader context, taking into account two factors in particular.
The first is that the tendencies which have shaken up the inherited political and psychological frameworks were already at work well before May 10, 1981. The crisis of capitalism and the bosses responses to it led in the 1970s to the destruction of the traditional centres of organized working class strength, such as steel and ship-building, and the complete restructuring of others (cars, textiles). Thus, at the very moment when French capitalism was adopting new technologies and finding a new place in the international division of labour, the working class was suffering hard blows and a massive shake-up of employment and work patterns. The models advanced by the Union of the Left held back an understanding of what was going on. But, besides that, the entire political superstructure found itself out of phase with the developments in society.
Social democracy, finding itself in power, adapted, as we have seen, but other forces, including both the PCF and the parties of the traditional right, were unable to contain the crisis. 5
The other element is the new awareness May 27, 1991 • #207 International Viewpoint
FRANCE in France of the weight of international factors. Throughout the 1980s the French bourgeoisie has been acutely conscious of the relative weakness of French capitalism, but has not wanted to adapt its political pretensions to this diminished reality. The Gaullist vision of the world has remained dominant on the right, with the connivance of the PCF and sections of the PS. This vision involves an attempt to chart an independent course from the US; the ambition of playing, in alliance with West Germany, a leading role in the construction of a "Europe" without the Soviet bloc; and an active presence in North Africa, Black Africa, the Middle East and the South Pacific, to maintain its interests and prestige as an ex-colonial power.
The whole period dominated by the Union of the Left, despite the fact that this formation was in many respects backward looking, saw deep changes at work on the world scale, including the high-tide of neo-liberalism in response to the economic crisis; the weakening of the USSR in relation to the US and the West in general, which was to destabilize Europe and lead to German unification; the rising tide of problems in the Third World and the end of the postwar right/left equilibrium.
### Objective collapse or conscious betrayal?
These conditions are part of the reason why the performance of the left in power has been perceived by the workers more as an objectively determined collapse of traditional values than a conscious betrayal of those values. This can be seen over the issue of privatizations. Nationalized enterprises were sold off by Chirac during the period of cohabitation: this was the right's revenge but it was above all the removal of an anomaly whereby France was brought into line with the worldwide free market trend. Hardly anyone opposed this, and after his second presidential victory Mitterrand took refuge in the prudent philosophy of "neither re-nationalization nor further privatization", shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted. In any case the whole idea of nationalization had lost its original meaning. At the start the nationalized enterprises were meant to be the instruments for an audacious and independent industrial policy, but in fact they were never more than out-of-date capitalist enterprises, and it made sense to "make savings".
The secret of Mitterrand's long tenure of the presidential office lies in the combination of these elements. He was carried to power by the left but in power has followed right-wing policies. At the same time the workers could not impose their own solutions, and those of them who could still be bothered to get out and vote have continued to vote socialist with the sole aim of keeping out the right, which 6 would be even worse.
The bosses, meanwhile, have nothing to International Viewpoint #207 • May 27, 1991
Death of a vision
THE UNITED STATES' initiative in the Gulf has left many of the "allies" , and notably France, at sea as to their place in the New World Order. The US political coup has caught French imperialism, which lacks the support of an effective
European political instrument, off balance.
After the Gulf war, the Gaullist vision of France as a great power, based on its nuclear capacity and its independent defence industry, is finished. Also washed up is the notion of France's independent policy in relation to the Arab states.
It is not even certain that the Elysée palace can round up the Mediterranean countries in a grouping that can counter-balance the economic weight of Germany. With the economic and political stakes in the East, which are absorbing all the energies of the main European power, France's policing role in Africa is increasingly less of a weighty factor in the new inter-imperialist rivalries. This is all the more true in that the multiplication of economic, social and political problems in France's traditional zone of influence in Africa are leading to a question-
Wing of whether this area of the world merits such a high priority.
In this new situation, it is no longer possible for French political leaders to fall back on the dogmas of nuclear defence first outlined by Guy Mollet in 1956, systematized by De Gaulle in the 1960s and religiously defended by Mitterrand.
The Socialist leaders, who were in at the birth of French nuclear power, now have to consider a thorough doctrinal spring-cleaning, in line with the world role they envisage for France.
Furthermore, Paris is trying to find a solution to the delicate question of maintaining an arms industry able, if not to rival that of its transatlantic competitor, then at least to keep in the running. Contrary to the soporific statements of
Bush, the Gulf war has given a boost to the arms trade, and the US victory is the best possible advertising slogan for American arms manufacturers. US influence will expand in zones where military agreements underpin relations of privileged dependence, and where French armaments manufacturers are the main competitors.
This is why the Rocard government has proposed to Britain the joint development of a long-range air-surface missile. The British leaders, for their part, have proposed to the Germans the formation of a joint rapid response force. * complain about in the present situation and have therefore done nothing to bring it to an end. Social gains have been progressively whittled away, workers struggles have petered out, the workers' organizations have shrivelled, and meanwhile profits have gone up and up accompanied by the revival of capitalist "values". Thus, after ten years, all the workers have gained is a reduction of the working week by an hour, a fifth week of paid holidays, new, rather lifeless rights and nationalizations that have become empty shells.
The real balance sheet is not a good one. High unemployment has become chronic, with more than two and a half million victims, the standard demands of the bosses - an end to any price related wage-indexation, work flexibility in the name of the productivity imperative, the spread of part-time work principally affecting women, massive growth of temporary work and short-term contracts, growing lack of job security for young people and the constant pressure on social services - have become entrenched realities.
And, perhaps the supreme expression of it all, social inequality has been growing constantly. While stock exchange manipulators make easy fortunes, the RMI (minimum income), that is to say assistance for the poorest, has become a central fact of social life, since unvarnished poverty has made its reappearance on the housing estates in the suburbs.
Thus, Mitterrand, the PS and the left, after a decade in power, have not only failed to make the most minimal change in favour of the workers and the most deprived sectors, but have even been unable to stop the situation getting worse. There is more injustice in France now than before. Mitterrand's trick has been to provide for each retreat a pseudo-democratic explanation of the type "one cannot impose measures, however just, on a society which rejects them". . Thus the right to vote for immigrants has been postponed until the forthcoming blue moon, because, in the view of the president, the French are not ready for it, as they are not ready for the independence of Kanaky, the secularization of schools and so on.
The apparent calm that prevails in France after ten years of Socialist rule cannot hide the huge political transformations underway. Without any great class battles, "realism" has swept away historic landmarks.
Change has been renounced in favour of the art of the possible. But this leads to an impasse, as has become clear as the world plunges into turmoil. It is necessary to reinvent everything, beginning with a new project of social change, since the old ones have disappeared in the great wreck of the left known under the name of Mitterrandism. *
The betrayal of hope "TO change life" ("changer la vie') they said. Yet the balance sheet of ten years of Mitterrandism makes sad reading, from the point of view of the workers at least; 2,600,000 unemployed on official estimates, wages frozen, growing inequalities, social protection eroded, setbacks in labour legislation. On the other hand there is the triumph and consolidation of capitalist legitimacy. The reformist left, elected in 1981 on a whole range of promises, very quickly adopted an entirely opposite policy. MAXIME DURAND
FRANCE being without doubt the decision to let Creusot-Loire go bankrupt in 1984, thus abandoning the perspective of building a French machine tool industry. Certainly, nationalization allowed the restructuring of industries such as iron, at the price of a drastic reduction in the workforce and a fusion of the two nationalized groups, Usinor and Sacilor. The left government thus assured the health of the principal French industrial groups, but according to a free market logic (reduction of workforce, non-integrated specialization, investment being sucked abroad) which means that if the French industrial apparatus has been financially strengthened, it remains nonetheless globally fragile, as the recent recession has shown.
The second necessary break concerned the world market. After five or six years of a strong franc policy, unanimously criticized by the left, everybody expected an early devaluation which would have established a value of the franc corresponding more to the competitiveness of the French economy. Mitterrand decided to postpone this devaluation, for eminently political reasons.
A message to the bourgeoisies
This could only be interpreted as a message to the other bourgeoisies to reassure them of France's determination to continue to play the game. In a similar manner, the debate on leaving the European Monetary System, which preceded the definitive turn towards austerity in March 1983, was settled through acceptance of the rules; even the authorized margins of manoeuvre have not been questioned.
This minimum not being attempted, it is hardly astonishing that more advanced measures were not envisaged, like the deconnection of interest rates, controls of foreign currency and capital movements, or import controls.
The third condition was, obviously, the popular mobilization which, alone, could permit the implementation of genuinely radical measures. This mobilization did not happen because the left did everything to avoid it, so as to reassure the middle classes and the bourgeoisie. Since the signature of the Common Programme in 1972, social struggles had been systematically reined in in the name of electoral considerations. The division opened in September 1977 between the PS and the Communist Party (PCF) did not aid this mobilization either, displacing the debate towards the rival apparatuses. Finally, from the arrival of the left in power, the political and trade union apparatuses in their entirety did all they could to discourage popular initiatives.
From May 11, 1981, the message repeated over and over again was that the boat should not be rocked, for fear of losing the legislative elections of June 1981. 7 The PCF and its relays in the CGT (GenMay 27, 1991 • #207 International Viewpoint
W HAT is striking is the rapid-
City with which the turn towards "rigor" was made. Mitterrand was elected on May 10, 1981, the first austerity plan was adopted in June 1982, and this turn was definitively consolidated by March 1983. Thus it took Mitterrand only two years to abandon the programme on which he had been elected.
According to the official version, the good intentions of the left were shattered by a hostile international environment. And it is true that the reflation of 1981-82 led to a significant growth in the balance of trade deficit, particularly because the international recession lasted longer than had been envisaged, and the dollar increased very rapidly in value. Faced with such adverse conditions, it is said, the left had to fall back in line and accept the laws of economics, given the extreme narrowness of its margin of manoeuvre. But this version, in which a well meaning policy is destroyed by an outside world which it had not taken into account, poses immediately the question; were the left in government traitors or simply incompetents? The question merits being posed in those terms, inasmuch as the leaders of the left were in a position to know what would happen. In a book entitled "Industrial Socialism", , presenting the official positions of the French Socialist Party (PS), the author, Alain Boublil, analyzed very clearly the two principal threats, namely a disequilibrium of the trade balance resulting from a strong increase in imports and the holding back of investment in the private sector.
Was the underestimation of these constraints deliberate or done in good faith? A saying attributed to Mitterrand ("for the moment I'm playing politics; the rigor, you will see later") could shore up the thesis of a Machiavellian intent. But the reply to this question, which would vary in any case according to the strata of administrative or political personnel you were talking about, matters little. Objectively, the success of a policy of social transformation was reliant on three conditions which the left did not want to meet. These were:
(i) domestically, a break with the logic of profit.
(ii) internationally, a break with the logic of the world market.
(iii) the kind of popular mobilization needed to implement these two breaks. Refusal to break with logic of profit
The refusal to break with the logic of profit is clearly illustrated by the fate of nationalization as an instrument of policy. Certainly, the left government nationalized some industries and the banks (with generous compensation), but at the same time it declined to make effective use of this. When Rocard, the great defender of the market, was put in charge of the Commissariat of Planning, it became clear that the planning in question would remain of the vaguely indicative kind.
Neither did the government create the kind of National Investment Bank which could have ensured the redirection of financing towards target sectors of the economy in accordance with the priorities of the plan. The minister of industry, Chevènement, did try to put such an apparatus into place and give a real content to the agreements made between the big industrial groups and the Plan, but he was very quickly disowned and then forced to resign.
This turn opened a period of progressive retreat, the most significant event
FRANCE
69-
Barre Plan
. "Left"
- power relied austerity
68on the reduction of wages rather than on
67a reduction of the working week to create
66jobs;
there again, it sur-
65rendered to the arguments of the employ-
64ers.
With the
63purchasing power of the
First
Second workers fro-
62zen, it was generalized generalized necessary to
61rely on that of the rich to prorecession recession vide the
60-
80 81
70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78
SHARE OF WAGE EARNERS AS % OF VALUE ADDED dynamic of
78 79 effective demand.
eral Confederation of Workers — the largest French trade union federation) played a specific role in the straitjacketing ot the masses; l Humanité the PCP daily) becoming an "official newspaper" for the four Communist ministers of the period. The struggles of workers in the car industry were disowned, the prime minister Mauroy going so far as to see a Muslim fundamentalist conspiracy behind the unrest.
The refusal to break with the logic of capital and appeal to popular mobilization meant the left in power had to apply instead a policy of rigorous austerity, one of whose principal axes was the "deindexing of wages". From June 1982 an effective freeze of prices and wages (mainly the latter) was implemented. Inflation was effectively bought down to levels comparable to those of West Germany, but the result was that from 1983 the share of wages in value added was falling (see graph). This was the essential result of Mitterrand's economic policy. A whole series of corollaries went with it, of which the most grave were the rise in unemployment and the growth of inequalities. And these were not perverse effects, but constitutive elements of this policy.
The freezing of salaries and the jacking up of profits were obtained in the context of a deflation of the economy which led to a very rapid rise in unemployment. Diverse measures creating intermediary situations between work and unemployment have given the appearance of a stabilization in the number of unemployed, but the French figures remain amongst the worst in Europe. The rise in unemployment has been accompanied moreover by a degradation of the status of the worker, reflected in the growing use of temporary and part time work, night 8 work, subcontracting, and so on. And each time the labour legislation has been International Viewpoint #207 • May 27, 1991 amended to accommodate these successive breakthroughs in "flexibility"
The left prides itself on having voted through the "Auroux laws" allowing a voice to the workers in their workplaces, but in reality there has been a regression in terms of rights at work.
The socialists maintained the right's thesis that the weight of obligatory deductions (taxes and social welfare payments) should not grow. This meant a freezing of the measures taken in 1981 and 1982 in favour of a minimum wage and minimum assistance to the old. A slow erosion of social payments then took place, the government being aware that social security is a gain to which the workers are strongly attached. Even retirement at 60, which is, along with the fifth week of paid holidays, one of the few gains of the decade, is today menaced by government plans, after having served its purpose above all in reducing the number of unemployed.
A damning balance sheet
Mitterrand has asked several times to be judged on his record on jobs. It is a risky demand, for the balance sheet here is particularly damning. The left thought it could settle the problem of unemployment through a combination of three means; more growth, more jobs in the public sector, and reduction of the working week.
Austerity rapidly destroyed the first two postulates, and as for the reduction in the working week, the predictions of the partisans of a 35-hour law came true; by lowering the working week by one hour only (from 40 to 39 hours a week) a buffer was created so that the effective maximum became synonymous with the legal maximum. The recent economic upswing even saw a slight increase in the average working week. Ultimately, the left in
The arrival of Bérégovoy as Minister of Finance was accompanied by a furious policy of freeing up of the financial markets. The inventiveness which the left had not been able to display for the benefit of the workers showed itself at last; new instruments were put into place, the tax on capital gains was progressively lowered to only 17%, restrictions on capital movements were totally lifted, and the tax on company profits was reduced from 50 to 34%. Moreover, Bérégovoy, who had been favourable to an exit from the EMS, embarked on a policy of defence of a franc overvalued by around 15% in relation to the mark (at the price of soaring real interest rates) and became the most heated defender of budgetary rigor. This policy had as its counterpart a spectacular distortion in the sharing out of income; whilst wages stagnated, financial income soared.
The sole motor of the economy was then the consumption of the rich, which compensated for the stagnation of that of wage-earners and eventually generated an increase in investment, starting from 1987-88. But, even from the point of view of the bourgeoisie, this policy has not exactly been optimal. The employers have laid off workers to the best of their ability, while the government has attacked the wage-earners and done everything it could to re-establish the financial health of the private sector. But this somewhat crude policy was accompanied by a stagnation of the interior market, a continuing weakness of investment and training, and thus a relative weakening of the productive apparatus which is reflected notably by a growing deficit in industrial trade.
But perhaps the most surprising aspect of this policy is the extent to which the Socialists have gone further than even the bourgeoisie might expect of them. The furious deregulation carried out by Bérégovoy, for example, went far beyond what
was strictly necessary in the short term. The best proof of this is without doubt furnished by the return of the right to government, from 1986 to 1988. If the right had meant what they said about the ravages worked by the left, one might have expected a 180° turn in economic policy. In fact the only significant change was the reprivatization of some of the industries and the banks which had been nationalized by the Socialists. This process was not fully carried through because of the financial crash of October 1987, but it demonstrated that the idea of nationalization had become an empty shell.
Going further than the right
Mitterrand campaigned in 1988 around the idea of "ni-ni" (neither privatizations nor new nationalizations) but his government quickly accomplished what their right wing predecessors had not done, namely the dismantling of the status of the Renault car company and the post office. A little while ago, the participation of private capital in public enterprises were authorized. In any case it is a long time since anything distinguished the orientations of management or the mode of work organization in public and private enterprises. An examination of all the important economic trends reveals that the right's return to power made no particular difference. The accompanying wages curve graphic shows the record of the reformist left in power. It shows how the two generalized recessions, and above all the first, led to a growth of the share of wages in percentage of value added. In 1976 the Barre plan was implemented which succeeded in lowering this share a little, only for it to rise anew with the second recession. The arrival of the left in power was reflected by a moderate rise, soon followed by a dizzying fall which, ironically, was interrupted only with the arrival of the right in power.
But, amongst all the setbacks, the worst is without doubt the pure and simple alignment with the values of capitalism, as summed up in the formula of Bérégovoy in the daily newspaper Les Echos on May 6, 1991: "France has reconciled itself to business and the Socialists have helped it". . The left has not been content with betraying a programme, it has destroyed a hope. Just as Stalinism cast its shadow on the perspective of the construction of a socialist society, the experience of the PS and the PCF in government has for a long time discredited any project of social transformation. The essential references of the French left (nationalization, planning, self-management) are now discredited. France is distinguished today by a particularly deep crisis of trade unionism, and by the rise of the far right. It will take some time to wipe away the impact of this balance sheet in the social imagination, and rebuild a genuine project of social transformation. *