Twelve long years
IF there is a country today where the failure of social democracy and its record in government are particularly striking, it is France. This doesn't mean that we should be satisfied with simplistic statements. It would be wrong, for example, to say that the social democrats pursued the same course as the right, or that nothing they did merits our consideration.
International Viewpoint #249 October 1993 in no hurry to mobilise, and which didn't genuinely want any real changes. In other words, it was the shortcomings of those they once called "the actors for change" that acted as a break on the transforming zeal of the Socialist leaders
Without a doubt, there are some grey areas here and there. But, taken altogether, the balance sheet is devastating JACQUES KERGOAT — Paris, 13 September 1993
R
ARELY have so many good intentions been so quickly turned into their opposite. The return to full employment — and the 2.5 million jobs that were supposed to be created within five years — turned into three million unemployed. The "regular" and "substantial" increase of salaries and buying power turned into stagnation and retreat. The implementation of the sliding scale of wages became the de-indexation of salaries. Social inequalities deepened, racism and social exclusion developed, references to class struggle became praise for enterprise culture, and the "anti-imperialist" speech at Cancun ended up as support for American policy during the Gulf War.!
How was all this possible? It is not particularly reasonable to imagine that all the leaders of the Socialist Party acted like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde — promoting a "break with capitalism" in their Sunday speeches, while in reality seeking to fulfill as far as possible the wishes of the capitalists and preparing to exploit to the fullest the country's working people. History does not have any room for these kinds of fairy tales.
To be sure, the Socialists had a few outright cynics in their ranks. But most of them came to power with a will to improve the lot of the masses, and convinced that this is how they would leave their mark in
It is fashionable on the left to blame the programme on which they were elected -François Mitterrand's 101 proposals, which can be traced back to the "Socialist Plan" and its pregenitor, the Common Programme. The criticisms made of this programme vary in nature. For some, it yielded to demagogy and a "revolutionist" approach, which is not false. For others, it was fundamentally a thoroughly reformist programme which didn't appreciate the scope of 20 changes that had to be made, which is undeniably true. And still for others, the programme was a prisoner of a national and statist logic that did not take into consideration the globalisation of the economy, which isn't wrong either.
It is actually difficult to have a full debate about the programme, for one simple reason: it was never applied. If it had been, though, we would have quickly seen that, in spite of all its limits, its dynamic would have posed very real questions about social transformation. And it is not certain that if the Socialists had a programme that took into account the changes underway in the world - the limits of productivism and the new problems associated with the globalisation of the economy — they would have applied it any more diligently.
The other explanation put forward has to do with external constraints. It goes without saying that they existed. But it in no way logically follows that it was not possible to take them on, nor that a policy different from that applied was impossible. We would do well to remember that among those who today insist on the globalisation of the economy can be found people who, in 1982-83, were in favour of protectionist
And we have to challenge the idea that "external constraints" affected all areas and all possible decisions: the exchange rate of the German mark did not necessarily mean that the Socialists had to renounce the "public and secular national education system" that they had talked so much about.4
Then there is a third explanation: the absence of forces in society willing to mobilise for major changes. We are shown an idyllic image of Socialist leaders profoundly convinced of the need to go forward towards a break with capitalism, and desperately contemplating a rank and file which refused to support their efforts, which was
In this view, the 1981 vote is characterised more as "anti-Giscard" than as "pro-
Mitterrand". 5 The whole experience is belittled; it is said that, after all, it was an election and not a revolution. While this is certainly true, such a limited description bears little resemblance to what actually happened.
First of all, because François Mitterrand's election was not the result of a more or less discreet shift of fractions of the anti-
Giscard petty bourgeosie: workers made up 80% of those who voted for Chirac in the first round and for Mitterrand in the second.? The desire for change can even be seen in this electorate: 40% said they voted for Mitterrand not out of anti-Giscard sentiment but because they wanted "big changes in society"
It is true that Mitterrand's electorate had to deal first with the break-up of the Union of the Left and then with the break-up of union unity and the repercussions this had on struggles.& But it is an exaggeration to
1. Cancún, Mexico was the site of a summit on interna tional cooperation and development in October 1981. At the summit, President Mitterrand made a strongly anti-imperialist speech, alluding to the beginning of US intervention in Nicaragua.
2. The Common Programme was a programme for a left government alternative signed in 1972. It brought together the Socialists, the Communist Party (PCF) and the Movement of Left Radicals (MRG) in the Union of the Left
3. At a time when it seemed that Mitterrand understood this, he wrote, "There are two ways to respond to a social demand. The first is to list all the problems in order to justify letting it fall by the wayside. The second is to consider that it is a question of justice and that if one takes into account all the obstacles, it is with the intention of getting over them." 'Ici et maintenant, Fayard 1980
4. It is also possible to nuance the statement which says that once the decision to abdicate in the area of economic reforms was taken any initiative in other areas was impossible. See Serge Halimi, 'Sisyphe est fatigué", Laffont, 1993)
5. Valéry Giscard d'Estaing was president from 19741981, and the leader of the right-wing French Democratic Union (UDF. Mitterrand won the 1981 presidential elections and arranged new elections for the lower house, the National Assembly, in which the Socialists won an absolute majority of seats.
6. Georges Ross, Stanley Hoffman, Sylvia Malzacher The Mitterrand Experiment, Oxford University Press, 1987.
7. Jacques Chirac ran for the presidency in the first round of the 1981 elections for the right-wing Rally for the Republic (RPA). In the second round, he was criticised for "dividing the right", since he did not clearly call for a proGiscard vote against Mitterrand. Chirac is now mayor of Paris and a likely candidate for the next presidential elections.
8. The Union of the Left collapsed in 1977, just before the 1978 legislative elections.
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International Viewpoint #249 October 1993 argue that the "deliberate demobilisation of the mass movements" meant that the left's social base could no longer be an agent for a policy of change.?
The most active elements of this social base had understood that if in the short-term change could no longer be won through struggle, it was possible to get it through the ballot box. This did not reflect a retreat, but rather a compulsory detour. Socialist leaders can therefore not be excused in the name of the supposed passivity of their social base; they were the ones who, once in power, consciously made it passive. Indeed, the roots of such a disastrous balance can be found in two different areas.
The first has to do with the relationship that the Socialists had with the State. This discussion can be wound up rather quickly We need merely recall that the State, in societies where it was put in place by the bourgeoisie, is a system built to preserve the existing order and not to change it - and this is all the moreso with the "strong state" set up by General De Gaulle.
If the nature of this State is not fundamentally changed - what, in less prudish times, was simply called a revolution — it turns against those who are unfortunate enough to try to make it do things for which it was not conceived. And this seems to have been largely confirmed by the Socialist
Nevertheless, it is interesting to examine how the Socialists approached the question of the State. The "Socialist Plan" had not ignored this question. It said, "the working class movement has always seen the State as an instrument of class domination and as an agent of the perpetration of this domination within society itself. "10 There was a waning gap between what they said and the reality of the exercise of power.
Did the Socialists feel that their winning the government meant that thereafter another class would dominate and that the State that served one class very well could, unchanged, serve another? We cannot say. That said, they did approach the State as a neutral entity — and as an effective one, like a toy that was all the more fascinating given how long they had been denied access to it. And in general they approached it with respect, with the modesty and deference of a neophyte.
How many times did we hear that in the ministerial team of 1981 only Gaston Deferre had been a minister, and that the others had no experience of State. So if there were any swifts and swerves, this was not because of the instrument, of its defects and resistance, but rather the inexperience of its users
— who, moreover, didn't hesitate to make public confessions, excusing themselves before the State.
Without a doubt, the State itself found the newcomers quite amusing. For a whole seven years, really? What do they know about the files? Files and knowledge about dossiers are always the last refuge for the recalcitrant State employee.
### Table manners
The resistance of the State certainly was an irritant for some people. We remember the radio interview with Louis Mermaz, on the evening of the Valence congress in 1981, in which he denounced the campaign against the "boorish and ignorant bearded teachers" that were preparing to take up their posts in the State. He said, "our table manners are just as good as anyone
This was welcome irony, but it also revealed the nature of the ambitions at play: the quest for recognition from the State. Combativeness was dissolved in the admission that, after all, they were just like the others, and just as worthy of being in the State with all its rules and splendour.
There are certainly loyal officials, imbued with the spirit of public service. For all that, though, it doesn't follow that they are the best placed to formulate reforms, to carry them forward and implement them. Moreover, there are openly hostile officials, discreetly hostile officials and officials who simply prefer their peace and quiet to change, and who are quick to evoke the unrealistic" and "irresponsible" nature of projects.
Once you decide not to touch this micro-milieu and to be accepted by it, you pay a price. You pay the price of complicity and jokes about the pre-1981 programme, a programme developed at a time when the "realities of state" were unknown; the price of broken promises, which are "soft" to begin with and become more and more tangible thereafter.
All this needed a theoretical dressing. furnished by the idea of the "culture of government", which offered the supplementary advantage of enabling its proponents to taunt the oldtimers and fuddy-duddies who hung on to the "culture of opposition".
Once this was done, the Socialists were not happy to silently tolerate the nebulous State into which they had been forced to enter. They set about using it with great relish.
Mitterrand explained that, before him, the constitution of the Fifth Republic was a threat to democratic freedoms and that, after him, it would be so once again - but that he could accommodate it, thereby cynically justifying his practices.12
However, they had planned on reforming a bit. They had put their ideas in black and white in the "Socialist Plan for the
1980s": a five-year mandate; changes in article 11 (on referenda) and article 19 (decisions without parliamentary endorsement); abrogation of article 16; real proportional representation and abrogation of block
But in reality the Socialists that is, the best among them - saw the State as an area of reforms like any other, and therefore felt that it was not very urgent in the eyes of the masses. They behaved as if they did not know — or no longer knew — that the State was the instrument for implementing reforms, and that it was first necessary to reform it to enable it to carry out this task.
And that is what the best among them thought. When the unchanged State proved to be no good at all for reforms, they gave up and the others invaded the scene. This latter group understood full well what they could get in exchange for dutifully serving the State: the GLAM planes, the R25s, and a whole array of perks. In all this, money was merely an additional facility, one of the jokers in the pack of cards they had been
The vague desire to reform the State vanished into thin air. It was not time that they lacked - they had twelve long years. But now, on the eve of his imminent departure, Mitterrand is making some noises about reforming the monarchist constitution of the Fifth Republic - after having made abundant use of it over the last twelve years. The reality, however, is that the Socialists did not want to change in the slightest way the State and the Gaullist constitution that they had so denounced. Having refused to change the State, the State changed them.
The second factor that can explain the Socialists' balance sheet has to do with their relationship to the "social movements". In 1974, the Socialist Party adopted these on self-management. In the Socialist Plan for the 1981 presidential elections there is still talk about "the wondrous democratic gamble" and the "self-managing socialism
9. Denis Berger and Henri Maler seem to share this the sis, 'Bâtisseurs de ruines', Futur antérieur, n°17, 1992 1993)
10. 'Projet socialiste pour la France des années 80', Club socialiste du Livre, 1980
11. Former minister and speaker of the National
Assembly, Louis Mermaz has been Mitterrand's political ally for more than 40 years.
12. In 1958, during the political crisis that surrounded the beginning of the war in Algeria, Charles De Gaulle came out of his self-imposed retirement, dissolved the post-war
Fourth Republic and formed the Fifth Republic, based on an authoritarian constitution that gives ultimate power to the
President.
13. Article 16 authorises the President to dissolve
Parliament and assume full powers. The block vote refers to the time when one member of a party could vote for his whole parliamentary group in the National Assembly.
14. GLAM planes are the jets available to government members, which have often been used for holidays. R25s are the luxury Renault cars provided to each Nationa
Assembly deputy.
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International Viewpoint #249 October 1993
To be sure, the reference to self-management does not figure in Mitterrand's 101 proposals; and it never really had anything to do with his political image. But people still remembered the theme of his previous campaign: "They want to hang onto power, we want to give it to you."
In the party itself, the Rocard current had described anti-statism, self-management and links with social movements as the standard bearers of the "second left" Jean-Pierre Chevènement's CERES current continuously argued for coordination between the movement from below and the movement from above. Even Pierre Mauroy, once installed as prime minister, did not hesitate to call for the mobilisation of the "actors for change", 15
These declared good intentions were never put into practice. The various Socialist governments never tried to mobilise the "actors for change". Most of the time they chose either to ignore them or to render them passive by explaining to them that they should let the government do what it had to, have confidence in it and not bother it with stormy demonstrations. They would even call on the social movements to applaud dutifully once government proposals were announced.
### Clandestine ringleaders
And when these actors for change genuinely mobilised, the Socialists in power saw this as a plot initiated by a constantly changing set of clandestine ringleaders. 16 The hostility was blatant in some cases, particularly when there were mobilisations against openly harmful government projects, a list which stretches from the conflict with steelworkers to the "affaire des délocalisations" in 1992,17
In many other cases the government could have chosen to call for mass mobilisation, but instead chose to oppose, discredit
The police water cannons used against striking nurses will go down as the symbol of this political approach. The "actors for change" were often left with the feeling that not only were they not needed, but also that the change they wanted was not - or was no longer — what the Socialists in power
Why, then, did the Socialists choose not to call for mass mobilisation? There are certainly a number of reasons. But the main one is that they felt that such mobilisation ran the danger of taking them beyond their minor reforms and initial goals. And this in turn would lead to the kind of confrontation with the ruling classes that they did not want, so convinced were they that they would lose and thereby squander the small 22 gains that they were so energetically seek-
In the event, they did not make any small gains either. The result in terms of government measures is well known. But the result is also a decaying, bitter and untrusting social movements. The result is also a Socialist Party that could no longer be the relay for these social movements, an intermediary between them and the government, which itself was thoroughly corrupted
It is for this reason that the CERES is trading "the break with capitalism" for a respectable republican identity. It is in this context that the technocratic wing of the Rocard movement in the Socialist Party is swallowing up the self-management wing.
It is more difficult to see how the Mitterrandists are changing and to figure out which of their previous convictions they would have to abandon. But they have already started to openly practice the politics of the "second left" - which they previously criticised, at least for the most distressing elements of its "economic realism". As prime minister, Fabius was already carrying out Rocard-type policies, and Rocard's "Big Bang" speech at Montlouis charts out the "USA-type Democratic Party" path already promoted by Fabius.18
Today, the Socialist Party could go in several different directions. The most probable is a return to a loose federal structure that brings together the Socialist Party's
The second solution is that of building a social democracy à la française. While it isn't possible to establish in France the conditions that exist in the Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon countries, something more authentically social democratic could exist — a clear party identity linked to the unions, the social movements and so on. But the leaders who would be most likely carry such a project forward - Lionel Jospin and Mauroy — are hardly in a political position to do so.
The third possibility is that of the disappearance of the Socialist Party as a party linked to the workers' movement and its transformation into a formation akin to the American Democratic Party - that is, Rocard's proposal from his "Big Bang"
The proposal is a coherent one. It is first explained that society in general, and the working class in particular, is no longer centred on the workplace. There follows the conclusion that there are no longer social classes since these classes were rightly defined as a function of their relationship to the productive forces.
Thus, there is no working class and the very notion of a working class movement is an archaic one. From this fact, it flows that the idea of a party linked to the working class movement is obsolete along with the notion of social transformation embodied in the socialist project.
The future belongs to a bi-polar management of society: on the one hand, those who favour a humane and social management of capitalism; on the other, those who favour a harsher management. The building of an alliance "for a humane and social management of capitalism" will be the result of a fusion between a party like the
Socialist Party and a section of the right — those who Rocard labels the "social centrists", essentially the Christian Democracy
It is easy enough to see the dramatic consequences of such a proposal. That said, it is very unlikely that it will see the light of day in the current circumstances, not only because of divergences within the Socialists, but above all because the "social centrists" - heavily involved in the current right wing government of Prime Minister Eduard Balladur — have no reason to get involved in such an adventure.
But it would be wrong to see Rocard's "Big Bang" project as a mere tactical manoeuvre linked to the next presidential elections, which have to be held before 1995. It is a real project for the reorganisation of French society which will rise again - and which will have to be fought. *
15. Michel Rocard was a leader in the late 1960s of the Unified Socialist Party (PSU), a leftwing party with revolutionary pretensions. Along with about one third of the PSU, he joined Mitterrand's Socialists in 1974. He was prime minister from 1988 to 1991.
Jean Pierre Chevènement was a leader of the left-wing CERES current in the PS, later known as the Socialism and Republic current. He was minister of education and then minister of defense, a post he quit at the beginning of the Gulf War in 1991. In 1992, he founded the Citizens Movement in the PS, which, against the majority of the PS, campaigned for a leftwing "no" in the referendum on the Maastricht Treaty for European Union. After the March elections, the Citizens Movement broke from the Socialists
Pierre Mauroy is a pillar of Mitterrand's historic current, and hails from the Socialists' working class bastion in Lille in the north of the country. He was the first prime minister after the PS victory and remained so until 1984, at which time he was replaced by the young technocrat Laurent
16. Islamic fundamentalists were blamed for the Flins strike of highly-skilled workers; Communists were blamed for the steelworkers conflict; "terrorists" from the Autonome movement were held responsible for the first actions in defense of housing rights; Trotskyists were blamed for the nurses' strike; and the leaders of Gauche Socialiste - a Socialist Party current itself linked to the leadership — were blamed during demonstrations organised by high school students.
17. The 1982-83 conflict with the steelworkers took place as the French steel industry was "rationalised" - virtually shutting it down - in the face of the continental restructuring of the industry. This had devastating results in the working class strongholds of the north and the Lorraine region.
18. In the run-up to the March 1993 legislative election Rocard delivered a highly publicised speech to the PS ful in which he called for a "big bang", which was to a process of political realignment regrouping the force the left and centre.
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