France's Socialist government
Unlike Britain's New Labour, France's Socialist Party actually made some radical promises before winning last May's parliamentary election. But over the summer, action on these promises has been mixed at best. La rentrée, the first weeks of September, may set the tone for a new period of social confrontation. Raghu Krishnan
French President Jacques Chirac and his outgoing right-wing alliance government were handed a major defeat in legislative elections held on May 25 and June 1. The rightist alliance (made up of the neo-Gaullist RPR and the centre-right UDF) received only 36% of votes (the lowest mainstream rightwing score since the late 1950s). Their parliamentary presence fell from 484 to 255 in the 577-seat lower house, the National Assembly. The neo-fascist National Front (FN) improved on its 1993 score, polling just under 15% and winning one seat in the new
The left-wing alliance, led by new Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's Socialist Party (PS), returns to power after suffering a major defeat in 1993. This time, the Left alliance includes the Green Party (making its first appearance in the Assembly) and relies on the Communist Party (PCF) for its majority.
Strange as it seems, Jacques Chirac called these elections nearly a year before the required date. The Right felt it had a much better chance of winning elections now than in 1998. Polls taken in late April after the dissolution predicted they would win, albeit with a reduced majority. The free fall of Chirac and Prime Minister Alain Juppé in the polls since late 1995 seemed to be levelling
The right-wing and its big business backers thought the time was ripe to renew the government's mandate. Delaying such a renewal, they argued, would mean going another year without implementing aggressive austerity measures. They knew that it would be utter folly to go the polls in 1998 after implementing such measures in 1997'
Chirac was preparing to use a new streamlined right-wing majority government, over which he would have more control, to carry out a major "neo-liberal" turn.? Public sector cuts and labour market restructuring are increasingly demanded by employers and financial circles, to say nothing of the letter and spirit of the 1991 Maastricht Treaty on European Economic and Monetary Union (EMÙ). Maastricht deadlines for the single currency, to be adopted in 1999, were approaching fast. The sooner a shock therapy could be applied, the better. Chirac also wanted to cut short investigations into corruption involving his party, the RPR, especially in the ranks of the Paris party machine he built up over many years as the city's
On all counts, Chirac's cynical and monarch-like manoeuvre has failed.* His stature has been diminished accordingly as the country settles for the first time into a "cohabitation" between a right-wing president and
L'Europa sociale
Venice, Italy, 12-14 September1997
Sessions include meetings with writer Eduardo Galeano and representatives of Mexico's Zapatistas • a video by the Paris Paperless immigrants collective (Les Sans Papiers) •
A debate on "Europe: Federalism and social state with: Fausto Bertinotti, Massimo Cacciari, Luigi Manconi, Marco Revelli, Franco Piperno,
Pierluigi Sullo, and Paolo Cento • A demonstration (Saturday at 13.00)
starting from both piazzale Roma and the train station, ending at
Campo S.Stefano •A meeting of
European delegates on the theme
"New initiatives for a Europe of solidarity after the Amsterdam marches
You are invited to propose your workshops and to bring and expose your own materials, videos, etc.
The meeting will take place at the Palazzetto dello
Sport "Taliercio" in Mestre. People who arrive. There train have to stop at "Venezia-Mestre" station.
will be a free bus service from the train station. More information, and a map of the zone will be published www.ecn.org/pad/euro/
Europe * Try New
Diet
Labour®
Www - NO NASTI SOCIALIST AFTERTASTE a left-wing lower house.
Thanks to France's 1958 Constitution, Chirac will have the right to dissolve the National Assembly again in April 1998. The Right sees this as an opportunity to take advantage of the crisis it expects will soon engulf the new Left government. Alternatively, Chirac could call new presidential elections, which would have the same effect, since a reelected right-wing president could then organise new legislative elections. Many rightwing leaders are leaning towards the presidential option, in the hope of getting rid of Chirac and the Socialists. The new mood
The victory for the Socialist Party (PS) alliance can be seen as a direct if rather "imperfect" extension of the strike and social movement that rocked the country in November and December 1995. That movement - the biggest since May 1968 — forced the Juppé government to abandon parts of a reform package aimed at attacking public sector pensions, and cutting back the railway and health care systems.
Most of all, however, December 1995 was a major boost for social movements, trade unions and critical left-wing economic and political thinking. A striking feature was the majority support these protest actions received in opinion polls.®
This new volatile social and political climate was exemplified by the outbreak through 1996 and 1997 of confrontational struggles in atypical sectors, such as among truck drivers, actors and musicians, bank workers and hospital interns?
Another example was the mass movement that developed earlier this year against the second wave of draconian immigration legislation introduced since the Right's victory in 1993 (the Debré laws preceded by
* France the 1993 Pasqua laws). Debate and passage of this xenophobic legislation coincided with municipal election gains for the FN. This sparked another round of protests and orga-
— against both the FN and governnising ment complicity with it. The movement signalled the beginnings of a break with 15 years of failed attempts to weaken the FN's appeal by toughening immigration and citizenship legislation.® For this rebirth of a radical anti-fascist and anti-racist consciousness in a significant minority of the population, the French owe a great deal to the courageous struggle of organised groups of undocumented immigrants, the sans-papiers, which began in earnest in 1996.
A further example of the new climate was the success of a feminist organising conference attended by 2000 women and men earlier in the year. Can Jospin deliver?
How well does this new government represent the aspirations and dynamism of the different forces that have burst onto the scene since late 1995? How far can it be expected to accompany and lead the dynamic of December 1995 and the election victory, rather than disappoint and break it? In answering these questions, the first error to avoid is that of drawing hasty comparisons between the PS victory in France and the Blairite Labour victory in Britain.
In the first place, the social and political situation in France does not resemble that of post-Thatcher Britain. It was precisely in response to the beginnings of a Thatcherite turn that the French unleashed the December 1995 protest movement and threw the Right out of office?
In the second place, the PS has not made a Blairite turn, although it did oversee France's neo-liberal shift from the mid-1980s onwards. The Blair victory against the Tories was also his victory over "old Labour" the critical Left. This is not true of the PS victory in France. The difference between the two leaders' approaches was apparent at the meeting of European social democracy held in Sweden in early June. Jospin is on the left
- and Blair is on the right - of a "social democratic" movement that looks more and more like Clinton's Democratic Party.°
In recent times, the PS has been nursing its wounds from its 1993 electoral drubbing and adopting a more humble profile in the face of protest and strike movements that have jealously guarded their independence and voiced their criticisms of the PS record in office in the 1980s and early 1990s. As a result, it has been more permeable to critical thinking around such key questions as European construction, privatisation, unemployment, taxation, ecology, immigration and women's involvement in political life.
One need only look at the PS election campaign and the initial pronouncements of the new government to see that we are dealing with a political dynamic that is at odds with the neo-liberal and authoritarian measures being applied almost everywhere
The PS campaigned for and has announ20 International Viewpoint #292 ced the suspension of the Superphénix fast breeder nuclear reactor and mammoth Rhine-Rhone canal project. It campaigned for and has announced an increase in the minimum wage. These are real gains.
To reduce unemployment, the PS campaigned for a reduction of the working week to 35 hours with no loss in pay and the statefunded creation of 700 thousand jobs for youth. It also campaigned for: a review of and probable halt to all privatisations in process and under consideration; a halt to public sector layoffs; the re-establishment of the law requiring government approval for "economic" layoffs; the lowering of valueadded taxes on consumer goods and increased corporate taxes; and the abrogation of new pension legislation that creates private pension funds at the expense of the (compared to other countries) generous public
In his inaugural speech to the National Assembly on June 19, Jospin said he would respect all these pledges, causing great consternation on the Right and in business
One can find fault easily enough. What immigration legislation will replace the abrogated laws? And what will become of the "illegal" immigrants not legalised in the current round? ' Similarly, Jospin announced that the 35-hour workweek would only be implemented by the end of the first mandate in 2002 — whereas such a reduction has to be implemented all-at-once and across-theboard to have the desired effect. Credibility
But the main problems lie elsewhere. First. credibility. The French saw too many PS promises broken in the 1980s, and it remains to be seen if the renewed PS has abandoned the manipulative and treacherous legacy of the 1980s and of the deceased former president (and PS leader) François
Second, Europe. The Maastricht single currency convergence criteria and the postconvergence austerity-driven Stability Pact will play an overriding role in determining government policy. Lest one forget, it was a PS government that signed the Maastricht Treaty in late 1991 and campaigned stridently for the "yes" side in the referendum on Maastricht in late 1992. Progressive economic measures run the risk of being sacrificed on the altar of the single currency, since it is difficult to see how these measures can be implemented without increasing the public deficit in the short term.
The new government's first policies have been less than encouraging. Take Jospin's renewed acceptance of the convergence criteria and the single currency Stability Pact at the Amsterdam summit of EU states in mid-
The PS has also betrayed what the electorate had understood was a promise to prevent the modern Renault auto plant at Vilvoord in Belgium from closing down. Since the French state holds 46 percent of Renault shares, the government could have vetoed the decision to close. But Jospin refused to do so. He argued that France no longer lived in an era of "state-administered" economies. '5
Public opinion is being prepared for the "discovery" of a worse inherited deficit than the outgoing government was willing to admit. The new government might use this as a cue to abandon much of its progressive economic agenda in its September budget The European dimension
The French delegation to Amsterdam provoked a mini-crisis, by threatening not to endorse the Stability Pact. It only did sign when agreement was reached on the addition of a clause on job creation, on the holding of a jobs summit in the autumn and on the establishment of a political counterweight to the European Central Bank."
Not much of a victory, to be sure. But the mini-crisis revealed differences within the PS itself. Not to mention the critical stance of its PCF and Green allies. It also focused attention on the difficulties faced by Germany's Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Germany, like France, is highly unlikely to meet the convergence criteria. And Kohl's tough stand on Maastricht is increasingly losing ground to the trade unions, the opposition social democrats and public opinion in general.
The Chancellor has been left with little room for manoeuvre. On the one hand, there is growing opposition within the population to the single currency. This opposition comes in both progressive and chauvinist hues. On the other, there is the unrelenting monetarist orthodoxy of the German central bank and financial circles.
Germany and France have entered a period of ruling crises and major showdowns, of the type Britain went through in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Strict respect for the criteria is virtually impossible in the two key European Union (EU) countries and is rapidly losing favour with public opinion. Coupled with the defeat of Chirac and the Right, this makes for a window of opportunity for the Left government in France.
loyed organisation and the Broders- e-mail < peterlindgren@swipnet.se>
Will it seize this opportunity? Only time and the unfolding political and social struggles will tell. The trade unions and social movements have already declared that there will be no honeymoon with the new PS government. A rally of more than 70 thousand people was held in Paris on June 10 (at the same time as another large rally in Bonn to demand action on unemployment." The Communist Party has launched a "citizens forums" initiative - hundreds of grassroots committees throughout the country that could be another vehicle for mobilising the population to force the government to keep its promises.2
The European dimension will be crucial for creating a better relationship of forces for the Left in each country. Protests against the closing of the Renault car plant in Vilvoord, Belgium marked a starting point for crossbase and of losing further electoral ground to
There is also a "conservative old guard," with a hostile attitude to other forces on the left. This current's loyalties are with former leader Georges Marchais.
A third current, the Refondateurs (Refounders), based primarily in the Marseilles region, has gone furthest towards recognising the need for a new "radical pole" in French politics to the left of the PS and with direct links to the social movements. 23
For now, all three currents retain an overriding loyalty to the Party. Despite the party's internal divisions, there have been no significant defections into the neo-liberal orbit of Western European social democracy and the
Europe * centre-left. This contrasts with the situation in neighbouring countries, and makes the PCF as a whole a central player in the creation of a genuine left alternative.
In the new political landscape, the party has opted to balance ministerial participation in the PS government with a call to its base and the population at large to mobilise and remain vigilant. If the new government strays still further from its election promises, it will be very difficult for the PCF to maintain such an approach without sharpening divisions within its own ranks. Or falling further into the orbit of the PS and discrediting itself in the eyes of the population. This difficult test could come sooner than expected. It will provoke tremendous soul-searching within a
Unemployment initiatives this autumn border organising. So did the pan-European march for jobs that converged from all corners of Europe to Amsterdam during the
A number of initiatives are under way to continue the momentum of the
EU summit. The declaration of 331 progres-