A shame-faced
France * objectives, means, for getting results.
Liberalism, on the other hand, as the name indicates, leaves everything to the rules of the market. It reduces decision-making and neoliberalism thus responsibility to a limited area, as if the economy was an autonomous domain.
It operates a neutralization of the role of
IT'S already three years since Lionel Jospin and the parties in his coalition came to power in France, defeating the supporters of ultraliberalism. It was June 1997 and Jospin's success came as a surprise
— it followed French president Jacques Chirac's decision to dissolve the National Assembly, in the hope of relegitimising his government and deepening its policies of austerity, deregulation and the destruction of the great social conquests of the post-war period. A big mistake. In believing it would win the parliamentary elections the right showed an extreme form of blindness.
CHRISTIAN PIQUET*
IGHTEEN months previously, in
H November and December 1995, it had had to face an uprising by wage earners of the public sector and the paralysis of the country by a general strike in transport — a movement which expressed the anger of all workers at Chirac's attempts to change the pensions system and attack public services. This social movement, unprecedented since May
1968, opened a new cycle of struggles in
France, encouraging a massive rejection of neoliberalism and generating a new social and political radicalism. In ignoring all this and attempting to push through his project of an overall remodeling of French society,
Chirac created the conditions for a defeat from which his own camp has to this day and unemployed.
This was where Jospin stepped in. Symbol of the "sabras" who took control of French social-democracy with Mitterrand in the early 1970s, first secretary of the party after the 1981 electoral victory, sedulous defender of the government's conversion to monetary and financial orthodoxy from 1983, minister of national education following the reelection of the outgoing president in 1988, he had nonetheless finally broken with his mentor at a time when the PS was sunk in scandal and internal conflict.
### Break with orthodoxy
In September 1993 Jospin stated in Libération: "The time has come to break politics and the state" 2
Reasonable
As the advocate of a "reasonable" alternative to the total submission to Maastrichtian liberalism characteristic of the Mitterrand years, Jospin launched the "Conference for Social Transformation" together with others of Communist, ecologist or trade union origin. The disarray of the socialist apparatus following its defeat in the parliamentary elections of 1993 then gave him the occasion of imposing himself as the challenger to Jacques Chirac at the presidential election of 1995.
Against all expectations, he came first of all candidates in the first round and was only beaten by a few points in the second, bringing the left-right balance of forces to nearly 50-50. He carved out for himself the leadership of the progressive camp and retook the reins of a PS which rediscovered its hegemonic ambitions. The idea of an "organic party of the left", of a "Congrès de Tours in reverse" with the idea that the Communist Party could turn back to the old social-democratic house, now acquired a certain credibility. Responsible for the PS's relations with the rest of the left, Jean-Christophe Cambadélis became an audacious theorist: "We can see a sphere of social transformation emerging, made up of parties, curnot yet recovered.
with the economic orthodoxy which has rents, associations, a convergence around Surprise In France and in Europe generally the left's return to power appeared as something of a surprise. Four years before, totally discredited after ten years in power under François Mitterrand, the Parti socialiste (PS) had suffered a historic defeat, which seemed likely to condemn it to opposition for many long years. In the absence of a credible anti-capitalist alternative, the relationship of political forces swung dangerously in favour of reaction, as the Front national profited fully from the desperation that crisis, unemployment and the economic restructuring engendered among the masses. This fascist party even became the biggest electoral force among the workers dominated the western world and France for 15 years, and which has shown its inefficacity. The arguments founded on competitive deflation or according to which the profits of today are the investments of tomorrow and the jobs of the day after do not work. The jobs of the day after never arrive". The following year he added: "Reform has conquered revolution but the reformists give the impression of no longer believing in reforms."| By successive touches, he finally appeared to promise a return to more classically Keynesian line, of which he gave the following definition: "This should first be a real policy, that is the affirmation of the responsibility of the political power in the economic area and thus the obligation for it to fix priorities, the Parti socialiste or with it, the network of democratic convergence."3 Before the anticipated parliamentary elections of 1997, the ingredients of the "plural left" currently in power came together. Jospin's skill consisted in bringing together, around a social democracy proclaiming its "leftwing anchoring", currents that had indisputable links with the radicalized or politicized sectors of the wage earners and the popular electorate, in the event the PCF and the Greens.
Even if its coherence was fragile and if no concrete programme was ever put to the citizens, 4 this alliance would have allowed the government to benefit from a undeniable tolerance on the part of the "people of the left". A tolerance reinforced by the International Viewpoint #322 June 2000 7
umphed after 1983, has never wished to admit its instincts or its "vices". Unlike Anglo-Saxon neoliberalism, long thought through by the economic advisers of the conservative candidates, French neoliberalism installed itself progressively, on the sly, without announcing itself, in a singularly perverse fashion, by arguing that there was no other road possible. This shame-faced neoliberalism, repudiated by the fiercest partisans of the real thing, found then few natural defenders among those who rallied to the line chosen in 1983. In truth this "masked" neoliberalism attacked a fortress, that of the "the French exception" " which continues to resist tooth and claw, despite the innumerable political, ideological and media attempts at its
1995 upheavals transformed French politics contrast between the discourse of Blair or Schröder and that of the French PS leaders. Cambadélis stressed the differences with New Labour: "I dare to say that the managerial centrism of Blair is not fully conciliable, or reconcilable, with the essence of a left wing political engagement: the primacy of politics over managerial "neutrality", of liberty (and equality inasmuch as it conditions the implementation of liberty) over financial "efficiency"S
Real strategy expressed
The real strategy was also expressed however: "All the components of the plural left evolve today in the same framework of thought, inside which there are more or less significant nuances on objectives and strategy." Since Guy Mollet, not to mention Jules Guesde, a double language has always been part of the French socialist tradition. The Jospinian practice was no exception.
If the effects of governmental announcements were to lead the public to think that the PS was returning to a Keynesian line and rejecting the neoliberalism sweeping the rest of Europe, the Prime minister had himself renounced the fight against big financial capitalism: "One of the lessons of this century for social democracy is that it is undoubtedly no longer possible to define it as a system among other systems. More than a system, it is a way of regulating society and putting the market economy to the service of humanity. (...) I no longer know what socialism as a system would be. But I know what socialism can be as an ensemble of values, as a social movement, as a political practice." 6 8 International Viewpoint #322 June 2000
In other words, the Jospin of 1999 has not foresworn what he said 14 years previously at the time of his adhesion to the "turn towards rigor" which came to underwrite the PS-PCF alliance of the time: "We have taken our distance from a certain Keynesianism: belief in the effectiveness of economic reflation, a short term vision of state intervention. We know that we should argue in terms of the slow evolution of structures, notably for productivity. The weight of international constraints makes itself felt heavily. (..) But to rediscover classical economy is to be closer to Marx. There is the paradox." 7 The ideological basis of the French version of social-liberalism is brought out perfectly here. Why then the anxiety of the PS to distinguish itself from the Blairite "Third Way" or Schröder's "new center"? It stems from the "shame-faced neoliberalism" which all governments, both right and left, have practiced these last few years. The attachment of a great majority of the population to its public services, its refusal to see its health system and social protection destroyed, the persistence of the aspiration to the social Republic will systematically block any neoliberal counter-reform on some essential points. Up to bringing a million people on the streets of Paris in 1994, when public education was threatened; and double that when the Juppé plan to "reform" pensions was proposed the following year.
### Curious paradox
Economist Hoang Ngoc Liêm sums up this social resistance as follows: "Everything starts, in France, from a curious paradox. Neoliberal thought, which tridemolition."8
This review of the framework of the Jospinian strategy helps us appreciate more clearly the reality of government action over the last 3 years. It claims to be a "point of equilibrium" between the social devastation induced by the globalization of capital and the supposedly dangerous dynamic of an open break with neoliberalism. Since this middle only exists in speechifying, the governing union of the left was soon concerning itself with the profitability of the productive apparatus and the insertion of French capitalism on the international market.
### Acceptance
Only a few days after the new team came to power, two events made this clear. First, there was the acceptance of the closure of the Renault factory at Vilvoorde, when the French state was still the principal shareholder in this firm. Then came the signature of the Pact of Stability at the European summit at Amsterdam. In opposition Jospin had gone in person to tell the Belgian employees at the car factory that if he came to power he would reverse this closure. And he also promised that he would not ratify the treaty of Amsterdam, denouncing it as a "super-Maastricht"
In office, echoing the offensive of the big employers, the government encouraged the acceleration of the processes of capitalist concentration in the industrial and banking sectors, accepted the wildcat deregulation accompanying liberal globalization and the dismantling of what remained of the regulatory functions of the state, and pursued the liquidation of the remnants of the "social pact" that the dom-
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* France
inant class had struck with the employees after the Second World War.
In this logic, generally hiding behind the directives of the European Union, the "plural left" has privatized more than the governments of right, which had preceded it since 1993. A process which began with the opening of the capital of France Télécom and which was then applied in energy, transport, health and even national education. This is accompanied by the deepening of attacks against the regulation of labour, carried out in the name of flexibility, in the public as in the private sector. Presented as the symbol of a determination to fight unemployment, the law on the reduction of the working time, introduced by employment minister Martine Aubry, systematized this regressive approach.
Far from encouraging the creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs promised, it authorized the intensification of the exploitation of the workers, the generalization of flexibility, the withdrawal of the guarantees written into the Labour Code. Moreover, it favored the holding back of wages through "wage moderation" clauses whose effect will eventually be the stagnation of purchasing power. It also involved a multiplication "aid to companies", under the form of lowering or exonerations of employers' charges.
### Health rights questioned
Parallel to this, the right to health is also being put in question. Budgetary restrictions affect the hospitals and a system of rationing of care is being introduced under the cover of control over health expenditure. The evidence is that, even if the government says it is opposed to substituting pension funds for the current system of pensions by allocation, these latter are in the line of fire.
Any projects for tax reform which might have had a certain redistributive logic, from the lowering of value added tax to an increase in taxes on the wealthy, were quickly abandoned in favour of tax cuts for the higher paid. Even the refusal to regularize a majority of the sans-papiers was not motivated simply by a desire to satisfy the more reactionary sectors of society, but reflected the deep tendencies of the government's approach: this attitude encourages an ultraneoliberal management of the labour force, plunging the most exploited fraction of the employees into a situation of illegitimacy and extreme precariousness.
In sum, this policy fits in perfectly with the offensive of the employers' organization, the Medef, which now calls for a "social refoundation". In other words, a real attempt at demolition of the social conquests and rights which workers have enjoyed until now.?
It is not then astonishing that three years of "plural majority" have produced a new configuration of French society, a new social and political model inspired by the Anglo-Saxon system. If the average level of consumption of households is increasing, so is poverty. More than six million people depend on the social minimum, the number dependent on the revenu minimum d'insertion (RMI - a payment made to those who do not qualify for unemployment benefit) is growing, the rate of unemployment remains one of the highest on the continent and precariousness has become generalized. 10
In other words, the neoliberal restructuring of the French social formation has led to its growing segmentation: the existence of a qualified sector of the workforce benefiting from the changes underway, at the price it is true of an increasingly unlimited availability, goes hand in hand with industrial restructuring, flexibility, wage moderation and large scale poverty, phenomena with which a majority of workers are now faced.
Two economic journalists, one for Le Monde and the other for Libération, sum up perfectly this sinister new reality: "French society is being overturned. One world is going, another is arriving. It is not just the big industrial and financial groups who are governed by the new laws, which flow from the concept of "value for the shareholder". It is, in reality, the whole of society which, in parallel, is suffering the repercussions. A society where exclusion gains ground, where the precariousness of labour becomes irresistibly the rule. A society where violence grows, along with ghettos." II
Adaptation
For all its adaptation to the demands of liberal-capitalist globalization, the government retains the support of a majority of the popular electorate. Firstly this is because of growth. For 1999, this was at 2.7% and predictions for the current year are around 2.8 %. Inflation remains down
France * to 1%, while for the fourth consecutive year a foreign trade surplus of more than 100 billion francs has been recorded. Although we are in no way seeing a return to the full employment of the post-war period, the new economic context tends nonetheless to generate regular falls in unemployment — it is down by 2.6 points from the time the government came to power, placing France first among EU countries for the fall in the number of those seeking work.
Without doubt, these figures conceal the reality of a rampant precariousness. But results like these offer the ruling class and the government authentic margins of manoeuvre. In a country where unemployment has represented such a scourge, the fact that it is falling produces undeniable effects on social consciousness. The "plural left" draws from it an obvious, although relative, stability. Its components, in particular the PS, have not suffered an electoral backlash similar to those which have shaken the social democratic governments of Great Britain, Germany or Italy.
The government also benefits from the non-existence of a credible alternative. To its left, although organizations like the Ligue communiste révolutionnaire or Lutte ouvrière benefit from a growing audience, and although they succeeded in June 1999 in gaining the 5% vote necessary to gain access to representation in the European Parliament, they do not dispose of the relationship of forces which would allow them to overthrow the political chessboard. To the government's right no true parliamentary opposition currently exists.
The conservative parties have found it difficult to oppose a government which has not broken with the heritage of the preceding teams and has managed to avoid provoking major social tensions. They have suffered repeated electoral defeats and are prey to a balkanization which sees the various apparatuses or cliques tearing each other apart. Which explains why the Medef now plays the dual role of defender of the interests of the employers and a substitute for a political opposition in crisis.
The Prime Minister and the PS can be all the more serene in that they have managed to contain any trouble their partners might have caused. In the case of the CP, its founding references and doctrinal fidelities have vanished, as the conditions of its participation on the government force it to back laws and decrees in flaInternational Viewpoint #322 June 2000 9
* France Alain Krivine: one of 2 LCR members of the European Parliament grant contradiction with its professions of faith. Under pain of being thrown out of the governmental team, it drew back from voting against the finance law, while its deputies have just approved the Aubry law on the 35-hour week in spite of its manifest
Green conversion
As for the Greens, their very recent conversion to managerial realism contradicts their original principles also. During the recent oil slick on the coasts of minister of Environment, Dominique Voynet, adopted such a complacent attitude towards the oil group responsible for the catastrophe, TotalFina, that it opened a real crisis of identity inside the ecologist movement.
Lionel Jospin has however not yet won. The strikes of winter 1995 opened a new social and political era in France. For sure, the movement didn't spread to the private sector, whose workers remain paralyzed by the fear of unemployment, nor did it alter fundamentally a trade union movement one of whose essential components, the CFDT, has collaborated actively with the offensive of the right on the question of pension schemes. But the rejection of neoliberalism expressed in 1995 has not been reversed since.
It has even deepened, as shown by the dizzying rise of an association like Attac, which fights for the introduction of the Tobin tax and now has nearly 20,000 10 International Viewpoint #322 June 2000 members searching for a global political response to the neoliberal model and the financialisation of the economy. The benevolent tolerance which the government has enjoyed for nearly three years stems above all from an image based on two messages: political voluntarism and honesty.
### Trouble
If the behaviour of ministers and parties in power appears out of line with these messages, it finds itself in trouble. This was the case in autumn 1999, when Michelin, the big tyre group, announced a plan for the suppression of jobs in spite of its soaring profits, and the PM claimed that the government was powerless before the functioning of the markets. 12 It was again the case when the government was faced with politico-financial scandals originating in the diversion of funds from the Mutuelle nationale des étudiants de France (Mnef) to the benefit of leading personalities in the PS: the minister for the economy and finances, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, had to be fired, even though she had been a key ally of Jospin because of her links with
Real as they were, the margins of maneuver of the "plural left" have progressively reached their limits. The government is now forced to show prudence in announcing measures clashing with the aspirations of their own electoral base. They can no longer hide from broad social confrontations since the massive movements in the first quarter of this year which led to a government reshuffle and the departure of several top ministers, among them those for education, economy and finances, and the civil service.
In the post offices, in the public sector hospitals, in the administration of finances, in national education, strikes and demonstrations have broken out, with their targets being essential aspects of social-liberal management: the dogma of a public jobs freeze as demanded by the Pact of Stability, the challenge to the quality and financing of the public service, the degradation of working conditions for those in the public sector, a tax system which could meet social needs if organized around wealth redistribution. Education minister Claude Allègre has attempted to submit the educational system to criteria essentially based on the "employability" of pupils. Inscribed in the most classic neoliberal perspective, this approach is not only heavy with consequences in the teaching area, but will lead inexorably to the dismantling of national education as a unified public institution built on the principles of republican equality,
Hoping to get the reforms through by appealing to public opinion, the minister eventually roused the anger of tens of thousands of teachers and parents in the course of a virtually uninterrupted month of strikes and street rallies. Meanwhile tax officials mobilized against a reform attacking the public service aspect of their administration, as did hospital staff objecting to the closure of beds and a constant reduction of their capacity to meet the needs of the people.
### Social upheaval
Finally, in the postal service, local bosses tried to use the reduction of working hours so as to in reality increase the workload of their employees which led to a wave of strikes lasting as long as several weeks. This social upheaval, the first of such breadth since June 1997, reflected the change of mood among working people. Resumed economic growth allows the government to maintain a largely positive image, but simultaneously shatters its alibi for budgetary and wage austerity.
At the same time, the Aubry law, by confronting workers with the dismantling of essential gains, has created sharpened conditions of resistance which are acquiring a new breadth and determination. The negotiations which this new legislative framework will engender in branches and companies, as well as public administrations, will be translated into a multiplication of conflicts about wages, employment and working conditions.
Finally the repeated attacks on public services, launched under the pretext of "reforming the public sector", appear increasingly as the expression of a will to generalize deregulation, with a consequent unbearable deepening of inequalities. To the extent that the conflicts of this Spring express a similar dynamic, they have destabilized the parliamentary majority. The PS and its deputies are concerned about their possible consequences for the local elections of 200113 — which will be a test for the parliamentary and presidential elections the following year - and demand the withdrawal of the government plans which provoked the mobilizations in
between fidelity to the revolutionary marxist programme and openness to new aspirations which its members have created over more than three decades. *
Raphaël Duffleaux education and the civil service. Initially, Lionel Jospin believed it was enough to make some concessions by using the increased tax receipts generated by growth to a cut the contributions of the less wealthy, reducing VAT by 1% and loosening budgetary austerity somewhat.
### Reshuffle
But he could not escape a ministerial reshuffle, which only underlined the fact that the institutional stability on which he prided himself could become shaky when his social base rediscovered the road of action. For many people, the proof was that struggle paid and that the social movement was not condemned to impotence against a left government acting in the stage is opening for this government. The somersaults apparent in this first quarter are only a taste of things to come, in particular as we approach the elections of 2001 and 2002. * * Christian Picquet is a member of the Political Bureau of the Ligue communiste révolutionnaire (LCR, French section of the Fourth International). 1. Lionel Jospin, L 'invention du possible, Flammarion 1994. 2. Contribution to Socialist congress at Liévin, April 1994. 3. Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, Pour une nouvelle gauche, Stock 1996. 4. Before the first round of the parliamentary elections in 1997, the PS signed some very vague declarations of intention with the PCF and the Greens. 5. Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, L'avenir de la gauche plurielle, Plon 1999 6. Lionel Jospin, Revue des socialistes, April 1999. 7. Libération, October 5th 1985. 8. Hoang Ngoc Liêm, La facture sociale, Arléa 1998. 9. In the name of a new "social constitution", and after having threaten to leave the parity bodies where it sits with the
France * trade union confederations, the Medef has just imposed negotiations on these latter. It is determined to force all wage-earners into precarious status, to replace open ended contracts with 5 year contracts modeled on those for the youth jobs established by the government, and to destroy the main guarantees which employees enjoy in the area of hiring and firing. 10. Nearly 4 million workers are part-time, 85% of them women, and three quarters of those taken on are on temporary contracts. 11. Gérard Desportes and Laurent Mauduit, La gauche imaginaire et le nouveau capitalisme, Grasset 1999. 12. The indignation raised by the cynicism of the Michelin bosses led the PCF, with the far left and a majority of Greens, to organize a national demonstration for jobs, which was supported by tens of thousands of people, on October 16th 1999. The LCR and LO participated around the demand for that profit-making companies should not be allowed to lay off workers, a slogan which had already been at the center of their campaign for the European elections. 13. Three parliamentary by-elections took place at the height of the teachers' mobilizations. The PS only won one, due to the abstentions and spoiled votes of disillusioned left wing electors. 14. Fabius was Mitterrand's prime minister from 1984-86.
LCR holds 14th congress interest of the financial markets and big business.
The Ligue communiste révolutionnaire (LCR — French section of the Fourth
But the absence of a credible political
International) held its 14th congress at the beginning of June in Saint-Denis on the alternative continues to weigh heavily with outskirts of Paris. 200 delegates participated. The agenda included a balance sheet of negative effects. It has even allowed the the Ligue's activity, political theses, a resolution on ecology, on the feminist orienta-
Prime minister to avoid open political crition of the LCR, organisational theses, youth work, and a discussion on changing the sis and hastily reorganize his team.
name of the organization.
Coming on the heels of a defeat suffered in
Three quarters of the delegates voted for a political theses text describing a complex a test of strength with hundreds of thoupolitical situation marked by the effects of capitalist globalization, a new phase of sands of workers, Jospin's second governeconomic growth, an unprecedented employers' offensive against social rights as ment has tried to establish a new equilibriwell as Jospin's daily rapprochement with neoliberalism. The Ligue has three major um within the "plural left". There are two priorities in this context: so far as the far left is concerned, in particular Lutte more portfolios for the Greens and the PCF ouvrière, to pursue political confrontation and common action whenever possible; to
- respectively "the solidarity based econincrease debates and unitary activities with the parties and currents of the plural left;
omy" and "cultural decentralization", to deepen the presence of the LCR in social mobilisations and participate in the areas as badly defined as they are financed strategic debates within the social movement.
— and the left of the PS is reintegrated in
A motion finally adopted by 94% of delegates restated the LCR's intention to particithe coalition, with Jean-Luc Mélenchon, pate in the municipal elections of 2001 and to establish independent lists opposed to
Jospin's spokesperson, taking responsibilithe government's policies. The Ligue will search for a national agreement with Lutte ty for professional teaching ouvrière around this goal, as well as developing contacts with campaigners, trades
But these nominations seek above all to unionists and local groups to create such lists in the greatest number of municipalioffer a left cover for the return of Laurent ties, on the basis of a platform defending the axes of an anti-capitalist politics.
Fabius, 14 henceforth in second place of the
For the first time an LCR congress devoted a discussion to a document defining its ministerial hierarchy with the portfolio of conception of a clearly anti-capitalist ecology, reflecting an increasingly significant economy and finance, who has made no involvement of LCR supporters in recent ecological mobilisations.
secret of the sympathy he feels for the
The congress also debated the transformations of the place of women in the world of
Blairite model. Long considered as work and in society touching on a wide range of themes — changes in the image of
Jospin's rival, and for this reason relegated women, characteristics of the struggles of working women, new kinds of radicalisato the presidency of the National tion among young women, and so on.
Assembly, he has never ceased to argue for
On the debate over changing the name of the LCR, the congress did not take a decian acceleration of the "reforms" of the sion and the central committee will organise a continuation of the discussion.
state, a new attack on the principle of pro-
Finally, delegates elected a new central committee in proportion to the positions gressive taxation with the goal of rewardexpressed. The new national leadership allows a better representation of regions and ing "those who create wealth", a lowering sectors of intervention, as well as greater representation for youth and women (the of the fiscalisation of stock-options and the
The con proportion one i is deal are for of pension funds "à la setting up française"
In other words, his arrival is a nod to business circles worried by a possible governmental retreat before the mobilization of its social base. On the evidence, a new
11
International Viewpoint #322 June 2000