Right
Way Ahead For France
By Mahir Ali
09 May, 2007
Zmag
The
French electorate this week forwent an opportunity to pick a woman as
the head of the state for the first time, opting instead, by a small
but decisive margin, for a sharp turn to the right. It’s a decision
quite a few of those who voted for Nicolas Sarkozy on Sunday may come
to regret before long.
For all his keenness to depict
himself as an outsider, Sarkozy was very much a part of the establishment
18 months ago when economically depressed suburbs in cities across France
exploded after two youths of Arab origin were electrocuted while being
chased by the police. Two days earlier, Sarkozy, in his capacity as
interior minister, had described petty offenders as “scum”;
few months before that, he had vowed to clean out the Parisian suburb
of La Corneuve with an industrial-strength power hose.
If soundbites of this variety,
spiced up with a racist flavour, infuriated large numbers of people,
they also served as a dog whistle that attracted the far right. The
National Front’s Jean-Marie Le Pen received a smaller proportion
of the vote in last month’s first round of the presidential election
than he did five years ago because a section of his support base defected
to Sarkozy, correctly viewing him as a more effective vehicle for the
extremist agenda.
Not surprisingly, the next
president’s perceptions of the present are coloured by his views
of the past. Twelve years ago, Jacques Chirac admitted collective French
responsibility for collaboration with the country’s Nazi occupiers.
Sarkozy rejects all guilt on this account. Another favourite subject
of his is the supposed falsification of history by those who find cause
for shame in France’s colonial past. However, it isn’t very
clear which colonial experience he fancies as a particular cause for
pride: Algeria? Vietnam? Rwanda and Burundi?
He has been more ambiguous
on the subject of the latter-day colonization of Iraq, describing the
occupation of that country as a “historical mistake”, yet,
during a visit to the US, chiding his own government for its “arrogance”
on the matter, to the considerable annoyance of Chirac and prime minister
Dominique de Villepin. The latter, while serving as foreign minister,
responded eloquently to the Bush administration’s belligerent
rhetoric at the UN. France played a vital role in ensuring that the
US and Britain embarked on their aggression without the world body’s
imprimatur.
This was unquestionably the
Chirac government’s finest hour on the international stage, and
its policy enjoyed an approval rating of 90 per cent among the French
public. This helps to explain Sarkozy’s reluctance to diverge
too sharply from the near consensus. But had he been ensconced in the
Elysee Palace in 2002-03, it is likely that he would have followed in
the footsteps of Spain’s Jose Maria Aznar and Italy’s Silvio
Berlusconi by massaging George W. Bush’s bloated ego with unstinting
moral support and a limited military deployment.
Unlike some of its neighbours,
postwar France has maintained a certain aloofness from the US. This
tradition, established by the president-elect’s putative hero
Charles de Gaulle, is likely to be discontinued by “Sarko the
American”, which in turn could precipitate a diminution in Europe’s
stature in world affairs - not least in the Middle East, where Sarkozy’s
attitude towards Israel closely reflects that of the US.
It is on the domestic front,
however, that Sarkozy’s progress will closely be analysed, and
his campaign benefited from the fact that he brings to the project a
clear vision, unpleasant as it may be.
In his victory speech, he
vowed to “rehabilitate work, authority, morality, respect, merit”.
Whether it was used deliberately or subconsciously, “rehabilitate”
is an interesting choice of word, because it carries the implication
of bringing back into vogue something that existed in the past. You
will seldom find its proponents acknowledging that the neoliberal “reform”
process falls squarely in that category, for it is based on the assumption
that rapid “growth” and “wealth creation” are
contingent on further empowering the owners and controllers of capital
while wresting from workers many of the rights that were gained after
long and arduous struggles.
This is, in other words,
a regressive process, its primary aim being to take relations of production
back to where they stood a hundred or so years ago. Small bribes often
succeed in restricting resistance to the backsliding. Trade unions tend
to sell out, or become so bloated and bureaucratized that they lose
the respect and allegiance of their members. But those that continue
to serve their historic purpose of agitating and bargaining for better
conditions face the wrath of the entrepreneurial classes: they are dismissed
as relics of the distant past and as hurdles to “progress”.
From the capitalist point of view, the ideal solution to the nuisance
posed by organized labour is legislation that strips it of its powers.
That, in part, is the sort
of thing Sarkozy has in mind. His supporters hope, and his opponents
fear, that his influence on the economic landscape of France will be
as profound as the effect Margaret Thatcher produced in Britain. He
has the unions in his sights, not least because they proved a year ago
that they can still summon up the street power to resist retrograde
proposals.
The bone of contention last
spring was the de Villepin government’s contrat première
embauche, which would have made it easier for employers to sack young
workers. It was ostensibly intended to combat widespread youth unemployment,
but millions of French workers and students didn’t see why job
creation should entail job insecurity, and they poured into the streets
in numbers not witnessed since May 1968, compelling Chirac to order
a retreat.
Sarkozy has frequently underlined
the need to “liquidate the legacy of May 1968”, offering
the impression that the events of that tumultuous phase in French history
were little more than a mass mobilization in defence of the right to
strike. In fact, the radicals of ‘68 were determined to overturn
the power structure, and very nearly succeeded in bringing down de Gaulle.
They were let down, above all, by a Communist Party fearful of seriously
challenging the status quo.
Among the more prominent
leaders of the abortive revolution of ‘68 was Daniel Cohn-Bendit,
who now represents Germany’s Greens in the European Parliament.
He recently advised Sarkozy’s presidential rival Ségolène
Royal, the Socialist Party candidate, to back away from left-wing policies.
“If she tries to play it on the traditionally socialist card,
she will lose,” he predicted, “because France has veered
right.”
So much, then, for the legacy
of May ‘68. It was, in fact, liquidated long ago. Sarkozy isn’t
inheriting a socialist state any more than Royal would have sought to
create one, had she won last Sunday’s election. France does, however,
retain elements of the welfare state. As Tony Judt commented in The
New York Times a couple of weeks ago: “The dysfunctional French
social model, we are frequently assured, has failed. In that case there
is much to be said for failure. French infants have a better chance
of survival than American ones. The French live longer than Americans
and they live healthier (at far lower cost). They are better educated
and have first-rate public transportation. The gap between rich and
poor is narrower than in the US or Britain, and there are fewer poor
people.”
Much of this may no longer
hold true once Sarkozy has had his way, but there can be little question
that his campaign benefited enormously from the incoherence of the competing
vision. Royal was unable to offer voters much more than a vague, unexciting
continuity. It wasn’t entirely her fault: the fractious Socialist
Party was never solidly behind her, and some socialist voters decided
that a dose of Sarkozisme was likelier to reinvigorate the left than
a bout of Royalisme. However, the risk is that five or 10 years of Sarkozy
could drastically alter the shape of French politics, paving the way
for a situation analogous to that of Britain, where the Thatcherite
legacy found the ideal host in New Labour.
European social democracy
has been in decline for decades: most of the parties associated with
that label have convinced themselves that there is no alternative to
neoliberal economics and, furthermore, that deviations from the capitalist
path are indefensible on the electoral battlefield. No one exemplifies
this trend better than Sarkozy’s friend and admirer Tony Blair.
The centre has shifted, making it simpler for conservatism to slide
towards extremist variants of the creed. Sarkozy, with his appeals to
nationalist pride, is one of the consequences. If the drift continues,
it is not inconceivable that the far right in Europe will before long
acquire “respectability” of the sort it hasn’t enjoyed
since the 1930s.
“I will be president
of all the French people,” Sarkozy vowed in his victory speech.
The diminutive, polarizing politician’s tall claim will severely
be tested once he begins implementing his agenda after next month’s
parliamentary elections. One of his first targets is likely to be the
35-hour working week. And a harsh crackdown on “delinquency”
could reduce France’s unemployment problem the American way: by
increasing the prison population, with disproportionate representation
for non-whites.
There is a small possibility,
of course, that the reality of power will moderate Sarkozy’s crypto-fascist
tendencies. However, given that their new president appears to have
little time for notions such as liberté, egalité and fraternité,
it’s more likely that the plurality of French citizens will sooner
or later find themselves rallying to defend not the legacy of 1968 but
the spirit of 1789.
Email: [email protected]
Digg
it! And spread the word!
Here is a unique chance to help this article to be read by thousands
of people more. You just Digg it, and it will appear in the home page
of Digg.com and thousands more will read it. Digg is nothing but an
vote, the article with most votes will go to the top of the page. So,
as you read just give a digg and help thousands more to read this article.
Click
here to comment
on this article