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April 11, 2006"Dead and Buried"This is how Jean-Claude Mailly, leader of the leftist union Force Ouvrière, pronounced something of a requiem for the ill-fated labor law amendment meant to make the French labor market less rigid. But he might as well have been describing Chirac's Presidency, which is not only "dead and buried", but well 10 feet under now. All this is an outrageously depressing spectacle that one wishes, just somehow, could be fast forwarded along 14 months so as to get to the (potentially) providential arms of the next election. As John Vinocur suggests, it's not even that this proposed reform even began to seriously address the structural causes of France's economic malaise. But, to a fashion, it was at least a modest start to address France's endemic youth unemployment. No matter, like Chirac, dead man walking that he is, this rather piddling attempt at modest labor reform has been buried under the weight of grotesque cowardice (by the government) and myopia (among the public). Yes, it is hard to recall such a show of profoundly abject weakness as Chirac's inglorious retreat today. But, perhaps, his meekness is equalled, if not bested, by that of large swaths of France's center to center-left, and its unions, and most depressingly, its youth (most of France's bright young, of course, have long since decamped to places like Manhattan and South Ken, where labor markets function much more efficiently). Where does all this leave us? French economist Jacques Marseille, during an interview in Le Monde, was asked whether France was an impossible country to reform. He answered, and I translate: "Yes. Or in any case, it's immensely difficult. I've searched desperately through history moments during which France was capable of instituting big reforms which would have changed her destiny, calmly, through dialogue, via Parliament. I couldn't find such moments." He believes some "rupture", a revolutionary or quasi-revolutionary turning point, is the only way France has historically found her way forward, and that this legacy remains very relevant to the present day. He may be right, and such a 'rupture' is the strong medicine that will finally force France into some effective accommodation with the realities of the 21st Century. What form the next 'revolution', we can only guess and ponder, at this juncture. Still, I harbor hopes the so canny Sarkozy, if he can prevail against a potentially resurgent left (arguably somewhat strengthened after this so sad labor reform debacle), might just be able to bring France peaceably forward sans rupture. But who knows. Perhaps, instead, France will continue to limp sadly along, in a state of almost decadent decay--it can still be a charming place, after all, if you are lucky enough to just be a visitor passing through. As Adam Gopnik has previously written, about the "Venetian Temptation". For the past twenty years, many people in Paris have been talking in fear about the “Venetian Temptation”—the possibility that France, and Paris in particular, could become another Venice, a perfectly preserved citadel of past glory. What seems in play now is the Italian Interpretation, the possibility of seeing France as Italy has long been seen, as a country that, however misgoverned, thrives through culture, clan, commerce, and clandestine understanding. More likely, all told, a rupture of some kind awaits, save, as I said, if Sarkozy can act the savior and forge deliberative, methodical reform. More on what directions such a rupture could take down the road a bit, in these pages. One wishes for a quasi-miracle, of course, some form of rational progress, new direction, measured optimism, freshness and light new step. But amidst all the sour mood, one detects instead, at least to some degree, the real risks of France's Old Demons being resurrected. As Gopnik quotes an observer of the French scene: “France is the victim of her two demons,” he explains, “the left neo-Bolshevism that derives from the egalitarianism of the Revolution and still dreams of a great night of anti-capitalist massacre, and the right-wing xenophobic nationalism that was nourished by a long modern tradition running from Boulanger”—the French reactionary general who nearly took power in the late nineteenth century—“to Le Pen. We must all hope something better emerges. It is not in anyone's interests for utopic egalitarian follies or some variant of neo-fascism to rear its head again in a Europe meant to already allegedly be in some post-historical, post-Kantian moment of 'perpetual peace'. Even perennial decay and increasing irrelevancy would be better, but I wonder when France's frustrations might erupt more violently than they have over these past difficult years. This is especially true if the political class remains woefully ineffective and hamstrung, in the face of such degrees of protracted and painful drift. Yes, even if there are few urban strolls more beautiful than an April walkabout in the Jardins de Luxembourg, and Paris does increasingly become some Potemkin-like above-water version of Venice. These are real consolations, it must be said (if only sensory ones), but despite them one detects an ever-increasing visceral anger in the French polity. Perhaps a true boiling-point moment will be price of securing effective change, assuming the perils of extremist temptations, be they of the Left or the Right, are avoided when and if the so-called next 'rupture' comes. Or perhaps I'm being a tad hyperbolic, and normal party politics, moored to the rough center, will steer France towards a better future in coming years. I'm not sure, really, but perhaps commenters have a view? Posted by Gregory at April 11, 2006 03:16 AM | TrackBack (0)Comments
To be honest I was surprised that Chirac caved. The protests weren't THAT bad, were they? Posted by: Guy at April 11, 2006 05:54 AM | Permalink to this comment
The lack of resolve showed by Chirac is highly suspicious. It shows he never intended to reform the system in the first place and used the demos as an excuse. A Sarkozy could have prevailed. A more subtle step to loosen the labor market might be to see that the employment law is not rigidly enforced, at least in the case of younger employees, however much this goes against the French hunger to punish the successful businessman. If people complain, just throw up your hands and blame it on the bureaucrats. A similar laxness doomed the 35-hour workweek idiocy. Posted by: Robert Speirs at April 11, 2006 03:10 PM | Permalink to this comment
Ah, Boulanger! He could have been dictator, but on the eve of the planned coup chose to spend the night with his mistress instead! Who says the French don't know how to make correct moral choices? Posted by: Solomon2 at April 11, 2006 03:27 PM | Permalink to this comment
What is the difference between the "first world" and the "third world?" It's the people----the human capital. The first world has lots of human capital, and the third world doesn't. France has lots of human capital but it's squandering it under a bad system of government. Soon France will suffer like East Germany and the Soviet Union did under their system of government. Nothing can stop this decline. That's especially clear when you look at how large parts of France are starting to resemble the third world, with extremely low levels of human capital. Posted by: Burt at April 11, 2006 03:52 PM | Permalink to this comment
The rupture will only hapen after the far-right and/or the far-left have gained political power in France and then made such a huge mess of things that the country will finally be forced to put aside its dreams of French exceptionalism. The most likely way this could happen would be if the voters lose confidence in the mainstream centre-left and centre-right parties, as is happening right now, and end up with a second round presidential choice between a neo-fascist and an neo-communist. Given such a choice, I feel certain the French would opt for neo-communism. France would then have it's very own Hugo Chavez, with all the over the top anti-American and anti-globalization rhetoric, but no oil. The trickle of emigration among the country's best and brightest will turn into a flood, accellerating the economic decline. Of course this will all be blamed on the CIA, the Jews and perfidious Albion, but one day French people will wake up in a near-third world country and ask themselves 'how did it come to this?' That's when the rupture will come. Posted by: american in europe at April 11, 2006 05:27 PM | Permalink to this comment
Hmm, I recall that Soviet defector "Victor Suvorov" claimed that anti-Americanism, specifically the withdrawal of France from NATO, was organized and executed by Soviet military intelligence through its agent network and paid operatives. Why, with the USSR gone, does no one in France stand up to set the record straight: deny that socialism and communism are good ideas, advocate capitalism, and advocate partnering with the USA? Blind patriotism, is after all, the refuge of scoundrels. Posted by: Solomon2 at April 11, 2006 06:57 PM | Permalink to this comment
Hah. You've completely bought into the CW, Greg. France is on its last legs and is heading towards stagnation and collapse because they rejected measures to make it easier to fire people. Your article is really just a timider version of this crap , authored by the famous Mark Steyn, one of the leading proponents of "The media make us think this darn Iraq war is going bad, but it's going great" paradigm. The title of this link is "A continent hurtling towards the abyss". It's crap, Greg. Europe has a low birthrate and high unemployment. It's economically underperforming the US and some prom queens of the developing world - like India, which continues to starve its rural poor to death, or China, where living in Shanghai is like automaticall smoking two packs of cigarettes every day. This is not the end of the world, Greg. Stop listening to the echo chamber and start listening to the voice of the French people. These were not fringe protests. Dominique Villepin's popularity after this protests was at 26% - 10 points worse than GWB. You know what that means? It means the French think this idea sucks, by a margin that modern-pollsters consider overwhelming. Let me tell you something, all you free-marketeers: if the French situation was truly all that grim and dire, if 10% unemployment and 2% growth was really about to drag France into the grave, the people Italy's unemployment hasn't been below 10% possibly in its entire history as a nation, and no one looks at them for a model of collapse. Pundits in this country are absolutely enslaved to ekeing civilizational meaning from a few percentage points in some questionable and selective statistics. France may not be on the path to getting as wealthy as quickly as the U.S. So what? ----- But the continent is not about to go up in flames. You're supposed to know the difference. When non-Arab and arab citizens start forming militias for their own protection and it becomes impossible to safely drive across major highways in Paris, call me back. Until then, ... I know I've been a jerk here. I'm glad you're broadening your focus. But don't just bemoan the CW. Think of plausible alternative rationales! You know this was over the top. So don't settle! Posted by: glasnost at April 12, 2006 03:35 AM | Permalink to this comment
Glasnost, you are certainly hot tonite!! As a Francophile and one who passably speaks the language and has spent many delightful months in the country I can testify to the resiliency of the French. They go about their lives doing whatever they do and consistently have a love-of-life attitude. Of course, I don't venture into the slums and would rather not. That having been said, I am consistently amazed at the number of young French men and women that are living in the San Francisco area and who continue to arrive and integrate themselves into life here. I don't remember this happening a decade or so ago. They are voting with their feet and they bring lots of interesting qualities with them. The number of French engineers and scientists that are working in this area is conspicuously large. Yes, they love being French, but they love the economic mobility a bit more. Michael
You know glasnost, sometimes the CW is actually right. While it's true that a 10% unemploment rate doesn't look that bad, it's only half the story. To get a better sense of French (and Italian and German) labor market conditions, you should look at other indicators as well, like the participation rate (i.e. the labor force divided by the working age population x 100) and the employment rate (i.e. the number of employed persons divided by working age population x 100). The big continental European countries have lower participation rates than the United States, Japan, Canada and other big economies, making comparisons of their relative unemployment rates almost meaningless. On the other hand, the employment rate measures the number of persons who are working as a percent of people who conceivably could be working. Unless there are much higher disability rates in Europe than elsewhere, these numbers should be pretty comparable across countries. I just did a quick comparison using 2002 data from the World Bank (the latest year I could obtain easily) and the US employment rate was around 73% while France's was around 63%. Unless I am badly mistaken, conditions in France have stagnated since then while the U.S. has improved. Hourly productivity figures for the US and France are comparable, so there's nothing wrong with individual French workers. The problem is that so few of them allowed to work. It's so bad that many have given up trying to find jobs and are just living off state benefits, but unless the counrty does something about that low participation rate, sooner or later there won't be any money to pay for the wellfare (and retirement benefits, health care, schools, etc.) To get an idea of the relative economic health of different countries you should also look at GDP per capita. It gives you an indication of how much wealth a country is generating to pay for the wellbeing of all of its citizens, including children and old people. You'll see that European countries have much less wealth to pay for a much more generous package of promised benefits. As European countries grow older, there will be fewer workers to pay for more and more retired people, so things are likely to get worse very quickly in Europe. Sorry to disappoint you, but the economic situation in Europe really is as bad as people say, and the Europeans are determined to do nothing about it. Incidentally, I am a Europhile and have lived about half my life over here. I desperately want people to wake up and start fixing their problems before it's too late, but I don't see it happening any time soon. Posted by: american in europe at April 12, 2006 01:22 PM | Permalink to this comment
One more thing glasnost. Everyone should get this idea of France turning into a neo-nazi country with the Arabs playing the role of the Jews in WWII out of their heads. It's just not going to happen. There's a far greater risk of France turing to the far-left and becoming even more pro-Arab than it is now, maybe even going so far as to proliferate nuclear weapons technology to Arab states to make up for their "sin" of giving it to Israel. What the world needs to watch out for is the French Arab minority gaining effective veto power (or more) over French foreign policy. The almost have it now, and given their increasing militancy and population share, that power will only increase.
american in europe: You know what you're talking about from a CW version of economics... but you're missing the point. I wouldn't argue with the statement that, according to statistics that measure the creation of wealth, that France is underperforming the US. (As for "other advanced nations", well, that depends on your selective sample) Heck, no. Absolutely correct, it sure is. The point is this: wealth creation is just one possible national priority among many. Another is quality of life. Clearly, the will of the French majority values quality of life more than wealth creation. I think we're all in agreement so far. Where I get off the train is when the blowhards start spouting "France is less interested in wealth creation than the US, so the country is going to fall apart." It's ridiculous. They said that about Europe's growing disinterest in military force, and it hasn't happened, not in the slightest. They have different values. It doesn't mean they're degenerating into anarchy and helplessness. They make less money. It doesn't mean that our system is somehow superior. They very clearly like it the way it is - except for the elite in power. The 2% in France stand to gain a lot more from those upward ticks in GDP than the rest, and they know it.
Here's a hint for you: The only time minority groups ever exercise a veto over national policy is when they control most of the country's wealth and political system. Do the Arab French meet these conditions? No and No. France's not-as-openly-macho-as-America's policies have been this way since WWII and reflect the international balance of power more than anything else. Inside the policies, the French state is, and always has been, chauvinist. american in europe, you don't have anything here except your fear and suspicion of Arabs. There's no meat on the bone. You've got predictions and propositions and opinions, but no substance. Posted by: glasnost at April 13, 2006 12:22 AM | Permalink to this comment
With all due respect, glasnost, I think you have misunderstood my post and are reading things into it that are not there. I was writing in haste and perhaps should have been a bit clearer. Still, there's only so much detail you can pack into a brief blog comment. It is true that the French like their system the way it is. They like having a generous state that provides cradle-to-grave benefits in every area of life. It's probably also true that they value wealth creation less than the United States, and are content to earn less money in exchange for fewer hours of work, longer holidays and near-total job security (for those that can find a job, that is). The problem for France is that these priorities are irreconcilable, because a generous welfare state depends on wealth creation and strong economic growth to pay for it. The French want both, but they can only have one. (They are currently borrowing to pay for both, but that can't go on indefinitely.) Incidentally, I'm not some free-market fundamentalist who opposes the welfare state on principle. I think nations have to strike a balance between competing priorities, and what France chooses will not be the same as what other countries choose, and that's just fine. But if the French want the impossible they are bound to be disappointed. For some empirical support to my argument that France is indeed headed for a crisis, just compare the trends in the debt/gdp ratios of France and the United States. Between 1990 and 2005 the debt/gdp ratio of the United States went from 49% to 47%, almost unchanged, whereas in the last 15 years France's went from around 25% to 57%. Some economist once said "if a trend can't continue forever, it won't." This is true, but with a shrinking and aging population, France's debt/gdp ratio is likely to accellerate before it finally hits the wall. The useless governing elite understands this and has made feeble efforts to convince people that some things need to change, but they have clearly failed. I'm not saying that France will fall apart, but expect to see more of the same only worse in the next 10 years, with lots of anger and frustration, more and bigger strikes, more and bigger riots, etc. Sooner or later change will be forced on the French, either from within or from without, and it won't be pretty. As I said before, they will probably turn to some political extreme, more likely on the left, before the real crisis comes. You are absolutely right about the state of France's Arab minority in terms of socieconomic status, discrimination, police treatment, etc. Where I differ with you is in your assertion that "the only time minority groups ever exercise a veto over national policy is when they control most of the country's wealth and political system." (You're echoing Walt and Mearsheimer there, but let's not get into that...) The fact is, the actions of French governments can often be explained by fear of street unrest, and the suburban underclass, largely of Arab/Muslim origin, recently demonstrated their capability in that area. All you have to do to get the government of France to do what you want is throw a few cobblestones and/or gasoline bombs. Actually, all you really have to do is get the government to worry that you might. Now, I don't subscribe to the view that last year's suburban riots were some kind of Al Qaeda operation. They weren't, but the power of the Arab minority to wreak havoc certainly figures into the French government's calculations, and that includes foreign policy. Surely you must admit that at France's pro-Arab stance is at least partly motivated by this kind of fear? Incidentally, what I wrote had nothing at all to do with "fear and suspicion of Arabs." All I was trying to do was paint a realistic picture of what an extreme left government in France would look like. It would be anti-capitalist, anti-American, anti-globalization and pro-Palestinian. You're not suggesting that such a government would be pro-Israel, are you? And to reiterate, worries about the gas chambers returning to Europe are nonsense. A significant minority in France might vote for Le Pen, but a majority? Never. But I could see them swinging pretty far left under the right circumstances. P.S. My sample of advanced countries was the G7. The US, Canada, Japan, and the UK all had employment rates between 72 and 75 percent in 2002, but the continental Europeans(France Germany and Italy) were all in the 60 and 65 percent neighborhood. Posted by: american in europe at April 13, 2006 12:03 PM | Permalink to this comment
One more thing. The employment rate, though more comparable across countries than the unemployment rate, doesn't account for the number of hours worked. Adjusting for that would make wealth creation in the big 3 European countries look even worse. Again, I'm not saying the French can't choose to work less if they want to, but they shouldn't complain when they can't afford expensive government services any more. On the other hand, if they want to maintain the welfare state as is, they had better start growing their economy, and that means working more. That's their choice. Posted by: american in europe at April 13, 2006 06:11 PM | Permalink to this comment
American in Europe, I'm angry on this blog a lot, so I thought I'd do something different and say that I thought your responses are of high quality. They're in fact too firmly rooted in substance for me to argue against on a blog. If I was writing academically, I might take them on. Your clarified views seem to me a ways a way from how I initially percieved them. However, If I can concede that a government might modify its views for fear of unrest, you can concede that equally likely is that a strong anti-Muslim backlash - a populist backlash - could, yes, quite easily completely reverse mild muddling concesssions to young Arabs and start a movement for deporting the lot of them. Nativist movements are on the rise in Europe. TNR's blog profiled one in Britain this very week. The very anti-changing labor market protests in France this week are also, in their own way, probably anti-"making it easier for Muslims to get jobs at the expense of our jobs." An extreme right, nativist, anti-Muslim government in France is much more likely than an extreme leftist one. Posted by: glasnost at April 15, 2006 04:27 AM | Permalink to this comment
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