7 - Reconstruction and renewal

Summary

Introduction

Like most transformative events, the Liberation aroused substantial expectations of political and social reform, and at the same time considerable anxiety, particularly within established élites. The right had been discredited as a result of its association with Vichy. Committed to social justice and economic modernisation, the left was in the ascendancy. In the following years France would experience a sustained upward cycle of growth – the trente glorieuses, as the economist Jean Fourastié would label them. A massive stimulus would be afforded by reconstruction and then by the liberalisation of international trade and increased domestic prosperity. Greater state engagement and high levels of both public and private investment would promote sustained demand. This development of a mixed economy established a framework for the renewal and expansion of capitalistic enterprise, initially drawing on previously underused resources and labour and increasingly on improved technology. It was the scale and pace of change, in contrast with the periods both beforehand and afterwards, that defined these three decades. The statistics on gross domestic product (GDP) growth provide the clearest indicator of change (see Table 7.1).

Such rapid growth, and the structural change in the economy and society that accompanied it, inevitably provoked repeated crises d’adaptation. In addition, the opportunity was taken to substantially increase social welfare spending, with significant redistributive effects. This helped to promote a social consensus in favour of modernisation. Nevertheless, there was considerable resentment of reform on the part of the propertied classes, whilst the intensification of competitive pressures threatened the vital interests of many farmers, workers in uncompetitive industries, and small businessmen. In a remarkably short time the promise of a new era of social justice was to be followed by a restoration of the social and political relationships of the pre-war period. Many former résistants were to endure the sour taste of betrayal. More realistically, it is hardly surprising that the heterogeneous coalition that came together in the struggle against the occupiers fell to squabbling once it was a question of determining the shape of reconstruction and the locus of political power. The collapse of the left–centre political consensus, which had emerged from the resistance, and the inevitable recovery of the right would rapidly threaten to destabilise and, increasingly, to discredit the Fourth Republic.