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The French Strikes of 1995 and their Political Aftermath

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Dick Howard
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LIKE MANY OF HIS APHORISMS, MARX'S DESIGNATION OF THE FRENCH as the model political nation (leaving the economy to the English and philosophy for the Germans) contained enough of a grain of truth to remain relevant for over a century. Since 1989, the idea of politics based on the revolutionary experience begun in 1789 and pursued by a unified and international working-class subject has lost its utility for understanding the political choices facing modern industrial democracies. Nowhere is the need for a new understanding of the political more clear than in France itself, as illustrated by the strikes that paralysed the country for more than three weeks in November and December of 1995 and forced the government to retreat. While some saw the birth of a ‘social movement’, cheered the victory of society against the state, or imagined that class struggle had begun anew, the more pessimistic argued that the French had once again proven themselves incapable of political reform. The former presuppose a model of politics from the nineteenth century, the latter look forward to a globalized twenty-first century. For those of us still living in the twentieth, analysis of the French strikes can help us to understand how politics can make the shape of the twentyfirst century less inevitable.

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Articles
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Government and Opposition , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , April 1998 , pp. 199 - 220
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Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1998

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References

1 For a scathing, class‐conscious critique of the government proposals, cf. the articles that make up the dossier published by Le Monde Diplomatique (January 1996), pp. 8–13.

2 Cited from the International Herald Tribune, 15 December 1995 by Claude Julien's “Réformes”, “modernité”, “globalisation”… vers I’explosion des mots piégés’, in Le Monde Diplomatique (January 1996), pp. 10–11.

3 It should be noted, however, that each time he reaffirmed this attitude, recalling Margaret Thatcher's treatment of the miners’ strikes, the stock market and the franc rose; each time he appeared to weaken, the direction was inverted.

4 Morin, Edgar, ‘L’avenir en marche vers le passé’, Liberation, 19 12 1995 Google Scholar.

5 Israelewicz, Eric, in Le Monde, 7 12 1995 .Google Scholar Cf. also the remarks of Willam Pfaff, and dossier of Le Monde Diplomatique, cited above.

6 Cf., for example, Wormser, Gerard, ‘Crise et mediation: Les intellectuels dans le mouvement de decembre 1995,’ in CFDT aujourd ’ hui, 119 (05–06 1996), pp. 41–55,Google Scholar and Roman, Joël, ‘Recompositions en profondeur’, in Esprit (01–02 1996), pp. 189–91.Google Scholar

7 Cf., for example, Lefort, Claude, ‘La fin des dogmes’, originally in Le Monde, reprinted in Esprit (01–02 1996)Google Scholar. Esprit's editors have returned to this point in a recent evaluation of the post‐strike literature in’ L’electrochoc de novembre‐décembre 1995, premiers diagnostics’, (June 1996), pp. 185–94.

8 Cf. Lefort, op. cit.

9 Cf. the arguments of Maus, Ingeborg against this American conception of democracy, which I discuss in ‘Just Democracy’, Constellations, 2:3 (01 1996), pp. 333–53.Google Scholar

10 There is an alternative to this argument which stresses that as long as the state intervention makes for continual progress, the political justification of rights can be maintained. The problem today, however, is that two decades of economic stagnation, with no sign that renewal is around the corner, makes the hope for progress vain. Cf. Donzelot, Jacques in ‘L’avenir du social’, Esprit (03 1996), pp. 58–81.Google Scholar

11 The ‘Appel des intellectuels…’ was initiated by Pierre Bourdieu, and published in Le Monde (15 December 1995). It was intended to be a counter‐attack on an earlier petition initiated by the monthly journal, Esprit, published in Le Monde (2–3 December 1995) under the title, ‘Pour une réforme de fond de la sécurité sociale’. These two positions defined the possible stances within the French left. I will return to the Esprit petition below on pages 209–10 and 212. Both petitions are published in the Annexes of Jean‐Pierre Le Goff and Alain Caillé, Le tournant de decembre, Paris, La Découverte, 1996, along with a list of the signers of each of them.

12 In fact, the apparent contradiction of the two elements of French republicanism can be lifted once it is seen that the political intervention that is feared is that of a particular interest, of a privilege that is present this time not within society but in a state that has become separate from it and is dominated by capital. Hence the danger for a government of technocrats.

13 The political logic that led to the creation of the French social security system is brilliantly analysed by Dufourcq's, Nicolas ‘Les impasses de la Sécurité sociale’, in Esprit (03 1996), pp. 82–104 Google Scholar. Dufourcq points to the historical roots of this attitude, which are at the basis of the Durkheimian school of sociology. Durkheim, after all, was a devoted republican, concerned with the sources of social solidarity in a modernizing world, and convinced that his new science was only drawing on the implications of the French Revolution.

It should also be noted that in actual fact, in the climate of the cold war, an alliance between the anti‐communist (and initially CIA‐funded) trade union, Force Ouvriere (FO) and the patronat led to a de facto control of many functions by that union. But the strength of the communist‐led Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) should not be underestimated, particularly in the nationalized sectors and above all, in the present context, in the railways.

14 It should be stressed that the other side of this coin is the increasing inequality between the wealthy and the rest of society, made more glaring by the often speculative nature of the new wealth. While this gap is growing in France, it is hardly comparable with the picture of the United States. None the less, this aspect of the problem of ‘exclusion’ was indeed stressed by the strike movement and its supporters. For further details, cf. the dossier published by Le Monde Diplomatique, op. cit. For a critique of the RMI in the wake of the strike movement, cf. Alain Caillé, ‘Vets un nouveau contrat social?’, in Le Goff and Caillé, op. cit., fn. 11.

15 For example, Touraine writes that ‘Like a collective action that is concerned to defend particular interests, or one that proposes a counter‐cultural project that would completely change society, a collective action that is nothing but a refusal is much more limited than a social movement’. Cf. Touraine et al., Le Grand Ref us: Réflexions sur la grève de decembre 1996, Paris, Fayard, 1995, p. 50.

16 Blondel's tactic was to try to poach on the territory of the CGT. Jean Dubois's nuanced analysis of the strike movement (in ‘Décembre 1995: Un mouvement polysémique’, in Projet, 245 (Spring 1996) suggests why this tactic will surely fail. Blondel's tactic has been criticized by his predecessor, Bergeron, André, infe revendique le bon sens, Paris, Liana Levi, 1996.Google Scholar

17 Cf. note 12, above.

18 Cf. ‘Autour d’un appel’, in Esprit (January–February 1996), pp. 167–74; 169.

19 The report of the meeting is published in CFDT aujourd’ hui, 118 (March–April 1996) from which the following is adapted.

20 This is an allusion to the attacks on the CFDT during the strikes, claiming that its tactics were based on its desire to enter a partnership with government along what the French call ‘German’ trade union lines.

21 Cf. Thibaud, Paul, ‘L’Europe par les nations (et réciproquement)’, in Ferry, Jean‐Marc and Thibaud, Paul, Discussion sur l’Europe, Paris, Calmann‐Lévy, 1992, p. 16n.Google Scholar

22 Halimi, Serge, ‘La mélopée des contraintes et les leçons de I’histoire, French Politics and Society, 15:3 (Summer 1997), p. 6.Google Scholar

23 The National Front received 14.94 per cent of the votes in the first round of the elections, maintaining the level achieved by Le Pen in the first round of the 1995 presidential elections (15 per cent). Le Pen's advice to his followers concerning their choices in the second round was ambiguous – there appears to be a division in the National Front between those who think that they can achieve their goals by making necessary an alliance with the existing right, and those who want to destroy that old right in order to come to power on their own. On the 1997 elections and the National Front, cf. James G. Shields, ’ La politique du Aire. The Front National and the 1997 Legislative Elections’, French Politics and Society, 15:3 (Summer 1997), pp. 21–36.

24 It should also be noted that this French version of ‘mixed government’ was called ‘la gauche plurielle’ by the leader of the reformed Communist Party, implying the end of a Jacobin‐unitary vision of a united popular will that will put an end to social divisions. Cf. ‘Lionel Jospin favorise le débat entre ses ministres’, in Le Monde (2 August 1997), which neglects this important implication of the new style of politics (as does Serge Halimi in the article cited in fn. 22).

25 Cf. Schmidt, Vivien A., ‘Economic Policy, Political Discourse, and Democracy in France’, in French Politics and Society, 15:2 (Spring 1997), p. 42.Google Scholar

26 Indeed, the Communist Party seems to have admitted that it is simply one social force among other equally legitimate interests whose interactions form the basis of political decisions. As if to repay the favour, the Prime Minister reacting to the recent ‘Black Book’ of the crimes of communism affirmed to the Parliament the place of the party in French history and society. There has been some talk about a ‘reversal of the Congress of Tours’ – when the Communists and Socialists split – but this is not just wishful thinking but, from the perspective suggested here, undesirable.

27 Le Monde, 14–15 September 1997, p. 7.

28 Esprit (October 1997), p. 65.

29 The principles of the reform were elaborated in a report to the Prime Minister submitted at the end of July by Patrick Weil. Cf. Le Monde, 1 August 1997, which published large parts of this proposal. Chevénement's translation of these principles accentuated the role of the executive in their administration, which explains why the protests against them arose only later.

30 Published in a dossier, ‘Lionel Jospin, la methode et ses limites’, Mongin's article is entitled ‘Immigration: pour un contrôle de I’administration’, Esprit (December 1966), p. 46.