Chirac bows to the struggle against the CPE

by spider Tue Apr 11, 2006 20:49

"The radical left now has a chance to build on these victories and put forward an alternative vision for the future. It will need to argue for practical measures to combat poverty and unemployment that can both capture the popular imagination and point the way towards a socialist alternative to capitalism"

err, why should socialists (believing as we do in the common ownership of the means of production) argue for measures to combat unemployment, i.e. develop arguments for the better management of capitalism? ISN, you used to be cool.

by Dan Tue Apr 11, 2006 21:47

So you'd prefer we told people "you have to sit around and wait until we have a revolution until anything changes, in the meantime we can do nothing whatsoever, not even the slightest thing to improve your social conditions, nothing at all"? Brilliant strategy mate, brilliant!

Socialists have always put forward proposals for change that could be implemented under capitalism (minimum wage, universal health care, trade union rights etc). The challenge is create a bridge between proposals of that sort and an alternative to capitalism. As I said, this is easier said than done.

I really don't care if the ISN is no longer "cool" in your eyes. Your approach to politics sounds pretty juvenile to be honest, so we can probably do without your endorsement.

by Dan Tue Apr 11, 2006 22:59

Just while I'm in front of a computer, I'll suggest one possible proposal that could be put forward by the radical left in France for reducing unemployment (although it's really the job of the French movement to come up with ideas of this sort).

Housing conditions in the suburbs are appalling, and there are countless young people in the same areas with little hope of finding a job. The left could propose that the government slash the miltary budget or tax the upper classes at a higher rate, then use the money to fund a public housing programme that would improve conditions and provide work for the suburban youth (who could be given preferential access to the jobs).

This wouldn't be enough to end unemployment - certainly not on a permanent basis. But it would have some impact. It would certainly be far more likely to reduce youth unemployement than the CPE law.

It would also conflict with the logic of capital by A) shifting wealth from the war industry / bourgeois lifestyles to the so-called "underclass" and B) reducing the supply of unemployed workers that can be used to undermine wages and conditions for the working class.

It's quite possible that no capitalist government in France will ever implement a scheme of this sort, even though it's compatible with a free-market economy in theory. If this proves to be the case, then the government exposes itself.

A few years ago, when summit protests were at their height, the global justice movement argued for the Tobin tax. In theory a tax on financial speculation is perfectly compatible with capitalism, but the managers of global capitalism have refused to take even this modest step. Their refusal exposes their unwillingness to do anything to regulate capital. We have to put forward demands like this to show people the limits of reform under the current system.

I'm sure people with more knowledge of the French economy than I have could come up with other suggestions that shift the onus for reducing unemployment away from the working class and onto the shoulders of capital. The key thing is, proposals of this sort shouldn't be put forward as an end in themselves - then that really would be a strategy for the better management of capitalism.

The long-term goal should be an alternative economic system based on social ownership of the key industries. Socialists should never be afraid to say so, and they should also make clear their view that unemployment can't be abolished on a permanent basis as long as we live in a capitalist society.

When they put forward short-term proposals, they shouldn't say "we will go into government so we can implement these proposals". They should concentrate on building up a radical protest movement that can extort concessions from the state and win immediate gains for the working class, while fighting for socialism as the ultimate goal.

According to a recent poll, just 36% of people in France believe that the free market is the best possible system (compared to two thirds of the population in Germany, Britain and the US - don't know the figures for Ireland but I'd imagine it's very similar). So as things stand, there's a better chance of convincing the French people to go down the socialist path than everywhere else in Europe.

But the radical left will still have to convert that scepticism about free-market capitalism into positive support for socialism, and that will take time. Putting forward transitional demands for change will be essential.

by Socialist - SP Tue Apr 11, 2006 23:23

By: Robert Bechert, CWI, France
Just over a week after signing the CPE into law, mass opposition, led by workers and young people, forced President Chirac to abandon the CPE, on 10 April. Faced with the prospect of a major political crisis, and the possibility of a general strike, Chirac backed down.

Both in France, and internationally, this is correctly seen as a major setback for the continuing neo-liberal offensive on working peoples’ living standards. However, Chirac has only partially retreated. The CPE meant that all workers under the age of 26 could be sacked, without warning or reason, at any time during their first 24 months. The CNE, a law passed last year, lays down exactly the same conditions for all workers in workplaces with less than 20 employees, and this is still in force.

The trade union leaders declared that Chirac’s retreat is a big victory, but they are not using this opportunity to push forward with other demands. The French government is in disarray and deeply split. Now is the time to go onto the offensive against both the CNE and other neo-liberal measures, and to demand proper, well-paid jobs for young people and the unemployed.

However, the union leaders want to demobilise the movement, and ultimately redirect it towards supporting the opposition in next year’s elections. A chance to create a wider movement against both Chirac and capitalism, in general, is being thrown away.

New generation tastes first victory
But whether the trade union leaders can prevent further struggles erupting in the next 12 months is a different question. The huge majority support for the anti-CPE protests illustrated the profound anger in France and the opposition to the attacks of the ruling class. The combination of this victory over the CPE, and many workers’ bitter experience of the last ‘Socialist/Communist’ government, that was defeated in 2002, could mean that new battles break out in the coming months, as sections of the working class and youth decide not to wait until 2007.

Since the end of January, a new young generation in France participated in struggle for the first time and now has won a first victory. Many have already begun to question the entire system and, as they start to draw socialist conclusions, this can help to create a movement that can end capitalism, once and for all.

by francophile Wed Apr 12, 2006 01:11

The guy who wrote this article needs to reduce his medication.

This 'affaire' was nothing whatsoever to do with the rights of ordinary people or the fight against capitalism (what a ludicrously quaint idea in the 21st century!).

This was a fight by the children of the rich and priveleged to protect their interests at the expense of the poor and excluded.

The only 'workers' who went on strike were government employees with jobs for life and fat pensions at 55. The rest were mainly white university students who can depend on the system delivering them the aforesaid 'jobs for life' and fat pensions. These groups (aka the bougeosie) didn't want a law brought into force which might have a knock-on effect on their own rights and priveleges

"The 'Beurs' in the banlieus can jump in the river, I'm all right Jacques'" was the message from these heros of socialism.

by blaise Wed Apr 12, 2006 01:52

francophile nailed the button right on the head - and his puzzlement is mine also - at why the indymedia writers would opt against the poor social demographic of France - and hail Chirac's back down as a victory. De Villepin is finished now, and that's a shame, for this man truly meant to introduce a bill which would include the colonial immigrants into the French workforce. Now both he and them have been excluded. The irony is that most of these bourgeois kids have degrees in sociology - which they will have plenty to write about - having displaced an entire sociological sector.

by Dan Wed Apr 12, 2006 11:48

It's pretty comical to hear the rantings of the free-market fanatics on this subject. People who are trying to defend the gains won by the European workers' movement since the late nineteenth century are actually a privileged elite trampling all over the poor? If this is meant to be a joke, then fair play, it's very funny. If you expect people to take it seriously, hard luck.

Thatcherites always want to distract attention from the main faultline in capitalist societies - between workers and employers. So they come up with alternative lines of division - between "consumers" and "producers" (even though every consumer is also a producer, and suffers when the rights of working people are attacked), between public sector and private sector workers, and so on.

This ridiculous fairy-tale about French society is yet another example. So De Villepin and Chirac are desperately trying to help the poor kids in the suburbs, only to have their efforts sabotaged by the selfish students and trade unionists? I'd say the very same people who are peddling this line now and shedding crocodile tears for immigrant youths were rushing to denounce the "thugs" and "scum" who rioted last November.

On an international scale, the same nonsense is being spouted by free-market ideologues like Thomas Friedman - apparently European workers are a selfish elite, standing in the way of India and other poor nations. Funnily enough, while Friedman feels confident enough to speak on their behalf, he can never manage to find an Indian worker who is demanding that European workers lose all the rights they have fought for over the last century - because there are none.

He would have little trouble finding an Indian worker who wants to see a tax put on financial speculation to pay for development in the Majority World, or a drastic cut in the military budgets of the G8 to be redistributed for the same purposes, or a wealth tax imposed on the super-rich at an international level (with a determined effort to crack down on tax havens) for the same purposes ... and he would have little trouble finding European workers who would support such proposals enthusiastically.

But we can't go around putting the focus on the gross inequalities of wealth created by global capitalism, now can we? Much better to create an imaginary clash between different sections of the international working class. It's quite true that workers in Europe, South Asia, Latin America and elsewhere find themselves in very different circumstances. But that doesn't mean that they they only make progress at each other's expense.

Getting back to France and the CPE, I gave one suggestion above for tackling unemployment in the short term. It would create a lot of jobs for young people in the suburbs (there could also be training programmes to give them skills) and give them a step out of unemployment, while improving housing conditions at the same time. As I said, people more familiar with the French economy than I am could surely come up with alternative schemes.

The CPE would have encouraged the proliferation of low-wage McJobs where young workers could be used and abused by their employers and sacked whenever they started getting uppity and demanding a better deal. Alternative schemes would do far more to improve living conditions for suburban youths, without promoting job insecurity.

The proposal I outlined above was the product of a few minutes' headscratching, but considering the amount of money France spends on its military budget, it would almost certainly be viable (they could just do away with their show-off nuclear arsenal). But it wouldn't achieve the main goal of France's right-wing government - undermining the gains made by the labour movement.

This, rather than any hypocritical concern for the suburban poor, was the real motivation behind the CPE, and its defeat was essential.

by blaise Wed Apr 12, 2006 16:01

you are truly delirious, Dano. It's the labour party which will be the undoing of the French establishment, all right, and they will keep its production down, which is the whole point of trade unions, to work less and have a job for life. Most certainly I do not equate the rioters in Dublin with those lilly-white sociologists striking in France - the complete opposite - in fact the rioters would be more aligned with the suburban immigrant who were left out of the 'victory' by les etudientes bougeois. This is all good news for Ireland though - which is positive - because the French businessman will keep farming off his business to little but aggressive countries like Ireland while the little spoiled brats work unproductively at their little for-life jobs. Some smelling salts for Dano, quickly, before he goes off into the deep coma of this French revolution.

by Dan Sat Apr 15, 2006 22:19

Looks like you're not even capable of reading what people write on the page, since you didn't notice that I was referring to the French riots last November, not the rioting in Dublin in February. You haven't made the slightest effort to address any of the points I made, just repeated the same boring assertions that spring from a fairy-tale Thatcherite view of the world, where workers defending their rights are a privileged elite and right-wing politicians attacking their rights are great friends of the poor. I've dealt with your claims already so unless you have something new to add, I'll bid you good day Blaise.

by blaise Sun Apr 16, 2006 03:26

Dan, for the record, I am no fan of Thatcher and was only alluding to the Dublin riots because it was mentioned that the Dublin rioters would be scoffed at by me in much the same way I had put down the rioters in France. I have lived for a number of years in the south of France, studied poetry and literature at the universite Aix-Marseille and have worked there building houses for a university professor so I understand the terrain and the sensibility behind these young students. As I stated in an earlier piece, I am half torn between the good life the French in general espouse to and the realities of the modern world and the EEC effects on countries like France. My good friend, the university professor, had to paid secret communist dues to the establishment there for years just so he wouldn't be blacklisted by the community. Civil servants the world over as being asked to come to terms with the realities of modern existence and the need to produce more and not layabout with eternal job security. There are far too many who take advantage of these for-life positions and hence the companies have taken a firmer stand with their hiring practices. You have to admit that de Villipin's idea would have included the poorer immigrants who are mostly from the countries France made lots of money from in the past - so why shouldn't they be given a chance, that's all I was alluding to. For the students who were seeking assurances of staying on at their newfound jobs, I am sure if they turned out to be good workers, the employers would keep them so their worries were somewhat ill-founded. As it is, Chirac basically trumped de Villipin and ruined his chances of attaining the presidency, and I do believe he would have been a good president, much better I think than Chirac. I believe the French people lost here, and that's my opinion, for better or worse. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Best regards...

by Dan Sun Apr 16, 2006 20:41

Well, that's a proper argument at least Blaise - calling people "delirious" and urging them to get the smelling salts out is not.

BTW, I don't believe that France is on the brink of revolution, or anything of the sort - and I didn't suggest that it was in my article. I described the battle against the CPE as a limited defensive struggle that nevertheless suggested much bigger possibilities for the future. At the moment, the majority of people in France don't want to replace capitalism with democratic socialism (although there's a lot more scepticism about the free market there than in most western societies).

But they don't want neoliberalism either. If you'd done an opinion poll in Paris in 1789, you probably wouldn't have found a majority in favour of abolishing the monarchy. The fightback against neoliberalism may develop into a challenge to the capitalist system - it's already reached this stage in Venezuela, and may be heading in that direction in Bolivia.

That's a question the future will resolve one way or another. For now, I'm afraid I don't buy the theory that the protest movement against the CPE was "a fight by the children of the rich and privileged to protect their interests at the expense of the poor and excluded", as "Francophile" claimed with your approval. I think it's a particularly loopy Thatcherite perspective (adherence to Thatcherism doesn't necessarily mean admiration for the woman herself - I'd say a lot of Irish politicians and businessmen who are dyed-in-the-wool Thatcherites when it comes to the economy would still reject the label because of her policies towards Ireland).

The definition of students as a privileged elite is hopelessly anachronistic. There's been a massive expansion of third-level education across the western world - people who get the chance to go to university are still "privileged" in relation to those who don't, but defining them as part of the bourgeoisie (the class of large property owners) is absurd. Most of them will still have to sell their labour to make a living when they leave college, and the idea that having a white-collar job always places you further up the social ladder than industrial workers is also a relic of the past.

That said, there are certainly plenty of students who are very affluent by anyone's standards. But judging from my experience as a student activist, these are the very people who show no interest in protesting and campaigning around any issue whatsoever - the upper middle classes are an inert mass who never mobilise around anything. Students who are really "spoilt brats" (the term you use) in any meaningful sense of the term would have had no reason to worry about the CPE - they can generally use their family connections and the rest of their social capital to get a comfortable job.

The backbone of resistance to the CPE, as far as I can gather, came from students who occupy a very precarious position on the social ladder - not yet in the same mire as the kids from the suburbs, but feaful of falling into that mire. And they had the support of the entire workers' movement, from the centre-left to the Trotskyists, which saw the CPE as part of the agenda of neo-liberal counter-reform promoted by this government (it has already attacked gains made by previous generations of workers in pensions and health insurance).

I don't believe that the CPE would have made much difference to youth unemployment in the banlieues. It wouldn't change the fact that employers often reject CVs when they see the address, or abolish their prejudice against dark-skinned interviewees.

It would, however, have pushed France further towards a US-style labour market. And anyone who has looked at the realities of American society will understand why the French people are so reluctant to go down that road. The US government reduces unemployment by threatening poor people with starvation if they don't accept the most demeaning, under-paid jobs to make ends meet. If that's the best future the system can offer young people in the suburbs, then it's time to start asking questions about the system.

The political and corporate elites would rather not see questions of this sort raised. So they play the game of divide-and-rule, insisting that working-class people who have made some gains will have to sacrifice their rights if the poorest sections of society are going to make any progress. Meanwhile, the share of our wealth going to the real "privileged elite" (big shareholders, CEOs, financial speculators and so on) has sky-rocketed in recent decades. Challenging this redistribution of wealth from the majority to the rich elite should be the focus of all efforts to tackle poverty and unemployment.

by Liam Sun Apr 16, 2006 20:51

How does having to sack somebody without protection in the first 2 years tackle laziness in the next 30 potential years of their "job for life"