He singled out striking truck drivers for "taking the French hostage." After 12 days of blocking highways and paralyzing parts of the country, the workers had won retirement at age 55 and other demands, dealing a blow to the government's antilabor policies.
The president came to the defense of his prime minister, Alain Juppé, who has spearheaded a severe program of economic austerity. This program is "unpopular but necessary," Chirac asserted. He complained that workers in France "always look to the state for a solution," and have resisted these changes. "We can't live forever with a system of organization and management... that's 20 or 30 years old," he declared.
To capitalists in France, faced with declining profit rates and intensified competition from their rivals in Washington, London, and Bonn, the social gains working people won over the past half century are indeed a problem. These include social security and retirement pensions, state-funded health care, rent subsidies, five weeks annual vacation for many workers, and government subsidies for a range of other social needs.
These gains were the product of giant class battles. Three times this century -1936, 1945-47, and 1968 - working people in France carried out massive upsurges that opened the possibility of taking political power from the ruling capitalist families. While the Stalinist and social democratic misleadership in the labor movement blocked a socialist revolution each time, the bourgeoisie was forced to grant substantial concessions to win social peace.
Today, however, France is in its deepest economic crisis since the end of World War II. On December 16 the French government agency INSEE projected that unemployment, now at a post-war record of 12.6 percent, will rise to 13 percent by mid-1997. At least 3.5 million workers are jobless. Meanwhile, wages continue to stagnate. This cyclical downturn in the business cycle occurs in a period of long- term depression caused by falling rates of profit. Growth rates in France have decreased year after year, reaching a low of 1.3 percent in 1996.
Single currency as pretext for austerity
To reverse this crisis and gain an edge over their
international rivals, the French rulers are pushing to
slash social spending and drive down the value of labor
power. They are justifying this austerity drive under the
banner of creating a single European currency. In his
television appearance Chirac argued that only a European
currency could allow French business to compete with U.S.
and Asian corporations. "We need a means to struggle
against American hegemony," he stated. "There is a problem
of the dollar. The only way is to be strong, to have a
common currency. There is no other way."
Paris appears unlikely to meet the criteria for membership in the projected European Monetary Union (EMU) by the Jan. 1, 1999, deadline. In fact, each passing month brings evidence that a single European currency is further away than ever, with conflicts sharpening among and within the imperialist bourgeoisies.
Tensions have flared up between Paris and Bonn, most recently over a proposed European Central Bank. The French government has called for an international "stability council" as a counterbalance to a German-dominated bank. Bonn, the strongest economic power in the region, demands the new financial institution be free from control by an "outside" political body.
Meanwhile, the Chirac administration has repeatedly butted heads with the U.S. government in the international arena. Paris resisted Washington's campaign to replace United Nations secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali and unsuccessfully demanded that a European (preferably French) officer head NATO's southern command in Naples. It has clashed with Washington over imperialist intervention in central Africa, the Mideast, and Yugoslavia, with each power seeking to press its interests at the expense of the other.
French rulers fear social explosion
At the same time, the French rulers, concerned that the
government's attacks on social gains may lead to a social
explosion, are beset by internal differences.
Speaking for some in the French ruling class, former president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing has argued for a devaluation of the franc against the dollar to make French industry more competitive on the world market. He says this would spur growth and reduce unemployment.
Such a move would be a departure from Paris's franc fort (strong franc) policy of pegging its currency to the German mark. Supporters of Chirac's policies opposed Giscard's proposal, saying it would delay needed austerity measures, torpedo the European currency, and leave Central Europe in Bonn's domain, icing out French capital.
Chirac's government has been seriously weakened by its inability to push through its austerity package. That plan, announced by Juppé in November 1995, aimed to make drastic cuts in social security, extend by two and a half years the retirement age for public employees, and privatize sectors of the nationalized rail, gas, electricity, and telephone companies, which would result in thousands of layoffs.
This sweeping assault on social conquests sparked a huge nationwide strike wave in November and December 1995, led by rail and transit workers. The government was forced to back off from some of the harshest aspects of the Juppé plan.
Over the past year, however, the government has continued its probes. Workers have responded each time with resistance. On October 17, two million workers struck against the austerity measures; the government was forced to withdraw a wage freeze the day before.
Truckers' victory inspires other actions
The November victory of the truckers strike inspired a
series of smaller labor actions around the country. Bus
drivers in Rouen, Toulouse, and Dunkirk struck for a
shorter workweek.
The General Labor Confederation (CGT), the main labor federation, organized a 24-hour transportation stoppage with similar demands in major cities throughout France, except Paris.
Thousands of striking stage actors and other performing artists marched through Paris December 19 to protest cutbacks in unemployment insurance. Airline workers, railroad engineers, teachers, journalists, and doctors have staged strikes in recent weeks.
All these have been defensive struggles against government attacks and for relief from the effects of the economic crisis. The Rouen bus strike, for example, won a pledge to hire 80 drivers. The workweek was shortened from 38 to 34 hours, with 37 hours' pay the first year and 36 the second.
The government's drive to sell off state-owned industries hit a pothole December 4 when it halted the planned sale of Thomson SA, the defense and consumer electronics giant. Some 20,000 Thomson workers demonstrated November 20 against the sale in front of the National Assembly, among other protests. Union officials, however, channeled protests against the privatization into chauvinist opposition to selling the company to Daewoo, a South Korean company.
An assault on democratic rights has accompanied the drive against workers' social wage. In the name of fighting "terrorism" the Chirac government has relaunched its Vigipirate operation, taking advantage of a December 3 subway bombing for which no one has taken responsibility.
Some 1,800 heavily armed soldiers have joined cops in patrolling cities around the country. Soldiers and police routinely interrogate brown- and black-skinned youth and workers in railroad and subway stations. In 1995, security forces carried out nearly 2 million ID checks and deported several thousand immigrants.
In this atmosphere, the French parliament passed an anti- immigrant bill proposed by Interior Minister Jean-Louis Debré. The law would restrict the right of immigrants to renew their residence cards, authorize workplace raids, and permit the detention of individuals for 48 hours without recourse to a judge, among other things.
SP seeks to win next elections
Profiting from the unpopularity of the Chirac-Juppé
government, which has hit record lows in opinion polls,
opposition parties are getting wind in their sails. The
Socialist Party, Francés main bourgeois workers party,
seeks to win control of the National Assembly in the 1998
elections and form the next government.
At the party's December 14-15 convention, SP leader Lionel Jospin proposed a course of "realism from the left." He supported Chirac on the European currency but advocated a "European social contract" to cushion the effects. Jospin said he favored "not a brutal and sharp wage increase but gradually increasing [workers'] share of the national income." The SP - which dominates the French Democratic Confederation of Labor (CFDT), the second-largest union federation - called for a 35-hour workweek with no cut in pay, and the creation of 700,000 jobs for youth.
The French Communist Party held its convention December 18-22. CP leader Robert Hue presented a statesmanlike image to position the party to win a junior role in a future coalition government with the Socialist Party. He called for replacing "class struggle" with "citizens' participation." Another theme of the Stalinist convention was the "transformation" (mutation) of the party itself, dropping any vestige of a "Third International"-type party in favor of a party "of a new kind." This is part of the CP's moves toward a more openly social democratic organization.
Hue took a critical stance toward the single European currency, arguing for how best to defend "French" interests against U.S. and German domination. He proposed a national referendum on the issue.
The CP's "national communist" perspective was also apparent in its position in the immigration debate. While opposing the new bill's restrictions on "legal" immigrants, CP leader Patrick Braouezec, deputy mayor of the St.-Denis district of Paris, called for "more effective means to combat illegal immigration."
Echoing the CP, the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) published its stance on the EMU in an article in the December 12 issue of the weekly Rouge, titled "For a referendum on the single currency!" It called for "a struggle against Maastricht," referring to the 1991 treaty that was the beginning of the EMU process.
At its November 8-11 convention, the LCR issued a call to the CP, SP, and other left-wing parties to form "a fighting unity of the left." It also proposed a new political formation "bringing together all those who are `100 percent left-wing,' " with a particular appeal to the CP. As part of that process the LCR has begun discussing its own "organizational transformation" and changing its name.
Fascists organize unions
Meanwhile, the fascist National Front Party has been
buoyed by its strong gains in recent local elections.
Feeding on the discontent with the government and the
economic crisis, and in response to the labor upsurge, the
National Front has adopted a more anticapitalist rhetoric.
Denouncing "the bourgeois elite [that] prostitutes itself to Mammon," National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen advocates "a third road" that is "neither socialism nor capitalism." The December 18 issue of Présent, a pro-National Front paper, outlines a perspective of aggressive intervention in the trade union movement. The fascist outfit has already been organizing in the police and prison guard "unions," as well as the transportation and other labor unions.
The article called for National Front supporters to join unions where possible or form separate ones, as well as to sell its literature outside factory gates such as Thomson. The Front denounces the traditional union leadership and makes demagogic calls for "trade union freedom" and the defense of "French workers" against the evils of "world free trade-ism."
Meanwhile, protests against the National Front's anti- immigrant and antilabor politics have continued. A December 9 march against the National Front in the southern city of Grenoble drew 20,000 people. Two days earlier, 2,000 protesters, many of whom were youth of oppressed nationalities, marched against the fascists in Dijon.