What the fuck were the French protests about? These four writers have strong opinions

1. In Defense of French Dirigisme
They live longer. They eat better. They work less. So why do Americans want to beat up on the French?
By John R. MacArthur

Usually I give The New York Times's right-wing columnist John Tierney a pass in the morning. I like my ideologues witty—or at least outrageous—and Tierney, like his stablemate David Brooks, almost never delivers on either count (except, perhaps, in his weird defenses of Wal-Mart).

But Tierney's recent column on French social unrest caught my eye—not only because I'm half-French, but also because I'm interested in the public-relations tactics of the pro-Bush crowd. As Tierney's ideological predecessor (and former Republican press agent) William Safire well understood, when things get rough for your side, it's useful to change the subject.

Tierney finds it amusing that France is in upheaval over a new labor law, the Contrat Premiere Embauche (contract for first-time hires), that would make it easier for businessmen to fire young workers within the first two years of their employment. Private employers in France pay a heavy price for firing anybody—in justifying paperwork and money—so the theory is that they would hire more raw, untested types if it weren't so hard getting rid of the deadbeats.

If you're an employer, this makes perfect sense; if you're a member of France's “rightist” government, it's a great way to satisfy your corporate backers, as well as appearing to address the problem of high youth unemployment. If, on the other hand, you're a college student or trade unionist, the new labor law sounds like what it doubtless will be: discrimination permitting bosses to exploit and churn the lowest-paid people with the least seniority.

In “Who Moved My Fromage?,” Tierney labors too hard to be satirical about the French “facade of arrogance,” so the jokes turn labored very quickly: “Someone needs to rescue France from its self-proclaimed malaise. Close to a quarter of its young people are unemployed, but they're too busy burning cars to look for jobs.” There goes the drum in Doc Severensen's Tonight Show band: ba-dum-bump!

But underneath Tierney's strained humor (he suggests a new Marshall Plan, of American self-help wisdom) lies authentic hostility toward France's highly centralized social-support system: “Today's French can't even stand up to unarmed foreigners. When French young adults were asked what globalization meant to them, half replied 'fear.' ” Now that's really funny, especially contrasted with fearless post-9/11 America.

Of course, Tierney doesn't know much about France. When he and the like-minded Thomas Friedman mock the alleged French aversion to work and competition, they miss an important point. Not unlike the Japanese, the French idea of “national solidarity” has long dictated a dirigiste industrial policy, with big government subsidies poured into public-private business ventures thought to have good export and wage potential. When it suits the French to stimulate their private sector, they just do it, without getting hung up on liberal economic theory or anti-trust doctrine. Conversely, when the government believes that deregulation and competition might help, it's perfectly capable of acting more capitalistically.

The day that Tierney's column appeared, The Wall Street Journal , beacon of free-market orthodoxy, published two approving stories about French economic success—one dirigiste and one entrepreneurial. On the front page we learned that France gets 78 percent of its nationalized electrical production from nuclear-power plants, far ahead of second-place Germany, with 28 percent, and the fifth-place United States, with 19 percent. This far-sighted government-mandated policy has greatly reduced France's greenhouse-gas emissions, as well as its dependence on Mideastern oil. “With oil dependence and global warming at the top of the international energy agenda,” wrote the Journal , “France's experience is drawing interest from the U.S. to China.”

Elsewhere the Journal reported that by loosening its national telecommunications monopoly, France has become a leader in broadband services: “Thanks to deregulation six years ago, French consumers have access to high-speed Internet service that is much faster and cheaper than in the U.S.”

Why don't Tierney and others note such French achievements? Partly it's ideological intolerance and partly, I imagine, it stems from envy. Ideologues want purity and most impure Frenchmen don't believe that capitalism is an inherent force for good. Meanwhile, they're living longer and eating better food than we are.

But let's not forget PR as a motive for Tierney's column. Real median weekly earnings in the United States are falling, in part because of “free trade” and the bipartisan bludgeoning of labor unions into nothingness. We're bogged down in a neo-Wilsonian oil grab in Iraq, which is costing a human fortune in lost lives and limbs, not to mention a dollar fortune in public funds. And our public schools, practically speaking, constitute a system of racial and class apartheid that makes the awful Arab/African ghettos in suburban Paris look almost hopeful.

Whatever their own hypocrisy, racism, and corruption, the French look pretty smart by comparison with the Americans. Having learned in 1956 (the Suez crisis) and 1973 (the OPEC embargo) about the unreliability of Arab oil supplies, they could afford, thanks to their nuclear policy, to split with the United States on Iraq. Whatever the merits of a “flexible” labor market, at least French unions still have enough dues-paying members to put up a fight. Whatever the plight of immigrant Muslims, the French are graduating, on a percentage basis, twice as many students with bachelor's degrees in science, math, computer technology, and engineering as we are in America.

But in truth, I'm not as concerned about the ability of French youth to get secure jobs as I am about the decline in satiric skill in the United States. Some may recall Thomas Friedman's big laugh line about France's rejection last year of the European constitution: “French voters are trying to preserve a 35-hour week in a world where Indian engineers are ready to work a 35-hour day. Good luck.” This might be mildly funny but for a 2005 French government study that found that the 35-hour week created about 350,000 jobs, from its application in 1998 through 2002, and that the affected businesses enjoyed productivity gains of 4 to 5 percent during the same period.

Maybe the French don't need to work longer hours so much as American columnists need to spend more time reading the paper. It's one of the easiest jobs in the world.

2. Would you hire this man?
Let's see if we have this right: French kids are rioting because they can't have jobs for life?
DOMINIC HILTON

Am I the only one who thinks France is nuttier than frangipane?

Here is how I understand last week's wave of marches, riots and blockades in the land of loitering existentially in smoky cafés while making meaningful hand gestures:

Lots of over-educated youths with too much black in their wardrobes are desperate to dress up in balaclavas and bandannas and torch things because (now let me word this correctly) they are disillusioned that their government wants to help them get jobs, because when you get a job there is a big danger you might one day lose it, especially if you are crap at it.

I could have sworn that not long ago French youths were rioting because, thanks to workplace-protection laws so rigid you could dry your pantalons on them, no one under the age of 65 can break into the job market (unless their grand-père is head of the Union of Permanently Picketing Fonctionnaires, in which case there is always room for one more shop steward).

France's youth unemployment rate is consequently a staggering 23 per cent. The government's solution is this: In order to ease employers' worries about hiring graduates and then being stuck with them, regardless of their competency, for life, a new law will allow them to fire anyone under the age of 26 with fewer than two years on the job.

It is this law, designed to help students find work after university, that has them aux barricades . One minute French students are rioting for jobs, the next they are rioting because they might actually get a job but be required to perform well to keep it. How swiftly indignation adapts to circumstance.

Any anthropological textbook will tell you (using longer words) that France is a strange land with weird traditions. A few years ago, French prostitutes went on strike and took to the streets against plans to limit their soliciting. This protest was followed by a full-scale walkout by France's stilt-walkers (I'm serious!).

So perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that France's students are rioting before they have even got the jobs they are rioting about. Only the French could come up with the pre-emptive riot. Call it French Exceptionalism. Where else would you see a 12-metre banner demanding Regularisation ?

The networks are loving the "romance" of "the heady scent of revolution, black coffee and Gauloises."

"French student power has an impressive record," the BBC drooled, gushing on about "the delicious sense of people power" as McDonald's gets trashed.

One young revolutionary was quoted as saying, "[This new fascist law the government is proposing] means that when I do get a job I will basically have to work as hard as I can to keep it! " (My emphasis, his accent).

What was that thing Francis Fukuyama said about the "Last Man," who so cannot bear having nothing to revolt against that he revolts against his own liberty? Well, I'm no Fukuyama (I never change my mind about something and sell books about it), but I've got two big things to say, and here they are:

First, it's impossible to ignore the fact (though everyone seems to be doing it but me) that it's cool to protest, and that's why a lot of people, especially young people, do it (about anything). Every teenager knows how "It's not fair!" What they don't know is that, as Derek Jeter once wrote, "The World Is Not Always Fair." C'est la vie.

Staging sit-ins or building blockades in university canteens doesn't have to have any more meaning than the fact kids are dyeing their hair blue and sitting cross-legged in snack shops — big deal.

As for the violence part, well, let's face it, it's fun to lob flaming things at people you don't know, especially if your country refuses to go to war with anyone ever (even when it gets invaded) and, unlike, say, the United States, you rarely get the opportunity to formally lob flaming things at people you don't know. "I had nowhere to go but the streets!"

But the thing that really irks me is how, as my friend (who edits a magazine) put it, "It's like '68 all over again, only this time the French students are demanding a decently paying middle-management job and mid-range Citroën for all! What gives?"

One report quoted Marion, a girl full of that ever-present "indignation," saying, "I haven't studied hard to get nothing at the end of it. I've earned the right to a secure job."

The French are so wedded to the public sector that the Fifth Republic is, in essence, nothing more than a prenup. If the government breaks the terms of the deal, the rioters can construct a Sixth Republic and the government gets nothing. Zéro .

Has everyone forgotten what La France is all about? A couple of years back a book appeared on France's bestseller lists called Bonjour Paresse: De l'art et la nécessité d'en faire le moins possible en entreprise (Hello Laziness: The Art and Importance of Doing the Least Possible in the Workplace ).

"Finally," ran a review in The New York Times , "instead of dissembling behind ambiguous notions of Gallic joie de vivre, someone in this leisurely land has declared outright that the French should eschew the Anglo-Saxon work ethic and openly embrace sloth."

Author Corinne Maier "worked" for years at the state-owned Electricité de France. Here are some excerpts from her manifesto:

"What you do is pointless. You can be replaced from one day to the next by any cretin sitting next to you. So work as little as possible and spend time (not too much, if you can help it) cultivating your personal network so that you're untouchable when the next restructuring comes around."

"You're not judged on merit, but on whether you look and sound the part. Speak lots of leaden jargon: People will suspect you have an inside track."

"Make a beeline for the most useless positions (research, strategy and business development), where it is impossible to assess your `contribution to the wealth of the firm.' Avoid `on the ground' operational roles like the plague."

"Tell yourself that the absurd ideology underpinning this corporate bullshit cannot last forever. It will go the same way as the dialectical materialism of the communist system."

France's latest "revolution" is its most embarrassing yet. Not even a strike by stilt-walking prostitutes could rival this effort. Expect to read about it next week.

3. The culture of protest
In France, demonstrations took hold during the French Revolution and show no signs of slowing.
But analysts warn times have changed and today's rallies are often marred by thugs and violence.
SANDRO CONTENTA

PARIS—The French, as everybody knows, love to take to the streets in protest.

They do it with the proud conviction that mass demonstrations are another of their gifts to the world, every bit as fundamental to civilization as the Enlightenment, the declaration of human rights, and good Bordeaux.

"The French were pioneers," says New York-based historian Charles Tilly, who has written extensively on the significance of revolt and protest in French culture. "In some ways, they invented the street demonstration."

From the French Revolution to last Tuesday's countrywide marches and strikes against a new labour law, filling the streets in protest has been a defining element of French democracy. But with a chronic unemployment rate of 10 per cent and marginalized suburban youths increasingly using marches to lash out violently, many now fear this confrontational model is stifling reform and paralyzing the country.

No one expects a sudden change of tactics. Unions have called another nationwide protest against the labour law this coming Tuesday, promising more people on the streets than the estimated 1 to 3 million this week. It is, quite simply, the Gallic way of doing things.

Tradition explains the route taken last Tuesday by the biggest demonstration Paris has seen in decades to protest a law that, initially, allowed workers under the age of 26 to be dismissed without explanation during their first two years on the job.

Like millions of marchers before them, they followed a path rooted in history. It began in the Latin Quarter, on the Left Bank of the River Seine, where in 1968 student protests and strikes pushed president Charles de Gaulle to dissolve the National Assembly and call parliamentary elections. It crossed the bridge to the Place de la Bastille, once the site of a prison that symbolized repressive monarchist rule. The storming of the prison fortress by Parisians on July 14, 1789, marked the French Revolution and gave the country its annual National Day of celebration.

Tilly says the act of people gathering in protest before a symbol of power was a product of that revolution, a period of divided authority that allowed people to come together in ways that would have previously got them shot. Tuesday's march ended at Place de la République, where a bronze statue of a woman holds a tablet proclaiming the 1789 declaration of human rights. Below it are three other statues representing liberty, equality and fraternity, a motto that first appeared in the revolution and now forms a pillar of French society and laws.

"There's a sense in France that a successful mobilization is one that strongly recalls the images and the traditions of the past," says Parisian sociologist Guy Groux.

Adds philosopher Jean Pierre Le Goff: "All Western countries have demonstrations, but in France, they're part of our identity."

Having deposed and beheaded one monarch in the French Revolution, further street protests and violent clashes led to the abdication of two more kings over the next 60 years. In 1848, Napoleon III came to power and built wide boulevards through Paris, in part to more easily move troops into the city to crush protests.

In the 20th century, the 1917 Russian Revolution injected French unions and left-wing parties with a communist fervour that marked street protests to come, says Groux, research director at the government-funded National Centre for Scientific Research.

`In France, (protests are) part of our identity.' --Jean Pierre Le Goff, philosopher

Mass demonstrations, fuelled by anti-Americanism, helped de Gaulle consolidate his power after World War II. But the defining moment for modern French protests came in May 1968, when student demonstrations against university reforms culminated in a national strike of 10 million workers.

The next three decades were filled with major protests, most notably in 1995, when union-organized demonstrations forced the government to back off plans to cut pensions and curb health-care costs.

A government tendency to back down has reinforced the notion that the power of the people is every bit as legitimate as the power of the state, Le Goff argues. The result is a union movement far more powerful than the 8 per cent of French workers it represents.

As protests grew, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin made clear he was willing to water down the labour law. President Jacques Chirac went further last night saying employers will have to give reasons to young people who were dismissed.

Tilly, a professor at Columbia University, applauds street protests as "an often effective form of expression for people who don't necessarily have access to lobbyists or direct access to their elected representatives."

But some French analysts argue times have changed.

In 1968, a period of economic boom, the student-led protests pushed to change French society toward a utopian social model. Today, a time of economic decline, the protests are defensive — a bid to stop globalization or "Anglo-Saxon capitalism" from eroding cherished social benefits.

Yet the need for change is pressing.

Last fall, French youths from immigrant backgrounds — angered by racism and youth unemployment levels in some suburban ghettos of almost 40 per cent — launched weeks of violent riots.

Since then, mass demonstrations have been marred by thugs dubbed casseurs, or smashers, shattering shop windows and clashing with riot police. This has added to a collective sense of gloom, a feeling that nothing can get done in France before the next presidential elections in 2007.

Nothing, that is, except the symbolic re-enactment of storming the ramparts.

4. Liberty, equality, security
By Ignacio Ramonet

A group of rightwing “declin-ologists” ( 1), prompted by the avian flu scare, have diagnosed France as an organism in collapse and in urgent need of treatment. Recent events have confirmed the pessimism and, by reinforcing the perception of institutions in meltdown, have contributed to the general malaise. In 2004 the trial of an alleged paedophile ring in the northern town of Outreau turned into a judicial and media disaster. In February 2005 the National Assembly passed legislation requiring school courses to recognise the “positive role” played by French colonialism ( 2). The decommissioning of the asbestos-laden aircraft carrier Clemenceau was a shambles. Last November there were riots in deprived suburbs around French cities. The controversy over the cartoons of Muhammad and the shocking murder of a young Jew, Ilan Halimi, have reinforced sectarianism. The government has started a backdoor privatisation of the publicly owned gas utility Gaz de France.

The prophets of doom claim to detect a sense of collective despair, demonstrated in May 2005 when France voted against the European constitution. According to leading declinologist Nicolas Baverez: “France has retreated to a cocoon of demagogy and falsehood . . . where politicians refuse to tell the truth. They are afraid that if they introduce reforms there will be a revolution. But it is precisely the absence of reform that causes revolutions” ( 3).

To cure what Bavarez has described as “a sick France in a decadent Europe”, he and fellow-believers hope and pray for a liberal “readjustment”. Convinced that all that is needed is to push the right button, they have long demanded the deregulation of the labour market. The prime minister, Dominique de Villepin - who coined the term declinologist - is feeling the pressure. Sensitive to Baverez’s accusation that he “stands up to Bush but rolls over for the trade unions”, he seems to have decided to crash through ruling-class inertia and reform employment at last.

His first prescription, the New Employment Contract (CNE), was rushed through parliament last summer and came into effect on 1 September. It affects firms with fewer than 20 employees, 66% of French businesses, and its most striking innovation is the ease with which it can be broken. As labour inspector Gérard Filoche, points out: “It introduces a new right of dismissal: you can fire anybody at any time and for any reason, without following any formal procedure and without any right of appeal” ( 4).

It met longstanding demands from employers and encountered only moderate resistance. So Villepin decided to press on. In February the First Employment Contract (CPE) was voted through parliament with no real debate. This legislation applies to those below the age of 26 working for companies with more than 20 employees. As under the CNE, employers can terminate a contract at any time during the first two years without any written explanation.

Villepin tried to use the November 2005 riots as justification for this extraordinary legislation, on the grounds that there was an urgent need to encourage employers to take on untrained youngsters. The argument fooled no one. Opposition, first from students and then from major trade unions, was widespread and fierce. The stakes are political as well as symbolic. The French working-class movement was forced to look at itself after a major defeat over pensions legislation in July 2003. People have realised that if they give way on the CPE as they did on the CNE, they leave the way open for the complete dismantling of the labour code, with long-term consequences in terms of flexible, insecure employment.

Far from being “the sick man of Europe” that the right detects, France is strong enough to resist the attempted takeover by financial institutions. Almost uniquely in Europe, the majority of French wage-earners fiercely oppose the government’s attempt to wash its hands of them and let unrestrained globalisation serve them up to business. This shift in the relationship between political power and society could mean the end of the welfare state. The CPE is part of a campaign to destroy the sense of social solidarity central to French identity. That is why there is so much opposition. And why France is in revolt.