January 17, 2020
This conflict is essentially
over policies that put the avaricious demands of financial markets ahead of the
needs of the people, writes Diana Johnstone.
By Diana Johnstone
in Paris
Special to Consortium News
in Paris
Special to Consortium News
The people are angry with
their government. Where? Just about everywhere. So what makes
ongoing strikes in France so special? Nothing, perhaps, except a certain
expectation based on history that French uprisings can produce important
changes – or if not, can at least help clarify the issues in contemporary
social conflicts.
The current ongoing social
unrest in France appears to pit a majority of working people against President
Emmanuel Macron. But since Macron is merely a technocratic tool of global
financial governance, the conflict is essentially an uprising against policies
that put the avaricious demands of financial markets ahead of the needs of the
people. This basic conflict is at the root of the weekly demonstrations
of Yellow Vest protesters who have been demonstrating every Saturday for well
over a year, despite brutal police repression. Now trade unionists,
public sector workers and Yellow Vests demonstrate together, as partial work
stoppages continue to perturb public transportation.
In the latest developments,
teachers in Paris schools are joining the revolt. Even the prestigious prep
school, the Lycée Louis le Grand, went on strike. This is significant
because even a government that shows no qualms in smashing the heads of working
class malcontents can hesitate before bashing the brains of the future elite.
Pension System
However general the
discontent, the direct cause for what has become the longest period of unrest
in memory is a single issue: the government’s determination to overhaul the
national social security pension system. This is just one aspect of
Macron’s anti-social program, but no other aspect touches just about everybody’s
lives as much as this one.
French retirement is financed
in the same way as U.S. Social Security. Employees and employers pay a
proportion of wages into a fund that pays current pensions, in the expectation
that tomorrow’s workers will pay for the pensions of those working today.
The existing system is
complex, with particular regimes for 42 different professions, but it works
well enough. As things are, despite the growing gap between the ultra-rich and
those of modest means, there is less dire poverty among the elderly in France than,
for example, in Germany.
The Macron plan to unify and
simplify the system by a universal point system claims to improve “equality,”
but it is a downward, not an upward leveling. The general thrust of the reform
is clearly to make people work longer for smaller pensions. Bit by bit, the
input and output of the social security system are being squeezed. This would
further reduce the percentage of GDP going into wages and pensions.
The calculated result: as
people fear the prospect of a penniless old age, they will feel obliged to put
their savings into private pension schemes.
International Solidarity
In a rare display of
old-fashioned working-class international solidarity, Belgian trade unions have
spoken out in strong support of French unions’ opposition to Macron’s reforms,
even offering to contribute to a strike fund for French workers. Support
by workers of one country for the struggle of workers in another country is
what international solidarity used to mean. It is largely forgotten by
the contemporary left, which tends to see it in terms of opening national
borders. This perfectly reflects the aspirations of global capitalism.
The international solidarity
of financial capital is structural.
Macron is an investment
banker, whose campaign was financed and promoted by investment bankers,
including foreign investors. These are the people who helped inspire his
policies, which are all designed to strengthen the power of international finance
and weaken the role of the State.
Their goal is to induce the
State to surrender decision-making to the impersonal power of “the markets,”
whose mechanical criterion is profit rather than subjective political
considerations of social welfare. This has been the trend throughout the
West since the 1980s and is simply intensifying under the rule of Macron.
The European Union has become
the principal watch dog of this transformation. Totally under the influence
of unelected experts, every two years the EU Commission lays out “Broad
Economic Policy Guidelines” – in French GOPÉ (Grandes Orientations des
Politiques Économiques), to be followed by member states. The May 2018
GOPÉ for France “recommended” (this is an order!) a set of “reforms,” including
“uniformization” of retirement schemes, ostensibly to improve “transparency,”
“equity,” labor mobility and – last but definitely not least – “better control
of public expenditures.”. In short, government budget cuts.
The Macron economic reform
policy was essentially defined in Brussels.
But Wall Street is interested
too. The team of experts assigned by Prime Minister Edouard Philippe to
devise the administration’s economic reforms includes Jean-François Cirelli, head
of the French branch of Black Rock, the seven trillion-dollar New York-based
investment manager. About two thirds of Black Rock’s capital comes from pension
funds all over the world.
Larry Fink, the American CEO
of this monstrous heap of money, was a welcome visitor at the Elysée Palace in
June 2017, shortly after Macron’s election. Two weeks later, economics minister
Bruno Le Maire was in New York consulting with Larry Fink. Then, in October
2017, Fink led a Wall Street delegation to Paris for a confidential meeting
(leaked to Le Canard Enchaîné) with Macron and five top cabinet ministers
to discuss how to make France especially attractive to foreign investment.
Larry Fink has an obvious
interest in Macron’s reforms. By gradually impoverishing social security, the
new system is designed to spur a boom in private pension schemes, a field
dominated by Black Rock. These schemes lack the guarantee of government
social security. Private pensions depend on stock market performance, and if
there is a crash, there goes your retirement. Meanwhile, the money managers
play with your savings, taking their cut whatever happens.
There is nothing
conspiratorial about this. It is simply international finance at work.
Macron and his cabinet ministers are eager to have Black Rock invest in
France. For them, this is the way the world works.
The most cynical pretext for
Macron’s pension reform is that combining all the various professional regimes
into a universal point system favors “equality” – even as it increases the
growing gap between salaried people and the super-rich, who don’t need pensions.
But professions are different.
At Christmas, striking ballet dancers illustrated this fact by performing a
portion of Swan Lake on the cold stones of the entrance to the Opera Garnier in
Paris. They were calling public attention to the fact that they cannot be
expected to keep working into their sixties, nor can other professions
requiring extreme physical effort.
The variations in the current
French pension system perform a social function. Some professions, such
as teaching and nursing, are essential to society, but wages tend to be lower
than in the private sector. These professions are able to renew
themselves by ensuring job stability and the promise of comfortable
retirement. Take away their “privileges” and recruiting competent teachers
and nurses will be even harder than it is already. At present, medical
personnel are threatening to resign en masse, because conditions in
hospitals are becoming unbearable as a result of drastic cuts in budgets and
personnel.
Is There an Alternative?
The real issue is a choice of
systems: to be precise, economic globalization versus national sovereignty.
For historic reasons, most
French people do not share the ardent faith of British and Americans in the
benevolence of the invisible hand of the market. There is a national
leaning toward a mixed economy, where the State plays a strong determining
role. The French do not easily believe that privatization is better,
least of all when they can see it doing worse.
Macron is an ardent devotee of
the invisible hand. He seems to expect that by draining French savings into an
international investment giant such as Black Rock, Black Rock will reciprocate
by pumping investment into French technological and industrial progress.
Nothing could be less
certain. In the West these days, there is lots of low interest credit,
lots of debt, but investment is rarely creative. Money is used largely to
buy what is already there – existing companies, mergers, stock trading (massive
in the U.S.) and, for individuals, housing. Most foreign investment in
France buys up things like vineyards or goes into safe infrastructure such as
ports, airports and autoroutes. When General Electric bought out Alstom,
it soon broke its promise to preserve jobs and began cutting back. It also is
depriving France of control of an essential aspect of its national
independence, its nuclear energy.
In short, foreign investment
may weaken the nation in terms in crucial ways. In a mixed economy,
profit-making assets such as autoroutes can increase the government’s capacity
to make up for periodic deficits in social security, among other things. With privatization,
foreign shareholders must get their returns.
The United States, for all its
ideological devotion to the invisible hand, actually has a strongly
State-supported military industrial sector, dependent on Congressional
appropriations, Pentagon contracts, favorable legislation and pressure on
“allies” to buy U.S.-made weaponry. This is indeed a form of planned
economy, one that fails utterly to meet social needs.
The rules of the European
Union prohibit a Member State such as France from developing its own
civil-oriented industrial policy, since everything must be open to unhindered
international competition. Utilities, services and infrastructure must
all be open to foreign owners. Foreign investors may feel no inhibition
about taking their profits while allowing these public services to deteriorate.
The ongoing disruption of
daily life seems to be forcing Macron’s government to make minor concessions.
But nothing can change the basic aims of this presidency.
At the same time, the
arrogance and brutal repression of the Macron regime increase demands for
radical political change. The Yellow Vest movement has largely adopted
the demand developed by Etienne Chouard for a new Constitution empowering
citizen-initiated referendums — in short, a peaceful democratic revolution.
But how to get there?
Overthrowing a monarch is one thing, but overthrowing the power of
international finance is another, especially in a nation bound by EU and NATO
treaties. Personal animosity toward Macron tends to shelter the European Union
from sharp criticism of its major responsibility.
A peaceful electoral
revolution calls for popular leaders with a clear program. François Asselineau
continues to spread his radical critique of the EU among the intelligentsia
without his party, the Union Populaire Républicaine, gaining any
significant electoral strength. Leftist leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon has the
oratorical punch to lead a revolution, but his popularity seems to have
suffered from attacks even harsher than those unleashed against Jeremy Corbyn
in Britain or Bernie Sanders in the U.S. With Mélenchon weakened and no other
strong personalities in sight, Marine Le Pen has established herself as
Macron’s main challenger in the 2022 presidential election, which risks
presenting voters with the same choice they had in 2017.
Asselineau’s analysis, Yellow
Vest strategic mass, Mélenchon’s oratory, Chouard’s institutional reforms –
these are elements that could theoretically combine (with others yet unknown)
to produce a peaceful revolution. But combining political elements is hard
chemistry, especially in individualistic France. Without some big
surprises, France appears headed not for revolution but for a long frozen
combat.
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