La Femme
It was the Union for a Popular Movement Party that opened the Pandora’s box of insecurity. Responding in part to the riots that tore apart the country’s suburbs the previous fall, Dominique de Villepin had introduced the “first employment contract,” known in French as the C.P.E., in the hope of increasing employment opportunities for disadvantaged youth. Workers under 26 holding their first full-time jobs would have, in effect, a probationary period of two years during which an employer could lay them off without having to endure the elaborate judicial process to which employees can otherwise resort. This was a rather timid and piecemeal approach to labor-market reform, and for that reason it appeared to single out younger workers for punishment rather than increasing opportunities for them. Worse still, by presenting this immensely controversial measure as if he had received it from a whirlwind atop Mount Sinai, thus precluding all debate, the magisterial Villepin only confirmed the worst suspicions, which is to say that the center-right government was in league with “the bosses” to keep workers in a state of serfdom. And when students and union members predictably took to the streets, the Socialists just as predictably endorsed the call to virtually shut down the country until the law was withdrawn — which President Chirac ultimately agreed to do, in a humiliating rebuff to Villepin.
It was as quintessentially French a melodrama as, say, the battle over Terri Schiavo’s fate was an American one. Revolution is the only form of political activity in France that feels fully legitimate; so even the deeply conservative demand for security takes the form of insurrection. And the French still speak of “the bosses” as a class of bloodsuckers. As Alain Touraine observes: “The main French idea is that there is an absolute contradiction between social good and economic interests. Where else do you hear this, besides maybe Belarus?” The historic destiny of the left is to use the power of the state to protect the people from the ravages of the marketplace; the loneliness of the endeavor only increases its nobility. As Nicolas Domenach, a political commentator and an editor of the cheeky, leftish magazine Marianne, put it to me: “One could be arrogant, that is to say French, and say that someone must guard against the omnipotence of liberalism. But I would argue that France is not the exception but rather the avant-garde. If we talk again a year from now, you will see counterliberal movements across Europe.”
Yet this sense of moral superiority, and the reflexive horror at the unleashed energies of the marketplace, have plainly been losing force as France’s per capita wealth falls behind that of countries like Ireland and Britain. Editorials in the center-left Le Monde lambasted Villepin for his high-handed manner but acknowledged the need to reform labor markets. Scholars and journalists routinely speak of a crisis, or a paralysis, gripping the country. Gérard Grunberg, a leading scholar at Sciences Po, told me: “There is no liberal tradition on either the left or the right; there isn’t even a place for a social-liberal party, because it would imply an acceptance of labor-market flexibility. It would imply that the state isn’t the sole guarantor of the collective interest, which is entrenched in French culture. It is the state that embodies and guarantees the collective interests; the rest is selfish individualism.” And this antimarket, antiglobalist posture, Grunberg argues, “resounds among the people, because the people are afraid.”
The Socialist Party, perhaps wisely, harvested the growing public outrage over the C.P.E. without offering any alternative of its own. As party head, François Hollande led the attack on Villepin and the ruling party. Ségolène Royal kept mum, as she has done on almost all major subjects. But she was tempted to separate herself from the herd. In early February, just as the debate over the labor law was heating up, she was quoted as saying: “I think Tony Blair has been caricatured in France. It does not bother me to claim adherence to some of his ideas.” She even praised his policy of promoting employment among the youth through increased flexibility. This was sacrilege: flexibilité is the fighting word of French employers, and thus the symbolic opposite of précarité. Royal, trying to cover her tracks, explained that she had in fact used the word “souplesse” — suppleness — and that of course she, too, abhorred flexibilité. But she had opened herself to charges of apostasy. Laurent Fabius, addressing a crowd of 1,200 supporters, declared that the Socialist Party would not succeed by “cultivating I-don’t-know-what politically ambiguous position” — a reference meant to be lost on no one.
