A look at the record
Kramer, Steven Phillip
Report from France A LOOK AT THE RECORD JUDGING THE MITTERRAND REGIME EVEN THE ONSET of August, when France normally closes down shop and heads for the beaches, did not still the debate over the...
...President Mitterrand appeared as a veritable savior of"good society" threatened by the sans-culottes of the Socialist and Communist parties...
...Mitterrand did not explain to the public from the outset how grave the situation was...
...Report from France A LOOK AT THE RECORD JUDGING THE MITTERRAND REGIME EVEN THE ONSET of August, when France normally closes down shop and heads for the beaches, did not still the debate over the record of the new socialist government...
...much of the tension it presently experiences is self-directed...
...But the economic crisis has put all this on the back-burner...
...The policy involves channeling investment into French economic growth (this explains why various banks had to be nationalized), this growth to be in sectors of advanced technology, like electronics, some of which were also nationalized...
...devaluation came too little and too late, the attitude of the government towards the business community was ambiguous, the impot sur la fortune (a tax on the very wealthy) should either have been heavier or should not have been presented at all...
...an organization of political and non-political thugs tied to the R.P.R., the Rally for the Republic), changes in the structure of the Paris city government (a political error, to be sure, on the part of the left), etc...
...In making economic recovery its priority (and such a choice was inescapable) the government necessarily put itself in a difficult situation...
...The difficulty with the long-term approach is that it will not produce quick results...
...Nevertheless, the government does have a rational longterm economic policy, and it is this long-term policy which will determine its success or failure...
...they wanted to change it...
...Short-term policy has sometimes been inconsistent...
...The left victory brought a hysterical reaction on the part of much of the propertied classes...
...The militants of the left did not come to power just to manage existing society...
...The left does so as well...
...It might have been hoped that a French socialist government could have raised, in the clearest possible terms, the question of what a socialist alternative really means in an advanced society, that it could have begun to experiment, for example, along the lines of worker control or participation in management...
...But recovery will not come all by itself either, and the government's economic policy has been rightly criticized...
...One also hopes that the impulse to "do something now" will not lead the government into dubious adventures of a political sort...
...But the essential ideological cleavage within the party is between the more moderate "social-democrats," who wish to create a modern mixed economy and establish a "historic compromise" with Big Business, and left-wing socialists who wanted more thorough social transformation...
...One can only hope that short-term efforts, like the freezing of wages and prices can help the situation for the time being...
...Right-wing governments represented normalcy for so long that even their opponents could barely muster up enough energy to attack them after August 1. Today, however, the right perceives every action of the government as a veritable threat to political liberties: the dissolution of the S.A.C...
...Every decline in the polls of the President and Prime Minister is brandished as if it were a parliamentary vote of no-confidence...
...Recovery is probably impossible in a single country...
...It is divided by ideology, political origins, and by personalities...
...The only question is whether what really matters is the logic of an economic policy or its compatibility with international conditions which may be dominated by other policies far less rational in nature...
...The left knows that if it fails it will be out of power for another generation...
...There is a double standard used in judging French governments...
...But it is not only the right that measures the government by a double-standard...
...Unfortunately, the fears of the propertied classes help aggravate the economic crisis, and there are certainly some who favor an economic politique du pire...
...But it makes sense, which is more than one can say for our own economic policy...
...STEVEN PHILLIP KRAMER (Steven Phillip Kramer, a member of the history department at the University of New Mexico, has just returned from a stay in France...
...Nevertheless, the current economic crisis has forced even the more radical elements of the party to adjourn projects of the latter sort...
...I personally heard bloodcurdling stories predicting Communist take-over, virtual expropriation of the rich, etc...
...And the socialists have four more years to make it work...
...Recovered from their fear, such people now point with some satisfaction to the dismal economic situation, as proof that the socialists have no competence in governing...
...Some cabinet ministers have not been great successes (but how could they have become experienced in governing without having governed...
...In short, the government sees the economic crisis today as the result of both the international situation and the backwardness of French industry...
...When this did not happen, there was a sigh of relief...
...There is no way of knowing that the government's program will work...
...the right seems to think that President Mitterrand should have already packed his valises...
...The French Socialist party, and the government it dominates, is far from homogeneous...
...Underlying all this is the belief that the left has no right to be in office, that its presence is anomalous and inappropriate...
Vol. 109 • September 1982 • No. 15
