MENDÈS-FRANCE - A DOMESTIC ACCOUNT
Valois
PARIS. Valois Premier Pierre Mendb-France, it is reported here, is being criticized in the United States for lacking a sense of humor. Be that as it may, for the first time in recent history...
...If the minimum is enforced, however, particularly in the provinces where most violations occur, a general increase of wages will result...
...Even the most intransigeant representatives of capitalism do not deny it, but they want time-time to act in easy stages with what they term ‘prudence’ and ‘moderation.’ They believe themselves capable of directing the unavoidable transformation of society...
...The strike-wave of August 1953 served as a warning which was taken seriousWinter 1955 * DISSENT * 21 ly, it seems...
...As Mendts-France pointed out to trade-union leaders, the government has four weapons for encouraging employer compliance: (1) grant or refuse credits, (2) grant or withdraw state contracts, (3) grant or withdraw subsidies in certain cases, and (4) manipulate, to the advantage or disadvantage of an employer, various financial prerogatives...
...A trade-union commentator refers to this period as “a cold June 1936,” a June 1936 without the masses...
...A prominent trade unionist recently remarked: “Everybody agrees now that the social structure should be changed...
...In its final stages, the Indo-Chinese war was a war of the pirates and black marketeers of foreign exchange allied with a bureaucratic and military clique...
...They have been captivated by a man who is direct, active and does not care for grandiloquent speeches...
...Nevertheless he will have given it a chance-the chance to act according to its own interests without first having to ask what the Communists will or will not do...
...French society is no longer what it was in the ’Twenties and ’Thirties...
...Emphatically not...
...I t is known, for example, that the French bourgeoisie no longer supported the war in IndoChina, that the Bank of IndoChina had withdrawn from that “wasps’ nest” to other, more profitable fields...
...It is the style and accents that are changed...
...LAST JUNE IT LOOKED As IF MENDES-FRANCE might come to power as the momentary leader of a new Popular Front with the Communists as its working-class base...
...After 1948, they represented nothing but a political mechanism with its axis in the Center parties and its sole function that of elevating the concept and practice of “do-nothingism” to the level of a fine art...
...It is difficult to decide just what factor was most helpful in the rise of Mendes-France: the disaster in Indo-China, the beet and alcohol scandals, the “picayune politics” of M. Bidault at the Foreign Office, or the events in North Africa...
...Simultaneously, he reassured employers by stating that there would be no general increase applying to the whole scale of wages...
...This conglomerate power is an immobilizing and retarding factor, with its individual sectors constantly jockeying for advantage and concerned mainly with an easy way out through high prices and government subsidies...
...They see in him a man of neither the Left nor Right but simply one who has intelligence and energy and who might perhaps liquidate the parties-the parties, that is, not in the democratic or parliamentary sense of the word, but the sordid little clans, the “secret societies,” which slowly empty parliamentarism of all substance, It has often been stated that the social and political disintegration of the owning class would spread demoralization among the workers as well...
...Mend&-France came to power by maneuvering along the margins of the main political current set up by the 1951 elections...
...His policy of “reconversion”-Le., squeezing out marginal enterprises through abolition of state subsidies4 in no way original...
...By this he was saying not that “We are on the eve of revolutionary upheavals,” but rather that “We are still in a position to avoid the revolution if we act...
...But now paradoxically he emerges as the main obstacle to such an alignment...
...Should one conclude from this, as some observers have, that Mendes-France is a man of the Left...
...He sees clearly that stabilization is impossible without raising the standard of living and that the redistribution of labor within the framework of reconversion requires wage agreements...
...To some extent at least, Mend&-France represents the desire of Big Business to “clean up” the French economy in order to extend its internal market and defend itself more effectively against foreign competition...
...Faced with an unmanageable parliament, he had sometimes to play a card from the hand of the Communists, sometimes from that of General Juin, and even from that of De Gaulle...
...It is in relation to this question of wages that the political personality of the new premier emerges most distinctly...
...The task of Mend&-France is immediately to give French society a measure of new life...
...Mendts-France is able to aiinounclt...
...But this is certain: loss of confidence in the state, much more than the question of the standard of living, was at the root of the social dissatisfaction, and the “Mendes revolution” aims at restoring this confidence rather than altering basic institutions...
...The capitalists have survived by and large, but are now linked to the state apparatus where the rules are somewhat different...
...This tends to be the case in France where one section of the labor movement is subsidized by one outside power and another by a second power, where it is propelled first in one direction and then the other by whatever political wind blows strongest and where it is periodically disrupted by the incapacity or venality of its leaders...
...a wage increase together with a further one for this April, without provoking real opposition...
...Winter 1955 22 9 DISSENT...
...And he competes with them on their home grounds through a “reve lution of wages” which he makes an integral part of his program...
...The term “palace revolution” perhaps best fits the new regime...
...It would be a mistake, nonetheless, to attempt to dismiss Mend&-France as the tool of big capital...
...Valois Premier Pierre Mendb-France, it is reported here, is being criticized in the United States for lacking a sense of humor...
...It inay very well be that the labor movement will soon find itself in conflict with Mend&-France...
...Be that as it may, for the first time in recent history the entertainers of Montmartre are at a loss for jokes at the expense of the head of the government...
...Nationalization of coal, gas, electricity, railways and banks plus state controls under various forms have profoundly altered the outlines and internal structure of those vast holdings which in 1936 were conveniently ascribed to the “200 families...
...It is up to the socialists to deal with socialism...
...MendbFrance voiced this idea indirectly last year when he warned: “We are in 1788...
...That is what many French intellectuals have clearly felt...
...By intellectuals I do not here mean the apostles of Jean*Paul Sartre’s Temps Modernes or Claude Bourdet’s Obseroateur, uho have been disappointed by Mendks-France’s “Atlantic” orientation, I mean the students, the technicians, the members of the liberal professions...
...FROM 1945 TO 1948 THE VARIOUS FRENCH GOVERNMENTS reflected mainly the forces of the Resistance and Liberation...
...By simple decree, MendhFrance increased the premium in relation to the lowest salaries, thus raising the minimum wage from 116 to 121.50 francs per hour...
...But Mendks-France’s merit lies in posing the problem in concrete political terms...
...grouping, but there is ample evidence that it has not been totally indifferent to the pillaging of credit, the shady operations of beet and 20 Winter 1955 DISSENT alcohol kings, and the general decadence born of political inertia...
...He views the social scene not with the eyes of a socialist but with those of an able technician...
...One of the most popular of these tells his nightly audiences that if Mendb-France remains in office over a year, he will be unable to pay his taxes due to a shortage of “material...
...In the exchanges between parliament and the government one could distinguish only the raised voices of the small and middle entrepreneurs-a strong economic and conservative political force in France, but one lacking any long-range perspective and made up of an accumulation of individual appetites rather than a solid social bloc...
...Whether it will be able to take advantage of this opportunity is as yet anyone’s guess...
...He is certainly not a man of the Left in any traditional sense, but a man who seeks a certain social equilibrium based on a healthy economic life and improved living conditions...
...It is difficult to define the attitude of Big Business toward this sub...
...A general cleaning up and modernization of French economy, Mend&-France believes, will give it new possibilities for life...
...He has proved it possible to conduct foreign policy without the participation of the Communists...
...Edgar Faure, a more moderate politician, has voiced the same views...
...Note that the budget now proposed to the French parliament is on every point similar to the one proposed last year by the Laniel government...
Vol. 2 • January 1955 • No. 1
