SOCIALISTS IN FRANCE

...The combination is a perfect recipe for political instability: the centralized, interventionist state has traditionally regulated the myriad details of French social life because, given the heated ideological climate, social classes and forces were unable to regulate conflict on a voluntarist, pluralist basis...

...While the reforms substantially extend the public sphere and increase the functions of elected and administrative officials, they do little to enhance the power of workers and other citizens...

...There is another possibility...

...It was clear from the outset that the Socialist structural reforms could never produce instant results...

...The government has opposed this process, at least for now...

...An excellent place to start would be reorganization of production processes in the nationalized industries...

...While Reaganomics has wreaked havoc with all major foreign currencies, the franc has been especially damaged (two devaluations within a year...

...Planning is being decentralized, with regional governments participating in the national planning process as well as elaborating their own plans for regional development...

...This specter is a peaceful, incremental socialist transformation carried out by ballots, not bullets: a "tranquil revolution," in the words of Francois Mitterrand, France's Socialist president...

...The diverse socialist coalitions in Western Europe oppose attempts to roll back the welfare state and thereby force the working-class majority to shoulder the costs of restoring capitalist growth...

...Since they have not yet been fully implemented, it is too soon to judge whether they will be effective...

...Under Francois Mitterrand's leadership, the Socialist Party embraced a radical reformist program and swallowed its distaste for the PCF by negotiating the Union of the Left electoral accord...

...For example, shortly after Mitterrand delivered a reassuring analysis of the French economy last June, the government abruptly reversed course and instituted wage and price controls and other austerity measures...

...The first two structural reforms described below seek to alter this situation by reducing both the state's role and the ideological temperature...

...While the Socialist government has nearly completed the task of legislating its structural reforms, they have not yet had a substantial impact...

...Mitterrand was elected in May 1981 on a platform that promised to deal with France's soaring unemployment, represent the largely excluded working class, democratize production, and renovate the ailing French productive apparatus...

...They favor an earlier conception of democratic socialism, in which the public and democratic sphere is extended to the realm of production...

...of its most fervent opponents...

...Part of the government's economic difficulties derive from the fact that it sponsored shortterm stimulative measures in hopes of positioning France favorably for a widely predicted international economic revival in 1981-82—which never occurred...

...Previously, the French pioneered in indicative planning...

...To what extent has he kept his promises...

...If the government has failed American Profile Since last October, the poor and near-poor in America have lost more than $10 billion in federal support...

...It was an excellent gamble: the PS quickly overtook the PCF and reversed the balance of forces within the left, gaining support among non-Communist leftists ready to support the PS once it was firmly anchored on the left, as well as centrists disaffected with the incumbent government...

...Since 1981, democratic socialist governments have been elected in France, Greece, Sweden, and Spain...

...Meanwhile, military spending has begun to rise precipitously...

...Yet it has also been charged that because the reforms will work at cross-purposes, they are less than the sum of the parts...

...Henceforth, planning will be carried out on a more public and democratic basis...

...280,000 no longer receive free or reduced-price breakfasts...

...the process may accelerate without fresh initiatives...

...If this tendency is not reversed, the regime may find itself increasingly abandoned by its supporters and vulnerable to rightist pressure...

...THE SOCIALIST GOVERNMENT has sponsored a number of far-reaching structural reforms that promise to fundamentally improve French economic and political life...

...Many governmental functions were transferred from state administrators to elected representatives at municipal, departmental, and regional levels...

...The government names the chief executive officer...

...But from the perspective of other industrialized capitalist nations, these advances hardly put France in the vanguard: they represent overdue reforms blocked by generations of nearly uninterrupted conservative rule...

...America has all but abandoned its stand on global human rights, and has embraced friendly authoritarian regimes the world over...

...And environmental, health, and safety regulations have been stalled or rolled back...

...However, some of these recently elected democratic socialist governments also say they reject the Keynesian, social-democratic approach, according to which capitalists run the economy while the state pursues full-employment policies, provides incentives to encourage economic rationalization, 17 and redistributes part of the economic surplus through welfare programs...

...In addition, 890 school districts have cut back on special education programs...

...De Gaulle could command a majority in the 1960s thanks to his personal genius, economic growth (in part the result of the expansion of world capitalism), and the disarray of the left...

...However, if decentralization went no further, it would represent the most drastic increase in local governmental powers in a century...

...In fact, the PCF failed to reverse its slow decline in the 1970s precisely because its democratic professions collided with its continued undemocratic practice...

...For example, JeanPierre Chevenement, minister of research and industry (and formerly leader of the CERES leftwing faction of the PS), has declared that what is 20 needed in the present period is to modernize the Republic, not build socialism...

...The various reforms may facilitate coherence, efficiency, and equity—and not at the expense of democratic participation but in ways that will enlarge it...

...Mitterrand calculated that the only way for the PS to reach power was by posing an unequivocally leftist alternative...

...Structural reforms already accomplished provide a fine opportunity further to democratize French society...

...The Socialist government achieved a brilliant sweep in May—June 1981, which culminated years of rightist decline following the heyday of Gaullist rule...

...200,000 fewer pregnant women, new mothers, infants, and children are getting special federal coupons for milk, juice, and other diet supplements...

...Segments of the European left have begun to believe that, in an era of slow growth where it is essential to conserve resources, the job of organizing production and investment is too important to be left to capitalists...

...Three private universities have announced that they no longer will admit able students who cannot pay their own way...

...The Central Intelligence Agency has been allowed to return to its earlier policy of spying on Americans...

...Of course, the democratic socialist trend in Western Europe is neither universal nor ineluctable: in West Germany, Great Britain, and the Netherlands, conservative coalitions elected within recent years are seeking to curtail political and economic gains that workers and other popular forces achieved through decades of struggle...

...The PS is likely to emerge politically weakened and tempted to mount a holding operation to retain power...

...Some 661,000 children have lost Medicaid coverage...

...Yet the Socialist coalition is presently on a downward slide, mostly because government policies have been sufficiently audacious to antagonize the right but not audacious enough to mobilize popular support...

...By nationalizing a substantial portion of production and finance, the Socialist government seeks to harness the economy to public goals...

...France is the largest nation to have elected a democratic socialist government and its governing coalition may be the boldest...

...The Auroux reforms strengthen union rights and protections, extend the powers of elected works committees, and provide workers with a consultative voice over working conditions and legal protections against arbitrary managerial authority...

...More extensive redistribution of power might stiffen opposition on the right as well as redound to the benefit of the PCF, which was outmaneuvered electorally by the PS but retains the most powerful party organization in France...

...so are government deficits...

...Because the decentralization reform was extremely ambitious and complex, it was introduced in stages...

...by 1984, it will absorb nearly a third of the federal budget instead of the present quarter...

...20, 1982 to fulfill the fondest hopes of its most fervent supporters, it has avoided confirming the worst fears (and hopes...

...Export controls on plutonium have been reduced...

...While orthodox Communist parties in Western Europe have been eclipsed, democratic socialism has gained increasing credibility...

...Further, the government's short-term economic performance has been only fair: it has succeeded in limiting increases in the unemployment rate, but unemployment remains high...

...What are the chances...

...Each firm will negotiate a plan with the government that sets overall investment, production, employment, and other targets...

...550 public libraries and museums have begun to charge entry fees...

...All the structural reforms reviewed here redistribute power within the narrow confines of elected representatives and interest group officials...

...The result as a whole is potentially even greater than the sum of the parts...

...By extending the planning system (the last reform reviewed here), rational and democratic procedures are specified for elaborating long-range public goals...

...150,000 poor working families have lost eligibility for government-supported day care...

...The government is determined to avoid repeating the mistakes of other glorious—but brief—democratic socialist experiments...

...Because the state's role in daily life will be reduced in favor of pluralist self-regulation in factories and communities, it will be more able to assume respon19 sibility for rationalizing and directing the French productive apparatus...

...Discussions on banning nuclear tests have been terminated...

...Possibly of even greater significance, virtually all banks have been nationalized, thereby enabling the state to control credit and investment flows...

...However, democratic governments can never forget Keynes's warning about the problem with long-run effects...

...But democratic socialism involves the collective appropriation of the means of production, consumption, and administration at all levels...

...In Mitterrand's words, the regime wants to "govern for the long haul...

...The economic crisis reduces the possibility of redistributing material benefits (which explains why the government resorted to austerity measures in 1982...

...It might thus become the primary beneficiary of reforms diffusing power to the shop floor and community levels...

...But the various leftist coalitions differ on how to organize public economic control...

...Until the late 1960s, the left appeared destined to be a permanent minority in the Fifth Republic...

...Gaullist policies forced mediumsize producers to merge in steel, chemicals, data processing, and other industries, resulting in "national champions" competing in world markets...

...The Socialist government has taken an audacious step toward making the economy the public's business (not private business) by nationalizing many basic and high-technology industries, including telecommunications, electrical equipment, building materials, chemicals, aerospace, data processing, steel, nonferrous metals, and synthetic fibers...

...The two left parties eventually sought to exploit this opportunity by embracing the new forces and demands arising from May 1968...

...A review of four key structural reforms (described below) suggests both the magnitude of the Socialist achievement in its brief tenure in office as well as a critical flaw in the reform dynamic...

...The result was a return in 1977 to a sectarian stance reminiscent of the most somber days of the Cold War...

...Yet some of the criticism is unjustified and obscures the magnitude of the Socialist project...

...If the PS were to assign priority to democratizing relations of production, the specter haunting Europe would doubtless become more threatening for some—but more inspiring for many...

...The Auroux reforms (named after the minister of labor, who was responsible for elaborating the legislation) represent a belated French counterpart to the Wagner Act by compelling employers to engage in annual plant-level collective bargaining...

...For most French citizens, little has changed since the Socialists took office...

...However, even during its brief Eurocommunist phase, the PCF's ostensible commitment to democracy appeared rhetorical, since it was not reflected in democratic practices within the party...

...In a rapid switch, the Communist party (PCF) became an enthusiastic advocate of "bourgeois democracy," saying that it accepted the desirability of a multiparty system, democratic alternation in office, and civil rights and liberties, and calling for a marriage of socialism and democracy in France ("socialism in French colors...

...Workers in the firm elect one-third of the firm's corporate board, the government names one-third to represent relevant ministerial departments (especially the ministries of industry and finance), and the government names the remaining third to represent other groups who deal with the firm (such as consumer associations and subcontractors...

...In the most optimistic scenario, if the government's structural reforms reach fruition and the Socialist coalition receives a fresh mandate in 1986, France may succeed in achieving the distant and historically unprecedented goal described by Mitterrand in his inaugural address as uniting socialism with liberty...

...However, popular discontent with the Gaullist regime's conservative policies was steadily mounting, as dramatically illustrated by the May 1968 uprising...

...For example, the government has been taxed with incoherence for decentralizing—thereby reducing the state's role—at the same time that it has extended the state through nationalization and planning...

...It is too soon to say...

...A major cause was the bitter division between one of the largest and most resolutely Stalinist Communist parties in Western Europe and a Socialist party discredited by its opportunism in the Fourth Republic...

...The public's right to know about government activities has been curtailed...

...This criticism is partially valid...

...The PCF's return to "orthodoxy" was partly designed to weaken support for the entire left, the Socialist party (PS) in particular...

...Yet they by no means exhaust the Socialist government's accomplishments...

...some key features (notably, the reorganization of tax resources) have yet to be decided...

...In fact, that is precisely the aim: decentralization and industrial-relations reforms are the mirror image of nationalization and planning...

...Furthermore, in the political realm, the right's virulent opposition coupled with terrorist attacks in France quite unrelated to Socialist policies (recall that the rue Copernic anti-Semitic attack occurred under Giscard) have kept political tensions at the boiling point...

...France's international trade deficits are large and growing...

...After his return to power in 1958, de Gaulle sponsored an authoritarian modernization of France's archaic political and economic structure...

...Nationalized firms will be organized in a relatively autonomous fashion, to avoid the dangers of a monolithic, topheavy bureaucracy...

...900,000 poor youngsters no longer receive free or reduced-price school lunches...

...At the same time, Americans with annual incomes exceeding $200,000 have started to enjoy the bulk of a substantial cut in their personal income taxes, while America's 1,700 largest corporations have been major beneficiaries of a drastic cut in their corporate taxes...

...A bolder course would not be without risks...

...The government has demonstrated more than its share of internal disagreement, hesitation, and inconsistency...

...Within several years, a nation of small shopkeepers, small farmers, and small manufacturers was thoroughly transformed into an industrial giant...

...ROBERT B. REICH, New Republic, Sept...

...Antitrust laws have been all but rescinded...

...Instead, it had precisely the opposite effect: the PS emerged as the only reasonable alternative to the incumbent conservative regime...

...In parallel fashion, the government has sought to reduce state responsibility for regulating industrial conflict in France by strengthening collective-bargaining machinery...

...One million people have been dropped from the Food Stamp rolls...

...Yet the Socialists might find a second wind for renewed progressive movement if they redistribute not economic benefits but political power...

...Yet state 18 intervention provokes even further ideological conflict...

...THESE REFORMS, ranking with the most important in recent French history, entitle the current Socialist government to favorable comparison with Leon Blum's 1936 Popular Front...

...Each of the reforms reviewed here is important...

...The context for Socialist structural reforms is France's distinctive political culture: a highly centralized state and intense class conflict...

...While the Socialist government can look forward to constitutionally secure control until the 1986 legislative elections, municipal elections in early 1983 will provide an important test of Socialist popularity...

...When this became evident to PCF leaders, they abandoned Eurocommunism...

...There will surely be a good deal of conflict and messiness in implementing the reforms...

...The Socialist government introduced a major decentralization of the administrative structure in its first weeks in office...