Daniel Singer's Is Socialism Doomed?
Ross, George
Is SOCIALISM DOOMED? by Daniel Singer. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. 324 pp. $24.95. I Socialism Doomed? is an elegant analysis of the experience of the French left in power after...
...The Communist party, very powerful until the early 1980s, remained transfixed by the failed Soviet model...
...Television, hypermodern public relations techniques, and the commercialization of personalities have come to the fore...
...In this they were successful, our critics would assert, so much so that Mitterrand was reelected in 1988, the right lost its parliamentary majority and emerged from the 1988 elections in a state of internal division and policy uncertainty...
...What happened in France in recent years is extraordinary...
...Worse still, Singer concludes, in word and deed they discredited the notion of socialism itself...
...But it is also true that the dominance of this kind of politics on the French left is new, and of very great interest...
...They thus replaced earlier redistributive goals with new ones focusing on the "modernization" of French industry to make it more competitive internationally...
...Still, it is not enough to excommunicate the French left for no longer being committed to socialist transformation, as Singer does...
...The right's electoral strength grew and its flirtation with Thatcherite neoliberalism was intensified...
...There are no middle ways...
...But in the absence of new ideas about how to carry the banner forward, there is something too easy about brandishing it to condemn others...
...It must invent new democratic techniques of mobilization...
...is an elegant analysis of the experience of the French left in power after 1981...
...In the meantime, they would conclude, the French welfare state was preserved, some reforms were FALL • 1988 • 507 Books consolidated and new grass-roots democratic energy emerged...
...To begin with, Singer's claim that socialism is both a virtuous goal and a feasible process is marvelously exhortative...
...They will claim that the French left in 1981 was hopelessly out of touch with the problems and prospects of France...
...In this complex transition virtually everything, including the French constitution, changed...
...Because it had failed to think through its own radical proposals, because its statism deprived it of reserves of popular mobilization, and because the core of left politicians really did not want to transcend capitalism, the Mitterrand government retreated to austerity politics, cutting wages and increasing taxes...
...The CP's fetishes allowed the Socialists to rebuild from their own very checkered past, but the Socialist party's need to cooperate with the CP and the elitist, technocratic cast of its new leaders were severe handicaps...
...But, more significantly, it should also be analyzed, which Singer does not...
...Thereafter the left was unable either to reward its constituencies with improved living standards or to give them any sense of participation in national transformation...
...Alas, here Singer offers only the vaguest suggestions...
...Leaving the sleepy stodginess of empire behind in the 1950s, France rapidly became a full-fledged modern capitalist society, only to face new years of "crisis" after the postwar boom collapsed in the mid-1970s...
...Singer combines two rare qualities—a compelling writing style and a resolutely leftist viewpoint...
...To them, a recognition of the reality of France's irrevocable insertion in a constraining international economy was absolutely necessary...
...The simple "you're either for socialism or capitalism" dichotomy which Singer uses has another defect...
...The general reader will learn much about France and its left from the book...
...Mitterrand and the French left did not move towards socialism at all, but instead "did the capitalists' work for them...
...506 • DISSENT Books Thus the mixed gaggle of left politicians who came to power in 1981 faced "constraints and limitations from the very start...
...Until we can speak more concretely about a real socialist project such noble assertions are mainly of use to bash people we don't like...
...Although Singer does not completely discount the left's early burst of radicalism, he stresses that it came from above from technocratic elites in statist ways...
...The left's 1981 success, Singer claims, was "an ideological defeat and a political victory...
...Moreover, if in the past French Socialism never gave more than lip service to organic ties to a strong labor movement—the central identifying feature of social democracy—it abandoned even this in the 1980s...
...Mitterrand's refusal to devalue the franc immediately was a sign, Singer claims, of his desire to demonstrate a safe orthodoxy, a willingness to "play the game...
...The left then had a choice, says Singer, between a semi-autarkic effort to fulfill its radical pledges and retreating in conformity with the dictates of the international market...
...At story's end the Socialists—the Communists bailed out in 1984 to return to Brezhnevite confusion—lived a "cultural revolution," amidst much breastbeating about their earlier radical "illusions...
...There is a strong case to be made that we are witnessing in France—and perhaps in Spain and Italy as well—a new formulation of left politics whose most important characteristic is precisely that it is not social democratic at all...
...Singer starts with the context needed to understand what the left did after Francois Mitterrand's election to the presidency in May 1981...
...There remain a number of other essential questions to be addressed, and here Singer falls short...
...It must incorporate energies from new social movements like feminism and the greens...
...Simply labeling this new left "social democratic" and therefore hopeless, as Singer does, does not get us very far...
...Politically weakened, it then tried to "cover" its austerity programs with inept political attacks on private education and press monopoly, moves which had perverse effects, however...
...In 300 pages Daniel Singer can find very little good to say about the years of Mitterrand in power in France...
...Perhaps it should be denounced, as Singer does...
...Measured against these criteria, socialism may well be doomed in France...
...The right was thereby permitted to occupy, if only momentarily, the high ground of civil libertarianism and to take to the streets in protest...
...Autogestion— self-management — the Socialist 1970s buzzword, was abruptly forgotten...
...Singer treats the foreign policy history of the left under Mitterrand as a coda, which moves in rhythms similar to domestic policy...
...The left must cease being centralizing and statist and learn to promote grass-roots democracy...
...The best Mitterrand and the French left could do was to make the best of a bad situation and, in particular, to block the emergence of a serious, Thatcherite-Reaganite right in France...
...Mistakes which the left initially made, however "radical," made this belated recognition even more painful...
...It chose the latter...
...The turn to failure came in 1982-83, at the confluence of the international Reagan recession and the consequences of the left's macroeconomic imprudence, in response to a severe international trade crisis...
...The French left was statist and centralizing, hadn't a clue about mobilizing people, let alone in new democratic ways, and had little desire to do so in any event, misunderstood France's economy and the international market around it, and so on...
...The task is not easy, Singer knows, not least because the term socialism itself no longer has a clear meaning and can only be redefined through innovative practice...
...And, above all, it must realize that its reach must be international...
...The French PS has become a technocrat-run electoral machine whose main purpose is to win, and stay in, power...
...But they did so, as Singer claims, at the cost of commitment to social transformation and, by and large, in the name of modernizing French capitalism...
...There is some truth in the claim that Mitterrand and the Socialists have indeed staved off a neoconservative assault in France—a good thing...
...Is Socialism Doomed...
...is a pleasure to read—and it's also powerfully controversial...
...French socialism no longer talks about "class" and "class conflict" but about the need to liberate the energies of "civil society" and about "national unity...
...The Socialists' new leader, Francois Mitterrand, was an agile centrist who, after perceiving the left as an arena of personal opportunity, "learned to speak Socialist...
...Singer insists that movement towards socialism must involve visible effort, today, to transcend capitalism...
...This reviewer does not take such Panglossian positions about the record of the French left...
...The old socialdemocratic idea of a party of militants trying to organize ordinary people into a "counter-society" embodying the politics of the future was dropped...
...To hold the Socialist banner high is a good thing...
...To be sure, they would have to add, French capitalism was given some new hope, unemployment remained high and racism had become a greater threat...
...It came to power, Singer claims, "bewitched and bewildered...
...One left, unusually radical, at least rhetorically, gave way to another, no longer radical at all...
...Labor no longer holds an important place in French Socialists' vision...
...France's schismatic left changed as well, but not enough and not always in the proper ways...
...Yet what does it mean...
...Some readers will be exasperated by Singer's ultra-left viewpoint...
...Moreover, they might add, the moment when the left came to power, characterized by a strong capitalist counteroffensive against the left's gains in the postwar boom, was hardly propitious for moving towards socialism, whatever that might have meant...
...Still, Mitterrand's early governments, which included four Communist ministers (irrelevant, Singer claims), first stimulated demand in the French economy in a redistributive way and beefed up the welfare state, then promoted changes in industrial relations (where France was desperately backward) and, most significantly, enacted the most extensive nationalizations seen in Europe since 1947...
...Still, they would conclude, the Mitterrand years were largely positive...
...It must rethink its notion of "workers" to include new sectors and kinds of work, discarding oldfashioned reifications of the factory-based proletariat...
...It is true, of course, that a French version of the American Democratic party is unlikely to move towards socialism...
Vol. 35 • September 1988 • No. 4
