The popular eruption was fuelled by deep exasperation. People had endured a
lot while awaiting a promised tomorrow that, like the horizon, remained forever
out of reach. They had wanted to believe in automatic and irreversible
progress, but had suddenly discovered, for the first time in fifty years, that the
next generation would probably have a harder time than its predecessors.

Behind the December movement’s specific and sectoral demands, its driving
force lay in this massive rejection of a future which is no longer a
future. It quickly became apparent that the strikers were fighting on
everyone’s behalf and that their aspirations placed a choice by society on
the immediate agenda. They were struggling to resuscitate hope.

They were also expressing a loss of confidence in rulers and elected politicians,
and a wish to be self-reliant. What is described as a parliamentary
or political crisis looks, in reality, more like a disarray in democracy
itself. The speeches of presidents and ministers, who do the opposite of
what they say, are no longer believed. It is no longer possible to tell who
is responsible for what, or where the real centres of decision are, what
with the national state, the Brussels commission—and soon perhaps the
European Bank—and the prerogatives yielded up to international institutions
like the World Trade Organization. If the impersonal power of
mysterious ‘financial markets’ must inevitably predominate, then it is no
wonder that people feel under-represented and the public domain seems
drained of democratic substance.

Confronted with the total breakdown of politics, the social movement
quite naturally took charge of its own destiny. There is a striking contrast
between the movement’s power and the absence of a political alternative.
But, paradoxically, the absence of a governmental solution also
meant freedom from the electoral scheming and slippery manœuvres
that so often inhibited struggles in the past.

 Rejection of Neo-Liberal Counter-Reform

The spark that ignited the powder-keg was the Juppé plan for reform of
the social-welfare system. The Prime Minister presented this plan to the
National Assembly, without any preliminary public discussion, as an
emergency measure to save a welfare system threatened by its accumulated
debt of 240 billion francs and an annual deficit running at 60 billion
francs. This hurried reform was presented as the first element of a
‘coherent’ policy. Although the government soon claimed that a failure
of communication had caused its intentions to be misunderstood, wageearners
understood perfectly what was meant by this alleged ‘coherence’.

Apart from some fairly vague tinkering with health policy, the initial
version of the plan contained three sound motives for dissent.
First, contrary to Chirac’s promises during the election campaign, the
plan was built around an increase in fiscal pressure on wages and household
incomes—including those of the retired and unemployed. The proposals
for 1996 are eloquent: wage earners are supposed to provide an
extra 40 billion francs to finance the social-security deficit, while companies
are only expected to provide five billion—half of that coming from
pharmaceutical firms. The Juppé plan also instituted a new tax starting
this year, the rds (Remboursement de la dette sociale, repayment of the social
debt), which was supposed to apply to all incomes but in practice would
weigh most heavily on working-class living standards. This made it
immediately apparent that the plan was deeply unjust.

Second, under the pretext of correcting an imbalance in retirement
insurance, the plan included an alteration in the standard conditions for
retirement. Two years ago the unions agreed that private-sector workers
would henceforth need to have been working for forty years—instead of
thirty-seven and a half—before they could claim full-rate retirement
benefit. The Juppé plan proposed to extend this measure to civil servants
and public companies, at the same time doing away with specific
arrangements like the one covering railwaymen. Train drivers do, in fact,
have the right to retire at the age of fifty; what is seldom mentioned is
that their life expectancy is ten years below the average for the whole
population. Moreover the generalization of the forty-year retirement rule
was patently absurd in the context of the alleged priority given to
employment. It would compel workers whose active lives are starting
later than they did in the past to continue working until the age of sixtyfive
or over, blocking employment opportunities for the young. Behind
the apparent economic irrationality, the measure makes it clear that
employees will practically never be able to claim full retirement benefit,
and will have to resort increasingly to private insurance and pension
funds to make up the difference. Although they were accused of defending
a privilege, the demonstrators and striking public-sector workers
were really showing solidarity with the private sector by demanding a
return to thirty-seven and a half years for all.

Finally, although apparently ‘technical’, a third aspect of the plan may be
the most important, as it signifies a change in the nature of the socialsecurity
system established after the Liberation. Social security was originally
conceived as a sort of general workers’ friendly society financed by
the members’ contributions. That is why the law gave a ‘preponderant’
role to the trade unions in its management bodies. The system was subsequently
modified—through the statutes of 1967—to establish a tripartite
management by the unions, the state and the employers. But the
principle of a solidarity fund, in which wage-earners place their ‘deferred
income’ to finance their health care and retirement costs, independently
of changes to the parliamentary majority or budgetary juggling by the
state, was maintained. The deduction for social security still appears on
payslips today as a ‘contribution’, not a tax. However, the Juppé plan
proposed gradually to transform this contribution into a tax, paid
directly to the state under the heading of the csg (Contribution sociale
généralisée) instituted by the Rocard government. Overall health spending
would thus become subject to an annual parliamentary decision in
the same way as other budgetary choices. Amusing as it may be to witness
liberals handing over to the state the management of a social-security
budget as large as its own budget, this fiscalization means rationing
of health expenditure and the straightforward theft of the workers’ indirect
wages.

Nobody is denying that reforms are needed. But the Juppé plan was presented,
without preliminary public debate on a level appropriate to the
issue, as the only possible reform. The social-security system’s 240 billion
franc debt—the state itself incidentally owes more than 300 billion
—was invoked without any serious effort to examine its causes. Increasing
health costs were bewailed, but nobody mentioned that a large
chunk of the increase was due to physical and psychic pathologies stemming
from unemployment and exclusion. Of course in reality the main
reason for the deficit is the growth of unemployment, leaving the socialsecurity
system short of more than three million contributors. Then
there are the debts of the state and the defence ministry, the billions in
unpaid employers’ contributions, the social payment concessions given
to companies to encourage them to create jobs which never materialized,
and de facto subsidies to specific categories in deficit—for example peasants
and artisans—financed by the employees in general. Similarly, the
problems of financing have not been seriously debated. For example, it is
true that requiring employers to make part of the social-security contribution
favours capital-intensive enterprises over labour-intensive ones.

But it would be quite possible to correct this perverse effect by levying a
social-solidarity tax, paid directly to the social-security system, on high
value-added enterprises and financial revenues, without undermining
the original principle of finance through contributions.

The Juppé plan was thus perfectly understood as a counter-reform,
destructive of established benefits and social bonds. Moreover, the strikers
and demonstrators quickly established a connection between this
plan and the threat to the public services, represented by a ‘draft plan’ for
the railways proposing the closure of lines deemed unprofitable and the
sacrifice of railways to roads, plans for partial or total privatization of
railways, telecommunications and energy, and hospital reforms favouring
private clinics at the expense of public hospitals. From the issue of
defending social security, the mobilization grew within a month into a
movement of general opposition to commercial globalization and the
neo-liberal offensive, and their effects.

 An Unprecedented Movement

Public-transport workers—both national and municipal—were the
tough and spectacular nucleus of the strike. In other sectors, like electricity,
health, education, the mail and the civil service, the movement was
more sporadic, alternating one-day stoppages with demonstrations.
Student participation was very patchy, the student movement did not
play a leading role. Lastly, despite signs of sympathy and fraternization,
the private industrial sector, intimidated by the threat of unemployment,
did not take a direct part in the struggle. But it did show solidarity
by joining the demonstrations.

Another characteristic of this movement was the giant demonstrations,
especially in the provincial cities—though Paris was worst hit by transport
difficulties: more than 100,000 in Marseilles, 80,000 in Toulouse,
50,000 in Bordeaux, where Juppé is mayor, 60,000 in Rouen. In some
medium-sized towns with populations of a few thousand, like Roanne,
Annecy or Quimperlé, a third of the total population took to the streets.
Although it is too soon to measure the phenomenon fully, it is quite certain
that nothing like that had been seen before, not even in 1968.

Crowds on that scale indicate clearly that the mobilization had gone well
beyond wage-earners and acquired the dimension of a broad popular
uprising, in which the relationship between the provinces and the capital
was overturned for the first time. That 30,000 people took to the streets
in defence of women’s rights on 25 November is an eloquent indication
of fundamental change in French society.

Throughout this trial of strength between two worlds—the microcosm of
politics and the media, and the people—which no longer speak the same
language, the majority of ‘public opinion’, despite the inconvenience
caused by the total paralysis of transport, supported the strikers to the
point of accepting as legitimate the demand for payment while on strike!
Confronted with this flood-tide, Juppé—at first arrogant and inflexible
—was forced to retreat. The government first made budgetary promises
to the student movement in an attempt to separate it from the workers.

The issue of retirement benefits was dissociated and set aside. A commitment
was made to respect the specific status of groups like the railway
workers. The draft railways plan was ‘frozen’. All of this can easily be
reconsidered as soon as the workers drop their guard. Nevertheless, the
strikers and demonstrators were left with the taste, not of defeat, but of
qualified victory. They might have obtained even more were it not for
divisions in the trade union movement that left the government a margin
of manœuvre. Despite its massive scale, this struggle hardly gave
birth to grassroots forms of unitary self-organization. Although the
union confederations—the cgt and Force Ouvrière in particular—found
themselves side by side in the streets, there was no trade union front
capable of putting forward an overall strategic timetable of mobilization
or presenting a platform of common demands.

The affair is not over, however. As the mobilization grew, new demands
kept emerging: on wages, on working conditions, on employment, on
flexibility. A ‘social summit’ on employment between government and
unions, organized in panicky haste, came up with nothing concrete.
Juppé faces an explosive social timetable in the coming months. He is
committed to three further meetings on working time, youth employment
and family policy. He is going to have to specify the ways in which
his plan, or what remains of it, will be implemented. The retirement
issue will reappear on the agenda, along with the draft plan for the railways
and, most importantly, the proposals to privatize France-Télécom
in the spring. Against a background of recession, there is only the narrowest
of paths between reducing deficits, which strangles consumption,
and the need to stimulate recovery to avoid a further steep rise in unemployment.

 The Wall of Maastricht

Far from shackling society to archaic patterns, the popular mobilization
is in fact attuned to the future, to a dynamic of reforms appropriate to a
society based not on the competition of all against all, but on a right to a
decent existence—to employment, housing, health and education—
which would have some priority over the rights of property and finance.
They are two opposed rights. And this is where the decisive choice really
lies: between the neo-liberal counter-reform and a different direction for
society, indissociably national and European. Putting the needs of the
majority above unbridled competition leads to a reassessment of the way
Europe is being constructed, all the way from the Single Act to the single
currency.

Of course the issue of public-sector deficits and state indebtedness—
including that of the United States and Japan—would still have to be
faced, with or without Maastricht. But the frantic pursuit of criteria for
‘convergence’, and the hurried countdown to a single currency, are
imposing the worst solutions. Currency is not a robot fetish but an
expression of social relations. To try to construct Europe through monetary
restraint and financial deregulation is to approach the job back to
front. The recourse to the financial categorical imperative as a way to discipline
national economies is actually setting the European project back.
The effect is a restricted monetary Europe, a small club of a few countries
clustered around the Deutschmark. This club does not even deserve the
name Europe.

To set European construction straight, one would have to start at the
foundations. With, on one hand, the definition of a political Europe
based on democratically debated and agreed subsidiarities, and on the
other, with the creation of an area of European social convergence: the
gradual harmonization of wage levels, social benefits and rights; a concerted
and coordinated reduction in working time to generate jobs; and
the launch of major reconstruction, on a continental scale, of publictransport
services, telecommunications and energy. The choice is not
limited to a liberal Europe running into a wall or withdrawal down the
nationalist-populist blind alley. A different Europe, democratic and
social, could obtain the popular legitimacy whose absence is so glaringly
apparent in the case of Maastricht policy.

 Consequences for the Political and Trade Union Landscape

Many observers have remarked that this movement lacked a political
outcome. On the Left the Socialist Party, busy digesting its six years of
faithful management service to capital, has shown exemplary discretion
and refrained from suggesting any kind of solution. Jospin remained
practically invisible throughout the conflict, imprisoned by a European
project and Treaty of which social democracy, along with the moderate
liberals, had been the most zealous architect. Things are not all that different
on the Right. Harassing fire has been directed at the Prime
Minister by Balladur as well as Pasqua and Seguin. But their proclamations
on the need for ‘a different policy’ sound hollow, for what is meant
is not just another method of government based on dialogue, or a better
balance between austerity and reform, but an outright inversion of social
priorities in direct contradiction to the convergence criteria. A different
policy would thus mean a painful revision of the European project, something
neither the right-wing majority nor the Socialist Party is prepared
to risk.

The National Front might have been expected to use the events to make
some sort of populist capital. What it actually did was to condemn the
movement and oppose it openly, striving without success to rouse the
‘users’ against the strikers. There remains the possibility, however, that
it may still profit electorally from the discredit of the parliamentary
Right and the paralysis of the Left. In the end, thanks largely to the role
played by the cgt, the Communist Party may be the only major party to
have emerged unscathed, while carefully avoiding any move that might
widen the latent political crisis. Under these conditions, the social
earthquake will not lead to any immediate upheaval on the political
scene, but rather to sporadic, partial and molecular changes.

The main changes, which are already apparent, will affect trade unions.
When the movement started, superficial commentators were harping on
the unrepresentative nature of French trade unionism. In fact union
membership, with around ten per cent of employees unionized, is at a
low ebb. But it is a militant minority, and every professional election
confirms the representativeness of the confederations.

It seems more than likely that the December strikes will cause a significant
movement towards reunionization; but they have also caused
considerable changes to the trade union landscape. The confederate
leadership of the cfdt, headed by Nicole Notat, openly acted as strikebreakers
in order to become the government’s privileged interlocutor.

On the other hand, Force Ouvrière (fo), the traditional representative of
this collaborationist, responsible, ‘constructive’ trade unionism,
appeared extremist for reasons which are not necessarily all that noble.
The Juppé reform of the social-security system has broken this union’s
hegemony over the running of health-insurance funds, from which fo
used to draw a significant proportion of its resources. The December
ordeal will have lasting consequences for these two confederations. In the
cfdt, an opposition consisting particularly of the transport federation
and some of the big regional unions is calling for an extraordinary congress.
The fo congress, scheduled for two months hence, will see a moderate
candidate opposed by an alliance between Marc Blondel, the
Gaullist who took a leading role in the strikes, and the Lambertist militants
—Lambert being one of the historic leaders of French Trotskyism.
In the final analysis it was the cgt, whose congress took place in the
middle of the events, which made a show of strength and projected the
image of a combative union.

Perhaps most important for the future, however, is the assertion of an
autonomous—but not sectional—trade unionism, of which sud (Solidarité,
Unité, Démocratie), established in the post and telecommunications
industry, is probably the best example. This union emerged in
1988 after an exclusion from the cfdt; independent and democratic,
animated by leftist militants, it very quickly became—with nearly 30
per cent support in the professional elections—the second biggest force
in telecommunications, close on the heels of the cgt, at a time when the
cfdt was collapsing. In the December movement sud, along with other
autonomous unions, like the tax officials’ union, played a role extending
well beyond its specific area, and is preparing to challenge the threat of
privatization that hangs over the profitable public company France-
Télécom.

The other major development is a clear inversion of the balance of forces
among the teaching unions. Three years ago, the social-democratic leadership
of the fen (Fédération de l’Education Nationale, with about
400,000 members) engineered a split, fearing that it would be put in a
minority by the rise of elements close to the Communist Party, especially
in lycées and colleges. The split produced two federations, the
rump of the fen and the new Fédération Syndicale Unitaire (fsu). This
enabled the fen to retain its hegemony among primary schoolteachers.
In the struggles last December, however, the fsu marginalized the fen
completely. Already predominant in secondary and higher education, it
is now certain to become the majority union among primary teachers.
Given the specific influence of unionism in education, the fsu, run
mainly by the Communist Party and far-left militants, played a positive
role in the movement by trying to assemble the common unionist front
that was so sorely needed.

 Response of the Intellectuals

Lastly, the bashful silence of the politicians made a space for the remobilization
of ‘intellectuals’, reputed to have become depoliticized and indifferent.

This resulted in two completely contradictory calls. One, made
on the initiative of the review Esprit and signed notably by the sociologist
Alain Touraine, the philosopher Paul Ricœur and the modernist
‘deuxième gauche’ inspired by the Fondation Saint-Simon, extolled
throughout the ‘courage of Nicole Notat’ without taking a clear position
on either of the two main questions—support for the strikers and rejection
of the Juppé plan. The second appeal, made by Pierre Bourdieu and
others, urging active political and material support for the strikers and
their demands, was widely heard and well received.

Last December’s strikers and demonstrators proved that it was possible
to make the government back off, to resist the effects of commercial
globalization, to stop the liberal offensive in its tracks. The events have
created a new situation in which the old and new are entangled. The
popular mobilization is inventing its own future. It has outlined a possible
alternative to the dictatorship of ‘financial markets’ and the reign of
inhuman competition. There has already been much speculation on the
significance of this social explosion. A lot of journalists want to see it as
the last archaic strike of an era which is ending. Why should it not be the
first great anti-neo-liberal strike of the coming century?