Mark Kesselman, Ed.: The French Workers’ Movement

Abstract

The Mitterrand-Socialist experiment in government is in danger of a historical failure. After almost four years in power, things have not only failed to go as the Socialists (and for a time, their Communist partners) would have liked, but have gone decidedly badly. Few of the government’s political economic goals have been attained or seem likely to be in the near future; and the political economic failures have increasingly obscured the successful policy initiatives in other areas. Furthermore, to the extent that the government has had successes in the political economic arena, they have not been those anticipated by its core social base and ideological confrères. Nationalizations and advances in social welfare have been overwhelmed by balance-of-payments crises, high rates of inflation, and perhaps most damaging of all, high and growing rates of unemployment, much of it structural. Expansionary and egalitarian policies have given way to the “politics of rigueur” or, more pejoratively, Barrisme de gauche (Kesselman’s conclusion, p. 320).