Guy Sorman: France's Perpetual Revolution
[Mr. Sorman, a contributing editor at City Journal, is the author, most recently, of "Economics Does Not Lie: A Defense of the Free Market in a Time of Crisis".]
The French have a long tradition of taking to the streets as an irrational answer to economic reforms. In 1848, when a democratically elected government tried to contain monetary inflation, the nascent Socialist Party raised barricades in Paris. Alexis de Tocqueville, then a member of the parliament, wrote in his "Memoires" that the French knew a lot about politics and understood nothing about economics. The current disruption of French cities by strikes and riots illustrates the continuity of this political culture.
The pretext for the current "social movement," as we call it in French, is a perfectly rational initiative by President Nicolas Sarkozy to raise the legal age of retirement to 62 from 60. It had been lowered to 60 from 65 in 1983 by the socialist François Mitterrand. Going up to 62 is thus a modest return to sanity: 62 happens to be the average in the European Union.
The rationale behind this reform—an aging population—can be understood by all the French. Longer life expectancy and slow economic growth offer no other choice to save the public pension funds from bankruptcy. Why then such a violent reaction from the street?
The leftist unions that have started the strikes represent the public sector, a quarter of the active population. For them, any change in the pension-fund regulations is but a first breach in the welfare state. The French left sees how the Scandinavian, German and British governments are cutting spending in the name of sound finance and stronger growth.
The French unions fear that France will follow. Since they represent the public sector, they are not that interested in reviving the market economy. Moreover, the welfare state is perceived by the French left as a historical conquest on the road to socialism, which remains the ultimate goal...
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The French have a long tradition of taking to the streets as an irrational answer to economic reforms. In 1848, when a democratically elected government tried to contain monetary inflation, the nascent Socialist Party raised barricades in Paris. Alexis de Tocqueville, then a member of the parliament, wrote in his "Memoires" that the French knew a lot about politics and understood nothing about economics. The current disruption of French cities by strikes and riots illustrates the continuity of this political culture.
The pretext for the current "social movement," as we call it in French, is a perfectly rational initiative by President Nicolas Sarkozy to raise the legal age of retirement to 62 from 60. It had been lowered to 60 from 65 in 1983 by the socialist François Mitterrand. Going up to 62 is thus a modest return to sanity: 62 happens to be the average in the European Union.
The rationale behind this reform—an aging population—can be understood by all the French. Longer life expectancy and slow economic growth offer no other choice to save the public pension funds from bankruptcy. Why then such a violent reaction from the street?
The leftist unions that have started the strikes represent the public sector, a quarter of the active population. For them, any change in the pension-fund regulations is but a first breach in the welfare state. The French left sees how the Scandinavian, German and British governments are cutting spending in the name of sound finance and stronger growth.
The French unions fear that France will follow. Since they represent the public sector, they are not that interested in reviving the market economy. Moreover, the welfare state is perceived by the French left as a historical conquest on the road to socialism, which remains the ultimate goal...