[Peace-discuss] What's really going on in France, vs. US media lies

[C. G. Estabrook]

"...this movement is an expression of exasperation with the government of 
Nicolas Sarkozy, which blatantly favors the super-rich over the majority of 
working people in this country. He was elected on the slogan, 'Work more to earn 
more', and the reality turns out to be work harder to earn less ... While tax 
benefits for the rich help empty the public coffers, this government is doing 
what it can to tear down the whole social security system that emerged after 
World War II on the pretext that 'we can’t afford it'..."

October 21, 2010
French Fury in the EU Cage
By DIANA JOHNSTONE

Paris.--The French are at it again – out on strike, blocking transport, raising 
hell in the streets, and all that merely because the government wants to raise 
the retirement age from 60 to 62. They must be crazy.

That, I suppose, is the way the current mass movement in France is seen – or at 
least shown – in much of the world, and above all in the Anglo-Saxon world.

Perhaps the first thing that needs to be said about the current mass strikes in 
France is that they are not really about “raising the retirement age from 60 to 
62”. This is rather like describing the capitalist free market as a sort of 
lemonade stand. A propaganda simplification of very complex issues.

It allows the commentators to go crashing through open doors. After all, they 
observe sagely, people in other countries work until 65 or beyond, so why should 
the French balk at 62? The population is aging, and if the retirement age isn’t 
raised, the pension system will go broke paying out pensions to so many ancients.

However, the current protest movement is not about “raising the retirement age 
from 60 to 62”. It is about much more.

For one thing, this movement is an expression of exasperation with the 
government of Nicolas Sarkozy, which blatantly favors the super-rich over the 
majority of working people in this country. He was elected on the slogan, “Work 
more to earn more”, and the reality turns out to be work harder to earn less. 
The Labor Minister who introduced the reform, Eric Woerth, got a job for his 
wife on the office staff of the richest woman in France, Liliane Bettencourt, 
heir to the Oreal cosmetics giant, at the same time that, as budget minister, he 
was overlooking her massive tax evasions. While tax benefits for the rich help 
empty the public coffers, this government is doing what it can to tear down the 
whole social security system that emerged after World War II on the pretext that 
“we can’t afford it”.

The retirement issue is far more complex than “the age of retirement”. The legal 
age of retirement means the age at which one may retire. But the pension depends 
on the number of years worked, or to be more precise, on the number of 
cotisations (payments) into the joint pension scheme. On the grounds of “saving 
the system from bankruptcy”, the government is gradually raising the number of 
years of cotisations from 40 to 43 years, with indications that this will be 
stretched out further in the future.

As education is prolonged, and employment begins later, to get a full pension 
most people will have to work until 65 or 67. A “full pension” comes to about 40 
per cent of wages at the time of retirement.

But even so, that may not be possible. Full time jobs are harder and harder to 
get, and employers do not necessarily want to retain older employees. Or the 
enterprise goes out of business and the 58-year old employee finds himself 
permanently out of work. It is becoming harder and harder to work full-time in a 
salaried job for over 40 years, however much one may want to. Thus in practice, 
the Sarkozy-Woerth reform simply means reducing pensions.

That, in fact, is what the European Union has recommended to all member states 
as an economy measure, intended, as with most current reforms, to reduce social 
costs in the name of “competitivity” – meaning competition to attract investment 
capital.

Less qualified workers, who instead of pursuing studies may have entered the 
work force young, say at age eighteen, will have subscribed to the scheme for 
forty-two years at age 60 if indeed they manage to be employed all that time. 
Statistics show that their life expectancy is relatively short, so they need to 
leave early in order to enjoy any retirement at all.

The French system is based on solidarity between generations, in that the 
cotisations of today’s workers go to pay today’s retired people’s pensions. The 
government has subtly tried to pit one generation against another, by claiming 
that it is necessary to protect the future of today’s youth, who are paying for 
the “baby boom” pensioners. It is therefore extremely significant that this 
week, high school and university students massively began to enter the protest 
strike movement. This solidarity between generations is a major blow to the 
government.

The youth are even much more radical than the older trade unionists. They are 
very aware of the increasing difficulty of building a career. The trend is for 
qualified personnel to enter the work force later and later, having spent years 
getting an education. With the difficulty of finding a stable, full-time job, 
many depend on their parents until age 30. It is simple arithmetic to see that 
in this case, there will be no full retirement until after age 70.

Productivity and Deindustrialization

As has become standard practice, the authors of the neo-liberal reforms present 
them not as a choice but as a necessity. There is no alternative. We must 
compete on the global market. Do it our way or we go broke. And this reform was 
essentially dictated by the European Union, in a 2003 report, concluding that 
making people work longer was necessary to cut pension costs.

These dictates prevent any discussion of the two basic factors underlying the 
pension problem: productivity and deindustrialization.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the former Socialist Party man who heads the relatively new 
Left Party, is about the only political leader to point out that even if there 
are fewer workers to contribute to pension schemes, the difference can be made 
up by the rise in productivity. Indeed, French worker productivity is among the 
very highest in the world (higher than Germany, for example). Moreover, although 
France has the second longest life expectancy in Europe, it also has the highest 
birth rate. And even if jobholders are fewer, because of unemployment, the 
wealth they produce should be adequate to maintain pension levels.

Aha, but here’s the catch: for decades, as productivity goes up, wages stagnate. 
The profits from increased productivity are siphoned off into the financial 
sector. The bloating of the financial sector and the stagnation of purchasing 
power has led to the financial crisis – and the government has preserved the 
imbalance by bailing out the profligate financiers.

So logically, preserving the pension system basically calls for raising wages to 
account for higher productivity – a very major policy change.

But there is another critical problem linked to the pension issue: 
deindustrialization. In order to maintain the high profits drained by the 
financial sector, and avoid paying higher wages, one industry after another has 
moved its production to cheap labor countries. Profitable enterprises shut down 
as capital goes looking for even higher profit.

Is this merely the inevitable result of the rise of new industrial powers in 
Asia? Is a lowering of living standards in the West inevitable due to their rise 
in the East?

Perhaps. However, if shifting industrial production to China ends up lowering 
purchasing power in the West, then Chinese exports will suffer. China itself is 
taking the first steps toward strengthening its own domestic market. “Export-led 
growth” cannot be a strategy for everyone. World prosperity actually depends on 
strengthening both domestic production and domestic markets. But this requires 
the sort of deliberate industrial policy which is banned by the bureaucracies of 
globalization: the World Trade Organization and the European Union. They operate 
on the dogmas of “comparative advantage” and “free competition”. On grounds of 
free trade, China is actually facing sanctions for promoting its own solar 
energy industry, vitally necessary to end the deadly air pollution that plagues 
that country. The world economy is being treated as a big game, where following 
the “rules of the free market” is more important than the environment or the 
basic vital necessities of human beings.

Only the financiers can win this game. And if they lose, well, they just get 
more chips for another game from servile governments.

Impasse?

Where will it all end?

It should end in something like a democratic revolution: a complete overhaul of 
economic policy. But there are very strong reasons why this will not happen.

For one thing, there is no political leadership in France ready and able to lead 
a truly radical movement. Mélenchon comes the closest, but his party is new and 
its base is still narrow. The radical left is hamstrung by its chronic 
sectarianism. And there is great confusion among people revolting without clear 
programs and leaders.

Labor leaders are well aware that employees lose a day’s pay for every day they 
go on strike, and they are in fact always anxious to find ways to end a strike. 
Only the students do not suffer from that restraint. The trade unionists and 
Socialist Party leaders are demanding nothing more drastic than that the 
government open negotiations about details of the reform. If Sarkozy weren’t so 
stubborn, this is a concession the government could make which might restore 
calm without changing very much.

It would take the miraculous emergence of new leaders to carry the movement forward.

But even if this should happen, there is a more formidable obstacle to basic 
change: the European Union. The EU, built on popular dreams of peaceful and 
prosperous united Europe, has turned into a mechanism of economic and social 
control on behalf of capital, and especially of financial capital. Moreover, it 
is linked to a powerful military alliance, NATO.

If left to its own devices, France might experiment in a more socially just 
economic system. But the EU is there precisely to prevent such experiments.

Anglo-Saxon Attitudes

On October 19, the French international TV channel France 24 ran a discussion of 
the strikes between four non-French observers. The Portuguese woman and the 
Indian man seemed to be trying, with moderate success, to understand what was 
going on. In contrast, the two Anglo-Americans (the Paris correspondent of Time 
magazine and Stephen Clarke, author of 1000 Years of Annoying the French) amused 
themselves demonstrating self-satisfied inability to understand the country they 
write about for a living.

Their quick and easy explanation: “The French are always going on strike for fun 
because they enjoy it.”

A little later in the program the moderator showed a brief interview with a 
lycée student who offered serious comments on pensions issue. Did that give 
pause to the Anglo-Saxons?

The response was instantaneous. How sad to see an 18-year-old thinking about 
pensions when he should be thinking about girls!

So whether they do it for fun, or whether they do it instead of having fun, the 
French are absurd to Anglo-Americans accustomed to telling the whole world what 
it should do.

Diana Johnstone is the author of Fools Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western 
Delusions.Write her for the French version of this article, or to comment, at 
diana.josto at yahoo.fr

http://www.counterpunch.org/johnstone10212010.html