The Cauldron Boils

People have been asking me what’s happening in France. Being a long distance away, I have no ready answer, but I am reminded of an observation made decades ago by Raymond Aron: “Ce peuple, apparemment tranquille, est encore dangereux.”1

Indeed. On the one hand, the protests of the past couple of weeks look very familiar: marchers carry placards proclaiming their grievances, overzealous police attempt to restore “order,” grievous injuries ensue, passions rise, fingers are pointed, eventually the demonstrations subside, and what is restored is not order but a sullen silence—a silence that endures until the next eruption.

On the other hand, there is no denying that the students’ complaints are justified: schools are crumbling, classes are overcrowded, absent teachers go unreplaced, the system known as Parcoursup, intended to provide guidance and streamline the process of applying for continuing education after high school is fraught with infuriating difficulties, and the promises of successive governments to remedy these problems remain unfulfilled.

As usual, the basic narrative admits of numerous complications. The government accuses the far-left France Insoumise party of fomenting chaos to serve its interests. If so, this must count as an unintended paean to the hypothetical organizing capacity of LFI, which in a matter of days has allegedly managed to shut down half the high schools in France and bring 250,000 students, parents, and teachers into the streets. True, LFI leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon was vain enough to bask in the cheers of demonstrators and claim that not even the Pope had drawn more adoring crowds. He nevertheless admonished his followers to eschew violence, which only serves the government. Mingled in their ranks, however, were the familiar contingents of casseurs, masked, helmeted, and armed with weapons ranging from sledgehammers to flamethrowers improvised from aerosol cans. The prefect of police accordingly announced that “no order of restraint has been given” in the face of such urban marauders, only to reverse himself the next day after a fifteen-year-old child lost an eye to a “purely defensive” weapon which, as it happens, is banned in every European country but France. Another youngster lost a hand. Presumably, the blinding of one child and the maiming of another was too much even for a government determined to remain droit dans ses bottes in the face of a handful of would-be urban guerrillas.

The lycéens are angry, but much of France remains morose. Marine Le Pen is currently expected to take 34 percent of the first-round vote in next year’s presidential election, and no opponent currently claims more than 44 percent in the second round. In other words, 66 percent of the electorate believes that its first choice has little likelihood of winning the presidency. President Macron’s attempt to govern “neither from the right nor the left” has succeeded only in fracturing the former centrist parties of both sides of the spectrum, which have disintegrated into mutually hostile factions. With hopes for converging on a viable alternative to Le Pen currently at a low ebb, the action in the streets is an occasion for schadenfreude if nothing else. Aging veterans of previous protests are briefly roused from their funk by the memory of the halcyon days when they believed revolution was “in the streets,” even though it was never as near as they supposed, and even if they subsequently persuaded themselves that they had learned that lesson and taken to heart the Weberian adage comparing politics to the boring of hard, dry boards. Still, for wizened old campaigners, it is hard to remain unmoved when the voice of youth is amplified by megaphones and relayed by TV and social media while simultaneously being choked by tear gas and strangled by the strong arm of the law.

For Macronism, a movement that once based its promise of renewal on effecting France’s belated transition to the knowledge economy, it has to be a bitter irony that this latest protest has erupted in the schools, from which any hoped-for technological revolution must draw its workers, rather than among the left-behind of the rural hinterlands or the deplorables of the peri-urban outskirts—the seedbeds of the previous uprising known as the Gilets Jaunes.

In fact, no matter where one looks in France, there is impatience to see the back of Macron, who is now the lamest of lame ducks, without the means to pass any legislation absent the consent of parties vying to replace him and fearful that the slightest compromise, no matter how reasonable, with the unpopular president will doom their chances in the coming election, unless they happen to be named Le Pen.

Macron, a former investment banker, has managed to saddle France with a debt that now stands at 120 percent of GDP and government bonds for which buyers now demand interest higher than even Italy or Greece. Pension reform, though essential if order is to be restored to French finances, has proved impossible in the best of times and out of the question even to discuss in this highly charged electoral season. Le Pen, who may well win the presidency, promises to make matters worse by reducing the retirement age. Mélenchon, for his part, plans simply to repudiate French debt held by the Bank of France. It’s no wonder that the mood is morose. The lycéens are letting off steam in which their elders can only stew. Winter may drive people back off the streets, but the French mood will only darken as the days grow shorter. So beware: Ce peuple, apparemment tranquille, est encore dangereux.