The Broken Record...
So the French are at it again, and if you are French, and hopeful for the future, it must be enough to make you weep.
As the van driver in the article remarks, there's something fundamentally wrong with the French left's grasp of economics. But sadly, it's not just a lack of education that's done it. From my six months in France, the thing that struck me most clearly was that the French debate, such as it is, isn't so much about technicalities as it is about ideologies. In other words, most of what's being debated, by all sides of politics, has almost no bearing on reality whatsoever.
Take the argument about Europe. Europe? What Europe? Which Europe? All this debate about high-falutin concepts and constitutions and the like, and they can't even get the economy to work. They set down ground rules for fiscal stringency, and nearly everyone's so far broken them. The Europe of the debates is largely a figment of bureaucratic imagination, yet they argue like it actually exists... because in Europe, and in France in particular, belief is not contingent upon reality. It's like relgion that way. Secularism my foot, they merely swapped one belief system for another, religion for ideology, Christ for Marx, Mother Mary for Derida. These kids smashing shopfronts in the name of workers' rights aren't so different from the Muslims protesting the Mohammed cartoons in that sense -- each of them feels strongly that their rigid and inflexible belief system has been offended, and retribution must follow. Voltaire would weep.
Which leads to the next problem, the fact that the French State doesn't actually work. The simplest definition of 'The State' is that it is the institution that possesses a legal monopoly of violence within its borders. That means it can force you do to what it wants, and while its violence is legal, your's is not. That sounds terrible, but in reality, even the most free and liberal democracies work that way. Say you don't pay taxes in America, what happens? Well the IRS finds out, and if you ignore them long enough, the cops turn up. If you resist them, they'll grab you. If you use violence against them, they're perfectly entitled to kill you, if necessary. The same chain of events applies to any civil disobedience... if you resort to violence to disobey the State, the State can use violence straight back at you. This is where non-violent disobedience can be a far more effective way to challenge state authority in liberal democracies -- deprived of its excuse to use violence back, the State must go through the courts, in public, and may lose the debate that follows.
Sadly, that doesn't happen in France, because bad behaviour has been rewarded. Say what you like about Thatcher -- when push came to shove in England, she reestablished the State's primacy, and enforced her electoral mandate as she felt she had to, by force. Because that's how democracies work -- the majority rules, and the majority in England in the '80s, as in France today, didn't vote for the unions. The unions weren't just sticking it to Thatcher, they were sticking it to Thatcher's electoral majority, and she beat the unions down on their behalf. That's the system, and that's why it works, when it works.
But in France, no one has the guts to send in the dogs. One hint of violence, and the State goes scurrying for cover. Which of course encourages more violence. In France, a good riot seems to have far more impact on politicians' policymaking than a democratic vote. Worse, it renders democracy almost futile. Why vote for anyone if they'll back down from their stated policies as soon as some goon threatens a shopfront with a rock?
Maybe Sarkozy will have the guts, when he wins the 2007 election. He's the Interior Minister now, after all, which has to be a good place to lay down the groundwork required with the police. He'd have to plan a war, after all, to actually confront all the unions that would take to the streets if he tried to enforce all his favored policies. He'd have to be sure he had all the security forces onside, and prepared, because it would get very, very ugly if he really tried.
The worst thing about this is that if Sarkozy tried it, he'd be accused of turning France into a dictatorship. Wrong. He'd actually be saving France from a dictatorship, because the way France stands now, with democracy so pointless, dictatorship must surely start looking attractive. The democratic majority must be enforced, or democracy is pointless. What France has now is the rule of the tiny minority over the vast majority, by unlawful violence.
As the van driver in the article remarks, there's something fundamentally wrong with the French left's grasp of economics. But sadly, it's not just a lack of education that's done it. From my six months in France, the thing that struck me most clearly was that the French debate, such as it is, isn't so much about technicalities as it is about ideologies. In other words, most of what's being debated, by all sides of politics, has almost no bearing on reality whatsoever.
Take the argument about Europe. Europe? What Europe? Which Europe? All this debate about high-falutin concepts and constitutions and the like, and they can't even get the economy to work. They set down ground rules for fiscal stringency, and nearly everyone's so far broken them. The Europe of the debates is largely a figment of bureaucratic imagination, yet they argue like it actually exists... because in Europe, and in France in particular, belief is not contingent upon reality. It's like relgion that way. Secularism my foot, they merely swapped one belief system for another, religion for ideology, Christ for Marx, Mother Mary for Derida. These kids smashing shopfronts in the name of workers' rights aren't so different from the Muslims protesting the Mohammed cartoons in that sense -- each of them feels strongly that their rigid and inflexible belief system has been offended, and retribution must follow. Voltaire would weep.
Which leads to the next problem, the fact that the French State doesn't actually work. The simplest definition of 'The State' is that it is the institution that possesses a legal monopoly of violence within its borders. That means it can force you do to what it wants, and while its violence is legal, your's is not. That sounds terrible, but in reality, even the most free and liberal democracies work that way. Say you don't pay taxes in America, what happens? Well the IRS finds out, and if you ignore them long enough, the cops turn up. If you resist them, they'll grab you. If you use violence against them, they're perfectly entitled to kill you, if necessary. The same chain of events applies to any civil disobedience... if you resort to violence to disobey the State, the State can use violence straight back at you. This is where non-violent disobedience can be a far more effective way to challenge state authority in liberal democracies -- deprived of its excuse to use violence back, the State must go through the courts, in public, and may lose the debate that follows.
Sadly, that doesn't happen in France, because bad behaviour has been rewarded. Say what you like about Thatcher -- when push came to shove in England, she reestablished the State's primacy, and enforced her electoral mandate as she felt she had to, by force. Because that's how democracies work -- the majority rules, and the majority in England in the '80s, as in France today, didn't vote for the unions. The unions weren't just sticking it to Thatcher, they were sticking it to Thatcher's electoral majority, and she beat the unions down on their behalf. That's the system, and that's why it works, when it works.
But in France, no one has the guts to send in the dogs. One hint of violence, and the State goes scurrying for cover. Which of course encourages more violence. In France, a good riot seems to have far more impact on politicians' policymaking than a democratic vote. Worse, it renders democracy almost futile. Why vote for anyone if they'll back down from their stated policies as soon as some goon threatens a shopfront with a rock?
Maybe Sarkozy will have the guts, when he wins the 2007 election. He's the Interior Minister now, after all, which has to be a good place to lay down the groundwork required with the police. He'd have to plan a war, after all, to actually confront all the unions that would take to the streets if he tried to enforce all his favored policies. He'd have to be sure he had all the security forces onside, and prepared, because it would get very, very ugly if he really tried.
The worst thing about this is that if Sarkozy tried it, he'd be accused of turning France into a dictatorship. Wrong. He'd actually be saving France from a dictatorship, because the way France stands now, with democracy so pointless, dictatorship must surely start looking attractive. The democratic majority must be enforced, or democracy is pointless. What France has now is the rule of the tiny minority over the vast majority, by unlawful violence.
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