Revolution or Reform?

MANY SOCIAL SCIENTISTS theorize that science and technology are sweeping all before it, shoving aside tradition, magic, superstition and old values that cannot be justified in terms of collective utility. This ultimate rationalization of human behavior provides the basis for modern industry and brings about un--precedented economic progress with its promise of a material Utopia--abundance, the arguments go, will eradicate class conflicts and education and enlighten the masses so they will naturally agree with other classes on societal goals. Stability and prosperity will hold sway, and all members of society will accept the legitimacy of capitalism as the means of production.

In France--a prism through which modern society has often been seen and analyzed--many radicals who espouse revolutionary Marxism to break the shackles of an exploitative, capitalistic order, look askance to this optimistic prognostication. The radicals suspect that this justification of the perpetuation of the status quo is just more bourgeois ballyhoo to stem the revolutionary tide and maintain an odious mode of production built on the selfish expropriation of labor-power from the proletarians by the capitalists.

The elections in March will reflect to what extent French president Valery Giscard d'Estaing, prime minister Raymond Barre and their centrist political cohorts can convince the citizens of France that they are not simply the chief executives of an omnipotent industrial bourgeoisie. They must prove that although liberal parliamentary government and favorable business conditions go hand in hand, this does not indicate big-business manipulation. Although many issues cloud the political scene in France, the ethical legitimation of the present form of authority stands above all others in importance.

The most convincing evidence of the universal benefits of an economy with both monopolies and competitive elements has been an increasing level of real income for all members of French society. But recent economic woes have caused many French-men to wonder--once again--whether their country should be entrusted to the hands of corporation leaders whose motivations are not perfectly synchronized with the collective good. Despite the cataclysmic warnings of prime minister Barre--author of the basic French textbook on economics--that a victory for the left would be the beginning of the end of economic solvency in France, a recent poll appearing in the newsmagazine Le Point showed that 52 per cent of the electorate would vote for the leftist parties as against 44 per cent for the center-right. If the socialists and the communists can manage to establish some kind of ideological reconciliation for a few weeks until after the election, the left could well rule France for the first time since the Front Populaire collapsed in 1938.

ASIDE FROM THE influence of a coterie of egalitarian and moralistic French philosophers and the vestiges of old aristocratic and peasant values that have mediated industrial class conflict, the swing to the left can be attributed in part to the sheer expression of shifting material interests of the French. Ironically, the present majority has hastened its own demise precisely because it has been so successful in stimulating economic expansion and industrialization for the past 20 years. Aided by a government that maintained its legitimacy only as long as the assembly lines were pouring out increasing numbers of cars, clothes and automatic dishwashers, the French economy has grown an average of 5 to 6 per cent annually. In 1973, the Hudson Institute predicted France would come to possess the most powerful economy in Western Europe.

A generation of increasing division of labor and greater economic productivity has transformed French society and the French alike. The focus of French life has shifted from the small village to the industrial metropolis; less than 10 per cent of the French are employed in agriculture. A five-fold increase in the number of working women signals an important shift in social mores. An extensive transportation network and greater radio and television penetration has forced provincial peasants to attempt to grapple with and understand the ideas and values of a technocratic society while their old traditions are repudiated by those ostensibly more intelligent and pithy.

Herein lies the paradox. The economic prosperity that those defending the bourgeois consensus used as testimony to vindicate capitalistic elements in French society, in turn, gave rise to a clearer delineation between those who owned the means of production and those who did not. The peasantry and the displaced aristocracy that so often aligned with the amorphous bourgeoisie against the proletariat in times of social crisis is vanishing along with the obsolete ideas of the feudal hangover. The increasing rationalism that is intertwined with industrial capitalism allows the members of the maturing proletariat to better realize their own interests.

France has never escaped the legacy of the Revolution. The same political and social struggles that emerged in those turbulent years have continued to play themselves out. In addition, a peculiar French individualism, a distaste for resolving conflicts on a face-to-face basis, and the desire to turn to a higher authority to arbitrate disputes have also been inherited from the past. This French form of authority--which can also explain the dearth of intermediary associations between the individual and the state--has created its own built-in problems. The state is often isolated from the French citizens and has no conception of just how serious social divisions in the country are or how to go about solving them. As a result, French history is sprinkled with periodic crises and revolutions.

It could well be that the existing French government is underestimating the depth of the chasm splitting those who labor and those who reap the benefits of the laborers' efforts. If those in power wish to avert another revolution at some point in the future, they must acknowledge the fact that economic forces in France are not yet static and that the old justifications for capitalism are losing their applicability. As the ineluctable economic law of increasing returns to scale mandates larger corporations and more monopolies in the name of efficiency, it seems increasingly unreasonable to allow so much power and responsibility to rest in the hands of relatively few men motivated by a quest for money.

An eventual evolution to a socialist society is inevitable in France. The question remains whether this will come about through revolution or reform. French bourgeois governments have historically failed to take the necessary steps to allow socialists and communists to take over the reins of government peacefully. If the left does not receive substantial political clout after the March elections, if social reforms are neglected, another revolutionary chapter in French history might--at some indefinite point in time--have to be written.