This Boston Globe article on the French protests tells the tale of a country in crisis and decline. What all this means for the future is unclear. There’s a hint here that French overreaction to modest reform may actually shake the rest of Europe into accepting greater reductions in the welfare state. Muslim support for the protests seems odd, since the law they’re protesting is an effort to open up employment to largely Muslim immigrants from poor suburbs. Will France become more isolated and economically stagnant, or is this protest the last hurrah of the old welfare state before its inevitable passing? Will France’s identity as a counterweight to Anglo-Saxon liberalism survive, or will the French find a way to rationalize the decline of their system? Is Sarkozy now the presumptive next president, or has protest revived socialist hopes? Even if elected, could Sarkozy find a way to shake up the French welfare state after a protest like this? The culture of street battles meant years turmoil and despotism France. If today’s conflicts are so intense, what’s going to happen when baby boom retirements hit the fan?
In any case, although Americans prefer legislative politics to street protest, it’s not clear that we’re so different from France. True, President Bush did not imperiously pass Social Security reform without public discussion, thus sending millions of protesting Americans into the streets. Instead, the president started a national debate on entitlement reform and indicated a willingness to compromise with good-faith proposals from the Democrats. Like the French protesters, however, the Democrats refused to play ball, thereby sending a message to future presidents that entitlement reform is off-limits. So while the French left is famously weak on the culture of capitalism and democracy, our more democratic left has equally effective ways of setting a country on a long-term path to economic crisis.