What’s in a name? The debate over whether French president François Hollande and his socialist party are social democrats exemplifies the confusion surrounding French government policy.
In the early 1990s Hollande supported Jacques Delors to succeed François Mitterrand as president of France. Delors represented the most moderate branch of the socialist party but commanded the loyalty of only a small percentage of its members. Later, as first secretary of the party for more than a decade, Hollande appeared to veer leftward. Under his leadership, party congresses invariably ended with a motion de synthèse, earninghim the nickname of l'homme de la synthèse.
He continues to tack left and right. Asked on May 16th why he does not admit to being a social democrat, he replied defensively: “I’m a socialist. Do I need to say social democrat? Would that be better? I ran the socialist party for years; I didn’t call it the social democratic party.”
Change of tone
He changed tone dramatically in Leipzig a week later, at celebrations marking the 150th anniversary of the German Social Democratic Party. The SPD "greatly inspired socialism in France," Hollande said. While former SPD chancellor Gerhard Schröder sat in the front row, Hollande lauded "the courageous reforms to save jobs and anticipate social and cultural changes" undertaken by Schröder a decade ago. At the time, French socialists criticised Schröder severely. But unemployment in Germany has fallen from 9.8 per cent to 5.4 per cent. In contrast to France, the German health and retirement systems are running budget surpluses.
In Leipzig, Hollande came close to coming out as a social democrat. “I retain from social democracy the sense of dialogue, the search for compromise and the permanent synthesis between economic performance and social justice,” he said.
A rare socialist leader in a Europe dominated by the liberal right, Hollande has imposed that synthesis on European policy, with the stability and growth pact voted in June 2012, and on Thursday night with the joint Franco-German proposal to promote both “growth and fiscal consolidation” at the June 27th-28th EU summit.
Le Figaro compared Hollande’s praise for the Schröder reforms to Tony Blair’s dictum that economic policy is neither left wing nor right wing, that “the important thing is that it works”.
Hollande noted that the SPD distanced itself from Marxism at Bad-Godesberg in 1959, when it chose “as much market economy as is necessary, as much solidarity as is possible”. Blair followed with New Labour, amending clause 4 of the party’s constitution (regarding “common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange“) in 1993.
But two decades later, French socialists have undergone no such official aggiornamento and Hollande is described as a closet or selfhating social democrat. “When the French left does social democracy, it’s embarrassed,” says political scientist Pascal Perrineau, director of the Cevipof think tank.
For French socialists are prisoners of their history, of the 1789 revolution, seen as the origin of the modern French state and the sacrosanct “French social model” of a munificent, all-powerful state that guarantees liberty and equality for all.
'Social traitors'
The erstwhile "union of the left" between French socialists and communists is another historical factor preventing the French party from explicitly declaring itself social democratic. In other countries social democracy is a positive term. For the left of the French left, social democrats are "social liberals" or "social traitors". The left of the party accused Hollande of "giving [them] the finger" in his Leipzig speech. One senator referred to "the ex-comrade Hollande".
The core of Hollande’s government – prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, interior minister Manuel Valls, finance minister Pierre Moscovici, labour minister Michel Sapin, defence minister Jean-Yves LeDrian and education minister Vincent Peillon – are considered social democrats.
“There is a French social model,” one minister said recently. “To save it, we have to reform it. The right want the French to work 39 hour weeks for 35 hours’ pay. The far left says: ‘Don’t change anything.‘ But they offer no political alternative . . . We must explain to the French that the social democratic path is the best way.”
That explanation could be a long time coming. The 17th-century Cardinal de Retz remarked that “one abandons ambiguity at one’s peril”. In a campaign speech at Le Bourget 18 months ago, Hollande described “the world of finance” as “the adversary,” saying: “It has no name, no face, no party . . . It will not be elected and yet it governs.”
By contrast, Moscovici said on May 25th that finance “has a crucial role to play in the development of the real economy, without which our businesses cannot grow.”
Hollande has made numerous gestures to the private sector. Last year’s ‘competiveness pact’ refunded €20 billion in business taxes. The historic reform of the labour market, which for the first time in at least three decades makes it easier to fire workers or decrease their salaries, was given the Orwellian title of “law on the sécurisation of employment”. Hollande recently reversed an earlier increase in capital gains tax, and decided not to enforce a ceiling on business executives’ salaries.
Yet the business community remains distrustful. It would have preferred a reduction in social charges to the tax refund and was spooked by Hollande’s attempt to impose a 75 per cent income tax on millionaires.
Hollande will continue to zig-zag between the structural reforms demanded by Brussels, enacted discreetly, and rhetoric emphasising “solidarity” and the “French social model”, in the hope of “bringing the people along”.
Pension reform may be the most perilous tightrope walk of all, because raising the legal retirement age is anathema to much of the left. Instead of specifying the age, Hollande says the French will have to work longer to qualify for a full pension – another reform that dare not speak its name.
