Will Democracy Survive in France? Reflections on Emmanuel Todd's Comments

From the standpoint of 2023 the history of the twenty-first century can seem one long succession of deeply unpleasant shocks, which by the '10s were increasingly manifesting themselves in the most fundamental aspects of the political life of Western democracies in ways that no one could overlook. France, far from being an exception to the pattern, has instead been a particularly conspicuous case. The country saw the collapse of its established party system, the emergence of a mass protest movement in the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests), the ascent of the far right, and even the country's military establishment's openly threatening a coup--all as the government, headed by a "strong presidency" that, in Simon Kuper's words, is "the closest thing in the developed world to an elected dictator," displayed an increasing taste for rule by emergency measures to the point of routinizing them amid conditions of pandemic, war, economic stagnation and growing labor strife. The result is that even so mainstream and conservative a publication as The Financial Times recently ran an editorial (by the aforementioned Kuper) calling on France to move on from its Fifth Republic to a sixth.

Still, in the English-speaking world we hear about France mainly from other English-speaking writers, often not just outsiders to the country about which they write, but questionably informed about their subject, while bringing to the discussion a heavy freight of view-distorting prejudices (as the "experts" presented by a media historically lousy at identifying genuine expertise so often turn out to be--remember the drivel they used to write about Japan, and still write about that country today?). Meanwhile the commentary in France itself has been increasingly and unhelpfully skewed. The result is that when social scientist Emmanuel Todd (the author of The Final Fall, After the Empire and The Third World War Has Begun) gave Marianne's Etienne Campion a long interview regarding the protests against President Emmanuel Macron's use of article 49.3 to force a raising of the retirement age down the throat of a French public when unable to get his law passed through routine legislative processes the item seemed to me to be well worth some attention.

As one might guess from his prior work Todd is a staunch critic of Macron's act. The raising of the retirement age itself is in his view unjust, useless and incoherent ("injuste, inutile et incohérente"), and its being forced through in this manner unconstitutional. Moreover, there is a context here that makes the act much more than an abuse of the presidency's emergency powers to circumvent democratic institutions, to which neoliberalism is critical. Todd regards that ideology not as some revival of the classical liberalism of John Locke-Adam Smith, but an "economic nihilism" summed up in such "idiocies" ("idioties") as Margaret Thatcher's famous remark that "There is no such a thing as society."* Indeed, so far as Todd is concerned making short-term individual economic rationality ("la rationalité individualiste," "la rationalité économique à court terme") the determining principle of all of social life, with its destruction of the economic base (as through the deindustrialization of the U.S., Britain and France) and the social supports that give the population an indispensable minimum of security (sufficient for people to start families, for example), is "destructive of the capacity of populations to reproduce and societies to survive"--literally, as he shows on the basis of the falling life expectancy in the U.S. and sub-replacement birth rates across the advanced world (with France's high natality bespeaking its refusal of neoliberalism, and in an inversion of the neoliberal view of France, that refusal actually the country's greatness).**

Increasingly exposed for the nihilism it is, Todd holds neoliberalism to be "dying" (alluding even to a return to "state entrepreneurship" in that great champion of neoliberal policy, the U.S.), in spite of which Macron, as this pension reform shows, is, in spite of some glib, vague and unconvincing rhetoric about "reindustrialization," still pushing the neoliberal project. Of course, if Macron is a neoliberal in a world becoming less so this requires some explanation, and Todd offers it, speaking of political inertia--and the personal defects of Macron himself, not least a "cognitive deficit" (Todd uses the term at least three times over the interview's course), and serious problems of personality. These include a hatred for "ordinary people," and even a child-like "testing the limits" of what is allowed him as he deliberately provokes the public with his style as well as his substance.

Why is Macron managing to get away with such behavior? Todd argues that this is a matter of the combination of France's electoral system, and specifically its not offering its voters proportional representation (as seen in the two-round presidential elections), and the divisions between left and right in the country as represented by the "Unsubmissive France" ("Nupes") that Jean-Luc Melenchon led and Marine Le Pen's "National Rally" ("RN"). Both opposed to the neoliberal course, they are divided by what Americans today would call the "Culture War," in which educational levels factor (people who are not well-off but are still college degree-holders favoring Nupes, while their non-college-educated counterparts favor Le Pen). Still, while acknowledging the barriers to civility between them Todd, who admits to worries that on its present course the country is headed for a collision between the neoliberal "state-finance aristocracy" and the far right, ends the interview with a call to all French persons, whatever their educations, wealth, party or anything else to be the "adults" and "stop the child," and Nupes and the RN make some temporary pact under which they join forces to reform the voting system and introduce the "proportional" ballot France does not have, which he now thinks just about the only thing that can save French democracy.

Considering Todd's remarks I found his appraisal of neoliberalism of particular interest--his characterization of it as nihilistic in the cultural and economic sphere fair enough (and I think, Todd quite right to point out that the view of there being "No such thing as society" is not the tradition of Adam Smith, however much Thatcher had her economic thinking done for her by the folks of the Adam Smith Institute). This extends to his more specific remarks about family formation, birth rates, and the rest. Also noteworthy, and quite correct, is Todd's recognition of the essential endurance of neoliberalism underneath Macron's gestures toward protectionism (a subject on which I have found myself writing quite a bit these last couple of years as people speak of neoliberalism's supposed demise).

However, it seems to me that France is less unique here than some French observers seem to think (Todd perhaps included). Bruno Amable and Stefano Palombarini call Macron "the last neoliberal" (and I got the impression that Todd is thinking along the same lines), but I remember all too well that reports of the death of neoliberalism have been "greatly exaggerated" over and over again these past four decades (amid the neomercantilist fad of the '90s, after the 2007 crash, etc., etc.). And it seems to me that pretty much wherever one looks across the advanced world we see neoliberals confusing onlookers with protectionist gestures (increasingly numerous and disruptive as they have been) as they otherwise "stay the course"--that neoliberalism, for all its faults and failures, and for all the opposition it has aroused, is not being given up, even in a gradualist way, but at most adapted to meet the present emergency. (We see it in fiscal and monetary policy, we see it in social policy, we see it above all in the continued centrality of creditism-fueled and speculation-minded financialization in the economic model, among much, much else; while I might add that Todd's reference to "the return of the entrepreneurial state" in the U.S. must be highly qualified, a very limited matter in as well as out of the national security arena, and which seems likely to only dwindle in the months and even years ahead, given the combination of the shifting focus of a Joseph Biden administration which was never much of a candidate for a break with the past, the current makeup of Congress, or the response likely to follow in the wake of the current cryptocurrency and bank failures from Silvergate on.)

This exaggerated sense of the demise of neoliberalism extends to the domestic scene in France where, while popular sentiment is clearly and forcefully against it (across educational levels, a point he discusses in a more nuanced way than we tend to see in the U.S.), I am not sure how deep the opposition to neoliberalism of Melenchon and Le Pen goes--neither having said or done anything to make me think they, or the leaders of the tendencies they lead, are anything but another couple of politicians promising change on the campaign trail, but in office likely to continue and even intensify the policies seen to date. (Britain affords a striking example. There Keir Starmer posed as a socialist with a social democratic platform when it was convenient, then discarded that platform in the most brazen manner imaginable--such that the country's choice in the next General Election, barring some unforeseen change, is between the Tory neoliberalism of Rishi Sunak and the New Labour Blairite neoliberalism of Starmer.)

Being somewhere between "faint" and "facade" the two parties' supposed common opposition to neoliberalism is thus no foundation for overcoming their perhaps irreconcilable differences. Meanwhile, it may be that proportional representation is the last thing that Le Pen and the RN want, precisely because of how, in 2002 and more significantly in 2017 and 2022, the lack of such representation lifted this party with a mere 15 percent of the seats in the National Assembly to that second round of voting in the presidential election—where in 2022 it got over 40 percent of the vote. Putting it bluntly, the RN's best hope for winning in 2027 may be that disgust with Macron, and the blocking of any alternatives to Macron but themselves, push them over the top and put Le Pen in the Élysée Palace. (Indeed, in making his call Todd can seem to be calling on Le Pen and the RN to link hands with their center-left rivals to help save France from . . . Le Pen and the RN.) The result is that some Nupes/RN alliance coming to the rescue of French democracy in the manner Todd describes seems to me very, very unlikely indeed.

All that said (interesting as Todd's remarks about the subject were, the more in as we are so used here in America to the centrist-neoliberal press hailing the Macrons of the world as the "adults in the room" and their critics as unruly children) I am less sure of what to make of Macron the individual--and the relevance of his personality to the situation at hand. After all, the French government's line in policy does not emanate from the outmoded thinking of a single individual stuck in the past, but rather the preferences of the country's elites, which are entirely in line with those of their counterparts the world over (as, consistently shown by the decisions of the Constitutional Council, down to its supporting Macron in his use of 49.3 to push through the reform). Likewise the opposition to neoliberalism, and indeed the recent escalation of that opposition, is not unique to the French people, with, if French opposition in this case has been more focused and dramatic than elsewhere, still clearly part of a growing international trend (as France's neighbors, Britain and Germany, see historic strike action). The same goes for Macron's extreme display of disrespect for the population and authoritarian personal style in response to the protests--disdain for the inevitable widespread dissent virtually a requirement for the job of imposing those hugely unpopular policies. (Indeed, considering Macron, the backlash against him, and his answer to it, can one really say he is very different from Margaret Thatcher--especially the Thatcher of the coal strike and the poll tax riots? Or Blair? Or Sunak and Starmer today? Or any number of other aspirants to the status of being their own country's Thatcher--such as Macron's predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy was?) Still, it is not too great a stretch to believe that he is enjoying playing the part--and there seems nothing to be said in praise of that. One also cannot rule out that his doing so in these different circumstances may have different, very dangerous, consequences.

* No matter how her loyalists try to spin it, "There is no such thing as society" is exactly what Thatcher meant when she spoke those words, as you can see for yourself looking at the full 1987 interview with Woman's Own posted at the Margaret Thatcher Foundation's web site. ** For Todd it is significant that the great neoliberal "success" story, South Korea, is at the extreme opposite end of the spectrum, with a Total Fertility Rate of 0.8, as against France's near-replacement level 1.8.