Look to the French for a Model of Resistance to Austerity Politics
The Way to a Better American Social Contract
By Jim Miller
While much of the mainstream media was preoccupied with revelations coming out of the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News and Tucker Carlson’s attempt to re-write the events of 1/6 and free the unjustly oppressed QAnon Shaman, the Biden Administration’s efforts to push back against Congressional Republicans’ proposals to gut government spending in the name of debt reduction got significantly less attention. That’s too bad because the retirement security and healthcare of millions of Americans are at stake in the long run.
On this issue, Biden’s framing is spot on. As the New York Times reported:
The budget contains some $5 trillion in proposed tax increases on high earners and corporations over a decade, much of which would offset new spending programs aimed at the middle class and the poor. It seeks to reduce budget deficits by nearly $3 trillion over that time, compared with the country’s current path.
It reaffirms Mr. Biden’s case that he can prevent the growing debt burden from weighing on the economy while expanding spending and protecting popular safety-net programs — almost entirely by asking companies and the wealthy to pay more in taxes.
By proposing taxes on the rich to offset funding for Social Security, Medicare, and other social programs that the right loves to hate, Biden is offering a solid populist narrative to counter the slash and burn austerity politics of his Congressional opponents.
As I have written in this space before, consistently emphasizing the need for new revenue is important, even if the current gridlock prevents any action, because the public discourse should not be framed in a way that privileges austerity over investment. Indeed, the only way the right will succeed in continuing to roll back the twentieth century and completely undermine the legacy of the New Deal and later progressive policy is if they can shift the focus away from working people’s needs to bogus culture war distractions.
In sum, it’s clear that starving the beast and going after “entitlements” is a political loser, but keeping the public’s attention focused on what’s at stake is harder than it should be in the current political and cultural environment defined by what Thomas Frank calls backlash populism that substitutes a cultural elite for the actual economic elite.
Hence, the debate about “wokeness” and other hysterical cultural war tropes is a purposeful ploy to redirect attention away from the very real threat that the Republicans and their donor class represent to the retirement, health care, and economic interests of the vast majority of Americans.
For a stark contrast to the American scene, all one needs to do is look to France where Emmanuel Macron’s neoliberal attempts to raise the pension age rather than taxing the rich has been met with massive resistance. The Guardian noted that:
More than 1.2 million protesters marched in France on Tuesday as rail workers and refinery staff began rolling strikes and trade unions stepped up their campaign to try to stop Emmanuel Macron’s plan to raise the pension age to 64.
For the sixth time since the start of the year, trade unions called a nationwide day of strikes and demonstrations. Many protest rallies attracted bigger crowds than previous ones organised since mid-January, including in Marseille, one of France’s biggest cities, authorities and local media said.
“The idea is to bring France to a standstill,” said Fabrice Michaud of the railway workers’ branch of the CGT trade union.
The same piece notes that “56% of French people supported rolling strikes, and 59% backed the call to bring the country to a standstill” with only 32% in support of Macron’s call to raise the retirement age. Thus, in France, support for working people’s interests and the strike as a righteous political tool, translate into real political power and a culture of solidarity on economic issues.
A New York Times piece outlining the worldview motivating the French public’s fierce support for the earlier retirement age, illustrates how the French really do think we should work to live rather than live to work:
No longer a short reprieve before death, retirement is now seen as “the afternoon of life, a time that is blessed,” said Serge Guérin, a professor of sociology specializing in old age at Iseec Business College in Paris.
“It’s a time of liberty, to finally enjoy your grandchildren, your interests, your desire to travel, to volunteer and be elected in your community.”
It is also seen as compensation for working life.
“There is this vision in France,” Mr. Guérin added, “that working time is time waiting to be able to enjoy life.”
Americans, whose grind culture has led to an epidemic of burn-out and widespread talk of “quiet quitting,” could learn a thing or two from our friends across the Atlantic. French politics, steeped as they are in their own variety of rightwing nationalism, are far from perfect, but the principled, militant refusal of millions of their citizens to accept a vision of the social contract that favors budget cuts and austerity over quality of life is something worth replicating.