Let’s be clear right from the start. Despite what the media are saying, France has not elected a “Socialist President”. What has happened is that a member of the so-called “Parti Socialiste” (PS), which is not a socialist party but a party of capitalist reform similar to the Labour Party in Britain, has won the presidential election there.The PS was formed in 1971 as a result of the merger of the old, reformist SFIO (which, believe it or not, was the French for “French Section of the Workers’ International”) and various other groupings, under the leadership of François Mitterrand, who was to be elected President of France ten years later.
In its founding declaration, the PS proclaimed its equivalent to Labour Party’s former Clause IV:
“Socialism fixes its object as the common good not private profit. Progressive socialisation of the means of investment, production and exchange constitute the indispensable basis for this”.
Waxing lyrical, it went on:
“The socialist transformation cannot be the natural product of reforms correcting the effects of capitalism. It is not a question of re-arranging a system, but of substituting another one for it.”
This was just rhetoric. When Mitterrand was elected President of France in 1981 he made it quite clear that he had not been elected to bring about a change of system, but only to bring about a change in the existing system. It was the same distinction that had been made by the pre-war SFIO Prime Minister of the Popular Front, Léon Blum, between “the conquest of power” (for socialism) and “the exercise of power” (within capitalism).
Like François Hollande, Mitterrand promised “growth”. His government immediately drew up a plan to reduce unemployment by growing the economy by 3 percent a year through increasing both popular consumption and government investment. The government did increase the minumum wage and benefits and it did employ more people as well as nationalising the banks, but the economy didn’t grow by 3 percent. Instead, the workings of capitalism forced the government to devalue the franc three times within two years, the first as early as October 1981 (Mitterrand had only been elected in May of that year). A second followed in June of the following year. The third, in March 1983, was accompanied by a programme of austerity which clawed back the increase in wages and benefits introduced in May and June 1981. (For those who can read French, there’s description of what happened and why here: )
In short, the Mitterrand government’s attempt to grow the economy by increasing government and popular spending failed miserably. It failed because governments can’t control the way the capitalist economy works. It’s rather the other way round: that the workings of the capitalist economy oblige all governments, whatever their original intention or what they might prefer to do, to impose giving priority to profits and the conditions for profit-making. In a slump such as today, this means imposing austerity, as President Hollande will find out.
He, too, only wants to “exercise power” within the context of capitalism and its rule of “no profit, no growth”. On a visit to London in February he blamed financial deregulation for the crisis and said this needed to be reversed. Ed Miliband, who was with him, chipped in:
“We need to reform the way finance works and to reform the way that capitalism works. He is absolutely right” (Times, 1 March).
It’s clear, then, that Hollande wants to try to reform “the way that capitalism works”. He has set himself an impossible task. We can predict now that he won’t succeed in making capitalism work in the general interest but that, like the last so-called “Socialist” President of France thirty years ago, he will fall flat on his face and have to pick himself up and accept the economic realities of capitalism and keep austerity so as to facilitate profit-making. TINAUC. There is no alternative under capitalism.
Adam Buick
5 comments:
"It failed because governments can’t control the way the capitalist economy works. It’s rather the other way round: that the workings of the capitalist economy oblige all governments, whatever their original intention or what they might prefer to do, to impose giving priority to profits and the conditions for profit-making. In a slump such as today, this means imposing austerity, as President Hollande will find out."
Tell that to Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal.
Also take a look at the recent growth of China, what was that due to if not a planned economy?
i believe it took a world war to pull America out of its economic doldrums. I could provide the stats that show that the New Deal was a myth but i suggest you do that yourself.
"The New Deal is widely perceived to have ended the Great Depression, and this has led many to support a "new" New Deal to address the current crisis. But the facts do not support the perception that FDR's policies shortened the Depression" - Wall St Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123353276749137485.html
In regard to China, there is no denying that government can influence the economy eg it can be protectionist or for free trade. But the claim made that China controls its economy is misleading if you choose, for instance, to investigate the recent changes in Chinese banking that are being embarked upon. Or the closures of many factories due to drop in profitability. Once again it is economic events the Chinese government react to, not determining the course of these events. The Chinese don't plan their economy, they adjust their plan to it.
"But the facts do not support the perception that FDR's policies shortened the Depression" - Wall St Journal"
Are you sure you're a socialist, quoting the wall street journal as if it was gospel?? What did you expect the WALL STREET journal to say?? I think you'll find that when they stopped the new deal stimulus the economy fell back. There are many well respected economists who think the New Deal saved Americas economy.
As for China, the government owns 50% of corporations in the country. It has built its economy by bringing roads, electricity, water, sanitation, internet, telephones, trains, buses, education etc etc etc
"But the claim made that China controls its economy is misleading if you choose, for instance, to investigate the recent changes in Chinese banking that are being embarked upon. "
I never said china had complete control over it's economy, that would be idiotic.
"The Chinese don't plan their economy, they adjust their plan to it."
That's what a god damned planned economy is! You talk like they would plan for some unobtainable goal irrespective of econommic reality, giving champagne enemas with every tax return or something.
And Marx was an apologist for the British State from quoting from Parliamentary Blue Books! i actually counselled you to do your own research and check for yourself the actual facts.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1977/inflation/ch06.htm
"The recovery proved to be short-lived. At the end of 1937 the Business Index fell from 110 to 85, bringing the economy back to the state in which it had found itself in 1935. Steel production declined from 80 percent of capacity to 19 percent. Millions of workers lost their jobs once again. The New Deal was now adjudged a dismal failure, and the optimism engendered by it dissipated into general apathy. It seemed that stagnation was now the “normal” state of affairs and that nothing could be done about it...For all practical purposes by 1938 the New Deal was dead and buried. The economy revived once more, but there were still ten million unemployed in 1939."
The crisis ran its course and Rooseveldt had little to do with ending it - a conclusion of a Marxist economist not the WSJ.
"A planned economy is an economic system in which decisions regarding production and investment are embodied in a plan formulated by a central authority, usually by a government agency."
"..the [chinese] state retains ownership and control of large enterprises but the central government has little direct control over the operations of state-owned enterprises"
wikipedia entries.
But i will grant you your claims - that the inequality, the wealth of the minority, the exploitation of the poor and denial of union rights, the forcible re-location of people in land grabs, the adulteration of food, the negligence of health and safety at factories and in the mines...is all part of plan by the Chinese state to facilitate the economic growth...
In a later declaration, in 1990 (in french at http://www.lours.org/default.asp?pid=107) the so-called PS forget all anti-capitalist principles and said:
"Le Parti socialiste est donc favorable à une société d’économie mixte qui, sans méconnaître les règles du marché, fournisse à la puissance publique et aux acteurs sociaux les moyens de réaliser des objectifs conformes à l’intérêt général."
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