And this guy is represented by our corporate media as being left wing!
Miriam
Emmanuel Macron, speaking in February. (photo: Mutualité Française / Flickr)
The Trouble With Macron
By Cole Stangler, Dissent Magazine
27 April 17
Last May, French economic minister Emmanuel Macron got into a heated
argument with protesters. Opposed to his governments unpopular labor
reforms, theyd just disrupted what was meant to be a stress-free photo op
at a tech school in the sleepy Southern town of Lunel. As the minister
smiled and shook hands inside, the sound of the megaphone blaring from
across the street was impossible to ignore: Mr. Valls, Mr. Macron, and Mr.
Hollande are doing what Mr. Sarkozy dreamed of doing!
A year prior, in 2015, the so-called Macron Law had made it easier for
employers to open on Sundays and keep late night-hours. But at the time of
the ministers visit to Lunel, the Socialist government was pursuing even
deeper labor reforms: a historic rollback in collective bargaining rights
that would allow company-wide agreements to contain weaker terms than
sector-wide ones. Mass protests were sweeping the country.
After the school visit, Macron calmly walked over to engage the
rabble-rousers, a member of his entourage declaring the minister was ready
to listen. Things escalated quickly: the man with the megaphone, a
sixty-year-old local middle school teacher, accused government reforms of
aggravating Frances job crisis. (Unemployment stands at around 10 percent
and short-term contracts make up the large majority of new jobs.) Macron
told him he should start his own business. He had some more pointed advice
for a younger protester, an unemployed twenty-one-year-old who quipped that
he didnt have the cash to pay for a nice suit like the one Macron was
sporting.
Youre not gonna scare me with your T-shirt, the minister retorted. The
best way to pay for a suit is to work for one.
Since officially launching his presidential campaign last November, Macron
has avoided slip-ups of this nature. But the Lunel episode remains, as of
yet, a near-perfect distillation of his political vision: detached from the
struggles of ordinary people, spiteful of unions and left-wing social
movements, and enamored with the liberating power of free enterprise. While
current polls show him handily defeating the odious Marine Le Pen of the
far-right National Front (FN) in the second round of Frances presidential
electionand theres no question hes a far preferable option in this
casethe former investment banker-turned-minister is a dangerous politician
in his own right.
Macron wants to roll back state intervention in the economy, cut
public-sector jobs, and reduce taxes on business and the ultra-rich. He
wants to deepen employer-friendly labor reforms. And he backs the current
direction of the European Union, viciously hostile to public investment
across the continent. All in all, its a program nearly guaranteed to
aggravate the problems at the heart of Frances political crisis:
unemployment, inequality, and poverty. These are the same forces driving
growing numbers of French people to withdraw from politics altogetheror
worse yet, cast ballots for the National Front.
On a basic level, the success of the thirty-nine-year-old founder and leader
of the independent En Marche! movement is puzzling. How can a candidate
associated with such unpopular ideasa backer of finance, François Hollande,
and a neoliberal EUbe doing so well?
For one, thanks to some top-notch branding and messaging. From the very
beginning, Macron has posed as a renegade candidate, promising to take on
the system and shake it up. From the inside, I saw the emptiness of the
system, he thundered in his opening campaign speech last November. This
system, I refuse it.
Speaking before a crowd of London-based expats in February, Macron declared
that he was proud of his immaturity and inexperience. And striking a
similar chord in a recent interview with Brittanys regional newspaper, he
claimed to be the only outsider in the race.
The posturing belies his actual career. However you choose to define the
systemultra-tight political cliques in charge of parties and governments,
cultural elites with friends in high places, or brute economic powers
fueling inequalityMacron embodies it.
A native of Amiens in northern France, Macron attended the prestigious Henri
IV prep school in Paris. From there, he moved on to Sciences Po, a highly
selective university that specializes in politics and international
relations, before graduating from the ultra-elite École Nationale
dAdministration, an institution that literally produces Frances ruling
class. Designed to groom high functionaries and ministers, the school counts
as alumni three of the Fifth Republics seven presidents, including the
current resident of the Élysée Palace.
After ENA, Macron joined the ranks of the Inspection générale des finances,
an interdepartmental financial auditing corps. He quickly impressed his
bosses, and in 2007, was named adjunct general reporter of the newly
launched Commission for the Liberation of French Growth, better known as the
Attali Commission. Created by President Nicolas Sarkozy and chaired by
Jacques Attali, once a top adviser to François Mitterrands Socialist
government, the body was a French analog to the Simpsons-Bowles Commission:
under the guise of nonpartisan economic reform, its recommendations boiled
down to an assault on the social safety net. Its conclusions have inspired
many a reformist since, from mainstream conservatives to Macron himself.
In 2008, the budding functionary bolted for the private sector, taking a job
at an affiliate of the Rothschild & Co financial empire. During this stint
in investment bankingwhich paid nearly 3 million eurosMacron was formally
introduced by his old boss Attali to François Hollande, who had then just
finished a term as the partys general secretary. In 2012, Frances newly
elected president appointed the banker to a key advisory post. The
wunderkind continued to impress. Two years later, at the ripe age of
thirty-six, Macron was named Hollandes new economic minister. This, too,
though was a surprisingly short-lived gig. In April 2016, amid comically low
approval ratings for his boss and a self-professed desire to build
something new and advance against the blockages of society, Macron
launched his En Marche movement. It all but confirmed his personal political
ambitions. In August Hollandes former protégé resigned his post to focus on
preparing his own presidential campaign. Ultimately, Macrons record in
government was unimpressive: the Socialists failed to tackle unemployment,
even as they implemented reforms that doomed the partys electoral chances.
The fact that a graduate of one of the countrys grandes écoles who made
millions in the Rothschild banking empire and set economic policy for the
sitting government would even attempt to portray himself as anti-system
says a lot about our current political moment, and not just in France. That
Macron could get away with it, as polls seem to indicate, even more so. Its
not dramatically different, one might say, from a real-estate mogul
successfully posing as an anti-establishment champion of the working class.
Thanks to Hollandes dismal presidency, working-class and other
traditionally left-wing voters are turning their backs on the PS. The
partys presidential nominee Benoît Hamon has struggled to reverse the
trend. Some of these electors now opt for independent left-wing candidate
Jean-Luc Mélenchon. But as recent European and regional races showed, many
low-income voters prefer abstention and the National Front.
On the other hand, the standard-bearer of the mainstream right Les
Républicains, François Fillon, is a cartoonishly bad candidate. Aside from
an especially cruel and unpopular platform, the former prime minister has
been battered by a series of scandals over the alleged diversion of public
funds. Party leaders and the conservative base alike grow increasingly
critical.
Against this backdrop, electoral participation is projected to tumble to
historically low levels. A recent poll showed that 38 percent of voters are
prepared to abstain from the election, a record high since France adopted
its current presidential system. Another poll found the abstention rate
could rise to a whopping 52 percent for young voters, aged eighteen to
twenty-five.
Those who do plan to cast ballots are turning away from the parties that
have dominated French political life for a generation. Neither of the
leading candidates belong to the two major parties. Le Pen has for years
swelled the ranks of her far-right base with disillusioned working-class
people. Macron, for his part, has managed to attract a more
socioeconomically diverse swath of voters fed up with politics as usual,
albeit in a much shorter period of time.
Scooping up voters across ideological and class divides like this all but
requires vague messagingpresenting the campaign in a way that avoids
exposing its inherent contradictions. Macron tiptoes accordingly around
classic political labels, often deploying different messages for different
audiences. He once identified as a Socialist and said he supported the
values of the left; he now distances himself from the Socialists and
regularly proclaims he is neither left nor right.
His book Révolution, released in conjunction with his formal entry into the
race, sheds some light on his no-labels identity. In the work, Macron
describes himself as progressive. The word isnt too familiar to French
ears: Left-leaning voters think of something closer to its meaning in the
American context. To conservatives, it sounds vaguely pro-business and
pro-innovation.
Our political life is organized today around an old cleavage that no longer
allows us to respond to the challenges of the world and our country, Macron
writes in Révolution. Today the great questions of our time are our
relationship to work, profoundly shaken up by environmental and
technological questions, new inequalities, our relationship to the world and
to Europe, the protection of individual liberties and of an open society in
a world filled with risks. On each of these subjects, the left and right are
profoundly divided and as such, are prevented from acting. They havent
updated their ways of thinking to the reality that now surrounds us.
Of course, to translate this sort of blueprint into actual policy
prescription is to risk collapsing the entire project. No matter how one
describes ones guiding philosophy, campaign proposals interact in a real
world that remains preoccupied with the question of how resources are
distributed and who benefits from what; in short, a world still defined by
left and right. Undoubtedly aware of this problem, Macron didnt actually
release his platform until early Marchthat is, less than eight weeks before
the first round of the election.
With the curtain finally lifted, the regressive nature of his candidacy can
no longer be denied. One of the most worrying elements is a plan to further
overhaul collective bargaining in favor of big business. Just 8 percent of
French workers belong to unions, but by law, the contracts they negotiate
cover nearly the entire labor force, from national and industry-wide
agreements to deals with individual companies. Last years reforms undercut
large-scale labor agreements by allowing company-level negotiations to take
priority under certain circumstances. But Macron wants to go further,
authorizing companies to bargain over issues currently codified by law, such
as hours and the general organization of work.
Beyond that, Macron wants to cut 120,000 functionary jobs in the next five
years; at the same time, he calls for hiring 10,000 more police officers and
national guardsmen. He wants to reduce public spending by some 60 billion
euros over the course of his presidency, but he also wants to boost military
spending, to 2 percent of GDP. He backs the seemingly never-ending state of
emergency, too. Since the terrorist attacks of November 2015, the law
authorizes police to seize data from phones and computers and conduct
searches without the approval of judges.
In this years strange and unpredictable campaign, Macrons mealy-mouthed
liberalism could be enough to spare France from the National Front. But in
the long run, its not exactly a safe bet against the mounting threat of the
populist far right.
European politics increasingly take the shape of a bleak contest, if not
always in terms of policy, then at least in rhetoric: on the one hand, a
strain of xenophobic populism anchored to the national welfare state; on the
other, a sort of cosmopolitan liberalism in defense of free trade and
enterprise. This is what the Brexit debate looked like. German and Dutch
politicians increasingly talk along these lines. And its essentially what
defines the conflict between Macron and Le Pen. Squeezed out of the
discussion is the left: a force capable of defending public services while
distinguishing between the free flow of people and capital.
So long as this cheapened clash persists, regular people will continue to
suffer. Macrons plans to cut state spending and reshape collective
bargaining will likely hurt wage-earners and fuel inequality. Needless to
say, Le Pens France First program would be far worse, unleashing an
unprecedented wave of racism and xenophobia.
The first scenario is still much easier to imagine, but it ominously beckons
the latter. Pro-EU liberals cannot continue to ignore the plight of working
people and kowtow to business while assuming politics will go on as usual.
If Brexit wasnt enough of a lesson, events on the other side of the
Atlantic should have been. And yet Macrons bargain remains essentially
unchanged, however progressive he considers it, however new and fresh he
claims to be.
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