The left coalition has won the most seats in France, but failed to get a majority. Macron’s party is second, with LaPen third, though with more seats than ever before.
This is a result of candidates who were in third or worse place dropping out so as to not split the vote.
As a result it’s unclear who will form the next government, and how. La Pen is correct in saying:
“National Rally leader Le Pen, expected to make a fourth run for the French presidency in 2027, said the elections laid the groundwork for “the victory of tomorrow.”
“The reality is that our victory is only deferred,” she added. But Le Pen’s older sister, Marie-Caroline, was among her party’s losers Sunday, defeated by a leftist candidate and just 225 votes in her district.
It’s clear that the Center can’t stop the right. Policies like increasing the retirement age and various other austerity measures aren’t popular and can’t fix France’s economy. Macron’s reign has seen repeated mass protests and strikes, often violent.
For the Left to take over in the next election they need to deliver at least a bit. It may not be impossible: the right might vote with them on some issues, such as rolling back the pension age increase (which they opposed) and they may be able to convince the center to vote with them on other issues.
In addition, when they are stopped from pursuing popular policies like taxing the rich to pay for social programs, they need to scream to high heavens and make the case that with a majority they will be able to deliver their entire program.
Much of the problem in France has been that when Neoliberals want to do the right thing, like fight climate change, they do it in the most regressive way possible, hurting workers and farmers, rather than making the rich pay. Outlawing private jets and taxing the rich, then using the money to pay farmers to make necessary changes rather than forcing farmers to take the hit is a winning policy.
France now has a real chance to avoid fascism. Let’s hope the left can maneuver well enough to make it happen.
Jan Wiklund
The French economy is dropping in terms of output, labour efficiency etc, and would need lots of investments. Unfortunately, neither of the blocs offer that, if one is to believe Michael Robers, https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2024/06/29/france-macrons-gamble/. The best any of them can offer is a lot of tax-paid consumption.
There could be a lot of investments in solar panels and windmills, which would relieve the country of fossil fuels which is good for the economy as well as the climate. But that would probably not happen. I live in a small French town where any alternative to gas is prohibited for museal reasons. Solar panels wouldn’t fit into the medieval architecture. And I have seen on a map that it is so in all the towns and villages in the département, and Monsieur le maire shrugs his épaules and says it is impossible to change what Patrimoine de France has decided.
In France it seems that the bureaucrats have the last word in everything. That was also what OECD found when they checked the bureaucratic efficiency of its member states some twenty years ago. Countries with experience of Code Napopléon were the worst.
Feral Finster
Macron knows he is a lame duck. Come 2027, he will bugger off to New York to be a visiting fellow at some think tank or maybe he will decamp for San Francisco to start a venture capital fund.
Right now, Macron’s sole overriding concerns are 1. The War on Russia, and 2. The War On Gaza. (The welfare of france and of french citizens is of zero concern, except to the extent they further 1, and 2.). Macron will be able to get enough support from the left to keep those two projects going for the time being, by offering carrots and stick as necessary.
different clue
If the Right parliamembers vote against any good and beneficial thing, it will be for the same political reason that Trump instructed the Republican Senators to vote against the Immigration Reform bill . . . . in order to preserve the problem for Trump to run on. The French Right might well wish to preserve all the problems to run again on, as well as demonstrating that the Left can’t deliver anything.
If the Macronists vote against any good and beneficial thing, it will be out of pure spite and vengeance. ” If we can’t have France, let no-one have France. If we can’t have France, let there be no France left for anyone to have.”
I don’t know enough to predict that that’s what the Macronists will do. But IF they do that, that will be the reason.
Purple Library Guy
Really, I think castles with solar panels would be rad. And I’m a major castle fan. But I suppose it would be hard to convince the functionaries.
mago
There are French villages where traditional cuisine is preserved while it’s automat all the way elsewhere, and that’s the best way I can frame the French predicament.
Not to simplify or anything.
Bon apetit.
capelin
@ Feral Finster “Macron knows he is a lame duck.”
I find it interesting how many lame ducks are exiting the pond around the same time – Sunak, Macron, Biden, Trudeau. “whoa, s’not my shitty policies that’s fouled the pond” will be the universal cry. Er, quack.
–
“Right now, Macron’s sole overriding concerns are 1. The War on Russia, and 2. The War On Gaza. (The welfare of france and of french citizens is of zero concern, except to the extent they further 1, and 2.)”
–
@ dc “The French Right might well wish to preserve all the problems to run again on, as well as demonstrating that the Left can’t deliver anything.”
And there will be plenty of problems, including the squeeze on french energy resulting from 1). Not just gas, but (not sure where I was reading it, maybe here?) France being heavily dependant on nuke plants, and thus uranium from Africa, and Russia is pinching those supply points. Long suffering Africa.
capelin
Candace Owens on Jimmy Dore recently spoke regarding Macron’s marriage. I could see the French public having some awareness of this, but it never making it into foreign media, so it could have been a factor, on top of all the other problems.
I have not researched it beyond this, but they’re all lizard people anyway so why not.
https://youtu.be/81ec0BTdAd0
This is the link to that segment.
The full 1hr interview was my first exposure to Owens. Agree on much, disagree on some. Being able to wager 150k with Piers Morgan definitely puts her in a different class than me. Smart fierce woman. Anti-Zionist conservative Christian.
Jan Wiklund
To those who think solar panels in France is a matter of all or nothing, there are solar cells on thin films that can be made looking like tiles. But they are equally forbidden. I am not even allowed to put in a heat pump.
Nobody can explain why houses from the 17th-18th-19th century must look like the late 20th century (they have electricity, some of them have big shop windows). But 21st century is beyond the pole. I guess the rules were introduced in the 80s or 90s.
By the way, I am a big fan of terroir – the concept that each region has its own food culture. The world is getting too much alike everywhere, it’s good that the French keep up some variation. But that can’t be done by bans alone, there must be some carrots too.
Mark Pontin
What’s happening in France is in part simply one more manifestation of a problem for all the former top-dog countries — and not just the West — as the world becomes de-industrialized, or post-industrial. After the discussion of the UK’s situation here the other day, I checked a chart of the top ten manufacturing countries. The UK is still on it, near the bottom, at ninth position. France is eighth, with little difference between its 1.9% of global manufacturing and the UK’s 1.8 %.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/02/countries-manufacturing-trade-exports-economics/
1. China – 28.4% Global Manufacturing Output
2. United States – 16.6% Global Manufacturing Output
3. Japan – 7.5% Global Manufacturing Output
4. Germany – 5.8% Global Manufacturing Output
5. India – 3.3% Global Manufacturing Output
6. South Korea – 3% Global Manufacturing Output
7. Italy – 2.3% Global Manufacturing Output
8. France – 1.9% Global Manufacturing Output
9. United Kingdom – 1.8% Global Manufacturing Output
10. Indonesia – 1.4% Global Manufacturing Output
Likewise, French population at 68,373,433 is close to the UK’s, which is 67,596,281. As for GDP — granted, a questionable measure of a state’s real situation — the UK is at ninth position with $4.029 trillion, and France at tenth with $3.988 trillion.
Of course, manufacturing figures for all the countries on the list above show a big drop-off after the top two: China with 28.4% global manufacturing and the US with 16.6% .
So, three points, perhaps banal but inescapable —
[1] France’s contribution to global manufacturing output — like the UK’s and Italy’s – is miniscule compared to China’s. China could grow its manufacturing output in the next year or two so its additional manufacturing was as big as that of France, the UK, and Italy combined, and it wouldn’t make much difference to China’s position.
In 2024, manufacturing in France — and the UK and Italy — is most significant, therefore, as a source for employment within those countries.
[2] Interestingly, too, Italy is at seventh position with 2.3% of global manufacturing output, *ahead* of both France and the UK.
Nevertheless, London is currently filled with Italians, who’ve essentially replaced Poles post-Brexit, and when I ask them what brought them here, they’re all financial immigrants, at least temporarily. Why? Many complain about sclerotic over-regulation back home. Certainly, Italian GDP per capita is $39,580; while French GDP per capita is $60,339, and UK is $51,075.
So, Italy, with a manufacturing output almost a quarter larger than the UK’s, is nonetheless in a worse place.
[3] Furthermore, of course, should France, the UK, or Italy raise their global manufacturing outputs and build new manufacturing capacity within their respective borders, in 2024 those factories will employ a fraction of the workers they did thirty or forty years ago.
Here’s a factory in China that reduced its workers by 90%, for instance —
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/02/after-replacing-90-of-employees-with-robots-this-companys-productivity-soared/
The fact is, in 1970 manufacturing comprised 16.8 percent of the French workforce, and now in 2024 it’s 4.82%. And even if manufacturing returned to France, it wouldn’t solve their employment situation.
https://www.statista.com/outlook/io/manufacturing/france
This is a structural problem for almost all Western states like France (and the UK and Italy), and the standard prescriptions of the current Left and Right are fairly useless in the face of it.
Sure, neoliberalism is pretty much the worst guiding ideology from every POV – that is, unless you subscribe to an Accelerationist POV, because you believe neoliberalism hastens the big crack-up. But “taxing the rich to pay for social programs” is hitting its limits in countries like France and the UK under any standard model of economics – and since France and the UK exist within an international system of economics, they can’t escape features of that system like balance of payments accounts.
In the UK, 54.2% of people (36 million) live in households receiving more in benefits than they contribute in taxes.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/bulletins/theeffectsoftaxesandbenefitsonhouseholdincome/financialyearending2022/pdf
Figures for France are harder to find. But France spends more on social spending as a percentage of GDP at 30.1% than the UK does at 20.6%.
So this is a deep structural problem under conventional economic paradigms. As long as those paradigms prevail, I don’t see how conventional Left “redistribution” solves it, nor where “growth” is necessarily going to come from.
Senator-Elect
Good commentary, as usual, Ian. It would be nice to see the left take such an obvious political winner as linking taxes on the rich or private jets with direct payments to farmers or workers, but they seem unable to do so. Or if they do, the media ignores them and plays up the far right instead. With the left’s moment in the sun, now is the time to take full rhetorical advantage, at least.
Regarding fiscal capacity and investment, see a reaction article in The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/08/marine-le-pen-left-france-election-far-right), where various pundits talk about the EU fiscal rules and France’s limited spending room for the conventional and dead wrong view. Thankfully, Piketty had a good article last week in that same outlet (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/03/france-hard-left-new-popular-front-far-right) saying that the left isn’t radical at all. Funny how some economists say right-wing policies are all that will work and others say the opposite. You would think that they would mostly agree in a scientific discipline, but I digress.
Ian Welsh
Mark,
excellent comment.
As I’ve written before, the problem is that to regain manufacturing Western nations have to crash their cost structures. This isn’t impossible and it doesn’t even have to hurt most people. Crash the stock markets, crash housing and rent, stop profiteering in medical and food and other industries.
To pay for making it not hurt too much, however, you’re going to have to tax the rich and change a pile of laws. You might have to do some sort of debt jubilee. It’ll be messy, and no one has either the guts or vision to do it.
As for employment, we’re going to have to distribute welfare without demanding so much of it, though there’s a fair bit of new work to be done fixing the environment and what not. Everyone once thought that increasing mechanization would eventually lead to 4 day weeeks, then even three day and that’s the way to go. If we can produce enough with less workers, that should be a GOOD thing not some fucking crisis.
I suppose the best model is Solon.
Purple Library Guy
In some ways, we ran into the limitations of full employment in the face of increasing productivity decades ago, around halfway through last century. This was at the same time potentially a crisis of profits. Those in power have been doing these little fixes ever since–basically
–Creating more demand, trying to get people to have new “needs”
–Expanding the effective demand of people without that much money by using debt
–Planned obsolescence, so they can make the same thing a bunch of times
–Bullshit jobs, including much of the “service” economy
In theory, as productivity increased one might expect people to simply not have to work as hard. But in capitalism, they don’t want that for a couple of key reasons. First, if people work less, that means you’re not maximizing how much is produced (whether goods or services or whatever), which means there is money left on the table. Second, under capitalism, the capitalists want a very firm line drawn between people who are fully employed and people who are not and form the “reserve army of labour”; the worse off the latter are compared to the former, the more wages can be pulled down and profits increased. Third, if you have a capitalist firm and you increase productivity via increased automation or whatever (AI?), the point is to reduce the payroll and increase profits, not to pay just as much so just as many people can make just as good a living working half as hard.
Meanwhile, because of the second and third thing, in capitalism many left forces like unions fear productivity increases and technological change, because it just means they’ll be laid off.
If we had a system run in some way by the people, then sure, increased productivity and automation could mean everyone works a 10 hour week or something, and every further increase would mostly go to increased leisure. But we don’t so it doesn’t, it just creates all these dislocations, and the little fixes are kind of running out of room.
Mark Pontin
Ian W: “If we can produce enough with less workers, that should be a GOOD thing not some fucking crisis.”
Quite. I came across Keynes’s ‘Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren’ at a fairly early age and have never believed that *theoretically* he was wrong.
Of course, *practically* speaking the obstacles — the socio-heirarchical ones — pretty much amount to entirely reorganizing human life, which Keynes acknowledged in his essay.
Also, climate change featured nowhere in Keynes’s thinking