"Mitterrand's negative economic legacy still weighs on us!"

Erwan Le Noan is a strategy consultant, member of the scientific council of the Foundation for political innovation (liberal think-tank) and lecturer at Sciences Po. He is the author of

La France des Opportunities

(Les Belles Lettres, 2017 ).

Forty years ago, François Mitterrand was elected President.

This accession of the left to power had aroused the wildest hopes, as well as the worst fears.

Neither were perfectly realized: the alternation promised too much - and it was illusory to believe that a man could have such a great influence on the course of the country.

1981 nonetheless remains a turning point.

In the first place because the advent of a new majority has brought a democratic breath and helped to modernize France, with measures such as the abolition of the death penalty or the liberalization of the audiovisual sector.

In the second place, because while the Anglo-Saxon world made the choice of a turn favorable to the market, soon joined by the whole of the OECD, France turned towards an ideology at the end of the race: socialism. This doctrine, which promised revolution without physical violence, could be defined by an illusion: the possibility of organizing the economy centrally, through public power, giving primacy to equality.

Whether it favors authoritarian redistribution, in its most left-wing line, or claims to rely on the market to aim for the best distribution of situations (social democracy) or opportunities (social-liberalism), its variations have in common the idea that a supposedly enlightened entity would be able to define the orientations of society, better than the multitude of companies and individuals - and would therefore be justified in imposing them.

The economic and social measures that François Mitterrand inspired and the reflexes he anchored remain present.

In fact, for twenty years, most of the political debate has focused on essentially societal variations.

Erwan Le Noan

This choice left a lasting mark on French economic policies: beyond the alternations and despite the corrections or successions of nuances. With a few temporary and quickly extinguished exceptions, no majority wanted or managed to really question it. If he no longer has any real intellectual vigor, the measures he inspired and the reflexes he anchored remain present.

In fact, for twenty years, most of the political debate has focused on essentially societal variations: more secure and identity-based for some, more 'progressive' for others, with invectives all the more vigorous as these markers have become. the only distinctive ones. Conversely, in terms of economic policy, an impression of continuity emerges, with successive governments mistrusting the free market and using taxation, public expenditure and standards as privileged tools for their economic management - all of them almost finding themselves in an aversion to liberalism.

Yet this policy is a failure. It is in terms of employment. Out of the 159 quarters which separate the 2nd of 1981 from the 4th of 2020, France has had at least 2 million unemployed for 146 quarters (consistently since 1984, with the exception of one quarter in 1991) and a rate of unemployment greater than or equal to 7% for 153 quarters (and 8% for 130). Worse, the youth unemployment rate (15-24) has never been lower than 14% - and even greater than or equal to 19% for 26 years in total. The management of public finances is not more honorable: the debt, of 22% of the GDP in 1981 (and then already growing), is now around 116%; since 1974, all state budgets have been in deficit, confirming continuity beyond the labels.

The French decline has resulted in sluggish competitiveness and a drop in per capita GDP compared to the United States and Germany

Erwan Le Noan

Even more strikingly, the French decline has resulted in sluggish competitiveness and a drop in per capita GDP relative to the United States and Germany.

The Minister of the Economy himself recently deplored the “

impoverishment

 ” of the country.

The list could go on. The result is systematically the same, from education in difficulty to the overdue police, from record taxation in insufficient public services: an ever more expensive system for an ever less certain service. In its relentless search for resources, socialism has inexorably run out of taxpayers' money, crushing the private and associative sectors in the process. Quantity has been privileged over quality, the financing of structures over that of services. For want of having been corrected and for the ease provided by flight from the obstacle of reform, it turned out to be a dead end.

This sagging did not prevent economic, social or artistic entrepreneurs from creating and shining.

He did not prohibit volunteers from shaping the solidarity that was lacking.

But at the same time, a social unrest has set in, accelerated by globalization and the digital revolution which have upset past ecosystems, accentuated competition and renewed lifestyles.

Instead of redistributing the chances, we distributed the places, in a precarious and depressing Malthusian balance: relatively equal, but immobile.

Politics has evolved into shortage management.

Erwan Le Noan

Instead of adapting to better support these transformations, public action continued its course, claiming to erect illusory barriers against the changes that assailed it. Incapable of renewing the prospects for mobility, it stubbornly insisted on promoting equality. French society has found itself frozen and fragmented: when you can no longer promise a better future, you just try to prevent a worse one. Instead of redistributing the chances, we distributed the places, in a precarious and depressing Malthusian balance: relatively equal, but immobile. In many ways, politics has turned into scarcity management.

The middle and working classes were the first to be affected: the school, the police, the hospital first deteriorated in their neighborhoods. Seized by the fear of downgrading, they worried about their future. Anxious for their standard of living, they fought to protect what they had, also nourishing an overall conservatism. The denial of their realities by part of the elites has made the success of populisms of all kinds. The feeling of injustice prevailed and the demand for recognition turned into muffled anger.

Today, the main government parties, failing to have renewed their offer of economic policy, are reduced to chasing their respective extremes on the societal aspects. But none, with rare exceptions, questions the root cause of this situation: socialism, left and right. Yet it would be time to say goodbye to him.