Vive ... What, Exactly?

American observers have often looked at France, particularly its leftist legacy, with an eye roll, as if this venerable republican tradition, which gave us, inter alia, the Declaration of the Rights of Man, were the work of a precocious but unruly adolescent. Now it's eye roll time again, as on Thursday a Socialist Party insurgency fell just two votes short of passing a no confidence motion that would have brought down its own Socialist government. Even the French were surprised: "That's something unbelievable," sputtered centrist scholar Gérard Grunberg. "We've never seen that before."

But bemused incredulity is not an adequate response to this byzantine event. At issue is France's proposed labor reform law, which is intended to lower rampant unemployment by offering employers greater flexibility: hiring and firing, work hours, overtime pay, many of the highly structured worker protections in France would be relaxed. In itself the law is perhaps not the bogey man it has been made out to be: French unions would still wield real bargaining power, and many protections would remain. But the precedent that a Socialist government with a substantial majority would promote a rollback of workers' rights is for many on the Left--including 56 Socialist deputies--a red line that must be defended with protest marches, the Nuit Debout occupation of many public spaces, and now perhaps the demise through schism of the Socialist Party François Mitterand brought to national power 35 years ago.

But is this just France's problem, which we can dispatch with a wink? No, I would say, it is rather the most advanced and articulate version of a struggle that is happening all over the developed world. In America we have Donald Trump making ridiculous promises to launch a global trade war that will 'make America great again.' And we have Bernie Sanders earnestly gathering support, especially among the young, for a 'revolution' that will lead us out of the impasse keenly felt by our most promising young people. In France, but also in the Netherlands, Italy, Austria, Denmark, and indeed most of Western Europe you find nationalist parties growing rapidly on platforms that are nearly as bigoted and ignorant as Trump's. Free trade agreements that define the 'global economy' are particularly under fire, as are the tax havens and other lucrative perks that make the financial sector's domination of the global economy such a repugnant reality. The crisis signaled by these various manifestations of revolt or discontent constitute a civilizational impasse, and France--with its traditions of rational discourse and an articulate left-wing alternative--is merely taking the lead in a debate the rest of us can't obfuscate forever in personality contests and demagogic outbursts.

The crux of the debate--improbably signaled by this rather modest French labor law--is something much bigger than its technical details. What kind of society are we building? Will there be job security? Or a ceaseless shuffle among independent contracts (gigs, to use that offensive buzz term), low-wage service jobs, part-time, short-term expedients, unpaid internships, with a minority of high-paying high-tech jobs for the lucky few? Can these new forms of employment generate mass satisfaction, as the old ones did for a generation? The social unrest that is surfacing everywhere in no-nothing political movements suggests not.

On the other hand, I don't think the French or any of us can hold on to that previous system in a world that really, like it or not, has become globalized. The race to the bottom has already been won--and the working classes in the once-dominant economies have lost. What remains in countries like France, Italy, or the US, is the darwinian struggle to claim one of a diminishing number of winner slots, or accept the second-class status of the hustler ('gig') economy. Not the sort of choice that will fend off the Trump supporters for long.

 One conceivable option is an older-style socialist one: capture some of that excess profit lolling offshore and use it to create a minimum income floor for everyone, to reduce at least the worst forms of poverty and social exclusion. Such a program is finding supporters among conventional liberal theorists, and may appear in Elizabeth Warren's platform in 2020 or 2024. I have my doubts, but I can't say I've looked at it in depth.

The other, less formed but infinitely more promising alternative, is the one I call by its shorthand name: eco-socialism. This points to a new sort of economy, powered by green energy, grounded in local, sustainable production, building social forms around cooperation and solidarity, with localized democratic control. Very scattered forms of this brave new world--co-ops of various sorts, sustainable agriculture, a 'shared' economy--are appearing here and there. It lacks mass support or a global theory, but 'horizontal' experiments in power-sharing such as Occupy Wall Street, Los Indignados, and now Nuit Debout are early rehearsals for such a transformation. Is it feasible? I don't know. But if the alternative is authoritarian retrenchment behind a Marine Le Pen or a Donald Trump, sign me up for a test drive to a different future. Please.