The Blackwell Companion to Sociology (107 page)

20,000 on December 16).

The scope and depth of the events presented the press with the difficult

problem of reconciling what was under way with over a decade of ``conventional

wisdom'' ± itself a mythic construction ± of a depoliticized, privatized, French working-class consumer, a sort of French version of thèèmbourgoisement''

thesis that had been advanced earlier and elsewhere, and expressed in popular-

ized social statistics emphasizing the consumerism, the rates of private home

ownership, the variety of lifestyles, as well as the increasing distance from

traditional left parties of French working-class people (see, for example, Men-

dras, 1991; Forse et al., 1993; Mermet, 1995). In effect, the events of 1995

``colored with an intense life all the details of the composition,'' to repeat Sorel's terminology, of an alternative myth that was embodied, enacted, and therefore

illustrative of that other working-class reality, the one that is certainly much more ephemeral socially, but which can have enormous symbolic and material

effects. Writing in the December 19 issue of the newspaper Liberation, the

sociologist Edgar Morin wrote of the upheaval:

This general awakening and multiplication of solidarity between workers at their work stations, and between these workers and their families, their friends, and

neighbors, and the birth of communication and mutual aid between neighbors at

home and at work showed that the paralysis of the strike served as a spontaneous regeneration of the social tissue and helped us to rediscover a basic psychic health that brings openness toward the other. . . . We can see that the strikes have generated a great source of good will that underscores just how much it is trapped and locked up by our everyday existence in contemporary society. (p. 10)

The judgments and public observations of intellectuals had an important place

in the process of constructing the strikes and their effects in mythic terms.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Pierre Bourdieu has played a central role during

and since the strikes by putting the considerable symbolic capital that he has

accumulated (as holder of the prestigious Chair in Sociology at the ColleÁge

de France) at the service of the developing movement. His speech, in ``solidarity with those who are now fighting to change society,'' which was made to

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railway workers at the Gare de Lyon, and reprinted in at least four national

newspapers, immediately placed the strike in mythic terms: `Ì have come here

to express our support to those who have been fighting for the last three

weeks against the destruction of a civilization, associated with the existence of public service, the civilization of republican equality of rights, rights to education, to health, culture, research, art, and, above all, work'' (Bourdieu, 1998, p. 24).

Such pronouncements (by various intellectuals, as well as Bourdieu, who has

sought to organize them in various collective bodies) not only placed the strike in an epic context, but served to raise the strike by separating it from the mundane (``just another strike by self-interested civil servants''). That is, they used the powers granted by their symbolic capital (accumulated in other domains) to

perform acts of ``symbolic levitation,'' simultaneously raising the stakes and

lifting events into the realm of the sacred. Of course, such symbolic gesturing

might appear groundless were the other social act, that of assembly and collec-

tive action, not demonstrating in vivid fashion the existence (and therefore the plausibility) of a movement. As I suggested above, a fuller analysis would require a social inquiry of the strike supporters (and opponents) themselves, including

their social and institutional backgrounds and trajectories, and the stakes

involved in taking this or that stance, an analysis that has been attempted

elsewhere (Duval et al., 1998).

As might be expected, the opponents of the strikes sought tò`frame'' the

events differently, by attempting to keep them within the realm of the mundane,

expressing the inevitability of the Juppe plan, or some similar version, emphasizing utopianism of the strikers, their divorce from ``reality,'' etc. This symbolic conflict between the two sides was illustrated in thè`battle of the lists,'' two competing petitions on the strikes that were circulated among intellectuals, and then placed prominently in the press. The one petition, viewed as being ``headed''

by the sociologist Bourdieu (by virtue of the prominence of his name), expressed unambiguous support of the strikers, while the other, ``headed'' by Touraine and Wieviorka (authors of a well known book on the worker's movement) as well as

others, took a view which, while not explicitly supporting the program of the

right (a politically untenable position for an intellectual in France), but recognizing the inevitability of reform, offered unambiguous support for the only trade

union leader not supporting the strikes (lauding Nicole Notat for thè`courage''

of her pragmatism).

The reverberations from the strikes have been enormous on several levels.

The immediate issues were mostly settled favorably for the workers, for while

the government did retain the ability to control social service spending in the

future, it was forced to retreat on every other issue, including job cuts, reform of the pension systems, and the raising of health premiums (in fact, the movement

that emerged agreed that reforms might be needed, but that they should be

preconditioned on the right to a decent existence, in employment, housing,

health, and education, which would retain a priority over the rights of property and finance (Bensaid, 1996). In the political realm, the left was returned to

power in the next set of parliamentary elections, though the presence of an

The Myth of the Labor Movement

461

ongoing extra-parliamentary social movement opposition has served as strict

discipline for the Jospin government, just as it did the previous one.

The strikes generated potentially important shifts within the French labor

movement, as two old political and institutional antagonists, the communist-

dominated CGT trade union federation and the anti-communist FO (a product

of the Cold War), reached a historic rapprochement after the strikes, when their leaders (the communist Louis Viannet and the anti-communist Marc Blondel)

shook hands and embraced on national television. They are now both a part of à`common front'' that has animated the broader social movement that has developed since the strikes. The other significant result of the strikes has been the emergence and growth of two new militant trade union groupings, SUD

(``Solidarity, Unity, Democracy''), an autonomous movement of postal and tele-

communications workers, and FSU (`Ùnitary Union Federation''), a radical

faction of the Teacher's Union that has emerged as a significant force within

the labor movement and that has helped to animate and coordinate an important

movement of high school students.

The student movement, which has mobilized several nationwide strikes of

high school students demanding improvements in the educational system and the

labor market, is but one of a number of mobilizations among `èxcluded'' social

groups that has swept France in the past several years, and which has been

bound together with ± both in thè`public imagination'' and organizationally ±

the labor movement and groups of intellectuals. For example, within two years

following the strikes there was formed a movement of the homeless, centered on

the occupation of an unoccupied building for several months in an affluent Left

Bank neighborhood, which became a sort of mecca for thousands seeking social

absolution, and which was widely linked to the social impulses unleashed by the

strikes.

Later, a movement of the unemployed was forged out of the occupation of

government social service offices nationwide, and forced the immediate social

needs of the unemployed onto the national table. Supported by the labor move-

ment (a particularly meaningful institutional link), the level of organization was remarkable for those normally considered demoralized, and for those with such

few resources. Still later `ìllegal aliens'' were added to the growing ``Mouvement Sociale,'' as scores of African immigrants barricaded themselves in a cathedral, on hunger strike, ringed by hundreds of supporters, and forced the government

to reduce deportations and provide for further immigration appeals. The recent

``sacking'' of McDonald's outlets in southwest France, in protest over trade

requirements that allow for hormone-fed beef, has been the latest in a series of what are no longer separate initiatives, but are capable of being drawn into the vortex of a wider social movement umbrella.

Together, these movements have joined with the labor movement in ongoing

dialogue in an `Ètats Generaux du Mouvement Sociale,'' a sort of popular

congress to chart future developments, share resources, and coordinate actions.

While there have been extraordinary displays of mutual aid across these move-

ments, the linkages between them in the public imagination and within the

movements themselves have been equally the result of the coordinated activities

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of intellectuals to counter the media tendency to emphasize the sectional and

parochial interests of each. Indeed, an important outcome of the uprising has

been the remobilization of the intellectuals, who had been increasingly consid-

ered depoliticized and politically indifferent.

This process has been expressed in various ways since the strikes. The group

``Raisons d'Agir'' (``reasons to act'') was formed by several senior editors, journalists, and professors (Le Monde Diplomatique, Le Canard Enchaine, Liber,

etc.) to coordinate publishing schedules and to work together to increase the

critical impact of their work, with a strong emphasis on the social movements

themselves and critiques of the neoliberal orthodoxy (the best-selling ``Raisons d'Agir'' book series, under the direction of Bourdieu, has produced a number of

short, inexpensive, and politically charged books, geared to challenging the

neoliberal consensus, several of which have sold upwards of 200,000 copies).

In addition, within just the first three years, the number of publications devoted to the strikes has been quite remarkable. There have been no fewer than 13

books, 41 journal articles, 14 special issues of journals or magazines, four

conferences (with published transcripts), six student theses (``memoires universi-taires'') and 12 union or employer publications.

The French strikes and the solidarity that they demonstrated, combined with

the intellectuals' symbolic power to invoke, authorize, and ``name'' the events, have spawned a broad ``social movement'' that is, by all accounts, a significant social force in France and in Europe. In the strikes and their aftermath, à`working class'' was essentially remade, becoming not àùniversal class'' so much as a more cohesive social group whose demands and concerns have

become increasingly syncretized with the needs and demands of other social

groups. Further, what has developed in relation to this is a more coordinated and elaborated myth-making apparatus that is able to begin to offer an alternative to the myths of neoliberal ``globalization'' (and, above all, the myth of its inevitability and invincibility). For although opposed in content and much grander in

scale, the myths of global capitalism have a status comparable to the myth of the labor movement, to the extent that the myths of capitalism are also enacted

(through the seriality and enforced atomization of everyday life) and are

denominated by an extraordinarily powerful set of myth-making machines

(including the forces of mass media, the political process, academia, and the

economic realm to which everything else has become subordinate). Indeed,

societies everywhere are radically reconstructed to make the neoliberal mytho-

logy seem completely self-evident, so that, for example, the privatization of

public goods has become the practical context in which the market is posed as

the supreme arbiter of all human affairs, thus producing a reciprocally confirm-

ing ``reality'' that seems to foreclose any other. What the French strikes have

accomplished, therefore, is a breach in a socially constructed hermetic seal in

which the agents and institutions of global capitalism have sought to actively

institute ± symbolically and materially ± their own inevitability.

For both historical and cultural reasons, the specific lessons the French case

can offer for the American labor movement are few. In the USA, labor relations

are much more decentralized (unionism based in individual workplaces and

The Myth of the Labor Movement

463

individual companies, with a relatively weak national presence), there has been a very different political legacy, and employers enjoy an unusually large degree of freedom to mobilize economic and political resources to counter unions (Freeman, 1994). At the same time, the movement to reform the US labor movement,

if successful, will have a substantial impact on social relations in American

society. Unions will be larger and more socially representative of the labor

force as a whole, they will be more aggressive and will have more political

influence, and they will be linked to a broader set of social institutions (aca-

demic, religious, ethnic) that will, in turn, root unionism in the society more