France’s Macron Wants a Technocratic Presidential State

So, Macron has a huge majority, won on an historically low turnout. He has spent the summer fighting France’s Labor unions, his first priority being to overhaul France’s labor laws. For example, right now, workers can’t be made to answer emails outside of work hours. Macron will end that.

Of course, the changes are far more wide-ranging than that. The long argument has been that France’s economy isn’t all that it could be because it is not flexible: It’s hard to fire people, and you can’t make them do anything you want them to when you manage them. Arguably, you can make them do very little.

Macron, who ran the vastly unpopular economic policy of the last government (something people seem to have forgotten) is a dedicated technocrat.

In his recent speech, Macron said he wanted to shrink the legislature by one third, from over 900. And he thinks that the legislature should legislate less, and just judge what the executive does. This amounts, of course, to passing only bills suggested by him. Additionally, and of course, his party controls both houses of parliament right now, but this goes beyond normal French politics, where bills are not just suggested by the President and Prime Minister.

(The President appoints the Prime Minister, and the PM is then generally seen as following the President in most things.)

So this isn’t a small thing, it’s Macron saying he wants the power of a Westminister-style Prime Minister with a solid majority. Generally and theoretically, in this type of country, parliament can not simply do what the President orders. But in these days of tight party discipline, a PM with a majority is, in practice, close to being an elected dictator.

Such strong executives have their advantages, no doubt, but Macron does want a change that gives him more power, and he’s willing to go to a plebiscite to get it.

Then he will use it to remove French workers’ rights and reduce their wages and benefits. Because that is what he wants; it is the core neoliberal project, in which Macron is a true believer.

Macron is “young” but he’s not that young; he’s of the generation in which if you wanted to be taken seriously, and have any power, you had to sign on to neoliberal verities.

The French are going to get what they voted for, good and hard.

But little to none of what Macron does cannot be undone, and his making the executive more powerful may turn out to be a mistake in five or ten years, when someone like LaPen or Melenchon becomes president and wields those powers for which Macron fought.

Simply put, neoliberal policies never actually work. They can produce brief sugar highs of frothy economies, and France may get some of that, as money boils away from the middle and up to the top and housing bubbles and others stupidity are engaged. But this is late neoliberalism, the French middle class and poor are already suffering, and I don’t think enough bribes will be given to them to keep them onboard. They gave Macron a huge majority, yes, but on low turnout. This is neoliberalism’s last big chance in France.

When it fails, and it will, the French will turn either to the right or to the left. Within a decade, most likely.

And the boy prince, riding so high now, will be left spluttering like Tony Blair, wondering why all his wonderful plans didn’t work out, and assuming that those who reject his brilliance are buffoons.

So it shall be.

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