There are few Western nations that face continuous unemployment akin to France. It is not uncommon for the unemployment to be over 9%, where it has been for every year in this decade with the exception of the two most recent years. Since 1970, general unemployment has been over 7%. The statistics on youth unemployment are worse; 16-24 year olds consistently record unemployment over 20%. Regrettably for the French, some demographics figures are higher. Among immigrant communities, 50% unemployment, especially among young men, is not uncommon. As recent events in French suburbs demonstrate, the latter statistics are not just discomforting but socially unstable.

But what is the cause of such abnormal unemployment. France is a rich and industrious nation with the 10th largest economy and home to dozens of global brands; L’Oreal and Dannon, for example. There are numerous intertwined causes for high employment, all of them rest with the lack of freedom in the French market place. What is needed in France is a new faith in the ‘free market’ that begins by discrediting the anti-capitalist views of many in France.

There are in societies those who look at entrepreneurs and see not creative men whom have bequeathed the people with untold goods and prosperity but men with malevolent intent that the state must control for otherwise they would exploit the people. This is a view that is quite common in France, where every entrepreneur from the merchant down the street employing 10 to the head of a major corporation is derided for their supposed greed, and where efficiency is equated with exploitation.

This world view assumes that workers are pawns and corporations are “islands of power,” and with the ability to exploit workers for their own profit-seeking ends. Thus most French workers, even those who prefer some degree of freedom in negotiating contract, believe that some form of government-mandated “protection” from employer free will must be guaranteed to workers in the form of contracts that necessities some degree of security and compensation. Many in the French public and intelligentsia fail to comprehend that in a free market, laborers will negotiate to their advantage insofar is the costs of hiring them does not outweigh the costs of their production. If laborers do not find employment to be worthy of their effort, they are free to seek a better prospect.

A survey of French high-school textbooks partially explains this cultural mindset. France’s school system mandates that students select a focus for their baccalauréat, one of the three main options is titled “Economics and Social Science.” A widely-used textbook, according to The Economist, “devotes page after page to Marxist theories of production, class struggle and bourgeois exploitation. In a section on the labour market, it states that ‘employers seek to divide workers in order to reduce solidarity between different categories of staff.’” Economics Professor Daniel Cohen, who was also a member of the Prime Minister’s Council of Economic Analysis, describes the course as “a radical neo-Marxist amalgam of sociology and soft economics.” One can reasonable assume that such logic, or lack thereof, penetrates other French texts at the high school and college level; particularly in sociology and history.

Such teaching both in the classroom and in the public sphere has created a culture where the French greatly fear any absence of state power, which they view as a counter-protective-weight to businesses. As Mr. Cohen noted, “France must be the only country in which a [Socialist] Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin, feels obliged to apologise [sic] the day after for saying on TV that ‘the state is not omnipotent.’” There is a fear that unrestrained efforts to achieve profits will lead to exploitation of the “people”. This is a country where the press exalts as a hero the Société Générale trader who robbed the nation’s second largest bank of $7.3 billion. The trader was called “the Che Guevera of finance,” to the “James Bond of SocGen,” to a “modern hero” among French pundits. To many French, businesses are always seemingly bad and the employeers are in a constant struggle with them. Such teaching is undermining French in the ‘free market’ and thus undermining economic growth in the country.

But what is to be done?

Prescribing a method of tactic to any French government is not easy for there seems no path that is not going to confront strong resistance. One could argue that an incremental approach is the most practical, but past efforts to challenge entrenched entitlements, no matter how mild, have brought out strong protest. Take, for instance, the 2006 effort of right-of-center Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin to ease firing procedures for all employees under the age of 26 with less than two-years employment in the form of a new job contract known by its French abbreviation CPE (contrat premiere embauche, “first job contract”). The measure, which did not apply to most French workers, was met by a month-long protest movement that included campus shutdowns and street hooliganism. Although Monsieur de Villepin maintained his stand for a while, in the end he did what French ministers often do: back down to the protesters. If something as tempered as the CPE can shut down universities; anything more substantial, such as entirely scrapping the CDD and CDI, would stir up larger opposition.

Before attempting any measure of reform, France’s reforming class needs to build the intellectual and popular support for the free market. In a recent GlobalScan survey, only 41% of French respondents agreed that “the free enterprise and free-market economy is the best system on which to base the future of the world.” France was the only Western nation where a majority disagreed with the aforementioned statement. Clearly perceptions of the free market must change if reform is to have any hope. But the French right often does not seem up to the task. The manner in which the aloof de Villepin passed through the CPE is why the French have a difficult time trusting reformers: de Villepin held no debate on the law, but used an obscure parliamentary law to pass it through without hesitation. French politicians are notoriously elite and above the far (90% of them come from France’s ‘Ivy Leagues’), and many fail to understand the need to converse with the general people in order to achieve reform. The free market reformers also have an unfortunate habit of undercutting themselves. Instead of consistently defending the free market, the French right will often pander to leftist sentiments in the naïve hope that such rhetoric will neuter the opposition. During the Société Générale fiasco, supposedly reform-minded President Nicholas Sarkozy publicly called for the resignation of the president of SG, a private bank, and proclaimed: “We want a capitalism of entrepreneurs, not a capitalism of speculators.” Meaning what exactly is not known. And it was Messer de Villepin who declared in his inaugural speech: “Globalization is not an ideal. . . . It cannot be our destiney.” As The Economist observed: “With liberals like that, no wonder the French have trouble trusting the markets.” It is true French public opinion records a suspicion of capitalism, and perhaps this is why the French right feels to the need to walk a fine line between statism and a mixed-economy for fear of provoking a backlash that will lead the country further left. But opinion polls are superficial and a large and growing segment of the French populace resent the maximum working hours and high taxes. The French right would be wise to head the advice of libertarian polemicist Ayn Rand whom outlines the three paramouont rules of consensus: 1) in any conflict between the same basic principles it is the consistently argued one that wins 2) in any colloboration between different principles is is the irrational one that wins 3) when basic principles are clear the rational (capitalist) side wins, when they are not the irrational (socialist) side triumps. The French right must consistently argue for the free market. It has nothing to gain from incorporating leftism, while the left would have gained an added foot in the door. Finally, the French need to understand in clear language that their insecurity is not due to capitalism and globalization but by the exact policies intending to create job security. A classic case of a government act having the exact opposite effect of that which is intended. If, otherwise, the French right continues down the path of rhetorically minicing the left, then the “logic of the events [they] created by their” attempts as appeasement “will keep dragging [France] further and further to the left.”

French reformers must further shed any aloofness, drench themselves with the masses and unapologetically make the case for change. Their unabashed defense of capitalism will no doubt appear radical, and they will likely face some electoral losses. But patience is part of the cost for genuine reform. In 1964 Barry Goldwater lost to President Johnson in the largest popular vote landslide in the nation’s history, today to the American left he is the acceptable image of conservatism. It takes time before a paradigm shift occurs, but it can only take place if the proponents of change do not compromise on basic principles. The French right might need to sollow the bitter pill of electoral loss and concentrate on taking their massage, consistently and continously, to the French public and use a new base of support for future attainment of power and reform. Given the French climate, it appears this is the only option. Marxist-rooted dogmatism in France is strong and the trade unions are powerful forces of mobilization, but this is also the nation that gave the world Alexis de Tocqueville and Frédéric Bastiat, and it is a nation that is capable of restoring liberté. All is needed is a new generation with the will and, to quote Bastiat’s seminal work The Law, France needs to “give freedom a chance-freedom, which is an act of faith in God and in His handiwork.”

- Marco Villa