Let Them Eat Cake
“Travailler, pour qui? Pourquoi?”
Across France, daily life has once again ground to a halt, some 2 million citizens having committed to a grand nationwide protest, all in search of the answer to the succinct question posed by one protestor’s billboard: Work, for who? For what?
The French relationship with capital, labor, and the elite is one that has deep roots in history. The landmark French revolution of 1789 toppled a monarchy in the top 10% who held 90% of all wealth, one of the textbook examples of popular unrest driven by wealth inequality. Monarchical France’s decadence was such that Queen Marie Antoinette allegedly said “Let them eat cake” in response to reports that the peasants were starving from a lack of bread.
The quote has reached practically mythlike status, and ignoring its tenuous relationship with the truth, it represents a crucial element of popular resistance to the domination of an out-of-touch elite, and the need to rein them in by maintaining crucial social protections. Since then, France has been ground zero for all sorts of political experiments against the domination of authority and capital, ranging from the Paris Commune of 1871 to the riots of 1968.
Now, President Emmanuel Macron’s proposed legislation to reform pensions by raising the retirement age from 62 to 64 has ignited the fury of the entire nation, with protests gripping locales from the national capital of Paris to the tiny island of Ouessant off Brittany. The French are renowned for their striking, but there’s no understating the monumental nature of these protests–the collective public enragement at Macron’s legislative proposal is a stark demonstration of the uniquely French opposition to capitalist work culture.
From an American perspective, a reaction so apoplectic to labor reform would be practically unthinkable, but the French conception of labor is one utterly foreign to its American equivalent. To understand why France is so firmly opposed to a further two-year increase in the retirement age, one only needs to turn to the rhetoric of the protesters. With quotes like “Retirement before Arthritis” and “Defend Our Special Retirement System”, it’s easy to see that French people don’t regard the proposed retirement laws as mere legislation, but as a violation of a fundamentally French right–labor laws sacrosanct enough to be deemed a national institution.
Labor laws have long been subject to enormous controversy in France, a legacy that began with the left-leaning Popular Front’s Matignon Accords in 1936, which established rights to strike and the 40-hour workweek, among other innovations. In the infamous student protests of May 1968, when France teetered on the edge of collapse, its government in tatters and its president an erstwhile refugee, the cause was once again labor–over ten million workers went on strike against the accused forces of capitalism and imperialism, culminating in enormous concessions to the strikers. The resultant Grenelle Accords led to a 35% increase in the minimum wage and created new trade unions, while leaving behind a social legacy that stands strong today.
Pension reform in particular has been a sticking point for French protesters – before this year’s nationwide strikes, the French took to the streets in 1995, 2010, and 2019 over proposed pension reforms. They haven’t always won: conservative president Nicolas Sarkozy succeeded in a 2-year raise of the retirement age from 60 to 62 during the 2010 reforms. Nevertheless, protesters have typically been securing some concessions from the government, balancing the interests of the national budget and social welfare. In contrast to these prior reforms, Macron’s administration has adopted a less conciliatory tone, with Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne calling the retirement age issue “non-negotiable”, and Macron himself striking a similar tenor, asserting that reform was indispensable in a recent conference on January 30th.
To Macron, pension reform has always been a critical part of the political legacy he intends to bestow upon France. A former investment banker, Macron views the increasingly precarious state of the French coffers as a concern that supersedes the social system the people hold so dear. Yet, it is this exact background that makes Macron so unpalatable to many–lampooned by the press as Jupiter, the Roman king of the gods, his reputation has always been one of detachment from the public. Macron himself, while attempting to dispel the damning accusations of elitism, has embraced the extensive powers of the French presidency to propel his legislative agenda. All of these factors have epitomized his status as a symbol of France’s fraught connections to capitalism–fearful of its effects, yet dependent on it enough to elect an investment banker into the nation’s highest office on his promises of financial stability.
Across the Atlantic, the situation is drastically different. In December, President Biden signed into law a bill to end nationwide rail strikes, granting workers some concessions, but not their primary demand: one week of paid sick leave. For Biden, who previously promised a pro-union stance and swore to not interfere in the union bargaining process, the move represents a sharp turnaround on his previously stated policy. Caving to the economic pressures – the strike would reportedly have cost the economy some two billion dollars per day, in the midst of holiday season, Biden pressured congressional lawmakers to pass a bill negotiating a compromise. The move is par for modern America’s course, reflecting the harsh realities of a nation with some of the lowest collective bargaining coverage among developed countries.
Since the mid-1950s, unions in America have faced a gradual but inexorable decline, with current levels standing at less than half of what they were at the height of union membership. With the fall of organized labor, middle-class income has also seen a parallel decline, with the middle-class’ share of income dropping by some 10% over the last 5 decades. While Americans overall overwhelmingly support unions and oppose restrictions on collective bargaining, the legislative front has been unfriendly to unions, particularly with the expansion of corporate powers and harsh restrictions on lawful strikes.
Most of these anti-labor efforts have come from the conservative side of the aisle, with President Reagan’s 1981 breaking of the PATCO (Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization) strike representing a seminal moment in the history of American labor. Reagan fired some 11,000 workers participating in the strike, and proceeded to permanently ban them from federal service, a move that encouraged more corporations to simply seek replacements for strikers rather than bargaining with them.
Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in unions, an encouraging sign that has nevertheless been met with fierce opposition from increasingly powerful multinational corporations. With the vast majority of unions existing in the public sector, private industries have long suffered from a lack of union participation, due in no small part to the tactics corporations use to obstruct the formation of unions.
In the last few years alone, corporations like Starbucks, Trader Joes, and Amazon have poured millions into resisting unions, sensing the increasingly pro-union sentiment of their workers as a considerable threat. Yet, in spite of colossal resistance, the tides seem to be changing in American labor, particularly amidst the pro-worker atmosphere of the pandemic. From equipment manufacturers to cereal companies, unions at a wide range of companies have carried out remarkable strikes in recent years as more and more workers see the value in unionization.
In the context of labor in France, the very same value is easily visible. Not content to see their rights whittled away, French workers have held their ground and protected valuable welfare protections at the cost of corporate and state money. Meanwhile, American workers have failed to do the same, meeting with harsh regulations, unfavorable legal decisions, and the overwhelming power of wealthy corporations.
The harms done are plain to see: at the peak of union membership in America the income gap between the richest and poorest was at its lowest ebb. Now, the gap is larger than ever, to the point where the lowest 40% of American earners hold less wealth than the lowest 40% of the French did in the Ancien Regime of 1789. Content to let American workers eat their proverbial cake, corporations have increasingly sought to seek profits and shareholder value over their responsibility as employers, with horror stories such as Amazon’s refusal to let workers relieve themselves on the job.
As the pandemic hit, confronted with their own mortality, American workers found themselves asking the very question posed by that one French protester: “Work, for who? For what?” In a moment of relative strength, the so-called “Great Resignation” had tens of thousands quitting jobs to reevaluate their lives. Similarly, social movements against capitalist work culture have proliferated, from tang ping (lying flat) in China, to the “quiet quitting” trend in America.
But it isn’t enough. American workers need to gain control over the national dialogue surrounding labor and capital, just as their French counterparts have, to ensure that their rights are protected. More than merely spurring better legislation and friendlier corporate policy, a revival of American labor could spark important conversations over the role of work in life and society, a discussion that has already begun on social media. After all, comme le Français, many American workers seek an escape from the daily grind, and yearn for lives beyond their employment – a sentiment best captured by “Retirement before Arthritis” across the Atlantic, and #quietquitting here at home.
The French are oft-lampooned for their perceived laziness, perhaps better defined as a refusal to conform to the “hustle culture” so beloved by America, but it’s clear that the United States has much to learn from France if Americans want to enjoy the same social protections the French hold so dear. Beginning with grassroots social media movements and a renewed fight for unions, the charge has begun, but there’s still a long way to go – not just in rejecting work, but in building a better relationship with it. Above all, perhaps America had best take a page from its longtime ally’s revolutionary ideals: Let them eat cake is not an insult we should treat lightly.