Riots in France persisting

The anger-fueled rioting in the banlieues (suburbs) around Paris and some other big cities in France has gone on every evening for the past ten days now. It seems very diffuse and ill organized and looks really tragic. Who knows at this point if it will harden into some recognizable and lasting social movement supported by the marginalized, mainly immigrant-origin families stuffed into the banlieues?
One of the friends who came to our place for dinner last night commented that while the US news broadcasts he’d seen all tended to focus on the fact that most of those rioters have been Muslim, the BBC had given a lot more stress to the fact that the anger came out of the “housing estates”– that is, to give a socioeconomic interpretation to what was happening.
Here on JWN commenter David made some reference to “the Paris intifada”. That launched an interesting discussion, which didn’t really belong on that post and should anyway have its own post, so I’ll reproduce it at the end of this post.
I’ll just note here that the anger of this generation of mainly French-born young adults from immigrant-origin families seems largely parallel to the anger of their counterparts in the immigrant-origin communities in Britain– though in France, the anger has not yet spawned a violent, Qaeda-linked underground like the one that killed 55 people in the London Underground in July.
Here in the US, members of the “white”-dominated political elite are slowly coming to grips with the idea that the country’s self-image and actual practice of social interactions needs to change to incorporate the facts of the growing empowerment of African-American and other non-white citizens, and the growing empowerment and increasing numbers of Hispanic-cultured citizens, in particular. I see it as a pretty exciting, challenging and open-ended process.
In Europe, the pressing facts of demographic change have been quite a lot slower to become reflected in the self-image and social practice of the “indigenous” and dominant white majorities. I’m not sure whether the proportion of non-“white” residents is noticeably higher in the UK and France than it is in other European countries. But it is certainly interesting that it is in those two countries– the two that maintained the largest overseas empires for so long, and that for so long even defined themselves by reference to their worldwide imperial role– that the children and grandchildren of the formerly colonized have been most bold in staking their claim to equal rights with the indigenes of the metropolis.
Bill the spouse, who has done a lot of research on the modern history of North Africa, suggests that many of the young people now rioting in the banlieues of France may well be the children and grandchildren of the harkis, the Algerian indigenese who had been impressed into the French colonial forces and who, when De Gaulle finally took the French forces out of Algeria, were allowed to retreat with them rather than face the wrath of the FLN.
As anyone who has ever read Fanon will recall, one special feature of French imperialism was the conceit that the French cultural administrators spread within their various colonies that the indigenous people could actually become “French”, if only they could learn the language of Racine and Voltaire with enough flair and become sufficiently au courant with all the latest in Parisian literary thinking. (My ex-spouse, who grew up Lebanese and went to a number of French-run schools in Lebanon, vividly recalls all the pupils being taken out of school on quatorze juillet and given little French flags to wave in the streets as they shouted “Vive la France!”)
So you could see how Algerians or other North Africans who had fought for France against the FLN, then fled to France, and had been raised with this idea that they and their families could actually, seamlessly become French, might find the reality of the situation once arrived there fairly disappointing…. the kind of disappointment that might easily harden over a further generation or two, if most of the members of that community remained on the economic, social, and political margins.
… Social change ain’t easy. Our small city of Charlottesville here in Virginia is nowadays sometimes called by its detractors the “People’s Republic of Charlottesville”. That’s because we have a strongly Democratic-dominated city administration, a general commitment (not always well implemented) to support the full empowerment of the 50% of the city’s residents who are African-Americans, a strong-ish peace movement, and a general commitment to decent, generous, liberal values.
Back in the 1950s, however, the whitefolks who dominated the city council voted to close the city schools rather than accede to the federal government’s demand that the seperate white and black school systems in the city should be integrated. The whitefolks just couldn’t see their sons and daughters getting any benefit– or even, being safe!– if they sat down in the same classrooms with Black kids. The city’s changed a lot– in its self-image, aspriation, and practice–since then. Not enough, I might say. But certainly, significantly.
Are there forces in the “indigenous” white communities in France and the UK who, jointly with immigrant-origin leaders, can spearhead some analogous moves towards far greater inclusivity? I hope so. Certainly, I hope the streets of Europe never ring again to the cries of race-hatred that dominated so many of them back in the 1930s…
Anyway, here are what Christiane (who’s Swiss) and Hammurabi wrote earlier in response to david’s comment about a Paris “intifada”:
Christiane:
Concerning the riots in Paris which are now spreading in other provincial cities, I don’t understand why you call them Intifada. No-one in France name them so, not even the participants, at least I didn’t hear it.
What we have in France has nothing to do with terrorism; it’s a wide social movement which is caused by joblessness and exclusion.
They have much more to do with the right wing policies a la neocons which were imposed on France by Chirac and above all by Sarkozy : many many funds were cut in social programs aimed at integration, while more resources were put on repression. Sarkozy developped a theory of “zero tolerance” which has produced the opposite results.
After an incident (which isn’t yet completely clear but for the fact that two young people who took refuge in an electric transformator died electrocuted – with or without the police chasing them, that is the question) the whole leftover suburbs went in flames. At first they responded to Sarkozy’s provocation, because he named them thugs to be cleaned away. But sure enough if the whole suburbs are now burning since a week, it is for other serious social reasons. Since 1968, I haven’t seen such an important social movement. Hundreds of cars are burned out. And also a police station, some schools and many public busses.
Beside the many social workers and mediators trying to cool the spirits, there are two different groups pushing to the riots : the gangs and drugs dealers holding the different suburbs, who fight to extend their territories and also perhaps, some Islamist activists.
It is not impossible that Islamist movements try to organize this social movement. But it isn’t the only force around. And Muslim movements come with different flavors. I hope that this movement will cause the fall of Sarkozy. It is well possible, because he has been so irresponsible in his provocations. On the other hand when elections take place after riots, people tend rather to vote for the right parties, for the restoration of order.
Hammurabi:
au contraire…Sarkozy understands the need to coopt the Le Pens on the far right (by taking a strong law and order position and on illegal immigration) while making the French citizens from North Africa stakeholders rather than seething “outsiders”…that is why in the home of egalite and French “grandeur”, he favors meaningful affirmative action policies… “I think some people accumulate so many handicaps that if the state does not help them, they have no chance of making it,” he explained. Europeans pride themselves on their commitment to multiculturalism but in practice there is far less of the melting pot diversity that serves as a safety valve on the other side of the Atlantic. He also favors public financing of mosques in the land of banned head scarves.
With high unemployment, an aging nativist population and an increasingly alienated and growing Muslim population, France – like many European countries – faces a demographic challenge not just to funding its generous pension and other social programs but to help prevent Islamic extremists from exploiting the situation.
… [Back to HC] Thanks so much for those contributions. Everyone is warmly invited to continue this conversation here.

42 thoughts on “Riots in France persisting”

  1. Brief point on whether the riots in France are Muslim/Islamist. I haven’t really seen any figures on how many of the rioters could be Muslim. The two boys who died in the electricity substation: one had an African non-Muslim name, and the other a possibly Muslim one, but was African. Equally absolutely noone has brought up an Islamic link, though obviously many of the poor are Muslim, but other Africans are Christian.
    I speak from personal observation, we had a petrol bomb at the end of the road Tuesday night.

  2. Hammurabi,
    Concerning Sarkozy and his so called “meaningful affirmative action policies” you have to look further than words, to the facts : in reality, the actual government has cut a lot of money from social programs. This is the reality. The immigrant suburbs have been left over. Youngs have joblessness of 40-60 % at least .. no hope for any future.
    Yes, they have an interesting policy to finance mosquees by public funds in France. But that is only to control it better. Sarkozy for instance has been bashing Tarik Ramadan, whom Blair called as an expert on integration after the London Bombing (*). That says it all on the so called integration policies of the actual French government. As long as they incorporate the flavour of neocons discourse in thier policies, they won’t be able to begin a dialogue with the suburbs.
    Christiane
    (*) Tarik Ramadan whose grandfather founded the Muslims brothers in Egypt has been educated in Geneva. He is mostly concerned by how young Muslim can practice their religion and adapt it to the EU context. He also has thought a lot on the social situation of Muslims where he takes a left wing approach and discuss social discrimination. I guess that’s the part which Sarkozy dislike.

  3. Alastair, since you’re “on the spot” there, I’d love to have any further observations or analysis you can provide on what’s happening. If it’s easier for you to email me something as an attachment I can post it for you.
    I tried to get something relevant out of the websites of Le Monde or Liberation but couldn’t really find anything that seemed good. Maybe you or someone else can?

  5. Those are great links that Jonathan contributed– to one blog written by youthful Moroccan-American genius Nouri bin Khalid;, and two blogs written by sub-Saharan Africans (one, “Black Looks”, a resident of Spain.) Thanks, Jonathan!

  7. Projection, Preconception and Prejudice
    Psychologists write about a phenomenon called “Projection” where a person will attribute his own feelings to somebody else.
    Preconception is the case of applying a pet theory to a new and possibly inappropriate situation.
    Prejudice is preconception carried to extreme.
    I think we see all three in the various instant interpretations of the French riots. It’s Islamism, it’s Poverty, it’s Racism, it’s even a “Social Movement”. The French are more racist than the US — the French are too accommodating — and on and on. It’s the fault of the French establishment — it’s the fault of the immigrant families…
    Juan Cole is absolutely predictable, which means his analysis is about him and not about the situation:

    “The mainstream press doesn’t seem to be connecting the dots here, but the continued marginalization, high unemployment and discrimination faced by the large French Muslim community could help push them toward Salafi radicalism”

    I mean, okay, he might be right — but how can we know?

    Sometimes you just have to say “I don’t know”. Except for one thing: The strict French gun control laws have almost certainly saved a great many lives.

  10. None of those three links quoted by Jonathan Edelstein, interesting though they are, are written by people living in France. They are likely to talk up – I do not say exaggerate – the sufferings of their co-ethnics in France.
    I too am an immigrant in France, Brit here for 15 years, and I live in a highly Muslim quarter, even you could describe it as a “banlieue”. Actually apart from the petrol bomb thrown 50m away from me last Tuesday, which was only the local youth entertaining themselves, and copycatting what is happening elsewhere, there hasn’t been much.
    My friend, who has a house in Britanny, says that in that town attempts were made to fire two supermarkets, at least one of which includes a gas station, and it was only through incompetence that there wasn’t a massive explosion. However there are no Africans or Maghrebis there; it was the local Breton youth behind it.
    So there you have it. Two youths, one African, one Maghrebi, by the photos, died through electrocution. The police say they were not chasing them. The police in France are not entirely known for their honesty or competence; it could be that they are not telling the truth. The youth fire a few cars; the government reacts badly, particularly Sarkozy, the interior minister. And that sets off the prolonged pleasure of the deprived youth in setting fire to things. Much in the revolutionary French tradition, though all the French people I know strongly deny that this is allowed to be in that tradition.
    The factors behind the events have been well rehearsed: the economy is fairly stagnant, there is not much work about, but that was also true of the mid-1990s. The police are racist – nothing new there. I have often seen them stopping youths in the metro: the ones held up against the wall are never white, only black or brown. There is certainly discrimination against people of colour in the chances of employment. Many Africans live in third-world conditions; I have seen apartment buildings occupied by Africans, and you would not know that it was not Dakar.
    My feeling is that this has become, though may not have been at the beginning, basically a problem of globalisation, conducted in a peculiarly French way. Neither government nor white population are willing to admit the rights of others to have a say; both are fixed on an image of the past which is no longer true. This is not different from Britain, where the shock of the July 7th bombings was fundamental to Blair and Co, who had no idea that could happen.
    Actually I much applaud the efforts of Chirac to lead a sympathetic policy towards the Arab and Muslim world; it was the right choice. However, it has been from the top, and I can’t say that other government members, such as Sarkozy, nor many French, have followed, or understood.
    There is a certain logic and therefore rigidity in attitudes. “This is our country, and it will continue to be as we see it”, with mental images of drinking pastis in Parisian cafes of the 1950s. Algeria was of course a French metropolitan department, and there was no question of giving it independence. Naturally today French kids are in fact eating MacDonalds (though there is a real reaction against it right now), but it is not seen.
    You have to conform to an ideal French model, and I guess the less educated people of immigrant origin have trouble with that, and so they resort to the other French model, which is that of taking to the streets. But my neighbours don’t think they have the right.

  11. Thanks Helena for your timely endorsement of this topic, I look forward to learning more and I am glad we have some contributors right from France with a first hand view.
    Christiane, the TV images of the riots lead to my calling these riots the Paris Intifada, but at this time “Paris Intifada” returns 47600 Google hits, so I can no longer claim to have coined the term alone. If you think it is inappropriate you have another 47599 sources to convince. Good luck.
    Now I step back to listen mode on this topic.
    David

  12. WarrenW and Alastair make good points. We tend to jump to the conclusion that any outbreak of violence in immigrant neighborhoods (especially muslim immigrant neighborhoods) must have some political context. It could just as easily be the volatile combination of boredom and young manhood.

  13. David,
    Your Google search was only superficial. If I search the entire web, feeding in Paris Intifada, I get dozens of english pages applying it to the actual situation in Paris. But if you restrict the search to pages written in French, then when you get only pages speaking of the Palestinian Intifada (this book published in Paris, that conference .. etc. this the only connection to the word) The use of that word in connection with the Paris riots is applied by the English speaking medias.
    I find it inappropriated because of its strong connection to the Palestinian Intifada and given the way the ENglish press is stigmatizing the Palestinian as terrorists.. this is not judicious. As far as I know, the situation is very different in Palestine where the people are suffering under a military occupation of their land.
    Hammurabi..
    Your article offers a very partial right wing view on the situation.. Yeah.. more liberalism and wild capitalism of course that will solve all the problems of these jobless youngs, who can’t find a place in society .. come on.. Oh.. and Sarkozy is in government since almost two legislatures, but if the problems deepen, of course it’s not his fault. sh..sh.. give us a break.
    When the left was at power, they were already guilty of neglecting the suburbs, they didn’t do enough.. but when the right came to power, here is what they did :
    They put an end to “L’emploi jeune” a program aiming at the integration of the young jobless,
    They reorganized the police, cutting what is called the “police of proximity”, the one which is present in the neighbourhood doing small things to help citizen. These cuts were drastic : in one of the burning neighbourhood, 40 policemen out of 170 were suppressed.. out of the need to spare public money.
    For the same reasons a lot, really a lot of funds have been cut on public programs aiming at the strengthening of “Le lien social” (the social link) aka funds for culture, education and leisure of the youngs in the Banlieue. Structures helping young immigrant mothers, or teaching people to read, or speak French better. etc. etc.. Sarkozy pretended that these activities were useless, because the youngs were in need of jobs.. Well three years after these cuttings where are the jobs he promised ?

  14. Alaistair,
    The media are probably inflating the events, but I think that you are at the other extreme, minimizing things a little to much. What is succeeding is serious : apart of the hundreds of cars burned out, several schools were also inflamed to the points that the pupils had to stay home.
    John,
    You are right that it is easy to projects things on the events. That is particularly easy because the riotters don’t have a clear political line, nor any charismatic leader to speak for them. But I don’t think that they are just bored. They are angry and given the conditions in which they live it’s quite understandable.

  15. The French electorate in 18 months will be given an opportunity to pass judgment on a proper French model for integration and assimilation…They can choose to continue present policies (Villepin, Chirac’s poodle), scapegoat immigrants (Le Pen, who finished second last time), throw money at the problem, enlarge the already bloated public sector and squeeze French businesses even more to outsource jobs (Socialist Fabius or Hollande) or choose to make immigrants French stakeholders by rethinking the French model of assimilation through programs like affirmative action .

  16. Department of Myopic Spinning:
    The French government says that anti-discrimination laws are not necessary to protect the rights of its Arab and African citizens because everyone in France is French.
    In the US, Bush said today that anti-torture legislation is not necessary because the US government does not torture.

  17. Christiane
    I don’t think I am minimising the serious aspect of the affair, after all I am living in the middle of it.
    Nevertheless it has to be borne in mind that the French tend to react vividly to a problem in a way they would not in Britain.
    The problems are real; nobody would deny them. The fundamental problem however which led to large-scale outbreaks, was that the government showed itself to be out of touch. I don’t know whether Sarkozy will increase his popularity in the country (in his ambitions to be president) as a result of calling people rabble (‘racaille’), but he will certainly polarise opinion. we’ll have to see whether the present efforts to offer something to deprived communities will succeed.

  18. Christiane,
    How about 754.000 hits for “French Intifada”? Is that all english press? Right on the first page check out:
    http://no-pasaran.blogspot.com/2005/11/french-intifada-le-tlphone-arabe-passe.html
    BTW, the Palestinian Intifada does not have terrorism connotations but rather civil unrest. You obviously don’t know the arabic meaning of the word Intifada and how well it fits to the Paris riots.
    Reading the opinions on this thread you may be right on the need to revise our terminology to the broader problem, shall we say, the de facto “French Appartheid” Christiane?
    David

  19. David,
    No-pasaran ain’t no american MSM, but no french either.
    Au hasard:
    – Love name for FRance: this “Shitty little country”
    – Interesting comments, as suggesting to group the immigrant with muslim ties in a camp in the Jura and send them back home.
    Your pick does not disqualify the comment of Christiane in my book. I remember seeing the blog some months ago and thinking: interesting, you can duplicate LGF writing from France. And I forgot the blog, till you (or ggolge) bring it up.

  20. Actually David’s link to No Pasaran is interesting. I am certain it represents a certain point of view. The question is whether it represents more than than a minority of extremists. Extremists exist everywhere. Apartheid is not be found in France; the only country in which apartheid – to be defined as a government policy of legal discrimination – is to be found today is in Israel.
    To report what I have found the last couple of days in France. There is an increasing level of hostility to immigrants among the white French that I have met. This is not surprising and quite common, they have been through that before with Algeria. LePen says send them all back, even those of two generations in France. This is not realistic; even Sarkozy, the interior minister, would have to be sent back, I don’t know where, under those conditions.
    This is what I meant two comments ago, when I said the problem in France is really one of adaptation to globalisation, a problem which all of us westerners face. Many of us westerners want to go out to third-world countries to make money, perhaps not you or me, but many others. While the intelligentsia and the poor from outside countries feel they can make money by coming to the west. I’ve heard that many Christians from Lebanon have left, the Christians and other intelligentsia from Iraq, the Germans from Kazakhstan, even there’s a proportional outgoing emigration from Israel. You can’t stop it, only adapt.
    The French, or more particularly some of them, in their logical way, say no, we preserve our country. But it is not realistic. If this sentiment were to be pursued far, it would lead to a collapse of the country. But the French are also realists, and will adapt. It is just that there may be a big bust-up on the way.

  21. I agree Alastair that globalization is a powerful force compounding the problem. The moment an uneducated youth in the Banlieu is competing with educated Indian and Chinese youth on the far side of the globe…how do you solve that? You can burn all the cars you want and still not solve the underlying unemployment problem.
    As for the striking statistics of employment or decent housing vs.ethnicity that are coming out of France, that is Apartheid. And the worst kind of Apartheid, enforced by the French majority rather than legislated.
    If it were a pure immigration phenomenon you’d expect to see Chinese, Vietnamese, South Americans and Indians rioting. There is an undeniable religious component that you are pussy footing around, but it will remain the elephant in the room.
    As for the link, it is just the first I found, and I don’t read much into that particular one.
    David

  24. ‎many of us westerners want to go out to third-world countries to make money, ‎perhaps not you or me, but many others. ‎
    ‎”Usually they are hired American or British ‎security men, decked out in khaki cargo pants and baseball caps with tactical ‎daypacks; journalists toting laptops, flak jackets and bottles of whiskey or vodka in ‎plastic bags from the duty free shop, or Arab businessmen in brown suits and well-‎worn shoes.”‎
    ‎US$1000.0 A DAY minium, 360,000.00 annual pay with free ticks and free ‎tax and more, where ales you got this pay in western world. Offcourse David paid ‎more for his “Terrorist Experts”…..‎

  25. Alastair wrote:
    “the problem in France is really one of adaptation to globalisation, a problem which all of us westerners face. Many of us westerners want to go out to third-world countries to make money, perhaps not you or me, but many others. While the intelligentsia and the poor from outside countries feel they can make money by coming to the west. “
    Globalisation is just another word used nowadays in order to mask the reality of “wild capitalism”. Capitalism, during the earlier years of industrialization was often sold as necessary sacrifice to pass from traditional societies to modernity, denying the reality of exploitation. Workers movements complaining against exploitation were stigmatized as traditionalists who were resisting positive changes. Nowadays, wild capitalism along with neocons theories is imposed on the working masses using the pretext of globalization, presented like an unavoidable fate. Since the collapse of the former USSR, the building of an alternative economic model prooves to be difficult, but I’m sure there is one. The riots in France are not only a result of globalization : they are the result of a specific economic model, that of free markets, that of the profit of big corporations etc.. This model is mainly that supported by the US, where big corporations makes money in the third world or emerging countries, but where the small workers whose jobs are disappearing suffer at home.
    Along with the French riots of the past ten days, another dramatic byproduct of the “globalization” is the constant and increasing flow of African immigrants trying to cross the borders of the EU in the hope to find a better a life here. They have mainly two ways of entering in the EU : crossing the border in two minuscule territories which Spain possesses in Morocco (Ceuta and Mellija), or navigating across the Mediterranean sea and land in Lampedusa (Sicilia-Italy). Both ways have resulted in dramatic situations. In Lampedusa we see a remake of the story of the boatpeople in Vietnam, with lots of immigrants drifting for days on the sea before starving and freezing and with overloaded boats sinking. In Ceuta and Mellija the SubSaharan Africans camp and hide in the woods for months, hoping to find a passage through the border, which is now surrounded by an iron wall approximately four meters high. They are starving too and chased by the Morrocan police (after pressure of the EU). Just some weeks ago, they mounted outright assaults of several hundreds men against the iron walls in well planned operations. Being in numbers, they hope to be able to overwhelm the border police. But it is terribly difficult to cross that border; many suffered atrocious deep wounds due to the barbed wires. The police also fired on them and killed several of them. The Morrocan police is supposed to arrest them and to drive them back to the South border. But lately they just put an important group in several busses and abandonned them all in the middle of the Morrocan desert without water; several died too. It is a real tragedy and in my mind it’s the same North/South problem that we have in the French riots. And it’s a proof of the complete failure of the so-called globalization economy and of wild capitalism.
    What we need here, is less neocons theories and wild capitalism. And a new model of economy based on solidarity, solidarity with the developping countries in the South and solidarity with the masses of poorer workers in our developped countries, be they immigrants, third generation of immigrants or nationals. In this context, Hammurabi is right : what is needed in the French suburbs and elsewhere in the EU is affirmative actions. However, I don’t trust Sarkozy at all for the implementation. Those who generally really defend that kind of measures are supporting the welfare state, not wild capitalism.

  26. I just want to support Christiane.
    I feel that any discussion of justice must include an acknowledgement of what Christiane has written. Palliative justice, restorative of a status quo and blind to the realities that Christiane has written about, is of little use.
    What meaning attaches to the word “transitional” when in terms of the major influence which Christiane eloquently calls “wild capitalism”, there is no prospect of transition to anything better, only more of the same, enforced under threat of war?
    The young people know what the deal is. I’m not surprised they reject it

  27. “Those who generally really defend that kind of measures…[e.g., affirmative action]… are supporting the welfare state”
    au contraire…The banlieues, living in destitute, isolated areas on the edge of major French cities, are victims not of global capitalism but of unemployment and racist discrimination. “You’re French on your identity card, French to pay taxes and go into the army, but for the rest, you’re an Arab,” summed up one unemployed French citizen whose parents emigrated from Morocco.
    Jobs, with their ancillary benefits (short hours, generous vacations, sick leaves, pensions, etc.) are protected by the powerful unions. French companies or entrepreneurs are understandibly loathe to hire at home so jobs get outsourced to Eastern Europe or Asia. Not just the immigrants but even nativist French under 24 are experiencing a 20% unemployment rate. Many talented young French graduates therefore emigrate to the US or UK.
    Demonizing global capitalism is a copout. What is needed is to rethink the French Model for Integration and Assimilation. Sarkozy’s plan for Affirmative Action is a good place to start.

  28. ‎“wild capitalism”. Capitalism, during the earlier years of”‎
    In support of this view I thing the “new neocons theories” looks specially to ME ‎which had wealth make them lunched war and invasion like Iraqi war, if I be specific ‎there are more than 5Millions left Iraq from 1990 till now, the problem most due to ‎the 13 years of sanction used by US and others and also the occupation of Iraq rather ‎than dictator regime. By making Iraqi living in HILL this push more to flee the ‎country.‎
    So the point is there is a lot of oil which is easy and increasingly in demand which ‎makes a lot of money not like any other products of any type in the world, in addition ‎to strategic influence of controlling this all around the glob.‎
    In Nigeria their Nigerians living under poverty and most of the society suffering their ‎despite Nigeria produced a good amount of oil.‎
    Back to France, if we look back to what they did in Algeria by supporting the army to ‎get rid of elected party and then Algeria went in deep chaos because of that while the ‎west coloured that chaos to “ISLAMIC EXTREMEST” and fanatics whom they try to ‎put the country backwards, look to Iraq what we got a chaos their even the US in ‎control the country!!! Sweeping town and cities and displacing and moving people ‎from their lands. With same clams the terrorist playing their because of invasion.‎
    These problems offcourse causing a waves of immigrates to the north looking for ‎better live, now the west wakeup due to “neurons theories” that the Islamist are here ‎and they are dangerous, they neither left them in their country nor they accepting ‎them in the western world after generations‎

  29. > Jobs, with their ancillary benefits (short hours,
    > generous vacations, sick leaves, pensions, etc.)
    > are protected by the powerful unions.
    Bollocks. 8% of the French workforce is unionised, compared to 18% of the US. Unions aren’t all that powerful in France (and please don’t reply by quoting some weird statistics about the constant strikes, another myth repeated ad nauseum by the US right wingers).
    All the ancillary benefits are available in the rest of Europe too, there is nothing “French” about them at all.

  30. What then is YOUR explanation for the high unemployment rate – not just for succeeding generations of North African immigrants, but for recent French ecole graduates who increasingly choose job opportunities in US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia?

  31. The whole world has a high unemployment rate. There are local difference, but there is no place on earth where capitalism has been able to organise the whole population. Capitalism has failed. Its case for the defence is that the people are deficient. In other words capitalists are turning on the people and telling them they are not good enough for capitalism! This is a fatal mistake.

  33. Hammurabi, you say the unemployed immigrants rioting in France are not victims of global capitalism, it’s just that French companies are “understandibly loathe to hire at home so jobs get outsourced to Eastern Europe or Asia.” What exactly do you think global capitalism is all about? The whole point of capitalism is to extract maximum value from labor for the benefit of the owners – the capitalists. The larger the labor pool, the better. The point of global capitalism is to force workers in relatively high income countries to compete directly with workers from low income countries, to drive down the cost of labor. It ain’t rocket science.

  34. John C,
    I think that, if you read the statement within the context of Hammurabi’s entire post, you will see that the reason that these companies are “understandably loathe to hire at home” is because of the excessive benefits and taxation conditions in France. In other words, it is an internal problem resulting from Frances aging population and excessive labor benefits, rather than an external problem brought about by better conditions in other markets.
    Of course the French could force these companies to only hire French workers. Question is, could they force you to buy their overpriced products?

  35. Hammurabi,
    I completely agree with what you say concerning the need for affirmative actions. What I question is whether we can trust Sarkozy to achieve affirmative action or not. I have heard him yesterday again; he spoke for about one hour monopolizing the discourse as if he was the President of the Republic and prevented other actors living in the suburburbs from talking. He focused mostly on repression, repeating his provocative assertions that he would clean the tugs of the suburbs. At the end he also said a word in favor of affirmative action, but that was just smoke. What kind of affirmative action : he is trying to recruit more cops issuing from “visible minorities” (sic). He praised himself for having named an African “prefet” (prefets have the same power asstate governors in the US; they aren’t elected however but nominated by the central government). But that is not more than an alibi. What I’d like is the introduction of real quotas in the private enterprises and the public sector. He was minister of economy for three years.. When did he pass a bill to that effect ?

  36. Capitalism can provide “welfare” but it is never enough. A life of irrelevence is a torment even if the material needs are satisfied. This is what the kids are telling us.
    “Affirmative action” is no better. In south Africa we have it, re-branded as Black Economic Empowerment, or BEE for short. There are black millionnaires and even billionnaires now, but the ordinary people are burning trains (not cars; R200m worth of trains this week alone) because they are fed up. Affirmative action affirms the status quo. It honours position in the capitlaism hierarchy, which thereby become the value to be granted to the black people, or rather a few of them. It’s co-option more than anything else.
    Somebody once wrote of a “vast association of the whole nation… in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all”. This is the life that people want, isn’t it? Not a life of pre-existing categories by which people are to be selectively “affirmed”, but rather a society of free-acting individuals creating the common wealth.
    This, too, the young people understand. It is impossible to raise a human child properly without such a vision.

  37. JES, one can’t help but oversimplify matters in these brief comments. Obviously, high payroll taxes, “excessive” benefits, and the demands of an aging population are all factors affecting labor costs. Capitalists aim to minimize these costs in order to maximize profits for the owners. Nothing controversial so far, right? Global capitalism is largely a response to “first world” labor organization and the so-called “welfare state.” Offshoring, outsourcing, etc. have been very successful union busting strategies here in the U.S.
    This is not about “free trade.” Global trade is not the same thing as global capitalism. The capitalists talk publicly about expanding markets and reducing trade barriers; privately, they talk about reducing labor costs and obtaining government subsidies and other forms of special treatment.
    As to “overpriced” products, there is a debate heating up in the U.S. right now over the high cost to society of low-priced goods, the focal point being Walmart (do you have them in Israel yet?). This isn’t the place for a long discussion of that topic, but I will just point out that most of the “efficiencies” driving down the price of commodities are just value extracted from the global labor pool. It is a self-perpetuating cycle, up to a point. I’m sure Dominic will be glad to tell you where this all ends in Marxist theory (to which I do not entirely subscribe).
    What to do about it? Well, global organization of labor to offset the global organization of capital would be the ideal solution, but very difficult to achieve. Liberal “free trade” economists like Paul Krugman would like to incorporate meaningful labor standards in international trade agreements, but given who negotiates those agreements, this seems unlikely to happen. It’s a tough problem, but one we can’t just ignore, as the rioters in France remind us.

  38. Where it all ends in Marxist theory, J.C.?
    Marx wrote the following in the mid-1840s (in “The Holy Family”): “History is not a person apart, using man to achieve its own aims; history is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims”. The point is human beings make history (but not in circumstances of their own choosing, as he points out in the “18th Brumaire”).
    So there is nothing deterministic or fatalistic in Marx. The point is to change the world, not to ride it like a clockwork train.
    Concerning labour organisation, this comes in the first instance from capitalism itself. Capital is what organises labour in the first place. Not only does this mean that the bourgeoisie creates its own long-term grave-digger, the proletariat, but also that the workers have an immediate model of combination which they invariably use, as best they can, for economic self-defense.
    Imperialism is the insistance on the “right”, enforced with arms, of rich metropolitans to possess the most productive assets anywhere in the world, on their own terms. This is finance capital, and it is degenerate in the sense that it is risk-averse and rent-seeking. This is why capitalism has shed its early vitality and ossified into a system of fixed relations akin to feudalism.
    Comparative studies as between one small part of the world and another cannot reveal the nature of the whole Imperialist system. Such studies are aids to denial of the gross failure of capitlaist Imperialism to organise the whole population in work, and its even more disgusting attribute which is its eternal propensity for war.

  39. Dominic, we have no real disagreement here, except for the prediction that the proletariat will be the long-term gravediggers of the bourgoisie. I don’t see that happening on any lasting, wide-spread basis. Honestly, I think most people are quite comfortable wth a class system, as long as they trust the strength and wisdom of their upper-class leaders (rightly or wrongly), and feel that they are being accorded the emoluments due their class and position. When that trust is lost (as has now happened with W.), the people think not of revolt against the class system, but of finding a stronger, better leader.

  40. Hi J.C.,
    What you describe has happened often enough. Capitalism may be able to string out its declining years for a while to come. Jack London’s imaginary Iron Heel lasted several hundreds of years, if I am not mistaken.
    But I think it is fairly clear that the working class is growing and continuing to get better organised, world-wide, whereas Imperialism has reached the stage of having to rely on desperate expediency and make-shift, as in Iraq. “When the ruling class can no longer rule in the old way” is when we have a revolutionary situation. It involves change on both sides of the class front.
    Putting this in terms of your argument, there will come a time when the capitalist Imperialists cannot offer anyone looking like a stronger, better leader. At that point the game could be up.
    Of course the subjective factor is critical. If the working class fails to act, nothing is going to fall into its lap. Hence the importance of political education at this time.

  41. I would like to thank our hostess, and all the participants in this interesting discussion. This just beats the heck out of watching CNN!! I wish I could have you all over for beer and brats.*
    *Minnesotan for bratwurst

Comments are closed.