The Last Neoliberal: Macron and the Origins of France’s Political Class - Bruno Amable and Stefano Palombarini
Translated by David Broder
Translation of the Preface and Afterword by David Fernbach
English-language edition published in 2021 by Verso, London, UK and New York, NY
Originally published in French as L’illusion du bloc bourgeois: Alliances sociales et avenir du modéle français
192 pages
ISBN: 978-1-78873-357-1
On April 24th, 2022, Emmanuel Macron made history by winning his reelection to the French presidency, the first executive incumbent to do so in over twenty years. Liberals across the Western world were biting their fingernails in nervous anticipation that Marine Le Pen would overtake him, which she previously failed to do when they ran against each other in 2017. With Macron’s victory secure, these same liberals breathed a collective sigh of relief as they shifted their focus away to the latest cultural issue dominating the headlines.
Yet, when even taking a cursory look at his tenure, one can see that Macron has not been a friend of progressive causes. Through his policies, Macron has weakened the power of trade unions, reformed taxes to benefit shareholders over workers, and brutally suppressed popular dissent (such as the suppression of Yellow Vest protests, which arose in response to a regressive fuel tax). One year after his reelection, Macron again faces a populace in protest, particularly over the pension reform that he doggedly pushed through, which raises the retirement age from 62 to 64 years old.
It is no secret that the French political system has been in a protracted crisis for the past several decades, as no party has been able to bring together a coherent social bloc. In their book, The Last Neoliberal: Macron and the Origins of France’s Political Class, political economists Bruno Amable and Stefano Palombarini argue that in the absence of a cogent political project, a new minority “bourgeoise” bloc has taken the reigns of power through the election of Macron, much to the exclusion of most French citizens. As such, by tracing the slow and gradual process of neo-liberalization in French politics, the authors argue that Macron, long a champion for free-market policies, has exacerbated the crisis in France that has been wrought by its adoption of neoliberal reforms.
Overview:
Utilizing a Gramscian framework, Amable and Palombarini focus on the changing social blocs in French society and the rise of neoliberalism, which has led to the current gridlock that plagues French politics today. Stuck in gridlock since the 1970s, the French political system has been defined by the disconnect between the political parties and the social blocs that once supported them. This fracture, the authors argue, was best exemplified by the 2017 election.
Context: The 2017 Election
The 2017 election came as a shock to the French political scene. As the most unpopular president of the French Fifth Republic (polling at just 4% favorability in November 2016), François Hollande decided not to run for reelection, making him the first incumbent executive of the Fifth Republic to not seek a second term. As a result of the election, his party-- the center-left Parti Socialiste (PS) -- lost an astounding nine million votes in the first round when compared to 2015, knocking their candidate, Benoît Hamon, out of the race.
Mirroring this unprecedented loss, François Fillon of the center-right party Les Républicains (formerly Union pour un mouvement populaire, or UMP) also suffered a dismal showing in the first round of voting, causing him to likewise drop out of the race. With these defeats, two of the most popular political parties in France were soundly defeated and relegated to the margins of influence, as their numbers have still yet to recover to this day. On the other hand, two populist parties rose in prominence during the election: Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National (formerly Front National) and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s left-wing La France Insoumise.
Likewise, a new centrist political party called En Marche! quickly rose to the top of the polls, led by Emmanuel Macron, a former investment banker and cabinet member who had never held elected office. Pitching himself as a pro-European political outsider and describing himself as “neither of the right nor the left,” Macron won enough votes to advance to the second round of voting, where he would face Le Pen. With the endorsements of Fillon and Hamon (and a lukewarm statement from Mélenchon telling voters not to make the “terrible error” of voting for Le Pen), Macron was able to shore up enough support to vault him to the French presidency.
ii. Content
What explains Macron’s meteoric rise amidst such a chaotic and unstable political order? According to Amable and Palombarini, the traditional left- nor right-wing parties (SP and UMP, respectively) no longer represent the expectations of their respective social blocs that once supported them. As the question of European integration and the issue of immigration began to be foregrounded in political discourse, internal disagreements on both the left and the right unsettled the foundations of their respective parties. Through the policy choices of these parties, the social blocs that brought them into office have been fractured, as their electorate splintered off and either voted for another party or refrained from voting altogether.
This fracturing of the social blocs of the French electorate stymied any one party from achieving a majority vote. In the midst of this chaos and the dissolution of the old blocs, the authors argue that a new social bloc has formed that claims to transcend the left/right divide, which they name the “bourgeois bloc.” Consisting of an alliance of former Socialists and Republicans, as well as well-educated and liberal middle/upper-class voters, the bourgeois bloc supports neoliberal reforms to the nation’s economy as well as remaining committed to European integration. Through his en March! political party, Macron was able to seize upon this bourgeois bloc and represent its minoritarian interests at the expense of the majority of the working class, thus accelerating France’s neoliberal transformation.
iii. History: The Neoliberal Turn in French Politics
For Amable and Palombarini, this process of neoliberalization did not begin with Macron. Rather, they argue that the rightward shift of the Parti Socialiste in the 1980s signaled the beginning of this shift. Led by François Mitterand (president from 1981-1995) and a small minority within the party -- including Michel Rocard, Jacques Delors, Pierre Mauroy, and François Hollande-- the Parti Socialiste began to champion projects of modernization and neoliberal reforms to the economy while simultaneously distancing themselves from the Parti Communiste and their more ardently left-wing political demands.
Mitterand’s abandonment of Keynesian principles, social protections, and the nationalization of key industrial sectors was simultaneously accompanied by his increased neoliberal ideological commitment to the primacy of market forces in making economic decisions, often leading to austerity measures that benefited the wealthy at the expense of the working class. The authors write, “From Mendés France to Macron via Delors, the modernism of the ‘governmental left’ continued to degenerate, abandoning whatever social concerns it might originally have had, and only retaining those elements it shared with neoliberalism” (49).
This neoliberal turn of the popular left-wing party in France mirrored that of New Labor in Britain, which began to shift rightward in the 1990s and early 2000s as the administrations of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair accepted neoliberal reforms to the economy. By choosing to focus on European integration rather than uniting the leftist social bloc of the electorate, the Parti Socialiste in France neglected its working-class support in favor of appealing to the professional-managerial class who are more amenable to neoliberal structural reforms. This strategy of paying lip service to social concerns while simultaneously championing the privatization of industry and the rollback of social welfare programs ultimately failed to win a majority of the social bloc it claimed to represent. For the right wing, the Parti Socialiste could not be so easily dissociated from its left-wing associations. The left-wing bloc of the party, on the other hand, saw these neoliberal reforms as a move to cater to the interests of the wealthy and powerful.
iv. Macron and his Bourgeois Bloc
With the dissolution of these traditional blocs and out of the ashes of the Hollande presidency, Hollande’s former finance minister Emmanuel Macron positioned himself as a political outsider who would transcend the left/right divide and remain steadfastly committed to European integration. While pitching himself as progressive on social issues, Macron’s policies have instead worked to further unite and expand this bourgeois bloc by rapidly accelerating neoliberal reforms. With no more than a quarter of the electorate, however, this bourgeois bloc must find avenues for growth to consolidate and solidify its power.
Unlike former presidents, Macron is not interested in appealing to the working class; rather, according to Amable and Palombarini, his goals are to expand and consolidate the bourgeois base by pushing through rapid neoliberal reforms, weakening trade unions, quashing populist dissent, and extending olive branches to the right-wing establishment. Amable and Palombarini argue that the old left/right divide is insufficient to describe the current social blocs in French politics. Rather, they suggest that a new divide has come to define and further divide the traditional social blocs: pro-EU voters vs Eurosceptics. A central goal of any party hoping to build a hegemonic coalition must be to identify these blocs and attempt to balance their respective demands. This is made all the more difficult since these blocs are riven with their own internal contradictions.
For the past two presidential election cycles, Macron has had the advantage of running against a few particularly unsavory opponents, most notably Marie Le Pen. In 2017, many left-wing voters either held their noses and voted for Macron as a protest vote against Le Pen or refrained from voting altogether. According to the authors, since Macron has little hope for siphoning off more voters from the left, he has realized that his best strategy is to push through reforms that will discourage working-class voters from forming a viable political opposition while energizing his base and expanding it to white-collar professionals. This strategy, however, is a precarious one: as inequality and economic crises are exacerbated by these neoliberal reforms, Macron’s strategy risks being undermined by waves of popular protest. This fragility of the current political regime is seen through Macron’s increasingly authoritarian actions against protesters, both during the Yellow Vest protests and the pension reform protests of 2023.
Commendations:
As someone who was only vaguely familiar with the basic contours of French politics, I was given so much to think about in this work. The Last Neoliberal provides a great crash course into the details of the French political discourse, including the recent debates regarding European integration. With a rising tide of anti-immigration sentiment throughout Europe in the past few decades, it makes sense that this issue would serve as a lynchpin that holds together a fragile and often contradictory social bloc.
Furthermore, the author’s conceptual framework that they use to frame these competing tensions in French politics is powerfully convincing. Amable and Palombarini’s analysis is not only useful for the French political landscape, but could also be utilized in other contexts, such as Britain, Germany, Italy, or even the United States. Their Gramscian model has quite a bit of explanatory power, as it brilliantly illuminates the shift toward increasingly neoliberal policies over the past four centuries of French politics and the difficulty in any one bloc attaining a majority.
As such, the authors provide the Left with a cogent and enactable project going forward: to consolidate the different contingents of the working class and the youth together to form a new social bloc that can amass a majority of the electorate. Amable and Palombarini do not hold any punches in critiquing the failures of the Left in France, as they hold that it has focused far too much on issues of identity over economic inequality, ecological justice, and universal social issues. While they recognize that Macron’s bourgeois bloc will be difficult to break, they are also hopeful that a populist Left party like Melenchon-led La France Insoumise can rally together a cogent social bloc that can challenge and overcome Macron’s ever-narrowing base of support.
Critique:
On the other hand, while Amable and Palombarini’s explanation is compelling, it can also be quite dense and difficult to follow at times. Admittedly, this might simply be an issue of translation, but the authors tend to be overly wordy, bogging down the reader in difficult-to-follow abstract concepts without giving many tangible examples to ground the reader. Those who are wholly unfamiliar with the basics of French political life will probably find themselves a bit lost in the minutiae that Amable and Palombarini detail in their account.
Additionally, the title of the book is a bit misleading. Those who pick up this book thinking that it is primarily about Macron will likely find him elusive in this text. This is not really a book about Macron, but rather about the forces that allowed him to take office. The focus of the book -- reflected in the original title, L’illusion du bloc bourgeois: Alliances sociales et avenir du modèle français (“The Illusion of the Bourgeois Bloc: Social Alliances and the Future of the French Model”) -- is to utilize the Gramscian concepts of social blocs and hegemony to examine and explain the instability of the French political landscape over the past four decades. In this regard, the book is largely successful. The reader simply shouldn't expect it to be about either Macron or his potential fall from power in the near future.
Indeed, the authors note that much of the book was written before the 2017 election, with the final chapter about Macron being included in the second edition at the beginning of 2018. As such, Macron’s policies that he has pushed while in office -- as well as the development of the Yellow Vest protests and the subsequent unrest in France -- remain unaddressed in this account. Since this book was written over a few distinct moments in time (each with its own political context and development), its structure can often feel fragmented and overly repetitive. For example, the authors explain the similarities and differences between neoliberals and modernists in the second chapter (47), only for this distinction to fully disappear in later chapters. Amable and Palombarini introduce novel concepts and frameworks throughout the text only to abandon them as the book progresses. While these insights and distinctions are often brilliant, it is a bit disappointing that we don’t see them more fully developed, or how these concepts interact with each other.
Finally, the authors are hopeful that the left in France can construct a strategy to oppose the dominant, if minoritarian, bourgeois bloc. They see a future in which the left can embrace populist left-wing values by making economic inequality, labor rights, and ecological justice the forefront of their platforms. How to begin to compose this bloc, however, remains frustratingly elusive. The authors’ propositions are a bit vague, which points to the difficulty of building a left-wing bloc in the current political climate that dominates the West.
Conclusion:
Overall, The Last Neoliberal provides a cogent theoretical framework to understand the current political crisis in France. While a bit convoluted in some places, this work serves as a valuable analytic perspective on the gradual neoliberal transformation of French politics. Amable and Palombarini’s contribution is erudite and all the more convincing in the wake of the 2022 French elections and the subsequent souring of the populace’s attitudes toward Macron.
As I finish writing this review, millions of protestors are lining the streets of Paris, furious over Macron’s bullish pension reform policy, which effectively increases the age of retirement from 62 to 64 years old. While France has patted itself on the back in recent decades for improving worker productivity, the working class has suffered the brunt of the physical and mental strain that this has required. Stagnant wages, the high cost of living, and the threat of war are all fueling this strike action across the country against Macron and his administration.
Although he made history by squeaking out another victory against Marie Le Pen once again in 2022, Macron’s popularity has plummeted since taking office, as voters denied the newly-reelected president an absolute majority in the National Assembly. Despite his image as a modernizer and uniter of the French population, Macron’s presidency has been marked by increasing inequality and economic precarity for the working class while the wealthy continue to profit. It is no wonder that the French population is increasingly moving toward the parties of Melenchon and Le Pen to voice their dissatisfaction with the status quo.
Macron’s failure to forge alliances illustrates that Amable and Palombarini’s analysis still holds water. The bourgeois bloc has nowhere to grow, as it has completely alienated those to its immediate left and right. Yet, along with the parties of Melenchon and Le Pen, the rate of abstention voters continues to rise as over half of French voters did not participate in the last National Assembly election.
Macron’s fragile coalition is tearing apart at the seams. In the wake of his failure, opportunities have arisen for both the populist left and right in France. If the Left is to succeed, it must be rooted in the poor and working-class struggles, uniting a diverse pool of voters by focusing on their common struggle against the forces of neoliberal capitalism, and mobilizing them to build a coalition based on popular power and worker’s democracy. Macron’s obsession with pension reform and his bullish tactics to bypass parliamentary processes and push it into law might ultimately prove to be his downfall. Repeating familiar tones, anger and revolution are stirring in the air of Paris. It is up to the Left to channel the populace’s rage into a cogent political project that delivers a dignified life for all the people of France.