Americanisation was the only component of globalisation that did not bitterly divide the French. According to Fourquet the split between those for whom globalisation meant achievement and those for whom it meant dispossession, would, from 2017, become central to understanding France. As in the United States and Britain, globalisation swept the French economy. As in the United States and Britain, its impact could have perverse consequences.
At the turn of the century, the French telecommunications manufacturer Alcatel had 120 different types of plants scattered around the country. One of them was located in Lannion. This is where Minitel was created and where the first French portable phone, Bi-bop, was invented. In 2001 Alcatel’s CEO declared that in the new economy factories were not necessary. Thousands of Lannion residents lost their jobs. Between 1999 and 2004 the city lost 10% of its population — then between 2004 and 2017 it fell by another 20%.
What happened to Lannion residents? They dropped out of the middle class, which was everywhere being reshaped by “the Great Metamorphosis”. It led to a phenomenon that Fourquet calls “bipolarisation”; society begins to resemble an hourglass. The middle class disintegrates, its lower strata falling into the lower classes and its upper strata ascending into the upper classes.
This process can be seen in leisure activities. The Trente Glorieuses were a time of upward social mobility, which translated into democratisation of ski slopes. While it used to be that entire middle class families went skiing, today skiing has become an activity that only the well-off can afford. The appearance of hard discount stores represents another sign of the erosion of the middle class. Its less affluent members cannot afford to maintain their consumption habits. This also, as Fourquet points out, explains the ominous success of Dacia cars. This Romanian brand, bought out by Renault, was originally intended as a way to expand into Eastern European markets. However, Dacia has enjoyed great popularity in France, allowing those who otherwise would have to turn to a used car to buy a new one.
Dacia drivers in the new France were more likely to work in warehouses, schools, and nursing homes than factories. It was these workers who became the backbone of the Gilets Jaunes movement. The protestors were the people who Fourquet had studied for decades; “the proletariat working in logistics and services”, and those who juggled several jobs to make ends meet. Jacline Mouraud, a Gilets Jaunes in the protest delegation which met with the French government, simultaneously worked as a hypnotherapist, an accordionist, and a security guard. Fourquet sees the Gilets Jaunes as an example of the “subaltern class” once described by Gramsci. Similar to the farmers of the Italian Mezzogiorno, constantly agitated, but unable to articulate their grievances successfully.
In Fourquet’s work we can see the patterns that have come to define modern France. The detachment of the elites from their country; the splintering of the middle-class; the collapse of centuries old traditions. His analyses clarify French politics. A Fourquet reader might have predicted Eric Zemmour’s failure to pick up the Rassemblement National vote over the weekend. The electorate of Kevins who sing country music and enjoy Buffalo Grill belongs to a different universe than the de Maistre-quoting essayist from Paris who recorded his best results in Saint-Tropez.
Without Fourquet’s writings, it can be difficult to grasp that the run-off between Macron and Le Pen is more than a political battle. It is a clash between two worlds within France, between the two halves of Fourquet’s hourglass. A confrontation, as Disraeli once wrote of a divided England, of “two nations, between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets.”
What will France be after France? Fourquet warned that the islands of the French archipelago will continue to drift apart. Stark differences in consumption, lifestyles, mobility, and wealth would only sharpen. He believed there were two ways to end this fragmentation. A new electoral system, based on proportional representation. And a final abandonment of France’s old Left-Right divide, and the acceptance of a new politics, contested on one side by the winners of globalisation, with the losers on the other side.
Proportional representation seems a distant prospect. But on Sunday, France, where politics had been structured for over half a century around two parties, changed dramatically. The socialists were irrelevant by 2017. Now Les Républicains cannot even obtain 5% of the vote. In the run-off, for the second time in a row, we will witness a showdown between the candidate of France for whom the future and globalisation mean the same thing and the candidate of France for whom globalisation means decline. French politics has finally come to represent the society described by Fourquet.
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