March 2/9, 2020 The Nation. 33

DE GAULLE’S LONG SHADOW The making and unmaking of ’s Fifth Republic by HUGO DROCHON

n May 8, 1789, at the onset of the tion, and for good reason: Until recently, the other a bottom-up demand for demo- French Revolution, the deputies of French politics has usually opposed a left- cratic participation and popular control. In the Third Estate, one of the three wing president (Mitterrand, Hollande) to short, much like the situation during the “estates of the realm” under the an- a right-wing one (Chirac, Sarkozy). But it Terror, the struggle in France’s postwar re - cien régime, were asked to vote on would be a mistake to think that this was construction was less left versus right than Ohow to bring together the country’s three the only opposition in existence at the elites versus the people. orders (the clergy, the nobility, and the time or, indeed, that it has been the only This, at least, is the central claim that commoners) by filing to either the left or opposition since. Although Robespierre Herrick Chapman, a professor of history the right of the president of the session. and the Jacobins were to the “left” of the at New York University, makes in his new Having done so, they sat down as they had Girondins, the dynamics of La Terreur, for book, France’s Long Reconstruction: In Search voted, and the left/right division of politics instance, seemed more to oppose a central- of the Modern Republic, a history of France was born—a division that would play a ized, revolutionary Parisian government to from the end of World War II to the Alge- decisive role in the subsequent course of opposition in the provinces. Instead of left rian War of Independence. Chapman fo- events, notably during the debates about versus right, what existed in this case was cuses on the social, economic, and political what to do with the deposed king. (The left a conflict between a top and a bottom— dynamics of the reconstruction effort, and wanted to send him to the guillotine, the between elite designs and popular demands. in closing his book in 1962 rather than in right did not.) The same might be said of the country 1958, with the end of the Fourth Republic Ever since, we have tended to tell the after World War II, when what was at stake and the founding of the Fifth, he follows a history of France through that opposi- was less whether left or right visions of trend in French historiography that aims France would win out than the existence to integrate colonial Algeria into the his- Hugo Drochon teaches politics at the University of tensions between two competing visions tory of France. He does this not simply to of Nottingham and is the author of Nietzsche’s of modernization: one centered on a top- underline how France’s domestic recovery

CHARLES DE GAULLE, SECOND FROM LEFT (REPORTERS ASSOCIÉS / GAMMA-RAPHO VIA GETTY IMAGES) GETTY VIA GAMMA-RAPHO / ASSOCIÉS (REPORTERS LEFT FROM SECOND GAULLE, DE CHARLES Great Politics. down, elite-run, state-driven program and was deeply entwined with two full-scale 34 The Nation. March 2/9, 2020 colonial wars, in Algeria and Indochina, but France’s Long Reconstruction in family support, that consensus soon also because the referendum of Charles de In Search of the Modern Republic cracked under the bottom-up pressures of Gaulle that brought the Algerian conflict to By Herrick Chapman second-wave feminism, leading to clashes an end marked what has often been dubbed Harvard University Press. 416 pp. $46.50 with administrators over marriage law re- the “second founding” of the Fifth Repub- form and contraceptive rights, among the lic. This was the moment when the “pres- day as the feared anti-riot police. many fissures between the country’s ruling identialism” of the French political system De Gaulle also worked to erode old left/ elite and those resisting them from be- came into being, and de Gaulle carved out right divisions. As head of the Provisional low. Those clashes made their way back for himself and future presidents certain Government of the French Republic, he into national politics, with Communists domaines réservés—notably in foreign policy, formed a government of “national uni- posing the question of women and work military affairs, and national security—that ty” after the liberation of Paris that was in opposition to the more traditionalist, established the president as the lead actor in composed of all the political actors in the child-centered Catholic approach. When French political life. Resistance: Communists, Socialists, left- François Mitterrand, the future Socialist wing Catholics, as well as the conservatives president, challenged de Gaulle for the t is hard to overstate the challenges closer to de Gaulle. All parties agreed that presidency in 1965, the debate no lon- France faced after World War II. Fight- the modernization of France should occur ger concerned family policy but women’s ing during the first war was concentrat- through a two-pronged process: The state rights—and here, too, the arguments were ed in the northeast, but in the second, should take the lead in postwar recon- about the level of popular participation in 74 of the 90 French départements were struction, while democracy was revived at state decisions. Itouched by combat. A total of 1 million the grassroots. This began the process of These top versus bottom tensions could families were homeless; 2 million people reorienting politics away from older di- be seen in postwar economic policy, too. were former prisoners of war. Thanks in visions and creating others. At the state France was the only country in Western part to the successful work of the French level, for instance, the Communists were Europe that took on all three of the in- Resistance, only 45 percent of the country’s keen to present themselves as a “party novations available at the time: national- rail lines were serviceable—and really only of government,” following Stalin’s diktat izations, work committees, and planning. in unconnected sections, with just one in from Moscow that the European Com- Top-down dirigisme, best incarnated by six locomotives working—making commu- munist parties should participate in post- the Monnet Plan of 1946–52—which nication between Paris and the rest of the war rebuilding efforts. Yet the party’s rank sought to modernize electricity, gas, coal, country virtually impossible. There were and file, continuing a Resistance tradition rail lines, cement, and tractors—was highly massive labor shortages and even less trust of self-government, persisted in calls for successful, with France going through an among French citizens in a country torn new forms of democratic participation and unprecedented 30-year economic boom, apart by what had essentially been a civil helped organize the nationalization of the known as Les Trente Glorieuses. Again, while war between Vichy collaborators and the automaker Renault. Although he was less everyone from conservatives to Commu- Resistance at the end of the occupation. open to exploring ideas of economic de- nists and the trade unions was on board, France also needed to regain its interna- mocracy, de Gaulle declared his desire to the strains between economic recovery tional standing and independence vis-à-vis “remain faithful to the democratic princi- and democratic renewal played out in the the Allied forces after the war. ples that our ancestors drew from the ge- conflict between centralized parliamentary Returning to France from London, nius of our race and that are the very stakes oversight of economic policy on the one where he had led a government in exile of this life-and-death war” in his 1941 ad- hand and workplace democracy on the and established himself as the undisputed dress at London’s Royal Albert Hall. other. The distinguished civil servant Jean leader of the French Resistance after his Monnet, with Robert Schuman, the French “Appeal of 18 June” was broadcast by the hapman follows these competing im- minister of foreign affairs, was at the heart BBC in 1940, de Gaulle quickly turned to pulses in the postwar years through of the subsequent project to establish the solidifying his authority in his own country. the prism of four policy domains: European Coal and Steel Community, for He did so by victoriously parading around labor and immigration, tax reform which his plan—with all the advantages of town centers after liberation to the acclaim and the regulation of small enter- postwar industrial recovery—served as a of the local people. These “street proces- Cprise, family and the welfare state, and model but which precipitated the growing sionals,” as Chapman calls them, helped de the nationalization of industry. On the “democratic deficit” that is still playing out Gaulle unite the country around him and family, for instance, Chapman shows that in France and across the European Union. cement his legitimacy as the leader of the a pro-natalist policy, although it echoed Chapman also documents how the . At 6 foot 5, he had a stature Vichy’s slogan of “Travail, famille, patrie,” growth of the French security services that conferred a natural authority. This was widely consensual, with de Gaulle emerged as the state expanded its social was reinforced during the victory parade calling for 12 million “beaux bébés”; soon security programs and as immigration from in Paris on August 26, 1944, when enemy France’s baby boom started in earnest. the colonies increased. Desperate to attract snipers took potshots at him but he refused Family allow ances even managed for a foreign workers to help in the reconstruc- to back down. But if de Gaulle’s method was while to reconcile the Parisian high civ- tion effort, the French state turned its eyes to restore state authority from above, he il service with local associations, as the to its colonies, especially Algeria, to recruit moved to integrate the former Resistance caisses that administered the funds were them. It invested massively in training, from below as well, notably by recruiting its decentralized and run by citizen boards. providing these workers with accommo- members into the new CRS (Compagnies Although to this day France is the country dations and education. Compared with Républicaines de Sécurité), best known to- that invests the most of its national income their fellow French, they remained very March 2/9, 2020 The Nation. 35 much second-class citizens, but such an being a sales tax, taxe sur la valeur ajoutée lthough Chapman closes his study investment came at another price, too— (value-added tax, or VAT). in 1962, he is clear that the founda- namely that access to social welfare was a Keen to regain control of its fi nances, tions of the Fifth Republic shape the way for the security services to keep tabs the central government sent tax officials dynamics of French politics today. on the pro-independence unrest that was throughout the country to ensure that Indeed, his whole point is that a already fomenting in Paris and . shopkeepers were complying with the new Aregime born in crisis will engender only The link between the top-down surveil- laws. This upset the fragile ecosystem that further crisis from within. That de Gaulle lance of French Algerians and the social had been built up locally to survive the end embedded in the foundations of the new security programs only deepened with the of the war and immediately touched off regime the top-down centralizing tendency, bottom-up protests in Paris for Algerian a wave of protests. Drawing on previous- to the detriment of the bottom-up democ- independence that began in the 1950s and ly untapped archival material, Chapman ratizing demands, means that the modern- ’60s, leading to the militarization of the reveals that this began as early as 1947, izing tensions that characterized France’s police force under the dreaded Maurice when 7,000 people protested in La Roche- reconstruction after World War II would Papon (later inculpated in the deportation sur-Yon in the department of Vendée. But inevitably spill into the streets. of 1,690 French Jews to the Drancy intern- by the summer of 1953, a movement ap- The recent gilet jaune (yellow vest) pro- ment camp during World War II), blurring peared to be on the rise: When Poujade tests can be seen in this light. Like Pou- the long-standing lines of demarcation be- and a group of 300 men prevented some jadism before it, the unrest is a struggle tween the French Army and the police and contrôleurs from carrying out a verification between elite modernizers and popular de- leading to further centralization in the final in a town in the department of Lot in the mands. Like the Poujadists, the gilets jaunes years of the Fourth Republic. south of France, protests spread across the are mostly white, lower-middle-class French Although much work has been done on country, leading to a number of similar, people, primarily based in smaller towns, the history of France since the war, Chap- more or less violent actions. who felt that they were losing out as a result man’s focus on policy offers new insights The wave of protests led to the for- of globalization; neither movement was a on familiar terrain. In focusing on the mation of a Poujadist party, the Union de revolt of the more diverse banlieues, the im- tensions between top-down technocratic Défense des Commerçants et Artisans, in migrant ghettos on the outskirts of cities, or reform and bottom-up democratic reform, 1953, which had some electoral suc- principally about unemployment. This he has radically changed the paradigm cess during the final years of the was the provinces coming to Paris. through which we see this history. After Fourth Republic—especially The anti-Paris sentiment is Chapman’s France’s Long Reconstruction, we in 1956, when the party sur- key, as is the anger toward will never look at French history in the prised even itself by winning France’s centralized govern- same way again. 2.5 million votes, thereby ment. Anti-Semitism also sending a number of deputies reared its ugly head in both ne of the interesting episodes in to the National Assembly. In movements: The Poujadists which the dueling dynamics of mod- Paris, however, Poujade and targeted the center-left pol- ernization can be seen is the tax his fellow deputies soon proved itician Pierre Mendès France, revolts of the 1950s, which gave rise politically incompetent and fell and the verbal abuse directed by to what came to be known as the into infighting, and Poujadism ab- yellow vest protesters against the public OPoujadist movement, named after its lead- sorbed into what Chapman calls “the rising intellectual Alain Finkielkraut is a more er, . Although he presented tide of Gaullism” and the founding of the recent example. Both movements had an himself as a “modest local boy,” he had links Fifth Republic in 1958. international dimension, too. The pressure to the French far right, having been active But Poujadism’s anti-Paris and anti- for tax reform in postwar France came in ’s fascist Parti Populaire centralization politics left its mark on the from America’s Marshall Plan; today it Français in his teenage years and collab- political landscape. A young Jean-Marie Le comes from the EU. Finally, Poujade’s anti- orating with the youth wing of the Vichy Pen cut his teeth in the movement and went parliamentarism (he called the National regime. Many former collaborators and on to found the Front National, which gar- Assembly the “biggest brothel in Paris”) was Pétainists, who served in the Vichy regime, nered the support of disgruntled pieds-noirs expressed through the gilets jaunes’ demand found his movement to be a congenial (European white settlers) who were forced for direct rule through citizens’ referenda. home. out of Algeria after independence in 1962. In both cases, the French state’s re- During the occupation nearly 100,000 (Poujade’s wife, Yvette Seva, was a pied- sponse was the same: a combination of small neighborhood shops opened, pro- noir.) Most of their ire was directed toward heavy-handed repression and concession. viding groceries, clothing, and other small de Gaulle, who was appointed in 1958 to During the Poujadist rebellion, shopkeepers household items, some of which were pro- resolve the deepening crisis. His first action were given special VAT exemptions, and in cured on the black market. In the context was to announce to the gathered crowd in December of 2018, Macron made a number of rationing, shopkeepers gained a standing Algiers, “Je vous ai compris,” which seemed of concessions, including abrogating the in small communities, but at the end of to signal his support for . fuel tax. (Tellingly, both protests concerned the war de Gaulle’s government wanted to The pieds-noirs thus felt betrayed when he the VAT.) Like the Poujadists, the yellow take back control of commerce. This was granted Algeria independence four years vest movement turned to electoral politics, done both to regulate it and to modernize later. De Gaulle used the crisis to usher in putting up candidates on two lists for the it— introducing supermarkets on the out- the Fifth Republic, which reinforced the European elections; also like the Poujadists, skirts of towns, developing new industrial presidential power he had dreamed of since these electoral efforts were complete flops. centers of production, and bringing into the end of World War II. Together, the two yellow vest lists garnered 36 The Nation. March 2/9, 2020 less than 1 percent of the total vote. In the end, it seems that up to 44 percent of the gilets jaunes voted for , Jean-Marie Le Pen’s daughter, leading his party, since rebaptized the . From Chapman’s perspective, this align- ment of political forces makes perfect sense. Macron has captured the state and the po- litical center, and the forces arrayed against him have been pushed down and out onto the streets. Yet much as Poujadism led to concessions, the yellow vests’ protests have forced the government to engage in one of the biggest democratic experiments France has known since the war, namely the Grand Débat, and of course the point of meet- ing every Saturday on roundabouts was precisely to experiment with new forms of participation. While Macron reduced the movement’s momentum by granting it many concessions, he has also shown openness to some of its farther-reaching de- mands, and notably the creation of a nation- al citizens’ assembly to discuss the transition to a green economy. If the tension between top-down reforms and bottom-up demands remains the template of French politics, it appears that tension can sometimes be productive, too. Like many presidents before him (Gis- card, Chirac, Hollande), Macron is a perfect example of the type of leader the French reconstruction sought to produce: a gradu- ate of the grandes écoles Sciences Po and the ENA (École Nationale d’Administration), which were established after the war to train France’s bureaucratic elite. He is a so-called politician-expert not unlike Michel Debré, de Gaulle’s right-hand man and first prime minister under the Fifth Republic. More- over, as a former Rothschild banker and min- ister of finance, Macron embodies precisely TO THE MOON the type of figure that Poujade detested (and 070 Shake’s cosmic rap one of the rallying cries of the gilets jaunes was “Macron, démission!”—Macron, resign!) by STEPHEN KEARSE With the death of , the last true Gaullist, a chapter of French his- n the cover of her debut album, They have the look of constraints and im- tory seems to have drawn to a close. But Modus Vivendi, New Jersey rapper ply danger, but Shake appears unbothered, what Chapman’s book most powerfully 070 Shake strikes a fascinating pose. as if everything is going according to plan. shows is how the tensions between top- She’s styled to look like an android; On Modus Vivendi, that mix of coolness, down reforms and bottom-up demands are her body, save for her face, is encased vulnerability, and ambiguity characterizes still the story of French politics. Along Oin glinting metal. Her skin is smooth and Shake’s work. A bit of a stargazer, she’s with setting up a committee to evaluate his vibrant, and “070,” the name of her rap constantly turning to the cosmos for an- much-hated suppression of the ISF, France’s crew and the first three digits of her home- swers, finding purpose in the mysteries of wealth tax—often described as his “original town zip code, is printed above one of her the universe. Her music has an expansive, sin”—Macron has pledged to abolish the cheekbones in neat black ink. Metal tubes exploratory feel, as though she were simul- ENA. Whatever emerges to take its place, jut from her head and torso, stretching into taneously mapping the stars by observing however, is likely to be another ENA in all an orange band that glows like a hot flame. them from afar and visiting them in person. but name. Plus ça change… Though the war Bridging rap, R&B, emo, and synth pop, is over, France’s long reconstruction has Stephen Kearse writes frequently for The Nation Shake follows her instincts rather than a only just begun. ■ on books, music, and culture. rubric, resulting in songs that feel both IMAGES) GETTY VIA WIREIMAGE / OKPAKO (JOSEPH 2020 LONDON, IN SHAKE 070