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“Increase in inequalities is worldwide”

Marcus Dam

Michel Rocard, who was Prime Minister of France during 1988-91, speaks on the challenges ahead for the Socialist Party and the ascendancy of conservatism in his country. Excerpts from a recent interview in Kolkata:

— Photo: SUSHANTA PATRONOBISH

Michel Rocard: “India’s communists have found an intelligent way to survive — to be efficient in governance, even in coalitions.”

You have had three consecutive conservative Presidents in France, the latest being Nicolas Sarkozy. What has gone wrong with the Socialists, the Leftists? They seem to be in retreat.

What seems principal to me is the fact that the French Social Democrats have a difference with the rest of the social democratic forces worldwide, especially in Europe where they are united. The French Social Democrats have believed too much that there would be national solutions to the present difficulties of international capitalism. And I fear that the French public opinion did not think so.

The problem is worldwide. Growth in developed countries is more than half slower than what it was 30 years ago. Capitalism then was compatible with full employment; it is no more. Now in North America, as in Europe, as in Japan, in all these populations in these developed capitalist societies, the sum of unemployed, of precarious workers and the poor is more than 20 per cent. And this is the reason why the German Social Democrats lost the last election though they are still in the coalition government. It is the reason why in Italy and in Spain you have had change in government. It is the reason why the Netherlands and France have rejected the European constitution. Europe has not been capable of defending itself in the face of growing precariousness in work.

In this situation the French left-wing did not find a convincing enough answer. On the contrary it was the right-wing which produced a tough man who it was believed could give a small kick to growth [and] could make some changes that include the very new idea that the foreign policy could be managed by a left-wing Minister under his authority.

But my position is very personal and I don’t think there is a conservative solution to re-dynamise international capitalism and to remake it full employment capitalism. The solution for that, which is compatible with free enterprise and open markets, is a social democracy that could win elections and whose programme could be visible as an alliance between all European countries.

The results were [a] overwhelming majority for the right-wing. Not a complete disaster and disappearance of the left-wing but a severe defeat.

I don’t think there is any future for the Left in France which might be reserved to France alone and be designed around the French project. There has been an international evolution of capitalism presently under the leadership of President George Bush who is really a very conservative man. This evolution which includes India has also seen a continuing increase in inequalities, the number of the very rich has risen as well as that of the poor. That is a worldwide phenomenon.

I do think that the only meaningful project is that of the European Union for correcting such an evolution, cutting down on unemployment, lessening the precariousness of work, and also inequality. That is possible but only at the European level. Will this intellectual duty be fulfilled I do not know.

No. Splits are for the media. We are democracies. Even in India the political party is not a regimented army. We have no condition or reason to be united all at once. The fact that we debate and register disagreements is not the crisis. It is life, it is called democracy. Unity is a slogan, it is a decorative word. Democracy means permanent conflict and India is a very good example. It means how to manage disagreement. It is the job of political parties including the French Socialist Party to select ideas and propose the evolution of society, select candidates for general elections with competitive ambitions in the competition for those ideas. We are doing our job, to select people who are ambitious, but one will be completely mistaken to call it a crisis.

Yes, we had probably chosen the wrong candidate.

Because that was not accepted we came to this defeat.

It is rooted largely in a tradition or culture of half a century. The French Socialist Party, which was all along the biggest left-wing party, had the possibility to win an election in alliance with only forces that would be on its Left all this while. So the habit of winning an election with those on its Right was lost to it. Most socialist democratic parties in Europe, our brother parties, work in coalitions with the Right. So this French purism can be read as an excessive claim for purity, which is a signature of political incapacity.

That is where we are. But there is something else. All this in my view will be solved within five to ten years. But for journalists such a period is more than eternity. You usually comment on events of the coming weeks. That is not your fault — it is the market, the needs of capital, which animates your newspapers. This is no criticism. We will find new solution in these coming years but cannot do that in a few months.

There are three reasons. First, the special weakness, not only electoral but in thinking of the French Socialist Party that is peculiar: it does not need to follow the general path-lines of social democracy internationally. We are united in the Party of European Socialists, though it has a French section which is undisciplined.

But if you look at the other social democratic parties most of them are culturally ready, some actually practising coalitions with the right wing which the French should learn to do.

Second, I do not agree with the so-called worldwide great success of monetarism or ultra liberalism, the School of Chicago — manned by people like Milton Friedman and which I consider a catastrophe for the world. I consider these people were responsible for the unlocking of increasing growth of inequalities that has happened even in your country. My feeling is the Economic Nobel Prize jury has stopped crowning theoreticians for such growth since the past 12 to 15 years now. The debate now is open. Look at the trade negotiations — it is all blocked. The five past world negotiations have all failed because of the growing consensus that we are under an excess of de-regulated free trade.

Then there are financial reasons. Our American friends need to borrow two billion dollars a day to survive and keep their position. Half of the amount comes from the Central Bank of China, the rest from other parts of Asia — Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc. This is not sustainable.

So, my answer to your question is that these facts will push for solutions calling for collective thinking where the powerful Indian government will also have its place. My prognosis is that the French socialist forces will prevail if they join a common world movement towards more regulation and less inequalities.

Since the death of Stalin, the disappearance of the Berlin wall, and the breaking up of the Soviet Union the word ‘communism’ does not mean anything but a tradition. But your communists have found a more intelligent way to survive better than ours — which is to be efficient in governance, even in coalitions. And they are right in what they did in West Bengal in terms of land property and agriculture: first, very efficient, second, respected, third with good macro-economic measurable results, and, fourth, being completely contrary to what the international communist movement had been before in many other countries.

So congratulations to your communists and welcome to some democratically international way of managing the world’s problems.

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“Increase in inequalities is worldwide”

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