Force

source: Libération, January 10,2019.

author: Denis Merklen, professor of Sociology,  Sorbonne Nouvelle University 

translation: doxa-louise

Using force to counter violence, the bad medecine on the gilets jaunes crisis

The forms taken by current mobilization can be seen as the consequence of social defeats suffered in recent years, after strikes and demonstrations that brought out millions of people, on retirement incomes, labor laws or the  train service (SNCF).

Opinion. The rule of law and democracy go together, and include social movements, without doubt. Yet, at the very moment when the government is getting ready to up repressive measures to counter certain effects of social mobilization, we are experiencing an important form of confusion which stops us from seeing things clearly.

A social movement is more than the expression of a simple idea. That movement must act on a double front. On the one hand, there is a demonstration in public space in order to convince other citizens, the press, the government, other collective actors such as associations, parties, unions, employer associations. On the other hand, it goes into the arena to defend its interests, must thus establish a show of strength against another agent with which it enters into conflict, the government, another social group, another more or less institutionalized actor.  In this manner, the ecology movement acts at the same time on public opinion in order to raise consciousness as to the cause they defend, and at the same time, hinder industrial, agricultural governmental projects. Farmers sometimes block roads and ask for aid with respect to activities under threat. Students occupy their institutions and demonstrate in the street in opposition to a proposed reform.

The strike, a major element of contemporary democracy

The workers’ movement formed itself while mastering these two arcs and has succeeded in integrating these  aspects of mobilization into law: the demonstration and the strike. Very early on, workers realized that changing opinion only would not be enough. The strike recognized by law is one of the major achievements of contemporary democracy. It allows workers to cut off their contribution to social life, or in other terms the production of the common good. By putting production and services in breakdown mode when not working, the worker can as a consequence demand a remuneration considered more just. But the strike rests on the possibility of overcoming the will of the boss or the government, of opposing these.

The forms being adopted today by social mobilizations are for the most part the consequence of the stunning defeats met in recent years by social movements. Demonstrations and strikes have not succeeded in stopping the reform of the retirement system or of the Labor Code, the status of the SNCF or the universities, even where millions of people got involved. The fiasco of social movements can be understood from economic and political factors. Among the most prominent, change in the value of capital thanks to technological evolution while the mobility coming out of the liberalization of economic exchanges have made capital difficult to reach. And in second place, the willfulness of governments, the transfer of decision-making to supra-governmental organizations such as the European Community, the impossibility of responding to electoral abstentions and the growing importance of technocratic reasoning at the expense of political discourse. And where strike action did become effective as in the case of strikes in the transportation sector, we were served a direct political attack accusing the social movement of ‘taking the user hostage’.

The yellow vests succeed where the suburbs have failed

There have been laws adopted to limit the usefulness of strikes, such as law °2007-1224 from 2007 ‘with respect to social dialogue and the continuity of public service in the regular terrestrial transport of commuters’. Where economic conditions were not enough to weaken a strike, such as in industry, governments have sought to weaken the impact of collective action. Democracy looses out when one of the two wings of a social movement is cut off. It is increasingly difficult to establish a power struggle by collective mobilization. And for anything other than a strike, any action seeking to establish a power relationship has been rendered illegal. The space for social movement has been reduced to nothing. Only the demonstration of opinion in public space appears to be allowed. But there are many who share the feeling of not having been heard.

One of the reasons why violence is erupting in front of us comes from this quasi-impossibility of standing up to an identified adversary. It is not the exclusive mark of the yellow vests but has been found in the ‘suburbs’ and elsewhere. If the former have had some success it is because they have succeeded in re-establishing the two components of mobilization: power relationship and public demonstration. A strike being no longer useful, they occupy the territory and cut off the roundabouts. The roadblock is saying, ‘not until we have secured a place that is just and respected for the future will we free-up the road’. They are making themselves visible by their vests and demonstrate violently in areas that symbolize luxury and power. Thus, as was the case in the suburbs, violence here has a function that is notably expressive although not totally disconnected from an actual power struggle. This is why it is happening on the Champs-Élysées and not on roundabouts. From everywhere in the national territory they have found a symbol which gives them an identity, have clearly designated an enemy (the government, the technocrats and the rich), have invented a form of action which gives back to mobilization the two lines of action which are indispensable. They give off the feeling that French democracy is inhabited by a people who will not be ignored.

The government is in danger of weakening the legitimacy of the Law

Unable to come up with a political response without abandoning its project of liberalizing society and the State, the government is readying to double the strength of its repressive arsenal. But the common man classes which are now integrated into contemporary democracy thanks to an institutionalized Social State will not bow down to defeat and the pure and simple acceptation of an economic, social and political order imposed from the top. The government praises the rule of law and representative democracy. All the while narrowing right as it extends the space of what is illegal. The risk here is that of compromising the legitimacy of the law, eroding the legitimacy of exercising public force, of turning the police into a body dedicated to defending public order.

It wishes to reduce social opposition to a mere demonstration of opinion and make impossible all form of power struggle. It might well win this battle. But while it thus condemns once and for all the loosers of globalization to defeat, by the same token, it puts democracy in jeopardy and creates the conditions for increasingly violent confrontations from which it will be difficult to extricate ourselves. Democratic space is shrinking before our eyes.