Can the French Teach the Americans How to Say NO!?

Many Americans may get a kick out of making fun of the French. But our neighbors across the pond can teach us a thing or three about how to keep a society democratic. Admittedly, France has a different history than the U.S. - having been ruled by a hereditary monarchy more than once, having overthrown their monarchies more than once, suffering from much more class stratification than we have had, and creating a parliamentary democracy in response to that situation that has resulted in their having major political parties of the left that survive to this day.

France also has a much stronger labor movement than we do in America. And the fact that the French have left wing political parties and strong unions plus strong civil society organizations means that when something pisses off working class people in France, their government hears about it fast and hard. And is often forced to make reforms that are unheard of in the U.S.

This doesn't mean that France doesn't have a strong right-wing. It does, and just like here it is bankrolled by corporate leaders and populated by arch-conservatives and nationalists. And that right-wing can absolutely get political leaders like the neo-conservative Nicolas Sarkozy into the French presidency periodically.

When right-wingers are in office in France, they do exactly what right-wingers (and too many erstwhile "left-wing" Democrats) do here in the U.S. - they try to roll back hard-won social reforms that benefit working people, and get more money into the pockets of the rich and the corporations they own. Sometimes they succeed, but every once and a while they overstep their mark - and all hell breaks loose.

Because French working people have learned a lesson that American working people have forgotten.

They know how to say "NO!"

Sarkozy wants to roll back France's retirement age from 60 to 62. The U.S. by way of comparison has already managed to roll back our retirement age - the age when most Americans become eligible for Social Security - from 65 to 67. And soon we may see it rolled back further to age 70. Yet there's been nary a peep of protest over the last few years as this process has gone on.

But France? France has just gone up over that one issue. Millions of people in a country the size of Texas are in the streets. And they're not just doing symbolic protest and going home like their American counterparts on the left tend to do when confronted by a new big bad.

They are shutting their country down. Making it ungovernable. Saying no to pension "reform." Until Sarkozy backs down and calls off his initiative.

What's interesting is not just the scale of the protests, but the age range. High school and junior high students are walking out of class - joining their teachers and parents. They seem quite clear that anything that hurts their elders will ultimately hurt them too.

Also, the fact that key points of production are being shut down makes the French struggle especially interesting. Transportation is crawling. The famously militant French truck drivers have joined the effort. The rail and airline workers are out.

Most critically, the oil workers have been refusing to offload tankers . The lack of fuel is a serious threat to the workings of latter-day capitalism.

All of this will mean hardships for French working people, but the head of the main (and far from the most militant) French trade union, the CGT, just shrugs and says "We are hardening our stance." People there seem to understand that it is worth some minor hardship in the short term to stop major hardships from happening in the future.

And the current French government is now teetering on the brink of collapse - and will probably be forced to the bargaining table like it was on related issues in 2006 and 1995. Nice work for a few weeks of concerted political struggle.

The day I see a major American labor leader (or other progressive leader) do the same thing will be a great day indeed. And I'm not holding my breath for that development to come to pass anytime soon.

I mean compare the recent "March for Jobs, Justice, and Education" protest (a.k.a. 10-2-10) in DC to the French rebellion, and you'll see what I mean. A one-day scripted protest in the nation's capital held on a weekend when the government's not at work. Called by the One Nation Working Together coalition that was launched by one large union "superlocal" - 1199SEIU - and one venerable civil rights group - NAACP - but was eventually joined by the major American labor federation AFL-CIO and a host of civil society groups in the months of organizing leading up to the October 2nd demonstration.

Whatever points that were put forward by the 100,000 to 200,000 person (depending on your source) event were already blunted by the Democratic Party leadership's intervention and by the native timidity of most American progressive leaders when it comes to anything that might affect the success of the Democrats in major federal electoral contests like this fall's midterm elections.

But even if the rally had made very strong demands (like, say, "Single Payer Health Care Now!"), the powers-that-be were certainly aware they had nothing to fear. Such protests come and go, and rarely result in significant political change.

Now imagine if the same progressive leaders - especially AFL-CIO leaders who run a failing labor movement that is proportionally no smaller than the French labor movement - had said "that's it, Democrats ... that's it, Republicans ... that's it, corporations ... meet the following demands or we'll shut this country down!" And then proceeded to stop trucking, the rail system, the oil industry, most schools and several other major points of production.

Well, the government's first reaction would be to jail union leadership under various Cold War anti-union laws that were put in place to stop such threats to "national security."

Let's say the union leaders stood firm. And their members backed them. And civil society organizations honored the strike wave, and students and teachers stayed out.

What would happen then? What would happen if Americans said "NO!" To corporate power. To corporate-dominated government. To anti-worker policies.

I'm thinking we might see some reforms enacted with a speed previously thought impossible.

Then we might have a movement of working families that could develop the power to change our political system to finally say "YES!" to a raft of pro-worker reforms. Full unionization rights, cradle-to-grave government-backed living wage, cradle-to-grave public education, a national public health care system, a national public child care system, a 35-hour work week, nationalization of the financial industry, and so on and so forth.

But to get anything like this scenario to occur before neo-liberals and neo-conservatives and their corporate overseers have finished carving up this country like a Christmas goose, American labor and other progressive leaders will have to learn to say "NO!" again - as their predecessors once did.

And they'll have to develop a will to fight. They'll have to stop thinking that workers and bosses have anything much in common (which will require climbing over a mountain of communitarian rhetoric from both sides of the constrained American political aisle).

I'm coming at this discussion from the perspective of a journalist who covers progressive social movements in Boston from week-to-week - and from the perspective of someone who has been a foot soldier and leader in those movements for a couple of decades prior to becoming a journalist again. And from both perspectives I have the same analysis. Progressive social movements are currently very weak. In Boston. In Massachusetts. And on the national level. The story is the same. There are always some promising developments here and there. But in the main, the American left is weak weak weak.

I think that's a pity. And I don't think that has to remain the case. But I do think that American progressives need to take a careful look at the current movement in France. And in many other countries with similar rebellions against the corporate threat to democracy. And we all need to ask ourselves ... "are we ready to say "NO!"

Are we ready to challenge "market forces" with "human needs?" Are we ready to fight for a more humane, more just and more democratic society again?

And if so, we need to get on with it. Our nation and our planet can't wait forever for us to get on the stick.