In the early 1930s, Antonio Gramsci, former General Secretary of the Italian Communist Party, theorized from the walls of his prison what a crisis was. An “interregnum”, a “chiaroscuro” in which “monsters arise”, he says in a development often quoted later. However, this ambiguity between dog and wolf applies perfectly to the political context caused by Emmanuel Macron’s pension reform. Rarely has a text so weighed up the different legitimacies that can claim to dictate public action. Which should dominate? Neither general strike, nor popular tidal wave, nor project indisputably validated in the ballot boxes, the responses sent by society are only weak signals that everyone interprets according to their preferences. This growing inability to agree on common frames of reference finds its most caricatural translation in the discrepancies in the counting of demonstrators between the police and the unions. 700,000 in Paris this Tuesday, March 7 according to the CGT, 81,000 according to the police headquarters. Everyone lives in their reality. For lack of a clear balance of power, everything is confused.
The mobilization against retirement at 64 is on an unprecedented scale, say opponents of the project. It is actually comparable to the movement against the Woerth law in 2010, raising the retirement age from 60 to 62 years old. And it was passed and then came into force. 1.28 million demonstrators in the streets, according to the police, is less than the number of French people on the Champs-Elysées on July 12, 1998, after the France-Brazil World Cup final. And this represents less than 5% of the electorate in the second round of the presidential election of 2022. We are far from the seven million strikers of May-68. Seen like that, there is no reason to see a piece of history there.
Polls don’t elect anyone
Yes, but this time, add the opponents, the mobilization is massively supported by public opinion. Is it not true that 68% of respondents today reject the reform, according to a study by Ifop for the JDD, published on March 5? In 2010, they were still 53% to consider “acceptable” the decline to 62 years of the legal age of retirement. In 2023, the French would have invented the “social movement by proxy”, as in 1995 they had supported the strikes of the public services, without participating in them, thus initiating a “strike by proxy” which will be fatal to the Juppé plan. What will they think tomorrow, when the protests turn into economic blockages? Should we consider that a poll support is equivalent to a popular revocation of the government? Need we remind you, in France, the polls do not make a decision, otherwise Jack Lang and Bernard Kouchner would have been elected Presidents of the Republic.
There remains electoral legitimacy. Impossible to place it on the same level as the others. In a democracy, it remains the first marker of the will of the people. In 1968, we remember that the seven million strikers were contradicted, a month later, by the 10.5 million Gaullist voters in the legislative elections caused by the dissolution of the president. A triumph for the right. The truth of the street is therefore not always that of the majority of the country. But it is too little specified that between these two moments, the Grenelle agreements, signed on May 27, 1968, led to a 35% (!) increase in the minimum wage and the authorization of union sections in all companies. . The legitimacy of the protest movement had therefore been well understood.
Lethal weapon of 49.3
This time, no compromise. Emmanuel Macron does not wish to water down his project. By electing him to the Elysée, didn’t the French moreover ratify his program? A month later, the Head of State even obtained a majority in the National Assembly. Only relative majority, oppose his critics, who describe this choice as a disqualification a posteriori pension reform. Questionable analysis, when we know that the block of circumstance that the macronists form with the Republicans, long-time defenders of the principle of working longer, has a majority. Above all, the institutions are clear: the government can have its project adopted, if necessary by means of article 49.3 of the Constitution, provided that an alternative majority does not agree to cause the resignation of the government. A provision… invariably decried in the polls.
What is fundamentally striking in this politico-social struggle is the absence of the popular masses. In 1968, the unions represented 4 million members, 7 million French people had gone on strike. In response, 10.5 million French people voted for the Gaullist candidates in the legislative elections, which represented 48% of the votes cast and more than one in three voters. 55 years later, the French population has increased from 51 to 68 million inhabitants, but the mobilization figures have fallen dramatically. In the legislative elections of June 2022, voters from the Renaissance bloc and the Republicans only represent one in six registered citizens, that is to say 8.4 million French people. The unions have only 2.4 million members, the figures of demonstrators have replaced the scores of the strikers.
Polling institutes have become the only oracle recognized by the media for relaying public opinion. But everyone knows that the answer of the respondents depends on the question asked. Ifop, Ipsos or Odoxa, as brilliant as they are, will never replace democratic deliberation. Whatever the legitimacy to which we devote ourselves, one thing can make everyone agree: it will be necessary, after this showdown, to engage in a process to mend this country and restore strength to our democracy.