John Lichfield has a powerful piece on the weekend's Paris riots in the Guardian this morning. I do not apologise for quoting two paragraphs. The rest needs to be read as well:
France is a republic that was founded in popular violence. Politics runs to the street here more rapidly than in any other western democracy. I've lived in France for 22 years and have witnessed street protests by workers, farmers, wine producers, truck drivers, railway employees, university students, sixth-formers, teachers, youths in the multiracial suburbs, chefs, lawyers, doctors and police officers. Yes, even police officers.
I have never seen the kind of wanton destruction that surrounded me on some of the smartest streets of Paris on Saturday — such random, hysterical hatred, directed not just towards the riot police but at shrines to the French republic itself such as the Arc de Triomphe. The 12-hour battle went beyond violent protest, beyond rioting, to the point of insurrection, even civil war.
Civil war is a strong term to use. I suspect John Lichfield knows that. I presume he uses it wisely as a result. And where France goes, who knows who might follow?
I have a concern. As Lichfield notes, France rioted 50 year's ago and rising prosperity deflected the anger. Now no one thinks that will happen. All increases in prosperity go to a tiny handful in society. People are oppressed, and they know it.
We need to be clear about the cause of the oppression. The superficial anger is in tax. I am well aware of it. But the cause is inability to make ends meet.
We cannot do without tax.
And we need green taxes.
So the problem has to be tackled another way.
The problem is excess rents.
And maybe excess interest costs.
And a lack of a living wage.
The problem is not tax.
The problem is the failure of a society where enough is made for all to make sure all can partake.
This is what neoliberalism has delivered. The riots are its consequence. As is Brexit. But the answer is not to blame taxation. Nor is the answer to overthrow government per se. Instead there is a need to oppose a government that will not tackle unfair debt burdens, income and wealth inequality, the absence of affordable property and the failure support those in need.
Those are the core issues, along with the environment, for our times.
And we have too many governments who will not be radical in the face of them.
No wonder there is anger.
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There is a somewhat different take on events in Paris here:
https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/the-brief-a-yellow-vest-fake-news-paradise/
My partner was in Paris over the weekend – she noted that most of the demonstrators were good natured.
The damage and destruction was limited to very specific areas.
Speaking to people in the French administration (at fairly senior level) there is concern with rising levels of inequality & the eco tax on green diesel could be seen as a trigger to the current set of demos (I was caught up in on motorway blockage @ Calais). It could also be seen as a move by Macron to raise funds for environmental action – given that France, a member of the Euro-zone is constrained by the 3%/60% rule – which makes it difficult for the state to fund directly things such as renewables or indeed, the energy rennovation of the built envirioment (urgently needed in France).
Related: Euro zone finance ministers are meeting to revise Euro-zone “rules” – Germany is dragging its feet – one supposes due to a mix of a lame-duck (dead duck?) chancellor and corner-shop mentality wrt finance. Whatevere happens, there will be no acknowledgement of the recent EC “COMM” (“Clean Planet for All) which identified the need for green investments of Euro520 billion per year for 20 years – where this money comes from is anybodys’ guess – but it ain’t going to come only from…. “Private business and households will be responsible for the vast majority of these investments”……yeah & another squadron of flying pigs has just passed the office window – doing a barrel roll. Apologies if this seems disconnected – but I’d suggest it ain’t.
I agree it is not
It was not by chance I wrote Green QE
The proposed fuel tax rises were the enough is enough moment. Don’t forget that this is a protest move that originated in the rural areas of France, where poverty is on the increase. Fuel prices, especially diesel, have risen hugely in the last 1-2 years. It’s impossible to get around in these places without a car, as we all know. Paris is not France!
What is being said is the rioting in Paris was caused by the ‘usual suspects’. Mainly hard right elements who constantly infiltrate union organised demonstrations.
But don’t ignore the French police who have for decades used these tactics, when it suits their agenda. Macron did say he would go in hard. Someone who was in Tours the same day, not on the demo but watching, said that for no apparent reason the police used tear gas on perfectly peaceful demonstrators, that’s including kids and old people.
Out in the sticks there are little kids and grandparents on the roundabouts. It’s all very friendly and non intimidating. I got held up three times on Sunday.
The unions have stayed out this…It’s a social movement not political. Organised by ordinary working people who see their lives being eroded. My yellow vest is on the dashboard of my car in support like over 70% of the population. It’s been there for the 3 weeks since I came down to the SW.
It’s just ordinary people who are saying…Enough of this shit.
@ Mike Parr
While grateful to see some sense in the link you give to euractly.com, and certainly senior administrators are concerned about inequality (Face à la crise du mouvement des « gilets jaunes », les prefets sonnent l’alerte », lemonde.fr ; 3dec18). Even some of the spineless robots in the LREM are having second thoughts and criticizing Micron.
But you confuse issues in suggesting Micron wants “Macron to raise funds for environmental action — given that France, a member of the Euro-zone is constrained by the 3%/60% rule”
1. Micron is reducing spending on the environment.
2. He had available all the money he has given and is giving to the rich, to the larger corporations with the CICE conversion and subsidies for polluters starting with Total.
3. The EU debt constraints are a very different argument, to do with neo-liberalist attempts to cut back the state.
This caught my attention and chimes with your post:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/dec/04/four-million-british-workers-live-in-poverty-charity-says
It’s just not on really. Working but also struggling? Outrageous.
Noisy here, but nothing burning and nobody fighting. Police remove their helmets and diffuse the tension.
https://www.facebook.com/VofEurope/videos/341347226597885/
When the powers that be want a riot they send in the riot police. It always works.
@Andy Crow
“Noisy here, but nothing burning and nobody fighting. Police remove their helmets and diffuse the tension.”
I doubt this facebook interpretation very much.
I think you’ll find that the CRS go in a priori with riot gear and only take it off when they are convinced there is no threat. It rarely happens and I think you’ll find it is nothing to do, regrettably, with solidarity.
That’s also why, I’d suggest, in France firework throwing is widespread – by definition ‘riot’ police deserve a challenge….
Peter May says:
“I doubt this facebook interpretation very much.”
Aye, you’re right to be doubtful, Peter. It’s probably no more a reflection of what’s been going on in Paris (and beyond) than the Mainstream media story.
@Peter May.
This gives yet another perspective.
https://www.commonspace.scot/articles/13626/media-rebuttal-yellowvests-movement-not-nihilism
Interesting that this is being taken by Bloomberg, BBC News 24 and The Guardian as another opportunity to ‘dis’ Facebook…and by extension social media generally. Establishment authorities are trying hard now to clip the wings of social media in order to take back the media under its control.
Facebook is a medium of communication. And it happens to be very democratic, in the sense that it is widely available to ‘ordinary’ people. The accusation of ‘professional agitators’ behind the French civil disorder rings hollow when it is a charge levelled by very definitely professional commentators of what we laughingly call the ‘free’ press.
I thought the Commonspace article interesting – I read it this morning
Perhaps this is an appropriate time to review this unflattering profile of Macron from Zerohedge. He comes over as being a man with a mission; someone else’s https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-25/meet-real-emmanuel-macron-consummate-banker-puppet-bizarre-elitist-creation
Macron – like Justin Trudeau – has always come across as a Poster Boy, ticking the boxes for a small range of ‘politically-correct’ attitudes, but with no real substance behind him.
I wonder how long that image can be sustained. I doubt, however, that he’ll fade away, like the Cheshire cat. More a Humpty Dumpty, I fear.
I thought a while ago of a new political product, the Trudobamacron, an attractive package that all kinds of things can be put into.
A sort of second-generation Obama then 🙂
The widespread perception that other people aren’t paying their fair way is where a lot of the dissatisfaction comes from. It’s particularly hard to accept money going out of our pay packets when we feel that tax is optional for the super rich.
Obviously I’m preaching to the choir, if not its conductor.
But it cannot be emphasised enough that tax justice is important, I’d guess it’s a bigger factor than tax amount. In the ’50s when top rate income tax was 90%+ there seems to have been less public resentment. (Obviously the super rich resented it and remade the world accordingly).
I agree….
We come all the way round the big circle with this don’t we.
The failure is to understand the basic principles of MMT, that all money in fiat currency system is created by government and that tax takes it back out of circulation.
As long as the narrative is accepted, that money is created by these ‘enterprising corporations’, and the rest of us are simply trying to steal it from them we cannot get away from the tax and spend orthodoxy that prevents a proper assessment of how the economy works.
The big corporate players and financiers know how it works, but keep that secret to themselves entirely for their own benefit. If the recovery from the GFC didn’t make that clear to everyone I can’t imagine what sort of Armageddon scenario will.
As cracks in the Neo-liberal hegemony become more publicly visible, “a great variety of morbid symptoms” will appear across a widening social and national spectrum, manifesting themselves increasingly as civil disobedience. In fact, in the US, this is what Chris Hedges publicly advocates (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hailNKOv2mw).
We have entered a period of tectonic planetary and socio-economic change. Uncharted waters. How it will end up is anyone’s guess but, because of the continuing concentration of power/wealth, I’m not optimistic. Capitalism, as we know it, has no mechanisms to deal with the systemic environmental challenges. And, as debt outruns its efficacity as a tool used by the puppet-masters to anaethetise the general population, there will be ever more dissatisfied elements in society at large demanding immediate solutions to their frustrations. Enter fascism, stage right.
But it’s not all bad news. Looking at polling across Europe (https://pollofpolls.eu) it would appear that the more radical parties on both left and right are the ones growing fastest, demonstrating dissatisfaction with the centre left/right consensus – a now well-documented trend. For those of us on the progressive left there is optimism from countries such as Belgium, Denmark, Germany & the Netherlands where the Greens are either the 2nd or 3rd largest party.
It is an affront to our democratic tradition that the 2 major UK parties will continue to block a transition to PR. I foresee long-term trouble at t’ mill.
There seems to have been so many key areas of our lives where we should have serious concerns. So many opportunities for the opposition to act, indeed so many reasons for the population to react, but largely we have silence.
Rail fares, energy prices, water treatment/supply, education, NHS, social care, benefits. More recently we have seen stories about financial abuses from within the private renting sector. Added to that there is an issue with the percentage of income going on rent which varies enormously by location and age. Some suggest that young people in London spend 60% of income on rent with stories of many requiring several jobs in order to service rent costs, suggesting the 60% figure might be on the low side.
How many more high-profile opportunities does there have to be? I think that it is fairly certain to say that many are already sold on radical changes to rail services, nationalisation should not be a dirty word here. But what about utilities? Price hikes and continuing dividends to shareholders. On top of that we’re having trouble getting private money in to fund new power stations. Why not say stuff it and start People’s Power, green energy, government funded with the nation as the shareholder.
I think we need to look carefully at every area where rent is extracted without anything of value going in. That in a nutshell is where my anger primarily lives. Perhaps the new model should be the people’s finance initiative where the people extract rent from wealthy corporations that we allow to use our infrastructure.
Yet another lecturing piece telling the protestors that they aren’t actually asking for lower tax and a new government that would lower tax, even though that is quite clearly what they are asking for and what the protest is about!
No……… you know better, you can project your own personal and completely removed rational onto their actions and hey presto!…….Now all those protestors are fighting for what you believe in and stand right behind you!
Its pathetic, when will you actually listen to what people want rather than assuming they are all too thick to work out what they really want?…….Has Brexit taught you nothing?
Brexit taught me that when people are misinformed they make bad decisions
@~Richard: Richard Murphy’s reply should satisfy even the ignorant; but I would just add that you seem unaware that if tax was the match that lit the flame, the gilets jaunes are coherently and explicitly arguing for a fairer France – for égalite and fraternité, including better living wage, pensions and social structure – and less contempt from on high. That is not me reading my own view onto them, as you seem to be doing, but what they tell me when we stand at the roundabouts together.
I see. To be agreeing with you
I have not the slightest idea what case you are trying to make
I think it is you deliberately misreading
Democracy has been ‘of the people’ nowhere and has failed to engage with the potential of new technology or democratised economics, work and incomes and foreign policy. I say ‘new’ but much of this has been available since 1910. Good luck to those protesting. It would be better to be protesting for a real, green, new democracy not based in Persian rival management.
John D said
“We have entered a period of tectonic planetary and socio-economic change. Uncharted waters. How it will end up is anyone’s guess but, because of the continuing concentration of power/wealth, I’m not optimistic. Capitalism, as we know it, has no mechanisms to deal with the systemic environmental challenges. And, as debt outruns its efficacity as a tool used by the puppet-masters to anaethetise the general population, there will be ever more dissatisfied elements in society at large demanding immediate solutions to their frustrations. ”
I recommend “How Will Capitalism End” by Wolfgang Streek.
1. I respect Mr Lichfield’s France reporting over the years, but he exaggerates sadly both to minimize past damage in demonstrations and to exaggerate the damage and hysteria this time. The great bulk of the gilets jaunes are pacific, as reports from Le:Monde, Libération, l’Humanité, Mediapart, &c., would confirm. Indeed the number of burnt cars would have been a lot higher if all the demonstrators had been like the casseurs. There are credible reports that ,for instance, the police sometimes allowed some of the rioters to act, both for the joy of arresting them and possibly under government encouragement to damage the reputation of the gilets jaunes. Shades of what happened with the “black blocks” at the time of the Benalla affair which “smirched” the protesting unions. Certainly this was the case in Puy-en-Velay (Lemonde.fr, 3dec18) where they ignored warnings from the gilets jaunes that some shifty characters had arrived — and the prefecture subsequently was set on fire.in spite of attempts by the gilets jaunes to prevent it.
2. He echoes the egregious Natalie Nougayrède, also in the Guardian, warning of the failure of plucky little Micron to bring France in to the 21st C, and how his magnificent struggle of little Manu against the titans of German indifference and the fascists of Italy, Hungary and so forth will be subverted by the selfish French workers. She sadly fails to note that Micron has no intention of leading an ecological charge: under him, the environment is going backwards: the increased eco-taxes are to pay for Micron and the LREM’s subsidies to the rich, to large corporations (the CICE change to reduced social welfare reductions mainly affects the large companies using lots of cheap labour), and to polluters such as Total — while less money is actually spent on the environment, on public transport, &c.
France is not facing a civil war, unless Micron, whose first resort is to control and “security”, brings out the army. It is however facing a constitutional crisis, such as you describe for the UK. The gilets jaunes are concerned to knit up the raveled sleeve of society, which governments at least since Mitterrand have done their best to tear apart. Making ends meet, yes, but also the pauperisation of local government combined with more responsibilities – as in the UK; austerity and the impoverishment of the not very well off the disabled, the already insecure — as in the UK; the hollowing out of the hospitals, the employment offices and so on — as in the UK; and the contempt for ordinary people – Osborne and the Tories passim. These are the issues, and, again as you note for the UK, it is hard to see how progress can be made, given the legitimate mistrust of the established parties.
But did Lichfield argue that there was anything but legitimate anger by all concerned, including those whose passive resistance I appreciate?
The differences were best summed up by a gilet jaunes protester speaking to a journalist from Le Monde
” The elites talk about the end of the world while we talk about the end of the month “
@Richard Murphy, 5dec @3.15
Yes, Lichfield did speak of the legitimate anger, and expressed understanding and sympathy. However his, perhaps slightly carelessly written piece (unusual, for him) lapsed into a generalized fear of, where will it all end ? Allusions to faux-maoists, whatever they may be (one can think of such, but Lichfield leaves the phrase merely as a provocation), the bizarre remark that even ordinary gilets jaunes came “dressed and armed for combat”, arguments that the filets jaunes are so divided that they can never agree, and that no resolution is possible – all this simply leaves the reader aghast. (This is what I argue is similar to Ms Nougayrède’s prophesies of doom.
The gilets jaunes differ from the normal union protest, in that their demands are not primarily about salary /working conditions: their salary claim is limited to a revaluation of the SMIC, the minimum wage, from 1150€ to 1300 €. Beyond that, they look to increase their purchasing power, primarily by tax cuts for the ordinary people, and to restore the proper functioning of French social and administrative life. It is thus a social protest – of both men and women – which unifies disparate elements – and is widely supported. I have seen (only a report of) an IFOP poll showing the gilets jaunes are primarily supported by employees, ordinary workers and independent s such shopkeepers, artisans &c. This takes no account of the support from the retired and indeed from many in higher income groups, my contacts suggest. But in the present fast-moving situation (Griveaux expressing readiness to look again at the ISF, simultaneous uprisings in schools against the BAC reforms – and those children also support the gilets jaunes, they are their parents) it would be foolish to be only pessimistic. When Medef finds it must remain silent because it has nothing to say …
I think we’ll have to agree to differ on interpretation