Why France Erupted

WHAT ever happened to la grandeur? For ten years France appeared on the world scene like a golden phoenix miraculously resuscitated from the ashes of the Fourth Republic, the agony of the Algerian war, and the long shame of the Vichy collaboration with Hitler. The man who accomplished this miracle of recovery was Charles de Gaulle, who in 1958 took over a nation with a mere $19 million left in its treasury and even less moral credit around the world. He restored both the franc and France's prestige. He also restored French pride: even casual visitors in the years after his takeover noticed a new French self-confidence that contrasted with the half-apologetic, half-arrogant attitude often found before. Until a few weeks ago, and despite an occasional flicker of trouble, De Gaulle ruled a France enviably serene and stable, seemingly the very model of a modern nation working toward a new destiny.

No matter to most Frenchman that abroad, De Gaulle kept Britain out of Europe, did his annoying best to thwart the U.S., meddled in Quebec and increasingly behaved like a cantankerous old man. There is a little of Napoleon in every French breast, and the nation took a certain pride in De Gaulle's ability to command far more attention for France than its power and resources deserved.

But there is also a little of the cynical, skeptical Voltaire in the Frenchman--and a lot of the stubborn, even violent individualist. Smug paternalism at home did not wear nearly so well as posturing abroad. The Gaullist panoply gradually began to enshadow and constrict every aspect of French life, from politics to morals, painting to fashion. The rhythm of French existence perceptibly altered. Hints of ennui crept in--and boredom has always been underrated as a revolutionary force. Paris was no longer the most richly alive city in Europe. Looking beneath the glittering surface of Gaullist France as long as two years ago, Yale Professor Henri Peyre, an astute France-watcher, sensed that the French, after "a prolonged seven-year itch," were "feeling nostalgic for some turbulence."

Much of what ailed Gaullist France was economic. Under De Gaulle, the gross national product has more than doubled, from $49 billion in 1958 to about $108 billion in 1967--at the cost of much stress. De Gaulle hoarded gold, attacked the dollar, and did his best to keep the franc invulnerable. The nation's growth rate, which had climbed above 7% in the early 1960s, last year sank to about 3.5%. Consumer prices have shot up 39% since 1958 v. only 18% for the U.S. For a while, the workers shared in the fruits of Gaullism, and many bought their first small cars and TVs. But the costs of De Gaulle's global policies mounted. The force de frappe alone, a dubious deterrent, required more than $2 billion a year. Not enough was left for the workers, whose wages lagged behind those in every other Common Market country except Italy. To add to the pinch, De Gaulle increased social security payments and cut benefits last summer to cover his budget deficit.

If French workers felt deprived, French students felt, as students seem to the world over these days, ignored, ill tutored by their educational system, and dismayed by the quality of their society. To the students, the university stands for everything archaic in French life. Valery Giscard d'Estaing, leader of the Independent Republicans, explained last week that what the students really hated could be summed up in "two mediocre leitmotifs: the pursuit of material goods and the stultifying masques of conformity."

In politics, De Gaulle rewrote France's constitution, gave the country a strong President with an arsenal of emergency powers and thus assured it of the decisive executive that all previous French republics lacked. But the pendulum perhaps swung too far, in reducing France's National Assembly to an impotent debating club. Only once in ten years did it force the resignation of a government. That was in 1962, when Assembly Deputies rejected De Gaulle's proposal for popular election of the President, because they felt that this would further curtail the Assembly's influence. De Gaulle took the issue to a nationwide referendum, which he won, as he has won them all--so far.

In all his policies, De Gaulle showed a lofty disdain for public opinion, and indeed for the people. Last summer, for example, he pushed through the Assembly a law providing for profit sharing among workers in French factories. Whatever the plan's merits in theory, nobody but De Gaulle himself thought it was a good idea. As Raymond Aron of Le Figaro wrote: "This measure has been imposed by a single man on ministers and high-ranking officials who were unanimously opposed to it, on organizations of business leaders who were ferociously hostile, and on reticent or indifferent labor unions."

The regime at times banned books and dragged Frenchmen who offended the dignity of the President into court. One victim was Novelist Jacaues Laurent, who was fined $1,200 in 1965 for accusing Franc,ois Mauriac of writing "an idolatrous biography" of De Gaulle. Nothing angered De Gaulle's critics more, though, than his high-handed use of the state TV monopoly for propaganda. Both in Paris and the provinces, the state network rarely gave leaders of opposition political parties the chance to appear on TV.

The Gaullist era seems to have blighted part of the nation's culture--although De Gaulle alone cannot be entirely to blame. The government, in fact, has subsidized artists and brought lively repertory theater to the provinces through the maisons de culture. But behind the splendid facades of Paris, which were so thoroughly scoured creme and clean on the orders of Cultural Minister Andre Malraux, France became something of a petits bourgeois prude. Movies that were too sexy were forbidden export licenses, since they would damage the image of France abroad. In the early 1960s, Lui, the French imitation of Playboy, was not allowed to display the female nipple. The details, trivial in themselves, were symptoms of a deeper cultural malaise.

"What we are witnessing," says a French Jesuit philosopher, Father Georges Morel, "is the decadence of a culture that was too rich and too critical." Father Morel finds, for example, that "the ideal of a total view of life is finished" among French intellectuals. "All experience can be interpreted from a thousand points, each equally valid," he says. "In literature, this is expressed in a greater interest in the material, the linguistic texture, than in the thought content." Literary Critic Maurice Nadeau finds, furthermore, that many young novelists are simply "popularizing or dramatizing the linguistic and sociological findings" of such popular scholars as University of Paris Anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

Parisian designers have yielded the frontiers of fashion to London and New York. Many painters in France not only produce strictly for a New York market but also borrow in style from American trends. Among composers too, the avant-garde has moved elsewhere; French musical life has been mediocre for years.

No one factor could explain France's eruption. The workers certainly did not go to the barricades because of censorship, the young did not rebel because of bad art or poor music. But all these things taken together caused the new mood in France, a crisis of attitudes. Ultimately what happened was the result of simply having too much De Gaulle. "Without me, this country wouldn't be anything," he once said. "Without me, it would all have collapsed. For years, I've carried France on my shoulders." No nation with any pretense to vitality can indefinitely be carried on the shoulders of one man. Either its sinews must atrophy or its restlessness erupt in the desire to walk on its own. The French are on their feet now, but swaying dangerously, reckless with the rediscovery of their latent powers.

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