The protests against austerity policies in France that
blossomed into the Yellow Vest movement in November, 2018 present challenges to
those who still carry faith in electoral democracy. While initially centering on fuel taxes, participants
also are demanding raises to the minimum wage and the rollback of recent
tax cuts for the wealthy and other pro-business policies.
Like other
protests by the poor against pro-business policies that have bloomed across
the world for decades, these protests against fuel price rises push back
against neoliberal economic policies. Although the Macron government argues the fuel
price tax increase was to move the French economy towards a greener economy, French
truck drivers, secretaries, care workers, and others with no room in their
budgets are forced to pay costs they cannot bear. This is the cost of living in
an electoral state where the leadership
is not interested in popular opinion, but in its own narrow interests.
The history of policies generous to the rich and attacking the
poor in France and many other
economies worldwide often produces protest from the poor. But when do
electoral democracies listen to the poor?
The difference of the Yellow Vest movement in France from
many other protest movements is its lack of a center. This is a structure for democratic
demand that does
not replicate the centralized hierarchies of electoral governments, an organizing
tactic that produces other politics. The turn away from
centralization and towards openness to many constituents and viewpoints characterizes
many political practices, what we term “Other Democracies.”
Commentators who are only familiar with centalized
organizations assume that the Yellow Vest movement will be overtaken
by already established political parties. This shows that commentators are
not familiar with non-party movements, and can only conceive of politics in the
narrow terms offered by electoral party policits. Yet the Yellow Vest movement
has refused
to align itself with established political parties, since they recognize
the danger of participation in a centralized system tilted towards social
elites.
The success of French democracy hangs in the balance of this
struggle over public discussion.
Other
struggles in Europe against neoliberalism, such as the Greek anti-austerity
movement of 2010-2015 and the 2011 indignado movement in Spain, have shown the
costs of allowing a popular movement to morph into political party activism. Austerity policies have continued apace after both of these
movements were captured by political parties, and the pressures on low-wage
workers, the unemployed, the disabled, and even the middle-class have not been
reduced significantly.
One strategy of the privatization and wealth redistribution
upwards policies known as neoliberalism or austerity is to attack public
spaces. Presenting private spaces, such as shopping streets, mini-malls, and
megastores, as gathering places for the public makes it more difficult for the
public to do the important business of discussing urgent concerns. These
privatized spaces displace citizenry roles to make roles as consumers more
central in the life of the public.
The yellow vest movement members claims on traffic circles
as meeting places revived the important activity in any democracy of a
discussing those topics of concern for citizens. When austerity policies remove safety nets
ensuring all can meet basic needs and place intense pressures on the public,
citizens would respond in any full democracy with discussion of how to meet
basic needs and reduce the stresses of a lack of resources. So discussions in
open, public spaces become important on a time frame driven not by
parliamentary elections but by increasing pressure on the poor.
Macron’s attempts to reclaim
public discussion and manage it to serve his own interests is an attempt to
disrupt competing claims to represent the public’s interest by the Yellow Vest
movement. The smear tactics of sending
in thugs and vandals to reduce public support for the Yellow Vest movement
is an old tactic found since the nineteenth
century in France (275-80), when the wealthy began using thugs to divide
the poor and prevent mass movements.
Outside Europe similar struggles have led to different
outcomes, as when multiple presidents were thrown out by popular
meetings in public places in Argentina of 2001 and when the South
Korean president was removed from office in 2017. Certainly Macron is aware
of the high stakes, and will do whatever he can to remain in office.
Perhaps the greatest fear of those in command of electoral
political systems is that they will lose their monopoly on the claim to
represent the public. As Michel
Foucault argued (271-88), unexpected associations of groups in horizontal
solidarity is a major threat to the modern regime that enforces individuation
in an effort to interrupt horizontal solidarities. Such horizontal solidarities
were very successful in Europe between around 1780 and 1848, demanding
accountability of political leaders to widespread concerns and changes in
unequal distribution of wealth and political power. These horizontal solidarities also attempted
to disrupt actions of the wealthy that were harmful to common people, such as
labor exploitation and the theft of family wealth through financial markets.
Democracy can thrive only when the urgent concerns of large
social sectors are addressed by political leaders. Yet electoral democracies in Europe and
beyond have shown for decades that they are more responsive to the interests of
the few than to the interests of the many. That is why structures for
democratic practice other than the electoral state have long received wide
support, even if these movements are overlooked by news commentators and policy
experts.
