Karl Marx birth bicentennial has not given a place, to the difference to the 50th anniversary of May 68, to many reflections about his work and its influence. He took from Hegel the idea that the society was divided into classes and that their struggle will be a driving force. The events which have marked the first half of the 20th century, the crisis and the wars, didn’t prove he was wrong. Western Europe, once the peace has been reestablished, will learn the lessons: deep inequalities generated by the capitalist system really constitute a threat for democratic regimes which can lead to conflicts. They will adopt major reforms. If the Marxist concept of a collective appropriation of production tools will be abandoned, public services will become almost everywhere the property of the nations. In France, the “Etat-Providence” will be created, as in the U.K. the Welfare State. In Germany, the foundations of a social market economy will be set with a power-sharing system in enterprises between shareholders and workers representatives. The objective was that everybody takes advantage of the recovered prosperity.

These models will be dominant until the end of the Eighties but they will be put into question under the pressure of the United Kingdom which asks, at that time, to its partners to fall into line with the transformations achieved by Margaret Thatcher. The peak will come during the Lisbon European Summit in March 2000 when it is decided the acceleration of the liberalization of the public services and when it is laid down the target to create, in the following decade “the most competitive knowledge economy in the world” able to reach full employment. Retrospectively, it is difficult to pretend that this target has been reached, especially when we see the growing hostility Europe is causing among population in many States. During 2004, it is decided to go even further: the principle of a “free and unbiased competition” is inscribed in the planned European Constitution which will be, at the end, rejected by two referendums in France and in the Netherlands. Even if a Treaty will later include some of its provisions, these ones will have lost their constitutional character, which will allow the States, during the following crisis (sub-primes and euro) to be free to intervene. But the liberal turnaround will not be put into question with its two major points: public services must be managed as normal enterprises and, in several countries, they will be privatized; company successes must lie on its competitiveness and it is the workers duty to make the sacrifices which will allow their employers to support competition and to develop themselves.

Once more, it is difficult to pretend that the objectives assigned to this policy have been reached. Europe came close to a disaster during the euro crisis and has never regained a growth rhythm enough to reach full employment, even if, in some countries, mainly due to demographic reasons as in Germany, they are near to it. France has not made a lot of energy to defend its model which is today considered as belonging to the “old world” and the government has adopted as an objective to transform the country through the employment code reform and the acceleration of the public services liberalization process.  

Apart from putting a ceiling on redundancies payment which is a real blow to workers rights, job market reform has an essentially symbolic significance but that one is very strong: if growth is too weak and unemployment so high, it is, at least partly because salaried people have too much benefits and too much protection. The reasoning was the same when, in 2013, was adopted the tax credit in favor of enterprises. If the economy is not going well, it is because wage costs are too high. Five years later, when you look at the situations of the job market and of  French foreign trade, it is once more difficult to assert that this reasoning has been validated by the facts.

The growth of the public services liberalization relies on the same logic but the risk is high that everybody is a loser because enterprises which deliver them are not common ones. They create a lot of wealth but their purpose is not to keep it for themselves. It is what economists used to define as “external creation of wealth”. An office building will have higher rents if it is located near a railway station. A house will have its value increased if it is close to a high speed train line. Wherever he leaves, an inhabitant pays his electricity the same price, even if, obviously, the cost for the utility is much higher to deliver power in Corsica or in a harbor in Brittany than in the Paris agglomeration. It is why, the pursuit of profit cannot be the only objective of a public service, especially when, to reach it, the companies are not anymore guaranteeing the safety of their supplies or the delivery to areas where it is not profitable. The transformation of these enterprises in charge of a public service cannot finesse on these constraints.

Their future depends on the skills and on the motivation of their workers. Current social movements affecting Air France and the SNCF result from the misunderstanding of both their management and the government about this essential issue. Air France has a conflict with its pilots about payment increases representing some percents. Compared with fuel costs and airports charges which are passed on tickets prices, amounts are ridiculous. Air France market capitalization hardly reaches 3 billion euros when Aéroport de Paris value, which is 50% owned by the State, exceeds 18 billion. The company will be confronted, in the near future to a major recruitment problem due to the retirement of many pilots at a time where there is going to occur a severe scarcity worldwide. China, by itself, will have to hire 6000 ones every year until 2035. Is, in this context, the stubbornness of the top management of the company about pilots demands justified?

SNCF “reform”, with the end of the special status of rail workers is all the same economically unjustified. There again, the expected cost reductions are ridiculous compared to the investments to be achieved and it not even sure that will not cost more when it will be necessary to ask to the “new rail workers” to work on Sunday or to these who are in charge of switching or of the maintenance of the lines to be free by night in case of emergency. The truth, it is that this measure is, again, purely ideological.

France is the theater of a kind of upside down class struggle. It is not anymore workers who are rallying to get more but the enterprises supported by the State, or in the SNCF case, the State itself, which act with the target they have less. Social progress is not anymore an objective but an obstacle. Who can seriously believe that a growing precariousness, the stagnation of the purchasing power and the questioning of acquired benefits granted to workers who decisively contribute to the good functioning of public services and, through that, to the whole economy, will permit a durable comeback of growth and a real unemployment fall?