98
PARTISAN REVIEW
the future and reduce the burden of the welfare state.
There may be more immediate cultural and political reasons
for the optimism of these authors. Their preference for civil society
over economics and the state is meant to recycle the old enthusiasms
of 1968, to reawaken the forces of
autogestion,
flexibility, and spon–
taneity in a drastically different economic context. There is almost a
perverse feeling that what could not be done with the opulence of the
late 1960s can now be brought about, thanks to a climate of necessity
and austerity . In concrete political terms, the youngish generation of
social activists and theorists who espoused the Left, especially its
Rocardian wing, and who feel increasingly alienated from the party
Socialists in power, are given a new future to dream about , and a
new ideal to work toward (a society which solves unemployment
through social innovation), an ideal that leaves dreary economics
and politics by the wayside. In this long-term optimism , political
violence, social unrest, tensions, and struggles are left out as are the
danger of a
rentier
neocorporatist backlash, or the return to a narrow–
minded protectionism.
It
is the most advanced, liberal, and modern
sectors of French society on which the wager is made. And in a
quasi-Marxist manner, today's oppressed, namely, marginal, tem–
porary workers with no guarantees, will as tomorrow's new part–
timers of creative scarcity inherit the world. Ultimately though , it is
unclear whether a dynamic civil society, which has fully internalized
the market mechanism of liberalism, can really lead the way in a
country where the economic future is bleak and the state continues
to be the propelling force. Substitution mechanisms never work.
Closets, Albert, and Minc have denounced the evils of French
society, its fears, hypocrisies , privileges, and frequent selfishness ,
basing their work on a clearheaded evaluation of French economic
and social impasses . This in itself is a major step in breaking the am–
biguities and silences of the Left in power. In fighting against the
political and economic voluntarism of the Socalists, Closets , Albert,
and Minc have taught the lessons of the marketplace and the
economic reality of social costs which no amount of ideology can
hide. They have sought, however, to sweeten its bitter pill with the
language of social innovation and a dose of utopian escapism.
In reality, the
etat d'ame
they mirror is one of a French national–
historical impotence unprecedented since the postwar period . Seven–
teenth century Venice in decline is not a model for true optimists but
for resigned economic realists.
