May 1968 was a huge and resounding no to “authoritarian” France by a new left generation that felt it could no longer accept classical Marxist-Leninist doctrines and could no longer wait for the great day to come. This generation and others started to look for the positive part of the project — it was no longer enough to say no, you had to reinvent a doctrine, a praxis, and a set of goals, and you had to figure out how you would create a different society. As French political scientist Philippe Raynaud pointed out in his seminal book on the extreme left in France, the combination of leftist political thinkers, sociologists, and outspoken militants all pleading for another way and another polity was intellectually and theoretically productive and provided almost all the lefts in the rest of the world with their tools and themes. The revival of the extreme left had many origins. One of them was the persistent popularity and influence of different Trotskyist groups and intellectuals who benefited from, or at least were not affected by, the discrediting of the Soviet experiment in Russia as they had been fierce opponents of Stalinism, “state capitalism” and bureaucracy since the 1930s. Others included the Maoists, the ecologists, the anarchists, the multiculturalists, and so on. There is a tendency to consider the extreme left as a support or a nuisance for the Socialist Party in France, according to circumstances, and of course this is true. But it should not be overlooked that these lefts, regardless of their changing electoral weight, have also won the cultural battle for ideas in academia, the media and elsewhere in the country. Many of their themes have even been borrowed by the French right. This is not so very odd, as even in the French rightist parties there are people who hate economic liberalism, capitalism, globalisation and the US, and it should not be forgotten that France is a country with a powerful sovereign state and a peculiar statist tradition. Some of the leftist ideas are the core of politically correct language, and many people, including many on the extreme left who beg to differ, hate this. The rise of the extreme left and its ideas started in the 1990s in France. The generations that participated as students in the great 1968 upheaval then held key positions in the media, academia, and the political parties. France was also facing a radically new situation that seemed to legitimise new ideas and new formulas, and these generations had a lot of ideas. The Soviet Empire had collapsed, globalisation seemed to be advancing unhindered, the European Union project was no longer a small club centred around France and Germany, but had a lot of eastern newcomers and the ambitious project of a single currency, and last but not least the demographic balance in France and Europe was changing, with the growing importance of retired people and Muslim minorities. France has both the largest Muslim and the largest Jewish communities in Western Europe, both of which pay a lot of attention to the Israeli-Arab conflict, and their relations are sometimes tense. The welfare state and the centralised secular culture in France have been facing unexpected challenges and have been ill-prepared for these. While acknowledging the seriousness of such problems, it should be added that the 1990s were for France a “wasted decade” that was astonishingly mishandled by its political elite. The key verbs of the political lexicon of the last quarter of a century have been “adapt” and “resist”. The key issues have been the welfare state and the modernisation of the economy, together with the fate of the republican model in France based on the dissemination of a national secular culture, equality for all citizens, and the possibility of climbing the social ladder by succeeding in school and university. The debate on national identity is related to the controversy over this model's fate. “Adapt” is a verb that has different uses. It can either be a euphemism meaning “accepting radical change or total overhaul” or meaning accepting adjustments to the existing model in order to face new realities. “Resist” is a popular term referring to the glorious deeds of a united nation confronting evil powers, and it is basically used in France to mean that people or classes will fight for the preservation of social gains endangered by globalisation, business, the political submission to multinational diktats, etc. Though a gross oversimplification, it could be said that the right in France agrees it is necessary to “adapt” the welfare state to new realities, even if every leading politician has his or her own specific position regarding the pace, extent and priorities of such reforms. The left is divided on this issue, and most leftist politicians are wary, even hostile, to them, but understand that something needs to be done because the current situation is unsustainable. However, under all governments in France reform has been slow, due to social unrest: for many people, the social gains associated with the welfare state are essential components of citizenship. To attack them is attacking citizenship. Some left-wing groups are also active in pressing for a different form of globalisation. Things are more interesting regarding the future of the republican model and of national identity in France, as all the forces on the political spectrum are divided on these things, with the possible exception of the extreme right. This is an especially important topic as discussion on Islam and the republic is an essential component of the debate. The writer is a professor of international relations at the Collège de France in Paris and a visiting professor at Cairo University.
