Hegel said that a tragic situation is one in which both sides are right. The violence that has recently broken out at French high schools comfortably fits this definition. On the one hand, a movement supported by leftists—notably Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s party, La France insoumise (Unbowed France) or LFI—is protesting against inadequate resources and the dire state of many lycées (high schools). On the other side are the French state and its security forces, which are responding forcefully to the protesters’ brazen rejection of elementary standards of civic behavior. The violence in which the movement has engaged is indeed deplorable, resulting in the destruction of several schools and the beating of police officers. At the same time, the French government’s police state reflexes are also on full display. Yet this exclusive focus on violence overlooks the fact that, despite all that sets them against each other, the grievances expressed by parties in the conflict are surprisingly similar.
“France manages to combine the worst elements of neoliberalism with the worst elements of social democracy.”
Even as they fight one another, the students and the police have both experienced the profound degradation of French public services in recent years. Both represent institutions that feel they no longer have the means to carry out the tasks they are expected to fulfill. Both, moreover, have suffered from the policies France has pursued for decades, and which have been heightened during President Emmanuel Macron’s decade in power. The French state has increasingly adopted neoliberal approaches to public management, even as it borrowed money at astronomical rates. France manages to combine the worst elements of neoliberalism with the worst elements of social democracy. Financial incoherence is matched by political dysfunction. For all intents and purposes, France lacks and seems incapable of finding a governing majority. Many fear that the chaos afflicting many high schools is merely a foretaste of the civil discord that could erupt during next year’s presidential election.