France is experiencing its worst political crisis in thirty years. Governing parties have distanced themselves from the working class, abandoning craftsmen, shop owners and small entrepreneurs. At the same time, these politicians have alienated those workers hostile to the pro-European integration policies of the Socialist Party. The presidency of Fran???cois Hollande signalled the definitive failure of attempts to reconcile the left-wing base with the drive fro modernisation. However, the pursuit of neoliberal reforms did ...
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France is experiencing its worst political crisis in thirty years. Governing parties have distanced themselves from the working class, abandoning craftsmen, shop owners and small entrepreneurs. At the same time, these politicians have alienated those workers hostile to the pro-European integration policies of the Socialist Party. The presidency of Fran???cois Hollande signalled the definitive failure of attempts to reconcile the left-wing base with the drive fro modernisation. However, the pursuit of neoliberal reforms did not end there. It has been taken up and radicalised by his successor, Emmanuel Macron. This project needs a social base, the bourgeois bloc, designed to overcome the right-left divide with a new alliance between the middle and upper classes. But this, as we have seen recently on the streets of Paris and elsewhere, is an undertaking fraught with danger--back cover.
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