Commentary
The embrace of the extreme right and the bourgeois bloc
The Barnier government is, simply put, a Macron-Le Pen government. Le Pen was the fulcrum to fight off a leftist government, and Macron took full advantage of what she had to offer.
The long-awaited name was announced: Michel Barnier, an old-fashioned conservative from the Gaullist right wing, has been appointed as the new prime minister. The reason why Barnier will be prime minister is because the far right has given its blessing; reportedly, the other names Macron put forward were each rejected by the National Rally leader.
The Barnier government is thus, simply put, a Macron-Le Pen government. However, the two leaders represent two distinct social blocs. What we are now witnessing is not a merger of the two blocs, but an alliance of circumstance arising from the fact that, within the neoliberal paradigm, the power balance has shifted.
The social bloc that has supported Macron in recent years, which my colleague Bruno Amable and I have called the “bourgeois bloc” (L'illusion du bloc bourgeois, 2017), and the far-right bloc that has supported Le Pen, have one thing in common: the fact that they have constituted themselves within the neoliberal universe and its parameters. That is, within the ideological horizon that says growth comes from private innovation, that sees collective bargaining is a negative factor, that sees a need to protect sufficient profit margins for corporations, not to be conceived as a locus of struggle but as individual agents.
The bourgeois block that brought Macron to power in 2017 saw the neoliberal reforms as tied to promises of progress, a mirage of meritocratic social ascension, not unlike what Tony Blair or the first iteration of Matteo Renzi put forward in their time. From a political-electoral point of view, this bourgeois bloc works if these promises of social ascension are believed by a part of the middle classes, as well as by the privileged classes that constitute its hard core.
The French extreme right is constructed differently, but still within this general neoliberal paradigm. This bloc holds that neoliberal reforms are inevitable, but it also has a more acute perception of the risks of social downgrading that they entail.
This is a risk to which the lower-middle classes are particularly sensitive – those which are one step above poverty – and they demand a form of protection compatible with the idea that in every scenario there is no alternative to the neoliberal horizon. Among the far-right bloc, this “protection” is set up against immigrants, against insecurity, against threats to “identity,” but also against those who are just below them: this is why the NR is skeptical of the welfare measures that still exist in France.
And what has happened in recent years in France is that the promises of the bourgeois bloc have failed to come true (in a truly shocking turn of events). The flexibilization of labor, the tax cuts to big business, the liberation from “strings and ties” have not resulted in the meritorious being rewarded, nor in increased social mobility. The Macronist recipes didn’t work, except to a very small extent. On the contrary, a large part of the middle classes now feel that this set of reforms is a threat, and are breaking away from the bourgeois bloc and moving toward the far-right bloc. While this is a change, they remain in the same neoliberal universe, within the framework of the same ideology.
If we compare the current situation with the 2022 elections, in which the three blocs – the two mentioned above and that of the left – were basically equivalent in size, now the bourgeois bloc has been greatly weakened, while the far-right bloc has been proportionally strengthened. Thus, the Barnier government represents not so much a deliberate convergence as an internal rebalancing within the neoliberal universe, within which the balance has now clearly shifted all the way to the right.
Le Pen and Macron have a common enemy, the only one outside the neoliberal universe: the leftist bloc that has formed in France around the idea of a break from the neoliberal reforms and worldview. It is only natural that the latter is seen as an adversary for both the bourgeoisie and the far right.
Faced with this common enemy, and noting the now-unfavorable imbalance in power relations, a part of the French ruling classes had already thrown in with Le Pen even before Macron did. If the bourgeois bloc is no longer able to oppose the left, the far-right bloc will do it: obviously, it may not be the one that these classes would choose on its own merits, but at this point it is the only one that can perform this function they deem essential.
In the end, Macron has done nothing more than take note of the rearrangement of these power relations. This is why we are seeing the birth of a government cobbled together against the left. Moreover, the left has always been the real opponent of the current tenant of the Elysée: it is the left that would like to repeal the pension reform, which in terms of fiscal policy would be the very opposite of what he has done. Not Le Pen, who has spent many months campaigning on the promise that she would continue Macron's policies.
Le Pen was the fulcrum to fight off a leftist government, and Macron took full advantage of what she had to offer. This does not mean that the bourgeois bloc and the far-right bloc are now merged together; it simply illustrates the weakened condition of the social bloc that brought Macron to power, combined with the specular strengthening of the one that supports Marine Le Pen. Today, in France, she is heading a bloc of growing strength, and she will set the course for the new government.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/labbraccio-di-destra-estrema-e-blocco-borghese on 2024-09-08