Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- PART 1 THE BACKGROUND
- 1 The context
- 2 The inheritance
- 3 Programmes of the left
- PART 2 THE COURSE OF POLICY: GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION 1932–1936
- PART 3 NON-CONFORMISTS OF LEFT AND RIGHT
- Epilogue: The politics of rearmament 1936–1939
- Conclusion
- Appendix
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Programmes of the left
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- PART 1 THE BACKGROUND
- 1 The context
- 2 The inheritance
- 3 Programmes of the left
- PART 2 THE COURSE OF POLICY: GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION 1932–1936
- PART 3 NON-CONFORMISTS OF LEFT AND RIGHT
- Epilogue: The politics of rearmament 1936–1939
- Conclusion
- Appendix
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Pour nous le mal provient non d'une insuffisance de direction volontaire et raisonnée, mais au contraire, d'un excés d'artificialité dans l'organisation économique du monde
(Edmond Giscard d'Estaing, Journal des débats, 8 September 1934)Aujourd'hui ce qu'il faut ce n'est pas un economisme métaphysique, mais un economisme pratique
(Léon Blum, 1933)To conservative economists and politicians, the economic crisis required no innovatory responses but, on the contrary, a return to ‘wisdom’, a repudiation of the ‘facility’ of the ‘era of illusions’. The Depression was seen from this perspective as the pretext for the reversal of years of increasing state intervention, a pretext to modify a social order in which ‘the extension of the idea of the all providing State has made very dangerous progress’. But this programme of a return to traditional virtues was also seen as a remedy for the economic crisis which was the pretext of its implementation. Far from calling into question the benefits of the market economy, the Depression only demonstrated the necessity for it to exist unfettered by any controls: ‘liberalism is confirmed by the opposite experience of the last few years’ declared Le Temps: ‘if the economy is in chaos, it is because freedom has been reversed and excessive state intervention … has thrown everything off course’. The moral was clear. But what were the alternatives? What were the programmes of the left?
The Socialists
The level of economic discussion in the S.F.I.O. was probably marginally superior to that of other political groups, but Blum was nevertheless very conscious of its shortcomings.
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- The Politics of Depression in France 1932–1936 , pp. 35 - 50Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1985
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