ANARCHY DEFEATS SOCIOLOGY
Paris THE AUTUMN has long been the season of strikes in France. `ca bouge' — 'it moves' — is the public's ironic comment, in the sense of 'if it moves, call it out on strike'. But autumn has also been the sea- son of sociology. In the past, when French workers, students or peasants misbehaved, the media would turn to academic com- mentators, who would offer profound, or at least wordy, explanations for what was happening. In the past, this seemed to make everyone feel better, even if it did not get anyone back to work. But not this year.
In the first week of October, a strike of suburban train drivers paralysed the Ile de France and most of the Nord-Pas de Calais. A third of the Paris buses did not run and the suburban sections of the Gare de Lyon and Paris-Montparnasse closed down. On 15 October, half a million schoolchildren throughout the country abandoned their lycees and went on a mas- sive demonstration. The demonstrations — and riots — are continuing.
All this had been threatening for a long time. There had been bus and train strikes for many months in places like St Etienne, Rennes, Limoges. The lyciens had been protesting ever since the schools reopened in September, and those Parisians who lived near the Ministry of Education in the rue de Grenelle were only too accustomed to finding the roads blocked by a placard- carrying crowd.
There is a simple explanation for the transport workers' anger. In certain parts of France it is no longer safe to be a bus or train driver. Sometimes they are attacked by young men bearing sticks and knives; sometimes both they and their vehicles are the targets for stones, rocks, Molotov cock- tails and `lacrymos'. The number of these attacks has been increasing steadily, so the drivers want protection. These attacks come from alienated youth of a lower social stra- tum. But the lyasens, drawn mostly from the bourgeoisie, are equally in revolt.
In most parts of France, the lyciens believe that their schools are in an unac- ceptable state of disorganisation. They find classes without teachers, and teachers who have no classes to take in their particular subjects; they do not have the equipment they need, the classes are too big (often over 40), the buildings sometimes decrepit, the syllabus and the examinations over- loaded. The lyciens want these things to be put right. They demand an education that will give them qualifications for the future.
As always, in spite of the warnings, the government was surprised by the extent of these protests. The Prime Minister appear- ed on television and promised additional security measures for the drivers. At a spe- cially convened meeting of the Socialist party's national committee, he said that both the transport workers and the lyciens would be given satisfaction. The Minister of Education, Claude Allegre (a close friend of M. Jospin), spoke on television last Sunday and promised swift action. Naturally all this was greeted by a certain cynicism. If every driver is accompanied by a colleague, this will simply mean that both are attacked, says a union official. It will take more than a few million francs to reorganise the lycees, says one of M. Alle- gre's critics. His policy has been described as one of active immobilism.
Naturally, the strikers and demonstra- tors find it hard to remain united. The rival activities of different unions, regional representatives and politicians have a divi- sive effect. But the opinion polls show that the public is behind the protesters, provid- ed that the protest does not last too long. So far, everything has proceeded normally. But there is a surprise. Where are the soci- ologists? In the old days, the government would have turned to them for counsel, Urbane Guerrillas rather as British governments tend to appoint royal commissions: as a means of clothing political indecisiveness with intel- lectual respectability. In the old days, it seemed to work. The sociologists explained that the 1995 demonstration against the then prime minister's changes to social security was particularly intense because the strikers had no precise idea why they were striking. The lorry drivers in 1997, meanwhile, supposedly believed that they represented Europe and were entitled to certain privileges, such as early retirement.
This October should have been easy for the sociologists. So far as the transport workers were concerned, they are attacked by young men. These, frequently immi- grant, usually unemployed, think of the crowded estates of the outer cities where they live as a prison. But the estates are also a refuge that must be protected. Hence, when a train or a metro or a bus arrives, it comes from the outside, from the world beyond, and must be attacked as it penetrates the refuge. The driver wearing uniform is the symbol of this danger. Therefore he must be assaulted. On Mon- day 5 October, an 18-year-old passenger asked the driver of a Paris 76 bus if he could get out. When this was refused, he attacked the driver with a knife.
The problems of the lycees are also caused by young people. So is the class war being replaced by the generation war? Rela- tions between parents and children are par- ticularly difficult in modern times, and it may be that there is an analogy between schools and immigrant ghettos. In schools, the pupils are both coerced, in that they are under authority, and protected, in that they are insulated from the outside world. Equal- ly, there is a bridge between school and ghetto: unemployment. Even relatively priv- ileged lyceens fear for the consequences once they are expelled from the privileged/coerced world of the lye& and condemned to freedom in the uncertain world of work. Then again, the demonstra- tions by i)?ceens, often led by girls, frequently had the support of the pupils' parents. This was not, therefore, a condemnation of the bourgeois order; merely a demand for cer- tain adjustments within it. That may explain the sociologists' bafflement, and irrelevance.
The strikes will continue in future years. They are, in large part, a survival of an older, anarchic France, still able to assert itself against the Napoleonic, centralising state. This is a further explanation for the sociologists' irrelevance: there has never been a sociology of anarchism. It is also a general dismissal of intellectuals in modern France. As has been said, there are still those who take the beautiful risk of think- ing. Some seek to be the conscience of the nation. Some succeed in explaining the past. Some achieve fame by denouncing the present. But their importance is not what it was. And in the land of Durkheim the soci- ologists cannot explain why the suicide rate is so high.
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