The New France
France : Change and Tradition. By Stanley Hoffmann and others. (Gollancz, 42s.)
IT is a curious paradox that in the distribution of topics in this book the American contributors are, with one exception, 'Cartesian' in the loose French sense of the term—rather inclined to push a thesis much too far; while the two Frenchmen are models of Anglo-Saxon empiricism. But all the articles are of great value. We have seen, rather to our surprise, a resuscitation of France and a rapidity of economic growth which has led to some naïve beliefs such as that we could plan in the French way Professor Kindleberger's admirable chapter on 'The Postwar Resurgence of the French Economy' shows the limitations as well as the advantages of French planning.
The hope, unfortunately, is doomed to frus- tration. French planning is in some important respects the opposite of planning. Knowledge of income and industry projections and faith in the inevitability of expansion are communi- cated to firms at intra- ancl inter-industry meetings. This is perhaps the most powerful effect, and one which has a faint resemblance to a revivalist prayer meeting.
But although Professor Kindleberger is not de- ceived by some of the claims made for French planning, he does convince us of the astonishing expansion of the French eco- nomy since France emerged half-ruined from the Second World War. The degree to which the French economy, rigid and frozen as it certainly was before 1939, has loosened up is extremely well conveyed. No one, however, has pointed out one desirable effect of a disastrous inflation which wiped out the savings of a considerable part of the bourgeoisie: a decline of arranged mar- riages and the dot system, which was, I am con- vinced, in part due to recognition of the folly of limiting families and saving up money to send a daughter into the world with an adequate dot —which turned out to be inadequate. This is one of the reasons, I believe, for the French marrying younger and having bigger families.
But a more important point made in this book is the shock to French complacency caused by the ignominious disasters of the last war. The French were forced to reconsider their way of life more deeply than we have been. Few coun- tries have changed more profoundly than France, and I am inclined to say that in no country known to me is the gap between generations wider: the young Frenchman, the young French- woman is a new type of Frenchman and French- woman, and there are more and more of them.
Professor Stanley Hoffmann starts off with a most admirable essay on `Paradoxes of the French Political Community. It makes French politics before, during, and after de Gaulle almost intelligible. In one way, the most interest- ing article is by Professor Laurence Wylie on the changes in French rural society. We tend to think of this as immobile whereas it is changing very rapidly indeed. A sous-pre/et who formed his opinion of his administres by reading Balzac has many parallels in British and Ameri- can commentators on French society. Professor Wylie is not among these naïve observers of French society and he tells us a great deal about the problems of France—the decline in the den- sity of French rural life and the improvement in its quality.
I must confess that I find Professor Jesse R. Pitts's chapter on 'Continuity and Change in Bourgeois France' less satisfactory. Professor Pitts is a sociologist and he seems to me to sys- tematise French bourgeois life far too much and impose on it a pattern which covers only part of the realities. Nevertheless, what Professor Pitts has to say is, as far as it goes, very valu- able: but I think there is more in French bourgeois society than he is willing to admit. The two French contributions, by Jean-Baptiste Duroselle and Francois Goguel, are delightfully un-French in their unwillingness to impose pat- terns. But this refusal is itself a sign of the great changes in French society.
It would be impossible in a book of such density to avoid statements which readers like myself are not quite willing to believe. Some- times the difficulties arise from ambiguities of translation. Thus Peguy is described as 'poor Peguy,' but I cannot make out whether this is a description of his. economic situation, in which case the adjective is justified, or of his moral and intellectual status, in which case I think it is absurd. It might be pointed out that a cure is not a 'curate,' and that the great Catho- lic secondary schools like the College Stanislas are not 'parochial schools' in the American sense of the term. M. Soustelle was not, when he started his political career, a man of the right, but of the left. The Jacobins were not the war party in 1792; and the description of the Renault regie as a 'monopoly' is misleading in English.
One or two other points could be made. I think the contrast between the two capitalisms, one Catholic and one Jewish or Protestant, as being 'one producer-oriented, family-oriented, Catholic; the other financial, speculative, Jewish or Protestant' is highly misleading. This is a picture of French economic life very popular on the French Catholic right; but I do not think it describes the realities of French life. What I should be inclined to say is that probably wealthy Catholics tend to devote more money to the land, to being country gentlemen, to being soldiers and officials than do Protestants and Jews; but certainly there are plenty of impor- tant Protestant and Jewish families in produc- tive business: for example, the great textile firms of Alsace and Normandy, and such great motor firms as the Peugeot company of Franche-Comte. I could give other examples, such as the Jewish origin of Citroen, although that firm is now controlled by the eminently Catholic family of Michelin. But thee are trivial criticisms of a really first-class book.
T) W. BROGAN
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