French Letters

by Jonathan Miller

  PARAÉTATISME, PARAÉTATIQUE

  The state by any other name

  Paraétatisme (semi-government) describes the myriad of supposedly private enterprises that are not independent from the state at all. They are controlled by highly distorted share-ownership structures that give ministers de facto veto power over every important decision. These companies include Air France-KLM, France Télécom, PSA Peugeot Citroën, EDF, the world’s largest electricity company, Areva, the nuclear power plant constructor, Engie (formerly GDF-Suez), the world’s largest energy company, Thales, the engineering group, Aéroports de Paris, France Télévisions, La Poste, Radio France, Française des Jeux, the betting monopoly, SNCF, the state railway, and the ports of Bordeaux, Le Havre, Marseille and Rouen. The state’s official share of GDP is admitted to be 54 per cent, but with the commanding heights of the economy under state ownership or operating under an effective state veto, there are really very few important parts of the economy that are not semi-governmental.

  PARIS

  Venice without the canals

  So pronounced Flaubert. Victor Hugo, author of Les Miserables, wrote:

  Toujours Paris s’écrie et gronde.

  Nul ne sait, question profonde !

  Ce que perdrait le bruit du monde

  Le jour où Paris se tairait !

  Always Paris cries and mutters.

  Who can tell, unfathomable question!

  What would be lost from the universal clamour

  On the day that Paris fell silent!

  Paris is not yet silent but is no longer so central to the universal clamour, and is more ville musée (a city that is itself a museum) than indispensable global metropole, much as Parisians might imagine themselves at the centre of the universe. With 3 million inhabitants at the beginning of the 20th century, 2.1 million at the beginning of the 21st and 1.9 million forecast by 2024. Many apartments in Paris have been vacated by their owners and are now let short-term to tourists via Airbnb. There is still plenty of style in Paris, but perhaps less of substance.

  Outside the touristic hotspots, the city is no longer dynamic. Much of the basic infrastructure is crumbling. There is a feeling of insecurity, especially in the northeast. It’s hard not to notice the feral gangs at the Gare du Nord. If the centre is overrun by gawping tourists during the day, by 9pm much of the city is deserted. On Sunday, with the shops closed to protect the workers from having to work (see travail dominical), Chinese tourists take the Eurostar to go shopping in London.

  Paris is a city sculpted by pharaonic urban renewal projects, rather than organic consolidation of older settlements. George Eugène (‘Baron’) Haussmann was the principal architect of modern Paris. Working for Napoléon III in the time of high empire, it was his blueprint that has produced the city that everyone knows today. What was lost is barely recorded: Haussmann boasted that he was an artiste démolisseur (demolition artist) and set about his mission without sentiment, driving great new boulevards through ancient neighbourhoods, even razing his own boyhood home, pushing the poor to new slums in the suburbs.

  Émile Zola vividly describes Haussmann’s destruction of Paris in Au bonheur des dames, (The Ladies’ Paradise, 1883) with harrowing descriptions of the razing of the neighbourhoods and the societies and cultures within them, and how in the centre the great department stores rose from the dust of the destroyed settlements, introducing an entirely new way of life to the capital. The embourgeoisement left Paris a paradise for some. Walter Benjamin in Passagenwerk (The Arcades Project, 1940), his masterful work on Paris, said the ‘true goal of Haussmann’s projects was to secure the city against civil war. He wanted to make the erection of barricades in Paris impossible for all time’ by creating straight avenues that could be cleared by cannons in case of a rebellion. Pierre L’Enfant used similar military logic laying out Washington, D.C.

  Although very energetic, Haussmann cannot claim credit for all of modern Paris. After the Commune there was another great urban renewal scheme entered on Montmartre, headquarters of the Communards, whose quartier (neighbourhood) was razed to build the hideous basilica of Sacré Coeur. Then, between 1971 and 1978 there was the extraordinary vandalism of the glorious pavilions of Les Halles in central Paris and the replacement of this priceless market district with a soulless plaza and an egomaniacal museum by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, named after Georges Pompidou, the President of the Republic who inspired this destruction.

  Grand Paris (the Metropolis of Greater Paris) is a big idea that’s come to nothing much, so far. A scheme for rebuilding Paris including the first new skyscrapers in the city since the hideous Tour Montparnasse was erected in 1975, the initiative was launched by former president Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007. Much discussed, hugely criticised by politicians, architects and ecologists, proposals for improved suburban transport networks have become a renewed talking point as thoughts turn to another scheme to integrate the ghettos. Compared to London, Paris remains a resolutely low-rise capital, and many prefer to keep it that way. Transportation in the city is a catastrophe with the ring road (périphérique) completely congested, the interior boulevards in a perpetual state of chaos and the metro and suburban rail links in a state of decay. A shocking 100 per cent of French women surveyed report having been sexually harassed on the metro. The Paris city council has recently approved a scheme for La Tour Triangle, a 180-metre glass pyramid already being called the Toblerone, for its resemblance to the Swiss chocolate bar, and Renzo Piano’s scheme for a 160m Palais de Justice is also supposedly going ahead. But these are both on the city perimeter. The bid by Paris for the 2024 Olympics, if successful, may stimulate progress on the Grand Paris project since the city is in no condition to welcome the games in its present state, which has barely evolved since the 19th century.

  It sounds philistine to doubt the grandeur of Paris but it takes more than grandeur to be a world city. The cityscape looks in dire need of maintenance and investment. Away from the posh arrondissements (districts) Paris gets grim quickly. Walk up the Canal St Martin to La Villette, the modernist science city, to see the stark contrast between promise and performance. The banks of the canal are home to a sordid camp of homeless migrants. The space bears no comparison at all to the canals of Amsterdam, and the sympathetic development that makes them captivating. Eventually, one arrives at the brutalist installations at La Villette, approached over an endless concrete plaza, and Paris doesn’t feel quite so chic after all.

  PARLEMENTAIRES

  Privileged, often corrupt political class

  France’s too-frequently grasping, greedy, lavishly compensated parliamentarians comprise 577 National Assembly deputies and 348 Senators. They inhabit a world entirely divorced from the economic realities of modern France. An acquaintance of mine, let me call him Jean-Marc, was a deputy in the National Assembly. He was also the mayor of his hometown and the president of the local government agglomération council. So he had three mandats, that is to say three jobs, three salaries, three sets of tax-free allowances and three pensions. Before embarking on his political career he was an officer in an intelligence branch of the national police and took home 3,300 euros per month. His terminal emoluments, before he carelessly lost two elections, including various allowances and indemnities (tax-free payments) were, he calculates, just short of 30,000 euros per month. The system of mandates has been reformed, so while double-dipping will continue, triple-dipping has been disallowed - this, after one senator was revealed to be making 360,000 euros a year.

  To be elected a deputy in the National Assembly of France is to inhabit a different planet. It is not just the gilded surroundings, but the constant enveloppes (packets of cash).One socialist member told me he was a little shocked at first at the range of tax-free allowances being thrust in his direction, but he seems to have overcome his initial surprise.

  Everyone else working in the parliament is also generously paid - an average of around 8,000 euros per month for each of the 1,212 fortunate servants on the payro
ll. Being a Senator is another golden privilege with a monthly salary, a hefty series of tax-free indemnities, as many free tickets on Air France as you can use, free train travel, etc., etc., etc., and of course no need to give up your day job since there is almost nothing to do, the place being stuffed with individuals who might once have been important. All around the Senate is golden. The gardeners who look after the Senators’ gardens at the Palais de Luxembourg earn 7,000 euros a month.

  The French hold their parliamentarians in contempt. They say, On y parle, on y ment (as they speak, they lie). But they still vote for them.

  PARTI SOCIALISTE

  Clientelist and statist party

  As an elected official in France, I meet a lot of politicians. Before the recent departmental elections, the socialist candidate dropped by for a private meeting with members of our council. I asked him a few questions, admittedly provocative, to test whether he had any clue at all. What about the employment code, doesn’t this make it hard to employ people? Oh no, he said, that couldn’t be touched. How about the ghastly killing of a schoolgirl by a classmate in the city where he is mayor? Had he learned anything about leadership from the experience of being mayor during such a terrible time? Apparently not. Not really his business, he said, it was a matter for the police and the school. Then, evidently bored with my attempts to discover how he approached leadership, he cut to the chase, pulled out his notebook, addressed himself directly to the mayor, and came to the point of the meeting: what did we want? What were our commune’s priorities, and what subsidies did we seek? It was a straightforward bargain on offer: our votes, for his cash. He was subsequently elected and at the first meeting of the new council, voted to raise his own salary by 8 per cent - an intention he neglected to mention in our interview.

  While genuflecting before the saints of French socialism like Jean Jaurès, with their agenda for social reform, the modern Socialist party is led by a class of elite, bourgeois career politicians who know nothing of the working class and whose concern for social justice is purely theoretical. At the top it is an elite composed of people who have attended the elite grandes écoles. Lower down the pecking order, they are machine politicians drawn from the unions, the civil service and local politics. The modern socialist party pays lip-service to socialism but is less a socialist party than aparty of clientélisme, allied with the civil service, the teachers, the unions and paraétatique (semi-governmental) semi-privatised monopolies, devoted to power for its own sake and the privileges that come with it. Real socialists in France hate the Socialist party, although their reaction is to become even more irrationally left-wing.

  PASTEUR, LOUIS (1882-1895)

  great scientist, ethically dubious

  Invented pasteurisation, developed vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, TB, smallpox and rabies. A graduate of the École Normale Supérieure. Has been accused of arrogance, dogmatism, unethical experimentation, secretiveness, claiming credit for the discoveries of others and even of practising deception. His notebooks were only made available to researchers in 1971, provoking further controversies. But his achievements are beyond dispute and millions if not hundreds of millions owe their lives to his work. France’s Sanofi-Pasteur, originally founded by a student of Pasteur, now a division of the Sanofi-Aventis group, is today the largest vaccine company in the world. There are 2,020 streets named Rue Pasteur in France, more than any other Frenchman.

  PASTIS

  French café breakfast

  What French peasants often drink at the café in the morning to fortify themselves for the labours ahead. Pastis, an alcoholic drink flavoured with aniseed, is a basic ingredient in the great French peasant breakfast (Pastis, cigarette, coffee). Fernandel (1903-1971), the great French comic actor, said: Le pastis c’est comme les seins, un c’est pas assez et trois, c’est trop. (Pastis is like a woman’s breasts. One isn’t enough, three is too many.)

  PAYSAN

  A peasant

  To call somewhat a peasant in England is somewhat akin to calling them a bumpkin. In France, to be a paysan is an honourable calling, and paysans are seen as an authentic expression of the soul of rural France, the salt of the earth. In ancient French, a païsan could also mean a villain - and this remains sometimes true. Peasants are not necessarily poor, many have accumulated substantial land holdings. And they are not always as charming as those I often encounter on my perambulations through the countryside, often ready to hand me a basket of apricots from their orchard or a bunch of grapes from their vines.

  LE PENS, LES

  French nationalist political dynasty

  Jean-Marie - Founder of the Front National (National Front) and its leader for almost 40 years, made it to the second round of the 2002 presidential election, losing to Jacques Chirac. Channeling a long history of French fascism, he sounds increasingly demented. Suspended from the party for his outrageous and barely concealed anti-semitism. Still a member of the European Parliament, has health problems (he was 83 in 2011 when he gave up leading the party), is a fading figurehead of the party’s unreconstructed right-wing - more nationalistic, more to the right economically, a champion of traditional moral values and advocate of les Français de souche (French people grown on the soil of France). Provocative statements on the Holocaust and unconcealed nostalgia for the collaborationist Vichy regime warranted the depiction of the Front as a party of the extreme right, although since he relinquished the leadership to his daughter Marine Le Pen the party has moved to the centre on social policy and to the left on economics. He has subsequently disowned his daughter and remains embraced in a bitter feud with her.

  Marion Maréchal Le Pen - Elected youngest-ever deputy to the National Assembly at 22, and still just 25. Fearless in the Assembly, provoking prime minister Manuel Valls to quivering rage and afterwards urging her supporters to give Valls a heart attack. Granddaughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, much closer to him politically than her aunt, Marine Le Pen, although she has stayed quiet about the Holocaust. Seen as an eventual leader of the party.

  Marine Le Pen - papa problems, maman problems, and now the problem of keeping her politically rightist base on-side while denouncing her father’s anti-semitic provocations, softening the rhetoric generally, and moving her party further to the economic left. Born in 1968 and aged 46 in 2015. Her mother once posed for the French edition of Playboy, dressed as a chambermaid. This was supposedly to make money after Jean-Marie failed to give her enough to keep the house. He supposedly told her that if she wanted more, she should go out and faire des ménages (work as a cleaning lady). So it’s fair to suppose that Marine’s family was always pretty dysfunctional. After inheriting the leadership of the party from her father, she has surrounded herself with advisors who are less obviously gorillas than the blokes who still hang out around her dad.

  She is friends with gay people, avoids overtly racist rhetoric as she proclaims nationalism and demands a return of the death penalty. If she can be said to have an economic policy it is protectionist, hostile to labour-market reform, anti-European and in policy detail hard to tell apart from that of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the ultra-leftist leader. ‘Marine has stolen our economic policy,’ wails one advisor to the extreme left. But she has foes on the right, too. There are those who do not approve of her close political relationship with advisor Florian Philippot, a graduate of both ENA and the Haute École de Commerce in Paris, who was outed as gay by Closer magazine in 2014. It was once considered impossible that Marine could ever survive the second round of a presidential election but there are new calculations that suggest she has handsomely profited by the rise of Islamic extremism, where her nationalist, integrationist ideas find resonance with threatened, disaffected voters.

  PÉRIPHÉRIQUE

  Toxic orbital motorway

  The Boulevard Périphérique is the rough Parisian equivalent of the M25 or the Washington Beltway. The busiest and most congested road in Europe, in a perpetual miasma of carbon monoxide fumes and photochemical oxidants, with no hard s
houlder, it marks the division between Paris and the suburbs. It is almost impossible to drive from the north to the south of Paris without passing the périph’. It is claimed that when travelling at the legal speed limit of 70 km/h (45mph) it takes 30 minutes to circumnavigate the city. Perhaps at 3 a.m. My own experience is that it can take 30 minutes to travel 2 km and the crumbling road is made more terrifying by motorcyclists weaving suicidally through the crawling traffic. Plans to build a new outer ring-road have stalled.

  PERPIGNAN

  Crossroads of the world