ABSTRACT

The crisis that engulfed the entire French economy beginning in the mid-1970s soon engulfed organized labor. The conservative bloc governing France sponsored a fundamental restructuring and expansion of the French economy in the 1960s and 1970s. During these years the CGT and French Democratic Confederation of Labor displayed a radical stance. French macroeconomic regulation in the 1960s and early 1970s was informed by the Keynesian approach prevalent throughout advanced capitalism. It involved state-sponsored countercyclical measures to stimulate rapid capital accumulation and rationalization, which generated material benefits to reward the state and labor for tacitly accepting capitalist domination of production. Working-class political pressure also helped provoke the crisis, for the state expanded welfare programs and employee benefits in the early 1970s in an attempt to maintain labor peace. Increased taxes and state expenditures eventually proved a drain on capital accumulation.