ABSTRACT
The acute political crisis was resolved by negotiation, under pressure from the government, of a compromise between labor unions and employers. While the macroeconomic indicators were still pointing to a healthy economy, then, the people can already detect signs of instability in the existing wage labor relation, which had played a crucial part in the postwar growth of the French economy. Even more it freezes the hierarchies that have resulted from past struggles, which may run counter not only to new worker aspirations but also to the harsh logic of resuming capital accumulation, the need for which labor may in some respects be willing to admit. It is generally acknowledged that a Fordist wage labor relation has played a central role in the intensive regime of accumulation, based on mass consumption, that underlies the exceptional growth of the postwar period.
