ABSTRACT
France's two major trade union organizations, the Confederation Generale du Travail (CGT) and the Confederation Francaise Democratique du Travail (CFDT) responded to the arrival of economic crisis in the 1970s from within economic perspectives and strategies. The Cold War shift in French politics, in this view, involved the subordination of French economic policy, and the French economy, to US interests. In this process of 'Marshallization', France would ultimately suffer the fate of all imperialized societies. The French 'labor exclusionary' postwar settlement inevitably created its own contradictions. At the beginning of the postwar boom French union weakness followed from the divisions and distortions of Cold War politics. 'Peaceful coexistence' was destined to make French political life less manichaean in itself. The change of regimes in 1958 was of great importance in altering the structure of French political debate as well.
