MITTERRAND'S NEW AUSTCRl FY DRIVE 43 class. This loss in social support, which, according to recent polls is still to affect Mitterrand himself, marks the failure of France's social democratic experiment after 23 years of conservative rule. To the interested observer what the French experience once again underlines is the poverty of social democracy. Repeatedly social democrats all over the world have come up with 'programmes for survival' and 'blue prints for recovery' that have as their basic premise the belief that capitalism can be crisis-free so long as correct policies are pursued. In this case the correct policy was an effort to 'Japanisize' France. The current international economic crisis, the Socialists believe, is no indication of the weakness or failure of capitalism as a system, but merely the product of a shift in the focus of growth from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Europe is no doubt decadent, but it could regain its post-war vigour if only efforts could be made to replicate the Japanese experience there. But reality has proved too slippery for the minds that want to remould it. Not only have efforts at expansion run aground in the mire of inter-imperialist rivalry, but in fact promises of expansion have given way to exhortations to the working class to accept a cut in living standards that they had not bargained for when they voted the Socialists to power. What emerges from the experience is that the Socialist programme was not really a blue print for recovery, but had in fact relied on an upturn in world economic activity •to sustain the boom that it expected to set afoot through its expansionist programme. Recovery was a premise rather than the goal. In the event that such optimism has not tallied with reality, the current reversal of policy was to be expected. But what has made matters worse is that social-democratic optimism did not even permit the French to consider the implications of launching on Keynesian policies in a situation where all other countries have opted for tight-money contractionary regimes. All of them no doubt agree that capitalism works, but the monetarists are convinced that the workers must pay to make it work. The social democrats not only believe that it works; they -in fact expect it to serve the people. c. p. c.