caa a22 4500 388061553 CHVBK 20180307125122.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161130e199804 xx s 000 0 eng 10.1111/j.1477-7053.1998.tb00790.x doi S0017257X00004589 pii (NATIONALLICENCE)cambridge-10.1111/j.1477-7053.1998.tb00790.x Howard Dick The French Strikes of 1995 and their Political Aftermath [Elektronische Daten] [Dick Howard] LIKE MANY OF HIS APHORISMS, MARX'S DESIGNATION OF THE FRENCH as the model political nation (leaving the economy to the English and philosophy for the Germans) contained enough of a grain of truth to remain relevant for over a century. Since 1989, the idea of politics based on the revolutionary experience begun in 1789 and pursued by a unified and international working-class subject has lost its utility for understanding the political choices facing modern industrial democracies. Nowhere is the need for a new understanding of the political more clear than in France itself, as illustrated by the strikes that paralysed the country for more than three weeks in November and December of 1995 and forced the government to retreat. While some saw the birth of a ‘social movement', cheered the victory of society against the state, or imagined that class struggle had begun anew, the more pessimistic argued that the French had once again proven themselves incapable of political reform. The former presuppose a model of politics from the nineteenth century, the latter look forward to a globalized twenty-first century. For those of us still living in the twentieth, analysis of the French strikes can help us to understand how politics can make the shape of the twentyfirst century less inevitable. Government and Opposition Cambridge University Press 33/2(1998-04), 199-220 0017-257X 33:2<199 1998 33 GOV https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1477-7053.1998.tb00790.x text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1477-7053.1998.tb00790.x text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Howard Dick NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Government and Opposition Cambridge University Press 33/2(1998-04), 199-220 0017-257X 33:2<199 1998 33 GOV CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-cambridge