The slow growth ail over Europe (1.3%) in the
early 1990’s has been particularly visible in
France (1.1%). This low rate represents the
worst records since World War II. This article
examines the mechanisms of such a sustained
slow growth.
The first sign of the changing power relations
on the market, accountable for that slow
growth process, was a sharp but persistent
raise in the long-term interest rates. The
present economic context is characterised by
a dominance of creditors in the financial
markets and of entrepreneurs in the labour
market, both outcomes of financial
globalisation and of the, until recently, ail but
restrictive monetary policies. Employment and
investment are currently the main adjustment
variables for firms constrained to pay their
debts. Simultaneously, investment momentum
and increasing unemployment will generate
social and public déficits as well as states’
indebtedness thus strengthening capital
markets’ control over economic policies.
However, these unbalanced power relations
are not irréversible and do not imply either to
capitulate or to relinquish social security. It is
possible to contrive policies meant to restore
balanced power relations, the only way to
achieve a real market democracy. This article
tries to outline such a system.
Like the past «glorious thirty», the «poor
twenty» we just went through may also arise
from specific, historically dated factors that
shouldn’t be cast into the future. Hopefully,
economic growth will see much better days on
condition that one fully grasps its inherent
mechanisms and accepts that the intersection
of the social and the economic is the privileged
site for democracy.
