471 



Space -Age Europe 185 



tronics, atomic power, computers, and space technology in the 195()s 

 ushered in a postindustrial age with still stiffer requirements. "It is no 

 longer enough," wrote de Gaulle, "for industry, agriculture, and trade 

 to manufacture, harvest, and exchange more and more. It is not 

 enough to do what one does well; one must do it better than anyone 

 else. . . . Expansion, productivity, competition, concentration — such, 

 clearly, were the rules which the French economy, traditionally cau- 

 tious, conservative, protected, and scattered, must henceforth adopt." 

 How could such a revitalization come about? First, through state lead- 

 ership under the French Economic Plan. Second, through priority for 

 international competition, "the lever which could activate our business 

 world, compel it to increase productivity, encourage it to merge, per- 

 suade it to do battle abroad. ..." Thus, the Common Market, in de 

 Gaulle's view, was not a means to submerge France into Europe but a 

 means to expand the market in which French industry might achieve 

 dominance. Third, through statist stimulation of advanced R&D in the 

 fields of nuclear power, aviation, computers, and space "because their 

 labs and their inventions provide a spur to progress throughout the 

 whole of industry."'' 



De Ciaulle envisioned a hybrid economy uniquely adapted to an age 

 of continuous technological revolution. He rejected laissez-faire caj)i- 

 talism, for that model carried within it "the seeds of a gigantic and 

 perennial dissatisfaction. It is true that the excesses of a system based 

 on laisser-faire are now mitigated by certain palliatives, but they do not 

 cure its moral sickness." Communism, on the other hand, theoretically 

 "prevents the exploitation of men by men, [but] involves the imposition 

 of an odious tyranny and plunges life into the lugubrious atmosphere 

 of totalitarianism without achieving anything like the results, in terms 

 of living standards, working conditions, distribution of goods, and 

 technological progress which are obtainable in freedom."'" 



solution to such stalemate is "corporatist" decision making bv which labor, business, 

 political parlies, and bureaucracies, e.g., compiomise to bring about centrali/cd social 

 progress. The French Third Republic proved singularly incapable of effecting sue li 

 compromise even under the threat of foreign competition or internal disruption. In 

 perverse fashion, it was left to the collaborationist Vichy regime to foster a number of 

 reforms — in industrial organization, labor relations, and scientifu rcse.in h — amouniing 

 to a certain "modernization" of the Fiench state. Ihe Fourth Repiii)li( then established 

 new research institutes and the Economic Plan after the war, presaging in main wa\sthe 

 C.aullist eia. See, e.g., Stanley Hoffman, In Search of Fmtice (CambiidgO. Mass., and 

 London. 1*>()3); (iilpin.Frafjr^;^; //if.A^foy //i<vVnV'>(^0r.S7«/<'(n. .') abo\e): Chai lesS. M.iit i. 

 Recasting Botirfrcois Europe: Slabilizalion m France. Itnh. and Cerwinn in the Decade after 

 World War / (Princeton. 1974); and Robert O. Paxton, Vich\ France. OhI C.uard and Xeie 

 Order. 19W-1944 (New York. 1972). 



De C.aulle. Memoirs of Hofie. pj). !3.V:^.-). 

 Ibid . p. \M\. 



