Leaders in driverless cars

THE inquiring progressive mind, scanning Europe for new thinking on the left, would not instinctively turn to France. No eager throngs gather for debates at the headquarters of the Parti Socialiste. No French intellectual review churns out required reading on how to remodel social democracy for the 21st century. If anything, under President François Hollande, France seems to be stuck chasing old ghosts and replaying its own history—a modern remake of the 1983 U-turn, when François Mitterrand jettisoned hyper-taxation and accepted the free market.

Yet the election in Britain of Jeremy Corbyn, Labour’s new retro leader, has the disconcerting consequence of making French socialism look like a bold step forward. Not that the Socialist Party machine itself has changed much. Its sectarian cliques still wage yesterday’s wars over platters of fruits de mer at seaside conferences. And the left’s intellectuals, including Thomas Piketty, an economist now on occasional loan to Mr Corbyn, remain preoccupied with denouncing austerity and modelling a more progressive tax system. Yet peer into a tiny corner of the government under Manuel Valls, the centre-left prime minister, and one finds an effort to think ahead that could resonate beyond France. Nimble minds are asking how to arm the left for a world hurled sideways by disruptive technology and automation.

A glimpse of the new mood was on show last week in London, when two Frenchmen in their late 30s leapt on the stage at an investor event. One, an entrepreneur, put on a tie (presumably to show seriousness). The other, France’s economy minister, Emmanuel Macron, took his off (presumably to signal hipness). He has become the liberal left’s foremost agitator. The entrepreneur, Frédéric Mazzella, has just led BlaBlaCar, his ride-sharing startup, which has 20m users from Mexico to India, into the tiny club of European market newcomers valued at over €1 billion ($1.12 billion). Their shared message: France is embracing disruptive innovation (Paris is one of Uber’s busiest markets outside America, even though French prosecutors are pursuing Uber executives), and trying to make it work for all.

Emboldened by books such as “The Second Machine Age”, by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, Mr Macron and his friends are grappling with how to rewrite the rules of equality and welfare for the digital economy, which hollows out the salaried middle, spreads freelance work and sidelines union-backed incumbents. What, they ask, will the left have to say when driverless cars make unionised taxi-drivers redundant? Or about legal working time in an Uberised economy where freelancing prevails? Such questions may seem otherworldly to those handing out flyers and treading pavements to try to stave off electoral defeat today. But the workplace shake-up is on its way faster than Mr Hollande can perform a pirouette on economic policy. Nearly 25% of Europe’s workforce is not salaried. Mr McAfee reckons that half of today’s jobs will in time be automated out of existence. And France is ripe for disruption: mergers aside, the youngest firm in the CAC 40, the main stock index, was founded in 1967.

“The left has built its history around the extension of collective rights,” Mr Macron recalls. Now, “the transformation of the economy risks bringing to an end this adventure of collective progress.” The challenge, he argues, is to “build a form of neo-progressivism, structured around the idea of individual progress for all, in a way that combines agility with security.” What does this mean in practice? Work will increasingly need to be measured by tasks accomplished, not time spent behind a desk. Protection and benefits, such as training or social insurance, will need to be individualised for à la carte careers.

Furthermore, regulators will need to put consumers first. “They vote every day, by taking Uber,” says Mr Macron. “We have to take it into account and build a fair framework.” Workers, after all, are transformed after work into shoppers and may seek late-night bargains or a ride summoned from their phone. For the left to side only with those threatened by technology is to favour conservatism and the defence of insider privilege. “Rules need to evolve with society,” observes Mr Mazzella. “Macron is trying to encourage disruption as fast as society can accept it.”

Bewildered Labour moderates at their party conference in Brighton might willingly have traded some of this new-economy zeal for the old-economy ruminations of their leader. Yet Mr Macron, an unelected one-time investment banker with a philosophy degree, faces the reality that his ideas are about as welcome among many French Socialists as a corked bottle of Bordeaux. At best, he is an irritant; at worst, toxic for the Socialist brand.

Celebrated in history textbooks

For all the past efforts to reconcile the party with the market, French Socialists find Mr Macron’s talk not just uncomfortable, but in collision with the left’s defining narrative: the long historical march of collective progress. The struggle for shared, incremental rights is seared into young French minds: the right for all to two weeks’ paid holiday in 1936 under Léon Blum, extended to five in 1982 under Mitterrand; the working week capped at 39 hours in 1982, reduced to 35 hours in 2000. To query the merits of a shorter working week, says one Socialist, is to throw out “a hundred years of struggle, tears, sweat and blood”.

Technology has long disrupted politics as well as markets. During the first machine age in the 19th century, it took decades of upheaval to enact the social reforms that enabled whole societies to benefit from automation. Today Mr Macron is not even trying to formulate policy, just to say the unmentionable in order to nudge the debate forward before technology gets there first. The party may not like him for it, but polls suggest the French do. Britain’s Mr Corbyn makes France’s Mr Hollande look improbably modern. But Mr Macron is showing up most of the Socialist leadership for what it still remains: unforgivably passé.