The French Take a VACATION

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(I wrote this back in 2004 or 5.  It captured my sense that the US was going off in the wrong direction,  though the French had their own strange ideas.  14 years have exaggerated the differences and complicated the picture with the role of immigration in both countries.)

A recent NPR piece gives a significantly different perspective on human values.  It seems, according to the reporter, that France guarantees each citizen a month of vacation every year.  This includes every working citizen, and even extends to those who are unemployed.  This surely exceeds the social tolerance of American culture.  But wait, there is more:  it seems, according to the reporter, that not all French citizens are accepting this right (or is it a responsibility?) and going on vacation.  So the French government has assigned counselors the task of identifying why certain families do not choose to go, and then counseling or educating them so that they will begin to enjoy this benefit. To the average American,  this seems truly “over the top”:  it typifies the peculiar French culture and its seeming deviance from any rational course of action.  How can we make sense of this culture, with its concern for art, fine food and wine, and this apparent obsession for the relaxation of its citizens?

While still nominally a capitalist economy, France shows an unusual concern for the well being and lifestyle of its citizens.  According to capitalist principles, the primary concern for the individual or the state should be the return on expended capital, ie money or its equivalent.  As Marx eloquently pointed out, humans are equivalent to “labor”, and represent a cost (or, more recently, a “consumer”).   It is the job of the human consumer to allocate his/her capital for whatever vacation he or she may choose.  For the French government to encourage or demand that the citizen choose vacation is to reverse the capitalist flow.   Perhaps the wily French have calculated that the increased consumption, which occurs during the vacations of the French, helps pay for the cost of encouraging this, or even covers the cost of lost production to the economy.  (Probably not.)   Surely there are other ways to stimulate consumer demand that are more product specific and not so geared to improving the lives of the citizens.

France is not REALLY a dedicated capitalist system.  As a country they put far too much emphasis on quality of life, REGARDLESS OF THE PROVEN ECONOMIC RETURN.  A country that is so concerned about culture, or the preservation of language, or  the careful preparation of food, even to the point of being too expensive to create truly “profitable restaurant chains” cannot claim to really be capitalist.  While its social welfare system is extensive,  it is not so extensive to justify being considered Socialist.   And what’s more, many of the cultural concerns of the French are not part of the social welfare system.

In the end we must conclude that the French are concerned about some other value, not directly related to return on capital,  and therefore not readily translated into American language or culture.   It is no wonder that they remain such a mystery.