Abstract
The ‘thirty glorious years’ of economic expansion following the Second World War, during which GDP per capita grew at an annual average rate in excess of 5 per cent, are closely identified in the public mind with the return of de Gaulle to power, the restoration of order, and the establishment in 1958 of the Fifth Republic. This golden age of economic growth witnessed the modernisation of the French economy, the transformation of living standards and the birth of consumer society. In the 1960s France emerged as one of the world’s leading industrial economies: ‘France has married her century’, as de Gaulle theatrically put it.
In economy as in politics or strategy, I do not believe that there can be absolute truth, but only circumstances.
Charles de Gaulle
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Notes
The ‘Golden Age’ of the Gaullist Era
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Berstein examines the case for the ‘embourgeoisement’ of the working classes. According to opinion polls of the day, many believed that this was happening. Mallet argues that, on the contrary, the working class was expanding through the absorption of minor civil servants, employees and artisans, giving rise to a new working class elite of industrial wage-earners whose demands were no longer quantitative (e.g. higher wages, shorter working hours) but qualitative (e.g. status in the firm). Mallet, S., La Nouvelle Class ouvrière, Paris, Seuil, 1963, cited in Berstein, S., The Republic of de Gaulle 1958–1969, p. 137.
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This conversation reputedly took place in 1984. Attali, J., Verbatim 11981–1986, Paris, Fayard, 1993, p. 642, cited in Webber, D., ed., The Franco-German Relationship in the European Union, p. 12.
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Maclean, M. (2002). The ‘Golden Age’ of the Gaullist Era. In: Economic Management and French Business. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230503991_4
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