Mitterrand’s Technocratic Socialism

Last May I attended a lecture by Laurent Fabius, then minister of industry and now prime minister, at one of the fairly exclusive left-wing private political clubs in Paris. The audience consisted largely of academics, civil servants, and political journalists. Fabius gave an accomplished presentation of budgetary, financial, and, above all, industrial issues. He fielded technical questions in a confident and sure-footed manner. But then someone asked: “What is the vision [l’imagi...