The history of French socialism is filled with famous and heroic dates: 1789, 1848, 1871, 1936, 1968. But less well remembered is another date of great significance: 1981. It was in May of that year that the French left achieved its greatest electoral triumph of the postwar era, with the election of Socialist Party (PS) leader François Mitterrand as president of the republic. That victory, which came after a quarter century of uninterrupted conservative rule, raised hopes for a new departure in French politics. Mitterrand’s election manifesto, the 110 Propositions for France, embodied the sweeping reform agenda he had promised since ascending to the leadership of the PS a decade earlier, when he memorably capped his speech at the Party’s 1971 Congress with a thunderous call for a “rupture” with capitalism. As head of the PS, Mitterrand’s decision to pursue an electoral agreement with his longtime rivals from the Communist Party (PCF), which resulted in the 1972 “Common Program,” was both a milestone for the postwar French left, and an important step in his own rise to the Élysée Palace.

Mitterrand’s election in the spring of 1981, and the subsequent triumph of the Left in parliamentary elections which followed immediately afterwards, led to the formation of a government under Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy that was more radical than any France had seen since Léon Blum’s Popular Front in 1936. For the first time since the start of the Cold War, Mauroy’s cabinet included four Communist ministers. Once installed in office, the new government moved quickly to make good on the Left’s campaign promises, introducing a dizzying array of reforms in the weeks and months that followed. Among these were an extensive series of nationalizations, which put dozens of major firms and numerous strategic industries (including the entire banking sector) in the hands of the state; a 40 percent increase in the minimum wage; a reduction in the legal workweek to 39 hours (with the promise of additional reductions to follow); a host of new powers and protections for French trade unions; welfare state expansion the creation of thousands of additional public sector jobs; plus abolition of the death penalty, and reform of the legal code and education system.

In many ways, this reform agenda was indicative of the leftward turn of European social democracy during the 1970s. In the face of growing economic difficulties and widespread labor militancy across the region, left parties and trade unions throughout Western Europe adopted increasingly ambitious reform plans. In France, where the crisis was particularly acute, that radicalization was the backdrop to Mitterrand’s rise during the 1970s, and continued to shape the outlook of his administration during its first year in office. In this initial, reformist phase, the government pursued an economic program which, though it may not quite have constituted the promised “French road to socialism,” was at least a kind of augmented Keynesianism, in which wage and employment growth was prioritized, disposable income rose sharply, and the tools of state-led economic development that had long been central to French capitalism were turned toward a left-wing, pro-labor policy agenda.