Is France really in terminal decline?

By Caroline Wyatt BBC Paris correspondent

While America and others have accused France of typical Gallic arrogance in recent months over the war in Iraq, the French themselves seem to be suffering a period of acute self-doubt.

French traditional life is ebbing away, the intellectuals claim

That, at least, is the message from three best-selling books published this autumn by French intellectuals, who've provoked the government into paroxysms of rage with their gloomy prognosis that economically and politically, France has gone into terminal decline.

I hadn't suspected the French of being gloomy. Quite the opposite in fact. There seems to be rather a lot to be cheerful about in France, from the food and wine, to public transport that works.

Yet three books on the desk in front of me tell a rather different story. The titles alone warn that all is not well: France in Collapse, The Arrogance of France, Farewell to a Disappearing France.

Materialism, a merchant mentality are nothing to be ashamed of in your protestant cultures. But for us, money is a rather dirty thing Jean-Marie Rouart

So it is a relief as I meet the author of that last glum title, Jean-Marie Rouart, to find a rather jolly man in his late 50s with a distinct twinkle in his eye.

Despite being a member of the exalted Academie Francaise, he's warm and welcoming. He ushers me in to a flat that lives up to all my expectations of life on the Left Bank.

Inside, the walls are almost invisible under a riot of colourful paintings. The bookshelves are so full they've taken on a precarious life of their own. Bulky tomes by Chateaubriand compete with Voltaire to see which can teeter most vertiginously on the edge.

Lamenting a slow death

And yet, his own book is distinctly elegiac, a semi-autobiographical story of love and loss. The love of a country and the loss of a France which valued honour, which prided itself in its civilisation.

Jean-Marie Rouart paints his own picture of a country whose slow death he laments. Why is it, I ask him, that so many writers in France seem to believe their country is lost?

Hasn't it just stood up to America over Iraq, proved that France can still act on the world stage? He shakes his head sadly. Today's politician, he says, is no De Gaulle. He had fire, passion, poetry.

Prime Minister Raffarin has hit back at France's apocalyptic visionaries

That's why he was loved. De Gaulle made the nation proud to be French, after a period in which it had been bitterly ashamed. Today's leaders, by implication, are pale shadows mouthing nothings, mere understudies on that world stage.

"We are even ashamed of our history," he tells me. "We will never admit it, but for us, history is Vichy, defeat."

But what about now, I ask. France still has a culture to be proud of, and despite its current economic problems, enjoys one of the highest rates of productivity in Europe.

Another Gallic shrug. Globalisation, he tells me, has passed France by and left it far behind. "What you must understand is that for Britain, for America, globalisation is easy, it's natural.

"Materialism and a merchant mentality are nothing to be ashamed of in your Protestant cultures. But for us, money is a rather dirty thing," he says.

"We are Jacobins, Catholic, we value the life of the mind. We are a country that still wants to speak to the world but we have to find a new language."

Violence and unemployment

And, according to many of Mr Rouart's fellow intellectuals, that's not the only problem. Why listen to a country with so many problems of its own? With unemployment so high - at 10% of the workforce - and violence in the suburbs?

The intellectuals never speak of a content and thriving France Jean-Pierre Raffarin

Another author has an even more apocalyptic vision - of a France torn by racial tension, violence in the suburbs, and high and rising support for the far right thanks to unemployment, which he claims the government seems incapable of getting back under control.

Nicolas Bavarez, economist and right-wing author of 'La France Qui Tombe' - France in Collapse - has been the author to most annoy the government.

As a right-winger, he's supposed to be on the same side - and has received no thanks for his pithy summary of France's current failings.

"We have a very difficult situation in France today, real political and economic decline. And the problem is that there is no real political project to tackle those problems by the government or by the opposition, and so this creates political extremism and social violence," he tells me. "This is the cycle we have to break in France."

There is no external providence to save us - neither Europe nor the American recovery. It's up to us to act. Nicholas Bavarez

But, he admits, it won't be easy.

"French society and the French economy are blocked and we won't benefit from the US upturn for this reason. We have to realise that nobody will reform France but the French," he says.

"There is no external providence to save us - neither Europe nor the American recovery. It's up to us to act."

An intellectual problem?

The French Government, however, begs to disagree. This autumn's outpouring of despair about the decline of France has stung it to the core.

In the papers, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin hit back.

The problem, he said, was not France but its intellectuals, sitting at Olympian heights looking down and condemning French society from on high.

"They never speak of a content and thriving France," the prime minister complained.

I think it's a very old tradition within the French intellectual community to believe that the past was better than the present Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet Conservative MP

"They're like the cork in a champagne bottle, judging the wine. The cork has to pop so we can taste the champagne."

The youngest governing UMP party MP, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, agrees with that wonderfully French comparison.

"I think it's a very old tradition within the French intellectual community to believe that the past was better than the present," she tells me when we meet in a cafe on the Right Bank.

"This is not true. Of course there are historical cycles, and the world is moving on very quickly. Globalisation and all those changes trouble many in society - not only the intellectuals.

"But I firmly believe there is nothing to be pessimistic about."

Looking around at the affluence that still exists in much of France, especially in the capital, and taking comfort from a rather nice glass of Beaujolais at the cafe, it was hard to demur.