To conservative economists and politicians, the economic crisis required no innovatory responses but, on the contrary, a return to ‘wisdom’, a repudiation of the ‘facility’ of the ‘era of illusions’. The Depression was seen from this perspective as the pretext for the reversal of years of increasing state intervention, a pretext to modify a social order in which ‘the extension of the idea of the all providing State has made very dangerous progress’. But this programme of a return to traditional virtues was also seen as a remedy for the economic crisis which was the pretext of its implementation. Far from calling into question the benefits of the market economy, the Depression only demonstrated the necessity for it to exist unfettered by any controls: ‘liberalism is confirmed by the opposite experience of the last few years’ declared Le Temps: ‘if the economy is in chaos, it is because freedom has been reversed and excessive state intervention … has thrown everything off course’. The moral was clear. But what were the alternatives? What were the programmes of the left?

The Socialists

The level of economic discussion in the S.F.I.O. was probably marginally superior to that of other political groups, but Blum was nevertheless very conscious of its shortcomings.