Retour sur la politique des revenus : une réponse abandonnée face à la « crise du fordisme » en France

This paper examines the relevance of the incomes policy advocated by Claude Gruson in the 1960s to address the inflationary pressures characteristic of the crisis of the "Fordist regime" in France. To this end, we draw on the unprecedented study of the Gruson report submitted to Georges Pompidou in 1964. Despite its theoretical coherence, this policy was rejected by Pompidou, who ordered the physical destruction of the report copies due to its "sensitive" nature. Rooted in the perspective of the regulation theory and enriched by neo-realist political economy, this study demonstrates how Gruson’s proposal, based on a “proto-regulationist” analysis of inflation, could have acted as an institutional stabilizer by limiting distributive conflicts at the heart of the crisis. Pompidou’s decision, emblematic of the realignments taking place in the 1960s, marks a step towards a neoliberal regulatory framework. The article thus highlights the interactions between structural transformations and political decisions, underscoring how the abandonment of incomes policy reflects the shifts within the "dominant social bloc" in 1960s France.