Le Penn will just be more of the same in France

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As the violence in the streets calms, thoughts inevitably turn to what will come next. The relatively optimistic case, which I would like to believe, is an application of Stein’s Law: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” France’s low-growth, high-tax economy and high-immigration, low-assimilation social policies obviously can’t go on forever. Ergo . . .

The difficulty is that someone needs to define “cannot”—the moment at which a breaking point has been reached. Since denial that the country has hit “cannot” is the core of the political dysfunction and occasional street violence of the past decade, there is likely a lot of beating yet to be done on France’s assorted dead horses.

As a start, dispense with the assumption that Ms. Le Pen’s election will solve anything. The idea is nursed by her supporters in France, but also among many Anglophone conservatives who hope and believe a National Rally win will constitute the next step in the popular-conservative revolution supposedly sweeping Europe.

Yes and no. Ms. Le Pen probably would be less squeamish than President Emmanuel Macron has been about the use of state force to maintain order in the streets. She’d be helped by a popular mandate, something Mr. Macron has lacked in recent years.

She also might be able to exploit such a mandate to paper over the political fights that paralyze Paris. A President Le Pen probably could pass a government budget by vote in the National Assembly, for instance, a feat that has eluded Mr. Macron lately.

Note, however, that these are matters of procedure rather than substance. What conservatives in France and elsewhere really want from her is an overhaul of France’s failed immigration system and a revival of confidence in French political and cultural traditions. Ahem. Does France have the state capacity—and do the millions of French who won’t vote for Ms. Le Pen have the stomach—to uproot France’s problematic migrant communities wholesale?

As for what might be in the budget Ms. Le Pen might be able to pass, help isn’t on the way for beleaguered bondholders. France already is taxed beyond its limit. Sacrifice must be redistributed from taxpayers to the recipients of government spending. Ms. Le Pen’s signature fiscal promise, a reduction in France’s already-low-by-European-standards retirement age to as young as 60 from 62, signals a political determination to do the opposite.

Which is the important point about the riots: It isn’t obvious that anything has changed. The French left has signaled its growing enthusiasm for moving beyond the sphere of elected politics to settle France’s bruising distributional problems in the streets. Expect them to try again, and then some, if Ms. Le Pen wins the election. Ms. Le Pen and her party will use the prospect of rioting to run a law-and-order campaign that addresses only one of France’s two imminent disasters (deteriorating social cohesion) while studiously ignoring the other one (chaotic public finances).

The key problem remains that no one perceives any benefit in moving first. No one yet believes that France’s troubles have grown so severe that political rewards (and the spoils of economic overhauls) will redound to those who propose and shape the reforms. It’s the opposite. Everyone thinks, based not least on Mr. Macron’s unhappy experience, that being the first to volunteer any sacrifices is a mug’s game.

So what form will France’s “cannot” take? Bankruptcy is the traditional expedient. France’s size and its membership in the eurozone seem to preclude it. As skeptical as global investors may be of the budget, they will be hard-pressed to pass up an opportunity to buy euro assets at a generous discount. Especially if they can so easily persuade themselves that Papa Berlin and Mama European Central Bank will always swoop in with some sort of rescue.

The other option is that the French themselves conclude they can no longer tolerate the present social contract, with its particular balance of economic costs and opportunities and taxes and social benefits. Should French youth recoil once and for all from the fiscal burden of those infernal pensions (and, if you think about it, why haven’t they yet?), France will be able to heal itself.

But this requires a cultural revolution, one built not on Ms. Le Pen’s aspiration to bolster faith in French civilization but rather on a reorientation of the relationship between the individual and the state. It might happen, and perhaps one could even say that it probably will at some point. But it won’t be on the ballot next spring.

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