The creation of wealth depends on the capacity of economic actors to adapt to market changes. Such adaptation, in turn, poses fundamental questions about the distribution of resources. Daley investigates the interaction among business, labor, and the state in France in the second half of the twentieth century and reveals how political dynamics refract market pressures.

He explains how and why profitability came at the expense of union mobilization, employment, and management autonomy, vast amounts of state aid, and less national control over industrial decision making.