Of course it isn't about anything of the kind, objectively, and not only because no one has yet suggested Ontario's municipalities become bilingual, officially or otherwise. Bilingualism has never meant more than that the state should communicate with its citizens in both official languages, nor has it ever been a requirement for more than a fraction of the civil service.

Fluency in two tongues is not skin color: it is simply a qualification, like a university degree or a driver's license. To believe that bilingualism inherently favors those whose first language is French requires one to believe that language facility is linked to language group, or perhaps that English is easier to learn than French.

But - and this is the real point - suppose this were true. Perhaps this will seem unsympathetic, but I can only respond: So get a real job. It is a sickness of our society that policies are measured by whose kids get how many jobs in the civil service. The revolt against bilingualism may stem in part from racism, but its deeper roots lie in another ism: statism.

INFLAMES RIVALRIES

This is the soil in which most of the antagonisms that beset our nation have been nourished: French vs English, large provinces vs small, Quebec vs the rest. None of these would have acquired anything like their present intensity had the state not become so critical to people's perceptions of their economic interests. In each case, the struggle for amandla - for state jobs, state riches, state power - inflames linguistic and regional rivalries.

This is not the way it was supposed to work. State power was to be the ligature of national unity. Bob White, for one, is still blaming the rise in social tensions on the Tories' supposed dismantling of the state. The collection of power at the centre, however, does not draw society together in like manner. It rather erects a trophy for opposing groups to mass and contend for, and the greater the concentration of power, the nastier the fight.

This is especially true of economic power, for when ''the coercive power of the state will alone decide who is to have what,'' as Friedrich Hayek has written, ''the only power worth having will be a share in the exercise of this directing power.'' Choosing collectively how to allocate society's resources makes the outcome turn on the contests and conquests of politics. Cultural distinctions which might otherwise lie peacefully side by side are politicized by the necessity of each to obtain its share. Indeed, in the winner-take-all world of politics, they will be encouraged to demand more than their share.

The connection between statist economic regimes and social conflict is more widespread than is usually noted. It is impossible to understand the intifada, for example, without reference to the exclusion of Arabs from access to the commanding heights of the state-heavy Israeli economy. Conor Cruise O'Brien has pointed out the correspondence between the apartheid state and the South African bureaucracy, and the preponderant interest of the Afrikaners in each. Ethnic warfare in the southern republics of the Soviet Union has been ignited over such mundanities as access to state housing.

SOCIAL CONSENSUS

The differences between these groups obviously go far deeper than mere economics. But one need not embrace a crude Marxist materialism to see that an economic system can either encourage different groups of people to get along with one another, or throw them into conflict. The ''democratic control'' of economic life does not produce social consensus; it assumes it. The market, on the other hand, since it does not rely on consensus, but on competition, allows social differences to flourish within the impersonal regime of price.

It is a matter of social peace, then, as much as of efficiency, to move economic decisions from the political to the economic domain. As for Mandela, if he is truly to bring peace to South Africa, he might wish to discard quietly his plans for nationalizing major industries, as soon as he is able.