Policy National Assembly neoliberalism reforms

The corridors of the National Assembly

April 5, 2006

Six o'clock. Three hundred fifty unread emails, many of them important. I need to scan a Russian-translated comic book and upload it for Knowledge Without Borders. Pomagalsky sent me three new documents that I must assemble and install. I need to prepare a list of questions for Gérald Yonas regarding his two billion degrees. Given my six thousand daily connections, I should also place an ad for a young entrepreneur who needs my support—imaginascience—a pleasant little venture.

I need to...

In November 2005, when exhausted and broke, I briefly considered not closing my site but simply stopping the addition of "news," I discovered the silent plea of thousands of readers who were counting on me to help them... think for themselves.

In recent days, millions of people have taken to the streets to express their unease. The First Employment Contract affair was both the trigger and the pretext for this outpouring of discontent. There are a thousand everyday issues in our lives that would prompt a reaction from me. Faced with these social movements and growing unease, I had already created a dossier that doesn't focus on symptoms but on the true cause: the effects of globalization and its inescapable corollary: neoliberalism. In issue 467 of the magazine "Marianne," Jean-François Kahn offers a sharp analysis of a situation where, on both the right and the left, so-called "reforms" are merely attempts to label measures that reflect only the inevitable erosion of social gains in the "rich countries" to which we belong. The magazine also provides a timely correction regarding the so-called "English miracle," which now only appeals to those who no longer live in the country and continues to fascinate François Hollande’s wife.

Here, I will simply point to one aspect of politics that you may not be aware of: its profound vulgarity—unfathomable, shocking. In France, bourgeois politicians entering politics are slapping bandages on wooden legs. I've read a few articles about current political turbulence. One newspaper quotes remarks attributed to Giesbert in a recent book by de Villepin, The Tragedy of the President (Flammarion, March 2006, p. 284). Here is the quoted passage, attributed to de Villepin:

- France wants to be taken. It itches from the hips down. The one who wins the next election won’t be a career politician, but a seasonal worker, a rogue, a looter.

De Villepin

Ah, what a splendid phrase! Yes, the charming de Villepin, so popular with female voters, can speak vulgarly, like a peasant cart driver. Why am I telling you this? Because I've been close to politicians. You see, this is how they speak in the corridors of the National Assembly—because it sounds stylish, "in," trendy. These people think they're making clever remarks. They're utterly disconnected from reality, treating politics as a game, a sport. The article’s author comments: "So, France, we take it by storm."

I recall a dinner where sheer coincidence brought my student Bertrand Lebrun and me to the arena of Nîmes in the early 1980s. Attendees included representatives of a party I won’t even name. From table to table, barroom banter and barracks jokes flew, all at the level of daisies. We felt as if we’d stumbled into a theater dressing room after a performance, when actors stop reciting their lines and reveal themselves as they truly are—mediocre, vulgar.

I smile when people talk about the dizzying intelligence of certain political figures. All these are just words invented by journalists, labels. On stage, we see painted puppets. Our politicians, severed from reality, lacking imagination, ineffective, aren’t merely vulgar in speech—they’re even more so in their minds.

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