The former deputy chief of staff to Pierre Mauroy, from 1981 to 1983, paints a polemical portrait of the economic, social, political and trade-union situation of our country. Democracy is weakened, society is fractured, the economy is in decline, public finances are heavily in deficit, and the political and trade-union world continues to demonstrate its inability to meet these challenges. The vertical concentration of power at every level, the refusal of dualism, the denial of reality, economic illiteracy, compounded by the intellectual fraud of a few, have pushed France into such disorder that democracy itself is threatened with disappearance.
France is not capable, on its own, of forming a cohesive society. Post-revolutionary historical facts remind us of this: from the Terror to the Third Republic, which established itself after militarily defeating the Commune, France has reformed itself through riots and bloodshed. The various social forces and numerous political parties seek only to gain access to this supreme vertical power. Each therefore defends its own positions in its own interest, without concern for the common good.
For the author, the current situation is not without resemblance to that of the July Monarchy. The crisis threatening us is at once economic, financial and political. Both the deficit and the debt are out of control, and our productive apparatus suffers from a lack of competitiveness. Employers’ organisations and trade unions remain entrenched in their positions, while, on the political side, the left, still profoundly anti-capitalist, remains trapped in the myth of the ultra-rich who should be taxed ever more heavily, and the right indulges in illusions, believing that it would be enough to reduce public spending without touching social expenditure. Meanwhile, extremists on both the left and the right, whose programmes have not the slightest capacity to restore the country’s economy, hold out promises of change and social upheaval in order to attract those at the bottom of the social ladder.
And yet solutions do exist to address each of these problems. They are known and documented. But who, on the left or on the right, is prepared to state and explain what should be implemented? Solutions are born of drama: this is a very French habit. So must we first plunge into chaos — this being the most likely scenario according to the author — in order to see, once again, the emergence of a providential man or woman capable of solving the fundamental problems and finally changing our methods of governance ?
Ph Alezard