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The observation made by Jacques Genereux, economist and professor at Sciences Po, in his book "The Great Regression", is compelling: since the early 1980s, the liberalism extends to all spheres of society.
He demolished gradually, all the social gains. The quest for maximum profit and the infinite opening of new competitive markets mean that companies wanting to keep their margins, keep wages as low as possible.
Hence the decline in aggregate demand, overproduction crises, mass unemployment, job insecurity, bankruptcy of small enterprises fragile ...
capital enjoys everything from his own failures, but also the progress of modernity. It exploits the features progressive, individual freedom, democracy, science, when they serve its interests. And it even happens to believe many people it is at the source.
But our grandparents know that he had to win, thanks to union struggles for social rights and social security. The generation of postwar had the good sense to move away from any power market, after having understood the economic crisis of the 30s and the world war that followed, there was nothing good can come of capital, and that it was better to keep away quietly.
Hope destroyed after 30 glorious
From the early 1980s, the old classical liberal discourse was revived under the name "neoliberalism": the individual would be a rational homo economicus, free competition would ensure the best use of resources, all problems would actually social limitations to the free market, etc..
short, the new orthodoxy that has emerged through the right and also of social democracy, is actually a simple restoration of orders rejected by our grandparents after the war. And dare call these neoliberal modernity, which is actually an adaptation of people to natural and irrepressible history that constitute the global economic war and the commodification of society.
The least we can say is that the brakes imposed in the capital during the war boom disappear gradually. Workers are subjected to the worst flexibility, job insecurity is widespread, low wages increase, social protection is under attack from all sides, global finance has been liberalized. And the concern of modern ecology has been exploited as a new prospect for capital growth.
The new economic discourse insists that saving the rich can finance investment and job creation, inequality vitality of society and the need to attract the wealthy investors in our territory . The facts are however constantly the opposite: that the productive work that makes saving and wealth of a country, and that the allocation of a share of national income to utilities that generates social progress.
Grounds for hope
Despite its title, the work of Jacques Genereux invites optimism. The current disaster is a political process voluntary. It is by no means the result of a failure of the state to meet citizens' expectations. For thirty years, "the nation-state has not declined, it was privatized. Widespread global competition was orchestrated by governments to break the last resistance.
We now return power to the people, by the citizens' revolution. We must reverse the current process and adapt the economy to the general interest, to build a society of human progress, one that forges links release individuals from the obsession with material accumulation. A society that is human nature: men and women are gifted for cooperation and solidarity, unlike the claims of the neoliberal dogma. Man is primarily a social being and homo economicus is a fiction.
The twentieth century has immunized against the totalitarian temptation, but not against the side of the coin is obsessed liberal-libertarian who confuses freedom and freedom from all social ties and thus created what Jacques Genereux called dissociété, atomized communities pitted against each other, denying the public interest and serving as the neoliberal project.
We now return to reality lead by the prescient genius of the French Revolution who wanted to create the framework for social emancipation. It is quite possible because there are still citizens a simple weapon: the ballot.
The welfare state is still powerful and high level of education: French citizens are still able to stand up and vote for a truly progressive program, which entrusts the management of companies in part to employees, stifle radically financial speculation, would eliminate the dictatorship of the shareholders and preserve the utility market and interest individuals.
For this, we must argue, act, write enough to reach the threshold of citizens seizing the opportunity to bring about a peaceful revolution ...
The vast regression, Jacques Genereux, Seuil
Jacques Genereux GP: de-economy financial class
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