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Welcome to European Tribune. It's gone a bit quiet around here these days, but it's still going.
by afew
Fri Jun 5th, 2009 at 10:09:43 AM EST
EUROPEAN ELECTIONS
Who wrote this? (Hint: someone with the self-assurance and sense of humour to give the book it's from the Leninesque title above).
| Cette crise, singulière et inédite, marque la fin du double modèle fordiste et néolibérale. | | This crisis, singular and of a new kind, marks the end of the double Fordist and neoliberal model. | | Le compromis fordiste qui a régné de 1945 à 1975 avait articulé un cycle de croissance économique autour d'un type de production (la production industrielle),
d'un mode de vie (la consommation de masse de biens standardisés), d'un partage des richesses entre capital et travail et de formes diversifiées de sécurité collective (sécurité sociale, mais aussi services sociaux et services
publics). De même le modèle néolibéral mis en place progressivement à partir du début des années 1980 aux Etats-Unis et en Grande-Bretagne, puis étendu à presque toute la planète, proposait de libéraliser les marchés et
marchandiser l'ensemble des sphères de la vie pour générer de la valeur, de baisser massivement les impôts, de déréguler les cadres collectifs (de production et de protection), d'individualiser et de solvabiliser le
quasi-totalité des demandes sociales possibles (donc, bien au-delà des biens, celles d'éducation, de santé et en général de bien-être). Ainsi, les Etats-Unis ou la Grande-Bretagne ont fait du crédit un instrument facile de
compensation de l'abandon des politique keynésiennes de redistribution. Cette orientation est directement responsable de la crise que nous connaissons. La modération salariale et la précarité croissante qui l'accompagne
n'étaient soutenables qu'à le condition d'un accès facilité au crédit, avec une inflation jugulée et des taux d'intérêts bas... A l'économie sociale de marché a ainsi succédé une économie marchande du sociale. | | The Fordist compromise that reigned from 1945 to 1975 articulated a cycle
of economic growth around a type of production (industrial), a way of life (mass consumption of standardised goods), of wealth-sharing between capital and labour and of different forms of collective security (health and
pensions, but also social services and public services). The neoliberal model gradually implemented from the beginning of the 1980s in the United States and Great Britain, then extended to almost all the planet, set out to
liberalise markets and to make merchandise of all the realms of life in order to generate value, to lower taxes massively, to deregulate collective frameworks (of production and protection), to make individual and solvent
almost all possible social demand (so, far beyond goods, demand for education, health, and well-being in general). In this way, the United States or Great Britain have made credit into an easy instrument of compensation
for the discontinuance of Keynesian redistributive policies. This overall policy direction is directly responsible for the crisis we are going through. The accompanying wage moderation and growing precariousness were only
bearable if access to credit was facilitated, with controlled inflation and low interest rates... The social market economy was thus succeeded by a market-allocated social services economy. |
And so what is to be done?
| ...non seulement il nous faut rompre avec le dogme néolibéral, mais plus profondément aussi avec les hypothèses qui avaient sous-tendu le compromis fordiste: celle de la gratuité et du caractère inépuisable
des ressources énergétiques, mais aussi des disciplines collectives et anonymes de la société de masse, auxquelles nul n'aspire à revenir. Le changement qui nous attend est donc d'une autre ampleur que celui des années
1970. Il nous faut changer notre mode de consommation et de production en privilégiant le soutenable contre l'irresponsable, le durable contre le jetable, le recyclable contre le stockage des déchets, le qualitatif contre le
quantitatif. | | ...not only must we break with the neoliberal dogma,
but more deeply too with the hypotheses that underpinned the Fordist compromise: the free and inexhaustible character of energy resources, but also with the collective and anonymous discipline of mass society, that no
one wants to return to. The change that awaits us is therefore of quite other dimensions than that of the 1970s. We have to change our mode of consumption and production by choosing the sustainable against the
irresponsible, the lasting against the throw-away, the recyclable against waste storage, the qualitative against the quantitative. |
Leading the Europe-Ecologie (Greens + allies; see José Bové Comes To Town and Eva Joly: Economic Crime Fighter ) list in the French EP elections, Dany Cohn-Bendit is doing well. The list is vying for third place after the UMP (EPP)
and the PS (PES), and, according to the latest polls, Cohn-Bendit is ahead of the centrist Modem list (François Bayrou's party), with 13% against 11%, in the Ile-de-France region (Paris and surroundings). [see comment below]
Que Faire? (What Is To Be Done?) was written for the elections. It's not surprising that it takes time to get off the ground as Cohn-Bendit deals with the sempiternal questions around himself as candidate: is he
German or French? Is he a "real" ecologist (and not a Marxist in disguise)? Is he "really" on the left (and not a neolib in disguise)? We're sixty-odd pages in before we get to the passages quoted above. From there, he takes
the automobile industry as the (obvious) Fordist paradigm, and develops the point that the end of Keynesian redistribution has led to "social insecurity" and the end of the dream of upward mobility.
| Le renouvellement du pacte social devient donc indispensable. Il est, à mon sens, impossible d'envisager une véritable écologie politique sans une réduction sensible des inégalités. Pourquoi? Parce que
l'écologie politique repose sur une notion simple: la valeur du futur. Contrairement aux utopies traditionnelles, il ne s'agit pas de sacrifier le présent aux lendemains qui chantent, mais il ne s'agit pas non plus de poursuivre ce
modèle absurde dans lequel nous laissons nos enfants et nos petits-enfants porter le poids de nos erreurs de gestion et régler nos dettes écologiques et économiques. <...> | | The renewal of the social pact has become indispensable. To my mind, it is impossible to conceive
of a genuine political ecology without a considerable reduction in inequality. Why? Because political ecology is based on a simple idea: the value of the future. Unlike past utopias, it's not about sacrificing the present to
happy tomorrows, but neither is it about continuing this absurd model in which we let our children and grandchildren carry the burden of our mismanagement and pay down our ecological and economic debts.
<...> | | Face à l'augmentation très forte des inégalités internationales et
nationales, il faut se rendre à l'évidence: la solution au problème écologique n'est pas la fin de la croissance des niveaux de vie, mais la décroissance des inégalités. | | Faced with the very strong increase in national and international inequality, we have to accept the evidence: the solution to the
ecological problem is not the end of increase in standards of living, but the decrease in inequality. | | La crise sociale que nous traversons n'est cependant pas seulement une crise de redistribution qui verrait une montée des inégalités. Elle est profondément liée au modèle de développement qui s'est
imposé et qui remplace les solidarités collectives par des prestations individuelles <...> | | The social crisis we are going through is not however only a redistribution crisis that causes a rise in inequality. It is deeply linked to the development model that has won out and which replaces
collective forms of solidarity by individual benefits and services <...> | | le
ciment d'une appartenance commune (fait de multiples références: nationales, religieuses, etc.) se délite tandis que montent de nouveau liens, plus individualisés (réseaux, liens communautaires choisis). Il faut donc refonder
le lien social sur ces multiple liens interindividuels. | | the cement of
common belonging (made up of muliple references: national, religious, etc) is cracking up while arise new, more individualised, ties (networks, chosen community links). So we must find a new foundation for the social
bond in these multiple inter-individual links. |
Pollen
From this he goes on to develop at some length an appropriately green (and perhaps not entirely original) metaphor for the type of society he's thinking of. Honey bees, he says, produce honey that is sold on the market.
But their ecological function is complex and vital. The value of the pollination they accomplish is many times greater than that of the honey they produce.
| L'activité humaine dans une société complexe doit, tout comme la biosphère, se comprendre comme une pollinisation générale, résultant des multiples interactions créatrices de richesses. Il ne faut pas limiter
la perspective à le seule production de miel vendue sur le marché. | | Human activity in a complex society should, just like the biosphere, be understood as a general pollination, resulting from multiple wealth-creating interactions. We should not limit our view to nothing but the
honey sold in the market-place. |
Even those who are not involved in production -- the unemployed, retired people, students -- "produce network, information, social bond", and so may be likened to bumble bees, which don't produce honey but are vital
pollinators.
| Je crois qu'il est vraiment temps d'embrasser la complexité des sociétés humaines en les comprenant comme des ensembles marqués par la pollinisation, par la puissance des externalités positives, et pas
simplement par le monde marchand ou par la multiplication des externalités négatives. Dans cette "société pollen", les politiques publiques ne peuvent pas être réduites au marché, ni mesurées par la seule valeur marchande
produite. La pollinisation ne se produit pas sur le mode industriel. | | I think it is really time to embrace the complexity of human societies by understanding them as wholes characterised by pollination, by the power of positive externalities, and not simply by the world of the
market or by the multiplication of negative externalities. In this "pollen society", public policies cannot be reduced to the market, nor measured only by the market value produced. Pollination doesn't work in industrial
mode. |
He describes, somewhat disappointingly after this general proposition, a number of European-level transformations of the economy, the environment, and society: a share of money should be taken from other sources (all
taxes, possibly, or hand-outs to banks and automobile companies, certainly) and invested in renewable energy, urban renewal, anti-global warming measures, least-polluting forms of transport, non-toxic forms of
agriculture. At the same time, a "new cognitive deal" in which research, innovation, education, training, are supported way beyond the 3% of GDP set (but not met) by the Lisbon Strategy. Equally important, a basic
minimum income -- an "existence income" -- for all, recognizing the "pollination" function of all members of society, even those who do not produce for the market-place, and incidentally helping to eradicate poverty. How
to finance this?
| En d'autres mots, comment taxer les abeilles, si on considère que ce n'est pas le miel mais leur activité de pollinisation qui importe le plus? Dans l'économie de la "société pollen", la richesse est constituée
par le lien social et les transactions dont il résulte et qui l'animent... L'impôt intelligent devrait donc frapper la circulation -- et non pas la consommation. | | In other words, how should we tax the bees, if we consider that it's not the honey but their pollination activity that matters most? In the
economy of the "pollen society", wealth is constituted by the social bond and the transactions it is the result of and which give it life... The intelligent tax should therefore be on circulation -- and not on
consumption. |
He calls this an "internal Tobin tax", and reckons that, at a low level (0.01%) on all financial and banking transactions, it would adequately supply the budget needs of the State (and presumably the EU too).
What's missing here, it seems to me (whether one agrees with this method of taxation or not), is any vision of how the "pollen society" would develop greater interactivity -- how individuals would, while avoiding the
return to mass societies that next to no one wants, create new links and a new social bonding through "communities of choice".
There's more in the book, on multiculturalism (perhaps I'll come back to that in another piece) in particular. Overall, it's a good read because Cohn-Bendit has the capacity to marshal striking arguments and generally
speaking has the "vision thing". At times one wonders exactly what is behind the brilliant face, what logic leads from one step to another, what the practical implications would be. But the book's value lies in its convincing
description of political ecology as a coherent force that integrates all the doom-laden challenges facing us and offers a perspective from which to determine radically new policies.
Que Faire? Daniel Cohn-Bendit
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