English translation of the French transcript, made with AI and not yet proofread — click a paragraph to jump to it. Show the French original
True poverty and true wealth 0:00 Thank you all.
0:30 Thank you, Bertrand. Thank you. Thank you to Saint-Dizier, for having made the effort to come to Saint-Dizier once again anyway. Oh yes, no, but I thank the audience first. The weather is magnificent, you saw that. You could have done better than come and listen to me, frankly. But still, I'm all the more grateful for it. I'm always very happy, and I say this quite seriously, to come back to Saint-Dizier. I say it without any demagoguery. I'm not going to run in the next elections. I'm very glad to be among the Bragards. And all the more so tonight, to speak about money, I'll get to it, in a region that powerfully contributed to France's wealth, and that the rest of France has since ruined.
1:15 There you go, I mean, I never forget that these few regions—it's a Corsican speaking to you, I'm a perverse Corsican, that is, a lover of the countries of the North and the East. That is to say, the two regions that made the fortune of industrial France for two centuries. And now the most socially abandoned regions. There, I won't dwell on it, you know the subject better than I do. So I'm still always very happy to find myself here, because I know that words have meaning here. We're not here to indulge ourselves with fine words.
1:45 That's the first thing. Secondly, you can thank me for being here because I've just given a lecture in Bergen, Norway, one in Montauban, I had the flu, I nearly lost my skin. I'm delighted to keep going because I'm getting to my subject there. True misfortune, true misery, true destitution. I live in a retirement home in the Paris suburbs, I won't hide it from you, in 18 square meters, I'm very well, this isn't a complaint, I've never been so well. And I fight so that everyone can have money, so I'm not making the case for happy sobriety either, believe me.
2:19 But I greatly appreciate being asked to give a talk somewhere—that's the real misfortune. I look at my poor companions in the retirement home where I am, you can imagine what that's like, they're social cases, abandoned by family, by friends, whom nobody asks to give a lecture here or there. And that's the misfortune, that's the real misfortune, the real misery. I say this because I'm starting with real misery, and so I'm going to talk now about true wealth.
2:52 The truth is that one of the rare advantages of the period of crisis we're living through is that we can lay these concepts out flat. What is true wealth? You see what I mean? I told you I fight so that the maximum number of people have the maximum amount of money, so I have nothing against money, I'll come back to it, I don't demonize it, and I demonize it even less, that's not the question. But still, you've touched on this theme—without money, there's a kind of wealth that appears, and it's historically recent.
3:24 It's at the end of the 18th century that a Jean-Jacques Rousseau can say—I come back to what made for the complicity that brought Bertrand and me together at the start, it was indeed around the figure of the great Jean-Jacques, because he's known for the Social Contract, and I know that matters, for being somewhat at the origin of what is perhaps most fundamental in our institutions, including when they're being flouted. But still, there's also this Jean-Jacques who dares to say, in the third letter to Malesherbes—Malesherbes is a good fellow, a man of the establishment, as we'd say today, of the aristocracy, who wanted to play a bit of an intermediary between Rousseau and his adversaries.
4:03 Come on, explain yourself, you defend yourself poorly, what do you find in walking in the forest? Yes, I'm getting to true wealth. What do you find in walking in nature? At the time, that wasn't obvious. A Voltaire writes a poem called Le Mondain where he praises luxury, carpets, beautiful women, chandeliers, that's what it was. And then suddenly, there's this vagabond, this Rousseau, telling us about the pleasure he felt walking in the forest. That was brand new. And there it is, as if in answer to this poem by Voltaire called Le Mondain, where Voltaire makes the case for luxury—Voltaire has qualities.
4:37 But still, here I'm pointing to one of his flaws. Rousseau, in his response in that letter to Malesherbes, speaks of the landscape and says, "The gold of the broom and the purple of the heather struck me with a luxury that touched my heart." You see, the gold of the broom is free, it's free, no one can take it from you. So when I started by saying the weather was nice in the landscape, that wasn't a joke. Even the poorest man—no one can take that from him. He has, as the language so admirably puts it, his place in the sun.
Totem, fetish and language 5:09 There, after this introduction, I'm asked to speak about religion, about... with my slip of the tongue there, about the link between money and the sacred. Now, that seems paradoxical. Money is the filthiest, dirtiest thing there is. That's what we're taught as children, when we're well brought up. You have to wash your hands. Money passes through everyone's hands, it's disgusting. What connection could it have with what is most eminent? God, the sacred! So, several answers for now, in the form of...
5:41 I'm going to do a bit like Blind Man's Buff, I'll confuse you a little, put the blindfold on you, then spin you around. Because I don't have the answer, one has to gather materials. Among the savages—I say savages on purpose, not to say it's inferior, but to say these are people who save themselves. Look closely at the etymology. They're quite right, when you see what was done to newcomers. Well, among primitives—these aren't my words, if you like, rigorously speaking, societies without writing, you know, if we want to speak both correctly and rigorously.
6:12 There's what's called the totem, you've heard of it, the fetish. Not quite the same—the totem is the animal with which the group has an alliance. I had a driver, oh yes, I'm a son of the colonial world, I was born in my parents' suitcases. As a good Corsican, I was born in the colonial empire. There's nothing more Corsican than being born in Vietnam or Africa. So, one day, one of my father's drivers nearly got us killed—he swerved to avoid running over a python crossing the road. That's because the python was his totem.
6:42 So, the ally of his clan—if he kills it, he too will die. You see? That's what the totem is. It's an alliance with an animal. For us, it's not so old, when we say that in football, the Gallic rooster got the better of the English lion. Usually it's the other way around. I'm not even talking about the Berlin bear. Bär, Bern, in Switzerland, all that—it's the bear. These totemic religions aren't old, they're still here. Well.
7:12 And then, I'm not even talking about all the eagles, the aristocratic families, you know, the Prussians, the Tsarist family, you know, the eagles, the birds of prey. They come to take our harvests, our wives and our daughters. There. Well. So, among peoples without writing, there's an object that embodies the totem, an object made of wood, you mentioned it, a statuette. It's always covered in urine, saliva, filth. Yes, I'm starting to show the strange relationship between what can be raised up, what can be raised up, what can be raised up, and what unites everyone.
7:50 Because the totem works for everyone, the fetish. For money, after all, is what circulates among us. It's the instrument of exchange. So it has a relationship with—ah, how strange—something that apparently has no relation to money, but that has interested philosophers a great deal since the origin of philosophy. And not only philosophers—it's language. Language is what circulates. Look here, we're communicating because we share the French language. That is, a language which is part of a broader human system called language itself.
8:23 Well, a French poet, a decadent poet, neither proletarian nor revolutionary. I'm thinking of Stéphane Mallarmé at the end of the century. Very decadent, who wrote menus like that and did write-ups of fashion shows. An immense writer, I can't caricature him. And who perhaps wrote one of the most beautiful texts on class struggle that I recommend to you, because it's on Wiki and all that, it's called—the title is Variations on a Subject. And there's a subchapter called Conflict.
8:53 Where there's a class struggle involving railway workers. Anyway, that's not my subject, I won't dwell on it. But Mallarmé says somewhere—now I'm coming back to my subject, you thought I'd lost it, don't worry. "Speech has relation to things only commercially." I'm translating it into French for you—Mallarmé, always a bit strange. "Speech has relation to things only commercially." Well, pass me the salt. "Speech has relation to things"—implied: when one is a poet, words have something else to do besides relate to things.
9:25 "Speech has relation to things only commercially." And he adds, "though it would suffice for each person to silently place a coin in the other's hand." You see, he saw very clearly the relation between verbal exchange and monetary exchange. So I told you, money—we all chase after it, and it's the vilest thing there is. That's already strange, it's called an ambivalence in psychoanalysis. It's not an ambiguity. An ambiguity is when I myself am not clear in my head.
9:55 It's an ambivalence. It's the thing itself that is contradictory. It's what is highest. And it's at the same time what we trample underfoot. In the muck. In the mud. Mud is what's beneath our feet. I say mud because Baudelaire, in a magnificent hymn to Paris, to whom he owes everything, all his love and his hatred—for Paris, that magnificent great prostitute that is the capital—says this magnificent line: "You gave me mud and I turned it into gold."
Moses, the golden calf and Aaron 10:25 You see, poetic inspiration. Once again we find the conjunction of what is lowest and what is highest. There, for now I'm developing that side thanks to my primitives. They put us on the track. Well, that's not all. I move on to a reference that you know well, an eminent one, found in the Bible, in the Old Testament, where God comes very, very close to—what? The golden calf. You know it well. Moses has a direct relationship with God.
10:58 He's the first one to speak to him, my goodness, or rather to hear him. Sixty-four-thousand-dollar question: what are the first words the Eternal addresses to Moses? Even before the 10 Commandments, before saying "I am that I am." What are the first words? Does anyone remember? That God addresses to man in the middle of the desert. Take off your sandals. For you are on holy ground. There is a profane ground.
11:30 We all tread on it. You see? I'm continuing the metaphor of what's beneath our feet. And then there's sacred ground. I don't have it on me, I have it on my tablet. I can't show you slides, but you have to have seen what a mosque is. I say mosque because in the desert, it's often Islamic countries. I'm talking about the desert in black Africa, I don't know North Africa. You see a mosque sometimes—well, no, no, no, no. These are shepherds' mosques, people who have 15 goats, nothing at all, but who do their prayers during the day.
12:00 And so they put a little circle of stones on the ground. With a small entrance. And they leave their sandals right there. There's no one to police them. There's no imam, there's nothing. "Take off your sandals, for you are on holy ground." That's Moses, the sacred. He's not doing politics there. He's doing religion. Then afterward he does politics. He wants to address the people who had stayed below, down there. You know your history, the Jewish people who are down below. He addresses them—what are they in the process of worshipping? The golden calf. I haven't invented anything. You see, that's our subject. Money is the sacred.
12:31 I'm leaving the sacred and moving to money. And fortunately there's his brother Aaron, the politician. A contemporary musician, Schoenberg, wrote an admirable opera called Moses and Aaron. Aaron who says, you don't know how to speak to them, let me handle it. You know, what we'd now call the communications officer. But yes. Aaron is decent. He takes God seriously. But you don't know how to speak to them. You know how to speak to God, you don't know how to speak to others. You see? I'm boring you a bit, but I'm doing it on purpose, taking different examples to show that it's not from today that there's a link between money and the sacred.
13:07 So, first summary, to stay clear and logical now, and not drown ourselves in imagery—in both cases, as I've said, for language and for money, these are instruments of exchange. Exchange between men, between human beings. And here, I'm obliged to address another, more recent, determination—more recent in the history of thought. I'm thinking of psychoanalysis.
Freud: money, excrement and the first commodity 13:38 I'm thinking in particular of an incredible advance made by Freud. Freud had noticed that his patients... We often think Freud has theories like that, which he imposes from outside. Freud is forced to bow to the evidence when, for the three-thousandth time, different patients use the same symbols for the same problems—there's something there. Something. It's not him inventing it. Now, in this case, a connection between what and what? Sorry, but it's not me—between money and excrement. Yes, that seems strange.
14:09 You see? I'm going to open a parenthesis before continuing on Freud, on purpose, to show you that these aren't fantasies. There's a play by Jean-Paul Sartre—I'm multiplying references, not to bore you, but to show you none of this is arbitrary—called The Devil and the Good Lord. I'm not a Sartrean, though I'd cry to have a quarter of Sartre compared to the idiots being served up to us now on France Culture. I'm thinking of Onfray and company. You know, the philosophers they trot out on the beaches every July, you hear the tide rolling in, then there's Onfray.
14:39 Well, anyway, so, Sartre, still, deserves respect, but there's more than that, frankly, they take their part, they're the children, plenty of things, there. And why am I talking about this? The person who takes care of the infant—that's what matters for the infant, he couldn't care less whether it's his real mother or not, what does he care? On the other hand, there are phases, aren't there, of the libido, to speak in psychoanalytic terms, the oral phase, and so on, we've all gone through it.
15:12 Forgive me for diving a bit into the clinical, but after all, it's all our history. And there's a stage, you know, where the newborn begins to control the muscles of excretion, the sphincters, right? So from that point on, rigorously speaking, you know, I may seem to be wandering off, but we're right in the thick of it. From that point on, he can, for the first time, refuse or grant what is expected of him. Do his little business or not, well, you see, he's no longer some kind of thing where all sorts of stuff happens in his body that doesn't depend on him—he can start to control it.
15:50 And so, granting to the person who matters most to him what is expected of him. So it's not so surprising that this commodity—for it is the first commodity, if you look closely, that is, something that has value. I'm right in the middle of Marx, I'll spare you the full fruit of Marx. What is a commodity? It's not simply an object that has been worked on. I could amuse myself working all day on a tree, carving "Domi loves Nicole."
16:20 That won't have any market value because it only has value for me. Even Nicole doesn't care. Right? So a commodity is something I can go exchange at the market. That is, a commodity only has value if it has a use for someone other than me. If I make a wooden spoon for something, something useful to someone other than me. Agreed? So there, for the first time, between the two protagonists of the first exchange, you see, there's the possibility of granting or refusing.
16:55 I may seem to be dwelling on this, granting or refusing. But look at what happened between Germany and Greece. Not so long ago. Germany didn't want to grant anything. Isn't that right? No spending. Luther, Protestantism. But that's constipation. On the contrary, spending, and the best of it, is diarrhea. We don't say diarrhea, we say economic laxity—laxism. Laxism, L-A-X, laxative.
Nerval's Sylvie: love cannot be killed with gold 17:25 No, you see, language knows everything I'm saying. I'm not speaking at random. So, there, between what is highest, the sacred, and money, there are old complicities. And, I'll now give a more literarily elaborate example. Since I have a soft spot for Gérard de Nerval, I never miss a chance to bring him in, so I'll take advantage of it here. There's a novella by him, he's an admirable writer. You know he died mad and by suicide.
17:56 And that he's one of the first accursed poets, roughly around the middle of the 19th century. There, but much more discreet than the Baudelaires and so on. That's why we've had much less time to talk about him. He was discreet in a suicidal way, so to speak. So, with an admirable prose that Proust admired greatly. And so, we're not here to give a literature lesson. Nerval, in his best-known novella, Sylvie. The pitch, as journalists say, I'll sum it up quickly for you: the narrator is a hero who takes a bit of distance from the Romantic generation.
18:30 The first sentence is, "Every evening I appeared in the front boxes of a theater, in full suitor's attire." You see, there's already a self-irony about Romantic heroes there, who comes to love an actress. All that is banal, for now. That is, an inaccessible being. But of course, he tells us about the actress, how sublime she is, how he never dared speak to her. Besides, one mustn't even speak to her. It's a dream, a mirage, etc. All that, these are themes, I won't dwell on it. Everyone knows all this well. And then, the theater, the play is over.
19:05 he finds himself with one of his friends in a group at the theater. And one of his friends says to him, "Look, this is the umpteenth time I've seen you come to the theater, every night. For whom do you come?" "For whom—it didn't seem to me that one could come here for anyone else." And he says, "I give the name"—the name of the actress, let's call her Aurélie, no matter. And the friend says to him, "You see, you see the young man she's with, I mean, who's going to escort her home, that one? The place is taken." "That's possible. That one or another, she had to have someone, that one seems to me worthy of having been chosen."
19:38 Then the friend, somewhat astonished: "And you?" "Oh, me, it's an image I'm pursuing and nothing more." You see? Now, he says, speaking of the man she's with, he was a young man, clearly of the aristocracy, with a pale and nervous face—that's the Romantic, a bit tubercular, as was the fashion then. He was throwing gold onto a whist table. You see how we get there? Whist is the bridge of the era, more or less. He was throwing gold onto a whist table and seemed to lose it with indifference. Not only does he take the woman from me, he's got plenty of money, plenty of gold.
20:09 What am I going to venture into there? It's unplayable. Oh no, no, that's just the beginning. What follows: afterward, he walks through the room—you know, in theaters of the time, there were reading rooms with the day's newspapers. He looks around, daydreaming, and notices in the stock listings that he has just inherited—well, it just happened, it's an inheritance from his uncle, stock shares that have just been revalued. So he suddenly finds himself flush with gold.
20:39 You see I'm not straying from my subject. And he says to himself, what would the young man from earlier say now if I came to take his place beside the admired actress that I'm going to... And then suddenly, the author Nerval says, no, that's not how it is, that's not my way. How does he put it? To kill love with gold? Besides, this is an idea from another century. Someone wrote, there, in the 1840s, the other century is the Ancien Régime. Up until the Ancien Régime, up until us, up until modernity.
21:13 Modernity is everything that follows the English industrial revolution and the French political revolution. I'm painting with broad strokes, but well, roughly, we can agree on that—that is, it's us. But at a time, I knew it well, I told you—Africa, the third world, countries that are still in the Ancien Régime, in the old mentality, where whoever has the money can have everything. Sorry, where's my bag, what did I do with it? Good grief, I had a bag, a green plastic bag, I'm sorry, but I'd brought it to...
21:54 There's a quotation from Marx that I need. Who is it, up there? Who might that be? That one's mine. If I scatter things everywhere, thanks. That's because of your wine. Yes, all right. Go on with what you were saying. It's because I was following the text quite smoothly. No, no, but I didn't bring it over there, it must be around here. It's a greenish plastic bag, anyway. It's the most ordinary thing there is. You're not bothering anyone, you're not bothering anyone, excuse me.
22:26 So, it's... In the Old World, you see, rather than speeches, I'll give an example. My guard's daughter, when I was in Niger, one of the poorest countries in the world, said to me, Pagani, you need to buy me chocolate, so I can get fat. You see, ladies, I look at the pharmacies, everything is made to help you lose weight. I once said to a pharmacist, there's nothing for me at your place. I'm trying to gain weight, there's nothing for me. I said to myself, you're right.
22:56 But there's still this, that's the Old World, where the one who is fat is the one who eats his fill, the one who eats his fill is the one who protects, the one who protects is the one who pulls us out of nothingness. I'm not making a moral judgment here. What would I judge? My guard's daughter was 9 years old, she was a beauty, television wanted to sign her for commercials, and my guard said, in front of my girlfriend who was turning her nose up, she's for you, you're my boss.
23:27 When she's older, you're the one who'll marry her. For him, that was being a good father, he wanted to pull his daughter out of nothingness, have her marry a white man, who's kind, otherwise she'd marry some marabout who already had 7 wives, anyway. I won't spell out the rest for you. What am I recalling here? When Nerval, being a proper modern, no, that's not how it is, it's not at my age that one kills love with gold, besides this is an idea from another time, who also tells me that...
23:57 Yes, thank you. Who also tells me that this woman is venal. There, end of quote. You see? Money, the sacred, love. They're not far apart at all, I mean, it's a triangle. There's even a religion that said God is love, after all. You see? It's not far off. It's this religion Bertrand alluded to earlier, where the main character goes so far as to drive the merchants out of the temple, saying — the translations are a bit prudish — do not make my father's house a house of trade.
24:33 In my opinion, it wasn't that rather clunky phrase, he must have said, don't turn my father's house into a brothel, a souk, I don't know how he must have put it, but something like that. And in the same gospel, it says, you cannot serve both God and mammon. So there, both are there, God and money. Mammon, who is a personification of money, like Moloch, the golden statue of Moloch. There you go. So you see, there really is an Old World, an Old Testament, and a New World.
25:04 From the moment there are other values, aren't there, than the one based on the balance of power and money, it's clear our ambivalence is a bit better explained. There you go. I don't want to monopolize the floor. I've tried to stir up materials that seem a little disconnected from one another, but there's an extraordinary consistency.
25:35 Starting from the fetish, to sum up, which is covered in urine, excrement, stuff, everything that's vile because it's taboo. Taboo, you know, is what attracts and repels at the same time. It's been studied in anthropology, all that, I don't know. It's the sacred, but do me a favor, if you find the Gaffiot in a library, the big Latin dictionary, you know. Look up the word sacer, which gave us 'sacré' in French, S-A-C-E-R. I don't know. Look at the translations. You'll find everything and its opposite.
26:05 It's sacred, it's repulsive, it's unsettling. You see, it's all there. But, here, if there were — now this is my own example, it's not a literary or philosophical reference — when there's a construction site, a beautiful villa being built, or a building for a big company, or even a bank, if there were a sign, you know, those signs, saying the general council contributed so much, the regional council contributed so much. That's fine. I'm not for transparency, but I find it doesn't go far enough.
Surplus value comes from a minus 26:37 I would like people to say how the money that paid for that was earned. How was the money earned? All right? Through how many civil wars, how many millions of deaths did it take to accumulate the capital for what's being built. No, I'm not demonizing anything. I was born in Vietnam. Yes, what I'm saying isn't complicated. But how many millions of hours of unpaid, underpaid labor did it take?
27:10 I'll remind you here, since we're talking about money, we're at the heart of the problem, that Marx's theory of surplus value — Marx himself said, oddly, a philosophy professor takes 48 hours not to understand it. A worker understands it right away. Strange. Why? Because everyone believes that in 'surplus value' there's 'more.' Which isn't wrong. But then, the boss is the one who seeks maximum profit. That's not wrong either, who seeks the maximum margin.
27:40 But here's the thing, he doesn't do whatever he wants. Why? You know very well, because unfortunately for him, he's not the only employer on the labor market. There are other competing employers, so he can't set an exorbitant price either. Agreed? So his slider can't move indefinitely to the right when setting the price. He has to bring it back to the left according to competition. Agreed so far? It's a strange thing, this slider business. Where does it stop? Ah, there's the problem of surplus value.
28:11 Down to the point of making a loss. You can't underfeed the machine. If you don't give it the oil it needs, it grinds immediately, it's ruined. An employer knows very well. An employer, or rather management, if they're experts, know very well how to calculate the time it takes for a machine to wear out each day while it produces goods. That's already factored in, isn't it, the share of wear and tear in the price of the object, don't worry, all that is well amortized. Well, since the 19th century, we've known perfectly well how to do all these calculations.
28:42 So that's not where I want to make a profit. If I take 500 tons of cotton and then run it through the factory and get 500 tons of shirts, I'll assume — it never happens this way — that there are no scraps, no losses, to simplify. Well, if the 500 tons of cotton cost me 1000 francs and I sell the 500 tons of shirts for 1500, you'll tell me, that's normal, because in between there was labor. That's clear. And so the extra 500 francs is the value of the labor.
29:14 Yes, but if I give the worker the 500 francs, I've made a null operation. I gain nothing from it. The only area where I can make a profit is by making a loss. There's the secret, surplus value. It's by making the worker work beyond the time it would take him to earn what he came for, to reproduce his labor power. I mean, honestly, under the Popular Front, we moved to the 40-hour week, didn't we?
29:47 40 hours. Now we're at? 35. Yes, 35, 39, it varies a bit, yes. Also. All right. Where did the difference go? Meanwhile, productivity was multiplied by 1327. We should be working almost two hours a week. Two days a week and two hours a day. I say this because there are people who think you're all lazy, you know, we mentioned it earlier, the parasites, right Isabelle?
30:18 The harder people work themselves to death, the more they get called lazy and parasites. That's a law. I knew the French in Africa who used to say Black people are lazy. Meanwhile, there were the dockers of Abidjan carrying their loads on their backs. So you see, surplus value actually comes from a minus. For me, the employer, to come out ahead, I have to not pay labor its full value. I have to pay it below that value. He has to work for a certain amount of time for me and no longer for himself.
30:52 And the more productivity increases, the more machines become sophisticated. In our era, they've never been so sophisticated. The more I tip the scale. None of this is very mysterious. There's plenty of the sacred here too. Marx does speak of the fetishistic relation to the commodity. You see, I started from my 'savages.' And here Marx says that this bottle has use value. It's useful because I use it, in fact. That's use value, that's it.
31:23 But that's not its exchange value. Exchange value is what I can trade it for. It's worth an nth part of a pack of cigarettes or whatever. It's worth so many packs of chewing gum. And it's worth a fraction of your car. That, I mean, is its exchange value. There, all commodities become comparable. Why? Because as commodities, they are all crystallized human labor. That's the common point of all commodities. That's why, when you build a sandcastle on the beach, no one asks you for anything, because the sand is free there.
31:58 You're not the one who produced the sand. Products, when you steal them from the beach to make building material out of them. It becomes a commodity. That's work. There you go. I say that because I just saw a documentary. You may have seen some of the poorest populations there are. I'm not doing poverty porn. I hate that. But in the Cape Verde islands. Yes, the Cape Verde archipelago. They gather sand on the beach. Yes, did you see it? You also have to consider that it costs nothing, but it still brings in money, because in the end it's not given away for free.
32:32 Ah, but it's the construction companies that pay — and you see at what price — poor mothers, grandmothers. Did you see their age? Yes, the girls out there in the waves, trying to bring a bit of sand to a buyer, you see, for next to nothing. And in the end it causes the cliffs to erode. There you go. And of course there was an environmentalist who was furious. What are you going to give them instead, huh? All right? Make a law against your construction-industry slave drivers over there.
The landscape is not nature 33:03 All right? Who exempts them from doing that. And afterward, it's just that they weren't blaming the poor women for going to fetch sand on the beach. Really! There, I'll close my parenthesis. Sorry, that's my anti-environmentalist side. You're used to it. I love the environment, but I don't like it when people naturalize it. We should teach that in elementary school, it would take too long — the distinction. Well yes, yes, when I look at your countryside here, the countryside, it comes from 'campus' which means field. A field is labor, it's not nature, it's human, that.
33:33 I respect it because it's human sweat, it's culture, it's also intelligence, because you need to be intelligent to make a field, not just have muscles. To make a table, you need to be intelligent. There you go. So when I look at the landscapes, heading toward the Meuse or the Marne. Yes, or on the contrary, the Ardennes, you have the choice around here, as soon as you move you change region here. That's the whole charm. I always see a compromise between the powerful nature it has, with this magnificent forest, isn't it, and the labor on top of it, of woodcutters, sawmills, and then, from the wood, cellulose factories, etc.
34:14 plus, of course, agriculture, that's labor too, all that makes up the landscape, it's not nature, it's a magnificent compromise. It takes thousands of years to turn nature into landscape, that's what I mean. The Alsace plain, what a job, really, really. Because the great forests are up in the Vosges, but as you come down, the vineyards, what a job! There you go, I'm not talking about my own home, Corsica, huh? Yes, people say we're lazy, but if you are...
34:46 You can all laugh, I'd be denouncing you, but here I speak freely, don't worry. When you look at the terraced fields at home, you know, we have terraced cultivation going up into places where even goats would barely venture, chasms — that means that back then there was hunger, nobody went looking for baguettes at the supermarket, you had to produce it right there, on the spot. Back then they weren't lazy, the Corsicans, they became lazy because of you. When seaside tourism began, and they realized that by renting my garage to a German family, I was making a fortune in the summer, right?
35:20 I'll extend my digression, it's sociologically interesting, you see, it's that traditionally it was the crooks back home who owned property on the coast, because the coast is a harsh place for us. There's no water, there are mosquitoes, there was malaria, that's how it was before the war, before seaside tourism. So, to disinherit a son, they'd tell him, you'll go to the plain and die of thirst, you see, those coastal plains. And it's those very people who made a fortune, of course, with seaside tourism, you see, they're the bad boys. Don't judge Corsicans by the ones who welcome you on the coast, try renting a bit further inland in the village just above, it'll be much cheaper, people will be much more welcoming, more genuine.
35:58 So I'm being a bit prejudiced there, you see, it takes millennia of human effort to turn nature into this admirable thing that is landscape. That's to say, when I'm anti-environmentalist, I'm not against the scenery, on the contrary, it's in order to respect it. But I respect — look, when I see a Romanesque chapel in a wheat field, neither the wheat field nor the chapel are nature. They're the expenditure of muscle and intellect. It's magnificent. There you go. That's a reminder of why I'm here.
36:29 So, I took that example. I started from our fetishes via psychoanalysis. I recalled that it's no accident that the first time we spoke of the value of an object, it's when it suddenly acquires value because someone other than me is waiting for it. Isn't that right? And so there could be confusion between what is highest and what is most unnameable.
Audience question on the value of the artwork 37:03 There. I don't want to repeat myself. So now I'll hand the floor back to the room, because I'm sure some of you have questions about part of what I've said here. No, I can go on. Yes, Hervé. It's a bit like paintings. Some people see it as something like paintings. Yes. Some see it as something priceless. For me, a painting is canvas, paint, and a bit of sweat from the person who painted it. Everything else is capitalist speculation. Nothing more, nothing less.
37:33 That means the market value of the painting. The value of a painting, for me, is... How do you determine the value of a painting? For me, afterward, some people set prices. No, no, but the question... the question you'd like to ask... The question is, how can one attribute a value to an object when, for me, it only has the value of the materials it's made of? Why does that mean nothing, then? A little boy... I don't know, you exhibit it at the FIAC.
38:04 It would fetch a phenomenal price, you know. The value. Now you're touching on a delicate area, the value of works of art, which is yet another sector... it's complicated. It's speculation. All right? One of the best-selling classical musicians in the world is Mozart. I'm saying something obvious, all right? Yes, I don't like... everyone knows... there are even jingles that come from Korea or Samsung. What? Isn't that true? It is true. It's true. Yet Mozart, you can't even go visit his grave, he's buried in a mass grave, he died so poor.
38:35 That's true. Whereas the first one — I'm making this up — rock star, rapper, I mean the ones who broke through, because there are thousands who are excellent and never break through. What? But yes, he says, I'm the genius of the century, and I brawl with the other guy at the airport, yes or no? Publicity stunts. Because their coach told them, hit each other a bit because sales are starting to drop. Need to boost things. It's hard to assess the value of art because I don't fully agree that it comes down to the value of the paint tubes I bought.
39:10 All right? But it's an extremely difficult value to assess. First, a painter — even a genius, sorry, an accursed painter whose canvases nobody buys — can at least contemplate his works in his garret. Whereas an architect, a musician like Mozart, his last symphonies, the most performed ones, he never heard them, because you have to pay 80 musicians for that. Gathering an orchestra, you see? We never think of that kind of detail, but he never heard the symphonies everyone knows. Same with Beethoven.
39:41 But yes. Well, he had a bit more money, but only a little bit more. There. I won't even mention Mussorgsky, who died in the gutter from alcohol. I don't know. I mean... I could give many more examples, but there's a disproportion between the extraordinary artistic value of their works and the market value, which depends somewhat on speculation, on fashions. I quite agree with you, because I'm answering your question plainly — but what determines... ah, Bertrand's question, sorry. The question wasn't foolish. What determines the value of a painting?
40:11 It's an auction session at Christie's. That's true. Or at the Salle Drouot. That's what suddenly creates value, at auction. It's the Salle Drouot, yes, that's true. There you go. No, it's a bit like... how would I put it... like... There's really only one person who got rich off Mozart. It's the person who catalogued all his scores. Köchel. I believe.
40:41 There's... Pathé Marconi, Philips with Mozart, they made money. First to reply. Yes, well. Of course. Well, good for them. I'm all for people having money. That's not the point. And there, with Mozart, there's none... some did make money off it, huh. He was a bit of a sparrow. It was one of the very first times someone freed himself from feudal patronage. Well, you know your history. Mozart is the first modern man in that sense, who said, I'm sick of working for the bishop on commission. The result: he still ended up in a mass grave.
41:12 There you go. It's worth recalling that art has a special status, doesn't it? As Gérard de Nerval, whom I like to quote, says: we poets, we poor poets always, and poets often poor. There. So if there are... yes, Élise. No, but just, that made me think of what you were saying. The scene, Don Juan and the beggar, there's really the scene, the feel of it, and Don Juan dies, the gold coin to the beggar, and who is Don Juan, and who is Don Juan.
Dom Juan, the poor man and the lord's right 41:49 No, sir, there really was a Don Juan. I'm sure your question would contain something crude. And also... I forgot, indeed. Let's say that's the word. The jewel aria. That's true, that's true, that's true. No, no, no, but it's a great passage she's quoting from Don Giovanni. Élise has an agrégation in literature, she puts me to shame, because I forgot. But, no, there are so many examples one could cite too. I'm getting old, I'm losing my memory. There's this extraordinary scene. He's the only god left, so to speak. Quite right. In Molière's Dom Juan, before Mozart set it to music as Don Giovanni, that masterpiece of masterpieces.
42:26 At one point, Don Giovanni seems to be a cynic. Someone who doesn't care about any human or divine principle, which is precisely why in the end he'll be il dissoluto punito, the libertine punished. There has to be a moral ending. Now, at one point, they are attacked in the forest. He's with Donna Anna's brother, I believe, at that moment. Yes, that's before he doesn't attack. There you go. There's the beggar and they're attacked in the forest by bandits. Let me start there first. Because at that point, he draws his sword.
42:56 There, he rediscovers the function of the nobleman that justifies — there are few things that justify the nobleman — coming to the rescue of someone attacked by bandits, etc. But above all there's the scene with the beggar. Do you want to summarize it for us, it's extraordinary. He says, what is your occupation among the trees, and the beggar says, it is to pray to heaven every day for the people who are kind enough to give me something. He replies, then it can't be that you're very well off. Meaning, he wants to show him the futility of prayer, since the man prays and yet is poor.
43:31 And so, he says, angrily, I'll give you a medal provided you swear. And there, the poor man can't do it. Ah, it's terrible. He says, if you renounce God, I'll give you a gold coin. Sadistic, isn't it? Whereas little Charlotte in act 2, it's true that it's the sacred versus. The sacred versus. Oh no, no. He can't do it, he can't do it.
44:01 There. Thank you Élise for that example. There's a commander and the statue of the commander too in the same play. Yes, but there it's not a question of money, except that it's his father, after all. Any remarks? Don't hesitate, on the theme of the sacred and money. Well, Élise is bubbling over, so that's it. No, it's just that also regarding the theme of prostitution, a large part of the plays written during the Terror, during the Revolution, the theatre plays, were about contesting the lord's right.
44:43 Yes, the right of the codpiece. The lord's right. They called it the lord's right. I recall that throughout the Ancien Régime, the lord, in law, even if it happened less and less towards the end, in fact, still, in law, he could deflower the betrothed woman before the fiancé, as lord. Well yes, as the one who does it. Woman is the first commodity, if you look closely at history. Marx said it, the first social division of labor is man and woman. Sorry, I'm interrupting you a second. I'm digging deeper, but from the moment, because there are material reasons behind all this, from the moment when the woman, I'm thinking of prehistory, was eight months pregnant, she wasn't going to chase the mammoth with the men.
45:24 So there was a division of tasks where the woman stayed there, where childbirth could occur at any moment, so she prepared the meal while the others were out hunting. There you go, I rebel a bit against a certain trendy feminism, I fight for real feminism, but I mean, there aren't wicked men against women, I mean, it's a division of tasks. They were poor wretches, men as well as women at the time, sharing the load. I've seen this in Africa too, you know, when you see the dry season in the Sahel, all the men leaving 500 km south to sell their arms and legs in the coffee and cocoa plantations in countries where it's a bit wetter.
46:01 And there's nothing left but old people and children and women in the villages. You see it's a sharing of misery, there's no villain against a good guy. Even if, I specify this to be honest, all else being equal, it's always the woman who suffers the most. That's clear. Among the poor as among the rich. So, I mean, they couldn't chase the mammoth and so there was the first division of labor which happens through the division of the sexes, which Marx says is the first division of labor at the origin of social classes. It's not far off in Marx after all. There, I recall that anyway to do justice.
46:34 I'll give you back the floor, sorry. No, no, just to say that it's true that in literature, the god money is represented by the noble who has all the rights and all the... That's what I call Ancien Régime, it's the Ancien Régime value. Those who studied Latin know that boni homines, the bad students, translate it as good men. No, it means people who have goods. The aristocrats, the patricians, as they said in Rome, they were deified.
Prometheus, Greek gods, praxis and chrematistics 47:06 Greek citizens are gods compared to slaves. If you look closely, the young Marx analyzed this when he studied the myth of Prometheus, the Titan, you know, the one who went to fetch fire to run the foundries of Saint-Dizier. No, I'm barely joking. But yes, that's fire, it's the fire of intelligence, of enlightenment, at the same time, which melts metals. So it's very interesting to see that, the fact that in Greek mythology, the Titans are in conflict with the gods.
47:41 It's called the Gigantomachy, it's depicted on lots of frescoes. So their relationship is a bit ambivalent. They make weapons for the gods, the gods, by definition, do nothing. That's where you see that the gods are the fantasized expression of Greek citizens who aren't slaves. There were roughly, you know, a quarter free men and three quarters slaves, roughly. Much better treated than in Rome, I'm not trying to... Well, anyway. So the relationship of the Titans to the gods is the relationship of muscle, of labor, of physical strength compared to those who work.
48:21 Plato, he works with his students, he teaches. But the Greeks have two words for work. Chrematistics, what I'm doing right now with you, hot air. I say hot air because I'll never forget that it was African schoolteachers, black-skinned, who taught me the language with which I earned my living, the wind, as a teacher or consultant. French wasn't even their mother tongue, I pay tribute to them. So that's called chrematistics in Greek, this kind of intellectual work that doesn't transform matter.
48:51 But if I make a sandal as a cobbler, that's called praxis, a term Marx would take up. Not 'practical,' the same root as in practical. There, that's a reminder to start with. In other words, the distinctions Élise makes, you find them in language. You see, it's very interesting. And there's always, indeed, a representation of gods, of people who have goods, as being a bit above. And finally, after the revolution, it carried on, didn't it?
Parable of the talents, usury and speculation 49:21 Of course. Sorry. Yes, Eric. In the New Testament, there's the parable of the talents. What do you do with your talent? In fact, where a rich man, a master, gives talents to the servants, the value of... Three, he gives, I believe. There, it carried on. And in fact, he punishes the one who didn't make all the talents prosper. And so, there's a valorization, in fact, of saying that money, in fact, serves to create wealth.
49:55 So it can be individual wealth or wealth through the course of work, and to create something that will put work in motion. But where does the talent come from? Is that a notion, well, in Christianity? Uh, that's the Old Testament. Is it in Matthew? It's true that Matthew takes it up. Absolutely. But it's already in the Old Testament, of course. It's Judeo-Christian. It's in the Old Testament too. Absolutely. On the other hand, absolutely. In Islam, regarding the Quran, there's riba, the prohibition, in fact, of usury. Because the future doesn't belong to us.
50:26 It belongs to God. You can't speculate on the future. But that's exactly, well, I think that, look, money is a tool. It's a hammer. A hammer, you use it to build your house or to bash in your neighbor's face. So money is only a tool. Then, so for some, precisely, for us, it's a need that allows us, well, it's a means of living, let's say, at a given moment. For others, it's a tool of power. So to earn... there are two notions, in fact, a quick money.
50:56 But on the other hand, what's interesting about Islam is that it points to the fact that we're in a financialized society where 95% of financial flows are purely speculative and not... Here, you mean? It's modern, that's it. It's flowing, well, in today's world, 95%... Not the world restricted to the West and a few... Yes, it's much worse than that. But I mean, it's 95% of financial flows, completely speculative. Absolutely.
51:26 I'm interrupting you to confirm this for you, but 90% of the United States' financial exchanges, every day, all the emails, the stuff, you know, the robots that do the... happen with which country? In your opinion, does anyone know. 90% of the United States of America's financial exchanges happen each day with which country first? With China. China. With the Cayman Islands. Tax havens.
51:56 There, that's to prove you right. Speculation is parasitic. There's also Delaware, isn't there, a state within the federal state that allows us to dodge taxes... Of course. Without... You attach a lot of importance to the Earth, you, huh. I've noticed. Because we are fed by the Earth. Yes, if you like. Me, I think we're fed by human labor, above all. Is that how it is?
Fed by the earth or by human labor? 52:26 Me, I think we're fed above all by human labor, more than by the Earth. The Earth, we feed it through human labor? No, we're fed above all by human labor. Because I've known many countries where the Earth lets people die. No, but I'm telling you, I've known many countries, and they still exist, where the Earth lets people die. I remind you, as we said earlier, for example, that malaria, which is the greatest cause of death in the world, more than suicides and AIDS. No, but I'm saying it because they're starting to bombard us with nature, and it's transmitted by a guaranteed organic mosquito.
52:59 No, I'll say it again in passing. There, it's not against you, I say this. It's to rebel against a certain worship of the Earth. You know, Pétain, I'm wary of it. It doesn't lie. There. And as everything comes back to that, you know, what's rising in the countries of Europe at that time, it's the far right, it's Pétain. I'm wary. That's why I seem a bit harsh on this chapter. I'm talking about this, well, we remember. What I mean, in fact, is that Islam forbids usury and we realize, well, I'll draw a parallel, the Earth's overshoot GDP, in fact.
53:36 That is to say that starting from the month of August, we start eating into nature's reserves, into what it produces naturally. Yes, pfft, nature. What is nature? The universe, the solar system, what is it? What are you talking about? No, but what grows on the planet... The planet. Already, that's not nature. It's a tiny part of our planet, there. That's what you're talking about. You're telling me, oh come on, stop messing around, Pagani. This planet is where we live, we do. That's exactly what you're thinking. So it's man who matters. You see, it's not the universe, it's not nature.
54:06 It's this planet where man is. Yes? Man, who is that? Because as you say, well... It's women, that's what you want me to say. In the Meuse, there are fields... Yes! There's the Romanesque church, the wheat field, the farmer, bang. But well, 100 years ago, maybe the guy was, there, the other one, he was the owner, there, he had his horse, he worked, he maintained things and all. But now there's some outfit that owns the seeds, saying, you're going to put this in your field.
54:44 Monsanto, that's what you mean. Monsanto, but not only Monsanto, there's... Of course. There's the... How to say... it's linked, Cargill. Of course, of course. How were there plans, there? We shouldn't personalize it. When they removed the small plots, the... Enclosures. Land consolidation. They removed the hedges so there'd be no more birds in them, so the birds wouldn't do their job anymore, so afterward there'd be too many insects, so afterward they used DDT, or I don't know what, to... You see? So in the end, we pollute the Earth anyway.
55:14 We exhaust it. Maybe, I don't know, these are value judgments, we're going to pollute. Starting from 'polluting,' we're in morality, for me, we're no longer in economics, there. We exhaust it. I don't know, if we consider that the Earth is an ecosystem, it's a thing that feeds, that self-feeds. I don't know if that's the case, me. There were famines, in the old days. At my place, I have a house, well, I have a house, I'm in a house, there's some land. Without the land, there are branches that grow, that grow very fast.
55:44 You always have to cut. Trim, you have to prune. Otherwise, we end up overrun by... You have to clear it back against nature. And before, not long ago, 10-15 years ago, when I cut branches, I let them rot a bit, like that. I could let some rot in a corner, it made a shelter for... Toss it there, that's good. I could make a bit of fire and I could take the ashes and put them back in the vegetable garden. I could do that, but now it's a whole thing to make a fire because there's a waste collection center further away, with a biomass power plant, with a...
56:19 Since there's... We used, there, a biomass boiler. And then... I agree 150% with what you're saying. How's that? I agree 150% with what you're saying. That's not the problem of industry, it's the waste center. It's that the earth that makes things grow, it's not me who does it, it's it, it does it right away. There. The fruits fall, they should re-nourish the tree that grew them. But now it's been diverted toward something that doesn't belong to me, that's going... On top of that, I'll be forced to pay to get heating that comes from the plant there, when it's me who provides the...
56:55 Absolutely, absolutely. I see your example very well. Perfectly well-founded, but we're far from our debate. Because for centuries and centuries, if the peasants have... With the story of... You mentioned in Cape Verde, they go get sand to feed. Because there's sand aplenty in the Sahara, but it's not usable for construction work. It's not viable under today's financial conditions. I don't know. It would take transformations that would cost the entrepreneur dearly. But that's a political problem, it's no longer a pollution problem. They drag it off the beaches, but afterward, it's...
57:27 Is it good to do that? I don't know. Oh no! I never said we should tear sand from beaches. I'm saying we shouldn't make the women who do it feel guilty, because they do it for reasons. So find them an income and we'll talk about it again. I mean... They're relaunching elephant hunting. There are environmentalists who say that's good because it helps to... Yes, let's talk about environmentalists. I saw them in Africa, I saw them work. Like NGOs, by the way. Let it be said in passing. The infamous NGO sect that serves as espionage and such in conflict zones.
57:59 I'm not talking about the good people who stand picket duty on the ground. They're saints. I'm talking about those who employ them. Barbarism with a human face, as the saying goes. Kouchner, have you heard of him, no? The guy who called us to war, you know, in Iraq, everywhere. I'm not talking about you. We shouldn't mix everything up. I'm not saying that the women are right to take the sand. It serves the beaches right. I'm not saying that. You didn't hear me say that. I'm saying that between the women and the sand, I prefer the women. Give them another income and we'll have both the women and the sand.
58:31 There, that's what I want, me. You see? And it's easy, in my opinion, to make sure that the women of Cape Verde at 60 years old aren't forced to go scraping in the seawater, with rheumatism and all. The sand, that's what I'm saying. Don't twist my words. Nature, I don't care about it. Excuse me. Because if peasants exhausted themselves for millennia working the land, it's because it doesn't give like that generously. It has to be worked all the same. Yes or no? All the same. We mustn't insult the work of our ancestors. Where does the sand go, then? That's the sand problem.
59:01 No, but I mean... Oh, but that's not true. We can't get it out of our heads. No, but when there's... But there's a war brewing and you're talking to me about sand. There's a war brewing, there, you see? Against the Russians and the Chinese and you're talking to me about sand. You were talking about writing your name on... I love Nicole on a tree. Yes. Well, no one's forbidding that. You're saying it won't be of use to anyone. No one will be interested in that, but maybe... Unless you think it's a treasure. Someone will come along with a pair of scissors, who'll cut out your bark, who'll resell it very, very expensively... Well, good for him.
59:31 Me, I won't claim anything. We share, Dominique. Yes, sorry. So I quite agree in saying that... Nature is a creation of man. I'll come back to that. That's going to surprise you when I say that. Wouldn't it take, for instance, a consciousness, a human subject, to say that this is nature? But exactly. Since when do we speak of nature? Since we came out of it. It takes a being that's come out of nature to speak of nature. Should we thank a consciousness, but even chemistry no longer... So it came from what? It's natural, in a way. Ah, I'm glad you're telling me...
1:00:01 Because me, when I hear 'don't eat that, it's chemical,' as if a banana weren't chemical. In a banana, there's carbon, there's anhydride. And in water, it's H2O. No, that's what we learned. In water, it's not natural anymore. Are we going to separate now what's chemical from what's natural? Nature is chemistry. And physics, of course. We have to stop fantasizing about nature. Doing the biological delirium. Nazism, that's what it was. That's why I get a bit worked up. You see, it's when we start putting fantasies behind nature. The first ministry of ecology was the Third Reich. The first wildlife and flora reserve.
1:00:31 The Jews, the communists, the Bolsheviks, we didn't care, we liquidated them. But on the other hand, nature had to be preserved. Understand me, this is the era we're living in today coming back. The forces rising in Europe, that's it. Sorry, Eric. I understand, but there, for example, when we talk about conflict, indeed... Be a bit political. So what would be good, in terms of method, I'm being a pain, I'll be boring for two minutes. Okay? We develop a little point and we try to formulate a question. We try to problematize something.
Usury, Islam and public credit 1:01:01 Yes, because it's to counter the ecological rhetoric found in every magazine and every TV channel. In every sense. And we end our point by saying, well, is it this or that, or how is it this or that. There. In terms of method. Regarding the notion of money in evolution, there, so I was talking about the Old Testament and the New, well, the talents in Matthew and Luke, and otherwise, I don't say, or we say, it's... Is there, precisely, a prohibition on usury in scripture and what would its usefulness be regarding, precisely, human well-being?
1:01:32 Absolutely. But I don't know... Precisely... Yes, absolutely. Perfect. Usury, in fact, is... It's making money for money's sake. It's lending money to really make a profit with rates that are... An abusive gain. An abusive gain which, in fact, will impoverish... With a huge interest rate. That's it. I recall that the critique of usury is one of the origins of antisemitism. I recall it in passing.
1:02:04 Yes, but because they were left... Ah, well, bravo. I'm glad to hear that. Because they weren't left any other choice than to go into finance. Of course. Absolutely. Firstly. Secondly, I didn't quite understand in your comment. Sorry if I use 'tu' with you. I didn't quite understand when you talked about Islam. Islam forbids usury. Because in Islam, only God is master of the future. There's a logical coherence. So you don't speculate. On the other hand, hence the problem of Islamic banks. On the other hand, Islam doesn't forbid trade. Oh really, okay. Because if there's one thing truly typical of Muslim countries, it's Mokhtar import-export.
1:02:39 In desert countries, you don't produce. So you only circulate what passes through. There. There, that's the people of the desert. They brought us the zero of the Hindus, for example, which has had quite a fortune since. There. So, me, I'm not against the lending system, etc. It's usury that's condemnable, that is, the abusive interest rate. So, in my opinion, all that should be nationalized, that is, there's a credit rate fixed by the State, which is reasonable.
1:03:12 Me, in the retirement home, when I pay my rent, I pay it, I write a check to the public treasury. It's not a private landlord. That's reassuring. He's not going to send the bailiffs right away. The public sector, it has time. Yes, that's the difference with a private landlord. Long ago he would have evicted me. Macron is private. I know, I know. I have to hurry. There's still the Caisse des dépôts et consignations which was used for speculation. Because its activities were privatized. No, you know exactly who is the largest deposit bank in the world.
1:03:42 If you look closely at the Caisse des dépôts et consignations. Because it was forced, a bit like Mitterrand did with Crédit Lyonnais, to finance the operations of cronies and crooks. If I recall a quote, it's over there. There. Of course. But that's because it's been a long time. I say it because earlier, Jean-Luc, I think, earlier, you made a jab against the State. I'm not an anarchist. But still, we shouldn't confuse our legitimate anger against the abuses of the State. We shouldn't confuse the State and the state apparatus.
The state and the state apparatus 1:04:14 Sorry to introduce a philosopher's distinction. But I'll be quick. I love picking mushrooms. I'm not the only one. But me, I've lived in countries where there aren't any because there's no autumn. So I'm even more motivated when I'm in a temperate zone to pick mushrooms. Still, when I see it written 'mushrooms,' sorry, 'private forest, mushrooms forbidden,' that means it's me who's deprived of them there. Me, you, well, walkers, right?
1:04:44 We're in agreement. What I want to get at. When I see it written 'forêt d'Aumagnale,' of Ermenonville, or whatever, Chamouillet? Yes, also. I'm trying to show off by naming local forests, but there are habits without a forest. What does that mean? But there, the fact that it's a state forest increases my freedom. It means I can go there in the forest. We're in agreement. So there are two meanings of State. It's either the guy putting the ticket on my car, or Macron's latest directive which forced them to cut in half the revenues of an association, of a public sector, of a hospital, even of a school.
1:05:25 That's the State apparatus. And that's what I rebel against. We can say that nowadays, there has never been a more monstrous State apparatus. You know, camera surveillance, or whatever you want, it's never been so perfected. We agree on that. But in the service of what? Of that absence of State which is the private sector. That's never said. There's a scam. We believe it's the State that runs us. No, it's the State apparatus in the service of hatred. I listen to BFM Business. I'm not a masochist. You can talk about the State, about its use. There, there. But if the State means the general will, our common good, then I'm for it.
1:06:00 But if the State means the predatory State apparatus that pumps what is collective to give it to the private sector, I'm against it. There. I think I tried to be clear. There. Because you have to fight to have it. It didn't fall from the sky for me. No, I know. You have to fight. This is the ordinary popular university. I too used to talk about the State just like that, you see, and then we tie ourselves in knots. All of a sudden, we stumble. You mustn't have... since women give you grief, things like that, well then we think thanks to women, we go deeper.
1:06:30 That's my job. Ah, all right then. There. Of course, because everyday language traps us, of course. Of course, of course. Exactly. That's a bit what Bertrand suggested, talking about the Trente Glorieuses earlier. I recall moreover that when he said, quite rightly, quoting the passage about the 16th century, the Vagabonds Act, when he was outraged, quite rightly, against the blaming of the poor, you're poor because you did something stupid.
The guilt-tripping of the poor 1:07:14 You know, it's in the book of Job, in the Bible, it's a profound book, the book of Job. They're all there, the rich, the Pharisees, saying, listen, admit it, you must have done something after all, if you're in that state, it's because you did things that aren't clear. You see? And Job magnificently says, I did nothing. I lived within the law. It's unjust. You see, he resists, that's good. Now, why am I talking about this? Because it's all the more vile to blame the poor since not only did it not happen all of a sudden—I say this because one might have thought, through what you were saying, that it happened that way, which isn't at all what you meant—that suddenly the poor found themselves, the peasants found themselves vagabonds, hoodlums, wanderers.
1:07:53 It's that it was all done by the great landowners, it's in England that it started. That's what the famous enclosure act—sorry, the enclosure movement, meaning hedges, properties, fences, I was searching for the word. Everything was done to make life unlivable for the peasants, so that they'd be in dire poverty, so they'd abandon the countryside and come work in the first factories. To the point that peasants ran away to avoid going to the factory. And since it had become unlivable, they enlisted in the navy, which was hell, the sailing navy, at the time.
1:08:26 But they still preferred to do that, you see, rather than see their 8-year-old children work 14 hours a day at the foundry. That's how it was, I'm telling you, because it isn't that old. It was—excuse me, Dominique—one of the first theorizations of liberalism, it's Locke who does it, in a very small book called What to Do About the Poor? There. Where the great English philosopher Locke will present this report to the king and from there, indeed, well, the whole mentality both of the era and of the way the poor would be treated, it starts from there.
1:09:00 Of course, and it hasn't changed much. What to do about the poor? In the 19th century, the Quakers in England, when the law that wants to abolish child labor for children under 13—the poor kids, can you imagine, under 13—and for a number of hours you can't imagine, in the most appalling trades, I mean, steelmaking, things like that—the Quakers said yes, but in the meantime, when they're with us, they're not out being hoodlums in the street, it's the same tricks. The girls won't turn to prostitution, we're here for morality—but now we say human rights.
1:09:32 In exchange for which, we bomb whatever countries we want—I mean, in Iraq, there still isn't running water in Baghdad, which was a country producing nuclear engineers not so long ago. I recall it's still the same trick going on. The world is run by a bunch of convulsed puritans. That's what I'm saying. I'm serious, I'm not being anti-Protestant, there are admirable things in the Reformation. But I mean, the way it's been deformed, the world is run—and this is a bit of my anti-eco slant—all of that, Islamic fundamentalism, Protestant fundamentalism, ecological fundamentalism, it all heads toward the pure, the unsullied, the unpolluted—I'm wary of that, the sacred, I'm wary.
1:10:08 There. Sully the scenery a bit for me, it won't bother me too much. You too like the rot in Roquefort, what's better than mold? No but beer, what is it? It's fermented, it's not... There. All right, I'll stop because it's getting late. So, are there other remarks on God, money? Unleashed, he says, seen. I'm sure you didn't do it, I'll hold on, but a link precisely between ecologism, the relationship to nature, divinizing nature.
Deified nature; law of nature and law of matter 1:10:44 Yes. That would be in the... What can I say? That is, from the moment we say that all species have a role and that none should be eliminated, that everything balances out—that's called providence in religion, that, that everything has been calculated, which is what the Anglo-Saxons call intelligent design. There's an intelligent design. I'm not settling the debate, I'm not a metaphysician, we shall see. Maybe what physicists call the universe is in fact creation. That's possible. But then let's say so, let's not say it's scientific, no, it's religious.
1:11:15 There, I respect that, why not? It's respectable. But you need a religious viewpoint to say that if you touch the mosquito that inoculates malaria—I bring this up again because I had classes where there were gaps at the start of the school year, you see. Students who had died of malaria because the school year starts in September and the rainy season is July-August there, you see. There, I mean, you have to own it, but as you say, there's a new religion of nature, it's called pantheism, I mean, Gaia, Mama Gaia, mother earth and all that, fine, earth that nourishes, earth that also starves.
1:11:54 Who talked to me about the pharaohs earlier, the Egyptians? One of us told me they'd read in the... Ah, that was me. Yes? I'm not betraying what you said—studying Egyptian history, Gina, right? Read that the fourth dynasty—that goes far back in Egyptian history—entire populations had been decimated, moved to other regions because of 20 years of appalling drought.
1:12:25 They make us believe it's global warming now causing drought in Egypt. I'll add to what you said, moreover, that this period was so important that there was a war at one point between the Egyptians and the Hittites—it happened often—who were in the mountains of present-day Turkey, roughly. And the Egyptians lost the battle because it was made up of young men who had never seen a drop of rain. And since it started raining during the battle, they thought it was a supernatural phenomenon and became vulnerable, they stopped fighting.
1:12:56 This is to show that we must stop saying that nature is becoming deregulated. It was never regulated. Just saying it's regulated is already a religious thought. Right? In certain eras, nature was much colder than today, when glaciers reached Nice. You can miss that era if you like, that's everyone's business. There are periods when the Earth was much warmer. When you think that Greenland means green land, Greenland, if you look closely. And when Erik the Red, the one who discovered the American continent well before that good Christopher Columbus, with a Viking longship that was far more seaworthy than the caravel, landed at what is now roughly the level of Halifax in Canada, he called it Vinland.
1:13:37 There were grapevines. It's known, it's been noted since by climatologists. There was a short period when it was much warmer, in the 16th century. Then afterward, on the contrary, there was the little ice age in the 17th century when wine was chopped with an axe in the markets of Paris. You want 3 kilos? Boom! It was that cold. There. That's to remind you. There. I don't demonize nature, I don't divinize it either. We do what we can. I think there's matter. And when that matter is worked by man, it's no longer nature.
1:14:08 When it's matter that hasn't been worked by man, which is by far the majority in the universe, then we can call that nature. But that assumes we've come out of it. I mean, this might be my last somewhat abstract point, but you still have to exercise your brain a bit. If I go up to the fourth floor with two flowerpots, or rather two bouquets of flowers, one bouquet of plastic flowers, one bouquet of natural flowers, and I drop both bouquets from the fourth floor. Whoosh! We calculate the fall, we'll find the same law of falling bodies from Galileo, one-half g t squared.
1:14:38 Do you agree? So it's not a law of nature, it's a law of matter, whether it's plastic, artificial, or natural. But again, I'm learning to speak, excuse me. I'm breaking with everyday language, all of a sudden. It's not really a law. I say it myself, I'm the first to say it's a law of nature, the law, but it's an abuse of language. In fact it's a law of matter, but that word, all of a sudden, isn't much liked. Matter sounds a bit laborious, it sounds a bit like the dirty hands of someone who works. Well, yes, there.
1:15:08 Whereas nature sounds a bit virginal. There. I didn't hear the beginning. If I listen to a bird singing next to me in a tree, I love it. I'm going to adore it, I think it's very pleasant. On the other hand, if we play a recording on a magnetic tape of a bird singing, I think that will annoy me very quickly. Have you read Kant? Ah, no. Yes. Ah well that's extraordinary. No, no, no, no, but I suspected as much.
1:15:40 No, but it's all the more remarkable. That's exactly the example Kant uses in his aesthetics. The first modern aesthetics, the Critique of Judgment, 18th century. Yes! Yes, he says we're delighted by... He says we're delighted by... we're delighted by the nightingale's song. But if we're told it was the early days of automatons at the time, you know, mechanical ones, wound up with a spring. If I'm told it was a nightingale moved by a hidden spring in a tree, he says my pleasure disappears. He's just like you! So that's where we see that nature is a fantasy. The song is the same, it hasn't changed, but we'd like man to have had nothing to do with it.
1:16:10 That's odd, all the same. Admit it, what is this anti-humanism? Even if I... No, I think if I don't know it's a bird on a tape, so if you think it's natural, yes. That's what I mean. We have a sensitivity that goes well beyond what you say you have. Ah! There are good... Don't you find that we're getting further and further away from nature? That we're getting further and further away from it? It's about time, isn't it? I've lived in countries that can't manage to get out of it.
Man in general does not exist 1:16:40 I had students who told me, sir, if you have too much pollution, just give it to us because we're dying from not having any industry. You know, that makes you think when you hear that. When you're in nature, you're in survival mode. It's strange, it's as if everything that's caused your misfortune is what has made humanity's wealth up to now. That's really extraordinary. I've heard a lot of people who wanted to get out of survival mode, after all. Man has no impact on the environment. Me, man, I don't know him. The capitalist has an impact on the environment, capitalism, right? There's a disastrous management of the environment.
1:17:10 I'm the first to say it. Do you think I like it, if tomorrow we make a Jean-Jacques Rousseau park at Disneyland? Obviously. That's not nature. Of course. But that's not human nature. Enough, stop demonizing man. Right? No, but there are social classes. There's no such thing as man in general. That doesn't exist, man in general. Hitler is a man too. That doesn't exist, man in general. There are social classes. There. That's distinct.
1:17:40 Ah yes, yes, that's right. It's just when Nazism is coming back that we're supposed to stop talking about it. No, but you see, Godwin's trick, that's it, you see? No, but it's odd. It's taboo, this Godwin thing. Godwin's law, that's a clever trick. Right when it's coming back, it's ridiculous to talk about it, you see? Because whoever currently thinks, in the world, whoever thinks that climate change isn't man's doing, that's Donald Trump. But what climate changes? There have always been climate changes, that, you don't understand.
1:18:11 There have always been. Far more catastrophic than right now. Who created plastic and who's polluting everyone? Yes, you're jumping from warming to plastic. Next we'll move on to nuclear waste treatment. We never get anywhere with ecology. We're always stuck in misery, you see? That's the problem. Giving hope to young people, for heaven's sake, it's not possible. You tell them there's no solution. Whatever we do? Look at Servigne, the pope of collapsology. Anyway, it's too late, it's the end of the world. Your end-of-month stories, we don't care, pensions, everything we talked about today, poverty, none of that matters.
1:18:43 What matters is the interest of the planet. Oh no, but behind it all, the design is to permanently blame what's called human activity. And notably three great notions we could name: humanism, progress, and the universal. There. Those are three great notions that have been set aside for 30 or 40 years, with philosophies today that are rather anti-humanist and that draw on more or less the same thinker, around Nietzsche, or that keep bringing us back to the beast, to water.
1:19:22 No, but wait, Gina said, it's true there are things that aren't going well. That's what you're saying. Of course, but there are a thousand things that aren't going well. Compared to you, in philosophy, etc., or knowledge like yours, Dominique. That's not an argument for me. It doesn't mean I'm stupid, that I can't grasp lots of things happening around us, and that's across the whole planet, because I don't mean the universe, nature. We live on planet Earth. And it's the Earth that feeds us because, however much human labor there is, if there were no earth, we'd have nothing to eat. Exactly. And there'd be no animals.
1:19:52 We agree on that. Marx said, until further notice, we've never managed to fish fish out of waters where there are none. We agree on that. We know there are desert regions where people, they're at least as well off as us, but maybe they have oil or things like that. Or Niger, as you say, it's very, very beautiful. Their government has oil, the people don't have any. But what I mean by that is it doesn't mean that we, ordinary citizens, even if we haven't done advanced studies, etc., aren't capable of thinking, of taking things into account, of going and looking into our own little matters.
1:20:22 It's even a duty, of course. Learning everywhere and having a real awareness. Because when we're shown a continent's worth of plastic pollution three times the size of France, it's man who... Man, the human being, it's not monkeys who invented plastic and dump it. But it's not man. It's not man. Earlier, I answered you, I told you, you don't have a yacht. Neither do I, we're not the ones dumping our waste into the Mediterranean. It's a handful of privileged people doing that. I do my little bit.
1:20:53 I sort my plastic. I even compost too. And then I realize it's in open-air dumps. It's companies organizing that. It's not man. It's a minority of men on Earth. Let's fight against capitalism. What do you want? Against the management.
1:21:25 Yes, but then, it's contradictory. It's not man. It's the capitalist management of the planet that's disastrous. There, we agree. They exist. They're men who are men. So, concretely, we have a quarter of an hour left and let's try to get back... It's good when it goes off the rails. Yes, yes, yes. No, but it's good. It's good. They're arguing, there. I mean, it's like cigarette-butt media in Paris. Go on, say your piece. I don't have a troubled conscience. I'm doing fine, you know. But Paris isn't hell. There are plenty of people who dream of visiting Paris.
1:21:58 Yes, me neither. I don't like wet tobacco. Fine, we agree. Good grief, there are other problems. Capitalism is fed by man. Ah, I never said it came from figures. That's what starves man. Is that what you mean? There's woman, man. By certain men? Why do you immediately want to... You want to make me feel guilty for being... Ah, but then? I have nothing to do with capitalism. It benefits a few... You don't either. You're a victim, so am I. So, fine. It's man, it's me, it's her, etc.
1:22:30 I was talking with a friend, because we often say in France, it's a bastard boss and a lazy employee. You see, that's the antagonism that's often set up culturally. Which is paradoxical when you see that China, the communist country, is the most capitalist in the world right now. If you like. But the State intervenes in China, that's not capitalism. It's socialized warfare. The State intervenes for the currency. The national currency. I listen to BFM Business, they hate the State just like the anarchists, the capitalists.
1:23:02 The Medef, don't talk to them about the State. It's regulations, it's this and that, it's showers for your workers, that won't do, it's an expense. By certain men, why man? By certain men. I could say Protestant man, that's already been studied, it appeared in England, but yes. That is, man who produces and doesn't spend. It's not just any man. I'm Corsican, myself, Catholic, we splurge, we buy a Cadillac because we made three women work in Marseille.
1:23:37 I'm exaggerating, not me. I'm jumping from one extreme to the other, from Paul Getty to the Corsican thug. It's not man, they're abstractions. With abstractions you get nowhere. It's like saying the French—there's Pétain, he's French, De Gaulle, he's French. That's not the same France. The resistance and the collaboration. So certain men have resorted to capitalism for power, in my opinion, for power, to dominate others and then enslave the other and minimize the other's strength.
1:24:12 They've been using it up to now because it was labor power. We also know that slavery was abolished at the same time industry was developing. And if we draw a comparison—you don't seem to like Pablo Servigne much, but I'm saying, well, actually, if we want to have our current comfort, that's 200 slaves we'd need at our disposal. Yes, I know it by heart, I've seen his theme. He couldn't care less about slavery. When you make comparisons like that, he clearly hasn't lived in Africa. I know he doesn't care, but he's drawing a parallel. But he's a bourgeois-bohemian, have you seen how he dresses, you're going to take lessons from Servigne.
1:24:45 The guy talks about the apocalypse while laughing. Wait, I'm not taking lessons from Servigne. I listen, I'm curious, I listened for instance to Attali who... There's another one for you. Jacques Attali? Yes. That's the one. The one Mitterrand said, well him, I'll be consulting him for a thousand years. Yes, in the midst of his co-religionists who says, how, nature is bad and the whole interest of Judaism is to explain nature to me. What does Attali know about Judaism?
1:25:15 No, but... Who handles Mitterrand's affairs, which aren't exactly clean. No, but what I mean is there's a guy who claims that among his admirers, and on the other hand you've got a guy like Idriss Aberkane, for example, who talks about biomimicry and says that, actually, if we look at how living things are built, animals, plants, etc., we can draw inspiration from them for a better existence for man. Yes. That's what the whole history of pharmacy has done, studying plants, imagining something to find medicines that saved your life.
1:25:47 Well yes. I agree. Of course. So while there's progress to be made, if there's a shellfish, a virulent poison from which one can make a fortifying agent... There's no problem at all. Let's slam capitalism. That's the best one of the evening. So that'll be the theme of the next... No, no, but I apologize in advance, to the audience, I'm passionate, so unfair, certainly at times, about Pablo Servigne. Dominique made an excellent video, type in Pagani Servigne.
1:26:18 Play pause. There. And on Foucault too. YouTube, Pagani Servigne. Bam, a hit. Here, you've gotten a lot of views. 16,000. 16,000 views and that... It's not me, it's the young people, that's how they are with video, I'm incapable of it. Lots of debate on that video. It's not like the one that... That's the one we filmed that got stolen from us by the... No, no, that's not worth going into, that's something else entirely. Mr. Vargas. Anyway... So, my question hasn't been answered, so how do we get rid of this damn capitalism?
Resisting: the century of revolutions 1:26:49 How do we get rid of capitalism? To resist. And how do we resist? I don't know, we've just lived through the Yellow Vests episode. We were told that France is finished, France is lying down, France is just consumers, it's... Don't move! We've been hearing that for a long time! There's a beautiful poem by Aragon about this. Right? It's There is no alternative, we've been hearing that for 40 years. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, since 1989, there's no more alternative.
1:27:22 Since there's no more communist danger. Except for China! They're at ease, capital is at ease. They're at ease. They're a bit at ease there. They're reselling it in the forest. Yes, so, a little correction: China has a very active market economy, but one that is extremely supervised by the state. That's precisely the big difference with laissez-faire, laissez-pisser, if I may play with words a little. It's the whole structure of the state. In that structure, it's precisely not liberalism. They have a currency... a billionaire, that's a false step, they're prisoners. Yes, and then, apparently many economists, I mean financial technicians, admire how they manage, by raising interest rates by an eighth of a point, to control such a gigantic machine, without it going haywire.
1:28:03 We had the subprime crisis, right? I mean, it was a close call, there wasn't a bank crash, as they say. I mean, we just barely avoided crowds rushing to the sidewalks to get their bank accounts back. It started with the Bank of Scotland, if I remember correctly. It was quickly contained, quickly contained, you know how? By throwing thousands of billions of dollars at it, by throwing thousands of tons of oil onto the blaze. That's what they do. I don't know how it's going to end, but... Yes. This story isn't going to end well, that's the thing.
1:28:34 But for now, I mean, we need to... I believe, as Bertrand said very well earlier about the yellow vests, it goes up, it goes down, right now it's dormant, if I were in the employers' shoes, I wouldn't be reassured. I wouldn't be reassured. Yes. We thought it was over, but bam, it comes back, you know. We thought the revolution was finished. What happened in 1818. No, but in '18, the Restoration, checked and contained, the return, the king, England financing, Austria managing politically, already, the Germans politically and England financially, already at that time.
1:29:07 It's not yet the United States, but that's it, the Holy Alliance. The revenge against the French Revolution, and then bam, in 1830, it starts again, the Three Glorious Days. There it goes again, Louis-Philippe, bam, it starts again in 1848, it goes back out into the streets. And then afterward, it's the Paris Commune, then afterward, it's the revolution of '17, it doesn't stop. Rousseau saw it coming. We are approaching the state of crisis and the century of revolutions. 1765. If ever anyone was a prophet, you see, and lucid, he didn't say 'the' revolution.
1:29:37 He saw it coming, it was a succession of revolutions that would not end. We are approaching the state of crisis and the century of revolutions. Here we are. That's my conclusion. Thank you, Dominique. Thank you.
