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Le Temps des cerises and introduction of the broadcast 0:00 Not to give it to him [transcription noise/garbled] The cherries and gay nightingale And mocking blackbirds Will all be in celebration The beautiful girls will have madness in their heads And lovers will have the sun in their hearts When we shall sing The time of cherries will whistle much better
1:12 The Mocking Blackbird. Good evening for this rather special appointment With the Comaguer files An appointment with a French philosopher Not very well known, who died a short while ago Three years ago I believe Named Michel Clouscard For all those among you who haven't read him Or who haven't even heard his name I'm giving this opportunity to get acquainted With this important philosopher Not for the pleasure of doing philosophy In the sense of that discipline Which terrorizes final-year high school students Throughout our Republic But that's much better than in republics Where there's no philosophy at all After all Let's keep that But simply to say That philosophy consists in reflecting On the human condition On its future On human history And And this echoes a bit later What we'll say about Marx It's also sometimes a tool For transforming this condition But we only transform well What we have understood well What we are well aware of That is, we are at a certain point In human history And then we want to go in this or that direction Philosophy provides tools For building a future
2:22 That we want For some, radiant At the time that's what was said Anyway Better than the present In which we live And so that's why I wanted to meet Two people Who are beside me With this wish That you know Which drives me Through all these programs That is, to reflect And to give tools For a world To be transformed Because clearly We don't feel very good in it You all know that So my two others Who came specially from Paris To talk about Michel Clouscard Are on one hand Michel Clouscard's publisher Éditions Delga So Aymeric Monville Whom I greet And Dominique Pagani Also a philosopher Who has the advantage For us tonight Of being a friend And of having been a close collaborator Of Michel Clouscard Before his death So you have We have two ways Of seeing How Clouscard's thought fits In the publisher's work And in the general work Of reflection and publishing Of philosophy In our country Which is a vast subject And then A more precise knowledge Of the man And his contributions Which you will see Are of extreme importance For understanding our advanced capitalist society The term itself Is eminently debatable So we'll discuss it
Clouscard, thinker of the genealogy of the crisis 3:33 Extensively. So I'll give the floor To Aymeric Monville Director and founder I believe Of Éditions Delga Advanced capitalism Or regressive capitalism Since we are indeed At a stage Of decay of history That has been called The end of history Well, what Fukuyama Called the end of history But indeed We're still arriving Somewhat at the crisis of all that Where everything is starting To reveal itself So to speak We see the incredible imbalance Capitalism Which was supposed to Allegedly produce Enough wealth for everyone And We realize well That Every time there have been Great crises They got out of it Through Crises What's called Enormous devaluation Terrible wars Imperialism Or an increase In exploitation And So The crisis We're sinking More and more Into the crisis And it's worth Looking a bit At this genealogy So for me That's What interested me most About Michel Clouscard He's someone Who traces the genealogy Of our last 40 years Since May '68 There He started To write Precisely around that time At age 40 He was born There If we're talking about crisis He was born in 1928 There One year before the 1929 crisis
4:44 And he dies in 2009 Right after the subprimes And all that So From one crisis To another There As they say With a few wars in between There That's it Exactly 17 years '45 Colonial wars There That's it And Indeed What drives him to write Strangely What Cuts his life Like a mystic In a glass Is May '68 And Because from there He's going to discover something We've forgotten Since There Absolutely We've concealed it since He's truly the thinker Of '68 To the crisis And how '68 Prepares that crisis So His characteristic Of course he's a Marxist That is, more than a philosopher In that sense he's not a philosopher Because if you're a disciple of Marx You're a disciple of someone Who wrote The Poverty of Philosophy But still He's a thinker That's for sure He's a sociologist He's an analyst He has a novelistic side His book Le Capitalisme de la séduction Is really like Balzac In the way of describing It's really the novelist's eye And then going into the small corners Of everyday life About music Swing Things like that We don't normally think of It's not among the classic attributes Of the philosopher Who wants to seem serious
5:54 And esoteric. Absolutely Or else we find outright The Socratic word The side of intervening in the city That side The confrontational side I would say It's I think that of Merleau-Ponty Who said If philosophy is to remain It's under the angle of interpellation It's really The guy who arrives in the city And precisely him He intervenes in '68 Because strangely That's what characterizes him Clouscard In He's a Marxist In the first definition We always give the genus As the cat is a mammal Well he's a Marxist But then The particularity The cat is a mammal I don't know With retractable claws Well So Among Marxists His category Is the side Critical of May '68 Critical of its Counter-revolutionary aspects That is Clouscard is someone Who in any case Was absolutely on the side Of the workers Of the great strikes in '68 Which culminate in fact In the years '67 and '68 And simply If we take stock of '68 We realize that Strangely It's something People don't talk about But If we must take an unflinching account of May '68 Starting from the 1970s The two great forces Of resistance We can Left as right The Gaullists And the Communists Collapse completely There And strangely
7:04 We end up with people like Giscard Mitterrand I remember a film It's strange we haven't talked about it In 2005 At the time of the constitution Where Giscard was making an apology For the European constitution I still remember A film Called The Sorrow and the Pity About the resistance in France We see indeed Someone like Mendès France Testifying About the abuses He suffered As a Jew And he says Yes there was a young idiot Roughly speaking Of course he spoke Much better than I do But The Marshal won't put up with that How could the Marshal Have allowed this?
7:36 Well, a complete Vichy man? That was Giscard d'Estaing Well anyway He started very badly Like Mitterrand There There's something like that It's quite astonishing all the same This revolution Which put into power all the same What there was Most anti-progressive Because You have to be clear I'm speaking of the Resistance As Let's say as a symbol But it had practical effects There was the CNR The National Council of the Resistance It's the CNR program Whose effects we continue Fortunately To live the benefits of And which is of course Social security For example And pensions There I'm talking about all these nationalizations Of course That's been eaten away a great deal And it's the favorite target Of the capitalists Absolutely I'm thinking for example Of Denis Kessler Who was for a long time The former number 2 of MEDEF He said clearly It was in black and white We want to eradicate Eradicate the CNR program And I'm thinking of a country Like Italy You know in Italy They have a thing A constitution That Berlusconi Called soviet Yes but which is progressive Hyper progressive That is In the country Of the mafia of fascism Of the Vatican It's a country Very heavy In terms of reaction The Resistance had managed To create in fact A program Truly institutional structures
8:47 Institutional, there extremely progressive And which for a long time Served as a shield It's a shame To have this defensive side But there We are in the process of So there That's why I want to come back to '68 That is It seems to me that '45 Is an enormous victory Of the progressive forces And at the cost of how many Millions of dead If we think of the sacrifice Of the Red Army To be clear There are resistance fighters And strangely From a sort of Palace revolution Of May '68 If we take stock Regardless Of the actors' intentions It would seem That we are living Through a decadence Up to today Or truly That's it A return To the Middle Ages There I'm going to Give the floor No perhaps On May '68 Since it's a founding turning point At once In the history of France And in Clouscard's thought Let's clarify well The fact that there was The largest workers' strike In the history of the country And that we forget Today And by saying That there was I'm simplifying With the emblematic figure There was only Cohn-Bendit And students In the streets That's it The first slip Which proves That one '68 Can hide another There One '68 Can hide another It's clear That in collective memory
One 68 can hide another 9:59 What we call Collective memory Which is not a memory Which on the contrary Is often a mixture Of memory and amnesia A collection Induced by the dominant media The key man of '68 Is essentially Cohn-Bendit There Absolutely And not Who remembers Krasucki Who coughed up his lungs At Mauthausen at 15 I mean With great opera lovers That's not exactly The profile of the Stalinist scoundrel Which people caricature Or Georges Séguy I mean Completely forgotten I mean And instead It's Cohn-Bendit Kouchner At the US
10:31 I have no idea And Aymeric has admirably Synthesized the essential That is Beyond any ideology Beyond any partial viewpoint Anyone can measure Here we're in measurement There is no science Except of the measurable What are the two great political forces I dig into what he stated very well That decline starting from '68 On the French political chessboard On the right, Gaullism On the left, communism I mean the PC's communism of course That is The two great forces That gave a headache To NATO and the Americans in France Of course Don't make me say I didn't say That the CIA organized it No All the same I mean It's still troubling In light of everything just said That this is what's worst In the French political tradition When I say Vichy That's not a slur I'm speaking very seriously Because Aymeric very rightly recalled This stunning statement By the number 2 of MEDEF That we must be done With the With the council The achievements Of the CNR I say the achievements To remind that these are struggles Of blood and tears Which brought these victories In this case here 70 million dead A trifle But I'll take the opportunity to say That they Call that The welfare state As if it fell from the sky Yes The word says it well
11:41 We see clearly The ahistoricity And the naturalism It's thinking But I'll go back Not only Are these The two forces That decline But It's not only the number 2 of MEDEF After all It's not new That the employers' side Might be a bit Well Even if it's still A big secret to the masses We're made to believe That liberalism Isn't perhaps Isn't perfect But everything else is worse There are even historians Paid by the employers To rewrite its history During the Resistance See the work of Annie Lacroix So what horizon For today's youth We're heading for a wall But there's no other way Because the alternatives are worse Nice for the youth Well fortunately We're starting to get out of it Thanks to the crisis So He mentioned Kessler Of MEDEF But Former Maoist A week after Cohn-Bendit So there I leave MEDEF Says We've had enough Of Gaullo-communism In the middle of the battle Over the referendum On the European constitution Absolutely And we didn't see it Yet as clearly Now the masses Are starting to notice it Me, I don't hate the Germans I mean I'm delighted That Germany Has become European Finally After the war On the other hand That Europe has become German
The scandal at the origin of great thought 12:51 That's a whole different program Well That's what they want to sell us We're made to believe It's the other So it's worrying What's being said And Clouscard Fits Into this scandal There's always A great scandal At the base Of great theoretical thought I say theoretical Because We're not going to Quibble Whether he's a philosopher Not a philosopher At the time You had to have A degree in philosophy There wasn't A sociology degree And then a specialization Afterward for a sociologist So all that Are false debates He's a philosopher by training And besides Booksellers always have A problem Do we classify His books under social sciences Under history Under philosophy Which is rather a good sign Well And fairly cross-disciplinary In disciplinary terms But Every great Theoretical advance From Plato Up to today Is triggered By a scandal It's the scandal Of Socrates' death Which gives The philosophical vocation To this young Son of an Athenian bourgeois Who was Plato Who was the son of an aristocrat Promised an easy Political career Who all of a sudden Sees that the man He admired most The most just in the city It's him the city condemns There's something wrong here Well And that's what makes Plato famous For 20 centuries There And already with the sacred union Of leftists I mean the sophists Of the time And the conservatives It's extraordinary all the same Conservatives Who say Socrates is
14:01 Corrupting the youth Allied with the leftists Who are on the contrary Isn't it The demagogues Of youthism If not of youth One of the worst enemies Of youth Is the youthism of the old So This scandal That initiates Clouscard's thought Is precisely The fact that '68 Which was supposed to be And which almost was And which was in part While there was An unprecedented advance I mean After all The minimum wage It's not a small thing There Rights Especially the new rights In the workplace Because we always talk About quantitative things But there There That these things Were completely concealed In favor of what The new struggles What's the new struggle The one capital adores When I say Madam Minister Or Mister Minister Me, I have nothing against it Me, I'm delighted I love women But That doesn't cost capital a cent That kind of left Capital loves that It's that kind of feminism too This kind of feminism Which has nothing to do With the old feminist struggle Éditions Delga Published an admirable book Written by a former CGT activist Called Les femmes de la CGT [The Women of the CGT] With The feminists of the CGT Who had run-ins With bourgeois-bohemian feminists Precisely at the time So I mean The scandal for Clouscard
15:11 That's it How is it That this revolution Which perhaps had the most chances Of succeeding afterward There haven't been Many revolutions In France It's a revolutionary period '89 the Convention Bang The Restoration Then The Commune That's not even a revolution It's a revolt Crushed in blood 80,000 dead in one week Then The Liberation The great gains We've said it Pay-as-you-go pensions That doesn't last long Every time There's the counter-revolution NATO Which takes over From the Congress of Vienna And Metternich There are extraordinary continuities And There That this revolutionary advance Is concealed By the most counter-revolutionary thinking Since the end of the war The one that's Against Gaullism on the right And against communism on the left In any case what remains I'll finish very quickly To hand back the floor What remains Is what Malraux was talking about In '45 Why do I allow myself To quote Malraux here It's because Malraux And this famous phrase In '45 Between the communists And us We the Gaullists There's nothing He was right at the time Ah yes at the time Everyone had collaborated Everyone and all the rest Was soaked in collaboration This nothing Has become the everything That has governed us For 40 years
Liberal-libertarian and societal 16:21 And which Clouscard Called in a famous article The Shameful Forty [Les 40 honteuses] I'll give you back the floor Excuse me What is this nothing There Let's come to this nothing It's funny But there's a transition Ready made With what was said I believe By Malraux In '65 About Mitterrand That unfortunately The PC had made the mistake So we could think That it's a historic mistake It's not a fault It's at least a mistake To present as a candidate That's already dodging the issue And going to fetch This character all the same A bit shady Malraux said Mitterrand Candidate of the whole left Including the far right There was that side When you think of all Those former OAS members Absolutely And the rehabilitation Of the putschist generals And lots of phenomena There Absolutely Exactly Absolutely And so It's funny All this transition We see how coherent Our adversary is really In fact I was thinking of what Cohn-Bendit said About Gaullo-communism It's over He found a phrase That brings us right back To Clouscard Because he quoted Clouscard Without knowing it in my opinion But he paid him An enormous tribute He said I am liberal-libertarian So there There That's a key notion I am liberal-libertarian He said it In the '90s Something like that At the moment when he was coming back Truly into politics It was his
17:31 Well I don't know If he knew The return to Germany Basically That's it Yes that's it Or let's say he wanted To get himself Reestablish himself Let's say in politics And it's a concept That was forged By Michel Clouscard As early as 1972 That's what's interesting That's it precisely We started talking about it At the time we talked about the Lili Bobo So at the time Lili remained Lili It's liberal libertarian But then we tried To launch the word Bobo I remember We don't care much about it Excuse me But it's stuff Like Bolshevik Bonapartist That means Then it didn't catch on Because that In fact in the end There are very few Bolshevik Bonapartists We have too few Bolshevik Bonapartists But well There Roughly The Lilis are the bobos But the real bourgeois-bohemians Or Buddhist bourgeois-bohemians Well There Excuse me I'm digressing a bit But there Clouscard had forged This term liberal-libertarian It's much more serious Because concretely It's the very formula Of capitalism After '68 Especially after the Marshall Plan Because Not everything happened Of course All at once In May '68 Clouscard's great strength We said Marxist critique Of counter-revolutionary elements In May '68 That's really his particularity But above all He explains May '68
18:41 As a consequence Of the Marshall Plan Well This May '68, that one This societal May '68 One must be There, another Important term Important to dig into Because these are words That have passed into the media But since we don't see How they are conceptualized They passed by precisely Smuggled in And without Really thinking about it So this term societal What does it mean For Clouscard He wants to show For example The fact of saying Madam Minister That's not real feminism Which can only be linked To a real change In the economy I don't know Increase the number of people In daycare That's fairly coherent That costs money For example If with that But there Not even That difference in salaries But it's when This so-called societal There A supposed Cosmetic measure Like Madam Minister Or even Like what the government Is currently doing That is to say putting Several women in the government While all the chiefs of staff Are men There This kind of measure Purely cosmetic Has almost the function Of concealing the class struggle So for example Women are victims Or other categories That, of course But of course That was It's someone like Domenico Losurdo Who I believe He was on the air Several times And who said It's thanks to the workers' movement Fundamentally Throughout its whole history In every country in Europe
19:51 That the greatest discriminations Based on money On sex Or on ethnic Origin Well in quotation marks If there hadn't been The workers' movement These three great discriminations Would have persisted There That is to say There's an intrinsic link Between these moral reforms So to speak And this workers' movement Starting from May '68 We invent the societal To create a screen Against these struggles There That is to say For example We start to worry About ecology In the sense of the environment A priori No one is going to tell you That they want to live In a polluted environment That is to say a priori But simply We used that To deindustrialize There That's where the societal Came in as a screen And so What Clouscard shows Is that starting from the Marshall Plan Fundamentally Capitalism Needs To avoid a crisis Of overproduction And it needs To avoid of course The subversive threat Communist Whatever you like So for that It needs To loosen On the level Of a certain consumption So on the level Of morals Of course It's not for everyone Because not everyone Consumes That Clouscard shows well
Libidinal, ludic, marginal consumption 21:01 That we don't enter Fully Into the so-called consumer society And into the American dream Carried by the Marshall Plan Exactly There Exactly Another journalistic term Consumer society But simply Of course That needs to be dug into I've never seen A consumer society Fully I've seen classes consuming And especially consuming It's not the same thing It's the milieus that consume The classes that consume But if there's a whole society that consumes Then tell me I'll go there right away There that's it But everyone consumes Not as much Absolutely A priori As Clouscard would say If a society Consumed everything it produced That would be socialism Strictly Speaking Democratic distribution Full satisfaction Of all needs Entirely There Exactly And no We don't live in that consumption But indeed There was a loosening On the level of morals So that a certain social class Could New middle strata Who were also Could consume Even in modes That are outright What Clouscard calls A transgressive type of consumption With a liberation of morals Which will authorize This consumption To such an extent That these new middle strata Will become outright The very advertisement Their way of life Will be the very advertisement Of this consumption Of the prolongation of the system There It's these consumptions That he calls of type
22:11 It's not the consumption Of so-called equipment goods Because that He's going to make a distinction It's not the fact Of having a washing machine That brings you into the bourgeoisie There That is to say for example At the time people like Marcuse would tell you And a certain number of leftists In the pejorative sense To take the lines That is people Very poorly organized And somewhat provocative And in the end Rather counter-revolutionary In their attitude Would tell you We are We the proletariat is wallowing In consumer society Because these people Consume a car For example They bought Or a color TV Etc Well except What Clouscard sees well Starting from the Marshall Plan And the organization Of what's called State monopoly capitalism It was a transition To hyper-organized capitalism An organization of production From every point of view Including It's really the era Of the large corporations Of complete relocations Of the countryside toward the cities An organization including In morals It's in the consumption From steel country in Lorraine Toward Fos-sur-Mer Massive There for example Yes We talked about it There It's a massive migration Very very organized There's a need for equipment goods So the corporate groups It's equipment goods And also equipment goods
23:21 Household goods, that is to say That if you don't have the washing machine So that madam can work Or the car To get to work To spend two hours In traffic jams Anyway The production doesn't work These are goods That are necessary For production And I'm not sure That when we spend Two hours in traffic Every day Well It's not exactly great fun No Indeed That's not consumption What There That's not going to be the consumption That Clouscard will define By contrast As libidinal Playful Marginal Libidinal consumption Playful Marginal There And that This consumption Is always The consumption Reserved for an elite And there From that point of view Everything is permitted There The great floodgates Are open And that's why We're passed on a morality From dad Morality of daddy's capitalism That Clouscard does not value For all that It's old France He situates it in history But that was The competitive one Where there was a need For a kind of Protestant morality If you will Of savings Of effort Of savings Of effort Etc There Even somewhat fascistic With its dreadful sides But he wants to show These are the same people who continue They continue exploitation It's exactly the same people But simply They need A bourgeois class
24:31 Who consumes To excess This production Libidinal Playful Marginal And who is going to serve To create envy in others Even if the envy Cannot be satisfied That's it? Which has a promotional function Yes which has a promotional function That's very true, guardian That's it, yes It's part of the ideology There, that's it Yes we're shown Shine, the beautiful car Or the fine equipment You want them And so you're going to accept The unpaid overtime hours Not imposed That's it? For example Work more to earn more As the other one said Or earn less Since that's it The reality of this slogan Yes yes And that gives what he calls The capitalism of seduction Seduction That's the term And capitalism of seduction Without any worry It's a critique of liberal Libertarianism He shows well that This capitalism This liberalism there Which continues to always be Just as exploitative In its very formula Which is always driven By the pursuit of profit That's the law In a capitalist mode of production As long as we don't change The capitalist mode of production It's simple It's always the same Since Marx In the abstract sense Marx described it It's the private appropriation Of the great means Of production and exchange We're at the heart of the problem So Well This capitalist mode of production Has a particular strategy
The capitalism of seduction and the old-fashioned bourgeoisie 25:42 Which consists At the level of morals In loosening A certain moral restriction For new middle strata For particular strata And having a certain discourse Libertarian So that's why There are almost people Who will tell you In sociology In a very silly way The bourgeoisie no longer exists In the sense There's no one left Who calls themselves bourgeois It exists more than ever In capitalistic terms The old-style bourgeoisie The one of Balzac Has disappeared The one from dad's era That's finally a bit That's why In '68 We bury dad This kind of bourgeoisie That's why Someone like Flaubert In the end is a bit off the mark I have a lot of respect for him But his Dictionary Of Received Ideas If it's to criticize That bourgeoisie there And then on top of it To wallow in the critique Of the Commune As he did with George Sand At the end of his life He started to miss his target And he misses it even more Today Because I mean Today It's so easy This subsidized art Sponsored I'm thinking of the PS state We're right in it Which criticizes this old Daddy bourgeoisie Which anyway No longer holds power No longer in power There Well The substance of the matter Is that When Clouscard criticizes This new society Being put in place It's not at all Out of nostalgia for the old one He himself always remains
26:53 From the point of view Of the workers' movement That's absolutely An essential contribution With this new society That it bears within itself That is to say all the same A complete reinforcement Of the capitalist mode of production In itself But he denounces This strategy He calls Liberal-libertarian And it's still astonishing That a Cohn-Bendit Was proving him right Right yes Without knowing What the underlying critique Was The real is rational As Hegel says Can I say a little word He spills the beans And he says he is Liberal-libertarian He says it in '98 In '68 He's very libertarian No question We're not liberal Because there You had to position yourself To the left of the PC To be heard Absolutely And he reveals himself now To the right of De Gaulle Well that's fine Liberal-libertarian Regarding the working-class roots Of Michel Clouscard Could you tell us Dominique A bit more About it Because he has Pro-worker feelings It's almost The emblematic topology Of the great sites Of the French working class The father a miner in Carmaux We're in Jaurès's country The mother A small schoolteacher in Gaillac The father died fairly young And for Michel It was already For him He told me often A huge promotion
Clouscard's working-class origins and his accent 28:03 To simply be A boarding-school supervisor A prefect, to put it plainly To pay for his studies At Saint-Gaudens Not yet in Toulouse Not yet in Toulouse Outright At Saint-Gaudens Right With the work He imagines To pay for his studies And Having noticed That Clouscard Stood out from the ordinary He was a protégé Coming out of his stables Sociological ones, so to speak It was his thesis supervisor There And who had worked On the Campan valley So he knew well The southwest and the Pyrenees Noticed this fellow So I allow myself here To situate Clouscard In relation to your question Yes I speak I speak with the voice Of Stentor That Lefebvre had No but So He was a philosopher Who had the accent Of his village Of his region Which is not well regarded Absolutely I don't want to reproduce it On the radio Because he showed very well No he has the accent of the southwest First of all it's not my region I'll only do a caricature There delicious But who was not ashamed To say I have the accent of my region I never tired of hearing it He used his accent a lot To fuel his humor
29:14 There But he was the first To be aware Like Rousseau We're celebrating the tricentennial But I'll come back to it precisely To the parallel Clouscard Rousseau Functional parallel Let's not get lost in ideas That mocking someone's accent Is mocking their social background In Marseille Pagnol's Honorine The fish seller Has a wonderful vulgarity Savory Which is that of the people Which is popular But it's not the moneyed vulgarity Which is the most odious of all That of the Balkany couple for example If you see what I mean Who are even more vulgar And who don't have that excuse But a very great doctor in Marseille Won't necessarily have The same accent as Honorine No but he'll have a touch of it There there there That's where That We recognize here The accent modulates socially And it's a Corsican telling you that Exactly So Clouscard very aware of that So I'll take the opportunity Since I introduced the figure of Rousseau The best way to make people understand Clouscard's positioning In relation I don't like the term intelligentsia Which lumps together Very different things But in relation let's say To the intellectual worker In the plural Whoever he may be Whether engineer, philosophy teacher His positioning In relation to that world Is exactly that of Rousseau Coming from Switzerland Le Pébourg Coming from Switzerland
On Modernity: Rousseau or Sartre 30:24 With his accent besides And arriving In Paris Or if you don't understand The comeback a split second late But we see what staircase wit Is It's ridiculous You remember the film Rousseau was the first to say Damn I understand Three hours after everyone else Oh yes That they mocked me There Clouscard And his positioning That is to say He appears to those who are The salon's flunkeys He appears He appears more reactionary On the societal level As we'd say today Of course Because he's the most revolutionary On the social level Because as soon as he says That equality is a right Then everyone jumps on him Including Voltaire Who demands his head on a chopping block In the famous letter On citizens In 1761 in Geneva There So if we lose ourselves If we stray into details Since we're celebrating The tricentennial of Rousseau Next June 28th And that Clouscard identified himself In large part With that positioning To the point that The first part Of the book that Bernard Kindly brought The critique of liberal Libertarianism It's a reissue But the original title Which was removed By the publisher Present here and fortunately so Because it was a bit Enigmatic for the average reader
31:34 With the author's permission Of course The original title Was On Modernity Colon Rousseau or Sartre That's the original title That's why I allow myself To talk about Rousseau To stay with Clouscard You don't know that Putting Rousseau or Sartre Poses problems Because a priori If we choose two terms Of an alternative We usually put the one We prefer afterward So for him it was really Rousseau against Sartre But yes Why did we go Fetch Sartre Because in this book What does Clouscard recall There I come to Clouscard properly philosophical Not the one who does The study of morals Etc Societal He says that after all The entire French philosophical school Of the postwar period That of the Cold War From Sartre to Derrida They can quarrel among themselves I don't understand The structuralists Existentialists There They're in the shadow Of the most Nazi of philosophers They all claim Heidegger It's still astonishing As an operation It took all the same A little detour By way of the United States Hannah Arendt Isn't it Student Disciple Mistress I didn't say that Heidegger Was a Nazi philosopher I said he's the most Nazi Of philosophers I stand by what I say Because there are quarrels At that level I mean Yes And Not that he controls without
32:44 I'm one of the most Germanophile There are now Left-wing Heideggerians Yes yes no But no but no That's not today's subject I'll give three quotes From Heidegger Without comment We all have A duty of Eros Toward the Führer The greatest event Of Western metaphysics Is the creation Of the Panzer Divisionen Well I'll stop there And it's more complicated than that The debate But I mean From there Making it pass Well So Clouscard sees this scandal There, another scandal How is it That from Sartre to Derrida Of course Sartre said At the time Whoever is anticommunist Is a dog Like the future René Andrieu Of the political bureau Of the PC at the time No one asked him to go that far Right Well But Clouscard spotted very early That there was something fishy in that And so he says But we saw Rousseau Why go fetch Sartre There we have someone Castro was wandering in the Sierra The Cuban jungle When he was doing guerrilla warfare Before taking power In Havana With The Social Contract Under his arm It's like interesting References I mean He risked his life every day There And then And as luck would have it Rousseau Who has nothing to do With the Terror It's before I mean It's a superb terrain Rousseau Pure Not contaminated By the quarrels The revolutionary terror
Worldliness, class snobbery, and the third term 33:55 Why not do This refounding And that's what he does He wants to do a refounding And from this refounding The great lesson The main thing retained from Rousseau Is The notion of what he calls Class snobbery And worldliness Rousseau Denounces in his time Denouncing a worldliness Not the world But worldliness As we'd say today Bling bling That's interesting Which is only the froth That surfs on the cream Of worldliness And Not a puritan It's quite the opposite Of a puritan Clouscard Nor Rousseau Had nothing Against money Against the fact That it's a bit Limited to certain milieus As Aymeric said earlier About consumer society So What The idea of Rousseau Strong From which he draws Most inspiration Clouscard Is the fact That important things happen among three It's not binary It's not left Against right It's not man Against woman Hutu Against Tutsi Or Corsican Against French That's to Muddy the waters Or as he puts it Admirably Capitalism Will always carry The civil war To the poor As he says very well It's extraordinarily topical Absolutely When you see the fights Between Roma
35:06 And North Africans in Perpignan Among others Well it's very topical Fight among yourselves And meanwhile We're pulling the strings We even add parties That organize to make that happen There And so make societal quarrels Turn men Against women Women against men The young against the old The forty-somethings against whoever Because the forty-somethings Take the jobs It never ends I mean In the end We fight Inside the same company So He saw that very well It happens among three Right It doesn't happen between two In a binary Or mirror-like way As we'd say Elsewhere In a mirror There's a third silent term That watches us Called the CAC 40 Called Wall Street And called The great international stakes And which is careful Not to be a party Involved in this chit-chat There So it's wasted time Distraction In the bad sense of the term Absolutely What I simply want to emphasize In relation to If we place If we make this analogy With Rousseau Which seems entirely relevant to me What's striking When Rousseau arrives In Paris Is that he runs up Not simply Against feudalism Against the old-style Ancien Régime He runs up Already Against a There Against a Propaganda Against a Bourgeoisie In vogue
Rousseau against the Voltairean bourgeoisie 36:16 Against a certain Bourgeoisie Of the Enlightenment To this This Voltairean Bourgeoisie Which well No longer Kneels Before crucifixes She's not there anymore But she's already starting To prepare To do the accounting And the one Who will come to power In '89 And pass the Allarde decree The law Prohibiting Guilds The law Le Chapelier Prohibiting Workers' demonstrations She's coming To really Lock things down There And God knows That I'm not making An apology I'm not associated With feudal society But there Already Rousseau He sees that He sees it Even if there are Proletarians Who helped The bourgeois Take power The right Remained With the bourgeois That's precisely why Starting from What's fantastic From August 10th, '92 This storming of the Tuileries Which relaunches The revolutionary process Otherwise we'd have ended up Like the English We'd have ended up Like the Glorious Revolution There Absolutely That means The pact Between the bourgeoisie The business bourgeoisie And the aristocracy And the corporatist guilds That's liberalism Among themselves Liberalism of the happy few It's between us Especially for John Locke
37:26 Basically Reason depends nonetheless On one's level of income Whereas for Descartes Already it must be noted That good sense Is the most equally shared thing In the world There's already a difference here But that's this liberalism There I'm quoting another Of my authors If I may Losurdo is excellent On this real youth Of liberalism What is liberalism It's that It's liberty For the happy few For the privileged There And Rousseau sees That Rousseau isn't only the Enlightenment Rousseau Well perhaps he's the Real Enlightenment But in any case There's a real sympathy For Diderot That's true But if Diderot Doesn't necessarily go as far But Diderot He tasted prison Really And then he Well anyway Rousseau His path is almost suicidal But anyway There Rousseau and Diderot Go very far But with Voltaire There it's already Already starting to lock things down And Clouscard is the same That's what's incredible Is that when he arrives in Paris With this same Class experience And we're not making It's not Stakhanov We're not going to make A whole workerist mythology But that explains As many things It's that There was Marxism and Marxism If We There That's the '60s If the '60s Are to Marxism What the 18th century
Althusserian Marxism and Deleuzo-Foucauldianism 38:37 Was to the Enlightenment There's Marxism and Marxism There are different Marxists There At the time We do Althusserian Marxism It's a Marxism Completely de-Hegelianized We're going to suppress Dialectics Alienation Which is in fact A coup d'état By the bourgeois university Against The movements Whatever they may be The PC first of all I weigh my words But clearly It's concretely that And you also have in full A supposedly leftist ideology Called Deleuzo-Foucauldianism Concretely Which is put in place Deleuze and Michel Foucault They are I know my trade I'm a publisher I always see booksellers When I tell them You have a philosopher Who criticizes Deleuze and Michel Foucault How?
39:16 A man of the right And it's true that most booksellers Are people of the left And progressive And that's likeable There are also many cultured booksellers But there are many For whom Deleuze and Michel Foucault Are still the left It's the ultimate The left And it's true indeed That they're philosophers But it sold well It sold at certain periods There That side exists too Oh yes for sure It was well promoted Anti-Oedipus It's a print run Really big problems But I think yes There are indeed Certain publishers Who have a great interest In defending them As happens with the media relay Oh yes yes That's obvious France Culture Absolutely But these are people Like also as Well Voltaire You mustn't make me say Too much bad about him He had courageous fights I don't know For freedom of expression Against We know all that by heart Well indeed It's the same For the struggles In Foucault's prisons Or the struggle In asylums But afterward The ideology that goes with it The philosophy that goes with it They're going to tell you The great confinement It's the fault of the Cartesians Which is a total misunderstanding Because it's true That it's the moment When the most witches are burned That corresponds roughly To that era It's not at all the Middle Ages It's more the modern era But this Cartesian bourgeoisie There Which was progressive Advanced Which took it full in the face From
40:26 From the [garbled name] At the college of the Feodos Of course not that bourgeoisie Which was on the front line In that repression And then a number Of total misunderstandings Which mean that Foucault Is absolutely detested By historians By Paul Veyne But on that point You only have to read Pierre Vilar On Les Mots et les Choses Where he takes it apart completely Where Foucault makes blunders Makes the critique of political economy Start By saying there isn't even one In the 17th century He forgets Montchrestien's treatise Which dates precisely from that period There, to show The intrinsic weaknesses of the system And then to arrive at something That is fundamentally Anti-rational Destructive Of progressive rationalism On the pretext And to arrive finally Excuse me I'm rambling But the most important thing Is that he arrives at a concept Of power Power in Foucault Is the equivalent Of the will to power In Nietzsche It's a concept That explains nothing It's so vague, so to speak That is, between I don't know The V2 rockets That Hitler wants to send on London And I don't know A kid who slaps another In the schoolyard All that is the will to power Or else I have a will to power Well thanks But that doesn't tell me It seems to me that with the concept Of class struggle I have a bit more
Bourdieu, Proust, and class determination 41:36 Well there I can go somewhere I can build a bit more So it's the same That All that Must be put back In relation to Marxism's achievements Let's say Marxism well understood Well worked through Of course Not everything is in Marx But And I think back To another author, so-called Marxist Well who's also Rather leftist To whom Clouscard Long clashed with Was Bourdieu There Bourdieu There, someone Who erased his accent Another good man I'll specify that I have a refined accent But I'm the dove But there I didn't erase mine But indeed Bourdieu spoke roughly like me Because he felt obliged To speak like Parisians He corrected himself There He corrected himself He says so himself With a certain honesty But I remember In one of his It situates him In relation to Clouscard Clouscard right in the middle of Apostrophes He was perhaps the only person Who arrived with an accent Forgive me for the expression But it cut like a knife Literally And Bourdieu on the contrary Said Me, this Béarn accent Horrifies me Yes Ashamed of his origins There That's it Well It's funny Because we're talking about all the same The two great sociologists To me Of this Marxisant era So to speak And they're strategies That have nothing to do with each other
42:46 There's an entryist strategy With Bourdieu Very well analyzed There I pay tribute to him By Jacques Rancière In The Philosopher and His Poor The Philosopher and His Poor That's quite clear We understand perfectly How Bourdieu wanted To get into the system Supposedly To hijack the plane To subvert it Well it's always The one who ends up drenched by his own hose After a while In the end you end up Pushing at open doors Clouscard said He showed That we play the accordion In the bistros And the piano In the salons That's the Distinction Yes yes we've made good progress I'll make a small aside In the same vein He said You look at all the pubs in France It's at the time Of the Anquetil-Poulidor rivalry Ah yes right The boss roots for Anquetil And the bartender for Poulidor That interests me much more There already there's Much more struggle We're in lived experience We're in everyday life There Me, on the other hand, I prefer Clouscard And you show I'm not going to badmouth But I clearly prefer Proust's research There, rather than Bourdieu's Distinction There we learn a lot more About the bourgeoisie There, concretely There's ten times more Of it In Proust Oh yes absolutely Any novelist In Balzac In I'll go further In Proust we find Not only Like all the great novelists We don't find only
43:56 An admirable state of affairs A well-observed picture As they say in cinema Of the bourgeoisie We find outright Reflections Class determinations To explain processes There's a passage Where we truly see We're at the opposite of Proletariat The girls in bloom On the pier at Balbec In front of the Grand Hotel He says There was a small beauty That circulated from one to another Regardless of their physical features It was linked to sport And to comfort Which was starting to develop In their milieu And which produces beautiful bodies It's extraordinary We'd say that now We'd say mechanistic Marxism It would be censored By Deleuzo-Foucauldianism And by Althusser It would be forbidden Under penalty of being A crude mechanistic Marxist To say like Proust Simply That there's a class determination In the beauty of young girls And so just to come back To Bourdieu Because I wanted to finish In relation to We talked about the concept Of power in Foucault Which is supposedly His key word And which explains strictly nothing Which is absolutely inoperative As a concept And historically So I'm thinking of things As big as houses By Bourdieu Telling you I'm going to complete Marx Or improve Marx Etc Who remains stuck in a dumb Economistic mechanism Etc I'm going to talk to you about the domain of the field So the field That is to say
45:06 There would be, for example, among journalists there would be rivalries between journalists, even though these journalists have the same salary, etc. Big deal. As if Marx wasn't capable of understanding this kind of thing. Or the notion of symbolic violence, that's taken from Weber. As if Marx wasn't capable of understanding that. When it comes to ideology, they're absolutely going to reduce Marx to some kind of stupid little runt, who actually corresponds in the end to something that even the bourgeoisie before Marx accepted, namely the notion of class. When you read, for example, Guizot's History of the Revolutions in England — Guizot is hardly a Marxist-Leninist — or Augustin Thierry, you have these people at the time who, well, admitted there had been classes. They accepted, roughly at least, social classes. Except afterwards they thought that once the bourgeoisie arrived, with positivism, things stopped there — the bourgeoisie, that was it, finished, that was that. But well, you see, they accepted that. And it's because there was Marxism, which at least put that back on the table — even if, let's say, everything that we end up crediting Marx with is often what already existed before him, things that were already established gains before him. Marx, fundamentally, is the tendential fall in the rate of profit. It's the imbalance of capitalism. That's what it is. It shows that in any case...
46:17 ...in the end the guy dies. That's it, I'm sorry, but that's how history goes. And well, precisely because there was this Marxism which kept restating these obvious truths, in order to understand a bit of sociology... It seems that now, in sociology theses, only a few percent of theses even mention the word "class." That's where we're at — an enormous occultation. I mean, we no longer understand anything if we don't go through... Of course, we can refine things in terms of "field," etc., fine, I'm willing to grant that. But is that what's decisive, concretely? Is it these rivalries between journalists that matter? No. What's decisive, what fundamentally makes us move into a revolutionary situation, as opposed to stagnating — where there's a transformation of quantity into quality, quite simply — fundamentally that remains, in the last instance, I do say in the last instance, an economic phenomenon. So, well, there you go. These are examples to show what Clouscard ran up against. That is, he ran up against the enlightenment of his time — not simply against obscurantism, which is still around — he ran up against its kind of false enlightenment, and with this sort of Rousseauian enthusiasm, but really charging in headlong, because that's a bit his characteristic, which makes him someone absolutely endearing. There you go. That's how it is.
47:27 ...that I met him, quite young. There you go. He was someone — it's quite fascinating — and on top of that, that talent as a writer, because in the last resort, there — yes — it's really a pen, it's a gaze, it's an eye. As Balzac said, he was an eye. It's a gaze upon this society. For me, Clouscard's "capitalism of seduction" is the human comedy of these last 40 years.
