English translation of the French transcript, made with AI and not yet proofread — click a paragraph to jump to it. Show the French original
Liberal-libertarian: a critical concept recuperated 0:00 With perhaps Georg Lukács as well. There's also Henri Lefebvre. Yes, exactly, you talk about that in the film. They were friends, by the way. A tribute to Henri Lefebvre. On the subject of co-optation, I do think, and this would really be the place to talk about it, it's the co-optation of the term libertarian. And the way in which the notion, the concept of liberal-libertarian, which was forged by Clouscard in an eminently critical perspective to show how capitalism—that is to say, liberal, so liberalism—could very comfortably accommodate a pseudo-emancipation, but one reduced to the individual flourishing of neo-petit-bourgeois.
0:42 How this notion of liberal-libertarian was later co-opted, but as something positive, by Cohn-Bendit, who said afterwards, I am a liberal-libertarian. And Cohn-Bendit is now an unconditional defender of capitalism. I heard him again, and you may have heard him not long ago, a little over a week ago, there was this right-wing Hungarian prime minister who wanted to finally impose laws—the right of nice people. Yes, right-wing, well right-wing, yes, but he wanted to impose laws, well, very reactionary, but what he's being criticized for is not caring about Europe, not obeying the European community, so to speak, that is, Brussels.
1:25 That is to say, in fact, what he was being criticized for was not the content of the laws, but the fact that he ignores the diktats of the European community. So there was a notable speech by Cohn-Bendit in the European Parliament, where he has been kept, housed, and fed for years. It has to be said that he's a parasite who has been living off his '68 fame for years. As with many others, he's not the only one, but this one is a big parasite, very visible and very loud. And here's what he said, I'm quoting from memory.
1:57 So, mister, I don't remember his name anymore, Orban, he was there, Orban had come. Mister Orban, Europe is not a carpet, not a rug you can wipe your feet on. Europe is a common house that we are building together. That's what he said. Well, that's why I had a slip of the tongue with 'rug,' because when it comes to rugs, there's a notorious rug at the service of capital, and that's the Greens, actually. You have to know that, it's a green rug, all that. Those people, you have to see them in Germany as elsewhere, and tomorrow in France, today in the municipalities.
2:28 They are really in the pay of what's called green capitalism, ecological recycling with new markets, etc. You see Bouygues, you see Vinci, well I work in urban planning, you see the Greens everywhere. You see the same companies everywhere. So maybe we should take a close look at party financing too. They're further right than Roosevelt. Right? Yeah. So, to come back to the co-optation of the word libertarian, it's problematic. Because, precisely, let me take this opportunity, for a very long time there was an impostor who had a prominent place among French anarchists, who is now a first-rate impostor, it's Michel Onfray.
3:03 Who now sings the praises of a libertarian capitalism? Who manages to be lauded in Le Point magazine? By Franz-Olivier Giesbert. He's the one who, while Sarkozy was Minister of the Interior and had intensified repression, went to discuss for Philosophie Magazine, at Place Beauvau, the existence of God and the difference between good and evil, with Sarkozy, who comes out with sentences like—I have them here, I could quote them, I won't quote from memory, because for this, I would like, for the readers, the listeners of Radio Libertaire, because really, I'm starting to get fed up hearing this—here's what he did, he wrote an open letter, you may remember, for those with more than a short memory, on November 25, 2009 in Le Monde, to Sarkozy, to have Albert Camus's ashes moved to the Panthéon, and here's what he says, by acting this way, Mister President—he's addressing Sarkozy, open letter—you will be at the origin of a revolution, a genuine revolution, which would spare us from wishing for another one.
4:12 It's written in black and white in Le Monde, the most recent one, I'd say the most recent, it's not precise, because... He said he was himself a capitalist, that he wanted to reform capitalism, he even said, I am for a libertarian capitalism, and here's what he says, libertarian capitalism, there it is. And the reason is as follows, and I can give you the references, since I have them here, capitalism is as old as the world, and will last as long as it does. So, what's a problem for me is not that there are impostors, there have always been some, it's that there are so many people who let themselves be duped by impostors.
4:46 There's a serious problem of critical thinking and awakening. I remember, at the end of 2009, there was a special issue of Le Monde Libertaire, they asked what alternative to capitalism and social democracy. Several readers were asked to respond. So among the answers, there was mine, but there was also Onfray's, praising a libertarian capitalism. You really have to see it to believe it. So, you'd expect it from Onfray, but you'd also expect the people in charge of Le Monde Libertaire to do some self-criticism one day.
5:17 Because, personally, I was fed up seeing the stacks at Publico. I know it helps, it sells, it's good, it helps balance the bookshop's finances. But it's a shame that such a character can continue to have... That now they're supposedly going around telling... You have to see the nonsense they say about that. I'm not an unconditional Sartrean myself. But to let pass... So, I do like now... In black and white, the big book that just came out, from Fayard, I think, or Grasset, from Fayard. In praise of Albert Camus. Camus, socialist, libertarian.
5:48 Camus was never libertarian. He was never socialist. All the serious biographies, which by the way generally aren't written in France, they come from the United States actually, he never claimed to be. He never claimed to be, Camus. But here now, Mister, how should I put it, Mister Onfray, uses Camus to position himself in the media and elsewhere. There's the same distortion with Nietzsche, his famous left-wing Nietzscheanism, I wrote a very short pamphlet on that. What amuses me a lot is telling the history of philosophy while blithely skipping over Plato, Kant and Hegel, and going to dig up, exhume, vague thinkers, vaguely libertine, likeable, who, on the theoretical level, don't contribute much to the matter.
Why Clouscard resents the libertarian 6:31 That's really... But no, no! No, no, I can't say that if Onfray... Let's not waste too much time talking about Onfray rather than Clouscard, but it's a good thing Jean-Pierre spoke up because it brings us back to the most important question, through the listeners' question, which is why Clouscard is so hostile to liberal-libertarianism. In fact, there's this. Liberal, we understand, but why is he hostile to libertarian? Here I'll intervene, I don't want to be too abstract, but still, though I've seen that there are listeners of the show who are quite well versed. And simply, it's as if by using the word libertarian, someone would wave at me that anarchy is a sacred word that must not be criticized.
7:08 I mean, it has to be examined—in the sense of not destroying it, far from it, but examining it. It spans a spectrum that goes from the far left to the far right, like many abstract and general words when left as they are. Between Louise Michel, to whom I'm ready to grant a subsidy, put up a statue wherever we want, and between Louise Michel... No, no, no statue. No, no, no, no, no. I understand myself, I understand myself. A date to be remembered. And the Oregon libertarians, who wait for the tax inspector with a rifle because the individual is sacred, and taxes, society, that's shit, there's only me.
7:38 Well, I mean, all of that can claim to be anarchism. And then... That's not it, minarchy actually. Céline is a right-wing anarchist. I mean, that's well known. That's precisely why he's so prized by liberals. The liberal-libertarians, starting with Sollers. So, I mean, there's nothing sacred in that. It's as if someone told me, I'm anti-Gaullist. Bravo, me too, I voted against him my whole life. Ah yes, but it's because I'm a Pétainist for French Algeria that I'm anti-Gaullist. You mustn't leave words vague like that, because you can end up not with a nuance but with a complete inversion.
8:09 Now, there is a fascistic use of libertarianism. And here I come back to the story of co-optation from earlier. In '68, the discontent, very well modeled by Jean-Pierre earlier, between the aspirations of new rising social strata locked in by a political outlet that doesn't materialize in France in particular—I mean, this is going to be co-opted and reversed. That is to say, this discontent is going to be aligned with the old right-wing discontent I mentioned earlier, against progress, and that's going to give rise to a certain ecologizing discourse against progress, against society, against consumption, against Malthusianism, against the fact that there are too many of us.
8:47 Look at Lévi-Strauss, who is almost Marxist-leaning at the beginning of his career and who by the end is anguished only by the fact that humanity is having too many children and that we'll never be able to feed them all. Going back to the ideology of that English factory inspector criticized by Marx, who said that when they wanted to raise wages, it's not by multiplying the spoons that you'll get more soup. Marx said that this fool forgot that the quantity of soup could increase all the same. Jean-Pierre? Yes, but let's not get into the debate on ecologism as an ideology and the fact that the capitalist mode of production is indeed a mode of destruction on the ecological level.
9:23 I do mean destruction of the natural environment, destruction of resources. It's less about talking about ecology than about economics. I'm talking about ecologism as an ideology. There's far-right libertarianism too. When you say progress, the ideology of progress, I would say... If the word progressivism means something that goes toward the flourishing, the enrichment of individuals and collective emancipation, that's one thing. If we say that the progress of technology—which technology, the progress of science—which science, in whose service, we can talk about it. So earlier when you said progress means tearing down barriers with respect to nature, I would say that the artificialization of the world we've observed since the beginning of capitalism may not be progress on the ethical, political and philosophical level.
10:16 We can very well... We mustn't confuse the word. That's why I use, like another sociologist named Alain Bihr, I use the word 'advance' for science and technology, but with the maintenance of the relations of production, that causes regression on the political, social, civilizational level. When they're studying nanotechnologies in Grenoble to implant them in the brain, they say it's to allow Alzheimer's patients to live longer, but we know they're also learning to condition prisoners, that a whole series of increasingly sophisticated control devices are being set up, RFID chips being integrated absolutely everywhere to track people.
10:56 They say it's to track similarly the elderly who get lost, the sick, etc. It's also the tracking of individuals in their daily life. I mean, when it's the Atomic Energy Commission with the State, there we have state monopoly capitalism, we have private firms in the nuclear industry and we have the State behind them. They changed the name, they didn't change the name. You type CEA, before that meant Commissariat à l'énergie atomique [Atomic Energy Commission]. But now there's another site, also called CEA, that one's for the eco-crats, that's the Commissariat aux énergies alternatives [Alternative Energy Commission]. And behind it, what do we have?
11:26 We have, as I mentioned earlier, GDF Suez, which on one hand builds wind turbines and on the other hand nuclear power plants. You see, they've got two irons in the fire. Ecology is a perfect—ecology, I mean as a field—is a perfect leverage point for renewing, on the one hand, the economic dynamic of capitalism, and secondly, on the ideological level, for recreating consensus. Because, save the planet, all together, no one is guilty, we are all responsible, sort your waste and then we carry on. Well, personally I'd prefer there to be less and less waste.
11:58 I wanted to say that, to come back a bit to Clouscard, there are hilarious scenes where he shows, he stages—because that's also his Molière-like side—he stages the hippie riding on rural poverty, there's a famous passage in Le Capitalisme de la séduction about the country house. You see the technocrat boss and his hippie son communing in these new values of a sort of return to the land. There, those are really hilarious scenes, and they say so much about the era. Because indeed, for there to be marginal hippies, for there to be a margin, there has to be a page, and that page was being footed by dad, let's be clear.
Clouscard's background and the balance sheet of 68 12:33 Hence, by the way, the old... Dad who was footing it while exploiting a working class. While exploiting a working class, yes, exactly. I know I owe the listeners of Radio Libertaire a brief description of Michel Clouscard's career path. Let's say what seems important to me, beyond personal circumstances, and I don't want to make a workerist point out of this, but because it has meaning, it seems to me, is that Clouscard comes from a truly very disadvantaged background, it has to do with the Carmaux mines.
13:05 Well, and indeed, he had... After a fairly complicated academic career, during which he spent about ten years writing his great thesis, L'Être et le Code, while working simply as a supervisor, I don't know what the term is now, but there you go. That was a boarding-school supervisor. Right, and then afterwards, it's a path that led him to even become a university professor of sociology at the University of Poitiers. But well, there, precisely, I can't make this workerist, what's interesting is that he saw pretty much all these milieux, hence precisely his Balzacian gaze, his sharp eye on the entire human community across all social classes, he knows it by heart.
13:46 And hence also a kind of class-based wariness, in the good sense of the term, toward, I'm thinking of an Althusser, who was truly a kind of mandarin Marxism, completely cut off even from the reading of texts, with an esoteric overlay, a distortion of Bachelard, notably the epistemological break. What strikes me about Clouscard, and by the way I find him quite likeable in his work, is that he has this wariness toward the master thinkers of the time. And that's what makes for a singular career path, and which also explains his...
14:17 That's what truly explains his marginalization, because indeed it's not necessarily due to publishing phenomena—I'm well placed to say so—or even, we could talk about his appearances on Apostrophes, there were others, but it's clearly what happened... He was marginalized, including from academic Marxism, as they say, 'la chaire' with an e [the professorial chair]. Right. And well, another thing, to properly understand Clouscard's path, so it's different, is that he was born in 1928, he died in 2009, and in '68 he was 40.
14:51 So that is, reaching the age of manhood, it cuts his life, you could say, like a hemistich in a verse. That's really the... So what's interesting is that he too had truly known that France of poverty, really, before the Marshall Plan, painful. And at the same time, well, he's still anchored in a reality that is that of the republican reality of the country. So he witnessed pretty much all the changes of mode of production, everything that implied. And what I also wanted to say, I have the feeling the listener might misunderstand, but what happens fundamentally after May '68—and here I don't think I'm contradicting Clouscard—after '68, it's the victory, well actually it's the defeat, of what had historically been the two forces of resistance, namely communism and Gaullism.
15:37 That's fundamental. That is fundamental. It can be measured. The two political forces that decline starting from '68 are Gaullism on the right and communism on the left. So the field is clear. Let's not call it a revolution, I call it a counter-revolution. Made way for Atlanticism. Regardless of the fact that there was the biggest strike in French history and that's undeniable. But indeed, the result is there, it's the decline of these two great forces. And afterward, a sort of tacit pact is set up after '68: the right manages the economy and social democracy sticks to the societal, to the liberalization of mores, but that's the kind that doesn't cost capital a penny.
16:08 Because a liberation of mores should have been a happy complement to social liberation. But when it's there as a fig leaf, when they'll tell you, for example, they'll throw at you the fact of saying 'Madam Minister' while doing nothing for the condition of the women workers of this country, that's what's absolutely repugnant. That's the use of this societal thing. Jean-Pierre, if we don't change the relations of production, saying 'Madam Minister' doesn't cost capital a single cent, this kind of reform, capital loves it. And yes, we can even arrange for Madam Minister to sponsor a policy, a Black woman—look at Condoleezza Rice invading Iraq, no problem at all, we do that, we know how to do that.
16:45 It's a matter of parity, to see whether leaders can be 50/50, of what they call immigrant origin or women. If the relations of production remain unchanged, that won't amount to much. There's a film coming out about Margaret Thatcher, feminists should really be careful about what they say too. That's absurd. Parity to become a leader, what does that even mean? No, but I don't think... Regarding the Thatcher film, I don't think there are really feminists defending the film.
Feminism, class issue and the societal 17:15 And with regard to the image, with regard to the image... No, I just wanted to say a word about the feminization of terms, which indeed, if it stops there, I don't see the point, etc. We're in complete agreement. On the other hand, when there's a will to feminize terms and job titles within companies, it's obvious that it won't overnight change the egalitarian relations, let's say, between male and female workers, employees, etc. On the other hand, it can still have an effect on minds.
17:47 Mentalities. I don't know, complementary and social rights. That is to say, it starts there. Those are baby steps. Because, I mean, we do have... You see what I mean? There you go. On the other hand, if you will, indeed, if it isn't accompanied by struggles, etc., it'll be very nice, very funny. I'll be happy about it. But I note that... No, I'm second. The first is capital, because it doesn't cost it a penny. So if people think they've made progress, etc.
18:18 No, that's not progress. If you like, it's the setting up of certain things that allow, for example, talking more and more about the glass ceiling, to use only that term, and, indeed, to show women themselves, who are absolutely not engaged in the struggle, that 30% of the population here, that is, women, are paid less than men, and it's them who get stuck with precarious jobs and all that. So that matters at that level. It matters at that level. Now, of course, if it's just that observation, and it stays, if you like, in the small tallies, and then, it's nice, and it stops there.
18:53 Aymeric. We'll agree, but precisely, so as not to speak for feminists, I remember there was a very good show on your airwaves. Femmes libres, on Wednesday evenings. With, notably, one of the authors, whom I had the pleasure of publishing, Jocelyne George, who wrote a book on the feminists of the CGT, and thus the history of the magazine Antoinette. And what personally thrilled me about that show is that she showed there was indeed a class issue within feminism itself. Exactly. She shows clearly that while the CGT was advocating precisely a reduction of working hours for women, at the time a number of bourgeois women were saying the slogan should be, we must work as much as men.
19:33 She also said that in the 1970s, while everyone had only the word feminism on their lips, on the contrary, the condition of working-class women was where there were the most factory closures, and that's where they took the biggest hits. But there was, there was a great deal, if we're talking about film, there was a great deal done precisely on that, if only regarding what happened at Lip, there were remarkable films, Christiane et Monique, etc., by Carole Roussopoulos, which speak very precisely about what happened and about gender relations within class relations.
20:06 And I mean, if we don't have, if you like, that analysis, at every level, and if there isn't, as you said earlier, self-criticism regarding terms used just like that, we won't move forward, that's clear. It's important to work on the concepts, and that's why Clouscard seems important to me, especially when he talks about the use of the societal and the social, you have to see their dialectical implication, their implication. But then, the use of the societal as a fig leaf for social regression, that, that... That's the opposite of a condemnation of the societal. It's a condemnation of that misuse of the societal which consists of using it to block social progress.
20:39 Which is the case of the dominant ideology. It has to be said that the very term 'societal' is contemporary with this movement. It didn't exist before. Look in dictionaries from before '68, you won't find it. It's like how the word 'resistance' bothers some people, so they made up 'resilience.' Yes, that's psychobabble. Nice word. On the other hand, I wanted to come back to what you said earlier about the term anarchy, which indeed covers something extremely broad. It's just that, in my opinion, we also need to keep going back to definitions, as we should also go back to the word fascism.
State-owned forest: two senses of the state 21:12 Because that covers a lot too. Because when you say, 'Ah yeah, that cop over there, look at his face, he's a fascist, that guy,' that doesn't say anything at all. So we need to go back to definitions. The term anarchy, if you like, when it comes to libertarians in the United States, obviously, they call themselves that because they're against the State. But what does being against the State mean? Very good question. Does that mean they're also against exploitation, against domination? No, they're actually quite in favor of exploitation and domination. Wait a second, I'll answer your question. What does being against the State mean?
21:42 When I go mushroom picking, which happens to me often, because I've lived too long in countries where there are none, I go mushroom picking, and I see a sign saying 'Private property, mushroom picking forbidden.' Do you pick the mushrooms? Not for me. No, no, no. You don't do it? Yes, yes, come on. I might go, but don't repeat it. On the other hand, when I see a sign saying 'State forest,' my freedom is extended. That means it belongs to the State. So there are two meanings of 'State' that contradict each other. The State, as you said, the villain who puts a ticket on my windshield, etc. Or the State that takes vicious measures, as we're seeing right now, attacking purchasing power, the social VAT, etc.
22:15 And still, I prefer to talk about the government at that point. And then, there's the State as general will. Me, I fight so that the general will comes to power and stays in power. The notion of general will is very debatable. No, no, but I'm precisely in the process of refining it. When you move from one to the other—Christiane is right to say we need to criticize and be clear—when you move from one to the other without warning, that's trying to fish in murky waters. We shouldn't already do that... Hence a question from a listener at the very start of the show. I'm coming back to it because we should answer it.
22:45 If you like, he says his impression is that Clouscard, at the end of his life—I'm giving it to you raw, as is—defended the State. I just answered that. If it's the State that puts up 'State forest' signs, that means, there, I'm not excluded, you're not excluded, the listener asking me this question isn't excluded either, he can go have a picnic with his girlfriend and his children. I mean, that's the complete opposite of a repressive State. So capitalism has an interest in playing on its own hatred, its own capitalist hatred, of the State. I come back to your example of the American libertarian.
23:17 And then, you listen to BFM, it's against the State every 10 seconds, against France, against the State, against France, against the State, against the Jacobins, well anyway, we all know that the whole Gulag, Nazism, fascism, it all comes, as everyone knows, from the French model. Well anyway, so, the Republic. So, between that State—the State that capitalism has an interest in criticizing because it stands for free enterprise, we must never forget, at the start, these were thugs seizing small ports in England because even the English monarchy was already too much of a lawmaker for them. They want every trick to be allowed in port zones.
23:48 That's the origin of true capitalism. And we still find it today, incidentally speaking of England's position. Well, I mean, that's not the state that this listener is criticizing, and he's right to criticize it, which is the repressive, regressive, and liberticidal and impoverishing state. So, I mean, I'm sorry, I gave an example with De Gaulle earlier, I can be against De Gaulle because I'm a Pétainist, that's not a guarantee of democracy. And conversely, I can be for the state, but well defined as the general will, that is, one that includes all of us and not as a government that is above us and does without us.
24:19 Which is not at all the same thing, but that's an old debate between the young Marx, who hadn't read Hegel's youthful texts at all and who becomes Hegelian again. I'm the opposite of Althusser incidentally, but let's not bother the listeners with that. But Marx clearly saw in the Critique of the Gotha Programme and the Erfurt Programme, I mean that we shouldn't leave the state as a state of decay either. Yes, well, if we start to... We can't do it because it's been done for decades and it continues. The rereadings of Marx, you can always find in his writings one thing and its opposite.
24:50 He wrote a lot. Yes. Me, I read... The last time I read Marx, it was the four volumes of the Pléiade edition. So of course, Maximilien Rubel, who wasn't held in high esteem in official party Marxism, showed that Marx was in fact profoundly anti-statist. Especially in his youth. And especially when he... No, no. When there was the Commune, he wasn't that young during the Paris Commune. When he said communism, finally, here it is realized in the Paris Commune, what was that? It was the self-organization of the working class where representatives and the represented, that divide no longer existed since the representatives were under permanent control of the said working class.
25:24 It was the rotation of tasks. It was the... Well, the institutionalization of class power since the French Revolution, there are lots of... There's the definition of the state as... How should I put it? I repeat, institutionalization of a class power. The bourgeoisie couldn't reproduce itself if there were no state. The university serves to reproduce the ruling classes, we need to know that well. The idea isn't to... If you're really an anarchist, you say, we shouldn't reform the university, we should shut it down and find other modes of teaching.
25:54 I don't hide my commitment. As for me, I lived long enough in certain so-called socialist countries. The one where I lived the longest was Cuba. Well, people confused, as in France, the Cubans didn't confuse it for long. State property of the means of production and collective appropriation. State property, when it's in the hands of an uncontrollable bureaucracy with a single party and repression, I can tell you it's just as much a privation, in the proper sense of the term, for the workers as private property is, because it deprives them of all power.
26:25 I'm not here to praise the State with a capital S. It's simply obvious that there's a right-wing anti-statism and a left-wing anti-statism, which is represented by the movement, well, I was saying, the anarchist tendency. The state, as a separate institution that allows either a ruling class to reproduce itself, or serves as the cradle of a new ruling class as we saw with the nomenklaturas, and so on, that's not progress for me. That's not progress. State property of the means of production is all well and good, but if it doesn't give an increase in power to the workers, or to the users for that matter, that's not progress.
27:05 For me, that's not progress. And everything proves it. And one of the great failures, one of the great reasons for the unpopularity of the so-called socialist regimes among the population was that, they knew they weren't in power. They knew very well, I was in East Germany for a while, in Poland, well anyway, nobody, people, of course once you had their trust, they knew very well, moreover there was something symptomatic when they watched television seeing a leader, they always said 'they,' 'they say that, them.' It's understood, it's not us. Well, that's very clear, we still have, well, we have a disagreement.
27:35 As for me, I'm not, and that's why I'm against the alter-globalists, whom I call alter-capitalists, who dream of a return to the social state, which is impossible. Capitalism in the current crisis cannot again generate the profits, and above all the surplus value, that would finance part of, I was going to say, welfare, as we used to call it, but on top of that, the people who dream of a state, the Mélenchons and company, Attac and company, Le Monde diplo, for me, it's, one, unrealistic, capitalism cannot return to the social state, and the social state was, after all, the result of a given conjuncture where the bourgeoisie was scared, as was said earlier, scared of revolution, it was better, you know very well that the first social laws of a capitalist state came from Bismarck, who was a progressive regime in a sense, in the sense of progress.
28:25 I think we're 100% in agreement. No, we don't necessarily have to agree, we know that well. No, no, on that point, yes. I'm criticizing those who have a legitimate critique of the state, deep down, and who get it hijacked by a right-leaning discourse. It's the small-state, the petty-poujadist counter-state and its ideology of proximity. When you read Le Point, indeed, they're against the state's grip, but it's very simple, it's in order to leave it. No, what they're asking for is a state that deregulates even more. Because it's false to say that the state doesn't intervene.
Did Clouscard defend the state? 28:56 Neoliberalism is a policy. Now they call it governance. They no longer say government, that's too political. Governance is a term imported from corporate management. That's why these are trap terms. Public-private partnership. Ah well, we have to keep renewing ourselves. We have to change things in a regressive direction. This story about Clouscard and the state reminds me of an anecdote. I don't know if you know Pierre Bayle, he was a sort of precursor of the Enlightenment. He talks about an anecdote about the child and the gold tooth.
29:28 And it had been said in the Kingdom of France that there was a child with a gold tooth. And it sparked debates as far as the Sorbonne, and people tore each other apart with theological arguments endlessly. And then, after a while, someone wonders, he goes to check anyway what's going on under the gold tooth. And he scratches and sees it was gold powder or something like that. It's the same thing for Clouscard and the state. In fact I can see where it comes from because I think it's a listener who must have simply looked at the Wikipedia page, the Orwellian reference of Michel Clouscard. Wikipedia is the very opposite of the Diderot-style encyclopedia.
30:00 It's an encyclopedia founded on the invisible hand, on individual energies, but of course of those who have the means to spend all their time on the internet. And I admit that, despite all the interest I'd have in developing this page, I don't do it because I think it's a lost cause compared to all the stupidities floating around on the web. And that's why I prefer to devote myself to publishing books because that's paper, it lasts and it must be defended, forgive me for having a somewhat corporatist point of view and defending the profession. He said it.
30:30 So yes, I saw something like Clouscard defends the state at the end of his life. But what does that mean? I would like us to pin down... From that point of view, as much as I agree with Jean-Pierre when he says Marx has contradictions, maybe. I mean, there are certainly some, in any case. But what's important is to do applied Marxism. In any case, and Marxism is vast. That's what needs to be done... especially in the 20th century. But in any case, what I mean is that, sorry, but Clouscard doesn't differ from a basic Marxist. So yes, Clouscard is not an anarchist. Indeed, Marx's conception of the state, and the conception, well at least of Marxists regarding the state, I'm not doing any demagoguery about that.
31:11 But there you go, that's simply it. I seem to be laughing, sorry, but let's reassure this listener who's worried about Clouscard's relationship to the state. An anecdote: Clouscard, at 61, had done his military service at the Joinville battalion because he was a great athlete, where the best athletes in France were. Yes, we didn't say that. At Vincennes, right, right, right. You see, he was a finalist in the 100 meters, right after the war. And so, at 61, he still went there out of loyalty. It was a paradise for athletes. He kept climbing over the wall. He, supposedly a partisan of the state, even though he had a hundred times the means to pay, but it was a habit of dodging, as when he was in the army.
31:45 He got caught by a guard who told him, and he said, 'I'm a state doctor and Sartre was on my jury.' He couldn't help saying that, with his accent and everyone laughing. I would have loved to see the guard's face. No, but that's the exact opposite of someone with a cult of authority. But it was a provocation when there are pages or passages where he speaks well of the State with a capital S, in the spelling, not in the thought. It was to take the opposite stance from those who pass themselves off as libertarians and who are in the process of building neoliberalism. That's it. In the last texts too, on questions of state, he was nostalgic like many.
32:20 I was talking earlier about Attac. There are plenty of well-intentioned people. He's nostalgic for the social state, as they say, or the protective state. Wait, social state in Italy means something very heavy-handed. In France, in France, that's the social state. All the discourse of the alter-globalists, whom I call alter-capitalists, as I told you, and I can tell you why, but it's the social state every time. Le Monde diplomatique, the theorists, Lordon, the whole bunch, Jacques Sapir, I take all the pens, I was going to say, of the alternative, which is one alternative.
32:51 Alter-capitalist why? Because another capitalist world is possible, or a world that's differently capitalist, but certainly not, for them, a world other than capitalist. That's why I call them alter-capitalists.
Song by Fred Alpi and Clouscard's bibliography 33:31 Violence and corruption underline the vulgarity of these unbroken laughs that serve as their identity. Between Vichy and Las Vegas, the masks eventually fall. It's still in the name of race that humanity is brutalized. The sheep think they're dogs and the dogs...
34:23 And the dogs think they're wolves. It's under the songs of the militiamen that they bring thought to its knees. The advertising megalomania, narcissistic and all about ego, creates the illusions necessary for the flock's consent. Between Vichy and Las Vegas, the masks eventually fall. It's still in the name of race that humanity is brutalized.
34:53 The bankers have set up their abominable puppets and as they wage their class wars.
35:25 They feel invulnerable. I don't want their hell. Even crumbs would be too much. Now, heaven on earth is simply what I need. Between Vichy and Las Vegas, the masks eventually fall. It's still in the name of race that humanity is brutalized. That was Fred Alpi, 'Between Vichy and Las Vegas.'
36:10 You're still listening to Chroniques Rebelles on Radio Libertaire 89.4. And we're on the phone during the music breaks. 0143 71 89 40. Before we resume the discussion, I'd like you to tell us again, since the listeners don't necessarily have time to write it down, the title of the DVD, where you can find the DVD, at Publico for certain, but you can also find it elsewhere. And also, the books that have been published precisely on Clouscard's thought. So the title of the DVD is Everything Is Permitted But Nothing Is Possible.
36:42 A documentary on Michel Clouscard's thought. So it can be found in all good bookstores, first of all. And also directly on the website of Éditions Delga. It can be ordered directly, either by check or by credit card, secure system, that's it. So you type Delga, D-E-L-G-A, that's it? DELGA, or Éditions Delga, you'll find it very easily. Otherwise, all of Clouscard's complete works are being published by Delga. So in the catalog, there's already The Capitalism of Seduction, Neofascism and the Ideology of Desire, The Frivolous and the Serious: Critique of Libertarian Liberalism, Genealogy of the Counter-Revolution, The Production of the Individual, which is part of his thesis Being and the Code, which is coming next.
37:23 And among the forthcoming books, there's The Wild Beast, which actually refers to Hegel and his conception of liberalism, actually it refers to liberalism, The Wild Beast. And the famous Treatise on Mad Love which will appear soon. Fabien? Yes, I'll also mention the little book by Aymeric Monville, who out of modesty won't talk about it, which is a little book that... Ad usum Delphini, how should I put it? Yes, which summarizes... That's nice, can you repeat it? For the use of the dauphin.
Not rock in general, but a metric 37:55 There you go, it's called... And another one, is that enough? It's called Neocapitalism According to Michel Clouscard. There you go. Also at Delga. Yes, at Delga as well. So I'd like us to come back to the music. You see, it goes by very fast. We'd need at least four hours to really talk about it a bit. You'll come back. We'll do that. And also, no, I wanted to talk about the music because, watching the film, and I'm addressing this more particularly to Dominique, Dominique Pagani, is that you say... Well, I'm going to say it very quickly and bluntly.
38:27 That is to say, you make a kind of amalgam, you say rock. But rock, and you say that rock is... Actually it's... You lump in disco, whatnot, and also the interesting stuff, excuse me. And then you say it's not a popular music. Well, I don't agree at all. Which rock are you talking about? Are you talking about the first rock in France or rock in general? I didn't understand. It's not to please anyone, but I sense that the good questions are good but well posed today. That's what answered in my place with your distinctions.
38:58 So, I just have to give the second half. I'm precisely not talking about rock in a global way, it's quite the opposite. I clearly distinguish rock'n'roll stricto sensu, the rock'n'roll that was called that in the 1950s, the Bill Haleys, the... Elvis Presley, etc. Ray Charles, before Elvis Presley. There you go. Ah, but that's not the same thing. Already, we need to make a distinction between Ray Charles and Elvis Presley. No, no, no. Elvis Presley, that's really... So there, that's really redneck. I'm not talking about soul Ray Charles, I'm talking about rock'n'roll Ray Charles, that is, he wrote 'I Got a Woman,' to be precise, which was one of Elvis Presley's biggest hits.
39:31 Yes, but Elvis... Yes, okay. And he couldn't sing it himself because he was Black. I mean, and it's a white man who popularizes it. That's not racism itself. Quite so. The very first rock'n'roll, that's Messi, that's... Before white people take hold of it. And I even want to tell you, I actually praise rock'n'roll compared to what followed, because there's still a counterpoint. I don't want to get too musically technical, but at the same time, it's not that musical either. We're talking ideology and we get trapped. So, there, I'm not putting rock in general on trial. I'm putting on trial a metric that can be called disco, that can be called...
40:02 There you go. It's a metric. And even so. And you're forgetting, you're forgetting some groups anyway. There's music I love that's binary. On the contrary, it's much more nuanced than you can present it at a distance. But it's convenient to present it that way. That allows me to make... These are more than nuances, fundamental distinctions. Bach is binary. Jazz is binary. I love jazz. Pink Floyd is not binary. No, but I'm getting there. I'm getting there. A metric can be binary, one of the simplest there is. But it doesn't matter if it's compensated by a richness of harmony or timbre. I think amplified sound doesn't bother me at all.
40:33 It's a contribution. I'm on the lookout for all new sonorities, whether in classical, jazz, or elsewhere, or in world music. If it's enriched by harmonies, by melodic work, I'm thinking of the improvisation of a Charlie Parker or a Monk. From a melodic point of view. It's fabulous. At that point, the metric can be binary or monotonous, it doesn't matter. There's balance. But when everything is reduced, when there's nothing left but the guitar and the bass, keyboards, for 60 years as I speak, I denounce, I don't want to, in the name of some conservatism, I denounce a blockage, on the contrary.
41:04 When young people's ears... I ran a music training center funded by your taxes, if I may say, because it's the European Union, in one of the poorest countries in the world south of the Sahara. And I saw clearly the reactions of ordinary Africans, because they don't have the means to... In Niger, to be specific. There's a center in Niger, not to name it, which is a country almost... Even poorer than Mali, which is saying a lot. An LDC, least developed country, to use the jargon of bureaucrats. Well, I mean, moreover, I should say, this center brought in more money for Niger than corrupt agricultural projects, etc., and river irrigation.
41:34 There you go, we'll talk about it another time. And there's a book being published by L'Harmattan about this center called Griot and Musician: From the Grind to the Profession. So I know the subject a little. And I had African, Nigerien students who only knew Vanessa Paradis or Michael Jackson and who were playing Chopin and Debussy with tears in their eyes after a year at my center. I saw that happen. Saying, we were locked in there. Because on RFI, they never play for us what you're showing us. On RFI, an institution of the French state precisely, I mean, they only play rock. It's a propaganda institution.
42:04 Only rock in the extensive sense now. In the sense that encompasses all things binary from the 1950s to now. I mean, there was a great confinement. I'm deliberately using Foucault's expression to turn it against him. The great confinement isn't Descartes and reason. The great confinement is that moment that appears with the Marshall Plan, as if by chance. How curious, we talked earlier about binary metrics and we never get out of it. You're on a rail, guys, you'll never get off it. There's no question of going to listen to Beethoven's ruptures where you never know if it's going to turn left, right — Beethoven, who is his contemporary, popular, is stuck in a populist mode.
42:42 So, the real populism that I denounce, that one, we don't often denounce that one. There you go, that's the ghetto in which millions of young people worldwide have been locked up so they never get out, because I believe there's a very high stake in musical consumption, a political stake. Let's be clear. Since always, since antiquity until now, these are not indifferent matters. I've just taken part in a broadcast on the lyrics of the Marseillaise at the time of the Revolution. Things like that mattered. There you go. So, I mean, I'm not at all putting recent music, so-called 'current music' as they say at the Ministry of Culture, probably by antiphrasis since it's more than 60 years old, I don't see how it's 'current,' on trial.
43:20 I'm trying, on the contrary, to broaden the musical horizon of young people who've been locked in this ghetto, and poor young people, I should say, because a young Japanese person has all the leisure to play the complete works of Beethoven whenever he wants, or to play jazz, or to take an interest. I've seen Japanese people into traditional Malian music. Yes, but if you want, what comes across in the film, and I regret this a bit, because there's actually an interest in having this nuance you're developing, that is, we get the impression, I'll play devil's advocate a bit, that is, it's also a reproach addressed to Aymeric, that is, it seems like rock isn't a popular music, jazz is.
Jazz, learned and popular music 44:05 So, I have a bit of trouble swallowing that because jazz, for me, is a music that addresses, not all jazz, but a certain form of jazz addresses, all the same, an elite. On one hand, and on the other, if you want, when we talk about rock for example, it's impossible to overlook the blues, without which rock wouldn't exist. So if you want, we get to jazz, but if you want, that music, for me, represents something extremely powerful on a subversive level, I mean, not all of it, I'm not talking about the little repeated song that gets played on TV shows, etc.
44:44 Besides, it's very simple, you just have to watch television, everything that's not shown on television is generally sometimes interesting. What's shown on television is rare. There you go, we agree on that. So my impression is that you left out these nuances a bit, and also on the matter of production. Something happened in France in relation precisely to rock which also arrived from Great Britain, because there, and then from the United States, and if you want, the producers said to themselves, uh-oh, watch out, we're missing out on something, money, money, no question, so they quickly, quickly, if you want, took it over.
45:24 They didn't even have the singers, they had nobody, they went to find them in the street, etc. So if you want, they completely, these are manufactured pretty-boy acts. What happened in the United States, what happened in Great Britain was totally different. Because there, it was also a music, even if it was later co-opted, but at the start, even the production companies, if you want, had something where there were demands being made. It was quickly co-opted. Speaking of co-opting, we can still think of one of Clouscard's very elliptical, rather brilliant formulas, he says, only what is co-optable gets co-opted.
45:58 Hence the fact, moreover, there are plenty of people who still believe that Cohn-Bendit was someone who betrayed the Revolution. Actually, his behavior was mightily... If we go back precisely to '68, we should talk about Jean-Pierre Duteuil, who did not betray. We'll come back to the music, a word on Christians on jazz-classical music. I just wanted to say one thing about... Why are we talking about this? Very quickly, because it's very interesting what you're saying. It's because indeed, Clouscard talks about it a great deal in The Capitalism of Seduction, which is moreover dedicated to Dominique who is here. And that's not for nothing because Dominique was...
46:30 I'm not betraying a secret in saying he was also behind the scenes on these issues. So, it all connects fully with Clouscard's work. We're not off topic. There you go. Let me make a quick clarification. Indeed, this work is dedicated to me, and it's a work I owe a great deal to, in this way. There, I'm setting the record straight. Posthumously, I owe a thousand times more to Clouscard, who never told me... It's only in the musical field that I brought a few small pieces of objective information. There you go. Full stop. That should also indicate that the music on the DVD is jazz music. We've forgotten a lot of things.
47:00 That's signed by the philosopher. I didn't... The show is uncontrollable. When Christian says "I said you're pushing it a bit far by saying that jazz is popular music and that rock is music sold out to reaction." Of course, there's a provocative side to it. But it's still to recall historically that I'm taking maybe the most difficult jazz. Our two young filmmakers here know music in general and jazz in particular well. And I think they'll contradict me. Bebop, the solos of Parker, Monk or Gillespie are among the most complex things there are.
47:33 We'll rather make a simplification afterwards. As happened with classical music. Yet this jazz was danced to in dance halls holding a thousand people. I mean, listen, Bird at St. Nick's, one of Parker's lesser-known records, which is fabulous, it's a live recording where he plays even ten times louder than in the studio. Bird at St. Nick's, because you see, I mean, yes, almost distortions, sonorities that are very free-jazz-like, if you will, and free-jazz-ifying, sorry, it was done in... It was still a popular music, the most popular of the learned musics, the most learned of the popular musics, to borrow a famous expression.
48:07 And, I agree with you, when it became connoted with a certain elitism, that's a musical decline. I note that jazz has become impoverished. When I... I'll finish on this, I'll hand over the floor. When I come out of the metro coming back from a stay in Niger, for example, and I see a young guy in the metro, 17 years old, with a little amp, playing note for note the most complicated solos of Gillespie or Clifford Brown, I say, still, that's fantastic, that's good, all the same, we never talk about these young people. And then, I realize, I'm admiring a young man who's playing music from 40 years ago. There's a blockage because Gillespie was playing the music of his time, and he wasn't playing music from 40 years before.
48:40 There you go. I mean, it's not entirely a coincidence, all the same, when jazz became elitist — that's already reason to denounce it — it became impoverished musically. Yes, it got whitened. Well, no, I have nothing to add, except that, well, that ties back to what the Frankfurt School sociologists, the Germans, used to say, that one had to distinguish mass culture from popular culture. Mass culture is a culture manufactured by manufacturers, by merchants, aimed at a people treated as consumers and as cattle, and that they seek only to stupefy. Popular culture is something that emanates from collective creativity.
49:11 And then, there you go, between... We talked about blues earlier and rock. Between the two, there was what was called... We mustn't forget that the word "rock" is a commercial word meant to launch this music. Before, it was called rhythm and blues. Well, but rhythm and blues wasn't at all... reality. The origin of the word is very, very, very complicated. Because on top of that, there are connotations... There you go, there you go. We'll sometimes get into the etymology of what "rock" means too. Well yes, there are sexual connotations, absolutely. But that's quite... It was starting as mass music, to come back to that.
49:41 With this film, in France, we can say it took hold with the film Blackboard Jungle. Yes. By Bill Haley and his Comets, which was a perfectly moral and reactionary film since there were bad hoodlums and good teachers, with a colonel from the American army. He always voted Republican. So, we have a white one. What about country? Yes, you could still have talked a bit about country because... If we talk about country, we're going off topic there.
50:12 No, but it's kind of the same theme. That is to say, country music equals Southern peasant music, racist, redneck, and whatever else you want. Redneck. Local pétainism. Yes, but there was... Redneck. First of all, well, we can't get into that debate here. There can be profoundly reactionary music, made by artists who can be good otherwise. Yes, for example, take the band Guns N' Roses, who are far-right and who make beautiful music. I consider Louis-Ferdinand Céline to be one of the greatest French writers, and I'm perhaps the only one here who thinks so.
50:42 Well, let's close that parenthesis, and especially since in his early books, Journey to the End of the Night, all the same, there's quite a libertarian side. It's brilliant, it's an immense artist... It's by chance that before we were talking about Aragon, now we're talking about Céline. That's a sociological phenomenon. It has nothing to do with literary qualities. We're still talking about two very great writers. As it happens, Céline has thematically replaced Aragon just as Heidegger replaced Marx. My father was an anarchist, he had me read Céline at 14. I can tell you, so there's a problem there. He didn't swing to the right afterward. What I want to say about music is, forgive me for getting into something universal that's not so concrete, that's a bit abstract, but we can still at least praise music that's complex for everyone.
World music, the Musée de l'Homme, and conclusion 51:20 That is to say, I love steak and fries, but steak and fries at every meal is horrible. And there you go, more music, and give everyone a musical education. That is to say, what Dominique didn't mention about his center in Niger is a very, very interesting experience. It's that there's playing Chopin, playing Debussy, and then these popular musics that also had to be rediscovered — I'm thinking of Niger. And also to make them known. These little Nigerien musicians now tour the whole world. I mean, their music is recognized. There you go, that's it. Against these sorts of...
51:51 against the very notion of "world music," which has served to rock-ify a whole wealth, a whole complexity. If you think of Pygmy polyphony, for example, that's a complexity that escapes any rock producer today. World music is not the music of a world without masters. Exactly. That's a very beautiful phrase — I was taking photos, sorry, I was a bit far from the mic. But we must still say that world music, for many musicians, of the world.
52:21 Yes, what's called world music, that is, traditional music, if you like. I'm thinking in particular of Ocora, for example, which does quite... I've published quite a few... Yes, there you go. I have one right here, I'm glad you mention it. Yes, because it's true that it's... It's really... There are absolutely magnificent things. And most self-respecting musicians can only be curious about this collection and about what's done there. Because the music we make, even if it's...
52:51 We take up again, we borrow, we draw inspiration from music made 40, 50 years ago, etc., to feed the imagination, creativity, and so on. If you don't take these little gems that are scattered all over the place into account... There, you're making me think of something extraordinary, which is that the students at that center in Niger, precisely, were locked into pop stars, etc., and didn't know their own traditional music. And even had a bit of contempt for it, which is somewhat normal when you come from the bush to the city, it's rather...
53:22 Because when you're 18, 20 years old, it's not to play the music of the auntie who stayed in the village. Well, bringing to them, broadening their horizons by teaching them everything that RFI forbade them — jazz, classical, etc. — and other world musics, African, Japanese or Oceanic, because there are polyphonies among the most complex in the world — he mentioned the Pygmies, admirably, but there's also Papua New Guinea, almost as complicated as the Art of Fugue, and even something more complicated. Well, that reconciled them with their own traditional music, precisely.
53:52 There you go, that's just the paradox I wanted to point out. That's interesting to know. It's striking, moreover, this logic that led to destroying the Musée de l'Homme to build the Musée des Arts Premiers. All the same. All the same, there we went from a republican universalism that respected all cultures in all their richness and highlighted them, to a kind of commercial thing aimed at the picturesque and the exotic. And false otherness, which is neocolonialism. False otherness that's visible, because the Romanesque capitals could be — well, simply, to wrap up...
54:26 That's a bold digression. Oh no, I'm well placed regarding African sculpture. I look at the heads on Romanesque capitals, it's closer, frankly, to African sculpture than to Rodin. So, to wrap up the show a bit, we're going to tell you again, of course, where to find the books or how... the DVD, which I think, as you were able to see, is truly a DVD, a film that's extremely dense and that thoroughly sparks debate.
54:56 I don't think we can watch... That's a good question. There you go. Frankly, it's a film worth seeing. You can agree, disagree, it doesn't matter. In any case, it brings about reflection, and that's what's important, I think, in Fabien and Ossian's work. Personally, I think that for non-professionals, they did an absolutely fantastic job, very important in the sense that they really brought something. Are you going to make other films, in fact, on your own works. In the mic, in the mic. We're working right now on a...
55:26 Ah, that's it, they've caught the bug. Exactly. But on a film about Jean-Jacques Rousseau for the tricentenary, with Dominique Pagani as the main speaker. And others are planned. There you go, others afterward, no doubt, on Gramsci. There you go. So, just one thing, may I allow myself just one tiny little critique, very small, tiny, from a technician's point of view. In the editing, there are 2-3 spots where you need to leave a little bit of breathing room, what's called in the trade jargon, to give a bit of a connective flow, something.
56:03 Musically, I jumped a couple of times. But it's nothing. It's not important at all. I'm saying it on air on purpose because it's not something important. But it's an absolutely essential thing in editing. It's not a matter of... In this film, it mustn't be cut, it must be edited. Editing is something... It's another part of the creativity that adds to the filming, etc. Because the shots — you did very beautiful lighting, the interviews, it's remarkable, it's really well done.
56:34 So, on what medium? What did you film with? A camera. That is, a 5D? Yes. Right. That, I suspected. But you recorded sound separately. There we go, there's a democratization of productive forces, which is a major area of our time. Well, the 5D, democratization, excuse me... No, but compared to... There you go. It's still two average salaries. Or three. There you go, or three. We agree on that. Oh no, that's not... I have a 5D too, but it's...
57:05 Well, well, that's very good. So, can you give us all that again? So, a film by Ossian Gagny and Fabien Trémeau, Everything Is Permitted But Nothing Is Possible, a documentary on the thought of Michel Clouscard, which is in all bookshops and on the website of Éditions Delga, www.editionsdelga.fr. And of course, the works of Michel Clouscard currently being published, Le Capitalisme, also from Éditions Delga, and in good bookshops, and at Publico: Néofascisme et idéologie du désir, Le Capitalisme de la séduction, Critique du libéralisme libertaire, généalogie de la contre-révolution, Le Frivole et le sérieux, La Production de l'individu, and others to follow.
57:46 There you go. And then, one thing must also be said, which is that with people who are starting to film, to make works like this, I personally find that wonderful, and it means that, if I turn around the phrase "everything is permitted, nothing is possible," we're going to make sure that both are the case, that it's permitted and that it's possible, both, because there's no reason it shouldn't be. I believe you can come back whenever you like, for the Rousseau film, for example, and even, why not, talk about this film again, because I think it might be good to broaden it further, even with other people who will have seen it, even perhaps do a screening at Publico, and see a bit how people react, how people interpret it, what they send back about what they saw — I think that's something, this film needs to travel.
58:30 Right? Agreed. There you go. And then, for Dominique, well, the theme music of Chroniques Rebelles is a Berber singer named Houria Aïchi, who has an absolutely magnificent voice, along with the musical bed underneath, and so, it's him who did the production.
