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Positivism, structuralism and the project of short formats 0:00 So, I'll probably ask Pierre-Alain to start with the question from someone who is particularly loyal and whom I'm happy to greet here, to greet again, because he's a regular. It's Daniel Arias, almost too self-effacing because he sends questions like that, always very well argued. I had the pleasure of talking with him once live on the phone. I realized he was the kind of person that, if it weren't for this disgrace of lockdown, I mean the way the lockdown is being managed and used politically, I'm not saying we can do whatever we want as if there were no virus.
0:46 If there weren't the lockdown, I would gladly go have a drink with Daniel Arias. Frankly, he's the kind of person I'd like to have a discussion with. So, in the discussions, I read Daniel's earlier question: we often come across categories of thinkers that remain obscure to the uninitiated. What are the positivist, structuralist currents, their order of appearance in history? And if possible, a brief description of their main characteristics, their reasons for being, how do we recognize them?
1:17 Well, allow me to call Daniel by his first name. Daniel, here's a question that comes at just the right time, if I may say so, it's so well-founded that it hastens my decision to give in to the pressure I feel from all sides, from people who are most well-disposed toward me, who say to me, "Dominique, make short formats." Keep doing the long format, we're very happy to follow them, but I mean, try to also do short formats for certain well-defined topics.
1:50 So, why not, and I announce it here to Daniel, why not, and I announce it at the same time to Pierre-Alain, who I'm sure will be delighted to take on this project, a series of short videos, technical fact sheets if you will, on positivism, structuralism, we'll try to be as objective as possible. You know, I have a teacher's tic, well I don't know if all teachers are like me, but I always defend the person I'm talking about.
2:22 If I do a text by Racine, I'll be Racinian; if I do a text by Descartes, I'll be Cartesian; if I do a text by Pascal, on the contrary, I'll be Pascalian. There, that doesn't always win me friends, but it's still better than the ukase and the exclusion, isn't it? Especially when you're passing something on, it's better to pass on a treasure, and a treasure isn't made of just one jewel, is it? Think of those who come and are fortunately hungry for more. I take this opportunity to greet Jean-Paul Legrand, my dear comrade, who, I'll say it, keeps nagging me—and he's right, the proof is there—to make short formats, and who also remains a requester on that front, and who reminds me that it was brought up during a board meeting we had a few weeks ago, where several of us said I should work on producing more condensed things.
The Monville–Vatan series: historical materialism in economics 3:26 And here's an opportunity, isn't it? I'm not going to do that tonight, you can be sure of that, tonight I'm answering questions. Besides, so I come back to it, Daniel suggests we watch a video. Well now, that's even more fitting for what I'm getting at. Not for what I intend to do soon, the short formats, but for what I've been saying since the beginning of this cycle. Since he points us to a series I can't recommend highly enough, and I'm all the more pleased that he recommends it because, without knowing he was going to recommend it, I was watching one, for half a day, before he posted this recommendation.
4:08 All the more so since I regularly meet up with Aymeric for our music sessions at the Sophie, and so I greet Aymeric, who is able to be on so many fronts at once, and who also makes this enormous effort of broadcasting and passing things on—not other people's thoughts, hats off to him. So, as I've often told you, I don't feel creative myself, I only pass on what I've had the good fortune to receive, or what chance has given me to encounter or come into contact with, in life's chances, and I try to pass on what seems to me most collectively precious.
4:54 And here we're talking about a series of lectures, a dialogue between Aymeric Monville and a young economist, whom I discovered on this occasion, and how do you say it—blown away! Who literally blew me away by his mastery, first of all, of the corpus, given that he's not even old enough yet to have read everything, he's gone through all of Walras for instance, that takes some doing.
5:27 So, I mean, someone who not only masters the corpus but also organizes it according to a logic of historical materialism, which he is one of the rare people, to my mind, to make operative without misreading it. Let me dwell on this a bit. You see, in this whole cycle we're developing, for my part—I shouldn't say "me," for my part, I apologize, I was raised that way—I ask whether historical sciences can be real, and therefore possible, since if something is real, that already means it has been decided that it was at least possible, and we can't examine whether it's necessary—the three postulates of modality: possible, real, necessary.
6:12 He proves motion by walking. He doesn't ask himself whether historical sciences can be real. He already knows that Marx opened the door that allows one to set out on the long road of the historical sciences, even if Marx died in the effort. Don't forget that Marx died at the very moment he had just put a heading in the third book of Capital, "Social Classes," a heading just like that in capital letters, and he dies.
6:42 At the very moment when we were finally going to find out, in a developed and detailed way—"gerade das," as they say under Hegel's pen—with that care for detail without which even the most generous or the most accurate ideas, seen from afar, are never anything but the abstract universal, the most actualized. That's what our friend Vatan does—Antoine Vatan, another comrade—with historical materialism, which he applies to reading economists, whether Marxist or, above all, liberal or bourgeois economists.
7:21 So here's something exemplary. I recommend this series. I was recently watching the fifth one, which was precisely about one of the currents of liberal economics called marginalism, and on which he gave some very interesting information. I thought I roughly knew the essentials, well I learned quite a bit.
Reply to a correspondent: Stalin, Munich, the German-Soviet pact 7:51 There you go. Antoine Vatan—may he forgive me if I add, and if I don't conclude—remember that name well. So thank you, Daniel. Here I want to warn those who might be tempted by the kind of comment I'm about to read. It's not long, that's already something. I won't give the name, because I don't like to argue ad hominem. I don't like tearing into a physical person. I have nothing against any physical person. I fight against capitalism, against liberalism, not against this or that individual.
8:22 And not against this or that individual. Except when he identifies with it, or when... But you know, I find that an individual is always richer, somewhere within him there's always something that lets you close your eyes to the—let's say, to put it mildly—the foolish things he may say otherwise. There. So, he says this to me, speaking about...
8:53 about what is political in my talks. "Good, evil, everything is in its place, selective and professional indignation, the crime, the crime, colon: not being a communist, even if one is on the left." Well, that's extraordinary. I make—I make quite a few card-carrying comrades frown, don't I? But I won't say which party, because I have comrades and friends in the parties that...
9:23 I have nothing against those parties, even though I'm not a member, but... who feel I make too many concessions, that... as I was saying earlier, that so often I use Pascal to convey a Marxist content, that is, one of the greatest Christian thinkers. "The crime: not being a communist"—but that's extraordinary. I champion Wagner's Ring, which is generally considered to be a darling of the far right.
9:54 And here he reduces me to being... It's extraordinary, because throughout all the years when I was politically active, back when it was worth it, when the game was worth the candle, so to speak. I don't discourage those who courageously keep at it today. I'm thinking of the French Communist Party. Back then, we were called Stalinists simply for belonging to the French Communist Party. And now, for about ten years...
10:24 people on the further left of the left, to keep it broad, find that I'm not Stalinist enough. Isn't that something? I often say, when I defend such and such a point against Russophobia, etc., I say, to reassure my audience, the truth is that I probably would have been one of the first to be shot under Stalin given my big mouth. The fact that I don't much disguise what I want to say. So it strikes me as odd to have attributed to me the idea of Stalin as the true gentleman versus Hitler the fake one.
10:57 I'm reading here, as you are too, what this correspondent says. I challenge him to find, in everything I've said—I have more than 300 videos, two hours each, so there's plenty to go through—a single passage where I speak of Stalin as a gentleman. At most, I might say that I regret that he killed far too many of our comrades, some of whom we miss, well, had they lived, they would have served us well afterward, and often among the best.
11:34 That's one point of view. I'm going to get insulted again by the neo-Stalinists. On the other hand, I will always have a respectful thought for the commander-in-chief who, under his boot heel, crushed the Nazi jackboot. Well, it wasn't him personally, but I mean, he was still commander-in-chief and he knew how to appoint men like Zhukov or Konev, to whom we owe the greatest victories, don't we, of humanity over barbarism. There. I mean, I never said he was a gentleman.
12:05 Besides, it's better not to be a gentleman to do that kind of job. It's curious, though, that they say "the real gentleman versus Hitler the fake one," because someone did call Hitler a gentleman. A real one, not a fake one. No, no, not a Nazi—not even a card-carrying member of the Nazi party. No, it was Mister Prime Minister, 10 Downing Street, London, the British Prime Minister, Chamberlain, on returning from Munich. What is the German-Soviet pact next to Munich?
12:37 There are those who would have liked the German-Soviet pact not to have been signed, so that Hitler would go and pick a fight with the Soviet Union while it wasn't ready. As if 30 million dead, to rid us of Nazi barbarism, weren't enough, as if the German-Soviet pact should have been wiped off the face of the earth. It was indeed the Westerners' plan for Hitler and Stalin to devour each other, our main competitor against our main adversary, and we'd pull the chestnuts out of the fire. Well, sorry, thanks to the German-Soviet pact, they had to rethink their plans.
13:08 Then afterward, there was the worst of it, there was Stalingrad. That's annoying. If Hitler had been able to win, we would have divided up the planet. Well, I'm not talking about Churchill here, who did fight against Hitler. I'm talking about his predecessor. I come back to Mr. Chamberlain. He comes back from Munich saying, "Mr. Hitler"—in front of all the cameras of the whole world and the spotlights—"Mr. Hitler is a gentleman."
Philosophy is not idle chatter 13:38 So, that strikes me as odd. There. Let me continue his comment: "This is no longer sociology or philosophy." This gentleman knows what sociology and philosophy must be. Good for him. "It's an act, a refrain, moral guilt-tripping." Well now, this one surprised me too. That's why I'm reading it to you, because I know it will surprise those who have been listening to me for years. Because often I'm reproached for almost the opposite—that I'm a bit lax on this front. I'm... In societal matters, I'm much less politically correct.
14:12 It's not just the wave of surrounding neo-puritanism disguising itself either as bourgeois feminism or as a defender of women, children, and orphans. Really, I mean. "Pagani as priest." Well then, we'd need to decide, wouldn't we, whether I'm a communist or a priest. And this just goes around in circles pointlessly. So there. Then he tries to backtrack a bit at the end: "There are two Paganis, the incisive, the original, the unexpected one, and another, conventional to the utmost, as expected." Well, I understand the compliment.
14:42 The incisive, the original, the unexpected one, that's when I don't talk politics. That's when I talk about music, poetry, Nerval, isn't it? And even then, I'd better not quote the passage where Nerval says one shouldn't claim he did politics, he says he never did anything but opposition. A quotation from Nerval. There, I'll stop commenting. The point is, there's no question at all here. So now, my reproach—this is the most serious reproach I make to this commenter. If he had asked me questions—don't you think Stalin is one of the greatest criminals?
15:12 Whatever the case, I'm quite willing to engage in a discussion. But when there's just a string of assertions like that, I would remind everyone that philosophy is not the corner café. I myself am delighted to go to the corner café, to chat, to discuss the last soccer match, that's not the issue—except that it's a bit hard to go there right now. But in philosophy, you have to at least adopt a problematizing, questioning approach. Because whatever this gentleman says, I find—and this is all I'm doing throughout the cycle I'm currently developing on the sciences—I'm only showing how problematic these questions are, that as soon as you touch on X, you immediately have non-X standing there, which has to be taken into account.
Scientistic imperialism and the stagnation of fundamental concepts 15:55 There. I won't dwell on it any longer. Frédéric Cordier—I won't say he intimidates me, but I can say he's someone I admire a great deal. So, here's another person whose page I recommend, on Facebook but especially on YouTube. I recommend you subscribe to his channel—for YouTube you say a channel, for Facebook a page, you have to watch the semantics carefully. So, and he was kind enough to be pleased that I used, that I chose as the opening credits for the latest workshop on the hard sciences...
16:32 On imperialism. Yes, I take the opportunity to mention, I made a little slip, I said "scientific imperialism"—there's never been such a thing as scientific imperialism. Personally I think science doesn't go far enough, so I'm not going to reproach it for going too far. I meant of course to speak of "scientistic imperialism," I corrected it along the way, but at the beginning when I introduced it, I said "scientific imperialism," which is obviously the exact opposite of my thinking. In fact I'm not the only one who thinks there's almost been a scientific regression for some time now, that science is moving more slowly than it did at the beginning of the twentieth century, for example, and that as for the essential, the fundamental concepts—sorry for this long parenthesis—I discussed this with a researcher at CERN, at CERN in Geneva, which is nonetheless the largest particle accelerator and collision-producing machine, and thus fundamental for research in micro-physics, for example, and therefore in astrophysics in a way.
17:34 Yes, I told him, look, this isn't my field, but I have the impression there are plenty of new applications, that there's been fabulous progress at the technological level—miniaturization, whatever you like, ergonomics. There are people who think the Steve Jobses of this world are great inventors, when really they're people who only miniaturized and better packaged, ergonomically, work already done by the Pentagon, isn't that so? You know, the American army had walkie-talkies two generations before there were mobile phones.
18:05 Well, it was a bit bulky. So, seriously, I told him, I get the impression, on the other hand, that regarding the fundamental concepts—mass, velocity, energy—we haven't made much progress beyond these fundamentals that are relativistic mechanics on one side and quantum mechanics on the other, or if you prefer, relativistic physics, or Einstein, and the general theory of relativity, and quantum theory, quantum physics.
18:41 So, there you go, it seems to me that progress isn't as linear as it appears, isn't it? Some people complain that science is going too fast, that we have too much... No, no, I find that it's stagnating. And besides, you see, this has consequences. There's such an anti-scientific discourse—I won't launch into another anti-ecology tirade, I mean there's as much difference between ecologism and rational ecology, the kind I hope for, democratic and planned, as there is between science and scientism.
19:20 So, after this long parenthesis, I recommend following Frédéric Cordier's channel, who is an excellent reader—you know how important that is to me—who, without much commentary, without voice-over, and with far fewer exasperating detours than I make, plunges us into words that deserve to be brought back to life.
Climate warming: consensus and vulgate 19:51 There. So, I greet him in passing. Now, sorry, I'm not handing out gold stars—well, I've even handed out a few bad marks. But now I'd like to greet an old acquaintance, Raoul Leboeuf, whom I'm glad to see reappear. Even if he reappears to give me an earful. No, I'm joking. If I were always scolded the way he does, I'd be the wrongdoer. He doesn't start by saying "I'm an absolute admirer of the rigor of Dominique Pagani's thinking."
20:23 Frankly. That would have been hard. But "stop talking nonsense about global warming," I'll tell you right away. But I implore him about the effects of solar activity on climate, on the recent changes actually induced by the consequences of the industrial revolution—my ears bleed when he suggests referring to information that's been proven false. Yes, I had said, someone told me that it's man—not that the anthropogenic factor would be the main cause of warming while we neglect gigantic forces like solar activity, the activity of the Earth's inner magma, the changes, the variations in the Earth's axis, the Earth's axis of rotation, which can cause considerable upheavals in climates.
21:17 So, anyway. And he tells me, no, no, you shouldn't—and he's right. I say right away that I concede the point to him. Only, there's a misunderstanding. I'm not railing against what scientists grappling with the issue say—I'm not talking about those who are physics teachers in, I won't say where because I'd offend certain provincial towns, who imagine themselves to be at the cutting edge of Nobel-worthy teams. I have the greatest respect for the teaching profession.
21:48 I find that being a physics teacher is truly heroic. And I have comrades and friends who are exactly that, for whom I have affection and admiration. No, no, but I mean, apart from a very few rare exceptions, they're not at the cutting edge of what's currently being decided in the teams working on the Higgs boson. So there, I have nothing to say, and by what right would I say it? I have no business contradicting what a certain scientific consensus says.
22:19 Let me reassure Raoul here, who is quite right to take me to task when I seem to be talking through my hat. Actually, it's not quite through my hat. It's that I'm not addressing myself here—I'm not contradicting the scientists in question. I'm contradicting what in good French is called the vulgate—a dominant discourse that isn't that of the scientists. He was kind enough to send me an extremely complete, exhaustive document, for which I thank him, and which supplements the ones I'm constantly trying to inform myself with, either on my own—since we live in an age where we have extraordinary databases right at home—if I'm not sure of my own reading, that's not far off, or by consulting people I trust, some of whom are very sharp in their field.
23:14 So, I mean, it's not to those people that I'm speaking. I'm addressing the vulgate, the most widely broadcast one, which spends its time essentially deifying nature and demonizing man. I know Raoul isn't part of that. So I thank him for warning me, because sometimes I might give the impression, might suggest that global warming, that human activity—sometimes I push it a bit far when I say, I believe he's referring to this, when I said you'd have to be megalomaniac to think that our activity can be measured against the effects, for example, of solar energy, of incoming solar energy.
23:52 So now, let me be precise. What I'm asking Raoul for isn't just a 50-page report—I thank him because it's extraordinarily rich in documentation and the sources are valuable—but it's to satisfy this very simple request. All right? If we say that the temperature is such and such degrees right now and that it's going to gain, I'm just making up numbers, 2 or 3 or 4 degrees over the next 50 years. Fine. What I'm asking for is a quickly-made chart, half a page, showing a precise breakdown of what comes from the sun, what comes from the heat of our own planet.
The Earth has been warming since the end of the ice age 24:36 The interior, isn't that so, which also produces the volcanic effect. We must not forget that there were periods, isn't that so, where entire harvests were wiped out because there was no summer, because of volcanoes over there in Asia, in Indonesia, in the ring of fire, isn't that so, which caused famine throughout Western Europe to the point that women were reduced to prostitution in Switzerland. There, I won't go into too much detail, but specialists know very well what I'm talking about.
25:07 So, once again, what is the proportion that comes from solar energy? Of factors that are never talked about, isn't that so, or that only climate skeptics talk about, but I don't want to go from one extreme to the other, I'm not a climate skeptic either. But I've never seen in the consensus—or rather, let me put it the right way round—I notice that no one denies what I'm asserting and what I keep repeating, but on the other hand, it isn't repeated.
25:41 When I bring it up, people say yes, that's true, and then move on to something else, namely that the Earth has been warming for more than ten thousand years now, because how many times has it cooled and warmed throughout its history—find out for yourselves. It's not my field, but it's not complicated; we have ice caps we can examine, we can now determine the average temperature that prevailed during the Permian, the Jurassic, in a given place, through simple geological, or at times glaciological, study.
26:17 So, I don't want to get lost in detail, let's be clear, no one denies that the rock carvings in the Sahara, dating on average between ten thousand and five thousand years before Christ—on average their greatest flourishing—there are some spread over kilometers and thousands of square kilometers. We think it's a desert, but there was extraordinary human activity there. You see, cattle above all, you already know, a cow needs a lot of fodder in a day.
26:52 It's not a goat or a sheep, it's a cow that needs tall grass. In other words, the Sahara at that time—it wasn't the Amazon, but it was a marshland. At the time it was much colder than now, only mind you, the current location of the Sahara was not yet a desert. I'm talking about a period 10,000 years before the industrial revolution. No one can deny that.
27:25 And not only cows, but there were hippopotamuses, elephants. An elephant needs almost a ton of grass a day. But there you go. Ah yes, it's true, it's true that I've read the Sahara was a marshland. Yes, but at that time, the glaciers stopped between Lyon and Nice. We have to face facts. If there are people who lament the warming of the planet, they should also know that we could just as well decide that what's now a place for waterskiing was once something else.
27:57 If you want me to say it plainly, it's a choice, it's not up to me to impose it after all. But there you go, the Earth has been warming for thousands and thousands of years. We haven't finished, ask any geologist or climatologist, we haven't finished coming out of the ice age. In northern Canada, in Finland, look at the thousands of lakes, for example, which are the remnants of what were once much larger bodies of water—there were seas, and these are what remain as witnesses.
28:29 And most of the great lakes of much more central and much more populated Europe—I'm thinking of the Swiss lakes, for example—look carefully, they're all along the edge of the Alpine fold, they too, isn't that so, are reservoirs that were mainly filled during the great glaciations. So whether it's Lake Geneva, Lake Neuchâtel, look carefully, you need a very high curve at Constance, the Bodensee, as they say in German-speaking countries. There, once again, I mean, we haven't finished warming up, and that's a process that began long before the revolution, which owes nothing to industrial activity.
29:11 Now, that industrial activity worsens it, accelerates it, don't count on me to deny that. What I criticize is that people talk only about that, isn't that so, and act as if the danger had begun with mankind. I don't see why there would have been some climatic normality at a certain time that man came along to disturb. That's what I'd like us to agree on. Fine, I'm sure Raoul agrees, because I know he's a faithful viewer and watches—I've never seen him take offense at that point of view.
The naturalism of liberal economists 29:45 There isn't—you know, in fact, I'll come back to it, you see, I read several questions together, that's why I take my time, I'm answering several questions at once. I'm coming back to Daniel Arias who recommended to us the video between Aymeric Monville and Antoine Vatan. At one point, in that issue number 5, which broadly vindicates Marx, he makes a critique, Antoine Vatan does, of the so-called classical, liberal economists—it's very clever to call it liberal, that liberalism, it's the fig leaf that hides capitalist rapacity, but it sounds better to say liberal.
30:35 So we must defend liberty against liberalism. He criticizes the fact that there is always a naturalism at work—it's in the nature of things, there just are the rich, the poor, the powerful, the weak, and ultimately there's a natural order that we're wrong to disturb. He finds this in apparently very different people like Adam Smith, like Ricardo, like Jean-Baptiste Say, and even Walras—he gives a beautiful demonstration showing that Walras ends up, in the last instance, invoking natural equilibria.
Was a Terra made of lava out of balance? 31:13 So what does that mean? Equilibrium is a moral term. Unless it's a purely physical term, but then you'd need a Roberval balance, that is, in the literal sense, it would no longer be a metaphor. But as soon as we step outside that, isn't that so? Thanks for that passage, that video, which I recommend, which is admirable. I'm deliberately insisting on the fact that there was a moment, quite a few million years ago, almost a billion, where the Earth was a juxtaposition of erupting volcanoes, where not even an earthworm could ever have lived.
31:54 Isn't that so? Not even an earthworm, an earthworm, isn't that so? Or even the life forms that exist—this should make more than one person think—at 400 degrees, water boils at 100 degrees, you see, boiling water, that's a terrible burn, that's 100 degrees. Well, there are animals, you know, living beings, which, because sometimes they're right at the edge, both mollusks and vertebrates, and giant shrimp, isn't that so, which thrive in hot springs, in the ocean abysses.
32:34 All right? Well, even that couldn't have lived in certain eras, isn't that so, when there was practically nothing but lava everywhere on planet Earth. Are we going to say it was more or less out of balance than today? What does that mean? It's anthropocentric—it means, we couldn't have lived there, I fully agree, we shouldn't wish for that climate to return. But when it came about, isn't that so, it wasn't man's fault, and even less industry's.
33:04 Whereas we, that we concentrate our efforts on what depends on us, I fully agree. And there, I side with those who are alarmed about it, isn't that so? And there, we must warn—not against industry, because there are many who call themselves anti-capitalist nowadays, isn't that so? There are many, generally seen as such, one sees there's a crisis, isn't that so? But in fact, they aren't anti-capitalist, they get along quite well with it. The proximity market, you know, we've just been placed under house arrest again, isn't that so?
Anti-industrialists rather than anti-capitalists 33:37 No, they are anti-industrial, because they only know the capitalist mode of industrial development. They don't remember that the first man to go into space was a Soviet, at a time when American rockets were crashing one after another, at the time of—look it up—the Grapefruit satellites, Vanguard, etc., isn't that so? The Americans certainly caught up since then, that's fine. But I mean, it's not only the liberal model and the market economy, isn't that so, that ravage—and there I agree with them—both mankind and the planet.
34:18 But I admit that humanity holds my attention more than the planet, because the planet will still be there when we're all dead. And one day we'll all be dead, the planet—I don't know, it might get torpedoed by meteorites, no celestial body is permanent, isn't that so? And you remember it wasn't in Alta. But I mean, or else, that would be more serious, isn't that so, nuclear madness, isn't that so? Putin recalled the day before yesterday, after being called a killer, that the only country that dared to drop the atomic bomb on civilian populations when the die was already cast, and Japan was already completely crushed—the phosphorus bombing of Tokyo, isn't that so, caused more deaths than Hiroshima—still, using the atomic weapon wasn't at all to make Japan finally surrender, it was well known that this was already about to happen, it was because the Soviets had reached Sakhalin Island, and likewise the Normandy landing, so I'm glad
35:28 that it took place, I would have preferred it to have happened earlier, you see, and I pay tribute to the young men who fell on the beaches of Normandy, that's not the issue, I would have preferred they'd been sent earlier, but they were sent when the Soviets were at the gates of Berlin, that's what I mean, you see, so, all this holds together, you see, there is an equilibrium in nature, and there is an invisible hand in the market, it's the same ideology, there, that's why I pay tribute here to Antoine Vatan, but I would like to point out to him, isn't that so, but I'm sure he has a nose for this, if I may say so, namely that there is a certain environmentalism that reproduces the same imaginary illusion that Marx called—and he knows Marx very well—Robinsonades, you know, Robinsonades, when the classical economists imagine the origin of the economy, the first hunter-gatherers, etc., they think they're doing history, when in fact they imagine each isolated producer joining together the better to chase the mammoth, isn't that so, thinking that's more practical, with Anglo-Saxon utilitarianism,
Robinsonades: projecting the present onto the origin 36:38 as if that were what governed humanity—that's a huge misreading, we wouldn't be able to make sense of behaviors that involve more suffering, isn't that so, than useful things, if only in the various religious protocols—protocols in the clinical sense, moreover—those who walk on burning coals, isn't that so, with needles through their lips and through their cheeks, I respect, I respect forms of worship, but I mean, that's not an obvious illustration of utilitarianism.
37:12 So maybe it's actually deeper than that. He knows very well that passage where Marx says that we think we're thinking about the origin of history or of humanity, when we're actually projecting our present onto it. What is it? It's each Robinson—that's why they're called Robinsonades—each Robinson in his enterprise, in his free enterprise, accountable to no one, isolated, and able to decide to make a deal, a trade, with another.
37:42 That's the projection onto the past, in the imagination, of what, unconsciously, is the historical present that drives us to determine things that way. So those who imagine a point of equilibrium in nature that we're supposedly about to disturb, but who imagine this equilibrium as natural—whereas the equilibrium I myself am attached to is the one that makes human life possible on Earth, but human life, not the life of giant shrimp wriggling in ecstasy at 400 degrees in sulfur and ammonia.
38:25 Almost incandescent, there. There. I mean, we project onto the past the structures of the present, and so, deep in the unconscious—since there are some who even want to talk about the unconscious—there is indeed class determination, socio-economic determination, we see it clearly, which passes itself off as science. So I won't be intimidated by science—yes, I respect it and I bow to it and I ask questions, it's not my field. But positivist scientism, no.
Against financial capitalism, not against industry 38:55 There. So I wanted to salute our friend Raoul Leboeuf, who is very loyal and who gave me the opportunity to make some clarifications, I think, important ones. Once again, I am ready to mobilize for any action that would limit the appalling massacre and waste that capitalism imposes. Capitalism, not industry—capitalism, and not by way of degrowth.
39:26 On the contrary, I criticize capitalism for becoming increasingly financial, for playing less and less with industry and more and more with transferring wealth from here to there rather than creating new wealth. You see? They're confining us here, now, while the number of hospital beds has dropped by nearly 20% just in the Paris region. Then afterward they tell you it's urgent, the hospitals are overwhelmed, you mustn't leave your home anymore, there's an emergency.
39:57 Ah yes, the Chinese, they built 3,000 beds in a week. There. So, I should add—this is for my previous interlocutor—I should add that perhaps in China I would be in the opposition, who knows. But on this front, they still managed things better. There are so many more people starting to notice this, and even countries that are supposed to be in the Atlantic alliance and that are starting to order vaccines from outside it, isn't that so, from quite a few crooks from whom we buy ours instead.
40:27 I stand by what I'm saying.
