“A State that interferes everywhere does not only weaken institutions; it also destroys the bonds of trust between citizens, for it interposes itself between them and makes them strangers to one another.”
La Crise de la culture – Hannah Arendt
The thought of social-democracy as it exists in France has run its course. It has contributed a great deal for decades. But its intellectual model has hardly evolved, even though at least four important trends have emerged. These have been ignored, not analysed, sometimes denied, or, even worse, followed without seeing the consequences. Let us cite them, in no particular order of priority. The question of public authority, of security and the migratory phenomenon with the rise of Islamist ideology, which brings into focus what constitutes a nation. The rise of fierce individualism, with the overvaluation of each person’s rights and the devaluation of duties. The obsession with equality, bringing a dangerous egalitarianism at the expense of the pursuit of equal opportunity and fairness. The development, finally, of an overgrown public sphere, whose entropy breeds inefficiency, discouragement, loss of confidence, and growing unease… We shall return to each of these points. The issue of the necessary climate transition is not here mentioned, as social-democracy—though with too many dogmas and an insufficiently scientific approach—has rather well integrated it into its core thinking. Social-democracy must thus renew its thinking, or risk becoming obsolete, by addressing certain territories so far too little explored within its own ranks. Let us attempt to lay a few modest foundations.
Market and State
The market is indispensable, for it generates economic dynamism, resource allocation, and a match between supply and demand that may be imperfect, but is irreplaceable. Nevertheless, the market cannot, by itself, be a sufficient mode of regulation; to be sustainably efficient and sufficiently stable, it needs law, rules, institutional authorities, regulatory bodies, and intermediary organizations capable of acting when the market gets out of order or develops a destabilizing dynamic. The public sphere is thus indispensable for regulating the market, the economy and, more generally, society. The State (in the broad sense) is necessary for the harmonious balance of society, including by encouraging the existence of intermediary bodies, like trade unions, to regulate everything properly. The various forces of society are then channelled more or less harmoniously, in a balance, even if this balance is by nature changeable and unstable. And this model of regulation has, albeit unevenly and non-linearly, enabled an increase in well-being. And this, relatively well shared in European countries… Until now, the most accomplished expressions of this mode of societal regulation—combining ethics and efficiency—have appeared in Northern Europe and Germany. Then, with nuances, a form of social-democracy spread throughout Europe and became, willy-nilly, one of its defining features. Overall, social-democracy, in its variants, has for decades successfully combined the market and institutions and rules (including redistributive ones).
We will therefore use the term social-democracy in a broad sense, that is, beyond alternations between left and right governments, as the common foundation that broadly defines the way European countries regulate themselves.
Yet Europe seems today to be experiencing a relative decline, and even, for some years now, a significant economic lag, particularly compared to the American model. The multiplication of norms and regulations, less incentive to be enterprising or take risks, and a pursuit of equality—rather than equity—pushed without limit, appear to be some elements of explanation. Even its reformist currents, aware of this dangerous trajectory, have become insufficient… It is first and foremost essential to integrate into social-democratic thinking and public action the questions of public authority, security, and more effective management and integration of immigration. If not, failing to address these issues in a republican way will leave exclusive control of the narrative to populist movements, capable of attracting rightly discontented voters on sensitive everyday issues. These topics are crucial, and should not be treated moralistically or with contempt. In the same vein, to conceive of a country, a nation, as a multicultural kaleidoscope with no unity, no real borders, no shared culture, no identity, with only abstract universal values, is an ethereal vision, dissolving history, geography, and the Nation itself. It ignores the cultural bonds that allow a country’s people to recognize themselves and live together. To deny this is to provoke, sooner or later, the worst, willy-nilly. Renan already said it all: “What unites us is not a language, a religion, or a race, but a shared past and a common will to live together. A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle, based on the memory of past glories and the current consent to continue that shared life. A nation is a daily plebiscite.” Let this inspire reflection! Although fundamental, these topics are not specifically developed further here…
Next must be carefully analysed the diminishing efficiency of the public sphere. Just as the market is not immune to errors and endogenous dysfunctions, decisions by public authorities can be ineffective, even the wrong ones. Neither markets nor the State are omniscient. It is vital to recognise, beyond any ideology, that a public policy can indeed be ineffective. Worse, it can be inappropriate, even undesirable, with effects contrary to those sought. This must be central to the renewal of social-democratic thought. There is no “evil capital” and “good State”. No camp of evil and camp of good. This Manichean view is not only simplistic but dangerous and misleading. There is capital and its double (1), each with its own logic for endless development—return and capitalisation, on the one hand; control and power, on the other. Both, like all living organisms, feel the need to grow. Yet both are necessary and complementary, as long as neither totally imposes itself to such an extent as to destabilize the delicate balance permitting both to be effectively combined. That is what enables a society of progress…
The Logic of State Expansion: Over-Administration
We must therefore think freely to analyse the development, over decades in France, of an omnipresent State tending to intermediate everyone’s relations with each other and with society. This State exerts ever-closer control over individuals and develops an entropic, ever-heavier over-administration with diminishing returns… If the logic of State development and the public sphere must be thought through, this analysis is much more necessary in Europe and more particularly in France than in the US. Over-administration produces a feeling of helplessness, discouragement and nostalgia; it also encourages self-maximisation for some, or for others, a desire for rebellion or insubordination. With its own logic of unending growth, over-administration tries to respond to everything, infantilising people and constantly pushing for more State demand—which brings inevitable disappointment and, in turn, anguish, the insurmountable fear faced with the smallest problem, as individual responsibility is reduced and diminished. Too much State leads to atomisation of individuals and their alienation from their own ability to act. Over-administration and an overly intrusive State can indeed lead to a collapse of trust in oneself and between people, and hinder individual and collective action. They erode self-organized solidarity between members of society…
“Action is what allows people to appear before others, reveal their uniqueness and build a common world. When the State monopolizes this capacity, citizens are reduced to spectators.”
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition.
In short, as Hannah Arendt insightfully argues, this dynamic induces a loss of the necessary balance between, on one side, freedom and individual or collective responsibility, and on the other, necessary regulation to organize a just society.
“The danger is not only the violence of authoritarian regimes, but the gradual drift towards a gentle and paternalistic administration that stifles freedom under the guise of protection.” she also writes.
The Essential Combination of Ethics and Efficiency
Faced with possible errors by the public sphere, and its tendency to expand until its effectiveness is significantly reduced and obstacles pile up for the energy of society, the State at large must regain vision and vigour to best accomplish its mission. It must avoid developing unnecessarily. And avoid issuing laws, rules, and creating various and sundry institutions not strictly required for the proper functioning of the economy or for society in general. The public sphere must, therefore, ensure the best possible combination of ethics and efficiency. Neither concept belongs exclusively to the market or the State. Their roles in this respect are much more complex and intertwined. Ethics and efficiency, two notions that must be united in companies as in society as a whole, since they are indispensable to each other in a dialectical tension. One cannot last without the other and vice versa. There is no sustainable ethics without efficiency, nor sustainable efficiency without ethics. And the two are not oppositional or dichotomous. Public authorities must permanently reflect on this dialectic…
Hyper-Democracy and Hyper-Social-Democracy
We should also question the natural tendency of democracy, and social-democracy, their endogenous dynamic. What I call hyper-democracy and hyper-social-democracy. These can create their own excesses. Tocqueville already warned of democracy’s internal logic. Without deep reflection on these trajectories, democracy and social-democracy can lead to their weakening, and even, ultimately, their possible demise. With, looming, the arrival of populism—left or right…
We cannot ignore excesses specific to democracy, produced by its own momentum: an ever-widening extension of rights, always pitted against the rights of others, and, symmetrically, the gradual abandonment of duties. This means individualism and egoism taken to the greatest extreme, and highly segmented, heightened communitarianism. Both are signs of complete self-enclosure. Alongside, as manifestation and justification, comes the idea that everyone is either oppressor or oppressed, with any questioning of the new dogmas forbidden. This leads, contrary to the claims of its proponents, to hate of others—those burdened with the fault of being the oppressor by pre-assigned status and inescapable guilt. The only possible forgiveness for the supposed oppressor is total re-education after confession and admission of fault. Fantasies and manipulation of history are rewritten through the simplistic oppressor-oppressed pair, everyone assigned to their original box. History, thus rewritten, is bent to this view. All resemblance to totalitarianism…? All this concealed behind words turned into totems, repeated endlessly. Words voided and emptied, but made mandatory, while others become forbidden and shameful. Morality police, thought police. Wokism is clearly the caricature and most accomplished expression today of this total distortion of the concept of democracy. It is not in any way an extension of democracy. It is not a continuation of progressivism. It is the new ideology of democracy’s excesses. An ideology, ultimately, that destroys the reality of democracy itself. To oppose wokism—understood as the intolerant and totalitarian radicalization of progressive activism—is neither conservatism nor reaction. Social-democratic thought should neither ignore nor abandon criticism and opposition to wokism to populism. Otherwise, it risks dissolving itself, and disappearing. The American example shows this well (the Democratic party defeated by Trump even in traditional strongholds, geographic and ethnic alike). In France, today’s Socialist Party gives a striking example, absorbed, unless it deliberately acts otherwise, by the NFP/LFI, mirrored by the rise of the RN…
We must also analyze the excesses of social-democracy itself. Social-democracy and democracy are obviously not totally distinct. Here we distinguish them formally, for they are not identical, and to facilitate analysis. Its excesses, developed from within, can be summed up as a search for absolute ultimate equality. Magical thinking that hides lack of depth. Absolute equality in all things, everyone with everyone, leads to universal jealousy, to sad passions. And also to condemnation of what drives the dynamism of society—effort and the quest for progress. There lies the root of progress itself. Tocqueville:
“There is no passion so fatal for man and society as this love of equality, which can degrade people and push them to prefer common mediocrity to individual excellence.”…
Social-democracy, without self-reflection and control of its own excesses, slides towards these fatal dynamics. The distinctions between “absolute” equality, equality of rights, equality of opportunity and fairness must all be reconsidered, along with their diverse moral, economic and social effects…
Thus, hyper-democracy and hyper-social-democracy bring about regressions and the risk of a gradual extinction of the inner drive of societies and economies, and so of well-being. They lead to financial failure, and thus social failure. But they also seriously undermine the capacity to live together and respect the necessary compromises between freedom and rules. They bring about moral failure, letting the lowest passions—jealousy, resentment, hatred—run loose. These are already at work…
There can be no renewal of social-democratic thought, nor lessened mistrust towards democracy, without a thorough analysis of the natural rise of the specific excesses of democracy and social-democracy, their hypertrophy, over-administration and its effects, as well as the legitimate republican need for a return of public authority and better regulation and integration of immigration. The general rise of populism, to be sure, has more causes than just these. But it would be dangerous to deny that here too lies part of its origin…
A Fake “Progressivism” Hides a Real Regression
Benevolent blindness to the causes and consequences of these four trends is not progressivism, even if it borrows its virtues. Quite the contrary. It confines, isolates, and causes fatal regression against values of both humanism and universalism—always values of progress, responsibility and emancipation, as well as harmony. These values may never have been fully realized, of course. But they did allow humanity in certain civilizations to recognize and respect minorities, and without harming the majority (a democratic principle otherwise outrageously and dangerously twisted). They led to equality between races, sexes, and social origins. They also helped facilitate equal opportunities rather than the assignment, from birth, of one’s status due to one’s parents’ caste, for instance. The combination of too much State with hyper-democracy and hyper-social-democracy produces this insidious and destructive malaise, only resolved by the boundless rise of rights and the collapse of duties and responsibilities. As with the loss of effectiveness of socio-economic regulation… And with it, a loss of societal trust, mistrust of institutions, of politics, of others, and ultimately, society itself.
And, in the end, a never-ending, unsustainable growth in public debt.
For a social market economy to endure, the assurance—especially for the poorest and those struck by adversity or circumstance—of essential protection by society, that is, for the most part, by the public sphere in a modern society, must be coupled in a balanced way with individual, family, and autonomous group responsibility. The welfare state, yes, but it cannot—it must not, on pain of entropy—seek to provide unlimited protection, with the result of making its members irresponsible to themselves and to others. Tocqueville again:
“The sovereign extends its arms over the whole of society; it covers its surface with a network of small, complicated, minute, and uniform rules, through which the most original minds and the boldest spirits cannot break to rise above the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends, and guides them; it does not tyrannize, it hampers, represses, enervates, extinguishes, and reduces each nation to being nothing more than a flock of timid and hardworking animals, whose government is the shepherd.”…
Survival of the Social Market Economy Model
The right combination, the viable balance, is for now broken. This endangers the welfare state and thus the precious safety net. Criticism of administration is as old as time, of course. But this analysis questions the capacity of democracy, social-democracy, and, closely linked, the public sphere, not to succumb to entropy, to stabilize at a point of equilibrium marrying ethics (or justice) and efficiency (wealth production), and socio-economic well-being.
It is thus a question of survival for our European socio-economic model. With its specifically French flaws, making the system ever more inefficient, our model will soon be unable to reproduce—i.e. survive—unless a rebound comes in time, with the consequence, if not, of widespread impoverishment and both moral and financial ruin.
The reflection must continue. How can mechanisms be invented to limit these excesses? How can we recover the vital balances for our societies to survive and revive? That is the whole challenge. It is a fundamental question for our future, our “model”, our Europe, and our country.
Note 1:Marc Guillaume, PUF
Note 2: The atomization of individuals, as well as the loss of meaning concerning collectivity and society, is also caused by the rise of social networks, which in addition transmit both false and true information that distorts the relation to truth and increases individualism. Alongside the omnipresent State, this too boosts the rise of populism. But their roots differ and cannot be conflated.
