How Should
We Think About Economics Today ?
“Labour omnia vincit”
Of all our modern worries, the economy is certainly the most
important. Even in our concerns about
our health, families, and friendships, topics that most of us would consider
exempt from economic considerations, money still remains an element. The economy is the continuous thread running
through all our actions. Yet
paradoxically, everyone talks about it -- it is the main subject of political
discourse and the principal preoccupation of the media -- but these discussions
focus merely on describing economic phenomena; they do not tackle important
questions about how to think about the economy, questions such as: What makes it possible? What is its function? What purpose does it serve? What meaning should we give to it?
The theme of this conference, dealing as it does with prosperity and
globalisation, provides us with a starting point for reflection. If there is one thing that is global today,
it is the economy. Marx understood very
well that the distinction between primates and homo sapiens lies in
socially organised work. Work is an
activity common to all human beings, and enables any one of us to associate
with anyone else. Economics organises
our planet as a unique space in which all human beings can be distinguished by
what they share as human beings (and by this I do not mean what they have in
common, for instance that they are all citizens of a certain country, all
products of a particular culture, or so many other symbols of their
differences). Economics is the one
unifying principle between peoples.
This is a first point. But
economics is not only global, it is also something that enables us to apprehend
globality, for it involves not only the interaction of human beings among
themselves, but of humanity with its environment, of the human mind with
matter.
To demonstrate this unifying function of economics, I would like to
illustrate how economics is both science and wisdom, and to show what it can teach
us within these two domains.
Economics is a science that aims to examine how human beings obtain the
goods and services they need without resorting to violence. Of course, there is another way of obtaining
what we need -- certainly a very efficient way in the short-term -- and that is
to steal. Criminals do surrender to this type of activity, sometimes even
organising themselves into mafias, but their impact on society remains
only minimal. The practice of theft on
a grand scale, the kind which affects us all, is the type practised by the
institutions we call states, with the support of armed police
forces. Thus, one could argue they are
two ways of obtaining the goods we need, through trade and gift, which is the
economic way, and through coercion, which is the political way.[1]
Economics is a science of a particular kind. It is neither an exact science like mathematics, nor an
empirically precise science like physics.
It so happens that business people – more so than, say, artists or
philosophers – make use of numbers in their work: the shepherd counts the number of sheep in his flock, the
wine-grower monitors his production figures.
The pseudo-scientists of the 19th century saw in this use of
numbers a golden opportunity and a new territory to claim: where numbers exist, they imagined, it is
possible to create mathematical formulae and construct associated models. They set about compiling dubious statistics
that did not correspond in any way to reality, the most famous of all being the
GNP. But why a “gross national product”,
and not a “gross feminine product” or a “gross Alpine product” ? Knowing a country's GNP is only useful to
pandering to its leaders and to the jingoistic sentiments of a handful of
nationalists (a few years ago, the Italians rejoiced at having “surpassed the
United Kingdom”, and now they lag again behind, and who cares?). Statistics like these are no more relevant
than knowing that 80% of air crash victims had eaten chocolate during the month
before their fatal journey. They do not explain either wealth, growth,
employment, innovation, etc. The
mystery of the economy is not unveiled to us by mere numbers.
Economics is not an empirically precise science simply because it is an
activity performed by human beings in the service of other human beings. Human activity cannot be moulded into
mathematical models like the movement of boulders in space for the simple
reason that with human consciousness comes uncertainty. Therefore, it is as meaningless to speak of
mathematical laws or models in relation to economics as it is to speak of
“models of art” or “laws of education” or of any other similar principles of
human activity.
Nevertheless, the claim that economics can be reduced to mathematical models,
and the desire at all cost to think of it as a mechanism, is not without its
consequences. When we acquiesce to this
scientistic vision, in referring, for instance, to an “economic mechanism” and
to analogies like “re-activating the economic machine”, we define ourselves as
irresponsible beings, incapable of judgement.
For if the economy is a kind of Newtonian mechanism, we are only its
clogs. We have no autonomy. Even worse, if the economy is a mechanism,
it will only take a bunch of miscreants to claim that they are the mechanics,
with sole authorisation to intervene when the machinery breaks down. It isn't difficult to see how agents of The
State could make use of this paradigm.
However, to say that human beings are not subject to the mechanical
sequence of cause and effect does not imply that everything is possible. If everything were possible, nothing would
be real. Yet, economics is not an
illusion. It is a genuine competence
and way of doing things.[2] Certainly, there are laws of economics, but
they are qualitative, not quantitative.
We can state with scientific certainty that, all other things being
equal, if the price of a product falls, consumption of this product will
rise. What we cannot predict is how
much consumption will rise. There
is no mathematical calculation, no models that account for the free will of the
people we call consumers. Therefore,
the science of economics is above all a wisdom; and like all wisdom, it teaches
us humility and calls us to transcendence.
Let us now examine these two aspects in turn: economics as humility and
economics as a call to transcendence.
1. Economics
As Humility
Psychologists tell us that a young child, at a pre-conscious stage of
its development, believes in the power of its desires. It imagines a feeding bottle, and the bottle
appears. Of course, parents are
familiar with their baby's rhythm and physiological needs, and they know when
it will be hungry. It is only after
experiencing the inevitable disappointment of the bottle not appearing, that
the child finally discovers reality.
Freud sees in this “reality principle” one of the two principles
governing the history of psychic events (the other being the “pleasure
principle”).[3] We witness the same phenomenon in history,
as if the development of each individual were repeated by certain stages in the
evolution of the species. Prehistoric
hunters painted cave walls with the figures of wild game that they hoped to
kill.
At a certain stage in a child's development, as in the development
of the species, the human psyche abandons the attempt to satisfy its desires
through imagination, and understands that desires will be satisfied only by
effecting a change to the outside world.
It is this process of changing the world that economists call “labour”.
But there remains in the human unconscious a kind of nostalgia for an
imaginary primitive era, when our desires could be satisfied before we even
became aware of them, a symptom of the paranoid desire of total power over the
environment, such as that found in the mythical tales of paradise lost that are
told in almost all societies. This is
why for the greater part of human history -- in fact, right up until our modern
age -- work was endured as the painful consequence of a lost “Golden Age” [4].
Work was the curse handed down to humanity upon their expulsion from the Garden
of Eden.
The more harshly that human beings were subjected to labour, the further
they strayed from the state of innocence that preceded Original Sin. Of course, monks have been great
intellectual and manual workers since the Early Middle Ages, but precisely this
practice is for them an exercise in humility.
For the aristocrat, work was nothing
more than a demeaning activity.
In defence of the aristocrat, however, it must be said that throughout
almost all of human history, certainly before the machine age, work had very
little impact on the world. What
satisfaction could it possibly afford?
Man himself was so convinced of the futility of his work that he looked
to higher powers in order to achieve results. It was not the shaman's plasters
and potions that healed the sick, but the spirits. The farmers scratching at the surface with hoes would not fertilise
the soil, but the gods might, if the appropriate rites were performed. Efficiency laid not in the labourer working
with his materials, but in the priest and the sorcerer pleading to the
gods. The only power was magic power.
With modernisation, everything changed.
Technology increased the efficiency of work. In doing so, it has become the only magic; for what else besides
medicine and agronomy can cure sickness or ensure an abundant harvest? Thanks to technology, work, which was once
the evidence of a powerless Man, has now become instead a demonstration of his
power.
But then humankind, promoted to the position of
“master and owner of Nature”, as proudly described by Descartes,[5]
is now subjected to yet another humiliation.
If work is to be effective, it has only value if it serves someone. Work itself has no intrinsic value; if
anything, work consumes and destroys Nature’s resources and human energy. This is why we do not reward people because
they work (this is the great mistake people make, they believe they should be
paid because they work), but we pay for the product of their labour, and
then only when this product satisfies our requirements. Citroën cannot hope to convince car owners
that they must pay more for a Citrën than for a Toyota simply because a Citroën
requires more work to manufacture than its rival. Car owners buy an object, not an amount of work. Actually, if Citroën workers could build
cars whilst playing golf, we would be happy to pay them to play golf [6].
So is it not humiliating for the “master and owner of
Nature” to have to make a living by rendering a service to others ? For many
modern people there is something unbearable in the idea that others will
measure the value of their work.
This is why in many societies (in the Slavic and African cultures, for
example, and of course in the Hispanic-American and in the French cultures),
the bourgeois who earn their daily bread in rendering a service to others are
looked down upon.[7] In these societies, all the respectable
positions are held by so-called “civil servants”, that is by those who do not
need to provide any useful service in order to be paid.
Many people hold any work in contempt when its value is measured by
those they consider to be lower than themselves on the social ladder. This approach is a remnant of the
aristocratic values prevailing in agrarian and political societies: your worth
is decided by those above you, not below.
The French film maker will not mind waiting like a lackey in a
government minister's chambers to beg for a grant, instead of making a film
that would please the general public.
Scores of scientists struggle to decipher the laws of the universe, and
congratulate themselves when they succeed, whether or not this research is
useful to others.
Note that the scientific approach (like the aristocratic one) is a quest
for power for its own sake; in other words, it is the practice of black
magic. Science transforms white magic
into black when it turns the young child’s paranoid fantasy for total control
into the real world. The bounds of the
expanse of total power (and of black magic) is the economic requirement of
performing a valuable service for others.
This is the humility that the capitalist market expects of us so that
the white magic of economics might deploy its beneficial effects.
The fact that we need to work in order to narrow the distance between
our desires and realising them, means that nothing in this world comes free.[8] This brings us to the heart of economics.
The myth of a free lunch, whether it takes the form of “free health
care” or “ free education” is the ultimate dream of the consumer society,
to take and consume everything without having to give anything back. Yet I am
justified in destroying Nature’s resources only if I am conscious of the value
of what I am destroying. By making us
believe that there is no cost for what we consume, subsidies destroy the
link between human beings and Nature.
The obligation to pay is the restraint that economics puts on human
greed. Yes, we can have everything we want, but we must accept that there is a
price to pay.
The myth of a free lunch is therefore another lesson in humility that
economics teaches us. To produce
something is to destroy human energy and Nature’s resources. This is a serious act, and one which has
consequences in the whole universe. By
paying for what we have destroyed, we restore cosmic balance. We are told, for example, that American
Indians ask forgiveness for their destruction of a life before killing a bear
or cutting down a tree. The payment we
make for what we consume is our tribute to Nature and the way of making us
aware of our responsibilities towards humanity and to its small planet.
2. Economics As A Call To Transcendence
I have stated that economics is not only a lesson in humility, it is
also a call to transcendence. The
transcendence of economics is revealed in the magnificent and creative act of
production. Only human beings produce,
while all other species can only pillage.
But how is production possible?
First, the fact that work is possible at all means that we are part of
this earth. There is a tangible
identity of both the subject and the object;
human beings and the Earth are on the same metaphysical plane, we are two
aspects of the same world.
Other-worldly ghosts, on the other hand, obey other physical laws; for
example, they can pass through walls and get by without food or drink. The proof that we are part of this world is
that we absorb it into ourselves through food, which itself represents the
primary economic activity. For
instance, Jesus ate with his disciples at Emmaus in order to prove that he had
been resurrected and was not a ghost.
Similarly, we know that we could never survive on any other planet without
taking a part of our own Earth with us, in the form of its air and food
resources.
Next, the ability to conceptualise the world proves the existence of an
identity of both mind and matter.
Reality is consistent; it is subject to the laws of logic. Now human
thought is also logical; there exists therefore an identity between our ideas and the world. Once again, the human mind and Earth are on
the same metaphysical plane.
In the same way, economic production is possible because human beings
are capable of masterminding plans, and nature accepts and receives these
plans. Here we can pinpoint the
difference between dreams and reality:
we cannot produce in our dreams, we need to be physically confronted
with reality for us to be able to shape and mould it in the image of our plans.
The product of economics is therefore a thing -- an inanimate object,
manifested outside of ourselves, and at the same time an object steeped in our
own beings;. Production is the movement
of the human mind projecting itself into matter in such a way that the human
being imprints his idea onto the object, he realises his idea; the
possible and the virtual become real.
Thanks to economics, the human mind penetrates into the world; in doing
so, the distance between humanity and matter is reduced.
Economics unites mind and matter in order for matter to give way to
life.[9]
Economics invalidates the trivial notion that differentiates between
having and being. Many pundits have
made this theoretical distinction the central theme of their philosophy. Even the young Marx, in his Grundrisse
period, teaches us that luxury is as much a vice as poverty, and that we should
strive to be more and not to have more (I do not know if Marx's
disciples were ever conscious of being more, but they certainly
succeeded in having less). The
American psychologist Eric Fromm devoted an entire book to this question: To Have or To Be?[10] But this distinction only exists in the
minds of those who, like Marx and Fromm, have not understood the real meaning
of economic activity. For in economic
activity, the opposition of having and being is reconciled in the
making of things, because to create an object is to infuse our being
into this object. When we say about a
statue “That's a Rodin”, or about a car “That's a Citroën”, what we mean is that the 'being' of Rodin
and of Citroën engineers, financiers and workers, has been incorporated into
the bronze of the statues, and into the metal and materials that comprise an
automobile.[11]
And here we have clarified the meaning of economics. The aim and the
importance of economics is to humanise matter.
It is to instil into matter the essence of the human. If we truly understand what is involved in
the act of producing, that is in all economic activity, then we realise
that there is only one legitimate way for human societies to co-exist, and that
way is laissez-faire capitalism.
Laissez-faire capitalism is a way of life based on the dynamic
relationship between “being” and “having”, without the exclusion of one or the
other. The foundation of laissez-faire
capitalism is natural property rights.
For if what we make does not become something we have, we are dispossessed
of the expression of our being that we have instilled into it. And if what we have is not of our making,
what right can we claim to possess it?
Being and having are inextricably bound together in humans, what we have
is closely linked to what we are. Even
the most spiritual among us acknowledge this to be true; they maintain that
having can prevent the being from flourishing, therefore to be and to
have are truly linked.
And so if human beings’ possessions can affect the essence of who they
are, then to control their possessions is also to control their being.
For instance, under democratic socialism, which is the political regime
of all industrialised countries today, we are only truly free to possess
consumer goods, in other words objects that we have the right only to
destroy. To put it another way, our
governments only allow us the right to ownership on the dark side of the
economy, that of destruction. The solar, or Apollonian, side of the economy --
that of production and creation -- does not belong to us, or at least not
entirely. Governments do not permit us to fully own what we produce. About half
of all wealth produced is confiscated by the State.
This is why in democratic regimes, the relationship we have with the
economy is not one of creation but of consumption and of destruction. We need only observe the devastation around
us to become seriously troubled about the worrying consequences of this
distorted connection with Nature.[12]
3. Money
Let us now return to Eric Fromm to see how he was to some extent correct
in his hypothesis. For if the human
spirit (the being) and matter (the having) are combined at the heart of
economics, which of the two drives the other?
For example, it is true that none of us is today who we were at
birth. It is in doing that we create
ourselves, and the doing that modelled our being was in large part our work,
our economic activity on things.
Therefore, it is not outside the bounds of imagination that the burden
of these things have enslaved some of us, and that instead of the spirit
transforming matter, the weight of the matter has enslaved the spirit. There are people who are smaller than their
properties.
However, this contrast between having and being emphasised by Fromm
disguises the real nature of property rights.
As Ayn Rand rather astutely observes, ownership is not the right to
possess a thing, but the right to act on this thing. This is precisely the lesson taught by
capitalism. Having is always
transcended by doing. Things only exist
to be worked on, to be the objects of human endeavours. We establish all kinds
of relationships with Nature.
Contemplation or celebration, for example, are the relationships that we
establish when things satisfy us as
they are. Economic activity starts when
we see things as we wish they were. The
capitalist is a visionary, always in pursuit of other possible worlds outside
of his one. Contrary to popular
imagery, the bourgeois capitalist does not revere matter; matter is only the
structure onto which it is possible to imprint an idea.
Furthermore, even after they have been shaped by an idea, things do not
acquire a value. The bitter frustration experienced by artists, engineers and
workers is the realisation that they themselves do not create the value of
things. The capitalist economy tears us
away from the materialism for things to show that these things do not have an
intrinsic value. Everything exists only to be transformed and to be
exchanged. In economics, things exist
only to be put into circulation.
The symbol of this circulation is money. It is impossible to speak of the economy today without talking
about money. These days, nothing is so
little understood by the critics of bourgeois capitalism as the function of
money. Money is an energy. The great transformation of our era is the
transition of hierarchical agrarian
societies, that were founded on the permanent ownership of lands and
factories, towards another type of society, more fluid, more mobile; in fact,
towards a new nomadism. Money is
clearly the energy of this new nomadism.
Consider society before finance capitalism. This was a society of aristocrats and peasants, soldiers and
workers, who encountered frequent conflicts, but who, in spite of these
conflicts, ultimately shared the same values:
a love of mother earth and the nourishment she provides, a devotion to
their homeland and country, a submission to power and dogma…
And then money disrupts the order of things, because wherever it
appears, that is to say everywhere nowadays except in the most primitive of
societies, its energy reverses traditional hierarchies. Money upsets human-made rules and
privileges. It even prevents the
restoration of new and stable orders, so powerful is its revolutionary energy.
Contrary to customary opinion, money is not an idol, it is instead the
tempest that upsets idols. Unpredictable
and uncontrollable, money is on the side of liberty because it does not
recognise borders and it threatens all governments. It is spiritual because it tears us away from materialism.[13]
In a certain way, finance capitalism points us in the direction of a
continual journey. It shows us things
and reminds us “Don’t get attached to this, it can be sold”. This is the
warning issued to us by the modern economy in an attempt to cure us of passive
hoarding and of the temptation of acceptance of dogmas, and to guide us instead
towards a life of constant creation.[14]
4. The Fight For Life
So we can now understand why economic activity is so disparaged. All the
reactionary and conservative forces in contemporary societies are propped up
against the winds of change that the economy blows on the world.
A capitalist economy is a new way of being in the world; no longer one
of powerlessness before nature, as with primitive peoples, nor one of
submission to a dominant class using repressive State power, as in political
societies. The values of the liberal economies sooner or later clash one on one
with the traditional values of agrarian political societies: economics advocates the individual instead
of the collective, generosity instead of forced solidarity, voluntary co-operation instead of forced
association, contracts instead of power, exchange instead of theft, [15] initiative instead of obedience, networks
instead of hierarchy…
Politics imposes uniformity: if
the King is Catholic, all his subjects must also be; if the majority votes for
socialism, the minority must also submit to it… An economic vision of the world
encourages both choice and diversity.
If all of the people on this side want socialism, or Islam, or a
communal mode of living, you can have it; leave out the people on the other
side to enjoy a different mode of living. Both sides will be happy to trade
ideas, and culture and material goods, if it is mutually beneficial.[16]
Unlike politics, the economy does not lead to uniformity, but to unification.
And unlike politics, economics allows us to choose who we want to
associate with, and it may be with any human being on the planet.
In the course of this lecture, I have noted that economic wealth is
desired by the majority of people and that, ironically, the acceptable road
that leads to this wealth inspires hatred.
The reason for this is because legitimate wealth is only acquired by
providing a service for others, and our pride, the legacy of thousands of years
of aristocratic culture, does not enable us to tolerate our work being judged
by others, by the general public … Economic logic reverses the historical flow
of work and remuneration. We no longer
work for someone who is above us -- the King, the nobility, the high priests…
-- but we are asked to work for the people next door, or some distant foreigner
... In the past, the poor produced for
the rich; today, in the market economy, the rich remain rich because they do
not mind producing for those who are poorer than themselves.
The heroes of political societies are the warriors, defenders of the
land. Today’s government employees and civil servants still pretend to live by
the values of the warriors. They claim they are fighting for our modern ideals,
the integrity of the Country, the Common Good, Human Rights... and they urge to
place these ideals above our own life. The warrior is one who accepts death --
that of others and his own -- in the name of an ideal.
This is the great divide between the values of the
aristocratic agrarian political societies and the values of the economy. The
bourgeois ignores tragedy, the tragic conflict between life and a so-called
“higher cause”. The bourgeois unequivocally puts life first.
The figure of the capitalist bourgeois who always prefers life to death
-- that is the figure of the entrepreneur, the innovator, the merchant, who places
honesty and competence above national identities, -- this bourgeois figure can
now answer the question we asked initially about the nature of economics: Economics is the attempt by human beings to
give life to matter -- to minerals, to oil, to land, to an indifferent Nature,
to dogmas, to abstract ideals and to man-made idols, to so-called “higher
causes” and to faceless institutions --
to all these objects of death, by giving them a part of their own life. The entrepreneur hopes that his life will
enter into the world, and in this way economics is the struggle of mankind
against death. This is the call of economics to transcendence.
To sum up, the subject matter of economy is simply the Soul of the
world.
NOTES
[1] Franz
Oppenheimer, The State, (First published in Germany 1908. The last
English edition from 1922 does not include the additions Oppenheimer made in
the1929 German edition). Until now, all
modern societies have been subjected to State violence, a domination that was
made possible by a hierarchical and agricultural way of life. For the majority of people who do not
reflect on this question (and who themselves often hope to benefit from
political violence), it is therefore difficult to imagine the extraordinary
outpouring of energy that could result in societies where violence is
outlawed. Some analogies can only be
glimpsed, for example the general improvement that resulted from the abolition
of serfdom.
[2] As shown by Ludwig von Mises as praxeology.
See his Human Action, 4th edition, Irvington, Foundation for
Economic Education, 1996; Murray Rothbard, Economistes et charlatans,
trans. from François Guillaumat, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1991; and Hans
Hermann Hoppe, The Economics and Ethics of Private Property, Boston,
Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993.
[3] Sigmund Freud, Au-delà du principe de plaisir, in Essais
de Psychanalyse, Paris, Payot, 1951.
[4] Work was the degrading occupation that
Aristotle considered good enough for slaves in
Athens. The etymology of the word clearly shows esteem held for work. In the Latin of the Middle Empire, tripalium
referred to an assembly of three stakes on which an animal was immobilised
ready for castration.
[5] Descartes, Discours de
la méthode, Part 6, Librairie Larousse, Paris.
[6] When we
purchase a service or a product, our payment corresponds directly to the value
of that item to us, and not in any way to the human qualities inherent in the
people who created it. Whether in the
world of business or of art, a creator disappears behind his creation, and this
is how it should be. In an economic
relationship, we do not judge people (and even less their personal qualities),
but only their creation. Because
payment for service is independent from the person who makes it, it is not even
the merits of a worker that is paid for.
It is very admirable to build a dam with bare hands, but for those who
are waiting for the electricity it will produce, it is more practical to use
bulldozers.
[7] It is difficult to imagine the heroes of
Corneille, Racine, and Madame de Lafayette returning as wealthy men. They
return as victors. Their values are
those of the aristocracy: the sense of sacrifice to the community, physical
courage. These values disappear in
1914. In actual fact, they are being
called for today, especially in Europe, by “public servants”, but in the way
that servants put on their masters' clothes.
[8] Here, however, we must make one important
distinction: giving something away for
free (what I shall call here a “free lunch”) is different to giving a gift. A gift associates people; one person to give
and one to receive. Giving a gift is an
eminently capitalist act; it symbolises the right to ownership, because the
giver can only give what belongs to him, and the act of giving reveals the
central characteristic of the right of ownership.
[9] Père Serge Boulgakov, Filosofia Hozaïstva, Moscou, 1912,
French Translation Philosophie de l’économie, Lausanne, Editions
de l’Age d’Homme, 1987.
[10] Eric Fromm, To Have or To Be ?,
New York, Harper & Row Publishers, 1976, French Translation Avoir ou
être ?, Paris, Robert Laffont, 1978.
[11] This infusion of life into possessions,
which is the bare essence of capitalism, cannot be understood by those who are
still prisoners to the view of a feudal world.
For these people, a being is deteriorated as a result of its contact
with having. Friedrich von Schiller,
“Base natures are respected on the basis of what they do, noble natures on the
basis of what they are”, quoted by
Alexander Rüstow, Freedom And Domination, Princeton University Press,
1980.
[12] Current ecological discourse
confines itself to space, and remains grounded in the values of agrarian
societies. But social democracies cause
yet another kind of damage, one that has nothing to do with our relationship to
space and the environment, but to time.
One primary characteristic of social democracies is the diminishing
relationship to time. This manifests
itself in the depletion of national savings in all Western societies and in our
own carelessness towards the future.
Ostensibly
there are others who are concerned for us -- namely
the State -- and we are supposed to put our confidence in them. When we invest, we understandably have a
preference for schemes that show
immediate profitability, because the bad habits of
fiscal and monetary policies in social democracies, and the whims of the
majority, make any long-term commitment very hazardous.. The State creates
conditions of insecurity that make it impossible to
plan long-term investments, and then accuse capitalists of only investing in
the short-term.
[13] I follow closely here Edouard Valdman, Les
juifs et l’argent, Paris, Biblieurope, 1999.
[14] In Western imagery, the man with money
and learning is the nomadic Jew. To all Christians, as I am, Jews are, as in
the words of one of the Popes, “elder brothers in faith”. Historically, the Jews are a prophetic
people.
The prophetic message the Jewish
people is delivering is that political power and all institutions which confine
us inside borders, prevent our evolution. The Jew is forever a stateless. (I
remember my surprise when on my first visit to Israel I saw huge posters
denouncing the State of Israel pasted on the walls of the Mea Shearim quarter
where the more traditional communities lived.
For Orthodox Jews, the State of Israel is heretical because only the
Messiah would be able to create it).
Hitler's hatred of Jews, and also of gypsies, communists and bourgeois
capitalists, was due to their getting by very well without allegiance to a particular
State.
Auschwitz marked the end of an era
in the evolution of humanity. What Auschwitz teaches us is that a certain type
of society, the agrarian and political societies based on the triad of land,
people, and State (which the national-socialists expressed in their slogan ein
Reich, ein Volk, ein Führer and which has been the way for human beings to
organise themselves for 7.000 years) is no longer viable. In the same way that
great tectonic earthquakes are followed by less powerful aftershocks, we are
witnesses, after the failure of national socialism, to the final shocks of
political societies in Yugoslavia and in the Caucasus. The Auschwitz lesson will take some time to
be understood. But the obsolescence of political societies will leave room undoubtedly
to the formation of communities that unite people who want to share the same
expression of their culture and the same common projects, wherever they may
live, as the Jews did for over 2000 years from Morocco to the shetel of
Poland, from Baghdad to Lithuania.
Globalisation confirms the definitive failure of those twin brothers,
nationalism and socialism. In that
sense, we have all become Jews.
[15] A great lord, as opposed to a shopkeeper,
only settles his gambling debts. There
is a story about the Count Robert de Montesquiou (who was one of Proust's
models for the character of Baron de Charlus) haggled with his suppliers like a
second-hand clothes dealer in the casbah.
One of his
friends exclaimed: "Why are you so determined to
make them lower their prices, when you're not going to pay them
anyway?" "It is only out of
kindness towards them," replied the generous lord, "so that they will
lose less."
[16] If people wish to live according to the
principles of socialism or Islam, or of any other way of life, grand bien
leur fasse, the others who have adopted a different philosophy will be
happy to exchange with them their commercial and cultural goods -- as long as
each person gets something out of it -- and to compare their experiences, in
short, to do everything typical to the market.
And if those who have adopted the life style of socialism, for example,
are so happy, this example will gradually make the entire planet wish to live
like they do, and the dream of universal socialism will be realised without
violence. If you do not believe that
this could happen, that is to say if you do not believe that people would agree
to share their revenue, to give up their legacies, and to share the means of
production, and that as a result they will need to be encouraged to do so by
political initiatives (such as to throw the refractories in prison), then
perhaps socialism is not compatible with the human nature; if so, what right do
we have to deny this reality?