With his diatribes against Peugeot’s shareholders, the Minister for “Industrial Renewal” displays a violence similar to that of the far-left presidential candidates – Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Nathalie Arthaud (or even the “friendly” Philippe Poutou?) – during the recent campaigns.
Faced with such aggressiveness from a political figure – a minister and former MP in one case, a senator in the other – one may wonder what psychological phenomenon leads them potentially to stir up a violence that could go beyond mere political expression and into the physical realm (illustrated here by a logo seen on the T-shirt of a “family man” on the TGV…).
Montebourg is a lawyer; Mélenchon was a journalist. Each has therefore had the opportunity to learn that money does not fall from the sky. In a country where most elected officials come from the civil service – which lives only on taxes collected, not on immediate wealth creation – this is all the more surprising.
Several avenues therefore open up for reflection, beyond mere posturing that would go beyond deep convictions – because in this period of extreme economic and political tension, one could not imagine such irresponsibility from either of them.
Psychological repression?
The first avenue is that of psychological “repression” (or “suppression”). Our country is tremendously in debt. This debt is not merely virtual, in the hands of stateless, greedy bankers whose claims could simply be “cancelled”, as some demand. It is deepened every day by our trade deficit. To meet our “needs” (or desires) for high-tech products, textiles, machinery but also energy in particular, we buy from abroad. Unfortunately, our exports of goods and services are not enough to offset these purchases. We apparently need other people’s products more than they need ours…
And to maintain the State’s lifestyle and pay social benefits, since we generate no surplus, we borrow from those who export more than they import. Not only are we in deficit day to day, but we are also burdening future generations with debt.
What we are experiencing is a historic reversal. France, and the Western world with it, no longer dominates. But it keeps the posture… It is true that this is hard to accept, because it means accepting that continuous “growth” is not real, and that we must now adjust our spending to the wealth we produce. Even if that means borrowing a little to invest in the future, but within acceptable limits…
The violence expressed by Arnaud Montebourg may therefore reflect the psychological struggle going on within him – for he is intelligent – and his unconscious refusal to acknowledge reality. That is “repression”.
Or political repression?
The other avenue is different, and we must absolutely rule it out, because it is the Albanian or North Korean way, for example. In short, the way of all the totalitarianisms of the 20th century and of this one, which, rather than looking within themselves for the resources to face up to difficulties and find solutions, prefer to look for culprits and enemies – of race or class. And which consider launching wars of territorial conquest, because raw materials are the resources most easily “captured” (services, by contrast, can only be produced freely). And this path begins with repression at home: of dissonant voices, non-conforming thoughts, divergent opinions.
A retroactive tax policy has not been spontaneously ruled out; it has even been attempted, although it is clearly an abuse of law – at least in the spirit of the laws that “no one is supposed to be ignorant of” (provided they have been promulgated).
So let us hope that this kind of repression remains a figment of the imagination, because real change – the kind based on ownership of transformation, or of rupture – can only truly be achieved through dynamics that exclude all violence.
Leave a Reply