It is striking to observe the abyss that separates France, this old theater from patented egalitarianism, from triumphant America, where entrepreneurs’ icons are erected such as Musk Elon. There, success is a permanent spectacle, where money becomes striking without shame; Here, he triggers moral convulsions and public lamentations. Because finally, with us, success is always suspect, the wealth necessarily fraudulent, and ambition, a fault of taste. Where does this typically French acrimony come from with the great captains of industry and all those who still dare to create value and wealth?
If we are going to make the genealogy, we discover several bypassing of thought having perverted our relationship to success and success. Since the Revolution, France has exalted equality, while developing an inflexible distrust of any inequality, superiority, elite or hierarchy. Tocqueville had foreseen it: the noble ideal of equality has changed into an egalitarianism where equal rights was confused with a requirement of equivalence in facts. Because we are equal to the law, we should be equivalent in all, as if legal indifferentiation had to abolish any social disparity. The Revolution and its tomorrows have instilled this fallacious idea that all hierarchy would be disguised oppression, and all that rises should be brought to the ground. But by dint of wanting to eradicate any inequality, we came to reprove any distinction, until success itself.
To this is added a second heritage, that of the old regime, where fortune, often inherited, was the prerogative of some privileged. This collective memory has produced an automation of tenacious thought: we no longer just deplore the unjustly acquired fortune, we end up disapproving of any form of wealth, whatever the origin. Silver is castigated, not only when it is badly acquired, but also when it is the fruit of a genius, a talent, an effort. In short, we no longer fight the abuses of wealth, but wealth as a whole. It is through this lack of thought that fallacious reasoning multiplies: because some have inherited their fortune, all the rich are privileged; Because money generates inequalities, it must be hated; Because money generates inequalities and large bosses embody money, the big bosses are responsible for inequalities.
Always this same destructive drive
This false logic does not result from stupidity, but from several interests of reason. The first is that it is much more convenient to give in to illusion than to face reality. To admit that the distinctions are inevitable and that the disparities exist beyond well-righteous utopias would amount to renouncing the comfort of reassuring egalitarian fictions. However, many who prefer the sweetness of illusion to the bitterness of a disturbing truth. The second interest of reason is that it is infinitely easier to deconstruct than to build, to lower than to raise. Behind these indignant clamors, these cohorts of tireless protesters and the age -old trial of those who have had the overhang of succeeding, is heard the catchphrase of resentment, jealousy, decay, these black energies which prefer destruction to the ‘Construction. It is always the same refrainment of the rabougrimisting, the same destructive drive which prefers a world of indistinction without relief to a society where some would shine too much, where dazzling trajectories would remind everyone of their own limits. And yet, success, success, far from always crushing by the verticality they impose, raise. They do not condemn, they inspire. They do not submit, but open possible.
France, unfortunately curled up on its egalitarian myth, prefers resentment to emulation, resentment to admiration. So she tramples and sinks. It is time to exchange this bitterness for a new ambition. It would still be necessary to give up this suave poison which makes egalitarization a virtue, the differences of automatic injustices and success a fault.
* Julia de Funès is a doctor of philosophy.
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