Rarely has our country been so well examined. Passionate about numbers, Jérôme Fourquet offered masterful X-rays with his Afrench archipelago and France before our eyes (with our columnist Jean-Laurent Cassely). In From France, Laetitia Strauch-Bonart in turn probes our nation, but rather works as a psychologist by tracking down old neuroses. The strength of his analysis is to stand out from a declining current in vogue among our intellectuals, for whom immigration, globalization, May 68 or even Waterloo (Zemmour…) would be synonymous with incurable diseases.
To understand the “French evil” once diagnosed by Alain Peyrefitte, it is necessary, according to the essayist and journalist, rather to go back to the roots. Problem n° 1: the French Leviathan. Our state is both obese and powerless. “France succeeds in this ultimate paradox of being the country where the tax rate and that of public expenditure are among the highest in the developed world but whose citizens feel the most wronged”, notes the author.
In what she called the “debt society”, each social movement is resolved by a new state check. “The people want power but power gives them alms. Because to maintain the status quo, the State inevitably takes out its wallet. Not only does this gesture tighten the bond of credit with society, but Leviathan, deprived means because of its galloping debt, is forced to compensate for its largesse later or elsewhere, which will give rise to new disputes.
Safari in regions
Problem n° 2: the French swear only by equality, but seek to distinguish themselves by innumerable privileges, special statuses and tax loopholes, proof that we have not completely driven out our aristocratic past. With us, the diploma is a lifelong pass. “In first position come the Grandes Ecoles, then the Parisian universities, then those of the big cities… finally all the others. As with the aristocracy of yesteryear, the name of your school marks your origin and therefore your quality. C It’s a competition made all the more absurd by the fact that most jobs require very little academic knowledge.” And Laetitia Strauch-Bonart to invite companies to take inspiration from the British weekly The Spectator, which requires its trainees to take an aptitude test rather than a school allowance.
Problem no. 3: centralism, a legacy of the Old Regime reinforced by the Republic. When she devoted a series to the great contemporary English intellectuals, the journalist was surprised to have to go to Oxfordshire or Wiltshire. In France, it is enough to survey two or three arrondissements. To realize the extent of Parisianism, it is necessary to see renowned journalists embarking, with each new presidential election, on reporting in the regions as if it were a safari.
Rather than this ugly word of “decentralization”, Laetitia Strauch-Bonart prefers to defend “localism”. Unlike a centralized system that can apply harmful ideas to an entire territory, localism allows experimentation on a small scale, while bringing together rulers and ruled. Moreover, the current ills of peripheral France owe less to globalization than to centralism. In West Germany, for example, activities are much better distributed: chemicals in the Ruhr, automobiles in Bavaria, banks in Frankfurt, and festive tourism in Berlin.
phobia of liberalism
Problem n° 4: the hatred of liberalism, this widespread phobia from the extreme left to the extreme right. Or more exactly of “neoliberalism”, this largely fantasized devil, as the economist Guillaume Bazot showed in the recent The neoliberal scarecrow, a very French evil (PUF). And what does it matter that the market economy has, in a spectacular way, reduced extreme poverty, while multiplying by almost 100 the gross world product for two centuries. Presented a little hastily as a liberal candidate, Macron was quickly overtaken by French demons, to the point of wanting to resuscitate the obsolete Planning Commission.
Often, you have to focus your gaze and go abroad to realize how much our country also has qualities. Laetitia Strauch-Bonart, who lived for several years in London, thus salutes the attention paid to health, the fruit of the Pasteurian revolution and a hygienist tradition. Despite the mistakes in the face of Covid-19, our executive came out much better in the health crisis than a Boris Johnson who boasted of having “shake hands with everyone”. There are hardly any French fast food chains, as if the meal here remains a unique and non-standardised moment. And then our compatriots have a visceral attachment to heritage.
“The sweet France exists, and we always forget it, preferring to represent to us everything that malfunctions, by this form of chronic masochism which is only one of the manifestations of our political malaise”, concludes the essayist. France even resists rather well to “wokism”, this identity virus that appeared on American campuses. Presidential candidates would do well to throw themselves on this brilliant check-up of a “country that we think we know”, and which has far more resources than the champions of decline describe it.
“From France”, by Laetitia Strauch-Bonart. Perrin / Presses de la Cité, 400 p., €22.