Liberty, equality, fraternity? Pull the other one!
National identities are built around a history – or, more precisely, selective fragments of a history interpreted in what is deemed a politically correct manner at a given point in time – and a shared set of cultural, social and political references.
In the French imagination, or collective unconscious, the origin of modern France – the ‘big bang’ that brought our nation into being – was the Revolution of 1789. Our identity resides in the philosophy of the enlightenment, which inspired the revolution: the triumph of reason and science over the mumbo-jumbo of religion. It resides in the principles engraved above the door of every town hall in the land: liberty, equality and fraternity. It resides in the abolition of all forms of privilege, so enthusiastically proclaimed on the night of 4 August. It resides in the Republic as a symbol of egalitarian democracy, national unity and jealously guarded secularism. Not even the events of this current Fifth Republic have shaken our foundations: on the contrary, despite the climate of domestic ‘cold-war’ that has long characterised relations between left and right in France, the two have joined in pious communion to harp on about our founding values.
Sadly, this image of ourselves, which we like to maintain and seek to project to others, has become rather like the vision in a fairground hall of mirrors.
Liberty? We are anarchists, skilled in the practice of ‘civil disobedience’ – that wonderful oxymoron that so neatly sums us up. We claim to be revolutionaries but in truth we are only grumblers.
Equality? Now that is a joke! Modern France is a nest of privilege, in the literal sense of the word: every occupation and every social group has its own rules, and very soon every neighbourhood will have them too. Under the banner of ‘equality’ we are all jostling to defend our privileges against those of others. It is to the credit of the current government that it has sought to tackle these special regimes head on, whether in relation to retirement entitlements, labour law, access to particular professions or educational provision, for example.
Fraternity? It has to be admitted that we are generous – at least with other people’s money! Making the state responsible for mopping up every personal misery could, and surely should, be seen as a way of passing the buck: we put our grandparents into old people’s homes and leave them there to stew through heat waves; most of the down-and-outs on our streets are victims not of poverty but of abandonment by their families; and the task of parenting our teenagers is being shifted from fathers and mothers to the education system.
What about secularism? While France may no longer be the ‘eldest daughter’ of the Catholic Church, it continues to approach politics in terms of moral – and even religious – philosophy. In France, more so than elsewhere, Marxism was practised exactly in the manner of a materialistic religion, with its bible and prophets and preachers, its schisms and witch hunts, its theoretical morality in blissful disregard of the facts (remember Billancourt in 1968), and even its human sacrifices (intellectually justified, of course, and not only by Mao and his cultural revolutionaries). Long after the fall of Communism, and right into the early years of this century, the French left – the last to cling to Marxism – continued to lay down the law on matters of good and evil.
Scarcely had we got rid of Marx – who was well and truly buried by both Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal in the last presidential campaign – than a new faith emerged to claim the ethical monopoly in this so-called secular society. This time it is the High Church of the Environment, and France certainly is its ‘eldest daughter’. Interestingly, many of the clergy of this church are Marxists who have swapped the class struggle for the struggle of man versus nature, as the latest embodiment of that eternal struggle between good and evil. One might have hoped that the cross-party effort on environmental issues would at least have resulted in a victory of reason over mumbo-jumbo. But no: the decision on GM foods has given our new ‘green’ religion a dimension that not even Marxism could boast – namely dietary taboos. Never mind scientific assurances that the products in question are harmless. Never mind the unprecedented potential of genetic engineering in medicine or its capacity to revolutionise farming in developing countries. Never mind the fact that France’s high priest of all things green, José Bové, got just 1% of the vote in the presidential elections. One twitch of his eminent moustache was enough to ensure the triumph of dogma over science, democratic legitimacy and common sense.
As for the Republic itself, we could do worse than take to heart the gentle irony of the British observation that ‘France is the last European monarchy’. Since the inception of the Fifth Republic, the people of France have behaved towards their President not like citizens towards their elected representative, but like subjects before their king: either excessively respectful and awed by power and its trappings, or defiantly rebellious – convinced in both cases that political power resides with the President alone and that it is absolute. The people elected the President and they reserve the right to decapitate him (for was not Valéry Giscard d’Estaing effectively decapitated on 10 May 1981?) yet they regard him as a monarch, they expect everything from him and they are disappointed if he fails to behave like royalty. It will be interesting to see whether Nicolas Sarkozy’s desire to break with the past extends to this fundamental aspect of our political culture.
So, what about breaking with the past? Two hundred years after the French Revolution, the principles for which it stands are as valid as ever. What about trying to put them into practice? What about truly endeavouring to live up to the image?
Alain Lamassoure, 13 January 2008