About the Manufacture de l’homme apolitique

Introduction

Two fundamental trends seem to converge in the manufacture of apolitical “inhabitants”. One is the confiscation of the people’s power, carried out as soon as the Republic was established and explicitly announced as such in both the United States and France. This is an established fact in the discourse of the time, and even in the texts of the constitutions adopted. Thus, elected on the basis of constructed legitimacy, presidents shouted “Vive la République!” over and over again, but never “Vive la démocratie!”, and the dupes went dancing at the July 14th balls to the backdrop of an invented national memory. Taking a more strictly political approach, we show how the confiscation of power, deviating from the idea of democracy, necessarily leads to the disappearance of the effective citizen in favor of the development of an increasingly apolitical population. This is what La démocratie du futur denounces , before suggesting ways of re-politicizing power-sharing.

The other trend, which deprives politics of any chance of such an implementation, is the consented vassalization of States by a deleterious ultraliberalism, transforming former citizens into modern apolitical individuals – be they “collabo” consumers of the system, or suburban outcasts in the suburbs or peri-urban outcasts in rural areas. This is what the Manufacture de l’homme apolitique denounces, providing a thoroughly convincing panorama based on hard-hitting analyses.

Manufacture de l’homme apolitique – reading notes

That ultra-liberalism leads to the apoliticization of the “masses” is self-evident – although it needed to be said! -This book, by philosopher Caëla Gillespie, explores the ins and outs of this phenomenon, all the more so as it is the undeniable result we have been witnessing for decades. The analysis of so-called “democratic” regimes – in effect stillborn in both the United States and France, under bourgeois, mercantile and, from the outset, plutocratic control, and resulting in the confiscation of power – clearly shows its undeniable responsibility for political disengagement (non-registration on electoral lists, abstention, blank and invalid votes). However, the economic approach ultimately provides the motivation, the driving force; and it is, anthropologically, quite simply the individual greed of some, set up as a socio-economic system for all the others. “Everyone on minimum wage except me” is the slogan of this system, illustrated by the drastic reduction in the gap between a teacher’s salary and the minimum wage (from 4 to 1.5), with French teacher salaries the lowest in Europe. Indeed, we shouldn’t be educating critical citizens.

Historically, this book clearly shows how ultraliberalism misappropriates and surpasses its sources in classical liberalism, where the state’s intended role was first and foremost to safeguard property, an individual right received at birth, itself giving rise to possible dissent and, in any case, the superiority of the individual over the state. This is illustrated by the so-called^5th Amendment in the United States, which is specifically designed to enable “inhabitants” (we no longer dare speak of citizens) to defend themselves against the federal government!

Historically too, we understand the need to eradicate absolute monarchism, which spoliates individual property. That said, rather than the end of history, isn’t today’s neo-feudalism simply a return to medieval feudalism, the reign of taxes and the pre-emptive power of a few over all others? A regression, then, with all the infantile aspects of this type of pathology.

A passing remark about Adam Smith, which in no way detracts from the analyses in the book: we now know that his general aim was not so much to liberate the “living forces” of nations from state control, but, on the contrary, to protect the state against merchant lobbies. In any case, we can clearly see the perverting of classical liberalism by modern ultraliberalism, which castigates all state regulation.

The extracts from Hayek’s thought are edifying.

We could have added that of Rawls, more of a philosopher (Hayek is indeed an “economist”, but not, in our eyes, the philosopher we claim to be), with his justification of misery by equality of opportunity! It’s the motto, or excuse, of the American business world: this is not personal! as if there could be business on Venus where there’s no one, as if the world weren’t first and foremost made up of people (present, incidentally, in the definition of economic science).

In any case, the rhetoric of ultraliberalism is well-honed and effective. Even more than a “single thought”, ultraliberalism now seems to be a real obstacle to thinking (see the younger generations), having reduced the environment of individuals to the exclusive domain of the commercial world. Man is, in effect, reduced to the role – and identified with it – of producer of wealth¹ and consumer of goods. He’s no longer even a homo economicus, who would remain a man, he’s just an agent, an element in equations – classified by purchasing power.

Three observations:

• Firstly, this link between citizenship and purchasing power takes us directly back to the plutocratic origins of the Revolution (in particular, the prices paid to vote or stand for election).
• Secondly, we might add that, like all modern sciences – including the most concrete of all: physics – economic science has totally abandoned reality in favor of mathematical abstraction. No surprise, then, if all humanity fades behind the numbers.
• Finally, we could talk about the language of companies, now appointing a “DRH” (after “personnel manager” and “human relations director”), turning employees into “human resources”, without realizing that they are reproducing, in their own way, the horrors of a regime of sinister memory.

Ultraliberalism’s (successful) attempts to overturn the pyramid of economic laws have been heard. What remains, as mentioned, are questions of morality that have little economic impact because they take place in the private sphere (homosexuality, paedophilia…). Apart from taxing users caught in the act, not much has been done about prostitution and, surprisingly, although it’s a potential super-business, euthanasia remains in the hands of the State.

It’s true that considering the rule of law as a necessary (but not sufficient) condition of democracy, having, moreover, an ancestral anteriority (^2nd millennium BC, with the 282 articles of the code of Hammurabi, Babylon’s inaugural legislator and “king of justice”), it is clear that the State is under attack from all sides, from above (EU, Nicolo ruling, art. 55 of the Constitution), from below (the commercial world) and from the side (non-elected bodies such as international financial organizations).

Of particular note are:

• The ignored responsibilities of people in positions of responsibility and merchant leaders who collaborate with the system (“Tous collabos!” would sum up the situation). In corporate parlance, they are shamelessly referred to as “collaborators”.
• The mention of Cahier de politique économique no. 13 (p. 105), which recommends the underhand demolition of schools, is still not widely known.
• The expression “democratic election” (p. 88), an oxymoron denounced elsewhere (cf. La démocratie du futur).
• The excellent analysis of the urban sites reserved for demonstrations.

We may have reservations about the image of a “religious revolution”, a cliché of an “unreal here below”, which is too reductive. The phrase “mystical body” of Christianity applies to the Church, in a much broader sense than to the faithful as a whole. On the other hand, to say that there is not a disenchantment of the world but a (fallacious) re-enchantment or “misenchantment” (the fable of “Economic Necessity”) seems quite accurate (we’ll have to find the American author who proposed this “misenchantment” formula).

Concerning progressives, we could refer to the myth of progress, initiated during the Renaissance and still denounced today (e.g. Bouveresse, 2023). The definition, given in the famous article by Karl Kraus (1874-1936), is delicious:

progress is the prototype of a mechanical or quasi-mechanical process, self-powered and self-sustaining, which each time creates the conditions for its own perpetuation, notably by producing inconveniences².

More recently, following Georg Henrik von Wright (1916-2003):

continuous economic growth is a condition for solving the problems that intensified and rationalized industrial production itself creates.

In other words, progress has remained the self-solution to the problems it poses; progress progresses! as Heidegger would say. It’s enough to label those who denounce the evils caused by progress as anti-progress, to clear the name of progress as a perpetual solution of itself and to itself.

Conclusion

Ultimately, if the establishment of anarcho-capitalism is becoming a matter of course – and the recent American election confirms this, if need be – it’s clear that the future begins with an awareness of this state of affairs. But what about action?

The means at our disposal seem very limited.

It seems to me that economic confinement and the survival situations we maintain prevent any action of an economic nature.

The manufactured and definitively (?) established apolitism, for its part, prevents things from evolving towards a democratic, i.e. diacratie (cf. “power sharing”), solution from below. Thus, the book clearly shows how demonstrations and Gilets jaunes have no political impact. It was naive to believe that this could come from the top and convince the top of the state that its survival lay in power-sharing (cf. La démocratie du futur); it was to miss the fact that the state itself seems to have become apolitical. What’s more, in a barbaric world where power is taken for granted, hasn’t it become obvious that this isn’t going to happen? We won’t have philosophers in power, Plato will have lived for nothing.

The outcome is clear-cut, and what remains to be done is to invent a plan of action.

Footnotes

1. see this unthought of economic theory on Metafysikos.[↩]
2. “Der Fortschritt” (Progress), Simplicissimus, then issue 275-276 of Fackel (“ Le Flambeau ‘), summarized by Jacques Bouveresse, ’Le mythe du progrès selon Wittgenstein et von Wright”, Mouvements 2002/1 (no19), pp. 126 -141, §3.[↩]