‘Gilets jaunes’: the meaning of the confrontation

So
the President has spoken. But to whom? That is the first question to be asked.
Without ever trying or daring to name those who forced him into this – the
famous gilets jaunes – he spoke words of contrition in
homoeopathic doses, and, as the press immediately pointed out, ‘granted’
measures to reduce the financial burden on the poorest part of the population
but ‘without conceding’ anything that would have marked a change of course, or
satisfied the movement of revolt that has so deeply shaken the country over the
last four weeks.

It
will become clear in the coming days who has gained exactly what, both
immediately and in the longer term, and who can be satisfied with it. Once
again, Macron promised that citizens would have their say in a ‘consultation’
of national scope, in which he would contact local elected officials himself.
And he seasoned his speech with two elements that should cause great concern to
all democrats. First, a long proclamation of severity against ‘disorder and
anarchy’ – ‘I have given the government the most rigorous instructions’ –
meaning that demonstrations are placed under a kind of preventive state of
emergency and that police brutality will not be subject to any restrictions.
Then a strong return of the theme of national identity, of nauseating memory,
immediately translated into the ‘question of immigration’, a ‘question’ that
has played no role in the recent movement, but whose resonances on the right
and far right of the political spectrum are well known. Then a strong return of the theme of
national identity… immediately translated into the ‘question of immigration’, a
‘question’ that has played no role in the recent movement.

I
do not believe that this speech, and the orchestration it will receive, despite
some international warning and chuckling, will help the president out of the
absolute impasse he has locked himself into after eighteen months of exercising
power. This opens up both interesting possibilities and formidable unknowns.
But to try to decipher these, we must first review, schematically, the
conditions under which he came to power and the most salient features of the
policy he has followed, which perhaps not everyone had imagined in this form.

Macron’s
election and the pitfall of power

On
the first point, I will simply recall that Emmanuel Macron was elected, not as
has sometimes been said ‘by default’, but in opposition to a candidate that the
majority of the country, regardless of opinion, did not want, and that her
television performance had eventually discredited (though this may change
sooner or later).

His
candidacy had been prepared a good way back by a network of inﬂuence which
stretched from the top echelons of ﬁnance and the civil service to some
intellectual and trade-union representatives of social liberalism, but in which
the former immediately had a decisive influence. This is why the famous ‘at the
same time’ of his electoral discourse, vaguely Hegelian, was immediately tipped
in favour of neoliberal economic and social policies, in a very aggressive form
justified by the watchword (not very original) of a long-delayed
‘modernization’, combined with a ‘refoundation of Europe’.

While
his predecessor very quickly caved in to the injunctions (and probably
blackmail) of the French and foreign business community, as well as to lessons
of budgetary rigour from Germany and Brussels, Emmanuel Macron anticipated
these, with the avowed claim of joining in their management. But perhaps the
most serious consequence for today’s situation was the way in which, lacking a
real political party or movement of his own, he had a fictitious parliamentary
majority elected in the wake of his victory, on the usual grounds of
governmental effectiveness, recruited by managerial methods on the basis of
their CVs, with no autonomy or implantation on the ground, thus completing the
discrediting of representative democracy, already very badly affected by the
authoritarian institutions of the Fifth Republic.

On
the second point, I think we should mention at least four overlapping aspects,
each of which obviously deserves a more in-depth analysis. The first is the
decisive European dimension, given the current economic situation and the
interdependence of national economic and political systems. It is certain that
the situation is very difficult, since the EU has entered an existential
crisis, probably irreversible, marked by a deep disaffection of public opinion
and the successive collapse of states into ungovernable situations, by a
gigantic widening of the gaps between the various regions of the continent, and
by the ossiﬁcation of conﬂict between ‘sovereigntyist’ and ‘Europeanist’
discourses, which tends to merge together with social antagonism, but adds to
this nationalist connotations going as far as xenophobia. It is certain that the situation is
very difficult, since the EU has entered an existential crisis.

However,
the need for the unity of nations on a continental scale is so great, both to
cope with global financial hazards and to initiate the transition to an economy
of solidarity in the fields of energy, consumption and climate, as well as to
reduce inequalities and facilitate the movement of people (especially young
people) across borders, that we could have been pleased to see Macron at the
head of the second camp.

Except
that he did so in a totally unrealistic and conservative way, raising neither
the question of the European budget, nor that of the accounting ‘rules’ of
economic orthodoxy, nor that of transnational common goods, nor that of the
in-depth democratization of European Community institutions.

In
the end, therefore, he reinforced the status quo that is leading to
fragmentation, when it was necessary to aim at a genuinely new creation of a
Europe in the service of its populations, running against the direction of
France’s partners if necessary. In some areas, such as the crisis in the
reception of refugees and migrants, he has continued and even aggravated the
unscrupulous double standards of his predecessors, which is not without its
consequence on the public mentality.

European
policy is clearly inseparable from the bloc of economic and financial policies
forming the heart of what must be called Macronism. This is a politics of
reinforced austerity that does not speak its name (it actually does, but in an
esoteric jargon based on a certain dominant economic ideology, which has
remained unchanged since the great crisis of the 2010s, and despite its
lessons: ‘supply-side policy’ and ‘competitiveness’, ‘control of public
expenditure’, ‘encouragement to the investment of wealth’, ‘reduction of labour
costs’, ‘ﬂexicurity’,[1] ‘digital
champions’, etc.). The
only ‘effective demand’ that really matters for this politics is export demand,
or the demand of the privileged classes who can afford high prices for basic
consumer goods.

The
only ‘effective demand’ that really matters for this politics is export demand,
or the demand of the privileged classes who can afford high prices for basic
consumer goods and even add extras, ‘German-style’, to the detriment of the
living standard and purchasing power of the vast majority of the population.
This orientation is ultimately suicidal for the national economy itself. We are
still further removed from the vigorous neo-Keynesianism that is necessary to
lead collective activities and individual skills in the direction of
transforming the growth regime, the mass training of individuals and the
improvement of local amenities that the crisis of the old industrialist model
requires.

Stock
market indices and shareholder value reign supreme, and the income gap is
continually widening, steadily creating a kind of dual society. Public services
are trimmed to adjust the national budget, and the government sees the civil
service as a declared enemy. The tax system, with any progressive character
abandoned, is ever more clearly becoming a system of subsidy for the possessing
classes by the dispossessed (not to mention the refloating of banks by
taxpayers in time of crisis, and complacency towards tax evasion).

This
touches on the third aspect, which is undoubtedly the most sensitive, being
closest to daily life. It is this that the gilets jaunes revolt,
precipitated by a new tax that boldly declared itself ‘ecological’ (despite not
affecting any of the heavy carbon-guzzling activities or supporting any
alternative policy), has exploded in the face of our governments and their
advisors. Social policy – in this case essentially repressive and destructive,
and therefore anti-social – is only the other side of economic policy. Perhaps
a capitalist regime is never egalitarian. But at least it can remain for a
while within the limits of liveable inequality if social ‘conﬂictuality’ –
formerly known as ‘struggles’ – along with policies of national interest and
cohesion (which now need to be rethought at a continental level and beyond)
curbs impoverishment and imposes a certain degree of redistribution, whether
through taxation or public services.

On
the contrary, everything happened as if Emmanuel Macron had seen his election
as a mandate to accelerate the ‘scrapping’: a scrapping of labour legislation,
of progressive taxation, of arbitration and occupational representation, of
public service and social assistance. Perhaps the underlying idea was that the
devastation of ‘civil’ society, with its potentially demoralizing consequences
and the effects of ‘disafﬁliation’ or ‘social insecurity’ (Robert Castel),
would be offset by a mixture of ‘entrepreneurial’ propaganda and well-meaning
moralism, without suspecting that there could be a backlash.

I
will dwell on this point for a moment and make it my fourth aspect. We should
not just speak, in the old-fashioned way, of the ideological dimension of
Macronism, but rather of a symbolic charge that eventually exploded with
extreme violence, because it encountered and merged with a material situation
that had become intolerable for a very large number of people. It is right to
emphasize the character traits revealed by the president’s behaviour: his aggressiveness,
his proclaimed contempt for ‘losers’, the ‘illiterate’ and the poor who can no
longer make ends meet, to the point that his entourage eventually had to
explain to him the negative effects on his ability to govern. We
should not just speak… of the ideological dimension of Macronism, but rather of
a symbolic charge that eventually exploded with extreme violence.

But
I believe this is only the surface of a larger problem, as reflected in the
ubiquitous formula at gilets jaunes gatherings: ‘they take us
for fools’. ‘They’, i.e. the entire dominant technocracy in this country (which
is also often a plutocracy), ranging from a President who fantasizes about
being a ‘master of the clocks’[2] and
algebras to those who try to reform school curriculums with a magic wand (or
even an axe), and the ‘Toulouse’ economists[3] who
explain without laughing in their op-ed columns that France’s difficulty of
‘staying in the race’ come from the absence of a ‘basic economic culture’ on
the part of its citizens.

It
would be wrong to believe that this has not been noticed, and especially that
the mass of citizens have forgotten the difference between the democratic
postulate, which is the competence of the people once provided with necessary,
sincere and intelligible information, and the oligarchic postulate of their
ignorance and stupidity. Bring this resentment together with a distress that
puts people’s backs to the wall, add a flagrant pretence about ecology (the
very day after the resignation of the minister who had been noisily charged
with defending ecological values, and who did not hide his sense of betrayal),
and you get a real popular revolt, perhaps uncertain of its perspectives but
perfectly aware of its purpose, and for this very reason immune to coercion, as
long as its causes have not been clearly taken into account.

Confrontation

We
now come to the confrontation that the President, once again playing on his
‘stature’ and ‘function’, evaded rather than acknowledged in his speech.
Despite his denial, this exists none the less, and on a double level: between,
on the one hand, his person, his speech (scant, prepared, circumvented), his
presidential posture, and on the other hand, ranged against him, the democratic
gesture of the gilets jaunes, strategically occupying the roundabouts
and motorway tollbooths of France, from time to time also its squares and main
avenues, demanding a change rather than a catalogue of additions and
subtractions. Between the two, there is also the perception of public opinion:
is the government playing fair or only pretending to do so, is it seeking
negotiations or to benefit from and even favour a deterioration. This public
opinion is measured by the polls and by the words exchanged on the square;
these reflect its meaning and development, and it is what everything will
ultimately depend on.

This
public opinion is measured by the polls and by the words exchanged on the
square; these reflect its meaning and development, and it is what everything
will ultimately depend on.

There
is clearly a powerful emotional dimension. The hatred that the President
inspires among a large number of citizens (not just in François Ruffin’s
proclamations),[4] his way
of exercising power and the style of ‘governance’ he embodies, has rightly been
mentioned. There is nothing irrational in this, whatever is said about it,
rather the materialization here and now, in twenty-first century France, of a
political truth known since Machiavelli (an author whom Emmanuel Macron seems
to have studied): the fear inspired by rulers is manageable, it can even be
useful, but hatred is harder to manage, unless the ‘prince’ undertakes a
conversion, an ostentatious change of personality (as we have sometimes seen in
exceptional situations, most often linked to the requirements of ‘public
safety’).

I
very much doubt that this conversion is possible, not only for psychological
reasons, but because it would require that our President – as exhorted by some
of his helpless supporters – somehow exchange one political family for another,
‘betraying’ those who ‘made’ him what he is and brought him to the vestibule of
power, in favour of those he had fooled in his electoral campaign (conducted,
it must be admitted, with effectiveness and talent). He is surely not
Machiavellian enough for that.

But
above all, the emotional dimension is part of an objective situation that
leaves no escape. In another famous formula, Lenin described it as a characteristic
of ‘revolutionary situations’ (though we should not jump the gun) that a crisis
is irreversible when those at the top can no longer govern as before, and those
at the bottom no longer want to be governed as before. A crisis is irreversible when those
at the top can no longer govern as before, and those at the bottom no longer
want to be governed as before.

This
is indeed the case today, and is what was played out behind the scenes of
Macron’s 10 December speech, between consultations and canny advice (including,
as we have just learned, that of former President Sarkozy) about the sensitive
issue of the threshold, both ﬁnancial and symbolic, to be crossed or not in
seeking to resolve the conﬂict, or at least trying to postpone its dénouement.

Everything
has visibly crystallized around a single measure that focused the antagonism
and will continue to do so. Either the wealth tax will be re-established, under
that name or an equivalent, and even extended to cover both the increased
budgetary costs of a somewhat more equitable social policy and the needs of a
real energy transition, or else we are witnessing the confirmation of its
abolition, sealing the alliance of Bercy and the CAC 40[5](and Wall
Street), even of Neuilly,[6] which
means that sooner or later what has just been given by one hand will be taken
back by the other.

The
answer is now certain: the President will not give in, otherwise he would lose
his prestige, his government and his advisers, not to mention what remains of
his parliamentary majority. He will therefore sink ever deeper into a blind
alley, with the risk of having to declare a real state of emergency (for the
time being described as ‘social and economic’, but already correlated with a
‘rigorous’ discourse of public order). It is not from him that we should expect
a solution, except for the worst.

The
situation can therefore only evolve, unblock, or move forward, as we would
like, on the side of the ‘movement’ itself. It depends closely on what this is
and what it will become. Like everyone else (except those with an innate
revolutionary science), I am from this point of view both passionate and
expectant, ready to participate in initiatives of solidarity and the defence of
democratic rights (above all the right to demonstrate freely and safely, without
being subject to indiscriminate attack with military weapons), and to formulate
opinions, necessarily revisable, which may help public debate.

I
will clearly not claim for myself an increase in living standard that I do not
need. I perceive the absolute and decisive urgency for this, and I can see
other equally fundamental interests appearing in counterpoint, and I try
imaginatively to take the point of view of the whole movement, which
increasingly involves the whole of society and will now play an essential part
in its future. Indeed, those French people who do not have any interest in
the gilets jaunes obtaining satisfaction, forcing a halt to
neoliberal logic and thereby initiating a democratic and social transition, are
a minority, and we all have a duty to understand and a right to express
ourselves, or rather a right to hypothesize. This may change, but it is the
massive, unavoidable fact of the moment.

Who
are the gilets jaunes, in the richness and multiplicity of their
gatherings? Their statements, the descriptions they give of themselves,
corroborated by some remarkable surveys carried out in real time (which does
much to restore the civic function of the social sciences), show that they
constitute a representative sample (and for this reason widely supported), not
of the French population in the static sense of the term (that recorded in
censuses by occupational category, age, gender, place of residence, etc.), but
of what it is becoming, owing to the massive trends of contemporary capitalism,
which the policies mentioned above have had the effect of aggravating and
making more perceptible.

Without
unnecessarily complicating matters, I would say that they embody and denounce
the generalized precariousness of activity and livelihoods that today affects
millions of French people and immigrants of every educational level and
geographical location (with the obvious exception of the beaux
quartiers and certain ‘bobo’[7] habitats),
because they are caught between two major trends characteristic of
neo-liberalism, both based on the application of ‘free and undistorted
competition’.

On
the one hand, the new iron law of wage compression, both direct and indirect
(including pensions, of course), to which globalization and deregulated
technological change contribute, as well as the weakening of trade-union
organizations; on the other hand, the accelerated uberization of ‘manual’ or
‘intellectual’ jobs that do not depend on companies with a fixed location but
rather on digital platforms, creating a competition ‘to the death’ between
individuals (called ‘self-entrepreneurs’) whom their masters control by
intermittent demand and by debt.

The
two tendencies converge, and workers or employees from cities, suburbs and
countryside who have not yet reached the bottom see that they cannot stop it,
even if ofﬁcial language proclaims that we are entering the individualistic
skilled paradise of a ‘start-up nation’.

But
this socio-economic representation is also coupled with a political
representation that makes the gilets jaunes movement so
original and has inevitably generated a flood of interpretations, even
exploitations. Observing the bankruptcy of representative politics or its
disqualiﬁcation, to which several long-term institutional and sociological
factors have contributed, not to mention the methods of government of the
current administration that I mentioned above, the gilets jaunes have
in brief proposed a contemporary alternative to the decline of politics, based
on the self-representation (and therefore the presence in person) of
‘indignant’ citizens in the public square, with the support of their localities
and the technical assistance of ‘network’ communication. The gilets jaunes have
proposed a contemporary alternative to the decline of politics, based on the
self-representation (and therefore the presence in person) of ‘indignant’
citizens in the public square.

This
alternative is remarkable in that it invents a new form of articulation between
local solidarity, gatherings, and national convergence, even if it also
generates tensions (viz. the episode of ‘threats’ against the delegation that
proposed to meet the prime minister). Between these two modes of
representation: that of current trends that are socially developing, and the
political representation of direct action and uncoded speech (which
particularly implies keeping electoral apparatuses, or even just organized
activists, at bay, even when they could serve as supporters or spokespersons),
there is obviously a resonance, a parallelism, but this should not be hastily
transformed into a new ‘essence’ of collective subjectivity, whether in the
name of ‘multitude’ or ‘plebs’. I believe that it should be seen as the symptom
and potential agent of an exceptional, rapidly evolving and perhaps creative
conjuncture, provided that certain conditions are met.

Three
conditions

Several
conditions, actually. Because the movement is both powerful, by the support it
generates, by its despair, by its novelty, by the strategic dimension of the
double ‘problem’ that caused and triggered it: tax injustice, the economic and
ecological contradiction; and at the same time fragile, like any revolt that
depends on the endurance of the individuals who bear it, without the backing of
any organization, and against whom the privileged classes, a good part of the
media, and especially the machinery of the state, will gradually unite.

Under
what conditions can it last, which means, win, since its very existence has
become the issue at stake? In a non-exhaustive way, I would suggest three:
convergence with other movements, less original but not less representative;
civility, or the ability to resist the spiral of mimetic violence in relation
to the state; finally, and above all, the emergence of a political idea, which
extends the conjunctural invention by anchoring it in institutions, and thus
confers on it the capacity of a ‘counter-power’.

The
issue of convergence is clearly crucial, in terms of both duration and
effectiveness. It must be distinguished not only from the simple phenomenon of
public opinion (what the pollsters call sympathy, even solidarity), though it
can inflect the orientation of this, but also from a historical fusion of
resistance movements and aspirations to another society, whether in the form of
an emerging organization or, on the contrary, of a ‘coming insurrection’,[8] anarchically
crystallized around a generic power of refusal or dismissal.

But
on the other hand, we should recognize that its possibility holds the keys to a
profound change in the balance of power and power relations within our society.
Without this, however strong the motivation of the gilets jaunes movement
may be and however resilient the causes that generated it, it risks finding
itself caught between two probable effects of isolation: discouragement and radicalization,
which would mean a collapse of its political capacity. The gilets jaunes movement…
risks finding itself caught between two probable effects of isolation:
discouragement and radicalization, which would mean a collapse of its political
capacity.

But
considering the possibility of a convergence, even if still virtual, requires
caution in formulations at the same time as openness towards the novel event
and the surprises it might bring. On the one hand, I would say that there must
be compatibility between heterogeneous demands and expressions, which is not
guaranteed, since there is nothing like a spontaneous ‘commonality’ of social
demands (in the face of the ‘sole adversary’ of the neo-liberal monster), and
above all, there are potentially all kinds of very real conjunctural
contradictions between the various logics of change (of which a good example is
the clash between projects to combat global warming and the urgency of cheap
energy for mass consumption).

And
on the other hand, there should be an acknowledged and recognized diversity of
the components of the ‘popular’ aspiration to social and political
democratization, allowing discussions or even negotiations between these, but
preserving at all costs the uniqueness of their origins and their own voices.

This
is why we can indeed speak, in Gramscian terminology, of the constitution of a
‘historic bloc’ and the ‘reversal of hegemony’. But we should not get into the
conception of ‘chains of equivalence’ imagined by the champions of a ‘left-wing
populism’ inspired by Ernesto Laclau, who would like to translate all demands
into a single language, suitably idealized (and whose counterpart, as Chantal
Mouffe has recently made very clear, is the emphasis placed on the power of
emotions to the detriment of reasoning, and the need for a personalized
leadership, which today shows how little it matches the movement’s
aspirations).

I
will risk once again the expression I used a few years ago, when Greek citizens
revolted against the diktat of the European troika: what is needed is rather a
counter-populism, equally distant both from anti-popular oligarchical politics
and from the ideological populisms of left or right. Quite a conundrum! What we
see in the current situation seems to be, on the one hand, the tremendous
driving force of a movement of demands and revolt that puts the idea of active
citizenship back on the agenda, and on the other hand, the extreme unevenness
of the effects it has on the expression of other demands for justice, equality
and empowerment. What
is needed is rather a counter-populism, equally distant both from anti-popular
oligarchical politics and from the ideological populisms of left or right.

In
terms of positive effects, I would include right away the fact that the
‘climate marches’ of 8 December were not only not minimized or discouraged by
the simultaneous demonstration of the gilets jaunes, but even proﬁted
from this to make the idea more strongly heard that there could be no
ecological transition without a huge effort in terms of social justice and cost
sharing. Hence the encounters that actually took place here and there between
different groups of marchers. Far more cautiously, I would also include here
the possible convergences with opposition trade unionists and farmers’
organizations, since I do not take for granted that the historical crisis of
these is synonymous with an inevitable disappearance, and the heat of a crisis
situation may well be favourable to regenerating their militant capacities.
There are signs that this is the case.

On
the other side, however, I would note that the Day to Combat Violence against
Women (25 November) clearly suffered, in its attendance and visibility, from
competition with the booming gilets jaunes movement. This does
not mean that there is incompatibility, but that we are in very heterogeneous
registers, discursively and emotionally, ideologically and socially – if not
necessarily permanently so, especially since all observers emphasize as a real
sign of changing times the active presence of women in the gilets
jaunes movement, but along other lines of mobilization and division. The Day to Combat Violence against Women
(25 November) clearly suffered, in its attendance and visibility, from
competition with the booming gilets jaunes movement.

And
I will reserve as the great unknown, perhaps decisive, the question of whether
and how convergence can take place between the gilets jaunes movement
and the potential revolt of young people in the banlieues whose existence is
dominated by mass unemployment, urban and educational segregation, the
abandonment of public services and the ravages of state racism. The ‘political
anti-racism’ movement that denounces this institutional racism (particularly
discrimination in housing and employment, and police violence against
‘non-white’ youth) has divided tactically in its relationship to the gilets
jaunes: one section (the Rosa Parks collective) seeking to maintain its
independence so as to assert the irreducibility of racial oppression, the other
(the Adama committee) preferring to call right away for a merger or
interpenetration.

Naturally
I do not know how things will end up. The government may decide to aggravate
matters by increasing brutality and humiliation towards young people in the
banlieue (as we saw, ignobly, at Mantes-la-Jolie),[9] in order
to shift the main focus of conﬂict in this direction and give it more violent
forms, at the risk of being uncontrollable. A desirable (should we say
utopian?) evolution would consist in initiating a conversation, perhaps at a
distance, perhaps intermittently, between those citizens who articulate social
violence, and those who articulate racial violence; it is clear that the two
overlap very widely, but their voices and emotions are not the same.

This
also means that the ‘identity’ issues that the President is now trying to play
on cannot be indefinitely neutralized, and everyone knows the damage they can
lead to. They must be formulated as such. Perhaps the school and university
students who have begun to strike over demands ranging from the rejection of
mechanisms of exclusion and segregation by school catchment area through to
asserting equal rights for students of all nationalities and colours, will play
in this case, as at other times, a role of mediators and catalysts. Convergence
is a problem, which means both a horizon of possibilities and a knot of
contradictions, each of which can be used to disintegrate support for the
movement. Convergence
is a problem, which means both a horizon of possibilities and a knot of
contradictions, each of which can be used to disintegrate support for the
movement.

And
so we have to address the question of violence. As I write, the terrorist
attack in Strasbourg has just occurred, creating an easily understandable
emotion and tension. And as in other circumstances, the government (followed by
part of the press) seems unable to resist the temptation to instrumentalize
this, combining a call for national unity, as if it wanted to conceal
everything, with a security deployment that can serve several purposes. The main,
permanent, omnipresent violence, to which we must hope our fellow citizens will
not get accustomed, is police and judicial violence. This has a long history:
think of the brutal treatment of students protesting the El Khomri law under
the previous presidency, the ‘legalized’ murder of young Rémi Fraisse,[10] the
forcible dismantling of the ZAD at Notre-Dame des Landes,[11] the
multiple actions of the police against individual and collective freedoms, the
unfair or disproportionate sentences. It relies on or encourages the
quasi-fascist elements in the police (Benalla…).[12] At
this very moment, it is trying to create an atmosphere of fear around the next
planned demonstration of the gilets jaunes, and a kind of
expectation of confrontation and destruction.

This
poses a fundamental problem, both strategic and tactical. Let me be blunt: I
believe that the symmetry of state violence and ‘popular’ counter-violence is a
death trap from which we must collectively find the means to escape at all
costs. Not all keys to this are in the hands of the movement, but it must make
a choice, just as each of its participants must choose. I believe that the symmetry of state
violence and ‘popular’ counter-violence is a death trap from which we must
collectively find the means to escape at all costs.

I
hear and even understand the argument that, without an outbreak of violence,
the government would not have taken notice of the confrontation. But I would
point out that the decisive factor was not the violence itself, but the fact
that it did not lead to a decline in public support, as measured by the polls.
This is a strictly conjunctural phenomenon, there is nothing permanent or
established about it.

Similarly,
I hear and understand the concrete analysis that shows that attacks on police
officers and the looting of shops are by no means just the work of organized ‘casseurs’
(black block or otherwise). They involve demonstrators and an accumulation of
humiliations and blows that has turned into ‘just’ anger against the
representatives and symbols of a society of injustice. It is they whom, by
inclination and calculation, Macron stigmatized in his speech by seeking to
dissociate them from right-minded people. Nevertheless, the theory that poses
an equivalence, or a symmetry, between economic or ‘structural’ violence
suffered and political or ‘insurrectional’ violence preached and premeditated,
as if the latter were not only a revenge against the former, but a way of
bringing it to an end, is as historically false as it is politically dangerous.
Bertolt Brecht may have written, in a nice line often quoted: ‘What is robbing
a bank compared with founding one?’but this is nonsense all the same, at least
in the current situation. Banks can laugh about damage to one of their
branches, and all citizens have a bank account or even an overdraft.

Physical
violence as counter-violence, anti-state or anti-capitalist, does not create
any favourable balance of power, let alone a ‘revolutionary consciousness’. On
the contrary, it makes the final decision depend on ﬂashballs, grenades,
perhaps tanks. It has been able to create movements of sympathy in the past (I
am not talking about colonial situations and wars of liberation): this needs
only one dead person (as in 1986), or a mass bludgeoning (as in May 1968),
provided it is not planned for this purpose. But in the current place and time
I see three absolutely crippling disadvantages: it will very quickly constitute
a factor of public disaffection exploitable by the authorities, especially if
there are also economic difficulties attributable to the movement; it will tend
to frame the conﬂict in terms of acceptance or rejection of the ‘state’, which
is not at all what is at stake; finally it will encourage a convergence between
extremists of right and left, under the pretext that ‘the enemy of my enemy
cannot be my enemy’ (if I understand correctly this risky expression used by
Éric Hazan).

It
seems to me that the deeply civic gilets jaunes movement must
also retain the privilege of civility, or anti-violence, however hard this may
sometimes seem to some of its participants or supporters, and however perverse
the provocative strategies used to undermine it. It is not a question of giving
in to the blackmail of chaos, of cultivating fear within the movement, but of
demonstrating a strength and intelligence superior to government manoeuvres,
which is essential today to open up major strategic opportunities.

In search
of a political idea

But
this also requires the rapid emergence of credible prospects for collective
action, debate and even confrontation between the various sensitivities and
even ideologies at work in the movement, as well as for meeting other social
demands and for building a power base within the institutions.

Call for the RIC (Référendum d’Initiative Citoyenne, or Citizens’ Initiative Referendum) at the Place de la Comedie, Montpellier, France, on December 15, 2018. Beracassat Eric/Press Association. All rights reserved.Such
prospects, as many people have said and I agree, do not lie in the forthcoming
elections (which will inevitably see the advance of the far right, especially
in the ‘European’ elections); they are a function of the radical democratic
impetus that is clearly central to the novelty of the gilets jaunes:
what I called above their alternative to the decline of politics. But an
impulse is not enough, it needs continuous development, and therefore it needs
a political idea, this time in the sense of understanding situations, seizing
opportunities, grasping levers. So let us look for this idea, or rather listen to
whether, in some of the words that are circulating, on the Internet or
otherwise, it has not already announced itself. But an impulse is not enough, it
needs continuous development, and therefore it needs a political idea.

One
slogan hits the nail on the head in this respect: the call for an États
Généraux, which evokes for everyone (the virtues of French national education!)
the great historical moment of the constitution of the ‘political people’ in
the face of the privileged strata, and which is clearly also called for by the
insistent comparison, which Macron himself brought about, of the current
presidential power with the monarchical tradition.

We are not here in the
famous ‘antique guise’ described by Marx in well-known texts, with mass
movements serving as an imaginary screen on which to project a desire for
revolution. Rather, we are in a confrontation that is emerging between the two
extremes of the great cycle that the institutions of liberalism have undergone
in our country in modern times, and which is signalled each time by the
widening of demands and the very form of participation in public affairs.

What
I find particularly interesting in this idea is that it has been formulated in
a special connection with the question of tax justice (and consequently the
standard of living and social benefits), both at the ‘centre’ and on the
‘periphery’, by intellectuals and even politicians, and by the gilets
jaunes of Brittany who came together to formulate this in Carhaix on 8
December, and are soon having to return there again. It is the fact that, in
the tradition of the ‘registers of grievances’ that preceded the Revolution, it
combines the idea of a collective drafting from below with the demand for a
national outlet, a new governmentality of economic choices and taxation, which
no longer restricts citizens to the alternative of submission or revolt.

But
other equally constructive initiatives use a different language, such as
the gilets jaunes of Commercy in the Meuse, who talk about
assemblies or people’s committees, and consequently focus not on an ‘ascent’ of
demands or on governmentality, but on direct local democracy and the lived
experiment of equality. Or the ‘Maison du peuple’ of Saint-Nazaire, located in
a former job centre marked for demolition, where the movement’s initiatives are
organized on a daily basis by self-management, reflecting a long and heroic
history of workers’ struggles and autonomy. Are these contradictory? It is not
for me to decide this prematurely and presumptuously, although I tend to see
the two approaches as complementary rather than clashing. Time will tell, if
the movement continues.

But
I believe that all these ways in which collective ‘speaking out’ (Michel de
Certeau’s phrase in May 1968) and the desire to escape from a ‘subaltern’
position in society and public life are powerfully expressed, need
institutional anchorage if they are to effectively build a counter-power in the
face of a technocratic monopoly equipped with economic expertise, public power
and legal legitimacy. This idea seems to me to be broadly similar to that put
forward by Antonio Negri, except that I am talking not about ‘dual power’ but
counter-power. It is not 1917, and most likely will never be again.

Finding
an institutional anchorage does not mean that we ‘return’ to the fold of
existing institutions, under the yoke of administrative and representative
frameworks, delegations and concessions. On the contrary, it can mean seizing
an opportunity presented and turning this against its top-down and
condescending instrumentalization. I therefore suggest that all this could be
given concrete form, opening up a dialectic of self-representation and governmentality,
if municipalities (starting with some of them that set an example: those most
sensitive to the urgency of the situation or most open to democratic invention)
now decided to open their doors to the local organization of the movement, and
declared themselves ready to pass on its demands or proposals to the
government. It
can mean seizing an opportunity presented and turning this against its top-down
and condescending instrumentalization.

The
legitimacy of the communes in France is absolutely unassailable as long as we
are in the Republic, and the strategic function they perform in communication
between the government and the citizens (and therefore between the citizens and
the government), given that Parliament is no more than a registration chamber
and a place of jousting between government and opposition, has just been
explicitly acknowledged by the President.

Indeed,
the communes are potentially at the heart of the confrontation under way, since
the only democratic concession he mentioned was to announce that he would go
‘region by region’ to the mayors of France who ‘represent the Republic on the
ground’, to gather, through them, the ‘requests’ of the citizens.

But
the mayors are, precisely, the people that citizens want, or what they ask them
to be. And there is no reason, in the midst of a social crisis in which the
responsibility of a political leader appears overwhelming, to wait for him to
dictate the modalities, timing and limits of the consultation needed to
relegitimize himself. What we need, on the contrary, is for the ‘natural’ site
of active citizenship, where, from the outset and in principle, constituent
power (the people) and constituted powers (the basic elected representatives)
are able to exchange places and means, to take their autonomy and assert their
prerogatives.

In
this way, the confrontation that the President sought at all costs to avoid
last Monday would be forced into being. That is how democracy is invented and
perhaps, at the end of the day, how a regime can change. It is not a long road
from the roundabout to the town hall, via the public square, which does not
mean it is easy to travel. Demonstrations, popular assemblies, municipal
counter-power, États Généraux or their modern equivalent, such is perhaps the
squaring of the circle; it must be resolved on a daily basis and over the
coming weeks, probably quite quickly, so that a political idea that everyone
now needs can emerge from a revolt that no one had expected. A race is under way,
and we must find ways to win it. This is the hypothesis that I modestly want to
put forward for discussion.

Published
in the original French by Mediapart on December 13. Thanks go to David
Fernbach for the English translation prepared for Verso.

[1] The term coined by Danish prime minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen in
the 1990s to refer to a combination of labour-market flexibility in a dynamic
economic and security for workers – the latter often more conspicuous by its
absence.

[2] Emmanuel Macron claimed in his election campaign to be ‘master of
the clocks’, in apparent reference to the 1991 book by Philippe Delmas, Le
Maître des horloges, modernité de l’action publique, though the metaphor
goes back to the Voltaire’s ‘great clockmaker’.

[3] The Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), presided by Nobel-prize
economist Jean Tirole.

[4] The journalist and filmmaker François Ruffin was a moving spirit
of the Nuit Debout protests in spring 2016; he was elected to the National
Assembly in June 2017, and is a prominent supporter of the gilets
jaunes.

[5] Bercy is the seat of the ministry of finance, the CAC 40 the
benchmark index of French share prices.

[6] The commune just west of Paris, with the headquarters of several
large corporations as well as wealthy residential quarters.

[7] = bourgeois bohemian, i.e. yuppie

[8] A reference to the manifesto of the Invisible Committee, The
Coming Insurrection, Semiotex(e), 2007.

[9] On 6 December, 150 students were arrested and forced to kneel
with their hands behind their heads for hours by police following a
demonstration at a secondary school in the Paris suburb of Mantes-la-Jolie.

[10] The botanist Rémi Fraisse was killed by a flashbang grenade on 26
October 2014, while protesting the construction of the Sivens Dam in the
department of Tarn.

[11] ‘Zone d’aménagement differé’, i.e. ‘deferred development
site’. The pioneering Zadistes were militants who occupied the
projected airport site at Notre-Dame-des-Landes.

[12] The security officer Alexandre Benalla was deputy chief of staff
to President Macron. On 18 July 2018, he was identified beating up a young
protester. Macron, who seems to have been personally close to Benalla, defended
his chief of staff, who escaped with a two-week suspension. An investigation by
the Senate is still under way.

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