Wandering moods

No more laughing; the serious things begin, have, in fact, begun for a very long time, long before the awareness of the extent of the disaster that is looming comes to us. And when I say we, I think of those who were a little, or even largely ahead of the times, those few mocked, denigrated, insulted figures who warned us, who warned us and who were only heard by a few « hurluberlus-chevelus-barbus », pioneers of the ecologist movement of which we know what a poor thing it has since become in the hands of those devoured by political ambition and the taste for the places that it promises to its best and most loyal servants. But this is only one detail among many, because, of course, infamy and servility are widely shared by all political elites, with very few exceptions. Today, more than forty years after René Dumont, it is the think tanks that bring together citizens, thinkers and philosophers who, against the general resignation, with words as their only weapon, have taken up the torch of criticism and questioning the foundations of this world of brutes and sharks. For things must be clearly stated: the « crisis » — which is undoubtedly the most widespread word of the time — whether it is presented as financial, economic, debt or whatever, is only the perfectly predictable outcome of a process that began at the dawn of industrial society at the same time as the blind trust in progress — exclusively material — that was profiled as the only path henceforth open to human emancipation.

The strolls of the militants from the Gare du Nord to the Gare du Midi have no real influence on the governments in place that this kind of « good-natured » demonstration suits as much as the employers.

The beginnings were difficult, of course; the princes of industry, the holders of the wealth that was beginning to accumulate, considered the masses called to work for the conquest of a future earthly happiness as people of little means. The work was hard, the pay miserable, the days endless. It’s a wonder that in those distant times, the plebs rose up only sporadically and that it was necessary to wait for the birth of the workers’ movement, the emergence of the first structures of mutual aid, so that, from far and wide, the first skirmishes and then the fights led by the dominant figures of the people’s parties could be seen, and finally the Great Bolshevik Revolution could take shape, which for a long time, in the imaginary of the masses, was to be the universal reference. In the meantime, the progress in the field of armaments, the disputes and the rancour within the old Europe will have given birth to the first world conflict: a few million dead and crippled and, after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, a redrawing of the old borders, the humiliation of Germany and the ingredients of the second world war. Which had been, among other factors, the logical continuation of the crisis of 1929 which we know was the result of the mercantile fury of some financiers and other money fools.

In 1936, the Popular Front, in the meantime, had been the occasion, for the masses, to obtain, through hard struggle, those gains which already prefigured what would be the future (since, as well, the war was still only a specter that the chancelleries and the diplomats had to make forget). We have seen how what was already the first power settled the end of hostilities in Asia. Two atomic bombs on two Japanese cities inaugurated the beginning of the « cold war » during which the two antagonistic blocks, each in their own way, intended to make their peoples happy. The upheavals and industrial choices, the progressive end of the role of the State in the economy, gave rise, in the West, to these famous « thirty glorious years » which saw the affirmation — despite the beautiful and, for some of us, unforgettable interlude of the spring of 1968 — of the primacy of individual egoism and the mad race for things and objects of all kinds, which had become the norm of a new humanism. In the East, the Soviet Empire and its satellites did their best in this area, but they could not compete with the dazzling victories of trade as it was asserted on the side of the so-called free world.

The walks of the militants from Bastille to Nation, in Paris or from the North station to the South station, at home, in Brussels, have no real influence on the governments in place that this kind of « good-natured » demonstration suits as much as the employers’ circles.

Besides, as Jean-Pierre Voyer nicely expressed it on his website, the peoples who saw the collapse of the masquerade of « communism » in the Stalinist way, did not conquer freedom on the occasion of this historical and sudden decay, but it is indeed trade (and thus, capital, finance, extortion of all kinds) which invited itself and won. In this respect, therefore, the world was finally unified, globalized — as it is called today — with the consequences that we know.

The increasingly visible resignation — and collusion — of the political elites before the tyranny of pseudo-economic science and the worst of its representatives authorizes and even accompanies, with a perfectly disgusting glee, the worst undertakings ever carried out against what still vaguely resembles humanity. Everywhere misery is spreading, while the exorbitant profits of the world’s owners are taking on truly insane proportions. In the same movement, it is the totality of what still tries to exist that is now threatened by the vertiginous effervescence that has been set in motion over a period of barely ten years. There is no need to insist on it, it has become commonplace to say that a world limited in resources and space cannot meet the excess and madness of infinite expansion, of the famous and mortifying growth at all costs. This is however what the soft heads and the narrow-minded continue to advocate as the only perspective, from the head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, to the various — and so similar in their unfathomable stupidity — political leaders of all sides; or almost. To which we can add a good part of the trade union leaderships who still call for full employment, economic recovery, the defense of purchasing power and other stupidities which we have the right to ask ourselves if, in some way, they are not doing their job. These apparatuses, more and more distant from their base, itself subjected to the ambient torpor — on this side of Europe, in any case — have not yet had the courage nor the intelligence to take the right measure of the stakes of the hour and of the means to be set in motion which could bring the best answers to them. The walks of the militants from Bastille to Nation, in Paris or from the North station to the South station, at home, in Brussels, have no real influence on the governments in place that this kind of « good-natured » demonstration suits as much as the employers’ circles. But let’s move on.

Now, what should not escape anyone — and yet seems to be the least of the concerns of the great mass of those we meet every day — is that, unless the immense machinery comes to a sudden halt, we will not have to wait much longer to see the ship on which we are sailing⁽¹⁾ break irremediably against the gigantic iceberg of which, by fear, laziness — others by interest — we persevere to deny the existence.

Jean-Pierre L. Collignon