Nothing forbids, during the holidays, to say much nonsense, and sometimes,
they have less impact than in the winter. That is what we can hope for
Martine Aubry who, among other criticisms, has informed Manual Valls that if he
did not remove his request for reflection on a change of name for the
Socialist Party, he’d better leave.
It is surprising to see leaders of the opposition, who should only think
about finding the best solutions to the current crisis than those in power,
throw such ridiculous anathemas at each other. We can be in revolt seeing
the heirs of François Mitterrand committing political suicide while they
have the electoral majority. And yet, this discussion is not irrelevant. It
even raises two crucial questions.
First, the validity of the concept of socialism in a world where so many
barbarities were, and are still, committed in its name, it has been
exchanged in many countries for that of social democracy. Yet it retains all
its utopian power, provided it is not reduced to a blissful scientific
positivism and returned to its original meaning, which is to privilege in
some areas, public interests before individual interests.
The question is therefore to draw the line between what should remain
private today and what needs to be socialized (ie what should be a public
service). However, the present crisis teaches us that many things we think
should remain private have too much influence on our collective well-being
not to be socialized, in one way or another: it is the case for Finance; it
is also the case for Nature, because future generations are part of society
where the question is to protect its interests, and ecology is from now on
one of the essential dimensions of a socialization as we face some world
challenges.
Besides, to socialize a certain area means to clarify its geographical
framework: in many cases, as Marx saw, it is necessarily global, or at least
continental.
The other issue is the relevance of “socialist” within the name of the main
opposition party in France, where the president, who is supposed to be from
the right-wing party, strives to hold, on many subjects, a speech that no
ideologist of the most demanding left-wing party would challenge.
In fact, whatever the name which they adopt, if the French socialists still
do not discuss the border between private and public, market and democracy,
paid and free, if they strive not to put very clearly the socialization of
Nature and Finance at the forefront of their program, if they continue not
to define the levels where must aim socialization (the world, Europe, the
nation, the local council), they will do nothing but accompany with their
ridiculous quarrels the slow current evolution towards a society which
privatizes more and more the profits, socializes more and more the debts and
forces the poor more and more to pay the essential goods: today’s music,
tomorrow’s health, education and the rest.
If they so continue, in three years, ten left-wing candidates will be beaten
by the only candidate who will have been, at least in his speech, Openly
socialist, and who will triumphantly be re-elected.