trust and hope

Macron and his friends are going to face great difficulties in building a workable coalition in the house of representatives in June (= Chambre des députés). He has to co-opt ex-socialists from the center and left and beg them to run for and with him. And at the same time he has to find center and center-right incumbents or people he can work with. In other words, he has to woo many people still defined by their party’s machines and echo chambers. I’m not familiar enough with the inner workings of the parties and regional politics to venture a prediction but I think the window of opportunity Macron has right now (the large numbers that voted for him) will close quickly. He is quite aware of it and said so on Friday night before the final run.

The larger issues are economic and cultural. Trust within institutions like schools and health system, corporations, and political groups, was maintained according to a mix of religious and political makeup of France until the eighties. Even more important, probably, was the heritage of the “trente glorieuses” (post-WWII thirty years) that had brought significant economic development to French people, right into the seventies. Superficial perhaps but mappable and vouchers of stability. This trust and hope are under considerable pressure, including among immigrant communities. Systems of rationality inherited from the Enlightenment, reinforced by a top down education system (Sciences-Po or ENA, after Polytechnique et al) that shapes Macron and other elites, cannot generate trust or fidelity and hope, or at least I don’t see how they can. Religions and political systems (various -isms, a phenomenon often analyzed especially since the so-called fall of communist political entities) have become very marginal. However, rather than creating enthusiasm, the faith placed in social calculus fosters suspicion. The description of the sober reality of migratory flows, for instance—as in Hervé Le Bars’ L’âge des migrations (Paris: Autrement, 2017)—doesn’t make a dent into the emotions poured out over the topic. Once more, emotions are in danger of replacing political analysis and commitment.

I think about those matters with my very recent experience of the French health system and end-of-life apparatus in mind. My older brother passed away in April. He was in a medicalized unit for which he paid about 2,000€/month on top of the payments by the national health system, in a very complicated situation in which one is left to wonder not so much who owns but who profits and how much. For example, special bedding is sub-contracted to private companies or mixed (national/private) companies. It seemed very murky to me, in spite of the regulations for which France is famous in the US. As for death: the mechanics of funerals and the contracting with private companies that sell an ersatz of dignity for very high sums of money have become ubiquitous. There was also a Catholic funeral mass in this case. It was celebrated by two priests in their eighties, helped by two able older women. The cost was small, 180€. I should mention that all through this process, from hospital to the cemetery, the people we met (nurses, doctors, insurance agents, Catholic priests and lay workers) were helpful, supportive, and trustworthy. Nevertheless, I have a sense of drift in which human lives, characterized in the case of my brother by fidelity, steadfastness, judgment, and strenuous work or social involvement, have become near-pure matter for the maw of financial and production systems that escape rational judgment even while justifying themselves as rational. It is especially grating to consider that my brother’s values, not simply his work and productivity, could be relied upon by such partial systems and turned into financial advantage and power over others (he was a site supervisor, working on big concrete sites).

My sense of where all of this is going to go is rather somber, in spite of the high score by Macron (66.1% vs 33.9% for Le Pen). I did see some genuine signs of hope, that is, people working indefatigably to repair the fractures that are so prominent in French society. Macron is well aware of those fractures and repeatedly mentions their healing as the first order of business. I hope people of good will manage to come together to create a more just, peaceful, and integrative political program, while keeping at bay the powerful forces of neo-liberalism.