English translation of the French transcript, made with AI and not yet proofread — click a paragraph to jump to it. Show the French original
Marx quoting Shakespeare: gold in Timon of Athens 0:00 The first thing is to find you again. I've already told you that I have a soft spot for the east of France. It's a Corsican speaking to you. It's not out of atavism.
0:30 I'm a rather perverse Corsican. I love the countries of the north and the east. That's how it is. But I said once, it might seem anecdotal, after all, going east is going against the course of the sun. So, turning back time a bit at my age, that can be useful. No, no, I say that because every time, I really like the audience I find here. I remember, when I was a child, I was born into colonial administration. Well, my parents were in the colonial administration, like many Corsicans who were fleeing poverty, the vendettas, or both.
1:04 And so, in Saigon, in Abidjan, I was small, I had no choice, I was in my parents' luggage. I saw on the ground, whether next to us in Saigon, cast-iron plates, you see, foundry marks, Pont-à-Mousson. All over the world, you saw that. And then there's nothing left. It seems to me that foundries haven't multiplied. So, this could turn out to be a discouraged, depressed audience.
1:38 Not at all. I sense an attentiveness to the issues, particularly social issues, that you don't always see in the corridors of the grandes écoles. And I say that in the mode of litotes when I say you don't always see it. That's the first reason I'm glad. The second is that you've talked a lot—well, I'm coming in at a rather late stage—about the subject of work.
2:10 So, you've tackled serious matters. Tonight I can only offer you fun. There, that brings me to my third reason. It's that you're indulgent with my faults. You know my faults. I like detours. And then people think I'm going to talk about Marx's work, about surplus value. And then I talk to you about poetry. It's not serious, is it? You see? It may not be serious, but well, I do like Marx.
2:40 On that point, I haven't become megalomaniac. But look, look, I'm quoting you a text by Marx. I'm quoting you a text by Marx quoting the poets. You see? To show that it's not out of whim. Look. Marx quotes Shakespeare. It's an excerpt from a play by Shakespeare, a bit less well-known than the others, called Timon of Athens. And the text says this. Gold... Money, that's gold. Currency, money. Gold, money. Gold, yellow, glittering, precious gold.
3:11 No, God in heaven, I am no idle votarist. This yellow slave will knit and break religions, bless the accursed, make the hoar leprosy adored, place thieves and give them title, knee and approbation. This much of gold would make the black white, foul fair, wrong just, base noble, old young, coward valiant. God rest his soul, as we say in Christian lands, may the earth be light on him, as they say in Africa, where I lived a lot, but I'm thinking of someone who died recently. It's not good, to speak ill of the dead, but I'm thinking of... what was his name, the American who kicked the bucket, the hero of the Vietnam War.
3:48 No, not Bush. Ah, Bush senior, not bad either, a peacetime criminal, that one. No, the hawk. Who, in the end, appeared as a great democrat, since he was against Trump. Thanks, McCain, much obliged. Yes, who wreaked havoc in the country where I was born, in Vietnam. Well, they made a hero out of him, you see. It's written in black and white by Shakespeare. Making the old young, the coward valiant. Because in fact, it seems he was captured by the Vietnamese and may even have denounced his comrades.
4:21 I'm not a specialist on the file, but it's not that clear. Fine. This gold will draw your priests and servants from your sides, pluck the pillow from beneath the head of the dying. This yellow slave will knit and break religions, bless the accursed. That's a series of what are called antitheses. If there are literature teachers here, those are figures of speech. Bless the accursed. Make the hoar leprosy adored. Place thieves, give them title—what was our socialist minister called, the one who had his taxes?
4:53 Thank you. Excuse me, I'm losing my memory, I'm getting old. There, and there are so many like him that why remember one name among others. But anyway, he wasn't sad, that one, because he knows you'd better pay your taxes before the end. Fine. So, make the hoar leprosy adored, place thieves, and give them title, knee and approbation with senators on the bench. Shakespeare, 16th century. It's he who makes the widow, wooed of the stale elder, wed again—she whom the spital-house and ulcerous sores would cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices to the April day again.
The 1844 Manuscripts and the miner's money 5:28 Come, damned earth, thou common whore of mankind, that puttest odds among the rout of nations. That's Shakespeare. And Marx says Shakespeare gives a masterful depiction of money. And Marx goes on to say this. What I am able to appropriate for myself through money, what I can pay for, in other words what money can buy, I, the possessor of the money, am myself. The properties of money are my own—the possessor's—properties and essential powers.
5:59 What I am and what I am capable of is thus by no means determined by my individuality. I am ugly, but I can buy myself the most beautiful of women. Therefore I am not ugly, for the effect of ugliness, its deterrent power, is nullified by money. As an individual I am lame, but money furnishes me with twenty-four feet. Therefore I am not lame. I am bad, dishonest, unscrupulous, without intelligence, but money is honored, and hence its possessor.
6:29 Money is the supreme good, and hence its possessor is good. Moreover, money spares me the trouble of being dishonest, and I am presumed honest. I am stupid, but money is the real mind of all things, so how should its possessor be stupid? Besides, he can buy talented people for himself. France Culture. Not everything, but... No, not at 3 in the morning, France Culture is still serious, that's serious stuff. No, no, but there are excellent programs about the Collège de France at 3 in the morning, when nobody's listening.
7:03 Otherwise, we have Onfray at 1pm. And in July, we have him on the beaches. That's why I call him the seaside philosopher. I am stupid, but money is the real mind of all things, so how should its possessor be stupid? Besides, he can buy talented people for himself, and is he who has power over the talented not more talented than the talented? I, who can have, through the power of money, everything for which the human heart longs, do I not possess all human abilities? Does not my money therefore transform all my incapacities into their opposite?
7:33 If money is the bond that ties me to human life, that ties society to me, that links me to nature and to man, is money not the bond of all bonds? Can it not bind and loose all bonds? There, I'll stop that rather long quotation, but still, it's magnificent. Especially right after Shakespeare, you see. Well, this isn't the Marx of Capital. This is a young Marx. This excerpt from the 1844 Manuscripts, Marx is young, he's still libertarian, with all the qualities and drawbacks of that position.
8:06 I hope everyone started out as libertarian when they were young, all the same. It's the least generosity one can have. The trick is not to waste too much time on it. But yes, it's the period when he was, I don't know, Feuerbachian, Proudhonian, you see. Naturalist. Not yet a dialectical materialist, but a naturalist. And I tell you that because the Marx of Capital, the one who stops being outraged—because this is magnificent, but it's outrage, it's irony, it's...
8:41 Money is being demonized here, clearly. You see what I mean. Yet, when as a result of hard union struggles, there were deaths, sometimes it wasn't long ago. A worker, a miner, I'll pick this example deliberately, you'll see. It's not for the imagery, it's because it's for a specific reason. I'm thinking of silicosis, that terrifying disease that introduces particles as hard as diamond—silica particles—into the lungs, causing death in atrocious conditions, and which was a scourge in the mining world before union struggles forced the wearing of masks, helmets, shift rotations, and which caused a staggering death toll.
9:30 I'm not even talking about firedamp explosions. In short, the miner who had paid into his pension rarely had the luck of reaching pension age to get the money. But if I think of one who did have the luck to make it, say, in July '68—I say that on purpose, I was around 20 at the time—and who buys on credit, let's not exaggerate, his first color TV after 40 years of career, you see, of career, let's call it a career, 40 years of hard labor, well, along comes a Cohn-Bendit appearing at the edge of the wood who tells him, you bourgeois-ified bastard, subway, work, sleep, you're no good for the revolution anymore, you're a consumerist bastard.
10:19 We're surely not going to demonize that man's money, that miner's money. He has every right, having survived, mind you, silicosis and other scourges, he has every right, after the life he led, to sit down a bit in front of his television set. There, I'm trying to think dialectically, you see, I'm not deifying money or demonizing it. I'm showing the extent to which I'm problematizing—that's my job as a philosopher too, to show that there are problems where people had slogans in their heads instead, I don't know, that things are problematic.
Money and language, primitive accumulation and the perversion of words 11:00 Marx said, one of his most beautiful lines, that mystification lies not so much in the solutions proposed as in the way the questions are posed. Yes, there are ways of posing questions and problems that condemn you to having only one solution, only one answer. What was the color of Henry IV's white horse? That's no good. When we were in primary school, they made us laugh with that, but that's often what politics is like. So, I began with that text because it's a real determination.
11:31 Seen from a certain angle, money is abominable. Everything Marx said there is true. It transforms the thief into a hero, the criminal into a man of peace, the dishonest man into a model of honesty, and the greedy ignoramus into a man of generous wit. That's not false. And that's why I ended with the last sentence, which I'll repeat. Three lines. If money is the bond that ties me to human life, that ties society to me, that links me to nature and to man—everything is there, nature, culture, society, it's all there.
12:10 Is money not the bond—second time, the word bond?—Look closely. Of all bonds? Third time. Can it not bind and loose all bonds? Fourth time. Why do I dwell on this sentence? Because money, like language, which is the material of my trade—a philosopher is someone who questions words, after all. What do you call...? That's how philosophy began with Socrates. Not 'what is it,' that's a scholar's question. But 'what do you call it'? We saw that last time.
12:41 What is a star? That's an astronomer's question. What do you call a star? That's a philosopher's question. Once you've told me what you call a star, I'll tell you whether it's earthbound, etc. So there. Am I making a detour? Not at all. Language, money, in both cases, is what binds men together. Yes, there's a curious link—I use the word link again—between two fundamental forms of exchange in humanity since the dawn of time.
13:11 Currency, speech. Which led Mallarmé to say—I made this long development because Mallarmé is often obscure, but it's going to be a bit clearer now—speech only relates to things commercially. Though it would suffice to silently place a coin in another's hand. Mallarmé saw very well the relationship there is, mind you, between a certain way of speaking and a certain way of exchanging goods, because in language too, there's inflation.
13:44 You see? Or deflation, depending. In language there's an enormous history, there's a sedimentation in money too. If you read Capital—and I recommend it, because there are difficult passages, very difficult—but there's a passage accessible to everyone, and it's no less profound for that, and above all no less informative, for it's fabulously rich in historical information. It's the chapter in Book 1 of Capital, which you'll find in a paperback edition, called primitive accumulation.
14:16 If you have the courage to read that all the way through—primitive accumulation is the moment, because capital, you make it grow, you make profits, but for that, it presupposes there's capital to begin with. What characterizes capitalism is that there's capital to invest first. But how was it formed? There must have been a moment when it had to be built up, starting from zero. That's the moment of primitive accumulation. And there, there's amnesia. The history of primitive accumulation is so atrocious that it's better kept silent. And the pages where Marx talks about primitive accumulation are truly revealing.
14:47 If you simply see what he says about the way the Dutch... I don't want to single them out, the French did no better and even worse. But I mean, he takes the example of the Dutch colonies in Indonesia, in Java, the example of how slaves were locked up in prisons meant for 20 people, and they put 200 in them. It's frightening. I'm talking here about the eras of the industrial revolution. I'm not talking about the Middle Ages. How was this Western civilization formed, of which we're so proud that it invented democracy?
15:20 Yes. You have a kid, he's 6 years old. At the time, he works in a factory in England, the most developed country. He works 13 hours a day. And without vacation, without insurance, etc. But that way, he doesn't become a hooligan in the street. That's what the Quakers who employed them said. That's to show you that already, you know, human rights now, you always need a good conscience. The more evil you do, the more you need to pass it off. I'm illustrating what Marx said, money transforms everything.
15:51 The more evil you do, the more you need to present yourself, as Bush said, as the empire of good. Well yes, since across the way there's the empire of evil. So I must be good. You had to think of that one. When there's evil—China, Russia, depending on the era, the secular countries, the rare secular Arab countries, Iraq, Syria, Libya—that's evil. I'm from the generation of the Suez War. Young people haven't really known it, but I think some of you remember the Suez expedition.
16:21 It's that there was Nasser who had the nerve, the audacity to nationalize what? Bravo, the Suez Canal. No, not the oil, there isn't any in Egypt. It's the thing that brings in a bit of money in Egypt, sorry to speak a bit casually, that brings in a bit of money, a few dinars, the Egyptian pound. It was the canal. And it turned out it didn't belong to the Egyptian people. It was France and England that ran the thing.
16:52 You had to think of that one, all the same. Nasser, what's called the generation of young colonels—I won't do history here—who take over from the sovereigns the West kept in place, King Farouk, who indulged himself in the sheets, I'm speaking seriously, in the sheets of the Carlton in Cannes, etc., who was the shame of Egypt. In short, so he restored a bit of Egypt's pride. And now they decide to nationalize the only sector bringing in a bit of money. What was the headline in our newspapers, remember? The new Hitler.
17:24 No, that's to tell you, when I talk about Assad, it's not my cup of tea, the Assads, the Saddam Husseins, they put comrades in vats of acid. I'm not demonizing, but it takes some nerve, some cynicism. Especially since generally, these dictators, it's we who created them. I'm thinking of Saddam Hussein—the British, they picked him out because he was a good communist-killer. It's a classic scenario, like what was done with Bokassa, you know, in the Central African Republic.
17:54 The Central African Republic is sinking into criminality, political criminality. It's frightening, it's a permanent carnage that everyone couldn't care less about, moreover, since there aren't Russians or Chinese behind it—we can't say that. I'm telling you this—it's not certain, your wife might say I was in Russia. That's the Russians' problem, not mine. Mine is what we say back home. I don't know. Well, we never talk about it. The Central African Republic, what's happening there is frightening. It's a country that should be almost richer than France.
African poverty and indifferentiation through lack of money 18:24 There are perhaps more diamonds than inhabitants. The result is it's almost even poorer than Mali. And that's saying something. It's a country you'd think was a desert. So, you see, there's a perversion of words, a perversion of concepts. Fine. Sorry, go ahead, Hervé. I'm a little bothered when you say a country as poor as Mali, when Mali has incredible mineral wealth.
18:55 I'm a bit in disagreement. Excuse me. Ah yes, but you're right, I shouldn't have said Mali, I mean the Malians. And especially the Malian women, when you've seen, as I have, Malian women getting up in the morning—I'm talking about three-fifths of Malian women—walking 10 kilometers to fetch water. And once they've done 10 kilometers, they have to do another 10 kilometers to fetch wood, to heat the water, in a country where there's neither water nor trees.
19:26 Well, she'd better not run into some eco-friendly aid worker who's paid 3,000 a month and tells her, 'you mustn't cut down trees.' But yes, that's how it is. I saw that in Niger. Niger, Mali, these are countries that are two-thirds desert in the north and just a little bit of greenery in the south. It's called the Sahel. Sahel is an Arabic word meaning 'shore.' The ocean is the desert. It's the great Sahara desert. It's a beautiful metaphor. There. So, those are the people I'm talking about. But you're right, their poverty is all the more scandalous. But it's a poverty you can't even imagine.
19:57 Mali, Niger, you can't imagine it. I had the chance to teach in Côte d'Ivoire. A country incomparably richer than those. In relative terms, all these are developing countries. But still, Côte d'Ivoire compared to Mali is like Germany compared to southern Spain or Italy. Well, I had students at the technical high school in Abidjan, senior year, I teach philosophy, I'm with the older kids. And so, already, who have the chance to go to high school. That's already a filtering process.
20:27 And to reach secondary school. During the break, after two hours of class, at the break, you know, I talk a lot. You've seen it, the chalk, the dust, the heat, there was no air conditioning back then. I have a little biscuit, a bit of sugar, etc. And there are always three or four students more motivated than the others who don't go out for the break, who want to talk with the teacher. And I'm not about to eat my biscuit without offering some, so I offer a biscuit. That, I saw it, that's why I'm telling you, excuse me, it's anecdotal, I know, but still, I mean, in the relatively wealthy Côte d'Ivoire, his biscuit—a little brown biscuit, a petit-beurre—he takes it, cuts it into 5, 6, 7, 8 pieces to give to his classmates.
21:08 Côte d'Ivoire, I'm not talking about Mali—I've traveled hundreds of kilometers in a single day. In Niger, there are markets, villages, in the market you only find onions, onions, not even a grilled one, that's how it is. But you're right, all our electricity comes from Niger—well, I'm exaggerating a bit, because that's our main... yes? Yes, absolutely. The day you make my planes take off for my son who had an accident in Thailand on vacation, running on wind turbines, I'm all for alternative energies, as long as we're not there yet.
21:45 No, but it's true that most of the nuclear electricity, which is dominant in France, the ore for the most part—not only, but the largest part—comes from Arlit, in Niger, I know the place well. These are countries that should—I'm not even talking about the biggest scandal, that's the Democratic Republic of Congo, what used to be called the Belgian Congo, then Zaire, you know, it keeps changing. It keeps changing, but always for the worse, every time. You know, that's where, at the time, we helped Tshombe gun down Mobutu—gun down Lumumba, excuse me, who had the bad idea of having Marxist-leaning ideas.
22:26 We were told, you're free, you can go, you're not in prison anymore, and then they shot him in the back. It's a continent-sized country, it's gigantic, but it's a scandal, it's not me saying it, it's Mobutu, one of the most corrupt men. I'm not going to take the blame, I'm not one of those who describe African corruption, because I belong to countries that have the corrupters. I'll come back to it, but since we're talking about money. And Mobutu himself used to say, my country is a geological scandal.
22:59 You find everything, manganese, diamonds, iron, under the ground, you find everything, and on the ground, you plant a broomstick, three months later, there's a banana plantation. I'm barely exaggerating, it's so fertile, this isn't the Sahel, this isn't Niger, it rains, it's fertile, it's prodigious. It's poorer than Mali. Between 10 and 15 million dead, nobody knows exactly since the end of the 19th century, you know it was the private property of the King of the Belgians. It didn't even belong to Belgium, to the Belgian people.
23:29 It was the backyard garden of the King of the Belgians. And as for rubber, when natural rubber was a fortune, which disappeared with the creation of synthetic rubber, I mean, when the yield didn't come in from a village, they cut off women's breasts, they crucified men on trees, I'm not exaggerating anything, look it up. All this is on the Internet, but I'm talking about historians, I'm not in conspiracy-theory territory, these are well-established facts. We never talk about it, that's why I'm telling you. Because you can't say it's totalitarian, and no, it's Belgium.
24:02 Belgium, the King of the Belgians. Yes, at the time it was Leopold. So there you go, I mean, all that, for what? For rubber which brought in a fortune. So, bravo, coltan, cobalt, you know that without coltan you don't have your cell phones, you know that well. There you go, of course. But it's 12-year-old children, I've seen that, it's terrifying.
24:33 I'll tell you, because we'll get to it later, they all have the same face. That's what brings tears to my eyes, they all have the same face. Even though they're different to begin with, in a sense, but given the conditions they live in, they end up all looking alike, a face of misery. Just like the kids who, as soon as you park in Abidjan, say, boss, I'll watch it, I'll watch your car, because there are no other resources, in the street, and the little one who's 12 gets shaken down for what I give him by the one who's 15, and well, misery breeds misery.
25:03 Misère, miséreux, that means unhappy, in Latin, we shouldn't forget, misfortune. Yes, and violence, bravo. So they all have the same face, it's frightening to see. There's an indifferentiation caused by lack of money. There, I'm contradicting myself, I'm no longer demonizing money. And since I'm in Africa, I won't linger too long in Africa, I'll leave Africa on a joke, but a wonderful popular joke. Our problem, which you've been discussing for five sessions, four sessions, a quarter of a session, is money.
25:36 You ask an African, we did the experiment, you ask the question we often ask ourselves, does money buy happiness? You know, the discussions, you know what Africans answer? Maybe someone knows the answer. It's easier to cry on the leather seat of a Jaguar than on a bicycle. Well, no, that's too complicated for an African, it's simpler, but in my opinion more pertinent, what he answers. He answers... That's already better. Give it to me first, then I'll tell you.
26:06 But that sums up the Yellow Vests. That sums up the Yellow Vests. What? You only think about money, you don't think about the planet. What? There's the end of the world, and you're thinking about the end of the month, aren't you ashamed? Yes or no? Who are the scoundrels among the Yellow Vests? There are heroes, there are scoundrels, like everywhere. Do you think that when the Bastille was stormed, they filtered people, saying, you, you have good intentions, you, you're against violence, whatever. Really, everything that used to be a source of pride in French history, now we have to be ashamed of it. It's serious, really, the way language is being perverted.
Nerval, Sylvie: in love with an image 26:43 So there you go, I'll leave Africa on that note, because does money buy happiness, I haven't settled it, but the African answer, meanwhile, which doesn't settle it either by the way, which is subtle, he says, give it to me first, then I'll tell you. There, he's giving me a philosophy lesson. So, I allowed myself, through this long detour via Marx quoting Shakespeare, to quote writers to you, who are witnesses. You know that Marx, for example, preferred the royalist Balzac to the progressive Zola.
27:19 He found that the two classes were much better expressed in Balzac, with much more concrete richness, regardless of Balzac's political ideas. But what matters is the testimony that gives us the world he lived in. And here, I'm going to quote you someone who is nothing like Balzac, someone known for being what they call — well, it's worth what it's worth, but in schools they say Balzac is the leader of the realist movement. That says fairly well what it means, even though Balzac shouldn't be reduced to that, he's also a visionary.
27:52 It's not just about sight, it's about vision. But no, I'm quoting a dreamer who died mad. I'm thinking of Gérard de Nerval, you know I love him, and Dada. And since he's too little read, I take the opportunity to make the point every time. In his most famous novella, the one Proust placed above all of French literature, it hasn't been long that we've recognized Nerval as a great writer. That dates from around the 1960s, you see, that's not old, 1960. But it's a novella, I'll tell you the context right away, the pitch, you'll very quickly see the connection with money, and with what money shines, and with what it's rarely connected.
28:32 To sum up the novella very quickly for you, it's about a typical hero of the Romantic era, whom Nerval mocks a little, it's almost already Flaubert with a certain lucidity. The first sentence is, I appeared every evening at the theater, in the stage boxes of a theater, in full suitor's attire. You see, there's a kind of self-mockery. The guy, in the part of the theater, in love with the actress, it's a banality, you see, it's typical of the Romantic era.
29:08 My uncle had told me, however, that actresses were not women like other women, and that nature had forgotten to give them a heart — you see, so far nothing original. And he makes clear, this too is very Romantic, that the real woman doesn't interest him, it's the image he has every evening, of seeing this actress, approaching her is not even a question. She had to appear as a queen or a princess, and above all not be approached. Seen up close, the real woman revolted our naivety, he says, speaking of his generation.
29:41 Now let me point out, and you'll see we come back to very concrete things, that he's speaking exactly in the years following the revolution of 1848, and its failure, which traumatized the French working class, as the Commune would later. It's very important to see the retreat of writers into an inner world, into a world of dreams and escape, after 1848. Whereas before, even people like Lamartine, who was an aristocrat, who was nonetheless head of the provisional government of the Republic, which overthrew Louis-Philippe, you see, there was political engagement by the first Romantics in favor of revolutionary ideas, the Republic, and freedom.
30:21 All that receded, we'd now call it a reactionary current, counter-revolutionary, not yet very nasty, that shuts itself up in dreams, in the ivory tower of poets. In short, the author, the one speaking, the narrator, sorry, that's not the same, is at that point. And a friend says to him, I see you coming to the same theater every evening, which one is it for? In Paris we're gallant. Which one — it seemed to me one couldn't come for any other reason. Up to here, it's very human, a rather trivial story, trivial in the mathematical sense, quite banal and Romantic.
30:56 Well, he says, look, he points to a table where she's sitting with a young man, there's the young man who's going to walk her home tonight, without much emotion — I was watching a well-dressed young man, a pale, nervous face, the Romantic hero, a bit tubercular, yes, pale and nervous, he was throwing gold on a whist table — whist is a bit like bridge — and losing it with indifference. Well now, we're back to our subject. To his rival, he throws gold on a table, he loses, no big deal, there's more where that came from.
"An idea from another time": droit de cuissage and Figaro 31:27 It's not over. It's just beginning. He answers his friend, what does it matter, that one, another, someone had to be chosen, that one seems to me worthy of having been chosen — the other is stunned — and you or me, it's an image I'm pursuing, nothing more. Remember that, I'm in love with an image. Very well. Without a break, he continues, the play is over, he goes to the reading room, in the theater, at the time, there were reading rooms, the day's newspapers, and he comes across a little item, just like that, a tiny item, that gives the stock market prices, and he notices that the shares his uncle left him have just gone up in value, in short, he's made a fortune, he suddenly realizes he's become rich.
32:09 And what would the young man say if I went back? Because now, it's an image I'm pursuing, now that he has money, you see? What Shakespeare and Marx were saying earlier, with money, everything can be reversed. If I found him saying, this woman belongs to me, I'm richer than you — and then he says no, that's not how it is, it's the narrator speaking, it's not at my age that you kill love with gold. Besides, this is the idea of another era, which also tells me that this woman might be venal. You see, everything turns on the terms of buying and selling values that we believe to be non-economic.
32:40 That's what interests me. Because if we confine — you see Marx's discourse — to being valid only in shop windows, that's fine, but Marx spends his time saying that to understand what's in the windows, you have to see the back room. There are little hands, often, that dress up the great ladies. And so he says this, he's of another time. Here I'll linger, because Nerval turns into a historian.
33:10 What does that mean? He's right. The other time is before the French Revolution. At the time, you know, there was the droit du seigneur, but it was a right, it was part of feudal jurisdiction. You've all heard of The Marriage of Figaro, but we forget that the main subject of the play is the droit du seigneur. By right it wasn't really practiced anymore, she had already given herself. In fact it hardly happened anymore. But by right, the Lord, here Count Almaviva, has the right to sleep with the bride, with Suzanne, before Figaro, before her fiancé.
33:49 And that's why he has almost the entire household staff against him, because revolution is in the air. You know Mozart turned it into an opera, it's no longer called The Marriage, but The Marriage of Figaro. And Mozart always chose — Mozart is a contemporary of the Revolution, in the 1780s, his greatest masterpieces, that's in the years '86-'87, '91, '92. Mozart always chose subversive subjects. Don Giovanni, we see the master and the servant, Don Juan is punished, and Così fan tutte, I set that one apart it's so incredibly libertine.
34:20 And then The Marriage of Figaro, where the problem is, will she marry him or not. I mean, will she keep her fiancé or will the Count get there first? And it's a miracle, meaning twists and recognitions and stories of birthmarks that mean, at the last moment, the Count is left wanting. But Nerval alludes to that. There was a time when it was absolutely not the case. Because now, bourgeois feminists — I'm for that, equal work, equal pay, we're still far from that for women.
Being and ought-to-be, counter-powers and Yellow Vests 34:50 Forgive me for recalling this old, archaic feminism. But as long as women are paid less than men, I'll remain a partisan of that feminism. First of all, that's not all there is. That's not all there is. I'm the first to say, all other things being equal. I think I've seen enough different regions of the world. Woman is always the one who, excuse the informal language, gets it worse. All other things being equal. I don't know if it's in poverty or in wealth. But still, it's better to be Mrs. Bettencourt, frankly, or Mrs. Clinton, or Condoleezza Rice — you know, that's even better, because for those who love identity politics, you know, nobody cares whether someone is progressive or conservative.
35:31 We just look at whether it's a woman, a black person, a white person. That's it, but no. I'm barely exaggerating. Condoleezza Rice was Secretary of State for foreign affairs under Bush's son, who organized the aggression against Iraq, despite the UN ban. She was black and a woman, that doesn't stop her from being someone abominable. And not because she was black and a woman, of course — to show that really, that's not the issue. So when Nerval says, 'This is the idea of another time,' he's pointing out that it's very recent, it's modern, it's Romantic, that we now say, 'No, it's not at my age that we kill love with gold.'
36:13 It's progress. It took millennia to get there. I've lived too long in countries where all you need is money to have whatever you want. Everything. I just told you, 'It sounds cynical, what I'm about to say.' It would be cynical if I were in favor of it. No, I'm just observing, unfortunately. We shouldn't do what Baudelaire did. Baudelaire said, 'I spent my time expressing abominable things.' And as a result, people believed I was abominable. It's as if Marx, because he studies capital, Marx must be an exploiter. Let's not exaggerate. Marx spent his time trying not to be a utopian like so many were on the revolutionary left before him.
36:46 And that's why it always failed. Instead of being in utopian socialism, he tried to make a more scientific socialism, that is, one that doesn't concern itself with what ought to be, but with what is. How does it work? How is profit extorted, surplus value, rent, etc. Once we know that, we can, if we want, change it. In any case, if we don't know how it works, we can want to change it all we like, we won't change anything at all. That's the philosophical distinction between being and ought-to-be. As Spinoza said, a great philosopher of being, it's not a matter of laughing or crying.
37:17 It's a matter of understanding, of knowing what needs to be known. So, what I'm about to say sounds cynical, but one of the most enviable fates, not in terms of values, but for the one living it, is to be rich in a poor country. You get whatever you want. Here, at home, we still have countervailing powers, because there's a rich history. I had African students who told me, excuse me, you see, I've gone back to speaking as an African, who told me, you're lucky in Europe, you have democracy.
37:52 They listen to Radio France Internationale, we have democracy, they have dictatorship. Very well. Nobody tells them that we're the ones propping up these dictatorships, but that will make us listen to contradictory drifts. So I answer them what I think. I tell them, listen, at our place, they're crooks too. But it's true it's better than at yours. Because at yours, there's only one crook. Just one. One family, one clan, that does whatever it wants. Step out of line, everyone trembles. At ours, there's one crook watching another crook face to face in government.
38:24 He says, hey you, the taxes, what are you doing with them? Because I too want my share of the national budget. Deal? You've got your schemes, I've got mine. You see, when there are several crooks running things, that's called checks and balances. It's not good versus evil. We have to stop reasoning that way. Afterward, yes, it's the consequence. It's better. It's better to have several crooks than just one. It does less damage. It limits things. But that's how it started, that's what parliaments are.
38:54 That the prince, as they used to say in England, one of the oldest forms of parliamentary democracy, the prince has free hands to do good and bound hands to do evil. That's not a bad formula, if it were applied. There you go. So you see, I'm reminding you that what's called the Ancien Régime still exists in many countries that lag behind the achievements of the French Revolution. I've been insisting a bit on the Revolution because I still, even now, feel sick to my stomach thinking of the abject way its bicentennial was celebrated under Mitterrand.
39:32 It was almost as if it were done to shame the Revolution. If you remember a little — I won't insist for those who have the memory of it — and yet we're living through hours where suddenly, it seems to me, I'm seeing things I haven't seen for maybe two generations. I don't know how it's going to turn out, I'm not saying it's good or bad, I'm saying that on TV panels, it had been years and years since I'd seen, or in street demonstrations, red-cap protests.
40:05 That's regional, I'm Corsican, I know about that — regionalist, or else generic. These weren't an expression of battered women. There's nothing more appalling than a battered woman. I'm not trying to... Sorry? Or else a battered man, is that what he said? Yes, yes, I quite agree. It makes me think of Mozart who said, what's more out of tune than a flute, two flutes. Of course, but I mean, it was always identity-based. You weren't obliged to feel concerned every time.
40:35 Or else, I don't know, the students. And then, suddenly, I saw an interview with a guy named Bachir, a Yellow Vest, native French, interviewed at a roundabout, about thirty years old. And he was asked, but aren't you a bit infiltrated by National Front people? He said, I don't know. He said, among us, there might be fascists, there are leftists, there are Arabs, there are Black people.
41:06 I don't care, he said. What a relief. The people are there. You mustn't overthink it. The people know how to clean house, you know. I'm stunned to see people my age, out there right now as I speak, in the cold, in front, at the roundabouts, with a brazier, with their wives. Because, between the two of them, their small salary, it's not unemployment benefits, their small salary, the two of them together can't make ends meet, and their son, even less so.
41:39 And their grandson, they tremble to see the world he's going to arrive into, if things keep going like this. Notice, at the very top of the social ladder too, people think about their grandchildren. I'm told, you're going to hand them a planet. Suddenly, they're interested in children, in those cases. But by putting them out of work first. Even with a master's degree plus ten years of study. There you go. So, I was going, through these various detours, via Nerval, you see, everything has been turned around.
Nerval, Angélique: Rousseau refuses the hundred louis 42:09 I'm in love with an actress, I don't dare approach her, but if suddenly a stock market fluctuation means I suddenly have a fortune, she can be mine. Well now, the role of social mobility. Come on, third and last example of this link between money and those who apparently are independent of it, because there are many people who will say, 'Oh sure, money, of course, it has quite a few advantages, we have to be fair and all.' I mean, when you have heartbreak, you can have heartbreak and be a billionaire, which is true. Look at Welles's admirable film, Citizen Kane, right?
42:40 where he dies in solitude, probably the richest man in the world — that's not actually in the film. Yes, except that, the third example, is a triangle I've already spoken about on other occasions, though I don't think it was here. It's also in a Nerval text, Angélique, a novella, where he wanders in the outskirts of Paris, not far from Rousseau's tomb, 3 km from Ermenonville, and he arrives at the Abbey of Chaalis, and he says, the gamekeeper's son was showing us around the grounds.
43:12 It happens that on the grounds — I'm telling you this so you understand what follows, very quickly — Henri IV, there's a small château from the time of Henri IV, where Henri IV sheltered his love affair with the beautiful Gabrielle d'Estrées. I'm somewhere between Capital and Closer, you'll see. And the gamekeeper's son tells us, so he's a local peasant from the Valois area, that is, from the Oise, here is the tower of the beautiful Gabrielle. Every evening Rousseau came to strum his guitar under her window, and the king, Henri IV, who was jealous, eventually had him put to death.
43:48 Extraordinary. Apparently it's absurd. Henri IV was two centuries before Rousseau. So Nerval starts off laughing, like you and me, since we're educated people — poor ignorant peasants. And then, Valois-wise, he says, this story is truer than one might think. Henri IV and Rousseau are the local celebrities. But the population favors Rousseau, who was compassionate toward the suffering classes.
44:21 You see, how it already becomes socialized. And then he adds this, Nerval, and here it's extraordinary, the summary. Rousseau, by refusing — here I'm quoting from memory — Madame de Pompadour's hundred louis, ruined the edifice founded by Henri. Everything collapsed. His immortal image remains standing amid the ruins. Let me go back in the sentence, but I didn't want to interrupt it, all right. Rousseau refused a hundred louis from Madame de Pompadour. Rousseau had written a successful opera, we'd say today a celebrity success.
44:52 All right? He could have gone on in that vein. He had no worries at all in his life. You know he had to change residence, he was pursued by the police of the three greatest powers of Europe. His house at Môtiers was stoned. He was in utter destitution. He nearly died at my place in Corsica, one of the poorest regions of the Kingdom—already at that time. Yes, it's little known, you're making a nice little digression here. I wrote the preface—I ventured a preface, I was asked to write the preface—for the draft constitution that Rousseau composed for the young Corsican republic in Pascal Paoli's time.
45:28 We shouldn't forget that in the 1770s, Corsica, before the United States and before France, formed the first political state—it didn't last long—that applied the most advanced ideas of the Enlightenment. There, I still wanted to mention that in passing. So Paoli sends an emissary to tell Rousseau, "Won't you be what we'd call today our consultant, to draft a constitution?" The most advanced man of the Enlightenment—it's extraordinary. And Rousseau replies, "I am in my parenthesis."
45:58 Rousseau says, "You are an extraordinary people, because the Corsican struggle is a bit like Vietnam was at a certain time for the European left. You are a wonderful people. You have freed yourselves from Genoese tyranny. You are fighting against the armies of Louis XVI. You are exemplary." Voltaire was saying at the same time, "Europe is Corsican." "But I am too old. I am at the end of my rope. I am tired. I am ill." "I had the stone disease." "I walk around with catheters in my urethra." "Go to Corsica today—it's not simple."
46:29 Already, back then. But imagine at the time... And so, roughly speaking, he refuses. The other insists. So there are four letters I recommend to you, between Rousseau and Buttafoco—which doesn't mean "at the end of one's tether," that's something else—and Paoli's emissary. And Rousseau ends up getting drawn into the game. He asks for information like a good consultant: "What are the morals of the clergy, Paoli?" "What are the island's mineral resources?" It's rare to see a Rousseau as economist, even concerned with industrial development. It's interesting.
46:59 We are no longer in the Social Contract, which was general political philosophy. Here we are in a here-and-now, which is Corsica, as he would later do for Poland—the draft constitution for Poland. And suddenly Rousseau changes the subject. He says, "Let's forget the draft constitution. I am too old, I am tired. Let me come die at your place. I want to die free on a free, liberated land." It's little known—I tell you—we almost had Rousseau's tomb in Corsica this time.
47:29 So, to show you how independent he was from the powers of money, he copied music all day long. There were no photocopiers. It was long work. Copying scores the way Spinoza polished lenses—you see, he was starting the optics industry to make himself independent from the powers of this world. And Rousseau's motto, which I've often repeated here, Bertrand knows it well, was "Vitam impendere vero"—"to devote one's life to the truth." Which was rather new at the time. I mentioned Mozart earlier, I can't help thinking of him again, because there's a lot of Rousseau in The Magic Flute, if you look closely.
48:05 But Mozart is the first to die in poverty because he refused the protection of the Archbishop of Salzburg. Before that, musicians were servants. Bach's genius, it's fabulous, Bach's music. But still, Bach was employed, he wrote his cantata every Sunday for those who employed him, the Protestant consistory. Mozart threw off his leash. Well, it was all the same period, the 1780s. So I'll close this digression. Rousseau refused the hundred louis from Madame de Pompadour, who wanted to reward him with a pension, as was done—"I found the opera beautiful, here, take this, so you'll be at ease, you won't be an 'intermittent du spectacle' anymore," as we'd say today.
48:46 And Nerval says, in refusing these hundred louis, Rousseau ruined the edifice founded by Henri—the whole absolute monarchy. So it's not so foolish, what the peasant says. The Bourbon monarchy, founded by Henri IV, whose holder at that moment, in Rousseau's time, was Louis XV, was ruined by this refusal of Rousseau's. He can no longer be bought. It's extraordinary. We're talking about money. Everything collapsed—meaning at the Revolution—his immortal image remains standing upon the ruins.
49:20 And suddenly, little Rousseau, unnoticed, he who stammered in the salons—at the time you needed a quick wit to get the jokes, and he didn't have much of one, with his Swiss heaviness—it's he who says all this. He says, I always understood on the staircase—that's where the phrase "esprit d'escalier" comes from—too late. And suddenly, in this sentence of Nerval's, he acquires an almost titanic figure. His immortal image remains standing on the ruins. So, I wanted to show you that money could just as well be demonized, but at the same time it could distribute freedom as well as servitude.
The letter to Malesherbes: fleeing servitude and domination 49:57 because we spoke of freedom earlier, so we must speak of servitude. So I'll make one last allusion to Rousseau before generalizing, drawing conclusions, and giving you the floor. There's a letter Rousseau wrote to Malesherbes. Malesherbes was a decent fellow, part of the grand establishment—he was really, as we'd say today, a very senior civil servant, in charge of censorship, and he had sympathy for the Enlightenment philosophers. And he had friendship for Rousseau, and he reproached him for not explaining himself well, for defending himself poorly against his enemies.
50:32 So anyway, to give you the context of the letter: explain yourself, you defend yourself badly, tell us what you find in walking in nature, in the forest—that was new, you don't understand it today, it seems natural to us to go for a walk there—you have a magnificent forest and riverbank not far from the industrial wastelands of Saint-Dizier—there's more than just industrial wasteland in Saint-Dizier, but anyway, I mean, you have wonderful countryside—that's still what he tells him—for a spot to be admired, it has to be beautiful, but at the time people didn't understand that pleasure, which is recent, which dates from the Industrial Revolution, you see, I insist, it began in England, Romanticism, in Germany—"the light comes to us from the north," said Madame de Staël, to explain the beginning of Romanticism—it's when nature began to retreat before industry that people began to love it poetically; that's no accident, it's interesting—and nature became landscape.
51:30 What could be more beautiful—oh sorry, yes excuse me, excuse me, you're right, my son tells me that all the time, he watches my videos, he says, "ah, the ends of your sentences, we can't hear you anymore, you're mumbling into your beard"—thank you, thank you very much—yes, I was saying that nature becomes landscape, it becomes a spectacle; it's not the nature that's worked by the peasant, that's not a spectacle, you see. In Goethe's Faust, which arises at the dawn of Romanticism—Goethe comes immediately after Rousseau—the hero Faust falls asleep before a magnificent landscape, a "site" as we'd say today, and he says to himself, he says, "What a spectacle! But alas, only a spectacle. Where shall I grasp you, infinite Nature?" The laborer doesn't ask himself that question, does he—the one who ploughs his field doesn't say, "Where shall I grasp you, infinite nature"—he grasped nature long ago: "You gave me mud and I made gold of it," as Baudelaire would say—"you gave me earth and I made an orchard of it," a vegetable garden, whatever, a field of potatoes. So, I come back to servitude
52:42 and domination, and Rousseau's letter—so Rousseau, to answer him, tells him about one of his days at the Hermitage, north of Paris, at Montmorency, where there was, and still is, a magnificent forest, and he says: every morning I set out with faithful Achates—that's the name of his dog—and then it begins, any psychiatrist would recognize the semantics of paranoia, of a paranoid person: "quickening my pace for fear that someone would seize hold of me before I could slip away"—you see, "my first wish was that neither letters nor visits should come to disturb the charm of the day"—no contact with society. You'll say, wait, I don't understand, this is the man of the Social Contract who's telling me his virtues, who wants to flee all relations with men and be all alone in the forest? You'll see what follows: "quickening my pace for fear that someone might seize hold of me before I could slip away, but once I had managed to get past a certain corner, with what a thrill of joy, with what a tremor I would say to myself: here I am, master of myself for the rest of this day."
53:49 Freedom here consists in being perhaps without money but also without society. "I then walked on at a more leisurely pace"—look, change of tempo, the musician, he was in a hurry before—"I then walked at a more leisurely pace, seeking out some wild spots in the forest, some deserted places, where nothing..." I'm quoting it word for word because every word counts. If I stop there, we'd say it's total misanthropy. Since that's not possible—it's the same man who wrote the Social Contract, it's not possible.
54:19 So I'll continue the sentence I interrupted: "where nothing showing the hand of man"—I sought some wild places, "where nothing showing the hand of man"—comma—"proclaimed," look carefully at that circumflex accent, "servitude and domination." That's what Rousseau flees—not society, but this society where servitude and domination reign. Class society on the eve of the greatest upheaval it had ever historically undergone—well, the first of the great upheavals it would not cease undergoing from that moment on, because after 1830, 1848, the Commune, 1917... Rousseau says in Émile, "We are approaching the state of crisis and the century of revolutions."
Distribution and money as medium 55:00 We're still in it. There. For servitude and domination, I'd like to show—and now I'll conclude the philosophical assessment, because it's not just a matter of piling up quotations—that it's not money that is the problem. You suspect as much, I'm not telling you anything new—it's distribution. Because if money—we can say all we said at the start, the text of Shakespeare—if it's demonized to such a degree, it's because there are enormous inequalities.
55:31 If there are... As he speaks of the prostitute, of women who sell themselves—well yes, but that's because they don't have many other resources. Why is there a Rue de la Gaîté in Paris, near the Rue Montparnasse, do you think? Because there were plenty of brothels, to put it politely, because Breton poverty drove women there, starving, near the Gare Montparnasse. That is to say, as my friend Clouscard used to say—undoubtedly the greatest Marxist thinker of the postwar period, who died in solitude and who said anything except about the working class—
56:06 the woman, at that time, the woman fleeing poverty, tried—and how understandable it is, you see, given the working-class condition of the time—she tried not to fall into the hell of the working class. You know, to be near her children, whom I mentioned earlier, who at age 6 worked thirteen hours a day. So if money, here, is vile, to the point where there are, as it dealt with earlier, venal women—as for men, let's not even talk about it, we know they're all venal too, depending on the case—it's because money is unequally distributed.
56:39 If money were equally distributed, the problem of prostitution wouldn't arise—at least, it wouldn't be motivated by this social factor. That's what needs to be understood. So it's distribution, social justice, that determines this—and I'll end on the word with which I framed the whole problem, the word "link": language, currency, money is only a mediation. It's what is in the middle, that's what it is—a medium, that which stands in the middle, a hub of a bicycle wheel, the perpendicular bisector of a segment, the median.
57:17 Every time we speak of a medium, it's because there's something that acts as intermediary between two extremes. As here, there's the French language between you and me, between sender and receiver—and I'll be the receiver, with your questions. There you go—but there's a medium between the two, and that's what money is. So it's neutral. Take a segment—I'll finish on this image—AB, with point M in the middle. Let's say AM is red and MB is blue. Not complicated, I'm no great mathematician, I'm giving a very simple example.
57:50 What color will the middle be? Point M, yes? I didn't hear. Bravo! Yes, but bravo—it will be purple. It's not the far left, it's not the far right, it's what has been steering us for two generations, the extreme center. You never know what color that is. The more it's on the right, the more it calls itself left, you know. There, I'll stop there and hand the floor over to you. Thank you, Dominique.
58:26 Thank you.
