English translation of the French transcript, made with AI and not yet proofread — click a paragraph to jump to it. Show the French original
Presentation of the film and of Le Capitalisme de la séduction 1:23 The film is a documentary by Ossian Gagny and Fabien Trémeau on the thought of Michel Clouscard. Everything Is Permitted but Nothing Is Possible, with the participation of the directors Ossian Gagny and Fabien Trémeau, of Jean-Pierre Garnier, Aymeric Monville and Dominique Pagani. Everything is permitted, but nothing is possible. That sums up the current situation, which calls itself permissive—it depends for whom and why—and runs up against the impossible as soon as it's a question of utopia, more than ever consigned to the dustbin of liberalism.
1:59 Everything is permitted, though this "everything" still needs to be defined in relation to social reality or to the liberal-libertarian ideal: repressive for the producer, permissive for the consumer. You can go everywhere, have everything you want, but you'll have to slave away, submit, and accept the norms. Which translates into "nothing is possible," since there's no question of stepping outside the frameworks agreed upon and validated by the single dominant way of thinking. Exploitation, emancipation, revolution being obviously terms to be banished from discourse—terms as out of place as class struggle, rebellion, revolt, or working class.
2:33 The working class has indeed disappeared from the discourse of politicians, academics and journalists. Yet it is still present, this ghost class of 7 million workers. The film by Ossian Gagny and Fabien Trémeau, Everything Is Permitted but Nothing Is Possible, analyzes the ideological system put in place by capitalism and its ideologues, for a better understanding of the present situation.
3:04 Michel Clouscard is an intellectual who swam against the current and was marginalized, sidelined, for having denounced the treason of the intellectuals and the abandonment of social questions and collective stakes in favor of the societal concerns dear to the middle classes. He also devoted himself to studying classes not only in terms of production but also of consumption. Through archives and interviews with Jean-Pierre Garnier, Jean-Pierre Levaray, Aymeric Monville and Dominique Pagani, the directors of the documentary Ossian Gagny and Fabien Trémeau revisit the question of the regulation of capitalism and the crisis of 1929 which led to the Second World War and its horrors.
3:46 This is the beginning of the film. Since the Marshall Plan, capitalism has used another weapon, the weapon of seduction, a strategy tied to the manufacture of a mass culture, aimed at a people in order to align them and get them to adopt conformist and consumerist positions. Michel Clouscard's Le Capitalisme de la séduction, published in 1981, is a decoding of the way of life built by consumer society, seen from the angle of a class strategy. Tolerated in the current context, a few occasional bouts of protest can still pass. If it's then possible to recuperate them, social critique must in any case be consigned to useless and unused accessories.
4:28 This idea has to be firmly installed: that capitalism is unavoidable and that at best one can envisage adjusting it or "moralizing" it, in quotation marks, but certainly not calling it into question. Consumption would thus be the only possible path to emancipation, a real godsend to save capitalism from crisis. Life flows by, life slips away, the days pass by at the pace of boredom.
5:02 The party of the reds, the party of the greys, our revolutions are betrayed. The party of the reds, the party of the greys, our revolutions are betrayed. Work kills, work pays, time is bought at the supermarket. Paid time never comes back, youth dies of wasted time.
5:41 Eyes made for the love of loving are the reflection of a world of objects, without dream and without reality, condemned to images. The shot, the starved, come toward us from the depths of the past. Nothing has changed but everything is beginning, and will ripen into violence.
6:26 Burned dens of priests, nests of merchants and police. To the wind that sows the storm, are reaped the days of celebration. The guns pointed at us will turn against the leaders.
6:56 No more leaders, no more State, to profit from our struggles. Life flows by, life slips away, the days pass by at the pace of boredom. The party of the reds, the party of the greys, our revolutions are betrayed.
7:35 That was Serge Utgé-Royo, "La vie s'écoule." You're listening to Chroniques rebelles on Radio Libertaire 89. And to reach us, by phone during the musical breaks, 01 43 71 89 40. So we're talking about a DVD that exists, because for the moment it's not being shown on screens. So I'll address the two directors, Ossian Gagny and Fabien Trémeau, who made this documentary, Everything Is Permitted but Nothing Is Possible. So obviously the first, very simple question is: what got into you to make a documentary about Clouscard, who was, for me at least, completely unknown.
Genesis of the documentary and choice of participants 8:22 At the start, for us too, we stumbled on Le Capitalisme de la séduction a bit by chance. And indeed, precisely because he was totally unknown, and yet he had, especially in Le Capitalisme de la séduction, relevant analyses of capitalism. We ourselves don't come from a filmmaking background at all, we didn't study that at all, we have more of a university background, philosophy and history. It seemed interesting to us to make Clouscard more widely known. What interested us was his analysis of French society, of the evolutions of capitalism since the Second World War.
9:05 You just said, Fabien, that you weren't a director. You can have an idea like that—"it would be good to have a film on Clouscard"—but then you still have to move on to actually directing it. So how did that go? How did the two of you set that up? Well, first of all we looked for funding, because that's a bit the sinews of war, and so we met a producer who was interested in another project, and well, after that it took a while, because we started to...
9:35 It has to be said that with a title like that... It is what? Well, it's pretty catchy. Yes, yes, yes, but still, his thinking is quite particular, it's not in the mainstream media. So our producer got interested in the project, and, well, step by step we managed to make it happen, which still required a lot of work. How long? Because obviously there are the interviews—you have to set them up, light them, make sure they're good. And besides, there was also all the research into stock shots, that is, into filmed archives, which wasn't obvious either.
10:12 So there was all that to set up. So that means how long? For non-professionals. Yes, it was two years of work. And the editing afterwards. The editing, of course. Because there's a common thread, it has to be said, it's not just clips strung together. Oh no, no, no, yes. But afterward we worked with a researcher who did very good work. Then there was the search for interviewees, obviously, preparing the script. Yes, it was—with the funding search, the development of the script, the search for the interviewees—it was two, two and a half years of work.
10:46 Well, now I'm going to make the guests here jump. How did you choose the cast? Ah, well, that's it, they're not reacting, luckily, I'm in luck. So, for the scientific side? Well, first, Aymeric Monville was obvious, he's Clouscard's publisher, he reissues all of Clouscard's books, so he was a must-have guest. Dominique Pagani, same thing, it was obvious, he was a collaborator of Michel Clouscard, so we met him through Aymeric Monville.
11:23 Jean-Pierre Garnier and Jean-Pierre Levaray, that's true, it went less smoothly, it took a bit more time. Jean-Pierre Garnier—we discovered, somewhat by chance, an article he had written in Le Monde diplomatique in which he cites Clouscard and the concept of "liberal-libertarian" coined by Clouscard. Jean-Pierre Levaray—the last part of the documentary is devoted to the exclusion of workers from the media, political field, etc.
12:01 So it would already have been rather ironic not to interview any workers and to make them disappear ourselves from the documentary. He did after all write the book La classe fantôme. We stumbled on the book and on the film. And so we said to ourselves, bingo, interesting things, a critical point of view on work that can add something to the documentary. That's the representation of labor. And so, once they were contacted, did you all react well to it? What did you think, for instance, Aymeric?
The art of the formula and the contradiction of 68 12:36 I was delighted that people from this generation were taking up such an important author, even though I wasn't all that surprised, since ever since Clouscard has been reissued, he's actually quite present in bookshops—let me nuance a bit the idea that he's not... or else I'd really be doing my job badly, distributing him badly, but we do try to bring him back... Actually, look, let me stop you there, because I said, and it's true in the introduction, that he had been marginalized, that's obvious, but there's still something surprising, because he had this bookshop success in '81, with that book, and it's not the only one.
13:14 We can call it a bestseller in the case of Le Capitalisme de la séduction, that's clear. In fact, that may be a problem... So why, in your view, does he continue not to be known? I even think that this book is clearly the entry point into his work, because it's a very accessible book, and at the same time it has something of a novel about it. At the same time, the problem with this book is that it overshadowed the rest, a somewhat more theoretical, more philosophical body of work. And that's the more sociological aspect of his work. But at the same time it's unavoidable.
13:48 As a publisher, I'm mostly interested in Marxism, Hegelianism, theorists. But with Clouscard, of course, the love at first sight is enormous, because on top of that Clouscard has real qualities as a writer, qualities of a visionary. It's a way of seeing. I don't mean writer in the sense of someone who builds a plot, a story, because maybe that even has a somewhat outdated side to it. When we talk, for instance, about—I think it's Breton or Valéry who said he wasn't interested in the novel because of that thing about "the marquise went out at five o'clock," etc. Well, there's none of that in Clouscard, but there is what we love in the novel, I think, for me—that is, really, the vision of society, that gaze.
14:30 That's what, for instance, made Marx fascinated by Balzac. Marx despised Auguste Comte, he adored Balzac. I think that's important to understand—that it gives lessons in terms of sociology, so to speak. Good sociology is Balzac's sociology. One thing is certain, for instance in Clouscard's case, having watched the film several times, what struck me is that he really has a gift for the striking formula. Oh yes, and also Rousseau. Very simple, understandable by everyone, direct, it's clear, you don't need to think twice, you see it right away, you say, wait, there's something there, and you immediately see, well, a bit of what there can be, the contradiction, but at the same time a contradiction that has content and that means something.
15:15 It's not just to make a pretty sentence. It takes great dialectical power, that is, to manage to find the slogan that finally sums up the era. And there, precisely, in "everything is permitted, nothing is possible," you understand—but precisely "everything is permitted" shows well what happened in '68 ideologically. And that's where we get to the whole contradiction that Clouscard points to. That is, this contradiction between the fact that certain things were let go regarding morals, regarding consumption, but for one particular class. There, I would make a slight qualification with respect to the introduction. It's this horizon of consumerism, it's the consumption of other people's production.
15:51 With one class able to consume the production of others. It's a two-speed society that Clouscard denounces. And I could add to that, for instance, the fact that Clouscard says we do not live in a consumer society. A consumer society stricto sensu—I think he'd say right away... That's the case. A society where one can consume what one produces. We could call that socialism, to use another term, but a priori it's a...
16:24 There's another problem in consumerism, it's the anarchy of production. Maybe we produce things that people don't actually decide on. That raises democratic problems. Anarchy of production? Wait, do you really mean what you're saying? We're on Radio Libertaire. For me, anarchy—we may not have the same conception. No, I don't think so. Maybe it was an improper term. There you go, disorder, there you go. There you go, disorder, please. Chaos, if you like, that I accept. I'm referring to the fact that in capitalism there is no—it's the invisible hand, individual initiative, that's what is extolled, even if, of course, as it also shows very well, there is a state monopoly capitalism, that is, an intertwining of the state and capitalism, but let's say that the doctrine that is extolled is still individual initiative in production, but of course in the hands of those who hold the great means of production and exchange, that is, the capitalists.
17:15 So there we can say there's no democratic decision about what to produce and how much. So that's what can be pointed out in the critique of consumerism. But at no point does Clouscard say that we consume too much. He always says that we don't consume enough. It's true, how would one dare say—especially now, with this regression we've experienced compared to the Popular Front, compared to the gains of the Resistance—how can one say that we don't consume enough in this country?
The worker's color television and the two classes 17:48 Oh, I said we consume too much, you meant. Oh, right, okay. I could say we consume too much. But you, Dominique, at one point in the film, tell an anecdote saying—it's not really an anecdote, more a comment or a remark—you say it's still rather incredible that, for instance, a guy who has slaved away, or a miner, or a worker who has slaved away his whole life, and who has really sweated it out—well, when he retires, and then suddenly this comes along...
18:18 It was color TV. He gets his first color television and suddenly he can afford it, this first color TV. Of course we know what we think of this color TV, which is an extraordinary propaganda object, but still, for him it's entertainment, he wants it, etc. And you say, I don't understand how people can criticize the fact that they buy this color TV, so that means he's part of the system in a way. Why do you insist on that particular comment, on the relationship that can exist between this color TV and this object of consumption that is television, in more ways than one, with respect precisely to a worker?
18:59 Well, to answer you, I'm not going to make an apology for the content pumped out by this color TV into the household of the worker in question. No, but I think we agree. We shouldn't take this worker for a fool, whatever the Cohn-Bendits of the time might think. I mean, he wasn't ready to swallow everything his television set told him. I remember a few—precisely, because I'm taking a general case that I'm imagining like that in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais, because I was talking about a miner, but well, I've known others who were roughly in that situation, in this scenario I'm describing in a somewhat simplified way—who would say very clearly: me, I don't understand any of it, the problem of the Middle East, I already have trouble placing things on maps, but they say the United States backs Israel, so that's the bad camp. We shouldn't take workers for fools. It's a somewhat crude response, but it was already better than what we most often hear, for instance.
19:48 And so there you go. No, it's not that... The fact that he buys his first color TV, as you said very well earlier, Aymeric, is not an access to consumption. He's a man who embodies production. When you produce so many cars or color TVs a day and you buy one after 50 years of working life, you can't call yourself a filthy consumer. Maybe I'm biased because I was born in the colonial world, I was born in Vietnam and I lived and worked quite a bit in sub-Saharan Africa.
20:22 Go tell people over there that we live in a consumer society, and you'll get lynched. And they'd be right to want to lynch you. I had students, I was a philosophy teacher for a while in those regions, who told me: listen, sir, if you have too much pollution, just send it our way, because we're dying here from having no industry. That makes you think, doesn't it. There's still a little bubble of people having enjoyed themselves since '68, I mean—I don't want to get into psychology, but speaking of pleasure—a bubble that has served the interests of the power we currently have very well.
20:52 At the very moment when those in power talk about austerity, about going back on this "everything was possible" that '68 had let us glimpse, along comes, right on cue, a greening discourse claiming that we're filthy consumers. I have never in my life seen a consumer society. I've seen classes that consume, I've seen milieus that consume. But if there is a consumer society, as Aymeric says, I'll be the first one running toward it. That would mean communism has been achieved. What do you want me to say? I'll say, I ask for nothing better. I've never seen a society that consumes. I've seen societies that produce. And within these producing societies, there are some that consume more...
21:27 And there I'm paraphrasing Clouscard, I've heard him say this 14,000 times: there are two social classes in history. There are 10,000. But for the purposes of analysis, let's reduce it to two fundamental ones? I mean, there are those who consume more than they produce, and those who produce more than they consume. That allows for objective and measurable distinctions on the problems you're asking me about. Yes, I don't see why we put television, color television, on trial, that's a petit-bourgeois way of thinking. There you go, I'll say... I knew a very, very upper-class woman who took the TV down to the basement so that her sons, who were in prep school, wouldn't be distracted by television. The fight against TV comes from an elitist milieu, it doesn't come from a working-class milieu, as far as I know, for one thing.
Television, spectacle and "consuming what" 22:06 Ah, I don't completely agree with you. Statistically, I don't really want to say. We could measure what I'm saying. Maybe the elite is right, I'm not settling the substance of it. No, no, but I think, still, there is now maybe—it took time, but there's maybe now a reflection precisely about the television as a tool, which has changed a lot since the '60s and '70s. That is, before, it was channels for everyone, etc. Now, if you don't have thirty-six subscriptions, etc., and you pay for subscriptions, etc., you're often left with, aside from maybe one or two programs, garbage. So that reinforces a reflection on the television tool, on how it's used. It's much stronger than before.
22:45 Before, it was still more general-purpose tools, let's say. That could grab you somewhere. I don't know what you all think. That's how I feel it. On what you just said, I think, very quickly, on this—I'm very happy to hear what you just said. That means that thirty years ago—I'm perhaps not paraphrasing exactly what you meant, but it implies it—under General De Gaulle's rule, there was, in another way, more positive content, when there was any, that made it onto television, than now with 300,000 channels. than now with 300,000 channels. No, but it's significant.
23:15 But in any case, out of 300,000 channels, you don't have access to them. Or only if you pay. So we always come back to the same problem. There you have the paradoxes of the world we live in. Now if you don't pay, and you're already paying the license fee, but apart from the license fee, if you don't pay any subscriptions, what do you get? You get series, you get garbage most of the time; if you want something a bit higher quality, both in terms of content and form, there's a difference between the television of that era and the television of now.
23:46 I quite agree. May I make a tiny aside? Aymeric, go ahead, please. Here we get the impression we're talking about spectacle, we get the impression we're talking about Guy Debord and not Michel Clouscard. Yes, exactly! You see, we've drifted, it's true, you're right. And so, but at the same time, I mean, what fascinates me, I'm speaking simply as a publisher, but what also fascinates me about Clouscard, is that precisely—if we're talking about alienation, because it's a real phenomenon, it's not enough to stop at that observation of alienation. In Clouscard, I also find, compared to Debord—well, I'm not here to do comparative advertising, that doesn't matter—but there is in any case a will to fight against that, to rely on real revolutionary ferments, on class practices, on concrete struggle.
24:26 But in any case, to describe this alienation, it seems to me Clouscard went even further, because he doesn't just talk about spectacle. He talks about anthropological training/conditioning. That is, conditioning right into the body itself, right at the heart of what they call "mechanical animation." That's really one of his great concepts, and it's very, very well described in Le Capitalisme de la séduction. Notably the great passage on music. Jean-Pierre, you wanted to say something a while ago. I just wanted to make a point about consuming or not consuming.
24:57 The problem isn't consuming or not consuming, it's consuming what? Because, well, we know very well that most of the production now aimed not only at the working classes but even at the middle classes is a perfectly useless consumption from the point of view, one might say, of people's actual needs. We know very well that a mode of production determines not only the objects, but at the same time the desire to consume and, thirdly, the manner of consuming. This desire to consume and this manner of consuming refer back to the type of products that are put forward.
25:28 We could say that when you look at the shelves at the FNAC, you can marvel at the technological innovations, you can wonder whether that contributes to developing critical thinking mentally, another way of life. No. And no. Right? If anyone was still wondering, the answer is right away: no. Well yes, but the problem is that, that is, we shouldn't say "consume" and so on. We need to know exactly whether we spend our life—consuming is an activity. And even now, an activity that could be called passive, with respect to advertising injunctions.
26:01 So now, indeed, we're launching now, and this was launched by the middle strata once again, the eco-friendly folks, the "consumer-actors." These are people who want to consume intelligently. That is, they're going to consume different things to distinguish themselves, generally more expensive things. And on top of that, to consume them, you have to read all the cultural sections of Télérama, Technikart and other Libérations. I want to say that I don't believe in that. One could very well think, especially when thinking about the consequences for the environment, that a large part of production isn't much use in terms of civilizational development, but largely destroys the environment, if only through the depletion of a whole series of resources that could be used differently, or not used at all for that matter, parenthetically. That's the point I wanted to make, that's all.
Capital goods and the reactionary indictment of consumption 26:50 So the film actually raises an enormous number of issues because there's a book, Aymeric you have it in the studio, you brought it, so there's this book and actually when you market the film, do you sell it with the book or how does that work? Or is it separate? No, it's separate, if only because they're two different distribution circuits, a DVD and a book, it's not the same thing at all. Well obviously it's connected, people are interested in it. But I invite you.
27:20 I'm thinking of another title, precisely because it relates to consumption. Another book by Clouscard is Néofascisme et l'idéologie du désir. Yes, that was earlier. It's earlier. After his thesis, it's a pamphlet, notably against Deleuze and also against a whole era. And also that kind of Marcuse-style refrain denouncing consumer society, precisely there. There, he talks about it very well. And that's where he makes a distinction which is a real contribution, in my opinion, to theoretical analysis. He distinguishes between capital goods and what he calls playful, marginal consumption.
27:59 For example, they'll tell you, it's a bit like what Dominique was pointing out with his worker who feels guilty about buying himself a TV, but they'll even make him feel guilty about buying a car, a fridge, etc. What's very, very important with Clouscard is that in the state monopoly capitalism that really gets established thanks to the Marshall Plan, we can debate exactly when, but in any case it's an essential fact, this total organization of production, the car is absolutely necessary to get to work given the enormous conurbations, the fact that to get to work you need at least two hours by car, often for most people.
28:32 And then there are places in France where there's no other way than your own feet or the car. That's what's at work, it's not a luxury. It's an obligation. The fact is that it can also serve, as Clouscard says, to take the family out on the weekend. But above all, it serves production, it even serves exploitation. And it even induces oil consumption, etc. that the worker pays for directly. And the washing machine, of course, is an advantage, but it's also a capital good.
29:05 So passing off as pleasure-type consumption what is absolutely necessary for capitalists to continue exploitation on an even vaster scale, that's a bit much. And all that is called consumption, and Marcuse tells you the working class sold itself for a mess of pottage. It's that discourse that made Clouscard sick, and which is why he's quite alone compared to his contemporaries from right after '68.
29:35 Yes, go ahead, go ahead, Dominique. No, no, just for a film that... The critique of consumption is an old right-wing theme. All the authors since the 18th century, I mean, they complain about the rise of the masses and these people who want to consume. It's an old reactionary theme. How did it manage to become something that claims to be leftist? '68 is the reversal, once again. That is, for Clouscard as for me, the beginning of the great counter-offensive, the counter-revolutionary offensive of the bourgeoisie endangered by the effects of the Marshall Plan. For example, an old resentment against paid vacation, it's as old as the world. But what's crazy is that from '68 on, there's a certain leftish discourse that tells you the working class isn't defending itself enough, it's letting itself go on the beach.
30:14 That's where we see that ecologism is a fundamental dimension of this leftism, because there's a leftism I admire, but this regressive leftism, ecologism, because personally I'm for my environment, like everyone else. But this immanent naturalism that revives the old discourse of the clergy, of guilt-tripping people about desiring, about consuming, etc. It's the most reactionary thing there's ever been in history. It's the vulgate of people who believe themselves to be far-left. It's really extraordinary. Capital pulled off a fantastic coup in the 1970s.
30:45 Notably this notion of natural balance, properly religious. You mentioned the clergy. — Try to find any justification other than a religious one for this notion of natural balance. Balance is a moral notion, not a scholastic or physical one. The Earth was no more "balanced" when it was volcanic than when there were only dinosaurs. I don't know, things like that don't mean anything. Nature is balanced nowhere. The only thing one can say that's roughly coherent about humanity in general, the process of hominization, is precisely that it's about pushing back natural limits, as far as I know. These are things well forgotten for 40 years now.
The Marshall Plan against the red plague 31:15 So I'd like you to go back over the link you just made, Dominique, that is, the link between the Marshall Plan, which was set up at the end of the 1940s, and '68. I think that for our listeners, if you don't mind, this is going to seem a bit like a leap to them, and also to go back, since there have already been questions on the phone lines, to go back also to this, when we say liberal-libertarian, that made something leap. I understand very well, you might think there are things to clarify, absolutely. No, these are the right questions, the real questions.
31:47 Marshall Plan, '68. First of all, Radio Libertaire listeners, among whom I count myself, not exclusively, because I channel-surf despite my white hair, and have all the knowledge needed, to my knowledge, moreover I've learned quite a bit through them, to understand the Clouscardian modeling that follows. What is the priority of priorities in 1945, amid the ruins of Nazism? You'll never say that to me again.
32:17 But no, that's not the priority. It's not the fight against the brown plague and "never again," it's the fight against the red plague, and it's the Cold War that begins. Never forget this original sin, since I'm using a religious metaphor on purpose, I mean, we're living the result of a society that took as its political priority the fight against communism. One must never forget the fight against communism, against communist ideas, left, right, center-left, Stalinist, Leninist. It's not about communism in power, whether in Hanoi, Moscow or Cuba, in power. That's the only thing that worries capitalism.
32:47 It must be said that the Communist Party at that time was quite... it's important. The PCF in France was 25%. That's enormous! You walk down the street, one passerby in four votes Communist. It's unimaginable. So, not to mention, at the end of the war, it's 28%, in Italy even a bit more. The priority of priorities was to avoid, to stem all that. Hence the Marshall Plan, because if the old poverty of yesteryear had been left as it was before the war, communism would make 80% in the years to come. That was the context in 1945. Jean-Pierre, we're generationally accomplices on this, more or less, he won't contradict me on that.
33:26 And so, the priority of priorities, that's it. The Marshall Plan, it's so communism doesn't... Except, it costs, we're not in idealism here. The Marshall Plan costs money, you have to invest, you have to do what capitalism never did. And what it does even less today, because now I denounce strikes, I'm against strikes, one particular strike. It's a paradox I find. The strike on investment carried out by capitalism for 40 years now. It invests in finance and no longer covers France with railways the way it did under Napoleon III. It's a capitalism that used to leave traces, infrastructure, the sidewalk you step onto when you go out, that's infrastructure that serves everyone. We're far from that today, and have been for a long time.
34:03 That's the globally positive balance sheet of capitalism. We agree on that. Which Marx is the first to pay tribute to? The first part of the Communist Manifesto? The Marshall Plan gives concessions to the popular strata to quickly reach the classes and popular strata. There's a small distinction there, I won't dwell on it. What it had never done since the birth of capitalism, so as not to have the muzhiks on the Loire the way they'd had them on the Elbe when they woke up in 1945.
34:41 That means that at that moment, it's the Truman administration in the United States, so they're giving out money, apparently, not really with strings attached, but there are conditions that are... they're gifts, but there's still... You have to buy American, you have to buy... Anyway it's in all the texts, in all the American texts, you find that! They decided to... 12 billion dollars paid out from '48 to '51 by the United States to 16 European countries, so 23% for France.
35:12 France is the top beneficiary. There you go. But that was normal because to get in, since they, for their part, were making a kind of medium-term investment, roughly speaking, let's say. So they did that of course to be able to, if only through cinema — I love American cinema, but that doesn't change anything — you also have to look at the music, etc. So they needed to secure their entry, and thus break down any protectionist reflexes there might be, shatter them completely, and open up a kind of grand boulevard toward the European countries.
From ideological war to the explosion of 68 35:46 To sum up the essential point, it gives up part of the ground on the material level, but on the ideological level, it wages an all the more ferocious war, it's the Cold War. On the ideological level, by cultivating subjectivity, keeping the old Bergsonian idealist fancies, we won't dwell on it, renewing it from Sartre to Derrida, the French philosophical school, from existentialism and its apotheosis of the individual and individual freedom, and of the particular against the totality that crushes it, right up to — need I say more — the New Philosophers, I don't need to draw you a picture.
36:21 Yes, those ones, you've spared them a bit. That's NATO's thinking. It's even much simpler than in Sartre's day. It's about producing a discourse that justifies all the deadliest interventions since the World War. So it's this gap between the two that's one of the reasons for the explosion of '68. Because people believed in it, and young people first of all, in what had been glimpsed through the Marshall Plan. So there's a mix of the beginning of material emancipation and the frustration of political emancipation that explodes in '68.
37:00 Quite simply, it seems to me the chronology is clear. It's not that mysterious. Yes, but wait, you're telling me there's a link, that there was a kind of preparation for '68. Or are you telling me that in '68 there's actually a co-optation of a movement, an uprising, let's say, a kind of intifada that was natural and that was very quickly co-opted precisely so that things would go in the desired direction. Because '68 isn't just France, France is...
37:31 No, it starts in Germany, it starts in Berlin, Red Rudi, Rudi Dutschke, who was known before Cohn-Bendit. It's a global phenomenon, we agree on that. So actually they... You have the key word here, by the way, we always forget it, this is measurable, it's not a matter of opinion. In 1967, there's the highest number of strike-hours ever recorded in France. It's a record still unbeaten today, unmatched today. So they had to act. If the clock had just been left to run normally, socialism would have won out in the '70s. And perhaps even the Soviet Union too would have won out. Let's not forget that for the generations of Ossian and Fabien, I mean, for them, the Soviets are, in the popular imagery, hicks, backward compared to Saturn V technology.
38:20 Wait, you're telling me that despite... Whereas for me, it's the first Sputnik, the Americans can't match it, all their rockets keep blowing up. Yes but wait, wait Dominique, there's also... I'm talking about the danger for capitalism. What were they afraid of? I'm not saying anything good about either one. You're talking about generations, from the moment you talk about generations, we have to be very clear, because there's still Hungary '56. Excuse me, that surely wasn't really... There was Berlin in '53. The first, was it Vienna, with something in the middle, in Berlin. I'm not talking politics. I'm talking about the image, the prestige, that counts for the electorate. I'm convinced, and I know it'll cause a scandal, that the reasons people didn't vote Communist for years had nothing to do with freedoms, but with the fact that there were lines in the shops that were shown to them, and people aren't stupid, by the way.
39:01 They said, I don't want that model, me. I had a hard time wresting my gains in France, in England, in Germany after the war, I don't want to go backward and live in scarcity. But that was much more decisive in people's deep-seated motivation over the long run than questions of freedom. People closed their eyes while Hanoi was being bombed, or during the Indochina War — let me go back further — Vietnam, or while 200,000 deaths were being caused, which are never mentioned, in Cameroon. I mean, there you go... That's not what worried people. In Madagascar, it's never mentioned. 80,000 dead in a few weeks.
39:35 Well, I mean... Sétif, 25,000 dead. And I'm not even talking about... It's a Communist minister who's in charge of aviation. And I'm not talking about Sétif. Tillon, Tillon, yes. Well, I mean, that's not political. Economically, you have to understand it sociologically. No, because we have... there, I... except... The underlying opinion of the new strata appearing within the '60s, let's say '68 is the first expression of the new sociology made possible by the Marshall Plan.
40:06 It's not shameful. I'm very glad that, out of fear of communism, the Americans forced the employers to let up a bit. We're not going to complain about that. Out of fear of communism which existed, let's say. As Fabien said very well earlier, they didn't just sell caterpillar trucks and oil, they also sold cinema, a discourse, an ideology, an imaginary. Hence the jeans on the first edition of Le Capitalisme de la séduction, the figure of jeans, isn't that right?
The crisis of the late 1960s and the new middle strata 40:36 Which, as Clouscard put it very well, split all women into two, those who could wear them and those who couldn't. I'd like to go back to the year '67 actually, because that's where we see the number of strike days peak, and at the same time, again, this is measurable. Most economists show that there's a fall — not a tendential fall in the rate of profit, that's an internal law of capitalism, it's always tendential, but it's counteracted, this law — but there's a fall in profit. In fact the crisis starts there. It doesn't start in '73 because of nasty Saudis raising the price of oil. That's completely false. It starts as early as the late '60s. There, the system, which is actually a system based on reconstruction because there's a devaluation of capital. I'm relying here on Paul Boccara's major theories, which continue Marx's in a way. There's a devaluation of capital during the war, thanks to the war, and that doesn't hold for long. This system, which even our Keynesians, the people most on the left, so to speak, in the dominant discourse of the time, praise as a supposedly balanced system, a welfare state, etc. It's itself a system in enormous imbalance. And this system anyway doesn't last long. It lasts from '45 to the end of the '60s.
41:42 And there we enter into arrangements such that you absolutely have to let up the pressure in a way for part of the population, for new middle strata. New middle strata are created that will serve as buffers, with an ideology claiming to be emancipatory, which will only address these new upstarts of the system. I'm thinking in particular of Deleuze's desiring machines and all that, all that discourse, what Clouscard calls the ideology of desire, which has nothing to do with desire itself, that's not what's open to criticism.
42:14 This co-optation of the ideological discourse, well, about desire, addresses the upstarts of a new system that's going to be completely pampered, made to believe that they'd achieved... And here's another Clouscard formula that's absolutely revealing. May '68 will be the Bastille Day of a new middle stratum. And that's why one could even say, contrary to what's always claimed in basic anti-communist discourse — that the CGT jumped on a moving train in '68 — it's actually the opposite. There's an enormous amount of workers' revolts, demonstrations, etc. And then the middle strata jump on the moving train to co-opt this discontent.
The insurrection of the intellectual petty bourgeoisie 42:51 In order to push it back. Jean-Pierre? Well, I'm not entirely in agreement with this interpretation, insofar as, indeed, capitalism resumed the offensive, one could say the so-called neoliberal offensive, though there was a certain lag depending on the country. In fact it started in the United States, the crisis of capital valorization, as early as the years, indeed, '66-'67. In France, it came later for other reasons, one could equally say, because France was more backward in capitalist development than other countries.
43:22 The crisis had started in England, it had also started in Germany. In Italy it started later, in Spain it was even more delayed. There was Francoism for years which didn't lead anywhere. Opus Dei had to take over, even under Franco, to develop capitalism in Spain. I won't go on with that at random. But, what I see, well what I've always thought, and still do, and it shows very clearly in the film, is that in '68 there were two massive movements in that period. There was first of all indeed a workers' movement that had already begun earlier, as you just said, but there was...
43:57 It's well stated in the film, there was this uprising of the intellectual petty bourgeoisie, the students, the teachers, the artists, people who consider themselves to hold a monopoly on understanding the world, who were actually frustrated for the following reason: we were in a country — this was true for Spain and also true for Italy — where the intellectual petty bourgeoisie, which was a rising class, increasingly important demographically, was the relay class, well, the buffer class. The mediating class between rulers and the ruled, the dominant and the dominated, that class should normally have been able to participate in power, in a modern capitalist country.
44:35 That's what was happening in the countries of Northern Europe. Scandinavian socialism was a socialism with leaders and parties in power and unions affiliated with the party that were neo-petty-bourgeois. That's true of the Labour Party in England, it's true of all developed capitalist countries. The intellectual petty bourgeoisie was also in power, as a relay of course for the bourgeoisie, in the United States, through the Democratic Party. In France, Italy and Spain, it was blocked in its political ascent. It was blocked.
45:06 In France, it was blocked by a regime — one must say — there was the whole colonial legacy, an authoritarian, centralized regime, with General de Gaulle, archaic values. In Italy, it was blocked by the alliance... between the Catholic Church on one side, and on the other side there was the Mafia, which also controlled the situation quite a bit. The Communist Party was strong, powerful, but it wasn't yet in power there, even within the framework of a latent historic compromise. In Spain, well need I say more, with Francoism, they were blocked too.
45:36 And from the moment that this class, rising economically, culturally, with an important strategic role in the virtual hegemony, the bourgeois-city situation in a normal country was being held back, it radicalizes. These frustrations radicalize it, and that's indeed the rise of what one might call the contestation within these strata starting in the '60s, traces of which can be found in New Wave cinema, in the songs of Brassens and others, etc. And which indeed explodes in '68 in the form of this uprising. It's clearly stated in the film that right in the wake of '68 there was the biggest strike in the history of France, which is simply put in parentheses, set aside.
46:17 And all the commemorations of '68, which took place at 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, it continued again last year, it's the celebration of individual fulfillment, of morals, lifestyle, sexuality, tastes, etc. And the ongoing burial of any prospect of collective emancipation. And the liberal-libertarian, today when we say "bourgeois-bohemian," which is indeed a bobo term imported from the United States — bourgeois refers to liberal, and Bohemian refers to libertarian. So there were those who discovered the wheel, who had a lot of success, sociologists Ève Chiapello and Luc Boltanski, on the new spirit of capitalism, distinguishing an artistic critique from a social critique. They were pushing at an open door.
47:00 Clouscard had said it well before, in other terms. We now know that, indeed, in order to win over these new strata, they had to be allowed access to power. That's what happens in France, through the reconstituted Socialist Party, reborn from its ashes, with old SFIO dinosaurs, parenthetically, at the outset, as we know, brought in by Mitterrand, they come to power at the municipal level. Didn't he not even have his socialist party card when he became first secretary? Yes, well no, he didn't have it. Still, well, not to mention, well that happens in the '70s, we have to say too, this stratum comes to power via other channels, after '68 it's promoted within the cultural apparatuses, it's promoted at the university, it's in research, it's in publishing, it's in the media, and as it happens all these former leftists, as they undergo this promotion — I'd say professional promotion — move to the center, so to speak, if not swing to the right.
47:53 And it was a general phenomenon. Afterward, there's an arrival at institutional power via the municipalities. That will be the pink wave of 1977. Most of the big cities are won over by the united left, within which one finds plenty of '68ers. And the crowning moment will be 1981 with the victory of May 10th. And that will be full-on class collaboration between the new intellectual strata and the bourgeoisie. And it continues today. The 403s are overturned, the wildcat general strike. The gates finish burning, the enraged ones open the ball. It's five o'clock.
Listening to "Il est cinq heures" and references from the film 48:35 Paris awakens, Paris awakens. The black-jacketed youths are on the lookout, slingshots against tear gas. The cops fall dead on street corners, our little girls become queens. It's five o'clock, Paris awakens, Paris awakens.
49:14 The Eiffel Tower has hot feet, the Arc de Triomphe is toppled. Place Vendôme is nothing but smoke, the Pantheon has vanished. It's five o'clock, Paris awakens, Paris awakens. The maquisards are in the train stations, at Notre-Dame they're slicing the bacon.
49:49 Paris finds again its revelers, its gamblers and its Communards. It's five o'clock by one. Paris awakens, Paris awakens. All the power plants are seized, the bureaucrats exterminated. The tax men are hanged, thank you, from the guts of the priests.
50:22 It's 5 o'clock, Paris is waking up, Paris is waking up. The old world is going to disappear, after Paris, the whole world. The workers without God, without master, self-manage the city. It's 5 o'clock, it's 5 o'clock, the new world is waking up.
50:59 It's 5 o'clock and we'll never sleep. That was Vanessa Hachloum, it's 5 o'clock, you're still listening to the Chroniques Rebelles on Radio Libertaire 89.4, and to reach us by phone during the music breaks, 01 43 71 89 40. We haven't given enough of the details. So this is a DVD entitled Everything Is Permitted but Nothing Is Possible. It's a documentary film by Ossian Ghani and Fabien Trémot.
51:35 You can find this documentary at Publico, 145 rue Amelot, but not only there. You can find it in quite a few bookshops. Ask for it, by the way — that's also a way of making it known. So it's published, Aymeric, by Éditions Delga. The DVD is co-produced with Les Films des Trois Univers. It has to be said. How long does it run? 54, 56. 56. 56 minutes — I've watched it three times myself, so I can tell you it can be watched even more, because there are really some very important things in it.
52:09 Aymeric, you also give the references for the book. To get into Clouscard, I'd recommend Le Capitalisme de la Séduction, Critique de la Social-Démocratie Libertaire, published by Éditions Delga — we're going to talk about libertarian liberalism precisely — and above all Néo-fascisme et idéologie du désir, also from Éditions Delga. There's also a critique of libertarian liberalism. So that answers the question, which film? I repeat: Everything Is Permitted but Nothing Is Possible. It's a documentary film by Ossian Ghani and Fabien Trémot. You can find it at Publico, 145 rue Amelot.
52:42 Now, first question, very simple: how do we put an end to the idea of treating people as cash cows? Well, that's... quite a vast program. Also, there were comments from someone who says she knows Clouscard, she says, but still, he did appear for instance on the show Apostrophes, of course he was sidelined, there weren't really many publications and so on. But he was still known, on the one hand.
Clouscard, Soral and Sorel 53:12 On top of that, she puts forward the idea that Clouscard's ideas would have influenced Alain Soral. I'll let you... Dominique, go ahead, start. I'll start with the last point raised. I'm fairly well placed to see what Alain Soral is doing in a field so far removed from his. First, very quickly, before he died Clouscard wrote a very precise text, a letter sent to his publisher, in which he states very clearly that his struggle had always been exactly the opposite of Le Pen's and the National Front's.
53:51 It's not a letter, it was even published in L'Humanité. Yes, it was published in L'Humanité. And that any conflation... But simply, it's very simple, I'll answer quickly because it's simple. Where he says... A crowd of people from the right and the far right, even the extreme right, say to themselves, well look, here's a guy who attacks the leftists, so he must be on the right. It's as stupid as that, sorry to put it so bluntly. It's as simplistic as that. Dominique, can I ask you — is this kind of amalgamation somewhat like what was done, for instance, regarding Georges Sorel, who supposedly, for some people, turned his coat and became right-wing at the end of his life?
54:29 Is it a bit the... It's the same phenomenon that re... because well, these are people who were extremely critical of certain things, who tackled extremely deep and extremely important problems and subjects, and then, you see, just before their death, bam, they get knocked down. I agree with the Sorel-Soral parallel, but not at all with the Sorel-Clouscard parallel. I've just sketched Sorel's trajectory, who indeed claimed allegiance to the left not so long before, and who undergoes a drift, as you say, which is well known. There are other Sorels.
55:02 Clouscard is the opposite. I'll answer your question from upstream. The fact that he appeared on Apostrophes — we can't say he was ignored, etc. But you still need relay structures. The ideal relay structure for him would have been, at the time, the French Communist Party, of which I can say he was always one of the voters, never a militant, he never held a membership card. He was a fellow traveler, as they used to say at the time. And he defended the PC, even though he wasn't a card-carrying member, against those who attacked it at the time.
55:33 But he himself was judged too far to the left, precisely, by the PCF, a good part of which was drifting rightward — heavily in scare quotes there — at that time, when one mustn't upset either François or Lionel, François Mitterrand or Lionel Jospin, and before the PCF became, as one of our contemporaries put it in a rather terse formula, the union of elected officials. But again, that's the complete opposite of Sorel's trajectory. That is to say, Clouscard never departed from class analysis, a bit like a Jung — sorry for the parallel — breaking away from Freud, setting sexuality aside, etc. Well, there's an irremediable drift that will lead him to sympathies for the Nazis.
56:15 Likewise, when one departs from class determination, on the pretext of mechanistic determinism or nonsense like that, which is the most enormous misreading one can make of Marx's thought, the rightward, even fascistic, drift becomes — not inevitable, I don't think it's fated in this world — but becomes a heavy tendency. There you go, but that doesn't apply to Clouscard. There's also something I was asked, Aymeric, before you answer, which is to just briefly retrace Clouscard's path, his intellectual trajectory as well as his personal life. We haven't even said he passed away in 2009, is that right?
56:54 Yes, early 2009. No, regarding all these stories of appropriation, the history of ideas is made of nothing else. The privilege of great thinkers is to be quoted by everyone, and that's normal. It's not a bad thing, but indeed there are absurdities. When I think of the GRECE operation, or Lord... Thatcher's advisor, who took up the concept of hegemony from Gramsci and used it for every purpose, well, that doesn't change the fact that Gramsci died, or nearly so, in fascist prisons — that's obvious. Marx, in any case, is part of the baggage, I'd say, of just about anyone, and the same goes for one of the most important Marxists of the 20th century, Michel Clouscard.
