“When change is out of control, all that remains is to dream of the greatness of the past,” says François Dubet, a 76-year-old French sociologist and former director of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, of the way of thinking that has led a group of voters to opt for Trump, Le Pen or Bolsonaro. For the author of The time of sad passions y Why we prefer inequality, extreme right-wing populism responds to the success of the imaginary of a society that has disappeared and that many look nostalgically at. The success of an industrial society that is perceived by these sectors as “orderly and protective.”
Has class identity, which emerged at the height of industrial society, ceased to be the way in which political representation is organized?
The current paradox is that while inequalities grow, social classes are erased. This mechanism is due to the transformation at work, the retreat of the “workers’ redoubts” and the expansion of mass consumption. Capitalism weakens classes and multiplies inequalities. Whereas before all inequalities converged within social classes, today inequalities are multiplying and individuals feel unequal based on a multiplicity of factors and dimensions. Whereas before political life in industrial societies was dominated by class voting and opposition to the left or right, it is clear that the popular electorate now oscillates between right-wing populism and abstention.
On the other hand, the centrist parties, the social democrats and environmentalists, have the support of the more educated voters, from the urban centers. It is as if the class divide has been replaced by the opposition between winners and losers of globalization.
It argues that inequality based on social class was unfair, but also stable and predictable. How is inequality perceived now?
Essentially, in class society, inequalities are reproduced in the form of destiny: the children of workers and bourgeois become workers and bourgeois because it is an unjust destiny, but for which individuals are not responsible. Today, the production of inequalities has been transferred to individuals in the name of equal opportunities. In the school in particular, everyone has the right and duty to move up in society, there are more women employed, and meritocratic equality of opportunity has become our dominant principle of justice.
In class society, social justice consisted in reducing inequalities in living conditions in favor of the exploited. Today, social justice is above all about fighting discrimination, because in a just society everyone should occupy a social position based solely on their merits. In this sense, the ideal of justice is that of a perfectly fair sporting competition.
Because the another poor or he another worker become an enemy?
When inequalities are multiple and singular, when everyone participates in a meritocratic competition, the winners of this competition think they owe nothing to the losers. They accuse those who have even less merit than them to safeguard their dignity and their “honor”. In this case, the enemy is the one above them, but also the one below them: the poor, the unemployed, foreigners. This explains, to a large extent, the turn of the popular vote towards populism and right-wing nationalism. For the “whites”, the enemy is not so much the capitalists, but the discriminated against who obtain rights: immigrants, women, sexual minorities.
The production of inequalities has been transferred to individuals in the name of equal opportunities
How are negative emotions translated –or negative ones? sad passions– in political programs?
I believe that sad passions create a style, but not a political program. The style is well known: hatred of the “people” against everything that is “not the people”, that is, foreigners, elites, the rich, the “official” media. These “enemies of the people” are part of a plot rather than true social adversaries because they are always hidden. The sad passions are also embodied by a leader, of the right or of the left, who embodies the “anger of the people.”
But the populist style of sad passions does not necessarily lead to a political program, because the people themselves are divided and no policy can satisfy so many, often contradictory, demands. On the other hand, the world does not disappear and, once in power, there are populisms of the left and of the right, socialists and pro-capitalists, more or less racist. Poland, Italy, Hungary, Trump’s USA, post-Brexit England, Bolsonaro’s Brazil, Maduro’s Venezuela, they all have common styles, but not common policies.
Is outrage a trait of this age?
It seems to me that the outrage stems from the fact that feeling unappreciated is the elemental political emotion of this age. The more unique we are, the more invisible we feel, the more discriminated against and stigmatized, the more we feel despised. In a way, we are all despised and can despise everyone. This emotion is understood to the extent that individuals do not feel represented by churches, parties or unions.
But the outrage also stems from a revolution in the repertoires of collective action. In class society, the passage to the public word was mediated by parties, associations, newspapers, unions, activists. These mediations “cooled” the anger. Today, information and communication technologies and the Internet allow access to public discourse without mediation and without filters. The combination of democratic progress with an explosion of indignation can create mobilizations, as we have seen with the Tea Party in the United States, the Pentecostals in Brazil and the Yellow Vests in France.
How do you analyze the growth of the extreme right in France?
Far-right populism is on the rise everywhere, even in countries that seem most immune to it, such as Scandinavia. These parties, like the National Gathering in France, they don’t have a real program, but they take the wrath of the people by naming their enemies, without worrying about consistency. This success is largely based on the imaginary of a society that has disappeared and for which many feel nostalgic. A sovereign industrial society, a homogeneous national society, a society in which the family reigns, the traditional school, a society perceived as orderly and protective. Obviously, this appeal to the past is a powerful nostalgia, an idealized society that will never return. When change is out of control, all that remains is to dream of the greatness of the past.
Do you think that the labor parties are forced to redefine their political subject?
It is clear that all left-wing parties are in deep crisis and are struggling to represent multiple and contradictory inequalities, are forced to combine their ideals of justice with economic constraints, and, in many cases, defend above all democratic values against authoritarian tendencies. Although I celebrate the electoral victories against Trump and Bolsonaro, I am not sure that the labor parties will quickly recover a popular and classist base.
The current paradox is that while inequalities grow, social classes are erased. This mechanism is due to the transformation at work, the retreat of the “workers’ redoubts” and the expansion of mass consumption.
If we add to this that ecological issues will require sacrifices, I believe that the recomposition of the leftist parties and unions will take a long time: we have changed the historical era.
The worker is more precarious, more autonomous, less organized than a few decades ago. How do changes in the world of work impact political representation?
In France, work is the great forgotten of social struggles, we only care about employment and unemployment. The French conflict over the pension reform shows that we do not discuss the conditions in which we work, fatigue, administration and precariousness. In addition, workers feel abandoned because they feel that working conditions have deteriorated, that autonomy at work is a ruse of domination, while individuals continue to want a job that satisfies them. So I think we have to get back to work in the sense that a successful life is also a happy working life. From this point of view, we must not abandon the ideals of the old class society in which workers opposed the dignity of work to capitalist exploitation.