CRITIQUES DE LIVRES/BOOK REVIEWS
RIMBAUD AU MILIEU DES DOCTEURS
(ITALIANO/ENGLISH) Vincenzo Gentile, « La Calabria strappata: l'emigrazione transoceanica dal sogno americano all'incubo di Monongah » (2009 Edizione LibrAre, p 343)
Les inépties concaves de Piketty sur l'inégalité et les patrimoines
Recensione idiosincratica : Luigi Oliverio editore, Eccellenze di - Excellences of Calabria, Casa Editrice Pubblisfera, Volume I: Natura, Preistoria, Storia, Cultura, Solidarietà, 2016, ISBN: 978-88-97632-85-6
Idiosyncretic book review: Luigi Oliverio editore, Eccellenze di - Excellences of Calabria, Casa Editrice Pubblisfera, Volume I: Nature - Prehistory - History - Culture - Solidariety, 2016, ISBN: 978-88-97632-85-6
RIMBAUD AU MILIEU DES DOCTEURS.
''Au glorieux 18 MARS!''(a)
''Changer la vie'', ''réinventer l'Amour'', tout un programme pour celui que Verlaine appellera ''cet enfant de colère.''
On a trop longtemps occulté Arthur Rimbaud en tant que poète communard et chantre de l'émancipation égalitaire. Pourtant nul ne peut nier que celui qu'on dénomma ''le nourrisson des muses'', ce génial adolescent précoce que d'aucuns décrivirent comme ''Jésus au milieu des docteurs'', ou encore comme l'homme ''aux semelles de vent'', ce jeune homme adulte enfin qu'on loua unanimement pour son honnêteté et sa loyauté intrinsèque, était bien un communard convaincu, et qui plus est dans le sens communiste et avant-gardiste du terme. En vérité, après la redécouverte surréaliste, avec un clin d'oeil ici à Verlaine, on constate que le communard communiste Rimbaud nous permet une nouvelle fois de remettre les ''pendules''(b) à l'heure en ce qui à trait à la position communiste en matière d'émancipation des moeurs. Par la complexité de son caractère doué d'une probité à toute épreuve, Rimbaud au milieu des docteurs reste un exemple éclatant de génie égalitaire précoce mais jamais démenti.
La mystification à laquelle nous avons fait allusion précédemment est enfin levée grâce au beau livre scientifiquement argumenté et volumineusement documenté que lui a consacré Jean-Jacques Lefrère. Ce livre sobrement intitulé Arthur Rimbaud, est publié aux éditions Fayard (2001, 1242 pages.) Il contient d'imposants cahiers d'illustrations réalisés par Josseline Rivière. Ils illustrent et complètent les démonstrations du texte pour le plus grand bonheur des admirateurs de Rimbaud et de la littérature de son temps. Cette étude monumentale plaira à toutes celles et ceux qui aiment le jeune poète communard et qui savent reconnaître la bonne poésie, celle dont Verlaine admiratif, empruntant à Fénéon, disait qu'elle était ''en dehors de toute littérature et sans doute au-dessus.'' (c) M. Lefrère lui-même n'a pas manqué de relever ce jugement qui rend honneur à Verlaine. Grâce à cette monumentale étude biographique et littéraire de M. Lefrère, l'occultation de l'oeuvre rimbaldienne arrive à son terme, sans que l'auteur ait à développer une thèse particulière, puisqu'il lui suffit de laisser parler les documents.
Jusqu'ici cette occultation avait été propagée selon un mécanisme bien rodé; elle était encore appuyée par le souci du qu'en-dira-t-on de certains personnages ayant connu et fréquenté le jeune poète. De plus, avant l'amnistie des Communards intervenue seulement après 1880, il était risqué de se valoir publiquement de telles fréquentations. Ainsi, selon les besoins, nombreux furent ceux qui s'ingénièrent à dissimuler, à diminuer ou simplement à gommer les authentiques idéaux politiques et poétiques du prodigieux jeune chantre des temps nouveaux. Aujourd'hui toute cette mystification se réduit à la question de savoir si le jeune poète, volontaire franc-tireur communard dans le 88ème régiment de marche qui mit la crosse en l'air à Montmartre, participant ainsi directement à l'inauguration de l'insurrection parisienne, était présent ou non à Paris durant la Semaine Sanglante avec les autres gamins volontairement enrôlés de Paris, dont les Vengeurs de Flourens.
Pour le bonheur des lettres et pour l'éclat avant-gardiste de l'émancipation égalitaire humaine, nul ne regrettera que Rimbaud ait survécu à la tuerie versaillaise; sur la foi du témoignage de Rimbaud lui-même personne ne peut douter de sa volonté d'être de la ''bataille'' dès le mois de mars 1871 (Lefrère, p 263.). Ses poésies écrites avant et après la Commune, parmi les plus belles de la littérature mondiale, ne se comprennent pas en dehors de ce cadre constitutif pour ce ''premier de classe'' qui choisit de se réinsérer volontairement dans les rangs du peuple. Ceci se fit à la suite d'une mûre réflexion politique et poétique placée d'emblée, humblement mais avec la dernière résolution pratique, à l'avant-garde de l'avant-garde. Tout bon lecteur en avait déjà l'intime conviction. Dans ce contexte, les quelques jours de l'emploi du temps du jeune poète qui posent encore quelque problème à partir de la mi-mai 1871, apparaissent comme une question dérisoire pour tout critique ne se prenant pas pour un autre ''col'nel-godchot'' (un bougre qui dans ce contexte-ci ne mérite pas un nom propre), ou bien pour un autre Maxime du Camp! Le tome de M. Lefrère devrait supprimer les derniers doutes entretenus par les plus sceptiques. Lefrère le fait avec une rigueur scientifique dont on lui sait gré même lorsque, compte tenu de la masse de sa documentation, il donne peut-être trop d'espace aux détracteurs qu'il sait fourvoyés : mais au bout du compte, pour celles et ceux qui ne se contentent pas de quelques pages prises hors contexte, cette stratégie, consciente ou pas, emporte l'adhésion en faveur de l'indéniable vérité du personnage.
Résumons brièvement ce chapitre capital dans la vie et de l'oeuvre exemplaires de notre jeune franc-tireur poète.
En vérité, Rimbaud ne sera pas seulement communard, il se voudra communard communiste. Ses poésies en sont la preuve la plus éclatante quand bien même on ne s'attacherait qu'aux plus explicites, parmi lesquelles Le chant de guerre parisien, L'Orgie parisienne ou Paris se repeuple, Les Mains de Jeanne-Marie, L'Eternità, Solde, Démocratie, ou ce Bannières de mai dans lequel résonnent ''des chansons spirituelles'' de fraternité contre la défaite, qui renaîtront par la suite dans l'Hymne au ''sang des copains'' de la Butte Rouge du chansonnier ''révolutionnaire cocardier'' Montéhus. (d) ... Je n'hésite pas, au demeurant, à lire dans les spirituelles Réparties de Nina, un appel à l'amour libre, à l'émancipation féminine et à l'émancipation égalitaire générale, comme le démontrent le corps et la chute de cette charmante piécette, laquelle tombe ainsi : ''Et mon bureau?''.
Sans insister davantage, Lefrère nous montre un Rimbaud anticipant prophétiquement l'insurrection des gardes nationaux de la Butte Montmartre qui refusèrent de rendre les canons, déclenchant ainsi l'insurrection populaire et forçant simultanément le retrait de l'Armée prussienne des faubourgs de Paris. On se souvient du poète moquant les pioupious de l'empereur, ainsi que l'élan patriotard déclenché par ''l'éclatante victoire de Sarrebruck'' : avant Jules Vallès dans l'Insurgé, il s'exclamait indigné : ''Ma patrie se lève ... moi, j'aime mieux la voir assise; ne remuez pas les bottes ! c'est mon principe.'' (p 137) Mais du moment que la France est en guerre contre la Prusse de Bismarck, que Napoléon le Petit, défait, laisse la place à la République, Lefrère peut mettre en scène un Rimbaud qu'on a refusé d'enrôler avec son ami Izambard du fait de son jeune âge, mais qui tient néanmoins à être présent à l'entraînement des unités de défense nationale : on lui donne alors un balai pour la manoeuvre à défaut d'un chassepot. Arrive le moment des décisions politiques : pendant que la garde nationale discute sur l'opportunité d'envoyer une pétition au maire de Douai, notre futur franc-tireur poète du 88è régiment de marche, a déjà composé cette pétition qu'il soumet à ses aînés beaux parleurs : Voici le paragraphe en question (Lefrère, p 167-168) :
''Nous soussignés, membres de la légion de la garde nationale sédentaire de Douai, protestons contre la lettre de monsieur Maurice, maire de Douai portée à l'ordre du jour du 18 septembre 1870.
Pour répondre aux nombreuses réclamations des gardes nationaux non armés, monsieur le maire nous renvoie aux consignes données par le ministre de la Guerre; dans cette lettre insinuante, il semble accuser de mauvaise volonté ou d'imprévoyance le ministre de la Guerre et celui de l'Intérieur. Sans nous ériger en défenseurs d'une cause gagnée, nous avons le droit de remarquer que l'insuffisance des armes en ce moment doit être imputée seulement à l'imprévoyance et à la mauvaise volonté du gouvernement déchu, dont nous subissons encore les conséquences.
Nous devons tous comprendre les motifs qui déterminent le gouvernement de la défense nationale à réserver les armes qui lui restent encore aux soldats de l'armée active, ainsi qu'aux gardes mobiles : ceux-là évidemment doivent être armés avant nous par le gouvernement. Est-ce à dire que l'on ne pourra pas donner des armes aux trois quarts des gardes nationaux, pourtant bien décidés à se défendre en cas d'attaques ! Non pas : ils ne veulent pas rester inutiles : il faut à tout prix qu'on leur trouve des armes. C'est aux conseils municipaux, élus par eux, qu'il appartient de leur en procurer. Le maire, en pareil cas, doit prendre l'initiative, et, comme on l'a fait déjà dans mainte commune de France, il doit spontanément mettre en oeuvre tous les moyens dont il dispose, pour l'achat et la distribution des armes dans la commune.
Nous aurons à voter dimanche prochain pour les élections municipales, et nous ne voulons accorder nos voix qu'à ceux qui, dans leurs paroles et dans leurs actes, se seront montrés dévoués à nos intérêts. Or, selon nous, la lettre du maire de Douai, lue publiquement, dimanche dernier, après la revue, tendait, volontairement ou non, à jeter le discrédit sur le gouvernement de la défense nationale, à semer le découragement dans nos rangs, comme s'il ne restait plus rien à faire à l'initiative municipale : c'est pourquoi nous avons cru devoir protester contre les intentons apparentes de cette lettre.''
La nécessité, à la fois défensive et sociale, de l'insurrection de la Commune de Paris couvait bien au sein des meilleurs esprits, jusque dans la France profonde. Lorsqu'elle éclata finalement le 18 mars 1871, Rimbaud s'écrira : ''Ça y est !'' ''L''ordre est vaincu'' (Lefrère, p 232). Il écrira également à Izambard comment il voulait être de cette ''Bataille.'' Il suffira d'ajouter ici que Rimbaud aurait pu être un très fin stratège. Un de ses patrons en Afrique remarquait que ses caravanes offraient :'' un modèle d'ordre et de précision que je n'ai jamais atteint par ailleurs ... (Et il ajoutait :) Je n'ai jamais rencontré un trader comparable à Rimbaud comme correction et clarté'' (p 1044). D'autres encore n'hésitaient pas à ajouter : '' Le mépris de la gloire et de toutes les réclames vaniteuses de notre siècle est la marque d'une âme supérieure.'' Son père, le capitaine Rimbaud, avait théorisé la guerre de guérilla alors que la France avait pour adversaire au Maghreb nul autre que l'émir Abd El Kader. Au moment où Rimbaud écrivait sa pétition, on le voit déjà conceptualiser la guerre en profondeur avec un front sur la Loire (Lefrère, p 213), ce que tout l'Etat-major sera incapable de concevoir comme si, oublieux de Valmy et de l'amalgame, il en était revenu face à ... Bismarck à une conception de la guerre à la Wallenstein (en gros, l'opérette des pioupious de l'empereur mise en scène par notre camarade poète.) Après la défaite, du fond de ses Ardennes, ce fin stratège en herbe se projetait déjà dans l'avenir en prophétisant que l'Allemagne payerait un tribut plus lourd que celui payé par la France, malgré ou plutôt à cause de sa victoire. Car, selon lui, cette victoire était acquise au prix d'une militarisation extrême des esprits et de la société allemande : le sort fait par la suite à nos camarades spartakistes par la ''République de Weimar'' illustrera à quel point ce lecteur précoce de Heine avait raison.
Lefrère nous montre également un Rimbaud occupé à résumer pour son ami Delahaye rien de moins d'un projet de constitution communiste. (Lefrère, p 257) Voici les souvenirs notés par ce dernier à ce sujet :
''( … ) Le peuple s'administre sans intermédiaires, en se réunissant tout simplement en commune ou par fraction de commune, pour voter les décisions utiles au groupe. Tout exercice indispensable d'autorité, toute direction du travail dépendent du vote, et la mission ainsi conférée doit être, au bout d'une courte période, renouvelée de la même manière.
Comme cette république idéale est communiste, fondée sur la suppression de l'argent et l'organisation de l'unique travail nécessaire à la vie, son fonctionnement n'a pas besoin d'autres complications. Le centre fédéral - autant qu'il m'en souvient - se composait cependant de délégués temporaires, mais avec mandat impératif et strictement renfermé dans les instructions de la commune.
Je me rappelle seulement quelques-unes des dispositions principales : socialisation des biens fonciers et moyens de production, législation directe, par les citoyens égaux, dans les communes indépendantes, mais fédérées, travail imposé à chaque homme valide, sous la direction de chefs élus, pourvus de mandats limités et temporaires.''
Ceci prouve que Rimbaud, le jeune poète théoricien qui affirmait ''je serai un travailleur'' en ''poésie objective'' (p 263), n'ignorait pas les travaux de vulgarisation communiste de la Ière Internationale des Travailleurs de Karl Marx qui circulaient en langue française. Seul Lénine, qui bénéficiera plus tard des critiques de Marx, qui saluera l'expérience de la Commune de Paris comme la première tentative révolutionnaire authentiquement communiste, ainsi que du travail de Engels, Lafargue, Guesde et de toute l'avant-garde avancée du mouvement ouvrier de France et d'Europe, sera à même de mieux spécifier ce programme dans le feu de la lutte, avec son mot d'ordre : ''Tout le pouvoir aux Soviets'', après avoir désengagé unilatéralement son pays de la guerre inter-impérialiste mondiale.
Nous pouvons dès lors saluer la fin définitive de la mystification : le génial poète franc-tireur communard communiste, trop hâtivement présenté comme un Symboliste ou comme un Décadent, au demeurant très hermétique, nous est définitivement rendu dans toute sa limpide splendeur. Son oeuvre brille enfin de son sens originel, qui est on ne peut plus explicite.
Le livre de M. Lefrère a aussi l'avantage de dissiper sans aucun parti pris les légendes les plus mesquines avec lesquelles la bourgeoisie et les tenants de l'ordre, de même que leurs victimes idéologiques, ont cherché à entacher la mémoire du poète franc-tireur communard. Il éclaire également la dynamique profonde de la ''rupture'' de Rimbaud avec la poésie, à moins qu'il ne se soit agi d'une simple mise entre parenthèses jusqu'à l'établissement de cette illusoire indépendance financière à acquérir par le commerce en Afrique, qui devait le mettre hors de toute servitude familiale ou sociale, mais aussi face à d'anciens soutiens comme Verlaine.
Notre jeune poète n'est pas seulement un adolescent précoce en rupture avec la société; il est une pure flamme que l'éteignoir idéologique de la propriété privée tente à tout prix d'étouffer dans le double moulinet capitaliste de l'exploitation dont parle Marx (à savoir, le travailleur est formellement libre de refuser sa force de travail à un capitaliste uniquement pour se retrouver devant ses frères siamois, identiques en tous points au premier, de sorte qu'il ne lui reste plus qu'à s'abrutir dans le travail exploité jusqu'à ce que mort s'ensuive.) Une fois happé dans ce dédale minotaurien de la subordination capitaliste, nulle poésie, nulle vie libre et créatrice ne peut plus émerger à la lumière du jour, sinon comme autant de ''cris du peuple'' en attente d'un scribe fraternel les tirant du gouffre infini de l'oubli. ''Si je me plains, dira plus tard Rimbaud, c'est une espèce de façon de chanter'' (Lefrère, p 851)
A Chypre Rimbaud, contre-maître, ne fut pas un petit-chef, pas plus qu'il ne sera un marchand d'enclaves en Arabie, en Egypte ou bien dans la Corne d'Afrique. Il se livrera au commerce des armes dans cette Corne d'Afrique bouleversée par tous les appétits coloniaux, notamment anglais, français et italiens. Ces puissances impériales sauront chacune créer un clientélisme attisant la guerre civile en Ethiopie, au moment même où le soulèvement musulman du Mahdi tentait de mettre à mal la dominance anglaise dans cette région contiguë au Canal de Suez, voie de passage stratégique à travers la Mer Rouge vers l'Inde, la perle de cet Empire britannique sur lequel, aux dires de Rudyard Kipling, ''le soleil ne se couchait jamais''. Le rôle direct ou indirect de Rimbaud dans ce jeu stratégique, auquel le Capitaine Marchand ajouta un chapitre aussi isolé que celui, antérieur, du comptoir de Pondichéry, n'est pas encore bien sorti des archives de la politique internationale. Cependant nul ne peut nier que ses rapports sur le Harar et l'Ogadine, ses nouvelles routes commerciales ouvertes suite aux victoires de Ménélik, tout comme son jugement sur le potentiel stratégique et commercial de la baie encore inexploitée de Djibouti, n'aient été pris très au sérieux en haut lieu.
Au demeurant, le commerce des armes de Rimbaud sera un commerce qui n'hésitera pas à rompre avec les préjugés racistes, stratégiques et coloniaux de ceux qui, à l'instar de son ancien patron Bradey, mieux connectés aux ministères à Paris, déclineront l'offre de s'associer à lui au prétexte que : '' Les indigènes ne connaissent pas ces armes, il est dangereux pour les Européens et pour eux-mêmes de les habituer à s'en servir.'' Comparé à ces attitudes coloniales convenues, Rimbaud est un homme qui se livre à son commerce en étudiant les langues des contrées qu'il traverse afin de pouvoir dialoguer sur un pied d'égalité avec ses acheteurs. Borelli qui le connaissait bien écrira : ''Les Indigènes (Rimbaud les préféraient aux Européens) venaient volontiers vers lui parce que, comme il connaissait leur langue, ils pouvaient causer; et ils étaient sûrs de le trouver toujours d'un esprit égal'' (Lefrère, p 1047) Rimbaud écrira à sa mère et à sa soeur de Harar le 20 février 1890 : ''Les gens du Harar ne sont ni plus bêtes, ni plus canailles que les nègres blancs des pays dits civilisés; ce n'est pas du même ordre, voilà tout. Ils sont même moins méchants, et peuvent, dans certains cas, manifester de la reconnaissance et de la fidélité. Il s'agit d'être humain avec eux'' (ed La Pléiade, p 612) Le 22 octobre 1985, il écrivait aux mêmes : ''J'ai quitté mon emploi à Aden, après une violente discussion avec ses ignobles pignoufs qui prétendaient m'abrutir à perpétuité. ( … ) Je les ai envoyés au diable, avec leurs avantages, et leur commerce, et leur affreuse maison et leur sale ville ! Sans compter qu'ils m'ont toujours suscité des ennuis et qu'ils ont toujours cherché à me faire perdre quelque chose.'' (Idem p 405) Dans sa lettre du 25 août 1883 à Mazeran, Vivianny et Bradey, il explique le pourquoi du massacre de la caravane de Sacconi : en fin de compte il était dû selon lui à '' ... la mauvaise tenue de M. Sacconi lui-même, contrariant (par ignorance) les manières, les coutumes religieuses, les droits des indigènes''; à cette arrogance coloniale il oppose le comportement de son partenaire M. Sotiro lequel passera indemne au même moment dans la même région, dûment vêtu d'un habit local et sachant se conformer aux coutumes du lieu. (Éd La Pléiade, p 369-370) Lucide, il note également : ''Car les employés, en Orient, sont à présent aussi mal payés qu'en Europe; leur sort y est même bien plus précaire, à cause des climats funestes et de l'existence énervante qu'on y mène. ( … ) Enfin, vous le penserez comme moi, je crois : du moment que je gagne ma vie ici, et puisque chaque homme est esclave de cette fatalité misérable, autant à Aden qu'ailleurs; mieux vaut même à Aden qu'ailleurs, où je suis inconnu, où l'on m'a oublié complètement et où j'aurais à recommencer ! Tant, donc, que je trouverai mon pain ici, ne dois-je pas rester? Ne dois-je pas y rester, tant que je n'aurai pas de quoi vivre tranquille?'' (Idem, 10 sept. 1884, idem p 390-391) Mais Rimbaud n'a jamais été entièrement dupe de cet engrenage : en se montrant décidément très moderne (considérant l'actuelle régression sociale en matière de droits sociaux et de pension), il ajoutera dans une lettre aux siens en date du 6 janvier 1886 : ''Or c'est la saison des fièvres dans un mois ou deux, et je compte bien y passer. Enfin, l'homme compte passer les trois quarts de sa vie à souffrir pour se reposer le quatrième quart; et le plus souvent, il crève de misère sans plus savoir où il en est de son plan !'' (Idem, p 413)
Ce ''génie qui se lève'', selon le mot juste de Verlaine, croyait fermement au travail et à la science pour ''changer la vie'' - sans bien entendu exclure la science appliquée au domaine agricole grâce à la remise en cause de ''cette belle conquête de 1789" puisque ''le morcellement de la terre est un mal'' qui fait qu'on ''peine d'avantage pour un rapport moindre'' (Lefrère, p 774) Malheureusement, si ''le travail humain ! c'est l'explosion qui éclaire mon abîme de temps en temps.| ''rien n'est vanité; à la science, et en avant !'' (...)|| Qu'y puis-je? (demandera celui qui se serait voulu ''philomate'' après le coup de revolver reçu à Bruxelles) Je connais le travail; et la science est trop longue'' (Une Saison en enfer, ed la Pléiade, p 114) Lénine saura intégrer cette lenteur de la science, donc de la croissance non-automatique de la productivité, à sa critique de l'économie politique de son temps. Pour comprendre l'évaluation personnelle de Rimbaud et son départ vers la rive sud de la Méditerranée, ajoutez à cela la défaite durable du prolétariat avec l'écrasement de la Commune, avec la proscription et le bagne, ou bien leurs risques réels suspendus comme des épées de Damoclès sur la tête des communards encore vivants et en liberté : en rongeant son frein, ''l'enfant de colère'' cherchera à se donner les moyens de son indépendance en Afrique. Alors que son rêve était en passe de se réaliser, il perdit une jambe et dû craindre un moment avec effroi de devenir ''cul-de-jatte'' (éd La Pléiade, p 681), lui qui tentera une ultime fugue vers Marseille, en route pour l'Afrique durant les derniers jours de sa vie, accompagné cette fois-ci par sa petite soeur Isabelle.
La vérité d'un tel être ne méritait pas d'être occultée; et, à dire vrai, elle ne le fut jamais réellement pour celles et ceux, nombreux, qui savent lire avec le coeur. On soulignera les traits de caractère dominants de notre franc-tireur et génial poète qui firent l'unanimité de tous ceux qui le connurent; ceci suffira pour faire pièce à tous les ragots (y compris ceux passablement tordus d'un qui personnellement tenait mal la route, cet Albert Camus, pitre prétendant savoir comment on transporte son pécule durement gagné en pays étranger lorsqu'on est seul et en proie à une maladie terminale, transporté sur une civière artisanale, voir Lefrère p 1016, note 22. Le concept de ''pitre'' est au fond bien rimbaldien, voir éd La Pléiade, p 46.)
Sa loyauté, son habileté et son comportement faisaient l'unanimité auprès de tous ceux, Indigènes ou Européens, qui l'avait approché ou qui avaient eu affaire à lui. Pour le reste l'enfant qui déclarait, après l'éphémère victoire de Sarrebruck saluée par l'usuel brouhaha patriotard précédant le désastre de Sedan : ''ma partie se lève, mais j'aime mieux la voir assise'', deviendra l'homme qui n'en finira pas de s'indigner de la bêtise européenne qui l'avait suivi jusqu'en Afrique. Son partenaire le grec Sotiro en témoignera. Et plus encore Dimitri Righas (Lefrère, p 686) qui, de toute évidence, était une grande âme lui-même. Righas résumera mieux que quiconque ce qu'il faut réellement penser de notre ''nourrisson des muses'' devenu marchand : Voici la citation en entier telle que donnée par l'édition La Pléiade :
''Dimitri Righas à Rimbaud,
Harar, le 15 juillet 1891
Mon cher Monsieur Rimbaud,
Set aujourduy saliment que jai reçu votre lettre du 30 mai et du 17 juin sur lequel vous manonsé que on vous a fet lopération, savedire que on vous a coupé votre jambe et sama frapé beaucoup insi que tout vot conésance du Harar. J'oré préféré que on me coupe la mien pluto que le votre. Enfin j'ai vous suit (je vous souhaite) une bone guerison ( … ) Moi, depi que vous et parti du harar, j'ai croi que j'ai perdu le mond. J'ai ne sort jammé se se (chez) moi que jousque au Zaptie (...)'' (p 686)
Une telle lettre de fraternité spontanée et vraie ne devrait jamais être oubliée dans la publication des oeuvres de notre jeune poète franc-tireur communard. Elle ferait bien rire Verlaine, lui qui s'amusait du projet de simplification du vocabulaire entretenu par la Commune (voir note (e) ci-dessous.) Mais, si l'on en croit Jules Vallès dans l'Insurgé, elle en aurait certainement séduit le ministre de l'Education, ''le grand Rouiller'' dont Vallès écrit en le citant :
''Il est cordonnier, et révolutionnaire.
- Je chausse les gens et je déchausse les pavés !
Il n'est guère plus fort en orthographe que son collègue de l'Intérieur. Mais il en sait plus long en histoire et en économie sociale, ce savetier, que n'en savent tous les diplômés réunis qui ont, avant lui, pris le portefeuille - (éd. Garnier-Flammarion, 1 er trimestre 1970, p 239.)
Ce qui est indéniable c'est que Rimbaud était conscient de la défaite historique subie durant la Semaine Sanglante, l'écrasement de la Commune donnant lieu à une boucherie générale versaillaise. Cette tuerie hystérique, dont témoignent maladivement un Flaubert ou un Maxime Du Camp parmi tant d'autres bien-pensants, fut suivie par l'exil et le bagne des captifs, politique qui décapitera le prolétariat le plus avancé d'Europe pour une vingtaine d'années. Il est également conscient des effets délétères que cette pesante défaite ne manquait pas d'avoir sur les communards réfugiés en Belgique et à Londres. Il a cependant décidé de ne rien renier de ses idéaux, ni de ses combats : au contraire, dans son magnifique poème débutant par : ''Qu'est-ce pour nous, mon coeur, que les nappes de sang'', il affirme que la Vengeance historique ''ça nous est dû''. (éd. La Pléiade, p 71) Là-dessus Rimbaud ne cédera jamais sur rien, pas même pour donner le change à l'instar de Verlaine lorsque ce dernier, plus âgé, se sentit contraint à le faire en travaillant assidûment à sa ''conversion'' protectrice, tout en se regardant faire comme un authentique Héautontimorouménos - Il anticipait en cela la belle préface de J-P Sartre au recueil Les Fleurs du mal de Baudelaire, éd. Gallimard, 1964. Voir le ''Charles Baudelaire'' de Verlaine dans Articles et Préfaces 1865-1886, éd La Pléiade, p 799 et suivantes. Mais Verlaine le fera aussi sous l'oeil sarcastique de Rimbaud qui le surnommera alors ''Loyola'' avec une finesse saluée par son aîné, qui marmonnera des méchancetés admiratives qui ne l'étaient pas vraiment, du genre ''s'il n'en reste qu'un, … ''; ou bien encore, en affirmant à Germain Nouveau, sans trop y croire d'ailleurs, tout en cherchant instinctivement à se situer lui-même ce faisant, que le Rimbe qu'il connaissait risquait de devenir ''un vilain bourgeois, bien vulgaire, à trente ans - à moins qu'une bonne leçon dans le genre de la mienne … '' (Lefrère, p 719) Lefrère ajoute aussitôt : ''Il faut rendre cette justice à Rimbaud : il n'a pas simulé la piété religieuse pour soutirer de l'argent au prosélyte de Stickney … ) (Idem).
Verlaine lui-même deviendra, bien entendu, le principal artisan du sauvetage de l'oeuvre poétique de son Rimbe qu'il savait incomparable par sa façon de produire des pièces dont le sens allait au-delà de la littérature (en paraphrasant Fénéon avec bonheur.) Ce même Paul Verlaine, qui s'élèvera avec indignation contre la manie de prétendre asperger d'eau bénite la mémoire de son ami absent, lui-même ne croyant pas une seule seconde - il était bien placé pour cela ! - à la conversion du franc-tireur, communard et athée, sur son lit de mort.
Malgré les passagères hallucinations survenant durant les ultimes moments de la vie du poète qui étaient naturellement dues aux concoctions de pavot et à la morphine utilisées pour atténuer ses douleurs. Certains ont bien vu le Rimbaud rebelle et farouche, travaillant assidûment à se rendre à ''l'état primitif de fils du Soleil'' lors de ses fugues en Angleterre, se transformer subitement en un être plein de prévoyante fraternité, lorsqu'il était confronté à des miséreux, surtout les enfants. Verlaine dans son Laeti et errabundi le décrit comme suit : ''Dans les bouges où nous nous enivrions, il pleurait en considérant ceux qui nous entouraient, bétail de la misère. Il relevait les ivrognes dans les rues noires. Il avait la pitié d'une mère méchante pour les petits enfants. - il s'en allait avec des gentillesses de petite fille au catéchisme. ( … )'' (Lefrère, p 631.) Ce qui n'est pas une vaine image d'Epinal, s'agissant de ce nourrisson-là. Il n'est donc pas à exclure qu'en appelant un prêtre à son chevet, Rimbaud ait simplement voulu faire plaisir à sa petite soeur Isabelle; car cette petite soeur dévouée, consciente de son état déclinant du fait de son amputation et de son cancer osseux désormais à un stade métastatique, l'avait suivi dans son ultime tentative de fugue vers Marseille dans l'espoir, vite anéanti, de rejoindre Aden, puis le Harar.
Nous ne disposons en l'occurrence ici que du témoignage d'Isabelle selon laquelle le prêtre, sortant de son entretien avec le patient, attesta de sa haute spiritualité, tout en refusant cependant de lui imposer la communion - pour ne pas le troubler davantage … ! Il s'agit, bien entendu, du témoignage d'une petite soeur naturellement aimante, dévouée et protectrice. Ce qui est néanmoins troublant, particulièrement dans le cadre de ce qui fut rapporté au sujet de cette communion avortée, est que personne n'ait songé à interroger le prêtre en question, à l'époque où les trompettes de la renommée commençant à se faire entendre, la recherche des témoignages battait son plein. Contre cette mise en scène du retour improbable de Rimbaud à la foi ... des charbonniers ..., il est préférable d'opposer les dires de Verlaine, ainsi que les poèmes vécus de Rimbaud lui-même, lorsqu'il dénonce tant les paradis artificiels que les paradis religieux et les parades (v. Parades éd. La Pléiade, p 126); ou encore lorsqu'il laisse dernière lui les simulacres d'émancipation cosmogoniques ou spiritualistes de Blanqui à Swedenborg, en passant par Bretagne (voir Lefrère, p 666; cependant, contrairement à Antoine Adam de La Pléiade, Lefrère oublie dans cette histoire le crucial Blanqui … ) En effet Rimbaud a vite fait de prononcer la fin de ces ''cycles'' et de ces ''éternels retours'' aussi illusoires que réactionnaires, en faveur de l'émancipation égalitaire humaine, véritable devenir historique de l'Humanité; il le fait magistralement dans son poème saisissant de fausse simplicité qu'est L'Eternité qui rend en forme poétique le cheminement conceptuel allant de Fiore à Vico pour aboutir à Marx (''Elle est retrouvée./Quoi? - L'éternité./C'est la mer allée/Avec le soleil.'') D'ailleurs conscient que ce chemin séculier de l'émancipation est semé d'embûches, notre jeune franc-tireur communard communiste s'écrira, en défi à une existence vampirisée, dans Angoisse (Illuminations) : ''Que des accidents de féerie scientifique et des mouvements de fraternité sociale soient chéris comme restitution progressive de la franchise première?.../Mais la Vampire qui nous rend gentils commande que nous nous amusions avec ce qu'elle nous laisse, ou qu'autrement nous soyons plus drôles./Rouler aux blessures, par l'air lassant et la mer; aux supplices, par le silence des eaux et de l'air meurtriers; aux tortures qui rient, dans leur silence atrocement houleux.'' Heureusement, Lefrère, sans avoir l'air d'y toucher mais disposant d'une monumentale documentation, remarque magnifiquement que les derniers mots audibles prononcés par Rimbaud selon son beau-frère Berrichon étant : ''Allah Kérim ! Allah Kérim !'', on est en droit de se demander de quel retour original à la foi catholique et romaine il peut bien s'agir ... (Lefrère, p 1158). Ce qui ne peut être nié c'est son désir, maintenu jusqu'à son dernier souffle, de retourner à Aden et au Harar, son désir de fugue opposé à toute servitude volontaire. Heureusement, pour marquer dignement la fin de notre jeune camarade franc-tireur communard et poète, il y eut l'émouvant poème écrit en guise d'épitaphe par nul autre que Paul Verlaine :
''Toi mort, mort, mort, mais mort du moins tel que tu veux,
En nègre blanc, en sauvage splendidement
Civilisé, civilisant négligemment...
Oh mort ! Vivant plutôt en moi de mille feux'' (Lefrère, p 1161)
L'émergence travaillée de tout monde nouveau produit fatalement l'ensemble des idiomes nécessaires pour l'appréhender. La Commune salua l'inéluctabilité du devenir historique dans le dépassement du mode de production capitaliste qui s'appuie sur un régime idéologique d'égalité formelle, propre à protéger les privilèges de la propriété privée. Marx et Rimbaud, chacun à sa façon mais de manière totalement complémentaire, forgèrent les idiomes nécessaires à la maïeutique de la société nouvelle en toute connaissance de cause (forma mentis, langage, concepts, métaphores, analogies, théories, organisations et pratiques professionnelles concrètes, dont la poésie.) N'étaient-ils pas tous deux admiratifs de Heine de qui le jeune Rimbaud, celui-là même qui demandait, espiègle, à Bainville s'il n'était pas grand temps de détruire l'alexandrin et qui forgera parmi les premiers vers libres (Marine) qui furent consciemment écrits comme tels, retiendra qu'il serait plus utile de rimer les fleurs de la pomme de terre selon Parmentier ou selon l'épidémie irlandaise, que de sombrer dans la sempiternelle et sirupeuse eau de rose pseudo-poétique pour salons mondains : ''- Tas d'oeufs frits dans les vieux chapeaux,|Lys, Açokas, Lilas et Roses (...) La flore est diverse à peu près| Comme des bouchons de carafes.| ( … ) En somme, une Fleur, romarin| Ou Lys, vive ou morte, vaut-elle|Un excrément d'oiseau marin?|Vaut-elle un seul pleur de chandelle?| ( … ) Surtout, rime une version| Sur le mal des pommes de terres !'' Ce qu'on dit aux poètes à propos de fleurs, éd La Pléiade, p 55-60)
Le camarade Engels, tout habitué qu'il était encore de la prose de Rousseau, Montesquieu et autres, critiqua à tord la syntaxe du français modernisé du Livre I du Capital offert par Marx dans la version française écrite de sa main, et donnée en tant que telle comme version de référence de son oeuvre majeure. Or, ce français-là résultait de sa longue étude de la théorie politique et du socialisme qui était nettement plus développé alors dans la ''langue de Molière'' renaissant entre les mains des hérauts du peuple tels que Babeuf ou Volney, et jusque dans le style citoyen et direct de Thomas Paine, y compris dans la traduction de ses pamphlets en français. (L'importance de Paine et des révolutionnaires français dans l'évolution du jeune Marx durant mais surtout immédiatement après l'achèvement de sa critique du droit chez Hegel, est bien connue; elle est parfaitement lisible dans la critique radicale de la théorie politique prévalant jusque-là, telle qu'en témoigne la Sainte famille oeuvre dans laquelle il expose son refus de tout exclusivisme ainsi que son triptyque de l'émancipation religieuse, politique et humaine.)
On sait que le rôle joué dans l'oeuvre de Marx-Engels par la critique de l'économie politique permettant de révéler le travail humain comme le moteur du devenir humain avait été anticipé par Giambattista Vico (voir Lafargue à ce sujet) dans sa Scienza nuova. Il n'est pas inutile de préciser en l'occurrence que Vico procéda par le biais d'un développement original de la philologie. Cette nouvelle méthode d'archéologie historique lui permettait de présenter le peuple et les classes sociales comme créateurs, donc comme auteurs collectifs, de leur propre Histoire, à l'encontre de l'individualisation souvent théocratique pratiquée jusque-là (Héros, Juges, Prophètes, Rois etc.) En l'occurrence, Vico devra procéder prudemment pour échapper à l'Inquisition (qui n'épargna pas un de ses amis de jeunesse), de sorte qu'il substituera la figure mythique de Homère à la place de celle du biblique Moïse pour éviter d'être excommunié et subir un ostracisme du genre de celui imposé à Spinoza. (Par malchance, Vico ne disposait pas de la traduction de l'Epopée de Gilgamesh, ni de la Légende de Sargon, ni du Code Hammourabi, desquels l'Ancien testament est abondamment plagié.) On voit donc l'importance cruciale (Wittgenstein?) de réintégrer dialectiquement la philologie et la linguistique modernes dans l'analyse marxiste de l'évolution sociale. La poésie de Rimbaud accouche de ce que l'on pourrait qualifier de philologie prospective : elle crée le terreau inductif du nouveau ''sens commun'' (Gramsci) politico-éthique et culturel, en dévoilant simultanément l'épaisseur civilisationnelle des évolutions sociales que l'exposition scientifique est obligée d'abréger. Nous considérons Rimbaud comme complémentaire à Marx : il opère une révolution culturelle sans taches du fait de son incontestable talent et de son inflexible loyauté à la cause du peuple.
Rimbaud se voulait poète comme d'autres se veulent artisans ébénistes ou artistes peintres. Il se forgera vite une idée militante de la poésie comme maïeutique langagière du monde nouveau. Il s'agissait d'une méthode assez éloignée quoique affine à l'idée vocationnelle sinon élitiste qu'en donnait un Baudelaire qu'il admirait à ses débuts : dans son travail de dynamitage des préjugés sociaux, Rimbaud sait qu'il pose parfois en ''drôle d'oiseau'' mais jamais en ''albatros''. Contrairement à Verlaine, il dépassera très vite les pseudo-initiations, maçonniques ou autres, apprises au départ à travers les lectures suggérées par Izambard et Bretagne : mais ce premier de classe était rompu aux traductions et aux compositions latines et grecques, primées de surcroît, de son propre cru : il conservera toujours une distance scientifique parfois amusée avec les expériences qu'il s'imposera volontairement, en toute connaissance de cause. On saluera ici la perspicacité du parnassien Ernest d'Hervilly qui comprit d'instinct le côté séculier de la mission christique et prophétique d'un Rimbaud assumant en lui toutes les souffrances d'un monde soumis à de mauvaises Lois pour mieux le transcender. Rimbaud décrira d'ailleurs en détail cette feuille de route poétique - dans le sens étymologique du terme - dans ses lettres sur la Voyance, si mal et si dérisoirement présentées d'ordinaire (car elle ne se réduit pas au fameux et magistral poème Voyelles, point de départ plutôt que point d'arrivée.) D'Hervilly aura ce mot si juste, tout empreint de l'usuelle admiration un peu sarcastique d'un l'aîné plus blasé que philistin : ''Jésus chez les docteurs''. (Ajout Déc 2024: pour l'origine de Voyelles dans On composition de Giordano Bruno, voir https://www.la-commune-paraclet.com/ItaliaFrame1Source1.htm#bruno i.e, ou bien dans la Section Italia de ce même site.)
Aussi est-ce bien ainsi qu'il apparaît dans le tableau ''hollandais'' de Fantin-Latour, Le Coin de table : ce tableau, le meilleur du peintre selon des témoignages concordants, prend les allures de la perspective lumineuse sous-jacente et calculée de la Cène de Léonard de Vinci : par cet artifice, les regards se trouvent naturellement concentrés sur la face ovale d'angelot aux beaux yeux clairs du jeune Maître incontesté de la poésie moderne. Celui-là même qui sera donné, cette fois sans doute un peu à tort, par Verlaine pour un grand poète ''maudit'', parmi un aréopage restreint de très grands confrères qu'il réunira sous l'étiquette un tantinet nietzschéenne-wagnérienne de ''Poètes maudits''. Avec la même ambiguïté, il terminera son Jadis et Naguère par un poème intitulé les Vaincus ('' la vie est triomphante et l'Idéal est mort'', Poésies complètes éd. La Pléiade, p 366) Rimbaud présent aurait rué dans les brancards ! Car tous les communards lecteurs de Michelet et de Marx, Rimbaud au premier rang parmi eux, savent que ce n'est jamais que partie remise : la victoire des chaînes, contraire au devenir humain, n'est jamais que transitoire. ''Eppur si muove'', pour paraphraser Galilée. Verlaine lui-même, dans un texte posthume longtemps resté inédit, Mes souvenirs de la commune, décrira cette victoire des chaînes comme proprement ''infâme'' : en référence ''au glorieux 18 mars' éclatant en réaction à la trahison des généraux et à la capitulation, il ajoute : ''Il n'était pourtant que juste que nous nous révoltassions contre tant de maladresses, à propos de la dignité de la Patrie''. (La Pléiade, Oeuvres en prose complètes, p 1542.)
Rimbaud travaillait consciemment, avec une sorte d'entêtement militant, à se rendre, en compagnie de Verlaine, à ''l'état primitif de fils du Soleil'' (Marx, qui débuta par la poésie pour en arriver à la critique de la nature humaine selon Locke et surtout selon Rousseau, aurait sans doute applaudi ...) Cette recherche avait pour objet l'accouchement des formes neuves d'expression compatibles avec le monde nouveau à naître; il n'y eut jamais chez Rimbaud la prétention imbécile des soi-disant ''maîtres du monde'' se plaçant initiatiquement par l'effort de leur ''volonté'' ''au-delà du bien et du mal''; c'est tout le contraire qui est vrai. C'est d'ailleurs ce qui explique l'acharnement des maçonneries non-égalitaires à occulter l'éclatante lumière éclaboussée sur le monde par ce jeune génie fraternel; tout autant que leur obstination dans le but d'en mystifier et enlaidir la portée révolutionnaire. Manoeuvre de renversement usuelle chez ces ''pitres'' apologues d'un monde archaïque de castes, théocratique ou pire. Celles et ceux qui entretiendraient encore quelques doutes à ce sujet feront bien de se reporter à l'introduction par Jacques Borel des Romances sans paroles de Verlaine (Oeuvres poétiques complètes, La Pléiade, p 171-190) : à sa grande honte éternelle, ce Borel n'hésite pas à présenter Rimbaud comme un homme engagé dans : ''l'entreprise démoniaque par excellence'', en opposition à un pauvre Paul Verlaine - plus très Pauvre Lélian dans ces mains-là - qui aurait lutté pour ne pas s'éloigner du Christ ! Rappelons que Rimbaud tout petit défendait les bénitiers de son école contre des congénères chamailleurs plus insouciants que lui, sans pour autant être une punaise de sacristie : bref un peu comme Obélix, il était etc. … (Lefrère, p 73.) Borel ose écrire une telle calomnie juste après avoir cité Rimbaud qui se voulait dans le rôle par excellence du ''poète (définissant) la quantité d'inconnu s'éveillant en son temps dans l'âme universelle'' (idem, p 174)'' Chose peu étonnante pour de pareils spécialistes, il omet, le plus jésuitiquement du monde, de mentionner que les voies toutes tracées de cette foi soudaine de Verlaine lui avaient été soufflées par l'Abbé Eugène Descamps, expédié auprès du prisonnier par des prêtres de Namur et de Paliseul, liés à la famille militaire du poète, en vue de le tirer de prison le plus rapidement possible, habillé d'une respectabilité nouvelle. (Oeuvres poétiques complètes, La Pléiade, p XXVIII.) A la décharge du grand poète visé, communard instinctif, parfois malgré lui, Verlaine n'est jamais tombé lui-même dans une pareille abjection morale et dans un tel reniement de sa nature profonde. Marx disait que la bourgeoisie présente toujours les choses à l'envers en sachant exactement de quoi il parlait !
Le ''nourrisson des muses'' conservera d'ailleurs toujours une froide raison, sans jamais abdiquer sa propre responsabilité. Cette résolution s'affirme particulièrement dans les moments les plus graves, comme le démontre sa magistrale anticipation de la ''psychoanalyse marxiste'', ou si l'on préfère ''révolutionnaire'' (pour éviter tout faux problème d'imputation, ici), offerte dans sa magistralement lucide Une Saison en enfer. La fugue, oui, par besoin hygiénique dans le cadre d'une société malade, où même les médecins conseillent la montagne ou la mer à ceux qui en ont les moyens, bref changer d'air; mais ''l'enfant de colère' savait pertinemment qu'il s'agissait surtout de remplacer ces deux destinations par la révolution sociale, pour vraiment ''changer la vie'', ou du moins pour changer d'atmosphère ainsi qu'il est démontré dans la seconde partie de mon Pour Marx, contre le nihilisme … Une démonstration d'ailleurs parfaitement illustrée dans les faits par notre jeune franc-tireur durant la Commune, encore qu'il démontra également que la fugue et le ''vagabondage'' peuvent être nécessaires comme un pis aller momentané. Pour le reste, la désintoxication était superflue pour un Etre de cette trempe-là (déjà exceptionnel dans les langes, comme d'autres héros ... Mais le lascar atteindra vite une grande taille avec, disait-t-on, de larges mains …)
Sans la contribution inégalée de Rimbaud à la destruction raisonnée de tous les préjugés sociaux et partant à la nécessaire révolution des moeurs, nous en serions restés aux très explicites mais néanmoins conceptuelles indications du jeune Marx concernant l'amour libre, par conséquent aussi la nécessaire abolition de la structure de pouvoir implicite au sein de la famille traditionnellement définie. De cette abolition Marx faisait un postulat nécessaire au dépassement de la société capitaliste, comme forme avancée de la société reposant sur l'exploitation de l'Homme par l'Homme. En mettant le tout en perspective, sans démagogie inutile, on se rend d'ailleurs compte que ce projet marxiste d'élimination des liens de pouvoir hiérarchisés dans toutes les cellules sociales, y compris les ménages librement formés, est dans l'ordre inéluctable des choses : il s'accomplit d'ailleurs - trop lentement - sous nos yeux par le biais du mariage non-forcé, par le divorce, les programmes sociaux et les allocations ''familiales'' et de maternité-parenté, la contraception, et les unions civiles. (Ajout déc 2024: les pythagoriciens Socrate et Platon faisaient reposer l'analyse sociale sur le concept universel d'Espèce humaine. L'arci-conservateur Aristote pour sa part préféra initer la sienne avec le concept particulier de famille, qui signifie étymologiquement « domesticité ». La société bourgeoise reste au fond aristotélicienne comme l'Eglise le fut, pour les mêmes raisons. C'est pourquoi le jeune Marx analysait la famille bourgeoise comme le dernier rampart des sociétés de classe.)
Afin de réellement émanciper ce pan crucial de la vie en société, il reste encore une conquête primordiale à obtenir, à savoir le remplacement des pensions alimentaires, aujourd'hui sournoisement calculées pour renforcer la famille traditionnelle et ses liens de subordinations économiques et psychologiques au sein de la hiérarchie capitaliste, par des pensions alimentaires versées par l'Etat; elles ne seraient d'ailleurs logiquement versées que de manière transitoire, durant les périodes d'ajustement de la RTT universelle, à parité de salaire pour chaque profession, mais en réduisant au maximum l'échelle salariale puisque l'éducation, justifiant ces différences, serait gratuite, universelle et continue. Comme chacun sait Marx lui-même n'a pas été exempté par les ragots déversés par l'hospice moral bourgeois, savamment entretenu comme tel, sur l'hôpital des moeurs subordonnées imposé, misère matérielle, religieuse et culturelle à l'appui, au prolétariat. Cet ordre moral est bien entendu destiné à l'intériorisation de la culpabilité distillée à souhait par la bourgeoise pour mieux dominer l'esprit des masses (opium du peuple, dans le sens vrai de l'expression.) Ce processus implique l'imposition de l'automutilation des pulsions vitales qui est ensuite sadiquement manipulée, selon Emile Durkheim, pour légitimer paradoxalement la rigueur du système judiciaire de classe. A ceci s'ajoute la massification de drogues douces comme l'alcool, le tabac, le café et le thé servant à maintenir le niveau d'énergie nécessaire devant être canalisé dans une forme exploitable par le capital (voir là-dessus la belle analyse de Gramsci relative au fordisme et à la sexualité.)
Ce faisant Rimbaud se hissait consciemment, par ses propres efforts raisonnés, au premier rang de l'avant-garde culturelle du prolétariat. Ceci s'accomplissait avec la même aisance qui le distinguait écolier lorsqu'il remportait ses nombreux 1er prix et accessits. Il assumait ainsi sa vocation de poète au sens étymologique du terme : son programme de ''voyance'', en d'autres termes d'investigation prophétique et de dérèglements de tous les sens, était donc bien un programme de rupture avant-gardiste, une maïeutique culturelle révolutionnaire, bref ''une pratique poétique'', si on veut bien me permettre de paraphraser ici le grand Louis Althusser. Alors que d'autres membres du club Zutique pouvaient affecter des poses ou succomber à un effet de jeu social, chez notre Rimbaud il n'y eut jamais rien de factice : rien de contraire à l'authenticité n'est concevable dans cette âme-là, comme il est d'ailleurs parfaitement illustré par sa vie entière, de sa plus tendre enfance à sa vie adulte de marchand, dans des contrées alors exotiques et en partie inexplorées par les Européens. Il meurt à Marseille le 10 novembre 1891 en tentant, lui désormais estropié et miné par un cancer osseux, une dernière fugue hors d'un monde qui lui était plus insupportable que jamais.
Dans la magnifique étude de Jean-Jacques Lefrère, on regrettera sans doute le manque de clarté sur deux aspects délicats qui devront être entièrement élucidés par les spécialistes de l'oeuvre rimbaldienne qui prendront appui sur lui. A moins qu'une biographie complète et sans fard de Verlaine ne vienne jeter la nécessaire clarté sur les zones d'ombre à relevance politique. Il semble que le jeune franc-tireur communard ait été en contact avec la Fédération à laquelle appartenaient d'autres communards éminents comme Jules Andrieu. De fait, Lefrère ne manque pas de documenter, sans insister davantage, ce qui semble être un examen d'entrée ou de vérification de Rimbaud à la Fédération, par un Vénérable, lors de son séjour à Londres avec Verlaine. (Lefrère, p 535) Le sujet de l'examen semblait porter sur ce que le jeune poète pensait de l'épisode communément connu comme étant celui des ''pétroleuses'' qui advint durant les derniers jours sanglants de la Commune, lorsque les troupes versaillaises perçaient les dernières barricades des insurgés. Les sociétés plus ou moins secrètes, les loges républicaines de gauche étaient nombreuses à l'époque; encore faut-il, bien entendu, y ajouter l'Internationale qui pratiquait au besoin la clandestinité mais jamais le répugnant ''secret'' des franc-maçonneries, toujours enveloppé de mystères à quatre sous à l'usage réel plus que suspect - il s'agit bien d'un répugnant ''secret'' car hiérarchisé par une pseudo-initiation qui est plutôt un mutuel travail de complicité et de sélection au sein de petits cercles restreints, par conséquent liés par une imbécile complicité et donc par une mutuelle vulnérabilité chargée d'assurer la ''fidélité'' apparente et servile des Loges.
Or, on sait que, sans renoncer à aucune spiritualité supérieure fondée sur le devoir universel des consciences, par définition libres et égales entre elles, le jeune Rimbaud avait abandonné la cosmogonie de Blanqui autant que celle de Swedenborg (Lefrère, p 666.) Il l'avait fait en faveur d'une conception communiste de l'émancipation humaine et du devenir humain. On sait également que Marx et Engels eux-mêmes furent un temps proches de la Société des Justes et de la Société des Egaux. Tout ceci devrait être clarifié une fois pour toute. Au risque de me répéter, Une Saison en enfer est le premier et le plus grand monument de psychoanalyse marxiste, d'inflexible loyauté envers les camarades, et de fidélité à soi-même au moment crucial où ce soi-même (ou ego) est révélé par l'épreuve du feu et de la lutte. En tant que telle, cette oeuvre hors du commun, représente une condamnation sans appel tant du pseudo-secret des loges que des diverses charlataneries psychanalystes, particulièrement freudiennes.
Le second élément qui demande approfondissement et clarification relève des motivations profondes, encore obscures, de la dispute avec Verlaine, laquelle mena à une tentative d'assassinat prémédité de Rimbaud à Bruxelles. Les mêmes pitres à la ''col'nel-godchot'' et à la ''maxime-du-camp'' ont prétendu, sans la moindre preuve, que le ''couple'' Verlaine-Rimbaud était tenu à l'écart par les autres réfugiés communards du fait de leur comportement soi-disant dissolu. Rien n'est plus ridicule. En effet, les réfugiés en question étaient le plus souvent des gens érudits, en avance sur leur temps, majoritairement des militants éprouvés, des artistes ou des gens proches des mieux artistiques les plus en pointe. Au moins depuis le Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville, Ou Dialogue entre A. et B. sur l'Inconvénient d'attacher des Idées morales à certaines Actions physiques qui n'en comportent pas de Diderot (éd La Pléiade, p 963), ou encore depuis les analyses pleines d'esprit et de finesse, des sentiments prévalant au sein des couples enserrés dans une société retardataire, par lesquelles Marivaux devance et instruit la critique de la dialectique du maître et de l'esclave de Hegel, ils étaient tous parfaitement conscients de l'importance fondamentale d'un changement de moeurs, confiants, à l'excès sans doute, qu'une saine éducation publique pourrait y pallier (Jules Ferry, le sanglant adversaire des communards, n'en pensera pas moins, lui pour qui, à l'instar du petit père Combes, un des objectif de l'éducation publique et laïque était de libérer les âmes, particulièrement celles des jeunes filles, de l'emprise sournoise du clergé, et plus encore des confesseurs jésuites décidément trop fouinards et trop politiques.) A titre d'exemple, un Vermersch, échaudé dans sa vie privée, ce qui le poussera à rédiger L'Infamie humaine, n'aurait jamais tiré la première pierre, sauf en faisant en sorte : ''Que la pierre se change en pain'' (selon le magnifique vers de Tristan Corbière, cité dans les Poètes maudits, éd La Pléiade, p 642)
Que cachent alors ces ragots calculés pour discréditer à bon compte, aux yeux des pauvres gens, en manipulant les préjugés des petits-bourgeois intimement pervers mais mondainement rigoristes? On connaît une partie de la réponse qu'il faut cependant éviter de donner comme une réponse définitivement fondée sur les faits : bien que ce ne soit pas une simple hypothèse, nous ne posons qu'un problème crucial à élucider plus en détail par les experts à venir de l'oeuvre rimbaldienne et de la biographie de Verlaine. En décrivant le milieu communard français de Londres, Lefrère mentionne les noms de quelques semeurs de troubles et de quelques mouchards avérés. Pour faire bonne mesure, il aurait pu ajouter les noms des mouchards dédiés à Marx lui-même, en particulier par son beau-frère. Parmi les premiers, Joseph-Pierre Barjau (Lefrère p 535) et Matuszewics - ce dernier, ancien colonel ayant servit dans le Bataillon de Belleville, celui-là même qui trahit la Commune de l'intérieur (idem p 532, voir aussi note 20, p 622). Des parents militaires de Verlaine, lui-même fils de militaire, ainsi que le filleul de sa mère, Auguste Mourot, fils du commandant Mourot, lequel, après son retour précipité de Londres, suggéra à Verlaine de s'engager dans l'armée Carliste contre les républicains ( !) sont également bien ambigus (idem p 602); surtout si on tient compte du fait que, bizarrement, Verlaine tentera d'y emmener Rimbaud … (Oeuvres poétiques complètes, La Pléiade, p XXVII.) Apparemment, le général Clément Thomas, justicié par la foule qui l'avait reconnu, n'était pas le seul à chercher à s'infiltrer dans les rangs des insurgés … Ce Matuszewicz fut condamné mais avec une peine réduite après son entrée en France; néanmoins, il prétendra sans la moindre gêne reprendre son travail et sa paie de mouchard après sa libération.
La dispute de Verlaine qui le forcera à prendre la fuite, sous prétexte de se remettre en ménage avec sa femme Mathilde, tout en laissant Rimbaud en plan et sans argent à Londres, l'opposait justement à Jules Andrieu. Qui plus est, dans ses lettres désemparées mais lucides, Rimbaud plaide d'abord avec Verlaine pour qu'il revienne à Londres afin de s'expliquer avec Andrieu et les autres communards. Lorsqu'il réalise ce qui se passe, il change d'avis sur le retour impossible de Verlaine à Londres. Ayant entre-temps parlé à Vermersch et Andrieu, Rimbaud répond alors à Verlaine : ''Tu veux revenir à Londres ! Tu ne sais pas comme tout le monde t'y recevrait ! Et la mine que me feraient Andrieu et les autres, s'ils me voyaient avec toi.''; et le loyal, quoique encore naïf, Rimbaud d'ajouter : ''Néanmoins, je serai très courageux. Dois-moi ton idée bien sincère. Veux-tu retourner à Londres pour moi? Et quel jour? Est-ce ma lettre qui te le conseille? Mais il n'y a plus rien dans ta chambre. - Tout est vendu, sauf un paletot.'' (Éd. La Pléiade, lettre du 7 juillet 1873, p 275). Le même jour, de Bruxelles, Verlaine écrit au mouchard Matuszewics pour l'avertir qu'il avait abandonné Rimbaud à Londres, en ajoutant sarcastique : ''Enfin parlez-moi de Rimbaud. Vous a-t-il vu après mon départ? Ecrivez-moi là-dessus. Ça m'intéresse tant ! (Toute bonne blague à part, hein?) Le temps n'est plus à la blague, nom de dieu !'' (Lefrère, p 603).
Lorsqu'il avait contacté Rimbaud pour ''fuir'' avec lui à Londres, le franc-tireur Rimbaud servant certainement de caution, Verlaine lui écrira à propos de son projet de départ : ''Lesquels projets d'ailleurs, toi y entrant, nous seront utiles parce que ''quelqu'un de très grand à Madrid'' y est intéressé, - d'où security very good !'' (Lefrère, p 466) Or, Le Café de Madrid était un point de rencontre de certaines sections de communards auxquelles appartenaient des ''chefs'' comme Vermersch et surtout Jules Andrieu. Verlaine y avait rencontré ce dernier plusieurs fois. Or Andrieu avait été élu chef du personnel de l'administration communale de la capitale le 16 avril 1871; à ce titre il était le patron de Verlaine qui occupait alors la place de chef du bureau de la presse de la Commune, un poste d'information stratégique, s'il en fut. Il se trouve que dans ses nouvelles fonctions : '' le 11 mai, il (Andrieu) avait été chargé de saisir les biens contenus dans l'hôtel particulier de Thiers.'' (Lefrère p 531-532) Arrivé à Londres, grâce à ses relations avec des dirigeants de la Commune, dont les deux précédemment cités, Verlaine réussit à se faire admettre au sein du très restreint Cercle d'études sociales, réunissant ''des gros bonnets de la proscription'' (idem, p 537). Marx lui-même, le fondateur et dirigeant de la 1 ère Internationale engagée aux côtés de la Commune de Paris, viendra parfois participer aux séances. Lorsque Rimbaud, abandonné précipitamment à Londres par Verlaine, décide d'aller à Paris après avoir parlé aux dirigeants communards, il doit se rendre dans la capitale, mais pas n'importe où, puisque sa destination est le Café de Madrid. La loyauté instinctive de Rimbaud le force à se rendre au préalable auprès de Verlaine à Bruxelles pour l'avertir de ce qu'il s'apprêtait à faire. Rimbaud franc-tireur communard-communiste est une vérité de fait facilement démontrable dont attestent même les mouchards londoniens (idem, p 585). Rimbaud mouchard ou simplement déloyal est et reste une chose impensable. Face à cette mise en demeure par son cadet de s'expliquer lui-même en l'accompagnant à Paris où, à défaut, rien ne l'empêchant de sy rendre lui-même, Verlaine perd la tête, menace et finit par acheter un revolver avec lequel il tentera d'assassiner son ami à bout portant dans sa chambre d'hôtel. L'affolement est total puisque, lorsque Rimbaud, fraîchement pansé au poignet mais toujours fidèle à son devoir, partira vers la gare il sera suivi d'un Verlaine toujours armé et menaçant, ce qui le contraindra à prendre la fuite. Par la suite, lorsque Verlaine tentera, à travers le célèbre imprimeur progressiste Lemerre, de publier ses Romances sans paroles, l'oeuvre issue du séjour à Londres la plus rimbaldienne de l'auteur, le jury du Parnasse contemporain ajoutera au refus de publier la sentence suivante : ''L'auteur est indigne.'' (idem, p 702)
Si Rimbaud peut à juste titre être présenté comme Jésus parmi les docteurs, ou caricaturé comme un Saint Michel terrassant le dragon, Verlaine est un ange plusieurs fois déchu, sur lequel le destin s'acharne avec un raffinement digne de sa victime, qui trouve pourtant toujours en elle-même la force nécessaire pour ne pas succomber entièrement : il le fait de la manière la plus belle qui soit, en refusant d'enlaidir ceux qui pouvaient lui lancer la première pierre, mais qui, fidèles à eux-mêmes, ont toujours refusé de le faire. Ainsi après la tentative d'assassinat de Bruxelles, Rimbaud retirera sa plainte contre Verlaine, ce qui permettait à ce dernier de s'en tirer à bon compte, y compris par la demi-feinte de la conversion (à roué - si j'ose dire, pour le Secret et le confessionnal jésuite-policier - roué et demi.) On a prétendu que Rimbaud monnaya son attitude : il semblerait sans doute plus juste de croire que la mère de Verlaine, présente dans la chambre d'hôtel lors du drame, et parfaitement au courant des mobiles réels de son fils, fit une proposition en ce sens, en toute connaissance de cause, en sachant que l'enfant désargenté ne refuserait pas. Reste que même sans cela Rimbaud se serait expliqué à Paris auprès de ses camarades plutôt que devant un tribunal bourgeois. La preuve en est que lorsque Verlaine cessa de verser ce que son jeune ami pensait être son dû, ce dernier continua à se conduire avec la loyauté la plus exemplaire. L'argent initialement versé permit quelques voyages, notamment en Allemagne. Mais lorsque Verlaine, sûr de son homme, cessa les versements, Rimbaud, assagi par l'épreuve, prit courageusement les choses en main : il s'exila momentanément dans l'espoir de faire fortune et d'assurer ainsi sa propre indépendance financière, de sorte à ne plus jamais rien devoir à personne : il était décidé à ne compter que sur ses propres forces, à ''marcher sur ses deux jambes'' si je peux m'autoriser ici de Mao, poète à ses heures. (''je n'aime pas à servir ni à être servi'' dira le franc-tireur communard, jamais repenti. Idem p 773)
Entre-temps, Verlaine utilisera les amis de Rimbaud pour obtenir des ''renseignes'' sur ce dernier, en particulier au sujet de ses relations avec Germain Nouveau à Londres. Sans doute, le Verlaine échaudé par la paille humide du cachot commença-t-il par accumuler des renseignements lui permettant, le cas échéant, de faire chanter son cadet. Heureusement, ces ''renseignes'' serviront plus tard un but autrement plus noble.
L'homme ''aux semelles de vent'' devenu marchand était ''la loyauté et la probité mêmes'' selon Pierre Bardey, le frère de son ancien parton (Lefrère, p 895) En fin de compte, c'est bien la loyauté et la droiture inflexibles de Rimbaud, telles qu'éprouvées concrètement par Verlaine après son refus sans conséquence de verser l'argent ''dû'', qui déclenchera son sursaut salutaire. Cette preuve de droiture exemplaire rassurera Verlaine mais le mettra également désormais en paix avec son ''for intérieur'' : Verlaine sera alors en mesure de se restituer à lui-même, cette fois-ci selon un procédé plus mûr que celui qu'il décrit dans son texte, court mais crucial, intitulé ''Le Poteau'' (Oeuvres en prose complètes, éd La Pléiade, p 27) : car cette fois-ci, ce n'est pas une quelconque statue de commandeur fantasmée dans la brume de la mauvaise conscience qui le mouvra, mais bien un point d'arrivée éthico-culturel atteint de la manière la plus dialectique qui puisse être imaginée. En retenant notre thèse décelant dans Une Saison en enfer une magistrale auto-analyse marxiste, le même procédé, bien que plus lent, se déroule avec Verlaine. Bien entendu, Verlaine continuera à louvoyer avec le climat politique ambiant - coquetterie incroyable, il admet même avec une certaine hargne qu'il aurait aimé faire part de l'Académie française … Mais il choisira ses combats avec soin : A l'examen sournois du Réveil Catholique concernant sa conception du Saint Graal (éd la Pléiade p 751) il répondra par une analyse qui consistait à encourager ces bougres réactionnaires à se couper de plus en plus de la société moderne, que pour sa part il tentera d'illustrer et d'encourager en procédant au sauvetage de sa production littéraire et poétique. Il poursuivait de la sorte son plan initial qui avait pris son envol avec la création du Parnasse contemporain. Pour saisir entièrement la malice contenue dans la réponse de Verlaine, notamment au sujet du retour à un néo-Moyen-âge (plus burkéen que nietzschéen) il faut sans doute se vacciner en lisant, dans le texte, Houston Chamberlain avant Alfred Rosenberg ! Bref envelopper Verlaine dans les lamentations lamartiniennes ou autrement d'outre-tombe des nouveaux Chevaliers de la Foi de la réaction post-émigrée, reste une bonne blague. (Sur les réactionnaires Chevaliers de la Foi, dont Chateaubriand, on ne manquera pas de consulter Jésuites de Jean Lacouture, t 2, éd Seuil, 1991, p 51 et suivantes.) En effet, le bougre aurait sans doute utilisé de préférence l'eau bénite pour servir son absinthe, à condition qu'elle soit bien frappée, comme de rigueur ! Le Messin poète utilisera une stratégie semblable avec ses conférences sur les 5 départements du Nord (belges, et, foin de toutes zones tampons entre grandes puissances continentales, genre de celles accouchées par le Concert de l'Europe, mais sans doute aussi par ''vingince'' du traitement subi dans la prison de Mons ... ); ou encore les conférences sur l'Alsace-Lorraine occupée, néanmoins lieu de sa naissance dans une famille de militaires.
Mais ceci était, en partie du moins, pour la pose : le Verlaine authentique restait l'homme de l'impérieux besoin d'émancipation par rapport à une gangue sociale et culturelle longue à se désintégrer. Sa contribution à cette lutte n'est pas aussi avant-gardiste et franche que celle, pleinement assumée, de Rimbaud, mais elle va dans le même sens, de la même façon que toutes les fractions plurielles de la Commune, y compris la ''minorité'' durant la tragique dernière semaine de mai, à l'heure de vérité : par chance, grâce à l'exemple de Rimbaud, Verlaine n'aura jamais pu éviter d'être, parfois malgré lui, un authentique communard. La révolution des moeurs, et donc la nouvelle poésie intersubjective qui en dépend, faisant partie du combat général de l'émancipation égalitaire humaine, on voit que ce n'est pas rien. (Rappelons ici Simone de Beauvoir : ''assurément il est certaines manières de vivre l'aventure sexuelle qui seront perdues dans le monde de demain : mais cela ne signifie pas que l'amour, le bonheur, la poésie, le rêve en seront bannis. ( … ) Ceux qui parlent tant de ''l'égalité dans la différence'' auraient mauvaise grâce à ne pas m'accorder qu'il puisse exister des différences dans l'égalité. D'autre part, ce sont les institutions qui créent la monotonie'' Le deuxième sexe, t2, éd. Gallimard, 1971, p 502-503).
Ses Romances sans paroles, qui portent l'empreinte indélébile de sa collaboration londonienne avec Rimbaud, ne connurent pas le succès qui sera le leur par la suite. Pire encore, le jury du Parnasse contemporain dira de Verlaine : '' l'auteur est indigne'', mêlant allégrement sans doute opinions politiques mal réfléchies et poses morales encore plus ambiguës (ceci alors que, triste chant du coq dans une l'aube mièvre, des Forain marchaient désormais vers la cacadémie en cherchant à faire l'impasse sur leur propre passé, en particulier en ce qui avait trait à leur fréquentation de Verlaine et de Rimbaud. Il nous incombe de relire dans ce contexte, pour la dérision libératoire, le magnifique L'Angelot maudit de Rimbaud éd La Pléiade, p 213-214).
Quel que soit le comportement de Verlaine à Londres, il avait été le chef du bureau de la presse de la Commune, et se réclamait publiquement à l'époque de tendances républicaines hébertistes. De sorte que, sans prendre les précautions d'usage, il risquait la prison ou le bagne. On notera que le colonel mouchard de Belleville, Matuszewics, n'échappa pas à la prison après son retour en France lorsqu'il fut dénoncé par sa femme, quoiqu'il ne reçut qu'une peine adoucie; il prétendra d'ailleurs reprendre son travail d'indic et sa ''ration'' journalière à la sortie ! Cette situation changea avec l'amnistie des communards (après 1880.) A sa sortie de prison, Verlaine collectionnait des ''renseignes'' sur l'inflexible Rimbaud qu'il tentait de moquer avec des faux Coppée singeant Hugo tenant seul de son exil (''s'il n'en reste qu'Un, je serai celui-là'' Lefrère, p 723-724); ce qui, entre parenthèses, en dit long sur notre jeune camarade qui répondait alors en se riant de ce nouveau et improbable Loyola machiavélique. La capitulation morale de Rimbaud aurait-elle pu adoucir la douleur intérieure de Verlaine, confronté au déchirement de son masque? Ce n'est nullement sûr : le contraire, lui fut plus profitable.
L'air du temps changea grâce à l'amnistie. Verlaine conçut alors le projet de sauvetage de la meilleure poésie moderne en rendant hommage et en faisant connaître les oeuvres de Rimbaud, Mallarmé et Corbière avec ses Poètes maudits (1884), et de tant d'autres par la suite. Ainsi les ''renseignes'' sur Rimbaud trouvèrent leur authentique destination. Le titre calculé de l'ouvrage était fait sur mesure pour plaire aux réfractaires, et à tous ceux qui n'avaient pas besoin de commentaires pour reconnaître en Rimbaud un génie poétique et fraternellement communard.
Mais ce faisant Verlaine continuera à jouer à la marge, contribuant, sans doute malgré lui cette fois-ci, à présenter la meilleure poésie d'avant-garde qui ouvrait la porte aux nouvelles représentations du monde moderne, avec toutes ses contradictions et sa soif de dépassement, comme la production marginale d'un milieu de réprouvés. Cette ambivalence continue de Verlaine relativement à l'épisode de la Commune ne sera finalement levée par la suite que par les meilleurs poètes surréalistes, communards ou communistes, dont Paul Fort, Desnos, Eluard, Apollinaire bien entendu qui compta parmi les tout premiers bons critiques des peintres et artistes du Bateau lavoir, de même que symptomatiquement le communiste et anti-colonialiste Aimé Césaire etc. … Et bien entendu, l'exemplaire Louis Aragon, le poète sans renoncement qui, après la Libération, saura recueillir le beau message de fraternité poétique de Verlaine, en rendant lui aussi hommage aux grands poètes et artistes, parfois en rupture avec le mouvement ouvrier, mais qui n'avaient eu ni sa chance durant l'Occupation, ni sa destinée face au public. Sans cet acte de pure amitié créatrice de Verlaine, l'oeuvre de Rimbaud serait restée largement sans échos pendant très longtemps : à défaut de défendre franchement la mémoire de la Commune lui-même, il hissa au premier rang son chantre le plus pur et le plus génial, avec Karl Marx. On ne peut que s'incliner, reconnaissants devant cette éclatante preuve d'amour poétique et fraternel, la plus belle qui soit en fin de compte, pour sa part de renoncement volontaire.
C'est aussi pourquoi on aimerait disposer de tous les éléments concernant la dispute de Londres : car le secret nuit à la part de pure clarté gagnée par les personnages eux-mêmes, par eux-mêmes. ''La vérité seule est révolutionnaire'' disait Gramsci. Personne n'osera faire de Verlaine un autre Matuszewics. Il ne s'agit pas ici uniquement de raisons purement littéraires et poétiques : la vérité est que le personnage est complexe, sans compter que les différents dirigeants de la Commune provenaient de courants politiques très différents : c'est le cas, par exemple, pour Verlaine et son supérieur Jules Andrieu. On sait combien d'inepties furent déversées à loisir par les réactionnaires de tous bords sur la phrase de Romain Rolland (#) relative à ''l'optimisme du coeur et au pessimisme de la raison'', le second membre de la phrase étant une idiotie dialectique patente pour qui entend ces choses-là de la bonne façon, naturellement marxiste-rimbaldienne. Ce juste milieu du petit-bourgeois qui, ignorant tout du chevalier-au-pot, s'imagine plus à l'aise dans sa petite maison de banlieue que Louis XIV à Versailles - oui, oui … - , collera de gré ou de force au derrière - si j'ose dire - du camarade Paul Verlaine, à chaque fois relancé par ses fouilleurs cyniques des consciences, ceux-là même qui applaudissaient au massacre de la Commune ainsi qu'à tous les autres massacres qui l'ont précédé, ou encore suivi, avec les ''pignoufs'' dénoncés par Rimbaud, jusque dans les colonies. Jugez vous-mêmes par cette enquête :
'''' Contrainte ou liberté : ''Quelle est la meilleure condition du bien social, une organisation spontanée et libre ou bien une organisation disciplinée et méthodique. Vers laquelle de ces conceptions doivent aller les préférences de l'artiste?''
Réponse de Verlaine (Paul) : ''L'organisation disciplinée et méthodique en attendant que l'autre soit possible, ce qui paraît un rêve. Je suis, en fait de politique générale, de l'avis de Joseph de Maistre, le rêve de Bakounine n'étant pas encore réalisable'' '' Oeuvres complètes en prose, éd La Pléiade, p 1137. Comme quoi, tout en étant Messin, on peut bien être Normand au besoin et, bien entendu, verlainien jusqu'au bout des ongles.
Dans son oeuvre en prose, Verlaine fera part d'une initiative culturelle émergeant au sein de certaines sections de l'Armée ou proches d'elle. L'objectif était de renouveler le langage culturel et politique; il s'agissait de renforcer ainsi l'esprit républicain contre les dérives impériales et autrement conservatrices, voire ultramontanistes. Il suffit pour vérifier de relire les quelques pages Du Parnasse contemporain dans Mémoires d'un veuf, (Oeuvres en prose complètes, éd La Pléiade, p 107.) Ceci mériterait également de faire partie des élucidations désormais nécessaires. Car on ne peut plus en rester aux âneries proférées sur le ''modernisme'' de Baudelaire et de ses contemporains, issues des milieux maçonniques philosémites nietzschéens de la première heure, du genre de celles laborieusement accouchées par le juif Benjamin, piochant d'ailleurs allégrement dans les commentaires et aphorismes de son vrai ''maître'' Nietzsche en personne, malgré un jargon faussement marxisant, mais ne pouvant s'empêcher très symptomatiquement d'accorder foi à ces soi-disant prières à Satan ou en ces ''anges souffleurs'', que d'ailleurs il s'acharnait à entendre à l'envers jusqu'à sa fuite tardive et à sa mort, symboliquement à la frontière, mort proprement pitrique vu le contexte pourtant dépourvu de tout clair-obscur, le tout selon une inspiration toute contraire à celle d'un Baudelaire qu'il prétendait analyser, et plus encore à celle d'un Carducci qui aurait pu lui déciller les yeux (voir son militant Inno a Satana) puisque, pour ces deux grands auteurs, ces arguties rhétoriques ne seront jamais qu'une métaphore de la nécessaire négation dialectique et de la révolte sociale (de renversement des idoles établies, si on veut : voir ''Abel et Caïn'' et ''Litanies de Satan'' section Révolte de Les Fleurs du mal, éd Gallimard, 1970, p 140-141. Lire parallèlement Elévation, idem p 20.) Et que tout ceci fasse une étoile dans la nuit selon la conclusion apaisée de Proust au terme de sa longue recherche ! On ne dit pas assez que Marcel Proust, en cela très verlainien, constata à la fin de son parcours que la culture vraie qu'il recherchait si avidement dans les cercles factices de la ''haute société'', lui avait en réalité été illustrée au quotidien par sa servante, solidement ancrée dans la France profonde. En Europe, la culture naquit avec la généralisation littéraire de la langue dite vulgaire.
Il serait impossible de conclure sans citer deux extraits poétiques signalés par Lefrère. Ceci nous semble être le meilleur remerciement pour sa belle, monumentale et rigoureuse étude; bien que la thèse exprimée sans détour ici ne puisse lui être imputée en aucune façon. Par ces deux extraits, Lefrère apparaît comme un fin connaisseur de la poésie du ''nourrisson des muses''. Lefrère n'hésite pas non plus à relier le Bateau ivre à l'expérience de la Commune sur la base d'une plus précise reconstitution chronologique; concernant Bainville, le Bateau ivre et Ce que l'on dit aux poètes à propos des fleurs, sa chronologie est fort utile mais ne modifie pas mon jugement, en réalité il le renforce, puisque Rimbaud marmonnera : ''c'est un vieux con'', pour tout jugement du maître qui aurait voulu que le Bateau ivre commençât par un : ''Je suis un bateau qui … '' (Lefrère, p 346-347) et qui, de surcroît, ne voulait pas lâcher l'alexandrin (malgré Hugo et Baudelaire ...). Enfin, notons pour les spécialistes, qu'il offre de précieuses indications sur la chronologie et la numérotation des feuillets des Illuminations (idem p 950.) Mais revenons à la poésie. Voici le premier extrait du poème Tête de faune, le second mettant ensuite subtilement en scène le peintre Auguste Renoir :
Tête de faune :
Dans la feuillée, écrin vert taché d'or,
Dans la feuillée incertaine et fleurie,
D'énormes fleurs où l'âcre baiser dort
Vif et devant l'exquise broderie,
Le Faune affolé montre ses grands yeux
Et mord la fleur rouge avec ses dents blanches.
Brunie et sanglante ainsi qu'un vin vieux,
Sa lèvre éclate en rires par les branches;
Et quand il a fui, tel un écureuil,
son rire perle encore à chaque feuille
Et l'on croit épeuré par un bouvreuil
Le baiser d'or du bois qui se recueille.
En ce qui concerne Les Chercheuses de poux, après avoir montré Rimbaud dans les mains tendres des soeurs Gindre, les tantes de son professeur Izambard, le voilà qui met à contribution nul autre que Renoir : ''overkill'' si l'on veut, mais rudement efficace. Voici :
''Le peintre Renoir tient toujours la parole. Il dit à Mendés que le plus grand poète de la terre est son ami Arthur Rimbaud. M. Mendés esquisse un sourire et alors Renoir, pour l'en faire juge, lui débite une pièce où Rimbaud montre des chercheuses de poux, deux soeurs nubiles et nuance les langueurs du bébé :
Il écoute chanter leurs haleines plaintives,
Qui pleurent de longs miels végétaux et rosés
Et qu'interrompt parfois un sifflement, salives
Reprises sur la lèvre et désirs de baisers.
Il entend leurs longs cils noirs battant sous les silences
Parfumés et leurs doigts électriques et doux
Font crépiter, parmi les grises indolences,
Sous leurs ongles royaux, la mort des petits poux.
Renoir, se laissant aller aux souvenirs provoqués par ces rimes raciniennes, de la même voix qui traîne, s'abandonne à une élégie :
-Qui de nous n'a éprouvé une indicible volupté à sentir des mains féminines caresser sa chevelure en promenant sur le crâne, en pattes d'araignée, les pailles délicates de bous de doigts. Je me rappelle encore l'engouement de ma tête qui s'affaissait dans le giron tiède de ma mère et mes envies exquises de m'endormir.
Catulle applaudit cette poésie et le commentaire. Il remarque d'ailleurs que pour aimer les vers, il faut aimer même les mauvais. On rencontre, de la sorte, dans le fumier, les perles.'' (Félicien Champsaur, cité par Lefrère. Nous nous effaçons derrière le grand peintre et ami, jugeant tout autre commentaire inutile.)
''C'est trop beau. Trop ! ''. On admire en silence.
Paul De Marco
Copyright (c) La Commune, mars 2011.
NOTES :
a) Sur le rôle déterminant des sections socialistes de la 1ère Internationale, dont faisait partie entre autres le camarade Varlin, durant ce glorieux 18 mars, il suffira de lire les pages 229-232 de l'insurgé de Jules Vallès, éd. Garnier-Flammarion, 1970. Bien entendu, on lira également La Guerre civile en France (ainsi que Les luttes de classes en France et le 18 Brumaire antérieurs) de Marx-Engels.
b) On ne manquera pas de lire ce texte hilarant, tellement verlainien, dans Supplément aux mémoires d'un veuf, La Pléiade, Oeuvres en prose complètes, p 129
c) Voici le passage en entier tiré de ''Arthur Rimbaud'' (1884) dans Les Hommes d'aujourd'hui, l'éd. La Pléiade de Oeuvres en prose complètes (p 799)
''ARTHUR RIMBAUD ''1884a''
Félix Fénéon a dit, en parlant comme il faut des Illuminations d'Arthur Rimbaud, que c'était en dehors de toute littérature et sans doute au-dessus. On pourrait appliquer ce jugement au reste de l'oeuvre, Poésies et Une Saison en enfer. On pourrait encore reprendre ce jugement pour mettre l'homme en dehors et au-dessus de la commune vie. Tant l'oeuvre est géante, tant l'homme s'est fait libre, tant sa vie passa fière, si fière qu'on n'a plus de ses nouvelles et qu'on ne sait pas si elle marche encore. Le tout simple comme une forêt vierge et beau comme un tigre. Avec des sourires et de ces sortes de gentillesses !''
Il serait prétentieux de vouloir commenter ce jugement. Nous pouvons néanmoins remarquer que Verlaine était connu comme un grand poète avant d'avoir rencontré le ''nourrisson des muses''; toutefois, ainsi que le fait remarquer Jacques Borel dans l'édition des Oeuvres complètes de Verlaine dans La Pléiade, après cette rencontre, son oeuvre ne se comprend plus sans référence à celle de son génial cadet. Mais tout le caractère de Verlaine se trouve résumé dans ce lucide et tendre témoignage poétique et littéraire. On ne peut que saluer, reconnaissant.
d) Nous nous devons de dénoncer ici une énième occultation de notre mémoire communarde et communiste. Relativement à l'hymne révolutionnaire la Butte Rouge du camarade Montéhus, qui se voulait fils de la Commune et qui était l'ami de Lénine, cette mystification est du même type que celle voulant reléguer l'autre hymne communard par excellence Le temps des cerises de Pottier au rang d'une simple élégie bucolique du printemps ! Il est vrai que durant la bataille de la Somme durant la Première Guerre Mondiale les affrontements autour de la butte Bapaume, conçue comme un nouveau Gibraltar par les états-majors anglais et australiens, seront particulièrement durs, au point que les descriptions témoignent de villages réduits en poussière reconnaissables uniquement à la terre trempée de sang. Ceci était le résultat direct de la fumeuse théorie transversale du ''barrage'' ou ''déluge de feu'' devant précéder les assauts par les fantassins, qui seraient alors lancés dans une rapide guerre de mouvement, théorie oublieuse de la redoutable efficacité protectrice des réseaux interlacés de tranchées qui imposèrent une longue guerre de position menant à une lente et douloureuse attrition - visitez Douaumont à Verdun pour vous rendre compte.
Ce que les démagogues évitent de nous dire a trait à la position politique de notre ''révolutionnaire cocardier''. Après l'assassinant de Jaurès, lâchement mais caractéristiquement salué en public et par écrit par les patriotards à la Péguy, cette position fut celle de la section la plus avancée du mouvement ouvrier français, du moins jusqu'au Congrès de Tours (1921.) C'est-à-dire de celle qui était conduite par le camarade Jules Guesde (lequel, encore engoncé dans une histoire nationale-bourgeoise, contrairement à Lénine, oublia que la victoire de Bismarck avait conduit à la Commune. Mais ce revirement ne fut possible que par la disparition trop opportune de Lafargue, juste avant le déclenchement des hostilités, pour qu'on puisse croire à la fable de son suicide en compagnie de sa femme Laura Marx laquelle, pour sa part, en avait totalement exclu la possibilité. On sait que durant la Commune, l'internationaliste prolétarien Engels avait fait passer par l'intermédiaire de Lafargue les plans d'attaque de Paris par l'armée prussienne aux sections parisiennes de l'Internationale. La Grande Muette, transie d'idéologie réactionnaire de caste et de classe, avait une hantise telle de l'internationalisme prolétarien qu'elle le craignait plus que ''l'ennemi'' allemand, ce que le maréchal Pétain et tant d'autres illustreront le plus haineusement du monde après la défaite de 1940. Bien entendu, à la suite d'un Adolphe Thiers négociant à prix d'or avec Bismarck le relâchement des milliers de soldats français prisonniers nécessaires pour dompter l'insurrection parisienne. Cette position patriotarde différait de celle adoptée par le mouvement révolutionnaire en Russie où agissait un parti bolchevique discipliné conduit par Lénine. Ce dernier n'ignorait rien de la trahison ontologique des renégats Kautsky, Bernstein, Hilferding et toute cette clique. Elle nous valut l'entrée de Guesde dans le gouvernement d'Union Sacrée dès le déclenchement de la guerre : mais avec une nuance toutefois qui fut d'ailleurs mise en chanson par notre communard Montéhus : La Marseillaise était chantée en attendant de pouvoir chanter l'Internationale, au retour (voir www.wikipedia.org ). Position mitoyenne d'ailleurs fausse, puisque le prolétariat n'a aucunement à participer ni à seconder les guerres impérialistes ou inter-impérialistes; ce qui ne signifie pas pour autant qu'il renonce au ''rôle de la violence dans l'histoire'' ni à la guerre, du moins lorsque celle-ci lui est imposée et qu'elle est défensive, ainsi que le sanctionnera par la suite la Charte de l'ONU, elle-même issue de l'alliance anti-nazifasciste forgée durant la Seconde Guerre Mondiale : C'est d'ailleurs-là la grande leçon prolétarienne du 18 mars et de la Révolution d'Octobre. Jules Vallès avait déjà ramassé le tout en une phrase qui résumait parfaitement l'esprit de l'Affiche Rouge : ''On devait songer à la patrie, en même temps qu'à la Révolution''; et Tridon d'ajouter : ''Place au peuple ! Place à la Commune !'' (L'insurgé p 216-217, op. cité) En conséquence des massacres inutiles subis aux mains des états-majors bourgeois, et par suite de l'exemple bolchevique couronné de succès, le sentiment au sein des troupes changea sur tous les fronts, sans exception : le massacre à froid « pour l'exemple » des récalcitrants par les Cours martiales n'y changea rien. Notre chansonnier révolutionnaire opéra donc son retour à l'Internationale plus rapidement qu'il ne l'avait d'abord cru : il le fit naturellement, en intitulant son texte la Butte rouge, non pas pour occulter mais, de manière évidente, pour être tout à fait clair. A la manière de Pottier, si on veut, qui lui cousait la métaphore amoureuse pour parler aux siens, sûr d'être parfaitement entendu, alors que la menace du bagne était encore présente à l'esprit de celles et ceux qui se réclamaient directement de la Commune.
Si Montéhus était resté patriotard, un demi-argument aurait pu être avancé : or, ce n'est pas le cas, ni pour lui ni pour les héritiers directs de la Commune, les communistes français ralliés à la III Internationale. La Butte Rouge c'est bien celle de la Commune qui éclaire comme un phare toutes les autres de la franche couleur internationaliste de la Sociale, avant toute autre.
Les gens qui répandent ce genre de démagogies mystificatrices de bas étage devraient s'abstenir de chanter - contre argent - ces chansons peu faites pour eux.
e) Voici le poème complet tiré de l'éd. La Pléiade des Oeuvres poétiques complètes (p 610)
''A A. DUVIGNEAUX, trop fougueux adversaire de l'orthographe phonétique
É coi vréman, bon Davignô
Vou zôci dou ke lé zagno
É meïeur ke le pin con manj,
Vou metr'an ce courou zétranj
Contr(e) ce tâ de brav(e) jan
O fon plus bête ke méchan
Drapan leur linguistic étic
Dan l'ortograf (e) fonétic?
Kel ir (e) donc vou zambala?
Vizavi de cé zoizola
Sufi d'une parol (e) verde.
Et pour leur prouvé sans déba
Kil é dé mo ke n'atin pa
Luer sistem(e), dizon-leur : ..... ''
Notons toutefois que la simplification de l'orthographe n'est pas synonyme de sa traduction phonétique. A mon sens, en procédant très prudemment, par exemple sur la base des erreurs les plus courantes, il devrait être possible de procéder à une certaine simplification, du moins lorsqu'elle n'entre pas en conflit avec la recherche étymologique, vu les racines multiples de toute langue vivante, en particulier de la langue française construite comme telle à partir, disons de Villon, Marot, Guillaume Budé, Du Bellay et Ronsard. Autrement, il en résulterait un appauvrissement extrême sans réel avantage. Mais ceci se fait déjà avec les termes importés et naturalisés. Finalement on ne juge pas du caractère d'un être humain par son orthographe, foi de Dighas, pas plus qu'il serait sain de mêler induction et déduction, topica et critica. En nous livrant à ce genre de commentaire, sommes-nous bien ou mal placés? Heureusement, contrairement à Verlaine enfant, on ne nous demandera pas de décliner le verbe ''lire'' en latin ... (voir Mes prisons, éd. Oeuvres en prose complètes, p 322.)
# ERRATUM : Vous avez sans doute remarqué que nous avions par mégarde fait référence à Jules Renard là où il fallait évidemment écrire Romain Rolland. Que Antonio Gramsci lui-même me le pardonne.!
XXX
THE BODY ECONOMIC: why austerity kills, by David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu, HarperCollins Publishers LTD, 2013. A critical review.
''The Body Economic: Why austerity kills'' is unquestionably a must read book. It was very recently published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. The authors are not economists. One, David Stuckler is a ''Senior Research Leader at the University of Oxford and Honorary Research Fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine''. The other Sanjay Basu ''is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and an epidemiologist at the Stanford Prevention Research Center''. These two ''pioneering public health experts'' do not hesitate to write: ''Both of us have experienced financial vulnerability and the health consequences that attend it. '' (p x)
This work is deeply inspired by Dr. Geoffrey Rose, the father of preventive medicine, who once wrote: ''What good does it do to give patients medicine but send them back to the environment that made them sick in the first place? '' (p 113) They know that economic hills are not the ''cause'' of illnesses, pathogens or viruses are (p 139), but they insist on the fact that they are the ''cause of causes''. They note that we must distinguish between recession and austerity (p xix). Their conclusion is unequivocal: it is unsupported by sound logic or data. It is an economic ideology (...) had austerity experiments been governed by the same rigorous standards as clinical trials, they would have been discontinued long ago by a board of medical ethics. '' (p 140) This is because quite simply ''recessions can hurt, but austerity kills.'' (p xx) ''The price of austerity is calculated in human lives. And these lost lives won't return when the stock market bounces back.'' (xxi)
Their conclusions are not gratuitous. They are based on a rigorous methodology. The authors note that ''the way to resolve this austerity debate was with data.'' (p 64) This data is mined in two specific fashions, but always driven by a scientific rather than an ideological spirit. First came the case studies from practitioners well acquainted with their field of study on a global scale. This is superbly illustrated by their summary of the rapid spreading of the West Nile virus around Bakersfield, an event that was neatly tied up with the emergence of so-called ''green-fuzz residences'' whose abandoned swimming pools and Jacuzzis had become potent incubators for mosquitoes. ''These clusters of rectangular green fuzz'' (p 125) were the direct result of the avalanche of foreclosures produced by the subprime crisis. Hence, aside from the analytic investigation tied to epidemiological transitions, the authors are also alert to the detective field work that is necessary to detect unusual turns or spikes in longer-term sets of data. Then comes the critical analysis of the austerity policies seen from the angle of the fiscal Multiplier and from that of the human cost already illustrated in the case studies. This two-pronged and complementary approach renders their conclusions hard to refute.
As a matter of fact while they were finishing to write their book and completing its publishing process, the IMF was issuing a research note pointing to the allegedly minor corrections needed on the set of formulas used to evaluate the Multiplier and hence to inform the correct path to be followed by the enforced so-called ''fiscal consolidation.'' Similarly, soon after, Brussels had to relent on its own fiscal compact, which imposed wall-to-wall cuts to public spending, particularly on all safety nets; this had become necessary because even France was now falling into recession whereas economic growth was fast becoming anemic in the powerhouse of the EU, Germany itself. Given the authors' empirical and analytical efforts, it is hard to argue with their main conclusion: ''The data we've gathered lead irrevocably to this conclusion: Societies that prevented epidemics during recessions almost always had strong safety nets, strong social protection (...) Recessions can hurt, but austerity kills.'' (p xx)
It would be well if our current Monetarist leaders would take some time to ponder this conclusion. As noted above they are now forced to take note of many scary and cumulative developments, which signal that their economic paradigm and practices are badly fraught. But, contrary to argumentation by Th. Herndon, M. Ash and R. Pollin in their essay entitled Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth? A Critique of Reinhart and Rogoff, we can safely advance that the main points of the authors' analysis do not militate in favor of a slowdown in the implementation of the very same austerity measures squarely based on the same badly fraught paradigm. (See http://www.peri.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/working_papers/working_papers_301-350/WP322.pdf (for a magisterial résumé of the critique of these valiant threesome see: http://www.latribune.fr/actualites/economie/international/20130418trib000760224/et-si-une-erreur-de-calcul-avait-impose-la-rigueur-budgetaire.html. However all failed to see that even this mild though embarrassing critique of Reinhart and Rogoff pointedly avoided taking account of Italy and Greece and other deeply indebted countries for critical years; this would have derail the original thesis and its critique which only argued for the same albeit more loose policy ... The urgency was the great countries exhibiting a debt close to 90 % of GDP, the USA included ... )
The point however is not to gain time in order to better impose the so-called ''structural reforms'', or, in brief, in order to give some rope to transversally neoliberal governments in order to allow them to better hang their people and their laboring classes, both being now jointly sacrificed on the altar of ''salary deflation.'' As Stuckler and Basu rightly argue, the point is to change course and work for a ''New New Deal'' guided by three key principles: 1) do no harm; 2) help people return to work; 3) invest in public health. (p 143) After all, if the Multiplier of public health spending is 3 for 1 instead of 0,5 for 1 as the IMF and other ideologically minded organizations had assumed, a New New Deal has indeed emerged as an urgent prophylactics.
The case studies proposed by the authors are wide ranging but always focused on a specific medico-economic problem arising from a non-ideological understanding of social reality and trends. Hence, if the American stimulus package succeeded in reversing the rapidly emerging social and medical tragedies engendered by the foreclosures caused by the subprime crisis, we learn that such public programs prevent the explosion of suicides and even more that of attempted suicides, while lowering the multifaceted plight of the homeless. We are reminded that « People without homes tend to die forty years earlier than those with a roof over their head » (p 127). than the general population. The same argument remains valid for the prevention of TB or of HIV outbreaks which the authors analysed at great length; they strongly took issue with the dangerous denials of governments enslaved to their austerity programs such as the Greek government in the later case. (p 77-28 etc.)
Furthermore, as the authors note, public housing does pay: ''In Philadelphia, each group of 100 people housed saved the city $ 421,893 per year, over and above the cost of running the program and covering housing bills.'' (p 131) Such results prove to be general in character. Moreover the authors note that : ''even as another 1.9 million houses were foreclosed in 2010, the homeless population actually fell.'' We are far here from the disciplinarian and blind policies bent on stigmatizing people and harassing them until they moved elsewhere, including into the entrails of the New York Subway system or alternatively into costly and privatized jails made profitable by a lunatic fixation on so-called repeat offenders (remember Dr. G. Rose's phrase?), in effect, a much costlier ''alternative.'' Importantly, the authors find that :'' ... 93 % of those signing for housing benefits had jobs but could not earn enough money to keep pace with rising cost.''`(p 133) This is a pity. We all know the traditional role of the construction sector as an economic engine. The authors point out that the housing Multiplier is around 3.5. Thus the authors easily show that the UK housing program before the victory of the current Tory government had an equally positive impact.
On that same line of reasoning we can add that, during the last elections, the French Socialist government had promised to modernize the public housing policy. It spoke of doing so by tying it with measures of environmental betterment, hence adding to the tradition sectoral Multiplier. Unfortunately, it seems that this promising announcement is now badly compromised by the new social-liberist course followed by the nominally Socialist government wedded to the austerity measures, albeit carried out at a slower pace and with some extra room to manoeuvre (i.e., the disastrous rigor imposed by the Fiscal Compact is slightly modified: The deadly zero deficit strategy is replaced by a reference to ''structural deficit'' something which amounts to vacuous shibboleth since it is hardly possible within the present deleterious context to determine what causes the deficit conjonturally or not. In effect, this new allegedly more moderate Brusselian course is stillborn: early June, it proved impossible to impose the constitutionalized financial penalties to Italy for its non-respect of the Fiscal compact. This is because they would have costed 7 to 9 billon to be financed through new debt at a time when the fiscal consolidation path cannot even be reached by sacrificing the whole country and by cooking up the books; it just happens that the Italian public debt has reached and will soon surpass 130% of GDP, but this disastrous number makes abstraction to the other close to 100% of GDP representing unpaid State bills to the private sector, which could only be taken care of with the issuance of more debt! This in a country now confronted with a widespread industrial collapse given the 30% industrial decline in the North that reaches 47% in the South in 2011 (See www.wicomwebspace.com/avanti/?p=2356 .) and where a meager 11 billion Trade surplus is basically due to tragically dwindling imports. ) All this shows how tragic and grotesque the whole austerity neoliberal circus has now become; it is something which goes much deeper than the simple mathematical errors signaled by Blanchard to the World from his IMF posting. (see http://www.humanite.fr/social-eco/le-fmi-le-confirme-l-austerite-etait-une-erreur-de-512240 and www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2013/wp1301.pdf )
The authors case studies span a wide diachronic (the Great Depression and the FDR New Deal) and synchronic range (the global crisis including the bath, the rubble and the euro.) As the authors show, the Shock therapy liberalization, privatisation and deep public spending cuts etc had a tragic impact on post-communist Russia. Not only did the GDP fall but instead of relaunching economic growth mass privatizations caused a further 16 % decline. Life expectancy already low for men declined by a further 2.4 year during the transition. ''Ten million Russian men disappeared in the early 1990's. '' (p 21) ''It was during that rapid transition that men began to die at an increasing rate. '' (p 23) The rapid wall-to-wall liberalization and privatizations disrupted the entire planning system and created havoc within the once secure Soviet mono-towns. (p 23) No wonder, as the authors note, a running joke among families became: -communism'''' (p 32)
One element missing from the argumentation is indeed the fact that as Marxologist Fred Block had once remarked Western capitalist leaders had accepted the struggle against the 5 Giants of Lord Beveridge not because of a rational ethical and Hippocratic reflection but instead because of the fear instilled by the Bolshevik Revolution. (The 5 Giants are: Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor, and Idleness. P 141) Similarly, the surface acceptance of Keynes' reasoning as well as the social programs enacted by the FDR New Deal (Federal Emergency Relief Act, Works Progress Administration, Home Owner's Loan Corporation, Food Stamp Program, Public works Administration, Social Security (p 15), and, last but not least, the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 regulating the banking and financial sector) were principally due to the Communist victory at Stalingrad and to the consecutive rapid development of the USSR, at least under Stalin. As the post-1956 Soviet leadership lost faith and became more and more corrupt, the Reagan counter-revolution was able to engage in a dangerous and then victorious new ''roll-back'' strategy. Social, cultural and economic regression in the West quickly followed from the collapse on the soviet Union, this collapse been taken as the signal of the disappearance of a real systemic threat to the Western capitalist regimes (i.e., it was prematurely given as inaugurating ''the end of history''. Today, the old Report from the Iron Mountain seems to have belatedly become the blueprint of our Western leaders ...)
Yet, the authors are confident that current leaders can come to their senses if only they would look at the facts. Hence their insistence on the illuminating contrast between the case of Iceland which democratically refused to go along with the austerity programs, and that of Greece turned into a scapegoat by what Gramsci called the ''pedagogy of coercion'' now practiced by the BCE and Brussels . They quote the economist James Galbraith who declared that ''the treatment of the Greek people (is) a form of ''collective punishment''. They add: ''this form of punishment was unprecedented in Europe.'' (p 93) (Early June 2013, the IMF recognised that it used Greece as an example to force other States to tow the line ...
See http://www.latribune.fr/actualites/economie/union-europeenne/20130606trib000768867/austerite-le-fmi-s-excusepas-tant-que-ca.html ) Even though, ''Greece's tragedy has shown that austerity will not save a falling economy. Rather than being part of the solution, it is part of the problem.'' (p 93) Iceland, on the contrary, shows that a different and more rational path could be travelled. And here the authors insist on an important point: This was because the Icelandic leaders listened to their incensed citizenry; they decided to travel a democratic path including a referendum on the debt and the banks (see the chapter'' God bless Iceland'' starting p 57)
This is important because such democratic consultations were refused or prevented everywhere else including in Greece (indeed, Papandreou was forced to backtrack on the referendum and had to resign.) In Italy we all know about the letter written by Trichet's BCE and confirmed by Draghi, which in effect placed Italy and all other euro members on trusteeship ...) True, the authors took note of the fact that Iceland is now excluded from borrowing on the so-called global financial market; but, in reality, this might well be a blessing but only if the Icelandic leaders prove seriously committed to an alternative policy: Unfortunately, it would seem that Icelandic leaders and powers-that-be have instead gone back one step in order two jump two steps forward later; in short, they adopted the usual transient strategy consisting in the socializing of private losses in order to stabilise the situation and privatise anew once this goal will be achieved. It is perhaps sad that we do not find any mention of the Kirchners' policy in Argentina ; here the refusal to kowtow to the diktats of IMF and of the private banks inspired by the so-called Washington Consensus regarding debt reimbursement, caused the national debt to quickly dwindle from 92 % to a mere 8.4 % of GDP while the Mercosur and Alba together with Argentine determination leaves little room for Washington's residual and recalcitrant hedge-funds to manoeuvre in order to reopen the term of the deal offered to the banks. (see http://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2012/08/06/l-argentine-solde-la-crise-economique-de-2001_1742814_3234.html ) In retrospect, this deal turns out to be more lucrative and economically sane than the repetitive ''haircuts'' which even scared Mr. Dallara from the International Institute of Finance when they had to be implemented ''once again'' in Greece (not to mention the so-called Cyprus model desperately invented later.)
Keynes' magnum opus was purposefully entitled The general theory of employment, interest, and money. The authors understand that employment is the key to the well-being of individuals as well as of States. Their chapter entitled ''Returning to work'' states: ''Of course, there are other ways to address the problem of unemployment than with depressants'' and they immediately quote Dr. Geoffrey Rose, the ''father of preventive medicine''. They equally present an analysis of the Swedish program ALMP this acronym standing for Active Labor Market Program. ''In order for people to access cash benefits, they have to take part in a guided, step-by-step plan to get back into work.'' (p 114) ''The protective effects of Sweden's ALMP were put to the test during its recession in the 1990s. In a scenario that resembles the current recession, Sweden's housing market collapsed in 1991 and 1992, bringing nearly all of its 114 banks to near-closure. GDP fell by 12 percent. Ten percent of Swedish workers lost their jobs, a rise on the par with unemployment spikes in many countries during the current recession. Remarkably, despite large spikes in unemployment, suicides rates fell steadily during the period between the 1980s and the 2000s, when the government invested, on average, about $ 360 per capita per year in active labour programs. There was no significant correlation between Sweden's fluctuations in unemployment and its suicide rates.'' (p 116) ''By contrast Spain invested $ 90 per capita per year focusing their money only on cash benefits. For men in Spain trends on unemployment correlated tightly with suicide rates.'' (p 116) the same positive Swedish trends were confirmed elsewhere: ''In Denmark, the programs generated a net saving of $ 279 000 Danish kroner (about $ 47 000) per worker over eleven years.'' The reversed course in the UK sums it all: ''When the Conservative government came into power in 2010, the UK response became even worse. In 2012, the British Medical Journal published our paper showing that the UK suicide rate had risen by more than 1,000 between 2007 and 2010 above pre-existing trends, corresponding to the continued rise in unemployment.'' (p119) In this particular case, the authors were not fooled by official statistics; they quoted a Health Department spokesman affirming that :''suicide rates in England had been at an historical low and remain unchanged since 2005.'' (p 113) They comment:'' the Department uses three-year rolling averages for monitoring purposes, in order to avoid focusing unnecessarily on fluctuations instead of on the underlying trend.'' The authors concluded: ''By now, this tactic should sound familiar: averaging-out deaths is the same technique the Economist used to cover up death rates in Russia.'' (p 120) (See the Note ** of my Book III Keynesianism, Marxism, Economic Stability and Growth for the critique of the official main number for unemployment according to the DOL or to ILO; it is usually underestimated by almost one half and does not tell anything about increases in poverty and deteriorating disparity in revenues. Nor do the global numbers say much about the quality of jobs: As we know part-time-jobs constitute 50 % and more of all jobs in the ''virtuous'' Netherlands; in Italy around 67 % of new jobs are precarious jobs, the majority of which consists of contracts spanning a few days only, and we all know about Germany Kürtzarbeit as well as about the current ferocious ''salary deflation''.)
On the general methodological side, the authors have provided a useful contribution, which goes at the very heart of good economics understood as the best preventive medicine. This contribution concerns the fiscal Multiplier. Importantly, the authors note that the IMF, like other mainstream leading organizations were mainly motivated by sheer ideology rather than by hard facts when they responded to the current crisis. First they did so despite the fact that ''there was no evidence from prior recessions that the extensive austerity would stave off depression but rather the opposite; austerity tended to increase unemployment, reduce people's spending, and slow down the economy'' (p 64). Second, the authors point out that the IMF assumption of a Multiplier of 0.5 implied that government spending shrinks the economy. Yet, this central assumption was never derived from real data, and worse still, was presumed on the damning corollary that all public spending have equal consequences, as if defense implied the same positive economic circuits than health-care, education, housing, public transportation etc ... The authors add: '' without data in the sector-specific effects on budget cuts, even if the IMF promoted austerity, how could it know which cuts would be the most detrimental and which would do the least harm to the economy and maximize the prospects of recovery?'' (p 65) They point out that 10 years of data for 25 European countries show that ''the real Multiplier had a value of 1.7 in the overall economy; thus austerity would have a recessionary effect. Not only did the IMF underestimate austerity's economic harm, but it overlooked the even greater damage resulting from cutting public health. Health and education have the largest fiscal Multiplier, typically larger than 3. In contrast, defense multipliers were significantly less than 1, and so were bailout packages for banks.'' (p 65)
In effect, in strictly economic terms, defense always exhibited lower multipliers despite the badly-termed ''military Keynesianism'': We all remember the never harvested ''peace dividends''. As the authors note, today '' these figures make sense, because much of the money spent on defense doesn't actually build jobs in manufacturing and technology domestically anymore, unlike previous years. Much of it actually leaves the economy, going to foreign contractors and to pay for non recoverable costs like fuel for fighter jets. Nor do banker bailouts tend to stimulate the economy, as funds are more likely to end up stacked in offshore bank accounts and less likely to get reinvested into providing jobs or technology. Health and education programs by contrast conferred both short and long-term economic pay offs.'' (p 65) This deserved to be quoted in full. We also know now, as predicted by some of us some time ago, that the various Quantitative Easing (QE I, II, III etc) only aggravated the initial -recovery which remains strictly a ''jobless recovery'' .
It is worth repeating that the epigones of austerity and of the Fiscal compact were recently forced by the glaring reality to backtrack a little; but they did so in a calculated attempt to regain legitimacy and to gain time. Thus, they pretended to recognize some marginal errors of calculation and tabulation and proposed to loosen the zero deficit target substituting it with a reference to the vague concept of ''structural deficit''. The same disastrous direction was thus maintained but at a slower speed in order to avoid popular revolts and to give some extra room to the States otherwise inexorably pushed from ''structural reforms'' to the repetitive ''haircuts''. These are now quickly substituting to the previous public bailouts à la Greek, which had come to scare even the likes of Dallara. (for the hilarious if tragic episode see A Athènes pendant la manif, la charge du banquier Dallara contre l'austérité http://www.france24.com/fr/20121114-a-athenes-pendant-manif-charge-banquier-dallara-contre-lausterite ...)
We believe that the authors are right to call for a ''New New Deal''. In my Keynesianism, Marxism, Economic Stability and Growth (2005) I raised a central democratic and cultural question: How would Keynes have responded to the current structural crisis? (Added: he would have found inspiration in Paul Lafargue in proposing a 15-hour working week, just to satisfy « the old Adam in us » but without acknowledging his source, see: http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf.) Would he have chosen to backtrack into damning and even repressive and fascistic neoliberal policies. Greenspan's House Effect was nothing else than a re-edition of Pigou's ill-conceived and half-backed Wealth Effect, a concept indifferent to the effects of revenue disparity on the behavior of the individual and aggregate demand curves, which Pigou tried to oppose to Keynes's full-employment strategy that implied some incitative and indicative State intervention. Or, instead, would Keynes have advocated the reinforcement of the public sphere of intervention a sphere which even Adam Smith recognized as vital for the good functioning of the economy as a whole? My tentative answer was that Keynes would have chosen the second path ''once again''. He would have done so I argued for various good reasons among which his cultural (Eton's Society, Bloomsbury circle etc) and his democratic make up equally informed by an acute sensibility to his aristocratic Normand ancestry and perhaps a sense of noblesse oblige modernized in his important notion that State personnel were servants of the State as the embodiment of the Nation-State. The authors of Body Economic strongly emphasise the vital importance of the democratic process in informing the decision processes and public responses to crisis: Iceland provide them with, at least for now, a perfect case study while their analysis of other nations most notably Greece, Spain and Italy unequivocally show the dramatic consequences of the neoliberal austerity choice.
Thus their contribution is both important and timely. It goes much further than the IMF, Brussels or academic (Ash etc ...) pseudo-corrections of mathematical and tabulation errors. No doubt, this is due to their methodological rigor, which is able to conjugate field work with theoretical analysis. This inspiring scientific attitude led them to understand the shortcomings of the GDP and thus the weakness of the conclusions hastily derived from it. They thus also refer to the alternatives set of socio-economic measures proposed by the PNUD in the attempt to enlarge strictly quantitative - in money terms - criteria with qualitative ones to better apprehend a real economic growth going hand-in-hand with the general growth of socio-economic well-being. In so doing they offer a very strong quote from Robert Kennedy on the subject, one which perhaps sheds a better light on the neoliberal abuse and taken out of context of his older brother's famous utterance about citizens having to ask what they could do for their nation rather than the reverse. ''Yet, wrote Robert Kennedy, the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measure neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile, and it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are American.'' (p xv) This potent quote has a universal character. As a Marxist I am wont to say that what has a real value has no price.
The authors ''take Robert Kennedy's proposition seriously''. We believe that the economic sphere belongs to the Domain of Necessity in so far as it is necessary to produce the material and institutional, cultural conditions for the flowering of the Domain of Liberty and the blooming of both individual personalities and collective characters. Yet to be effective the economic critique of neoliberal recipes must face up with their paradigmatic and systemic flaws. Of course, a central case in point concerns the Multiplier.
First, the general Multiplier is more affected than sectoral multipliers like health-care, education, housing, transportation etc by extroversion of the Social Formations now subjected to regional, hemispheric and global free-trade deals. In short Harry White won the battle against Keynes at Savannah just before the new world regime, aside the Eastern bloc, was ushered under American hegemony (IMF, World Bank, GATT etc). The various trade liberalisation rounds from the GATT to the WTO drew the last spikes. This led to the Friedmanite globalization of Robert Solow's vacuous function of production; this went hand-in-hand with the Monetarist ''public choice'' policies in a context in which the global competition enforced on the labor markets had to take place within strictly calculated neoliberal systemic constraints. The main systemic constraint in which the alleged ''free market'' would strive toke the form of a new definition of the anti-dumping which strictly excluded from the calculations any reference to labor rights, even the minimalist and tripartite version enshrined in the Monarchist, post-Versailles, ILO as well as the strict exclusion of any reference to environmental protection. Furthermore, the Repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, ushering into the disastrous so-called Rubinomics (see Rethinking Robert Rubin By William D. Cohan on September 20, 2012 http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-09-19/rethinking-robert-rubin#r=read ), opened wide the door to unbridled financial speculation spreading havoc for formerly sovereign State 24-hour a day on the world scale. Not surprisingly this so-called Volcker, Reagan and Thatcher's Big Bang unleashed formidable crisis, from the New Tech Bubble to the Bath and rubble crisis to the subprime crisis and its current tragic aftermath. This in turn display a damning neoliberal trend which goes much further than the so-called outsourcing or what I called the ''walmartyrization'' of the basic consumer basket, in effect an ill-advised imitation of the old Repeal of the Corn Laws. Instead, it involves a clear and conscious effort to desindustrialise in favor of services with the added hope of doing away with the traditional but union-strong working class as well as with so-called ''soft'' and highly polluting industries and sectors.
This disastrous choice was doomed from the start. It rested on the foolish and arrogant believe in the possibility to impose a Western ''asymmetrical interdependence'' on the world while China and India graduate more engineers than the US not to speak of their rising solvable domestic markets. In fact services are equally prone if not more to the law of productivity, meaning in short that they tend to be highly capital intensive. Unfortunately, thinking of Alfred Sauvy's crucial concept of sectoral labor ''déversement'', services also tend to substitute traditional intermediary sectors with new ones employing increasingly less workers, and increasingly less qualified. This trend becomes even more damaging when by services we mean financial (hence today inherently speculative) services: the latter represented some 3 % of GDP a decade ago but now account for more than 9 % in the US and elsewhere. This trend goes hand-in-hand with the dangerous development of the so-called ''universal bank'' too often said to be ''too big to fall''. In turn this undermines the economic and fiscal viability of formerly sovereign Nations States, which are called to called to bailout the private banks taking into account the heavy and interdependent weight of their shadow banking (think of the chains of CDS...) whereas this shadow banking escape official accounting criteria (and hence any rational monitoring) thus contradicting any fiscal logic. (So much for the so-called fiscal crisis of the States as well as the Lafferian crowding out of the private sphere by the public sphere.) I have thus spoken of the lost race opposing the loosing Stately Turtle to the unbridled speculative Achilles. (For the whole argument see my To save the euro we must end the so-called ''universal bank'' , as well as my Book III, my draft HI-HA and my Précis d'économie politique marxiste.)
The Active Labor Labor Market Program or ALMP of Sweden is an important program. Meidner's Workers Fund went even further before it was sacked by a hysterical right-wing reaction (see my Tous ensemble.) The real point seems to be: What are the real differences opposing the Reagan-inspired workfare and the Swedish ALMP and why? To be guided step by step to (meaningful and equivalent?) employment seems good. But is this the reality that is meant? This aspect of the problem goes at the heart of the question because there are two basic ways to conceive labor or full-employment policies: either the neoliberal workfare or the sharing of socially available work among all apt citizens. Reaganian workfare only engineers the sharing of poverty among the workers and devalued middle-classes for the sole benefit of the 10% and even the 1 % on top of the socio-economic pyramid. It rests on national and global labor markets presumed to unequally concerned with the ''individual salary'' rather than with the three forms of the revenue of the household., namely individual salary, differed salary unemployment - insurance and pensions etc -, and global net salary of the household which includes the first two plus the transfers accruing to household in the form of access to the social safety nets. For a more detailed argument of this brief summary see for instance Note *, Note ** and Note 15 on John Galbraith in my Book III, as well as the essay on Althusser or why compromising compromises should be rejected.) Official full employment based on generalized precariousness of work sacrificing pensions, economic stabilizers and all social and environmental program is something to be left to the regressive mind of neoliberal organizations: in the form of salary deflation as the only mean to ensure the continued productivity of Western transnational firms and the competitiveness of Western neo-Nietzschean social formations will not do, though this is the real silent goal pursued by the modern austerity crusaders.
Let us note in conclusion that the specific form assumed by the social safety net is not at all indifferent. Indeed, it has become a deeply ''contested terrain'' for instance in assessing the real impact of the Stimulus Program of the Obama Administration. (see Pour les passionnés de la perfusion:http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/did-the-stimulus-work-a-review-of-the-nine-best-studies-on-the-subject/2011/08/16/gIQAThbibJ_blog.html quoted by Jean-Charles on G. Ugeux site on March 11, 2013). I customarily like to recall that the US wastes 16 % - now more than 19 % - of its GDP for the health-care system whereas, before it started to emulate the American system, European countries were spending between 9 and 11 % for very efficient public system offering universal access. Idem for the pension regimes. The fact is that in terms of current accounting standards this enormous waste will often appear as contributing to GDP growth even at a time when giants like GM faced ruin simply because they proved unable to face the financial burden caused by their in-house pension schemes. If nothing else, the public pension schemes engendered colossal saving because of the mutualising advantage tapped on a grander scale which in turn allows for better and more equitable payout to beneficiaries qua citizens.
As I have said above, the whole Marginalist paradigm, and not only its late neoliberal and Monetarist version, now needs to be replaced by a rational and reality-based Political Economy. We now need an Urgent and Great Transformation to borrow from Karl Polanyi.
But this will only come at the price of a Scientific Revolution against the present textbooks costly fallacies, in the manner portrayed by Thomas Kuhn.
The authors of Body Economic have achieved a good preliminary step in this direction enriching in the economic thinking process with the lights of their own discipline. This is something for which serious proponents of the discipline can only be grateful for.
Paul De Marco Copyright© La Commune, June 6, 2013.
XXX
Book Review: Yoram Gutgeld, Più uguali, più ricchi, ed Rizzoli, 2013, ovvero un sacco di vecchi cliché neoliberali che non valgono la carta sulla quale sono scritti.
Più uguali, più ricchi? I neoliberali trasversali si rassicurano, se non lo sono già: Non è proprio quello che vuole intendere il signore Gutgeld. Dice nella nota di copertina: « Portare l'equità al centro del dibattito politico non significa creare un Paese di uguali, ma uno in cui le impresse riescono a operare al meglio e le persone vengono premiate secondo le proprie capacità.» Poi precisa nel testo del libro: « Crediamo che debba essere l'equità, e non l'eguaglianza di per sé, il vero motore di sviluppo economico e sociale. (...) La domanda fondamentale da porsi è invece se queste politiche (cioè di ridistribuzione sociale, nota nostra) garantiscono equità e promuovono sviluppo economico. (…) Questa considerazione mi porta a sottolineare un piccolo paradosso. Questo libro avrebbe dovuto essere intitolato « Più equi, più ricchi » e non « Più uguali, più ricchi. » La scelta editoriale di usare la parola uguaglianza nasce proprio dalla consapevolezza che la parola « equità », e ancora più l'aggettivo « equo » sono termini « freddi », quasi tecnici. Se riuscirò a trasmettere a qualche lettore un senso di « calore » e di « emotività » per queste parole, riterrò di aver fatto qualcosa di utile. » (p 10) In termini di legittimità e di legalità da marketing non so cosa questa confessione valga. Rimane che i principi cardini della nostra Costituzione sono l'uguaglianza e la solidarietà nazionale tra i cittadini. L'uguaglianza non può essere ridotta - almeno non ancora ad un'idea idiosincratica dell'equità.
Ma chi rappresenta questo signore Gutgeld? Citiamolo. « Questo libro nasce da un percorso durato un anno, e iniziato con l'estate del 2012 e la campagna per le primarie del Partito democratico. (...) Giuliano da Empoli, autore materiale del programma per le primarie di Matteo Renzi nel 2012, è stato un critico costruttivo e un convinto incoraggiatore. Matteo stesso, oltre ad essere uno stimolo determinante alla mia decisione di cambiare vita, (cioè, diventare un politico del PD, nota mia) è stato preziosissimo per la sua straordinaria capacità di semplificare idee complesse e raccontarne l'essenza. » (211) Sembra che Gutgeld era un matematico; forse è perciò che le idee presentate in questo libro non sono tanto complesse, anzi sono esplicite nella loro banalità. Sono poco documentate e in modo generale in linea con la messa sotto tutela del nostro Paese dalla BCE, assieme al capitale transnazionale e speculativo globale. (Mario Draghi, come si sa, lavorava per la Goldman Sachs.) Leggendo la Spending review preparata da Mario Monti e oggi portata avanti da Cottarelli, avrete il canovaccio sopra il quale il libro aggiunge quale nuances, per questioni di calore e di emotività politica. Con un'accentuazione sulle privatizzazioni, incluso al livello locale, malgrado il referendum relativo alla proprietà pubblica dell'acqua. Ritorneremo sulle proposte specifiche qui sotto.
Ma chi è questo signore Yoram Gutgled? Ecco la nota biografica di copertina : « Yoram Gutgeld nato a Tel Aviv nel 1959, ha studiato a Gerusalemme e a Los Angeles. Filosofo e matematico di formazione, è manager ed esperto nella soluzione dei problemi e nella gestione dei cambiamenti. Ha lavorato per ventiquattro anni in McKinsey, dove ha ricoperto il ruolo di director e senior partner e ha servito grandi imprese e governi in Italia e all'estero. Dal 2013 è deputato del PD e membro della commissione Finanze. »
Il signore Gutgeld riassume il suo poco documentato libro con qualche « catch phrases ». Il riassunto del programma tiene in una frase « 30 x 4 per cambiare l'Italia». Sembra che neanche Renzi ne abbia parlato! Ecco di cosa si tratta: « Questa moltiplicazione serve per descrivere l'idea di una « dislocazione», da realizzare in un arco temporale di cinque anni, di quattro blocchi di trenta miliardi ciascuno in quattro aree di uscite ed entrate pubbliche: tasse, spesa, investimenti e assegni sociali.» (p 197). I Chicago Boys parlavano di terapia di shock. Gutgeld per l'Italia parla addirittura di «dislocazione » perché, come dice, gli piacciono le ultime immagini del film di Michelangelo Antonioni Zabriskie Point (che ) mostrano l'esplosione di una villa diroccata nel deserto dell'Arizona. » (p 207) Chiamare aiuto o i pompieri? Comunque, prendiamo nota che Gutgeld vuole « dislocare » l'Italia. Con i suoi 30 X4. In modo curioso, al signore Gutgeld piace citare spesso il Mercante di Venezia del grande barde londinese, e cosi va ripetendo che gli piace il fare più che il parlare. Si parla dunque di dislocare l'Italia sul serio.
Fiscalità. « Sul fronte delle entrate fiscali l'obiettivo è di fare emergere dal sommerso 30 miliardi e ri-allocarli completamente a favore di una riduzione delle aliquote delle tasse sul lavoro.» (p 198) 30 diviso 5 non sembrano abbastanza neanche per Confindustria. E non sarà certo una misura del genere capace di ridare competitività reale alle nostre imprese strangolate dal credit crunch. Gutgeld propone di agire sul credit crunch ma sembra che il fondo pubblico (p 191) da lui descritto, invece di seguire la logica che avevo spiegato altrove, segue invece una logica neoliberale ormai generale anche all'interno della BCE e dei suoi fondi di salvataggio delle banche private. Questa logica consiste nel utilizzare denaro pubblico - i fondi europei dice Gutgeld ... - per garantire i prestiti delle banche private. Insomma, la rovescia, come al solito. Ma, visto che nelle tasche delle lavoratrici e dei lavoratori entreranno pochi soldi, cioè una quarantina di euro tutt'al più, Gutgeld propone con grande ritardo di imitare il modello fallito americano del Low cost e di Walmart. (p 153). Ho spiegato altrove, anni fa, che si trattava solo di imitare il Repeal of the Corn Laws britannico con la speranza di abbassare il costo del paniere base dei lavoratori; aggiungevo che questo modello riposava sopra un'idea falsa e anche un poco pretenziosa dell'interdipendenza asimmetrica nascosta dietro la volontà degli USA di globalizzare il loro accordo di libero-scambio continentale Nafta. Di fatti, già da qualche anni, la Cina diploma più ingeneri degli USA e deposita più brevetti. Già allora avevo denunciato la strategia come una strategia fallimentare che portava solo alla « walmartirizzazione» del mondo del lavoro. Copiare un modello fallito non sembra cosa tanto ragionevole. Ma Gutgeld sa di contare sopra gente come Renzi e Taddei ed altri del genere.
Sopratutto Gutgeld mette da parte ogni riforma più progressiva della struttura globale e delle aliquote delle tasse. Neanche la tassa di 75 % sui redditi superiore a uno (1) milione di Hollande gli piace perché paragonata ad una confisca (!) (p 70) I ricchi debbono potere arricchirsi secondo il loro merito auto-conferito. Intanto, sciocchezze gutgeldiane a parte, l'iniquità e la disfunzionalità attuale del sistema fiscale è nota a tutti. L'Irpef, diventata poco progressiva, assieme all'IVA, la quale rappresenta addirittura un modello di regressività fiscale, sono le due voci principali, mentre le tasse sul capitale sono quasi inesistenti. (Vedi il Conto trimestrale delle amministrazioni, www.istat.it/it/archivio/72103 p 2 (Riassunto : II trimestre 2012 in milioni di euro : imposte dirette : 56 691; imposte indirette :57 996; totale entrate in conto capitale : 1 524 (- 0,2 sul I trimestre).) Non di meno si mette ancora al primo piano il cuneo fiscale e gli esoneri per il capitale!
Chiaramente non saranno queste proposte che rimetteranno in piedi il nostro apparato produttivo e la sua inserzione nell'Economia Europea e Mondiale. Per di più, il Fondo di garanzia esiste già; il nuovo proposto qui sarebbe finanziato con la svendita dei beni pubblici e con fondi europei. E verro che Renzi rappresenta la DC all'interno del PD ma si tratta di una DC che vuole ritornare, come diceva pure il Presidente, a Einaudi. Ma aggiungiamo noi, senza Keynes e senza le costrizioni costituzionali, cioè altri valori di civiltà. Rimane da vedere se sacrificando i lavoratori dipendenti e quelli della PA si vinceranno le elezioni facilmente come le Primarie PD scavalcando i membri con Internet.
Ci sarà comunque da seguire con grande attenzione il semestre italiano: In effetti, sembra che l'ossessione con il costo del lavoro sostituito al costo di produzione e del management porterà all'abbassamento diretto o indiretto dei contributi padronali; questo rovinerà ancora di più il sistema di finanziamento delle varie Casse integrazione e della previdenza e assistenza sociali. Ho già spiegato altrove che i contributi padronali vengono trasferiti sui prezzi e dunque pagati dai lavoratori qua consumatori; rappresentano un salario differito che non ha niente a che vedere con un presunto divario generazionale. Rovinando questo si farà pesare i costi sociali coperti dai contributi in busta paga sopra una fiscalità generale evanescente per causa della grande regressività delle tasse aggravate da rovinose tax expenditures (oltre 120 miliardi annui), per cause dei numerosi e rovinosi esoneri al capitale e per causa di precarietà dilagante. Questa tendenza sarà ancora peggiorata dallo fasullo lavoro indeterminato senza Articolo 18 che maschera una servitù di apprendistato senza ricorsi legali, ma sempre sovvenzionato dallo Stato. Una assurdità da Ubu Roi. (vedi il ragionamento relativo alla « struttura di v » in Uscire dall'euro non serve, serve mettere fine al regime della banca detta universale. , in Download now in Sezione Livres-Books del mio sito www.la-commune-paraclet.com .)
Rispetto al Articolo 18, Gutgeld è interessante nel metodo: Abolire l'Articolo 18 non serve afferma in pagina 141 perché, come dice giustamente, « non è un vero limite ai licenziamenti in caso di crisi aziendale ». E come tanti altri, anche lui parla in modo vago di apprendistato senza dire precisamente come verrebbe finanziato. Cosa che risulta difficile anche per il cosiddetto assegno universale. A parte i paragoni europei sopra i numeri esagerati dei vari professionisti in Italia Gutgeld allude, in particolare, ai commercialisti e agli avvocati secondo lui in sovranumero - , rimane comunque che la differenza tra il lavoro non a tempo determinato (p 149) di Gutgeld e il lavoro a tempo indeterminato senza Articolo 18 di Renzi sono la stessa cosa vista da un angolo differente.
In realtà, la logica della crisi e della public policy monetarista porta alla distruzione - attrizione del lavoro permanente oggi protetto dall'Articolo 18. Si tratta dunque soltanto di dividere le lavoratrici e i lavoratori tra loro opponendo i giovani ai più anziani. Ma i giovani italiani hanno già capito: Quando furono introdotti i cosiddetti scaloni aumentando l'età pensionabile contro le mie veementi proteste - 4 milioni di anziani furono costretti a rimandare il pensionamento. Anche includendo l'attrizione normale per causa di modernizzazione della PA, questi rappresentano 4 milioni di pensioni potenzialmente dignitose dunque supporto della domanda interna e, parallelamente, milioni di impieghi permanenti negati ai giovani. Intanto, i giovani italiani debbono aspettare in jobs con tutele inesistenti detti a « tutele crescenti » … più di 17 anni in media prima di ottenere un impiego a tempo indeterminato. Con Gutgeld-Renzi-Taddei ed altri di questa farina, quando otterranno il contratto desiderato sarà senza Articolo 18, ma non saranno più giovani. E non avranno neanche molti contributi per la pensione.
Il problema pero rimane: Ci sono attorno a 1 miliardo di ore di casse integrazione, con quasi 55 % tutt'al più di partecipazione della forza del lavoro; ci sono tassi di disoccupazione criminali per i giovani, incluso i 2 milioni di cosiddetti Neet, e per i meno giovani di più di 50 anni; prevale una precarietà dilagante. Perciò vengono meno i contributi sociali e le ricette della fiscalità generale, trascinando fatalmente l'economia in una spirale negativa. Ad un certo punto e ci siamo già vendere i gioielli di famiglia, incluso le spiagge, cioè adottando ricette una tantum, non basta più. Con l'Inpdap rovinata scientificamente prima di farla confluire nell'Inps, anche l'Inps oggi è rovinata. Il resto segue la stessa logica pirata (vedi http://www.repubblica.it/economia/2013/11/14/news/inps_mastrapasqua_conti-70964342/?ref=HREC1-2 ) Pero, per sfortuna o forse per fortuna, siamo diventati un Paese dove non si può neanche più finanziare una riforma del genere reddito annuale minimo garantito à la Milton Friedman; anche se questo assegno sarà concepito per rubare i contributi e mettere tutti al livello di povertà assoluta (attorno a 500 euro o meno, con criteri di risorse e con l'obbligo di accettare qualsiasi offerta di lavoro che verrà proposta, senza dimenticare in fine percorso gli effetti negativi sulla pensione...) Perché ci vorrebbero al minimo da 25 a 30 miliardi, all'anno! Poi ognuno e libero come Gutgeld di citare la « giustizia sociale » secondo John Rawls (p 68), per non citare direttamente Giddens e Blair oppure Reagan e Thatcher secondo il metodo già usato col titolo. Avete capito che serve « calore » e « emotività ».
Spesa. Poi aggiunge Gutgeld : « Crediamo che si possa ridurre di 30 miliardi, ossia del 10 per cento, la spesa per la macchina pubblica, attualmente intorno a 300 miliardi, senza che questo vada a incidere sul livello e la qualità dei servizi che devono al contrario essere migliorati. » (p198) Sembra che questo 10 % sarebbe da ricavare con tagli nuovi, oltre al blocco del turn over nella PA sin dal 2008, ed oltre ai 100 000 o 150 000 funzionari che andranno in pensione ogni anno senza essere rimpiazzato (p 104). Ma sopratutto il risultato deve essere raggiunto con lo snellimento della spesa pubblica e il trasferimento dei servizi pubblici alla gestione privata. Questo dovrà essere fatto anche con le privatizzazioni al livello locale, argomento sul quale ritorneremo.
Purtroppo, Gutgeld ha fatto un sforzo paragonando il costo del servizio pubblico sanitario europeo con quello dei Stati Uniti: Ma è solo retorica perché non è neanche sicuro delle percentuali. Cosi a pagina 42 la spesa sanitaria è attorno al 7 % del PIL « tra le più basse in Europa occidentale», mentre a pagina 59 si parla in maniera imprecisa di 9 % rispetto a 17 % per i Stati Uniti. Va ricordato pero che quando fu introdotto il federalismo fiscale io fui l'unico a protestare contro questa grave offesa all'ordinamento costituzionale compiuta senza nemmeno un minimo studio preliminare relativo agli impatti prevedibili di questa balorda riforma. Ora al livello sanitario si va in fronte ad una catastrofe senza che siano ancora stabilite le Norme nazionali, senza le quali diventa tutto frontalmente incostituzionale oltre ad essere socialmente, economicamente, e dal punto di vista sanitario, pericoloso e contro-produttivo. Ma questi aspetti interessano meno il signore Gutgeld. Si capisce perché: I servizi pubblici anche essenziali vanno pagati con fondi pubblici o con fondi individuali ticket ecc e pagati da utenti trasformati in clienti più o meno agevoli. Pero vengono gestiti da organismi privati, aprendo così la strada ad ospedali privati gestiti come delle macellerie private con il loro indotto di trasformazione alimentare, cioè gestiti con una logica di business.
Investimenti. Scrive Gutgeld « Spendiamo ogni anno circa 70 miliardi in investimenti pubblici e trasferimenti alle imprese. La qualità della gestione di queste uscite è forse la peggiore tra le ottocento che ogni anno spendiamo. Per questo motivo, riteniamo necessario spostare 30 miliardi, quasi la metà, per utilizzare come un motore di sviluppo e di creazione di posti di lavoro.» ( p 199) Come esattamente? Il mondo appartiene alla finanza e dunque non stupisce che il signore Gutgeld parla di venture capital invece di parlare di controllo pubblico nelle industrie strategiche, di R&D o altre misure realmente pubbliche del genere. Si tratta semplicemente di reindirizzare i soldi pubblici direttamente a fini privati. E questa la vera ossessione del piano di «dislocazione» gutgeldiano. Perché, come si sa dal canto di pappagallo di Gutgeld che intona « il pasto gratis non esiste », si tratta di una semplice traduzione del canto Reaganiano di quasi 35 anni fa : « There is no free lunch ». Pensando al pasto però Gutgeld ha perso il treno. Intanto, il pasto gratuito esiste solo per l'1 % (vedi http://www.repubblica.it/economia/2013/11/14/news/inps_mastrapasqua_conti-70964342/?ref=HREC1-2. In particolare la Tabella « The rich hold assests, the poor have debts ») oppure per il 10 % di Italiani che controllano 48 % delle ricchezze nazionali ... e le pensioni d'oro.
Sociale. Scrive Gutgeld « con circa 320 miliardi di spesa pubblica, pari al 20 per cento del PIL, siamo diventati nel 2012 il primo paese bancomat d'Europa...» (p 117) Come sapiamo il governo sta preparando una new social card per rispettare il parametri europei relativi al contrasto alla povertà. Ma non è di questo misero sostegno ad una povertà, così mantenuta ad arte, che allude il Gutgeld. Per lui lo Stato sociale descritto nella nostra Costituzione è un Babbo Natale (p 52) dispendioso al quale i grandi e meritevoli (sic) non credono ovviamente più. Intanto, ha ragione di puntare a sprechi e mal-gestione, anzi a volta gestione mafiosa-clientelare da parte degli impiegati pubblici quasi a tutti i livelli, rispetto agli utenti. A volta neanche le Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) esistono, e quando esistono sono manipolate speso a fine clientelistiche. Rimane pero che le cifre vanno rimesse nel loro contesto. L'Italia, anche prima dei scaloni, aveva assorbito il peso demografico specifico dello invecchiamento della sua popolazione Questo significa che le ultime riforme avevano altri scopi come da me già denunciato (vedi sezione Italia del mio sito www.la-commune-paraclet.com ) Detto questo, la soluzione non sta certo nella privatizzazione dei servizi pubblici e nella presunta creazione di sostegni mirati in modo incostituzionale all'equità. Se mai l'urgenza sarebbe di tirare le lezioni della bancarotta del federalismo fiscale dal Nord al Sud, passando dal Lazio, in particolare in materia di Sanità. In primo luogo servirebbe la fine delle privatizzazioni e lo stabilimento di Norme nazionali prima di modificare di nuovo la Costituzione per trasferire la Sanità e gli altri servizi essenziali al livello centrale ma con delegazione amministrative alle regioni. Questo risulta già in pratica dai molteplici commissariamenti ma senza nessuno degli vantaggi del sistema di solidarietà nazionale previsto dalla Costituzione, anche qui frontalmente violata.
La dislocazione, la valorizzazione e la cartolizzazione di Gutgeld. Si perché questo è il cuore del progetto. Il resto, con tutti i cliché, riguarda il calore e l'emotività che serve anche con le leggi truffa elettorali e il finanziamento privato incostituzionale dai partiti (con la scusa di finti attacchi alla « casta » ecc.). Il fatto sta che il nostro Paese è ancora un Paese molto ricco. Sembra che il Gutgeld abbia anche gli occhi sul nostro patrimonio artistico culturale. Di fatti, solo un paese ricco come il nostro può permettersi un tale livello di male gestione e di evasione dovuto sopratutto al 10 % più ricco.
Le privatizzazioni furono portate avanti. Scrive il Gutgeld: « ...fra il 1992 e il 2008, le privatizzazioni hanno portato nelle casse dello Stato quasi 150 miliardi di euro, che hanno permesso di alleggerire parzialmente il carico del nostro debito.» (p 174). Ritorneremo sulla questione del debito che rappresenta una grande falsità, una falsità ovvia a tutti visto l'andamento attuale con un debito che si aggira al 133 % del PIL, un debito che è ancora destinato a salire. Comunque, 150 miliardi non sono pochi. Anche se poi quello che rimane da questo trasferimento di ricchezze pubbliche è vistoso a tutte le Italiane e Italiani. Basta citare: Telecom e Alitalia e i loro indotto e industrie periferiche (ad esempio il nostro turismo rovinato). Ma Gutgeld è specialista in cambiamenti (diciamo in « soft and overt regime change », visto che, in questo rispetto, in Italia le cose sono più semplici sin dal Gladio e dai Stay behind.) Perciò in modo realista, Gutgeld ha gli occhi su quello che rimane da privatizzare. Al livello nazionale e al livello regionale.
Al livello nazionale non rimangono cose da poco. Anzi sono aziende o quote di aziende da tutti i punti di vista strategiche per il bene essere e per il futuro del nostro Paese. La lista di Gutgeld si trova pagine 175-176; riassume la lista trasversale usata da tutti i nostri « dirigenti ». Per quanto riguarda le quote pubbliche da dimettere si tratta dell'Eni, Enel, Terna, Finmeccanica, Stm Microelectronics ecc. Al livello delle aziende pubbliche non quotate ci sono sopratutto Le Poste e le Ferrovie. C'è pure il patrimonio immobiliare della PA (da 240-250 miliardi di euro) e l'edilizia residenziale pubblica (50-100 miliardi di euro) dei quali, dice Gutgeld, la meta è vendibile (p 177). Qui il processo di privatizzazione definitivo è già avviato con la Spending review e le leggi finanziarie.
Rimane pero il pezzo grosso: Le privatizzazioni locali (p 176). Immaginate: Nei settori energetico, idrico, trasporti, raccolta rifiuti e altri servizi locali, ci sono attorno a 3500 aziende pubbliche. Le più grandi, dette multiutility, valgono attorno a uno (1) miliardo l'una! Fa venire l'acquolina in bocca o la mostarda al naso, secondo. Ma c'è uno hic, uno grosso hic. Con la modifica della Costituzione nel 2001 federalismo fiscale la competenza locale su queste aziende fu aumentata. Dunque, per compiacere a Gutgeld e amici bisogna rivedere il Capitolo V della Costituzione! (revisione in corso al Parlamento, vedi sotto) Forse, per colmo, ci saranno altri vecchi quartieri romani in altre città da sventrare, come fu fatto prima a Roma. « Nel contesto italiano, sollevare queste questioni significa anche intervenire sul Titolo V della Costituzione, che stabilisce i poteri degli enti territoriali. La modifica dell'articolo avvenuta nel 2001 estende in materia molto ampia le competenze delle regioni, dando loro poteri legislativi (esclusivi o concorrenti con lo Stato) in quasi tutte le materie tranne difesa, ordine pubblico e sicurezza, giustizia, previdenza sociale e tutela dell'ambiente e dei beni culturali. » (p 203). Il progetto di nuovo smantellamento tramite la riforma del Titolo V è già da ottobre scorso in Parlamento. (**)
Dunque è molto chiaro. E anche chiaro la scelta del PD e di Renzi, un reazionario demagogo che non ha mai letto la Costituzione se non per violarla e per imporre una legge elettorale e di finanziamento dei partiti politici totalmente incostituzionale. Questa riforma elettorale ha un solo obbiettivo quello di trasformare la nostra Repubblica, « una e indivisibile » e ancora sottomessa a regole di democrazia avanzate, in una repubblica denaturata data in pasto alla speculazione globale ed alla democrazia degli azionisti (vedi i doni ai partiti con soglia di 300 000 euro !!!)
Ritorniamo un minuto sull'argomento del debito. Dal 1992 al 2008 abbiamo 16 anni. 150 miliardi diviso 16 danno 9,375 miliardo all'anno. Supponiamo invece dividendi annui, riversati da queste imprese ex-pubbliche allo Stato, di 1 miliardi per ognuna di queste 141 operazioni di privatizzazione «concluse con un lieto fine » (p173) e moltiplichiamo per 16. Se sembra troppo, dividiamo per 4 se vogliamo! Si arriva agli introiti sacrificati a favore di furbetti ladroni. Aggiungiamo gli altri dividendi annui che saranno persi con le altre privatizzazioni già previste: Si tratta di una vera e propria idiozia fiscale aggravata da una rapina incostituzionale ed organizzata, niente altro. La nostra Costituzione prevede un'economia mista, si dovrà dunque richiedere un audit. In oltre, sappiamo che il debito continuò ad aumentare malgrado, o per causa di queste privatizzazioni. L'aumento non è stato frenato dai fondi una tantum ricavati dalle privatizzazioni che da noi pero sono sempre andati a chiudere mini-finanziarie, cioè andati in spesse correnti di urgenza (frais de plomberie).
La verità poi sul debito l'ho già spiegata nel mio Uscire dall'euro non serve, serve mettere fine al regime della banca detta universale. Il debito, fin qui minimo, esplose in modo drastico e secolare sin dall'inizio del 1980, cioè sin dall'ulteriore privatizzazione di Bankitalia e dalla sua sottomissione totale al mercato privato; esplose ancora, in seguito, per causa della sua ulteriore sottomissione alle cosiddette poche « banche primarie » quelle che hanno manipolato l'euribor e il libor. Questo avvenne sopratutto dopo il 1999, data dell'abrogazione della Glass Steagal Act che darà l'inizio al disastroso sviluppo della finanza speculativa e della cosiddetta « banca universale ». Questa finanza speculativa sta strangolando i nostri cittadini, le nostre aziende, e il nostro Stato tramite gli illegali commissariamenti della BCE e della UE (i 2 Pack e 6 Pack incostituzionalmente inseriti nel Articolo 81, che non può neanche essere rispettato malgrado la UE abbia lasciato perdere i quasi 9 miliardi di penalità per non rispetto del Patto di stabilità nel 2012; ovviamente la UE non lo fece per ragionevolezza ma per semplice paura di affossare l'Italia, e dunque se stessa, visto che con 15 % del PIL della UE era 17 % prima della crisi - , l'Italia rimane « too big to fail » ...) Ma Gutgeld è un matematico, tra altre sue competenze ; certe cose fa finta che gli sono sfuggite (almeno che gli siano sfuggite davvero, cosa sempre possibile.)
E dunque arriviamo alla farsa finale, una che Gutgeld potrebbe forse declamare sopra un vaporetto sotto il Ponte dei Sospiri a Venezia. Questo programma di dislocazione e di valorizzazione-cartolizzazione porterebbe, secondo simulazioni, a una crescita di 2 % del PIL !!! (p 200 ) Forse sarà un programma di simulazione anteriore alla correzione parziale effettuata da Blanchard al FMI rispetto al cosiddetto consolidamento fiscale. Comunque non c'è dubbio che una percentuale sparata così, in un Paese ormai in preda ad una recessione cronica, dovrebbe contribuire a creare « calore » e « emotività » nella mente dei membri del PD attuale! (Negli anni 70 meno barbari, i stessi, più Dalla che Guccini, dicevano « feeling », il che indica ancora una certa nuance tutta peninsulare.) Per fortuna i membri di questo PD non rappresentano una grande parte dei nostri cittadini. Il vero problema è che Gutgeld ci parla di un piano politicamente trasversale, anzi derivato da una forma mentis singolare che non ha ancora capito il disastro creato dalla spirale negativa da loro nutrita.
Manca un'alternativa politica che prendesse i principi cardini della nostra Costituzione, inclusi uguaglianza e economia mista, veramente sul serio. Secondo la Tesi XI su Feuerbach di Marx « il mondo è già spiegato, ora bisogna cambiarlo ». Si dovrà dunque agire.
Conclusione: Il signore Gutgeld ha un progetto ben chiaro, quello di «valorizzare l'Italia» (p 173), cioè di svenderla al più presto. I dirigenti PD sono tutti con lui. Il popolo di sinistra probabilmente no, anche se si cerca trasversalmente di scavalcarlo con una legge elettorale truffaldina, prima di andare alle elezioni. Speriamo comunque che ai livelli locali il PD sarà capace di prendere le distanze con questo piano di dislocazione.
In fondo, il problema rimanda ad una visione sociale della nostra Repubblica, della nostra Europa e del mondo. Le proposte di Gutgeld sono interessanti sopratutto per i problemi veri che non vengono trattati sul serio. Avremo modo di ritornarci. Intanto, sarebbe bene che tutte le compagne e i compagni diano un colpo d'occhio alle proposte finanziarie di Sbilanciamoci: Costituiscono una buona base di partenza. (vedi http://www.sbilanciamoci.org/tag/controfinanziaria/ )
Paolo De Marco.
Copyright © La Commune Inc, 7 Gennaio 2014.
Note:
*) Oggi possiamo leggere due notizie importanti nei giornali. La prima riguarda il contesto del Jobs Act. Ricorda giustamente l'attuale ministro che furono creati 400 000 impieghi a tempo indeterminati contro 1 milione e 600 000 posti a tempo determinato. Ovviamente i predecessori di Boeri, Garibaldi, e Ichino hanno già percorso questa strada, con risultati non discutibili! Apprendiamo in oltre da Istat che ci sono più di 1 miliardo di ore in cassa integrazione. Non voglio ripetere il mio discorso sulla riduzione del tempo di lavoro (lavorare meno pure di lavorare tutt-e-i) eccetto per ricordare alcuni fatti indiscutibili. Prima dell'arrivo al potere della gauche plurielle, l'ex-ministro Michel Rocard aveva fatto un calcolo semplice: Raccogliendo una parte di tutti vari sussidi ed esoneri spesi in modo improduttivo per la disoccupazione e per le varie forme di assistenza al lavoro, si poteva facilmente ricavare una ventina di miliardi per finanziare la RTT 35-ore, ristabilendo così un ciclo virtuoso e sostenibile senza gravare sopra la fiscalità generale altrimenti evanescente. Il governo Jospin introdusse le 35-ore. Risultati: Il tasso di disoccupazione attorno a 11 % scesi rapidamente a meno di 9 %. Mentre i lavoratori francesi lavoravano in media 39 ore cioè con 4 ore in media pagate come ore supplementari, i lavoratori americani con i loro jobs act, idonei per creare MacDo jobs, lavoravano in media 34,5 ore per poi evolvere al ribasso fine alle 33 ore più o meno attuali ma senza molte coperture sociali e con una misera partecipazione al lavoro oggi caduta attorno al 59 % !!! Questo ebbe un impatto positivo sopra il « reddito globale netto » dei focolari francesi, e sopra il moltiplicatore economico inducendo anche una nuova sociologia dei divertimenti, o di «loisirs », una cosa che non si era vista sin delle conquiste del Fronte popolare nel 36. La ripresa dell'impiego permanente indusse un aumento dei contributi sociali permettendo così al governo di abbassare e quasi di azzerare il buco della Sécurité sociale portandolo attorno a 4 miliardi dalla ventina anteriore ( dunque abbassando una voce che conta nel calcolo del debito pubblico, oltre a permettere la bonifica dei servizi essenziali in questione. In oltre, i lavoratori a tempo indeterminato consumano e pagano tasse. Il governo pote cosi riprendere i suoi interventi strategici con un debito che passò al 59 % del PIL, cioè sotto il 60 % previsto dal criterio di Maastricht. Questi brillanti, risultati raggiunti in solo 2 anni, non furono difesi da un PS in gran parte già filosemite nietzschiano. E dunque neanche dalla destra. Quando la destra ritornò al potere rimesse in questione la RTT. Il buco della Sécu ricominciò a salire assieme al debito nazionale. Bastò solo 300 000 disoccupati in più con l'irruzione della crisi per mettere tutti gli equilibri fondamentali in questione. Con la sottomissione alla finanza speculativa si rovinò il mondo del lavoro e le finanze pubbliche in modo quasi irreversibili. Un anno fa il PS social-liberista di Hollande ritornò al potere; adottò subito il « modello » di smantellamento italiano dimenticando il suo discorso del Bourget che permise la sua elezione in extremis; si tagliò la spesa pubblica e si fece un regalo supplementare di oltre 20 miliardi al padronato senza nessuna controparte in termini di RTT. Risultato: La Francia è rovinata e non può neanche rispettare il Patto di stabilità, anche interpretando il deficit in modo strutturale. La disoccupazione cresce assieme al debito ed agli altri deficit. Ora, il governo PS tenta demagogicamente di mettere il bavaglio alle reali opposizioni usando di mezzi più spregiudicati e sempre più liberticidi. (Si imita così in salsa francese ma con identiche ispirazioni, G. W. Bush, Perle, Kagan, Wolfowitz, Dershowitz ecc., e la loro estensione del Patriot Act, necessario alle nuove crociate, al livello domestico, contando pero sopra una complicità totale dei partiti di sinistra incluso il Pcf e il Front de gauche.) La creazione di Kürztarbeit, o di chômage partiel, o di lavoro a tempo non determinato, o di lavoro a tempo indeterminato senza tutele, come si vuole chiamarlo, è un atto masochista. Almeno che, come credo, non sia una strategia pianificata per distruggere il mondo del lavoro e lo Stato a favore del 1% per i quali si privatizza tutto quello che rimane da privatizzare, prendendo pretesto dei disequilibri fondamentali creati ad arte. Ci mancava solo il bravo Gutgeld! Povera Repubblica italiana fondata sul lavoro dignitoso, la solidarietà nazionale e l'economia mista! Va sottolineato che tutto questo viene fatto in modo frontalmente anticostituzionale, viene fatto con l'aggravio di leggi elettorali che poco fa si chiamavano leggi truffa. Vedi http://www.repubblica.it/politica/2014/01/09/news/job_act_renzi_i_dubbi_di_giovannini_servono_dettagli_e_prevede_molti_investimenti-75459506/?ref=HREC1-1 e http://www.repubblica.it/economia/2014/01/08/news/inps_cassa_integrazione-75402881/?ref=search
**) « Building on the 2001 reform of Title V of the Italian Constitution, which governs the allocation of regulatory and spending powers across government levels, a constitutional amendment bill was adopted last October, with the ambition of further revising this chapter of the Constitution. In particular, the constitutional amendment bill brings some competences back to the central level and strives to reduce conflicts over the division of responsibilities. This reform has not yet been approved by the Italian Parliament. »
Questa nuova riforma del Titolo V evidenza uno fallimento concreto del federalismo fiscale. Purtroppo non sembra essere questo a motivarla ma invece, come fu detto da Gutgeld, serve solo a privatizzare quello che c'è ancora da privatizzare al livello locale.
Assessment of the 2013 national reform programme and stability programme for Italy in http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/eu/countries/italy_en.htm
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Book review: Against the Madness of Manu: B. R. Ambedkar's Writings on Brahmanical Patriarchy, Selected and Introduced by Sharmila Rege, Navayana Publishing Pvt Ltd, First published in January 2013. Reprinted August 2013.
1) Endogamy and caste
1) Endogamy and caste.
Ms Sharmila Rege's book Against the Madness of Manu is an essential contribution to many fields of study as well as to the understanding of the past and present history of India's and of the World. The present wave of ordered rapes makes this sadly clear albeit in a caricatural fashion. Westerners too are now faced with a cynical strategy devised by their leading classes (the infamous 1 % and their allies and servi in camera.) Their aim is to implement a « return » to inequalities and obscurantism based on « deference to Authority » and on the barbaric use of the Nietzschean Hammer. In such a context, Ms Rege's presentation of Ambedkar's thesis on castes, calculated violence and endogamy will act as a revelation.
Those who already know Nietzsche and his current philo-Semite Nietzschean unearthing will immediately appreciate the crucial importance of this book. Of course, Ambedkar's analysis of endogamy precedes that of Germaine Tillion: Both are essential for social sciences as well as for the development of a modern non-Freudian and non-Jungian psychoanalysis. This will be occulted by academics only at the cost of transforming themselves into servi in camera as is proven in my Pour Marx, contre le nihilisme.
Ambedkar's pioneering periodisation of the origins of endogamy and castes remains vital. It does not concern India's only. Of course, as Paul Lafargue, the great student of G. Vico, showed, this question involves the transition from pre-patriarchal societies to patriarchal ones. Thus, Prehistory must now be brought to task, in particular the analysis of fecundity rituals. This is often occulted by a calculated Western and generally academic conformist Puritanism, as much as Pompeii's frescoes which are but a late Roman echo of the earlier Neolithic and Protohistoric pictograms and other art forms. These fecundity rituals provide the main transition between « primitive exogamy » and hierarchical endogamy. The façades of many old temples in Southern India are also speaking to a later stage of this transition.
Because this touches upon the understanding of sexualized reproduction, one must also look at the behavior of higher primates. Fortunately, this investigation has already started. It will shade new light on the various lineage structures analyzed by Lévi-Strauss and others as well as on their social and psychological consequences. In the end, the simple arithmetic of sexualized reproduction irrefutably illustrates the meaning gap between inequality and difference, male and female contributing equally to the renewal of the human species. This equality supposes the wide and unfettered circulation of women and thus a new exogamy founded on gender parity and equal access to employment with equal pay. When this realization of human emancipation is negated, more or less unfortunate social and cultural mediations are invented to deal with the ensuing problems: Ms Rege's rightly points to sati and enforced widowhood as well as to institutionalized violence. When the negation of human equality rests on a strict and reinforced endogamy (Manu, Nietzsche and his teachers etc.), the human species is endangered because it becomes pray to consanguinity, cultural closure, obscurantism and systemic violence against the people, and especially against women.
It does not come as a surprise to see the confluence between women's liberation movement and the general unfolding of human emancipation: One beautiful example is Diderot's understanding of the liberating impact of Polynesian lineage structures which he lays down in his Suppléments au Voyage de Bougainville. The best revolutionaries understood this immediately, including many pioneering women. The Declaration of Human Rights remains a Declaration of Man Rights without it.
Ambedkar's lesson on castes and emancipation remains essential for all, not only for India. It is only sad that life did not grant Ms Rege's more time to fully offer her own essential contributions. She is clearly right in stating that the celebration of December 25, 1927 is not in opposition to the March 8 celebration, quite the opposite.
The full title of Ms Sharmila Rege's book is « Against the madness of Manu: B.R. Ambedkar's writings on Brahmanical patriarchy », selected and introduced by Sharmila Rege. Through her selection, Ms Rege has managed to illustrate perfectly B. R. Ambedkar's approach to the modernization of India. Everyone will agree that Ambedkar's distinguished studies far exceed in importance the rather conventional writing of Amartya Sen. His proposed Hindu Code Bill summarizes it all. It was rightly described as nothing less than the road to « the democratizing of India. » (p 55)
B. R. Ambedkar was not just the Law Minister in charge of introducing the Bill. It was mainly his child and as such it was backed by a profound and groundbreaking knowledge of endogamy and of castes before and after Manu. On that basis, Ambedkar emphasized the underlying profound unity of India, especially as the caste's logic used inequality to incorporate external tribes and splinter communities. As I understand it, Ambedkar never minimized the existing socio-confessional differences (Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh communities.) Quite the contrary, he wished to replace the previous generalization of caste's logic with the universalizing of human equality as the main organizing vector of society and of the Nation. He fully understood the crucial importance of initial parameters. Without unduly antagonizing the existing groups, already faced with the many contradictions emerging from modern capitalism and modern and increasingly globalised life patterns, he was content to let history unfold within the new framework devised by his Hindu Code Bill.
Of the regressive teachings of Manu he noted that he had wanted to deprive women of the liberty gained with Buddhism. (p 129) Ms Rege summarized the Bill in the following fashion: « Most of the uproar was caused by clauses referring to the abolition of cast restrictions in marriage, monogamy, divorce, and equal share in property for women. Against such censure, Ambedkar's sophisticated and reasoned argument illuminates the Bill's necessity and persuades naysayers to keep an open mind, all of which preceded his final recourse to resignation in protest. For instance, he argued that lifting caste restrictions in marriage and adoption was not tantamount to a ban on these practices within caste. » (p 195) He knew his Burke as well as his Manu and diplomatically described himself as a « progressive conservative » (p 230) in a move intended to win the backing of Parliament just as he had done for the Rau Committee in the Constituent Assembly.
B. R. Ambedkar had chosen inclusive social « métissage », operationalised through intermarriage, over Manu's hierarchical use of so-called « bastardization » to enforce caste's cohesiveness and continuity. He was clearly betting on the good sense and on the future of a country made up by the 90 % plus who, like him, belonged to « the other caste » as he proudly remarked. (p 220)
Defending the Bill in Parliament Ambedkar said: « Consequently, what will happen in Hindu society so far as marriage law is concerned is there will be a competition between the old and the new. And we hope that those who are following the new path will win subsequently. But, as I say, if they do not, we are quite content to allow two parallel system of marriage to be operative in this country and anyone may make his choice. There is no violation of a shastra, no violation of a smirti at all. » (pp 216-217) The fact is that he was rightly convinced that economic reforms would eventually fail without the prior reform of the underlying lineage and inheritance structures laid out in the Bill. « In explaining his resignation Ambedkar wrote: 'To leave inequality between class and class, between sex and sex which is the soul of Hindu society untouched and to go on passing legislation relating to economic problems is to make a farce of our Constitution and to build a palace on a dung heap. This is the significance I attached to the Hindu Code.' » (pp 200-201)
This was a most profound insight. Indeed, there can never be any « social justice » (Rawls, Giddens etc.) nor any social mobility without the prior rejection of structural inequalities (racial, caste, class). Even the « life chances » derived from the Austrian School utility economic theory which informed Max Weber's « meritocracy » turn out to be the fancy of a vacuous ideology without the restitution of a plain level field for each generation as had been advocated long before by Thomas Paine in his magisterial Rights of Man. Gender parity, equal access to education and knowledge, and the availability of the social safety nets are crucial to counterbalance, within households of variable size, the inherent injustice induced by the individual capitalist salary. As is crucial non discrimination inside the womb: Noting already then the preference for boys inherently tied up to the inheritance regime, Ambedkar simply stated: « I do not know what would happen to this world if daughters were not born. » (p 225) The most grotesque discrepancies in social redistribution of wealth and in social status do not materialize when gender parity, household's differential needs and equal access to education are respected (i.e. the 1 % versus the rest of the citizens.) Hence, B. R. Ambedkar displayed a profound acumen when he noted that: « A caste is an enclosed class. » (p 94)
Inequality has many faces. As I have tried to show (2) the ugliest and most barbaric one is that propagated by self-elected archaic tribes and castes who fancy themselves to be the unique divinely elected « Masters of the Earth ». They turn out to be putative masters who would dangerously pretend to ignore the dialectic of master and slave just because they have taught themselves to be « beyond good and evil» and, at times, to have no souls in their self-serving dispensation of obscurantism to the masses seen as mere Chandalas, as well as in their righteous use of the Nietzschean Hammer to preserve their privileges by sheer brute force. (See for instance the illegal preventive wars on undefined « terrorism » and the multifaceted consequences of this regressive strategy, most particularly the all-out war (harassment, ostracism and even torture under medical supervision!) against internal dissent embodied by the US Patriot Act and by its many international sequels. Enlightened Hindus and others might easily recognize here a reversed Planet of the Apes' narrative.
I have also brought attention to the fact that the Western putative masters, born after Edmund Burke and his regressive defense of Tradition, learned a great deal from Manu and from the Brahmin. This is obvious with the British imperial intelligence services and with the syphilitic Grand Master Nietzsche and many others. Ambedkar did not ignore that the Foreign Office and the Privy Council had quickly assimilated Sydenham's logic in order to preserve their Empire. It was quickly implemented in India as well as in the Dominions. According to it, in order to defeat patriots and independentists the appearance of democracy had to be granted rather than democracy itself. The Western pupils had now endorsed the mantle of the masters, although both logically shared a similar « mind set » aside from its cultural coloration. Temples always have their higher and lower priests. (3)
Ambedkar was arguing instead for real democracy and, emphasizing gender parity, for the Brotherhood of Man: His Hindu Code Bill was intended as laying the foundations for its future realization. His approach supposed a sophisticated knowledge of the underlying endogamy and exogamy structures. Today one would want to extend the necessary reforms to civil rights and to the modernization of Human customs. (4) Unfortunately, Ambedkar's pioneering contribution and political prescriptions retain their urgency today both in India and, in a similar but different form, elsewhere in the World. As I see it B.R. Ambedkar's resignation from the office of Law Minster was emphasizing the necessity to continue the struggle without compromising compromises.
Paul De Marco © La Commune Inc, March 2014.
Notes:
1) Ms Sharmila Rege's book is entitled « Against the madness of Manu. B.R. Ambedkar's writings on Brahmanical patriarchy, selected and introduced by Sharmila Rege. Navayana Publishing Pvt Ltd, First published in January 2013. Reprinted August 2013.
2) See for instance Pour Marx, contre le nihilisme, « Nietzsche as an awakened nightmare » and « Heidegger, the intimate corruption of the soul and of Human becoming » in the Livres/Books section of this site.
3) On the Western temple builders' murderous and genocidal regressions, particularly in Palestine, see the Section Fascism/Racism/Exclusivism. Note how carefully and laboriously all little and big servi in camera (brothers?) ignore my main arguments, namely first the precedence of Sumerian texts most notably the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Legend of Sargon as well as the Hammurabi Code and Ancient Egyptian « books » over the obvious late copy forming the Old Testament. Second, my emphasis on the important transition from astrology to astronomy linked with the attempt to deal with psychological phenomena, in particular schizophrenia, as was first developed in the second part of my Pour Marx, contre le nihilisme now offered in English in the Livres-Books section of this same site. Without these contributions, the important domain of archeoastronomy was fast becoming more obscurantist and credulous than the kabalah itself, and for the same reasons. I have equally underlined the crucial importance of Joachim of Fiore pointing out the secularization of the Spirit and the fact that the only temple worthy of worship is human conscience, not a temple made of stone and ludicrously, though symptomatically, said « to blind the eyes », i.e., Reason. Such a wonder!
4) See, in the pink section of my site, the essay « Mariage, unions civiles et institutionalization des moeurs. »
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Il libro di Vincenzo Gentile, « La Calabria strappata: l'emigrazione transoceanica dal sogno americano all'incubo di Monongah » (2009 Edizione LibrAre, p 343) colma con successo una grande lacuna parzialmente cosciente nella ricerca storica italiana. Oltre i ricercatori interesserà tutti gli immigranti ed i loro discendenti, particolarmente nel cosiddetto Nuovo Mondo. Questi vi troveranno serie di dati minuziosamente raccolti ed analizzati, assieme a numerose fotografie ed illustrazioni scelte con cura.
Il titolo evocativo inquadra il campo della ricerca. Vengono analizzati i flussi migratori delle tre provincie calabrese destando particolare attenzione alla città silana di San Giovanni in Fiore. Non a caso viene sottolineata la forte relazione tra altimetria ed immigrazione alla fine del XIX e l'inizio del XX secolo. L'autore dedica questo « labour of love » ai suoi nonni « e a tutti quelli che hanno lasciato con sacrificio la propria terra per dare alle generazioni future l'opportunità di vivere una vita dignitosa. »
Il fenomeno migratorio viene analizzato come la « causa mediatrice » delle contraddizioni sociali del nostro Paese tanto da parte dei ceti dominanti, in primo luogo i latifondisti, quanto da parte del popolo in cerca di quella dignità di lavoro e di vita che la Costituzione garantirà formalmente solo dopo il 1948. Di fatti, l'unità nazionale aggraverà la situazione socio-economica nel Meridione malgrado la promessa di emancipazione portata con esemplare spirito di disinteressamento dai Fratelli Bandiera e da tanti altri. Il brigantaggio e l'immigrazione si svilupparono come forme di resistenza dal basso, o per parafrasare Ignazio Silone, come « uscite di sicurezza » istintive prima che nascessero forme di rinnovamento sociale più mature come quella incarnata dalla Lega dei contadini.
Il solito gioco dialettico fece si che il fenomeno migratorio di massa cambiò l'Italia assieme al Nuovo Mondo. La coscienza stessa delle persone sarà durevolmente trasmutata. Durante questa prima fase di immigrazione di massa, numerosi furono quelli che ritornarono al paese con i loro risparmi duramente acquisiti ma sopratutto con una diversa visione del mondo. Ne vennero mutate le forme di organizzazione sociali e familiari, il punto di vista sui costumi e la religione.
Il tributo umano pagato dal nostro popolo, e sopratutto dai « meridionali » durante questo esodio, troppo spesso forzato, dalle misere condizioni economiche, fu immenso. Le traversate costituivano un buon affare per le agenzie marittime: fine 1800, vi erano in Italia oltre 20 000 agenti e subagenti vari, tra i quali 463 per la Provincia di Cosenza. Questi viaggi transatlantici furono ritmati da immane tragedie per lo più taciute dalla storia ufficiale, al contrario della mediatica e tragica fine del Titanic. Ad esempio, il naufragio dell'Utopia avvenuto il 17 marzo 1891 costò la vita a 576 immigranti su 878 imbarcati, « quasi tutti meridionali ». Altri naufragi altrettanto micidiali includono quelli dell'Alfio, del Sirio e del Campania. Le condizioni di partenza erano dettate dalle politiche migratorie, o meglio di popolamento, cinicamente gestite da parte dei paesi ospiti con la complicità tacita del nostro paese. Eventualmente, i governi italiani presero qualche provvedimenti legali lasciando per il resto il campo all'iniziativa individuale oppure a Francesca Saverio Cabrini. La Cabrini fu la prima missionaria femminile, essa cercò di rimediare alle carenze statali. La sua Congregazione offriva corsi di lingua ed assistenza per prassi burocratiche e corrispondenza con le famiglie.
Siamo in una epoca nella quale l'abrogazione della schiavitù fece emergere una massiccia domanda di lavoro salariato a bassissimo costo. Di fatti, i salari degli immigrati sottomessi a forme americane di caporalato ( Padrone o Boss system ) erano più bassi di quelli dei lavoratori indigeni, quelli dei meridionali essendo spesso i più bassi. La sicurezza sul posto di lavoro veniva lasciata alla prudenza individuale in un sistema dominato dalla sola legge del profitto. In quelli anni, gli immigranti in partenza verso il Brasile o l'Argentina conobbero forse le peggiori condizioni perché spesso abbandonati a loro stessi senza lavoro e senza nessun mezzo per ritornare in patria. L'autore da una commovente interpretazione dell'orecchino ostentato da molti immigranti, questo singolo vezzo servendo a volta ad assicurarsi una sepoltura, spesso anonima. Quando i migranti erano fortunati, all'arrivo erano accolti dalla visione della Statua della Libertà prima di essere condotti nel famoso luogo di quarantena di Ellis Island.
Anche nei Stati Uniti, le condizioni di lavoro che confrontarono queste prime coorte di immigranti erano scarse. Ci vorrà il massacro di Ludlow del aprile 1914 con la morte di decine di donne e bambini per convincere i specialisti di relazioni industriali di Rockefeller a parlare di « industria « e « umanità », concretizzando questi nuovi discorsi con nuovi diritti sindacali, pur minimi e non privi di paternalismo. Molti migranti italiani e sangiovannesi furono impiegati come minatori in West Virginia. Tutti grandi e docili lavoratori. Certi, come Little Joe, potevano concorre con Stacanov oppure con « il cavallo Gondrano della Fattoria degli animali di George Orwell.» In quelle miniere molti vi perdettero le loro illusioni e, a volta, la vita.
Il pregio più grande di questa ricerca è certamente di avere ridato vita e memoria a queste vittime. Commuove l'autore quando racconta come rintracciò il grande dramma di Monongah nei proverbi e nella pronuncia dialettale, il senso dei quali era perduto per i stessi locutori (« te pensi ca vaiu a mironga o minonga?») La tragedia di Monongah del 6 dicembre 1907 viene trattata in dettagli con una abbondanza di illustrazioni e l'elenco delle vittime sangiovannesi. Viene giustamente utilizzata come simbolo delle altre numerose tragedie del genere alle quali l'autore accenna.
In queste prime e durissime fase di immigrazione non vi erano solo i lati oscuri del « sogno americano ». L'emergenza delle Little Italy nel Nuovo Mondo mostra la resilienza degli immigrati in un ambiente ostile. I pregiudizi contro i cosiddetti wops andavano di pari passi con il successo di figure mitiche tale Valentino oppure Angelo Siciliano, alias Charles Atlas, « l'inventore del nuovo culturismo » dato secondo l'autore come « simbolo della forza e della bellezza americana. » La loro creatività nativa non andò estinta. L'invenzione del « Petittomule » mezzo meccanico molto efficace per spostare grandi quantità di pesi, fu suggerita al suo autore dal ricordo del suo mulo nella Cona, una nota e ripida strada storica di San Giovanni in Fiore.
Oggi vari politici di spicchio nel West Virginia ed altrove nel Nuovo Mondo sono di origine italiana, a volta sangiovannessi. Conclude l'autore: in questi luoghi « ci sentiamo un po' a casa nostra, avendoli fatti propri! »
L'immigrazione rimane un grande vettore di internazionalizzazione. Oggi l'Italia diventa paese oste. Ci auguriamo che saprà dare condizioni di accoglio degni della sua Costituzione, la quale include il diritto di asilo e la dignità del lavoro, approfittando di questi nuovi flussi per rafforzare l'internazionalismo, e lo spirito di pace tra i popoli e di sviluppo mutualmente benefico.
Paolo De Marco.
San Giovanni in Fiore, 7 agosto 2014.
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Vincenzo Gentile's book « La Calabria strappata: l'emigrazione transoceanica dal sogno americano all'incubo di Monongah » (2009 Edizione LibrAre, p 343) sucessfully fills an unconscious lacuna in the Italian historical production. It will be of great interest to scholars and generally to all immigrants and to their descendants, especially those residing in the so-called New World. They will find consistent series of data painstakingly gathered and rigorously analysed, together with numerous photographs and illustrations always chosen with care.
The title speaks for itself. The migrants' flows from the three Calabrian provinces are analysed with an emphasis on those originating from the Silas main city San Giovanni in Fiore. Interestingly, the author notes the strong causal link between altitude and immigration at the turn of the XIX and XX Centuries. He dedicates this « labour of love » to his grandfathers and to « all those who left their own land at great sacrifices for themselves to ensure the opportunity to live with dignity to the new generations. »
The migrating phenomenon is analysed as the great « mediating vector » of the social contradictions of our Country for the leading circles, particularly the owners of the latifundia, as well as for the people in search of a worthy and dignified life, which the Constitution will formally guarantee only after 1948. In fact, the unification of Italy had aggravated the socio-economic situation in the Mezzogiorno despite the promises of emancipation propagated with exemplary and disinterested spirit by the Bandiera Brothers and many others. The formation of bands of « brigands » and immigration simultaneously developed as forms of resistance from below, as « emergency exits », to paraphrase Ignazio Silone, at least until the emergence of more mature forms of social renewal such as that embodied by the Peasants League.
The usual dialectical interplay ushered by the migrating phenomenon profoundly changed Italy as well as the New World. The consciousness of the masses was deeply transformed. As a consequence of this first migrating wave many immigrants will return home with their hard-won savings and above all with a mutated world view. All the social and family forms of organization will be affected as well as the perception of social mores and of religion.
The human tribute paid by our people and above all by the « Meridionals » during this often economically forced exodus was dramatic. The transoceanic trips were good business for the shipping companies: At the end of the XIX Century there were more than 20 000 agents and subagents in Italy, of whom 463 in the Cosenza Province. These trips were punctuated by untold tragedies, shamefully hushed by official history unlike that of the Titanic. For instance, the shipwreck of the Utopia on March 17, 1891, took the lives of 576 immigrants among the 878 embarked, « most of them being Meridionals ». Others shipwrecks, similarly costly in terms of human lives, included those of the Alfio, of the Sirio and of the Campania. The conditions presiding over these departures were dictated by the immigration, or rather the settlement policies cynically enacted by the host countries. This happened with the complicity of our own country, which eventually felt obliged to take some legal measures, being otherwise content to leave the field to individual initiative and to Francesca Saverio Cabrini. Cabrini, the first woman missionary, tried to remedy these governmental lacunae; her Congregation offered language courses, assistance for bureaucratic procedures and facilitated the written correspondence with the families.
At that time the abrogation of slavery led to a massive demand for low paid salaried work. The wages of the immigrants subjected to American forms of labor « contracts », such as the Padrone or Boss System, were systematically lower than those of the indigenous workers, those of the Meridionals being the lowest. Safety on the job was left to individual ingenuity in a system mainly driven by profit motives. In those years, the immigrants leaving for Brazil or for Argentina were met with the worst conditions because they often were left to their own means without a job and without the means to pay for their return ticket. The author gives us a moving interpretation of the earring worn by many immigrants, this singular possession transforming into a mean to ensure a decent and often anonymous burial. When the migrants were fortunate they were welcomed by the vision of the Statue of Liberty just before being quarantined in the famous Ellis Island.
In the United States the working conditions confronting these first waves of immigrants were similarly difficult. It took the Ludlow massacre of April 1914 with dozens of victims, among whom many women and children, to convince the experts of industrial relations working for Rockefeller to start conjugating « industry » with « humanity ». These new discourses were eventually concretized with new union rights, albeit too often restricted and paternalistic. Many Italian and Sangiovannesi migrants were employed in the mines of West Virginia. They were known as hardworking and docile workers. Some, like Little Joe, could have entered into competition with Stakanov or with « the horse Gondrano from George Orwell's « Animal Farm ». Many lost their illusions and their life in these mines.
The worthiest contribution of this study is most certainly to have restored the memory and the voices of these victims. It is hard not to be moved when the author recalls how he suddenly traced the great tragedy of Monongah in the proverbs and their pronunciation in the Sangiovannese dialect, the sense of which was often lost to the speakers (for instance: « te pensi ca vaiu a mironga o minonga?»). The Monongah tragedy, which happened on December 6, 1907, is here treated in details with an abundance of illustrations and a list of victims from San Giovanni in Fiore. It is rightly taken here as the symbol for all the other similar tragedies mentioned by the author.
These initial waves of immigrants lived through very hard times; but not all was dark. The emergence of many Little Italy in the New World bears testimonial to the resilience of the immigrants in a hostile environment. The many prejudices against the so-called wops went hand in hand with the success of mythical figures such as Valentino or Angelo Siciliano, alias Charles Atlas, « the inventor of a new form of bodybuilding »; as the author says, he became the « symbol of American force and masculine sex appeal ». The immigrants' creativity never failed them. Testimony to this is the invention of the « Petittomule », an efficient mechanical mean to move great weights, which came to the mind of its inventor when he thought about his mule in the Cona, a notoriously and steep historical street of his native San Giovanni in Fiore.
Nowadays many known politicians in West Virginia and elsewhere in the World are from Italian origin, sometimes retracing their roots to San Giovanni in Fiore. As the author writes in conclusion: « We feel a bit at home in these lands, having made them our own! » Immigration remains a great vector for the internationalisation process.
Italy has now become a host country. It is to be hoped that she will be up to the task, offering to the new immigrants a welcome worthy of her Constitution, which includes refugee rights as well as dignified labour conditions. It is to be hoped that she will know how to benefit from these great new inflows to straighten internationalism, the spirit of peace among all peoples and to foster a mutually beneficial socio-economical and cultural development.
Paolo De Marco.
San Giovanni in Fiore, August 7, 2014.
XXX
LES INEPTIES CONCAVES DE PIKETTY SUR L'INEGALITE ET LES PATRIMOINES.
(Ceci constitue la première partie. Pour le texte complet en anglais, cliquez ici.)
Introduction.
Les paramètres de Piketty.
Conclusion.
Résumé : Les perceptions sont données pour la réalité ; de même, une image vaut mille mots pour la construction d'une bonne narration. Ceci est surtout le cas pour celles et ceux qui n'ont ni le temps ni les ressources pour en vérifier la justesse scientifique et la pertinence socioéconomique et politique. Piketty propose donc une série de courbes et de graphiques destinés à servir de référence pour les plus naïfs. Il vise ainsi à façonner la perception du monde des lectrices et des électeurs, y compris universitaires; d'autant plus que ce matériel est mis à disposition en ligne. Or, il s'agit de constructions statistiques frauduleuses qui visent à prouver que l'inégalité a toujours existé en tout temps et en tous lieux. Il serait donc irrationnel et vain de prétendre changer ce qui découle d'une loi naturelle. Cette fraude repose sur plusieurs trucages méthodologiques. En particulier, Piketty, qui ne maîtrise pas la science comparative, choisit de ne pas tenir compte de l'expérience communiste contraire à sa thèse. Il efface ainsi ex cathedra plus de 70 d'histoire moderne hautement signifiante pour son sujet d'étude. Il écarte également les paradis fiscaux et les dérivés financiers qui explosèrent pourtant après 1999. Or, en tenant compte de ces derniers son ratio « normal » d'inégalité, oscillant de 6 ou 8 pour 1 selon ses courbes en U, s'avèrerait dramatiquement sous-évalué. En effet, selon ses propres dires relégués en une note en bas de page, il s'établirait plutôt à 20 ou 30 pour 1. Un tel écart serait, en effet, plus difficile à justifier, bien qu'il soit lui-même sous-évalué. Par conséquent, Piketty n'en tient pas compte et le tour est joué ! Ce défenseur du capital global veut lui éviter une fin « apocalyptique », c'est entendu. Encore que ce ne soit pas là le rôle d'un universitaire payé sur fonds publics. Mais peut-il alors prétendre être pris au sérieux par des gens sérieux ?
Introduction
Piketty est un idéologue éveillé, c'est-à-dire qu'il anticipe selon le besoin des intérêts qu'il sert. Il vise uniquement à servir la légitimation des transnationales et à remplacer le PIB par le Revenu National ou RN. Et donc par un appareil statistique débarrassé de l'encombrement de la production nationale porté à mettre en relief une croissance qu'il faudrait alors partager. Par conséquent le rôle de régulation joué par l'Etat s'en trouverait justifié. Ceci revient donc à substituer la souveraineté nationale par la « gouvernance globale privée », laquelle vise le dépérissement de tous les Etats à son profit impérial. D'où l'importance attachée à étendre globalement, bien entendu en les reformulant, les séries statistiques de Kuznets, voire de Furet, en les harmonisant si possible, à commencer par les pays riches. Piketty nous informe que ce vaillant labeur porte déjà « sur trois siècles et plus de vingt pays ». (p 16)
Piketty est convaincu que sans son apport, le monde capitaliste qu'il faut sauver du désastre, s'en va vers l'« apocalypse » (p 16) comme au temps de Malthus lorsque la quantité de terre disponible par rapport à la population en croissance géométrique semblait représenter une contradiction létale pour le système. Ou encore au temps de Ricardo qui opposait la logique de la rente à celle du profit industriel, ou encore au temps de Marx qui selon Piketty aurait tablé sur la contradiction interne de « l'accumulation infinie » du capital dont Marx n'a jamais parlé, mais tant pis. En effet, pour Marx la contradiction principale du capitalisme ne tient pas dans l'accumulation qui sera poursuivie, voire accélérée, par le communisme ; ceci pour libérer la force de travail par le biais de l'accroissement de la composition organique du capital, donc de sa productivité, afin de permettre son émancipation par le temps socialement libéré ; elle tient au contraire dans la contradiction proprement capitaliste qui oppose surproduction et sous-consommation, le développement des forces productives et celui des rapports de production. Cette contradiction principale du Mode de Production Capitaliste se présente à nouveau sous nos yeux dans la forme outrée du monétarisme et de sa public policy.
Pour sa part, Piketty imagine une contradiction qu'il exprime ainsi : r > g, soit le « taux de rendement du capital » supérieur au taux de croissance. Le capital est allègrement confondu ici de manière générique avec le « patrimoine », ce qui n'est pas admissible. Pour Piketty, cet état de chose peut mener vers le nouvel apocalypse de l'inégalité insoutenable. Cette inégalité de revenu, symbolisée par l'écart croissant entre le 1 % plus riche, voire les fractions de ce 1 %, et les autres 99 %, est traitée comme une inégalité insoutenable sans que l'on sache précisément pourquoi elle serait effectivement insoutenable pour lui (on est vaguement renvoyé aux inepties de Rawls sur la « social justice », p 768). Du coup sa mission est claire : « Des moyens existent cependant pour que la démocratie et l'intérêt général parviennent à reprendre le contrôle du capitalisme et des intérêts privés, tout en repoussant les replis protectionnistes et nationalistes. Ce livre tente de faire des propositions en ce sens, en s'appuyant sur les leçons historiques, dont le récit forme la trame principale de l'ouvrage. » (p 16) ; à noter ici l'emploi du terme « récit ». En défense de sa proposition « utopique » en faveur d'un impôt progressif mondial sur le capital, dont il se garde bien de fixer le taux minimum, donc les objectifs à atteindre (p 831), il affirme : « Beaucoup rejetteront l'impôt sur le capital comme une illusion dangereuse, de la même façon que l'impôt sur le revenu était rejeté il y a un peu plus d'un siècle. Pourtant, à bien y regarder, cette solution est beaucoup moins dangereuse que les options alternatives. » (p 837, les italiques me sont dus.)
Admettons hypothétiquement une économie en croissance séculière soutenue produisant des emplois ; du coup, le poids des inégalités croissantes serait relativisé par la hausse du niveau de vie au bas de l'échelle, surtout si les emplois en question s'avéraient être des emplois à temps plein impliquant de bons programmes sociaux, publics et universellement accessibles. Piketty s'en soucie peu : or, la croissance américaine depuis 1980 et surtout depuis 2007-2008 n'est plus uniquement une « jobless revovery » mais une croissance qui détruit les emplois. De plus, elle détruit les emplois à temps plein, en même temps que les cotisations sociales et donc les programmes sociaux participant à la formation du « salaire différé » et du « revenu global net » des ménages. Aujourd'hui le taux de participation de la force de travail aux USA est le plus bas depuis les derniers 35 ans, alors même que l'on annonce la baisse du taux de chômage dans le sens du Department of Labor, qui est aussi peu crédible que le taux selon le BIT (voire ma Note ** dans mon Livre III intitulé Keynésianisme, Marxisme, Stabilité Economique et Croissance, librement accessible dans Download Now, section Livres-Books de mon site www.la-commune-paraclet.com qui donne une idée des vrais chiffres du chômage.)
Les apocalypses antérieurs furent levés et le système sauvé, du moins pour un temps. Du coup, Piketty propose sa solution pour sauver le système de l'apocalypse actuel par lui défini, à savoir une simplification radicale de la fiscalité en faveur d'un impôt progressif sur le capital à l'échelle globale. C'est un remède que Piketty lui-même qualifie d' « utopie » utile (p 836), alors que d'autres pourraient légitimement le définir comme un énième «mythe sorélien », ou encore une nouvelle «narration » uniquement destinée à sauver et conforter l'hégémonie absolue de la « gouvernance globale privée », c'est-à-dire une démocratie globale d'actionnariat substituée à la démocratie représentative bourgeoise. Comme chacun sait, cette dernière est soudain devenue suspecte du fait de son ancrage dans des constitutions anti-antifascistes ne reconnaissant qu'un seul souverain, le peuple. (Il est ici piquant de noter qu'à l'image d'un vulgaire Denis Kesler, la Goldman and Sachs trouve que ces constitutions sont désormais un obstacle à lever pour le capital.)
On s'en doute, Piketty n'est guère loquace sur le genre de relation que cet impôt global entretiendrait avec les impôts existants, y compris sous la forme dilapidatrice gigantesque des tax expenditures qui une fois accordées disparaissent gentiment des radars. Il en dit très peu également sur le niveau de soutien à accorder aux revenus au bas de l'échelle pour aboutir à un taux d'inégalité « acceptable ». Le fait est que ni le marginalisme ni aucune branche de l'économie bourgeoise ne permet de répondre à cette demande sans se contredire sur le rôle joué par le marché dans l'établissement de l'équilibre économique. Du coup, en creusant un peu sans vouloir imputer à Piketty ce qu'il est bien incapable d'expliciter, on arrive plus ou moins à un impôt global sur le capital remplaçant tous les autres ou presque, pourvu qu'il puisse soutenir ce que Yoland Bresson appelle le « revenu minimum de base ». Selon Yoland Bresson il serait fixé entre 350 et 500 euros par mois. A ce niveau on approcherait en effet aisément d'une harmonisation européenne et globale !!!
Dans ce cas de figure, ceci nous renverrait aux deux moutures antérieures du « revenu annuel minimum garanti » de Milton Friedman avant et après l'effondrement de l'Urss ce qui à son tour renvoie au Report from the Iron Mountain. Ce rapport voulu par l'Establishment américain soutenait que, du fait de la croissance accélérée de la productivité moderne, le capitalisme ne nécessiterait plus à terme que de quelque 20 % de la force de travail disponible. Que faire alors des 80 % restants ? Quoiqu'en dise les usuels enfumeurs du « damage control », John Galbraith confirma l'authenticité de ce Rapport sur son honneur dans la préface qu'il écrivit lors de sa première édition. Ce Rapport concluait en faveur d'un « retour » forcé vers la société du nouvel esclavage salarié et de la nouvelle domesticité en instrumentalisant la peur y compris en matière d'écologie de masse - et en éliminant les surplus de population par la guerre, voire par l'introduction de jeux meurtriers entendus comme versions modernes des arènes romaines. (Marcello Mastroianni a même joué dans un film portant sur ce sujet précis dans les années 70.)
Dans cette foulée, des Brezinski concevront leurs guerres au nom de la société technétronique. De même, au sein de la Trilatérale, pour un Samuel Huntington, déjà concepteur des « strategic hamlets » mis en oeuvre au Vietnam et au Guatemala, il fallait bloquer d'urgence les « rising expectations » des travailleurs et réimposer la « déférence envers l'Autorité », en particulier grâce au contrôle des flux autorisés de la communication. Cette idée s'inscrit aujourd'hui dans le cadre post-9/11 de la « guerre préventive » et de ses Patriot Acts, ces versions externe ou interne étant pareillement illégales aux yeux de la loi internationale. Piketty devra s'expliquer là-dessus à défaut de se voir imputer ce qui autrement serait une pénible évidence.
Nous laisserons ici de côté les critiques méthodologiques intra-paramètres. (Voir à ce sujet la seconde partie en anglais.) Car avec Piketty les paramètres eux-mêmes sont aléatoires ou faux. Il faut donc commencer par eux. Par exemple, Piketty utilise des statistiques émergeant avec l'impôt sur le revenu puis son élargissement à la faveur des deux guerres mondiales, en particulier la Seconde. Cette base est insuffisante pour déterminer le revenu disponible des ménages, et surtout les composants du standard de vie, dont il importe de savoir comment ils sont socialement organisés. De même, pour les patrimoines. En son temps, le Collectif Adret avait montré que les chiffres n'étaient pas disponibles ou bien qu'ils étaient soigneusement dissimulés par le fisc. Ce « Collectif » était essentiellement composé par Lipietz avant qu'il ne versât dans les ahurissants applaudissements de la directive européenne en faveur des 48, 60, 65, voire 72 heures hebdomadaires …
A l'heure de la financiarisation de l'économie par le biais de l'hégémonie de la spéculation sur l'économie réelle, Piketty n'est pas sans savoir que certains chiffres ne sont même pas fournis par les banques centrales, y compris par la BCE. C'est encore pire lorsque l'on considère le shadow banking : il échappe à toute forme de taxation bien qu'il soit estimé à plus de 12 % du PIB, d'ailleurs faussement établi selon des critères marginalistes. Cet état de chose est encore aggravé par la dernière réforme introduite en France le 15 mai 2014 sous prétexte de tenir compte de la soi-disant économie immatérielle. La même réforme est appliquée partout ailleurs, y compris au sein de l'UE.
Dans de telles conditions, parler de patrimoine et d'impôt sur le patrimoine ou « capital » selon Piketty n'est vraiment pas sérieux. J'avais pour ma part proposé de faire au moins émerger le shadow banking ce qui, au demeurant, aurait fourni un peu de transparence en cas de crise, y compris pour la BRI. Du coup, ceci aurait également stabilisé l'assiette fiscale. Or, même la soi-disant Taxe Tobin est diminuée à un statut de symbole sans dent. On n'entend pas Piketty sur ce sujet essentiel.
Pire encore au niveau méthodologique, Piketty inclut le patrimoine dans sa définition générique du capital. (Le patrimoine est ainsi assimilé aux revenus du capital, soit aux « loyers, dividendes, intérêts, bénéfices, plus-values, royalties, etc., et autres revenus obtenus du simple fait de la détention d'un capital terrien, immobilier, financier, industriel, etc., quelle que soit là aussi leur forme légale» p. 42). Ceci a peu de sens car le capital concerne l'accumulation capitaliste alors que le patrimoine stricto sensu concerne la partie luxe empochée par les capitalistes et thésaurisée à demie pour maintenir leur standard de vie personnel (propriétés, jets privés etc.) A la limite, le patrimoine ainsi défini aurait une importance relative destinée à se stabiliser automatiquement pour autant que les impôts portassent sur tout le capital, dont le shadow banking.
Par exemple, après la seconde guerre mondiale, les grandes propretés capitalistes dans les grandes villes nord-américaines furent transformées en fondations ou bien vendues. En effet, l'impôt foncier devenait prohibitif, y compris là où les grandes propretés étaient protégées par des évaluations foncières bloquées temporellement pour abolir les effets de l'évolution du marché sur les prix. En France, la même logique prévaut avec des accommodements, par exemple le soutien aux propriétés historiques ayant valeur de patrimoine national en échange de leur accès public au moins partiel. En Angleterre, le contournement se fait surtout via les fonds agricoles européens milliardaires monopolisés par la royauté et par quelques lords ou quelques grands propriétaires fonciers. En gros, à part ce genre de contournements législatifs, l'impôt foncier et l'impôt sur le revenu provoquèrent ici une transformation de la localisation des grandes propriétés dans des zones plus favorables, mais non pas leur disparition (zones franches, paradis fiscaux etc.) Pourtant, localement et nationalement parlant, ceci eut un grand impact sur les échelles des inégalités et sur leur reproduction. En réalité, la valeur d'échange se forme dans une Formation sociale précise correspondant à l'espace de la Reproduction.
Les paramètres de Piketty.
Ceci étant posé nous nous concentrerons ici sur l'essentiel, à savoir sur les paramètres.
En me fiant à ce que j'ai déjà lu, et aux éléments irréfutables découlant de cette lecture qui va au coeur de l'argument une critique définitive suivra dans la seconde partie en anglais -, la supercherie, volontaire ou moins, peut être résumée aux quatre points essentiels suivants :
1) La thèse de Piketty (sa contribution à la science économique ?) est bien entendu marginaliste et simpliste à la fois. Elle se résume par la formule : r > g. Cet universitaire et auteur réputé devrait au moins lire mon Livre 4 intitulé Hi-han : les âneries visuelles hallucinatoires des économistes bourgeois. (http://www.la-commune-paraclet.com/Download/ ) Car « r » est donné comme le taux de rendement du capital mais Piketty, pas plus que tous les marginalistes, ne sait ce que c'est. Leur fonction de production est énoncée comme suit : Y = f (K, L) K étant le capital et L le travail, ce qui revient à dire en traduction scientifique que la fonction de production est : c + v = p (c = capital ; v = travail ; p = produit). Adam Smith avait immédiatement vu la contradiction sans chercher à la dissimuler : en effet, dans ce cas, qu'en est-il du profit et de sa genèse ? Seul Marx a été capable de résoudre ce problème conceptuel et logique (Piketty ne l'a jamais lu : en effet, Marx ne parle pas « d'accumulation infinie » du capital, c'est grotesque que de le prétendre ; ceci revient à une manoeuvre d'universitaire bourgeois poppérien qui consiste à dresser un épouvantail fait sur mesure, pour mieux le « déconstruire » ensuite, en contrôlant à la fois les questions et les réponses à apporter.)
Le profit est le fruit de l'extraction de la plus-value par l'exploitation capitaliste. Mais en reportant la fonction de production marxiste écrite c + v + pv = p (où pv représente le profit) dans les Equations de la Reproduction Simple et Elargie (voir mon Livre 4 ou bien le Précis d'économie politique marxiste dans le même site www.la-commune-paraclet.com section Livres-Books) on peut analyser à la fois l'évolution du profit et du crédit capitalistes. Pour analyser le crédit on ne parle pas génériquement de « taux de rendement du capital » sans faire la différence entre les fractions du capital mises en cause : marchand, industriel, bancaire, financier. Car il y a une distinction logique entre profit et intérêt ; ce sont des catégories logiquement « distinctes » : l'intérêt fait partie du profit mais l'inverse n'est pas vrai. A partir de là, on peut également comprendre que la spéculation, c'est-à-dire l'intérêt phagocytant une part toujours plus grande, voire tout le profit, est intenable ; et surtout qu'elle ne peut pas être appréhendée comme étant le rendement. (Trois ânes bâtés ont obtenu récemment l'équivalent du Prix Nobel pour la «dismal science » pour leurs théories portant sur les «marchés efficients » ; ce qui vérifie une seule chose, à savoir que ce sont bien des ânes, preuve encore étayée par la crise actuelle. L'Etat dût en effet éponger les effets dévastateurs de cette crise pour sauver les banques spéculatives privées, ce qui ne fit qu'aggraver le problème d'origine. En témoigne leur difficulté à satisfaire aux stress tests, ou encore l'accentuation du « credit crunch » malgré les trillions de liquidité déversés par le biais des QE, des LTRO, TLTRO 1,2,3 et autres manoeuvres du genre.
Aujourd'hui la spéculation (incluse tout bonnement dans « r » chez Piketty) est intenable structurellement du fait de la distinction entre intérêt et profit. Cette dernière implique la distinction entre économie spéculative et économie réelle. Suite à l'abrogation du Glass Steagall Act entériné dans le mandat monétariste de la BCE, le décloisonnement des 4 piliers bancaires et financiers, soumet la fiscalité publique ainsi que les banques centrales, au marché spéculatif financier. Ceci se fait via les quelques banques dites primaires. Or, il se trouve que malgré mes critiques et malgré les mises aux points disponibles sur Internet, par exemple Berruyer, Piketty ne comprend rien au système de la banque universelle et donc au fonctionnement actuel des banques centrales (p 911et suivantes) : il imagine, par exemple, que le bilan des banques, dont les banques centrales, importe peu du fait de la création monétaire ex nihilo par les QE etc. On lui conseille au moins d'aller lire les essais : « The Treasury and the Fed » et « Credit without collateral » disponibles dans la section Economie Politique Internationale de ce site ainsi que les pages pertinentes de mon Précis, section Livres-Books, pour s'y retrouver un peu.
Pas plus que les ruineux bailouts, les soi-disant « bail in » ne permettent une meilleure déconnection de la fiscalité et de l'économie réelle d'avec la spéculation. Ils indiquent uniquement un changement de forme des mesures présidant aux sauvetages. Tout ceci a peu à voir avec les inégalités en soi, bien que ce processus spéculatif aggrave les inégalités inhérentes à la société capitaliste.
2) Piketty se fonde sur deux séries principales ; la première est celle des inégalités qui est comprise de manière très partielle selon un ratio inapproprié, à savoir la part du décile supérieur dans le Revenu National (lequel représente en gros 90 % du PIB selon Piketty.) Pour les USA, ceci donne de manière circulaire une courbe en U présentée dans le Graphique I.1 (p 52) (ou en ligne : http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital21c/Piketty2013GraphiquesTableauxLiens.pdf ). Cette courbe en U sera répétée et déclinée ensuite ad nauseum dans le livre. Or, non seulement elle est méthodologiquement très partielle mais surtout, dans sa hâte, Piketty l'interprète à l'envers. Car il n'est pas un vrai économiste mais un idéologue comme en témoigne son r > g et le reste. (Quoiqu'il dise sur Solow ou sur les faits qui sont toujours « construits », son cadre mental reste le marginalisme tout comme ses faits empiriques qui en sont un résultat statistique accepté.) Quand au 1 % entendu comme concept intégré dans une théorie cohérente résultat de la politique de l'offre et de sa public policy - il apparaît pour la première fois dans mon Livre-Book III (2005, même site ; il suffit d'utiliser « 1 % » dans la fonction « rechercher » pour vérifier), livre dans lequel je dénonce, déjà à l'époque, la fin du cloisonnement fonctionnel bancaire et financier menant fatalement à la crise.
En fait, la thèse de Piketty consiste ici à dire que les inégalités selon le critère du graphique proposé reviennent à ce qu'elles étaient avant 1914. Or, il n'en est rien. Pour le comprendre, il faut analyser le standard de vie, soit en termes conceptuels économiques ce que j'ai appelé la « structure de v ». Elle est liée aux époques caractérisant la reproduction-redistribution du capital, voir le Précis. La « structure de v » est cruciale surtout lorsqu'une partie au-delà du « salaire capitaliste individuel » est institutionnalisée par les cotisations sociales et par une partie des impôts retenus à la source. L'importance de cette institutionnalisation de l'épargne pour la croissance plus harmonieuse de l'économie capitaliste constitue de fait l'apport majeur de Keynes et sa critique interne au marginalisme. On sait, par ailleurs, les ravages produits par la reprise du Wealth Effect de Pigou par Greenspan avec son House Effect. Elle mena à la crise des subprimes, alors que Pigou se souciait peu de la « structure de v» ainsi que de la distribution des revenus et des richesses dont la logique devait être abandonnée au marché. Il y eut d'ailleurs des batailles syndicales et politiques épiques pour déterminer comment cette épargne serait institutionnalisée et par qui elle serait contrôlée ; les dernières grandes batailles de ce genre furent celles qui opposèrent l'hystérique droite suédoise et française au Plan Meidner puis à la RTT et à la problématique subordonnée des fonds salariaux publics.
Or, durant la période Boom and Bust américaine la force de travail était relativement rare (la frontière vers l'Ouest était encore ouverte.) Les salaires étaient moins bas et on faisait appel à l'immigration. De sorte que le standard de vie des ouvriers américains était plus élevé que celui des travailleurs européens. Mais il n'y avait pas d'institutionnalisation de l'épargne, ce qui constitua une des demandes clé de Beveridge-Keynes durant la Grande Dépression, revendication qui sera en partie reprise par la ensuite par le New Deal. Il faut également considérer les flux ou circuits du capital qui sont ainsi créés et soutenus. De sorte que les sommes versées ad hoc dans le cadre du « rugged invididualism » de Hoover coûtaient bien plus cher à l'Etat et aux Etats fédérés en quasi faillite que ce qu'il en coûtera avec la mise en place de la Social Security et des programmes publics naissants du New Deal de FDR.
A l'inverse, après 79-81, soit avec la contrerévolution monétariste de Volker-Reagan (voir dans le même site l'essai « Les conséquences socio-économiques de Volker-Reagan et Cie » de mars 1985, section Economie Politique internationale) cette institutionnalisation de l'épargne sera remise en cause. Cette régression sera aggravée par le libre-échange et par le Big Bang boursier voulu par Thatcher pour maintenir l'hégémonie de la City sur les nouveaux marchés financiers. Avec le libre-échange nous aurons droit à la fonction de production de Solow selon laquelle l'équilibre économique est atteint au seuil physiologique ( !) et de surcroît au niveau global. Mais il s'agit d'un seuil calculé uniquement sur la base du seul salaire capitaliste individuel, sans cotisations sociales et sans références aux critères environnementaux !!! La définition de l'anti-dumping adoptée par l'OMC entérine ce cadre légal anti-social.
Dès lors, fatalement, les inégalités croissent et le standard de vie s'oriente à la baisse pour des couches croissantes de la population qualifiée de working poor par Julius Wilson ; à quoi il faut ajouter l'attrition des classes moyennes etc. Laffer résume cette thèse idiote sur une serviette en papier : l'Etat doit être minimum afin de libérer l'entreprise privée pour assurer (sa ? la ?) compétitivité globale. Ceci revient à confondre le rôle de l'Etat et celui de l'entreprise en ruinant les deux très rapidement. De fait, parler de « crowding out » à l'heure des QE produisant du « credit crunch » structurel serait proprement obscène. Mais la fumeuse courbe de Laffer n'est plus utile pour le massage médiatique, elle est maintenant remplacée par les discours creux et lénifiants portant sur les « inégalités » !
Ajoutons ensuite la destruction provoquée par le Glass Steagall Act et donc par la spéculation dans le cadre de l'émergence et de l'affirmation de l'hégémonie de la banque dite « universelle ». Il s'agit du même type de banques qui dut être sauvé in extremis et à répétition par l'Etat. Nous obtenons ainsi la logique intime de la genèse du 1 % et même des fractions de ce 1 %. Au niveau de l'économie réelle, le ROE phagocyte le profit, de sorte que les managers oublient aussitôt le coût de production, qui risquerait de remettre en cause leur propre efficacité ainsi que celle de leurs maîtres politiques libre-échangistes, pour se concentrer sur le seul coût du travail. Pourtant, ce dernier ne constitue que quelque 25 % du coût de production. Bien entendu, c'est-là une stratégie myope à très court terme ; en outre, elle s'avère très destructive pour la «demande sociale » et pour la demande interne. Cependant, cette course au moins disant salarial est désormais tenue à tort comme la seule alternative capable de conforter la « compétitivité » des entreprises transnationales. (v. Livre III, op cité) D'où les attaques répétées contre les salaires et les cotisations sociales, ce qui provoque l'accroissement des inégalités et de la pauvreté.
Par conséquent, il suffit de recomposer la teneur historique de la « structure de v », en déterminant également si une partie en est institutionnalisée ou pas, pour y voir plus clair. En effet, quand ce n'est pas le cas, cela s'avère plus onéreux: de fait, l'assistance sociale ad hoc est plus onéreuse que l'assurance sociale conçue comme un droit citoyen. Cette dernière met en branle des flux économiques plus vertueux. Ceci seul montre toute l'inanité du travail et des prétentions de Piketty concernant «l'inégalité ». Il établit une série partielle sans réelle prise sur le niveau de vie ni sur les circuits du capital - et dès lors il lit sa courbe de travers. C'est beaucoup de travail pour rien, pour être poli. J'ai souvent soulevé ces problèmes méthodologiques : de fait, Piketty ne fait guère mieux que Leroy-Beaulieu qu'il critique (p 812); car, pour avoir un sens, les statistiques économiques doivent correspondre à la fonction de production scientifique (marxiste, jusqu'à preuve du contraire, Livre I du Capital) et à son intégration dans les Equations de la Reproduction Simple et Elargie (Livre II du Capital) alors que le dynamisme mis en cause par la reproduction élargie choix de réinvestissement, partage de la plus-value sociale etc. relève de la forme historique prise par le salaire, l'intérêt et le profit, c'est-à-dire par les « époques de redistribution » du MPC, selon la lutte des classes (Livre III du Capital).
Bien entendu la structure du Capital de Marx, à laquelle nous faisons allusions ici, devait au préalable être extirpée de l'épaisse gangue dans laquelle l'avaient enveloppée Kautsky et Bernstein malgré Engels ainsi que tous les Böhm-Bawerk, Tugan-Baranovsky et autres Bortkiewics, sans compter tous les pathétiques marxologues universitaires que l'on sait. Ceci fut accompli par Althusser d'une part (la genèse du Capital et sa méthode fondée sur le « concret pensé ») et d'autre part par moi-même (la loi de la productivité marxiste réintégrée dans les Equations de la Reproduction, ce qui donne de manière cohérente à la fois les quantités et les valeurs, voire les prix, ce que ni le marginalisme ni aucune forme de soi-disant science économique bourgeoise n'est capable d'approcher, même de très loin. Jusqu'à preuve du contraire.)
3) Il en va de même avec la seconde courbe chère à Piketty, elle aussi circulaire. Elle porte sur le rapport capital/revenu. (Voir le Graphique I.2, p 54, ou en ligne : http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital21c/Piketty2013GraphiquesTableauxLiens.pdf ) Méthodologiquement parlant, Piketty ne sait pas ce qu'est le capital ; on a vu qu'il ne sait pas non plus ce qu'est le revenu. Ainsi, alors qu'il ne tient pas compte de la « structure de v » pour le revenu, pour ce qui est du capital il ne tient pas compte non plus des formes historiques prises par lui et par la « plus-value sociale ». (Ajout 2024: il ne sait pas non plus distinguer profit, intérêt classique, et intérêt spéculatif lequel phagocyte l'économie réelle. Au fond, son « revenu » n'est que l'informe « income stream » de Irving Fisher pensé, de son aveu même, pour occulter les distinctions entre rente, profit, salaire, donc la lutte des classes exposée dans le Livre III du Capital de Marx. Voir la préface ici: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.264222/page/n3/mode/2up. En ce qui concerne la mention à son mentor Böhm-Bawerk voir la préface ici: https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/theory-interest-6255?page=4) Du coup, ses pronostiques sont dangereux. Il en tire l'idée régressive disons « rabbinique nietzschéenne » selon laquelle le capitalisme ayant déjà connu ce genre de répartition inégalitaire, il suffira d'assurer uniquement le minimum, pour tenir les gens tranquilles. C'est-là se mettre le doigt dans l'oeil, jusqu'au coude. Car le capitalisme du Boom and Bust était très différent du capitalisme actuel sous hégémonie spéculative.
Bien entendu, il existait déjà une forte spéculation en bourse avant 1980 et surtout avant 1999. Mais cette spéculation subordonnée permettait la destruction récurrente du capital excédentaire par le jeu de la bourse et, à terme, par les cracks boursiers. Autrement, c'était l'explosion ostentatoire du Luxe durant la Belle Epoque mais surtout la guerre qui assuraient le rééquilibrage du système capitaliste en éliminant la surproduction relative. A part la bourse, l'économie réelle concept que le marginalisme n'est pas outillé pour distinguer de l'économie spéculative restait plus au moins à l'abri de la spéculation. On se reportera à ce sujet aux diatribes entre Ford et Morgan. (Pour ce qui est de l'industriel H. Ford, sa position est exposée dans : https://archive.org/details/TheInternationalJewTheWorldsForemostProblemhenryFord1920s )
Entre 1920-30, les Big corporations (Means) devinrent hégémoniques ; mais, du moins aux USA, elles ne nécessitaient que de 30 % d'apport bancaire pour assurer leur investissement. Or, ce 30 % était du crédit capitaliste traditionnel. Ce n'était pas un intérêt spéculatif, de surcroît de court terme, phagocytant tout le profit ou presque, y compris, via les restructurations aux forceps imposées par les fonds d'investissement ou equity funds. Ces restructurations visant avant tout la masse salariale, elles contribuent à détruire davantage la demande interne, à quoi s'ajoute la destruction structurelle opérée par le biais de la réduction, voire de l'annulation des cotisations sociales.
Ensuite, la « plus-value sociale » se retrouve d'une part côté salaires dans l'épargne institutionnalisée via les cotisations sociales, et d'autre part côté capital par le biais de la distinction entre capital public et capital privé. Keynes parle d'ailleurs d'intervention de l'Etat ou de régulation visant à sauver le capitalisme de ses propres « esprits animaux ». Piketty et les siens en aggravent au contraire les effets avec l'illusion que ce jeu-là puisse être soutenable. Il ne l'est pas : l'intérêt ne peut pas être supérieur au profit et pourtant l'intérêt spéculatif a pour vocation de l'être, et ceci structurellement depuis 1999 avec la fin du cloisonnement bancaire. Cet état de chose fut encore aggravé par la réforme de Paulson mise en oeuvre suite à la crise des subprimes ; elle fut émulée par l'ensemble des reformes bancaires réactionnaires entérinant un « crédit sans collatéral » reposant in fine sur ces mêmes Etats souverains, en fait sur leurs contribuables, que la « gouvernance globale privée » voudrait bien voir disparaitre mais qui demeurent cependant les seuls garants directs en cas de bailout et indirect en cas de bail in comme à Chypre.
Aussi côté capital la « plus-value sociale » prend la forme des investissements publics qui sont nécessaires pour créer les infrastructures d'une économie mixte prospère. Le monétarisme et sa public policy font tout le contraire ; ils détruisent les Etats au nom d'une vulgaire thèse du crowding out nécessitant un Etat soi-disant minimum. D'où la spirale économique négative d'aujourd'hui.
4) Piketty ne sait pas non plus ce que c'est que la fiscalité capitaliste quoiqu'il publiât beaucoup sur le sujet. La fiscalité capitaliste moderne due en large partie à mon homonyme selon Schumpeter, un économiste que l'on a tort d'abandonner dans les mains d'un Buchanan … - n'a pas pour vocation de régler le problème de l'inégalité. L'équilibre marginaliste ne repose pas là-dessus même pas pour ceux qui, comme Walras, différencient en principe entre « économie sociale » et « science économique ». La prétention marginaliste est l'inverse : à l'équilibre la fiscalité trouve aussi son équilibre. Comme chacun sait, avec Solow l'équilibre économique s'établit au seuil physiologique, tout élastique qu'il soit lui-même en réalité.
En fait, au départ, la fiscalité capitaliste était minime dans le cadre de la démocratie libérale sexiste et censitaire. Elle répondait à des objectifs d'intérêt général minimum, conçus au mieux selon la vision philosophique physiocratique d'Adam Smith. Elle évolue ensuite pour tenter de répondre aux crises récurrentes du capitalisme. Par exemple, Beveridge fait des droits sociaux des droits universels servant à stabiliser le système des filets de protection sociale entendus comme amortisseurs de crise alors que Keynes élargit ceci à l'intervention de l'Etat dans l'économie. Là encore, tout dépend comment cette intervention est effectuée et comment elle est institutionnalisée. Un seul exemple suffira : les classiques subventions directes des Etats keynésiennes si on veut étaient bien moins onéreuses que les centaines de milliards gaspillées aujourd'hui sous formes de tax expenditures et d'exonérations pour le capital. Elles devraient être revues d'urgence. Entre-temps, elles expliquent le transfert massif de 11 % minimum du PIB des salaires aux profits, à quoi s'ajoute aujourd'hui la destruction programmée des cotisations sociales. Ces transferts aussi massifs que régressifs échappent à la méthodologie de Piketty par construction. (Le basculement des cotisations sociales sur une fiscalité générale évanescente, dont on reparlera au prochain Sommet Européen présidé par l'Italie, est tout bonnement un complot guerrier contre les travailleurs et contre les citoyens.)
Ceci étant dit, les différents impôts et les cotisations répondent à des objectifs précis : d'où leur croissance ainsi que la multiplicité de leurs formes allant de pair avec la mise en place de l'Etat social. Il ne s'agit pas uniquement de réduire les inégalités, ni de transparence ou d'équité formelle. Après tout il s'agit de fiscalité capitaliste. Ensuite, chaque forme a un objectif qui se veut précis, sauf qu'à trop vouloir cibler, l'impact se perd. Ce fut a contrario le cas de la fiscalité keynésienne dès lors que l'extroversion du multiplicateur de Kahn induite par la fin du Gatt l'a mise en crise ; et c'est aujourd'hui le cas des exonérations et des tax expenditures. Elles ne servent plus qu'à détruire l'aissette fiscale et les revenus fiscaux de l'Etat et rien d'autre, du fait du libre-échange global entériné par la destructive fonction de production globalisée de Solow - (i.e. équilibre au seuil physiologique (sic !) global.
C'est pourquoi, là encore, une réforme fiscale digne du nom, doit tenir compte de la « structure de v » et de la « plus-value sociale ». A commencer par la RTT allant de pair avec le maintien de tous les bénéfices sociaux dans le cadre d'une adéquate nouvelle définition de l'anti-dumping à l'OMC. A bien y penser, une forme transitoire de la nouvelle définition de l'antidumping pourrait prendre la forme une hausse drastique de la TVA, exceptant le panier de consommation de base par des crédits d'impôt ciblés. Cette hausse sur les produits d'importation servirait alors à financer, via des crédits d'impôt systématiques, les programmes sociaux, les exonérations en faveur du capital ainsi qu'un amortissement accéléré pour le ré-outillage, le tout en contrepartie de la RTT entendue comme loi cadre. Notons que les affaires sociales demeurent des compétences exclusives nationales au sein de l'UE. Les Etats membres peuvent agir. Ce n'est qu'une question de volonté politique et de choix de société.
Conclusion.
Piketty est un piètre économiste, son équation r > g ne vaut absolument rien, je dis bien absolument rien (on peut sans doute prévoir dans ces conditions qu'il recevra l'équivalent du Prix Nobel bientôt !!!) Ensuite, ne sachant rien du capitalisme ni de la « structure de v » résultant de l'exploitation capitaliste ni de la « plus-value sociale » qui définit les formes du capital et ses fractions hégémoniques -, ni des « époques de redistribution » du capitalisme, il offre allègrement des séries concaves qu'il lit tout bonnement de travers. Car il est emporté par son idéologie, sinon par une sorte d'hybris de défenseur «gattopardesco » auto-proclamé du système. En fin de compte, sa thèse revient à une tentative classique de légitimation de l'hégémonie naissante de la « gouvernance globale privée ».
Le problème est que la spéculation érigée en système est structurellement contradictoire, en dépit du niveau d'inégalité. L'intérêt ne peut jamais excéder le profit, l'économie spéculative ne peut pas se substituer à l'économie réelle. De même, la banque centrale ne peut pas se substituer aux ratios prudentiels en permanence car la création ex nihilo de monnaie ne peut pas effacer le rôle de son bilan (Milton Friedman était bien un dangereux « excentrique » ainsi que l'avaient annoncé les tenants de l'Ecole autrichienne qui lui avaient conseillé d'aller voir ailleurs …). De même, l'Etat, dont certains avaient souhaité le dépérissement, ne peut pas en permanence se substituer à la banque centrale pour renflouer les banques privées dites « universelles» aux bilans très dégradés. Pas plus que les contribuables ne peuvent se substituer en permanence aux nécessaires purges du système par le biais des « bail in » qui sont aussi ruineux pour l'économie réelle que les bailouts. Ces purges devraient au contraire découler de l'effet de rétroaction cybernétique impliquée par la loi de la concurrence capitaliste. Après avoir cru en un « crédit sans collatéral », croira-t-on maintenant à une nouvelle New Economy re-stabilisée par Piketty avec son « utopie » d'impôt mondial sur le capital ? C'est se moquer du pauvre monde, et il faut croire les gens bien naïfs pour mordre à cet appât-là ! Remarquons en passant que ces différences essentielles, notamment celles concernant l'intérêt et le profit ainsi que l'économie réelle et l'économie spéculative ne sont strictement pas concevables dans le cadre de la soi-disant science économique bourgeoise et surtout marginaliste …
Alors peut-être Piketty devrait revoir son travail et refaire ses courbes. Il rendrait alors réellement service à la discipline et aux disciplines annexes :
a) En vérifiant les composants de la « structure de v», soit le standard de vie, tout en vérifiant l'institutionnalisation de l'épargne qui est impliquée. On a dit plus haut que lorsqu'elle l'était, elle créait des flux vertueux. Ceci fut démontré par l'Etat social européen, issu de la Résistance et par FDR et le New Deal américain. Lorsque ceci n'est pas le cas Hoover, Reagan, Thatcher etc.- le contraire se produit et les contradictions inhérentes au mode de production capitaliste deviennent plus aigües. Piketty se veut le continuateur et correcteur de Kuznets (voire de Furet …). Or, s'il est vrai que Kuznets oeuvrait dans le cadre de la guerre froide, il n'en reste pas moins vrai qu'un de ses points de départ principaux renvoyait aux statistiques établies par la Tennessee Valley Authority. Pour la première fois, du moins à cette échelle, cette dernière présentait un ensemble considérable de données sur la vie des travailleurs et des chômeurs ; d'où il fut conclu qu'au-delà de 2 ans de chômage, la force de travail était à ce point dégradée qu'elle devenait inutilisable, pénalisant ainsi tant les citoyens que les entreprises et l'Etat. Le MPC n'est pas un dîner de gala philanthropique. Du coup, les travaux publics devaient être conceptualisés comme un élément de la politique de plein-emploi. Les équations marginalistes devant être réglées selon Keynes sur ce critère exogène essentiel à la stabilité du système. Il suffisait d'ajouter ce que les services sociaux avaient déjà étayé, à savoir l'effet d'amortisseur de crise joué par les filets sociaux, ainsi que l'effet d'accumulation du capital via les régimes de retraite publics. L'iniquité flagrante découlant du chômage forcé ou encore en matière de santé, était unanimement ressentie par tous. Par exemple, lorsqu'un court séjour à l'hôpital ruinait les ouvriers et leurs familles pour longtemps. Alliée à la privatisation de l'éducation nationale, cette vulnérabilité économique pervertit encore la mobilité sociale, y compris dans le sens restrictif des « life chances » de Max Wéber et de l'Ecole autrichienne. Ce consensus social fut alors pertinemment résumé par la phrase : « Through no fault of their own », ceci menant à la Social Security et au contrepoids syndical conventions collectives mises en oeuvre par le New Deal. (Voir par exemple la Note 15 sur John Galbraith dans mon Livre III, op cité)
b) Côté capital, il lui faut aussi faire la différence entre fractions dominantes du capital et entre intérêt et profit ou encore entre intérêt, crédit et spéculation. Piketty est jeune. Il a le temps de se reprendre et de contribuer un petit quelque chose à la discipline. Pour l'heure, malgré la somme de travail accomplie, ce n'est pas seulement nul, en réalité c'est faux et nocif.
Il est cependant à craindre qu'après l'ère des Nouveaux philosophes (voir mon Pour Marx, contre le nihilisme, le Livre II, même site) Piketty n'inaugurât, avec quelques autres auto-choisis, l'ère des Nouveaux Economistes ! Malgré la disparition d'Althusser et l'auto-effacement du parti communiste français diminué par un trop grand nombre de renégats, il reste tout de même surprenant de voir ce genre d'happening médiatique se reproduire dans l'Hexagone ! J'ai déjà dit ailleurs que cette France-là, voire cette Europe-là, était bien là où Nietzsche la voulait. « Une fois encore !»
Paul De Marco
Copyright © La Commune Inc, 20 mai 2014.
Ajout déc 2024: (En ce qui concerne l'optique sur les inégalités, notons que favoriser ce retour à une situation fiscale comparable, pour les riches, à celle de l'époque antérieure à 1914, donc avant l'introduction de l'impôt sur le revenu, était le point de départ de Piketty et Saez et d’autres de cet acabit. Il s'agissait de protéger le capital financier mondial avec quelques bricolages à la marge comme le soi-disant « GIEC fiscal ». En proposant de prélever un petit pourcentage - 2 % ou un peu plus - sur l'évasion fiscale plus ou moins légale, ils occultent la fiscalité progressive selon la Constitution et légitimise du coup l'hégémonie du capital spéculatif. ( Voir ici.) Leur principale préoccupation est la suivante : « Nous avons provisoirement suggéré qu’une forte taxation progressive, en réduisant le taux d’accumulation de la richesse, a empêché les grandes fortunes de se remettre complètement de ces chocs. » . Leur analyse se fonde sur des séries de données relatives à l’impôt sur le revenu à partir de 1913 aux États-Unis. La différence alléguée dans la fluctuation des inégalités de revenus entre les États-Unis et la France vient principalement de leur occultation du rôle joué par la sécurité sociale. Ils se concentrent sur le salaire net individuel plutôt que sur le « revenu net global » des ménages. Ils ignorent également les autres formes de rétribution ainsi que les taxes municipales plafonnées américaines. Ce qui leur permet de se déverser abondamment sur les inégalités … ici).
XXX
First part: The concave ineptitudes of Piketty on inequality and patrimonies.
Introduction.
Piketty's parameters.
Conclusion.
Second Part: A fraud called Piketty
Introduction.
Piketty's set of equations.
Piketty's first fundamental law of capitalism.
Piketty's second fundamental law of capitalism.
Piketty's third fundamental law of capitalism.
Piketty's peculiar methodology.
Piketty and Pareto.
Piketty versus Kuznets.
Notes.
FIRST PART: THE CONCAVE INEPTITUDES OF PIKETTY ON INEQUALITY AND PATRIMONIES.
Abstract: Perceptions is given as reality. Similarly, for a good narrative, a picture is worth a thousand words. This is particularly the case for all those who have neither time nor the resources to verify its scientific soundness and its socio-economic and political pertinence. Hence, Piketty proposes a series of curves and graphs destined to serve as reference sources for the most naive. His aim is to construct the perceptions and world view of the readers, including in the universities, which might explain why this material is made available online. However, we are dealing here with fraudulent statistical constructs which pretend to prove that inequality has existed everywhere and at all times. It would be both irrational and vain to try to change what is the result of a natural law. This fraud rests on many methodological tricks. In particular, Piketty, who has no mastery of comparative science, chooses to brush aside the communist experiments which refute his thesis. He thus erases ex cathedra more than 70 years of modern history although it goes at the very heart of the subject he pretends to treat. Similarly, he brushes aside fiscal paradises and derivative financial products despite their literal explosion after 1999. Of course, if he had taken these into account, his « normal » ratio of inequality, oscillating between 6 or 8 to 1 according to his bogus U curves, would look rather under-estimated. He himself says in a footnote that the ratio would then more likely gravitate around 20 or 30 to 1. However, it would then be more difficult to try to justify such a grotesque ratio, although it is itself under-estimated. Consequently, Piketty chooses to brush this aside, and he is done! This valiant protector of global capital wants to spare it an « apocalyptic » end, as he told us himslef, although it should not be the role of an academic especially one paid out of the public purse. However, can he then hope to be taken seriously by serious people?
Introduction
Piketty is an awakened ideologue. He anticipates evolutions according to the interests he serves. His aim is to legitimate the transnational firms and to replace GDP by National Revenue that is to say by a statistical apparatus disencumbered from national production and from the implicit obligation to share any resulting economic growth. In a way, the GDP logic argues in favor of the regulating role played by the State in the economic sphere. Therefore, Piketty's arguments amount to the substitution of the national sovereignty with a « global private governance » aimed at the demise of all States in favor of its own imperial advantage. Hence, the importance attached to the reformulation of the statistical series of Kuznets, or better still of Furet, harmonizing them whenever possible. This oriented work, which eventually aims for a global reach, starts with the rich countries and we are told that it already spans « over three centuries and more than twenty countries. » (p 16)
Piketty is convinced that without his own contribution the capitalist world cannot be saved from its current march towards the « apocalypse » (p 16). In the past, Malthus had sounded the alarm by noting the (fake) contradiction between the available quantity of land relative to a geometrically increasing population; to him, this seemed to represent a lethal systemic contradiction, one which of course could only be dispelled through a Malthusian control of the population! Similarly, Ricardo pointed to the logic of rent which he opposed to that of industrial profit. According to Piketty, Marx too had an apocalyptic vision of capitalism because he believed in the internal contradiction of « infinite accumulation » of capital which, in truth, Marx never mentioned. Indeed, for Marx the principal contradiction of capitalism does not rest with the accumulation process which will indeed be continued and even accelerated under communism, albeit in a qualitative social fashion. This will be done to liberate the labor force thanks to the deepening of the organic composition of capital, hence of its productivity; and this will then open the road for the general emancipation of Mankind based on socially liberated working-time. Therefore, the intimate contradiction of the Capitalist Mode of Production (CMP) does not concern the accumulation process per se, but is instead nested in the irresolvable capitalist contradiction opposing overproduction and under-consumption. This major contradiction of the CMP is presenting itself again with the outraging Monetarist form aggravated by its neoliberal public policy.
For his part, Piketty sees a potential contradiction which he expresses by the equation r > g, namely the rate of return r is greater than the rate of growth g. (Capital is here generically confused with « patrimony ».) For Piketty, this state of affair can lead to a new apocalypse, that of unsustainable inequality. Revenue inequality is symbolised by the increasing divergence between the wealthiest 1 %, or even fractions of this 1 %, and the remaining 99 %. It is treated as an unsustainable inequality, although we are not told why he himself considers this unsustainable. We are vaguely referred back to Rawls's ineptitude on « social justice », (p 768.) Thus, his mission is clear to him: « However, means exist that will allow democracy and the general interest to regain control of capitalism and of its private interests while rejecting any protectionist and nationalist withdrawals. This book makes proposals in this sense based on the lessons of history; this constitutes the main narrative thread of this work. » (p 16); note here the term « narrative » (« récit » in the French text). In defending his « utopian » proposal in favor of a progressive global tax on capital, Piketty very carefully avoids setting a minimal threshold and thus the objectives he wants to reach (p 881). He affirms: « many will reject this tax on capital as a dangerous illusion in the same manner that income taxation was rejected a little more than a century ago. However, looking at it more closely, this solution is much less dangerous than any alternative options. » (p 837; italics are mine.)
Let us hypothesise an economy characterised by a sustained secular job-creating growth. Then the weight of increasing inequality would be relativised by the increasing standard of living at the bottom of the social scale, especially if the jobs in question were permanent full-time employment with good social benefits. It would be particularly the case if the latter are public and universally accessible. Piketty does not take this into account. However, the growth in United-States since 1980 and especially since 2007-2008 has been described as a « jobless recovery ». In truth, it is a recovery which destroys employment, particularly full-time, and thus at the same time the payroll social contributions needed to finance the social safety nets and to account for the « differed salary » and the « global net revenue » of the household. Today, the rate of participation of the work force in the USA is the lowest in the last 35 years although the Department of Labor announces the decrease of the official rate of unemployment. This official rate is as credible as the unemployment rate according to the ILO statistics (See my Note ** in my Book III entitled Keynesianism, Marxism, Economic Stability and Growth (2005), freely accessible in Download Now, Livres-Books section of www.la-commune-paraclet.com which gives an idea of the real unemployment numbers.)
The past apocalyptic dangers were avoided and the system was saved, at least for a while. Hence, Piketty proposes his own solution to save the system from the present apocalypse. As he describes it, it consists in a radical simplification of fiscal policy in favor of a progressive global tax on capital. Piketty himself qualifies this remedy as a useful « utopia » (p 836) although others could define this as another vacuous « Sorelian myth » or as a new « narrative » uniquely destined to save and reinforce the hegemony of « global private governance ». The latter implies the substitution of current bourgeois representative democracy with a global shareholders' democracy. Representative democracy is now being treated with suspicion because it is based on post-war anti-fascist constitutions which recognise one sovereign subject only, namely the people. (It is rather interesting to note that just like a vulgar Denis Kesler, Goldman and Sachs now considers that these constitutions have transformed into an obstacle hindering capital.)
As one can guess, Piketty is not very forthcoming in detailing the sorts of relationships this global capital would entertain with existing national fiscal policies. His blind spots include the gigantic squandering in the form of tax expenditures. Once granted these do neatly disappear from the radars. Similarly, he says very little about the level of support to be granted to the lowest revenues so as to reach an « acceptable » level of inequality. The fact is that neither Marginalism nor any branch of bourgeois economy makes it possible to answer this quandary without contradiction over the role assigned to the market in the formation of the economic equilibrium. Thus, without wanting to impute to Piketty opinions that he would prove unable to explain, it suffices to scratch the surface to realise that we are dealing here with a proposed tax destined to replace almost all existing taxes as long as its receipts prove sufficient to pay for what Yoland Bresson calls the « minimum basic income ». This would be generously established at between 350 to 500 euros a month. At that level, we would quickly approach a European and global fiscal harmonisation!!!
This choice would send us back to the two earlier proposals made by Milton Friedman concerning a « guaranteed annual minimum income ». These Friedmanite proposals are somewhat different in their post-USSR clothing than they were in their original form, when it was still inconceivable to openly aim at the physiological level for the workers. They send us back further to the post-World War II Report from the Iron Moutain. (see here). This report was written for the American Establishment. It argued that given the acceleration of modern productivity, capitalism would soon need at most around 20 % of the available working force. The problem then became: What to do with the remaining 80 %? Whatever is now said by the usual « dispensers of smoke in the eyes » and associated adepts of « damage control ». John Galbraith had confirmed the authenticity of this report on his honor in his preface to the original edition. This Report concluded in favor of the forced « return » to a society of new salaried slavery and new domesticity. This had to be achieved thanks to the instrumentalisation of fear including in the field of popular ecology and thanks to the elimination of surplus population through wars. It even advocated the introduction of murderous games conceived as modern versions of the old Roman Arenas. (In the 70s, Marcello Mastroianni even played in a movie based on this very subject.)
Following this, many Brzezinski's conceived their wars in the name of the so-called « technetronic society. » Similarly, within the Trilateral Commission. Samuel Huntington, who had already been at the origin of the « strategic hamlets » implemented in Vietnam and Guatemala, argued in favor of the « ending of rising expectations » among the workers. To get away with it, he argued in favor of the re-imposition of « deference to Authority », in particular through the tight control of all authorised flows of communication. These ideas are now enshrined in the post-9/11 framework defined by the « preventive war doctrine » and its Patriots Acts. The external and internal versions of the Doctrine are similarly illegal with regard to international law. Piketty should come clear on this issue unless he wants to fall prey to an inevitable and obvious imputation.
We will leave aside here the internal methodological critiques. They are dealt with in the second part of this essay. This is because it is first important to show that the parameters used by Piketty are hazardous to say the least or outright false. We must then start from them. For instance, Piketty uses statistics derived from the original income tax which was later widened as a consequence of the world wars, in particular the Second. This base is insufficient to determine the revenue available to households, and above all to understand the components which are essential to define the standard of life. Furthermore, it is essential to know how they are socially and economically organised. The same can be said about patrimonies. Years ago, the Collectif Adret had shown that the data was either not available or carefully and legally hidden by the official fiscal policies and associated statistics. The« Collectif » was essentially composed by Lipietz long before he was won over to the flabbergasting rounds of applauses saluting the European Directive in favor of a 48, 60, 65 and even 72-hour work-week ...
In an epoch of financialization of the economy through the affirmation of the hegemony of speculation over real economy, Piketty cannot ignore that some numbers are not even made available by the Central Banks, including the ECB. It becomes even worse when we consider the so-called shadow banking: It escapes any form of taxation although it is estimated to more than 12 % of GDP. Yet, one must realize that this is falsely defined by Marginalist criteria, a situation still aggravated by the last reform introduced in France in May 15, 2014 with the pretext of taking better account of the so-called immaterial economy. The same reform is being implemented in the USA and in the EU.
In these conditions, speaking of patrimony and taxation of patrimony or capital, in Piketty's mixed-up parlance cannot really be taken seriously. As far as I am concerned, I had proposed to force the emergence of the shadow banking. This would have further led to more transparency, something vital to deal with crises, including at the level of the BIS in Basel. It would have had the automatic effect of stabilising the fiscal revenue base. Note also that even the so-called Tobin Tax is now diminished to a symbolic and toothless status. Piketty proposes a utopian tax but we do not hear him on this crucial subject.
It gets worse at the methodological level. In fact, Piketty includes patrimony in his definition of capital. Patrimony is assimilated to the revenues of capital « renting, dividends, interests, benefits or returns, capital gains, royalties etc., as well as other revenues obtained through the simple ownership of a land or real estate capital, financial or industrial capital etc., whatever their legal forms » (p 42). This makes little sense at all because capital concerns capitalist accumulation while patrimony stricto sensu concerns the luxury part pocketed by capitalists which takes the form of thesaurisation, at least in part, to maintain personal standards of living (mansions, private jets, etc.) At the limit, the patrimony thus defined would at best have a relative importance destined to stabilize automatically as long as taxation would affect all forms of capital, including the shadow banking.
For instance, after the Second World War, the great capitalist mansions located in the big North-American Cities were quickly transformed into Foundations or even sold because municipal property taxes were becoming prohibitive. This remained true even where great properties were protected by municipal evaluations arrived at on the basis of a set year in order to abolish the dramatic impact of the evolution of prices. In France, the same logic took sway with various accommodations, for instance the support granted to historical properties classified as part of the national patrimony in exchange for a public access, at least a partial one. In the UK, the turning of the problem is even more refined and involves for instance the monopolisation of the billionaire agricultural funds by the royal house, a few lords and some other great owners of real estates. Generally speaking, aside from these legal and carefully engineered loopholes, property tax and income tax provoked a significant transformation in the localisation of great properties in more favorable zones, but of course not their disappearance (tax free zones, fiscal paradises etc.) However, at the local and national level, this had a great impact on the inequality levels and on their reproduction. In reality, the exchange value is formed within a given Social Formation which technically corresponds to the Reproduction space.
Piketty's parameters.
Having recalled this, let us now concentrate on the essential, namely the parameters.
1) Piketty's thesis his contribution to economic science? is of course both Marginalist and simplistic. It is neatly summarised by the formula: r > g. This acclaimed academic and writer should at least read my Book IV entitled Hi-Ha! The bourgeois economists' visual donkish hallucinations, albeit it is still in a rough draft form (Livres-Books section of this site). Indeed, « r » is given as the rate of return of capital by Piketty, who, like all others Marginalists, has absolutely no clue as to what it could be, and even less how it is arrived at. Their function of production is written as follow: Y = f (K, L), K being capital and L being labor, which among other things amounts to say that the function of production is: c + v = p (where c = capital; v = labor and p = product.) Adam Smith had immediately seen the contradiction without trying to hide it: In effect, in this case, how would one account for the genesis of profit? Only Karl Marx was able to solve this conceptual and logical problem. Piketty never read him; in fact, Marx never speaks of « infinite accumulation » of capital, it is grotesque to affirm it; it amounts to a bourgeois and Popperian academic trick according to which one builds a scarecrow according to his-her needs to better « deconstruct » it, while simultaneously controlling the questions and the answers.
Profit is the result of the extraction of surplus-value through capitalist exploitation. We should start by restituting the scientific and thus Marxist function of production written: c + v + pv = p (where pv represents the surplus-value or profit). Then it must be integrated into the Equations of Simple and Enlarged Reproduction (see my aforementioned Book IV as well as the more recent and elaborate Synopsis of Marxist Political Economy in the Livres-Books section of this same site). We can then analyse the evolution of profit as well as that of interest.
To analyse credit one cannot generically speak of « rate of return » without differentiating between the various fractions of capital which play a different functional role, namely merchant, industrial, banking and financial capital. There exist a logical distinction between profit and interest; they are logical distincts, in the sense that contrary to logical opposites, interest is part of profit but the reverse is not true. From this scientific starting point one can quickly comprehend that speculation (namely interest cannibalizing an increasing part of, if not the whole profit) is unsustainable, and above all that it cannot be apprehended as a generic rate of return. (Recently three donkeys were granted the Nobel Prize for their bogus theories of so-called « efficient markets »; this verifies one thing only, to wit that they are true donkeys, something proven again by the present crisis. Indeed, the State had to soak up the monumental mess engendered by this crisis in order to bail out the speculative private banks operating in their so-called « free » or « efficient market ». This policy choice only served to aggravate the original problem as is testified by the continuous difficulties of the banks in satisfying stress tests, or by the accentuation of the « credit crunch » persisting despite the trillions lavished in financial liquidities through the various QEs, LTROs, TLTRO 1,2,3 and other such manoeuvres.
Today speculation which is falsely included in Piketty's « r » - is structurally unsustainable. This is because the distinction between interest and profit implies the distinction between speculative economy and real economy. This was aggravated by the dismantling of the functional desegregation of the 4 main banking and financial pillars following the abrogation of the Glass Steagall Act in 1999. The mandate of the ECB integrated this absurd financial deregulation in the name of the independence of the central bank. But this had the effect of subjecting public fiscal policies as well as central banks to the hegemony of the financial speculative market, embodied by the hegemony of a few so-called primary banks.
It just happens that despite my criticisms and despite the warnings available online, for instance Berruyer. Piketty does not show any understanding of the so-called « universal bank » system, and thus of the current functioning of central banks (you can quickly check this on p 911 and following pages.) For instance, he imagines that the balance sheets of banks, including central banks, have little importance since money is created ex nihilo by QEs, etc. We feel like advising him to read « The Treasury and the Fed » and « Credit without collateral » - available in the International Political Economy section of this site - as well as the pertinent pages in my aforementioned Synopsis.
The « bail in » do not permit a better disconnecting of fiscal policy and thus of the real economy from speculation, no more than the ruinous bailouts. At best, they represent a change in the salvaging mechanisms that are implemented. All this has little to do with inequality per se albeit this process does aggravate the inequalities inherent to the capitalist society.
2) Piketty rests his case on two main statistical series. The first deals with inequalities and is understood in very partial fashion. It uses an utterly inappropriate ratio namely the part of the top decile in National Revenue which according to Piketty represents more or less 90 % of GDP. In the most circular manner, this gives you a U curve for the USA. It is presented in the Table I.1, p 52 (accessible on line at: http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital21c/Piketty2013GraphiquesTableauxLiens.pdf ).
This U curve will be repeated and reoffered ad nauseum in many versions in the book. Yet, not only it is methodologically very partial but moreover, in his haste, Piketty interprets it in the reverse. This is because he is not an economist but rather an ideologue as is testified by his r > g formula and by all the rest in his pretentious book. (Whatever he says about Solow or about facts, which are always « constructed », his forma mentis remains Marginalist as well as his presumed empirical facts. In reality these are the accepted statistical results of the Marginalist paradigm.) As far as the 1 % is concerned, when it is understood as a concept integrated into a coherent theory, namely when it is understood as the result of the supply-side economics and its public policy, it appears for the first time in my Livre-Book III entitled Keynesianism, Marxism, Economic Stability and Growth (2005, same site; one just need to write « 1 % » in the search function to verify) In this book, I had already denounced the banking and financial functional deregulation which led to the bursting of the current crisis.
In effect, Piketty's thesis consists in affirming that inequalities illustrated in the adduced graph are returning to their normal pre-1914 level. In realty, this is wrong. To understand it, one must analyse standards of living, that is to say in rigorous economic terms what I called the « structure of v ». It is tightly linked to the epochs which characterise the reproduction-redistribution of capital see the Synopsis. The « structure of v » is crucial above all when a part of it, over and above the level of the « individual capitalist salary », is institutionalised by social payroll contributions and, in part, by the income tax equally levied on the paycheck. The importance of this institutionalising of saving for a more harmonious growth of the capitalist economy does constitute the major contribution of Keynes to the discipline and the result of his internal critique of Marginalism. We also know the devastating result of the revisitation of Pigou's Wealth Effect by Greenspan with his House Effect: It quickly led to the subprime crisis. Pigou had little time for the « structure of v » or for the distribution of revenues and wealth, the logic of which had to be abandoned to the market. There actually were epical unions and political battles to determine how exactly this saving would be institutionalised and who would control its use. The last great battles of this kind were those which opposed the Swedish and French Right to the Meidner Plan and then to the Reduction of Work Time (in French RTT, or « réduction du temps de travail ») and to the subordinated question of the publicly-owned workers' or labor funds.
However, during the American Boom and Bust the labor force was rather scarce (the Frontier to the West was still opened.) Salaries were not as low and immigration was called to the rescue. So that the standard of living of the American workers was higher than that of their European counterparts. Yet, although the institutionalising of savings was a major plank of Beveridge-Keynes during the Great Depression, one which was eventually reformulated by the New Dealers, it does not stop here. One must also consider the flows or circuits of capital thus created or sustained. As it is, the sums granted in an ad hoc fashion in the framework of the Hoover's « rugged individualism » did cost much more to the Federal and to federal States than the Social Security and all the other institutionalised public programs imagined by F.D.R's New Dealers. Before the New Deal stabilized the situation, many federal States were bordering on bankruptcy, thus endangering the credit worthiness of the Federal State. With the victory of the reactionary Truman over the New Dealer Wallace within the Democratic Party, the development of the US Welfare State was forcefully blocked and reversed. The federal spending power was no longer invoked thus letting to the Supreme Court all possible margins to dismantle social programs deemed to be contrary to the freedom and interstate mobility of capital. The last judgement relative to Social Security and Obamacare proved that crucial point again. On the contrary, in the heydays of the New Deal F.D.R even talked about « packing the Court » if it persisted in its reactionary stands.
On the reverse side, after 1979-1981, that is to say with the Volcker-Reagan counter-revolution (see « Les conséquences socio-économiques de Volcker-Reagan et Cie » March 1985, in the International Political Economy of this site. For the english version see here) this institutionalising of saving will be questioned. This regression was aggravated by free-trade deals and by the so-called global stock-exchange i.e., the Big Bang forcefully wanted by Thatcher to maintain the hegemony of the City over the emerging financial markets. With free trade we will be faced with the Solow's function of production, but now generalised at the global level. According to it, the economic equilibrium could only be achieved at the physiological level, a level strictly calculated on the sole basis of the individual capitalist salary without regard for the financing of social safety nets or for environmental criteria!!! The anti-dumping definition adopted by the WTO enshrined this legal a-social system.
Consequently, the inequalities increased and the standard of living was pushed downward for increasing strata of the population (the « working poor » according to Julius Wilson's definition, a phenomenon soon followed by the attrition of the so-called middle classes.) Laffer fittingly summed-up this inept thesis on a restaurant napkin: The State must become a minimal State so as to free private enterprise to insure (its? the?) global competitiveness. This amounts to confusing the role of the State with that of the enterprise, quickly resulting in the ruin of both. In fact, speaking of « crowding out » at a time in which QEs produce a structural « credit crunch » has become obscene. But the half-baked Laffer's curve is no longer used for the media neoliberal massage of public opinion, and it is therefore replaced by vacuous and soporific speeches on « inequality »!
Later the destruction provoked by the abrogation of the Glass Steagall Act was added, and thus the destruction produced by speculation in the framework of the emergence and affirmation of the hegemony of the so-called « universal bank ». This is the same sort of bank which had to be bailed out in extremis and repetitively by the State. We thus obtain the intimate logic of the genesis of the 1 % and even of the fractions of this 1 %. At the level of the real economy, the ROE cannibalises the profit, so that managers rapidly forget the « cost of production », because it would question their own efficiency as well as that of their free-trade political masters. They concentrate instead on the sole « cost of labor » which however amounts to a meager 25 % or so of the overall production cost. Of course, this is a myopic short-term strategy. It is one which proves very destructive for « social demand » and for internal demand. (See the aforementioned Book III.) This explains the repeated attacks on wages and social contributions. They are the real cause behind the recent increase in inequality and poverty levels.
Consequently, to get a good grasp of things, it suffices to recover the historical content of the « structure of v », determining further whether a part of it is institutionalised or not. In effect, when this is not the case, it does cost much more: In fact, social assistance is more onerous than social insurance conceived as a citizen's right. The latter triggers more virtuous capital cycles. This alone shows the complete inanity of Piketty's work and pretences concerning « inequality ». He establishes very partial statistical series without any connection to standard of life - and to capital circuits , and thus he misreads his curves.
In truth, this represents a lot of work for naught, just to be polite. I have often raised these methodological problems: In reality Piketty does not do better than Leroy-Beaulieu whom he criticises (p 812). This is because to make sense, economic statistics must correspond to the scientific function of production (Marxist until proven wrong, see Book I of Capital) and to its integration in the Equations of Simple and Enlarged Reproduction (Book II of Capital) while the dynamism implied by Enlarged Reproduction the choice of re-investment; the sharing of social surplus value etc. sends us back to the historical form assumed by the salary, the interest and the profit, that is to say by the « epoch of redistribution » of the Capitalist Mode of Production according to class struggles (Book III of Capital.)
Of course, the structure of Marx's Capital alluded to here had to be extracted from the thick layers of obfuscation in which Kautsky and Bernstein had buried it despite Engels with the help of all the others Böhm-Bawerk, Tugan-Baranovsky and Bortkiewicz, and with the laborious help of all the known pathetic academic marxologues. This clarifying labor of love was mainly worked out on the one hand by Althusser who pointed out the genesis of Capital and its method based on the « concrete in thought »- and, on the other hand, by me with the Marxist law of productivity reintegrated in the Equations of Simple and Enlarged Reproduction, which gives both the quantities, the values and the prices in a coherent fashion, something which neither Marginalism nor any forms of bourgeois economic science is capable to approach, even from far away. At least until I am proven wrong, which I strongly doubt.
3) The same criticisms apply to Piketty's second main curve it too is a circular affair which concerns the ratio capital/revenue (See the Graph I.2, p 54, or online: http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital21c/Piketty2013GraphiquesTableauxLiens.pdf )
Methodologically speaking, Piketty does not know what capital is; we saw that he does not know what revenue is either.(Ajout déc. 2024: Both become an inform Fihserian « income stream » masking the distinction between profit, rent and wage, classical interest and speculative interest.) As far as revenue is concerned, he does not take into account the « structure of v ». Similarly as far as capital is concerned, he does not account either for the forms historically assumed by it and by the « social surplus value ». It follows that his prognostics are misleading and dangerous. He draws from them the regressive, let us say « rabbinical-Nietzschean » - idea according to which, just because capitalism has already experienced this kind of inegalitarian wealth repartition, it will suffice to insure the minimum income to keep people quiet. Piketty is here fooling himself as well as his more candid readers. This is because the Boom and Bust capitalism was very different from the current form of capitalism now fallen under the hegemony of speculation.
Obviously, a strong speculation was already present in the stock exchange before the 1980s and especially before 1999. But this subordinated and cyclical form of speculation allowed the destruction of excess capital thanks to the ups and downs of the market, and to the stock exchange cyclical crashs. Otherwise, it was left to the explosion of ostentatious luxury spending during la Belle Epoque and to wars to insure the re-equilibration of the capitalist system through the elimination of relative overproduction. Aside from the stock exchange, the real economy a concept which Marginalism cannot distinguish from speculative economy remained relatively sheltered from speculation. It suffices here to refer back to the diatribes born from the opposition of H. Ford and Morgan (As for the industrialist H. Ford his position is exposed in: https://archive.org/details/TheInternationalJewTheWorldsForemostProblemhenryFord1920s )
Between 1920-1930, the Big corporations (Means) became hegemonic; however, at least in the USA, they needed less than 30 % on average of banking input for their own re-investment. The rest came from re-invested profits. It must be underlined that this 30 % was in the form of traditional capitalist credit. It was not yet constituted by speculative interest, moreover short-term, cannibalising all the profit or at least its greatest part (including, via the sanguine restructurations now imposed by equity funds, the CFO dictating to the CEO; this involves deep cuts into the salary mass, with the added aggravation of the destruction of internal demand, on top of the structural destruction operated through the reduction or even the cancelation of social contributions.
Moreover when one analyses « social surplus value » as it appears today, one finds part of it alongside the individual salary. It sat the basis for institutionalised saving built on payroll social contributions. The other part is found on the side of capital and is based on the distinction operated between public and private capital. Indeed Keynes argued in favor of State intervention or regulation to save capitalism from its own « animal spirits ». On the contrary, Piketty and his ilks aggravate their effects with the illusion that this game could be made sustainable. It is not. Interest cannot be superior to profit and yet speculative interest tendentially pretends to be structurally greater at least since 1999 with the end of the functional banking-financial segregation. This was later made worse by Paulson's reform following the subprime crisis. Nonetheless, it was quickly emulated by all the reactionary banking reforms carried out elsewhere; they all enshrined the speculative form of credit, in truth a « credit without collateral » . In the end, this form of credit rests squarely on the bailing out power of sovereign States, that is to say in fine on the taxpayers. These are the same States which the « private global governance » would want to see disappear! Paradoxically, they remain the true lenders of last resort directly through the bailouts and indirectly through the so-called bail in, as was said to be the case in Cyprus.
Looking at it from the side of capital, the social surplus value takes the form of public investments. These are necessary to create the infrastructures of a prosperous public-private economy. Monetarism and its public policy did the opposite; they destroyed the States in the name of a vulgar « crowding out » thesis that militated in favor of a so-called minimal State. This gave rise to the negative downward economic spiral witnessed today.
4) Similarly Piketty has no clue about capitalist fiscal policy although he publishes a lot on the subject. Modern fiscal policy the birth of which was largely due to my homonym according to Joseph Schumpeter, one unfortunately abandoned in the hands of a Buchanan.... is not primarily mandated to solve the problem of inequality. The Marginalist equilibrium does not rest on that even for those who, like Léon Walras, did differentiate in principle between « social economy » and « economic science ». The pretence is the reverse: At equilibrium, fiscal policy too finds its own equilibrium. As we know, Solow's economic equilibrium establishes itself at the physiological level, although it is itself an elastic level.
In fact, capitalist fiscal policy was minimalist in the original framework of liberal democracy, a sexist and Censitarian form of democracy. It answered some objectives linked to the general interest, at best conceived according to the Physiocratic philosophical vision of Adam Smith. It later evolved in an attempt to answer recurrent capitalist crises. This is particularly the case with Beveridge who erects social rights to the status of universal rights in order to stabilise the system social safety nets conceived as economic stabilizers and as counter-cyclical tools , and with Keynes who widened this logic to the regulating intervention of the State in the economy.
Here too, everything depends on how this intervention is implemented and how it is institutionalised. One example will suffice: The Classical direct subventions of the States, Keynesian subventions, if you will, did cost much less than the current hundreds of billions wasted in the form of tax expenditures and other forms of tax credit and exonerations. They should be urgently evaluated and revised. Meanwhile, they explain the massive transfer from salaries to profits in the last few decades. It amounts to at least 11 % of GDP. This tragic situation is aggravated today by the programmed dismantlement of social contributions. The social programs resting on them will then fall on a dwindling general fiscal policy, something that will be discussed in the next European Summit presided over by Italy; in truth, this amounts to a declaration of war on all workers and citizens.
This being said, the various taxes and contributions aim at precise goals: Hence, their growth and their multiplicity. This cannot be restricted only to inequality reduction, or to transparency and formal equity issues. After all we are dealing here with capitalist fiscal policies. Moreover each form has a targeted objective except that too much targeting leads to a lesser impact. (This was most notably the case with Keynesian fiscal policy which entered in crisis as soon as the GATT triggered the extroversion of the Multiplier of Kahn. Today, this is the case with the tax exonerations and tax expenditures; in the end, they only serve to destroy the fiscal base and the revenues accruing to the State and nothing else, given global free-trade deals which enshrined the globalised function of production of Solow (i.e. the equilibrium to be reached at the physiological level!)
This is why here too a fiscal reform worthy of the name must take into account the « structure of v » and « social surplus value ». And, to start with, the Reduction of Working Time while maintaining all the social benefits in the framework of an adequate new anti-dumping definition at the WTO. All told, a transient version of the needed new definition of anti-dumping could assume the form of a small increase in the TVA (or value-added tax) based on imports in order to protect the differed salary without endangering the macro-economic rate of competitiveness of the Social Formation. The basic consumption basket would be exempted through targeted tax credits. The increase affecting imported products would thus finance systematic tax credits, social programs, tax exemptions for capital, at least when they are justified, as well as an accelerated rate of depreciation. But this would have a strict counterpart, namely the adoption of the Reduction of the Working Week as the overall legal framework. We hasten to add that social affairs remain an exclusive national power within the EU. EU member States can act. It is merely a question of political will and of socio-economic choice.
Conclusion:
Piketty is no real economist, his equation r > g is worthless; I underline this: It is worthless (and therefore one can predict that he could receive the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for the « dismal discipline» soon!!!) Moreover, he knows nothing at all about the working of capitalism. This applies to the « structure of v », which results from capitalist exploitation; it applies to « social surplus value » which defines the forms of capital and its hegemonic fractions; and it applies to the « epochs of redistribution » of capital. Piketty is thus able to happily offer his concave series and his biased reading of them because he is driven by his ideology, or else by the typical preventive «gattopardesco » hubris of the self-proclaimed protector of the capitalist system. In the end, his thesis amounts to a rather typical attempt to legitimise the emerging hegemony of the « private global governance » regime.
The problem is that speculation erecting itself as the dominant system is nothing but a structural contradiction, notwithstanding the level of inequality. Interest can never exceed profit, speculative economy cannot substitute for the real economy, and the central bank cannot substitute in permanence for prudential ratios, if for no other reasons that the ex nihilo creation of money cannot erase its role in its balance sheets. (In truth, Milton Friedman was a really dangerous « eccentric » just like the Austrian School members said when they advised him to try his luck somewhere else ...)
Similarly, it is clear that the State, far from evolving towards its own demise as some had wished, will not be able to substitute in permanence to central banks in order to bail out the dramatically vulnerable so-called « universal » private banks. Nor can the taxpayers lastingly substitute to necessary purges through the cybernetic feedback mechanism embodied by capitalist competition. « Bail in » are potentially as ruinous for the real economy as past and present bailouts. Some people have displayed a naive propensity to believe in « credit without collateral ». Can anyone bet on the same credulity in favor of a new form of the so-called New Economy finally stabilised by Piketty's ludicrous global tax on capital, a proposal he himself characterises as a useful « utopia »? To pretend such a thing one must assume that ordinary people are more naive than commonly thought ... I do not personally believe that this is true any longer, at least on that specific issue. Let us underline too that these essential distinctions, notably between interest and profit, between speculative economy and real economy, are not even conceivable within the framework of bourgeois economic science and above all within Marginalism. It is as bad as that ...
Therefore Piketty should revise his work and redo his curves and graphs. Only then would he contribute to the discipline and to the associated fields of study. For that, he should:
A) Verify the historically evolving components of the « structure of v », hence in short of the standard of living, while verifying the form of institutionalisation of saving which is adopted. (We said above that institutionalised saving creates virtuous flows of capital as shown by the European Social State or by the New Deal of FDR etc. When this is not the case - Hoover, Reagan, Thatcher etc - the opposite unfolds and the inherent contradictions of the capitalist mode of production become more acute. Piketty sees himself as a new and corrected Kuznets (in the light of reactionaries such as Furet etc ...). Although it cannot be denied that Kuznets's work was colored by the Cold War, it remains that one of his starting point sends one back to the Tennessee Valley Authority, which for the first time, albeit on a smaller scale, did present a considerable amount of data on the fate of the workers and of the unemployed. In particular, it established that after 2 years spent in unemployment, the labor power was so degraded that it became useless, thus penalising both the States and the enterprises. As was said, the CMP is not a philanthropic gala dinner. Hence, public works had to be conceived as an element entering into the full-employment policy (this meant, according to Keynes, that Marginalist equations needed to be regulated on the basis of those exogenous criteria deemed essential for the stability of the system.) One only had to add what the experience of social safety nets had already proven, namely their stabilizing and counter-cyclical effect, to which must be added the capital accumulation effect of the public pension regimes except for the repartition regime more common in Europe. Yet, even in this case, capital benefited from the less costly public regime. As we know GM, Chrysler and others had to be rescued by the Federal State because they could not afford to honor their own in-house retirement plans! The flagrant inequity induced by forced unemployment or by pre-Welfare health-care regimes was unanimously denounced by all. For instance, when it was realized that a short stay in the hospital fatally led to the lasting ruin of the workers and of their families, thus hindering any residual social mobility. This remains the case, even when mobility is understood in the restricted sense as « life chances » according to Max Weber and the Austrian school. This social consensus was convincingly summarised by the sentence: « Through no fault of their own », the basic sense of justice leading to the emergence of Social Security and to the conception by the New Deal of unions as counter-weights within the collective bargaining system. (See for instance the Note 15 on John Galbraith in my aforementioned Book III.)
B) Seen from the side of capital, one must also differentiate between the dominant fractions of capital and between interest and profit or better still between interest, credit and speculation. Piketty is young. He still has time to correct himself if he hopes to contribute something to the discipline. For now, despite the amount of work boasted, it is not only nil, it is outright economically and politically dangerous.
However, in the era of the Nouveaux Philosophes, one can legitimately fear that Piketty and a few others will inaugurate the tragic-comic era of the Nouveaux Economistes! (On the former, see my Pour Marx, contre le nihilisme, i.e. the Livre II in this same site; the second part of this book is now available in English in the Livres-Books section of this same site.) After the disappearance of Althusser and the self-cancelling of a French Communist Party now victim of the over-representation of many renegades, it is truly astonishing to note that such media happenings originate in France! I have already said that this peculiar France, or even this peculiar Europe, is truly where Nietzsche wanted it to be. « Once again! »
May 20, 2014. (Translated September, 2014)
SECOND PART: A FRAUD CALLED PIKETTY.
Introduction.
We are now hearing many hilarious claims from many « awakened » exclusivist corners portraying Thomas Piketty as a new Marx. When I was a doctoral student in International Political Economy, I heard many infra-Weberian and infra-Mannheim pitres pretending «to do for our times what Marx had done for his »; by which they meant to do what Böhm-Bawerk and others had done, trying their best to sow confusion and to reverse authentic Marxist proposals. Nothing is really new under these dark and obscuring skies.
Of course, Piketty's is a pretentious and obvious intellectual fraud and not just because the undeserved praises would pretend to compare an intellectual Lilliputian with a giant of thought (as we will see, comparing data is a difficult task for Piketty and his ilks.) In truth, Piketty is up to a self-imposed mission, namely obscuring theories and facts in order to artificially build a plausible narrative ideated to legitimize the otherwise unsustainable levels of inequality engendered by the regime of hegemonic speculation. As the adage goes, he knows that a picture is worth a thousand words. Hence, with others similarly self-empowered academics he cooks up a plausible if laughable new data bank on global inequalities. In a typical reversal, Piketty's title sends us back to President Chavez's Socialism of the XXI Century. Here too, we are dealing with a giant on the one hand and a pretentious Lilliputian on the other, but one who knows from the start that he can count on all academic and mediatic bourgeois choruses world-wide to praise the crass narrative he lays down in his uselessly voluminous and rather repetitive book. (It just seems that the volubility was calculated to ensure that few would have the patience and the strength to read this stuff up to the end, that is to say the more than 970 pages of it, at least in the French version ...)
Well, no! Piketty is not a new Marx. He is not even an economist in his own right (as we will see, to obtain his main bogus equations, he mainly and typically borrows Solow's fraudulent reversal of Harrod's dynamic version of Keynesianism.) He is just a laborious writer whose intent is to forge a new narrative in order to save and to legitimize the current global speculative capitalist system. His approach is similar to that of the bankers who, amidst the indignation raised by the bailout of private banks and enterprises, went on air chanting « Tax us! Tax us! » knowing full well that the bourgeois courts would abolish any decent fiscal levies on the wealthy with the pretext that this would amount to « confiscation » (pace Thomas Paine!) They used this rather stale trick while Dallara from the IIF and others were devising the Cyprus confiscation model of bank deposits. They thus improved their bankrupt haircut model which had been applied for instance to Greece; at the same time, they were contriving to implement a suffocating and unsustainable Fiscal compact to subject all democracies to speculative finance.
We had the laughable if warmongers Nouveaux Philosophes. Piketty offers you the equally laughable and dangerous New Economists version of this pseudo-awakened strategy! To establish his new narrative, Piketty offers you a bogus set of Solowian equations illustrated by pseudo-statistics which few will have the time to analyse and to question, taking them at face value as established empirical statistical truths. Moreover, Piketty's bogus statistics, drawn in a convenient long term form, suffer from all the known methodological fallacies which would cause a first year student to blush in painful shame. (I actually wonder who was the thesis director of this New (French) Economist and what s/he now has to say about this ... Obviously, this post and anti-Althusser peculiar France is overdoing itself despite the positive critique contained in my Pour Marx, contre le nihilisme (the second part of which is freely accessible in English in the Livres-Books Section of www.la-commune-paraclet.com . This is a clear symptom of philo-Semite Nietzschean overrepresentation in the Hexagon, as everywhere else in the Western World, together with its subsequent pervasive false representation.)
Piketty's goal is to legitimate current global speculative capital and its « credit without collateral ». This is why he is so concerned with inequality. Indeed, without some appropriate ideological conflict management, it could easily undermine the whole system. To avoid what Piketty calls « the Marxist apocalypse » (p 16), one must « regain control of capitalism and of its private interests while pushing aside any protectionist or nationalist withdrawals. » (p 16) Hence, Piketty's real task is to provide a plausible narrative presented as science with the hope to demonstrate that inequalities always existed anywhere and at all times and therefore will always exist despite the present resentment over the excessive wealth of the so-called 1%. According to the usual infinite regression ploy, Piketty decomposes this already small percentage in 0,1% and even 0,01% and less. He does this to better illustrate that in the long term (!) this sort of inequality always prevailed everywhere and at all times (!) He writes: « To my knowledge, there never existed any society at any time in History in which one can observe a wealth distribution that could reasonably be characterised as « weakly » inegalitarian ...». (p 405) This ludicrous affirmation sends you back to a footnote on the same page where Piketty brushes the USSR aside as presenting no interest for his analysis because capital was State owned! No wonder then that he calls his bogus global tax on capital a useful « utopia ». (p 836)
All references are here taken from the French edition and quotes are translated. Let us now examine more closely some of Piketty's main themes, or more precisely his most important and consciously forged fallacies. This typically pretentious and vacuous Lilliputian likes to call anti-capitalists « lazy » (p 62). However, were it not for his voluminous narrative rubbish, the least informed of them would quickly see what he is up to, why and for whom?
Piketty's set of equations.
In his puerile pretentiousness Piketty is prone to criticise everyone even Pareto and Solow. But he only does this to diffuse obvious reactions and to surreptitiously but heavily borrow from them. His aim is to offer a less rigorous but more palatable version of their theories, one forged to legitimate global speculative capitalism. If inequalities were grosso modo similar at all times and places then, of course, there would be no point in trying to attenuate or better to liquidate them. Except that, as we will show later, this is nothing but a ludicrous factual fraud based on a fraudulent methodology, unworthy of an academic. A methodology that would even appear rather simplistic and osé for a mediatised mainstream opinion-maker ...
As it is, his restricted set of equations is strictly borrowed from Solow. This is done according to the typical philo-Semite Nietzschean «awakened » method and its «reversing » mania. Piketty obviously reads me. For instance: He cannot refrain talking about social surplus value and « differed salary » (typically relegated in a footnote pp 400-401), although he does not understand what this might mean having no formation whatsoever in authentic Marxist theory (1). I had explained in my books and articles that Solow's work had been motivated by the American philo-Semite Nietzschean lodges' desire to erase Keynes's theories especially as expressed in his General theory of employment, interest and money. Of course, Piketty never quotes me just because like many other Lilliputians, he is too busy forging a plausible narrative to oppose ex cathedra to my scientific Marxist theories, shamefully knowing that he can count on my academic and mediatic occultation and on the tight bourgeois control of the flows of « authorized communication ». This philo-Semite Nietzschean a-scientific way of doing things is nothing new: Aside from occultation, it tries to pre-empt the scientific right to respond in order to control the mediatic pseudo-debate.
His rewriting also includes Harrod's and Domar's dynamic version of Keynes's theory which had been borrowed from Soviet planning theory (as I have already explained in my draft entitled Hi-Ha! The bourgeois economists' donkish visual hallucinations, see Download Now, Livres-Books section of my site www.la-commune-paraclet.com ). Following the usual method Solow only reversed Harrod's main equations. Piketty shamelessly and candidly explains that when the formula ß = s/g was first introduced by Harrod and Domar in the 30s and 40s it was usual to write it and to read it in the reverse order, namely g = s/ß. (p 364). Here, g is the rate of growth, s that of saving and ß the ratio of the stock of capital over revenue in Piketty's peculiar definitions. Of course, neither Harrod nor Domar, nor even Hicks, would have ever dared write it as Solow did and Piketty after him! It simply makes no chronological and logical sense. (Added dic. 2024: We can ignore here the confusion between saving and investment. Saving institutionnalised in the Social Security programs or in personal accounts, serves a specific purpose in fulfilling the Reproduction cycle. Investment referes to the re-invested profit plus credit, either private or public.)
Piketty rightly notes that Solow's model imposed itself only in the 70s-80s. (p 366); but he fails to understand that behind the so-called « two Cambridge » controversy, what was at stake was the function of production and its re-insertion into the Equations of dynamic economic growth. Indeed, it was more exactly known as the « function of production controversy ». I have provided the definitive scientific refutation of Marginalism and of Solow for instance in my Synopsis of Marxist Political Economy, Livres-Books section of my site www.la-commune-paraclet.com Ignoring it to do the reverse is academically dishonorable and represents a clear symptom of the mystifying strategy at play. And in my Methodology introduction, idem.
In fact, in this reversal of Harrod's and Domar's equation you have the gist of Piketty's forma mentis in all its characteristic chutzpah. Anyone else would have written the equation like Harrod and Domar initially did and then and only then an explanation would have been provided as to why it would be legitimate to read it in reverse. Not with Piketty, the New Economist who is not « too lazy » but who knows exactly where he wants to lead you. Note that ß being the ratio of capital over revenue, s being the rate of saving and g the rate of growth, reversing Harrod's and Domar's equation is pure Solowian nonsense, and moreover a nonsense forged maliciously. This is because anyone in good faith quickly sees that a strictly mathematical reversal is certainly possible after all it is an equality - but such reversal makes strictly no economic and chronological sense whatsoever. Of course, you cannot assume that Piketty (with the help of his proof readers and editors) is « too lazy » not to have learned this simple introduction level evidence.
Piketty calls this grotesque Solowian reversal «a fundamental law of capitalism ». He uses this terminology just because Marx had spoken of the « laws of motion of the capitalist mode of production ». Piketty does not bother with them but instead he forges a ludicrous law of « infinite accumulation » based on a quasi nil growth which he attributes to Marx! (p 24) This goes to show that Piketty never read a single page of Marx. Indeed, Marx sees infinite productivity growth and Enlarged Reproduction capitalist accumulation as opposed to primitive pre-capitalist thesaurization as the revolutionary traits which characterise the Capitalist mode of production. But, whereas productivity growth can be infinite, capitalist accumulation is contradictory. Nevertheless, Piketty needs this peculiar rendition of Marx to ground his own r > g pseudo fundamental law, which then allows him to speak of a « Marxist apocalypse » that needs to be dealt with in an « utopian » fashion of course, and only through a Pikettian narrative!
Of course, the law attributed to Marx by Piketty is nothing but typical rubbish.
Let us now look at Piketty's own first fundamental law in greater details.
Piketty's first law is derived from Solow's initial reversal. He writes it in the following fashion:
a = r x ß, where a is the ratio of capital's share of National Revenue (RN), r is a non-defined rate of return and ß is the ratio of the stock of capital over RN (of course, we mean here capital, revenue etc in Piketty's own peculiar sense of the terms, which always is a puerile aggravation of the initial Marginalist falsifications ...)
Piketty affirms: « The formula a = r x ß is a pure accounting equality. It applies to all societies at all times » (p 93) Wittgenstein had spoken about « significant tautologies » but this is not the case with Piketty's first law. Piketty's first law is no law at all simply because he cannot demonstrate it, it is as simple as that. As I will show, Piketty proposed this first law in these terms just because he is trying to falsify one of my main scientific results, namely the restitution of Marx's law of productivity which is at the heart of the Capitalist Mode of Production (CMP). In such a way, he is confident that he cannot be disproved. Still he misses the boat altogether because he cannot integrate this Marxist result into his Solowian Marginalism. In fact, his law could only constitute a particular and meaningless case, namely that in which the conditions of production that prevail in inter-firms or inter-sectors and even inter-social formations, that is to say the ratio of capital to labor as well as the rate of profit, are the same. Without the knowledge of the Marxist law of productivity which I alone have elucidated on the basis of Marx's work such identical rates can only result from an insignificant particular case in which productivity and profit rates are identical across the board.
Needless to say, Piketty just like all Marginalists, is utterly unable to integrate the rate of profit (or rate of return which mixes everything up from profit to interest, rent and the rest) organically with the ratio of labor over capital or organic composition of capital. However, this particular case is meaningless even if you replace Marxist productivity (i.e. the two main ratios v/C and pv/v moving in directly inverse proportion) by the childish theory of marginal productivity which, at a minimum, implies a difference in the economies of scale characterizing the various enterprises. This means that Piketty's law will become scientifically demonstrable only if you rewrite it in the Marxist terms that I alone have demonstrated following Marx, namely the Marxist Law of Productivity reintegrated within Marx's Equations of Simple and Enlarged Reproduction. This law constitutes the dynamic driving force of the capitalist mode of production and its specific revolutionary contribution to the History of Mankind.
We can sum up this presumed first law of capitalism in Piketty's own words: « The formula a = r x ß does not say anything to us about these subtleties » (p 94) namely how the ratios are arrived at and how they are linked. Don't worry: Piketty's second « law» will deal with that using the same methodology! Here is the gist of his approach : « a = r x ß tells us that whatever are the economic, social and political forces at play, the price level by the ratio capital/revenue ß, the share of capital a and the rate of return r, these three quantities cannot be fixed independently from each others. Conceptually, there exist two order of liberty but not three. » (98-99) Of course, Piketty then asks himself how to measure these quantities. He quickly concludes that « national accounting is a social construction in becoming. » (p 99) We are illustrating here exactly what he means!
Thus Piketty's first law like all the rest is just a plain fraud cooked up as a plausible narrative.
Note that, as I have already alluded to, Piketty knows about Solow's reversal. He also notes that Solow's « neoclassical » version did not gain pre-eminence before the 70's (i.e. as Keynesianism was being definitively undermined by the extroversion of the Kahn Multiplier, something which had been announced by his defeat against H. White at the Savannah conference of 1944 where the new world capitalist regime, characterised by the IMF, the Bird and soon the Gatt, was framed up.)
Piketty also notes that Solow's reversed equations were leading to an inherently unstable equilibrium, the so-called «razor-hedge equilibrium». But he does not really understand why. Here is what is at stake. Solow's reversal of Harrod (writing ß = s/g instead of the original g = s/ß. ) only means that Solow is consciously forging a meta-magical narrative. He does this by reversing the logical and chronological order of things. This is obvious because unless speculation has become hegemonic the rate of saving and thus investments can only come after production and after the realisation of production (effective sale) and thus after the distribution of the « value added » derived from this sale if you want to put it this way.
Except that Solow extends the falsification first conceived by Jean-Baptiste Say and Léon Walras: Treat everything as factors of production in a liquefied money form and you can deal with a mathematical equality without bothering about the genesis and inherent attributes of any of these factors. This concerns most particularly labor as a factor of production, albeit anyone would understand that it cannot be simply monetised as a machine would. This is because, contrary to the machine, labor power is still embodied by an individual in flesh and bones who is part of a species based on sexual reproduction. This implies that his o her remuneration must also cover the renewal of his household and that of the species and not only the replacement of his-her depreciation (wear and tear) through work. Hence, the crucial importance of my concept of « global net revenue of the household » which includes the individual capitalist salary, « differed salary » covering UI and old-age pension etc, and the transfer to the households in the form of universally accessible services and infrastructures.
Now just look at Solow's ludicrous function of production based on his rubbish reversal; it writes this way: Y = f (K, L) where K is capital and L is labor but not necessarily under full-employment! Pace Adam Smith! Pace Keynes! Hence, of course, this is bound to lead to «razor-hedge equilibrium». Yet, it still assumes, without in any way demonstrating it, that full-employment will eventually follow if only salaries adjust to the right level, i.e., tendencially the (elastic) physiological level. This is because it is further assumed that « where there is a need, there will be some enterprise that will satisfy it. » Needless to say, this is plain nonsense: Fundamental needs are obviously not met (According to the World Bank in 1998, 2.8 billion people lived with less than 2 dollars a day; many had no regular access to water; even in the developed countries absolute and relative poverty levels are going up dramatically despite the relatively recent definition changes, etc.) Obviously, what should be said is that only cash-worthy needs are satisfied within the CMP (i.e., back to Marx's notion of « social demand » which he exposed as early as 1844 in his Parisian manuscripts.)
Add to this that in order to infuse some exogenous dynamism into his system, Solow insists on technology. But he makes a horrible mess of it simply because he does not have any concept of productivity aside from economies of scale. Marginal utility is a one-sided value construct which leads to the pseudo-laws of increasing and decreasing returns thus obfuscating the real working of capitalist productivity just as badly as « Senior's last hour», an ineptitude already criticized in Book I of Marx's Capital. He thus misses the main point, namely that productivity means the production of more products of a given kind with less physical workers or else there would be no advantage to the capitalist in introducing new technologies and new workplace organisation methods to beat the competition. But given his ridiculous function of production, he can ignore this. Worse still, he attributes to technology an opposite role, that of helping absorb available excess manpower.
Of course, this is a stupid confusion of technology proper and of the dynamic produced by the introduction of new traditional or intermediary sectors. As I have demonstrated, secondary sectors like automobiles, domestic utilities, etc can absorb part of the labor force liberated by productivity and so can new sectors but only if they are labor intensive. If new sectors (like most IT) are capital intensive, the problem is quickly compounded and the sole capitalist alternative available, aside from work and wealth sharing, remains to attempt a forced return to a society of new salaried slavery and new domesticity.
Clearly Solow's contribution was plain rubbish. It was consciously conceived as a falsifying narrative directed against Keynes and Harrod and, of course, against their Marxist and Soviet inspirations. And so is Piketty's first fundamental law.
Piketty's second fundamental law of capitalism.
Let us now look at Piketty's second fundamental law of capitalism. We already have seen that it is based on Solow's reversal of Harrod's and Domar's original equation which had tried to dynamise Keynes's system. We now have to see how Piketty understand this « neoclassical reversal » and the use he tries to make of it.
Piketty takes no chances. He quickly explains that this fundamental law is no real law at all, though it somehow « effectively allows us to account for the historical evolution of the ratio of capital over revenue. » (p 265) As you already know, science has no part here, the « law » only needs to be plausible ... In fact, says Piketty, this law only applies « when several essential hypotheses are satisfied. » (p 265) He adds: « In the first place, it only is an asymptotic law, that is to say one that is uniquely valid over the long term. » (p 265) It does not account for crisis, shocks etc. (p 269)
We already saw above what this means: In the long term, the historical evolution of capitalism with its crises and shocks is averaged out so that the argument becomes circular. But this remains true only as long as traditional capitalism is at play, staging traditional capitalist credit instead of hegemonic speculation. We will soon deal with this point further. Let us quickly note here that this is typical of Piketty's hilarious methodology to which we will turn later in greater details: Make abstraction of everything historically significant and quickly proceed to cook up your long-term curves in order to back up your bogus thesis. Nothing original here: The brokers and the financial institutions have recently refined this statistical cutting method to make their reports look good. This amounts to a set of rather childish introductory tricks albeit they were usually taught preventively but whereas they have now become an integral part of the trade ...
In this equation, g is the rate of growth; s the rate of saving and ß the ratio stock of capital over National Revenue (of course, in Piketty's « fuzzy» sense of these words.) Thus, according to this purported second law of capitalism « the ratio ß of a society is proportionally higher when the rate of saving is important and the rate of growth is sluggish. » (p 98) In other words, first set up the division of the cake and then apply it to a smaller cake than expected. Piketty provides the illustration: « For instance, if s = 12 % and g = 2 %, then ß = 600 % » (p 262). In the footnote, Piketty tell you how to read this, namely ß = 600 % is equal to ß = 6, hence the stock of capital is 6 times greater than National Revenue.
In his long-term graphs, he then goes on to show that such ratios are valid for all times and all places. But then he quickly makes two reserves:
1) He will not deal with the USSR, because everything being publicly owned in that regime it is of no interest to his argument (p 405, footnote 3.) It simply does not fall within Piketty's fuzzy diachronic and synchronic methodology. Piketty obviously knows precious little about ethnology, ethnography, economic sociology and History and even less about comparative science, not to speak of Marxist comparative modes of production. He thus candidly states further: « To my knowledge, there never existed any society in which we can observe a repartition of capital which can reasonably be qualified as « weakly » inegalitarian. » (p 405) It is not just the USSR, it is far more serious: Piketty, like the worse ethnologists of the past like Marcel Mauss et al. sees capitalism, confused with merchant relationships, at work everywhere and at all times. As you know, this rubbish is quickly accounted for because it has become the characteristic mental perversion engendered by the Marginalist amputation of the duality of value, namely the Marginalist notion of « utility ». This notion conceives exchange value in psychological terms - the Austrian School's bogus calculus of « joys and pains » - entirely deprived of any tangible support, that is to say of any specific use value. Therefore, value in its utility form becomes strictly incoherent even when expressed in money terms and one cannot differentiate between forms of extraction of surplus value or profit and thus between modes of production
2) Similarly, Piketty makes abstraction of fiscal paradises, shadow banking and derivative products, because these are hard to analyse and because the ß ratio would then more likely be 20 to 30 times instead of 6 or 8, and that is of no interest to him. (p 306) Piketty wants to show that inequality has always existed at a more or less stable level and will always exist. However, he knows that in order to preserve the system this inequality needs to be hidden from the masses and at times mitigated to avoid dangerous social upheaval or, in Piketty's own term, « apocalypses». After all he and his ilks have already concluded that the return to a society of new domesticity and new slavery is feasible as long as you offer the masses a bogus narrative fitted with a bogus utopia i.e., Piketty's global taxation on capital which can dissipate the collapse of the system predicted by Marx. He writes: « Concretely, with a small part of their revenues, the 10 % on top could employ as domestics a large portion of the 50 % at the bottom » (p 403)
Such 20 to 30 to 1 grotesque inequality ratio scares Piketty. But it is a pale rendering of the present reality. In a World in which the US authentic fraction of the no-global movement declared « We are the 99 % », it has become so grotesque that Piketty's narrative and his« utopian » proposal would appear like a silly joke. In his own peculiar way Piketty is absolutely right: You cannot maintain pseudo-academic gravitas with such jokes attempting to interpret such obviously grotesque though more real numbers. You then need to laboriously cook-up the right numbers and associated graphs and curves to make it all plausible. As I said, we will come back on Piketty's peculiar methodology. (To repeat, I would like to know who this guy's thesis director was, and what he or she has to say about this ...)
The inept and ill-intentioned character of Solow's inversion of Harrod's and Domar's original equation is obvious. It is both logically and chronologically irrational, even if you already deal with factors of production previously liquefied in money terms (Say's founding trick built on Ricardo's paper currency.) This is because you still would need to explain the provenance of that capital given in money terms, and that always sends you back to the sphere of production and to its realisation (the circuits of capital). Marx had already explained that money is a general equivalent which still needs to be explained in terms of the economic universal equivalent, namely the exchange value of labor power.
Nonetheless, the belated adoption of Solow's inversion by the mainstream economic crews reveals the coming of age of a new dominant form of capital, namely speculation as opposed to traditional capitalist credit. The victory of this fraction of capital was signaled by the abrogation of Glass Steagall Act in 1999 from which ushered the hegemony of what I called « credit without collateral » - see the International Political Economy section of this site together with the financial structural crises engendered by this lethal disconnection of speculative economy from real economy. (2)The subprime crisis was only the tip of the iceberg.
This is crucial because one does not need to be a rocket scientist to understand that the relationship between saving, investment and growth becomes utterly fallacious as soon as reinvested profits are replaced by the de facto end of prudential ratios and by the printing press. At a time when the explosion of the public debt is mainly due to the bailouts, out of the public purse, of otherwise bankrupt private financial institutions, the impossibility to reimburse the public debt through a neoclassical fiscal consolidation path plainly illustrates the inherent contradiction. Suffice it to say here that Piketty, no more than any other Marginalist, is able to differentiate interest from profit, speculation from credit and speculative economy from real economy, or, for that matter, household's saving and re-invested profit plus interest. Obliterating as he does the existence of financial speculation and the weight of financial derivatives is not an acceptable solution but a silly narrative that can only bring discredit to his author and to his many albeit mainly American philo-Semite Nietzschean backers.
What should we make here of Piketty's pretense that this silly equation should be treated as a fundamental law of capitalism despite the fact that it is at best « asymptotic » and valid only over the long term (p 265) and furthermore that « it does not explain the shocks endured over the short term » (p 269). I suppose the members of the cohorts of militants who demonstrated under the banner « We are the 99% » would want to know whether, in the real world, such « short term » can make a lasting difference according to the political and socio-economic choice made by a given policy. For instance, how would the inequality ratio look like despite Piketty's silly diachronic/synchronic erasing, if there had been no public bailouts of the bankrupt financial institutions? (The UK experience with the nationalization of Northern Rock demonstrated that it would have been much less costly and would have avoided producing the current chronic credit crunch which rises proportionally to the QE largesse.) Piketty himself admits en passant that: «For instance, if we consider the period 1990-2010 instead of the period 1987-2013, the real rate of growth of the higher patrimonies falls around 4 % per year as against 6 % - 7 %. This is due to the fact that the year 1990 constitutes a high point in the World stock and housing market cycle, while the year 2010 is a rather lower point ( see graph 12.2) » (p 693) But, adds Piketty, this does not change anything in the long term, ... of course!
Keynes's had ironically noted that « in the long term we are all dead ». But it is far more serious than that, because it goes to the very heart of the laws of motion of capitalism that Piketty wants to falsify against Marx and the authentic Marxists. The main laws of motion of the Capitalist Mode of Production are as follow:
A) The Marxist law of productivity produced by Marx and clarified by me in its coherent integration into the Equations of Simple and Enlarged Reproduction (SR and ER). As it appears from the chapter « The last hour of Senior » in the Book I of Capital, it already contains the definitive critique of what would become Marginalist theory. As such, once coherently integrated within the Equations of SR and ER, it amounts to the definitive critique of the fallacious laws of increasing or decreasing returns, namely the logic of economy of scale. This is something Sraffa had attempted in the early 1920s without complete success because he had tried to rehabilitate Ricardo without directly mentioning labor exploitation: However, it does not take much ingenuity or does it? to notice that Sraffa's « basket of commodities necessary to produce other commodities » is nothing but a surreptitious attempt to introduce Marx's « socially necessary labor ». This is done knowing perfectly well, along with the classical economists, that labor power is not a factor of production like all the rest, if only because it must reproduce itself within a household while remaining the sole agent capable of producing new exchange values within the sphere of production. As you notice, Sraffa himself had nothing to do with the vacuous though rather verbose neo-Ricardians like Pasinetti and many others;
B) Following from the Marxist law of productivity (3), the main laws of motion of capitalism are the centralisation and concentration of capital. Lenin had already made the point when, following Marx, he offered his scientific clarification of Lafargue's and Hilferding's works dealing with capitalist credit, financial capital and the inter/intra-imperialist logic. This is something that cannot be reduced to oligopoly and monopoly see Sraffa, Robinson and Chamberlain. Capitalist productivity implies that the rate of profit remains the same as long as the systemic constraints which Marx called « moral conditions » are not changed, so that volumes of profit become determinant. These higher volumes are induced by the production of a same or highly elastic good through a higher organic composition of capital more capital and less labor power thus for a lower price. From this it follows that the more productive firm will easily conquer the available domestic and foreign markets.
C) A and B will tendentially aggravate the main contradiction facing the capitalist mode of production, namely the structural tendency to induce overproduction and under-consumption. The divergence of the so-called « invisible hand » from the optimum general equilibrium, namely the respect of the social demand expressed in the Equations of SR and ER, will fatally lead to gross squander of scarce resources even as the levels of relative and absolute poverty increase with the social inequalities that a Piketty vainly tries to explain away as a historical constant, one which therefore can be somewhat attenuated but never suppressed.
D) I have shown, for instance in my afore-mentioned Book III, that this capitalist bent can be countered momentarily through the introduction of new sectors, especially new intermediary sectors. The more so if they are labor intensive, something that the capitalist drive for an ever higher productivity will eventually dispel. (Look at IT sectors: Programming through algorithms based on AI is quickly replacing workers; even the close to a million financial workers employed in the City are now at risk due to the development of high-frequency robotized trading ... Yet, in order to be coherent with the dynamic optimum general equilibrium (Enlarged Reproduction in scientific Marxist terms), social demand needs to follow. This is true for both the necessary rate of re-investment as well as for consumption demand, the latter being summarized in what I called the «structure of v », v being the « global net revenue » of the household and not only the « individual capitalist salary ». If new sectors are introduced while the « structure of v » is undermined through the grotesque globalisation of the even more grotesque Solowian function of production, then you quickly fall prey to the downward economic spiral. The latter is now accelerated by the austerity agenda born from the fallacious neoclassical, Marginalist so-called fiscal consolidation path. This free-trade globalisation of Solow's function of production lowers the individual salary and destroys social services with the pretext that this lowering of the «cost of labor » will preserve competitiveness. At the same time, the failure of so-called «asymmetric interdependence » demonstrates that no country can hope to lastingly substitute export markets to domestic social demand.
You will have noticed that Piketty does not have to deal with any of these issues because he only sees the part of the picture that interests him for the construction of his bogus narrative. I have already said that his concepts, especially his rate of return and his definition of the stock of capital, are just convenient bags simplified for his specific purpose. Like all Marginalists, he has no concept of profit: Profit is confused with any form of interest or return - and even with rent - and furthermore it is always given post hoc. Remember Adam Smith's paradox according to which, if profit were to be the retribution of the labor of the owner of the means of production, then the fundamental economic equality would not be rationally explained. Noting capital as c and retribution for labor expounded during the production process as v and the result of the production process as p, then the function of production would write : c + v = p. Smith then asked himself: Whence then comes profit? Referring to the owners of the means of production he honestly noted that: « They love to reap where they never sowed.**** (Adam Smith, Sutherland ed., Oxford University Press, 1993, p 47) However as Marx explained against Proudhon, profit cannot be equated with simple robbery. The fundamental equality of the function of production c + v + pv = p demonstrated by Marx cannot be violated unless one wants to fall prey to voodoo economics, including the Marginalist brands, although profit can be collectivised as « social surplus value».
Only Marx proved able to solve this logical contradiction with his Labor Law of Value. The Marginalists only tried to occult Marx's scientific demonstration. They did this following J. B. Say's manipulation of Ricardo's paper currency which allowed them to express factors of production in monetary terms from the start, thus hiding the origin of capital. This hiding concerns both the historical genesis or primitive accumulation of capital and the function of production itself, namely the genesis of surplus value. Look at Solow's equations. His function of production is written: Y = f (K, L) where K is capital and L, contrary to Keynes, no longer needs to be full-employment. Indeed, Solow assumes that full-employment will automatically follow if only you let the market push the cost of labor down at the physiological level forgetting even the sustenance of the household where labor necessarily reproduces. This adjustment at the physiological threshold is now sought at the global level thanks to global free-trade deals! Solow's function of production displays all the contradictions of Smith's but with a consciously devised monetary mask. On the basis of this bogus function of production, Solow and all the neocalssics after him reversed Harrod's attempt to dynamise Keynes's system.
As soon as you suppress the prudential ratios and the «real economic » logic presiding over the relation between the capitalist central bank and the private financial institutions with the aggravation of the 1999 abrogation of the functional financial segregation enacted by the Glass Steagall Act of 1933 you then obtain the appearance of a self-reproducing speculative system (Namely, New Economy bliss with no trade cycles, no crises, no bank bankruptcy, etc...) Apparently, it does not matter any longer if « saving » is produced by the « credit without collateral » specific to the current speculative system, everything will look rosy if only you can dispel the strong popular resentment against rising inequalities (« We are the 99 % »)
Of course, such system is inherently unstable. We have already alluded to the real laws of motion of capitalism. We have shown that new sectors can momentarily dispel the main contradiction of the CMP, overproduction/underconsumption. Solow has no scientific law of productivity and thus his attempt to introduced technology in his system is as exogenous as his rate of profit, or as his unspecified rate of return. Moreover, he, like all the Marignalists, confuses technology with the new waves of massification of technology i.e., the new sectors supported by an adequate « structure of v ».
I have pointed out elsewhere that the so-called Kondratieff cycles are nothing but a « Baconian empirical » take (using Koyré's apt phrase) on these massification waves. Lenin had also shown that new technologies, which could be massified, are not available on demand. State intervention in economic affairs remains the key. Moreover, I have argued that the law of productivity leads to increasingly capital intensive sectors, be they traditional or new sectors, intermediary or not. The Report from the Iron Mountain shows that the Establishment's leading circles have always known that Marx was right and have planned accordingly. They did so while creating and circulating plausible narratives for the use of the « rubbles » - Nietzsche's word. This communication strategy is powerfully backed by the philo-Semite Nietzschean Nobel Prizes whose mission is to transform narratives into authoritative scientific truths, thus acting as the Authorities to which deference is due! (Hi-ha! as Zarathustra explains, in Nietzsche's book)
Crises are thus inherent to capitalism. Moreover, crisis is the specific way with which capitalism auto-regulates itself. Piketty mentioned the role of the stock market downward tendency in the 1990-2010. The same regulating role is played by structural crises. Military spending also helps destroy excess capacity. This is because military procurements impact reproduction by abstracting part of the investment from the dynamic reproductive cycle. True, artificially created wars to destroy surplus production even in the form of spending associated with so-called « Keynesian militarism ».
But crisis will play its cybernetic role as a partial regulating feedback mechanism only if you play by the rules and let the market and the capitalist law of competition purge the market of its excesses. This is what the current form of speculative neoclassical economics has eliminated through its repeated bailouts that can only compound the initial problem, a fact that should now be clear to everyone. There remains war, the illegal doctrine of preventive war and its correlative Patriot Act directed against domestic dissent in the hope to « once again » force a philo-Semite Nietzschean return to a society of new domesticity and new salaried slavery. Piketty and his ilks have already figured out that the members of the top 10 % can hire most of the bottom 50 % as domestics at relatively little cost for themselves! (p 403) But this is far from original; few years ago, the American Jew Royatyn had already made a similar argument in the Le monde diplomatique arguing that the Welfare State could be totally suppressed transferring its welfare functions into the hands of the transnationals and presumably of their private and confessionally oriented foundations. Of course, private foundations are financed by fiscal credit and tax exonerations. As you know, this is the best way to create subservient clientleism, making workers utterly dependent on their auto-selected bosses for their « livelihood» (to use Polanyi's word taken from his book The Great Transformation) Add to this a longer, though intermittent, working week up to 72 hours ... - with private pension plans, that is when workers can still afford them, and with criminally high tuition fees and you are well on the road to rehabilitate Fascism more precisely, Mussolini's brand financed by Jewish-Nietzscheans like Margherita Sarfatti.
Some people will never learn, right? It is clear that Piketty's long term and fuzzy concepts are devised to present an economic world always characterised by inequality and never affected by structural crisis (capitalism reigns everywhere at all times be it with slavery, the feudal mode of production and other pre-capitalist modes of production. Piketty even makes abstraction of the socialist mode of production applied for more than 70 years in the geographically most extended country which harmoniously reunited more than 110 different nationalities without the least form of ethnic cleansing. Ethnic cleansing is a criminal policy now implemented everywhere by the new philo-Semite Nietzschean crusaders in conjunction with their strategy of dividing the gentiles and «non-elected » nations to better conquer them.
When dealing with the relationship of saving to growth and the accumulation of stock of capital however defined one needs to address the relative weight of the public and private sectors. One needs to do so with a clear and objective mind, which is not the case with Piketty. For instance, I had ironically pointed out that in an epoch of repetitive and nefarious QE and LTROs, no one was speaking about Laffer's grotesque proposals any longer- the Laffer's curve and the so-called crowding out phenomenon. Laffer's simplistic concepts, if you can call them that, were of course key to the mass-mediatic offensive launched against the Welfare or Keynesian State. They were key to the propagation of the supply-side economic agenda. (Liberalisation, privatisation, flat-tax and wars.) Piketty got the point and he soon started muddling the waters again, the best way he could. He points out the size of the public debt of the UK at the time of Ricardo (over 200 % of GDP) and quickly adds that despite that there was no crowding out (p 214). The reason seems to be that private savings did compensate, says Piketty. However, he has no time at all for the reorganisation of the City's strategic role within the British Empire, and thus the role played by the British dominance of what was then the main international reserve currency and hence its control over the printing press ... Furthermore, he ignores the speculative emergence of the so-called « credit crunch». As far as the City and the Exchequer were concerned, Rosa Luxemburg explained the mechanism that was adopted to transfer the burden of the Empire on the shoulders of the dominated peoples through the Opium Wars. In a new version of triangular trade, opium grown in India was sold at tips of the gun to the reluctant Chinese thus replenishing the imperial coffers.
Thus Piketty sees that the crowding out phenomenon is not a universal phenomenon. However, he fails to see that it is the expression of an ideological choice. Worse still, he cannot comprehend why this is so. Indeed, Piketty uses here as elsewhere the same confused methodology, putting everything in the same bags. We have already seen that his definition of capital stock is a total mess (p 42). With Piketty, you need to forget all you know about merchant, industrial, financial and speculative forms of capital. He even offers a further twist to this conscious confusion, namely that patrimony and capital stock are the same thing and that national patrimony includes both public and private capital.
One can only affirm this if everything, including patrimonies stricto sensu, has been utterly monetized, and if even the public sphere has fallen under the hegemony of speculation. We already know that Piketty does not understand what profit and interest are and what differentiate them. He operates with a catchall bag which he calls « rate of return ». » That rate of return is a long-term undifferentiated average. (p 316) Of course, as always with Marginalism, it is post hoc, and thus economically irrational as even Adam Smith knew. But it does not stop here because even if Piketty purposefully ignores shadow banking and fiscal paradises which would infirm his whole system at first glance, he needs to present a view of rate of return compatible with it. And thus despite Smith, Ricardo, Torrens et al., undifferentiated rent - land rent, Ricardian or speculative rent - falls within the definition. He writes: « Rent is not an imperfection of the market: On the contrary it is the consequence of a « pure and perfect » capital market, in the sense used by the economists, that is to say a market offering to each owner of capital and in particular to the less gifted heirs - the highest and most diversified rate of return that can be had at the level of the national or of the global economy. »(p 674) Well, Piketty wants to be the new philo-Semite Nietzschean « maître à penser » of the speculative stage of capitalism. It is not sure, however, that such muddling of all conceptual distinctions can help the system to survive!
We will not deal with the long list of rubbish Piketty unfolds on the subject of public and private saving. It would be a waste of time. As we saw, like all Marginalists, he is unable to differentiate between savings and re-invested profits plus credit. We must however point out one ideological consequence of this conscious confusion which now happens to be operationalised by all present day neoclassics wedded to austerity and to their bogus fiscal consolidation path it is a path which Blanchard felt obliged to revisit for the IMF after I pointed out the inevitable downward spiral it would cause. Now Blanchard's purpose was to save it by presenting it as victim of an error that could be remedied within the same paradigm. I had noted that this is impossible and methinks that I was absolutely right given the undeniable facts which are now unfolding.
We said that national patrimony includes public and private capital. One can try to measure their respective magnitude. Piketty does that. However, public assets are understood to mean public assets as defined by the current statistical method by which, for instance, investment in health and education appears as spending and not as investment, minus the debt!!! something which should send us back to the logic of what I called « social surplus value ». It does not matter whether that debt is largely due to two main factors:
a) The privatisation of the Central Bank and its entire subordination to so-called universal banks after the abrogation of the Glass Steagall Act in 1999, and the subsequent explosion of derivative financial products. Central Banks are now subordinated to a small crew of so-called primary banks, the same which falsified the libor and euribor and they can no longer operate directly on the primary State-bond markets. For instance, before this privatisation in 1973, the public debt in France was around 21 % of GDP; it continuously increased after that no matter the government in power, except for the Jospin's government.
b) The public debt exploded again after the subprime crisis, the direct consequence of « credit without collateral ». Instead of letting failed banks go bankrupt and save small savings and productive credit through nationalisation, the philo-Semite Nietzschean leaders chose to bailout the failed banks on the public purse. They placed them on a large and cheap infusion of liquidities thus further feeding speculation QE, LTRO, etc. They even maintained them in control of the marketing of the State bonds which were issued to pay for these same bailouts on the primary market. Thus the private banks can refinance themselves at 1 % or less, while they charge much higher interests and commissions on State bonds and mortgages. They do so with the help of in-house rating agencies. If you do not account for that, what is your analysis worth? Or, more precisely, what is this pretentious and vacuous neophyte up to?
Piketty despondently writes that: « they, the economists know almost nothing about anything ». (p 64) He should more precisely write that bourgeois economists are ideologically operating with a fraudulent paradigm, which is now dangerously refuted by the most basic facts. He should add that he was educated by them, knowing precious little about others paradigms. This is particularly the case for the Marxist paradigm re-established by me to its scientific dominance, though this is occulted everywhere. Note, however, that occultation is not refutation. Piketty is merely attempting to relegitimize the mainstream Marginalist economists' original fraud continued by Solow's typical reversal while seeming to criticise them. The reality is that Piketty has learned in my work that the bourgeois paradigm is finished at the scientific level: The only hope for the Marginalists and philo-Semite Nietzscheans is occultation and tight control of the reformulated and actualised narratives. As I said it takes some typical chutzpah!
Note however that Piketty is not totally blind: He becomes positively hilarious when he underlines the fact that things often do not square up. For instance, he rightly points out that national accounts do not add up globally, except when one introduces fiscal paradises. (p 746) Of course, this candid admission immediately refutes his entire pseudo-theoretical construction. But he is then busy trying to persuade the readers about the difficulties and the advantages of introducing a bogus, in his own word a « utopian », global tax on capital. This is because the financial consequences derived from this admitted fact are excluded from his bogus statistics which pretend to measure the ratio of inequality that is supposed to prevail over the long term « everywhere and at all times »! (6 to 1 is not 20 or 30 to 1! but, of course, the last ratios would be too grotesque to be explained away; therefore, they have to be ignored; nonetheless they are themselves under-representing the current reality. In the late 90s, the great economist Maurice Allais, a classical Walrasian with a social and republican consciousness, denounced the divergence in salaries which had gone from 1 to 14 in the 60s to 1 to 400 plus. And yet, he was merely referring to the visible part of the higher-end remunerations, that small part which falls in the post-Reaganian income tax brackets! Furthermore, according to the BIS, before 2007, there were 15 trillion of real assets for 58 trillion of CDS and 596 trillion of OTC (see http://www.bis.org/publ/otc_hy0805.pdf?noframes=1 ). Despite the subprime crisis, or more precisely because of its neoliberal treatment, the situation has deteriorated greatly in favor of hegemonic speculation. Note also that in the last 15 years or so, the weight of the financial sectors went from 3 % of GDP to more than 9 % in Switzerland and in the United States, the same trend prevailing elsewhere too.
On page 744 and subsequent pages of his book, French edition, Piketty presents an interesting table dealing with the net position of the wealthy countries with respect to the rest of the world. He goes on candidly discussing it. The situation is indeed paradoxical: Aside from Japan and Germany, the USA and other rich countries, especially European countries, actually show a negative position of some 4 % of world GDP in 2010. It was closer to zero in the mid-1980. Piketty notes: « In other words, the poor countries should possess more assets in the rich countries that these own inside them to the amount of 4 % of world GDP » (p 745) « In reality, adds Piketty, this is not verified: Indeed when one adds up the whole financial statistics for the various countries worldwide, one reaches the conclusion that the poor countries have a negative position as well as the world in its entirety. In other words, we would all be possessed by the Planet Mars. » (p 746). This old « anomaly » he adds was known for some time but it is getting worse. Piketty explains « ... Gabriel Zucman has been able to show that the most plausible explanation for this discrepancy is the existence of an important mass of non-registered financial assets owned by households in the fiscal paradises. His prudent evaluation puts this mass to the equivalent of 10 % of world GDP » (p 746) Obviously, it is hard to tax what is not accounted for and therefore you only need to propose an utopian tax on capital to protect the current system ... It is even more unacceptable when you make abstraction of what you know perfectly well in order to present an inequality ratio hovering around 6 or 8 to 1 as a long-term truth for all times and all places, that is to say a natural law that cannot be changed but only mitigated with some kind of narratives. (Added: on Zucman see here.)
It becomes really grotesque when this conscious occultation is used to construct the rational for his utopian global tax on capital. It goes like this: In order to reimburse the public debt and to eliminate it totally, one solution would be to privatise all public assets and pay it down. Note that this is what the Fiscal compact and the Two and Six Pack now impose to the eurogroup countries. Thus says Piketty instead of holding interest paying State bonds, the wealthier households would directly own schools, hospitals etc. Given that minimal public services would still need to be offered, the State would have to pay a rent to the new holders. Here Piketty remains French in so far as he cannot directly admit what is unfolding under his nose, namely the privatisation of the public services themselves and the trend toward their increasing devolvement to private foundations and often confessional private charities. In terms of public expenditures says Piketty there is little to be gained. As a solution, he then proposes his utopian global tax on capital. « For instance, a proportional tax of 15 % on all private holdings or patrimonies would bring close to a year in national revenue and would allow the immediate reimbursement of all public debts. The State would continue holding his public assets but the value of its debt would be close to zero and it would have no interests to pay. » (p 886-887)
This is the positive rendering of the legitimizing Pikettian narrative. What is wrong with it? Piketty is not blind to the difficulty of implementing such a tax on capital globally. Look at the resistance mounted against the mild so-called Tobin Tax! But it does not matter because to legitimise the current speculative system, you only need to canalise serious discontent on utopian demands. As the philo-Semite Nietzschean leaders said about the no-global movement before and after the Genoa G8 counter-summit « they have the talk, we have the walk». Of course, if you have to act globally, you can wait for a long, long time.
Can you tax capital nationally at a fair rate? The question can be put in a different way. Can you control the use made by financial capital of fiscal paradises and other tax evasion tricks? It is a falsity to affirm that a modern State could not do so simply. But it is not even needed; as I have asked, the simpler and more rational solution would be to return to the equivalent of the Glass Steagall Act and to legally force the emergence of the shadow banking: Then you would not even need to change the degraded fiscal system to get the revenues needed to pay up the debt. If you add to this the re-empowerment of the central bank to buy State bonds at a low cost and at medium to long terms maturities directly on the primary market, you are done. Meanwhile, you would let failed banks go bankrupt and re-buy them for a symbolic dollar in order to save small savings and productive credit. This sovereign alternative would cost you precious little, because you would use the average financial lever. Moreover, it would drastically reduce existing inequalities! We do not hear Piketty on the subject of necessary bankruptcy to purge the banking and financial system. (Added: Note that in its wisdom, the Constitution proposes a much simplier and republican solution, namely a progressive fiscal system with tax brackets determined according to needs.)
In any case, it would cost much less than the State recapitalisation of failed private banks out of the public purse. This is because this has been done so far without anything in exchange except the preservation of the present speculative system and the preservation of the parasitic overpaid 1 % on top. Going further, as I had already noted in the chapter « Eléments » (1997) of my Tous ensemble (See Download Now, Section Livres-Books of my site), you can realise that the fiscal system established to counter the Great Depression and further developed after World War II was mainly based on the direct taxation of households and capita. To these were added traditional taxes tariffs, taxes on so-called vices etc and indirect taxes, by definition regressive. Notice that the historical evolution shows a typical philo-Semite Nietzschean perversion of the fiscal regime because all sources of taxation went systematically down, including for capital and inheritance taxes but not for direct and vaguely progressive income taxes. As for indirect taxes they quickly transformed into value-added taxes and literally exploded. Not surprisingly, they are notoriously regressive by design. (i.e., in the framework of the flat-tax philosophy pursued by the Reaganian and post-Reaganian USA.)
Piketty pretends to marshal unheard off data long-term data, you know, duly based on fuzzy logic and conscious amputations etc in order to propose a ground-breaking new fiscal strategy. But he never speaks about these obvious and historically grounded issues. What is he up to, really? Quite simply he is trying to save the skin of speculative capital and of the new transnational firms, which wish the demise of the National States together with their dangerous democratic institutions, including republican and progressive fiscal policies. Remember the bankers reacting against the anger of the citizens during the hay-days of the subprime crisis and the grotesque and ruinous bailouts: They all cried: « Tax us! Tax us! » knowing full well that they were still firmly in control of the agenda and of the public and academic debates over the issue.
Piketty simply adopts their communication strategy: Let us pretend to tax capital to better save its skin. Except that we are dealing here with speculative capital. And speculative capital cannot be saved from its own « animal spirits » to use Keynes's phrase. The complete explanation is provided in my Synopsis of Marxist Political economy (freely accessible in the Livres-Books section of my www.la-commune-paraclet.com ). To sum up quickly: «Credit without collateral » is no longer connected to the real economy, however you define it. Instead it cannibalises it as a direct consequence of the financialisation of productive activities. Nor is it connected to the normal operation of a rigorous central bank; but this leads to crises and credit crunch. Similarly the prudential ratios cannot logically be set on average to 40 or 60 to 1 in banking assets, abstraction made of the shadow banking (!); furthermore, the capitalist supply of credit should be governed by fractional reserves deposited with the central bank.
Anyone can understand that if Piketty's rate of return is based on the huge shadow banking while the fractional reserves and therefore credit is made available only based on the official prudential ratios, then any connection of this speculative credit without real collateral with the real economy will be irremediably lost. Furthermore, since speculation must feed speculation unless it is faced with a catastrophic call on CDS chains, then such speculative credit, feeding on itself with the help of privatised central banks, will inevitably create an ever growing «credit crunch ».
You just need to input this hard empirical data into Piketty's equations given as fundamental laws of capitalism to see that it is all rubbish (quite fittingly since OTC are also called «scraps » in the jargon ...) When he was leading the ECB, Trichet had warned: The first bailout of private banks did cost around 13 % of GDP and more likely around 30 % when you consider the whole socio-economic impact; Trichet warned that no second such public bailout on that scale was possible. And thus in the attempt to disconnect speculation from the real economy, haircuts were implemented. The Greek and Cyprus haircuts and levies on bank deposits i.e., those that could not escape to the fiscal paradises were given as the model that will need to be generalised. In parallel with that, a stricter version of the Washington Consensus has been proposed in Europe in the form of a redemption fund. Piketty mentioned its German origin in a footnote. (p 890) The redemption fund would work more or less this way: A part of the public debt of weak PIIGS - please, notice here the Nietzschean reversed attribution of the acronym -, because it is typical and meaningful would be federalised, i.e. it would be paid mostly by Germany but only in exchange for the control of the corresponding part of the Treasury of the bailed out country. IMF conditionalities were mere trifles compared to this. The Treuhand-like logic is plain, but Piketty, who mentions the origin of the redemption fund, fails to denounce its emergence as a serious scenario in the context of the Fiscal compact. He is just interested with his vacuous utopian proposal and we have already explained why. (Added: this fund actually took the form of ESM-MES, see here.)
Piketty's third fundamental law of capitalism.
Let us now turn to Piketty's third bogus equation, which sums up all his previous nonsense. We will now deal with the master equation given as: r > g.
In this equation, r = the rate of return and g = the rate of growth (in Piketty's fuzzy terms, of course.) Piketty explains his master equation in the following manner: « When the rate of return of capital is greater than the rate of growth and we will see that it was historically almost always the case, at least up to the XIX Century, this having great chances to become the norm again during the XXI Century -, this mechanically implies that the patrimonies accumulated in the past will recapitalise faster than the rhythm of progression of production and revenues. Heirs just need to save a limited part of the revenue of their capital to cause it to grow faster than the overall economy. In these conditions, it is almost inevitable that inherited patrimonies largely dominate the patrimonies built during a working life, and that the concentration of capital reaches extremely high levels that are potentially incompatible with the set of values based on meritocracy and the principles of social justice which constitute the base of our modern societies.» (p 55)
Of course, this increasing inequality based on the fundamental laws of capitalism - natural Pikettian laws ...! - can become dangerous if not mitigated by the proper ideological mediation and by the proper mystifying narrative. « My conclusions, says Piketty, are less apocalyptic than those implied by the principle of infinite accumulation and perpetual divergence expressed by Marx » (p 56) In Piketty's scheme « the divergence is not perpetual; it is only a possible future outcome among others » (p 56). What does this perpetual divergence falsely attributed to Marx mean? Simply the same as was attributed by Piketty to Ricardo's own « apocalypse ». Namely that the capitalist system can follow a contradictory logic that might turn it into its own « grave digger» as Marx puts it.
Well then, if inherited wealth is the problem, why not reintroduce the succession tax that prevailed even in the USA, up until the 60s? (Not to speak of Thomas Paine's vanguard solution magisterially laid out in his magnificent Rights of Man.) No! Piketty's aim is to save speculative transnational capital as the hegemonic form, not to fight it. We do not need to belabor the point again.
Far more serious is the fact that this proposal is factually and theoretically false. Piketty is forced to underline the political importance of the middle class. This was acclaimed by Bernstein and Max Weber and many others after them as the great bulwark of the capitalist system against Socialism (pp 410-411) Piketty is then forced to frame his defense of hegemonic speculation in a way compatible with the middle class's deep belief its own peculiar false consciousness , namely the fact that its middle position away from relative and absolute pauperisation (Michels etc) is due to its own merit. Today, the middle class is and feels under direct attack; its resentment increasingly takes populist forms, such as the Tea Party in the US and the FN in France. Thus you must canalise this « resentment» feigning to attack inherited wealth in words while defending it in reality. As we have seen above, a global utopian tax on capital seems plausible, though useless in practice, but meanwhile it allows you to silently shove aside all the real alternatives; including reining in speculation itself.
Moreover, the proposal is fallacious on all scores. We have already shown that Piketty's statistical evidence is a misleading though conscious construct. His U curves would be an utter shame even to a first year student. Piketty knows it. Here is another example of his own comprehension of the value of his long-term cutting strategy fittingly formulated, as in an afterthought, in parentheses: « (however we will see that some long-term evolutions do not clearly appear unless we are taking into account the data for the years 2000-2010, given that in truth some shocks caused by the world wars took a long time to be absorbed) ». (p 45)
This is curious to say the least. More precisely this is typical of Piketty: Inequality is said to be more or less the same at all times and all places as long as you abstract for all the divergences political and socio-economic - which you chose not to consider because they would otherwise refute your narrative!
The fact is that speculation as the hegemonic credit system was ushered by the counter-revolution launched by Volcker, Reagan, Thatcher and Co (see my « Les conséquences socio-économiques de Volcker, Reagan et Cie » Mars 1985 in the International Political Economy section of my site.) It became hegemonic over all the other fractions of capital after 1999, that is to say after the abrogation of the Glass Steagall Act which was quickly followed by the explosion of the financial derivatives on the global scene under the control of the so-called « universal bank. » This globalisation process had been prepared by the mid 1980s Thatcherian stock exchange revolution, known as the Big Bang. If you do not include the emergence and affirmation of speculative capital, your « universally » valid U curves would look like a flattened soufflé just like Piketty's scientific pretenses when more closely analysed ...
But it is even more serious than that. We already pointed out that the real working of capitalism includes temporary and structural crises as albeit partial cybernetic feedback regulating mechanisms. Excess capital is eliminated by these crises and this confirms the centralisation and concentration processes or fusions - in the hands of the most productive firms, the capitalist competition game restarting on this new but purged basis.
We have already alluded to military spending and war as other ways to destroy excess capital. Now, if you cook-up your long-term curves to abstract from these shocks and only consider the ill-explained changes after 14-18 and again after 39-45, you can have your U curves, but they will be utterly useless except as the most typical kind of demagoguery. In fact, not even with stock exchange crises i.e., temporary crises can you argue that it is a zero-sum game in which what one loses the other gains: When 401 K pension plans become 201 K or worse, and you are in you late 40s you have pretty much lost your shirt for good and can hardly rebound. This will compound the main contradiction of capitalism that is to say overproduction/under-consumption just because it will shave the average household's holdings and thus a good portion of the plain consumers' demand which constitutes some 70 % of GDP in the United-States.
You might remember that Pigou had fallaciously argued against Keynes in favor of what he called the « Wealth effect »: This was a rather crude misunderstanding but it remains at the basis of supply-side economics, namely the suicidal illusion that you can replace strong consumer's demand with investment or firms' demand. Just look at the tight link of what I called the «structure of v » with the positive dynamic of general equilibrium, or, in Marx's terms, Enlarged Reproduction, and this becomes crystal clear at a glance. If you need a recent if dramatic illustration just look at the laughable if obnoxious « maestro » Greenspan's lunatic version of Pigou with his own « House effect » in a context of known « irrational exuberance». It quickly led to the monumental subprime crisis which continues to produce the greatest chronic depression after the Great Depression of the Thirties.
Consider then this last point: The exuberant and irrational House effect led to the subprime crisis; without the ruinous and heavy intervention of the neoliberal and philo-Semite Nietzschean capitalist State, the so-called heirs constituting the growing portion of the parasitic 1 %, would have been ruined. How would Piketty's universal U curves have looked like then? Of course, bankruptcy is the regulating internal mechanism of capitalism; it is the main mechanism of competition without which there is no markets worthy of the name. What is a capitalist system based on the negation of capitalism? (Year ago, philo-Semite Nietzscheans attempted a similar squaring of the circle and that had a specific name: Fascism, together with its Nazi version ... a regime that was widely acclaimed by the leading circles of the United-States and elsewhere... at least up until 1938 and the so-called racial laws ...)
Furthermore, given that the intimate law of capitalism, precisely that which made it a revolutionary system at its origin, is productivity and not Solowian-Pikettian rubbish given as fundamental laws , how stable would a capitalist system be if based on non-capitalist rules that exclude capitalist competition and substitute to it ruinous and unsustainable bailouts on the public purse, thus impeding the normal purge of the system through bankruptcy? Again Piketty's science is like biblical authority; it is devised to block the road to real science in order to better subjugate the masses the rubbles? - with plausible narratives. Except that in his case, it is highly pretentious and highly rubbish. It does not stand up to scientific scrutiny not even with the mediatic and academic backing of similar « forgers » many of them crowned with a Nobel Prize.
Let us now turn to another aspect of Piketty's r > g law which we will meet again when he discusses Pareto. The point he makes is that if r, the rate of return, grows faster than g, the rate of growth, then the inequality ratio will automatically increase mutatis mutandis and inherited wealth will be consolidated. Note that as usual Piketty wants his cake and eat it too: If that were true his more or less constant ratio around which inequality oscillates « always and everywhere » would automatically prove wrong. But by now you know that these kinds of trifles are a constant with him for every issue he deals with. As you know, Piketty's inequality ratio and his fundamental laws are only true if they are made true by human i.e. elite intervention with the aim to avoid the Marxist apocalypse in the same way as the Ricadian apocalypse was (in the latter case land rent became capitalist land rent and its purported subtraction from capitalist profit was normalised.) Then, and only then, his narrative laws take the appearance of fundamental laws ...Speaking of rebellious Dominions Lord Sydenham had said: « We must grant the appearance of democracy, not democracy itself. » Again, there is nothing really new with Piketty's approach.
We should however examine the argument from a more serious point of view because it touches on some fundamental laws of Enlarged Reproduction which I spelled out in my Synopsis of Marxist Political Economy.
First, the Marginalist rate of return and even more Piketty's version which incredibly includes rent as the expression of pure and perfect market (!) as we have already seen is meaningless. One must differentiate between profit and interest. These are conceptually distincts in the sense that profit contains interest but the reverse is not true. In order to meaningfully relate these to the rate of growth, that is to say to the positive dynamic general equilibrium as specified by the Equations of Enlarged Reproduction, you must deal with the rate of reinvestment. Be it private or institutionalised or public, it will always be based on the previous distinction between profit and interest. It is a way to distinguish between speculation and the real economy i.e., the various functions of production composing the sectors which demand a certain amount of capital immobilization and banking capital or credit. I have demonstrated that in order to maintain the level of the pre-existing reproduction while increasing it harmoniously, the rate of re-investment must be the same in both sector composing SI, the Means of production, and SII, the Means of consumption. Any discrepancy will fatally lead to contractions and crises. This implies central dynamic planning and the existence of credit functionally tied to each sector and even to each firm.
With the capitalist « invisible hand » and the allocation of profit according to property rights you fatally obtain a rate of accumulation driven by differential rates of productivity; it follows that harmonious dynamic equilibrium can never be achieved. This problem is compounded by the intervention of the capitalist Central Bank which is the main vector of so-called « communism of capital ». This is even more the case when the Central Bank becomes entirely subjected to a few primary universal banks. Its central rates of interest are the same for all players, big or small, which are involved in the real economy or even more precisely in the industry and the banks. Remember H. Ford versus Morgan? Thus within the capitalist logic the allocation of resources resulting from the « invisible hand » and from private property rights will always produce some contractions in one branch or sector or in another, and the resulting razor-hedge equilibrium will always be wasteful and infra-harmonious or infra-optimum. There will be systemic overproduction and waste while real societal needs will not be met, unless they are crashworthy.
Hence, Piketty's r > g is just Piketty's rubbish presented as a law. It is strictly meaningless. When capitalist credit becomes speculative capitalist credit, it means that speculation emerges as a sector on its own with financial derivatives as used by the universal banks. At that point, the necessary difference between interest presiding over the reinvestment rate and the profit necessary to extract interest from the real economy, is erased: Interest tends to equate and even to become greater than profit. This is a suicidal road for capitalism: Speculation must always have some kind of tangible support be it tulips or the so-called tangible goods and services of the real economy. Note what is happening to the ROE, the epitome of speculative short-term capital: Often it is the result of grotesque and unsustainable exchange market capitalisation used in conjunction with various LBOs or other such market strategies. These usually imply restructuration and the forceful transformation of firms operating within the real economy into speculative enterprises inside which CFOs dominate over CEOs.
Of course this compounds the inherent contradiction of the capitalist mode of production. If ruinous and unsustainable public bailouts suppress the systemic regulating competition mechanism the purge by bankruptcy of failed banks and enterprises leading to fusions etc then the system becomes a perversion of capitalismand this will soon lead to a fascistic perversion that will not be hidden under candid talks of « soft power ». Notice that the drive now is to substitute global shareholders and their strictly Censitarian democracy to national democracy based on the universal ballot. As we have seen Piketty prudently takes the tremendous and problematic weight of derivative products, shadow banking and fiscal paradises out of his analysis and still pretends to be taken seriously!
Piketty's peculiar methodology.
Piketty's attitude towards «economists » - that is to say mainstream economists seems at first disconcerting. We know by now that it is part of his strategy which consists in feigning to criticise the discredited (Marginalist) messengers to better re-legitimize their message. We have seen that his fundamental economic laws of capitalism are taken straight from Solow's philo-Semite Nietzschean reversal of Harrod's and Domar's in fact the reversal of Keynes's internal criticism of Marginalism. Piketty can affirm that « They (the economists) know almost nothing about anything » (p 63). But he then goes on specifying: « In reality, economics should never have tried to separate itself from the other social sciences and should have instead developed in their mist. » (p 64) Years ago, I had underlined August Walras's advice to his son Léon concerning the fact the economics should respect previously given social conditions. Léon Walras derived from it his methodological dichotomy opposing economics on the one hand which deals with mathematical equations and, on the other hand, social economy which must provide the data to work with. This dichotomy was erected into a scientific paradigmatic or ontological truth by Joseph Schumpeter. Keynes was the first to take this seriously and thus he tried to work a coherent system based on a socio-economic and democratic given: namely, full-employment. Of course, Marx had already disposed of this artificial dichotomy with his « concrete-in-thought » which amounted to the historicising of Kant's scientific though steady-state methodology.
Although this escaped Piketty's presumptuous science, the fact is that what Keynes could attempt cannot even be conceivable with Solow and the neoclassics. This is the direct consequence of the reversal of the Keynesian equations that we already discussed. You cannot have a razor-hedge equilibrium if you interfere with the market operation (except for Solow's blind spot leading to the exogenous introduction of technology ...). We do not need to elaborate on this by now obvious point. Piketty's is working on a plausible narrative and thus he talks from both sides of his mouth. We should however remember what I have already established elsewhere, for instance in my Book III entitled Keynesianism, Marxism, Economic Stability and Growth , 2005 ( freely accessible in the Livres-Books section of my site www.la-commune-paraclet.com ) Keynes's system can be summed up in the following fashion: His economic variables are interdependent; hence, if you exogenously determine one of them, the system will adjust and find the equilibrium on that basis; if it can control the set of interdependent variables, the State can determine the social level for the equilibrium (full-employment, interest and money.) This implies the intervention of the State and organised labor to counter-balance the weight of capitalist owners and thus rein in the capitalist « animal spirits » which are responsible for crises. Similarly, foreign trade and monetary policy that is to say the exposure of the Social Formation to the World Economy must be controlled. We know that Keynes lost against H. White as early as 1944 IMF, BIRD and soon after Gatt and we know that the post-war City was quickly brought to its knees by a dollar speculative attack engineered to force its abandonment of preferential Imperial and Commonwealth tariffs in favour of its entrance into the US led Capitalist World Regime. The ensuing extroversion of the Multiplier of Kahn, accelerated after the Kennedy Round, was the last straw that broke the imperial camel back.
The point however is that Keynes's system remains logically contradictory because it is based on the non-dual concept of utility rather than on the duality of value as exchange and use values. It is also based on the irrationally partial logic of economy of scale. Hence, it cannot explain profit in organic terms no more than Sraffa or Joan Robinson et al., could. This is lethal because the main driver of the capitalist logic is the law of productivity and certainly not that of the decreasing and increasing returns which is at the base of the silly economy of scale reasoning (Note that given the usual overcapacity margin, economy of scale is already given as a technical data when an enterprise is functioning, or else competition quickly disposes of it ... When the operating conditions evolve they do it according to the logic of the Marxist law of productivity. After all F. Taylor developed his technical and organisational optimising method by borrowing Marx's reasoning over Adam Smith's « pin factory. »)
Of course, the Law of productivity, which was the revolutionary contribution of the Capitalist mode of production to the History of Mankind, will eventually lead to its demise and replacement with a superior mode of production. The latter will be able to conjugate ever increasing productivity with socially available work sharing among all equal citizens, so as to overcome the fatal contradiction between overproduction and under-consumption. This will then be done with an acute awareness of environmental criteria and qualitative growth which can be summarized as the Ecomarxist approach.
Keynes tried his best to save Marginalism and the capitalist system. If you will, he took seriously the strictures of Lord Beveridge on social rights having to take priority over capitalist rights every time pushes come to shoves. He integrated this new conception into his economic theory. Consequently, the interventionist Keynesian State did not shy away from necessary nationalisations etc. However, it was logically untenable because of its main contradiction: Namely the fact that the logic of capitalist accumulation is bounded by over-production and underconsumption. I then raised the question: What would Keynes do today? Would he fall back to neoclassical economics or would he pursue the logic of his own system and preserve socio-economic welfare without which there is no citizens' equality not even of the « life chances » kind propounded by the Austrian School and by Weberian sociology ... together with it meritocratic ideology. To preserve welfare for the masses of citizens you would have to retake control of the set of interdependent variables for instance the sharing of work in the framework of a new definition of the antidumping necessary to protect the three forms of the « global net revenue » of the household, namely individual capitalist salary, differed salary and public transfers to the household in the form of universally accessible and collectively paid social services and infrastructures.
In the second chapter of my Book III, I tentatively and hypothetically answered my own question betting on Keynes's choice for more socio-economic equality, given that democratic freedom is not entirely coterminous with the right to innovate and certainly not when this right is restricted by private property. I pointed out Keynes's acquaintance with the Bloomsbury circle to back up my answer. I also pointed out his effective and verifiable choice during the Great Depression when he pushed aside the philo-Semite Nietzschean Fascist solution to the structural crisis of capital. This Fascist temptation had gained a wide audience in the UK and in the US before 1939 and 1942 respectively, especially with the Liberal party and some members of the British Royal House. While Keynes saw the « euthanasia of the rentier » as an historical necessity to help reach a socially and economically acceptable equilibrium, the rather Lilliputian theoricist Piketty is trying his best to preserve this global class of parasitic rentiers. He does that by falsifying statistics, and occulting the suicidal weight of hegemonic speculative credit without collateral, and by proposing a bogus utopian tax as a solution ideated to canalise disconnect away from really efficient solutions. This is not an acceptable methodology.
But, believe it or not, you can find even worse in Piketty's verbose and lengthy book. We have already shown that his statistical definitions and thus his data are derived from Marginalist economics. I have insisted many times on the fallaciousness of the GDP (« value added » is not surplus value or profit etc.) Today, in order to gain time for their fallacious fiscal consolidation path, European elites have emulated the US methodological changes and included in the GDP such things as drogues, prostitution, the unofficial economy, armament etc., etc. Given the downward spiral, we already know that it will not help much for long, but it will give the philo-Semite Nietzschean leading circles more time to privatise all there remains to privatise, including at the municipal level. The most emblematic illustration is provided in my critique of Gutgeld's book (see the Critique de Livres/Book reviews section in this site.) Gutgeld is the philo-Semite Nietzschean who wrote Renzi's anti-constitutional program now carried out transversally by a parliament elected in elections that were declared anti-constitutional by the Constitutional court, which nevertheless saved its skin and its own with the bogus principle of « State continuity ». (See the English text entitles: « Appeal» in the Politica section of the site http://rivincitasociale.altervista.org )
Piketty has no time for this. His self-appointed mission is not to provide reliable and scientific statistics - for that they would have to be based on a scientific function of production coherently integrated into a scientific theory of general equilibrium intended as Enlarged reproduction, that is to say, modestly, on my own scientific work. Piketty's self-appointed mission is to show that inequality is an historical given, hence that it would be useless to attack the parasitic 10 % or 1 % and their speculative « credit without collateral ». Thus Piketty takes all the errors already inscribed within bourgeois Marginalist statistics and he naturally adds some more of his own making.
It quickly becomes laughable and a shame to his author and to his editors not to speak about his thesis directors and professors or about his silent or complicit colleagues and other donkish and mediatically known Nobel Prizes. I will only give you here two main examples the detailed list would be too long. First, his ludicrous U curves; then his comparing methodology (in truth, judging from the equivalent of the Nobel Prizes conferred by the Swedish central bank, this last prowess could probably earn the Nobel Prize to Piketty!!!)
Human inequality is Piketty philo-Semite Nietzschean compass. I had already shown that in his initial work, including that done with likely-intentioned colleagues from Harvard and elsewhere, he deplored that the patrimonies of the wealthy (capitalists) had not yet recovered from the shock produced by the First World War (As you know, it ended up with the Bolshevik revolution and the scared bourgeois creation of the ILO along with some basic social programs, something Piketty carefully avoids mentioning. Later, he became more careful on how to present his views in order to make his narrative more palatable to the masses. As Camille Flammarion pointed out in his ground-braking study popularizing astronomy 1885 which I am presently reading -, if you take a compass, it will always point to the North Pole despite oscillations, whether you take it down under the Earth or up in the air etc. Thus, using his usual trick, Piketty feigns to criticise Pareto - more on this below - but he does it with the aim of reformulating Pareto's ludicrous main idea about stable human inequality in wealth distribution.
We have already seen that to back up this rubbish, which is based on crass ignorance of ethnology, anthropology, sociology and History etc, Piketty shamelessly abstracts from pre-capitalist and from post-capitalist modes of production, indeed with him all differences between thesaurisation and capitalist accumulation quickly vanish. The same is true for potlatch and feudal clientelism and status compared to capitalist redistribution; similarly, there are no differences between « primitive » pre-communist societies, feudal societies and capitalistic societies: As far as inequalities are concerned, they are all the same in time and space because Piketty tells you so. It is like some purported though known and lunatic divine decree, in favor of an exclusively «elected race », although this might not be a simple coincidence.
In his hands, his compass remains compatible with stock-exchange variations. Even when these stock-exchange crises are no longer classifiable as cyclical crises, trade cycles, bubbles bursting but are instead the epiphenomenon of structural crises so acute that they force the massive intervention of the so-called non-interventionist neoliberal State. This is simply because it alone, and the tax payers, can bailout failed private big banks, financial institutions - Fanny and Freddie - and firms such as GM and Chrysler. Of course, a politically maintained inequality is not the result of a presumed natural law of human inequality in wealth distribution. Here is what Piketty writes: « «For instance, if we consider the period 1990-2010 instead of the period 1987-2013, the real rate of growth of the higher patrimonies falls around 4 % per year as against 6 % - 7 %. This is due to the fact that the year 1990 constitutes a high point in the World stock and housing market cycle, while the year 2010 is a rather lower point ( see graph 12.2) » (p 693) But, adds Piketty, this does not change anything in the long term, ... of course!». You know what to think about this sort of academic methodology...
It gets more serious than this because his U curves only verify when you selectively take into account the emergence of hegemonic speculation as the new legal system based on the previous abrogation of the Glass Steagall Act. Again if the phenomenon is the consequence of a relatively recent political choice, it does not qualify as the result of a constant natural law.
But here is where Piketty's peculiar scholarship and control of methodology reach their Zenith. In my Book Three (2005) I insisted on the deleterious socio-economic role of the top 1 % which would lead to a wasteful equilibrium - there eventually always is one ... - something I called the « cemetery equilibrium ». The no-global movement focused on the discrepancy between the 1 % on top and the rest (« We are the 99 % »). What does Piketty do? First using the usual pitre's method he proceeds with infinite regression, and brakes down this 1 % into thousands. That keeps you busy but always brings you back to the new speculative logic analysed in my Book III and in my more recent and complete Synopsis of Marxist Political Economy accessible in the Livres-Books section of this same site, a logic that had been announced as early as March 1985 in my « Les conséquences socio-économiques de Volcker, Reagan et Cie. » section International Political Economy of the same site www.la-commune-paraclet.com . In brief, if you privatise everything including the central bank and the issuing and financing of the public debt, and if you adopt the flat-tax strategy while lowering salaries and increasing legal working time, then productive investment will dwindle and speculation feeding on speculation will quickly take over the whole system. I wonder if the self-portrayed fiscal reformer Piketty knows about the huge waste induced by the gigantic tax expenditures which accompanied and aggravated the flat-tax strategy. For instance, they amounted to more than 120 billion euros in France before the election of F. Holland and have dramatically increased since then. Note that tax expenditures are doubly nice for the neoliberals: a) they nicely disappear from the next budget once granted because the servile media and academics have no time to retrace the considerable amounts of State revenues thus lost year after year; b) the budgets themselves are made to look constantly precarious thus « justifying » more spending cuts and more austerity measures. The other way to look at the regressive effects of tax expenditures is to note that in the last two decades of the XX Century in Europe, some 11 % of the GDP was transferred from salaries to profit without any counterpart for labor except longer hours, lower pay and the generalisation of precariousness. The same trend is verified in the USA.
Let us have a final laugh about the comparative Pikettian methodology staging deciles. Here is the non-«lazy» pretentious boy in his own words: « The notions of deciles and centiles are a bit abstract and certainly lacking in poetry. Spontaneously, it is simpler to identify with the categories of one's own time: peasants, nobles, proletariat or bourgeois, employees or higher cadres, domestics or traders. However, the beauty of deciles and centiles is precisely that they can allow the comparison of inequalities and epochs otherwise impossible to compare and thus to provide a common language which in principle can be accepted by all. » (p 396) Of course, this is not the result of abhorred « laziness » but that of a conscious mystifying methodology, one which is necessary to legitimise a arch-reactionary narrative presenting itself in progressive clothing (we even heard many plain if surnumerary and overpaid idiots qualify Piketty as the new Marx!!! And, of course, this diminutive statistician attacked Marx himself over his use of statistics whereas it was Marx's rigorous use of hard-to-get socio-economic data which high-lightened the necessity to develop and obtain good socio-economic statistics!!! (p29) Be it as it may, Keynes himself knew that « rules of thumb », duly integrated into a proper analysis, would go further than bogus minute Marginalist statistics conceived as part of an ill-intentioned narrative.)
Of course, one can actually compare apples and oranges. But in so doing one needs to specify the comparison criterion, be it trivial as color or significant as the content of a given vitamin etc. But you cannot compare inequality in different modes of production or even in different historical epochs of redistribution» within the same Mode based on deciles, and while you falsify the data for instance, by not taking into account this and that significant element, particularly the USSR and current credit without collateral.
It just happened that in my Book III and in the draft Hi-Ha! The bourgeois economsit's donkish visual hallucinations, I had asked for the re-visitation of the existing best historical economic studies, say those provided by the Ecole des Annales before Braudel. This is because I have provided the scientific elucidation of Marx's brilliant forms of extraction of surplus value integrating this into the dynamic of reproduction (SR or ER). In short, you have different forms of extraction of surplus value which are dominant within various historical modes of production, namely absolute surplus value based on time which characterises slavery, feudalism and in general all pre-capitalist modes of production (To be sure, within each mode you also have different epochs of redistribution, at times featuring significant civilisational gains); relative surplus value is based on the transient intensity of work which needs to be regulated by norms for instance feudal corporations, fair competition laws and the labor code etc -; productivity is the specific capitalist form of extraction of surplus value; the collective control and allocation of what I called « social surplus value » constitutes the now scientifically elucidated form of socialist extraction of surplus value. You cannot legitimately confuse them.
With these scientific contributions it is now possible to go beyond the current impressionistic and « empirical Baconian » sets of data. (For instance, Jean Fourastié used mirrors in his attempt to compare productivity levels and evaluate their relative values and prices. He did this because their production method had remained stable over a long historical time; similarly, he used the so-called « labor of the laborer » (or « travail du manoeuvre »). As I have shown, he failed because his comparing sticks, in particular that of the « labor of the laborer » was nothing other than another version of Adam Smith's « simple labor » already criticised by Marx but fully understood after my elucidation of Marx's Labor Law of Value.) Moreover, when you are fully apprised with the logic of the function of production and that of the Equations of Enlarged Reproduction, in which it realises itself, you can know both the systemic contradictions and thus evaluate the historical political mediations used in the hope to solve them, including the transition to a different and superior Mode of production.
The Lilliputian if pretentious Piketty tried to pre-empt this scientific statistical work which contradicts his bogus narrative. This is because it would point to the ineluctable transition to a different Mode of production, one that necessarily will be more egalitarian. While I called for scientific statistics and thus Marxist statistics, Piketty and his ilks quickly mobilised their unlimited resources to present the opposite i.e., the usual reversal strategy. Only that they look terribly ill-intentioned and scientifically ridiculous. Mediatic and mainstream academic backing won't help. By now people are used to look through these philo-Semite Nietzschean reversals and narratives. (I also exposed this sophist methodology, for instance with my « Le lit du néo-fascisme » and in my Pour Marx, contre le nihilisme, Part II of this book being now available in English in the Livres-Books section of this site. I was denouncing in particular the deconstructionist jargon of Derrida and Co and of many other Nouveaux Philosophes; but you will find the same denunciation of this ill-intentioned sophistry in Plato or even in Kant, one who notoriously tried to be rigorous with scientific and ethical criteria. By the way, this made Kant one of the greatest forerunners of the egalitarian French Revolution, though he is totally occulted in this role.
Piketty and Pareto.
Any first year student in Poli-Sci would think about Pareto when he reads a sentence which states that inequality has always existed everywhere in the History of Mankind. Piketty uses the same stratagem here that he used with Solow. He feigns to shoot on the messenger to better protect the message, doing his best to update it and reformulate it in a plausible fashion.
Piketty's knows the Marginalist failings of the GDP national accounting method. He does not ignore the congenital approximations and falsities contained in the Marginalist statistical series he uses. But that does not bother him too much: On the contrary, he is quite proud of his and others confection of such statistical series, building partial data and false data upon partial data and false data in purposefully chosen long terms in order to obtain the desired U curves. Their hope is to use their academic « authority » to make available to the general public a comprehensive data bank on inequality which everyone will be able to use without having either the time or the knowledge to question its scientific worthiness. They thus hope to artificially «construct » a subaltern world view for the unsuspecting masses, credulous colleagues and students included. Thus he mentions Corrado Gini's famous indicator on inequality level and finds it of little use. (p 582) He then quickly turns to his hidden inspiration, namely Pareto. He mentions that Pareto had saluted the Fascist Regime's power grab because he feared Socialists and, I would add, even more the impact of the demonstration of the superiority of central planning in producing development and growth. This open vicinity of Pareto with Fascism makes it difficult for Piketty to borrow his main « law of Pareto » while trying to present himself as a critic of capital or even as a new pseudo-Marx attempting to steal the XXI Century from Commandant Chavez and his Socialism.
But there is more: Piketty rightly see the danger of « Pareto's law» on inequality. Pareto presents it as a perennial law. (p 583) One might say: But this is exactly what Piketty does too when he speaks of inequality persisting always and everywhere. In fact, Piketty knows that Pareto's law is empirically unsustainable, it remains so even if you eliminate primitive communism and the USSR with the whole Communist Bloc from the analysis. And it is reprehensible on democratic terms too. Piketty equally knows that his fundamental laws are bogus laws used to mesmerise the « rubbles » and « chandalas » and keep them put. In truth, he believes that the functioning of capitalism is fraught with potentially lethal contradictions: He pointed to « Ricardo's apocalypse » (land rent against profit) and to « Marx's apocalypse ». As any good philo-Semite rabbinical-Nietzschean, he believes too that science can be replaced by narratives as long as you manage things in order to avoid « social revolutions » (to borrow Trotsky's phrase here.) Thus, his problem becomes: How do you transform Pareto's law into a concrete proposal that could be swallowed whole by the presumed «rubbles» and neo-« chandalas » (on these rabbinical-Nietzschean terms see my « Nietzsche as an awakened nightmare» in the Livres-Books section of my site www.la-commune-paraclet.com )
We already know the answer: In order to protect the system, you need a good narrative and utopian proposals to prevent any alternative scientific understanding of the real facts and of the real socio-economic dynamics. Everything should be done to prevent the proletariat and the people « to think with their own heads » - and connect with Marxist organic intellectuals who actually do that well. In the end it must be a collective endeavor.
Note that Piketty's reformulation of Pareto is more cynical and more dangerous than the original version. The inspiration is the same. Pareto like Michels and others, including Nietzsche and, in his own way, Léon Walras, was busy in Switzerland imagining new narratives in order to counter Marxism and the First International so-potently illustrated in concrete terms by the Paris Commune of 1871. Later, the Bolshevik revolution developed as THE concrete answer to the structural capitalist contradictions. I have shown elsewhere, for instance in the above quoted essay on Nietzsche, that with the colonisation of India the reactionary rabbinical and Burkean thinking about human inequality the so-called Tradition, took a new turn for the worse. The intelligence services had learned from the Brahmins' use of cast. Anthropology, mythology and linguistics were all bent in the same direction: For instance Dumezil theorised the perennial existence of three main casts in human History, the priest, the warrior and the peasant-servant. The dominant Masonic lodges reactionary rabbis, Nietzsche, Wagner, Meineke, Chamberlain and Heidegger to cite just a few, who also neatly illustrate the deadly logic of exclusivism, took that reactionary thinking over and reformulated it against the progressive Enlightenment movement, based on the egalitarian and secular becoming of Mankind.
Capitalism seemed condemned and thus to save the exploitation of Man by Man at the basis of cast thinking, be it theocratic or less, it was necessary to suppress its liberal-democratic aspects - see John Stuart Mill, On Liberty. These had dangerously transformed the original liberal capitalism from bottom up. Indeed, from the very beginning capitalists had to present their own vested interest in Universalist clothing private, property geared to private capitalist accumulation instead of feudal thesaurization with its congealed and inherited social status. This universalist veneer took the shape of formal democracy and formal access to private property for all, a view embodied in Adam Smith's naive Physiocratic society staging his corner butchers and bakers all working for their egoistic interests and thus unconsciously for the common good. The centralisation and concentration of capital destroyed these pretenses.
Moreover, in time of acute structural crisis, the middle classes who accompanied the development of the bureaucracy of the Capitalist State tend to be pauperized. Fascism was developed as a conscious social engineering of liberal capitalism with the hope to manage its structural crisis in a way compatible with the preservation of human inequality hence in a non-Keynesian and non-Marxist sense.
The same rabbinical-Nietzschean fascist solution is now presented by the new parasites, namely the 10 % and 1 % described by Piketty, and not in such a « soft power » version dear to the old Chair of Intelligence J. Nye. Indeed, with G. W. Bush and his overrepresented crusaders, the Nietzschean «Hammer » took the official, though anti-constitutional and illegal, form of preventive war on all economic and military rivals. These were quickly and unilaterally denounced as « terrorists » both outside and inside (the Preventive War Doctrine and the Patriot Act.) This is exactly why Piketty can pretend to look at the economists from top down (they know nothing about anything, says he.) Adding quickly that you need to replace economic thinking into its social context ... Of course, this is to better defend inequality which did not exist always everywhere, but which the new Zionist-Fascists like to pretend it did, in their attempts to cook-up the right narrative and right bogus U curves needed to legitimise their « ignoble lie. » If human history is all about becoming and the elite controls it, then the elite can perpetuate its dominant status: narratives are then the epitome of «embedded» bourgeois sciences ...
Notice here again the characteristic reversal: In his Republic, Plato lets Socrates who was educated in Calabria among the Pythagoricians explain the pedagogic and transient value of his « Noble Lie » devised to protect his new Ideal City against internal degeneration; the aim of this Ideal City was to set the framework for the progressive march toward equality, the metallic souls could transmute thanks to education as Socrates brilliantly demonstrated with his interrogation of the slave boy whom he led, through questioning, to find the right answer to the doubling of the square. The Calabrian Abbot Joachim of Fiore made the point again in a powerful and lasting fashion in the Middle Ages with his secularization of the Spirit leading to a new emancipatory Age. The reactionaries, including the reactionary rabbis - Spinoza later denounced their « delirium » - used the same mystifying trick and proposed instead their « ignoble lies » which they presented as science or better still as revealed or perennial truths. Their falsities, for instance human inequality, are « for all times and places » ... as long as they soullessly organise to concretely maintain it like Piketty suggests.
There is another point that should be addressed coldly by all, including Marxists. It concerns the theory of redistribution or rather the optimal redistribution that can produce the greater growth. Perhaps we should mention here Leibnitz's fallacious and self-serving theory on the subject. He was a Rosicrucian and a brilliant young mathematical mind; during his youth he was sent to Paris when Descartes was dying: His mission was to preventively go through Descartes's papers before others could, Descartes having been associated in his youth with the Rosicrucians and having used the same codes. (See Amir D. Aczel, 2005).(This too is typical and sometime goes under the name of « chiens de garde » as Léon Blum described his own role alongside Jean Jaurès: Bertrand Russell had his Ralph Schoenman; Althusser his wife; Jean-Paul Sartre his Benny Lévy alias Victor, and even the syphilitic Nietzsche his Lou Salomé etc, etc, etc ...) Leibnitz's proposal consists in pretending that only the intellectual elites account for human progress; hence, societies must extract a surplus to maintain them so that they can dedicate their life to their scientific endeavour. Note here the term scientific so dear to Leibnitz. Of course, one can take Leibnitz's point and argue for human equality; indeed, the USSR, Maoist China and Egalitarian Cuba under Fidel magisterially demonstrated how science and culture could be highly developed without requiring any grotesque divergence in salary and even less any entrenched human and social inequality.
Thanks to the democratisation of education and of research - as Althusser showed the individual inventor is now replaced by teams - Leibnitz's self-serving bent can be compatible with an egalitarian socio-economic redistribution. As a matter of fact, given the Marxist Law of productivity, the high development of culture, science and technology would be at the core of socialist development simply because ever increasing productivity would finally be made compatible with the collective control of « social surplus value ». It would be the exact opposite of the capitalist and biblical attempts to suppress and manipulate science in favour of narratives to be deployed to maintain human and social inequality and the accompanying theocratic-racist obscurantism.
What about Pareto's law? Piketty himself has pointed out the poor factual basis marshalled by Pareto to derive his pseudo-law. (p 583) But Pareto was not trying to be scientific here: He was mainly trying to forge a perennial truth for the masses against the Socialists: If inequality has always been, it would be a foolish waste of time to back up the Socialists in trying to change things. Pareto knew that his pseudo-law would at best show a more or less valid tendency for existing inegalitarian societies without saying anything scientific about their future; he only needed to generalise his data in order to present his historically-bounded partial data as universally valid. Piketty had to go a long step further: He needed to falsify his data in the most shameful fashion as we have shown above.
We will not belabor the point. Suffice it to say, as we already alluded to, that the creation of an economic surplus, which is needed to feed more dynamic reproduction, has nothing to do with social distribution and even less with social redistribution. This is determined by the socio-political and juridical rules used democratically or not to fix their respective levels. With capitalism the ownership of private property determines this sharing. However, the positive dynamic reproduction of capitalism is not perennially or automatically insured; quite the contrary because the working of the law of productivity constantly frees up excess labor, leading either to the sharing of work and at a minimum to the sharing of productivity gains, or else to a downward economic spiral.
It is symptomatic and ironic at the same time, that the pretentious Lilliputian Piketty does shamefully his best to cook-up his data and U curves abstracting in particular from hegemonic speculation. And yet, unless a return to the Glass Steagall Act is implemented, hegemonic speculation will now place capitalism on the fast track to its own demise. It will do so by killing rational capitalist credit and its connection to the real economy. With his bogus theory Piketty is already destined to the « dump heap of History » to use Marx's apt phrase. Perhaps with a deserved Nobel Prize (hi-ha!)
Piketty versus Kuznets
Surely Piketty would like to be as highly regarded in the economic statistical field as Kuznets once was and still is. However, he stands no chances at all with his bogus narrative. He lays two main critiques against Kuznets. (See pp 30-38 and 535)
A) Based on his statistical series for 1913-1948 presented in his major 1953 book, Kuznets finds a decrease in revenue inequality: «Concretely, in the years 1910-1920, the highest decile in the repartition, namely the 10% richest among Americans received up to 54 %-50 % of national revenue. At the end of the 40s, the share going to this highest decile fell to around 30 %-35 % of national revenue. This decrease of more than 10 % is considerable; it is equivalent for instance to half of the share going to the poorest 50 % of Americans. The reduction of inequality was clear and irrefutable. » (p 33). The enthusiasm of the profession and the Cold War pushed Kuznets to generalise the finding although, as Piketty says, he was more prudent in his writings. The so-called Kuznets curve, the Bell-shaped curve according to which inequalities would first grow and then decrease as the industrialisation process was taking sway, was established. Piketty adds that in his Presidential Address to American economists: « ... Kuznets took great care to emphasise that the stake of his optimistic predictions was simply to keep the under-developed countries ``within in the sphere of influence of the free world``. » (p 36). Some of you might have heard about Rostow's theory of « economic take-off » that pedalled a similar idea on the campuses and inside the American-dominated international agencies.
B) Kuznets, says Piketty, naively believed in the « gradual and automatic transfer of manpower from the less well paid sectors to the better paid. » (p 535)
Piketty uses his own bogus and cooked-up series to affirm that Kuznets's finding were incorrect because the difference was due to the shock produced by the World wars. According to him, they explain the « collapse of the higher revenue of capital. » (p 535) Of course, he has not time for political and socio-economic evolution and much less for the counter-factual New Deal initiatives. This is a pity because as Fred Bloch and others pointed out in the 70s, the presence of the USSR and of the Communist Block acted as a deterrent against increasing capitalist inequalities; this evidence is sufficient to prove Kuznets's conclusion right whether you play with the statistical temporal span or not.
In the first part of this critique, we emphasised that Piketty's fraudulently cooked-up long-term series. These are supported by brushing aside all contrary phenomena such as the USSR and by consciously ignoring the existence and role of fiscal paradises and other such tricks used by the leading classes to hide revenues and to shelter them from the new post-war fiscal policies which were coterminous with the development of the Welfare or Social State. Similarly, he brushes aside altogether financial derivatives and shadow banking although they powerfully affected the data he was compelled to use for the 2000 to 2010 period in order to present plausible U curves. He brushes aside all institutional innovations which accompanied the so-called Welfare or interventionist Keynesian State; he thus ignores everything not only about standards of living but more seriously about the institutionalisation of a greater part of the households' saving which had transformed and stabilised the circuits of capital within the new legal framework established by the New Deal Glass Steagall Act and by its labor and social security initiatives.
It does make a difference whether Social security guaranties you against « rainy days » that might « happen through no fault of your own », be it illness or unemployment or old age etc...
Piketty has no time and even less understanding of these issues. But in so doing he misses the whole point about the logic of the transformation of savings into investments (or, should I say, of largely institutionalised savings into productive investments). Thus he cannot comprehend the significant increase in well-being of the individual workers and of their households. Nor can he understands the concrete impact of decent labor laws: Just compare the permanent unionised production work in the 50's and 60's in the USA, with the dual labor force of the 70's and 80's and with the general precariousness of work following the Reaganian counter-revolution and not just McDo jobs ... In my Synopsis of Marxist Political Economy I explain this in some details, underlying the important of the « structure of v » and that of « social surplus value» to maintain dynamic quality growth.
You can look at institutional saving from a different angle and thus at a non-speculative form of credit made available for production , namely in its relationship to the three forms of the « global net revenue of the household » (Contrary to the bourgeois Marginalist and neoclassical neoliberal view of labor as a monetized factor of production among others, labor power is a very special attribute of real physical persons who are part of a species based on sexual reproduction; this highlights the crucial importance of the households with their various sizes. Indeed, one cannot abstract from this specific social reproduction of labor power without creating an inhuman, and more to the point here, a dramatically inefficient economic system. Just look at the current grotesque global flexibilisation of labor which feeds the current downward economic spiral and refutes anything the Marginalists and their Central bankers had to say about price phenomena: Remember that Bernanke's QE were originally implemented to create hyperinflation with the hope of transferring the financing of the debt to the US creditor countries, in particular China ... The talk has now switched to « deflation ». Obviously, they have little clue about the working of their own monetary aggregates, in particular the different role played by M1 more or less the social salary mass and M3. (Hi-Ha?)
The « global net revenue » of the household comprises the «capitalist individual salary » accruing to the individual worker, the « differed salary » or payroll levies to cover UI and pensions etc, and the transfers to households in the form of universally accessible services and infrastructures. If you make abstraction of this institutional organisation, you fall prey to the globalisation of Solow's grotesque function of production (Y = f (K, L) where K is capital and L is whatever you want but not necessarily Keynesian full-employment. This then leads you to a « razor-hedge equilibrium », which, as Solow himself admits, pushes the labor force to its physiological level.
In the present global framework this was aggravated by the adoption of a free-trade friendly anti-dumping definition at the WTO. It excludes any reference to minimal labor rights, as defined by the Monarchist tripartite ILO, and to basic environmental criteria. This automatically enforces a march toward the global physiological level unless emerging countries like China continue to show a willingness to increase the welfare of their own workers and population in general, in the framework of a « well-rounded socialist socio-economic system ». This is already clear and can be shown even looking at available Marginalist data. In short, the Solowian and free-trade agenda presupposed the previous dismantlement of the New Deal institutions which informed Kuznets's data. It implied liberalisation, privatisation and the privatisation of institutional saving, including pension regimes now hazarded on the stock exchange markets (401K into 201K as a consequence of the subprime crisis; and, on top of it all, this was followed by Jeffrey Siegel et al., avidly eying the average citizen's piggy bank to prop up the stock-market, despite the tragic fate of small savings placed on the Madoff-inspired Nasdaq ...)
Hence, Piketty looks puerile and ill-informed although he actually knows exactly what he is up too. Still, when you look at the wage of the individual worker, you quickly realise that, as many theoreticians pointed out in the recent past, a worker is now earning less on average than half of what he could have earned in the 50s. This reality tends to be hidden at the household level and Piketty's income tax return data just because women now tend to be better represented in the work force. Julius Wilson had documented the rise of the « working poor » while the levels of absolute and relative poverty increased despite the previous changes in the definitions. Similarly, I have shown that official unemployment statistics are utterly unreliable see the Note ** of my Book III. They were revised since then. Today, official unemployment is said to decrease even as the level of participation to the workforce has decreased dramatically: It now stands at 63 % in the United-States of America which boasts a laughable if tragic 6 % or so official (!) unemployment rate. By construction, none of this can appear in Piketty's et al., fraudulent long-term curves.
Kuznets never was that puerile nor that ill-intentioned. He tried to remain objective and scientific in his research, although it was based on the fallacious Marginalist assumptions of mainstream economists. In fact, I have often mentioned Kuznets's economic statistical importance in conjunction with the data provided by the Tennessee Valley Authority. These last sets of data were key to the New Dealers. In particular, they demonstrated that a worker left for some two years without employment would no longer be employable when the economic cycle rebounds. They argued in favor of a form of insurance which was rather crudely called a « maintenance level ». If need be, this had to be achieved through public works and through the institution of unemployment insurance. Of course, that level had to be lower than the lowest wage to avoid creating «laziness » in this still Puritan and bourgeois view ...
Piketty has no understanding whatsoever of these crucial socio-economic developments or of their reversal through the present regressive neoliberal policy. At bottom, he is content to note (p 403) that the 10 % on top could maintain the lower 50 % as domestics by sacrificing a small part of their wealth ... In other words, inequality should return to its pre-1914 level as long as revolts and revolutions can be avoided. This archaic and pre-modern level is given as the standard that would always prevail anywhere were it not for extraneous shocks like wars! In reality, this is the usual rabbinical-Nietzschean recipe and goes by the term « squandering », a policy supported by the willingness to use the «Nietzschean Hammer», including in the forms of educational obscurantism, deference to authority (!) and tight control of the flows of « authorised » communication.
What about Kuznets's second point? It is a fundamental point which one finds already in Marx and which was reformulated for instance by Alfred Sauvy: As productivity frees up labor, new sectors can absorb it. Sauvy called this mechanism « déversement». Marx added something else: As demonstrated by the history of capitalism and by the various popular democratic conquests, the best way to deal with the reabsorbtion of excess labor power was the lowering of the working day and of the working week with the addition of annual statutory holydays, without lowering the wages in order to preserve buoyant social demand.
After the Second World War new intermediary sectors emerged such as automobiles, domestic utilities, telecommunication, land, air and sea transportation etc. They were at first labor-intensive and were the main factor behind the relatively low unemployment rate up until the end of the 60s and early 70s (François Perroux then spoke about massification and mature Western societies.) Of course, the reabsorption process in not stupidly automatic as Solow for instance presented it through his inept insistence on technology. This is something which he does not understand; he is therefore obliged to introduce technology as an exogenous factor. (At a minimum technology means higher productivity and as such, unless it is embodied in labor-intensive sectors, it will not absorb manpower but rather contribute in freeing it.)
I have shown in my books that new sectors, intermediary or not, now tend to be more capital intensive, so that unless work sharing and the right « structure of v » are part of the equations, the downward economic spiral is ensured. And this will not be compensated by the general and simultaneous adoption of the deadly Chicago Boys' recipes by all Western countries, namely export in priority, including services, in the hope of balancing the books to repay the public debt. It just happens that these accounting books have two entries: neither the rabbis nor Nietzsche, nor the grotesque Marginalist Nobel Prizes can change that. Put it another way: Exchange is always a reciprocal affair necessarily based on cash-worthiness of the agents: If someone sells someone else has to buy, and vice-versa. Notwithstanding Piketty's fraudulent long term, a society of slaves and domestics can be compatible with thesaurisation but not with capitalist accumulation.
It just happens that Kuznets was trying to get a scientific grasp of the phenomena but just like Philips with his own curve that pointed to the role of the Reserve Army of the proletariat which I examined in my Tous ensemble. He was impeded in obtaining the desired results because of his Marginalist conceptual starting point, and because the derived statistics were hiding the phenomena. See for instance his attempt to understand trade cycles and Kondratieff cycles. I have shown that Kondratieff cycles are nothing else than the statistical Marginalist reflection of the massification waves of available technology. Piketty does not understand any of this and indeed he is not even interested: He is driven by his self-conferred mission which is to create a plausible narrative backed by bogus and cooked-up data. It is an absolute shame. And in the first place for the French academic reputation. After the deplorable Nouveaux Philosophes, the Hexagon certainly did not need its «Nouveaux Economistes ». Braudel seating in Marc Bloch's chair in order to surreptitiously introduce the « market » (?) as the great economic regulator exclusively compatible with human freedom was already more than could be tolerated!
Note that in my Book III, I had argued that my clarifications of Marx's theory the various forms of surplus value extraction and their integration into Simple and Enlarged Reproduction - allowed the re-visitation of the historical economic data of the various modes of production, primitive communistic, slavery, feudal, capitalist and post-capitalist modes. Note that, contrary to Sraffa et al., in their controversy with Solow and Samuelson, the last two using students as proxies, I have re-established Marx's scientific function of production and duly integrated it into the Equations of Simple Reproduction and Enlarged Reproduction. Each sector, or branch or enterprise can now be decomposed at will in their respective function of production; furthermore, on that basis, scientific statistics could easily account for sectoral interchanges and intermediary productions, both in quantitative or qualitative terms, something the Marginalists cannot even dream of. (For the details see my Synopsis of Marxist Political Economy.) I had therefore asked for the development of scientific statistics i.e. necessarily Marxist statistics, unless my contributions were proven wrong giving me the right to respond as demanded by academic deontology. Piketty and his ilks quickly tried to pre-empt this and proposed the opposite with their bogus series which purposefully mix everything up definitions as well as historical modes and epochs etc. This is done in order to establish the historical inevitability of a bogus level of human inequality. Of course, in so doing, do not account for speculation because then your 6 or 8 degree of divergence will more likely become 20 to 30 and that would be more difficult to justify in public. There is only one adjective for this: Rubbish!
One last point: What does the new parasitic 1 % has to do with the middle classes, since they are now dangerously eroded? (Some might remember that historians of Fascism like Federico Chabod purposefully ignored the Rabbinic-Nietzschean lodges and financiers behind the rise of Fascism and Nazism. They then had to focus on the resentment of the increasingly pauperized middle classes to explain the rise, including the electoral rise, of this first brand of philo-Semite Nietzscheism together with its inevitable and deadly exclusivist logic. Add to this the legitimizing argument made by Bernstein, Weber et al., in favor of the middle classes and their educational mobility through so-called educational meritocracy. They were seen as the main bulwark of capitalism against Marxist socialism. Quite simply Piketty does not know what to do with it and characteristically says contradictory things on the subject, as we will show. This is because he is still behind compared to the present new philo-Semite Nietzschean « Italians » represented by Gutgeld and Renzi-Napolitano et al. These have long understood the worth of Spinelli in working for a philo-Semite Nietzschean Europe. Transnational capital does not need democracy; hence the post-war progressive constitutions are seen as hindrances and are systematically, although illegally, destroyed to leave sway to a new Censitarian democracy controlled by the big transnational shareholders- see Denis Kesler or JP Morgan. The return to the private financing of political parties and to undemocratic electoral thresholds is an emblematic first step in this regressive direction. (Added dic. 2024: Lately Piketty set out to substitute class struggle with « electoral conflicts » propelled by « identity » just like the Right and Extreme Right like to pretend. In so doing, he, as usual, uses partial statistics out of context, not even taking into account the difference between Censitarian or universal suffrage, partis formation, electral financing, etc ...)
Poor Piketty will soon understand this. Meanwhile, he first says that the invention of the middle class was the main patrimonial change which affected capitalism. That is to say that he uses « middle class » here in the specifically sociological American sense through which unionised workers working in buoyant production lines considered themselves to be part of the middle class; in other words, they gloss over the institutional and socio-economic changes to which I alluded to above (John Galbraith spoke of counter-weights, See for instance the Note 15 on John Galbraith in my aforementioned Book III.) Unfortunately, if he insists too much on the role of buoyant middle classes his U curves will look like a half-backed or spoiled souffé!
He then quickly realised what happened to his series and curves when he introduced even partial data from 2000 to 2010 and he feels reassured thanks to the impact on his series of speculation after 1999 : His thesis about inequality being always present was safe again. Naturally, it all depends on how you chose to slice your statistical series. He thus says that, after all, the middle class invention did not change things significantly. Here are the quotes: a) «Make no mistake about it: The development of a real « patrimonial middle class » constitutes the main structural transformation of the repartition of wealth in the Western countries in the XX Century » (p 410); b) « In the end, the middle class only managed to win some crumbs: nothing more than a third of European patrimony, a fourth as far as the US are concerned. » (p 411)
Well, you know by now how this guy's mind works ...
Paul De Marco
Copyright © La Commune Inc, June 30, 2014
NOTES:
1) Piketty is a fine (typical?) exemplar of what I conceptualized as a « pitre » in my Pour Marx, contre le nihilisme. He takes himself seriously too, god knows why! My interpretation of his book is this: Piketty, like many members of so-called « awakened » circles, is doing his best to do just the opposite of what I try to demonstrate scientifically; they present their reversed version as something « plausible» with the backing of the usual chorus of overrepresented like-minded pitres in the academic and media circles. In this specific case, having produced the definitive criticism of Marginalism and bourgeois economic theories, and having re-established the scientific (Marxist) function of production, duly reintegrating it within the Equations of Simple and Enlarged Reproduction, I had asked for the development of scientific namely, Marxist statistics to replace the fraudulent Marginalist ones. These currently inform both national (GDP) and business accounting systems. (For a critique of GDP see here and here.)
My proposal obviously was seen as a serious threat because it is now scientifically operational. Everyone, including Kuznets at the origin, was well-apprised with the grievous fallings of GDP and Marginalist statistics. Jacques Barraux beautifully summarized the argument in his short piece entitled «Que mesure vraiment le PNB » (Economia No 15, September 1975.) It has become worse since then. The GDP accounting methodology has been recently modified to include armaments, investments, drogues, the parallel economy and even prostitution in the hope to show a continuous GDP growth in Western countries which are now faced with the predictable consequences of their suicidal fiscal consolidation path. Similarly, Piketty and others are now assiduously trying to blur things further with their ridiculous long-term curves abstracted from any historical and sociological input. Allow me to say that this is not even « fuzzy logics » or « fuzzy mathematics » although it comes from the same corners and from the same inspiration.
Piketty as an academic should know that he must quote if only to give a right of response. For instance, he ignorantly speaks about transfer payments and « differed salary » (see footnote pp 400-401) a concept which he took directly from my writings and from nowhere else. Idem for the concept of social surplus value which remains beyond his puerile and manipulating grasp. Finally, Piketty treats critics of capitalism as « paresseux » or « lazy». Allow me to tell him that he is but an obvious and demonstrated fraud who has not even learned yet the basic academic deontology. A pitre, indeed. Note further that Poincaré refused to have anything to do with Bachelier's ineptitudes. The same happened to Mandelbrot who had to immigrate to the USA in order to find sympathetic ears. Unfortunately the HEC and the Grandes Ecoles have now been contaminated by American Business and Administration syllabuses and are even surpassing their model with typical Cartesian zeal. Piketty's case only proves that things have changed for the worse in France, a country now ready for its Nouveaux Economistes after its shameful, laughable, obnoxious and over-represented Nouveaux philosophes.
2) In my Book III entitled Keynesianism, Marxism, Economic Stability and Growth see Download Now in the Livres-Books section of www.la-commune-paraclet.com ), I have shown that Keynes had borrowed Marx's capital cycles (Paul Sweezy had made the argument before in conjunction with the publication of the last volumes of Keynes's work.) This allowed him to criticise the Marginalist paradigm from within while trying to protect private property or, as he puts it, trying to save capital from its own « animal spirits ». In so doing, as the title of his main book the General theory of employment, money and interest makes it perfectly clear, he sets up a system of interdependent variables based on full-employment. I explained that his system was quickly brought down by the extroversion of the Kahn Multiplier, something which had been announced as early as the 1944 at Savannah when Keynes faced defeat against H. White in the negotiations leading to the emergence of the post-war new world financial and trade regime IMF, BIRD and GATT. However, I also showed that Keynes's remedy to the contradictions inherent to the capitalist mode of production was bound either to fail or to lead to the demise of capitalism through the sharing of socially available work. As we know, the political and social implication of the fundamental choice faced at this crossroad had been understood from the very beginning by the philo-Semite Nietzschean crews. Hence, the so-called « bastard» version of Keynesianism quickly proposed by Hicks and others offered the pseudo-conceptual basis on which the inversion proposed by Solow and Samuelson was erected, namely the « neoclassical» version of the already fraught Marginalist paradigm.
3) The Marxist Law of Productivity which I clarified and which I coherently integrated within the Equations of Simple and Enlarged Reproduction, thus refuting all arguments levied against Marx, notably by Böhm-Bawerk the so-called transformation problem - , can be stated in simple terms in the following fashion: Let the function of production be c + v + pv = M, where c represent the «used-up» capital; v the salary and pv the surplus value or profit. Then any increase in productivity implies a propositionally inverse movement in the ratios v/C (where C = c + v) and pv/v. It scientifically states that a rise in productivity implies a deepening of the organic composition of capital (the ratio v/C) which further implies that for the same rate of profit the rate of surplus value evolves proportionally in the opposite direction. Hence, with the same investment C but a deeper organic composition of capital or greater productivity the more productive firm can produce more products of a specific kind or similar products with a great elasticity at a proportionally lesser price. This allows it to conquer the available domestic and foreign markets. Hence, for the same rate of profit on C (the rate of profit is noted pv/(c +v)), the volumes of profit will be greater. The elimination of the competition leads to the centralisation and concentration of capital, an ineluctable phenomenon which explains Schumpeter's pessimism as to the survival of the capitalist mode of production. Keeping C = 100 to facilitate comparison, note that when the organic composition of capital is deepened by a greater productivity, C = 100 as before but the relative part for v given in exchange value or money terms is proportionately lower following the arithmetical logic of productivity, just as it is for prices. Note further that v at the numerator represents living labor, while v at the denominator represents past or crystallized labor, this being key to the Labor Law of Value. However, in use value terms, the lower v, given in exchange value terms, will of course continue to buy the same amount of products. The problem is what happens to v in terms of the physical workers it represents. This is something all Marginalists as well as Robert Solow are unable to see given the original monetised narrative build by J. B Say on Ricardro's paper currency which was later generalised by Léon Walras. The fact is that the labor power embodied in the number of physical workers employed also diminishes proportionally; namely, you must consider the abstract labor embody in them rather than the various professions and crafts something which falls under the technical aspect of talorysation. Of course, it is not true that the unemployed workers freed up by the rise of productivity - Solow's technology - will automatically be employed as long as the flexibility of the labor market is fluid enough to insure the« adjustment » tendencially at the physiological level according to the « razor-hedge equilibrium » of early Marginalists and neoclassical economists. If you consider the necessary relation between what I called the « structure of v » and the productions that need to be realised on the market, you quickly understand the sheer idiocy of the supply-side economics together with its austerity agenda, if only because such policy choice cannot be generalized. This is because there is no advantage to be gained if all countries choose to implement the Chicago Boys' agenda simultaneously, namely producing to export in order to reimburse a self-imposed debt, as the European countries now illustrate. Indeed, the « structure of v » amounts to some 70 % of the total « social demand » in the US. This is a crucial aggregate which Marx had anticipated as early as 1844 and scientifically analysed in his Equations of Simple and Enlarged Reproduction. It gives you the logic of the real general equilibrium. In short, value must be dual both exchange and use values and exchange itself is always a bilateral affair: You cannot sell if no one else one buys and the first crucial sale is always the advance made by the worker of his use value or labor power to the capitalist in exchange for a salary which is always paid at the end of the production process. Without this initial advance no production whatsoever can ever take place.
Can the overproduction/under-consumption contradiction be lifted economically? In the end, it cannot, neither with the asymmetric interdependence strategy, nor with the speculative strategy and even less with the preventive war strategy. I have explained from the beginning against Keohane and Nye that the asymmetric interdependence strategy was bound to fail: Other big countries will not let themselves be relegated into lower-end productions; furthermore most of them have a longer cultural and technological past than the USA and better schools; in short, today, both China and India graduate more engineers than the US and are catching up quickly in terms of patents. In the end, the extroversion of the basic consumers' basket which I ironically termed the « wal-martyrisation » of the consumers with the hope to redo Ricardo's trick embodied in the Repeal of the Corn laws, will only create increased vulnerability. This equally concerns higher-end products. Already in the Seventies, Vernon from the Harvard Business and Administration School was noting that around 30 % of the US military gadgets were produced in Japan; the percentage is now even more grotesque when you consider puny Israel (speak about delocalisation and outsourcing of jobs!) What about the speculative strategy? Aside from high official employment, high part-time and precarious work and endemic poverty, the rate of participation of the labor force is decreasing to levels unheard of before it is now around 63 % in the USA. The active labor force is less than 59 %. Can you return the mass of workers to institutionalised poverty and compensate through the development of services sectors especially financial services sectors? The latter now accounts for more than 9 % of GDP in the USA against 3 % less than two decades ago. The answer is negative, even if you choose financial sectors as the growing sectors with the hope that they could be compatible with an otherwise generally low wage structure given their increased autonomy from the real economy. « Credit without collateral » is not a viable solution especially if public bailouts take over from the natural capitalist purges of the systemic excesses, and substitute themselves to the competition logic, which is the beating heart of capitalism.
Just like Sarfatti-Mussolini's Fascism, the new brand of philo-Semite Nietzscheism embodies a deadly perversion of capitalist liberalism. And it does not help if you play on words and try to distinguish between liberism and liberalism, as Benedetto Croce and others did while initially backing Mussolini's regime. QE did not create hyperinflation as it was thought with the hope to help pay down the debt; instead it created a Catch 22 situation and a chronic «credit crunch» which ruins the real economy and the fiscal policies of the State. The disconnection between speculation and real economy is not in the cards unless there is a return to the financial functional segregation implemented by the 1933 Glass Steagall Act abolished in 1999; and unless banks and financial institutions are allowed to fail. No such institution is « too big to fail ». Quite the contrary, it would have been far less expensive to let them fail, and buy them out for a symbolic dollar. In this way, they would have been recapitalised out of the public purse at little cost by using the average financial lever of 40 or 60 for 1, in order to save small savings and productive credit to the small, medium and big enterprises, public or private. Is preventive war the solution? True, with capitalism, excess capital is liquidated by crises, either cyclical or systemic, and by bankruptcy and war. War and the culture of death are inherent to capitalism and to its bogus humanitarian rights destined to remain formal for the abused masses; the real aim remains to serve the privileges of their self-selected masters, sometime self-divinely selected, something which had Suetonius and Titus laugh in derision in the past. Military Keynesianism had been conceived from the very beginning as the main way to pacifically take excess capital out of the normal circuits of the real economy in order to fight overproduction. However, after the Marxist and the Maoist reformulation of the guerilla strategy and tactics, the most potent armies on earth cannot win against a mobilized people something quite different from mercenary troops as even Wallenstein and Machiavelli knew during the Renaissance. The USA put themselves in a position to be bleeding some $ 3 billion a month during their invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan (Note added in August 2014: and the criminal army of Israel is facing rampant defeat and total deligitimation in Gaza.)
Can the destruction of all economic and military rivals be useful? Well the main economic rivals, including Japan and Germany which could both develop the atom bomb in less than three months can use nuclear deterrence. Regime change is no longer available after the demise of the shameful clique of Yeltsin. Regime change through proxies and mercenaries is a double-hedged weapon which ends up costlier for the less centrally planned nations. That is, as long as the rivals do not adopt the speculative form of credit, thus automatically leaving the printing press to the FED to better enslave themselves. In Faust, Goethe explained the demoniac corrupting power of the fabrication of money.
XXX
Recensione argomentata del libro di Pino Fabiano, « Contadini rivoluzionari del Sud: la figura di Rosario Migale nella storia dell'antagonismo politico », Città del Sole Edizioni, Marzo 2011.
Non vogliamo proporre qui una recensione classica. Invece, questo bel libro di Pino Fabiano che vuole restituirci la memoria delle lotte sociali e politiche del nostro Sud, richiede di più, una riappropriazione critica della nostra storia per illuminare le lotte presenti e future. Nel mio caso, la faccenda diventa ardua per pura ignoranza e mancanza di famigliarità con la storia regionale. Come molti altri fui portato a conoscenza dell'emblematica figura di Migale tramite questo libro. L'esercizio che mi sono proposto, per essere inevitabilmente parziale, né è ancora più necessario. Prima di cominciare, conviene forse indicare le due interessanti classiche recensioni; sono menzionate nella Nota 1 qui sotto.
Sin dalla sua origine il modo di produzione capitalista ha avuto una vocazione mondiale. Secondo le fasi della sua evoluzione storica, la storia delle Nazioni e delle Regioni è la storia dell'inserzione della Formazione Sociale Nazionale o Sovranazionale (come la UE) nell'Economia Mondiale Capitalista. La storia di Regioni come la Calabria declina la Storia globale secondo la forma nazionale e locale adottata da questa inserzione.
La piccola storia informa la grande ma, a volte, il destino degli individui incarna il destino collettivo. Questa verità, più volte sottolineata dagli Hegeliani e dai Marxisti, è giustamente enunciata per il protagonista Rosario Migale nel sottotitolo del libro a lui dedicato. Il fondatore della Storia come scienza, Giambattista Vico, ci insegna che l'autobiografia o la biografia vanno capite nel loro contesto. Non a caso Gramsci sviluppò il concetto dell'Individuo in quanto cittadino e dunque in quanto Soggetto da intendere come uno « blocco storico ».
La seconda metà del XX Secolo aggiunse un elemento chiave allo svolgimento delle lotte di classe, cioè della Storia: il passaggio della dissuasione classica alla dissuasione nucleare, passaggio tragicamente inaugurato il 6 e l'8 Agosto 1945 con le esplosioni di Hiroshima e di Nagasaki. La lotta di classe, la lotta politica domestica o condotta al livello internazionale, era ormai sovra-determinata dalla possibilità reale che la competizione tra i due modi di produzione opposti, capitalista e socialista, portasse all'annichilazione dell'Umanità intera. Perciò, questa seconda metta del secolo passato dovette fare i conti con le sfere di influenza decise a Yalta (Febbraio 1945). Questo fu particolarmente il caso in Italia e in Francia dove i partiti comunisti, aureolati dal prestigio della Resistenza, erano fortissimi. Queste sfere di influenza furono subito rimesse in causa con lo sviluppo tecnologico della dissuasione: si passò da un sistema di distruzione mutuale assicurata o MAD, al contenimento ed al roll-back, alla manipolazione dell'irrazionalità temperata dal Telefono rosso dopo la Crisi dei Missili a Cuba nell'Ottobre de 1962, alla dissuasione del debole verso il forte, in somma a tutte le contraddizioni aperte dalla corsa agli armamenti.
Né in Italia né in Francia gli Accordi di Yalta diedero luogo ad una lotta di liberazione autonoma sotto egemonia della Resistenza comunista, come fu invece il caso in Jugoslavia. In ambedue i casi lo sbarco delle truppe alleate, sopratutto americane, fu decisivo. In Italia, forte delle analisi di Gramsci rapidamente pubblicate da Togliatti, si scelse la più ardua « via democratica al socialismo ». Il suo primo successo ne fu la convocazione dell'Assemblea costituente teorizzata da Gramsci, la quale portò all'adozione della nostra Costituzione repubblicana. Era concepita come complementare della Carta fondamentale delle Nazioni Unite e della Dichiarazione Universale dei Diritti Sociali e Individuali Fondamentali della Persona Umana. Lo Stato sociale così inaugurato era l'espressione capitalista la più avanzata dell'alleanza di classe anti-Nazifascista. Prova che la natura intima del Fascismo, il suo esclusivismo disuguale e razzista, non era stata capita, non si immaginava allora che si potesse regredire dal punto di vista socio-economico e culturale. Ad esempio, Federico Chabod se la cavava sottolineando la disoccupazione di massa e il populismo di destra che l'accompagnava, senza spiegare il tradimento, non solo elettorale e parlamentare ma etico-politico, della sociale-democrazia. La logica dell'esclusivismo filo-semite nietzschiano non era capita oppure era laboriosamente occultata. La sorte di Hilferding in Germania o di Léon Blum in Francia questo si illudeva di essere della « razza di Herder » - è illuminante, come quella di Max Warburg o di Margerita Sarfatti, padre e figlia ...
Il primo colpo di arresto della progressione delle forze di emancipazione socio-economiche e culturali in Europa occidentale venne dal Piano Marshall. Era ideato per rafforzare l'Alleanza atlantica contro la sfera di influenza socialista. La partecipazione al Piano Marshall era aperta all'Unione Sovietica ma solo in cambio della trasmissione di tutti i dati della Pianificazione. Il tipo di aiuto disponibile era deciso a Washington: era questo il trucchetto di Baruch per forzare Stalin a rifiutare. Questa resa dei controlli socio-economici valse invece per l'Europa occidentale. Il doppio risultato del Piano fu l'uscita forzata del Partito comunista dal governo e l'inizio della sovranità limitata del nostro Paese simboleggiata dallo dispiegamento delle sempre più numerose basi militari americane sul suolo italiano. (1) Oggi, il loro numero 113 - è superiore a quello delle provincie 93 - e il loro ampliamento sembra sempre farsi a spese nostre. Senza parlare dell'acquisto del F 35, acquisto a-costituzionale trattandosi di un aero di combattimento di penetrazione dietro le linee degli avversari (first strike). Il F 35 fu ideato per trasportare la bomba atomica B 61, ma venne comunque scartato da altri grandi alleati degli USA e rimesso in causa dal Pentagono stesso perché troppo costoso e tecnologicamente inefficiente. Va sottolineato che un tale aero di combattimento impone una dottrina militare offensiva diametralmente opposta ad ogni possibile interpretazione dell'Articolo 11 della nostro Costituzione relativo al ripudio della guerra per risolvere i conflitti internazionali.
Nondimeno questi parametri atlantisti sovra-determinanti imporranno la loro logica in Italia fin al collasso interno del Blocco sovietico dal 1989-1991. Questa implosione fu presto seguita dal harakiri del PCI alla Bolognina nel 1991. Il Gladio, i stay-behind, dunque i due tentativi di « golpe » - Piano Solo del 1964; golpe Borghese, Dicembre1970 -, la P2 con dentro quasi tutto lo Stato-Maggiore assieme ai principali dirigenti malgrado lo giuramento di fedeltà alla Costituzione, la parte la più spietata e violenta degli ideatori degli Anni di piombo, la complicità quasi sistemica nel Meridione tra Stato e Mafie, ecc, trovano qui la loro spiegazione, come pure una gran parte del trasformismo oggi verificato dai numerosi ex-comunisti ...
Al livello economico si passò dal Sistema di Bretton Woods messo in piedi alla fine della Seconda Guerra Mondiale (IMF, BIRD, GATT) alla sua progressiva rimessa in questione. Iniziò con la sovrattassa imposta da Conally-Nixon il 15 Agosto 1971 per arginare il deficit del bilancio commerciale americano. Questa misura unilaterale andò di pari passo con la sospensione della convertibilità del dollaro americano in oro stabilità a Bretton Woods ad una ionza d'oro uguale a US $ 35. Nel 1976, il Vertice della Giamaica mise ufficialmente fine al Sistema di Bretton Woods, inaugurando un regime di cambio flottante, e subito dopo rafforzato con il Uruguay Round, cioè con il superamento definitivo del GATT ed il passaggio al libero-scambio globale sancito dall'OMC.
Il progressivo smantellamento delle barriere tariffarie mise a male il funzionamento del Moltiplicatore domestico necessario alla coerenza socio-economica dello Stato Sociale europeo, come pure del Welfare State anglo-sassone keynesiano-beveridgiano. L'attuale libero-scambio egemonico fu invece fondato sopra una debilitante definizione dell'anti-dumping. Questa definizione, tutt'ora vigente all'OMC, crea una competizione al ribasso tra nazioni e lavoratori dato che impedisce ogni referenza ai diritti anche minimi del lavoro, come pure ai criteri ambientali minimi ed al principio di precauzione. La deflazione salariale attuale ne risulta essere una delle conseguenza ben oltre al ruolo dell'euro.
Questa transizione socio-economica del dopo-guerra fu inizialmente mediata dalla costituzione dell'Unione Europea, in particolare con la Politica Agricola Comune. Questa PAC aveva molteplici obbiettivi: si assicurava una certa sovranità alimentare tassando le importazioni agroalimentari e usando queste tasse per finanziare la modernizzazione agricola capitalista in Europa; si gestiva l'esodo rurale del dopo-guerra sovvenzionando i piccoli e medi contadini, comunque sacrificati a medio termine alla tendenza alla concentrazione-centralizzazione del capitale agricolo ma secondo il ritmo dato dalle possibilità di assorbimento della manodopera rurale dall'industria e dai settori dei servici pubblici e privati. Alfred Sauvy parlava di « déversement » della manodopera da industrie e settori ad industrie e settori. L'Occidente della Ricostruzione era anche diventato uno Stato padrone con una burocrazia pubblica e para-pubblica crescente.
Con l'egemonia del libero-scambio ben avviata all'inizio degli Anni 70 e realmente egemonica a partire del 1979-1981 grazie alla controriforma di Volcker-Reagan, il processo di integrazione europeo fu sottomesso alla « private global governance ». (2) A nulla servì la difesa del « Nobel » di Economia Maurice Allais a favore di una politica di blocchi commerciali capaci di favoreggiare delle « preferenze comunitarie » al posto dei vecchi tariffi nazionali. Questi erano oramai troppo confinati rispetto alla taglia assunta dalle firme multinazionali europee ed altre. Prevalse la debilitante definizione dell'anti-dumping poi resa ancora più debilitante dalla gestione à la Mundell della moneta unica europea.
Rosario Migale nacque il 31 gennaio 1920 a Cutro, in Calabria, « quarto di sette figli» « di una famiglia di braccianti senza terra.» (p 11)
Durante la Seconda Guerra Mondiale, Migale e il suo fratello furono arrolati. Quest'ultimo non ritornò dal fronte russo. « Il 3 febbraio 1940 (Migale) venne richiamato alle armi presso il III Reggimento Cavalleria Savoia di Milano e successivamente fu inviato sul fronte occidentale in Valle dAosta, poi in Jugoslavia e in Russia. Il 16 gennaio 1942 venne rimpatriato in Italia a causa di un congelamento di primo grado ai piedi. In seguito scontò nelle carceri di Milano e di Alessandria una condanna inflitta quando era al fronte in Russia. Uscito dal carcere nel settembre 1943 cominciò a prendere contatti con gli esponenti alessandrini del Cln, entrando così a far parte delle formazioni partigiane dei Gap. Durante gli scontri per la liberazione di Alessandria subì una ferita darma da fuoco alla mano sinistra. Agli inizi di maggio 1945 decise di ritornare a Cutro e aprì una sede del PCI. » (3)
Il 8 di maggio 1943, Rosario Migale aderisce ai gruppi d'azione patriottica. Questa, scrive Pino Fabiano, fu « una vera scelta che si è rivelata un programma politico cui è rimasto fedele fino alla morte » .
La sua storia personale ripercorre tutte le contraddizioni che hanno caratterizzato le varie forme di inserzione del nostro Paese e della nostra Regione nell'Economia Mondiale Capitalista. Purtroppo, dopo Luigi Longo, la gestione di queste contraddizioni per parte di uno PCI denaturato dal suo filo-semitismo nietzschiano non fu all'altezza. In privato addirittura Enrico Berlinguer diceva preferire « l'Alleanza atlantista », ma senza chiedere, come fece De Gaulle, il ritiro del nostro Paese dal comando militare unificato sotto controllo americano e la chiusura delle basi; oggi ancora si pone la questione cruciale dell'autonomia della politica estere e di difesa europea. Lo fu meno ancora per parte dei piccoli partiti radicali alla sinistra del PCI come testimonia la biografia personale di Brandirali del Partito comunista (marxista-leninista) italiano al quale appartenne Migale assieme al suo compagno partigiano e avvocato toscano Angiolo Gracci. « Tanto è vero, scrive Pino Fabiano, che il Brandirali, dopo l'esperienza maoista, restò folgorato sulla via di Damasco diventò militante di Comunione e Liberazione, per passare successivamente nel Cdu, in Forza Italia e, infine, al nostro tempo, nel Popolo delle Libertà. » (p 90) .
Conosciamo l'opposizione tutta accademica tra il « volterriano » Della Volpe e il presumibilmente rousseauista-leninista Lucio Colletti, poi rivelato tipico gira-giacchetta con ... Berlusconi …. A questa « opposizione » va aggiunto il pietoso fallimento del teorico Napoleoni relativamente alla legge del valore di Marx. Questi fallimenti testimoniano del declino teorico e pratico praxis del Partito una volta abbandonata l'eredita di Gramsci nelle mani dei filo-semiti nietzschiani, incluso molti stranieri. Oggi sono dominanti nell'Istituto gramsciano e colpevoli di avere soffocato la volontà scientifica ed il leninismo innovativo di Gramsci in una miscela sociologica indigesta et pour tout dire accademica piccolo-borghese. (4) In effetti, Gramsci, non è mai riassumibile ad una sociologia della conoscenza à la Karl Mannheim, aveva fra altro elaborato i fondamenti teorici, incluso l'Assemblea costituente, della via pacifica al socialismo solo accennata ma non scartata come possibilità nello Stato e la Rivoluzione di Lenin.
Rosario Migale, il partigiano comunista, era un contadino calabrese e, in quanto tale, al contempo protagonista di rilievo e vittima di tutte le contraddizioni della « questione meridionale » che aveva tanto nutrito il pensiero di Gramsci. Dalla risoluzione data a questa problematica dipendeva, e dipende tutt'ora, la modernizzazione ed il destino del nostro Paese.
Il 21 Aprile 1944, un altro comunista calabrese di rilievo, Fausto Gullo, nato a Catanzaro e conosciuto come il « ministro dei contadini » « si fece interprete della grave situazione dei contadini meridionali ». (p 19) La sua riforma agraria conosciuta come « Decreti Gullo » lanciò una autentica rivoluzione sociale. Nel 1947, con la cacciata dei Comunisti dal governo, si mise in moto, con il solito trasformismo italiano - Nenni ecc … - la nuova egemonia filo-atlantica, simboleggiata dalla permanenza governativa della DC, malgrado il sistema elettorale proporzionale. Questa svolta perdura oggi ancora con un trasversalismo parlamentare ed intellettuale quasi totale e, « una volta ancora », filo-semitico nietzschiano.
Con il PCI fuori dal governo, i latifondisti ritornarono. Ci vorrà l'eccidio di Melissa, in contrada Fragalà, il 29 ottobre 1949 (con 3 morti e 15 feriti) « per scuotere le coscienze di tutto il paese » (p 35) La DC prese allora in mano la questione meridionale. Nel Maggio 1950 ci fu la Legge Sila, in Agosto la creazione della Cassa del Mezzogiorno seguita in Ottobre dalla Legge Stralcio.
La riforma agraria della DC accompagnava la ricostruzione-modernizzazione capitalista del Paese concentrata al Nord. La distribuzione delle terre e poderi, con particelle troppo piccole per essere economicamente sostenibili, mirava ad affiancare la politica di immigrazione. Questa era l'usuale variabile di aggiustamento socio-economica delle nostre élite, ad un'epoca durante la quale tutte le frontiere non erano ancora aperte ai nostri concittadini. Simultaneamente, si creava una classe di piccoli proprietari terrieri da ridurre allo statuto di clienti per il partito governativo, ma comunque destinati a sparire lentamente con l'inarrestabile concentrazione-centralizzazione del capitalismo agrario. Questo processo di attrizione programmata fu poi gestito con la PAC all'interno del Mercato Comune europeo. Ma a questo punto la manodopera meridionale era molto richiesta dato che il boom economico del dopo-guerra si materializzava nel Nord, come pure nel cuore industriale e metallurgico dell'Europa, in America ed in Australia. Il destino del Meridione era così segnato come quello di uno hinterland in Italia, in Europa e nel mondo e dunque, prima di tutto, come un bacino di manodopera da conformare ai bisogni esteri, tendenza aggravata con il solito « brain drain ».
Ancora nel Marzo del 1958, La Stampa di Torino poteva pubblicare un articolo di Alfredo Todisco dedicato alla situazione di Cutro. Dalla citazione fornita sembra leggere il racconto della miseria delle classe operaie di F. Engels (5), oppure quello ben conosciuto di Villermé. Ad esempio, il Todisco scriveva : « A Cutro, forse il comune più depresso d'Italia, la natalità raggiunge uno dei tassi più elevati, il cinquanta per mille. Gli interni sono ancora più tetri delle vie, se possibile. Pavimenti in terra battuta, cosparsi di foglie e di verdura. Il fuoco, spesso, si accende in un angolo dell'unica stanza, il fumo incrosta il muro di nero, esce dal tetto sconnesso ...». ( p 57) Ci vorrà l'intervento di Ugo La Malfa con un articolo di fondo intitolato appunto « La miseria di Cutro » pubblicato nella Voce Repubblicana del 20 marzo per forzare la DC ad uscire della sua postura di negazione.
La vita del partigiano comunista e contadino Rosario Migale fu una protesta quotidiana contro questo destino crudele e, in realtà, sistematicamente contro-produttivo per la nostra Repubblica. Ma le contraddizioni erano tali che Migale spese il migliore del suo tempo, almeno fino all'inizio degli anni 80, sulla questione del prezzo del grano duro, produzione emblematica della nostra Regione e del nostro Paese ma oggi oggetto di ingenti importazioni … Scrive Pino Fabiano: « Quasi fossero l'origine di tutte le rivendicazioni, le complesse vicende del pagamento dell'integrazione del grano duro continuavano a mobilitare la società cutrunese, almeno quella contadina, con grandi mobilitazioni per tutto il 1969 per proseguire negli anni successivi. » (p 92) Questi erano gli anni nei quali la PAC cominciava ad essere mutata, ad esempio, con il famigerato Piano Mansholt (vedi la grande manifestazione del 23 marzo 1971 a Bruxelles ) per corrispondere meglio alla progressione del smantellamento tariffario all'interno del GATT …
Le contraddizioni storiche si rifletteranno nella vita di Migale sotto un altro angolo, la sua appartenenza al PCI, il suo progressivo allontanamento sin dal 1962, ma sempre in quanto comunista e partigiano. Ad esempio, ancora « negli anni Ottanta si mobilitò contro il trasferimento a Crotone di 72 caccia F-16. Nel 1997 fu tra i firmatari del Manifesto appello agli italiani per la Seconda Resistenza e portò avanti una campagna contraria alla minaccia secessionista della Lega Nord. » (6)
Con l'allontanamento dal PCI, le cose diventano assai complesse perché non si tratta solo di capire le derive successive del PCI stesso dopo la morte di Togliatti e la svolta « sovietica » del PCI al VIII (dicembre 56) e poi nel X Congresso del Partito (1962). Si tratta anche di capire i motivi non sempre univoci dei dirigenti dei partiti che emersero a « sinistra » del PCI dopo questa svolta.
Secondo me la difficoltà maggiore viene dal fatto che prima di Berlinguer in Italia - Luigi Longo era comunque il comandante generale delle Brigate Garibaldi - e di Andropov nella Unione Sovietica, dobbiamo ancora distinguere tra politica domestica e politica estera. Questo nonostante a partire del 1956, il cosiddetto « marginalismo socialista », espressione preferibile al termine « revisionismo », prenderà sempre più potere in Unione sovietica, spiegando la resistenza cinese e quella del Che. Questo aspetto è ancora largamente ignorato dai marxisti benché io abbia scritto un articolo di chiarimento intitolato: « Il socialismo marginalista o come incatenarsi se stessi nella caverna capitalista » (7). ed un altro dedicato a Althusser (e a Gramsci) menzionato più sotto.
In Italia, la svolta definitiva fu compiuta con il tradimento dei metalmeccanici e di tutto il popolo di sinistra, assieme alla loro repubblica, da Enrico Berlinguer. Questi era il dirigente « comunista » che, in privato, affermava preferire l'Alleanza atlantica. (8) La repressione della « Primavera di Praga » nel Agosto 1968 distrusse la proposta avanzata dell'opzione di una nuova « democrazia socialista » occidentale accompagnata dal Maggio 68 e dunque dalla solidarietà internazionalista della gioventù del dopo-guerra che confluiva naturalmente nelle lotte anti-imperialista sopra i 5 continenti. Questa completava la democrazia socialista genialmente proposta da Mao per la sua Cina ancora povera ma in via di sviluppo accelerato, centralismo democratico, linea di massa, dazi-bao, autocritica, pianificazione decentralizzata e bidirezionale con attenzione all'industria leggera, uguaglianza vera, ecc. A parte il capitolo intitolato « Pour le socialisme cubain » nel mio libro Pour Marx, contre le nihilisme (2002) e i capitoli pertinenti del mio Compendio di Economia Politica Marxista, questa problematica della « dittatura del proletariato » cioè dello stato di diritto nell'era della proprietà collettiva in quando intrinsecamente « democrazia socialista » è ancora universalmente negletta. Malgrado l'evidenza ogni giorni più vistosa, la falsa coscienza della cosiddetta intellighenzia occidentale e mondiale continua a fare credere che la dittatura reale del capitale, cioè la democrazia disuguale borghese oggi « una volta ancora » filo-semita nietzschiana, sia da equiparare con la « democrazia » stessa. (Vedi sezione Livres-Books del sito www.la-commune-paraclet.com ). La repressione della nuova rivoluzione sociale socialista in Cecoslovacchia diede luogo ad un indurimento della logica dei blocchi, cioè alla famigerata teoria brezneviana della « sovranità limitata ». Ma questo contesto, cruciale per altri, entra a dire vero poco nel rinnegamento del PCI berlingueriano che non è più in grado di capire i consigli di fabbrica della Primavera di Praga (vedi Jean-Paul Sartre ed., Le socialisme qui venait du froid, 1969) meglio di quelli dei metalmeccanici italiani. Questo totale rinnegamento ha invece le sue radici più tipiche nella contro-rivoluzione filo-semitica nietzschiana ungherese, vero tradimento di classe degli intellettuali tra i quali il rinnegato infiltrato G. Lukacs il quale, per rimanere dentro, si finse « ortodosso », conseguenza posticipata del tradimento fallito di Beria. Come sappiamo, Beria, complice dell'assassinio di Stalin dai medici ebrei-sovietici aveva ottenuto l'appoggio dei Stati-Uniti come futuro capo della Unione Sovietica in cambio dell'abbandono del Blocco dell'Est. Per fortuna Zukov non era d'accordo …
L'harakiri del PCI alla Bolognina fu coscientemente coperto a sinistra con la formazione di partiti come il PRC da gente per le quali la « spinta propulsiva del comunismo » era spenta, teoria sui generis ideata per mascherare il loro tradimento di classe. Quando, malgrado questo, il PRC fu capace di canalizzare le domande sociali e di pace di tutto il popolo di sinistra, i rinnegati fuori - il manifesto, il primo Grillo - e dentro, preferirono frammentare il PRC invece di rispondere alle domande della base. In questa prospettiva, l'amicizia di Migale per Pasolini, il fatto che con l'invito di Angiolo Gracci fu il primo contadino a entrare in un'aula universitaria diventa aneddotica. Del resto, Rosario Migale, nelle veste di San Tommaso, risulta una personificazione molto autentica e simpatica, e la sua difesa del reportage critico di Pasolini (9) attaccato da ogni lato da tanta gente per bene, affetta dalla solita miopia sociale, mostra la sua apertura di mente estranea ad ogni piaggeria sulla questione meridionale, incluso attorno a Cutro stesso.
I motivi politici di Migale non sono certo minimamente questionabili. Anche per questo il suo Movimento Comunista Cutrese (MCC) creato nel 1964 fu avvicinato da altri, visto il suo prestigio da partigiano comunista fedele ai suoi ideali. Ma con il beneficio della retrospettiva, quelli di un Brandirali devono fare riflettere senza aspettare l'apertura degli Archivi.
« Dal 1950 al 1962, a parte il periodo di latitanza, (Migale) aveva ricoperto le cariche di segretario della sezione di Cutro, membro del Comitato federale e del Comitato direttivo della federazione di Crotone, delegato al IX Congresso del Partito a Roma nel 1960, quando Togliatti tracciò la « via italiana al socialismo », cioè la conquista del potere attraverso le elezioni e l'abbandono di qualsiasi velleità rivoluzionaria. Nel 1950 era stato eletto nel Consiglio comunale e rieletto fino al 1960. Dal 1960 al 1962, infine, aveva ricoperto la carica di assessore ai Lavori pubblici, all'Assistenza e delegato della firma. Inoltre, in tutti questi anni, aveva assolto a diversi altri compiti e impegni, nella Camera del lavoro, nella Lega braccianti assistenza, all'Inca e presso altri enti.
Nel 1962 si ritrovò fuori dal Partito. Ma il malessere nel PCI non era evidentemente circoscritto soltanto a Cutro. » (p 63)
Nel 1964, Migale « il cinese » fondò il Movimento Comunista Cutrese (MCC) poi fuso nel Pcd'I (m-l). Il qualificativo di « cinese » già nel 1964 è interessante. Bisognerà in fatti aspettare il 1966 per il lancio della Grande Rivoluzione Proletaria in Cina, un evento che non avrà una diffusione di massa in Occidente prima del Maggio 68. Ma il Maoismo come simboleggiato al vertice di Bandung (Aprile 1955) andava di pari passo con l'emergenza delle colonie occidentali allo statuto di indipendenza riconosciuto alla ONU ed in Agenzie come il Gruppo dei 77. Il problema principale di tutte queste giovani Nazioni era, come per la nostra Calabria, la questione dello decollo industriale e socio-economico. Un aspetto centrale di questa problematica era la questione contadina e le modalità delle alleanze tra proletariato industriale e contadini. L'esperienza maoista diventò cruciale nei paesi emergenti, lasciandosi dietro le vecchie discussioni sul telescopaggio delle epoche capitaliste per progredire verso il socialismo. Questa problematica aveva già caratterizzato Lenin, buono conoscitore delle analisi proposta da Marx e Vera Zasulich per il Mir russo, in opposizione a Longuet, Kautsky et al.
Pino Fabiano racconta dei conflitti con la Federazione di Crotone, la quale aveva voluto la sua esclusione. ( p 65) Ma prima dell'allontanamento e dell'esclusione, c'è già l'episodio elettorale del 1960. Malgrado il prestigio di Migale e delle sue lotte a fianco dei contadini, la Federazione comunista di Crotone propose per la carica di sindaco di Cutro « Ruperto, il dirigente comunista crotonese con alle spalle una già importante esperienza amministrativa » (p 62) All'epoca, i problemi urgenti di Crotone in piena industrializzazione erano quelli di uno grande centro urbano. Ruperto, tartassato di impegni, disertò quelli incombenti al sindaco. Gli oneri amministrativi cadettero sulle spalle dell'Assessore ai Lavori pubblici Migale, finché durante una disputa non vennero alle mani: « la conseguente successiva denuncia gli costò un mese di carcere » (p 62) Siamo ben oltre qui ad una semplice incompatibilità di caratteri.
La rimarca di S. Tarrow nel suo libro Partito comunista e contadini nel Mezzogiorno, Einaudi, 1972 accenna alla trasformazione interna dei quadri del PCI con la « modernizzazione » democristiana del Sud: « Malgrado uno dei massimi fattori di successo del partito a livello nazionale sia stata la creazione di un nuovo gruppo di dirigenti di origine proletaria, nel Sud i dirigenti comunisti sono estratti dalla medesima classe sociale da cui proviene l'élite politica tradizionale, il ceto medio. Il mancato reclutamento di un numero significativo di contadini tra i dirigenti è coerente con l'attuale diffidenza dei dirigenti verso i contadini, nonostante il PCI sostenga di esserne il rappresentante. » (cit. p 63) La sorta di piccolo « cimitero industriale » di Saline Ioniche in seguito al Pacchetto Colombo mai entrato in funzione (10) rappresenta forse uno degli epiloghi più crudeli di questa subordinazione del PCI alle politiche di modernizzazione democristiane.
Oggi ancora la sorte del porto di Gioia Tauro e dei suoi lavoratori illustra il mancato inserimento positivo della nostra Regione nell'Economia Mondiale. Questo è dovuto ai tanti calcoli ed alla cecità dei dirigenti nazionali e locali. Nonostante sia abbandonato, il porto di Gioia Tauro muove comunque 1/3 del traffico di Rotterdam, il quale da secoli non trascura mai gli sforzi finanziari, organizzativi ed altri per essere capace in permanenza di catturare i flussi dominanti del commercio internazionale. Con il potenziamento delle partenze dei treni oltre alle misere 5 giornaliere attuali, Gioia Tauro diventerebbe il collegamento naturale tra il Canale di Suez e il San Gottardo per il crescente commercio tra il prospero Pacific Rim e la Germania. I grandi porta-container si risparmierebbero oltre 3 costose settimane di transito marittimo. Come sappiamo, la Germania è il primo importatore ed esportatore mondiale. In un tale contesto, la oggi deserta zone industriale prevista vicino al Porto, e potenzialmente ben collegata ai vari servizi della Città metropolitana di Reggio Calabria alla quale appartiene, prenderebbe il suo decollo. In effetti, se non altro per la riduzione dei costi di trasporto, diventerebbe il punto di confluenza economico naturale tra Sicilia e Calabria …, e la Mittleuropa e Amburgo. I lavoratori del Porto denunciano pure il quasi monopolio della MCT: senza altre compagnie presenti, basta dirottare le navi verso altri porti per fare pressione sui lavoratori. Purtroppo, questione Meridionale oblige, non solo il collegamento treni non viene potenziato ma si preferisce l'esubero di 400 lavoratori a Gioia Tauro, mentre si parla di spendere 3 o 4 miliardi di euro per costruire dei scali in mare al largo di Genoa, sembra che il progetto sia già concepito da Renzo Piano …
Migale fu naturalmente partecipe a tutte le lotte che travagliarono il Sud, da Battipglia ( « 50.000 abitanti, 6.000 iscritti al collocamento » p 120), alla lotta emblematica contro lo spostamento di una base americana per i 72 caccia F-16 a S. Anna. Sempre fedele ai suoi ideali aveva appoggiato la creazione di Rifondazione comunista con la speranza di contrastare la scelta rinnegata della Bolognina. Il « Profilo biografico » già citato riassume così: « Agli inizi degli anni Settanta partecipò alle lotte dei baraccati di Messina e si impegnò in prima persona nelloccupazione dell'Oliveto di Isola Capo Rizzuto. Nel 1997 fu tra i firmatari del Manifesto appello agli italiani per la Seconda Resistenzae portò avanti una campagna contraria alla minaccia secessionista della Lega Nord. Dal 1959 ebbe una lunga amicizia con Pier Paolo Pasolini e nel 1964 ricoprì anche una parte nel film Il vangelo secondo Matteo. Morì a Cutro il 9 aprile 2010. » (11) Ma la sua partecipazione politica dopo la morte della sua moglie Giuseppina il 7 aprile 1977 a « appena cinquantadue anni » fu probabilmente più quella di un testimonia e di una figura di legittimazione. Fine all'ultimo, conservò il ricordo del suo compagno di lotta Angiolo Gracci.
Forse sulla fine della sua vita, il suo ruolo più emblematico fu la sua difesa della Costituzione, proprio quella che il partigiano Rosario Migale sapeva, più di noi, essere nata dalla Resistenza.
Paolo De Marco, marxista.
Copyright © La Commune Inc, 15-16 Aprile 2017.
Note:
1 ) Vedi http://www.kelebekler.com/occ/busa.htm ; https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Province_d%27Italia
2 ) Vedi il mio « Les conséquences socio-économiques de MM Volcker, Reagan et Cie B, Mars 1985, nella Sezione Economie Politique Internationale/International Political Economy del sito www.la-commune-paraclet.com
3 ) Profilo biografico: Rosario Migale http://www.metarchivi.it/biografie/p_bio_vis.asp?id=1272 . Vedi pure « LE LOTTE DEI CONTADINI DEL SUD » in http://www.orsomarsoblues.it/2013/12/le-lotte-dei-contadini-del-sud/
4 ) See: « ALTHUSSER OR WHY COMPROMISING COMPROMISES SHOULD BE REJECTED.», February 17, 2013, in Download Now, section Livres-Boosk of the site www.la-commune-paraclet.com .
5 ) in https://gabriellagiudici.it/friedrich-engels-la-situazione-della-classe-operaia-in-inghilterra/
6 ) Profilo biografico, op cit.
7 ) in http://www.la-commune-paraclet.com/EPI%20TWOFrame1Source1.htm#socialismomarginalismo
8 ) Contro i Consigli di Fabbrica, il PCI di Berlinguer e dei suoi alleati sindacali scelsero la politica dell'austerità e il compromesso compromettente detto « storico » grazie al quale l'eurocomunismo non era più la « via pacifica al socialismo » di Gramsci-Togliatti ma un'evoluzione subalterna all'interno della Nato, incluso il suo Articolo 2 relativo all'integrazione economica ed ideologica atlantista. Vedi: « Berlinguer prende sempre più le distanze dal blocco socialista, fino ad affermare, in una famosa intervista al Corriere della Sera, pochi giorni prima delle elezioni politiche del 1976, che per il PCI, non è in discussione l'appartenenza alla Nato.» in Gianni Rinaldini: Enrico Berlinguer e i suoi rapporti con il partito e il sindacato, 30 dicembre 2014 http://www.inchiestaonline.it/politica/gianni-rinaldini-enrico-berlinguer-e-i-suoi-rapporti-con-il-partito-e-il-sindacato/ . Per un apprezzamento di chi tace il ruolo filo-Semite Nietzschiano del Manifesto prima di essere rivelato con il rinnegamento di Bertinotti vedi: « Berlinguer: i sovietici che banditi: ricordi da Il Manifesto ». Dagli archivi del Corriere della Sera, vedi pure questo articolo di Marco Cianca del 18 giugno 1999 alla vigilia dei 30 anni del Manifesto. Un dibattito dimenticato. 13 Dicembre 2015 http://www.democraziaoggi.it/?p=4162 ; Per l'apprezzamento anarchico con lo strano e malinformato leitmotiv delle accuse di « stalinismo » da gente che ancora non sa niente di Yeshov malgrado i miei chiarimenti ( Vedi ad esempio: « Nota sopra Yezhov, le Grandi Purghe e la IV o V Internazionale » in http://www.la-commune-paraclet.com/ItaliaFrame1Source1.htm#ITALIA ) e che non è nemmeno capace di fare la differenza tra Stalin et E. Liberman et al., vedi : « Berlinguer non era una brava persona », http://www.umanitanova.org/2014/06/26/berlinguer-non-era-una-brava-persona/
9 ) Nel suo reportage La lunga strada di sabbia Pasolini fa una descrizione del Meridione da Western, con i suoi « banditi ». Pino Fabiano cita: « Vado verso Crotone, per la zona di Cutro. (…) questa è una zone pericolosa (…) di notte e meglio non passarci (…) Due anni fa, (…) qui, in questo punto hanno ammazzato uno, un ricco signore, mentre tornava da Roma in macchina ...» (p 135) Era nel 1959. Negli anni 60 Pasolini avrebbe potuto questionarsi sugli incendi dei campi di grano per fruire delle assicurazioni, critiche strutturali che proporrà con coraggio in seguito con suo « Io so. Ma non ho le prove » in « Cos'è questo golpe?» articolo riprodotto pp 179-180. In mandarino il termine contadino non esiste e si usano parole come « banditi » per designarli, cosa che forse colpì Migale, il partigiano flilocinese … uomo non del tutto cieco alle realtà sociologiche della sua terra. Bisogna sapere distinguere, « faire la part des choses ». Intanto è vero che manca al racconto di Pasolini la dolce ironia di Prosper Mérimée nella sua lettera a Mme Pigalle. Era ospite in Calabria con un amico in una povera ed isolata casa di carbonieri. Lì furono svegliati la mattina da una discussione animata; ascoltando bene sentirono voci che chiedevano « Allora, dite, le dobbiamo uccidere tutti i due? » Si fecero coraggio e armandosi scesero per rendersi conto. In cucina, l'ospite e la sua moglie discutevano per decidere di quanto polli ammazzare per ricevere dignitosamente gli ospiti, vecchia e sacra ospitalità della Magna Greca. Intanto, contro l'intento di Pasolini, il coro di turiferari del sistema si scateno. Esempio: « La reputazione, l'onore, il decoro, la dignità delle laboriose popolazioni di Cutro stati evidentemente e gravemente calpestati ...» ( p 136) Ecc, ecc.
11 ) https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montebello_Jonico )
10) Profilo biografico, op cit.
XXX
Racconti d'altri tempi, Michele Belcastro, Pubblisfera Edizioni 1976, Recensione come atto di gratitudine per la restituzione della Storia quotidiana silana del secolo passato, fine Aprile 2017.
Secondo Roland Barthes l'Individuo è uno « mille-feuilles ». Prima di lui il nostro Antonio Gramsci, grande conoscitore dell'Autobiografia di Giambattista Vico, teorizzava l'Individuo come un « blocco storico », agente e frutto complesso della Storia in tutte le sue dimensioni. Nei luoghi e le città della nostra Magna Grecia si percepisce ancora l'eco delle epopee guerriere e culturali antiche, quello di Omero, Pitagora, Virgilio, Gioacchino da Fiore, i Fratelli Bandiera, Giacomino, l'ultimo eremite della Sila, i lavoratori e gli ingeneri che ammodernarono la Sila, impreziosendola in particolare con il suoi splendidi smeraldi laghi e laghetti così armoniosamente disposti nel loro scrigno montano coperto di boschi che sembrano avere esistito sin dall'inizio dei tempi.
Il nostro autore Michele Belcastro tiene al contempo dal narratore, o per meglio dire dal contastorie, e dallo storico. E il nostro Strabone silano, uno per chi la storia vera merita di essere tramandate alle generazioni future perché è la storia del popolo. Come Strabone trascrive la storia orale e vissuta, prendendo sempre cura di verificare i fatti e gli eventi rapportati. Ci offre così un'inestimabile fonte con la quale informare la Storia. Il volume è ancora abbellito da una cospicua collezione di foto.
Il suo stile è volutamente semplice perché vuole essere autentico. E molto conciso e preciso anche perché la maggior parte di questi racconti pubblicati nella rivista Il Petilino doveva rispettare lo spazio mezzo a disposizione. Questa è una limitazione che, in effetti, rivela i migliori autori, quelli che sanno creare un'atmosfera, pure mantenendosi all'essenziale. Questi racconti possono essere assaporati individualmente oppure letti ad un tratto. Ci sono pochi altri esempi con i quali gli operai e forestali vengo descritti con una tale naturalezza come autentici eroi dell'Epopea della modernizzazione qui del nostro Altopiano silano. Michele Belcastro oltre ad essere uno di quelli eroi in quanto nato e cresciuto alla Presa del Tacina nel 1938 ed essere stato per decenni impiegato sulle varie nostre dighe silane, è tutto intero impregnato dalla bellezza dei luoghi e dal valore del lavoro umano. Nessuno meglio di lui poteva intuire l'importanza di tramandare queste testimonianze della vita reale del popolo silano.
Per conto mio, nato a San Giovanni in Fiore ma partito all'estero da fanciullo avevo appena 5 anni mi sono sempre sentito legato ai pochi ricordi della tenera infanzia, ricordi formati in particolare duranti i pochi ma favolosi mesi di vacanze trascorsi a San Giovanni in Fiore e in Sila ad intervalli più o meno regolari sin dal inizio degli anni 60. Rimpatriato nel 2013, trovò un mondo simultaneamente mutato e per certi versi intramontabilmente identico. Sono così situato nell'ottica delle generazioni future per le quali Michele Belcastro ha scritto questa sua bella raccolta di « racconti d'altri tempi », salvandone la memoria. Ho avuto il grande privilegio di conoscere l'autore di persona e di avere sentito vari racconti, qui trascritti, dalla sua propria bocca, incluso le poesie. Sono uno dei membri privilegiati degli escursionisti menzionati nel libro.
Michele Belcastro è un autore che non esita dedicare alcuni suoi racconti ad un altro contastorie e recitatore di poesie, Vincenzo Ambrosio, di Castelsilano ma possessore di una bottega a San Giovanni in Fiore, oppure ad un poeta dialettale della nostra città, Tonino Audia, autore del commovente poema « I batelli » nel quale l'idioma dialettale da un'apparenza cristologica ai piccoli raccoglitori di olivi con le loro stimmate « ccu' le manu aggrancate 'e l'acquatina/'a spinella chi sangue me fa ». Recita quelle sue poesie predilette a perfezione, senza enfasi o grandiloquenza ma con il senso intimo del significato di ogni parola e di ogni strofa.
Questo fa parte del suo segreto come eminente contastorie. L'altra parte tiene da una missione a se stesso conferita, a dire vero la più belle in assoluto, quella che definisce la nostra specie, cioè la trasmissione delle conoscenze e dei valori più autentici. Lo si capisce dall'ode che scriva per la sua « dolce e cara maestra : Sara Pace », elegia che sboccia sulla rivelazione a se stesso davanti « quattro scolaresche di Bari a lezione alla diga Arvo » ( p 193). « Questo racconto, scrive l'autore, è davvero gratificante per me, senza ombra di dubbio, è uno dei più belli. Ne vado talmente fiero che spesso quando mi si presenta l'occasione lo racconto in tutti i suoi minimi particolari. E già, trovarmi d'innanzi a 100 ragazzi educati, intenti ad ascoltarmi, è qualcosa che a distanza di quarant'anni, mi fa ancora emozionare, un'emozione che non so descrivere. » Con il pretesto di raccontare la storia della diga, offerta come un regalo alla vista dell'audienza giovanile, ecco che siamo trasportati nel processo di afferrare « il meraviglioso ciclo dell'acqua » dal mare, ai monti e ai mille ruscelli silani, alle dighe, alle centrali elettriche per ritornare al mare in un ripetersi essenziale per la vita. Leggendo questo libro siamo anche noi altrettanto stregati quanto quella incantata audienza.
Prima del inizio del secolo scorso, l'Altopiano silano era rimasto una terra isolata. La modernizzazione venne in parte con la creazione degli Invasi e delle loro centrali elettriche. Michele Belcastro nacque nel 1938 alla Presa del Tacina, in una valle isolata, cupa, ombrosa, con giorni corti ma non di meno incantevole. L'abitazione stessa godeva di amenità ancora inusuali in quei tempi: elettricità, bagni, cucina, forno ecc. Ma sopratutto, in fronte della Presa era il Monte Gariglione, descritto dall'autore come la sua « patria », e a ridosso il Monte Scorciavuoi. Quest'ultimo offre una visuale panoramica della Valle del Neto sul quale ad un tempo galleggiavano i legni degli Achei.
Michele Belcastro trova piacere a menzionare un altro autore a lui contemporaneo che ha saputo cantare il Gariglione, Orsola Marrazzo, chiamata così perché nata a Macchia dell'Orso. Nel suo bel libro di memoria intitolato « Gariglione sulle ali della memoria » (2006) commuove quel racconto candido di una fanciulla che corre scalza all'alba nell'erba irrorata di rugiada. L'autore risenta piacere a citare questo libro perché completa quella che giustamente, ai suoi occhi, sembra una epopea moderna, quella della trasformazione di quel Monte e della Sila intera con lo sviluppo dell'industria boschiva.
Non era cosa da poco penetrare e sfruttare le ricchezze dell'impervio Gariglione. Oltre a tanti lavoratori, ci volle un trenino, una teleferica per trasportare i tronchi dalla montagna alle segherie situate a valle, tanti macchinari mai visti primi, camion di trasporto ed altri mezzi motorizzati, più quella antica industria di trascino con buoi e bovari appunto quella diretta dal padre di Orsola. Per l'autore questo fu un indimenticabile spettacolo, con i suoi martiri. Ad esempio quello conduttore di camion scacciato dai tronchi nella sua cabina. La sciagura di Mamma Giuseppina e della sua piccola figlia Teresa di appena 4 anni avvenuta il 1 settembre 1947; la morte fu causata dall'esplosione della riserva di dinamite temporaneamente immagazzinata nella loro tenta. « Carmella Borelli, madre eroica » morta assiderata nel Febbraio 1929 in una tempesta proteggendo i suoi due bambini dal freddo micidiale col suo proprio corpo. Gli eroi operai e i martiri non mancano durante la costruzione degli Invasi silani. L'autore le ricorda con atto di amorosa memoria da trasmettere alle generazioni future. Tra gli eventi più tragici, la morte di otto operai annegati, la mattina del 11 Maggio 1954 quando, in una curva molto accentuata, il loro camion precipitò nelle acque azzurre e fredde dell'Ampollino mentre si recavano al loro posto di lavoro.
L'autore ci racconta anche la vita quotidiana alla sua Presa sul Tacina o quando era impiegato sulle dighe. Immaginate un va e viene di camion in senso opposto, chi con « muso lungo » giudicati dall'autore, nel suo candido buon senso giovanile, più sicuri chi con il « muso piatto », nelle strade tutte curve appena sterrate, molto strette e spesso a strapiombo sui precipizi del Gariglione. Immaginate i cari armati inglesi con i cingoli trasformati in mezzi per muovere grandi tronchi d'albero ma che a volta precipitano in fondo valle lasciando i capelli bianchi come segno ai conduttori sopravvissuti. Immaginate, le escursioni ad esempio alla Tavola Parata sicuramente rifugio dei briganti in altri tempi dopo l'unità dell'Italia. Immaginate una caccia al « tesoro nascosto dei briganti sul Montenero » oppure un'altra di notte nella Torre dei Rinosi. Immaginate d'inverno la caccia alle lepri o alle volpe del quale il padre dell'autore, Salvatore Belcastro, oggi autentico monumento nazionale con i suoi 106 anni portati con splendida freschezza, era un esperto. Oppure un zio che si ritrova circondato da 7 lupi affamati ma sopravvive all'incontro riuscendo pure a freddarne 3, mentre il fedele cane afferrato alla gola, anche lui uscito indenne dall'avventura, si rifiuterà in seguito a seguirlo in montagna. Immaginate la vita difficile del popolo anche quando, per parti difficili o malattie, si ci doveva spostare verso Cosenza lungo strade non sempre continue e spesso inneviate. Immaginate pure lo spirito di quel popolo di montagna che si impadronisce di questa difficile quotidianità e improvvisa un spettacolo burlesco di chirurgia, ispirata al squarciare dei maiali, per divertire gli operai dopo una lunga giornata di lavoro. Immaginate una gita di quasi una settimana con un piccolo gruppo di amici a campeggio d'inverno nella nostra frigida Sila con oltre un metro di neve. Immaginate pure un giovane in cerca di una fidanzata ricorrere alla tradizionale scappatella o « fuitina » calabrese per accorciare il tempo, sapendo comunque di essere assolti dalle famiglie e dalla comunità… Immaginate infine la celebre diva Agostina Belli, con la sua silhouette e con quelli suoi occhi affascinanti, rifugiarsi preso questa copia per mezzo mese di tranquillità nel magico decoro del lago e della diga Arvo. Il nostro autore sa essere romantico.
Gli eroi di Michele Belcastro sono belli come il nostro popolo laborioso. Ed è senza dubbio perché l'autore vuole « rimanere al largo della politica », facendo pero uso delle sue conoscenze in astronomia - possiede una bell'edizione in italiano del libro di Camillo Flammarion « L'Astonomia popolare » pubblicata nel 1885 … -, per ricordarci che l'Uomo è « polvere di stelle » e dovrà comunque ritornare ad essere polvere, ragione per la quale dovrebbe cercare a dominare l'egoismo individuale e pensare al bene comune. « La livella » di Totò ha avuto e continua ad avere un grande impatto, sopratutto in zone periferiche come le nostre dove si apprezzano ancora le virtù legate a quello che G. Vico chiamò « l'antica sapienza italiana ». Tale attitudine si spiega se non altro perché l'autore sa la bellezza del nostro territorio, della sua fauna e della sua flora. Le sue descrizioni e la sua difesa delle specie autoctone, in particolare la trota fario, sono di un grande amante senza dogmatismo della Natura e della nostra Sila. Il capitolo « L'avvelenamento del fiume Tacina » è un bello manifesto ambientale, un monito completato dalla descrizione dello svuotamento episodico dei laghi, una procedura non sempre rispettosa delle specie acquatiche autoctone.
La creazione degli Invasi silani con le centrali elettriche costituisce una delle opere che hanno più trasformato in bene il nostro Altopiano e le regioni limitrofi. L'autore ne fa il racconto molto utile e molto informato. La galleria del Montenero « lunga 6.300 metri, attraversa le visceri della montagna congiungendo l'Arvo all'Ampollino ». Ne sentì parlare all'inizio degli anni 80 quando visitò la diga dell'Ampollino; mi ispirò il concetto dei laghi ad altezza differenziata ideata come uno dei metodi più adatti per immagazzinare e regolarizzare l'energia erratica solare ed eolica, l'altro metodo essendo l'aria compressa per i motori ad aria compressa, ad esempio quelli sviluppato dal geniale Guy Nègre. Non manca neanche il ritrovamento di « sette daghe e due asce di bronzo del II millennio A. C. » sulla sponda destra del lago Ampollino preso « 'u timpariellu 'e ri latri » oggi custodite nel Museo Archeologico di Reggio Calabria. Si sogna allora con meraviglia al nostro passato paleolitico e neolitico, così ricco e negletto, basta citare l'Incavallicata di Campana oppure i megaliti di Nardodipace o della Città della Porta. (Vedi sezione Cultura e R&S di http://rivincitasociale.altervista.org ) E come non sognare al « lago che non c'è », cominciato ma mai completato alle confluenza sangiovannese del Neto e del Arvo al luogo detto le Junture con il quale l'autore sognava un gemellaggio con la Città di Como. Progetto ad alto valore turistico, ancora fattibile, anzi da completare, la dove oggi c'è solo una presa a testimoniarne. I suo nome sarebbe già trovato.
I contemporanei dell'autore ritroveranno con piacere la tracia della loro storia passata. I più giovani e gli immigrati silani rimpatriati o meno saranno grati per questa bella testimonianza. I storici di mestiere saranno anche loro grati all'autore per avere saputo restituire il contesto quotidiano della storia della nostra Sila durante il Secolo passato. Questi « Racconti d'altri tempi » hanno anche il pregio di raccontare una storia in movimento, una storia di modernizzazione e di sviluppo economico e sociale dell'Altopiano silano, oggi in via di spopolamento. Forse è questo che trapela di più nello stile semplice perché autentico dell'autore. Il recupero del passato serve anche ad informare il presente e l'avvenire, a sognare la desiderata e dovuta rinascita.
Paolo De Marco.
XXX
Recensione idiosincratica : Luigi Oliverio editore, Eccellenze di / Excellences of Calabria, Casa Editrice Pubblisfera, Volume I: Natura, Preistoria, Storia, Cultura, Solidarietà, 2016, ISBN: 978-88-97632-85-6
La Calabria sembra una bella addormentata o meglio un romanzo d'amore incompiuto. Non ha saputo ancora esprimere tutte le sue potenzialità. Forse perché nata troppo dotata di autentiche ricchezze. Certo che il suo orizzonte sembra essere in prospettiva con la grandezza delle sue origini. Non può essere soltanto un punto di fuga.
Oggi in Calabria si evidenzia il peggiore ed il migliore della civiltà umana moderna. Eppure, in questa terra variegata, complessa e polivalente non si ci rassegna mai al peggio. La dove lo Stato luce per la sua assenza, o per le sue innominabili complicità, l'ingenio locale compensa. La realtà non è mai riassumibile ai cliché e alle statistiche ufficiali. Non bisogna grattare molto la superficie per realizzare che in questa nostra Regione c'è sempre chi sa vedere e mostrare il buon lato delle cose, come un auspicio della Calabria che fu a quella che può ritornare ad essere: una delle culle principali della civiltà umana. La scommessa degli articoli qui raccolti per cura dell'editore Luigi Oliverio, con il loro abbondante carteggio di foto e di illustrazioni, è già vinta con la pubblicazione di questo primo volume bilingue.
Il libro qui recensito è essenziale. Anche per la sua modestia: non pretende elencare tutte le eccellenze della Calabria ma solo alcune, offrendo parimente, in questo primo volume presto seguito da altri, alcune « pillole di eccellenza in filosofia, scienze, religione e sport ». Non certo per campanilismo ma con la consapevolezza che questa nostra eredità locale, determinatamente di carattere universale, fa parte dei tesori dell'Umanità intera. Mi viene da pensare al napoletano Giambattista Vico immerso nella sua « antichissima sapienza italiana » per raggiungere la sua meta, quella di una scienza nuova, capace di offrire un approccio universale del divenire umano e del diritto delle genti, cioè la Scienza moderna della Storia.
Mi piace sottolineare quanto Vico era radicato nella culture e la filologia romana-latina e quanto fu importante per il suo pensiero l'opera del pitagorico calabrese Gioacchino da Fiore (1), anche a volte con la mediazione e l'approfondimento, ad esempio per le concordanze astronomiche-astrologiche pazientemente stabilite, del nolano Giordano Bruno. (2) Testimoni tutti i seguaci più o meno fedeli o informati dell'Abate silano, da Dante a Mazzini, a Gramsci e tanti altri.
Il camino secolare dell'emancipazione fondato sull'uguaglianza umana e la pari dignità di tutte le forme di intelligenza nacque in questa terra durante il primo rinascimento. Con il Rinascimento classico, ed in particolare la Renaissance in Francia, questo divenire figurato nell'Ordine Nuovo di Gioacchino ritornò ad affermarsi con rinnovato vigore. Basta ricordare qui il ritorno dello spirito scientifico e sociale, nuova visione del mondo capace di irrigare i vari tentativi fatti per stabilire un regno di libertà, di solidarietà e di uguaglianza. Il Contr'un di La Boëtie, ne testimonia con eloquenza. Il regno degli Amici del giovane poeta e riformatore meridionale francese rinvia all'Ordine Nuovo e alla figura Il Salterio dalle dieci corde di Gioacchino. ( https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liber_Figurarum ) La rivalutazione della Storia nazionale in una ottica universalista-ugualitaria di Jules Michelet, come pure quella della cristianità alla luce della secolarizzazione dello Spirito di Ernest Renan, sono ambedue fondate sui scritti del pitagorico abate calabrese. (3) Similarmente gli aspetti più avanzati della riforma anglicana - Gerrard Winstanley, the Levellers - e ancora quelli che si manifestarono durante il XIX secolo - ad esempio, William Blake ecc - trovano la loro origine nell'affermazione gioachimita della coscienza come unico autentico tempio umano, processo che va di pari passo con quello dell'emancipazione generale. Questo filone si ritrova nella Rivolta contadina dei Taiping in Cina alla fine del XIX secolo, rivolta che influenzò i dirigenti del nuovo regime cinese come Müntzer e i suoi compagni contadini e minatori avevano influenzato Marx e Engels.
Se la Calabria fu chiamata « Italia » nell'Antichità, per il bene e per il male l'Italia moderna non si capisce senza la Calabria. L'affermazione vale per tutta l'Europa ed oltre. Da sempre la Calabria fu uno dei principali crocevia del Mediterraneo attirando a se popoli di ogni provenienza, forgiando così il contesto cosmopolita che ne spiega tutta l'originale vitalità. Mentre altri erano costretti ad immaginare strade atlantiche per commerciare con le Indie e Catai, la nostra terra seppe rimanere uno dei punti di arrivo più importante della Via della Sete prima e dopo la caduta di Gerusalemme. Ancora oggi, per le stesse ragioni, Gioia Tauro potrebbe facilmente diventare la Rotterdam del Mediterraneo, basterebbero migliori collegamenti ferroviari …
Comunque con le conoscenze accumulate dalle sue grandi città marittime, l'Italia fornì pure i stimoli necessari all'ineffabile Cristoforo Colombo con i suoi due emblematici quaderni di bordo: quello ufficiale e quello manipolato per ingannare i suoi equipaggi e farli pazientare, questo ultimo poi rivelandosi il più vicino alla realtà. Ecco perché, ancora nel 1494, il re di Francia Charles VIII scese in Italia. Per incisa, a Mongiana, i Borboni avevo stabilito il primo impianto metallurgico moderno prima della Rivoluzione industriale inglese benché, al contrario di questi, le produzioni del nostro regime arco-reazionario riguardavano principalmente la produzione di armamenti. In breve, l'inserzione vincente nell'Economia Mondiale è questione di volontà politica e di pianificazione strategica, incluso al livello regionale. Anche sul piano intellettuale. Ad esempio, senza Gioacchino e senza Vico non ci sarebbero stati né Kant, né Hegel, né Marx, né B. Croce, né Gramsci. Senza Bernardino Telesio, il quale influenzò pure Vico, non ci sarebbe stato René Descartes: Non c'è da meravigliarsi se Alcmeone, un giovane pitagorico già impegnato a delucidare la relazione tra sensazioni, emozioni e pensiero, diede particolare attenzione ai 5 sensi e scrisse un trattato intitolato Sulla Natura.
Ultimamente, il New York Times ha reso omaggio alle bellezze naturali della nostra Regione. Meglio tardi che mai: Diciamo solo che si tratta di un bel inizio. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/travel/places-to-visit.html?_r=0 . Per quello che riguarda le bellezze naturali, la Calabria, situata « tra Mari e Monti » risulta riccamente dotata. Basta ricordare i suoi 3 Parchi nazionali, 1 Parco Regionale, 16 Riserve Naturali Statali, 2 Riserve Naturali Regionali, 1 Area Marinea Protetta, 1 Zona Umida, con vari riconoscimenti dall'Unesco. La deriva dei continenti ha pure regalato l'Altopiano silano, con la più grande foresta del Mediterraneo, e con il suo clima più rigido; i seguaci di Gioacchino parlarono addirittura di « frigida Sila », oggi pero luogo ideale per il trekking ed i sporti invernali a mezz'ora dal mare. Similarmente, il Pollino con i suoi preziosi pini loricati - sembra che uno di questi patriarchi risalerebbe ad oltre 1000 anni - offre tanto agli amanti della natura, dalla sua rete sentieristica al rafting ed al torrentismo nelle sue pittoresche gole. E che dire dell'Aspromonte cantato da Oscar Wilde nella sua magnifica poesia Humanitad ? Oppure delle spiagge e della Riserva marina attorno a Capo Rizzuto?
In Calabria, dove furono ritrovati più scheletri umani giganti, la Preistoria - in realtà tutta l'evoluzione umana visto che certi reperti risalgono a 700 000 anni fa, cioè a Homo Erectus -, rimane ancora un campo scientifico aperto. A testimoniarne la Grotta del Romito nel territorio di Papasidero con le sue varie stratte risalenti al Paleolitico Superiore - circa 40.000/35.000 anni fa - e con le sue coppie di scheletri di Homo Sapiens Sapiens abbracciate. Questi non essendo antichi Romeo e Giulietta pongono questioni essenziali per il passaggio delle società se non matriarcali almeno matrilineari alle società patriarcali poi dominanti in Occidente. Personalmente avrei incluso il tempio neolitico sfortunatamente distrutto di Nardodipace ma per il quale rimane una documentazione spesso tratta dalla memoria degli operai utilizzati per smantellarlo in modo da costruire strade oggi diroccate … (4) Quest'epoca vide il progressivo passaggio dal calendario lunare al calendario solare, ponendo le base della scienza moderna del tempo, poi più volte perfezionate, ad esempio dal calabrese nativo di Cirò, Luigi Lilio, ispiratore del Calendario Gregoriano. Il grandioso Museo Archeologico di Reggio Calabria riesce a fare intravedere un patrimonio ancora tutto da scoprire e da valorizzare.
Bene inteso la Calabria si è pure guadagnato il titolo di Magna Grecia. La testimonianza di questo periodo fasto è quasi ovunque. Alla luce di quello che fu già detto sopra, basta ricordare Sibari e Crotone e i loro rapporti con le popolazioni indigeni Enotri, Bretti, Lucani ecc. In effetti, nelle città della Magna Grecia si trova tutto il terriccio socio-economico e etico-politico nel quale si giocarono le principali rivalità del mondo antico occidentale prima dell'età romana. La tassonomia dei regimi politici di Aristotele e la Repubblica di Platone non sono opere astratte calate dal cielo. In effetti, da queste rivalità e da quelle caratteristiche del mondo romano, Vico trasse il concetto fondamentale di « lotta di classe » poi ripreso da Marx e variamente dalla migliore sociologia moderna.
« In Calabria sono dieci i borghi considerati tra '' I Borghi più belli d'Italia '' dislocati nelle varie provincie, e ad alcuni di essi è stata conferita la '' Bandiera arancione '' » ( p 254). Potenzialmente, se restaurati, tutti i nostri borghi potrebbero aspirare alla classifica. Non solo per la bellezza ambientale che li circonda ma perché sono tutti carichi di storia e spesso adornati da monumenti e ruderi antichi e da castelli medievali. Un intero capitolo vi è consacrato. Stilo diede i natali a Tommaso Campanella, Taverna a Mattia Preti, Celico a Gioacchino da Fiore. All'editore piace ricordare il ruolo di Cassiodoro di Squillace, ideatore dei monasteri occidentali e perciò visto come agente del salvataggio dal naufragio della letteratura dell'antichità. ( p 168) Mi è sempre sembrato che l'origine della pittura moderna, diciamo da Giotto in poi, deve molto alle illustrazioni miniate dei copisti dunque effettuati sopra un supporto diverso delle icone o degli affreschi: un esempio tipico è fornito dalle illustrazioni del prezioso Codice Purpureo di Rossano, del quale esistono per fortuna varie edizioni anche se purtroppo a tiraggi limitati.
Piace oltre tutto il capitolo consacrato alla « solidarietà ». Dalla sua Storia la Calabria conserva istintivamente il senso del dovere sacro dell'ospitalità. Il rispetto dell'Altro, forse chi sa un dio presente tra gli umani, istituiva il primo grande passo di civiltà verso un mondo più pacifico, nel quale la forza brutale non era più il principio dominante di legittimazione delle gerarchie sociali. Parimenti, visto la fortuna azzardosa della guerra, i nostri antenati greci riconoscevano implicitamente l'uguaglianza umana. Aristotele, un meteco a Atena, lo afferma chiaramente nelle prime pagine della sua Politica. La migliore illustrazione, a noi cara perché di impronta pitagorica, rimane quella offerta da Platone nella Repubblica, cioè il ritrovamento tramite il metodo pedagogico maieutico del doppio del quadrato da uno piccolo fanciullo schiavo interrogato dal maestro Socrate.
Questa eredità etico-sociale si manifesta malgrado un contesto deleterio, incluso il ritorno del caporalato nei campi o la gestione a volte mafiosa dei centri di accoglienza. Spesso queste zone d'ombra vengono contrastate con iniziative di accoglienza lungimiranti. Basta qui citare le alte esperienze di Badolato o di Riace, la Città al largo della quale furono trovate le due più belle statue di bronzo greche antiche, oggi nel Museo Archeologico di Reggio Calabria. In effetti, l'istinto di ospitalità fu coniugato con l'uso razionale dei fondi europei disponibili. Questi, a differenza dei fondi strutturali con durata media di 2 o massimo 3 anni, sono fondi a flusso continuo. Con il restauro dei borghi e l'arrivo ordinato dei migranti, si misero in piede cicli socio-economici locali più virtuosi, senza parlare dell'arricchimento culturale reciproco, oggi come ieri. La Città del Sole deve molto a Pitagora e a Gioacchino ma anche a riflessioni simili condotte in ambito arabo allora più avanzato nel recupero della scienza antica e nel suo ulteriore sviluppo.
L'importanza di queste manifestazioni di solidarietà calabrese spiccano di più a misura che infierisce la demagogia xenofobe e razzista dei nostrali « imprenditori della paura » anche appoggiati da tanti esclusivisti esterni. Basta ricordare i numeri : « Gli arrivi complessivi del 2017 in Italia sono il 6,8 per cento in meno rispetto all'anno precedente: 98.145 finora rispetto ai 105.357 per lo stesso periodo dello scorso anno. » (in http://contropiano.org/news/politica-news/2017/08/31/traffico-migranti-litalia-stretto-patto-diavolo-095204 ) A me sembra che la tenuta democratica e socio-economica del nostro Paese sarebbe più sicura se si andasse nella direzione del Fondo europeo di sviluppo e di integrazione da me proposto nel mio contributo in http://rivincitasociale.altervista.org/litalia-alle-prese-con-le-migrazioni-moderne/ . Per il resto, come evidenziato in Francia con la destra trasversale, incluso larghe frange del PS, e con il FN, « la copia » risulta sempre più oscena del « originale ». Alla fine, queste derive ideologiche d'altri tempi non pagano nemmeno al livello elettorale … La priorità assoluta rimane la sicurezza socio-economica, diritto al lavoro e certezza della legalità inclusi, non le varie sciocchezze securitarie d'altronde importate dall'estero, in un Paese oggi caratterizzato da flussi demografici negativi e da una aspettativa di vita in calo. Ne testimonia l'inesorabile e tragico spopolamento contemporaneo della nostra Regione.
C'è da augurare che, nella scia di questa di-mostrazione di alcune delle nostre eccellenze, la Calabria imporrà presto a valorizzarle senza dimenticare l'accoglienza turistica che dovrebbe essere all'altezza della cultura e delle bellezze della nostra Regione.
Concludo con l'ottimismo del cuore temperato dal pessimismo della ragione, secondo la frase di Jules Romains resa famosa da Gramsci. Privilegiare il buon lato delle cose non implica nessuna patologia fantasiosa, nessuna cecità cronica, nessuno rinnegamento del principio di realtà, nessuno solipsismo intellettuale-sociale à la Berkeley. Se tale fosse il caso si perderebbe ogni motivo per cambiare l'attuale disastroso andamento italiano e calabrese. La nostra Regione rimane tra le ultime nella Unione Europea allargata. Perciò ci auguriamo che questa seria avrà come conclusione oppure come accompagnamento indipendente…. un piccolo (sic) compendio dei nostri gravissimi difetti. In primis, il disprezzo attivo per la Costituzione e per la legalità anche da parte di un sistema giuridico a volte patologicamente arcaico e venale, e spesso servile e ancora filo-semita nietzschiano, malgrado l'Articolo XII delle Disposizioni Transitorie e Finali della nostra Carta fondamentale (5). L'assenza, o peggio ancora la corruzione che ne segue fatalmente, dello Stato e degli Apparati di Stato, incluso il settore para-pubblico. La negazione attiva del rispetto dovuto ai cittadini sottomessi anti-costituzionalmente ad un tasso ufficiale di occupazione di solo 38 %, nel quadro di un sistema di previdenza-assistenza sociale tragicamente contraddittorio e per fine delittuoso si pensa, ad esempio, al livello ISE stabilito ad un reddito annuo familiare di 3000.00 euro! La negazione dei diritti fondamentali individuali e sociali, tra questi ultimi il diritto al lavoro ed alla sanità: la Calabria spreca ogni anno ben oltre 250 milioni di euro per la cosiddetta « mobilità passiva »! Lo sfascio generale del territorio, spesso avvelenato con tante diffuse « terre dei fuochi », su terra o in mare, non tutte conosciute; secondo il POR in Calabria si spreca oltre 4 volte di più in superficie rispetto alle altre regioni, nonostante l'accumulo di piccole e grandi cattedrali nel deserto. La privatizzazione dei beni pubblici in una Regione dove il settore privato non sa più generare profitto se non succhiando fondi pubblici. La generalizzazione silenziosa del racketing o pizzo, del bianchimento del denaro della droga, del clientelismo e del nepotismo cronici che costituisce una zona d'ombra sapientemente mantenuta da vari settori del sistema giudiziario e da alcuni settori delle forze di polizia e di sicurezza e perfino dalla Commissione Anti-mafia, in particolare nella provincia di Cosenza diventata oggi la meno attiva e probabilmente la più disfunzionale e corrotta dell'intera Italia, almeno se mi è concesso giudicare fin ora - dalla mia esperienza personale e dai resoconti mediatici. Il sacrificio, studiato al tavolino col smantellamento dello Stato sociale e del sistema pensionistico pubblico, di una intera generazione di giovani; non alludiamo qui unicamente ai cosiddetti NEET, costretti ad una precarietà dilagante, eretta come nuovo sistema di vita per le masse, in una marcia a ritroso verso la società della nuova domesticità e della nuova schiavitù. L'incompetenza pervasiva mal mascherata da un sistema di raccomandazione ben rodato ma svenduto come nuova meritocrazia. Il disprezzo dell'interesse generale eretto in modo di vita per tanti furbetti. La mancanza di ogni piano regolatore con un valore strategico minimamente concepito per favoreggiare le sinergie intersettoriali necessarie allo sviluppo socio-economico nazionale, regionale e locale. Quel misero 0.9% del PIL consacrato annualmente alla ricerca ed allo sviluppo (R & S) mentre la Germania ci consacra almeno 3 volte di più. Il dipresso attivo per i diritti fondamentali, per la democrazia e per la consultazione democratica delle cittadine/i e dei gruppi di interesse che compongono la società civile, e via discorrendo.
Paolo De Marco
Copyright © La Commune Inc, 2 settembre 2017
Note:
1 ) Per Gioacchino pitagorico, vedi la Sezione Italia del sito www.la-commune-paraclet.com. Il tetramorfo, la figura illustrativa dell'Ordine Nuovo, quella del Drago, quella del Salterio dalle dieci corde parlano quasi da sole, per chi sa vedere ...
2 ) Vedi Sezione Italia, idem
3 ) Vedi « Histoire ou narration: un commentaire rapide » in http://rivincitasociale.altervista.org/histoire-ou-narration-un-commentaire-rapide/
5 ) « È vietata la riorganizzazione, sotto qualsiasi forma, del disciolto partito fascista. » in http://www.quirinale.it/qrnw/costituzione/pdf/costituzione.pdf
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Idiosyncretic book review: Luigi Oliverio editore, Eccellenze di / Excellences of Calabria, Casa Editrice Pubblisfera, Volume I: Nature - Prehistory - History - Culture - Solidariety, 2016, ISBN: 978-88-97632-85-6
Calabria seems like a sleeping beauty or better still like an ongoing love story in search of its happy ending. She still does not know how to express all her potentialities. Perhaps because she was richly endowed with authentic wealth at birth. Surely its horizon must be put in perspective with the greatness of her origins. It cannot be a mere vanishing point.
Contemporary Calabria displays the best and the worse of modern civilization. Yet, in this variegated, complex and polyvalent land, the worse is never accepted as an unshakable fatality. Where the State shines for its absence or even for its shameful complicity, the ingenious spirit of the inhabitants does compensate.
Reality can never be subsumed under stale clichés and official statistics. You do not need to scratch hard beneath the surface to realize that in our Region there always is someone who knows how to see and how to show the good side of things, like a good omen of the Calabria that once was to that which it could return to be: namely one of the main cradle of human civilization. The hope of the articles here gathered by the editor Luigi Oliverio, with an impressive catalog of pictures and illustrations, is fulfilled with the publication of this first bilingual volume.
The book here reviewed is essential. If for nothing else for its modesty: It does not pretend to list all the excellences found in Calabria but only a few. Likewise, in this first volume to be followed by others, it equally offers some « pills of excellence in philosophy, science, religion and sports ». Not out of any exasperated parochialism but instead with the intimate knowledge that this local heritage, inherently universal in nature, is an integral part of the best Human heritage. The Neapolitan Giambattista Vico comes here to mind with his immersion in what he referred to as the « antichissima sapienza italiana » in order to better reach his goal, namely the founding of a new science capable to devise a universal approach to human becoming and to modern natural law - il diritto delle genti -, in other words the modern science of History.
It pleases me to underline how much Vico was bathed in the Roman-Latin culture and philology and how important for the maturing of his thought was the work of the Calabrian Pythagorean Joachim of Fiore (1), even at times with the mediation and elaborations - for instance with regard to the astronomical and astrological concordances patiently established - of the great mathematician and scientist from Nola, Giordano Bruno. (2) Witness all the more or less genuine and trustworthy followers of the Silan Abbot, from Dante to Mazzini, from Gramsci to many others.
The secular road to emancipation, grounded in the evidence of human equality and in the equal dignity of all forms of intelligence, was born in this land during the First Renaissance. With the classical Renaissance, in particular as expressed in France, this becoming illustrated in the « figure » proposed by Joachim of Fiore entitled Ordine Nuovo, made a comeback, and reaffirmed itself with renewed vigor. It suffices to recall here the return of the scientific and social spirit in a new world vision that was capable to nurture the many attempts to establish the reign of liberty, solidarity and equality.
The Contr'un of La Boëtie is an eloquent testimony to this historical trend. The reign of the Amici or Equals announced by the young French meridional poet and reformer sends one back to the Ordine Nuovo and to the figure Il Salterio dalle dieci corde of Joachim. ( https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liber_Figurarum )
The reformulation of national history in an universalist-egalitarian perspective by Jules Michelet, as well as that focusing on the history of Christianity in the light of the secularization of the Spirit by Ernest Renan, are both grounded in the writings of the Pythagorean Abbot from Calabria. (3) Similarly, the most advanced characteristics of Anglican reform - Gerrard Winstanley, the Levellers etc - and again those manifesting themselves during the XIX Century - for instance William Blake, despite the « peculiar » judgment of an EP Thompson - all find their origins in the Joachimite affirmation of human consciousness as the sole authentic temple, a process which goes in tandem with human emancipation in general. This historical nurturing vein can also be found in the Taiping peasants' rebellion during the XIX Century in China, a rebellion which influenced the leaders of the new Chinese regime as much as Müntzer and his peasants and miners comrades influenced Marx and Engels.
If Calabria was named « Italia » in the Antiquity, for better and for worse, Modern Italy cannot be comprehended without Calabria. This evidence applies indifferently to the whole of Europe and beyond. From times immemorial Calabria has been one of the main crossroads of the Mediterranean sea, attracting to her innumerable people from all roots and thus forging the cosmopolitan context that explains her uncontestable inventiveness. While others were forced to imagine new Atlantic seaways to trade with India and Cathay, our land knew how to remain one of the main points of arrival of the Silk Road before and after the fall of Jerusalem. Even today, for the same reasons, Gioia Tauro could easily become the Rotterdam of the Mediterranean sea, better railroad access would suffice ... Be it as it may, through the knowledge accumulated by her great maritime Cities, Italy triggered the stimuli necessary to move the ineffable Christopher Columbus, the man with two navigation books, one normal and the other doctored to better manipulate his crews and convince them that they were on the right track; in the end, the latter was closer to reality. In any case, this is why still in 1494 the French King Charles VIII descended in Italy. In parenthesis, at Mongiana, the Bourbon monarchy had built the first modern metallurgical plant before the unfolding of the Industrial Revolution in the British Isles although, contrary to the British bourgeoisie and its constitutional monarchy, the production of our arch-reactionary regime was mainly geared to the production of armaments.
In brief, the winning insertion into the World Economy is always a function of political will and of strategic planning, including at the regional level. The same can be said for intellectual endeavours. For instance, without Joachim of Fiore and without Vico there would have been no Kant, no Hegel, no Marx, no Benedetto Croce and no Gramsci. Without Bernardino Telesio, who strongly influenced Vico, there would have been no René Descartes: it comes to no surprise that Alcmeone, a young Pythagorean already dedicated to demonstrating the relationships between sensations, emotions and thought, paid particular attention to the 5 senses writing a treatise entitled Sulla Natura.
Lately the New York Times has underlined the natural beauty of our Region. Better late than never: We wish that it is just a beginning which will be emulated worldwide. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/travel/places-to-visit.html?_r=0 . With regard to natural marvels, Calabria, located « between Mountains and Seas », is truly richly endowed. To mention just a few, she offers 3 National Parks, 1 Regional Park, 16 State Natural Reserves, 2 Regional Nature Reserves, 1 Marine Protected Area, 1 Wetland Angitola Reservoir, many already being inscribed on the Unesco's list. The drifting tectonic plates have endowed Calabria with the Silan Plateau with the largest forest of the Mediterranean area and its much colder climate; indeed, the followers of Joachim spoke of a « frigid Sila », which nowadays is ideal for trekking and winter sports but only half one hour from the closest sea beaches. Similarly the Pollino with its Loricate Pines, also known as Patriarchs, offers much to Nature lovers from its networks of Mountain trails to audacious rafting in its picturesque gorges. It is said that one of these Patriarchs is more than 1000 years old. Not to speak of the rugged Aspromonte celebrated by none other than Oscar Wilde in his magnificent poem entitled Humanitad; or, last but not least, of the beaches and marine reserve around Capo Rizzuto.
In Calabria, where many giant skeletons were found, even Prehistory remains an open scientific field. In reality, this is true for the evolution of Humanity since many founds go back to more than 700 000 years ago, namely to Homo Erectus. Witness the Romito Cave situated in the territory of Papasidero with its various strata that go back to the Upper Palaeolithic circa 40.000/35.000 years ago and with its Homo Sapiens Sapiens couples skeletons buried in intertwined position. These not being antique Romeo and Julietta do raise some interesting questions with regard to the transition from matriarchal or at least matrilineal societies to modern patriarchal societies which came to dominate in the Western World. Personally I would have included the Neolithic temple once located at Nardodipace and for which there remains a documentation derived from the memory of the workers that were unfortunately used to dismantled it in order to build country roads that are now collapsing ... (4) That epoch saw the transition from the lunar calendar to the solar calendar, setting the foundation of modern time-keeping, a science often reformulated afterwards, for instance by the Calabrian native from Cirò, Luigi Lilio, the mathematician who inspired the Gregorian Calendar. The magnificent Archeological Museum of Reggio Calabria succeeds in its task of lifting the veil over an immense patrimony that still remains to be discovered and valorized.
It goes without saying that Calabria, as the Magna Grecia, is also worth her title. The evidences of this prosperous past are everywhere. In the light of what has already been pointed out above, it will suffice here to recall the role of Sybaris and Crotone as well as their sustained interactions with indigenous populations such as the Enotri, the Bretti and the Lucani, etc. In effect, in the cities of Magna Grecia one finds the socio-economic and ethico-political background which informs the main rivalries of the Ancient Western World before the Roman Era. The taxonomy of political regimes proposed by Aristotle and Plato's Republic are not abstract works fallen from the shy. Indeed, it is from these rivalries and from those which later characterised the Roman World that Vico deducted his fundamental concept of « class struggle » as the engine of History, a concept reformulated by Marx and, in various modes, by the best modern sociology.
« In Calabria are ten the villages considered to be among the « The most beautiful villages of Italy » located in various provinces, and to some of them was awarded the « Orange flag » ( p 254) With proper restoration potentially all our villages or borghi could aspire to make the list. Not only for the sheer natural beauty which surrounds them but also because they are witnesses to a long and rich past and are often adorned with Ancient monuments, ruins and Medieval castles. An entire chapter is dedicated to them. Stilo is the birthplace of Thomas Campanella, Taverna of Mattia Preti, Celico of Joachim of Fiore. The editor is wont to recall the role of Cassiodorus of Squillace who inspired the creation of Western monasteries and thus « saved from the wreck the literature of antiquity » ( p 168) I always thought that the origin of modern painting, say from Giotto onwards, was to be found in the miniature paintings or limnings of the copyists; these were done on supports that were different from the icons or frescoes: a typical example is furnished by the illustrations found in the precious Codex Purpureus of Rossano, of which fortunately there exist many albeit limited editions.
We take great pleasure to point out the chapter dedicated to « solidarity ». From its Past Calabria has instinctively retained the sense of the sacred duty of hospitality. The respect for other Human fellows, who could perhaps embody a god's presence among Man, was the first great civilization step towards a more peaceful world in which brute force ceased to be the predominant criterion used to legitimize social hierarchies. Similarly, given the hazardous fortune of war, our Greek ancestors implicitly acknowledged human equality. Aristotle, himself a dago, i.e. a métèque, in Athens, states it clearly in the very first pages of his Politics. The best illustration, dear to us because of its Pythagorean inspiration, is to be found in Plato's Republic, namely in the maieutical recalling of the doubling of the square by the young slave interrogated by the pedagogical master Socrates.
This ethico-social heritage does manifest itself despite a deleterious context, including the return of the sweating system (caporalato) in the fields or else the often mafia-dominated management of migrant centers. Fortunately, these dark realities are contrasted with highly inspired migrant reception initiatives. It suffices to cite here the successful experiences of Badolato and of Riace, this last being the City on whose coastline were found the two most beautiful bronze statues of the Ancient Greek era, now exhibited in the Archeological Museum of Reggio Calabria. In effect, the instinct of hospitality was conjugated with the rational use of dedicated European Funds. These, contrary to the usual structural funds, which only last up to two or three years, are « permanent ». With the restoration of the Ancient borghi and the rationally managed inflow of migrants, virtuous local socio-economic circuits were established, without speaking of the reciprocal cultural enrichment which follows, today just as yesterday. The Città del Sole owes much to Pythagoras and to Joachim of Fiore but also to similar thinking that had emerged in the Arab context which, at the time, was much more advanced in the task of retrieving the science of Antiquity and in furthering it.
The importance of these manifestations of solidarity in Calabria shines even more in the context of the recent unfolding of xenophobic and racist demagogy at the hand of homegrown « manufacturers of fear », even with the backing of too many foreign exclusivists. Just look at numbers: « Total migrant arrivals in 2017 in Italy are 6.8 percent lower compared to last year: 98 145 up until now compared to 105 357 for the same period last year » (translation mine; in http://contropiano.org/news/politica-news/2017/08/31/traffico-migranti-litalia-stretto-patto-diavolo-095204 ) It seems to me that the democratic and socio-economic posture of our country would be better assured if one were to chose the direction I proposed with the creation of a European Development and Integration Fund (see my contribution in http://rivincitasociale.altervista.org/litalia-alle-prese-con-le-migrazioni-moderne/ ). For the rest, as evidenced in France with the FN and with the dominant and transversal rightwing, including large sections of the PS, the « copy » always becomes more obscene than the original. In the end, this ideological drifting from another age does not even pay electorally ... The absolute priority remains socio-economic security, including the right to work with dignity and the right to the respect of legality, and indeed not the security shibboleths often imported from outside, in a nation that is now characterized by negative migration flows and a decreasing average longevity. Witness the inexorable and tragic depopulation of our Region.
One hopes that, following in the footsteps of this shining demonstration of some Calabrian excellences, our Region will soon learn to valorize them without forgetting the development of a modern policy geared to the reception of tourists that would be worthy of her culture and of her many Natural and cultural wonders.
We shall conclude with the optimism of the heart mitigated with the pessimism of reason according to Jules Romains's phrase made famous by Gramsci. Emphasising the good side of things does not imply any wishful thinking, any chronic blindness, any negation of reality, nor any intellectual social solipsism à la Berkeley. If that were the case we would lose any motivation to change the current disastrous Italian and Calabrian predicament. Our Region remains among the very last in the enlarged EU. Accordingly, we hope that this series will have as a conclusion or at least as an independent accompanying volume, a brief (sic) compendium listing our worse defects. First of all, the active disregard for the Constitution and for legality including from a juridical system sometime pathologically archaic and venal and more often servile and still philo-Semite Nietzschean despite Article XII of the Transitory and Final Dispositions of our Constitution. (5) The absence or even worse the corruption, which inevitably follows, of the State and State Apparatuses including the para-public sector. The active lack of respect due to citizens who are thus anti-constitutionally subjected to an official rate of employment of only 38 % within the framework of a tragically contradictory and even criminally incomplete social security system think, for instance, of the ISE, namely the annual and family revenue threshold used to access social rights which is set at 3000.00 Euros! The active negation of fundamental individual and social rights, including the right to work with dignity and the right to social security and health-care: Calabria wastes annually more than 250 million Euros for the so-called « mobilità passive » that is to say health-care migration outside the Region! The general collapsing of the territory, often poisoned with diffused « terre dei fuochi », on land as well as at sea, many of these being still unknown to officials; according to the POR, the operating program of the Region, Calabria wastes on average more than 4 times as much land compared to other Italian Regions, notwithstanding the accumulation of small and large white elephants and other cathedral in the desert. The privatization of common goods in a Region where the private sector does not know how to generate profits other than by pillaging them out of the public purse. The silent generalisation of racketing ( pizzo ), the white-washing of drug money, the chronic clientelism and nepotism constituting a dark zone artfully maintained by various sectors of the judiciary system and by some police and intelligence sectors, including some among the Anti-mafia. This seems to be particularly the case in the Cosenza province which has now probably become the most dysfunctional and more corrupt of the whole country, - at least if I were to judge from my own personal experience at least up to now - and from newspapers' coverage. The sacrifice of an entire youth generation, a public policy choice consciously induced by the postponing of pension age and the dismantlement of the public social security system; we are not merely alluding here to the so-called NEETs forced into a situation of permanent precariousness, this being conceived as a new way of life for the masses, in a reversed march towards the society of new domesticity and new workfare slavery. The pervasive incompetence badly masked by a well-rehearsed recommendation system sold as a new meritocracy. The general disregard for the public interest erected as a way of life by many profiteers. The lack of any national or local strategic planning minimally thought out to favor the intersectoral synergy necessary to induce national, regional and local socio-economic development. The miserably lean 0.9 % of the GDP consecrated to R&D while Germany spends more than 3 % of GDP. The active disregard for fundamental rights, for democracy and for the democratic consultation of the citizens and interest groups who together make up civil society, and so on and so forth.
Paul De Marco
Copyright © La Commune Inc, 2 septembre 2017
Notes:
1 ) For Joachim as a Pythagorean see the Section Italia in www.la-commune-paraclet.com. The Tetramorph, the figure illustrating Joachim's New Order, that of the Dragon, that of the Salterio dalle dieci corde, do speak for themselves, at least for those with eyes to see...
2 ) See Section Italia, idem
3 ) See : « Histoire ou narration: un commentaire rapide » in http://rivincitasociale.altervista.org/histoire-ou-narration-un-commentaire-rapide/
5 ) « È vietata la riorganizzazione, sotto qualsiasi forma, del disciolto partito fascista. » namley, « the reorganisation in whatever form of the dissolved fascist party, is forbidden » , see http://www.quirinale.it/qrnw/costituzione/pdf/costituzione.pdf
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Compte rendu idiosyncrétique: Luigi Oliverio editore, Eccellenze di Excellences of Calabria, Casa Editrice Pubblisfera, Volume I: Natura - Preistoria - Storia - Cultura - Solidarietà, 2016, ISBN: 978-88-97632-85-6
La Calabre ressemble à une belle endormie ou pour mieux dire à un roman d'amour inachevé. Elle n'a pas encore su exprimer toutes ses potentialités. Sans aucun doute parce qu'elle fut richement dotée à sa naissance. Quoiqu'il en soit, il est certain que son horizon semble être à la mesure de la grandeur de ses origines. Il ne saurait être uniquement un point de fuite.
La Calabre contemporaine offre à la fois ce qu'il y a de mieux et de pire dans la civilisation moderne. Cependant dans cette terre aux multiples facettes, complexe et polyvalente, on ne se résigne jamais au pire. Là où l'Etat brille par son absence, ou pire encore par ses innommables complicités, l'ingéniosité de la population locale parvient à compenser. La réalité n'est jamais réductible aux clichés ni aux statistiques officielles. Il n'est guère besoin de se livrer à de longues investigations pour s'apercevoir que dans notre Région il y a toujours des gens capables de voir et de montrer le bon côté des choses, comme d'heureux auspices de la Calabre qui fut jadis à celle qu'elle pourrait redevenir : à savoir, un des berceaux principaux de la civilisation humaine. Le pari de ce recueil d'articles rassemblés par l'éditeur Luigi Oliverio et embellis de nombreuses photos et illustrations est déjà gagné en partant avec la publication de ce premier volume bilingue italien-anglais.
On aura compris que le livre qui fait l'objet de ce compte rendu est un livre essentiel. Ne serait-ce que par sa modestie : il ne prétend pas étayer toutes les excellences présentes en Calabre mais uniquement quelques-unes, tout en offrant aux lectrices et lecteurs « des condensés d'excellences en philosophie, science, religion et sport ». Ce premier volume prévoit d'ores et déjà des suites. Il ne s'agit pas de succomber à un quelconque esprit de clocher mais plutôt de faire valoir un héritage local au contenu intrinsèquement universaliste dont on sait qu'il fait partie intégrante de l'héritage de l'Humanité entière. Comment ne pas penser au Napolitain Giambattista Vico immergé dans son « antichissima sapienza italiana » pour mieux atteindre son objectif, c'est-à-dire la création d'une science nouvelle capable d'offrir une approche universelle du devenir humain et de la loi naturelle - diritto delle genti -, à savoir la science moderne de l'Histoire ?
Il est utile de souligner à quel point Vico était enraciné dans la culture et la philologie romaine-latine et combien l'oeuvre du pythagoricien calabrais Joachim de Fiore (1) fut déterminante pour le développement de sa pensée, bien que parfois grâce à la médiation et aux approfondissements - par exemple, en ce qui concerne les concordances astronomiques-astrologiques patiemment établies - proposés par le Nolan Giordano Bruno. (2) En témoignent les émules plus ou moins fidèles ou informés de l'abbé Silan, de Dante à Mazzini, a Gramsci et tant d'autres.
Le cheminement séculier de l'émancipation fondé sur l'égalité humaine et sur l'égale dignité reconnue à toutes les formes d'intelligence vit le jour dans cette terre durant ce qu'il convient d'appeler la Première Renaissance. Avec la Renaissance classique, en particulier en France, ce devenir littéralement figuré dans l'Ordre Nouveau de Joachim s'affirma de nouveau avec une vigueur nouvelle. Il suffit de rappeler ici le retour à l'esprit scientifique et social, nouvelle vision du monde capable de soutenir les diverses tentatives faites pour établir le règne de la liberté, de la solidarité et de l'égalité. Le Contr'un de La Boëtie en témoigne avec éloquence. Le règne des Amis, envisagé par le jeune poète et réformateur méridional français, renvoie en effet à l'Ordre Nouveau ainsi qu'à la figure Il Salterio dalle dieci corde de Joachim. ( https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liber_Figurarum ) La reformulation de l'Histoire nationale dans une perspective universaliste-égalitaire par Jules Michelet, ainsi que celle de la chrétienté à la lueur de la sécularisation de l'Esprit par Ernest Renan sont toutes deux ancrées dans les écrits de l'abbé pythagoricien calabrais. (3) De même les aspects plus en pointe de la réforme anglicane - Gerrard Winstanley, les Levellers - et encore ceux qui se manifestèrent durant la fin du XIX siècle - par exemple, pour ne citer que lui, William Blake, n'en déplaise au « singulier » E. P. Thompson - trouvent tous leurs origines dans l'affirmation joachimite de la conscience humaine conçue comme unique vrai temple, processus qui va de pair avec l'émancipation générale. Ce filon se perçoit également dans la Révolte paysanne des Taipings en Chine à la fin du XIX siècle, révolte qui influença les dirigeants du nouveau régime chinois autant que Thomas Müntzer et ses camarades paysans ou mineurs avaient influencés Marx et Engels.
Si la Calabre se nommait « Italie » dans l'Antiquité, pour le meilleur et pour le pire l'Italie moderne ne saurait se comprendre sans la Calabre. Depuis la nuit des temps la Calabre fut un des premiers carrefours méditerranéens attirant à elle une multitude de peuples d'origines diverses, forgeant ainsi le conteste cosmopolite qui explique son originale vitalité. Alors que d'autres s'ingéniaient à découvrir de nouvelles routes atlantiques pour commercer avec l'Inde et Cathay, notre terre sut conserver sa place comme un des premiers points d'arrivée de la Route de la Soie en Europe, avant et après la chute de Jérusalem. Encore aujourd'hui, essentiellement pour les mêmes raisons, le port de Gioia Tauro pourrait facilement devenir la Rotterdam de la Méditerranée puisqu'il suffirait littéralement d'améliorer les connections ferroviaires pour simplement doubler les départs de trains de marchandises …
Quoiqu'il en soit, grâce aux connaissances accumulées par ses grandes cités maritimes, l'Italie sut fournir les stimuli nécessaires à l'ineffable Christophe Colomb avec ses deux emblématiques carnets de bord, le carnet officiel et le carnet manipulé pour faire patienter ses équipages, ce dernier se révélant ensuite plus proche de la réalité. Voilà pourquoi encore en 1494 le roi de France Charles VIII descendit en Italie. Entre parenthèses, à Mongiana, les rois bourbons avaient créé la première industrie métallurgique moderne avant la Révolution industrielle anglaise bien que, au contraire de la monarchie constitutionnelle et de ses bourgeois anglais, les productions du régime archi-réactionnaire des Bourbons italiens étaient consacrées principalement aux armements.
Bref, hier comme aujourd'hui, l'insertion gagnante dans l'Economie Mondiale est fonction de la volonté politique et d'un minimum de planification stratégique, y compris au niveau régional. Il en va de même sur le plan intellectuel. Par exemple, sans Joachim de Fiore et sans Vico, ni Kant, ni Hegel, ni Marx, ni B. Croce, ni Gramsci ne seraient concevables. Sans Bernardino Telesio, lequel influença la conception de la nature de Vico, il n'y aurait pas eu de René Descartes. De fait, on ne saurait s'étonner du fait que Alcmeone, un jeune pythagoricien déjà tout occupé à éclairer les relations entre sensations, émotions et pensée, accorda une attention particulière aux 5 sens et qu'il écrivit un traité intitulé Sulla Natura.
Dernièrement le New York Times a rendu hommage aux beautés naturelles de notre Région. Mieux vaut tard que jamais : disons seulement que c'est un bon début. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/travel/places-to-visit.html?_r=0 . En ce qui concerne la splendeur de ses paysages, la Calabre, située « entre la montagne et la mer », est une contrée richement dotée. Soulignons seulement qu'elle exhibe 3 Parcs nationaux, 1 Parc régional, 16 Réserves naturelles nationales, 2 Réserves naturelles régionales, 1 Zone maritime protégée, 1 Zone humide, le tout avec quelques inscriptions à l'UNESCO. La dérive des plaques tectoniques a également offert à la Calabre le Plateau de la Sila, avec la plus grande forêt méditerranéenne et avec son climat plus rigoureux au point que les moines qui suivirent Joachim de Fiore n'hésitèrent pas à parler de « frigide Sila » ; quoiqu'il en soit c'est aujourd'hui un endroit idéal pour le trekking et les sports d'hiver tout en étant situé à moins d'une demi-heure de la mer sur la côte ionienne. Il convient de mentionner également le Pollino avec ses « patriarches » ou Pins de Bosnie ( Pinus heldreichii ), dont un exemplaire remonte à plus de 1000 ans ; ce majestueux massif montagneux offre de nombreux sentiers de randonnée ainsi que la possibilité de pratiquer le rafting et le canoë-kayak dans de pittoresques gorges. Et que dire de l'Aspromonte jadis chanté par Oscar Wilde dans son beau poème Humanitad ? Ou encore des plages et de la Réserve maritime autour de Capo Rizzuto ?
En Calabre où furent retrouvés de nombreux squelettes de géants, la Préhistoire en réalité toute l'évolution humaine puisque certaines traces remontent à Homo Erectus reste encore un champ d'investigation scientifique ouvert. En témoigne la Grotta del Romito dans le territoire du village Papasidero avec des strates remontant au Paléolithique Supérieur environ 40.000/35.000 ans et ses couples des squelettes entrelacés. Ne s'agissant évidemment pas de Roméo et Juliette antiques, ils posent des questions essentielles sur le passage des sociétés matriarcales ou à tout le moins matrilinéaires aux sociétés patriarcales aujourd'hui dominantes en Occident. Personnellement, j'aurais inclus le temple néolithique malheureusement détruit de Nardodipace dont il ne reste plus que des dessins effectués à partir des souvenirs des travailleurs utilisés dans les années 70 pour le démanteler, les pierres servant à la construction de routes aujourd'hui délabrées … (4) Cette époque vit le passage progressif du calendrier lunaire au calendrier solaire, posant ainsi les bases de la science moderne du temps, plusieurs fois perfectionnées depuis, par exemple par le Calabrais natif de Cirò, Luigi Lilio, l'inspirateur du Calendrier grégorien. Le grandiose Musée Archéologique de Reggio Calabria fait entrevoir un patrimoine encore à découvrir et à valoriser.
Bien entendu la Calabre s'est aussi valu le titre de Magna Grecia. Les témoignages de cette époque faste sont partout. A la lueur de ce qui fut déjà écrit plus haut, il suffira de rappeler ici les villes de Sybaris et de Crotone ainsi que leurs interrelations avec les peuplades indigènes Enotri, Bretti et Lucani etc. En réalité, on trouve dans les cités de la Magna Grecia le terreau socio-économique et éthico-culturel sur lequel se jouèrent les principales rivalités du monde occidental antique avant l'époque romaine. La taxonomie des régimes politiques proposée par Aristote ainsi que la République de Platon ne sont certes pas des oeuvres abstraites tombées du ciel. En effet, de ces rivalités ainsi que de celles caractérisant le monde romain, Vico tira le concept fondamental de la « lutte des classes » conçu comme moteur de l'Histoire, concept ensuite repris par Marx et par la meilleure sociologie moderne.
« En Calabre il y a dix villages classés parmi « les villages plus beaux d'Italie » ; ils sont répartis dans les diverses provinces, certains d'entre-eux ont même mérité « le drapeau orange » (p 254) ce drapeau récompensant la qualité de l'accueil. S'ils étaient convenablement restaurés, tous nos villages pourraient se qualifier, non seulement en raison de la beauté de leurs paysages mais aussi parce qu'ils sont tous chargés d'histoire étant souvent embellis par des monuments et des ruines antiques ainsi que par des châteaux médiévaux. Un chapitre entier leur est consacré. Stilo est la ville natale de Tommaso Campanella, Taverna celle de Mattia Preti, Celico de Joachim de Fiore. L'éditeur aime rappeler le rôle joué par Cassiodore de Squillace, idéateur des monastères occidentaux et par conséquent vu comme un des artisans du sauvetage du naufrage de la littérature de l'Antiquité. (p 168) Il m'a toujours semblé que l'origine de la peinture occidentale moderne, disons pour simplifier après Giotto, devait beaucoup aux miniatures des copistes, par conséquent effectuées sur des supports différents de ceux des icônes ou des fresques : un exemple probant nous est fourni par les illustrations contenues dans le précieux Codex Purpureus de Rossano, duquel il existe heureusement de nombreuses éditions bien qu'à tirages très limités.
On soulignera avec plaisir le chapitre consacré à la « solidarité ». De sa longue Histoire, la Calabre a conservé le sens du devoir sacré d'hospitalité. Le respect pour l'Autre, qui sait, peut-être un dieu présent parmi les Humains, instituait le premier grand passage civilisationnel vers un monde plus pacifique dans lequel la force brute cessait d'être le principe dominant de légitimation des hiérarchies sociales. Pareillement, au vu de la fortune hasardeuse de la guerre, nos ancêtres grecs reconnaissaient implicitement l'égalité humaine. Aristote, un métèque à Athènes, le dit clairement dans les premières pages de sa Politique. La meilleure illustration, chère à nos yeux car elle porte l'empreinte indélébile de la pensée pythagoricienne, reste celle qui nous est offerte dans la République de Platon lorsqu'il met en scène la redécouverte, grâce à la méthode pédagogique maïeutique, du double du carré par un jeune esclave interrogé par son maître Socrate.
Cet héritage éthico-social se manifeste malgré un contexte délétère, qui inclut le retour au caporalat dans les champs ainsi que la gestion parfois mafieuse des centres d'accueil pour les immigrants et les réfugiés. On citera ici les expériences exemplaires de Badolato et de Riace, cette dernière étant la ville au large de laquelle furent retrouvées les deux plus belles statues en bronze du monde grec antique, aujourd'hui exposées dans le Musée Archéologique de Reggio Calabria. En fait, l'instinct d'hospitalité fut conjugué avec l'utilisation rationnelle des fonds européens disponibles. A la différence des autres fonds européens, qui ne sont disponibles que pour 2 ou 3 années, ceux consacrés à l'accueil des migrants sont à flux continus. Avec la restauration de ces villages et l'arrivée bien gérée des migrants furent mis en place des circuits socio-économiques vertueux, sans même mentionner l'enrichissement culturel réciproque, aujourd'hui comme hier. La Cité du Soleil doit beaucoup à Pythagore et à Joachim de Fiore mais également à des réflexions similaires dans les milieux arabes proches de la Calabre qui étaient alors plus avancés dans la redécouverte de la science antique et dans son ultérieur développement.
L'importance de ces manifestations de solidarité calabrese brille avec d'autant plus d'éclat à mesure que déferle la démagogie xénophobe et raciste de nos « entrepreneurs de la peur » trop souvent appuyés par tant d'exclusivistes étrangers. Les chiffres parlent pourtant d'eux-mêmes : « Le total des arrivées en 2017 en Italie est de 6.8% inférieur par rapport à l'année précédente : 98,145 jusqu'ici comparés aux 105,347 pour la même période l'année précédente » (ma traduction ; voir http://contropiano.org/news/politica-news/2017/08/31/traffico-migranti-litalia-stretto-patto-diavolo-095204 ) Il me semble que la tenue démocratique et socio-économique de notre pays serait plus sure si l'on choisissait d'aller dans le sens indiqué par ma proposition d'établir un Fonds européen de développement et d'intégration ; je renvoie ici à ma contribution librement accessible dans http://rivincitasociale.altervista.org/litalia-alle-prese-con-le-migrazioni-moderne/ .
Pour le reste, ainsi que le démontre la France avec sa droite transversale, qui inclut de larges sections du PS, et avec le FN, la « copie » tend à devenir plus obscène que « l'original ». A la fin, ces dérives idéologiques d'un autre âge, ne paient même plus au niveau électoral … La priorité absolue reste la sécurité socio-économique, qui inclut le droit au travail et à la sécurité sociale publique et le droit à la légalité dans le cadre du respect des droits fondamentaux individuels et sociaux. Les gargarismes divers sur la « sécurité », par ailleurs souvent d'importation étrangère, sont antithétiques à nos constitutions égalitaires nées de la Résistance ; ils masquent d'ailleurs maladroitement de dangereuses dérives, surtout en Italie, pays désormais marqué par un déficit démographique et par une longévité moyenne en baisse. Comment ne pas voir l'inexorable et tragique dépeuplement en cours de notre Région ?
Il faut souhaiter qu'en prenant acte de cette dé-monstration de certaines de ses excellences la Calabre saura au plus tôt apprendre à les valoriser sans oublier de développer l'accueil touristique qui devrait être à la mesure de son héritage culturel et de ses autres points phares.
Nous conclurons avec l'optimisme du coeur tempéré par le pessimisme de la raison selon la phrase de Jules Romains rendue célèbre par Gramsci. Privilégier le bon côté des choses n'implique aucune illusion pathologique, aucune cécité chronique, aucun renoncement au principe de réalité, aucun solipsisme intellectuel et social à la Berkeley. Si tel était le cas, nous perdrions toute motivation pour changer le désastreux cours actuel des choses, tant en Italie qu'en Calabre. Notre Région reste dans les toutes dernières positions au sein de l'Europe élargie. De sorte que l'on espère que cette série aura comme conclusion, ou mieux peut-être comme accompagnement, un volume indépendant recensant les défauts les plus graves. Ce serait un petit (sic) compendium salutaire. Il inclurait en premier lieu le mépris actif pour la Constitution et pour la légalité, y compris de la part d'un système juridique parfois pathologiquement archaïque et vénal et souvent servile et encore philosémite nietzschéen malgré l'Article XII des Dispositions Transitoires et Finales de notre Constitution. (5) L'absence ou pire encore la corruption, qui s'ensuit fatalement, de l'Etat et des Appareils d'Etat , secteurs parapublics inclus. La négation active du respect dû aux citoyennes et citoyens qui se voient soumis anticonstitutionnellement à un taux officiel d'emploi de 38 % dans le cadre d'un système de sécurité sociale déconstruit, tragiquement contradictoire et souvent délictueux que l'on songe, par exemple, à l'effarant niveau de l'ISE fixant le seuil du revenu annuel familial donnant accès aux droit sociaux à 3000.00 euros ! La négation des droits fondamentaux individuels et sociaux parmi lequels le droit à un travail dignement rémunéré et le droit à la santé publique : la Calabre gaspille plus de 250 millions par an pour la migration sanitaire, la soi-disant « mobilità passiva » ! Le délabrement général du territoire, souvent empoisonné par de diffuses « terres des feux », sur terre et sur mer, dont toutes ne sont pas connues des autorités. Selon le Programme Opérationnel de la Région (POR), la Calabre consume 4 fois plus de terre utile que les autres régions nonobstant la grotesque accumulation de petites et grandes cathédrales dans le désert. La privatisation rampante des biens publics dans une Région où le secteur privé ne sait pas générer de profit excepté en suçant les fonds publics existants. La généralisation du racket ( pizzo ), du blanchiment de l'argent de la drogue, du clientélisme et du népotisme mur-à-mur qui constitue une zone d'ombre savamment maintenue par divers secteurs du système judiciaire flanqué par diverses franges dévoyées des services policiers et de la sureté de l'Etat, sans épargner certaines franges de la Commission Anti-mafia. Ceci est tout particulièrement le cas dans la province de Cosenza devenue la moins active et probablement la plus dysfonctionnelle et la plus corrompue, du moins si j'en juge par mon expérience personnelle à date et par les comptes rendus médiatiques. Le sacrifice froidement planifié par le démantèlement de l'Etat social et par le report de l'âge de la retraite d'une entière génération de jeunes ; il ne s'agit pas uniquement des nombreux NEETs, mais également de tous ces jeunes soumis à une précarité généralisée mais érigée comme nouveau mode de vie pour les masses, dans une marche à rebours vers une société de la nouvelle domesticité et du nouvel esclavage. L'incompétence crasse générale mal masquée par un système de recommandation bien rôdé et pour comble aujourd'hui démarché comme nouvelle « méritocratie ». Le mépris militant pour l'intérêt général érigé en mode de vie par tant de profiteurs parasites. L'absence de facto de tout plan d'aménagement du territoire ayant la moindre valeur stratégique et conçu pour induire les synergies intersectorielles nécessaires à tout développement national, régional ou local. Le miséreux 0.9% du PIB que l'Italie consacre à la R&D fait pâle figure comparé aux plus de 3 % allemands. Le mépris actif pour les droits fondamentaux, pour la démocratie et pour la consultation démocratique des citoyennes et des citoyens, ainsi que des groupes de pression qui tous ensemble forme la société civile, et ainsi de suite.
Paolo De Marco
Copyright © La Commune Inc, 2 settembre 2017
Notes:
1 ) En ce qui concerne Joachim pythagoricien, voir la Section Italia du site www.la-commune-paraclet.com. Le tétramorphe, la figure illustrant l'Ordre Nouveau, celle du Dragon, celle de la lyre à dix cordes parlent quasiment d'eux-mêmes, du moins pour qui sait voir ...
2 ) Voir la Section Italia, idem
3 ) Voir « Histoire ou narration: un commentaire rapide » in http://rivincitasociale.altervista.org/histoire-ou-narration-un-commentaire-rapide/
5 ) « È vietata la riorganizzazione, sotto qualsiasi forma, del disciolto partito fascista. » c'est-à-dire « La réorganisation sous quelque forme que ce soit du parti fasciste dissous est strictement interdite » , voir http://www.quirinale.it/qrnw/costituzione/pdf/costituzione.pdf