Re: Gelles/ EMU/Popularism

[Bernard Girard <bgirard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dennis R Redmond wrote:
>
> On Thu, 4 Jun 1998 tmurphy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
> >     John comes to the heart to the matter. In France, the extreme left
> > (Pierre Bourdieu sells 300,000 of his short essays) and the extreme right
> > have a common cause. They are opposed to Europe, to progressive ideas.
> > What they want in common is chaos. The left. because it proves they were
> > right; the right because they seek power.
>
> Did Pierre really sell that many books? There's hope for European
> civilization after all!

Oh yes! He, and some of his friends sold that many books without any advertising,
without any help from TV or newspapers, just by hearsay. In fact, Bourdieu and his
friends had the very good idea to publish short and very inexpensive books (2, 3 or 4
dollars). The kind of book you read in one hour, you buy just to see what's in it.
French society is once again in movement. If Jospin is today prime minister it's because
the extreme left (not so extreme, by the way) organized large street demonstrations in
1997 to help "sans papiers" (illegal immigrants, immigrants without our green card) who
just wanted to stay in France. In these demonstrations what we call "peuple de gauche"
just met again and discovered it shared some ideas : they thought they were alone and
they discovered they were thousands and thousands ready to walk in the streets to say
no. It raised hope for all those who did not share the conventional political despair
("all the power in the hands of the markets (or Bruxelles), we cannot do anything" was
the official line on the right and on the left). Politics is back.
To say that Bourdieu and his friend want chaos as the extreme right does not do justice
to what is now happening. What Terence says is, by the way, what is becoming the
official line of the official left.
To go back to PKT and economics, this movement is mostly political, but economists play
a role in it. One of the most "leftist" papers is Alternative économique, a magazine of
good quality with a growing circulation. Several young academic economists met to fight
the official political line. Those I heard seemed to think like the old 60's marxists,
but I might be wrong (and I hope I am).
Is this mmovement mainly French? I can't tell, but 1848, 1968... showed that this kind
of movement is rarely restricted to one nation.
-----
Bernard Girard