On this May Day where popular demonstrations are traditionally held in many countries, it is worth contrasting the general atmosphere in some countries of Europe where the voice of the people in the form of an increasing number of demonstrations meets with total indifference of their governments.
I remember a school teacher who, back in the eighties, told us, her class of a small village perched in the mountains of the Massif Central, that in the Ancien Régime, the People, that is, peasants as they were then the big majority, were not considered as people by the ruling elite. As is well known, as I already knew by then, the society was then divided between the nobility, the clergy and the third estate. Such a division had its lot of injustice with the poor struggling and the privileged thriving.
The point that marked me is that, according to the lecture, the former two were not merely ruling over the overwhelming majority but did so in a spirit of absolute, intrinsic, quintessential superiority. That is, not like a king and his subject—a concept repulsive enough but one still in force today in many "respectable" countries—but like a master and his dog. The poor was poor not because of circumstantial vicissitudes, not because his family was poor, not because his ancestors had been poor, but because he was destined to be poor, because his descendants would be poor, because he had to be poor, it was what befits him.
I don't know how in her view the poor considered themselves, but the rulers—that's the statement that shocked me then—considered the ruled ones as cattle. Literally. There was no empathy, baring maybe the occasional concern from some princess for the dirty children of the village (I remember she used this image), but it was on a par with the pithy one feels in the blink of the eye for a starving abandoned mongrel in the street. The generosity of throwing some piece of garbage at it does not raise the poor creature to a status any closer to yours, the all powerful human being passing by with a divine-like power over an other being for which sparing a thought is already a proof of your superiority.
And I didn't believe this. I thought it was some exaggeration, some dramatization, some teacher trick maybe to capture our full interest, but the whole notion was preposterous to me.
I was then part of the People in the fullest sense of the term. I am less so now as I grew in the social ladder, but I was then from a modest family of hard working people, among other children who, like in the lecture, were in a large part from peasant families (my father was the baker of the village) and it was obvious to me that although there were differences of wealth between the bulk of us and the minority whose parents were the teachers themselves, the medical doctor or the pharmacist, there was no difference whatsoever in their humanity and ours, neither from their point of view, nor ours.
Now surely the point of the teacher was this one, that thanks to the French republics we were then equal in rights and in opportunities, but what marked me by then was that there was a time, not so remote (in this period we celebrated the bicentenary of the French Revolution) where people were considered as farmyard animals.
In retrospect it could be puzzling why the idea sounded so blatantly absurd; after all we had learned about slavery in the Egypt of the Pharaohs and in Ancient Greece (the slavery restored by the French Republic after the monarchy had abolished it, I don't remember we learned about it in school). I never doubted slavery existed and even in a child's mind, the gap between the slave and his master is precisely the one I refused to believe existed between the nobleman and his peasant.
In any case, I don't know how true it was before the revolution, and at which point the concept was the most defeated, but I am everyday more convinced that such a situation becomes increasingly true (call that "true again" if you wish) in our occidental society.
Slavery has also taken a more perverse form. It drapes itself with the attire of freedom. The belt and of is money.
It has long been known and accepted by the largest number that there is a big disparity of wealth in our society. I think most people do not care (I now should say "did not care"). The People at large are perfectly fine with the idea of some rich people being outrageously rich. For many, the reluctance to this idea is discarded as communist or Marxist propaganda, that is, a strongly biased political inclination that is perceived as both harmful and despicable. Note that I am not discussing whether such an opinion is justified or not, I am stating that people accept the fact of huge wealth imbalance as a possible model of their society, in fact even supporting it actively if they feel they have a way to enrich themselves through working and business.
This wealth imbalance does not matter much. What matters is that on one side of the scale, there is so little that the scale itself cannot stand in such a disequilibrium. The French Revolution, it is well documented, was a transfer of power from the Nobility to the Bourgeoisie, on the account that the latter enriched itself financially (through genuine economical growth at this time).
What happened, however, is that the condescending contempt of the elites for the majority at the bottom of the social scale was never vanquished. It only shifted hands.
Now I come back to the initial statement: the People, the working class, the proletariat, they are cattle for the ruling elite. They are not considered as human beings but as an economical variable, as a broken and lame resource one has to deal with, to manage, to regulate through lies and deception.
The biggest deception of all is democracy. This idea that the People mandate some of them to rule for the greater good, and has a say in the political choices. We think we delegate our power, temporarily, to those who rule in our name.
Already I put temporarily because even those who still believe in democracy must concede that whoever is in command has a mandate to do whatever they want, not infrequently the direct opposite of what they said beforehand. Democracy then reduce to "you'll see when it's time to vote". At which point the opposite party is elected, people cheer and the same process reiterates. Cyclically.
We have laughed at the expression of popular sadness at the death of Chavez. This, we hear in Europe, is the more convincing manifestation of despotism and of a brainwashed population. Indeed the idea of sympathy for our political figure has became completely alien to us. In France, for instance, presidents all beat records of unpopularity, in turns (you can get the figures here). After ten months of power, it went from 74% of confidence at the beginning of his mandate to 58% for Mitterand, from 64% to 40% for Chirac, a freefall from 63% to 37% for Sarkozy and from 55% to 30% for currently serving Hollande. Each one doing worst than his predecessor. Presidents are not elected for their merits, their program, their competencies, not even their charisma, but to chase the previous one. This is patent with Hollande who had no experience in any government before his election to the top office. His role was only to evict an almost unanimously despised Sarkozy after Strauss-Kahn got arrested for sexual assault in New York. Any socialist candidate would have won this election (Hollande was one of the weakest ones, who got there thanks to internal politics of his own party, and he won the game easily).
Once they get evicted, what happens? They have a luxurious lifestyle covered by the state which puts at their disposition, for life, copious financial treatments, pensions, and beyond mere pecuniary facilities, also staff, cars, lodgements, even prestigious political responsibilities, so on and so forth, quite like a king, and this even if they get convicted by the justice once their presidential immunity is lifted (which happened with Chirac and is about to happen with Sarkozy).
Chirac was charged of corruption. In the case of Sarkozy, there are even accusations of murder, as he is involved in suspicion of illegal funding by the Lybian regime and allegations that the execution was perpetrated by a French agent surfaced.
I'm not quite there yet. Some politicians are corrupt, we all know that, like I knew as a pupil of the feudal division of society. The corruption is however general and to an extent that bridges with the leap of .
Of course upon reading the accusations of Sarkozy's ordering the murder of Gaddafi, one can only suspect defamation and manipulation. Today, on Mayday, while people protest in the streets, I have seen the reaction of Sarkozy's former Chief of Staff to the discoveries at his home of large amounts of money by the judges investigating the claims of illegal Lybian funding. One part concerns half a million euro that he claims is justified by the transaction of a painting (unknown author and artwork). When observed that the typical laundering operation is through such artwork transactions, he replies: "I don't know because I don't know how to do money laundering". Anyway, the more interesting is when it comes to money he cannot justify at all, for which the argumentation comes down to: "it wasn't much money anyway" (by that is meant of around 25000€) and "so what?" The money was just taken from wherever (an obscure secret fund for the state abolished in 2002) and put in his pocket with no legal trace nor even declaration. Here is the exchange with the journalist:
Here we have the real face of democracy: "yes I took the money, this has been going on since forever, that's it, it's not a big deal". Asked if this is normal, would he blush, would he collapse in tear and realize the magnitude of his infamy? His reaction is that of an annoyance to having to reply to such questions. Deciphered, his last reply is: "Well, okay, one has to say to the People that no, this is not normal, but I don't even feel like making much of an effort, I am not in my acting mood today, possibly I'll be caught the hands deep in the blood of Gadaffi, that could be more of an embarrassment, so sure, one should say it is not normal, afterwards (that means, once he has been caught).
I took this one among others just because he happens to be the one in the newspapers today, but the same holds true regardless of which part of the political sphere is immersed in the dark waters of power. A few weeks before that, the minister of finance was caught in fiscal evasion after having solemnly declared, with the force of all his exacerbated conviction, the opposite.
In Spain, it is even worst than that. It is worst regarding the money, and
, if it ever existed at the extent described above