In creating the Left Party (PG), Jean-Luc Mélenchon has finally acknowledged being socialist in the party of the same name was impossible. That is at least a political actor that seems true to his convictions and dare leave the ship before accepting too many compromises, which are the daily life of the majority of its former fellow adventurers. Although it took him.
It must indeed consider the gradual shift (so to speak!) Of all political parties to the right. Never been so right right, and PS is now made the big centrist party in France. The joint program between 1981 PS and PCF, was not it at least as to the left than is the NPA today? While political commentators fail to see this reality, it should take note of this development. Moreover, worldwide, Sarkozy is considered a representative of the extreme right!
So today, in France, the weather, just be left true to his convictions, is considered extreme! And it's funny that we place the NPA to the far left so that this party is not leftmost the current UMP is right.
This book is "neither a manifesto nor a Program" (p19) but a conceptual framework, a "sketch" (p19) "in order to discuss" "and make them want" (p20). Because the objective of Jean-Luc Mélenchon in writing this book is to "share optimism and enthusiasm" (p19). "I deliberately take my desires for reality. It gives them the strength contagion, "he adds (p20).
The book is structured around five chapters: the Republican Refoundation; another division of wealth; out of the Lisbon Treaty; environmental planning; make another peace.
The first chapter presents the framework in which Mélenchon's approach fits: true democracy, so representative of the will of enlightened people and to favor the public interest.
For, beyond the title populist strand, it should pay attention to the subtitle, which is an indispensable complement: "Quick, the citizens' revolution". Mélenchon wrote that this "citizen" adjective "indicates both the means and the purpose of this action. "(P15) Nothing to see so with the" big night "! And the armed struggle that accompanies it.
In order to rebuild the country, he advocates a Constituent Assembly. It focuses on the necessary involvement of citizens, since "we do not change a country in depth, democratically, if the people are conspicuously absent. "(P26) This requires that we are all" citizens of a nation "and not just" occupants of a territory "(p29), and to fight against resignation, because today" the haves rest assured, the jaded resign themselves: life goes on. "(P32)
While we have been dispossessed (sometimes with our tacit agreement since it is easier to rely on others) and dominated the defense of particular interests, Mélenchon invite us collectively to "identify" the "general interest in all areas "and to" implement. "(P24)
To become a full citizen, we must "not be able to articulate what is good for itself, but what is good for all. This requires power "to distance". With his personal interests and prejudices. This is learned. "(P35) in the passage from the second chapter on the role of schools whose" purpose is to awaken the freedom of the mind. "(P36)
This first chapter shows clearly how Mélenchon approach is registered; that's why I got lingered. I will pass quickly over the rest of the book.
The second chapter focuses on the distribution of wealth. Mélenchon this "wealth sharing" as a "starting point" of the "citizens' revolution" because for everyone to become a citizen, you have that everyone can live with dignity. (P54) And in my opinion it should to pay special attention to what he writes on page 55: "there is more visible poor, the greater the fear of homelessness. And unless we fight for fear of losing what one has. Unless we fight, more deregulation and more advance there is new poor. "
To fight against indecent wealth gap, it ought to increase the share of value added accruing to labor (p51), to tax capital income at the same level as those of labor (18% against 42% at present according him) (p53), to introduce a maximum income (p67).
Being in the third chapter the wry observation of the turn taken Europe from undemocratic and ineffective practices to a "totalitarian slope" (p84), and "impose [ing] by all means liberalism, especially here where people do not want it "(p86), Mélenchon waives a federal Europe project he had dreamed.
He advocates the "opt-out" for not applying the non-compliance with rules our ideals, and the referendum to impeach the commitments contrary to the interests of France, including those contained in the Lisbon Treaty. (P87)
I was pleasantly surprised to find in this book a chapter on "environmental planning" or how to ensure that the planet remains livable. This is the biggest challenge we face.
Environmental planning, "is to decide that we will move from a model of production and exchange to another in a controlled manner. That is to say, with discussions to assess needs. From programming to put in motion the means. Democratic decisions to take on the collective consequences. "(P102) Because" what is not planned is left to the invisible hand of market and liberal norms. "(P103)
However, if the logic is set and that stigmatizes Mélenchon "charlatans of green capitalism" (p92), the contents of this ecological planning is very little explained relocation (the opposite of free trade) and public transport particularly common, and a reflection sketch on consumption (consume less to save humanity, or consume less to live better? Both? It is not known).
Environmental planning, what? This is (among other points):
- Implement measures to strongly reduce our dependence on fossil fuels (energy but not only). For two reasons: limit climate change and reduce the impact on our lives in the increase in prices of these resources due to their scarcity;
- Anticipate the effects of now unavoidable climate change and resource scarcity.
And all these measures must be linked with the social question.
Then the word productivism is present only once to me it seems (p93). It is then associated with capitalism. But the disease productivism plaguing the world, both socially and ecologically, is what is best shared between the different political trends; the PCF, the PG adventure companion within the Left Front, is still fundamentally productivist! We then painful to see how the MP could implement the proposals put forward here by Mélenchon. And especially since the Greens, while moving away from the left, have merged in a cluster that is political ecology that the PS is to the left.
It would be dangerous to try to summarize here Mélenchon's positions in the last chapter on peace, since many aspects are addressed.
While "the system" "assists, hallucinated, at its own dynamic of destruction of the human ecosystem," and that "governments will become political spectacle agencies" (p138), Mélenchon made policy proposals in the best sense of term it certainly exposes succinct analyzes, because that is not the purpose of this book, but fair and consistent.
This book clearly expresses the ideas it develops and turns invigorating. Its author has achieved its goal.
Finally, in addition defend ideas which should claim any citizen saying leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon does he is not part of the heritage of the National Council of Resistance? This is necessary, but is it enough?
(Krik, Amazon.com, 13/11/10)
