He was very ambitious to summarize the changes of the French Left since the mid nineteenth century until today sixty pages. However, the bet is successful, Michéa really has a sense of clarity and conciseness.
He managed to make it clear that the current real liberalism and socialism are from the same school of thought: the ideology of the Enlightenment.
In the XIX th century the "left" represented the middle class (small commercial bourgeoisie and industrial bourgeoisie), while the "right" came from the landed aristocracy and rentier and affiliated to the moral values of the church.
The workers and trade union movements were independent did not want to appear in the company of Republicans who had fired on the village. It is with the Dreyfus affair that things change: the Socialists will make an alliance with the Republicans who now defend the "camp of Progress" against the right deemed "reactionary". Metaphysics of Progress and the "sense of history" thus become the new markers of the left.
It was not until forty years (May 68 + Mitterrand liberalism) that the left betrayed the workers and socialism in fully adopting the market economy and abandoning the last moral values he had left. [For more information on this subject read the books of Michel Clouscard: Neo-fascism and ideology of desire; Capitalism of the seduction]
The right has also changed since 1945 she dares not sustain its fundamental concepts: the nation, the family, the fight against the power of the Silver etc ... it has also become liberal on all points.
This analysis is not as paradoxical as this: Is it really surprising to see two allegedly antagonistic systems initially come together when we know that they have the same philosophical ascendancy?
That Voltaire knew that he would cause one day unwittingly gender theory and FEMEN? Diderot could he suspect that his philosophy was to bring market economy without limits in the name of free competition and egalitarianism?
Any system, be it as attractive initially knows his excesses. The key is to be able to stop in time ...
In Scoliae we find interesting reflections on the opposition: the right logic / logic of gift that should be developed. Note also that Marx and Engels were already wary of the possible consequences a total break with the moral values of the ancien regime. To make fade some "leftists".
