Back to the spirit of Philadelphia is a political necessity

Alain Supiot is one of the most prominent French lawyers. Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies of Nantes, Professor of Law, member of the Institut Universitaire de France, it is also a committed citizen.

"The spirit of Philadelphia" is a profound work, intelligent, sensitive, reminiscent of the foundations of experiences from 30 years of war (1914-1944): it is indeed in Philadelphia, May 10, 1944, that was proclaimed the first international Declaration of universal rights.

30 years of ultra-liberalism trashed international law, national rights, labor, human dignity. "Faith in the infallibility of markets has replaced the desire to conquer some justice in the production and distribution of wealth throughout the world, condemning to poverty, migration, exclusion and violence the huge crowd losers of the new world economic order. "

As demonstrated by the author, the failure of this thought by the facts, incites "to update the normative work by the end of the war."

I regularly denounces the extreme harmfulness of thinkers like Hayek, who was a lawyer by training who has worked to "systematically undo" this social heritage:

"Once we give license to the politicians to intervene in the spontaneous order of the market, they (...) initiate the cumulative process whose intrinsic logic inevitably leads to an ever wider domination of politics over the economy. " (In "Law, Legislation and Liberty").

The author continues:

"This criticism is born the objective of the libertarian revolution to" spontaneous order "of the market away from power urns This assumes entirely remove the distribution of work and wealth, as well as. currency, in the political sphere. " (P.32)

Undo and prevent the institutions that protected human dignity can be replenished; this is the libertarian fight that recreates a reference scientism to justify its anti-democratic action.

We are in a totalitarian ideology: "Making the competition the only universal organizing principle of the world leads to the same dead ends that the totalitarianisms of the twentieth century, whose common feature was precisely the enslavement of the Right to the supposed laws of the economy, history or biology "(p.74)

I clearly understood the meaning of my struggle, already expressed against the Stalinists against the revisionists and now first, against libertarians:

"Popularized by Stalin before being formalized in contemporary economics, the idea of ​​human capital served as Communist equivalent to the Nazi concept of" human material ". It comes from a scientistic worldview that reduces man to the state of economic resource. " (P.142)

Lie Milton Friedman, one of the other fathers of ultra-liberalism:

"The only social responsibility of business is that of making profits".

Being responsible means being accountable to someone potentially, a community. Friedman's postulate refers to nothing. Responsibility is empty. Being responsible implies a referent, a Law. But national laws are in competition, the sovereignty of the state disintegrates into suzerainties (back to the Middle Ages) fading to the rule of capital profit.

Indeed:

"To judge of reality, there must be (...) the return to a system of values ​​which is outside him and vice versa, to question a value system, we must admit that it is not inherent the nature and ready to debate or dispute. " (P.85)

This book is essential. The ideas are of astonishing richness (I have not given an overview). I make one of my favorite books to plunge regularly.