France and Regression Part II

Sarkozy's response to his election win in France:

"[Voters] have chosen to break with the habits and the ideals of the
past so I will rehabilitate work, authority, morality, respect,
merit!"

I have previously addressed, albeit in a short-hand manner [France and Regression Part I], my general objections to this quote based on its logic of a society of scarcity. Within this critique I will excentuate to a greater extent Sarkozy's and the Right's perpetuation of the myth of personal responsibility and individual will, its ability to overcome all social impediments, and the outright denial of the existence of large scale social-structural factors.

Sarkozy's quote, or the logic behind it, emphasizes personal responsibility and individual meriotocracy turns away from economic and political restructuring post 1970s that has significantly affected the social relations affecting access to and quality of employment and allegiance to the state, which continues to reduce its legitimating functions of social service provision while increasing its coercive function of social control through overt violence or legal rangling.

Behind his logic is the assumption that people should help themselves, 'pick themselves up by their bootstraps' and rely less on the government for assistance. Sarkozy has bought into and perpetuated the myth that upward social mobility is solely the product of hard work and individual effort: that those who make it and end up on top have achieved these positions solely based upon their own efforts, while those at the bottom are lazy and maladjusted to the social norms and values conducive to upward mobility. Through doing so Sarkozy ignores the extensive academic literature whose findings support the social-structural arguements documenting that social (im)mobility is highly correlated with parent's socioeconomic position and educational attainment, which is itself highly correlated with parent's socioeconomic position. Furthermore, access to high quality social networks and the cultural capital conducive to upward mobility is highly correlated with parent's socioeconomic position and residential segregation that reinforces class and race segregation and therefore highly stratified and unequal acess to the resources conducive to upward mobility.

Moreover, Sarkozy's logic attributes joblessness, or weak labor force attachment and increased welfare recipients largely to a "declining commitment to the core values of society and therefore that the incentives for idleness or the factors that lead to a lack of personal and family responsibilites ought to be removed (Wilson 1996-97:570)." This argument has been systematically disproven through extensive ethnographic and qualtiative studies which find a majority of the underclass and poor desire work but are unable to obtain employment for numerous reasons - lack of educational qualifications, social networking, transportation, and cultural capital.

What is more insidious is that Sarkozy's argument, which focuses attention onto individuals and away from structures, is articulated with the explicit/implicit desire to destroy the welfare state and reduce public policy intervention into solving poverty and unemployment that result from structural factors brought on by global Neoliberal restructuring. He has attempted to argue that it is not the government's job to address social inequality because it is not a social-structural factor; for Neoliberals and social conservatives like Sarkozy social inequality is purely the result of individual choice and the defects of the individual. When in fact research consistently displays that social inequality is largely the result of the concentration and exploitation of wealth and power, which is used to perpetuate a specific structure of power to the detriment of social groups that lack economic and/or political power. A structure that deprives the working class, poor and underclass of high quality education, social networks and the cultural capital necessary for job advancement - deprivation resulting from residential segregation and the destruction of social services and the welfare state, which is itself the byproduct of capital [acting through corporations, the Right, and Left] systematical defunding the public infrastructure by reducing taxes on corporations and the rich.

The decline of social services to and residential segregation of the poor and underclass has resulted most recently in France in the massive riots among the ethnic slums in and around Paris. These riots are the byproduct of Neoliberal restrucuting which has lead to the social isolation and exclusion of minority groups from mainstream society. Coinciding with the Neoliberal destruction of the welfare state, which produces these urban slums in Paris but also in Baltimore, New York, Chicago, Newark, Detroit and Buffalo in the US, but in far worse numbers and severity throughout Latin America, India, and China, is the reinforcement of the claim that the state has the sole legitimate right to the use of force/violence.

Therefore, Neoliberalism is premised on the hollowing out of the state, the destruction of its traditional legitimating functions for the provision of social services and the rearticulation and heightening of its mechanisms of social control and cohersion. Therefore, when Sarkozy calls for a return to authority he means that the masses need to obey the state and therefore the demands of capital, if obedience does not occur, than the state will use its force to ensure that you are either a worker, prisioner or a prisioner who works - which under capital is the existence of most of the human race.

In summation, Sarkozy's quote needs to be deconstructed and upon doing so his words reveal their true meaning:

I will rehabilitate work = I will enforce degraded working conditions upon the mass of France: reducing work wages, the social wage, and job security while enforcing extended work hours.

I will rehabilitate authority = I will keep the poor and underclass [which Neoliberalism has increasingly created and perpetuated] under control through incarceration and social isolation/exclusion in ghettos.

I will rehabilitate morality and merit = I will move all blame for increasing social inequality onto the individual and deny the existence of large-scale social, economic and political factors, seeking to reproduce Thatcher's famous quote: "there is no society, only individuals!"

I will rehabilitate respect = I will enforce the myth of state neutrality and reinstigate allegiance to the state and capitalist class, who deserve their riches and political power based not on exploitation but because of hard work and individual effort.

Works Cited
William Julius Wilson, "When Work Disappers," Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 111, No. 4 (Winter, 1996-1997), pp. 567-595.