“Egalitarianism and out-of-control public debt”. French philosopher Chantal Delsol speaks out

The Estonian writer Hermann Keyserling, a cosmopolitan and polyglot, outlined the character of every European nation. Of France, he wrote: “It is a garden, and the French are gardeners.” He added, however, that the country was “the most spoilt in Europe” and that it would be less able to withstand major changes. “We are dealing with a society in which too many adults have given up exercising their authority over their children to educate them, and in which the ruling elites have been repeating for decades that secondary school pupils and students were entitled to everything without doing anything, and that they would all become part of the elite without deserving anything,” Chantal Delsol, France’s best-known Catholic thinker and author of the book La France: Prosperity and Turmoil’, who founded the Hannah Arendt Institute and is a member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, the ‘pinnacle’ of French culture.

“We have generations swimming in unreality,” continues the philosopher Chantal Delsol in Il Foglio. “A child cannot grow up without learning the frustration of fitting into the world they are entering. And a society made up entirely of elites does not exist: it is a contradiction. Acquiring everything without effort is impossible. We have generations who have been given high marks as a matter of principle, who have been awarded their school-leaving certificates as a matter of principle, who have been promised a five-year postgraduate degree as a matter of principle. And they find themselves faced with ParcoursSup, the only filter the authorities have found to prevent entire generations – largely illiterate – from flooding into degree courses in Sociology or Psychology with no career prospects. So they kick up a fuss: what, are they being denied something? Hence the fury. They are the victims. Not because their school premises are run-down (they always have been; in forty years of teaching I’ve never seen a roll of toilet paper). But because they’ve been lied to across the board.”

The French also seem to excel in the role of the famous spoilt children of Western prosperity, who had everything and yet claim to be so unhappy. “The French are spoilt because the country is rich, beautiful and largely spared the destruction of the 20th century. They are spoilt because they benefit from highly egalitarian political and social systems: healthcare and education are free, social benefits are extensive at all levels, one in two French people pay no direct taxes, and wealthy French people pay higher taxes than in any other country. Everywhere you hear professions or social groups denouncing the immense inequality that supposedly reigns in our country, yet there is no more egalitarian country in the world. And yet, you hear it said all day long that a large proportion of the French population does not eat enough! I see this as a sign of a country so steeped in egalitarian socialism that, ultimately, the population works very little and poverty is rife: Soviet or Soviet-style regimes at the end of the road.”

Count Alexis de Tocqueville understood this two hundred years ago: the desire for equality becomes ever more insatiable as equality increases. “Tocqueville’s paradox is a law of human nature,” says Delsol. “The law of desire knows no bounds, and this is terribly true of equality, because envy is a fundamental human emotion. Today, even promotion on the basis of merit – which is the fairest system we have found – is being challenged: to do away with the criterion of merit altogether means sliding into Soviet-style socialism, where everything is divided equally without asking for anything in return.’ France cannot rid itself of its demons. “Unbridled, unstoppable public spending is the consequence of its demagogic and ideological cowardice. It must consume, it must squander, because those in power dare not say no, because citizens never stop complaining. The out-of-control public debt highlights the governments’ inability to refuse anything, to resist the mechanism of permanent victimisation. And their inability to implement far-reaching reforms, due to a lack of courage. As soon as a group makes demands and rebels, those in power hand out money, incapable of doing anything else. This is never enough, because what is needed are far-reaching reforms and authority. It is the Danaids’ barrel.”

Population growth has stalled, and an ageing society – one that is growing ever older – must withstand the pressure of migration. “No, it cannot! History tells us so. However, we must not believe that the demographic crisis is a Western phenomenon: it is global, and it is not because the majority of immigrants are Muslim that they continue to have large families. As things stand, it is true that our demographic decline is driving us to welcome the young people knocking at our door. But it must also be noted that jobs – for example in hospitals – are far from all being filled, whilst a large proportion of the immigrant population is unemployed and living on benefits. We must therefore be wary of overly categorical statements, in any case. The reality is mixed.”

We will get used to the crisis. “We will get used to post-Christian societies. The worst thing in this case is to remain stuck in nostalgia and bitterness. We must face up to a new tragic situation: forms of nihilism, a conquering and fanatical Islam, and the weariness of the West. But do you really think our ancestors’ situation was any less tragic? What of the generation caught between Nazism and communism, or the generation that had to set off in 1914 for a war of extermination? Human existence has never been easy, and its beauty never stems from ease or nonchalance, but from the difficulties that are overcome.”