by Michele Sanfilippo
It seems simplistic to use racial discrimination alone to explain the anger and violence that are sweeping France after the murder of a seventeen-year-old boy: the fire had been smoldering for some time. It hasn’t been many months since the country mobilized for several weeks in protest against the pension reform, a law strongly desired by Macron, even at the cost of bypassing parliament. And it hasn’t been many years since the Yellow Vests locked down the country.
In my opinion, the anger present in France can also and above all be explained with growing social and economic hardship, which derive from the inability of neoliberal economic policies, now adopted everywhere, to redistribute wealth and to operate that social integration which were peculiarities of European countries, in the 60s and 70s, equipped with robust welfare systems. France, the country that gave rise to a revolution that changed history, is a country more inclined to protest than others but the same anger is present more or less everywhere in Western countries.
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In my opinion, “the origins of evil” have their roots in the triumph of neoliberal economic policies of the last fifty years, whose aims were perfectly expressed by the words and actions of Thatcher and Reagan. One of the most quoted sentences of the first era, and I quote verbatim: “Society does not exist, only individuals exist”. Reagan, like him, recited: “My friends, the story is clear: lower taxes means more freedom and every time we lower taxes the health of our nation improves.” Behind these simple and apparently trivial statements is the essence of neoliberal economic thought, which is the germ of all the economic and social problems we are observing.
The idea that there is no society and that everyone, as an individual, should think only of himself, effectively means reintroducing a sort of law of the jungle in the social and economic field: if you are stronger, take what you want. The State will eliminate snares and snares that hold back your enterprise and will not require taxes to finance services because the wealth that individuals will be able to create will be reinvested and there will be positive effects for everyone.
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After fifty years of these bankruptcy recipes which have only enormously widened the gap between the very many who have less and less and the very few who have more and more, people still insist on using them and no one, especially the left-wing movements, one dreams of contesting them. But it’s not just the economic effects that scare me; the lack of a good public school, which is the real engine for the social elevator, relegates more and more people to a marginal position.
All these people who take to the streets to devastate and raid not only for racial or economic reasons but also and above all because this society made them irrelevant. And when someone feels like this they think they have nothing left to lose.
I am sending a message to the left that does not exist: I believe that this condition can only be overcome by overturning the principles of neoliberalism and by returning to adopting welfare policies which rebuild an idea of society that is worth fighting for. Because it is not true that society does not exist. Only through coalition and mutual aid have individuals been able to protect each other. And today a policy worthy of the name should create the conditions that allow each individual to follow his own path leaving no one behind.
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