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Video: Debate with Monique and Michel Charlot Nip-Nip; The Monde.fr


"The PS is not immune to collusion with the aristocracy"
LEMONDE. FR September 21, 2010
Eric: Do you think Mr. Woerth is sincere when he denies any collusion? Do you think it might not be aware that all of his life (treasurer of the UMP and budget minister and a woman employed by a donor to his party, to whom he offered the Legion of Honor ...) is a "networking" Standing with the richest?

Monique Pinçon-Charlot: Eric Woerth has both conscious and not conscious of these conflicts of interest, because in the ruling class, the collusion between power and money is a de facto collusion. Businessmen, financiers and policy can be found daily in the same circles, in the first opera to golf, or dinner and cocktails.

TheArtofYello: What does the case Woerth-Bettencourt of French society? What it teaches us about ourselves? It means that the links between money and politics are particularly visible to become intolerable? We have integrated?

Michel Pinçon: This collusion is still specific to certain circles placed on top of the social ladder. It is true that the recovery of the success and enrichment circulate this desire for wealth in the lower categories. This is an example of the posture of the President of the Republic to try and trivialize the legitimate pursuit of fortune.

But this money-collusion policy does not apply to working classes, who, anyway, stay away from enrichment, which is reserved for people who have long-term studies, for example, and enter the world of business and finance.

Vincent: How to explain the tolerance of public opinion regarding the matter Woerth-Bettencourt and more broadly, political and financial scandals? Do we find this behavior also with our European neighbors?

Michel Pinçon: This tolerance may be more apparent than real. These scandals led to legal proceedings, indictments, trials up. This tolerance is the result of non-jurisdiction of the ordinary citizen to express to the courts for example, his refusal. That said, opinion polls suggest a clear frustration, resulting in a loss of confidence in the current authorities.

CamilleM: Why necessarily reduce the figure of Nicolas Sarkozy in a class concept? Whether the product of an oligarchy of course, but in terms of its objectives and membership aware, I think especially in the service of itself. I do not think there is a lot of solidarity there, albeit in an oligarchy. Is not it just that the famous "break"? Every man for himself ...

Monique Pinçon-Charlot: Nicolas Sarkozy, as we apprehended as chairman of the rich in our recent book, is a character who has built his life and his political career in Neuilly and in the Hauts- de-Seine, which we believe is in the service of the richest in our country.

As such, it satisfies both the CAC 40 bosses, financiers, businessmen and other leaders of society and his own narcissism, his own ego, his own personality, which was built in the hand, in the Competition will be the first having been, throughout childhood and adolescence in Neuilly, rather than the second.

Step: Do not you think that Catholic voters will flee fascinated by this government money?

Monique Pinçon-Charlot: The Catholic electorate is affected particularly relevant given the values brought by Christianity by décomplexion that Nicolas Sarkozy has introduced at the top of the state vis-à-vis money, consumption ostentatious and visibility of the operation workings of power.

But anyone who occupies a position atop the company recognizes the violence with which Nicolas Sarkozy tries to pass France in an advanced stage of capitalism, and religious positions, being a man or a woman, being young or old variables become secondary to the main variable: the place at the top of society as a combination of all forms of wealth, whether it be economic, cultural, social or symbolic.

Francois: Are the links between the holders of financial capital and the state relate only to ministers and their cabinets or is it that organizations like the Court of Auditors or inspection of Finance also maintain close links with the great fortunes?

Pinçon Michel: There are links between all the social elites. Which builds bridges, passages between business, politics, showbiz, arts and literature, the media. Members of control bodies as the Court of Auditors, officials, inspectors often finances, can not but be in contact directly or indirectly with the big bosses, bankers.

is why we talk in our book, an oligarchy which is at the head of state, and also economy, and form one class.

TheArtofYello: The composition of the Socialist Party does it for him an alternative remote risk of collusion?

Monique Pinçon-Charlot: The Socialists are diverse. Within the Socialist Party, there are oligarchs left as Dominique Strauss-Kahn, whose networks and values are not so far that those of Nicolas Sarkozy. And that is we believe the risk to the election of 2012 to see an oligarch from left to right to replace an oligarch, whose main value neoliberalism, capitalism in its phase financialized and globalized, service One class : One who has access, specifically, the financial world.

But there is within the Socialist Party of Socialists of more radical left who want to transform the capitalist system into a more just, more equitable, where the Republican values - freedom, equality, fraternity - are at the heart of decisions power.

Helen: What do you think of the argument justifying dippers local office for members to better understand the field?

Monique Pinçon-Charlot: Members, parliamentarians are elected in the nation and therefore they do not need to have another local office. This does not therefore appear to be an argument that justifies the multiple directorships.

Beast: Do you think the gap between elite and popular classes (even if the word classes seems out of fashion) he is called upon to dig?

Monique Pinçon-Charlot: The gap is huge these days, and if we do not take legislative measures to fight against the accumulation of political offices, the gap continues to widen. Therefore, in our book, we offer a number of steps to change things, including the abolition of accumulated political mandates, including the fact that we should not be a career in politics is to say that there should be a status that allows elected to rejoin the world of work.

Thus, in the National Assembly, whereas today there are zero workers and one employee, this legislation would open the chamber to women, diversity, social and ethnic diversity. And then, the turnout in the elections would certainly be upset.

Godin: Is there a specifically French links that you see?

Monique Pinçon-Charlot: I'm not sure that the collusion between politics and money is a French specificity. What is a Specificity today's era of Nicolas Sarkozy is the visibility of this collusion. From May 6, 2007, the evening at Fouquet's has given to see that coming media bosses CAC 40 came together to celebrate an election victory to the highest summit of the state.

And it is this visibility of the operation of the workings of power, the "rupture" of Nicolas Sarkozy, who helped us make the book The President of the wealthy, which has greatly facilitated the work to uncover how this oligarchy into action.

Sabine: Do you not think that a worker or employee who joined the Chamber will not experience the same "drift"? Is this not a characteristic of humans?

Michel Pinçon: For a sociologist, the characteristic of the human is essentially to build the social world through family, school, later the business. That is to say there is no human essence. The innate is something very limited and the relationship between time, space, the other is built by learning very early, what we've seen in working class backgrounds as sociologists, and working in the "uptown".

If you think a little part of life between "4000" La Courneuve and the Avenue Foch is the origin of worldviews, values, relationships with others very different and express the weight of social objectified in urban forms on personalities.

Lionel: What kind of events would you believe, enable workers to gain a greater awareness of class?

Michel Pinçon: Regarding events, we can consider that the case-Woerth Bettencourt is a developer that may be causing a beginning of awareness. Because show delivery to light other unexpected elements.

For example, restitution of 30 million euros due to Ms. Bettencourt mechanisms of the tax shield for a minimum wage-earners, is still quite amazing. This type of event shows what should remain under the waterline of the iceberg of great wealth, only one part is visible, very small compared to the vastness of opulence.

TheArtofYello: After your book on Pinochet, President of the rich is the second explicitly committed to the content. What motivates you to get out of your usual scientific objectivity?

Pinçon Michel: I do not think we are so out of our reserve sociological, that is to say, the desire not to take systematic advantage. What happens with this new book is that we're entering the political arena where previously we stayed in the family, we did an anthropology of the big bourgeoisie, analyzing their lifestyle, education given to children, the relationship to culture.

But we did not directly address the political dimension. In approaching our subject, the chairman of the rich, we have linked our experience with the social world that we could observe, thanks to Nicolas Sarkozy in large part, the relationship between these families of high society and politics.

What we could say such inequalities outside the school, where children from affluent backgrounds are more fortunate, had extensions in politics, where we could see the importance of the power of the upper middle class families who can greatly influence decision making by the existence of networks that we talked about earlier, which are really at the heart of social power.

Lionel: You mention the hurdle of symbolic violence that pushes workers to be ashamed of themselves in many situations. How to combat this symbolic violence?

Monique Pinçon-Charlot: Symbolic violence is actually the heart of the reproduction of relations of domination. In other words, the dominant dominated recognize their superiority in the areas of their financial literacy, culture, their lifestyle, even in keeping their bodies and their sartorial elegance.

Fighting this symbolic violence is essential if we want to change these relations of domination. And as a result of Pierre Bourdieu, we believe that the knowledge of how dominant and the updating of the mechanisms of this symbolic violence are able to give weapons to combat it.

Leo: Have you encountered difficulties in studying politics today - and in the current climate - in person as sociologists? More generally what are the worries that sociologists may encounter in studies of political environment?

Pinçon Michel: One major concern for working in the political world, the language of wood. It is not easy to collect a speech that is not agreed, which is not pre-built at the time of the interview.

Another difficulty is also present when working in the big bourgeoisie on their lifestyles, for example: politicians and upper class will read the results of research, which is not safe because they have any means of repression.

CamilleM: What about the middle class? What is its place in your summary, among the smaller classes and upper middle class?

Monique Pinçon-Charlot: The middle classes are in the inter-office, over their heads, the ruling class, and beneath their feet, the popular classes. They are characterized by an individualism that can be described as positive, with the injunction for individuals to achieve, succeed, whereas in the dominant classes, we speak of "collectivism practice ", that is to say, solidarity, sharing of the cake in the interests of the class.

While in the popular classes in France today, we speak of" disaffiliation "and of "negative individualism" to the extent that deindustrialization has cost the workers their industrial capital, with the factories, manual labor, which gives a lot of pride, that gives an identity, and their trade union and political capital.

It remains in France today is only one class in the Marxist sense, and that the ruling class it is.

Lionel: Do you think it is still possible TODAY 'hui for workers to have some class consciousness to enable them to mobilize massively to defend their interests?

Michel Pinçon: Workers have to overcome new challenges in social relations. There is the loss of a strong identity that is built into the pride of work and in the presence of class organizations in the business and residential areas.

These organizations were carriers of a memory that returns to 1789, but the great movements of the nineteenth century - 1848, the Commune - the Popular Front for Resistance in 1968. A memory that is lost today with the weakening of the organizations. And with a presence in the working class, which is still large, immigrant workers whose memory is obviously different and refers more to the colonial period or attempts to socialism in the East to struggles in France.

Helen: In an interview with Telerama advise you to do as the rich: each other, support each other ... how, given the prevailing individualism, federate exasperation to make a difference?

Michel Pinçon: Large worldly bourgeois sociability, which helps enormously to keep alive the collectivism practice we talked about. This sociability is fashionable at all times: it is the business breakfasts, lunches, cocktail parties, dinners, but also the first opera, small dinners with friends, playing golf on Sunday. It's also among one's own beautiful neighborhoods, are also shared holidays. In short, it continues to share space and time with his fellow man. It is the dominant force.

should therefore be taken that the working classes and middle classes are the terms of sociability, the binder for all positions in protest associations, political parties, trade unions, in the resistance to work, even sometimes in civil disobedience, it all ends up creating a dynamic that takes mayonnaise through sociability, thanks to the collectivism that is sorely lacking today. The big bourgeoisie

overcomes fault lines that have been dramatic and cruel. For example, wealthy nobles and the old bourgeoisie are now only a single group, where marriage alliances are very numerous, and we called the aristocracy of money.

Similarly, divides between Catholics and Protestants, between Christians and Muslims or Buddhists, are largely overcome. Thus, in some large schools - Ecole des Roches in Verneuil-sur-Avre, or Le Rosey in Lausanne - the elite international ecumenical practice a total and provide young people an education of tolerance, so that the bulk is preserved.

President of the wealthy, La Découverte, 2010, 14 euros.

Chat moderated by Eric Nunes