Ihe democracy has two components, one liberal – with the freedom to think, to associate, to contract –, the other properly republican – that of the sovereignty of the people, universal suffrage, elected representatives to vote for the law , and the institutions that stem from it.
The law applies to everyone, those who disagree can demonstrate, but they do not secede and thus put their beliefs behind their membership in society. With this important clarification: the law still has to be perceived as legitimate. Sovereignty belongs to the people and not to the Assembly or a fortiori to the executive. These are essential to represent and implement it, but they do not absorb it.
The street does not make the law (how could it?), but it is the duty of the political power to hear it, just as it is its duty to associate the unions, social democracy. We are far from it. The exorbitant power entrusted to the president by the operation of the Ve République offers full latitude to infatuation and authoritarianism, two registers in which Emmanuel Macron excels.
The current crisis, the result of years of contempt and austerity
However, this political crisis needs to be nuanced, in a sense. If there are lively debates on the functioning of our institutions, hardly anyone questions their foundation, the primacy of universal suffrage. The extreme right, apart from certain thugs, no longer equates the republic with the Gueuse. If she did, her score would not exceed 2% – we can measure the comfort of those who limit themselves to denouncing her “fascism”.
Similarly, the extreme left has abandoned the “dictatorship of the proletariat”, even if its most ultra currents continue to outbid in the throwing of cobblestones. Above all, the political crisis feeds mainly on the feeling that an essential sphere of our lives, that of the economy, escapes the republican principles supposed to prevail. We know it at least since Jaurès: the republic rings hollow if it does not extend to the economy, with the social republic.
That the crisis arose around pensions is not insignificant. For a long time France could be proud of its public services. Years of contempt and austerity have led where we know, with a hospital on the verge of asphyxiation and, from school to high school, the difficulty of recruiting. However, France can still take pride in its pensions. The poverty rate for people over 65 is lower there than elsewhere (10.9% compared to 16.8% in the European Union).
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