‘The Dispossessed’: How French Élites Abandoned the Working Class
A review of ‘Les dépossédés’, by Christophe Guilluy; Flammarion, 2023.
So France, land of Coco Chanel, chic riverside cafés and the Situationist International, is in a rather strange place at the moment. She seems not to know exactly what she is or what she wants to be. Perhaps she knows what she doesn’t want to be—at least, if the widespread loathing for Emmanuel Macron, complacent liberal technocrat par excellence, is anything to go by. And in the European elections, only tactical voting by those on the left stopped Marine Le Pen, Jordan Bardella and the Rassemblement National from taking power. In any event, as I wrote in a review for the European Conservative, France seems to be wrestling with that enduring question posed so memorably by Plotinus: ‘But we; who are we? No answer is forthcoming.
Against this backdrop I read Christophe Guilluy’s Les dépossédés (The Dispossessed), which takes a closer look at the sundry fractures from which France is clearly suffering. Known for the concept of ‘la France périphérique’, the title of a 2014 book about polarisation and the tension between the rulers and the ruled, he sets out a pretty grim narrative of how globalisation has, in his view, left behind vast swathes of the French population. His book is both an accusal and a warning. Things are bad enough, Guilluy suggests; but if the élites continue to ignore the common folk, they could get much, much worse.
He sets out a pretty grim narrative of how globalisation has left behind vast swathes of the French population.
His argument is this: globalisation has split France down the middle. The people now live in one of two worlds: a liberal, urban, globalised world; or a peripheral world. It goes without saying that the residents of the former are wealthy and educated; those of the latter are generally working or lower-middle class. To use David Goodhart’s terminology, the first world is occupied by ‘Anywheres’. The second world is inhabited by ‘Somewheres’. Guilluy believes that the traditional working class has been replaced in a brutal economy that stresses service jobs and only benefits the élite. The upshot of all of this is that tens of millions of people in France think the social contract has been broken, that institutions cannot be trusted, that they have been abandoned, and that they are quite ready to make themselves heard.
One of the central themes of the book is that the proud working class that was once central to the French economy has been systematically pushed to the fringes of national life. The service economy, focused in big cities like Paris, Lyon and Marseille, has left these people without steady jobs, decent pay, or the ability to climb the social hierarchy. Just as important is that this group has lost its sense of self: this, to a great extent, animated the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom. It was clearly a motivating factor in the election of Donald Trump. To dismiss as irrelevant or petty or stupid this idea—that large numbers of people have a weak or fractured sense of identity—is, I think, impractical. It is important that we know who we are, and that our self-image is more or less positive. It is also in the interests of the ruling class to take this seriously. To paraphrase Gore Vidal during one of his infamous debates with William F. Buckley, Jr., ‘This is an appeal to your own self-interest’. If the tiny sliver of French society who make the decisions keep ignoring la France périphérique, Guilluy suggests, then those who make up that group will take from them what they feel is theirs. Just look at the rise of the Gilets jaunes and the growing support for the Rassemblement National.
Guilluy’s problem is the problem that faces every writer who seeks to explain the rise of populism, whether only elucidating the phenomenon or speaking in clear sympathy with (to use Guilluy’s phrasing) the dispossessed. That problem is that there are many who will dismiss such a writer out of hand as nasty, racist, a ‘shill’ for the far-right, etc. etc.; though these familiar attacks have lost some of their emotional force as support for populist parties have grown. I know many thoughtful and clever people who believe the folks who voted for Brexit or Marine Le Pen are simply idiots, and some who have at least hinted that (ideally) they ought to be denied the vote. Up to a point, I understand that. I find some of things said about minority groups by the more crankish elements of populist parties really quite troubling; and even the most cursory of Google searches will show you the extent of it. Still, my view is that it is always worth listening to what someone says, if for no other reason than to make him feel heard. And there are many people who, rightly or wrongly, feel that advanced liberalism has swept away all of those things that, taken together, constitute much of their selfhood and many of their sources of meaning—in a word, their lives.
Many thoughtful and clever people believe that those folks who voted for Brexit or Marine Le Pen were simply idiots.
There are too many statistics in this book. Stats are important, but a good writer stresses the story and leaves the data to the footnotes unless they are particularly striking. Guilluy’s prose style, on the other hand, is good: he acts out Orwell’s belief that good prose ‘is like a window-pane’—that is, the words do not obscure the meaning that lies behind them. Furthermore, the tone of Les dépossédés is one of both urgency and concern. We have the sense reading it that Guilluy thinks something quite bad could happen if the ruling class fails to get its act together.
I suppose you could call Les dépossédés a sobering read; though that is such a cliché that I am reluctant to repeat it. I would say, rather, that it is a plausible and thorough analysis of political trends. Across the West, we are seeing the Somewheres grow, at once, in outrage and self-confidence, with the outcome being that parties called ‘far-right’ in the media are getting more and more support and (more consequentially) more and more votes. One thing I think is important to recognise about a book like this is that its author is, in the end, arguing for a fairer, more cohesive society. In point of fact it is his only moral claim, advancing behind his analysis of how the different classes in France are getting on. He joins thinkers like Patrick Deneen and Sohrab Ahmari in suggesting that neither the progressive nor classical forms of liberalism holds the key to resolving the tensions in Western society, and that some new system, centred on the common good, must emerge. Deciding whether there is any truth to that, I leave to you.
