- Confined, François Ruffin asked French people about the impacts of the coronavirus crisis in the health, distribution, industry and ecology sectors.
- The deputy for the Somme took out a book, Leur folie, nos vies , in which he harshly criticized the handling of the crisis by Emmanuel Macron and his government.
- The rebel also sketches political proposals to build "the world after".
During confinement, François Ruffin worked out a sort of diary of the coronavirus crisis in his kitchen. Listening to and questioning caregivers, cashiers, workers, environmentalists and philosophers, he recorded their exchanges, and formulated his proposals for "the next world", which he resolutely wishes to be ecological and social. The result is a book, which comes out this Wednesday in bookstores, Leur folie, nos vies (The links that liberate). The rebellious reporter-MP answered questions from 20 Minutes on Tuesday.
The title of your book comes from a speech by Emmanuel Macron: "Delegating our food, our protection, our ability to care, our living environment, basically, to others is madness". What do you put behind this word?
This word was in Macron's speech, and it was already in Sarkozy's speech in 2008 when the financial bubble exploded. It is madness to relocate our productions to the other side of the world, the madness of the all-market. But the madness of madness is to continue to press the accelerator of growth, competition and globalization, when we know that we are sinking straight into the wall of the ecological crisis.
Those who, for decades, have not wanted to outsource, refuse to allow health to become a market, were normally accused of being mad. But to judge only by austerity, deficit or accounting is a form of madness. There is an interesting reversal with this crisis, a temporary emergence of the truth.
According to you, this crisis is a chance to change your model. In 2008, however, after the subprime crisis, you write that nothing has changed. Why would it be any different this time?
It depends on us. A crisis is what men make of it. That of 1929 gave rise to Nazism in Germany, the New Deal in the United States and the Popular Front in France. This crisis, either it is an accelerator of injustices, Orwellian nightmares with drones in our garden, masks, distancing, or it allows us to change direction, if we decide.
Today, the forces of money want it to continue as before, to return to the front, and even worse than before. Faced with this madness, humanist forces must be set in motion so that we do not deliver a terrifying world to our children.
The deputies and senator agreed Tuesday on new adaptations of the labor law. Will the next world not be even further from your hopes?
It can be a worst-case accelerator. We are told that we have to revive, bounce back, work more, produce more, consume more, like the hamster in a cage, when it doesn't make sense. We must get the hamster out of the cage, and substitute an economy of desires for an economy of needs. Today, manufacturers and advertisers are driving the economy. But what do we need? Food, clothing, medicine. This is what we have to produce.
The people in charge of our country do not lead, because they are inhabited by the ideology of the invisible hand of the market. But it does not make masks or gowns, it does not focus on the basic needs of the country. So there needs to be a managed economy, that doesn't mean nationalized, but with objectives set for companies.
We are told that we have to revive, bounce back, work more, produce more, consume more, like the hamster in a cage (…) Today, the forces of money want it to continue as before, to come back at the front, and even worse than before.
Concretely, does that mean setting constraints on companies?
Yes, and directing efforts, capital and know-how mainly in three sectors: agriculture, which must be relocated and decimposed, building and energy renovation, and the professions of connection and care, this is ie caregivers, teachers, carers, childminders ...
What do you think should stop producing?
I have a list! The bottle opener that sends social media notifications when you open a beer. Why not the dryer? I was talking to people from the Whirlpool factory in Amiens, they agreed that we can do without it. Should 5G be one of our priorities? We must not produce to produce, we must produce what is useful to our lives.
And who would decide what is useful?
There should be meetings in companies, and especially multinationals, with management, workers, but also representatives of consumers, residents of the neighborhood, environmental associations ...
You defend economic protectionism. But isn't that risking economic reprisals, and shortages given our dependence on imports?
Customs taxes and import quotas have been used for decades to regulate market madness. In Picardy, we are unable to build masks and overcoats while we built our cathedrals thanks to our textile empire, which broke its face in the 1970s when we relocated this industry. It is pure madness! If we want to bring part of the production back to France, import quotas must be put in place.
What is the right scale according to you, national or European?
I would like it to be at European level, even if there is already significant intra-European competition. I am very, very skeptical about the fact that the 27 countries of the European Union agree to change their tune. There are times in history when nations have to carry the iron, take a step forward. I am sure that if we take heterodox economic decisions, other countries will follow us, such as Spain, Greece, Italy, Portugal…
National protectionism is not compatible with European treaties.
There is a necessary disobedience. In any case, European treaties forbid us everything.
The EU has released a 750 billion euro plan. Is this going in the right direction?
We balance 750 billion, but to do what? If it is the invisible hand of the market that decides, these pennies will go neither into local agriculture, nor into the energy renovation of the building, nor in the revaluation of the wages of the caregivers or the ecology. That is why I am an interventionist, and in favor of an effort of climate war.
There is a necessary disobedience. In any case, European treaties forbid us everything.
You want to prepare for the "battle after", through a popular movement. But the confinement could accentuate the withdrawal, and the failings of the State encouraged the citizens to fend for themselves, for the masks for example.
The general dynamic of society is atomization, individualization, that's right. But we can hope that this crisis is a time to recover. I can see that the road is rough. I feared that post-confinement, people would hesitate to demonstrate, but it resumed. I think there is latent anger in our society. What path of expression will she find?
What do you expect from the plan for the hospital, to be presented this summer?
I visited the Saint-Nazaire hospital, where the head doctor said to me: “Before, when I arrived at work, I wondered how my patients were. Now I wonder who I'm going to take out. In order for caregivers to do their job properly, you have to get out of accounting logic. It is also clear that they are underpaid compared to other European countries. And we must remove the regional health agencies, which are nests for Excel tables.
You denounce a "chasm" between the heroisation of caregivers and workers on the second line of this crisis in speeches, and the real recognition of their work. What do you want for them?
We broke these jobs of cashiers, carers, housekeepers, childminders, in terms of income and hours, giving them small slices of work in the morning, at the end of the day, night. The social utility of these professions has now been demonstrated. They must therefore raise their wages and give them a status. For example, it is necessary to count in their working time travel time, training, and not only to point them out.
If we let the market do it, tomorrow it will be the all-drive, the all-Amazon, and the cashiers will be replaced by automatic cash registers. Is that what we want? If we consider that cashiers bring people into supermarkets, we can create a tax on automated teller machines. A tax on the logistical square meter can help push back the Amazon and grow local businesses.
How to implement the proposals you make in this book. By the street? Through the ballot boxes?
You need both. If we only have the street, it's May-68, and the ballot boxes, it's May 1981. In both cases, we were hemiplegic.
To win at the polls, you would need an alliance on the left, even with environmentalists. So far the alliance has not taken place.
The problem is the presidential one, it is an obstacle. There is a head, and the rest is behind. We can clearly see the problem that this poses for us, it is undeniable.
Does it seem impossible to unite the left and the Greens in 2022?
I will make appeals. But we need a breath of air outside the parties coming from below. We will see what happens by 2022, because we are in a very unstable political period, and Emmanuel Macron is one of the proofs.
He promised to "reinvent himself" ...
It is at the foot of the wall that we see the mason, and for the moment I see nothing.
And the 110 billion released by the government to deal with this crisis?
There is no guarantee that they will serve to move towards more social justice. Besides, Emmanuel Macron is careful not to pronounce these words. But it is not an isolated particle. He arrived at the Elysee Palace with the support of economic forces, which every day earn billions thanks to this state of the world, by being able to seek lower wages in China, more flexible environmental standards in India. Do you think they will really reinvent themselves? Not at all !
Has the strategy of the popular movement of the rebels failed?
We are a stone of it, we are not the whole wall. Cultural hegemony has been swept away. The deadly triptych, growth-competition-globalization, brought hope before. Today, these words worry people. This is what Antonio Gramsci [an Italian philosopher] calls detachment from the dominant ideology. The problem is that something has to be linked to something else, and we are not there yet. And so far, the latent anger has not found a political translation.
The word decay also worries…
I am not decreasing, but increasing, that is to say that I know that growth no longer brings happiness.
As a rebellious MP, do you feel like you have failed? You have withdrawn your text on cleaning women from the Assembly, which was to be presented on Thursday.
The walkers have completely emptied the bill, it is unprecedented. The right did not do that when it had the majority, and neither did the Socialists. We have one day a year to present our bills, and they have emptied them. There is a Ministry of Labor, a Secretary of State for Gender Equality, and 300 deputies On the march, they have been in business for three years, and they have offered nothing for cleaning women .
Your book is also a presidential program, right?
No, I do not think so. There are proposals, yes, but it is mainly the work of a journalist. We must keep the memory of that time. I don't want there to be an amnesia law. We see how the political and media system works today, with an immediate erasure and an accelerated time.
In government, they want us to forget that they said that we did not need masks, that they asked us not to bury our parents anymore while at the same time they sent the workers to the factory to produce mirrors, boat sails, tires ... And we forget that, for lack of reliable sanitary means, that is to say tests and a certain number of hospital beds, Emmanuel Macron and his government have managed the crisis with police measures ... We must not forget.
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