*** PAUL JORION: Vers un nouveau monde. Renaissance du livre (1 av. du Château Jaco, B-1410 Waterloo. Tel: (32-2) 2108914 – fax: 2108915 – Email: editions@renaissancedulivre.be – Internet: http://www.renaissancedulivre.be )."Solidaris” series, No. 1. 2017, 125 pp. €11.90. ISBN 978-2-5070-5525-7.
Paul Jorion is an anthropological sociologist who forecast the sub-prime crisis. Over a long period of time he has also forged a reputation as a free and rather uncontrollable agent in the different milieux where the prevailing creed “there is no alternative". This new book inaugurates a series named after the Belgian French-speaking mutualist organisation and is very much bang on the money too. His ideas can undoubtedly be traced back to Keynes and his, “Letter to our Grandchildren" published in 1929 and in which he provides a moral argument against the evils overwhelming, "a society that is in reverse… on a human level as well as one of solidarity”. This society is totally devoted to the fatted calf and cult of "consumption" and therefore, “prostrates itself only before the possibly of making a profit, garish ostentation and bling”.
After setting the tone nothing detracts him for a single moment, at least in the first part of the book, from what Paul Jorion describes as “the world as it currently stands”. This is a world where Man, due to the, “absence of a regular and coherent wage indexation" subsequently has to rely on loans and upon which his future is mortgaged and oscillates “between living and surviving”. It is a world in which the balance of forces in society means that, “the poor pay much more than the rich when they purchase something and when they borrow or insure themselves”. It is a world where everything is subject to “ultra-liberal ideologues" and where the possibility of finding a way out of this condition through jobs and education has become a mirage and, “where the image of the dole scrounger… becomes widespread" and where someone who is lucky enough to have a job finds himself subject to "infinite flexibility”. This is the trap of a world where, nonetheless, "employment itself, is disappearing" and will no longer be the foundation of our existence… it is also a world where the state has been reduced, by way of ultra-liberalism, to nothing other than “a nightwatchman" whose only task is to ensure “the protection of private property" and the interests of those who possess the wealth. The author also refers to an “economic science” that oppresses and "accounting rules” that have been erected as the "Constitution" of our time…
Everything is not lost, however, because according to Paul Jorion all the conditions are there for citizens to become aware that they are not alone in suffering this world and that, together, they can change the current course and ensure that the, “absolute master, the pitiless lenders and unbridled form of capitalism" in its current form will in turn have to pay for the misdeeds it has committed and its final attempt to spread colonialisation “to the whole planet” for the benefit “of a small group holding infinite power”. The second part of the book involves the author developing ten different ideas that are likely to give credence to the indispensable revolt about which he talks. In turn he mentions “breaking the machine responsible for concentrating wealth” (with regard to what he considers as this “obscene” concentration of wealth, he suggests the authorisation of “loans without interest payments for consumer loans for essential goods”) and again brings into question the definition of a wage as a “business cost" and that there should be a tax on work carried out by machines, robots and software, “making the welfare state an irreversible and intangible institution”, ensuring “all goods that are essential to be free of charge” and again restoring “the ban on speculation"… there are so many different ideas that the partisans of economic orthodoxy will definitely disapprove but he does have the good taste to provide a number of precise ideas to demonstrate that the dreamer does indeed have his feet on the ground!
Does Paul Jorion sometimes get it wrong, for example, when he demonstrates a certain misplaced indulgence for "conspiracies" and “populism”? Notwithstanding this possibility, is he totally wrong when he denounces the misplaced goals of the original European project by “the central European authorities obsessed by humanity's representation in its exclusive ‘market’ form”? On the contrary, a lot of citizens would do well to lend a sympathetic ear to his recriminations, particularly when he states, “how can we invoke the European idea as an idea when it is being rejected in the way that our current leaders are rejecting the project for unified taxation throughout the Eurozone”? Is he really wrong to think that, “the European project should be revised, corrected, pursued and completed but by distancing it from its single and defining preoccupation” since the end of the 1980s, namely, that of “becoming a market", and market where only the strong are winners? In an effort to ensure that his accusation holds water, Paul Jorion, also accompanies it with concrete proposals, such as, for example, making the euro “the embryo of a new international monetary system" and to put into place a, “single tax system for the 19 countries in the Eurozone”. Is it is, therefore, unreasonable that we listen to him?
Michel Theys
*** MONIQUE PINCON-CHARLOT, MICHEL PINCON, ETIENNE LECROART: Panique dans le 16ème ! Une enquête sociologique et dessinée. Editions La ville brûle (36 rue Parmentier, F-93100 Montreuil. Tel: (33-1) 42872915 – Email: contact@lavillebrule.com – Internet: http://www.lavillebrule.com ). 2017, 94 pp. €16. ISBN 978-2-36012-091-8.
Monique Pinçon-Charlot and Michel Pinçon are sociological experts on the subject of the super rich. They are also activists who, two years ago, were shocked by the attitude of the residents of the 16th arrondissement in Paris, who took to the barricades to oppose the construction of an emergency shelter for the homeless in their neighbourhood. The researchers therefore decided to pull a number of sociological strings in this event, which was only apparently anecdotal, and they align themselves with the designer Etienne Lécroart, "to highlight the ramifications of the challenges linked to rejecting social mixing by the rich and powerful”. This book was written by six different contributors who tell the story and decode this battle that was finally won by those defending the homeless. In it, the authors provide both observations and interviews that underpin and interact with sociological texts and cartoon illustrations. As an ensemble it reveals and decodes as well as, as the authors confess in their introduction, “the energy spent by those who grab all the wealth and power to preserve it from generation to generation in socially purified areas" and which they further describe as, “one of the conditions for the reproduction of the order of class forces". (MT)
*** EVANGELOS SISKOS: Economie mondiale et européenne. Editions Patakis (38 Panayi Tsaldari, GR-10437 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 3650000 – fax: 3811940 – Email: bookstore@patakis.gr – Internet: http://www.patakis.gr ). « Sciences sociales et politiques » series. 2017, 317 pp. €19.70. ISBN 978-960-16-7707-1.
The European experience demonstrates that economic integration for a country is one of the most efficient ways of developing. It provides the evidence that the development of a regional economic organisation, which takes the shape of a common market in employment and capital is no longer simply the sum total of national economies but the subsequent transition to a higher level of competitiveness. The use of internal resources and labour, as well as the financial means that are pooled together, speed up and enhance all the different steps of economic development of each member state and the organisation of it as a whole. In this book, the economist, Evangelos Siskos, the founding member and director of the of Higher Education Studies in Business Administration at the National Economic University of Ternopol in Ukraine, argues in favour of the idea that the sustainable development of European and indeed global economy will only be possible if they are aligned with the external economic policies of the US, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Canada, Japan, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, China, India and Russia, as well as those monitored by the leaders of developing countries and those advocated by the World Trade Organisation, UN, International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
Obviously, everyone has to work intelligently and in unison in order to develop better regulation in the global economy. According to the author this is perhaps even more possible now that globalisation is accompanying increased interdependency between all countries, no matter how small they are, but which have an increasing influence at both regional and global levels. He also shows that poverty constitutes a particular risk to peace and global security and that it will be a contributing factor to international terrorism and religious and trans-national conflicts. Evangelos Siskos believes that globalisation also requires better European Union (economic) governance and therefore, an inevitable qualitative change in its structure and which the sovereign member states should take into account no matter the cost. (AKa)
*** L'Europe en formation. Revue d'études sur la construction européenne et le fédéralisme – Journal of Studies on European Integration and Federalism. Centre international de formation européenne (« L’Adriatic », 81 rue de France, F-06000 Nice. Tel: (33-4) 93979397 – fax: 93979398 – Email: europe.formation@cife.eu – Internet: http://www.cife.eu ). 2016, No. 381, 160 pp. €20. Subscription: €50.
What would Alexandre Marc have thought about this issue of the journal he founded in 1960? As a herald of comprehensive federalism, he would certainly have been delighted with the feature article in it focusing on “Freedom". As Hartmut Marhold in his introduction points out, this value is at the heart of the European project but over recent years it has been suffering from the excesses of neoliberalism and "mass hysteria", and the manufactured refugee problem. Given certain people are now threatening the fundamental value of freedom, it was therefore useful that the researchers and experts close to the International Centre for European Training seek to reassess this concept. Therefore some good contributions focus on the freedom, security and justice area, the situation involving economic freedoms within the Union and the “advantages and limitations” of economic liberalism in the fight against inequality. Arnaud Leconte provides an incisive analysis of the reasons why Europe is no longer “a spur of liberal society” (“given the crisis of confidence in the ability of the political power to project towards a desirable future” and a re-evaluation of whether the economy has to remain the main vector in European construction). In his view, 4 freedoms of movement go back to the Europe of the “Ancien régime”, which are now reawakening nationalism in their different forms and call for “a change of regime and a revolution, as peaceful as possible”. This brings us back to “federalist reflections regarding freedom”, which prevailed in the personalist journal, L’Ordre Nouveau, written between the wars by the historian Christian Roy, who provided some useful clarification regarding certain aspects that are still useful today. This is the case, for example, when he points out that the personalist writer Daniel-Rops, therefore discussed the issue of economic liberalism, “this freedom that is theatrically reclaimed by abstract economic forces and which ultimately produces for millions of flesh and blood individuals, the freedom to die of hunger”. It should also be pointed out that together with the contributions on Ukrainian policy on the European Union, the latter’s trade relations with Brazil the “free trade agreement of the 21st century”, there is also a homage paid by Claude Nigoul to Marc Heim a young economist who recently passed away and who had been “immediately seduced by the economic philosophy of federalism opposing Marxist consensus in fashion at a time of triumphant but de-humanised capitalism”. (MT)
*** JOHN CARTWRIGHT, SIMON WHITTAKER (Editors): The Code Napoléon Rewritten. French Contract Law after the 2016 Reforms. Hart Publishing (Kemp House, Chawley Park, Cumnor Hill, Oxford OX2 9PH, UK. Tel: (44-1256) 302890 – fax: 842084 – Email: mail@hartpub.co.uk – Internet: http://www.hartpub.co.uk ).« Studies of the Oxford Institute of European and Comparative Law » series, No. 25. 2017, 507 pp. £90. ISBN 978-1-50991-160-8.
Some people still call the French civil code of 1804 the “Napoleonic Code” and it has remained largely unchanged for a long time, whilst serving as a model for many different civil codes throughout the world. It is used to tackle the subject of contract law, the general regime of obligations and evidence regarding these contracts butt which was finally reformed in 2016, with a rejuvenated version that entered into force on 1 October this year. A number of experts contributing to this book, following a previous colloquy, attempt to present the main guidelines of this re-drafting. The new provisions decreed are included in French in the Annex, as well as in the English version. This translation was provided by the two editors of the book. In their introduction, Professors John Cartwright and Simon Whittaker emphasise that the new code is “considerably more clear, more explicit and easier to understand" than the original, but without altering the concision and even the elegance of the original. Nonetheless, owing to its specialist nature, it does not escape exclusive scope of the legal practitioner. The authors are all, in fact, legal practitioners and although the majority of them are French, some of them are not and they provide useful clarification in German, Spanish and Italian with regard to certain provisions examined. Moreover, with regard to the fundamentals of the reform and the transversal provisions in the new code, the insights provided by the researchers particularly focus on the creation of a valid contract, the contents and effects of the contracts, as well as failure to execute a contract and possibilities for rectifying this issue. (PBo)