*** CEDRIC HUGREE, ETIENNE PENISSAT, ALEXIS SPIRE: Les classes sociales en Europe. Tableau des nouvelles inégalités sur le vieux continent. Agone (BP 70072, F-13192 Marseille cedex 20. Fax: (33-0) 491642703 – Email: info@agone.org – Internet: http://www.agone.org / Diffusion-distribution: Les Belles lettres, 25 rue du Général Leclerc, F-94270 Le Kremlin-Bicêtre. Tel: (33-1) 45151970 – Fax: 45151980). Series ‘L’ordre des choses.’ 2017, 265 pp, €19. ISBN 978-2-7489-0333-1.
Why do ever-increasing portions of ‘people from European countries’ – or European people, to put it more simply – end up today wanting to take refuge behind rehabilitated national borders? This is the question to which three sociologists provide enlightening answers in this book by daring to think of Europe in terms of social classes and to flush out the relations of domination that prevail there. The authors are French but adopt a resolutely European approach, convinced that ‘capitalism is largely European, as are also, along with it, class relations,’ Cédric Hugrée, Etienne Penissat and Alexis Spire are not among those who see returning to the national fold as the solution to the problems that are expressed in public opinion. On the contrary, they are of the opinion that the solution will be European, but only on condition that their ‘sociological reading of inequalities’ leads political decision-makers to finally deal with the contradictions and conflicts ‘that are generated by the economic and political unification of a Europe without social protection safety nets.’
Defending an empirical strategy of social classes in Europe, the trio puts forward in these pages a cartography of inequalities in Europe that goes beyond the traditional comparisons among member states. In this case, they take the perfect opposite course to the European Commission, which consistently gives greater importance to ‘dividing up into nations’ and systematically puts the focus on national differences with, on the one hand, the ‘good pupil’ countries and, on the other, those that are ‘bad pupils.’ Suddenly, the statistical description of social groups is totally absent at European Union level, which notably leads the European institutions to point out ‘gaps in economic performance while masking unequal exposure to unemployment between the popular classes and the upper classes.’ It is this blind bias that the trio want to correct by taking advantage of new sources of empirical data to show that national specificities ‘are part of a bundle of social inequalities that are found in all European countries.’
The book is divided into five chapters, the first seeing the three authors discern ‘class divides beyond nations.’ They then look at a competing social group across the entire continent, that of the popular classes, including the small-scale self-employed, who are ‘weakened’ everywhere and find themselves in the front line facing the shock of migration, whose living conditions are systematically deteriorating. They then confront the ‘illusions of grandeur’ of the middle classes in terms of the social reality that is now their lot. Next comes the turn of the ‘upper classes’ whose ‘multiple forms of domination’ are methodically reviewed, from the economic domination that sees them define the rules of labour and master ‘the art of accumulating economic wealth’ to their cultural advantages (school supremacy, international skills) and the political supremacy that in fine results from this. Initially, the three authors analyse the realities that prevail ‘at the bottom of the European social area’ and ‘the domination without any sharing by the upper classes in North and West,’ also taking a look at circulation among classes and nations.
Nobody will be surprised if the conclusions that are drawn at the end of this scientifically solid work show ‘popular classes abandoned by the European construction.’ There is no doubt in the authors’ view that the European institutions are responsible for this. They make very tough comments about the European Central Bank, which ‘has gradually imposed itself as the best guarantee against the hazards of universal suffrage,’ going on to add: ‘Budget constraints are aimed sometimes at public services and sometimes at the viability of social protection systems, which in both cases turns against the middle and popular classes.’ A mistaken judgement? Perhaps, but how in that case can one explain the rising power of populists and extremists just about everywhere in Europe? ‘The feat of the ultra-conservatives is to have managed to turn social discontent into a turning-in on the nation according to a scenario that recalls that of the period between the two world wars,’ observe the three sociologists. Are they really wrong? Isn’t it rather time to give urgency to the social foundations of a European project, as per their invitation?
Michel Theys
*** JOHN MILBANK, ADRIAN PABST: La politique de la vertu. Post-libéralisme et avenir humain. Editions Desclée de Brouwer (Groupe Elidia, 10 rue Mercœur, F-75011 Paris. Tel: (33-1) 40465400 – Internet: http://www.editionsddb.fr ). 2018, 538 pp, €24. ISBN 978-2-220-09253-9.
Thus far, liberalism has been largely unscathed in terms of accusations and challenges emanating from its main philosophical rivals, as set out in the preface to the French edition of this book originally published in English: ‘the non-statist guild socialism of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon who rejected marxist statism; the Catholic personalism of Emmanuel Mounier, who resisted any complicity with fascism; and the socially anchored conservatism of Alexis de Tocqueville, who rejected the free-trade oligarchy.’ Will it also resist the methodical denunciators that expresses itself in these pages? No doubt more or less following the footprints left by the personalists and other non-conformists of the 1930s, Prof. John Milbank (religion, politics and ethics at Nottingham University, where he is director of the Theology and Philosophy Centre) and Adrian Pabst (senior lecturer in politics at Kent University and the Institut d’études politiques in Lille) start by showing the limits of the dominant liberalisms of the past half century: ‘the socio-cultural liberalism of the left since the 1960s and the economic-political liberalism of the 1980s.’ At this stage, the ‘embedded liberal’ post-war model, they explain, managed to nationalise the economy, whereas the neoliberal model privatised the State. In their view, this gave rise to a ‘secret collusion’ between liberals and anti-liberals that challenged globalisation, with the faced LU in France of Luc Mélenchon and Marine Le Pen. Calling, like those like them in the world, on ‘the supposed desire of the ‘people’ for a manner that recalls the authoritarianism of the 1930s,’ they are, accuse the authors, the spectre of the world subject ‘to authoritarian control from above,’ always with ‘increased executive stranglehold on the State’ in order notably to ‘reduce social and professional protection from the desire of democratic opinion.’ Clearly, ‘the Chinese hybrid system of brutal competition and control’ could well be humanity’s future. Milbank and Pabst do not resign themselves to this, recommending recourse to a new policy, ‘post-liberalism,’ which would reconcile market capitalism with economic justice and reciprocity, which would mark the transfer from individualism and egalitarianism to social solidarity. They way they see it, ‘Europe will not be able to maintain and influence the course of the world unless it revives its incomparable heritage and finds the means to inculcate the practice of virtue into the search for the common good.’ It is not certain that all aspects of this erudite sermon will be audible in all the layers of society. Fundamentally, however, there are paths of reflection down which it would no doubt be salutary to travel. (MT)
*** NIKOS SERDEDAKIS, STAVROS TOMPAZOS (Eds.): Aspects de la crise grecque. Le cycle de contestation et les résultats institutionnels. Editions Gutenberg (37 rue Didotou, GR-10680 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 3642003 – Fax: 3642030 – Email: info@dardanosnet.gr). 2018, 599 pp, €32. ISBN 978-960-01-1952-7.
The global economic crisis of 2008 and the neoliberal options selected for dealing with it continue, ten years on, to fashion the daily life of a myriad of people who have to weave the course of their lives in a complex and uncertain social world. In Greece, high unemployment, precarious work, the cost of living and greatly diminished access for the weakest and most dispossessed groups to public goods are, among many other things, the consequences of a long-term crisis of which nobody can see the end. From 2010 to mid-2015, this neoliberal stranglehold, characterised by extreme austerity and dramatic collective privation, has found itself strongly challenged: Greek citizens have made their voices heard, coming out on the streets and starting to trace out a horizon of expectations for the reorganisation of social relations at all levels. This volume, placed under the leadership of Prof. Nikos Serdedakis (sociology at Crete University) and Stavros Tompazos (researcher at the European Institute of Cyprus and professor at the Department of Political and Social Sconce of Cyprus University), focuses on the phenomenon of protest, with the participants working to shed light on the various aspects of the crisis in Greece since its beginning, along with the paroxysm and downturn of the cycle of protest. The study analyses the system of political parties, also in terms of political clientelism and socio-political participation. A selective bibliography, an index of names and a lexicon of terms are included in the book. (AKa)
*** SOTIRIS CHTOURIS (Ed.): Les jeunes en Grèce aujourd'hui. Le statut social, le travail et les réseaux sociaux. Editions Epikentro (9 rue Kamvounion, GR-54621 Thessalonika. Tel: (30-231) 0256146 – Fax: 0256148 – Internet: http://www.epikentro.gr ). 2018, 330 pp, €17. ISBN 978-960-458-681-3.
This study headed by a sociologist who lectures at the University of the Aegean Sea, presents the social and cultural characteristics of the social group of young people in Greece. The analysis leads to new understanding of the social concept of youth, avoiding certain established propositions that lead to the political ‘construction’ of youth through official statistics or government employment programmes. The authors are all university lecturers in Greece or overseas, who trace out paths for identifying young people in a manner that enables social and cultural identity, today and at origin, to be registered along with important social phenomena that determine it these days. Through the methodical processing of important theoretical models for young people and the situations of transition from school to work, they propose a new theoretical approach that mostly flows from data connected with research into the In4Youth programme. Quite naturally, the problems of unemployment, poverty and job and wellbeing prospects are at the heart of the book. At the same time, thanks to the experience of research acquired over recent years of economic crisis, a new methodological model for qualitative research is formulated by the authors with the aid of targeted groups and interviews with said groups. (AKa)
*** APOSTOLOS KAPSALI: Travailleurs immigrés en Grèce. Travailleurs, relations de travail et politique d'immigration à l'époque des mémorandums. Editions Topos (2 rue Plapouta, GR-11473 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 8222835 – Fax: 8222684 – Email: info@motibo.com – Internet: http://www.toposbooks.gr ). 2018, 400 pp, €19. ISBN 978-960-499-253-9.
The answers to central questions about immigration seem to be almost identical everywhere. Habitually, they arise, however, from a static, if not photographic, reading of reality. Most of the ideas about immigrant workers in Greece have to be reviewed in the context of the economic crisis. The author, a lawyer specialising in labour law and a lecturer at the Social Policy Department of Pantheon University in Athens, also works as a researcher in labour relations at the General Confederation of Greek Workers’ Institute of Labour, while also being special secretary at the Inspection of Labour. In these pages, he highlights the role of immigration policy and immigration itself in the development of labour law in Greece. He observes that the memorandum years led to a raft of deregulations, inequalities and illegalities that determined Greek social policy, imposing a quagmire of immobilism and impasses as much for the migrant populations themselves as for the state approach to modern transnational mobility. From this viewpoint, Apostolos Kapsalis feels it is extremely urgent to draw up a radically different immigration policy, which he sets out in detail in the book. (AKa)