L' Election Présidentielle 2007 / French Presidential Election [R]

[Nanbawan]

the villeurbanne office of the UMP was burned out last night, i bicycled past it this morning :eek:. villeurbanne is not a quartier sensible btw.

They at least seem to aim more and more accurately ! :D

Yeah, that's the tragedy of our mediatic era. You can get on your soap box and distribute tracts in a market and who's gonna talk about you ? Burn anything and you're on national news ! It's difficult to not talk about it but it's bad reflex to systematically highlight them as well.

[Pierre-Henri]

There's quite a difference between the original political theory of communism and the Soviet like regimes.


Sophism.

It didn't work in Russia, it didn't work in eastern european countries, it didn't work in China, it didn't work in Viet Nam, Cambodia or any other asian country, it didn't work in Congo, it didn't work anywhere else in Africa, it didn't work in Cuba, it didn't work in any other South American country...

... but it can work in France ?

Why ? Because we are angels of perfection fluttering in the clear blue sky of human ideals ? Because we are a naturally superior nation ? Because we are more clever than anyone else ?

Communism doesn't work because :

- Marx millenarianism (the idea that history will reach perfection and come to a end), like any other millenarianism, is crazy sectarian bulls**t. We are not fated to perfection. We are nothing but a small link in the long chain of history.

- People, all in all, don't want to sacrifice themselves for common greatness. We all seek our personnal confort before anything else. That's human nature and we have to deal with it.

However, France is a free country. If some communists want to renounce to personal property, if they want to live together in a phalanstery, they are free to do so. Frankly speaking, how many of them have done that ? How many have thrown away their TV, their car, their homes and all their personal properties ? Why don't they do it, right now ?

Answer : because like anyone else, they want to possess their own things. Because they want personal confort. They dream about communism but they certainly don't want to live in a communist system. Mythomaniacs, that's all they are.

[guignol]

Sophism.

It didn't work in Russia, it didn't work in eastern european countries, it didn't work in China, it didn't work in...
yada yada yada...

your points are not invalid... the fault lies indeed not in our marx but in ourselves. but if we change only very slowly, ideas can be adapted and refined more easily. their application rather than the ideas themselves, for most of marx's are as valid as newton's.

throwing out marxism because of the NEP and the "great leap forward" is like poo-pooing aviation based on the wright flyer. oh, they were pungent, even sickening, but so is civet... and without civet, no n°5 or mitsouko...

[guignol]

In 1968, Raymond Aron wrote a book (la révolution introuvable), where he showed that the revolutionary myth is part of the french psyche. It's like americans and their guns. He used the word "psychodrame" about the 68 events...yes aron... if france isn't a great country how do you explain aron (braudel, lévi-strauss etc...)?

mind you, sartre was a genius... but only as a novelist (la nausée, mais surtout les mots)... as a philosopher and political activist he was endearing and well meaning but... :rolleyes:

[Anthony]

yes aron... if france isn't a great country how do you explain aron (braudel, lévi-strauss etc...)?

Levi-Strauss? I never knew jeans were invented in France.

mind you, sartre was a genius... but only as a novelist (la nausée, mais surtout les mots)... as a philosopher and political activist he was endearing and well meaning but... :rolleyes:

I never liked Sarte. In any event, poor Simone was the brains of that outfit and never got any of the credit.

[Pike]

yada yada yada...

your points are not invalid... the fault lies indeed not in our marx but in ourselves. but if we change only very slowly, ideas can be adapted and refined more easily. their application rather than the ideas themselves, for most of marx's are as valid as newton's.

throwing out marxism because of the NEP and the "great leap forward" is like poo-pooing aviation based on the wright flyer. oh, they were pungent, even sickening, but so is civet... and without civet, no n°5 or mitsouko...

"Why can't we all just get along" - Rodney King
Unfortunately, changing human nature isn;t the same as creating a more tolerant society. It is what it is, we are what we are. I once asked my students, is greed bad? The most acceptable answer they came up is that only too much greed is bad. Greed inherently isn't bad. Afterall, we would not have what we have today if it wasn't for greed.

I don;t think it is possible to change what is inate in humans. No amount, if only humanity would change a thing. I don't think I want to live in a world where I am told when to wake up, what to eat, how I should get to work, what I should own, etc,... Additionally, no one wants to live in a society where they must accept the minimal in life. In the fail communism, a classless society in which *everyone* should prosperred, in fact, it had classes of the haves & have nots.

I leave with a quote from Star trek (wel maybe a paraphrase)
"... we know longer concern ourselves with enriching ourselves with material things. We concentrate on enriching our minds and bettering ourselves."
- Capt. Jean- Luc Picard (your countryman) :D
Ah,.. such sweet misguided dreams.

[ilv2]

"Why can't we all just get along" - Rodney King
Unfortunately, changing human nature isn;t the same as creating a more tolerant society. It is what it is, we are what we are. I once asked my students, is greed bad? The most acceptable answer they came up is that only too much greed is bad. Greed inherently isn't bad. Afterall, we would not have what we have today if it wasn't for greed.


But the being that we assume ourselves to naturally be is not who we truly are ontologically if in fact, we are constituted beings. This is exactly what Marx aims at with his critique of capital - i.e. the foundations of private property construct our being and our knowledge of the world that we live in in accordance to the root of its creed, or rather money/property/whatever you want to call it. Honestly, IMO the most convincing argument that supports Marx's arguments of social reproduction and the need to forcibly overthrow "everything existing" is the simple fact that these very workers, even though their lives are determined and shaped by the flow and distribution of wealth, do not actually identify with the reality of this process - i.e choosing identify the truly significant commonality between them and to form a international collection of communist parties - accepting the present structures as they exist as present. Instead then they throw much more weight, even their lives, in the support of ideological myths such as nationalism.

[Douai]

François Bayrou officialise le lancement du Mouvement démocrate
LEMONDE.FR avec AFP et Reuters | 10.05.07 | 12h34 • Mis à jour le 10.05.07 | 14h46

e Mouvement démocrate est lancé. François Bayrou en a fait l'annonce, jeudi 10 mai, lors du conseil national de l'UDF, souhaitant la "constitution d'une force politique nouvelle, indépendante, ouverte". M. Bayrou a précisé que, les 10 et 17 juin, "le Mouvement démocrate présentera ses candidats aux élections législatives avec cette étiquette". Le Congrès constitutif de ce nouveau parti, dont l'UDF sera "une force constitutive", se tiendra "à l'automne", a dit le président de l'UDF.La résolution proposant le lancement de ce parti a été approuvée à l'issue d'un vote à main levée,"à l'unanimité des présents, moins 4 votes contre et 4 abstentions", a déclaré le président de l'UDF, après ce vote de plus d'un millier de conseillers nationaux qui devait initialement se dérouler à bulletins secrets.
"Je n'ignore rien des pressions qui s'exercent sur un certain nombre d'élus", a déclaré M. Bayrou, lâché par la plupart des députés centristes, ralliés à Nicolas Sarkozy. "Tous n'y répondent pas de la même manière", a-t-il dit, appelant les conseillers nationaux réunis à la Mutualité à Paris à applaudir les élus présents. "Ils ont simplement choisi de rester fidèles à ce qu'ils avaient dit aux électeurs tout au long de la campagne électorale", a estimé l'ancien candidat à la présidentielle.

"DEVOIR DE RÉSISTER"

"Je n'aurai pas un mot de condamnation ou d'accusation contre ceux qui ont fait l'autre choix", a-t-il poursuivi. "Je veux leur dire ceci : dans la vie, quand c'est l'essentiel qui est en jeu et qu'on subit des pressions, au fond la question est très simple, vous n'avez le choix qu'entre deux attitudes : vous n'avez le choix qu'entre céder et résister", a-t-il lancé.

"Ma conviction profonde, c'est que c'est plus facile de céder mais c'est sans avenir, et il est plus juste, plus loyal, plus prometteur, plus important de résister", a martelé le leader centriste. "Nous avons le devoir de résister", a-t-il lancé, encouragé par ses partisans. "C'est de résistance que la France a besoin."
Le président du parti centriste a également démenti tout accord avec le Parti socialiste en vue des élections législatives. "Je n'ai eu aucune conversation, aucune rencontre, aucun échange ni téléphonique, ni par écrit avec aucun dirigeant du Parti socialiste qui laisse entendre que nous pourrions envisager une alliance aux élections législatives", a-t-il affirmé. "Je n'ai pas quitté l'allégeance d'un côté pour aller m'enfermer dans l'allégeance de l'autre", a-t-il assuré, sous les applaudissements de ses partisans.

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-823448,36-908361@51-902911,0.html

EDIT: I forgot to say that I read somewhere that the UDF has lost a large amount of its parliamentary members to Sarkozy.Since Bayrou launched this new party what will become of the UDF?

[Anthony]

I forgot to say that I read somewhere that the UDF has lost a large amount of its parliamentary members to Sarkozy.Since Bayrou launched this new party what will become of the UDF?


The UDf was really formed to group all the non-Gaullist right together. It really had no unifying ideology except "We are not Charles or Jacques"

For some time the UDF has been merging into the RPR then UPM. In 1974, Gisgard scored double the result of the official Gaullist candidate and in 1981 he easily outpaced Chirac. In the huge conservative parliamentiry victory in 1993, the RPR scored about 1% better in first round votes. In 2002, the UPM scored about 34% of first round votes, the UDF about 5 -- by then, most of the UDF had joined the Gaullists.

I would imagine that other than those joing Bayrou, the rest of the UDF will officially join the UMP.

[lefutur]

who'd a thunk we could get this kind of in-depth political and cultural discussion on Big Soccer?

Well, just goes to show you that football is the great democratic unifier after all.

I've actually weighed in a bit and added my 1 and half cents on my blog on Myspace. (yeah, that intellectual mecca of course)

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog&Mytoken=944EE24D-F0E1-4D18-B9F716145E731B2075434387

[YankBastard]

who'd a thunk we could get this kind of in-depth political and cultural discussion on Big Soccer?

Well, just goes to show you that football is the great democratic unifier after all.

I've actually weighed in a bit and added my 1 and half cents on my blog on Myspace. (yeah, that intellectual mecca of course)

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog&Mytoken=944EE24D-F0E1-4D18-B9F716145E731B2075434387

The link actually goes straight to my myspace blog.

[Douai]

Tant que la proportionnelle n’aura pas été instituée, un parti indépendant de la droite et de la gauche aura du mal à disposer de la masse critique nécessaire à sa survie électorale. Le centre a besoin d’alliés, qu’ils soient de droite ou de gauche. Le système majoritaire à deux tours permet de faire échec au bipartisme, pas à la bipolarisation.

— Jean-Louis Bourlanges, député européen UDF, Entretien donné au Figaro, 27 avril 2007

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouvement_democrate


Bayrou did very well during this year's presidential election, but do you think the Mouvement démocrate will be successful?I found there logo by the way:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/fr/thumb/f/f0/Le_Mouvement_D%C3%A9mocrate.jpg/200px-Le_Mouvement_D%C3%A9mocrate.jpg

[ilv2]

I liked the name PD better :D

A successful center party is not unheard, there are some in a number of latin american countries - although the left would certainly be considered an extreme left elsewhere. I think Anthony was looking at a similar sort of situation to develop here, but France is a very particular country and even though it is ripe for something to happen, the md need to convince the electorate that it can truly exist as an effective party. Otherwise it's the UDF in another suit, and the UDF is well and truly useless.

[Pierre-Henri]

yes aron... if france isn't a great country how do you explain aron (braudel, lévi-strauss etc...)?


You're RIGHT ! France today still has plenty of excellent intellectuals !

Antoine Compagnon, Henri Mitterand and Maryse Condé at Columbia, Michel Serres and Jean-Marie Apostolidès at Stanford, Edouard Glissant and Assia Djebbar at CUNY, Alain Mabanckou at UCLA, François Rigolot at Princeton and many, many others who... who... who...

... wait a sec. What do you say ? All these people work at American universities ? Oh. My fault.

Well, in France, we have... err... I may find someone... err... Well, Elizabeth Teissier got her Phd at the Sorbonne, I know that. And french universities are really attractive for... err... for some people, I'm sure... I've no example right now, but I'm sure that many excellent humanists and scientists crave to teach at one of our universities.

You probably know that the french consulates in New England and California are crowded with American Nobel Prize winners who would die for the sheer joy and prestige to work at one of our universities. Of course, we hide this truth, because France is so packed with academic excellence that we don't need more world-class researchers.

Nobel Prizes since 1990 :

Physics --- USA : 19 / France : 3
Chemistry --- USA : 15 / France : 1
Medical sciences --- USA : 15 / France : 0
Literature --- USA : 1 / France : 0
Peace --- USA : 2 / France : 0
Economy --- USA : 12 / France : 0

Turing prize (computer sciences) --- USA : 14 / France : 0
Pritzker prize (architecture) --- USA : 2 / France : 1

The only exception, Fields prize (maths) --- USA : 2 / France : 3

and still :

Shanghai Ranking (http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2006/ARWU2006_Top100.htm)
Look at the number of French flags on this page ! Wow ! (http://www.webometrics.info/premierleague.asp)


So, you see, you're absolutely right : EVERYTHING IS OKAY.

[Pike]

Well, this post will go far in repairing Franco- American relations :D

You're RIGHT ! France today still has plenty of excellent intellectuals !

Antoine Compagnon, Henri Mitterand and Maryse Condé at Columbia, Michel Serres and Jean-Marie Apostolidès at Stanford, Edouard Glissant and Assia Djebbar at CUNY, Alain Mabanckou at UCLA, François Rigolot at Princeton and many, many others who... who... who...

... wait a sec. What do you say ? All these people work at American universities ? Oh. My fault.

Well, in France, we have... err... I may find someone... err... Well, Elizabeth Teissier got her Phd at the Sorbonne, I know that. And french universities are really attractive for... err... for some people, I'm sure... I've no example right now, but I'm sure that many excellent humanists and scientists crave to teach at one of our universities.

You probably know that the french consulates in New England and California are crowded with American Nobel Prize winners who would die for the sheer joy and prestige to work at one of our universities. Of course, we hide this truth, because France is so packed with academic excellence that we don't need more world-class researchers.

Nobel Prizes since 1990 :

Physics --- USA : 19 / France : 3
Chemistry --- USA : 15 / France : 1
Medical sciences --- USA : 15 / France : 0
Literature --- USA : 1 / France : 0
Peace --- USA : 2 / France : 0
Economy --- USA : 12 / France : 0

Turing prize (computer sciences) --- USA : 14 / France : 0
Pritzker prize (architecture) --- USA : 2 / France : 1

The only exception, Fields prize (maths) --- USA : 2 / France : 3

and still :

Shanghai Ranking (http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2006/ARWU2006_Top100.htm)
Look at the number of French flags on this page ! Wow ! (http://www.webometrics.info/premierleague.asp)


So, you see, you're absolutely right : EVERYTHING IS OKAY.

[Pike]

But the being that we assume ourselves to naturally be is not who we truly are ontologically if in fact, we are constituted beings. This is exactly what Marx aims at with his critique of capital - i.e. the foundations of private property construct our being and our knowledge of the world that we live in in accordance to the root of its creed, or rather money/property/whatever you want to call it. Honestly, IMO the most convincing argument that supports Marx's arguments of social reproduction and the need to forcibly overthrow "everything existing" is the simple fact that these very workers, even though their lives are determined and shaped by the flow and distribution of wealth, do not actually identify with the reality of this process - i.e choosing identify the truly significant commonality between them and to form a international collection of communist parties - accepting the present structures as they exist as present. Instead then they throw much more weight, even their lives, in the support of ideological myths such as nationalism.

I can call myself a bird all I want, but if I am a penguin, I ain't gonna fly. This is a fact. Marx entire theory was based on erronoeous conclusions of historical events. Identification with a process is irrelevant, we eat to live, we drink to live, and we reproduce so that society lives. This is the primal nature of our existence. Within, society, as I already mentioned, we live to acquire whatever we can using whatever means we can. We are only restricted by laws. Its a good thing too,... if not, I would be out hunting wild game instead of typing on this laptop!

[Pierre-Henri]

Well, this post will go far in repairing Franco- American relations :D

And I watered down the truth. For example, Vladimir Voevodsky received the Fields Medal in 2002 in the name of his country (Russia), but actually he teaches at Princeton. This case is not uncommon : among the international prizes recipients, even when they aren't american, many teach in the USA anyway.

[ilv2]

Marx entire theory was based on erronoeous conclusions of historical events. Identification with a process is irrelevant, we eat to live, we drink to live, and we reproduce so that society lives. This is the primal nature of our existence. Within, society, as I already mentioned, we live to acquire whatever we can using whatever means we can. We are only restricted by laws. Its a good thing too,... if not, I would be out hunting wild game instead of typing on this laptop!

Fundamental needs exist, certainly. That is why the worker submits himself to low wages. You're arguing that we live to acquire whatever we can, which I suppose is a continuation of your statement that human nature is fundamentally possessive/selfish and self-serving. What we're looking at here, however, is that the process of capital ultimately reproduces through structures and indeed, these very laws you state that we are restricted by, an objectification of the individual through private property/possessions, to such a point that the basic common factor in society is truly money well beyond our simple basic needs. Commodity fetishism, according to Marx, hijacked the very functioning of modern society so that no one except for the rare few are even willing to consider that capital does not constitute man.
*Personally, I tend to agree in with him in that I'm not willing to assign a concrete vision of human nature based upon the biological fact that we all need a certain amount of carbs and food to fuel us every day. Beyond that, the assumptions of common nature are open to debate, as we see here, i.e. nature versus nuture, essence versus determinism.*
Now, you state that his entire theory is based on erroneous conclusions vis-a-vis modernism, bourgeois society, and industrialization. Okay, sure, but I've only seen on your part a critique against his clearly optimistic view of potential human nature beyond society's emancipation from private property. If you are going to critique his conclusions and analysis of historical events, then you're going to have to give me a run-down of why his analyses of capitalist economy and modern political economy contained in "Das Kapital" do not function. And please, when you do so, give me a summary of Marx's arguments as well, given that I have not read Das Kapital, nor intend to. Too busy avoiding self-estrangement by way of reading, so to speak ;) :D

[Anthony]

I have actually been to Karl Marx's birth house. My father-in-law 9who to be sure died before I met his daughter) was from Trier. On a visit to my wife's relatives a few years ago, I made it a point to visit the house. The only thing going through my head was "If only these people knew" ;)

[Douai]

"Nicolas Sarkozy a poursuivi samedi la préparation de son gouvernement avant son entrée en fonction mercredi"
http://elections.france2.fr/actu/30701097-fr.php