In the grip of declinology

By Agnès Catherine Poirier, a journalist on the French daily newspaper Libération (THE GUARDIAN, 29/03/06):

"Bankrupt France", "France in tatters", "France in free fall", "Scared France", "France is rotting from within","Doomed France". That is just a small selection of essays and pamphlets published in the past three years in France, some interesting, some mediocre, but all bestsellers. There is a word for their authors, one especially made for them: they are the "déclinologues", in other words "declinologists" - or "declinists" for those who argue that "declinologist" implies a certain disdain. Words are very important in France.

An eclectic lot - economists, journalists, editorialists and bankers - the declinologists share an ideology, ultra-liberalism, and sing one tune: off with the state, off with Chirac, off with the trade unions, off with the elite (to which they belong, but this is just a detail) and, if only they could, off with France.

Declinology is the new dandyism. They have brought in a new attitude, which until now had spared the French: self-hatred. The declinologists don't speak about "la crise" - that is much too lame. What they are talking about, and secretly dreaming of, is a national cataclysm. It would serve the French right. The declinologists are the kind of people who, after such national tragedy, would surely erect a new cathedral in Paris, just as others built the Sacré-Coeur after the Commune, in order to expunge France's sins. No doubt they would organise compulsory pilgrimages for their fellow countrymen, who would have to repeat 100 times: "Forgive me, Lord, for I have had revolutionary impulses."

Indeed, what the declinologists are advocating is an anti-France, a France cleansed from its revolutionary heritage, from the spirit of the Enlightenment. Yesterday they were confronted with France as it is: two million on the streets and the country convulsed by a strike against labour deregulation.

The declinologists, however, haven't sprung from nowhere; they have thrived on a real and deep malaise that France has experienced for the past 20 years. Their talent has been to catch the people's imagination and occupy the ideological ground left empty by a deafeningly silent socialist party. The declinologists have a ready-to-use, all-including theory, which has proved extremely handy and has spread like wildfire. According to them, France now stands where Britain was in the late 70s. When you have said that, you have said it all: anybody with the benefit of hindsight concludes that there is only one possible way out - a French Thatcher. And the closest we get to Thatcher in France is Nicolas Sarkozy. By the way, most of the declinologists are Sarkozy's personal consultants or friends. QED.

But, of course, President Chirac and his prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, only want to see that side of the equation: declinologists are Sarkozists, so must be overtaken politically, a very short-sighted position with the presidential election in 13 months. However dangerous the declinologists and Sarkozy are for the country, the problem is certainly not only tactical: it is political, economic, social and philosophical. Chirac is playing Russian roulette with Sarkozy but it is France that may get the bullet.

There is simply nobody to counteract the declinologists' theories. So far, the French left has refused to engage in a conversation, which would require them to question everything they have done for the country since 1981, and certainly to kick François Mitterrand's commanding statue from its pedestal. They prefer to bicker over Ségolène Royal's presidential potential. Only a few philosophers, such as Alain Finkielkraut, have acknowledged and discussed the reasons for the profound malaise felt by the French and the questions raised by declinology. This is not enough.