The National Council for Refoundation was installed this week by President Emmanuel Macron. The entire political class was invited, some parties chose to decline. On the other hand, important actors from civil society were not invited.
franceinfo: Does this absence, in particular, of intellectuals and artists in this National Council for Refoundation shock you?
John Viard: He is quite curious to want to think about the upheavals of the world without the thinkers, I was going to say professionals, and in particular the academics. Look at the United States, the importance of the university in the public debate, or in Italy, the role of the Agnelli foundation. Strange therefore to have excluded the intellectuals, all those who seek meaning and who are at the forefront of innovation. Within this Council, there will be no media prism, which will avoid posturing.
When you are in the National Assembly, you take postures for your electorate. Faced with the profound change in civilization that we are experiencing – we have gone to the end of the industrial era and progress to enter into a war against climate change – it is necessary to review all the decision-making systems. We can no longer separate peasants from ecologists, industrialists from hunters, etc. If this Council becomes a cauldron, without postures, something can come out of it. That’s why I would have included intellectuals and academics.
To hear you, the refoundation is essential?
The world is changing so fast. Some are paid to observe it and write books, which are read. There are artists who create dreams around that, who create artistic works, films, paintings, music. Thus, little by little, the change of the world is instilled in our brains. It’s a long and complex process, we’ve known for 50 years that global warming is going to happen, but we haven’t been fast enough and so we’re being overtaken.
No one has the keys to open the exit door. If there is one who says “I have the keys!”, I believe he is wrong; no one really has the keys. This will be played out between the whistleblowers that were the ecologists, the industrialists who have an essential role, the farmers, essential to feed us and reconstitute the soil.
National Council for Refoundation: a nod to the National Council of Resistance. What parallel between these two instances?
The CNR stood before the 1944 landing. Its members took the risk of meeting, of being arrested, of being tortured by the Germans to think about the post-war period, without knowing when that would happen. They could have waited for years, the Nazi empire could have settled in Europe for a very long time. They decided to develop a program. Social Security, women’s suffrage and so many other fundamental decisions were initiated there.
The challenge today is of the same nature, but society does not really know what to do. Perhaps a path will come out of this National Council for Refoundation that will become the path to tomorrow.