economists-from-france

"More vulnerable countries have a much harder time borrowing. Sometimes, financial actors do not want to lend at all and we are faced with episodes of "sudden stops" of capital flows into emerging markets with no way to roll over the debt."

"The risk of social unrest in many countries should not be underestimated."

"China acts according to its interests, including on climate: short-term economic factors may dictate over anything else."

"When it comes to risky assets (and emerging markets debt is considered a risky asset) risk and specifically credit risk gets priced in the yields of bonds issued by this country. When times are good, investors seem to be optimistic and the price of risk is very low across all kinds of assets. But when liquidity starts to be withdrawn, the price of these risky bonds in emerging or low-income countries goes up."

"When the banking system goes down the drain, the economy goes down with it (2008 is still very fresh in our minds)."

"Debt distress, inflation and hunger in the world are linked to the Russian invasion of Ukraine."

"Why should we now restrict ourselves to the Jewish Pantheon when we have been illuminated by this light which has begun to spread right across the horizon? ... Should we only recognize in humanity that isolated branch which is called Christianity, the revelation of Moses and that of Jesus? No. We desire a more ample Pantheon, one which answers to the name, so recently coined, of HUMANITY... We are not sons of Jesus or of Moses; we are sons of humanity.... On what principle of distributive justice can you place all the great religious lawgivers of humanity at the feet of one of them who lived in a comparatively recent age? .."

"All command other than its own, that is what irks Power. All energy, wherever it may be found, that is what nourishes it. If the human atom which contains this energy is confined in a social molecule, then Power must break down that molecule. Its levelling tendency, therefore, is not in the least, as is commonly thought, an acquired characteristic which it assumes on taking democratic form. It is a leveller in its own capacity of state, and because it is state. The leveling process need find no place in Power's programme: it is embedded in its destiny. From the moment that it seeks to lay hands on the resources latent in the community, it finds itself impelled to put down the mighty by its natural tendency as that which causes a bear in search of honey to break the cells of the hive. How will the common people, the dependents and the laborers, welcome Power's secular work of destruction? With joy, inevitably. Its work is that of demolishing feudal castles; ambition motivates it, but the former victims rejoice in their liberation. Its work is that of breaking the shell of petty private tyrannies so as to draw out the hoarded energy within; greed motivates it but the exploited rejoice in the downfall of their exploiters. The final result of this stupendous work of aggression, does not disclose itself till late. Visible, no doubt, is the displacement of many private dominions by one general dominion, of many aristocracies by one "statocracy." But at first, the common people can but applaud: the more capable among them are, in a continuous stream, enrolled in Power's army - the administration - there to become the masters of their former social superiors. It is the most natural thing, therefore, that the common people should be Power’s ally, should do its work in the expansion of the state—a process which they facilitate by their passivity and stir up by their appeals."

"[O]nce man is declared “the measure of all things,” there is no longer a true, or a good, or a just, but only opinions of equal validity whose clash can be settled only by political or military force; and each force in turn enthrones in its hour of triumph a true, a good, and a just which will endure just as long as itself."

"The idea so commonly found that scepticism leads to toleration arises from considering the effects of scepticism in the intellectual who takes no active part – not its effects in the man of action. In the man of action, moral relativism and scepticism as to the absolute and universal value of his principles are no obstacle to a fanatical belief in their immediate value as his own clan at the actual moment; they do not weaken in the least his will to impose his principles. How should he glimpse a soul of truth in the principles of others, entitling them to respect, when he does not believe in noble origins of this kind even for his own principles?"

"It is as futile and dangerous to aim at making of society one large family, as sentimental socialism seeks to do, as to aim at making of it one large team, as positivist socialism seeks to do."

"[T]here are no institutions on earth which enable each separate person to have a hand in the exercise of Power, for Power is command, and everyone cannot command. Sovereignty of the people is, therefore, nothing but a fiction, and one which must in the long run prove destructive of individual liberties."

"The natural requirements of Power made the fortunes of the common people. All those “little people” ...no sooner found their niche in the state than they set about advancing their own fortunes along with their employers. At whose expense? The aristocrats’. With a boldness born of obscurity they encroached progressively on the taxing rights of the barons and transferred to the royal treasury the incomes of the great. As their invasions grew, the financial machine grew larger and more complicated. There might be new posts for their relations, they discovered new duties, so that whole families take their ease in a bureacracy that grew continually in numbers and authority. Spawning a whole hierarchy of underlings – deputies, clerks, registrars. So it was that everywhere the service of the state became the road to distinction, advancement, and authority of the common people. ...What a sight it is, the rise of the clerks, this swarming of busy bees who gradually devour the feudal splendour and leave it with nothing but its pomp and titles! Does it not leap to the eye that the state has made the fortunes of all these common people, just as they have made the state’s?"

"Every historical society seems, by successive stages, to have dragged its slow length into a form of institutions in which all life is absorbed by, and all movement emanates from. Power. It is a despotic form; in it there is neither wealth, nor authority, nor even liberty, outside Power, which is in consequence the goal of all ambition; nor can its holders find shelter from the rivalry which breeds anarchy, except by buttressing themselves with divine status."

"Divine law must not be confused with custom. Custom is the crystallization of the whole of a society’s habits. A people among whom custom is altogether sovereign endures the despotism of the dead. Law, on the other hand, while prescribing and fixing such habits as are essential to the preservation of society, does not bar the door to favourable variations: it acts, so to speak, as a discriminating filter."

"The man who has dedicated himself to the success of the protect, the master builder, no longer has any freedom: his conduct is now determined altogether by the constraining force of the end. Logically, therefore, he is bound to require at every moment from his companions whatever will best serve that end, and he demands of them imperiously whatever he thinks is of that nature. This imperiousness, though to immediate view that of the master, springs ultimately from the project itself, for it is the project which is in command. In the eyes of those under him, however, it is the master who hustles them, and they think him inhuman by reason of his disregard of their moods and personalities and his inability to see them other than as servants of the project (like himself)."

"Command is a mountain top. The air breathed there is different, and the perspectives seen there are different, from those of the valley of obedience. The passion for order and the genius of construction, which are part of man’s natural endowment, get full play there. The man who has grown great sees from the top of his tower what he can make, if he so wills, of the swarming masses below him."

"If there is in Power's make-up an egoistical urge combined with the will to serve society, it is a natural supposition that, the weaker the former, the stronger will be the latter: perfection of government would consist in the complete elimination of the egoistical principle. The chimera of elimination has been unceasingly pursued by minds whose limited range is only equalled by their good intentions. They do not realize that the nature of man and the nature of society combine to make any such project chimerical. For without the egoistical principle Power would lack the inner strength which alone enables it to carry out its functions."

"We have just been seeing political power concerned to break a "clandom" which preceded it in time. Let us now see how it behaves in regard to a clandom which is its contemporary. It may be said in effect, paraphrasing Shakespeare: "Monarchy and feudal aristocracy are two lions born on the same day." There was something of an act of piracy about the foundation of the European states. The Franks who conquered Gaul, the Normans who conquered England and Sicily, and even the Crusaders who went to Palestine, all behaved like bands of adventurers, dividing the spoil. What was there to divide? First of all, the ready cash. Afterwards, there were the lands; no deserts, these, but furnished with men whose labor was to maintain the victor. To every man, then, his share in the prize. And there we have the man-at-arms turned baron. This is shown to the evolution of the world of the word baron, which in Germany meant "freeman" and in Gaul denoted the name of the class. There remains for seizure the apparatus of state, which there was one: naturally it is the share of the chief. But when a barbarian like Clovis found himself confronted with the administrative machine of the Late Empire, he did not understand it. All he saw in it was a system of suction pumps, bringing him a steady flow of riches on which he made merry with no thought for the public services for which these resources were intended. In the result, then, he divided up along among his foremost companions the treasure of the state, whether in the form of lands or fiscal revenues. In this way, civilized government was gradually brought to ruin, and Gaul of the ninth and 10th centuries, was reduced to the same condition as that in which William of Normandy was to find England of the 11th. ...By a slant common to the barbarian mind, or rather by an inclination which is natural to all men, but in barbarians encounters no opposing principle, these influential men soon confound their function with their property and exercise the former as though it were the latter. Each little local tyrant then becomes legislature, judge and administrator of a more or less extensive principality; and on the tribute paid by it he lives, along with his servants and his men-at-arms. Power thus expelled soon returns, however, under the spur of its requirements. The resources at his disposal are absurdly out of proportion to the area, which depends on it and to the population, which calls it the sovereign."

"Historians of the sentimental school have sometimes regretted that royalty became absolute, while at the same time rejoicing that it installed plebeians in office. They deceive themselves. Royalty exalted plebeians just because it aimed at becoming absolute; it became absolute because it had exalted plebeians. It is always utterly impossible to build an aggressive Power with aristocrats. Care for family interests, class solidarity, educational influences, all combine to dissuade them from handing over to the state the independence and fortunes of their fellows. The march of absolutism, which subdues the diversity of customs to the uniformity of laws, wars against local attachments on of a concentration of loyalties on the state, douses all other fires of life that one may remain alight, and substitutes for the personal ascendancy of the notables the mechanical control of an administration – such a system is, I say, the natural destroyer of the traditions on which is founded the pride of aristocracies and of the patronage which gives them their strength Resistance is, therefore, the business of aristocracies."

"Does thought preside over the successive transformations of human communities? Hegel asserted it did, and changes in the form of a state are for him only the shadows cast by the majestic march of ideas engendered by the world spirit which advances through an unceasing synthesis of opposites bred by itself. With Marx ideas are no longer queens but servants, the mere formal expressions of needs and feelings brought into being by situations: their effectiveness is not their own but has been lent them by the social impulsions which give them birth. Marx was wrong to deny the creative quality of the spirit, but Hegel misunderstood the way in which the mechanism of politics works. It is true that ideas are queens by birth: but they only gain favour when they enter the service of interests and instincts. Follow an idea through from its birth to its triumph, and it becomes clear that it came to power only at the price of an astounding degradation of itself. A reasoned structure of arguments ...does not as such make its way into the social consciousness: rather it has undergone pressures which have destroyed its internal architecture, and left in its place only a confused babel of concepts, the most magical of which wins credit for the others. In the result, it is not reason which has found a guide but passion which has found a flag. The history of the democratic doctrine furnishes a striking example... Born for the purpose of standing as a bulwark against Power, it ends by providing Power with the finest soil it has ever had in which to spread itself over the social field."

"The more one considers the matter, the clearer it becomes that redistribution is in effect far less a redistribution of free income from the richer to the poorer, as we imagined, than a redistribution of power from the individual to the State."

"[A]ttempts at the limitation of armaments are, it is clear, a vain thing. Armaments are merely an expression of Power. They grow because Power grows. And yet those parties are loudest in demanding their limitation which, with unperceived inconsequence, are the most ardent supporters of Power’s expansion!"

"As every advance of Power is useful for war, so war is useful for the advance of power; war is like a sheep-dog harrying the laggard Powers to catch up their smarter fellows in the totalitarian race."

"Power is linked with war, and a society wishing to limit war's ravages can find no other way than by limiting the scope of Power."

"It is passing strange that our philosophers of the Revolutionary period should have formed their conception of a free society by reference to societies where everyone was not free – where, in fact, the vast majority were not free. It is no less strange that they never stopped to ask whether perhaps the characters which they so much admired were not made possible by the existence of a class which was not free. Rousseau, in whose philosophy were many things, was fully conscious of this difficulty: "Must we say that liberty is possible only on a basis of slavery? Perhaps we must.”"

"Rejoicing in his absolute authority, the single egoist will exploit it methodically, whereas a mêlée of egoists will bring about a ruinous disorder and a disastrous cleavage, because the contrariety of the appetites to be satisfied will prevent the satisfaction of any single one. Clearly, then, the effect of the pursuit of private ends under cover of the public good will be worse if there are many with a hand in power than if there is only one."

"The modern absolutism, which we find the most natural thing in the world, would have been quite beyond the dreams of the most absolute of kings."

"The Führer will be impressed only if the British and the French nations cure themselves of their present laxity and slovenliness. What has been achieved by Germany has been achieved only because the ceaseless effort of every German, man, woman, and child, has built up that platform of strength from which Herr Hitler speaks. If we do not show ourselves the equals of the Germans in patriotism, we shall be neither worthy foes nor desirable friends. The only logical sequel to Munich is the 52-hour week in French factories and conscription in England. Then we can talk as great nations. But not till then."

"No century has been more concerned than ours to do away with war: it has proved signally unsuccessful. All too little attention has been given to the phenomenon that internal politics have become increasingly more warlike."

"The trend of our day is ... toward the reproduction of the medieval situation: Nul homme sans seigneur. It is appropriate here to recall that the so-called Dark Ages began with the flight of individuals into the protection of lords or chapters and came to an end when the individual again found it to his advantage to set forth on his own. We live at a time when everything conspires to push the individual into the fold."

"Where will it all end? In the destruction of all other command for the benefit of one alone - that of the state. In each man's absolute freedom from every family and social authority, a freedom the price of which is complete submission to the state. In the complete equality as between themselves of all citizens, paid for by their equal abasement before the power of their absolute master - the state. In the disappearance of every constraint which does not emanate from the state, and in the denial of every pre-eminence which is not approved by the state. In a word, it ends in the atomization of society, and in the rupture of every private tie linking man and man, whose only bond is now their common bondage to the state. The extremes of individualism and socialism meet: that was their predestined course."

"Barbarian invasions would be superfluous: We are our own Huns."

"Power changes its appearance but not its reality. Politics are about power; we cannot evade that truth or its consequences. We dream of a better world but it is in Utopia – that is, nowhere."

"Democracy, then, in the centralizing, pattern-making, absolutist shape which we have given to it is, it is clear, the time of tyranny's incubation."

"In later times, Power's growth has continued at an accelerated pace, and its extension has brought a corresponding extension of war. And now we no longer understand the process. We no longer protest, we no longer react. The quiescence of ours is a new thing for which Power has to thank the smokescreen in which it has wrapped itself. Formally, it could be seen manifest in the person of the king, who did not disclaim being the matter he was, and in whom human passions were discernible. Now masked in anonymity, it claims to have no existence of its own, and to be but the impersonal and passionless instrument of the general will. But that is clearly a fiction."

"As we shall see, theories like those of Divine Right and Popular Sovereignty, which pass for opposites, stem in reality from the same trunk, the idea of sovereignty—the idea, that is, that somewhere there is a right to which all other rights must yield. It is not hard to discover behind this juridical concept a metaphysical one. A supreme Will, it runs, rules and disposes human societies, a Will which, being naturally good, it would be wrong to resist: this Will is either the Divine Will” or the “general will.” Power in being must be the emanation of this supreme sovereign, be it God or society; it must be the incarnation of this will. And its legitimacy is proportionate to its satisfaction of these conditions. Whether as delegate or mandatory, it can then exercise the right to rule. It is at this point that the two theories, in addition to their divergent conceptions as to the nature of the sovereign, become much differentiated. As to how, for instance, and to whom, and, above all, to what extent the right to rule is given. ...When can it be said, and by what signs can it be known, that Power, by betraying its trust, has lost its legitimacy, and, having now become no more than an observable fact, can no longer claim a right transcendent?"

"Ransack the history of revolutions, and it will be found that every fall of a regime has been presaged by a defiance which went unpunished. It is as true today as it was ten thousand years ago that a Power from which the magic virtue has gone out, falls."

"When the production process demands less work and distributes less and less wages, it gradually becomes obvious that the right to an income can no longer be reserved for those who have a job; nor, most importantly, can the level of incomes be made to depend on the quantity of work furnished by each person. Hence the idea of guaranteeing an income to every citizen which is not linked to work, or the quantity of work done."

"The ideology of work and the ethics of effort therefore become cover for ultra-competitive egoism and careerism: the best succeed, the others have only themselves to blame; hard work should be encouraged and rewarded, which therefore means we should not subsidize the unemployed, the poor and all the other 'layabouts'. This ideology (which in Europe finds its most overt expression in Thatcherism) is strictly rational, as far as capitalism is concerned: the aim to motivate a workforce which cannot easily be replaced (for the moment, at least) and control it ideologically for want of a means of controlling it physically. In order to do this, it must preserve the work-force's adherence to the work ethic, destroy the relations of solidarity that could bind it to the less fortunate, and persuade it that by doing as much work as possible it will best serve the collective interest as well as its own private interests. It will thus be necessary to conceal the fact that. there is an increasing structural glut of workers and an increasing structural shortage of secure, full-time jobs; in short, that the economy no longer needs everyone to work - and will do so less and less. And that; as a consequence, the 'society of work' is obsolete: work can no longer serve as the basis for social integration. But, to conceal these facts it is necessary to find alternative explanations for the rise in unemployment" and the decrease in job security. It will thus be asserted that casual labourers and the unemployed are not serious about looking for work; do not possess adequate skills, are encouraged to be idle by over~ generous dole payments and so on. And, it will be added, these people are all paid far too much for the little they are able to do, with the result that the economy, which is groaning under the weight of these excessive burdens, is no longer buoyant enough to create a growing number of jobs. And the conclusion will be reached that, 'To end unemployment, we have to work more.'"

"At the very point when a privileged fraction of the working class seems to be in a position to acquire multiple skills, to achieve workplace autonomy and continually widen their capacities for action - all of which are things that were ideals of the worker self-management currents within the labour movement - the meaning of this ideal is thus radically altered by the conditions in which it seems destined to be fulfilled. It is not the working class which is achieving these possibilities of self-organization and increasing technological power; it is a small core of privileged workers who are integrated into new-style enterprises at the expense of a mass of people who are marginalized and whose job security is destroyed -people shunted from one form of occasional, unrewarding and uninteresting employment to another, who are often reduced to competing for the privilege of selling personal services (including shoe-shining and house-cleaning) to those who retain a secure income."

"The image of the enterprise as a place where employees can achieve personal fulfilment is therefore an essentially ideological invention. It conceals the real transformations that have taken place, namely that enterprises are replacing labour by machines, producing more and better with a decreasing percentage of the workforce previously employed, and offering privileges to a chosen elite of workers, which are accompanied by unemployment, precarious employment, de-skilling and lack of job security for the majority. The advance of technology has thus resulted in the segmentation and disintegration of the working class. An elite has been won over to collaboration with capital in the name of work ethic; the great mass of workers have become marginalized or lost their job security and serve as a reserve army for industry which wishes to be able to adjust its workforce rapidly according to fluctuations in demand."

"A system of co-operation between workers and management cannot survive, therefore, unless management effectively guarantees its employees job security, by which I mean employment for life. It is on this condition alone that there can be social integration on the Japanese model within the enterprise. Yet large Japanese firms are only able to guarantee their employees jobs for life by out the manufacturing and services which they, as , have no vital interest in undertaking themselves, to a vast network of satellite companies. These subcontracting enterprises cushion the parent company from fluctuations in economic conditions: they employ and dismiss their workers according to changes in demand, and the fact that their employees often have no union or whatsoever means this can be accomplished with great speed. Job security in the parent companies is matched by unstable employment and social insecurity throughout the rest of the economy. Employment for life and are privileges reserved for an elite (about 25 per cent of Japanese employees in 1987, a figure which is decreasing markedly as older workers are encouraged to retire early and are not replaced). They are only compatible with economic rationality within the framework of a dual society. This social division (or 'dualization') has been the dominant characteristic of all the industrialized societies since the mid seventies."

"Enterprises are adopting a strategy of flexible response on two levels simultaneously: the firm's stable core of employees must be functionally flexible; the peripheral workforce, for its part, must be numerically flexible. In other words, 'around a core of stable workers with a wide range of skills, there is a fluctuating, peripheral workforce with a more restricted range of more basic skills, who are dependent on the chance play of economic forces. The stable core must accept occupational mobility, both in the short term (changing their positions and acquiring new skills) and in the long term (retraining and modifyi~g their career plans), in exchange for job security. Their skills are essentially company skills provided, enhanced and perfected by the firm by means of a process of continuous in-house training. The firm therefore relies heavily on the employees it has trained, and vice versa."

"This revaluation of the image of the worker rests, on the part of the employers, on a rational calculation: it is not only a question of winning. the loyalty of an elite of workers they cannot do without and integrating them into the enterprise; it also means cutting this elite off from its class of origin and from class organizations, by giving it a different social identity and a different sense of social worth. In a society cut in two ('dualized'), this elite necessarily belongs to the world of 'the fighters and winners' who deserve a different status from the work-shy masses. The members of this elite of workers will therefore be encouraged to form their own independent trade unions and their own forms of social insurance, co-financed by the enterprises in which they work. At the same time, the employers will have limited the ability of this elite to bargain or fight trade-union struggles, by isolating it and stressing its privileges: its members have been chosen from among a very large number of applicants; they enjoy job security, a steady income and the kind of work and possibilities of promotion that are envied by all. And above all they owe their status to the fact that they are, professionally, the most capable; economically, the most productive; and, individually, the most hard-working. Insofar as it corresponds in large part to the ideal of the sovereign, multi-skilled worker of the utopia of work, the employers' discourse and the strategy concealed within it, have brought about the most serious crisis in the history of the trade-union movement. If, as is the case in West Germany, trade-union organization derives its strength from its roots in the ranks of the skilled workers, the threat exists that it will rapidly degenerate into neo-corporatism. If, on the other hand, trade unionism is particularly strong among semi-skilled workers - as is the case in Italy where until recently there was practically no foreign workforce and where semi-skilled workers owe their job security to their trade-union organization -then the unions find themselves in the dangerous position of having strong support among a declining category of workers and weak backing from the two categories which are in rapid expansion: the mass of temporary workers, which is expanding but difficult to organize, the unemployed and 'odd jobbers'; and the new elite of 'reprofessionalized' workers, characterized by a marked tendency to defend their own specific interests by forming company unions or small craft unions."

"The necessity -from a technical point of view - for control and, consequently, for domination, can be overcome without too much difficulty in small and medium-sized enterprises; it cannot be overcome in large enterprises except by effecting changes which are all the more difficult to implement since they affect both the enterprise's hierarchical structure and its technical (and spatial) organization. William F. Whyte provides a number of examples to show that organizations can be modified so that workers enjoy their work, espouse the aims of the enterprise and mobilize the reserves of productivity and skill they usually keep to themselves. The success of this kind of reorganization necessarily presupposes, first, a relationship of between and organized labour, second, recognition of the workers' ability to organize themselves, take the initiative and participate in , and third, financial involvement of the workers in the results of their labour. Sooner or later, however, this policy of 'participation' or co-management - of which the Scanlon Plan was one of the best example; and one in advance of the 'quality circles' of thirty years later -meets with the following difficulty: for job security to be guaranteed, the volume of sales must increase at the same rate as the productivity of labour. A duly motivated , however, can achieve staggering increases in: productivity (increases of 20 per cent per annum over a period of several years in the examples cited by Whyte). The volume of sales, however, cannot continue to increase at such a rate. The point inevitably comes when management decides to reduce the workforce in order to reduce costs, thus regaining sole ownership of the enterprise's decision-making power. The 'partnership' of labour and capital is thus destroyed at one fell swoop; the workers realize their co-operation with the management has been a swindle; and antagonistic class relations are re-established."

"Cantillon has been a much neglected figure in economics. He is known primarily for his influence on Quesnay and the Physiocrats, and for developing the notion that money flows connect the different sectors of the economy. Yet the place of Cantillon in history is more important than this. His Essay can legitimately be regarded as the first real economic treatise. It envisioned the economy as an interrelated system, and explained how that system worked. For this reason, Cantillon probably deserves to be regarded as the first real economist."

"The system in place in the countries of the historic imperialist triad (the United States, Western Europe, Japan) is based on the exercise of the absolute power of the national financial oligarchies concerned. They alone manage the whole of the national productive systems, having succeeded in reducing almost all small and medium-sized enterprises in agriculture, industry, and services to the status of subcontractors for the exclusive benefit of financial capital."

"These oligarchies alone manage the political systems inherited from bourgeois electoral and representative democracy, having succeeded in domesticating the right and left electoral political parties, at the price of eroding the legitimacy of the democratic practice concerned. These oligarchies alone control the propaganda apparatuses, having succeeded in reducing the directors of news organizations including public broadcasters to the status of media clergy in their exclusive service. None of these aspects of the dictatorship of the oligarchy is challenged by the social and political movements at work in the triad, especially not in the United States."

"Around the world we find institutions like the World Trade Organization (WTO), whose policies could mean starvation for three billion peasant farmers, according to Samir Amin, director of the Third World Forum in Senegal. Unable to grow foodstuffs that can compete with products imported from advanced countries, how can these people survive?"