At a time when huge threats are unfolding all over the world, threatening the very survival of humanity and calling for very large-scale collective responses, we hear writers, journalists and politicians everywhere advocating withdrawal into oneself and denouncing “the system” which, according to them, is responsible for all the misfortunes of every citizen, every country and the world.
This “system” monopolizes positions, prevents its opponents from winning elections, imposes a single way of thinking, using the most devious means, from the use of partisan judges to vote rigging, including all forms of pressure on the people.
Yes, but no one agrees on what it is.
For supporters of the far left, it is formed by the powers of money, billionaires, large companies, financial markets and banks, of which politicians are mere puppets. These powers, they say, form an extremely organized “system” that places its employees in the media, political parties, administrations, governments and NGOs. The “system” is said to meet in secret locations and pass laws that serve its interests, in particular imposing a tax system that exempts the richest and makes the poorest classes fund the benefits they are supposed to receive. In addition, this “system” is said to do everything it can to prevent the most disadvantaged from migrating to rich countries and to prevent far-left parties from coming to power.
For far-right supporters, on the contrary, “the system” is made up of globalist technocratic powers, with judges and the official media in their pay, who would persist in imposing a single vision of the world, with insurmountable constraints. This “system” would do anything to keep the borders of each country open, to impose a cosmopolitanism that denies the identity of each nation, and to seize power by appointing judges in its service and removing leaders who oppose it by having them convicted of imaginary embezzlement.
Thus, both the extreme left and the extreme right see “the system” as a machine designed to eliminate them as soon as they come close to power. Both see it as the dictatorship of a “single thought”. Both believe that closing the borders is necessary to implement a program of rupture. Both ask the people to stand up against the elites trained in the best schools, who manage the public administrations and businesses; both call for them to be removed, to be sidelined. Or else thrown in prison.
Still others, not so extreme, also claim that something like a “system” exists, and sing the same songs, to carve out a little place for themselves in the sun.
For all these people too, the “system” is simply what prevents them from coming to power. And to talk about the “system” is to prepare to designate scapegoats. Dark times.
This discourse is obviously absurd: capitalism itself does not form a “system” on its own, as it is intertwined with many other forms of power. There is no secret society of billionaires running the world their way. Nor is there an international technocracy imposing a single way of thinking and unlimited globalization on the people. There are only people from all walks of life defending their interests by whatever means are available to them: financial, cultural, ideological, economic, political and sometimes even military.
We must therefore put an end to this idea of a “system”. And tell the truth: it was not a system that prevented a pro-Russian, anti-democratic and corrupt candidate from standing in the presidential election in Romania; it was the application of the law by a democracy. It is not a system that prevents, in France, at least before the appeal, Ms. Le Pen from being a candidate in the next presidential election, it is the application of a law (which she herself voted for) sanctioning, by independent judges, clearly established offenses, committed by her as well as by a large part of the French political class (and undoubtedly also those of other European countries).
If so many people swallow these accusations, if so many people love to denounce “a system” and do not make the effort to try to understand the complexity of the world, it is because these discourses include, in their ravings, exact and indisputable elements: yes, our societies are very unequal. Yes, never in a century has inequality of opportunity been higher. Yes, billionaires and technocrats have more influence on political decisions than other citizens. Yes, they are proportionally much more numerous than other social groups among the leaders of states, companies and the media. This is true in democracies as well as in totalitarian states. And their children increasingly monopolize places in the best universities. However, they do not form a coherent and logical “system”. The world is much more chaotic, less governed, than that.
It is not by caricaturing reality, by locking ourselves into borders and fantasies, that we will bring about the radical and urgent transformations that it needs. It is by seeking to understand it, and to determine where and how we can best act, for the well-being of future generations.