A review of two books about Andre Gorz published in Le Monde (2 May, 2009):

‘Political ecology owes a lot in France to community movements, but also to the thinkers, who in the 1970s confronted the problems brought about by the environmental crisis. Amongst them Andre Gorz (1923-2007) holds a special place with a few others -from Ivan Iliich to Serge Moscovici-, he has contributed in defining an ecological doctrine for the left. His reflection, in constant evolution, covers more than a half century: still in 2006-2007 he drew up a diagnostic of the impasses  of financial capitalism, anticipating the actual crisis.

A few publications measure up his contributions. After the essay of the philosopher  Arno  Munster, centered on the relation  of Gorz to the marxist tradition and to the workers’ movement (Andre Gorz ou le socialisme difficile, Ed. Lignes) and the quasi simultaneous publishing of two other books can help to envisage what could be a project of society integrating the ecological demand: a collective anthology edited by the economist Christophe Fourel, which comprises unpublished material and articles  of authors of diverse inspirations, from Patrick Viveret to Philippe Van Parijs; and an “audio book”  containing a text by Michel Contat who presents the recording of an interview done in 1991 and relates the intellectual development of Gorz, by recalling his activity of journalist at the Nouvel Observateur -of which he was a co-founder-, and his political evolutions after May 1968.

For a long time , Gorz remained in the shadow of the philosopher who at first had influenced his reflection: Jean-Paul Sartre. He will always be faithful to his philosophy of freedom and to his conception of the “anti-establishment” intellectual. But this faithfulness will not be political , especially when Sartre will sympathise with the Maoists:” Their typically populist, sectarian and dogmatic doctrine”,  will write Gorz in 1984,  was in my eyes a resurgence of stalinism.”

In the 1970s , influenced by his friend Ivan Illich and by the critique of “growth” broadcasted by the Club of Rome, he becomes an influential theoretician of political,ecology. In the radiophonic interview  of 1991  Gorz resumes his vision of ecology, which  ought not to limit itself, according to him, in correcting the damages of the commodity economy. The objective is to “change paradigm” by breaking with the unlimited pursuit towards profit: ecological politics are ” necessary anti-capitalist politics”, because  it aims to “limit the field of consumption and the commodity exchanges”. Ecological politics reject no less the “reactionary” right  which dreams of a return to a “before-capitalism”, and to a society of order where “everyone is in his place” and where “there are no foreigners”. By  claiming to draw on Marx, the anti-capitalism of Gorz does not maintain any nostalgia towards tradition. The super-session of capitalism , according to him, is made possible  by the increase in productivity, which  permits as massive reduction of the  time of work for everyone, and an increasing disconnection between work and income.

These ideas have been debated on the left. Thus, the sociologist Robert Castel has expressed his divergences with Gorz, by  underlining how much the perspective of the end of wage-slavery was problematic. To the thesis of the”end of work”, Castel replies by saying that the market and work remain “the two  pillars of modernity”, and that the  sole realist project consists in a “leftwing reformism” which implies  a strong domestication of capitalism, not its abolition.

AN “EXISTENCE INCOME”.

The anthology dedicated to Gorz   brings other arguments. For example, Jean-Baptiste Foucauld, who was a commissioner  to the Plan( A French State body), confronts  the projects of Gorz about the massive reduction of the time of work with the trails  that he himself had opened, in  1980, in a collective  book prefaced by Jacques Delors and called  La Revolution du Temps Choisi  (The Revolution of Chosen Time). Andre Gorz, who knew Delors, had greeted that book as one of the rare ways to get out of the capitalist model, because it defended the right of wage-earners to auto-decide their time of work and to arbitrate between this one and their level of income. However, Jean-Baptiste de Foucauld  notes that the project of Gorz  had a more pronounced utopian character, and he welcomes with scepticism his belated plea for an unconditional ” existence income”. As for  Denis Clerc  and Dominique Meda, they speak , backed up with data, about the description by Gorz of an “ineluctable reduction of employment”.

All underline however the fecundity  of his thesis about the reduction of the time of work , on the disaster of an invading economic logic and of the impasses of an unlimited growth. The thinking of Gorz , Meda and Clerc suggest also that it evokes the visions of John Maynard Keynes who, in his text of 1930 called  Economic Perspectives for our grand-children, anticipated , that in a century , the “economic problem” would be resolved : three hours of work per day would be sufficient, the race for profit  would be perceived as pathological,  and human beings , thanks to freed time could devote themselves to higher activities.

Of that utopia, the political ecology of Andre Gorz is also the inheritor.

Serge Audier.
(translated by MPW Prigent for Principia Dialectica)

On the 6th of May 2009.
The two books reviewed by S. Audier are: Andre Gorz . Un penseur pour le XXI siecle. (La Decouverte, “Cahiers Libres”. 240p and Andre Gorz . Vers la Societe liberee. livre audio, commentaire de Michel Contat. INA-textuel . “voix au chapitre” 74p

               

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