Frederic Lordon: the French thinker celebrating strikes

A mural of Frederic Lordon painted in 2016 (Picture: thierry ehrmann on Flickr)

The strike wave and mass protests in France represent the biggest socio-political crisis that an advanced capitalist economy has experienced since the 1970s. And these struggles have also found theoretical expression in the writings of the sociologist Frederic Lordon.

His blog on the Le Monde diplomatique website has provided a brilliant commentary on the crisis. English translations have been published by Socialist Worker. Lordon has the gift for the perfect phrase.

He wrote, “Macron has never accepted otherness. He is in conversation only with himself—the outside world does not exist.” And, “So here is the Intersyndicale (the trade union coordination) at the point of failure, which was waiting for it from the start, without the slightest alternative solution since it refuses them all.”

This applies perfectly to the leaders of unions like the RMT and UCU in Britain. They are desperate to throw in the towel after doggedly pursuing a strategy of limited action doomed to failure from the start.

Lordon supports communism as the alternative to capitalism, but he isn’t exactly a Marxist. He’s closer to the tradition of French critical sociology, whose most celebrated representative was Pierre Bourdieu. 

But the chief intellectual influence on him seems to be the great 17th century philosopher Baruch Spinoza. Lordon wrote a book called Willing Slaves of Capital: Spinoza and Marx on Desire (2010). Lordon used Spinoza to supplement Marx in explaining how capitalists are able to “enlist” workers to labour and create profits on their behalf. The synthesis doesn’t really work theoretically, despite many interesting insights. 

And from the perspective of 2023, the book is quite pessimistic. For example, Lordon says that neoliberal capitalism is able to demand from workers without limit because of “a certain landscape of forces and notably… the state of the forces of resistance, more precisely of their non-existence.”

Now Lordon celebrates a society in insurrection. “It’s beautiful what happens when the ruling order starts to unravel. Small but incredible things occur that shatter the resigned isolation and atomisation on which the powerful rely.”

What’s made the difference? My guess is the destructive impact of the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-9. It was perhaps coupled with the futile and damaging efforts of the ruling class to persist with and even to radicalise the neoliberal policies that precipitated the collapse. 

“In the space of a few decades, and especially since 2017, an entire social model has been brought to its knees.” he writes. “They have brought the country to its knees. Not the CGT, not the Intersyndicale (if only) —-they and they alone have done this. The country has been ruined by the competent. It is in a state of total disorganisation. 

 “Hence a paradox (of which there are many) within late capitalism—the incompetence of the bourgeoise has itself become a historical force, one which a minimal amendment to (Joseph) Schumpeter (an economist who celebrated capitalism’s ‘creative destruction’) allows us to identify—destructive destruction. Or, to give it its proper name—McKinsey.”

 This is an interesting passage because people say similar things about Britain. But they put the “destructive destruction” here down to Boris Johnson and Brexit. But Lordon invites us to recognise the shambles that the Tories have inflicted on us as a symptom of something broader and more systemic.

I would call it the beginnings of the breakdown in capitalism’s ability to reproduce itself.  The explosion of 2023 has given a much more concrete class content to Lordon’s communism.

“Sovereignty of the producers over production —here is a slogan with an appeal, and well beyond the working class, those most directly concerned … Legitimacy, and consequently sovereignty, belongs only to those who do the work. 

“As for those who, despite their complete ignorance, nevertheless claim to organise the work of others—consultants and planners—they are nothing but parasites and must be driven out.”

 The road ahead for the struggle in France is far from simple or straightforward. But it’s fascinating to see how this revolt has already clarified the thinking of a talented left intellectual and helped him to express its logic so well.