Arnaud Benedetti is an associate professor at Paris-Sorbonne University and editor-in-chief of the
“
Revue Politique et Parlementaire
”.
He published
How Did Politicians Die?
The great malaise of power
(Éditions du Cerf, 2021).
Of the peasant discontent we are witnessing, we must first be surprised, not by its emergence, but rather by its belated nature.
Everything has been said about the peasant malaise: indecent incomes, pensions which are just as indecent, the inappropriate, not to say unbearable, normative injunction, the charges which increase production costs, the unfair competition.
Certain sectors, such as arboriculture, are ultimately on the verge of disappearing;
others, such as livestock farming, are just as threatened by free trade agreements which are increasingly weakening them every day.
The demographic decline of the profession, that of our food sovereignty, testifies to a reality: the overexposure of a sector to the consequences of uncontrolled globalization on the one hand and meddlesome bureaucratization on the other, very often driven by Brussels but also toughened by the French administration.
The ills from which French farmers suffer concentrate Brussels dirigisme and French state atavism.
Therefore, there is no need to be surprised by the explosion of legitimate anger, if not of this patience, undoubtedly earthly, which has contained it until now.
It is now here and everything suggests that it is only just beginning.
Farmers have been on the front lines of globalization for decades.
They adapted a lot to it and the more they adapted to it, the more they faced its impact and the more they faced its devastating effects, the more the public authorities urged them to adapt even more.
Absurd, Kafkaesque mechanism, destructive humanly, economically, socially where the throes of unfortunate globalization have been grafted the moralizing diktats of the radicalized lobbying of environmentalists and the indifference of media sensors.
Added to the crisis of the profession is also a crisis of representation, an extension of the democratic crisis.
Because it is indeed the sociological base of the peasant world which is rising up, partly bypassing its traditional representatives.
Arnaud Benedetti
As proof of this indifference, while in the countryside the signage signs of the villages were turned over and across the Rhine the peasant mobilization was weakening the government coalition, the French media only gave a very relative place to what was nevertheless in taking shape, expression of a revolt that came from far away and with force.
Here we are and it could all come together very quickly.
The southwest, epicenter of the movement, gave the “la”.
This is not surprising for at least two reasons: many of the sectors are representative of the sectors most subject to distortion of competition, including arboriculture, and bureaucratic hyper-control.
Occitanie has also seen the development for several years of unionism in opposition to that, historic but perceived as too co-managing and therefore too complacent, of the FNSEA.
In the department of Lot-et-Garonne, one of the most prominent centers of protest, the Rural Coordination has been in the majority for many years and it is this which leads, among other things, some of the most spectacular since Monday.
Added to the crisis of the profession is also a crisis of representation, an extension of the democratic crisis.
Because it is indeed the sociological base of the peasant world which is rising up, partly bypassing its traditional representatives, including in a certain number of departmental federations of the dominant union, such as in Haute-Garonne.
This situation makes all the more complex the task of a government which, fully committed to its European agenda and whose French Renaissance representatives vote in the European Parliament for all the directions opposed by French farmers on the ground, will have for weeks ignored most of the low and medium intensity signals coming back from the countryside.
In its initial gestation, the phase which is opening is not unlike the upstream of the "yellow vests" where inattention and invisibility initially had been experienced as the manifestation of casualness and 'a contempt.
In addition to this organizational ability, the movement is also strong in its imagination, that of a nurturing, hard-working France, as opposed to technocratic thinking and Euro-Parisian oligarchic governance.
Arnaud Benedetti
It nevertheless probably differs from it by its future developments, because the movement, even while escaping the channeling of the FNSEA, nonetheless remains the expression of collectively organized actors who master the register of action collective as the codes of communication essential to its projection.
This professionalization of mobilization is not, however, an advantage for the executive.
Faced with organized anger, politically capable of disciplining a balance of power, he will not benefit from the spontaneous disorganization which
ultimately
had contributed in the long term to the delegitimization of the “yellow vests”.
In addition to this organizational ability, the movement is also strong in its imagination, that of a nurturing, hard-working France, as opposed to technocratic thinking and Euro-Parisian oligarchic governance.
It provides entire sections of society with powerful mechanisms of identification: rurality, which refers to a nostalgic country attached to its terroirs, whose image constitutes the remanence of a heritage legacy.
It conveys a system of representation articulated around transmission, heritage and self-sacrifice.
Also read: François-Xavier Bellamy and Anne Sander: “The overwhelming responsibility of the European Commission in the misfortune of our farmers”
Peasants represent much more than their demographic weight;
because they are the fundamental links of food sovereignty, which is also under attack notwithstanding the fact that France remains among the top five agricultural exporting powers in the world, they constitute a sensitive nerve of the country.
Emmanuel Macron had announced a major meeting to the Nation;
it could be that it is this matrix part of the Nation which has set this big meeting for him, by summoning him to review his software from top to bottom…