Pierre Bourdieu has become a leading figure in the radical movements that have swept France in the last few years. He talked to Kevin Ovenden about anti-capitalism and resistance
The Weight of the World was recently published in Britain. It describes through interviews in the early 1990s the 'social suffering of contemporary society'. Why is life getting harder for most people?
There are similarities between what has happened to people's lives in France and in Britain. The main issue, of course, is neo-liberalism and what I call the retreat of the state. The state has abandoned a lot of areas that it was involved in, such as healthcare, education, and social provision.
When we conducted this study it was only beginning. Now it is far worse. So for example, in France neo-liberal philosophy has become embedded in all the social practices and policies of the state. It has become internalised in the minds of the political establishment. The minister of education who was recently forced out of office, Claude All鑗re, was very similar to the one you have in Britain. He introduced into education so called 'tough policies'--a drive for efficiency and productivity.
Instead of looking very carefully at how education works, the neo-liberals opt for a very simple solution. They create competition between schools and between the directors of schools, who have to compete for budgets and for students. This competition is fake--it is artificially constructed. It does not arise spontaneously from the way the education system works. The education system was not perfect. I was very critical of it. But instead of correcting it and providing the means to better it, they destroy it by introducing this capitalistic vision of education.
One could say the same about healthcare. I recently read a record of a meeting between a group of professors of medicine who are traditionally very conservative. They went to meet prime minister Jospin. He did not receive them. A technocrat met them instead. The transcript of the discussion is terrible. The people say, 'Look, I never demonstrated or participated in any strike or protest movement. But for the first time I am forced to speak out on behalf of my patients.' One gave an example of a 73 year old woman who had cancer, but her medicine was too expensive for the hospital's budget. Another said that his hospital does not have the money to pay anaesthetists, so there are no anaesthetists at night. He asked the technocrat, 'Would you send your wife to such a hospital?' He replies, 'That's a personal question which I will not answer.'
We are seeing a blind and chaotic response to the problems of public institutions. We have had a very hierarchical system in healthcare for many years. But after 1968 younger people tried to change it. They tried to make the system more collective and introduce the idea of working as part of a team. Now that is being destroyed because they work under the threat of cuts and demands for greater productivity.
Centre-left parties are in government across most of Europe. They are presiding over these neo-liberal policies. Do you see anything new in the way social democratic parties are governing?
I am very sceptical about the idea that there is this new approach called the Third Way or the Neue Mitte. We have, to varying degrees across the continent, basically neo-liberal policies dressed up with talk of a new form of politics which is not terribly new at all. So we find social democratic rhetoric being deployed to destroy the social democratic policies which grew up in the period after the Second World War.
In France many of those pushing this offensive hail from the 1968 generation. They became radicalised then, but now are incorporated into the system. The failure of the Mitterrand years generated a backlash against the French Socialist Party. Of course, the great revolt of December 1995 ushered in a wave of social movements which brought the Socialists back into power.
