A graduate from Ecole Normale Supérieure (in Philosophy), Gaspard Koenig runs the classical liberal think-tank GenerationLibre, which he created in 2013 and which has been ranked among the Top European Think Tanks in the 2015 Global Go-To Report. Prior to that, Gaspard worked as a speechwriter for the Finance Minister Christine Lagarde, and as a strategy adviser at the EBRD in London. He is a published author of novels and essays, and a columnist for various newspapers – including Les Echos and The Financial Times. He is also teaching philosophy at Sciences-Po University.
Could you please briefly describe the philosophy behind Génération Libre, the think-tank you created in 2013?
My pleasure. Actually, this gives me the opportunity to clarify a small methodological inaccuracy that some people sometimes make: I am not an Economist but a Professor of Philosophy. As such, I approach issues through a strong theoretical framework and this is also how we work at Génération Libre (GL). We have a top-down approach that allows us to look at a wide variety of topics so as to build and reinforce a coherent ideology. At an individual level, the drawback of course is that for each subject, my technical knowledge is somewhat limited and I need to do extensive research to compensate for this technical illiteracy. The think-tank is there in part to facilitate that research.
GL is based on a strong and clear world view, usually referred to as “Classical Liberal”: In a nutshell, the State’s sole purpose is to insure the individual’s autonomy. I could be more specific because there are many subcategories to this current of thought but it might become more explicit as the interview progresses. We then cover many topics from this philosophical vantage point, collaborating then with true experts to develop concrete and precise public policy proposals. We then introduce our work through a media strategy into the public debate, or as Hayek calls it the “climate of opinion”. You need to first change public opinion to be able to affect policy.
Our work on Basic Income is a good illustration of this. Of course, we are not the only ones working on the topic. Some people have been at it for forty years in France. However, we feel that we helped bring the subject to light over the last year and now, the Prime Minister is talking about it and it will be a talking point in the 2017 French presidential elections. This is to me exactly the role of a think-tank. And there is no way we would have brought this topic to such a high level if we did not have very strong expertise underpinning our proposals.
Tocqueville already in his time, thought that French intellectuals were too abstract and politicians too practical, so we are trying to bridge the gap. We have already worked on a wide variety of topics, from corporate incentives to “Free Schools” or surrogacy and our next topic will be ownership of personal data.
Could you please be a little more precise on your personal philosophical vantage point?
Well fundamentally, it can be summed up in the phrase « to live and let live ». In other words, if the State is a necessity - which it may not be - its sole purpose should be to help individuals to gain autonomy and emancipation. It follows that any moral value or planned social organisation is doomed to fail and a true threat to freedom.
This is true, for example, of “work ethic” as I often say when discussing Basic Income. In a true open society, there are no collectively defined or predetermined values. There are values of course but none defined by politics. Morality and law are completely distinct. So the work ethic cannot be an absolute reference. Some classical Liberals will say that an industrial society is a society of work with all that that implies but I am more in line with the ideas in Jean Tirole’s L’économie du bien commun for example, at least on his definition of society, on some other topics I may be more libertarian than him.
As my study focuses on this notion, do you believe society is in the midst of a transition and if so, how would you define it?
Yes, it is and it seems to me that the shift from an industrial society to a digital one is a change akin to that of an agrarian to an industrial society. It changes how we measure things. It changes our perspective of work, growth, all these fundamental aspects of society. A relatively short-lived perspective of only a couple hundred years at most, when you think of it. It will probably change our definition of what a Nation State is, which was one of the most structural notions of the Industrial Age. All these political systems, legal systems, even metaphysical systems will be redefined as they were at the end of the 18th century.
We are in the middle of this major shift and I would like to think that all these populist movements we are witnessing, in France with the Front National, in Britain with the Brexit, in the U.S. with Trump, are the death rattle of this past society and that demographically, those people will soon become the minority. At least that is the hope.
Disintermediation and the reclaiming of individual control over personal environment, time, relationships will change everything. All these aspects, including one’s community, should be an active choice. This in turn, changes the notion of representation, which is also fundamentally an industrial idea.
As I see it, the current political crisis is the crisis of representation. The idea of being represented by somebody else doesn’t make any sense in an age when one can make decisions on a second-to-second basis through various apps. Hence the development of Civic-Tech but which can also be very negative. I am very critical of Change.org for example. I find that direct democracy done in this way, where one decides on massive general topics in under a minute is truly terrifying. It is solely based on emotion and false evidence. I am usually in total opposition to the petitions one finds on Change.org. However, there are smarter tools out there, usually at a more local level, allowing people for instance to notify other of various issues in the community or allocate resources in participatory budgets. These are to me more interesting.
Then you have largescale liquid democracy projects which I find very exciting. Conceptually, this is truly novel because it allows us to transcend the usual right-left split of direct representation and thanks to technology, allow for a new type of democracy more in synch with behaviours in this century.
All this illustrates the nature of the transition as I see it, at a political level but we could also discuss how things are changing at economical or societal level as well.
To stay on the political just one more moment, as Christine Lagarde’s speech writer while she was the French Minister of Finance, you say of your time by her side that “[You] have understood the limits of the system’s ability to change things”[1]. You previously illustrated in great detail the role of your think-tank but for me think-tanks are an integral part of the “system”. Am I wrong in thinking that? How should one go about changing things?
It all depends how the think-tank is structured. Independence and the ability to influence change is always a complicated tight rope act. If you are completely alone or with no recognition whatsoever, your ability to act is inexistent. On the other hand, if you are financed by BNP and the CDC[2] like other French think-tanks, you will not achieve anything either.
We currently have found a rather good balance where GL is rather at odds with mainstream French thinking and is largely financed by individuals. This implies we have limited financial means but are very free. This allows us for example to write about the French banking oligopoly which no other think-tank in the country can do, right or left.
It also means, you need to follow some of the “rules of the game” such as appearing on TV broadcasts and commenting the news, which is not necessarily my favourite occupation. Again, it is a balancing act between being part of the establishment and at the same time, playing with it. This has over time given us a certain amount of credibility. For example, l’ENA asked me recently to write in their main publication[3] an article on Nations and Liberalism. It is quite funny that l’ENA, the heart of hearts of the French establishment, has asked me to write an article in which I argue that Liberalism leads to the death of the concept of Nation.
These represent nearly daily decisions so as not to lose our balance, but the way we have structured the think-tank and financed it, is I believe quite coherent with our ambition and mission statement.
We have already talked a bit about this but I wanted to come back for a moment if I may, on localism, Nation States and Globalisation. In a recent article of yours in Nation Française, you conclude by saying that “the current wave of populism is but the death rattle of the Nation State” as you mentioned earlier in the interview. You also talk much about the benefits of localism but what role do you give to Globalization? Is optimisation at a local level not dangerous for Global issues?
To answer, I would like to paraphrase Benjamin Constant on the difference between the Freedom of ancient times and the Freedom of modern times.
He explains that the Freedom of ancient times is to participate in creating a common goal for which one could sacrifice his or her life. This is what we call today, to the right “the values of the Republic”[4], and to the left “living together”[5], but it is fundamentally the same idea. The Freedom of modern times is freedom of the individual who can move beyond borders and, for the first time in the History of the world, is free to move wherever he or she wishes where there exists a strong rule of law.
With digital tools, one can create multiple communities. Localism today does not any longer have any geographical meaning and does not have to be anchored in one territory, under one homogeneous representative political system. It offers the possibility to belong to multicultural groups[6].
Actually an interesting illustration of this is the phenomenon of re-urbanisation[7], where individuals move to a new area where they decide to follow local traditions - even if they have never been there previously - whilst keeping in touch with their friends from Paris or New York, and belonging to a Pan-European Buddhist group for example. In effect, they create their identity by layering their affiliation to various groups and identities which seem – to a certain extent at least - chosen. To truly chose, one must be educated and have enough means to do so, but that is another question entirely.
This is an idea I develop in this yet unpublished article in the ENA publication, which is a somewhat Kantian ideal of a Society of Nations with a very distant and minimalistic State - in this case European – which guaranties the rule of law, competition, police and diplomacy and then, a very decentralised process in which individuals organise themselves, and where nationality is but one layer of their identity.
I think it is a good thing than Nations exist, I for one feel very French and I love my country, I love the language, its authors… but I do not see the point of superimposing this feeling to a homogeneous administrative system which also necessarily encompasses all other French citizens. On this topic, I – along with several American Libertarians – are of a mind that the phenomenon of secession probably will increase in the future. Only last week, the Institut Montaigne published a study which talks about secessionist Muslims in France, but also there was talk about the secession of cities like London or even the whole of Scotland from Great Britain after the Brexit.
France has one of the most restrictive constitutions in the world on this notion of national identity. France is “une et indivisible“ (one and indivisible) since its first constitution, over two centuries ago. This is very rare in democratic constitutions. This is in a way precludes State ownership of individuals as well as of the territory as a whole. I believe that idea cannot hold forever and the tensions we see today are early warning signs of this upcoming breaking point. We are trying to preserve at any cost, too rigid a structure on peoples and beliefs which are distinctive. This phenomenon can be seen as more or less pleasant. It is pleasant when London asks for its independence, it is less so when Muslims want to impose Charia law but behind all this, could be the same root cause.
In another of your articles Arrêtons de tirer sur l’élite ![8], you call on French intellectuals to communicate more and to take back their place in the public debate. Many people - Glucksman in France who says that the Front National is the only major political party in France to have a true political vision, or Srnicek in Britain, when he criticises the lack of vision of the Left – think the issue is more that mainstream Elites do not have enough of a vision, which is why they keep silent. Which is it, a lack of communication or a lack of ideas?
I believe the Elites and in general public intellectuals have abandoned their role in society. They bend to the will of populism because they no longer dare make sophisticated speeches, which are intelligent, nuanced and lengthy. By accepting the rules of Twitter, they abandon their important social role and because of this, their thinking in turn, becomes more basic and one could say even dumber.
As for the Front National (FN) in France, we have studied this in detail. The FN-vision in France is very coherent, very detailed and referenced, their vision is no longer fascistic today, it is just completely retrograde. They basically want to come back to the program of the CNR[9] with an administered economy and national companies. It is full of nostalgia for the Trente Glorieuses[10]. The FN has a vision of a closed society, logic would dictate that we oppose as detailed and undeniably more futuristic a vision praising openness, but it is indeed lacking.
It is a bit what we are trying to do here at GL. Emmanuel Macron’s popularity who has not said much up to now, shows that there is this need for someone to represent the opposite argument. However, everything is yet to be done. There needs to be a structured discourse on Planetarism, social models, taxes, etc. The socio-democratic consensus is very hard to create. In certain circles it is easier and seems obvious but when I attend some university symposiums for example, I am always stunned to see the awkwardness of the Welfare State mentality. The people who still wield intellectual power in France are still completely permeated with this way of thinking and refute any different discourse. I often feel completely marginalised and invited as a jester to amuse people, as if I were a curious animal in a zoo. I have very precise anecdotes but this is maybe not the place to discuss them.
While in San Francisco, I interviewed Fabien Courtot-Millet, Google’s Director of Economics and I asked him what he thought of the warning you make in your book, Le révolutionnaire, l'expert et le geek, where you argue that the gradual digitalisation of the economy and the gradual optimisation of society thanks to improved customised services could lead to the loss of our freedom and autonomy. Unsurprisingly perhaps, he dismissed it by giving the example, that even if Google book recommendations became so accurate that it always found exactly what you were looking for, nothing would stop you from asking Google to recommend books outside of your usual interests. It is simple and I am condensing it maybe too much here but it sounds rather convincing. How do you respond? How should we protect our autonomy?
Well what he says may be true but I think things might not be as clear cut if you choose other examples. Let’s take self-driving cars. Am I free to choose a car without a GPS inside? Probably not, because it would negatively impact the rest of society. Or could I decide not to give my personal health data?
I went to see a hacker community in Berlin and they wouldn’t meet with me if I had a smartphone. These are people at the very peak of technology and Big Data is their nightmare. In France and even more so in America, we are still very much technophiles. France has a strong engineering culture, politicians feel it makes them cool to use buzz words such as “Hackathons”, “Big Data” or “Smart City”, but it is interesting to go to Germany where they have their own history with personal freedom and surveillance. What they told me about the current state of information in general strengthened my beliefs.
One of the solutions to insure we maintain our independence and autonomy from Big Data is ownership of personal data. As I see it, the main issue today, is that our data and logically, the offers and recommendations that are made to us, are used and generated without our consent really, I mean Terms & Conditions are a joke.
The system is financed through advertising, so advertisers needs to know who we are, and since we take advantage of all this, it is only normal that we receive incentives to consume more. When all is said and done, it is a very collectivistic system, where everyone is equal, and is equal to zero. People get access to a product or a service in exchange for free data and we are not allowed to negotiate that value. In a truly liberal system, we could establish private property of data which is a concept missing from law today. We have private property of databases, for example data sets collected by companies which they work on and add value to. This is governed by classical Intellectual Property law, but individual data has no legal ownership.
In France, legal experts justify this by the fact that data is an emanation of the individual and that the individual is in legal jargon “indisponible” (unavailable); there is no ownership of the self. There is no ownership of the body which means you can’t sell yourself into slavery, sell one’s organs, freeze yourself for the future, to name but a few implications of what is legally referred to as “personal dignity”.
If we were to establish a private ownership of data – which I admit then leads to ownership of the body and paves the way for many implications in regards to transhumanism – we could collectively organise a market for personal data. Data would have a value even if it was of a few fractions of a cent. We could then buy and sell using nano-payments. Jaron Lanier in his book, Who owns the future? explains this very well.
This would allow us to do away with the unhealthy and central place taken up by advertising in digital business models. We would go back to a bilateral client/service provider relationship. Contracts could then become personalised. Some could say “I do not mind, you can have all my data for ever and in exchange I get paid the most money possible” and others could say “I want to have access to your service but without you having access to my data so I am happy to pay, which is normal after all since I am causing harm to the community by not contributing to the service”.
The idea that ownership of data has a cost because it constitutes a loss to the group, can be applied to pretty much everything. This loss can be measured and priced, so everyone could create his or her own digital contract.
Today on this issue of data usage and ownership, we are going down a centralised legal path illustrated by the Right to be Forgotten[11] for example. This is going to create a very slow bureaucratic system which is going to pester companies and slow down innovation. I believe companies will figure out that it is in their best interest to push for this idea I am proposing. Yes, initially it will cost them quite a bit to put the system into place but then, it would give them the freedom of a normal bilateral relationship with their clients/data generator. This is a very classical idea. For example, in oil, yes one pays the refinery for transforming crude oil but you one also pays for the oil field in the first place.
Ecuador is looking into organising what is sometimes referred to as Digital Commons at a national level as a source of revenue for the inhabitants. This is a similar idea but one you probably are against?
It depends. I agree with some who believe that this could constitute a source of revenue even to the point of helping create or help the Middle Class but I am against it being organised at a national level. In France, that is Pierre Bélanger’s idea who wants to nationalise data and create a national data agency who would sell it off as a national resource. But the advantage of personal data ownership, which is want I am in favour of, is that, beyond the financial benefit, it would give the individual back a huge amount of control.
I have a question concerning your position on centralisation. I could both quote you advocating for and against a strong centralised State[12]. Could you clarify your position?
Well it all depends on the topic. You need a strong State to protect ownership of data as I have just described it. To help create maybe unions of data owners like you have author unions for copyright law for example. As an aside, I would argue that data ownership is to the Digital Age what copyright law was to the Industrial Age. There was a need to create new concepts in law, and this need has again arisen. I am for a centralised and very distant State that guaranties a number of mechanisms in society and then for decentralisation of everything else.
One could give a similar illustration in Education. If you take Free Schools for instance – schools created by communities, who design the curriculum, hire teachers but which are financed and evaluated by the State. It is in the end always the same logic, the logic of a Big Society as the British theorised in their 2010 elections.
I just believe the State should be at a European level because there already exists there all that is needed. I know it isn’t necessarily the most fashionable thing to say at the moment but I really believe that.
While in Boston, I interviewed a doctoral student working at the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy (IDE) and one of the ideas we talked about was that, following Hayek’s arguments, the 20th century saw the victory of market economies and democracies over planned economies and totalitarian regimes because information being so complicated to gather and centralise, it makes sense to delegate decisions to the most local level. However today, we are probably able to centralise all this information in very efficient a manner. Does it make sense today to move back towards centralised and authoritarian powers to improve social efficiency, especially in a world with limited resources? What is your take on this reasoning?
I will say two things on this.
First, about the Shanghai Consensus – the idea that authoritarian regimes can create efficient economies like China – I think Hayek’s arguments are still as valid as ever. I remember talking with Mao Yushi – a dissident liberal Chinese economist - and I am convinced that China’s development will stop once it has caught up industrially if it does not liberalise politically. The examples of China or Russia do not refute that argument in the least.
Secondly, concerning the usage that could be done of Big Data, one should refuse utilitarianism. Utilitarianism, in this context, is to create the most happiness possible for the greatest number possible. This is exactly what Big Data enables us to do: to eliminate marginalities and to have the most optimised solution for the entire group. This is Bentham’s argument. This leads to the panoptical society, the Society of Transparency. I dislike Bentham’s approach; I much prefer John Stuart Mill’s. Which is to say, that one should refuse utilitarianism in the name of individual freedom and autonomy. Even if it suboptimal for the group, our civilisation should protect the “right to err”. Hence, the idea of Data ownership. I can choose not to share my data and this may well lead to society finding less vaccines or traffic being less fluid, but it is the only way not to end up in a society of obligatory optimisation.
I’d like to come back on Liquid Democracies for a minute. You agree with Rousseau’s argument that when voting one should not vote following one’s own individual wants but by imagining the broader society in which one wishes to live in. This is a common criticism done to Liquid Democratic schemes. At the same time, you defend - as you have just done - the individual’s right to extract him-or herself from society and disorganise or at least de-optimise it, so as to preserve one’s freedom. Is there not an incoherence there where the individual should both focus on the good of society and their own interests?
Not really. First of all, I truly believe in local democracies (local being, as we have discussed, not necessarily a geographical term). I went to Switzerland a while back to see direct democracy operating at a regional (Canton) level and I find that wonderful. It is exactly what Tocqueville explained about the learning of democracy, it should start locally. There is no point discussing a constitution if people can’t agree at how roads should be drawn up or if the local agriculture should be subsidised or not. This is truly how one learns about democracy.
Secondly, what I love about Liquid Democracy is the possibility to delegate power. In a Liquid Democracy, you can delegate to someone else your vote on a specific topic once and for all if you wish, or take it back when you want. Today, the only choice you have is either to partake of abstain. There, you can delegate and “go about one’s business”, as Benjamin Constant said, while still taking part in the process. This is what preserves most individual freedom because it allows somebody not to be plagued by community decisions and not to be penalised for that. It goes without saying that I am completely against obligatory voting.
This may be a little too philosophical for our discussion (I mean for me), but I am interested in your perspective of the individual. At the end of your book, you describe the individual as a nomad a little caught up in the flow of the world - following Deleuze’s definition of the term - and yet, it seems to me that the individual who you wish to arise, “Emancipated from tutelage and who overcomes law” is closer in some ways to a Nietzchean Übermensch. Am I wrong in thinking this?
Not everything is yet completely coherent and definite. Thankfully, my thinking evolves over time. I still don’t quite know what to think of the individual.
In the Liberal context, in everything we have said, the individual is the absolute reference. Deleuze pushed the logic of deconstruction further since for him, the individual is but the product of much deeper and de-territorialised currents. So I wonder if one should push the idea of autonomy beyond the individual. I don’t know. Each time I read Deleuze, I feel the same fascination and repulsion. I do not quite know what to think of it all. But I do see that the ultimate would be to abolish the individual as reference point.
For now, I’m working to make the individual autonomous and that should already be good enough.
My last questions are about Basic Income and the counter arguments that are usually levelled against it. Génération Libre proposes a Basic Income for France, that you call the LIBER, financed through revenue tax. With the forecasted reduction in jobs because of autonomous machines, are you not scared that the amount of revenue to tax will dwindle and so will doom Basic Income?
I do not believe much in the post-work era. I believe that there might be a post-salary era which one can see on the horizon socially, economically, with technology that frees us from office work which will make no sense in twenty years and which bores people like you and I who at 30 decide to leave our respective offices. Universal Basic Income is particularly well suited to a world with fluctuating monthly income. However, this is separate from the question of a post-work era.
If a post-word age does arise then no, a Basic Income scheme won’t work because there will be no more revenue and one would have to imagine a whole other society, a whole other economy.
The Universal Basic Income we propose is in a context of work but maybe post-salary and can be supplemented with revenue from personal data sales (Jaron Lanier’s idea).
Some opponents of Universal Basic Income (UBI) argue that it gives too much power to the State who may be tempted, once Basic Revenue is in place, to make it conditional and force people to adhere to a certain model of its choosing. An example, you have mentioned yourself, the Bolsa Familia in Brazil (which is not a fully-fledged UBI scheme) in which one must vaccinate children to be eligible. Does this possibility scare you?
Just briefly, as you mentioned the Bolsa Familia is but a step towards Universal Income.
What you describe is political economics and is what Hayek describes when talking about negative income tax in Capitalism and Freedom. Everything hinges on the “self-restraint of the electorate” which is always dangerous to bet on (laughs). To come back on the role of our think-tank, I believe we shouldn’t take into account the political constraints as we do for economic and legal ones. We offer very clear ideas and to achieve these it is up to politicians to find the way and we do not have to take those difficulties into account.
But to answer more specifically the fear you describe in your question which is the fear of the centralisation of power given to the State by Basic Income, I would say that UBI actually takes a way a lot of potential for electoral corruption. Politicians no longer can change every six months who gets a rebate or not, or who gets taxed. It is all much simpler and much less arbitrary. It creates a healthier more direct relationship between the State and the citizen which doesn’t go through the level of the family for example, because in our example child benefits are part of the Basic Income. So we have taken away another intermediary level.
My last question and counter argument to UBI, comes from an article by Nicolas Colin, in which he explains that there is this very Silicon Valley-“killer app” aspect to UBI which oversimplifies the reality of things and that one solution cannot solve all society’s problems and that it is puerile to think so. For example, Basic Income would be a gift to corporations who would simply lower their wages by the amount of the UBI. What is your reaction to this?
I believe simplicity should not be sneered at but of course he is right, it does not solve everything. Our UBI does not affect healthcare, retirement pensions or unemployment benefits, or specific benefits such as for the disabled. For the LIBER, we do not even take into account everything to do with housing, where there is a lot to do. It is a Basic Income.
To answer specifically the issue on company wages, what you/he/others describe could happen to low qualified employees but it gives the least qualified bargaining power. Nobody needs to work to survive, so we do away with the absolute economical constraint if you wish and that is quite something.
On this point, Srnicek believes that UBI should be accompanied by a major increase in the minimum wage so as to limit wage deterioration (and encourage quick and massive automation). Would that be a good idea for you?
I won’t go into too much detail but yes following my ideology, I am against the minimum wage and what Srnicek proposes for me is new age administered economy. Nevertheless, the UBI would be conceptually a big step forward, because even if today in France, the money is there and distributed through various programs: the revenu de solidarité active (RSA), the minimum-income allowance (RMI, or Revenu Minimum d’Insertion) and the employment bonus (PPE), the UBI recognises this distribution without any counterparts which is not the case of any of these other programs. So economically the balance is not affected but conceptually there is a major shift. France is probably the country most ready for UBI because it has already all the measures needed for wealth redistribution. I believe François Bourguignon wrote a column where he says that France already has Universal Income. In a way he is absolutely right, the money just isn’t flowing in the right pipes though. We have the costs associated with UBI without the benefits which is a shame.
What did I not ask and should have?
We should have talked more about Transhumanism.
Who should I meet during my study?
[1] « J’ai pris conscience des limites du système pour faire bouger les choses »
[2] La Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations (the Deposits and Consignments Fund) is a French public sector financial institution created in 1816, and part of the government institutions under the control of the Parliament. Often described as the “investment arm” of the French State, it is defined in the French Monetary and Financial Code as a “public group serving the public interest” and a “long-term investor”.
[3] La Revue Française d'Administration Publique (RFAP) is the main publication of the Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA) (In English: The National School of Administration). The ENA is France’s elite higher education institute for public administration. It is entrusted with the selection and initial training of senior French officials. It is one of the most prestigious and elitist French schools though in recent years, it has often been criticised in its lack of innovative thinking and ability to prepare French elite public servants to successfully manage times of transition.
[4] Les valeurs de la République
[5] Le vivre-ensemble
[6] Gasard Koenig here makes a distinction in French, which is hard to translate into English. He talks of “groupes pluriculturels” and not “multiculturels” which means that the groups in question allow for multiple cultures and are not themselves made up of one culture derived from multiple cultures.
[7] rurbanisation
[8] Stop taking shots at the Elite !
[9] Le Conseil National de la Resistance (the National Council of the Resistance) was the body that directed and coordinated the different movements of the French Resistance - the press, trade unions, and members of political parties hostile to the Vichy regime, starting from mid-1943.
[10] Les Trente Glorieuses ("The Glorious Thirty") refers to the thirty years from 1945 to 1975 following the end of the Second World War in France. Over this thirty-year period, France's economy grew rapidly like economies of other developed countries within the framework of the Marshall Plan. These decades of economic prosperity combined high productivity with high average wages and high consumption, and were also characterised by a highly developed system of social benefits.
[11] Droit à l’oubli
[12] « Nous devons préparer un monde ouvert où l’autonomie individuelle et les coopérations spontanées remplaceront les structures centralisées. » Description de Génération Libre sur son site.
« [Il faut une] centralisation puissante pour émanciper l'individu de ses tutelles" , Le révolutionnaire, l'expert et le geek