Citizens ! Sans Culottes ! Buers ! I will respond in my native language English which will be the first reason for you all to dismiss my comments.

This thesis show the intellectual decline of the left and our inability to find new solutions. Any sustainable transformation which delivers greater equality will require thinking beyond an analysis suggested by the author which has its origins in French revolutionary thought and practice.

This thesis does not take into account the increased participation in capital in most liberal democracies and of modern business practices which highlight worker participation. The level of shareholding in Western Liberal democracies has grown considerably as have the middle class. It is true that they still struggle with infrastructure issues but are aware of the pressing needs in this area and tend to enjoy new levels of prosperity and social cohesion. Poverty in the West and the rest of the World remains a pressing question. Its solution is not a new extended protectionism or the return to the supreme Nation state handing out largesse to the grateful masses. A retreat to old doctrine or dogma, however deftly disguised, is not the way forward. Further the naive suggestion of the Nation state concept (which resulted in the recent rejection of the EU constitution) which will see France returned to its former glory and to extend its influence and munificence in the world, is bound to continue the decline in France. There is no doubt that advances in health, science and education are important to long term prosperity but the authors method of addressing these issue is glib and outmoded. By 2015 France faces a 22 Billion shortfall in its health funding, in 2004 it was 11.6 billion. France’s current public debt is 66% of GDP and by 2014 will be 100% of GDP. This cannot be sustained and compromises both Frances economic revival and the likelihood of future investment in these essential areas. This is not the case in the liberal democracies the author refers to. Protectionism seems to be glorified even deified by the author in defiance of historical precedent. It is time for France to embrace the world. Solutions to the pressing social needs of the both France and the poor of the world are not to found in the this article.

Indeed the irony of the French revolutionary ideals are that they are in effect totalitarian and intolerant of individualism or separate identity whilst espousing a more human face through the worthy ideal of equality. The French Republican/Socialist model, from which the author proceeds, asserts that all French citizens have only one acceptable identity ; a hegemony which is reflected in his ideas. This concept has long expressed itself in France as the insistence on the same cultural identity. To achieve this shared identity, all citizens have to speak the one official language and be educated according to a common curriculum. But they also enjoy equal rights, and have the same duties, in the public arena. All this is not only fostered by the state, but also requires the kind of uniformity that only a centralized state can impose. Three components of this model incited France’s current crisis and make it difficult for the French Republic to address it effectively. Equally it is clear this model infects the authors thinking and those of most of your respondents. It might be wise to examine the underpinning factors at work in French thinking using an outsiders perspective. The first component is the classic French Republican prohibition on gathering data in the official census - or by government agencies or public or private enterprises - on ethnicity, religion, and even social class. Collecting these data would, it is argued, violate the Republican tenet that France is “one and indivisible.” But the absence of a secondary breakdown of such data, like the UK-style, four-fold class analysis (plus examination of patterns of unemployment by ethnicity or religion), makes it hard for social workers, public heath officials, and economic planners to diagnose new problems. Without the necessary data for analysis, public health policies, for example, cannot be directed toward groups that are especially disadvantaged or otherwise at risk. The second factor is the classic French Republican rejection of, and legal norms against, any form of “affirmative action,” or positive discrimination, even of the most inoffensive kind. Like the prohibition of fine-tuned data - without which positive discrimination is in any case impossible - affirmative action is seen as damaging to the Republican model because it is based on recognition of ethnic differences. And so capital must adopt a more « human face » or in other words fit closer to the French social model.

The third component is the post-welfare state, which is now part of the French model of citizenship and guarantees all full-time employees one of the highest minimum wages in the world and high employer-paid benefits. This makes it extremely difficult to let workers go, which makes employers reluctant to hire new people in the first place. Many of the social-democratic countries of Europe, like Sweden, Holland, and Denmark, created similar norms in their full-employment eras. Unlike France, however, they also used census data to identify pockets of new unemployment, and to invest socially and politically, not only in excellent job-training programs, but in job creation, and, just as importantly, in job-placement schemes. France is now very bad at creating new jobs. It has few training programs, but high benefits for the unemployed and strong restrictions against firing workers. Put all of this together, and it is like slamming a door in the face of young minority men looking for work. This is the primary cause of the 30-50% unemployment rates among minorities aged 16-24 in many French “urban zones of sensitivity.” Thus, the riots that France is now seeing emerge from French policies, not from instigations by Islamists. France has simply failed to incorporate minority citizens - many of them third-generation immigrants who have been educated for twenty years in assimilationist public schools. But few political leaders accept that the crisis has anything to do with the French model of citizenship. Indeed, they confidently wait for assimilation to kick in. The problem with the authors article is the same it proceeds from a French model of the world. But in today’s high unemployment, low job-creation, and now multicultural France, assimilation will not occur without big changes. However, so long as second- and third-generation minority citizens are taught that the only acceptable cultural identity is French, but are not in fact accepted as French - indeed, are blocked from enjoying the full rights of French citizenship - the Republican model will fuel alienation rather than democratic integration. The French Republican model enshrines the laudable abstract principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity. The author seeks to enshrine these concepts in his model. And the world will continue to pass by which makes me immensely sad.