“Work, Order, Progress” : it is under the sign of this new slogan that the “hundred days” to come of the government ofEmmanuel Macronhis spokesperson announced recently. Olivier Veran. If some saw it as a clumsy reference to the motto of the Vichy regime, “Work, Family, Country”, the reality is quite different. Genealogy of a triptych.
Positivism
“Work, Order, Progress” : where does this new executive slogan come from, less new than it seems? First of all, there are the improbable leads (even if Emmanuel Macronable to say as well “socialist” than to resume the reactionary opposition between “real country” et “legal country” likes to blur ideological positions). The father of anarchism, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, In particular, divides “economic science” into three areas: “work, progress, social order”. We obviously note the addition of an adjective, “social”. And above all, the trio is not elevated to the rank of general political motto.
The formula actually points to quite different references. The last two thirds of the motto inevitably evoke the leitmotif positivism, a philosophical current founded by Auguste Comte : “Order and Progress”. We find the motto on the flag of Brazil, where the current has spread widely: « Order and Progress ». The original formula, as employed by Comte, however included a third term: “Love as principle, order as basis, progress as goal. » (Positivist Catechism, 1852) Without this reference to love, which embodies and personalizes the whole, only the abstract frame of Comte’s political philosophy remains: a plea for a technocracy of engineers organizing society as well as possible by virtue of a public interest which it is up to science to determine and to technology to achieve. Emmanuel Macron’s political vision is not so far from this ideal.
Saint-Simonism
Comte, however, is not the first to defend the idea of a paternalistic technocracy. Claude-Henri de Rouvroy de Saint-Simon, already, of which Comte was the secretary, promotes a vision of politics as management by the industrial, scientific and technical elites, in order to optimize the economic organization of the country. It is probably no coincidence that Eugene Iis Schneider, co-founder of steel giant Schneider and Ciewill adopt the motto “Order, Work, Progress” (cf. B. Clement, C. Matthew, D. Schneider, The Schneiders, Le Creusot. A family, a company, a city, 1995). The Saint-Simonian reference in Macron has often been put forward, For example by the economist Virgil Chassagnon : “The philosophy of political action that he seems to espouse testifies to a modern Saint-Simonian ideology which, taking note of the structural weaknesses of States in our world-economy, recognizes the company as the primary institution of capitalism, certainly, but also of society and the administration of city life. »
Another figure marked by Saint-Simonism also mobilized the formula: Sadi Carnot, president of the Third Republic from 1887 to 1894. As summarized by the historian Nicolas Mariot In ““Propaganda by sight”. Sovereignty and management of numbers in travels in the province of Carnot (1888-1894) » (1995) : “Republican propaganda passes […] through the inculcation of standards of behavior aimed at the regeneration of the country. It emphasizes the successes of a policy of physical and moral hygiene articulated around a tirelessly repeated triptych of values: work, order, progress. » The slogan is brandished in particular during Carnot’s visits to workers’ houses: “When Carnot visits a miner’s house […]he insists above all on his cleanliness. […] The choice of exemplary places as a “methodology of social management”, because it is a symbolic action, a “form visible by the senses”, comes clearly from the domain of the “State in representation”. »
The three hammered values are part of the same horizon: valorization of self-discipline, of the rationalization of behavior against all forms of scattering and squandering. “The presidential visit tends to ignore anything that might suggest a selfish abandonment of the body to the free pleasure of popular celebrations. The Republican visit is above all an education » paternalistic, which must allow the people to free themselves from the tyranny of desires and impulses to which they are considered to be subject. It is in particular this “need” for order that, for Carnot, the anarchists call into question. From 1893, the ” villainous laws are adopted to fight against anarchist attacks. Hatred of the president is growing in these circles; he will eventually be assassinated by an anarchist. The rhetoric of the executive which consists in describing social movements as terrorists takes on a particular meaning in this context (the prefectural decrees prohibiting saucepans on the places where the president travels are explicitly placed under the aegis of anti-terrorist measures).
Napoleonism
The articulation between work, order progress does not however appear with Saint-Simon. The thinker will probably never use the expression. It’s up to the abbot Sieyes, a republican from the start, that we perhaps owe having formulated this articulation. In his Political writingsit sums : “General labor is therefore the foundation of society, and the social order is only the best possible order of labor. Here is the progress of this order. » It is necessary to underline, however, the particular tonality of the republicanism of Sieyes. Distrustful of the people and of direct democracy, he promotes a government of general interest enlightened and guided by scholars and intellectuals. He shares, despite major disagreements, these convictions with the members of the Society of Ideologues founded around 1795, who accept the idea of an enlightened despotism to hasten the progress of reason in the world.
A few years after the French Revolution, where the most lively popular passions are expressed, the Ideologues see in Napoleon Bonaparte a strong man capable of imposing, for the common good, a rational modernization of the country. They quickly became disenchanted with the Emperor’s compromise with conservative circles; Napoleon, in return, will disavow them. But the complex relationship they have with Napoleon Iis is perhaps not trivial in the current context. It was indeed Macron himself who, through the mouth of Olivier Véran, placed the current period under the sign of Hundred Days Napoleon’s return to power. A hundred days to prolong the work of an empire which, if it wants to be enlightened and modernizing, is first of all through the intervention of a man of action, of praxis, who distrusts the verbiage of intellectuals. Napoleon wants to carry the revolution and his work of social transmutation all by himself, against all odds, according to the vision he has of it. Do we not still recognize a little of Emmanuel Macron, author in 2016 of Revolution ?
