The Politics of the Future

It is quite difficult to diagnose the state of mind that France will be in at the end of the war, and accordingly what, at that time, will be the dominant political movement.1 However, if we set aside the inevitable groping in opposite directions that will occur in this critical period, if we confine ourselves to working out the most general lines of what seems is going to be our political and social evolution, here is what appears likeliest: You are wondering whether or not economic issues will be at the fore front of the programmes adopted by the different parties. It is certain that France will have such a need for material reconstruction that an intense, general stimulation of industrial and commercial life is to be expected. It is even to be hoped that initiatives, so often sluggish, of which we had proof on the eve of the war, will at last come out of the state of semi-slumber they have enjoyed, and will be stirred into action by the circumstances themselves, in an all-out effort. We have increasingly become a people of small producers and shopkeep ers, whose whole ambition is to secure a mediocre existence, without risks just as without glory. Such an ideal can no longer serve us. A great nation, and one conscious of its greatness, must have a penchant for great things, and this inclination must mark all its undertakings. But it will not be enough to bolster economic forces: it will be necessary, in addition and above all, to 'organize' them. The problem of their 'organization' will come before all the others in importance. It is a problem, moreover, that did not arise yesterday. It was the French Revolution that posed it; and it dominates the entire history of the nine teenth century. Under the old regime, there was a fully defined economic organization, in harmony with the state of commerce and industry at the time. This is the system of the guilds. Economic enterprises were then an essentially town based affair: the market was town-based; the guilds had the same charac ter. It was a local organization, which met local needs, and as long as it did not try to apply itself by force to economic forms for which it was not made, it performed quite adequately the functions that were its raison d'etre.