Chapter 23
Transition, implementation

Implementing the system described in this book first requires overcoming two cultural reluctances. The first is to continue to believe that there are only two possible and antagonistic systems, which are capitalism and communism, and therefore that the current capitalist system has no alternative. The second is to simply denounce the current system while trying to exist on its margins.

Implementing the system described in this book then requires avoiding two pitfalls. The first would be to want to do it brutally, through a revolution. Indeed, the most likely outcome of any revolution is the emergence of a strong man, therefore a concentration of powers not really in line with what we are trying to promote here. The second would be to want to adapt this system to the constraints of politics, that is to say, to apply only the parts for which we judge public opinion to be ready, with the logical result of a shaky system, which does not work. , and back to square one.

The very first step is to disseminate in society the vision of the future of living together contained in this book. There are four obstacles to overcome for this: Firstly, the ideas contained in this book are multiple and often very innovative, therefore not easy to assimilate, which risks leading many readers, convinced but not sufficiently sure of themselves, not to talk about it. This book should be read several times and discussed among interested people. Second, unlike in Marx's time, the media landscape is currently overloaded with products built to please, which occupy the field and leave little room for in-depth work built on a completely different basis. Third, 65 million French people are 65 million individuals who think they know what to do better than the president and any other person, including thinkers, and will do nothing in the end. Culture obliges. Fourth, a significant percentage of people will be fiercely - but not necessarily openly - opposed to this book, because they currently occupy the high-status, non-production social positions described in Chapter 2, and do not at all intend that this exchange.
Hence the importance that each reader who wishes, for himself or for his children, a future in accordance with the project described here, actively and with perseverance ensures the dissemination of the work to those around him.

The first step in implementation will be the creation of a bank operating in accordance with the description in Chapter 17, as well as the operational control mechanics described in Chapter 11. As a first step, we can create a few organizations operating in accordance with model and formalism described in this book, as well as converting some administration services to it. Once the system is established, it is enough to increase the budget of the banks operating according to this model, to convert more public services, and to gradually nationalize the most structuring private entities, that is to say those which are at the source of a cascade of subcontracting.
During the initial phase, what is most important is to concretely verify that we know how to set up organizations that conform in their functioning to the description given in this book. It is also important to ensure that all aspects of such social organization are gradually integrated into our culture.

For decades in France, and for several years in the United States, the left has been divided between on the one hand a moderate so-called social-democratic left, having accepted the principle of the market economy, but wishing to temper it by law. , in accordance with Marx's recommendations in Capital, and on the other hand, a more radical socialist left, attached to the notion of public services and redistribution, and more hostile to the market economy. The divide between these two lefts seems to have been growing in recent years, making the adoption of a common government program difficult. We believe, and we hope, that this book will provoke the emergence of a new radical socialist movement. Indeed, such a movement, even a minority one, could easily find common ground with the moderate left in the form: you continue to govern in accordance with the social democracy in which you believe, but in exchange for our support, you launch small-scale experimentation of the new system that we propose here. This would make it possible to unite those who wish for a profound change in the system, no longer in the form of an illusory promise of a return to a mythical past, but in the form of an innovative proposal to be experimented with, then deepened and gradually disseminated.

Let us now clarify the link between this book and political parties. To do this, let us recall what we indicated in the first chapter concerning the methodology. Solving a problem, here the qualitative insufficiency of capitalist social organization, involves very generally four steps: recognizing the problem, conducting a correct analysis, developing a relevant solution, and finally implementing it. Concretely, this book covers the part of conducting a correct analysis, and the broad outlines of developing a solution. On the other hand, it is up to the political class on the one hand to pass this analysis into the general culture, but also and above all to lead discussions to clarify the details as implementation progresses, in taking into account feedback.
Politics cannot do the analysis alone and lay the main foundations of the solution. Even if there are ways today to assert that to build a policy, it is enough to interpret what comes back from the field, or it is enough to organize a major citizen consultation, this is a dangerous illusion. Indeed, the quality of an analysis and the proposed solution depends above all on overall coherence. But at this level, the more people we involve, the more we lose. In other words, the current impression of the incapacity of our political elites to lead the country correctly is more due to the absence of thinkers to provide them with the broad outlines of a promising project in the medium and long term, than to a specific failure. of the political class.
It must also be recognized that after the golden age of the thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment, then Marx and the anarcho-syndicalists in the 19th century, political thinkers were conspicuous by their absence in the 20th century. We can offer three explanations for this observation. On the one hand, the effective implementation of revolutionary Marxism in the USSR and China in the 20th century gradually focused the debate, I should even say sterilized the debate, in the form for or against, or more precisely for the revolutionary Marxism of Communist Party Manifesto, for the Marxism of Capital embodied in social democracy, or for no Marxism at all with ultra-liberalism. On the other hand, during the 20th century, the major interest shifted from the collective to the individual. Finally, at the time when sociology was born in the middle of the 20th century, that is to say the tools which allowed us to rethink collective organization on scientific bases, and no longer empirical or dogmatic, the so-called period took place. of the thirty glorious years, which may have suggested for a time that social democracy would be the ultimate form of organization. This is evidenced by the events of May 68 which had great effects on individual freedoms but very little on collective organization. It was only with the return of the control of finance and its corollary of disruptions characteristic of the Belle Époque and the interwar period, and with the emergence of ecology and the incapacity to reconcile it with the imperative of growth of the capitalist system, that the need to rethink social organization has reappeared. The 21st century therefore needed a credible proposal for social organization, here it is. Its implementation is now everyone's business, politicians to lead it, citizens to support it.