The beginning of a future for the Left

29 June 2025. Published by Benoît Labourdette.

10 min

How did the left find itself trapped within the system it fights against? Analysis of an insidious drift and sketch of a possible renewal.

The progressive habituation to liberalism

The left, defender of a solidary society, has progressively found itself trapped within the liberal system without realizing it, except for some of its radical fringes. Attached to social peace rather than fratricidal wars, it has continued its path of benevolence at the heart of a world that was insidiously liberalizing itself.

After World War II, with the establishment of the French welfare state, creation of social security, institution of civil servant status, these structuring social innovations of solidarity masked a parallel evolution. The world in which these fraternal modalities were constructed and legitimized was slowly liberalizing itself, on economic and political levels. Little by little, values and modalities of organizing the world and powers fundamentally opposed to left-wing thought were normalized, including in the eyes of most left-wing people themselves.

This evolution recalls the experience of the frog in water: thrown into a pot of boiling water, it immediately jumps to escape this unbearable situation. Placed in a pot of cold water that is gradually heated, it becomes accustomed to the temperature change and loses the vital flight reaction it would have had in the first case, until the final scalding. We are witnessing a progressive habituation to the new normality of the liberal economy, now inscribed in the very thought of the world.

The enterprise as an insurmountable horizon

When I hear senior civil servants describe the Ministry of Education as “France’s largest enterprise,” I respond that it constitutes an organization whose agents share common objectives, education, and not an enterprise. Because an enterprise precisely designates a type of organization intended to generate financial profit. When I explain this distinction to left-wing people, many don’t understand what I’m talking about!

This confusion reveals the unconscious integration of the idea that an organization would by default be a capitalist enterprise. I observe the same phenomenon in associations. The associative concept, as defined by the French law of 1901, does not prohibit economic activity but profit, since no one owns the association. Therein lies the entire difference with the enterprise.

The confusion between organizations and enterprises

An enterprise belongs to owners, natural or legal persons. An association has no owners: this legal entity can generate benefits in service of its statutory mission, but cannot intrinsically enrich owners, since there are none.
However, I regularly hear association leaders talk about “their enterprise.” When I correct them, “you’re not in an enterprise but in an association, why do you use this term?”, they seem disconcerted. Certainly, common points exist in organizational modalities, hierarchical systems, respective functions, but the objective differs fundamentally.

The myth of entrepreneurial efficiency

The political space in which people evolve has therefore unconsciously transformed into a space of liberal capitalism, even when the organization concerned legally has nothing of a private law structure. Left-wing people still mistakenly believe that “the enterprise” would embody efficiency: since money is made there, better methods would be developed. They therefore wish to apply this supposed efficiency to their associations to better achieve their non-financial objectives. But they are wrong.

Private enterprises are not all as efficient as they claim to be. Many of them suffer from considerable productivity problems. They certainly generate profits, but their poor organization often prevents them from producing as much as they could. Substantial margins for improvement remain, even to increase profits in the private sector. The enterprise is therefore not the panacea we are presented with.

Books on liberated enterprises, like Freedom, Inc. by Isaac Getz and Brian Carney (2009), abundantly document this reality. The lack of efficiency in private enterprises frequently results from organizational and governance modalities that make agents irresponsible through a deleterious hierarchical system, harming both workplace well-being and economic efficiency. But we must note that the liberal enterprise has become for the left a myth, a model to imitate to gain “efficiency.”

The unconscious submission to capitalist representations

Thus, the left, by which I mean the entirety of progressive thoughts carried by people favorable to greater social solidarity, has progressively found itself, without being aware of it, in a state of submission to capitalist representations.

Inheritance: revealer of new inequalities

The question of inheritance perfectly illustrates this evolution. The anxiety of a large part of younger generations facing the future reveals how inheritance now structures the future social level of individuals, and increasingly so since the post-war period.

A person born in the 1950s-1980s could hope, through their work alone, for a form of social ascension compared to their initial family situation. Higher education opened access to well-paid positions, allowing the acquisition of apartments, houses, cars, and envisioning a decent retirement. But the considerable inflation of real estate prices and cost of living has brought us back to inequality reproduction mechanisms similar to those of the first half of the 20^th century, before the social advances of the post-war period.

The contradictions of progressive heirs

Now, those who don’t inherit know they will probably never be able to acquire an apartment, which remained accessible to young adults even twenty years ago. This possibility has almost disappeared without prior inheritance. Meanwhile, heirs generally have no awareness of their immense privilege and do not intend to question it.

People from the far left enriched by inheritance claim ideas of social equality, reduction of certain privileges for better collective sharing, without ever questioning their own privileges. They denounce the great billionaires to be taxed, certainly legitimately, but would probably fight fiercely to preserve their own advantages. This is exactly what the well-off have always done when faced with social changes likely to question their privileges. One could object: “These are not privileges but social achievements.” Very well, but why would these achievements only benefit some? Why don’t we question those who are excluded from them? Social justice consists precisely in developing empathy toward others and the capacity to question one’s own privileges to live better in a more egalitarian society. This is where the heart of left-wing ethics lies.

If you recognize yourself in these values and have inherited financial capacities, your parents having acquired real estate that inheritance allowed you to acquire in turn, would you be ready to share, to renounce your secondary residence for social justice? Or do you consider your property as social achievements to defend rather than as privileges? The question remains complex, and I don’t claim to simplify it.

The stakes of collective lucidity

My purpose rather aims to share political reflections, to question apparent evidences that, analyzed in light of sociology and ethnology, reveal other resonances. These disciplines inform us more precisely about what we reproduce, sometimes unconsciously. Human sciences serve precisely to interrogate anthropological evidences, phenomena that seem natural but actually constitute cultural and political constructs that should be questioned to found the exercise of our ethics in a more conscious, informed manner coherent with our values.

My intention is not, like the far right, to delegitimize the left by pointing out its contradictions, but to dare look our contradictions in the face, I include myself in this approach, to work on them, develop our collective lucidity and work together in coherence with our values, when we may have drifted without realizing it.

The necessity of dialogue and action

This question of evaluation seems crucial to me, and self-evaluation almost impossible. We need to be shaken up, questioned, taken out of our comfort zone, not to flagellate ourselves or discredit ourselves, but to collectively provide ourselves with updated thinking tools allowing us to found renewed means of action. Because politics is action.

Moreover, speaking, exchanging, writing, sharing already constitute actions: making our thoughts progress. It’s not about taking power over others by influencing them to embark them in our vision, but about dialoguing, arguing, mutually enriching ourselves. This is an act, and this article constitutes one.

Non-discursive acts also exist: our votes, our associative commitments, our relationships with others in public space, our view of youth, our tendency or not to stigmatize those who disturb us, our positioning in organizations... All this feeds on representations, hence the crucial importance of sharing worldviews, arguments and emotions, because humans are not purely rational beings.

The hoped-for opening: the example of Le Monde Diplomatique

Le Monde Diplomatique, which has existed since 1954, belongs to the private company Groupe Le Monde, completely infiltrated by financial interests. Its journalists undergo the influence of capitalist thought and interests without even realizing it. Le Monde Diplomatique constitutes the far-left branch of this consortium. It therefore defends left-wing thought that, unfortunately, often unconsciously inscribes itself in the defense of liberal values while believing itself to be left-wing, when it is no longer truly so. Despite a certain intellectual honesty, certain subjects remained untouchable.

A change has just occurred in issue 856 of July 2025, which represents hope for me and perhaps the sign of the beginning of a renewal for the left. The cover proposes an article by Daniel Zamora, professor of sociology at the Free University of Brussels, titled “The real meaning of fake news.” Never before had this journal questioned the legitimacy of fact-checkers and official information, particularly regarding the management of the Covid crisis.

A breach in the liberal consensus

Daniel Zamora cautiously opens the door. He knows that a more explicit statement would be immediately censored, but this opening concerns the non-questioning of official liberal messages and the legitimacy of anti-constitutional freedom restrictions imposed during the Covid period, restrictions that produced the doubling of fortunes of major shareholders. No one on the left dares criticize this reality. The rare voices that denounce it politically and engage in lawsuits, particularly against Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, are unfortunately far-right elected officials.

However, Daniel Zamora courageously expresses respect for people who sought to inform themselves otherwise than through official channels during this period. This attitude gives me much hope. Respecting these approaches and not immediately classifying these people among the “absurd conspiracists” of the far right constitutes for me a true opening of the left, a reopening of its original ethics: respect for others and consideration of each person as a being capable of emancipation.

The lessons of Daniel Zamora’s article

Some excerpts from this article deserve to be quoted:

Extravagant attention was given to fake Russian accounts during Mr. Trump’s election in 2016; however, it is rarely emphasized that the content of these accounts represented barely 0.004% of what Facebook users saw on their feed during this presidential campaign. [...] Another survey published in Science establishes that consultation of this false information mainly concerns a restricted group of readers already having relatively extreme opinions. On Twitter, 1% of users represented 80% of exposures to fake news.

The author paradoxically emphasizes that supposed “conspiracists” inform themselves more and seek to form their own opinion, unlike “good people” who don’t question information delivered by major media. He considers this exercise particularly healthy for democracy.

He writes again, after citing historian Marc Bloch on disinformation during World War I:

This perspective encourages reversing the terms of explanation. It’s not algorithms and our cognitive biases that undermine the legitimacy of institutions. It’s in the decline of this legitimacy that more radical aspirations for change prosper. Moreover, the erosion of trust in liberal democracies does not cause a lack of critical spirit, quite the contrary. Growing fractions of the population believe they can no longer grant their credit to scientists or experts and henceforth base their judgment on personal research. In a sense, vaccine skeptics or conspiracy theory supporters are more informed, but not necessarily better, than people confident in their doctors’ prescriptions or in the discourse carried by institutions.

The relegitimation of critical thinking

Finally! A left-wing personality stops considering as a perfect idiot anyone who questions the dominant liberal discourse. The construction of critical thinking, autonomous thought finally regain their legitimacy under the pen of a left-wing intellectual. This opening remains modest and cautious, but it appears on the cover of an official left-wing media organ. This is unprecedented, and that’s why I want to signal it as a significant event. I place this milestone at the moment of this article’s publication, hoping that this assumed public starting point can inform us about what follows, particularly if you read these lines ten or twenty years after their writing.

Daniel Zamora quotes Swedish political scientist Henrik Enroth:

“In the age of fake news, we don’t observe an abandonment of the search for evidence, but their pathological quest.”

He finally criticizes the presentation of opinions as indisputable facts by fact-checkers, actually subservient to the capitalist system but presenting themselves as holders of truth, exactly like the Ministry of Truth in 1984 by George Orwell (1948), which dictates truth independently of its link to reality.

Science and politics: a democratic issue

Daniel Zamora also writes:

It’s not necessary to side with “Covid skeptics” to grasp that health standards don’t rest solely on facts, but also on moral considerations and trade-offs between freedom and rights. They fall under politics. When these choices present themselves as achievements of science, the risk of a more general rejection of scientific discourse amplifies. While it would be absurd and dangerous to reject any form of expertise, its substitution for politics poses more problems than it solves.

And he concludes with:

[...] facing obstacles that hinder left-wing politics, [...] the appeal to “facts,” “expertise” or “reason” risks not being enough.

The author doesn’t go to the end of his reasoning, aware of the risk of stigmatization and censorship, still in 2025, but he identifies the real issue: purely political choices were passed off as scientific. The differences in crisis management between countries prove this. This lie was immediately perceived by many people, including myself. We were made to believe that political decisions were scientific, particularly with the discourse “we can discuss everything except numbers.”

Manipulation through numbers

However, numbers constitute eminently subjective elements, simple statistics, ways of presenting information. Pierre Chaillot’s book, Covid-19: what official figures reveal (2023), which proposes another interpretation of official data, constitutes one of many proofs of this. The daily presentation of the number of deaths in absolute value, rather than in proportion to the population and by age groups, transformed figures that would have been infinitesimal with regard to the national population into apparently considerable data.

Asserting that we can “discuss everything except numbers” amounts to scientistic lying supposedly justifying purely political decisions through science. Certainly, decisions had to be made to collectively manage this crisis, but the chosen modalities were political. The comparison between France and Germany perfectly illustrates this: Germany conducted diverse experiments according to Länder with negotiations, while France imposed a uniform centralized system on all territories, regardless of their specificities.

This attitude was diametrically opposed to the scientific approach, which examines reality in its diversity. Claiming that reality would be identical everywhere, in a metropolis, in high mountains or on the coast, amounts to instrumentalizing science in service of a totalitarian policy. Especially since major media asserted supposed “scientific facts” that were not at all, uttered exclusively by people all involved, without exception, in conflicts of interest with industrialists marketing the medicines.

The political opportunism of the Covid-19 crisis

I know that such discourse exposes one to accusations of “conspiracy theory” or belonging to the far right. I am neither one nor the other, quite the contrary. And finally, in a left-wing journal, a door opens to respect for citizens who strive to inform themselves, who perceive the incompatibility between the liberal system in which they evolve and the ethics of left-wing values they defend, as well as the will for people’s emancipation. They understand that this shift has occurred.

The Covid period in France, one of the countries where this crisis was managed in the most authoritarian manner, constitutes its epiphany. Let’s not forget the major political opportunism of the first lockdown in March 2020, occurring only two months after immense strikes and major contestations of power around the Yellow Vest movement, which were gaining momentum.

The stifling of social movements

Finland managed this crisis without lockdown, without recording more deaths than in France: another political choice. In France, people were confined, frightened, infantilized, guilt-tripped and locked in their homes while being made to believe that even going out constituted a dangerous gesture, which was not at all the case in Finland.

What were the consequences? This strategy notably durably broke the plural struggles for more social justice, not exclusively left-wing concerning the Yellow Vests, which were repressed with projectiles in demonstrators’ faces. By manipulating through fear with false science, any desire for social gathering was stifled using terms like “social distancing” rather than “physical distancing.” In other words, the idea was sown that autonomy of social construction was dangerous, exactly what the Yellow Vest movement and its powerful rumbling represented.

Toward a renaissance of authentic left

Similarly, “peace keepers” became “forces of order,” agents of state fear. Who dares demonstrate today? Everyone knows they will face forces of order in service of a state that has become totalitarian, what we call “the extreme center” (Pierre Serna, 2019). The fear of being shot dominates. Is this the role of a police force financed by citizens themselves to impose by force modes of thought and an order unrelated to democratic expression?

If an authentic left must be reborn, it’s precisely at this level: emancipation, critical thinking, solidarity, respect for everyone’s dignity, including those who refuse the dominant liberal discourse. This is the open door for the future of the left. This is what should be cultivated, in my opinion, without judging, neither people in general, nor left-wing people who have been deceived, in my opinion.

This is what the left must seize if it wants to remain authentically left-wing. And if finally, in small steps, some begin to dare express it, I see in it the beginning of a future for the left.