The privileged
Defined by what they hold: positions, codes, wealth. Progressivism paints them as the haves: they lack for nothing — except regard for the oppressed. Their abuses reveal an unacceptable domination.
Understanding the left
The diagram opposite illustrates, in simple terms, the progressive psychology:
the one that shapes the worldview shared by most left-wing ideologues.
Categorisation: in the eyes of progressives, society contains two major blocs:
the oppressed and the privileged.
Among the privileged is also what may be called the enlightened fringe, which believes
it accomplishes the Good by taking part in the liberation of the oppressed.
The liberation of the oppressed aims to break their chains and to integrate them fully
into a new, more egalitarian society meant to answer their expectations better.
Defined by what they hold: positions, codes, wealth. Progressivism paints them as the haves: they lack for nothing — except regard for the oppressed. Their abuses reveal an unacceptable domination.
Born of the privileged — it has their education, resources, positions —, its virtue is proven by its affront to the system that privileges it: it sides with the oppressed. In defending them, it seeks to secure their loyalty to power in the next period.
Defined as those who endure: codes, rules and hierarchies written without taking their demands into account. That they have no say is the moral proof that the codes in place must be deconstructed; defending them is the source of all legitimacy.
mistaken vision no. 1 — the “political compass”
The divide seen as a map of opinions — economics on one axis, authority on the other. The map is static: it shows neither who holds power nor the movement that makes principles switch sides from one era to the next.
A process rather than a doctrine
Left-wing ideas seem to contradict one another over time: yesterday championing freedom of the press, today censorship; yesterday anticlericalism, today the defence of Islam. That is because progressivism is not a fixed set of ideas or principles: it is a continuous movement of integration of the populations at the margins of the political system. The principles change with the populations to be integrated, while the gesture itself never changes.
One of the frequent illusions on the right is to see politics as the management of the “City”, whose main aim is to improve how it concretely works. This illusion rests on several misunderstandings of left-wing actors and of the measures they take.
Progressivism is not merely a down-to-earth wish to bring about a society in which life is better: it is also a spirituality substituting itself for the Christian religion, whose political influence has today been reduced to practically nothing in Europe.
As a substitute for Christianity, progressivism takes up certain aspects of the religion once dominant in our society.
The aspects of Christianity most important to grasp in order to dissect progressivism:
The progressive moral framework borrows from Catholicism the injunction to be noble, to take part in a project greater than oneself — and, fundamentally, to accomplish the Good.
The legitimacy of the political order, by contrast, in a progressive order rid of a king “by the grace of God”, rests on a radically different logic from that of Christianity.
fig. 02 — the justification in each era
The alliance of the enlightened fringe and the oppressed needs to be just to be followed. In each era, the narrative names the privileged, displays the oppressed, and entrusts liberation to the fringe: joining its camp becomes a moral act.
Nobility and clergy: fiscal privileges, the tithe, seigneurial courts — the order made unequal by birth.
Reforming Crown, liberal wing (La Fayette, Noailles), philosophers of the royal courts (Voltaire, Diderot, d'Alembert): privileged men who take the side of the Third Estate.
The Third Estate — bourgeoisie, peasants, sans-culottes, Protestants: the nation that bears everything and decides nothing.Progress takes shape in equality before the law — abolishing hereditary and ecclesiastical privileges.
Employers and notables, the episcopate: industrial property and authority over workers, made possible in the 19th century; the husband and his authority over his wife.
Trade unions, the “black hussars” of the secular school, committed intellectuals (Zola, Sartre, Anatole France): the products of free and compulsory schooling.
Workers and women: labour without rights, half of society without the vote.Progress takes shape in social justice — protecting the worker and emancipating the woman.
White privilege, cis-hetero people, the established French: beneficiaries of the 20th-century social revolution. They enjoy preferential treatment over the oppressed.
Academic vanguard of deconstruction and white privilege (Derrida, Foucault, Éric Fassin), the associative sector, mass media and the magistracy: the products of universal access to university.
Populations from the Third World, minorities, LGBT, immigrant suburbs: victims of the privileged’s ignorance, intolerance and abuses.Progress takes shape in the new France, rid of those responsible for systemic racism.
three eras — one same drama: name the privileged, defend the oppressed, integrate the margin
Mapping power
Political power breaks down into three strata — a centre, intermediary bodies, a margin. These are not social classes: they are structural roles, identified by their position in society, each divided into a top and a bottom.
This mapping draws largely on the work of Bertrand de Jouvenel — On Power (1945), the centuries-long growth of central power — but also on that of Chris A. Bond and his book Nemesis.
Dynamic: central power, by nature, seeks to grow —
it bypasses the subsidiary powers to rally the margin to its camp.
The centre of power forges an alliance with the populations at the margin
to fight the subsidiary powers.
This alliance is presented as a liberation, a correction
of inequalities, the end of an oppression.
By nature, it seeks to grow: to swell its ranks, to impose itself on ever more sectors. Two faces — symbol of the community and ambition for itself. Its means of expansion: bypass the subsidiaries and court the margin, describing the integration of that population as emancipation. Like every stratum, it splits into a top that decides and a bottom that executes — and, in every stratum, the top claims to be in solidarity with the bottom even as it makes its life hard.
Intermediary bodies, guardians of the inherited codes. Today they correspond very largely to the French taxpayer: he is the one who fills the state's coffers, for a limited power in return — that of the vote. Their nature is to resist the centre's expansion; they reproach the margin for not playing by the rules. It is here that the top / bottom division is decisive: the top, sensitive to the vanguard's prestige, ends up rallying to progressivism while the bottom rejects it in the name of the old order.
Those who were not in the equation when the codes, institutions and official values were defined. Insignificant alone, decisive once rallied to the vanguard: the centre brings them resources, exposure, protection — and gains in exchange a moral warrant and ranks to swell. They too have their top — figures risen to the fore — and their bottom — the precarious mass.
fig. 04 — the rotation of interpreters
If the successive waves of progressive ideas seem to contradict one another, it is because they change according to society. The same roles recur through time. In each era, a vanguard adapts the legitimate narrative, central power allies with a new margin population over the intermediary bodies of the moment — depicted as privileged parties mistreating the populations at the margin.
The abolition of the Ancien Régime order
topthe reforming Crown (Turgot, Necker), the King's Council, the intendants — then the revolutionary State, which inherits its position and completes the work (departments, civil constitution of the clergy) — reformers, then patriotsbottomjurists and lawyers of the Third Estate, clerks of the bureaus, mass-levied armies — patriotsThe Crown has already built everything — permanent taxation, army, administration — and pensions the philosophers it censors for show: Malesherbes protects the Encyclopédie.
topphilosophers and encyclopedists pensioned by the courts, salons, royal academies — the “philosophical party”bottombriefless lawyers and gazetteers (Brissot, Desmoulins), pamphleteers, clubs and lodges — advanced patriots, future JacobinsThe legitimate narrative: the sovereign nation, equality before the law — “What is the Third Estate? Everything.” (Sieyès)
tophigh nobility, bishops, parlements blocking the royal tax — liberal wing (La Fayette, Noailles)bottomsquires, refractory priests, guilds and corporations, seigneurial courts — counter-revolution (Vendée, Chouans, émigrés)The top, won over by the prestige of the Enlightenment, abolishes its own privileges on the night of 4 August; the bottom tries in vain to reject equality before the law and demands a return to throne and altar.
topthe bourgeoisie of the Third Estate — merchants, financiers, commoner proprietorsbottompeasants burdened with seigneurial dues and the tithe, urban sans-culottesJoined by the Protestants (1787); mobilised in the name of equality.
The social revolution, by stages
topthe republican State — prefects, Conseil d'État, the Bloc des gauches then the Popular Front, planning at the Liberation (nationalisations, Social Security) — Radical Party, then SFIObottomthe “black hussars” of the secular school, civil servants, postal workers, nationalised railwaymen — radical-socialistNo storming of the palace: each step — secular laws, 1936, 1945, Grenelle 1968 — transfers to the State the protections others used to provide.
topsocialists — the ENS and the Sorbonne (Herr, Jaurès), then Sartre and Beauvoir. Committed intellectuals — Zola, Anatole France, the League of Human Rightsbottommilitant press (L'Humanité), reviews, popular universities, teachers' unionism — SFIO, then PCFThe social question and feminism become the legitimate morality — SFIO at the forefront, up to May 68.
topthe general staff, the episcopate and congregations (dissolved 1901–1904), employers and banks (de Wendel, Schneider, Comité des forges) — liberal right (Alliance démocratique, Fédération républicaine)bottomnotables, small employers, parish priests, mutual societies and charities depicted as tutelage — nationalist right (Action française, Croix-de-Feu)The top fights nationalisations and labour laws — the “wall of money” against the Cartel des gauches (1926), campaigns against the Popular Front — before accepting each gain (the Ralliement of 1892, social Catholicism); the bottom tries in vain to reject social equality and demands a return to a more paternalistic and Catholic society.
topthe labour aristocracy — skilled workers, union and mutualist cadresbottomlabourers, women factory workersTwo converging causes, mobilised in the name of equality: the social question (1936, Social Security) and feminism (the vote in 1944, the Neuwirth law in 1967).
Contemporary progressivism
topsenior administration, the magistracy (Syndicat de la magistrature), public broadcasting and subsidised press (Delphine Ernotte), public funding (BPI, CNC) — leftbottomcivil servants, public-service employees, the National Education system — leftThey respect the vanguard and apply its ideas a few years late — the Stora and Sarr-Savoy reports commissioned by the Élysée — and close ranks with it under attack (“islamo-leftism”, 2021). Overwhelmingly left-wing (Cevipof).
topacademia (Lordon, Piketty, Zucman), philosophers of deconstruction (Derrida, Foucault), sociologists of “white privilege” (Éric Fassin, Sarah Mazouz), successful artists, major NGOs — radical leftbottomengaged media (Libération, Blast, Bondy Blog), the associative fabric (SOS Racisme, the Adama committee, Houria Bouteldja's Indigènes de la République, the Soulèvements de la Terre), social workers — radical leftIt makes the anti-racist and ecological struggle the legitimate narrative — on gender identity, jurists and sociologists build the notion's credibility, then the law enshrines it; the NFP at the political forefront.
topfinance and employers — centre-rightbottompolice unions (Alliance), retired generals (the 2021 open letter), farmers, private-sector employees, native-born French citizens, the “french dreamers” of peripheral France (Guilluy) — far right (Front National, Reconquête)From top to bottom, the stratum merges with the taxpayer who fills the state's coffers. The top rallies to Davos's ESG criteria — the exception remains Bolloré (CNews, JDD); the bottom tries in vain to reject anti-racism and radical ecology and demands a return to the secularism of 1905 and to the social Republic for the nation.
topstars of Southern immigrant origin — Aya Nakamura, GIMSbottomimmigrant suburbs, undocumented migrants — VTC drivers and delivery riders (Uber)Populations from the Third World, migrants, ethnic minorities, contemporary figures of the oppressed — from the 1983 March, received at the Élysée, to the Adama committee.
three castings — one single geometry: the appeal to the margin, over the bodies, in the name of equality
Case study
The following diagram traces the evolution of a political change — the duty of fraternity towards migrants — from its birth to its consecration. The idea is born in the vanguard: the jurists of GISTI (1972), sociologists, Derrida and unconditional hospitality (1996). It comes down: film-makers lay claim to illegality (1997), newsrooms change their words — the clandestin becomes sans-papiers, then migrant (2015). It becomes the norm: the trial of Cédric Herrou ends with fraternity raised to constitutional rank (2018) — the very year when 58 % of the French remained opposed to taking migrants in. The outstretched hand: the vanguard reaches the populations at the margin via the central power, bypassing the subsidiary powers — residence law belongs to Parliament, where too many deputies oppose the idea for it to be amended. The central power, for its part, carries out the vanguard's will. The change of mentality is imposed on the population from the top down: the idea is put in place before it is widely accepted.
fig. 06 — the subsidiary power bypassed
Why the law does not change: residence law is set by Parliament, where the representatives of the subsidiary powers — French taxpayers — sit. Too many deputies oppose the idea: the legal road is closed. The bypass: the vanguard goes through the central power — the administration applies the idea without any law being voted. The native-born citizen (subsidiary power) is not consulted, precisely because the central power is in struggle against him. Why does the President of the Republic no longer ever put reforms to a referendum — the direct tool for consulting the subsidiary power? None has dared since 2005.
The rivals for power
Wanting to gain status is natural. There are several axes along which to gain it, and each axis opens its own channel of power. The two main axes are the bourgeoisie and the nobility; their major difference lies in their relationship to the economy: the bourgeois gains social status and influence through his economic position, while the noble above all obtains his economic position through his social status and influence. The nobility, for its part, divides into two very different main branches: the sword nobility, whose rank comes from force, and the robe nobility, whose rank comes from its ideas.
The billionaires and the police, whom the left denounces as the powers that be, are nonetheless not the ones driving today's evolution of political ideas. They are competitors of the intellectual caste, adversaries in the conquest of power.
Two methods: the bourgeoisie obtains recognition through the material wealth it
possesses; the nobility obtains material wealth through the recognition it has acquired.
Since the need for recognition carries far more social weight than wealth, the nobility
despises the bourgeoisie — forced to buy the recognition it enjoys.
fig. 08 — three rival channels of power
The contemporary left is a robe nobility. Law enforcement and the bourgeois are not its oppressors: they are its competitors in the conquest of power — hence the distrust and rejection it directs at them.
Cultural and moral respectability
The sociologists, academics, judges, journalists and senior civil servants — the contemporary left, down to its activists who protest with megaphones or glue their hands to the tarmac.
Cultural and ideological domination: intellectual baggage and moral superiority — rank is proven through legitimate knowledge and adherence to noble ideas.
The book: knowledge and the intellectual, academic, cultural and religious patrimony — the library, the degree, the chair, the sermon yesterday, contemporary art, cinema and music today. Never economic performance, never martial genius.Luxury beliefs: displaying opinions that are costly to hold is its way of standing apart from the common people — and from the bourgeoisie, which distinguishes itself through basely material status signals.
Rank procures the salary: paid by the central power that ennobles it.
It is the left itself: chief adviser to the power that sources its political ideas from it. It produces the legitimate narrative — and marks the rival elites out for opprobrium.
Martial respectability
Law enforcement, the army, the Ministry of the Interior. Once the centre's rival, it is today completely neutered: strictly in the service of the political order through the law, with no credibility left to claim positions of power.
Force: blood, arms, valour in combat — rank is proven on the battlefield.It gains importance in extreme crises, when history summons military force. Napoleon obtained the legitimacy of his power by the sword: a victorious general in Italy and Egypt, it was his military prestige that made Brumaire possible. So did De Gaulle: general of Free France, the man of the appeal of 18 June, brought back to power in 1958 by the Algiers crisis and the army's pressure.
The uniform, the rank, the decoration — and above all authority: the right to use force, to exert physical constraint.
A competitor to discredit: the intellectual elite despises the taste for violence and brutality — which is also the ground on which it cannot win — and prefers to it the refinement of letters. The rejection shows in slogans — “ACAB”, “Tout le monde déteste la police”.
Economic respectability
The bosses and the rich: entrepreneurs, big groups, tech and finance. Their money buys them honours and respectability — a bought recognition, never the production of the narrative.
Commercial success: rank is proven by the fortune one has built.
Visible spending: property, brands, patronage — showing that one lacks for nothing. It also tends to adopt luxury beliefs, whose cost it can afford to absorb.
It does not produce the narrative: its wealth buys recognition — patronage, philanthropy, displayed virtue.Even the cultural industry — cinema, video games, advertising — does not produce its own political ideas: they are legitimised upstream by the robe nobility. The ideology promoted by Hollywood and the Davos forum is already held as valid at Harvard, Sciences Po or the LDH before spreading through the big commercial groups.
An illegitimate competitor: despised for its bought recognition, its wealth denounced as theft — “Eat the rich”. The robe tells the bourgeois: “If what you do did not generate money, your social status would be insignificant — your work commands no respect of its own.”
three channels of power — three currencies: force, the book, money