Champions of the end of history might be good losers: more than 20 years have passed now since the collapse of that dreadful wall – and with it, communism – so it's perhaps high time to admit that the idea of the domination of the market has taken us for a ride. With no enemy to focus on and enjoying a peaceful existence, capitalism imagined that it would spend the next thousand years smoking a pipe. But now it is weary, and all it has created is a vast shed in which boredom, globalised proletarianisation, greed and uniformity of hearts prevail. You only have to sniff the air to sense disaster, destruction and contempt.
We miss the utopia of transgression. It's well known that open space drives people mad. Yes, we really miss this thing that is closely linked to generosity. Sometimes, we're tempted to pack our bags and leave on the slightest pretext, for Berlin, Greece or Africa, never to return. And that sudden desire to die, which sometimes grips us, so disappointed are we at having to cope every day with watching faces distorted by hatred and rejection of other people, on our TV screens. Representatives of the damned, carried away by the excitement of the show. We can count the few men of honour, who have set a date with the nation, on the fingers of Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt's hand (he lost two of his fingers in a caravan fire). They exist, and now, more than ever, they need to be heard.
A very strange tide is rising, and steadily clogging up the arteries of my country: in the wake of communism, it seems to be fashionable in our land for the values of changing the world's direction to start to triumph at all levels. Books, misplaced vanity, comments and idle chatter: cardboard cutouts of Schopenhauer are having a whale of a time. Hope? How naff! The point should be made that with Michel Houellebecq, for example, it comes from afar. "Make a mess of your life," writes Houellebecq, "but only slightly. And suffer, always suffer. You must learn to feel pain through every pore. Each fragment of the universe must constitute a personal injury for you." That may be true, but the protagonist of Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea, Roquentin, looked at himself in the mirror every morning of his life, and this novelistic turmoil did not prevent its author from revolting against the injustices of real life. What should we make of this?
Sartre wrote: "The bourgeoisie force feeds its intellectuals inside hen coops, to ensure they're not tempted to like the world." Unless, in point of fact – given that the world is on the road to ruin – we all travelled there together, you to the Elysée table – in first class, Céline apparently noted, in Mort à credit – and the rest of us in steerage.
Thus it was that recently, the new Bardamu of French literature forcefully explained to us, punctuated by long periods of silence, with his hair dishevelled and in a tongue coated for the benefit of the media, that, well, "De Gaulle didn't achieve very much" but Nicolas Sarkozy is really the most honest man you could imagine.
The new credo of dinner parties attended by intellectuals such as Houellebecq, who was invited to the Elysée, is a fascination with the worst. Such postmodern suffering might even take over Sarkozy's presidential campaign. Le Nouvel Observateur even tells us that another diner at this table was a magnificent and sanctimonious supporter of George Bush and the patriotic Tea Party.
What a glorious future! As for de Gaulle, what a big deal for a few seditious spirits who were aged just 20 at the beginning of the 1980s and still dream of doing battle with the great nightmare of their existence: that fine utopia of the French resistance. How fine things look towards the end! The transition from Guy Môquet to the cool disenchanted characters who look upon the world as one vast night club, and our country as a hotel to stop off at along the way, has taken barely five years. Fascinating and revealing, as if, all of a sudden, this "mouldy France", which Philippe Sollers described with wonderment, was bragging about itself through the ages.
So, is this all about hope or despair? "We never believe that barbarism can exist contemporaneously with our own lives," wrote the great novelist Thomas Mann in 1933. In Buenos Aires, poverty-stricken immigrant workers are hunted down by armed groups. In Moscow – if your skin is black or brown – the advice is not to venture out on the anniversary of Hitler's birth. In Italy, penniless migrants wash up on the beaches in the south of the country and rub shoulders with tourists who are simply there to enjoy a breath of fresh air. And in France, in the middle of summer, here is an usher who claims to be a political activist: his face contorted by a scornful gesture, he announces that he would much prefer "to protect French people, rather than foreigners".
Someone else – this time a minister, who has twice been found guilty by the courts – is wary of the big vans driven by travellers. It's Dupont Lajoie without Jean Carmet. Over in her corner, the blonde lady calmly collects her winnings. The tempo is gathering pace. This is the new music of the men and women who claim to be combating political correctness, at the very moment when this music is dominating the news, to the point of making people feel sick. The philosopher André Glucksmann displays a great deal of class and lucidity when he observes that "the presidential campaign is getting off to a bad start", and reminds us that France's Muslim population are the ones best placed to follow western rules. Why pick a quarrel with them?
Yes indeed, shame and anger. Behind the curtain, the youth unemployment rate continues to rise in poor areas. Behind the curtain, nearly half of all young men are out of work. We might think that the prayers said in the rue Myrha cannot be blamed for this. Yet behind the curtain, there is also the unexpected arrival of a man who is 93 years young: Stéphane Hessel, who was a member of the French resistance from the very beginning, was deported to Buchenwald, and later participated in the drafting of the universal declaration of human rights. Hessel is a gift from heaven for you, Nicolas Sarkozy, isn't he?
A way of answering you through indignation, but through hope too. And you who are fond of quoting figures: 500,000 copies sold! Nearly as powerful as Marc Levy. An almost comical way of reminding you of the hope represented by a reunified, sharing and independent France. Open to the outside world, like a fantastic joke from a life that ought to go on for ever; Hessel simply reminds us that we are rooted in this spirit of resistance and indignation. Receptive to the spirit of the Enlightenment, and that France of which we still dream, even at the height of the nightmare.
No more dreaming of the revolution. We're sick and tired of revolutions that leave people high and dry. It's simply a matter of living side by side. Everything you have withheld from us since 2007. Hope, I tell you. "That narrow gate," writes Régis Debray, "from which we could see laid out in perspective the familiar little valleys of a modest fraternity, free of terror." Let's go out and find it.
• This article was translated from the French original
