draw on their skill, if not their experience, to run public affairs — while populists are often short of such skill and experience. Everyone can still remember how long the Trump administration needed to set itself up, or the game of musical chairs that ministers in the Brazilian populist Bolsonaro’s government indulged in just weeks after it took office. Again, these people are wrong. Implementing progressivism is a daunting task. Progressivism is not a conservatism and, if it is to transform society, it needs to overcome all the forces of inertia ranged against it — particular interests, of course, but also, quite simply, habits. It must break with the politics of the old school, and in doing so it runs the risk of attracting the wrath of all the old guard, who hate the fact that the game is no longer played by the rules they had learned by heart and that they thought were immutable. But progressivism cannot resort to the simple slogans of populism, since society is not changed for the better by angry tweets or capricious decisions.
Progressivism needs to bring on board the majority in each country if it is to embark on its long adventure. To this end, it needs to make a proper diagnosis of society. It needs to say what it is itself, where it is going, for whom it is fighting; it needs to invent its own method. It needs to live up to people’s expectations, and not to set out a hazy mixture of pragmatism, modernism and technical management: this has been, in too many countries, its natural temptation, one which distorts and weakens it. This is what, in France, Macron is taking great care to avoid. But it also needs to respond to the suspicions that it may arouse. What is its goal? Why (and for whom?) is it acting in this or that way? Today, its opponents are all too happy to answer on its behalf: they say it that it is acting for ‘the rich’, ‘city dwellers’ or ‘the beneficiaries of globalization’.
We therefore wish, in these pages, to clarify a certain number of questions. We believe that progressivism is only beginning to spread across society; it is very far from having delivered its full potential. The most important thing, in our view, is not that we won an election or finally managed to hold the traditional political forces to account. The most important thing, in France, is to fulfil the promise of this victory, and to provoke, enliven, and strengthen progressivists everywhere else so that they in turn can tackle today’s problems with the values and principles that we defend and — why not? — with the method we are proposing.
The purpose of this book is to bring together the new pro-gressivists wherever they may live, beginning with those who are not even aware of each other’s presence, and to provide them with a manifesto that will allow them to recognize each other and find guidance in current or future political debates. If we cite many concrete examples, this is simply to illustrate the principles that we are proposing, and to try to convince you of their scope.
We do not pretend to be academics. We do not pretend to have a ready-made programme, even less a full definition of the new progressivism. We do not wish to close the debate here but, on the contrary, to keep it open, and invite you to continue it. Based on our experience, we have no other ambition than to point out causes and ideas worth fighting for, and indicate a method to adopt. This book is binding only on us. But our secret hope is that it will encourage you too to play a part in politics, now that it has again become a great struggle.
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