Preface XVII
Nor is one obliged to approve the Darwinian concepts of economic competition and social relations which, thanks to technologies that have emerged
straight from the cold war and arms race, are presently expanding under
the name of "globalisation": the extension to the planet of a "liberal", i.e.
capitalist, and "modern" economic system founded on the principles isolated
by Adam Smith in 1776 and assimilated erroneously by the robber barons
who, at the end of the XIX th century, erected the great American capitalist
enterprises, afterwards revised a little and codified. It is now forbidden to
shoot the strikers but not to domesticate the unions; to dismiss thousands
of employees to improve the competitiveness of companies and in return to
exploit the work force at low pay in developing countries; to push for the
dismantlement of European social welfare systems hard won after a century
of struggle but now judged too expensive - or smacking of Socialism? - by
the alumni of the Harvard Business School and its foreign imitations; to suborn the public markets by handing cheques to political parties as is presently
the case in France, Germany, Italy, etc., or, in the Third World, to gangsters
in high places in order to inundate the countries they rule or own with killing
machines under the pretext of lowering the unit price for the countries that
produce them 21 , or in order to secure the rights to exploiting their natural
resources. It is the reign of money, whose rallying slogan was launched a hundred and fifty years ago by a famous French minister: Enrichissez-vous! If
you can 22 ...
That said, America possesses, notably in its universities, an intellectual
class not to be globally confused with the spokesmen of the Pentagon's warlords or the operators of Wall Street. In particular and as I said above, no one,
in France, has revealed the military influence on scientific and technological
development since 1940 as a number of American historians, particularly of
the younger generation, have done for a quarter of a century with the help
of massive documentation; if you are interested in, say, the history of the
Cold War, you will find in the American literature all the information, points
of view and opinions you want. There is no need either to point out that
many American novelists did not wait until 2003 to disseminate unorthodox descriptions of the American society. As to the mathematicians, many
of whom have always been very critical of official policy, the years I spent
with my family in the 1950s and 1960s at Urbana, Berkeley and Princeton
were among the happiest of my life. And when, at the end of October 1961,
21 A few years ago, the sale to Taiwan by the French company Thomson-CSF of
very sophisticated frigates generated a $500 million return for (mostly unknown)
Taiwanese and French politicians or political parties and go-betweens. An investigation of the case by the French judiciary was stopped in a most elegant way:
the Department of Defence classified all Thomson-CSF documents pertaining to
it. The company decided a few months later to change its name into Thales, a
rather unpalatable reference to Mathematics.
22 What Guizot said is: Get rich, by your work and savings - a cynical precept at
a time when the overwhelming majority of people, after working twelve hours a
day six days per week, would die as poor as their parents were.
Nor is one obliged to approve the Darwinian concepts of economic competition and social relations which, thanks to technologies that have emerged
straight from the cold war and arms race, are presently expanding under
the name of "globalisation": the extension to the planet of a "liberal", i.e.
capitalist, and "modern" economic system founded on the principles isolated
by Adam Smith in 1776 and assimilated erroneously by the robber barons
who, at the end of the XIX th century, erected the great American capitalist
enterprises, afterwards revised a little and codified. It is now forbidden to
shoot the strikers but not to domesticate the unions; to dismiss thousands
of employees to improve the competitiveness of companies and in return to
exploit the work force at low pay in developing countries; to push for the
dismantlement of European social welfare systems hard won after a century
of struggle but now judged too expensive - or smacking of Socialism? - by
the alumni of the Harvard Business School and its foreign imitations; to suborn the public markets by handing cheques to political parties as is presently
the case in France, Germany, Italy, etc., or, in the Third World, to gangsters
in high places in order to inundate the countries they rule or own with killing
machines under the pretext of lowering the unit price for the countries that
produce them 21 , or in order to secure the rights to exploiting their natural
resources. It is the reign of money, whose rallying slogan was launched a hundred and fifty years ago by a famous French minister: Enrichissez-vous! If
you can 22 ...
That said, America possesses, notably in its universities, an intellectual
class not to be globally confused with the spokesmen of the Pentagon's warlords or the operators of Wall Street. In particular and as I said above, no one,
in France, has revealed the military influence on scientific and technological
development since 1940 as a number of American historians, particularly of
the younger generation, have done for a quarter of a century with the help
of massive documentation; if you are interested in, say, the history of the
Cold War, you will find in the American literature all the information, points
of view and opinions you want. There is no need either to point out that
many American novelists did not wait until 2003 to disseminate unorthodox descriptions of the American society. As to the mathematicians, many
of whom have always been very critical of official policy, the years I spent
with my family in the 1950s and 1960s at Urbana, Berkeley and Princeton
were among the happiest of my life. And when, at the end of October 1961,
21 A few years ago, the sale to Taiwan by the French company Thomson-CSF of
very sophisticated frigates generated a $500 million return for (mostly unknown)
Taiwanese and French politicians or political parties and go-betweens. An investigation of the case by the French judiciary was stopped in a most elegant way:
the Department of Defence classified all Thomson-CSF documents pertaining to
it. The company decided a few months later to change its name into Thales, a
rather unpalatable reference to Mathematics.
22 What Guizot said is: Get rich, by your work and savings - a cynical precept at
a time when the overwhelming majority of people, after working twelve hours a
day six days per week, would die as poor as their parents were.