Andre Siegfried's life coincides with the era of modern colonialism: he was born in 1875, while accelerating the conquest of Africa, and died in 1959, while most French colonies preparing to become independent &Eactute; States. It is therefore not surprising that shares an idea that seems obvious to many: the superiority of the white race. It is not a fool: he sees clearly that the colonial order is challenged, it will probably not continue indefinitely in a state:
[...] and exotic breeds, awakened by us from a long sleep, like Sleeping Beauty, in turn claim their independence. The
"by us" is of course his weight in peanuts, but they are not so many who are aware of the reality of this aspiration. That's what makes the interest of the work of Siegfried: he thinks inside the system that the superiority of the white race is obvious while watching the rise of a dynamic that will eventually destroy this system: is the twilight of an idea.
Then suddenly, he tinkers certainties parts:
The technique is learned: it is with reason that many of Europe's competitors can boast to walk for European machines as well as their inventors. But run the machines is very little: what matters is to have invented, and then refine them, to renew and adapt to changing conditions. Such creative genius has so far been the privilege of the white race, even some section cettte race, and it is the first condition for maintaining our material civilization at a high level.
It is easy to sneer, and yet such was until very recent years the dominant attitude of the West towards China: they produce, we, we design, if China is the world's workers, let us to be the senior manager. The reasoning is the same.
And if this privilege inventiveness had to be shared? Remain the ultimate privilege, namely that of directing:
The qualities of this order in the conduct of a case are precisely those that the public does not see, and they fall into a sense of moral as well as the technique. How many mistakes, for example, in the Judgement of the worker, the importance of the function of the boss! This genius, who was administrative in the sense highest of the word, is the most authentic civilization, and would decline quickly if we pretended to do without.
The sneer is more difficult to remember, however, note that the concept of administrative culture is not an illusion: the chaos that has engulfed the Congo - Kinshasa after the hasty departure of the Belgian colonizers is proof. But to make it a privilege of the "white race" there are far ...
But here it is: we got rid of that cumbersome concept - turning point, extremely fast, we are still too close for us to be able to make history. In a world where he plans change, Siegfried tries to find reasons for maintaining the "supremacy", which seems an indisputable fact - otherwise, he concluded in the last lines of the book, the universal decline is assured:
Should be otherwise in the future is that the solutions of general interest, inspired by the great Roman politics, had given way in the world, to a fragmentation which civilization would survive with difficulty.
Addendum: writing this note has taken longer than expected, I found in the Monde on Tuesday a very interesting article on the launch of the latest container giant CMA-CGM, which announces the launch of future super-door containerships of 11,000 TEUs (twenty foot equivalent: a container the size of a tractor-trailer counts as two TEUs). These boats are designed and manufactured by Hyundai, Korea, and they also make it completely superseded the two-channel transoceanic which Siegfried was the hub of world trade.
As for the collapse of civilization, we are still waiting.
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