I’m not used to commenting too much on French news and politics as the large majority of the subscribers to this newsletter are not French, but I’ll make an exception for once. Yesterday, Le Figaro, one of the major French newspapers published an op-ed by the former French Ministry of Education (under the presidency of François Hollande), Najat Vallaud-Belkacem. Now head of an NGO, NVB has mostly disappeared from the French political landscape. She nonetheless still has ideas about how people should live, as this article illustrates. In it, she is proposing nothing else but rationing the quantity of online data people can use every day:[1]
“The fact remains that the problem is there, obvious, but that we refuse to provide a political solution to it.
I say obvious because all the major issues - ecology, discrimination, inequality, harassment, education, knowledge and culture - are linked to the Internet. The Internet is less often a solution than an aggravating factor. Between studies highlighting the ravages caused by overexposure to screens, those showing the extent to which social networks are toxic - particularly for young girls - or the Senate's recent work on the harms of online pornography - not forgetting the issues linked to the development of AI and the democratization of deep fakes, it's astonishing that no one has ever asked the right question: not how to constrain companies, or how to regulate usage - we know full well that there's an addictive dimension to our relationship with screens, and that addiction is never resolved by the good will of those who maintain or suffer it. Quite simply, do we really need the Internet that much?
And, since we're incapable of setting limits for ourselves - let's face it, and stop falling into the trap of all those elected representatives who rail against young people and their dependence on screens, but rush to their phones during sessions in the Assembly, the Senate, or elsewhere - the constraint has to come from elsewhere: from the law, from the State.”
NVB is obviously aware that her proposed “solution” will attract strong criticism, but that does not deter her:
“So, of course, as soon as I mention the possibility of Internet rationing, the accusations rain down: unrealistic! reactionary! DICTATORIAL - after all, China's doing it! Can you imagine? China! Is this what we want for our children? But unless I'm mistaken, in China, they also treat the sick, and I don't see why that should lead us not to do so, and to close all our hospitals. Reactionary? On the contrary, it seems to me that such a measure is profoundly progressive: because it makes it possible to deal with one of the major sources of pollution - digital pollution; because it helps to combat cyber-harassment, online violence and discrimination; because it also benefits the health of all of us, mentally, cognitively and physically, by preventing us from indulging in a harmful sedentary lifestyle; and because we all know that, on the Internet, it's never intelligence that wins the day... unfortunately...”
And let’s finish on a dramatic note:
“And if many of us are demanding that we break our dependency on fossil fuels, we must also be able to demand it for our more personal dependencies, and in particular the one that links us to that object you may be holding in your hand as you read these lines. Because yes, I've got a problem, you've got a problem, we've got a problem: closing your eyes won't change a thing. It's the screen we need to turn off.”
There are many things to say about this proposal. There is the obvious issue of the implementation that NVB briefly addresses. We could also respond that, as a matter of principle, it’s bad to interfere with people’s freedom and that, whatever the consequences, we should refrain from doing it. And there is the classical philosophical point that we should be wary of someone affirming the authority to assess the way people are living and that their way of life displays a “problem.” The fact that the NVB uses a rhetorical trick by including herself among the people who have a problem doesn’t change anything about this.
What is more interesting here however is the way NVB connects the use of state coercion with progressist ideals. In her mind, progressivism appears to refer to a general endeavor of identifying and solving social issues in the march of “progress.” This endeavor is associated with a general conviction that we can identify non-ambiguous social improvements and that we have strong reasons to do everything we can to achieve them. Obviously, the means to reach these ends include state coercion and major interferences with people’s daily lives.
Some will reject progressivism pure and simple. On a simplistic binary reading, conservatism is the negation of progressivism. There are no social improvements to look for, as what progressists call social improvements are just reflections of decadent mindsets and ways of life. Or, on a lighter version, there may be social improvements that are potentially reachable, but pursuing them runs the risk of destabilizing the social fabric.
It’s a truism to say that progressivism has historically often degenerated into illiberal and despotic regimes. It’s too easy to justify coercive interventions in the name of social progress and ideals that everyone “obviously” shares. NVB’s rhetoric should not mislead us. Of course, the fact that a despotic regime does A does not logically imply that doing A will also turn us into despots. Nor is state interference systematically illegitimate. NVB’s proposal would however turn out to represent a major intrusion in individuals’ private spheres. Information and knowledge nowadays mostly circulate online. In this context, to restrict access to online data would mean restricting access to knowledge and information. Do the ends justify such means?
That would not be a problem if people could revert to the good old ways of gathering information. NVB’s proposal is indeed grounded on a nostalgic view of past ways of life, as witnessed by these lines:
“But we can also consider now that many of the activities we've become accustomed to doing online, can also be done without. We can write out the day's e-mails on a word processor before sending them. We can move around to ask a colleague a question, or even benefit from the famous "coffee machine" effect; we can even, as anyone with even the slightest knowledge of programming will tell you, code without a computer, with pencil and paper.”
So, we have here an interesting mix of progressivism and nostalgia for past ways of life. I don’t think this is uncommon, but quite the contrary it is typical of “illiberal” progressivism. To imagine the ideal world you want us to live in and how to reach it, you have to start with things that you know and are familiar with. Planning people’s lives is incredibly difficult and there is so much that one’s imagination can do. Progressists are not always as avant-gardistes as they like to think of themselves.
NVB’s progressivism rests on the idea that social change must be controlled by a few minds. The problems she identifies may be real but the belief that their solution passes by curtailing people’s freedom precisely betrays a lack of imagination and an ignorance of history. If solutions are to be found, they will emerge not by simply pushing the button of statist coercion and forbidding people to do what you think is at the source of the troubles you want to address. This method has never been a source of social progress, only of further troubles.
To paraphrase an old saying, with friends like these, progressives don’t need enemies.
[1] Translation by DeepL with some human inputs.
Rationing Internet for everyone is indeed a terrible idea. However I think some categories like children having a SmartPhone in their six or putting them on a screen at the primary school is not very healty. The former minister would have had a point if that was her critics. Of course one can argue parents should be more responsible towards their children, but as a French friend of mine once said: when the worm is in the apple the basket has little hope, or something similar.