Les enfants du vide

Individualism has triumphed, the collective is weakened. But how to make society work under these conditions? Faced with this question, the French journalist and film director Raphaël Glucksmann calls for the awakening of citizens by questioning a vision of society the Left has surrendered to in recent decades. The book is a critique of a model of Social Democracy that is quite new in France. For him, the Left has failed in the face of ultraliberal thinking. It describes a richer world but a more isolated population. He points to the growing gap between financial, cultural and political elites and the rest of the population. A gap that shakes the democratic consensus. A new social contract is needed, concludes the author, citing the example of the city of Kingersheim in the French region Alsace, which uses participatory democracy. Glucksmann advocates a real strengthen- ing of citizens’ control over representative institutions and public authorities. A book resolutely in tune with the zeitgeist.