That was excellent Aurelien. A lot there to ponder and you might have actually revealed why the current crop of European leaders act like teenagers. They aren't very well educated and have zero desire to take any responsibility for anything beyond their own advancement, exactly like teenagers.
Their actions, it seems to me, are the types of actions one takes when one believes they are 'in charge' of just about everything. No humility and plenty of self-importance, in other words: prideful people. They are the result of those who taught them: they are greater than a Higher Power/Great Spirit/I AM. They are a godless people and they were taught well by their parents.
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
I am a member of the generation of 1968. For a long time I closely held a belief that the hardships of WWI and WWII, the Great Depression, and the influenza pandemic that my parents lived through as children and my grandparents as younger adults led them to indulge us, the 1968 generation cohort. Couple that indulgence with 'the pill' and we were rocking off to the races, never to look back.
It's the looking back part that we so sorely miss. Those two preceding generations endured tough times and the advice for how to deal with ever present hardship day-to-day is lying mute in a graveyard. Sometimes at holiday family dinners the Great Depression would come up at the table, but that conversation quickly move on to other topics that were less painful to recount. Why did I not ask for more detail?
Many of my cohorts have come to realize that one planet cannot possibly satisfy the resources taken for our lives to extend to our children on. It is probably not too much of an over generalization to state that most wars are over resources, those battles are engaged in earnest now.
It is ridiculous to contend "the reframing of the confinement and treatment of mental patients as a form of “oppression” and a denial of their “choice.” " is a consequence of 1968.
Antipsychotics were developed in the 1950s and came into wide use in the 1960s. Kennedy proposed in the early 1960s community based treatment and deinstitutionalization, no doubt influenced by the atrocity of his sister being lobotomized. It is also a fact that maintaining institutions for millions of mentally ill persons was extremely expensive and for many inhumane imprisonment.
Laing, of course, had plenty of company with the likes of Thomas Szasz and their current spawn. These "doctors" are no different than the lobotomizers.
Because some 1968 whack jobs might of said stupid things about mental illness has NOTHING to do with deinstitionalization. It was and continues to be the about the Benjamins and society's treatment of mentally ill persons as disposable trash. Good treatment costs money. Mentally ill persons are considered as trash. Why spend money on trash. There are reasons why so many of the homeless and incarcerated are mentally ill.
Not everyone compromised their idealism. Some of us have paid prices. Some of us even have mentally ill children and find your comments offensive.
I was going to comment on this. I too found that paragraph particularly objectionable. Mental 'hospitals' of that era were far from benign caring places, and to pretend otherwise is dishonest or ignorant. Many inmates were people with learning difficulties or with treatable mental illness but who were not treated, simply locked away or drugged, and sometimes abused or beaten. The problem is not the reduction in institutionalising, but the failure to properly resource the much better and more humane alternative of care and support within the community. To blame the scandalous failure of mental health care, and homelessness, on the student protesters is bizarre and as far as I am concerned, utterly undermines Aurelien's credibility.
I don't think I said anything about mental hospitals in the past. It would be worth talking to charities and front-line workers in social services, medical care and law enforcement to get an idea of the current disaster, not least for the victims themselves. I'd also recommend Freddie de Boer, himself a sufferer from severe mental illness; who has written extensively about the problem.
You said "More serious, perhaps, was the re-framing of the confinement and treatment of mental patients as a form of “oppression” and a denial of their “choice.”
Its a sweeping generalisation (not unusually) which contains the assumption that those confined needed to be - because if that were not true, then it would be oppressive, and a denial of choice. It also assumes they were getting effective
(or even, any) treatment, when many were not.
I have some inside knowledge of this but I prefer not to discuss it with someone I have no reason to trust.
You went on to say "The British psychiatrist R D Laing was known for the equanimity with which he greeted the suicides of some of his patients. This attitude led directly to the closure of mental hospitals throughout the West, and to the suffering, homeless and sometimes violent figures in the streets of western cities. But hey, it’s their choice."
Here you connect the closure of mental asylums with an 'Attitude' of indifference and inhumanity (based apparently on one person), but fail to notice that if it was widespread enough to change policy, the same attitude would have prevailed within the asylums where people were even more vulnerable to abuse behind locked doors.
Once again - the problem with mental health care today is NOT that the asylums were closed per se, but that they have failed to resource the community care and support systems required to deliver the necessary care instead. That such care, if resourced, would be better for most patients is widely accepted by those who actually know anything about it. Note that there is room for confinement and institutions for certain cases and circumstances, but NOT as the generic answer to any and every mental problem. Again, as mentioned before, many people with learning disabilities, such as Downs syndrome, were confined in so-called asylums in the old days that you seem so keen on. They were often abused and mistreated.
1. If the Establishment is good at nothing else, it is very good at figuring out whom to buy off, whom to co-opt, whom to neutralize, whom to ignore.
2. The primipal beneficiaries of The Sexual Revolution have been second-tier alpha males. The top tier, the JFKs and the Franz Liszts, have always lived lives in emulation of feral tomcats. Now, the scion of some local minigarch can go straight to the "rutting in the street" part and without having to bother keeping up the rpetenses of bourgeois propriety.
3. Romanitcism, is perhaps the ultimate luxury belief. Interesting observation about how the War On Russia lets europoliticians play at being heroes, and best of all, it's not like they are facing any danger, nor do they have to skip any meals.
So in the end, we are talking about an elite generation which, right at the apex of the energy abondance period, managed to secure its economic domination while shirking the social rules and collective responsibilities that are supposed to justify their position.
One consequence of the process you outline is the way that our politicians in the UK and Europe can only talk in soundbites and pre-rehearsed phrases repeated ad nauseam.
Contrast that with the depth of analysis that we get from Sergei Lavrov. WHather or not you agree with the things he says,it is indisputable that there is a coherent well thought out analysis behind what he says. And his command of English outstrips any politician we currently have in the UK.
I would take minor issue with you on a couple of points.
Firstly, the generation of '68 are now approaching 80 years of age, or older. It is the generation of the 1980s that is in charge - "There is no such thing as society. There are only individuals and families."
Secondly, your characterisation of Hamas as a "fundamentalist Islamic organisation" is at odds with their founding document, which advocates the founding of a state "between the sea and the Jordan river" where Christians, Moslems and Jews can live in peace respecting each other's religion. Sadly, it looks like were a very long way from that hope.
"Finally, it’s in this context, I think, that we should understand the war in Ukraine. For European politicians, at least, it’s fun it’s exciting, it’s a chance to relive the glory days of their parents and grandparents."
Y'know, that's an extremely apt way of putting it. I just don't like the real-life consequences of their games. Please understand: I don't enjoy becoming poorer and poorer, and I enjoy the threat of war (which they're trying so hard to provoke) even less than that. Someone should have given them a pack of toy soldiers to play with! Or a gaming console. Don't they have 3D versions these days? Well, let them play with that!
The gist of this could be applied to the United States and its ruling class. American politicians all seem to be cosplayers pretending to be politicians.
Thank you for your thoughtful essay on Clouscard's analysis of post-1968 ideological shifts and the "libéral-libertaire" phenomenon. I found your exploration of how the student movements evolved into a new ruling class mentality quite compelling.
If I might offer a friendly observation, I believe there's another crucial dimension to the economic liberalisation you describe that complements your analysis. While the cultural attitudes of the post-1968 generation certainly facilitated economic deregulation, there was also a parallel intellectual movement that deliberately promoted free-market policies well before 1968.
Friedrich Hayek, the Mont Pelerin Society (founded in 1947), and later Milton Friedman established an influential framework for economic liberalism that gained significant traction in policy circles throughout the post-war period. Their ideas became particularly dominant during the Thatcher and Reagan administrations, representing not merely a cultural shift but a deliberate intellectual project with institutional backing.
These economists and their followers worked through think tanks, academic departments, and policy networks to promote their vision of society. The Mont Pelerin Society, in particular, cultivated influence among political and economic elites for decades, offering a coherent alternative to Keynesian consensus.
I wonder if Clouscard's analysis might be enriched by considering how these deliberate neoliberal projects intersected with the cultural changes you describe so well. Perhaps the success of economic liberalisation came precisely from this convergence of two different currents – the cultural libertarianism of the post-1968 generation and the organised intellectual movement promoting free markets.
Your formulation of "everything is permitted but nothing is possible" remains a powerful insight, and I appreciate how you've applied it to our current political landscape.
I call the convergence you describe the hippy-to-capitalist pipeline. Steve Jobs was one, Richard Branson another. Swapping bell-bottom trousers for expensive clothes and becoming extremely wealthy while claiming to be 'disruptors'.
Those interested in the process Critical Perspectives describes in paragraphs 3 and 4 above might enjoy Quinn Slobodian's "Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism"
Read with great interest. I was 18 in 68. I think Aurelien's take is good, contributing understanding, but also quite unkind and limited. I quit my fairly lucrative and enjoyable job at 31, went on a vision quest :-), and changed the course of my life. Not for more comfortable, that's for sure! I took the difficult path...
I did not want a life where I go to work to pay the mortgage and bills, do some outdoorsy stuff to recreate and stay sane, and have almost no energy or spare time for anything else. I was looking for meaning, not fun.
This article comes off as though the "bourgeois" way of life should not have been tampered with.
Oh and 68 in Czechoslovakia (Prague Spring) was not about "fun" either. It was about making communism less grim. Trying to humanize it. Naive perhaps, but not an unworthy goal, no?
Oh, I was talking in general terms, with a restricted number of word; I wouldn't tar an entire generation with the same brush: most people didn't even go to university.
There's a lot in this but it isn't true to say that we (the 68 crowd) didn't care about the working class. I came from it and joined the Communist Party. If I knew then what I know now I would have stayed in it. Instead we concentrated on 'social' rather than 'economic' advance and dismissed 'workers' who had a more narrow focus as being dominated by apolitical 'economism'. A very big mistake. We now live in a world dominated by oligarchs and a contrived narrative and I have to say I DO hope that the antics of the Musks et al will destroy it much more effectively than all the 'progressive' social ideas we had. One of the reasons I am motivated to go on existing is I just cannot see things progressing as they are now.
French successors to Clouscards materialist approach may be the not very well known philosopher Jean-Claude Michéa who wrote a lucid critique of the 68`"libéral-libertaire" liberalism with his book "Realm of Lesser Evil: An Essay on Liberal Civilization" and the famous anthropologist Emmanuel Todd with his new study on "The Defeat of the West".
Brilliant essay capturing the background to the nihilism and infantilisation of western elites.
A minor quibble - despite his bizarre behaviour, I would place Musk more into the Jobs/Branson mould of business entrepreneur, than the modern spiv/spinmaster we see today.
There's no doubt that Musk’s SpaceX & Tesla companies are significant companies making a huge impact in the real world. I don't think the guy gets enough credit for his business nous and vision, but that's just me.
Agree, his public persona does not reflect how he runs his companies - with the intense focus on getting to the heart of topics instead of accepting received wisdom and easy narratives.
That was excellent Aurelien. A lot there to ponder and you might have actually revealed why the current crop of European leaders act like teenagers. They aren't very well educated and have zero desire to take any responsibility for anything beyond their own advancement, exactly like teenagers.
Their actions, it seems to me, are the types of actions one takes when one believes they are 'in charge' of just about everything. No humility and plenty of self-importance, in other words: prideful people. They are the result of those who taught them: they are greater than a Higher Power/Great Spirit/I AM. They are a godless people and they were taught well by their parents.
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Well done.
Why should they? They face no consequences for naked self-aggrandizement.
I am a member of the generation of 1968. For a long time I closely held a belief that the hardships of WWI and WWII, the Great Depression, and the influenza pandemic that my parents lived through as children and my grandparents as younger adults led them to indulge us, the 1968 generation cohort. Couple that indulgence with 'the pill' and we were rocking off to the races, never to look back.
It's the looking back part that we so sorely miss. Those two preceding generations endured tough times and the advice for how to deal with ever present hardship day-to-day is lying mute in a graveyard. Sometimes at holiday family dinners the Great Depression would come up at the table, but that conversation quickly move on to other topics that were less painful to recount. Why did I not ask for more detail?
Many of my cohorts have come to realize that one planet cannot possibly satisfy the resources taken for our lives to extend to our children on. It is probably not too much of an over generalization to state that most wars are over resources, those battles are engaged in earnest now.
Cue the resource wars of extermination ...
I'm a bit worried about the location of those battlegrounds!
It is ridiculous to contend "the reframing of the confinement and treatment of mental patients as a form of “oppression” and a denial of their “choice.” " is a consequence of 1968.
Antipsychotics were developed in the 1950s and came into wide use in the 1960s. Kennedy proposed in the early 1960s community based treatment and deinstitutionalization, no doubt influenced by the atrocity of his sister being lobotomized. It is also a fact that maintaining institutions for millions of mentally ill persons was extremely expensive and for many inhumane imprisonment.
Laing, of course, had plenty of company with the likes of Thomas Szasz and their current spawn. These "doctors" are no different than the lobotomizers.
Because some 1968 whack jobs might of said stupid things about mental illness has NOTHING to do with deinstitionalization. It was and continues to be the about the Benjamins and society's treatment of mentally ill persons as disposable trash. Good treatment costs money. Mentally ill persons are considered as trash. Why spend money on trash. There are reasons why so many of the homeless and incarcerated are mentally ill.
Not everyone compromised their idealism. Some of us have paid prices. Some of us even have mentally ill children and find your comments offensive.
I was going to comment on this. I too found that paragraph particularly objectionable. Mental 'hospitals' of that era were far from benign caring places, and to pretend otherwise is dishonest or ignorant. Many inmates were people with learning difficulties or with treatable mental illness but who were not treated, simply locked away or drugged, and sometimes abused or beaten. The problem is not the reduction in institutionalising, but the failure to properly resource the much better and more humane alternative of care and support within the community. To blame the scandalous failure of mental health care, and homelessness, on the student protesters is bizarre and as far as I am concerned, utterly undermines Aurelien's credibility.
I don't think I said anything about mental hospitals in the past. It would be worth talking to charities and front-line workers in social services, medical care and law enforcement to get an idea of the current disaster, not least for the victims themselves. I'd also recommend Freddie de Boer, himself a sufferer from severe mental illness; who has written extensively about the problem.
You said "More serious, perhaps, was the re-framing of the confinement and treatment of mental patients as a form of “oppression” and a denial of their “choice.”
Its a sweeping generalisation (not unusually) which contains the assumption that those confined needed to be - because if that were not true, then it would be oppressive, and a denial of choice. It also assumes they were getting effective
(or even, any) treatment, when many were not.
I have some inside knowledge of this but I prefer not to discuss it with someone I have no reason to trust.
You went on to say "The British psychiatrist R D Laing was known for the equanimity with which he greeted the suicides of some of his patients. This attitude led directly to the closure of mental hospitals throughout the West, and to the suffering, homeless and sometimes violent figures in the streets of western cities. But hey, it’s their choice."
Here you connect the closure of mental asylums with an 'Attitude' of indifference and inhumanity (based apparently on one person), but fail to notice that if it was widespread enough to change policy, the same attitude would have prevailed within the asylums where people were even more vulnerable to abuse behind locked doors.
Once again - the problem with mental health care today is NOT that the asylums were closed per se, but that they have failed to resource the community care and support systems required to deliver the necessary care instead. That such care, if resourced, would be better for most patients is widely accepted by those who actually know anything about it. Note that there is room for confinement and institutions for certain cases and circumstances, but NOT as the generic answer to any and every mental problem. Again, as mentioned before, many people with learning disabilities, such as Downs syndrome, were confined in so-called asylums in the old days that you seem so keen on. They were often abused and mistreated.
1. If the Establishment is good at nothing else, it is very good at figuring out whom to buy off, whom to co-opt, whom to neutralize, whom to ignore.
2. The primipal beneficiaries of The Sexual Revolution have been second-tier alpha males. The top tier, the JFKs and the Franz Liszts, have always lived lives in emulation of feral tomcats. Now, the scion of some local minigarch can go straight to the "rutting in the street" part and without having to bother keeping up the rpetenses of bourgeois propriety.
3. Romanitcism, is perhaps the ultimate luxury belief. Interesting observation about how the War On Russia lets europoliticians play at being heroes, and best of all, it's not like they are facing any danger, nor do they have to skip any meals.
So in the end, we are talking about an elite generation which, right at the apex of the energy abondance period, managed to secure its economic domination while shirking the social rules and collective responsibilities that are supposed to justify their position.
Isn't this the very definition of decadence?
BTW, I'm still recovering from the abrupt end of Uehara's data recovery adventures. That was much to short héhéhé
Yes indeed, Aurelien.
One consequence of the process you outline is the way that our politicians in the UK and Europe can only talk in soundbites and pre-rehearsed phrases repeated ad nauseam.
Contrast that with the depth of analysis that we get from Sergei Lavrov. WHather or not you agree with the things he says,it is indisputable that there is a coherent well thought out analysis behind what he says. And his command of English outstrips any politician we currently have in the UK.
I would take minor issue with you on a couple of points.
Firstly, the generation of '68 are now approaching 80 years of age, or older. It is the generation of the 1980s that is in charge - "There is no such thing as society. There are only individuals and families."
Secondly, your characterisation of Hamas as a "fundamentalist Islamic organisation" is at odds with their founding document, which advocates the founding of a state "between the sea and the Jordan river" where Christians, Moslems and Jews can live in peace respecting each other's religion. Sadly, it looks like were a very long way from that hope.
"Finally, it’s in this context, I think, that we should understand the war in Ukraine. For European politicians, at least, it’s fun it’s exciting, it’s a chance to relive the glory days of their parents and grandparents."
Y'know, that's an extremely apt way of putting it. I just don't like the real-life consequences of their games. Please understand: I don't enjoy becoming poorer and poorer, and I enjoy the threat of war (which they're trying so hard to provoke) even less than that. Someone should have given them a pack of toy soldiers to play with! Or a gaming console. Don't they have 3D versions these days? Well, let them play with that!
The gist of this could be applied to the United States and its ruling class. American politicians all seem to be cosplayers pretending to be politicians.
Thank you for your thoughtful essay on Clouscard's analysis of post-1968 ideological shifts and the "libéral-libertaire" phenomenon. I found your exploration of how the student movements evolved into a new ruling class mentality quite compelling.
If I might offer a friendly observation, I believe there's another crucial dimension to the economic liberalisation you describe that complements your analysis. While the cultural attitudes of the post-1968 generation certainly facilitated economic deregulation, there was also a parallel intellectual movement that deliberately promoted free-market policies well before 1968.
Friedrich Hayek, the Mont Pelerin Society (founded in 1947), and later Milton Friedman established an influential framework for economic liberalism that gained significant traction in policy circles throughout the post-war period. Their ideas became particularly dominant during the Thatcher and Reagan administrations, representing not merely a cultural shift but a deliberate intellectual project with institutional backing.
These economists and their followers worked through think tanks, academic departments, and policy networks to promote their vision of society. The Mont Pelerin Society, in particular, cultivated influence among political and economic elites for decades, offering a coherent alternative to Keynesian consensus.
I wonder if Clouscard's analysis might be enriched by considering how these deliberate neoliberal projects intersected with the cultural changes you describe so well. Perhaps the success of economic liberalisation came precisely from this convergence of two different currents – the cultural libertarianism of the post-1968 generation and the organised intellectual movement promoting free markets.
Your formulation of "everything is permitted but nothing is possible" remains a powerful insight, and I appreciate how you've applied it to our current political landscape.
I call the convergence you describe the hippy-to-capitalist pipeline. Steve Jobs was one, Richard Branson another. Swapping bell-bottom trousers for expensive clothes and becoming extremely wealthy while claiming to be 'disruptors'.
Those interested in the process Critical Perspectives describes in paragraphs 3 and 4 above might enjoy Quinn Slobodian's "Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism"
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36738613-globalists
Yes, good book.
Is this an AI comment?
Read with great interest. I was 18 in 68. I think Aurelien's take is good, contributing understanding, but also quite unkind and limited. I quit my fairly lucrative and enjoyable job at 31, went on a vision quest :-), and changed the course of my life. Not for more comfortable, that's for sure! I took the difficult path...
I did not want a life where I go to work to pay the mortgage and bills, do some outdoorsy stuff to recreate and stay sane, and have almost no energy or spare time for anything else. I was looking for meaning, not fun.
This article comes off as though the "bourgeois" way of life should not have been tampered with.
Oh and 68 in Czechoslovakia (Prague Spring) was not about "fun" either. It was about making communism less grim. Trying to humanize it. Naive perhaps, but not an unworthy goal, no?
Oh, I was talking in general terms, with a restricted number of word; I wouldn't tar an entire generation with the same brush: most people didn't even go to university.
There's a lot in this but it isn't true to say that we (the 68 crowd) didn't care about the working class. I came from it and joined the Communist Party. If I knew then what I know now I would have stayed in it. Instead we concentrated on 'social' rather than 'economic' advance and dismissed 'workers' who had a more narrow focus as being dominated by apolitical 'economism'. A very big mistake. We now live in a world dominated by oligarchs and a contrived narrative and I have to say I DO hope that the antics of the Musks et al will destroy it much more effectively than all the 'progressive' social ideas we had. One of the reasons I am motivated to go on existing is I just cannot see things progressing as they are now.
I thought you were taking us down the reactionary rabbit hole but in the end, you saved it. Nice essay.
'Me too' 😇
The usual italian translation, here:
"Giocare con la Politica
Tutto è permesso ma nulla è possibile."
https://trying2understandw.blogspot.com/2025/03/giocare-con-la-politica-tutto-e.html
Is that a reference to Brion Gysin in the subtitle?
French successors to Clouscards materialist approach may be the not very well known philosopher Jean-Claude Michéa who wrote a lucid critique of the 68`"libéral-libertaire" liberalism with his book "Realm of Lesser Evil: An Essay on Liberal Civilization" and the famous anthropologist Emmanuel Todd with his new study on "The Defeat of the West".
Yes Michéa is very good. he's written so many books I can't actually remember if I have read that one ....
I rate Todd in particular.
Brilliant essay capturing the background to the nihilism and infantilisation of western elites.
A minor quibble - despite his bizarre behaviour, I would place Musk more into the Jobs/Branson mould of business entrepreneur, than the modern spiv/spinmaster we see today.
There's no doubt that Musk’s SpaceX & Tesla companies are significant companies making a huge impact in the real world. I don't think the guy gets enough credit for his business nous and vision, but that's just me.
Thank you again for your insights.
Agree, his public persona does not reflect how he runs his companies - with the intense focus on getting to the heart of topics instead of accepting received wisdom and easy narratives.