2024-01-12 12:00:22
“Breaking its obligations”, “culpable deficiencies”, “lack of understanding of its objectives”, “insufficiency”, “mistakes” et “illegalities”actions which are not “not up to the challenge”… The terms used by the Paris administrative court against the State, a little over two years ago, are extremely harsh. “The case of the century” – the media name given to this legal action – had been prepared since the end of 2018 by four NGOs, including Oxfam and Greenpeace.
They had decided to sue the French State for non-compliance with its international, European and French obligations in terms of ecological transition. After condemning her for climate inaction in February 2021, the court ordered France, the following October, to repair the consequences of this inaction. On June 14, 2023, the NGOs again took legal action to request a financial penalty of 1.1 billion euros.
Criticism of the state is not new among environmental activists. “Political ecology was historically constituted, in part, by its distrust of the State and its bureaucratic organization”, notes Bruno Villalba, professor of political science at AgroParisTech. The criticism of the “productivist purpose of the State”, the latter being “at the service of a project consisting of maximizing the ability of everyone to access as many goods and services as possible”has been present among ecologists since the 1930s, notably in the writings of Bernard Charbonneau, author of a sum on L’Etat in 1949.
With Jacques Ellul, then in the founding writings of Ivan Illich, the foundations were laid after the war for a powerful critique of the technical infrastructures which underpin the social and territorial influence of the State. These, these authors analyze, lead to a depersonalization of individuals, who lose their autonomy.
Revolutionary project
Since that time, criticism of the State and its “growth” intention has continued to be refined. A theoretical expression can be found in the writings of the American anthropologist James C. Scott, most of which have recently been translated into French. This specialist in Asian agrarian societies is of particular interest to Laurent Jeanpierre, professor of political science at Paris-I. In Scott’s work, summarizes Mr. Jeanpierre, “the State is an apparatus which almost always fails in its undertakings, which regularly collapses, its failures having, in the last century in particular, taken the form of murderous tragedies on a very large scale for the human species and others living beings. It’s a machine that takes on water and leaks everywhere. In his book The Eye of the State, James C. Scott even suggests considering it essentially as a parasite! »
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