Editorial of Fédéchoses issue 180

The setting of this 180 Th issue of Fédéchoses is mostly identical to that of those published since mid-2017 when our Review has taken its present quadrimestrial rhythm with an increased pagination. Our editorial links also remain unchanged with The Federalist Debate and the on line French web magazine Le Taurillon but also for 18 months with the WFM International Secretariat in NY and its new publication Mondial. Furthermore we always remain open to collaboration with the democratic Federalist and Autonomist press worlwide.

Beyond, Presse Fédéraliste (PF, who also publishes [in French only] : Lettre d’informations européennes [Monthly web Newsletter of European Information], and various collections : “Textes fédéralistes” [“Federalist Writtings”], “Minorités nationales” [“National Minorities”], “Carnet d’Europe” [“European Booklets”], “Le fédéralisme dans l’histoire de la pensée” |”Federalism in the History of Thought”], “Cahiers de la constitution fédérale européenne” [“European Federal Constitution Booklets”] and, recently founded, “Cahiers fédéralistes” [“Federalist Booklets”]) will continue and strengthen our editorial and financial partnership with the Workable World Trust (WWT) founded in 2014 by the late Professor Joseph E. Schwartzberg in White Bear Lake (MN) in order to develop more specifically our works related to World or Extra-European Federalism.

We pay Tribute to Joseph ‘Joe’ E. Schwartzberg in this issue, following his death on 18 Th September and associate ourselves to the pain of his loved ones. PF will soon pay him another and much greater Tribute when co-editing (with UN University Press and WWT), a hard cover French edition of his work Transforming the United Nations System. Designs for a Workable World, presently under editing work.

But, let us come back to this issue. It is structured around two Féd-actualité and two Focus, in addition to the traditional « Billet d’humeur » by Alain Réguillon, our federalist archives rubric, a few papers not belonging to any of these specific files in addition to the bibliography. Within these specific papers let us mention the one by Mrs. Sylvie Guillaume, MEP for South East France, whose re-election we very much favour next May, on the « UN Marrakech Global Compact on Migration » and the scandalous desinformation campaign organized by the nationalist and extreme-right spectrum.

The first Féd’actualité is called ‘V Th. Republic Constitution, centralism, territories and Yellow Vests’. Composed by two papers and two Press Release published before the crisis : one on the founding of a new political group, ‘Liberties and Territories’, within the French upper Chamber of Parliament, the other on the recent Referendum on independance in New Caledonia. We wish to insist on these tematics because, if on financial answers to categorial wages or taxes requests Federalists have little to say, it is very different when relations betwen the Citizens and the State are concerned. In this field, part of our ‘core business’, we claim to have specific opinions to express, that is to say that the hart of the problem is :

  • within the monarchical type of the V Th. Republic Constitution (aggravated, if necessary, by President’s Macron ‘Jupiterian’ style) which the Federalists have always and tireless condemned ;
  • within the bureaucractic and centralized framework of the French State, cause for contempt for Territories and their Inhabitants, wastes and financial over-costs equally inefficacity and slowness, finally, denial of democracy ;
  • within, the more and more obvious inadequacy of the national framework to the problems or Europe and the Planet (some papers in this same issue being related to this last point).

The Nation State has served its time, and in Europe its progressive role is totally exhausted. To brace on this passeist and out moded model can only be reactionary. And, France, archetype of the bureaucratic and centralized Nation State system, is no longer a framework within which one could develop politics (right or left wing), efficient, protective and fair. Basta !

‘The solution is not to guillautine Macron but to destroy and overpass the Nation State !’, especially to protect and reconsider the Territories, their Inhabitants and their Cultures and Ways of life. On this ‘constitutional’ matters Federalists have to fight all at once the ‘profiteers of national sovreingty’ (denounced by Altiero Spinelli already in 1957) and the ‘profiteers of French centralism’ ; as wrote Bernard Lesfargues in 1976, ‘The French State is, for contradictory reasons but though in full consistency all the same, as reluctant to let gambol its national minorities as to to be hara kiri on the altar of Europe’.[1]

To the grandiloquant revolutionary references of the Yellow Wests, too often corrupted by (neo)fascists, we want to recall the words of Renaud in his song « Hexagon » (written 1975) : ‘They celebrate in July, in memory of a revolution, that has never cancelled misery and exploitation. They will dawn popular dances, fireworks and blare, they think they can forget in beer, that they are governed like pawns’… (https://lyricstranslate.com/fr/hexagone-hexagon.htm)

The second Féd’actualité there after needs no specific comments, being as usual about various aspects of European Integration. The first of our two Focus, on the other hand, this on the ‘Crisis of the Left in Europe and the World’, is of prime importance and should continue in our next to come issues, the other one on ‘Regional Integrations and Interstate Cooperations… On the way to World Federation’ will also be pursued in our next coming issues.

Finally, let us indicate, in our last pages, a Féd’document, being the Jean-Claude Junker Conference on our regretted Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, on 5 Th June 2018, and an important interview of the newly elected President of UEF Europe, since its recent Vienna Congress in November 2018, Mr. Sandro Gozi.

To all of you, we wish healthy reading and a good European, World and Federalist 2020 !

J.-F. B. and J.-F. R.

Mots-clés