piketty history 2

Multiplicity of elites, unity of the people? Last but not least, we must begin our investigation by studying ternary societies and analyzing some of their many variations and transformations, for whatever the extent of their opposition to modern societies, the fact Central is that the different trajectories and historical transitions that led to the disappearance of ternary societies have left a lasting imprint on the world today. We will see in particular that the main variations between ternary societies can be explained by the nature of the dominant political-religious ideology, and in particular by its position on two key questions: that of the more or less assumed multiplicity of elites; and that of the real or supposed unity of the people. The first is the question of hierarchy and complementarity between the two dominant groups (clergy and nobility). In most societies of European orders, and especially under the French Ancien Regime, the first order is officially the clergy, and the nobility must be satisfied with the second official place in the processions. But who really holds the supreme power within the ternary societies, and how to organize the coexistence between the spiritual power of the clergy and the temporal power of the nobles? The question is anything but innocuous, and it has received varying answers in time and space. This first question is itself closely linked to that of the celibacy of priests and their reproduction as a social group truly distinct from the other two. Thus the clerical group can reproduce itself and form a true hereditary class in Hinduism (in the form of the Brahmans, a true clerical and intellectual class, which in practice has often occupied a dominant political and economic position vis-a-vis the warrior nobility of the kshatriya , what we will have to understand), Shia and Sunni Islam (with here also a true hereditary clergy in the case of Shiism, organized and powerful, often at the head of quasi- local states, when it is not the centralized state itself), Judaism and most religions, with the notable exception of Christianity (at least in its Roman and modern Catholic variant), where the clergy must constantly be fed by the other two groups (in fact by the nobility for the high clergy, and by the third state for the lower clergy). This immediately makes the European case very specific in the long history of ternary societies, and unequal regimes in general, which can also help to explain certain aspects of the subsequent European trajectory, in particular the point of departure. view of its economic-financial ideology and its legal organization. We will also see in the fourth part of this book that this competition between different types of elites (clerical or warlike) and legitimacy is not without relation to the oppositions between intellectual and commercial elites that sometimes characterize the modern political and electoral conflict. , even if the conditions of the competition have obviously changed since the trifunctional age. Secondly, there is the question of the more or less complete unification of the statutes within the class of workers, or, conversely, the more or less late maintenance of various forms of slave labor (bondage, slavery). and the importance given to professional identities and corporations, in connection with the formation of the modern centralized state and traditional religious ideology. In theory, the ternary society is based on the idea of ​​unifying all workers into one class, one status, one dignity. In practice, things can be much more complex, as illustrated for example in the Indian world by persistent inequalities between lower-caste groups ( Dalits or untouchables, formerly untouchable and discriminated labor) and from low and medium castes (the ex- shudra , former proletarian or servile labor force depending on the case, but in any case less discriminated against than the Dalits ), an opposition that still plays a central role in the structuring of the conflict sociopolitics in India at the beginning of the 21st century. In the European world, the process of unification of the status of work and gradual extinction of serfdom has spread over almost a millennium, starting around the year 1000 and continuing until the end of the nineteenth century to Eastern Europe, which has left visible traces and discrimination until the present (as illustrated by the case of the Roma ). Above all, the Euro-American proprietary modernity has been accompanied by an unprecedented development of slave and colonial systems, which has led to persistent inequalities between white and black populations in the United States, and between populations of indigenous and postcolonial origin. in Europe, in different and comparable ways. To sum up: inequalities linked to different statutory or ethnoreligious origins (or perceived as such) continue to play a central role in modern inequality, which can not be reduced to the meritocratic fairy tale sometimes mentioned in should. However, to understand this central dimension of modern inequalities, it is important to begin by studying traditional ternary societies and their variants, and how they have gradually changed since the eighteenth century into a complex mix of homeowners' societies (where statutory and ethno-religious differences are in principle erased, but monetary and patrimonial inequalities can take on unsuspected proportions) and slavery, colonial and postcolonial societies (where statutory and ethno-religious differences play a central role, possibly in conjunction with considerable monetary and wealth inequalities). More generally, the study of trajectories postternaires and diversity provides an essential key to the analysis of the role of religious institutions and ideologies in structuring modern societies, especially through their involvement in education, and more generally in the regulation and representation of social inequalities. The ternary societies and the formation of the State: Europe, India, China, Iran Lastly, it is not a question of proposing here a general history of the ternary societies, on the one hand because it would require many volumes and would go far beyond the scope of this book, and secondly because the primary materials needed to write such a story are not available to date, and to some extent never will be completely, precisely because of the extremely decentralized ternary societies and the limited traces they have left us. More modestly, the purpose of this and subsequent chapters is to lay some groundwork for such comparative and global history, focusing on the most important elements for the analysis of later developments and modern unequal regimes. In the rest of this first part, I will examine in more detail the case of France and that of the other European countries. The French case is emblematic, because the Revolution of 1789 marks a particularly clear break between the Ancien Régime, which can be considered as a paradigmatic example of ternary society, and bourgeois society flourishing in France in the nineteenth century, which appears as the archetype of the owners' society, a major historical form that succeeds in many countries to the ternary societies. The term "third state" comes from the French language and expresses as clearly as possible the idea of ​​a society divided into three classes. The study of the French case and the comparison with other European and extra- European trajectories also make it possible to question the respective role of revolutionary processes and long-term trends (linked in particular to the formation of the State and changes in structure socio-economic) in the transformation of ternary societies. The British and Swedish cases offer a particularly useful counterpoint: these two countries are still monarchies today, and the process of transformation of ternary societies has proceeded much more gradually than in France. We will see, however, that the moments of rupture also play an essential role, and that these trajectories also illustrate the multiplicity and the diversity of the possible bifurcations within this general evolution. I will then analyze in the second part several variants of ternary (and sometimes quaternary) societies observed outside Europe. I will focus in particular on the way in which their evolution was affected by the enslavement and colonialist domination systems set up by the European powers. I will focus in particular on the case of India, where the stigmata of the ancient ternary divisions remain exceptionally strong, despite the will of the Indian governments to put an end to it since the country's independence in 1947. India offers in addition to a unique observation point, linked to the violent encounter between an ancient ternary civilization (the oldest in the world) and the British colonial power, a meeting that totally transformed the conditions of state formation and social transformation . The comparison with the trajectories observed in China or Japan will also open several hypotheses on the different post-tertiary trajectories. Finally, I will mention the case of Iran, which offers the striking example of a late constitutionalization and still in force of clerical power, with the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979. Armed with these different lessons, we can go to the third part of this book and to the analysis of the fall of the owners' societies under the blows of the twentieth century crises, and of their possible regeneration and redefinition in the neoproprietarist and postcolonial world of the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the 21st century.

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