In a book published in 2010, L’Esprit de Philadelphie. La justice sociale face au marché total [The Spirit of Philadelphia. Social Justice versus the Total Market] (Paris: Seuil, 2010), Alain Supiot, Ph.D. in law and, among other things, Director of the Institute of Advanced Study at Nantes, takes issue with the growing tendency to regard “total marketization” and economic globalization as realities that cannot be checked or curbed, even though it is clear that they increasingly run counter to what social justice ought to demand. This faith in the infallibility of the market has, he argues, led to the subordination of human beings to the market, whereas originally the market predominantly served human needs. The result of this has been, in his view, a growing number of victims or losers in the present economic order. Rejecting this line of development, Alain Supiot calls in L’Esprit de Philadelphie for a return to the principles laid down in 1944 in the ILO Declaration of Philadelphia, which sought to put the notion of social justice – and thereby of humanity – back at the heart of our economic system. Hedva Sarfati, who has read the book for Futuribles, outlines its main points for us here.
Cet article fait partie de la revue Futuribles n° 374, mai 2011
