GEOPOLITIQUE
‘A French Jeremy Corbyn, and in power!’ you’d think after reading the first few paragraphs of Macron’s recent interview in Le Grand Continent. He condemns the Washington Consensus, the paradigm of ‘less state intervention, privatisations, structural reforms, opening up of economies through trade, financialisation of our economies, with a rather monolithic rationale based on the accumulation of profits’. The ‘financialised economy’, the monster child of the Washington Consensus which promised us welfare but gave us powerful financiers, has destroyed the environment, increased inequality and powered authoritarianism, bringing us to a political break point.
The Macron Doctrine, or the Paris Consensus, pledges to reverse those trends. To fight back against the ills of the financialised economy, Macron offers a three-pillar solution: more Europe, a true Europe-Africa partnership, and coalitions with governments and non-governmental players. Indeed, the Macron Doctrine is notionally post-colonial. It calls for re-inventing the ‘Afro-European Axis’ and puts the onus on Europeans to ‘show that this universalism we uphold is not universalism of the dominant, as it was during colonisation, but one of friends and partners’. If the Macron Doctrine for Europe is to make it ‘the leading power in education, health, digital and green policies’ with massive investments, by extension it promises a post-financialisation, post-colonial partnership with Africa.
Yet paradoxically, the Macron Doctrine – explicitly built on a critique of financialisation and privatisation of public goods – co-exists with the French push for the Wall Street Consensus, which promotes a partnership with global investors to financialise development and privatise public goods, particularly in Africa.
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