The Minister for Universities, Joan Subirats, and the director of the Esade Technological Humanism Forum, José María Lassalle, both academics who migrated to politics –Lassalle was Secretary of State for Culture and the Digital Agenda, successively–, from different ideological traditions, they share more than distance. In the political era of "communism or freedom" or "Gürtel or Volkswagen", they meet and recognize each other in this debate proposed by La Vanguardia on the dilemma facing the country on July 23rd.
Joan Subirats (JS): We could consider, with a logic of cycles, that 28-M is the end of the cycle of the rupture of bipartisanship, which began in 2011 and reached its zenith in 2018. The results of Ciudadanos y the decision not to attend on July 23 goes along that line. And the wear and tear of the positions to the left of the PSOE could seem the same. I believe this is a circumstantial vision. There are more fundamental currents throughout Europe that point out that the central ideologies of the 20th century, which marked the great political families, are totally in question and have to be reconfigured. Because we are in a change of era. I don't see this as the end of the stage, but rather a reconfiguration that concerns the parties themselves, both the PP and the rise of Vox. We are not facing the end of the cycle.
José María Lasalle (JML): We agree. I don't believe in the logic of cycles, but rather in a dynamism, in a flow. We are really facing response processes, as you described, of changing times. They are not temporary changes.
JS: They are more structural.
JML: Sure. The conceptual categories of the right and the left, based on the logic of capital and labor of the 19th century and which have lasted until the beginning of the 21st century, are crushed by the historical events we are living through. I think there is a current that seeks order due to a perception of collective insecurity, which is a consequence of the lack of answers to questions that have to do with climate change, with technology, with the scarcity of resources, lurking realities...
JS: And threatening.
JML: Indeed. They cause tensions in social structures that have not yet been resolved. That's why I don't think we have a cycle ahead of us, rather it is the continuity of what is being experienced globally.
JS: It's been 80 years since the Beveridge report [William Henry Beveridge (1879-1963) was a British minister who produced the postwar reports that contain the foundations of the Welfare State] and if one compares this time with the 43-45 phase, we would be in the same coordinates, as you said: need for protection, fear of the future and therefore need to give a powerful response from the State. That is the logic. But despite the fact that the scenario may be similar, the answers cannot be the same because the configuration itself, as you said, of work, for example, is different.
JML: Or well-being. That is, in the end, where is the well-being? It is no longer a material, economic well-being, which also, but other keys that are very important generationally are at stake. For example, for generation Z, very concerned about the climate emergency, there are problems that have to do with the well-being of their identities. We are not facing a change of cycles, we are looking at a different, very different era, for which the old party structures have no response and are exposed to a risk like that of the dinosaurs: extinction.
JS: Note that you are saying that the traditional social-democratic or Christian-democratic logic, material politics, does not work. One of the readings of 28-M could be that, despite the great effort in material protection by the State, something is wrong because emotional aspects cannot be articulated, a sense of community, how we face the change of era together. Readings that have placed less emphasis on the material have been able to connect with that dimension.
JML: I agree, because there is a simplification. In the field of the conservative block, a restoration of order in the midst of uncertainty that proposes that the flanks through which fear can infiltrate be reduced.
JS: This supposes more authority.
JML: And therefore, hierarchization. And on the other side, the opposite happens. As if it were not so much the order, but the assembly and therefore the deliberative capacity, which must be preserved. Basically, what they are reflecting is the obsessive search for order or the obsessive search for deliberation as historical categories that simplify the needs of the conservative bloc and the progressive bloc.
JS: Yes. Feijóo saying “Sánchez or Spain”. It is a very, very strong simplification that also places us in a logic of negation. One of the parties negates the whole. Now I was remembering the case of Chile. When trying to build a new constitution, there are so many fragments of reality that together they cannot be articulated because they do not give a unitary meaning.
JML: That's a complicated tension. An apotheosis of artificial intelligence can be crossed that really leads us to the establishment of an IAcracy where artificial intelligence is the one that governs, which is the temptation of China, to platform itself as a State. In other words, the problem is not brought by the migrant who crosses in a boat, but by the drone that makes the war in Ukraine possible. Those are the realities that we should be able to identify and for which we should have a political response. And the parties must find a corner to think and do prospective.
JS: Yes, I think there is a difficulty with short-termism, which is a constant. The key element is to be willing to take certain risks, to open the stage for debate. We have to propose new scenarios in this regard. And I agree with you that if it is done from the corner of militant and convinced self-satisfaction, it is difficult to give answers.
JML: The hope is that after 23-J there will be a political outcome that will allow the formation of a stable government so that this country settles the debates on the big issues. The tendency that was revealed on 28-M makes it very difficult for the PP not to win, but that does not mean that it will govern. He will only be able to govern if he has a majority of 140 or 150 deputies and defines a commitment to political moderation. But it is not clear to me that it will happen, because the extreme right has doubled the results. The PSOE, on the other hand, must be able to preserve that social democratic vote that it has neglected. And it remains to be seen if Yolanda Díaz's project is capable of coming to fruition without Podemos obstructing its capacity for campaigning and proposals and that it would really allow it to add up.
JS: If we look at the results of 28-M, it does not give the impression that it is enough to call the unit. More response layers have to be incorporated. If the tension is fright or death, it is only reactive.
JML: But what would be interesting would be if we were able to achieve addition processes that do not translate into zero sums, with a purpose, a reason. Because the day after, it is necessary to restore the capacity for this logic of addition, and therefore of unity, to transcend division and polarity. The complexity of the responses that lie ahead requires spaces of centrality.
