"The bourgeois are a form of mediocrity of the soul, that's everything I
don't like. " Jacques Brel.We know the taste of our Belgian neighbors for the coastline of the Opal
Coast, in particular the seaside villages formerly populated by
fishermen and today given over to real estate trafficking and land
speculation. Bored with the concrete infrastructures bristling in the
seventies between La Panne and Blankenberge, a fraction of the
bourgeoisie is now abandoning the North Sea to take up summer quarters
further south, on the beaches of the English Channel. Certainly, the
famous resort of Knokke-Heist still remains this little tax haven where
the hard core of the well-off of the Kingdom of Belgium concentrates in
season, but a migratory phenomenon has for several years been attracting
a growing number of these privileged people to this side of the the
border, towards the outskirts of Boulonnais. Flemish developers,
supported in this by local authorities enslaved to the tourist windfall,
prospect land reserves, buy and build for a clientele quick to reproduce
the attributes of a classy community in the heart of landscapes praised
and sold for their authenticity...
From one bourgeoisie, the other...
Thus, from Wissant to Wimereux and from Equihen to Hardelot, from the
fisherman's hut to the villa hidden from prying eyes, from the luxury
apartment to the Airbnb studio, for this particular clientele the range
of possibilities is declined by virtue of the level crossed by the buyer
on the scale of the bourgeois class: small, medium or large.
Given the favorable cost of the local real estate market and the need
for authenticity so prized by a class which seems singularly devoid of
it (1), another factor comes into play in the decision which leads the
buyer to cross the threshold. border, that of language. French-speaking
Belgians are abandoning the coasts of Flanders, distressed by the
welcome they are now given there, as icy, according to them, as the
temperature of the water in the North Sea(2)...
Far from being a detail, this explanation caught our attention because
it reveals, in some way, the state of the balance of power between rival
bourgeois factions within the Kingdom of Belgium.
An identity bourgeoisie on the offensive
Of rural origin and historically younger than its French-speaking and
Brussels counterpart, the Flemish bourgeoisie appeared until recently as
a subordinate fraction of Belgian capital. The decline of traditional
industries and financialization have, in part, moved the heart of
accumulation further north, where employers with a regional identity
intend to make the area a stronghold open to the international market.
There is now a concentration of family businesses, working in the new
sectors of biotechnology and ICT, mainly SMEs, some of which have become
multinationals in their field of activity.
This bourgeois identity is reminiscent of a certain Bretron employers(3)
or its counterpart in Northern Italy, also regionalists and on the
political offensive since the 90s. Through the mediation of networks of
influence, groups reflection, business and management schools, an active
employers' union (Voka) and the development of a fantasized historical
narrative, it consolidates its territorial assertion by managing to
reach the international market.
Its program is simply stated: modernize the economy in the neoliberal
sense of the term by "reducing the nation-state and its bureaucracy to
their simplest expression, in particular the Belgian structures which
hinder the positioning of Flanders on the world market" (4).
From one separatism, the other...
The bourgeois class carries this separatism with them even in their
suitcases and across borders. Fifteen minutes from Boulogne-sur-mer, in
the discreet resort of Hardelot-Plage, the Belgian bourgeoisie has made
its mark and taken over the villas as the wealthy industrialists of
Lille and Valenciennes had done, a century before them. More discreet,
certainly, but no less well-off than its sisters in La Baule or
Saint-Tropez, the small resort of the Côte d'Opale posted an average
income per household in 2021 of 25,500 euros, compared to respectively
26,520 and 25,990 for its two rivals (5). Well! we have to believe that
it was not enough! For several years, a "Committee for the autonomy of
Hardelot" has been calling for the separation of the station from the
rural town of Neufchâtel to which it was previously attached. And this
request was validated by the Pas-de-Calais prefecture... This committee
estimates that: "The money comes from Hardelot, 83% for the property tax
and 98% for the housing tax. Taxes are much too high in Hardelot, and we
can lower them if we are autonomous.» QED.
This class separatism mirrors another form of rejection, this one
expressed at the ballot boxes during the legislative elections of 2024
where the far-right accounted for nearly 55% of the votes in this
municipality. As in many of these sleepy villages, immigration is
completely absent but the xenophobic vote is increasingly present(6)...
We will discuss at will on the particular factors which would explain
these results, highlighting that "the influence of trash TV", which "the
desertification of territories", which "the fear and rejection of the
foreigner"... all things in themselves not devoid of foundations, as
long as they do not lose sight of the fact that "the class whoever has
the means of material production has at the same time, therefore, the
means of intellectual production and that in all eras, the dominant
ideas have been those of the ruling class..."(7)
For another relationship to the territory and the population,
in the footsteps of Frans Mansereel
A century later, Frans Masereel's visit to Boulogne invites us to
reflect on a completely different relationship to the territory and the
population. We no longer present Frans Masereel, artist from a family of
the French-speaking Flemish bourgeoisie of Ghent, it is in this city
that he discovered at a young age the reality of the working condition
and was introduced to socialist and libertarian ideas. (8). He remained
loyal to them until the end of his life while subsequently moving closer
to the communist movement. Internationalist, anti-militarist and
anti-fascist, he will accompany and illustrate throughout his life and
during his numerous travels, the struggles and hopes of the working class.
In the 1920s, he settled in Boulonnais until the eve of the Second World
War. He works there several months a year, takes a rest there and
welcomes friends like the German painter and caricaturist Georg
Ehrenfried Grosz.
If Masereel buys and then builds a house a few kilometers from
Boulogne-sur-mer, in the village of Equihen, he does not settle there as
a tourist in search of artificial authenticity. In 1925, the coastline
and fishing still form a living and homogeneous natural and human
environment. Folklore and tourism have not yet replaced productive activity.
In contact with the sea Masereel certainly finds the inspiration he came
to seek there, but he does not keep his distance from the inhabitants of
the place. The pictures he paints of the local and surrounding
population occupy as important a place in his work as the panorama
offered to him. His portraits of everyday life, those of fishermen and
their wives, sailors, dockers, the quays of the port of Boulogne-sur-mer
and bistro scenes, all of this Masereel recorded in his work. And he did
it all the more acutely because he shared the lives of his models in his
own way. Masereel will participate and liven up local festivals with his
accordion, frequent cafes, rub shoulders with anonymous people... And in
the clandestine life imposed on him by the Nazi occupation, he will
adopt the false identity of François Laurent, born in... Equihen.
Boulogne-sur-mer, 07/23/2024
(1) You can't make it up: "Did you see me" is the name officially given
in 2023 to the central square of the very chic seaside resort of Knokke
le Zoute...
(2) The phenomenon does not date from today, already in 2013, the boss
of the local subsidiary of "Compagnie Le Zoute" stated that "80% of real
estate transactions in Hardelot are carried out by Belgians who are fed
up from the Belgian Coast in general, who no longer like Knokke,
especially because of the language problems. It's not taxes that are
making them flee." On the Flemish side, we say the opposite...
(3) All things considered because the regionalization process is much
more advanced in Belgium than in France. The creation of the Flemish
region offered this bourgeoisie economic aid mechanisms which promoted
its interests internationally. On the subject of Breton identity
employers read or reread: "Return to the strike at the "Captain Houat"
factory in Boulogne-sur-mer" in:
https://lamouetteenragee.noblogs.org/post/2017/12/23/
return-on-the-strike-at-lusine-captain-houat-de-boulogne-sur-mer/
(4)For an approach to the question, we recommend reading an article from
the journal of social criticism and Marxist analysis Lava: "The Flemish
bourgeoisie". Matthias Lievens. September 2020. In:
https://lavamedia.be/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Lava14_FR_Lievens.pdf
(5) INSEE sources
(6) For the year 2020, the gendarmerie displays only one offense linked
to immigration in the territory of the commune of Neufchâtel-Hardelot,
i.e. a rate of 0.01‰, compared to 108 cases linked to... family disputes!
(7) In: German ideology. K. Marx.
(8) The biography of Frans Masereel in Le Maitron:
https://maitron.fr/spip.php?article232781
* Discover THE CITY by Frans Masereel
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/frans-masereel-the-city
The Masereel Group is dedicated to the dissemination of the public
domain works of this great artist. The text was first acquired and then
scanned. It was then cropped, balanced, contrasted, saturated, bleached
and retouched manually. It was then scanned by OCR, manually proofread
and translated into English.
This book is in the public domain in the United States (because it was
published before 1925), but it is not in the public domain in Europe
(because its author died in 1972). As the Masereel Group is based in the
United States, everything within it is placed under the public domain,
and all content that is not authorized to be placed under the public
domain is placed under the Creative Commons Attribution license ( CC-BY)
3.0.
UprisingEngineer, Masereel Group,
September 18, 2020
https://lamouetteenragee.noblogs.org/post/2024/07/24/de-labjection-touristique-en-regard-de-loeuvre-de-frans-masereel/
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