Who can afford it

I recall a text from a few years ago in which Tzvetan Todorov warned of the high risk posed by "a conception of the economy as an activity completely separate from social life, which must escape the control of politics." It made me think of a joke by the president of the Ministry of Public Works, Josep Sánchez Llibre, who denounces President Salvador Illa's housing policies as "pro-communist." Just a few days ago, he said that he doesn't engage in politics, but that he cannot allow—referring to Pedro Sánchez—"businessmen to be criminalized." What explains this state of mind? What strategic objective leads him to say these things, when it can't be said that the class struggle is overly exacerbated or that business elites feel trapped? Rather, they are setting the pace more than ever, and managing to get societies to accept it as a matter of course. What remains of the old class conflict at a time when social discontent struggles to find effective means of expression?

We all know Sánchez Llibre's verbal fluency; he's one of the most skillful figures when it comes to adding color to public debates and making himself heard. A conversation with him is never boring. "Private property is a fundamental right of citizens," he declared as his definitive argument. But a fundamental right cannot be understood as absolute, that is, without limits. If we enter this realm, we'll reach the point where everything is permitted to those who can afford it. And with this refrain, figures emerge in the spheres of power—political, but also economic and business—convinced that for them, anything is possible.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk are currently the two icons of this way of understanding the world, which leads them to break the law with complete impunity and largely explains the drift of liberal democracies toward neo-authoritarian forms. A path that inexorably leads to an infringement on the rights of the majority of citizens. There are increasing reasons to believe we are at a breaking point. The question is: where are we headed? What will we sacrifice of the democratic culture that has allowed the Western world to set the pace for half a century? That's why Sánchez Llibre's defensive stance surprises me. Or is it part of a deeper strategy? There are many important issues that will determine the future, and one is precisely the enormous gap in ownership, which means that an increasingly small group with economic power dictates the pace for everyone else and fosters a growing erosion of democracy.