Leçons sur l'égalité

Communication will assure, it is claimed, freedom of exchange and culture, real equality between communicating subjects, each sending and receiving messages in turn. The state will become transparent, say its partisans. The state will disappear, and will be replaced by communication circuits, say extremist libertarians. And we are thus moving toward a society freed of the vices of real capitalism and socialism. And ail of the sudden, the concepts of equality, liberty, nation and sovereign state become important. Communication replaces them only in as much as it borrows from them. The very concept of communication includes the major problems of equality and reason.