“Above all, don’t let yourself be impressed by economists,” insisted Bernard Maris. A recognized economist, academic, writer, essayist, journalist, he was assassinated on January 7, 2015 during the Charlie Hebdo attacks. A striking personality, iconoclast, resistant and bon vivant, Toulouse continues to perpetuate his thinking with a UNESCO chair dedicated to him.
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10 years after his death during the Charlie Hebdo attacks on January 7, 2015, the thoughts of Bernard Maris are still very present in Toulouse. A UNESCO-certified chair in his name has been in place since 2018. His colleague Anne Isla has just published a book in English on the work of this iconoclastic and unique economist. “I first remember his friendship and then his spirit of resistance in the face of the soothing language of neoliberal economics, against teaching void of any political notion or power. He was also very concerned about sharing knowledge.”
Those who have read him, listened to him on different media or who attended his classes at Sciences Po Toulouse know it well: Bernard Maris is a unique economist and an exceptional man. There was no one more demanding and rigorous than him, while being a lover of life who does not forget its pleasures. “We had some very funny moments over a drink, continues Anne Isla. Bernard was a lover of life in all its facets. Everything in the life of this economist was a pretext for reflection, creation and transmission.” He made economics a multidisciplinary science, with a masterful Art of debate not stripped of irony and poetry.
Bernard Maris is from Toulouse, attached to his roots and his accent. After studying at the Pierre de Fermat high school, he studied at the University of Social Sciences of Toulouse (UT1-Capitole), where he defended his thesis in 1975: “Personal income distribution: a theoretical approach within the framework of balanced growth. Already the whole philosophy of his thought.
In 1984, he became a lecturer there. His iconoclastic choices opening economics to other disciplines led him to tirelessly criticize standard economics in a scientific and epistemological approach. Appointed professor of economic sciences at the Institute of Political Studies of Toulouse in 1994, the lecture halls were always well filled, often crowded… His students still remember the demanding, lively exchanges, always leaving room for humor and to the debate. In 1995, he won the “best economist” prize awarded by The New Economist.
That was also Bernard Maris: an economist who became a journalist in serious media (France Inter, Le Monde, Le Figaro, Le Nouvel Obs, C dans l'Air) but also lighter and often more ferocious things as in Charlie Hebdo under the pseudonym “Uncle Bernard” behind which he had fun for a long time.
Anne Isla has just released a book in English “Economics as rhetoric. The thought of Bernard Maris” to make his writings known because he wrote very few texts in this language. “For Bernard, the essential theme of the economy is how we share resources, reducing inequalities and respecting the planet.”
Anne Isla shared lecture halls and a long friendship with him. It was a DEA (research master's) course on the economics of conventions (a school of thought that appeared in France in the mid-1980s). “Sharing a lesson with him was nice. We worked a lot then we found ourselves at the edge of Lake Sesquières between 2 windsurfing tours. He was absolutely demanding but we couldn't stop loving life, to eat together, to have a drink. We worked late in the evening and ended in song with “El paso del Ebre”, a resistance song of the Spanish republicans. He also set it as a telephone ringtone.
Capable of quoting poems by Jorge Luis Borges, he wanted an open and multidisciplinary economy. This Keynes specialist did not hesitate to make a link with Karl Max and Sigmund Freud. An eclectic and iconoclastic side that was disturbing: “People rather perceived the person as ironic, satirical and did not see the erudition that was behind it. When I gave a conference just after his death, colleagues told me: 'I'm coming but it's not is not an economist”. When you are multidisciplinary, you are not an economist. Heterodoxes like Bernard are rejected and as he had a public audience in the media or as a member of the Bank of France, some hated him. We often try to sideline heterodox economists. It hasn't changed much since then.”
Understanding society, inequalities, what we can do beyond, so that life is gentler and respectful of human beings and nature, all these reflections and these lines of thought can be found in a chair installed in Toulouse since 2018 in the premises of Sciences Po.
Launched in Paris in 2016, a Bernard Maris chair took place in the Sciences Po premises, at 21 allées de Brienne in Toulouse.
The objective: to continue to promote the heterodoxy of Bernard Maris, to invite international economic leaders who advocate openness to history, geography, law, sociology, psychology, etc…
Olivier Brossard, professor of economics at Science-Po, is today the coordinator of the chair. “After the Charlie Hebdo attacks, several tributes to the victims took place in Toulouse and Paris. Bernard Maris was our colleague, our friend. We wanted to follow up on everything he did.”
The Paris branch stopped due to lack of funding but Toulouse continues thanks to the Occitanie region and the Haute-Garonne department. The chair is labeled UNESCO, a prestigious distinction which also makes sense to the work of Bernard Maris. It has an academic holder, the Dutch economist Ron Boschma for the research and teaching part. He has just been awarded a prestigious prize in 2024, the equivalent of a geographer's Nobel.
The chair invites other researchers, prestigious guests like Thomas Piketty or Joseph Stiglitz. History of perpetuating the spirit of popularization and civic animation dear to Bernard Maris.
“We wanted to create a special chair, not purely academic, continues Olivier Brossard. We have a citizen and educational component and a more traditional and academic component. Like Bernard, we want to bring the economy closer to citizens, to contribute to the opening of training courses for better diversity and plurality. We organize citizen conferences to get out of our ivory tower, listen to other points of view and not develop research beyond the soil.”
A tribute day will be held this Tuesday, January 7, 2015 to mark the 10th anniversary of the disappearance of Bernard Maris, in the Science Po library from 6 p.m.
The opportunity to find the many books by the Toulouse author like this pamphlet “The Seven Deadly Sins of Academics (Albin Michel) or his “Economics antimanuals” (Bréal), real bestsellers among students. “I was influenced by his books, his popularizing side and critical free thinking, recognizes Olivier Brossard. I remember that he was the only one to stand up to Dominique Seux on France Inter. For me it was beneficial. It's difficult to be at this level, capable of debating like him, with such literary talent. I don't see any others. We miss him.”
- “Not only are the opponents of growth not enemies of development, but they are undoubtedly the best defenders of civilization, the other name for development.”
- “Capitalism channels the frustrations of men, piles them up, as it accumulates capital, and inflates bubbles which end up bursting like bombs.”
- “But let's have a dream: when the economy and economists have disappeared, or at least have faded into the background, endless work, voluntary servitude and the exploitation of humans will also have disappeared. Art will then reign , chosen time, freedom. Who dreamed like this?
- “To understand life, economists continue to chase away the salt, the love, the desire, the violence, the fear, the dread, in the name of the rationality of behavior. They hunt down to destroy this emotion which abolishes the causal chain”
- “But is life a quantity, as economists would have us believe? What is life? A length or an intensity? What if life was only measured by itself?“
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