Conjuguer l’histoire Conjoncture et prospective To Read History Conjuncture and Prospective

Abstract

Futurology often looks like a new undertaking, the object of which would be to give people "the fantastic and marvellous" that every one needs: make one dream of tomorrow. But if the future is an alibi, it must also be a tool for mobilization. Prospective gives then to itself a less emphatic purpose: it is a new way of reading past and present (that is to say to understand history) as to define the prospects which make the future. The future is not determined in a mecanic way. It is the resultant and the expression of different projects (projects of economical groups and classes), which meet, clash inside a complex economic and social formation.

In another way, to read history goes with the idea the future is to be made, which only results of classes, struggle, social and international power-relations.

The method must unite on one side a way of production trends analysis (abstract time), and a social formation evolution (concrete time). It is a way of thinking which obviously can use traditional technics.