Reclaiming the True Meaning of Culture
France's cultural policy has shifted from its 1959 mission of elevating citizens through shared heritage to indiscriminately funding all cultural expressions as equally valid since 1981.
The fundamental question facing local elected officials today is not abstract but deeply practical: what should be transmitted, restored, taught, celebrated, and funded? At its core, cultural policy is always a policy of transmission, connecting generations and shaping civilization by giving a people full awareness of both their heritage and their calling.
When General Charles de Gaulle established the Ministry of Culture in 1959, he assigned it a mission of remarkable clarity, summarized by his celebrated minister André Malraux: to make accessible the capital works of humanity, and first of all of France, to the greatest possible number of French citizens. This vision recognized that certain works transcend their era, that a patrimony deserves transmission, and that the state has a duty to make it accessible to all.
This noble ambition has been progressively squandered by successive governments and deserves to be recovered today. In a France fragmented by doubt, culture should precisely contribute to rebuilding common ground.
The Relativist Turn Under Socialist Leadership
With the left’s arrival to power in 1981 and the famous decree by Jack Lang in 1982, a different conception took hold. Culture was no longer a common heritage to transmit but became a subjective disposition that each person supposedly carries within themselves. By erasing the distinction between enduring patrimony and ephemeral productions, the state ceased inviting citizens to elevate themselves toward beauty and instead became an undifferentiated funder of all expressions, without any genuine hierarchy of quality.
This evolution, particularly well explained in a recent report from the Thomas More Institute titled “1975-2025: The Fifty Decisions That Sank France,” explains why masterpieces and productions of the moment are now placed on the same level. When everything becomes culture, nothing truly is anymore.
Such a choice is not neutral. By refusing any hierarchy in the name of a relativist conception of culture, France has ended up marginalizing precisely what public authorities should have as their primary responsibility to protect: the national patrimony, language, history, great works, and traditions.
Restoration Over Relativism
The goal is obviously neither to freeze creation nor to administratively decree what artists must produce. A living civilization creates, innovates, and renews itself. But it can only do so sustainably by knowing where it comes from.
A cultural policy worthy of the name consists first of transmitting what endures. It requires restoring patrimony, supporting museums, libraries and archives, introducing young people to Molière, Racine, Hugo, Balzac, Péguy and Camus, promoting great French popular traditions—particularly musical ones—encouraging repertory theater, craftsmanship, and local cultures.
This ambition must translate into concrete choices. France must first know precisely what it possesses and in what condition it will transmit it. A major national inventory of the health of French patrimony should be undertaken to identify urgent needs and program restorations rather than waiting, too often, until a building is on the verge of collapse before acting.
Long-Term Planning for National Heritage
This work must also fit within a long-term framework to escape ad hoc management. National plans could be devoted to churches and abbeys, cathedrals, and museums, while apprenticeships and artisanal trades would receive greater support to ensure transmission of often centuries-old expertise.
Finally, this ambition must extend across the entire national territory. French culture does not stop at the gates of major cities; it lives in rural territories, churches, castles, monuments, libraries, musical societies, historical associations, traditional festivals, and landscapes.
In La Flèche, a city of history and patrimony, this conviction takes on a very concrete dimension. A mayor measures daily how local patrimony, commemorations, reading, and the transmission of history participate in the feeling of belonging to the same national community.
Cultural democratization therefore does not consist of lowering standards but of allowing everyone to access what is most elevated. Jean Vilar recalled that popular theater was not simplified theater—it was Shakespeare and Corneille performed for all.
With information from Valeurs Actuelles
