Rethinking our concept of social progress: no longer working less, but living more freely
For the past two centuries, our understanding of social progress has been straightforward: to live better than our parents while working less than they did. And that is indeed what happened. Since the First Industrial Revolution, each generation has worked less than the one before while enjoying a higher material standard of living.
Between 1840 and 2020, according to historical estimates and statistics compiled by INSEE, annual working time was cut in half, falling from 3,300 to 1,600 hours.
More strikingly, over the same period, total working time across a lifetime was divided by three, from 200,000 to 70,000 hours.
Over that same period, according to calculations by the Maddison Project reconstructing the long-term GDP of the world’s leading economies, the average standard of living in France increased tenfold.
What is distinctive about our era? Progress has stalled. In France in 2025, people are not working less than they did in 2005, nor are they living better. For the first time since 1945—certainly—and perhaps even for the first time in two centuries, a generation is neither working less nor living better than its parents.
What is the main cause of this unprecedented stagnation? Over the past 20 years, our productivity growth has been the weakest since records began. Without productivity gains, there can be no broad-based improvement in living standards and no general reduction in working time.
We therefore face two questions: how can we restore productivity growth? And, if we succeed, how should we use those gains collectively?
Should we continue reducing the amount of time people spend working over the course of their lives? Or should we rethink our understanding of social progress: living increasingly better not by working increasingly less, but by becoming increasingly free, both individually and collectively?
The major difference between the past two centuries and our current situation is that we have lost global economic and geopolitical leadership. As a result, we have become more dependent than ever on foreign powers—industrially on China and technologically on the United States.
What, then, should living better mean in the 21st century? Having the shortest working hours in the world while losing our freedom and becoming passive consumers? Or regaining our independence by directing productivity gains towards recovering our freedom through investment in education, innovation, healthcare, the energy transition and defence?
This should be our vision of social progress for the 21st century: ensuring that our children are freer than we are—not because they work less, but because they are better educated and trained, freer to choose their profession, earn a comfortable living from it and change careers, within a free France and a free Europe whose prosperity and security no longer depend on foreign powers.
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