The Food and the Prison

When a group of unemployed people decide to create a political party in the city of Le Mans in France, they elect Victor as their president, and ask him to present his views on politics at their next meeting. Not having the slightest idea about politics, Victor goes to a park in order to think, and sits next to a homeless man. He is in luck, because the homeless man decides to give him a free tutorial on politics. Politics, he says, is a fraud, and asks Victor to imagine a prison.

In this prison there are, unsurprisingly, prisoners. But they have not done anything wrong; they were born in the prison, where they will stay for the rest of their lives. It is pure chance, a whim of fate: there are those who were born in the prison, and those who were born outside of it. This is the natural order of things. When, one day, the prisoners start complaining about the shortage of food in the prison, an election is organised. There is democracy in this prison, and the prisoners have the right to elect their director. They elect a director from the Left, who thinks that the shortage of food in the prison is unacceptable. When this director proves incapable of resolving the problem, the prisoners elect another director, from the Right this time. In the meantime, the problem of food in the prison becomes a major issue in the political agenda. And this, the homeless man says to Victor, is the fraud. Even if one day the problem of food in the prison is resolved, either by the Left or by the Right, the situation will basically remain unchanged: the prisoners will have enough to eat, but they will still be in the prison.