The book was composed during the author's detention in La Santé Prison from October 29, 1936 to July 6, 1937 for death threats against Léon Blum.

[2] Although anti-doctrinaire and basing his thought on the experience of reality and "common sense", Charles Maurras consented in 1937, most of his career already behind him, to the writing of a work summarizing his various political positions.

To this corpus, Charles Maurras adds an original introduction called "La politique naturelle" which constitutes, by its defense of the principle of hierarchy and "beneficial inequality", an approach to the whole of the author's work.

[1] In Maurras, individuals are not born equal either apart from the natural gifts of reason, moral sense and the aptitude for freedom.

Society is supposed to be based on a natural anthropology, starting with heredity, which designates "less the transmission of genes than that of a material (house, land, business) and immaterial (language, customs, principles, values, tastes, heritage memory)".

The social question also holds a large place in this preface because it was composed at the time of the Popular Front.

Martin Motte notes that for Maurras "social mobility has always existed in the history of France and constitutes a natural movement: it is therefore useless to make it a political priority".

[1]The idea of nation is not a "cloud" as the anarchist cranks say, it is the representation in abstract terms of a strong reality.

He will lose all his defence, all his support, all his support.Finally, Maurras recalls that the French nation is not a matter of race, that it is not hermetic to possible external influences, while specifying that diversity can be as much a source of wealth as of division.