La Nouvelle Censure, by Jean-François Revel, Demain le capitalisme and Autogestion et capitalisme, by Henri Lepage, and L'Etabli, by Roger Linhart
Kaplan, Roger
BOOKS IN REVIEW - La Nouvelle Censure Jean-Francois Revel / Robert Laffont Demain le capitalisme Henri Lepage / Le Livre de Poche Autogestion et capitalisme Henri Lepage / Masson L'Etabli Robert...
...The first thing it allowed them to do was to reject humanism, which demanded far more of them than their moral fiber could take, and it did this, as one might know, in the guise of a heroic moral calling...
...If shipment cannot be made within 90 days, payment will be refunded...
...The American Spectator December 1978...
...The panel was supposedly convened to examine the points Revel had made in his book...
...Restricted to the continental U.S...
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...It is supposedly the most objective, fair, intelligent, and complete paper in France...
...With Demain le capitalisme, Lepage has produced a book that seems to be lacking in the United States: a complete but eminently readable summary of postwar American neo-liberalism, which is often referred to as a conservative movement to distinguish it from the liberalism of the Democratic Party...
...He found himself in a debate on television with Rene Andrieu, editor-in-chief of L'Humanite, the Communist daily, and Jacques Delors, representing the socialists...
...Le Monde is the most boring newspaper I have ever read, and I suspect that it is the most tiresome paper in the free world...
...If not completely satisfied, I may return the hook within 10 days for a full refund...
...Revel therefore turned to the Communists to see just how much they have in fact evolved...
...0 471 03374-X) 1978 312 pp...
...Claude Estier, National Secretary of the Socialist Party, virtually accused Revel of receiving dictation from Henry Kissinger, and of being an associate of pornographers (the pornography theme stemmed from the fact that L'Express had published some excerpts from the noted classic of French parlor humor, Story of 0, two months earlier...
...or $5.50 (elsewhere) for a 1-year subscription, starting with the current issue...
...Boston Globe...
...Linhart was "established" (hence the first part of the double-meaning of the French word for workbench which is used for the title) in an automobile assembly plant for less than a year...
...It carries no photos and it has no funnies...
...12.95 "Harry Dent understands politics as well as anyone I know, and he is one of the finest practitioners of the political arts in the country today...
...Is self-management as pro-claimed by socialist trade-union men really the way to make jobs more fulfilling and increase the standard of living...
...T his is the best of William Buckley's work from the last three years...
...Linhart was and remains a Maoist, by now a description so wrapped in contradiction that it is practically useless, but which in his case means that in the late 1960s he saw in the "thoughts" of Mao Tse-tung a fantastic opportunity to justify his detestation of freedom and his aversion for the critical and detached attitude of a man in his position, that is a university professor...
...Capitalism, Lepage points out, is any-thing but reactionary, and liberals must rescue it from its identification with conservatism when the latter means, as it usually does in Europe, a statist authoritarianism that is often very hostile to the free market...
...26 The American Spectator December 1978 William F Buckley, Jrs newest and best...
...Barron's writer...
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...it is an institution...
...If Your Love Words, you'll love VERBATIM, The...
...it is really life with its stink and death that they object to, and the jokes that the realists invent to make the going a bit less dreadful affront their sense of justice only because they identify justice so closely with their own unfulfilled and unfulfillable needs...
...But it was in fact a clever tactic...
...the hidden struggles to bring the two-party system back to Dixie...
...dissecting the selling of a bestseller or the political conventions of 1976...
...12.95 `Southern Living finance a younger brother's education, to send some money to parents, to live, albeit unostentatiously, in a world absolutely unavailable at home—a world which contains some chance for modest betterment...
...This short item by a man who apparently did not take the trouble to read Revel's short book in full set the tone for the press's reaction to The Totalitarian Temptation: distort and dismiss...
...If we understand liberalism as a mistrust of intervention by the state into the lives of its citizens, then France surely has a liberal tradition, represented, for example, by the late Jacques Rueff...
...In 1976 he published a book called The Totalitarian Temptation which created a furor because it announced that the Socialist Party was letting itself be "colonized" by the Communists...
...Melloan/CARTER ECONOMY (047103374-X) ^Dent/PRODIGAL SOUTH (047103913-6) Mail to: JOHN WILEY & SONS, P.O...
...Le Monde is, like the New York Times, more than a newspaper...
...On 12 January 1976, Le Monde's publisher personally attacked The Totalitarian Temptation on page one...
...What will happen next...
...Whether evoking the last days of Cardinal Mindszenty or the insatiable curiosity of Hubert Humphrey...
...Carter's economic policies will affect your pocketbook in the months immediately ahead and for years to come...
...Instead, the Communists and their friends did their best to persuade the public that Revel was not worth reading...
...at the same time, he will not have the state bailing out mismanaged or failing companies...
...Exactly like the Communist "journalists," he never tried to answer Revel's arguments, preferring to attack his character and misrepresent his book...
...If the Americans can use the rigorous application of economics to gain so original a perspective on the social and historical problems relevant to their society, he says, then we must learn to do the same: for what is most urgently needed are new ideas and fresh voices in French political discourse...
...But Lepage knows that the regulated and centralized economy in his country will not be wished away, and he knows that the changes in cultural attitudes required for the success of his ideas are profound...
...But what I really mean to do, in contrasting Linhart with Lepage, is to show that in France today the great clash of Voltaire and Rousseau continues: the one laughing through his tears, the other denying that tears need be a permanent part of the human condition (and crying a lot all the while...
...Lepage says there is little a liberal, in his sense of the word, would do that M. Raymond Barre is not doing...
...Times Book Review 66He remains the constantly stimulating champion of real liberty against a host of seductions in our political, economic, and social life...
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...However, the French situation is quite different, for in France there exists a long-standing cult of the state...
...Lepage's mentors are Ronald Coase, Milton Friedman, George Stigler, Yale Brozen...
...But why did so many of France's journalists (and Revel shows that his book encountered the same problems as translations appeared in other European countries) find it so difficult to deal objectively with his theses...
...Jimmy Carter's first year in office was an eventful one for taxpayers—to say the least...
...But how...
...Nobody ever said immigrants had it easy...
...Box 092, Somerset, N.J...
...For Linhart to justify Maoism by going to work in a factory makes about as much sense as trying to justify gun-control by taking a walk through Harlem, around 140th Street near Saint Nicholas Place...
...Lepage says none...
...Revel's point, in recounting the episode, is that Communist tactics—grotesque as they may appear to us—are still effective...
...With this sort of nonsense going on throughout the program, it was effectively impossible for Revel to address the issues which he thought he had been invited to discuss...
...He has studied Gordon Tullock and James Buchanan...
...Irving Howe recently reminded us of this universal fact in his book World of Our Fathers...
...Do price controls, growth plans, and government intervention (all part of the French dirigiste tradition since the end of World War II) really aid the economy's performance...
...Roger Kaplan rather the centrist social-democrats like Revel who are fools, and who lead the non-Communist Left to suicide...
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...This is a fine specimen of the French gift for definitions, and it states very nicely the preoccupation with freedom, as opposed to an ideal society, which motivates classical liberalism...
...092 A 3426-54 L 29 (see the review in this issue of American Spectator) For all those who want to know where our economy is going, this is the essential book...
...For here is a man who, in The Totalitarian Temptation, continued to proclaim his fidelity to socialist economic planning (in fact, he said global planning) and yet is now reporting his enthusiastic discovery of a young liberal economist, Henri Lepage, who in two books this year (Demain le capitalisme—"Tomorrow, capitalism"—and Autogestion et capitalisme—"Selfmanagement and capitalism") has de-fended free enterprise with a vigor and lucidity worthy of Milton Friedman...
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...The simplest question never seems to have occurred to him: Why do these men freely submit to this regimen...
...Their aim was to recover their status as France's biggest party of the Left, even if it meant keeping the Left out in the cold...
...He therefore suggests that the first task of the liberals in France be a vast enterprise in economic education...
...It is Roger Kaplan is a program officer with the Smith Richardson Foundation...
...From the day The Totalitarian Temptation was previewed in a special edition of L'Express, there began a vicious, bitter, slanderous campaign aimed at its suppression...
...The organization of labor at this level creates daily opportunities for humiliation and sorrow...
...Until recently—as Revel's own case shows—liberalism has not been exactly the hit number among French intellectuals...
...In this hard-hitting, yet thoughtful book, the Melloans critically examine the Carter economic record on energy, tax reform, inflation, trade deficits, and all other vital issues—and make astute, informed predictions on the future of our economy under Carter...
...And that, as thousands of readers — and viewers of Firing Line — know, is very fine indeed...
...Factory life is, Linhart informs us, bitter...
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...or analyzing the character and policies of Jimmy Carter and his two predecessors...
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...But when he lets the Maoist out—not as often as I'd expected, fortunately—he is very weak...
...The answer, probably, is that he touched upon one of the most sensitive nerves in the leftist physiology, the fact that the history of the socialist movement is a history of failure: failure of theory, failure of practice, and failure to face this double truth, which in turn leads to failure to resist the better discipline of the Communist parties...
...The public interest is too easily identified with the state's...
...The articles in the socialist press (said to be in the hands of democrats), which were signed by Francois Mitterrand's closest advisors, proved Revel's thesis in the worst way...
...Then Andrieu tried to pass off L'Express as a "totalitarian" magazine because a number of journalists on its staff had objected to the special issue featuring Revel's book and of course had been overruled...
...Lepage, for all his passionate defense of the free market, is not a man of drastic politics...
...He knows there can be no question of an abrupt return to laissez-faire, especially as such a program has no constituency in France (or elsewhere...
...It is difficult to say, but I believe with minds like Revel's, France will continue to surprise us...
...He knows too well that he will let himself be persuaded the insult is true...
...Bill firm or institution...
...He believes that in the long term, liberals must successfully demonstrate that their objective, in opposition to the socialists', "is not to impose an end, but to be concerned with the means that result in the best possible compromises among the various individual and collective preferences and aims which, at any given moment, make up the matrix of the conflicting interests and aspirations of the social body...
...The really awful thing, however, was the performance of the socialist Delors, whonot only did not come to Revel's defense, but for all practical purposes sided with Andrieu...
...Essays of range and pungency in the tradition of Addison and Steele...
...In the wake of the government's victory last spring, the economist-Prime Minister is very gently modifying his course, away from the artificial austerity measures he felt were needed to fight inflation, toward a loosening of controls...
...The cruelest—or perhaps one should say the most unbelievable—blow of all appeared in Le Monde on the day of the book's appearance...
...However, the Communists made it easier, attacking their nominal partners more bitterly than their opponents...
...Their reaction to criticism, after all, may indicate how they might be expected to behave if they hold power...
...Allow 6 weeks...
...It is refreshing to learn, from men like Revel and Lepage, that French intellectual life, which so often gives the impression of being narrow and anachronistic and shot through with orthodoxies, is in reality still full of that skeptical, moderate, clear-eyed, and ironic vision which is crucial to what is best in this nation's mentality...
...The book was a huge success—there can be little doubt that it contributed to the electoral defeat of the Left last March—but the intellectuals of the Left and the Communists hated it...
...French Maoism was above all the profound and collective cecity of a large handful (several thousand) of highly-trained humanists...
...It is arguable, to be sure, that the center would have held anyway, thanks, precisely, to the efforts of Revel and other journalists who informed the reading * Estier, as it happens, was the editor of a .fellow-travelling newspaper subsidized by the Communist Party until 1964, when it ceased publication...
...Linhart and many others in those days "went to the people...
...His tax policies seem to favor business investment...
...Of course for him to go into a factory is a great sacrifice (though I wonder if in truth it is not a great self-indulgence...
...Get yourself a good pair of workshoes," was one of Mao's more insightful cogitations...
...It is the scintillating new volume by "an urbane and truthful observer, a man of sustained principle...
...Send $5.00 (U.S...
...Symptomatically, Le Monde made great sport, in the long review it eventually published of his book, of Revel's petulant in-ability to recognize that the Communists could evolve and become worthy partners of the socialists...
...G.P...
...but in the case of a best-selling author and so powerful a magazine as L'Express, the danger of censorship was not direct...
...How, he wonders, can we believe the socialists when they tell us the Communists are "evolving," when on the face of it, it is they who look more and more like their Marxist-Leninist mentors?* The case Revel made for the intellectual and moral situation on the Left was graphically illustrated when the Communist Party, in a lurid display of the kind of political behavior it had, supposedly, outgrown, torpedoed the Union of the Left in the March 1978 elections...
...from the Foreword by Gerald R. Ford (0 471 03913-6) 1978 308 pp...
...Language Quarterly dealing with all aspects of language...
...This would seem laughable...
...There already exists in France a problem of straightforward censorship due to Stalinist infiltration of various sectors of the media...
...Somehow, they are still legitimate on the Left, and a leftist cannot bear to be insulted by them...
...He knows his job...
...Accusing the socialists of being fools for seeking unity with the Communists, said M. Fauvet, is a "simplistic" thesis...
...In describing this life, in relating the ways men help each other and themselves to preserve their dignity, their hopes, their sense of humor, Linhart writes some very moving passages...
...The public appreciation of what the state can best do for the citizen will come gradually...
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...Here are the public stands and private maneuverings of leading Republican and Conservative figures throughout the last three elections...
...As befits the most unskilled labor force of this necessary sideline of industrial civilization, most of Linhart's co-workers were south Europeans and north Africans, immigrants who took difficult jobs in painful conditions (living in miserable flats or company dormitories) in order to break out of the stagnation of their hometowns...
...tics—goes right to the heart of your most vital political concerns in the fascinating new "insider's" book...
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...It is quite remarkable to see Lepage, in an interview with Revel, answer all these questions negatively...
...Nevertheless, that he has soaked up his lessons a little too dogmatically, as well as brilliantly, is reflected inhis answer to the question that he puts to himself rhetorically in his book: What sort of economic planning would you propose for France...
...and an important prescription from the CI JOHN WILEY & SONS 605 Third Avenue, New York, N.Y...
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...With the emergence of Lepage, a debate is reopening that is long overdue in France: Does the state really contribute to economic and social progress...
...for them, it is a chance to 28 The American Spectator December 1978 Where is he taking us...
...BOOK REVIEW La Nouvelle Censure Jean-Francois Revel / Robert Laffont Demain le capitalisme Henri Lepage / Le Livre de Poche Autogestion et capitalisme Henri Lepage / Masson L'Etabli Robert Linhart / Minuit Philosopher and journalist Jean-Francois Revel is one of the most controversial figures in French public life...
...The theme of Lepage's proposed course, therefore, is: The true defense of the public interest is thus the attitude consisting of trying to restore in society the maximum number of mechanisms of exchange, always bearing in mind that perfection is unattainable...
...The work is disgusting, boring, sometimes dangerous...
...At all costs he did not want to be associated with Revel, whom the Communist was freely calling a cop, a whore, and, especially, a reactionary...
...Full of insights...
...The few skilled workers he met were usually French, for example the one with the old workbench (hence the second meaning of the title) which is replaced in a period of thoughtless modernization, leaving the man, ironically, handicapped in the performance of his work...
...The only thing remotely comparable to their violent response in recent American memory was the reception accorded Edward Banfield's The Unheavenly City by the liberal social-science establishment...
...They did not last very long...
...And it is interesting in this connection to take note, by way of contrast, of a fourth book which has appeared recently and received much attention, Robert Linhart's L'Etabli...
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...First, every trick was used to prevent serious conversation from taking place, up to and including interruptions...
...It is interesting, says Revel, that Estier, the official spokesman of the Socialist Party, repeated the sort of trash that originally had appeared in the Communist press, including Pravda...
...what occurred was a travesty of rational discourse...
...Wiley pays postage/ handling...
...Chicago Tribune " Readable and revealing:" THE PRODIGAL SOUTH RETURNS TO POWER Harry S. Dent Harry Dent—architect of the Nixon /Ford author for Republican victory in 1980...
...In La Nouvelle Censure Revel has meticulously chronicled the reaction to The Totalitarian Temptation, and his analysis provides fresh confirmation of the thesis he expounded in that earlier book...
...Los Angeles Times "Buckley certainly deserves his reputation as one of the wittiest political satirists writing today...
...Some commentators in America, notably Paul Weaver, have remarked that economic education, if it means explaining the market system to the masses who usually know perfectly well what it is, may be a misguided strategy for the defense of capitalism...
...Most of all, he has studied Gary Becker...
...The answers lie in THE CARTER ECONOMY —an incisive analysis by George Melloan, "An excellent background reader...the a leading Wall Street Journal editorialist, chapter on health care alone is worth and Joan Melloan, a respected freelance the price...
...Yet, far from mechanically transferring their lessons to the French scene, Lepage sees their work as a challenge to his con-temporaries...
...This is, at bottom, a debate as to whether or not we can, we should, accept the world, the modern world in particular of course...
...NJ residents: add sales tax.t L J The American Spectator December 1978 27 public honestly, as well as to the indefatigable campaigning of Jacques Chirac, the Gaullist leader...
...06426 U.S.A...
...Buckley is at his urbane, articulate best...
...This moral abdication—one of the themes, to repeat, of The Totalitarian Temptation—was not merely something that happened on one evening of video silliness...
...Southern Strategy," former protege of Must reading for all who care about Strom Thurmond, and one of the chief the kind of man we put in the Oval movers-and-shakers of conservative poli- Office...
...The crowning irony occurs when Linhart, who is Jewish, forces himself to rationalize away the primitive anti-Semitism of a Moroccan fellow-worker...
...One must remember that when romantics wish for a bygone era (or a utopian future) they are not serious...
...But like everyone else, I have always assumed I need Le Monde, when in Europe, to know "what's going on...
Vol. 11 • December 1978 • No. 12
