The New French Polemicists

...The GDR has managed to give the West Germans much of what they wanted—increased contacts—without giving them what they really wanted—liberalization and progress toward reunification...

...Germany is less divided as a result of detente, but it is no more unified...

...the idea of the good society is absurd...

...Michael Harrington, the American "democratic socialist," has been in the forefront of holding out such hope: One cannot set a date, or even a decade, when the last scene [of capital...

...Nothing can be all bad if it has ended capitalist exploitation" is the hidden but real impulse that prevents our intellectuals from properly understanding the threat from the East...

...Furthermore, as they themselves are children of the sixties they are listened to by others who are still captured in its intellectual hegemony...

...Michel Foucault, an established leftist philosopher, has described the process of their maturing: In 1968 and even before, we had arrived at this very paradoxical situation, of a movement whose pride and very reason for existence were based on its being on the left, a movement that was hostile to the Communist Party and yet had no way to express itself except in the Marxist vocabulary...

...Claims are made about the emergence of a new "school" of political thought—a school no less, and all within the space of a few years...

...Stephen Haseler The New French Polemicists Though their ideas are not new, the "new philosophers" of Paris have unburdened themselves of Marxism, no small accomplishment for French intellectuals...

...Literaturnaya Gazeta calls them "miserable abortions of leftism...

...Their books, for the most part, sell (Glucksmann's Stephen Haseler, former Chairman (Labour) of the Ways and Means Committee of the Greater London Council, is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington...

...Moreover, Marxism is so well entrenched that it may be next to impossible to oust it from the minds of the West European elite...

...Indeed, the Soviet Union is beginning to loom among the French left as the major threat...

...16 The American Spectator May 1978...

...Hence it is not a fundamental threat to East German Communism but merely an inconvenience, for which the GDR is compensated by recognition, trade, and credits from the West...

...And from the French intellectual left...

...The end of East Germany's international isolation has given the country a new self-assurance as well as improved access to western business, western tourists, and western money...

...This is a great advance...

...The world's greatest concentration of firepower is still to be found on the two sides of the intra-German border, and the area has witnessed a significant military build-up in recent years...

...And as Glucksmann himself admits: "It's not a new philosophy, but philosophy anew...

...The "new philosophers" have been greatly affected by Solzhenitsyn...

...There is also a continuing silliness, particularly on Glucksmann's part (another hangover from the sixties), in attempting to smear Washington with the same brush...

...For the most part these young thinkers spring out of the fevered world of Paris, 1968...

...Truth not necessarily on the left...

...The children of 1968, no matter their continuing anarchism, have grown up...

...From Michel le Bris, a former Maoist leader: "God is dead, Marx is dead, and I don't feel too well myself...

...More tentative, and probably more circumspect, intellectuals (at least in Western Europe) will rarely denounce Marxism in the round, at root...

...In France, as elsewhere, this is long overdue...

...One is led to wonder how anything coherent or sensible can possibly derive from the shattered illusions of the French leftism of the sixties...

...The East Germans responded by putting a $40,000 reward on his head...

...What, possibly, can be happening in France...

...If these young Frenchmen can resurrect him from his present isolation, that alone will be a fateful accomplishment...

...They have taken on some of the characteristics of the media personality—a kind of French intellectual equivalent of the Hollywood film star...

...Yet, although the "new philosophers" insist that they remain men of the left ("I could never vote for the right wing," insists Levy), they are no longer, in any real sense, socialists...

...Furthermore, the political pedigree of the "new philosophers" must appear to the Anglo-Saxon political mind as rather alarming...

...The "transformation to socialism" along Marxist lines will be much more pleasant and acceptable because of the democratic background of these societies and their higher stage of economic development...

...That is what accounts for the extraordinary reverberations that have been set off by these new books [of the 'new philosophers...

...Levy suggests that "Solzhenitsyn is the Shakespeare and Dante of our times," and Glucksmann declares that "what Solzhenitsyn taught us was not the existence of the Gulag, but how to resist it...

...Moreover, he insists that there can be no socialism without terror, no socialism without the gallows...

...At any rate, and previous support for the Maoist Gulag notwithstanding, the Soviet variety is no longer ignored...

...These earlier anti-Communists still seem more profound in their denunciations of left totalitarianism than the "new philosophers," and they were certainly less flashy...

...The "new philosophers" do not see it this way...

...All strong stuff, both resounding and crisp...

...Anti-Soviet socialists of the new type (not, let me hasten to add, of the old, social democratic type—the ones proven right all along) become a precious intellectual commodity...

...From such an impregnable position—fashionable, exciting, risque—the "new philosophers" perform an invaluable political service which should not be discounted by more world-weary conservatives or social democrats outside of France...

...Some of this may indeed be valid, but such concessions are inevitably used by the left for purposes of its own...

...And herein lies their real interest and, irrespective of their staying power, their potential long-term significance...

...It is suggested by "Eurocommunist" ideologues that there were bound to be perversions of Marxism in the Soviet or Cuban experience because of the backward nature of these societies at the time of the great revolutions...

...One may cavil at this because the existence of the Gulag was indeed denied, or at the very least ignored, by the French left until quite recently...

...If indeed the "worm is the fruit," and if this can be sustained and developed to the point where it becomes accepted wisdom, then the "new philosophers" will have made a major breakthrough...

...They are high on rhetoric and low on analysis...

...It is, in fact, denounced...

...The crimes of the Soviet Union, he suggests, are by no means the sole responsibility of Stalin or Lenin or Brezhnev or the party...

...If these trends can be widened, then a real debate could start about the nature of totalitarianism—and about the real differences between it and authoritarianism...

...By negotiating with the West, East Germany has redefined the central issue in its own terms—"how much movement" rather than "freedom of movement...

...They are certainly good news politically too, worrying as they do the French left and, in particular, the French Communist Party...

...Communist regimes are thereby typed as "degenerate," "deformed," "bureaucratic" workers' states, but they are workers' states nonetheless...

...But this type of frontal assault only increases the allure surrounding the "new philosophers...

...The Soviet Union certainly takes these young Frenchmen very seriously...

...Indeed they are already discovering some of the better theories of totalitarianism—and its link to Marxism—so prevalent in the days of the "cold war"—when our "inordinate fear" of Communism, and our sense of resistance to it, was still intact...

...We should "beware of Stalinism with a human face...

...Marxism itself is to blame as well...

...The problem seems to lie in the absurdly high expectations that those around them (astute publishers, quick-witted publicity men) have generated on their behalf...

...The great issues of war andpeace are not determined by the fact that West German fishermen now fish in East German waters, that coal miners now dig together in border areas, or that West Berlin's garbage is now dumped in the East...

...That has already been settled....But there are many possibilities within this tendency, the totalitarian, the authoritarian and the democratic socialist among them...

...Some of them are former Maoists...

...Above all, human contacts have not bridged the fundamental differences of principle that separate East and West...

...On balance, the GDR has done well by her decision to grant more "human contacts" in exchange for detente...

...Even so, serious political philosophy is not built in a day or upon sudden revelation or by polemical assaults upon a given orthodoxy (whether that orthodoxy be "liberalism," or "conservatism," or even, as in this case, "Marxism...

...If the "new philosophers" can indeed "tear the bandages of Marxism" from the eyes of the French left, then we will all, even those of us who live in countries that tend to chortle at the notion of a professional philosopher, be in their debt...

...As John L. Hess has observed: "theirs is not 14 The American Spectator May 1978 a movement, nor particularly new, nor a philosophy...

...Men of the left have turned before, with great force, upon the Soviet Union and the Communist parties...

...The future, comrades, is settled but it need not be nasty...

...And by making some concessions on human contacts, the GDR has given the West a certain stake in the status quo...

...These young writers are the subjects of lengthy television programs (apparently with large audiences) and color-supplement journalism...

...Marxist theory is unhinged from responsibility for Marxist practice...

...From Levy: "The proletariat in power becomes...new oppression for the benefit of a new prince born on the pyre of disappointed popular hopes...

...When the issue is drawn clearly, the two sides are as far apart as ever...

...I sense that we may even be on the verge of making the distinction, which came easily to us in the fifties, between right-wing dictatorships, which wither away when the Generalissimo dies or the Junta is overthrown, and left-wing totalitarian regimes which appear to have a greater coherence and lasting power, and are thereby a more potent threat to the democratic process and its systems...

...It is standard practice, and considered a mark of some intellectual depth, to pay obeisance to some aspect of the Marxist intellectual heritage—"its historical analytical method," or perhaps "its contribution to sociology...

...To get this message across to the intellectual community—that it is left totalitarianism that is the real threat to our democratic way of life—is a formidable task...

...As long as East-West contacts are based on governmental sufferance rather than individual rights, the GDR can survive a great deal of exposure to the West...

...Even allowing for a native Anglo-Saxon jealousy about the glamor and popularity to which intellectuals can aspire in France, this sort of treatment and response seems a very improbable setting for the arrival of a profound and new philosophy...

...Whether the publicity and excitement generated by the new polemicists of Paris will have much effect upon the immediate political future of France is highly doubtful...

...The difference between Werner Weinhold and the millions of travellers who now cross the border legally is at the heart of the GDR's attitude toward contact with the West...

...From Glucksmann: "We must tear the bandages of Marxism from [our] eyes and discover the truth in the wounds of the masses...

...Note here the seductive combination of inevitability and hope...

...Yet the job they are seeking to do has already been done very effectively by Karl Popper and others...

...They may not have the capacity to develop their ideas much further...

...Orwell and Koestler led an earlier, postwar generation away from the lies and treachery of Communism...

...Morin has called for the formation of an "anti-totalitarian committee" for just such a purpose...

...Our grey political leaders in the West may indeed feel the same way, but they apparently can find neither the will nor the words to express this revolt...

...Rather, it must be a painstaking exercise, something built brick by brick over a long period, if not a lifetime...

...They set about demolishing it ruthlessly and with obvious relish, with all the zeal of the convert...

...History as progress is derided as "reactionary...

...What we are presented with by the "new philosophers" is really a new, highly articulate, and persuasive polemicism...

...Of course, none of this is new...

...Of course, it is unfair and arbitrary to hold against those who have now rethought their position the infantilism of the counterculture to which they once subscribed...

...By such an intellectual strategem the inherent defects of Marxism are neatly dodged...

...Even Le Nouvel Observateur takes them seriously...

...Not only do they echo Popper but they are also arousing interest in Hannah Arendt's analysis of totalitarianism...

...This was an intolerable circle of contradiction....But, little by little, its members began to undo the web and unburden themselves from Marxism....And the game they tried to play "For Marxism and against the Communists" was now turned into another game "Against both the Communist Party and Marxism...

...West German police, for example, no longer encourage East Germans to escape to the West by way of the Berlin autobahn, for such "abuse of the transit roads" would force the East Germans to go back to inspecting every vehicle themselves, thus inconveniencing western travellers...

...To "unburden" oneself from Marxism is for French left-wing intellectuals, and for others who have known nothing else, no meager intellectual feat...

...Also, irrespective of the changing battle lines in the world of ideas, the "objective" social and political forces that seemingly impel Western Europe into neutralism and socialism may have established such a beachhead that no amount of last-minute rethinking can turn back the tide...

...Even in such an ideologically susceptible nation it takes time for new formulations to break through into popular daily politics...

...Nor has the increase in human contacts led to a dramatic reduction of tensions in Central Europe...

...Consider this earth-shattering statement from Foucault (who gave Glucksmann's most recent book a surprisingly good review): "It is no longer necessarily on the left that one can find the truth...

...It is the lack of such sturdy foundations that must preclude the "new philosophers," at least for the moment, from ownership of a new philosophical system...

...The successor to capitalism will be collectivist of course [italics added...

...They tend to assert their case rather than argue it...

...Or, to put it another way (as did Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan recently): We should distinguish between those systems, usually totalitarian, that wish to export their repression and those, usually authoritarian, that don't...

...And they may be an example for others, for they have grown up in a most interesting way...

...The socialist dream can go on, uninterrupted by the Soviet nightmare...

...For a start they have given plain, old-fashioned anti-Sovietism a new lease on life...

...What is so refreshing about these new polemicists is that they are in no way soft on the issue of Marxism...

...most recent, The Master Thinkers, was a best-seller...

...Weinhold went into hiding in the West...

...Even the simpleton understands that no matter how obnoxious they may be, neither Chile nor South Africa has submarines lurking around the oil fields in the North Sea...

...There is still, unfortunately, a residual tendency to use the vocabulary of the sixties ("fascist," "reactionary") in a sloppy and imprecise way...

...socialism is "an encyclopaedia of lies...

...In The Master Thinkers, Glucksmann sees totalitarianism "in the Washington Pentagon as much as in a remote Cambodian concentration camp...

...A recent example is the case of Werner Weinhold, a young East German who made his way to the West by killing two GDR border guards...

...What the "new philosophers" are doing is to articulate, in popular philosophical style, what so many ordinary people feel—a disenchantment with the prevailing left orthodoxies that have sustained western intellectual-cum-political life since the early sixties, and arguably for some time before...

...The East German regime is as repressive as before the Ostpolitik, and political relations between the two German states are terrible, human contacts notwithstanding...

...He is author of, among other works, The Death of British Democracy and (with Roy Godson) Euro-Communism, forthcoming in fall 1978...

...Others retain powerful anarchist strains with a continuing and annoying tendency to reject all forms of authority and stability...

...Still, this spurious evenhandedness (no doubt a product of Gallic pride as much as anything else, a sin not present in the works of fellow countryman Jean-Francois Revel) is a decided improvement on the pro-Soviet tunnel vision of the recent French intellectual past...

...Of course, no one should set overly much store by the "new philosophers" and the reaction to them...

...The "new philosophers" are in revolt against their own, earlier revolt...

...Even so, the "new philosophers" may not be able to go much further, and they could easily run out of steam...

...In Western Europe all will be different...

...There is still the possibility of a "democratic path" to socialism, and while such a possibility exists there is no need to think further about anything at all...

...Further resistance sets in because of the massive attendant publicity which the "new philosophers" themselves inspire...

...But the same thing from the children of the sixties...

...The East German government demanded his return to stand trial for murder...

...East Germany can tolerate more contact...

...Glucksmann, too, seizes upon the "sin" of Marxism...

...optimism is the opium of despots...

...What it cannot tolerate is free contact...

...The West Germans ruled "self-defense" and let Weinhold go free...

...I evy describes the Soviet state as a "reactionary machine," and for Glucksmann it is "fascist...

...Consequently, the argument goes, it is not Marxist theory that is responsible for totalitarianism, rather it is the misapplication of its principles...

...They are sometimes recognized on the street...

...Andre Glucksmann, Bernard-Henri Levy, Edgar Morin, Jean Marie-Benoist, all are powerful writers...

...In Western Europe the reason for such a left bias lies with the powerful allure of Marxism...

...it is not necessarily on the left that one can find a defense of moral values...

...And the accolade for this kind of achievement is, nowadays, a trip to an American Ivy League university...

...The American Spectator May 1978 15 ism] will be played out or specify how long it will last...

...Glucksmann and Levy and Morin say they wish to submit questions to the left-wing parties, socialist and Communist alike...

...Santiago Carrillo, the Spanish Communist leader who has attacked the Soviet Union, is invited to Yale...

...As long as Marxism remains respectable, free from a central challenge, then the obviously unacceptable practices of official Marxist regimes (whether the Soviet Union or even Cuba, no longer so appealing to the radical young) can be dismissed as perversions of the still-intact ideal system...

...some years ago it would have been an "anti-fascist" committee to question Chirac and Giscard...

...and Bernard-Henri Levy has agreed to give some guest lectures at Princeton sometime this year...

...But perhaps a renewed attack is underway against the intellectual hegemony of Marxism...

...Fashion, for once, is on the side of the system...

...Levy declares of Marxism that "there is no worm in the fruit, no sin was added later, for the worm is the fruit and the sin is Marx...

...It can be "democratic...

...They subject each left dogma to devastating scrutiny and find most of them false...

...Consider these magnificent phrases...

...The increased contact permitted by the GDR is tolerable to the regime precisely because it is permitted...

...Across a wide political spectrum in the European academies Marxism has such a hold that even among those of the liberal tradition the old man is accorded due deference...

...It attacks them with a vituperation usually reserved for "NATO circles...

...And it would be foolish to suggest that our heirs will necessarily inherit a millennium that will be socialist and humane...

...The whole phenomenon of the young Paris "philosophes" invites imperious skepticism—at least at first sight...