Revel's Dream of America
O'Neill, William L.
Revel's Dream of America WILLIAM l. o'NEILL No one needs to read far in Without - ^ Marx or Jesus to learn why the book has been so well received here. 5erhaps most countries, like most in-...
...Perhaps Without Marx or Jesus will do some good in France...
...Americans es- pecially do not need to be told that they are the freest, most creative, and effectively radical people in the world...
...That conceit is one reason why real so- cial progress has been so hard to achieve here...
...Under- developed countries, he points out, can only have underdeveloped revolutions...
...There is no new American revolu- tion...
...Without Marx or Jesus: The New American Revolution Has Be- gun, by Jean-Francois Revel...
...In any event, the whole debate over existing social sys- tems is irrelevant because experience shows that the qualities needed to seize power are different from those re- quired to solve the problems of mod- ern society: "The result is that, as authority in- creases, competence decreases...
...Even if untrue, the point is so deli- cious it bears repeating...
...Trans- lated from the French by J. F. Ber- nard...
...Liberals everywhere would like a non-violent, non-Communist solution to the world crisis...
...6.95...
...The most to be hoped is that eventual- ly they will resemble Russia, a country so un-revolutionary that it seeks cap- ital from Japan in order to buy fac- tories from the Ford Motor Company...
...This sort of wishful thinking, however well intentioned, is unlikely to provide one...
...I cannot believe that pretending otherwise will in the long run do any- one much good...
...They pride themselves on their ability to fol- low and adapt, but are no longer com- fortable "as anything but disciples...
...What you do is reform it...
...The fact is that what Revel calls America is largely of his own making...
...Poverty remains acute...
...Maybe so, yet one is reminded of .evePs earlier remarks that Europeans ave lost confidence in "their ability to formulate cultural prototypes and pro- totypes of political societies...
...First of all, there can be a "new American revolution" because he defines revolution as "a movement of dissent that succeeds in attaining pow- er...
...In France the Communist Party annot seize power, only deny it to ther leftist movements...
...What goes on here is just the newest chapter in a long his- tory of painful, piecemeal reform: a tradition that never quite succeeds and never entirely fails, but which is, in any case, precious because it is all we have...
...This solves the problem of how you change a government which cannot be overthrown...
...The non- lommunist Left is fragmented, pre- ccupied with doctrine at the expense f action, and obsessively anti-Amer- :an...
...Revel sweeps away the fashionable rubbish about so- cialism and the Third World that clut- ter the minds of Western leftists...
...Revel did not write his ingratiating »ook to win our affection...
...None of the supposedly radical new nations has achieved real socialism, Revel argues...
...In such a predicament, the question of whether one social system is better or worse than another becomes a matter of purely academic interest...
...And since no amount of criticism seems able to halt either the increase of the former or the decrease of the latter, society is becoming more and more dominated and less and less governed...
...5erhaps most countries, like most in- lividuals, need the approval of others, >ut few need it more than America...
...John de Crevecoeur, in 782...
...Sexual freedom, Revel solemnly announces, "is un- doubtedly one of the surest signs of an authentic revolutionary struggle...
...The ecology movement has scarcely begun...
...Devised, to be sure, out of a desperate need, and fashioned with such loving care that we who live in the real America can- not escape being moved by it, but a fiction all the same...
...He wrote it o sandbag the left-wing intellectuals of ranee, a class whose ignorance of, and igotry toward, the United States is pparently nothing less than stupen- ous...
...Doubleday...
...Because of everyone from Ralph Nader and friends of the earth to the yippies, the American Left is not only stronger than the Left anywhere else in the world, but is "probably the world's only hope for a revolution that will save it from destruction...
...This leads him to say that it is easier for a capitalist democ- racy to evolve toward socialism than for a socialist country to evolve to- wards democracy...
...None of the existing proposals offers much promise, so like generations of frus- trated Europeans before him, he turns to America...
...Right on, brother hippies, the penis is mightier than the sword...
...This is not merely unfortunate, e believes, but disastrous for France nd other countries with similar prob- !ms...
...Jean-Francois Revel's passion or America is all the more welcome low that we are so filled with doubt nd misery about ourselves...
...All these traits are self-defeating, ut especially the last, we are told, be- ause America heralds a future that all regressive elements in France should nite to realize...
...Despite Vietnam, most Americans still condone the arms race...
...Under these circumstances, the manic optimism of Revel is not only unwar- ranted but outrageous...
...The pathetic nature of this argument is enough to make one weep, the ev- idence for it too often thin or false, when not laughable...
...It surely cannot help us a bit...
...Nor have they moved towards anything like democracy...
...One press conference with Ralph Nader is worth a thousand books like this...
...How is urging them to be like Amer- icans going to make Europeans devel- op the creativity he so generously at- tributes to us...
...This is a hard thing to say of a book written with such feeling and laced with so much good sense...
...The American Left is hardly more than a joke...
...Afterword by Mary McCarthy...
...More than that, even if an outside model can revitalize France, should it not be an accurate one...
...The much larger body of liberal reformers—who, I imagine, are what Revel really has in mind—are serious, but they have everything to do yet...
...He wants a world government that will put an end to war, poverty, and injustice...
...Revel's Dream of America WILLIAM l. o'NEILL No one needs to read far in Without - ^ Marx or Jesus to learn why the book has been so well received here...
...269 pp...
...Ve have always craved the esteem of Europeans, and from the beginning Europeans have obliged—beginning vdth another enthusiastic Frenchman, . Hector St...
...Some of his observations are fresh and incisive, but they are at the service of his implausible dream...
...Revel's intelligence does not entirely fail him when he turns to America...
...Second, the agency for this reform exists in the shape of dissent, a strategy for obtaining social change so effective that it renders the government helpless...
Vol. 35 • November 1971 • No. 11
