Alain de Benoist
View from the Right
A Critical Anthology of Contemporary Ideas
Volume I: Heritage and Foundations
Translated by Robert A. Lindgren
Arktos
London 2017
Copyright © 2017 by Arktos Media Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any means (whether electronic or mechanical), including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Printed in the United Kingdom.
Original title
Vu de droite: Anthologie critique des idées contemporaines (Paris: Copernic, 1977)
ISBN
978-1-912079-76-6 (Paperback)
978-1-912079-97-1 (Hardback)
978-1-912079-96-4 (Ebook)
Translator
Robert A. Lindgren
Editor
Jason Reza Jorjani
Cover and Layout
Tor Westman
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To Jean-Claude Valla
Translator’s Preface
This present work is, in many respects, a series of intellectual engagements with a surprisingly wide range of contemporary scholarly publications, from palaeontology to postmodernism. In the course of this undertaking, Alain de Benoist cites a wealth of French works, as well as a considerable number of French translations of works by foreign authors. As a translator, I had to make a number of decisions on how to deal with these citations, especially because they are not simply relegated to the status of footnotes, but form a major part of the primary discussion.
My approach has been as follows:
Where an English edition of a particular book exists, I have attempted to render the book by its known English title, while referencing the French edition cited by Benoist in the footnotes. Where an English edition does not exist (or is unable to be sourced), I have rendered the French title in the body of the text as given by Benoist, and glossed the translation of the title in the footnotes.
For books that are originally written in a foreign language (e.g. German), but which are cited in French translation, I have, wherever possible, cited both the original edition and the French edition in the footnotes, while rendering the title in English in the body of the text. Exceptions to this occur where Benoist specifically cites the original foreign-language title, or where no English edition of the cited foreign-language work can be found. Any relevant clarifications, translations, or editions are contained in the accompanying footnotes.
In several places, Benoist also cites lengthy passages from Greek, Latin, or German authors in French translation. Where time and resources have permitted, I have either sourced and translated the original texts directly, or sourced and adapted existing English translations. Where time and resources have not permitted, I have simply translated the French translation as given in Benoist’s text.
I would like to thank John Morgan for inviting me to translate this fascinating work, while acknowledging, on my part, that a translation is by no means an endorsement of the author’s views, nor those of the publisher. I would also like to express my sincere thanks to my friend and colleague, Sylvain Saboua, for assisting me with certain aspects of the translation that I found especially difficult. Any errors or shortcomings in the translation of course remain my own.
Robert A. Lindgren
Preface to the New Edition (2001)
The first edition of View from the Right was published in 1977, twenty-five years ago. In the years which have followed, this book has seen five successive reprints, with an international print-run of around 25,000 copies. It was translated into Italian and Portuguese in 1981, into German in 1983–4, and into Romanian in 1998. In June 1978, it also received the Grand Essay Prize from l’Académie française, under circumstances which I have had occasion to speak of elsewhere.1 The work is composed of over a hundred articles, nearly all of which were originally published in the weekly magazine, Valeurs actuelles2 and the monthly periodical, Le Spectacle du monde,3 but whose substance has been largely revised and expanded. The articles are grouped under broad rubrics designed to facilitate reading. The subtitle, ‘Critical Anthology of Contemporary Ideas’, aptly expresses the intention that presides over this redaction: to prepare a portrait of the intellectual and cultural landscape of the moment, to establish the state of affairs, to signal the tendencies, to open the pathways and provide benchmarks to aid (and incite) the task of thinking in a world that is already in the process of considerable change.
The author is obviously ill-placed to judge the causes of the success, relative but certain, that this book has known. But what is most striking today is the extent of the echo made at the time by this release from a publishing house (Éditions Copernic) which itself only occupied a marginal position. The act of releasing a book apparently identifying as ‘right-wing’ posed no obstacles to the publication of numerous reviews in the mainstream press. The testimonies and extracts of literary criticism published in the appendix of this re-edition are a testament to this. A quarter of a century later, this tendency is brutally reversed. The rise of ‘uniform thought’,4 exploited by those whose interests it could best serve, has done its work. I have been but one victim among many. The unjust attacks and accusations have created a zone of increasing ostracism and prohibition which spreads further and further, in regularly expanding circles. A number of authors published in the seventies by the greatest publishing houses are today relegated to marginal publishers. A number of writers and intellectuals willingly welcomed to the open forum by the great evening newspapers are now requested to express themselves elsewhere. The catalogues of the great publishing houses have been purged to satisfy the demands of the ‘politically correct’. Conformity, intellectual laziness, and lack of curiosity have done the rest.
The title of this book has been the origin of many ambiguities. Two years later, during the summer of 1979, a vast press campaign would establish the international notoriety of the ‘New Right’.5 The expression had already been in the air for some time. Having hesitated for a long time on the choice of the title, I had nevertheless striven to dispel these ambiguities from the outset. ‘For the time being’, I had written on the first page, ‘the ideas supported in this work are to the right; they are not necessarily of the right. I can still quite easily imagine some situations where they could be to the left. It is not the ideas that have changed; the political landscape has evolved’. Later on I would express the wish that ‘one attains a position in which one is, at the same time, both right and left’. This is a way of taking note. Apparently there has been scarcely any acknowledgement of this.6 But the fact is that at the time, the ‘right’ was becoming fashionable. Political men who until then restricted themselves to saying that they were ‘not of the left’, began to admit they were ‘of the right’ without difficulty. The ideas of May 1968 were already more or less relegated to the background, for better or worse, even by those who had loudly proclaimed them ten years earlier. In a book which knew a certain notoriety, two talented journalists, André Harris and Alain de Sédouy, did not hesitate to ask: ‘Who is not of the right?’7 We would effectively see the right resurface during the course of the following decades under two different forms: the neoliberal variant, symbolised by the era of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, and the national-populist variant, illustrated by various tribunes who talk loudly but think superficially. These two variations which, in the era of Berlusconi and Haider, do not tend to be more than one, have no correspondence whatsoever to the idea that I had in 1977 of a ‘right’ engaging the realities o
f a nascent postmodernism. I had hoped to see the birth of a movement of thought (and action) defending the cause of the people, a right with a difference, participative democracy, and the primacy of free values over commercial values. Instead I have seen the right teach the logic of profit and the principle of exclusion. Today as we witness the complete obsolescence of the right-left split, I do not regret being shut out.
*
One of the passages from the introduction to View from the Right that has been cited most frequently is this: ‘I hereby define the right, by pure convention, as the consistent attitude to view the diversity of the world, and by consequence the relative inequalities that are necessarily the product of this, as a positive thing; and the progressive homogenisation of the world, extolled and effected by two-thousand years of egalitarian ideology, as a negative thing’. This phrase summarised my way of viewing things, and even today I still recognise myself well enough. This profession of ‘anti-egalitarian’ faith, mixing together the contiguous but distinct notions of diversity and inequality, and homogenisation and equality, was also somewhat ambiguous. The obvious risk in making the struggle against egalitarianism the principal objective was to appear to legitimise practices of exclusion (in the name of the presumed inferiority of such and such a group) or of elitist liberal practices (the inequality of conditions as the just result of equalities of nature, social justice as ‘illusion’). I would like to take the opportunity presented by this reedition to return to this problematic complex in more detail.
The equality between A and B (A = B) means that A is either similar or identical to B (that is, it does not differ), or that they are equivalents according to a precise criteria and according to a determined relationship. It is therefore necessary to specify this criteria or to identify this relationship. ‘If it only has equality according to one determined relationship’, writes Julien Freund, ‘the same entities and the same things can be different or unequal according to other relationships’.8 The result of this is that equality is never an absolute given, that it does not designate a relationship in and of itself, but that it depends on a convention, in this case the selected criteria or the chosen relationship. Articulated as a principle sufficient in itself, it is void of content, for equality and inequality only exist in a given context and through relation to factors that allow it to be situated in order to be appreciated concretely. The notions of equality and inequality are therefore always relative and, by definition, are never exempt from arbitrariness.
It is significant that inequalities (in the plural) are currently opposed to equality in the singular. Through the unicity of the concept, the notion of equality itself tends towards homogeny, that is to say, towards uniformity.9 However, this conceptual unity does not have its counterpart in an identity of empirical forms that it evokes. The forms of equality are not equal among themselves. To the degree that it does in fact has an absolute value, the notion of equality additionally becomes contradictory. A unique value does not exist, for a value only has worth in relation to others which do not have worth (or which are worth less). To value necessarily implies the creation of hierarchy, which is what happens each time equality is posed as a supreme value. But in creating hierarchy, one already violates the principle of equality, which contradicts every idea of hierarchy. (This is the equivalent of the contradiction that pacifists find themselves placed in when they are constrained to wage war against those who do not share their point of view). ‘Egalitarianism’, adds Julien Freund, ‘theoretically denies a hierarchy which it implies practically. Indeed, it accords a superiority and an exclusive value to equality in all its forms, and by consequence it reduces to the rank of inferior values all relationships which are not equal […] As a consequence, it judges reality according to the order of lower and higher, that is to say, within its concept it includes practically a hierarchy that it claims to deny and condemn theoretically’.10
When it intends to show an equivalence, even the notion of value is ambiguous. When one says that two things are of the same value, one does not say that they are the same thing, but that one is valued as much as the other despite what distinguishes them. However, the very fact of accentuating what renders them similar, no matter how dissimilar they may otherwise be, has the effect of shifting their dissimilarity to the background. Two things which are ‘the same’ are valued the same. It is easy to conclude, based on what they are worth, that they are the same.
Mathematical or algebraic equality, as distinguished from proportional equality, therefore contains in itself a principle of non-differentiation. Applied to human beings, it means that no difference exists between them that is of such a nature as to relativise what does not distinguish them. Understood in this way, equality leads to the elimination of every immeasurable part that specifies the human subject. But abstract equality is also a fundamentally economic notion, for it is only on the economic terrain, in relation to the universal equivalent of money, that it can be situated, measured, and verified. Economics, along with moral philosophy (but for different reasons), is the preferred domain in which equality can be appreciated because its unit of account, the monetary unit, is by definition interchangeable. One Franc or one Euro is worth any Franc or Euro. Only the quantity, the specified quantity, varies. Political or legal equality is a completely different thing. As to equality which is neither economic, political, or legal, it is not susceptible to any precise definition. Any doctrine which claims that this is so is a metaphysic.
In the modern era, human emancipation has long been associated with the desire for equality more than liberty. Inequality was posed as an a priori oppressive structure (which has actually often been the case); liberty, however, was in some way condemned to deny itself to the extent that, by allowing, indeed aggravating inequalities, it lead to the creation of new oppression. It is in reference to this that certain authors, like Norberto Bobbio, have been able to see the ideal of equality as the central operator of the left-right divide. ‘Those in favour of equality’, writes Bobbio, ‘generally think that the vast majority of the inequalities which outrage them and which they would like to eliminate are of social origin and, following from this, that they can be suppressed, whereas those in favour of inequality generally think that these inequalities are by contrast natural, and therefore inescapable’.11
Is this still true today? It seems to me that in the opinion of people of all persuasions, it is henceforth better to realise that the equality of conditions is not highly possible, nor even strongly desirable. We believe less and less that all inequalities are of a social origin. Conversely, we can certainly see that too many financial inequalities are politically and socially unsupportable, without having to believe in the natural equality of individuals. (Moreover, it is a commonplace in classical thought to assert that too much wealth destroys virtue). We also realise that the cultural increase in volume and standardisation carried out in the name of equality and under the cover of ‘democratisation’ has more often served the interests of large corporations than the ideals of democracy. We aim for an equality of opportunity more often than an equality of results. We attempt to make the distinction between just and unjust, tolerable and intolerable inequalities, which is tantamount to admitting that inequality in and of itself, as well as equality, no longer means anything.
More than equality, the accent is now placed on equity or fairness, which consists not in giving the same thing to everyone, but in making sure that each gets his due as much as possible. Even in economic matters, the left, rather than aspiring towards equality itself, seeks the sustainable maximisation of the minimum (maximin), that is to say, a compensation or a redistribution that allocates the most possible to those who possess the least, all the while taking account, in their own interest, of the positive effect that certain economic disparities can have on the incentive to invest or save. John Rawls has been one of the first to present in a systematic manner — but it is true, from an essentially procedural perspective — a theoretical
basis for the need for equality to be subordinated to the need for equity.12 ‘Equity’, writes Julien Freund, ‘is the form of justice that accepts from the outset the plurality of human activities, the plurality of ends and aspirations, the plurality of interests and ideas, and which strives to operate by compensation in the unequal game of reciprocities’.13
In regards to democratic equality, so poorly understood, for different reasons, by the right as well as the left, it is first necessary to comprehend it as an intrinsically political notion. Democracy implies the political equality of its citizens, and not at all their ‘natural’ equality. As Carl Schmitt remarks, ‘the equality of everything “that has a human face” is incapable of providing the foundation for a state, a state form, or a form of government. No distinctions or demarcations can be derived […] Nothing distinctive can be deduced in morality, religion, politics, or economics from the fact that all people are human […] The idea of human equality does not furnish any legal, political, or economic criteria […] An equality that has no contents except for the equality common to all men will be an apolitical equality, because it lacks the corollary of a possible inequality. All equality draws its significance and its meaning from its correlation to a possible inequality. This equality becomes all the more intense and important as the inequality opposing it grows. An equality without the possibility of inequality, an equality that one has intrinsically and that one can never lose, is without value and indifferent’.14
Like any political notion, democratic equality indicates the possibility of a distinction. It sanctions a common membership in a precise political entity. The citizens of a democratic country enjoy equal political rights, not because their competencies are the same, but because they are equally citizens of their country. Likewise, the universal right to vote is not an endorsement of the intrinsic equality of the voters (one man, one vote). It no longer has the purpose of determining the truth. It is the logical consequence of this that the voters are equally citizens, and have a duty to express their preferences and to allow the record of their consent or disagreement. Political equality, the condition of all the others (in democracy, people represent the constituent power) therefore has nothing abstract, it is to the highest degree substantial. Already among the Greeks, isonomia did not mean that the citizens are equal in nature or competency, nor even that the law must be equal for all, but that everyone possessed the entitlement to participate in public life. Democratic equality therefore implies a common belonging, and by means of this contributes to the definition of an identity. This term ‘identity’ refers at once to that which distinguishes — the singularity or uniqueness — and to that which lets those who share this singularity identify themselves. ‘The word “identity”’, remarks Carl Schmitt, ‘characterises the existential aspect of political unity, in contrast to any normative, schematic, or fictional forms of equality’.15
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