Systems and Debates

by Alain de Benoist

  There are about 200 active nuclear power plants today. Their number will be in excess of 1000 in 1985. In harmony with the law of large numbers, accidents may well occur. The likelihood of such an event, however, is infinitesimal. According to US calculations, a serious accident could take place every 1000 or even 100,000 years. The nuclear industry is, in fact, the only one to have applied strict security norms prior to industrial implementation. This was not even close to being true in the case of the chemical or charcoal industry.

  Mr François Lebrette adds that ‘risk evaluation has allowed us to conclude that, for the same energy output, the nuclear field will claim fewer victims than charcoal’ (Valeurs Actuelles, 10th March, 1975).

  As for Mr Maurice Herzog,569 he reminds us that ‘a stay in high mountain areas leaves human beings far more vulnerable than time spent inside a power plant’. Indeed, the natural terrestrial and atmospheric radiation, totalling an average of 125 millirems per year, is six times higher on Mont Blanc. And yet, no negative repercussions have ever been observed. Both plutonium and radium enjoy a relatively abundant existence in their natural states (with the Rhône itself ferrying around 200 grams of radium a year), but only become a source of danger when a specific concentration rate and chemical configuration have been met.

  Professor Pierre Pellerin, the head of the Central Service for Protection against Ionising Radiation (INSERM),570 an organism with ties to the World Health Organisation, has issued the following declaration: ‘There are nowadays no known kinds of human cancer caused by plutonium’.

  Mr Francis Perrin, a professor at the Collège de France and a former high commissioner in the field of atomic energy, had this to add in Le Nouvel Observateur: ‘The panic campaign that has stricken the public opinion with regard to the frightening risks which the development of nuclear power plants allegedly generates is completely uncalled for’.

  Despite their strong sympathies for ‘environmentalism’, Colette Guedeney and Gérard Mendel,571 who have attempted to ‘psychoanalyse’ the atomic obsession, have also drawn the conclusion that there is a considerable disproportion between the (explicit or latent) delusional anguish surrounding nuclear power plants and the genuine threats that could actually stem from their use. Mr Mendel notes that this anguish ‘corresponds undoubtedly to highly regressive experiences, and not to specific, well-defined and rational fears. It is as if the mental defences that have gradually been erected during the process of maturation were at fault in this regard; as if, experiencing an impossibility of efficient action and robbed of its power to act, the “I” found itself in various pre-action positions in which archaism, delusion, magical thought and the law of all or nothing reign supreme’.

  New ‘Scenarios’

  In its second published report (A Strategy for Tomorrow), the Club of Rome endeavoured to present a more nuanced point of view, ranging from an analysis rooted in reports on mass global averages (whose genuine significance is inexistent) to further reports on relatively homogenous regional systems. Instead of considering each of the 154 countries separately, the authors founded their calculations on ten large global communities or regions which, in some cases, relate to five distinct behavioural categories.

  This work suffers from the same weaknesses as its predecessor. It interprets the future on the exclusive basis of a given model. Even when including a certain number of ‘scenarios’, however, this model remains necessarily mechanistic. It cannot, by definition, take into consideration any factors that are foreign to its elaboration; neither could it ever take into account energy threshold crossings that it was not designed to analyse, incorporate the subjective and abnormal data that characterise periods of crisis or predict the innovations that will be produced in the coming years.

  The authors of A Strategy for Tomorrow make use of figures in a peculiar fashion. So as to demonstrate that the nuclear option will lead to unbearable financial burdens, they claim that in a hundred years’ time, ‘the mere replacing of used reactors will cost 2000 billion dollars per year, meaning 60% of the current world income, which totals 3400 billion’. In other words, they proceed to compare a current income to one that is expected in 100 years’ time, as if it could ever remain constant. Based on the current growth rate, however, the global income will, a century from now, have undergone a sixtyfold increase. Reactor replacement costs will thus total only 1 %, and not 60 %.

  Here is professor Vander Eycken’s conclusion: ‘It would be a vain effort to look through this second report in search of a response — however partial — to the numerous criticisms that the first one was targeted with’ (La Libre Belgique, art. cit.).

  Other recent works have served to confirm the mistakes made by the members of the Club of Rome, particularly Models of Doom. A Critique of the Limits of Growth, a compendium by H. S. D. Cole, Christopher Freeman, Marie Jahoda et al. (published by Universe Books, New York, 1973), in addition to Adrian Berry’s The Next Ten Thousand Years (Laffont, 1977) and Les terreurs de l’an 2000,572 a collective book presented by Mr Georges Suffert (Hachette, 1976).

  Mr Louis Pauwels makes the following observation: ‘If one adds up the religion of nature inherited from the 18th century and the resurgence of Judaic apocalypticism, the result is none other than our contemporary, advanced thinking’ (in La fin du monde?,573 a special edition of Question de).574

  Indeed, the belief in an imminent ‘doomsday’ is nothing new. Since the very beginning, man has lived in fear of ‘soon’ lacking whatever seemed indispensable to his existence in harmony with his own momentary choices. When gunpowder was first used on the battlefield instead of arrows and ballista missiles, it seemed ‘evident’ to some that humanity was bound to vanish soon. The great eschatological systems and universalistic religions have exploited (and, oftentimes, fostered) such concerns and beliefs. A certain ‘environmentalism’ has now reawakened these age-old millenarian fears, these ancient guilt-inducing prohibitions.

  The time has come for us to rid ourselves of these 2000-year-old explanatory schemes which, regardless of their religious or secular form, have always stemmed from man’s original sin and Fall and heralded the Apocalypse and Final Judgement.

  Never Shall Atlas Throw Up His Hands

  Nuclear energy is akin to all other technologies: it is characterised by both advantages and inconveniences. Just like any other innovation, it can either serve or doom mankind. By resorting to it, man is taking a risk, but it is specifically in this manner that he embraces his own condition. Everything he produces acts as a reminder of his essence: that of a being that never falters in the face of a challenge. And it is by taking up the various challenges that he has established his own humanity, and he shall survive as long as he continues, in a most ‘natural’ fashion, to face the ones that he creates for himself, only perishing at the very moment when, frightened by his own boldness, he attempts to ‘revert to a past state’.

  Mr Pauwels also states that he is ‘inclined to believe that human history will never reach its end’. ‘It seems to me that every form of messianism centred around the End of Days, the Final Judgement or the celestial Domains belongs to the sphere of mental disease. It is Atlas that carries the world, and he shall never throw up his hands. In my view, Atlas is the embodiment of the human adventure’.

  During the 2nd International Congress for the Defence of Culture (Nice, September 1974), Mr Pauwels quoted the following words uttered by Donald Wolheim:575 ‘There is a famous poet in our country whose constantly repeated chorus is “thus shall the world end”. As for me, there is one thing that I am certain of. We shall not end with a loud bang, nor shall we end up snivelling. Indeed, we shall simply not end at all’.

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  The Population Bomb, an essay by Paul R. Ehrlich, Fayard, 235 pages.

  The Limits of Growth, an essay edited by Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jorgen Randers and William W. Behrens. Fayard, 232 pages.

  A Strategy for Tomorrow, an essay edited by Mihaslo Mejarovic and E
duardo Pestel. Seuil, 208 pages.

  Croissance Zero?,576 an essay by Alfred Sauvy, Calmann-Lévy, 329 pages.

  La peste blanche. Comment éviter le suicide de l’Occident,577 an essay by Pierre Chaunu and Georges Suffert. Gallimard, 262 pages.

  L’angoisse atomique et les centrales nucléaires,578 an essay by Colette Guedeney and Gérard Mendel. Payot, 244 pages.

  La fin du monde?,579 a series of texts edited by Louis Pauwels. A special issue of Question de (114 Champs-Elysées, 75008, Paris, France), 320 pages.

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  The implementation of a nuclear programme is bound to contribute considerably to reducing the energetic dependence of national economies. This is what accounts for certain standpoints, both on the part of the friends and the rivals of the world’s superpowers. While most Left or extreme Left parties have expressed their hostility towards the development of the nuclear industry, the pro-Chinese members of ‘Red Humanity’ have proclaimed themselves to be ‘in favour of a nuclear programme’ (2nd May, 1975). Their publication states: ‘The French nuclear programme allows us to eventually ensure greater energetic independence, serving as a direct blow to the world’s superpowers. It is even the only programme to actually reinforce the French national independence. […] It is urgent for us to act, to reduce our energetic dependence and resist the machinations of the 2 superpowers, and particularly that of the more aggressive one, namely Russian social-imperialism’.

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  When the Communists Are Seized with Virtuousness

  On 11th November, 1970, an ‘ideological hit parade’ took place in the Mutualité conference centre. The topic? ‘Scientific Humanism and Sexuality Issues’; which, in clearer terms, actually means ‘Communism and Sexual Freedom’. The French Communist Party (PCF) sent a specialist to address the matter: Doctor Bernard Muldworf, a fifty-four-year-old neuropsychiatrist and hospital physician.

  For several years now, the PCF’s psychiatrist has been drawing attention to himself. In June of 1970, with the support of the French Movement for Familial Planning (which he belongs to), he published a book entitled L’adultère580 (Casterman). A few months later, echoing several studies published in La nouvelle critique, the communist teachers’ magazine, he had two articles released by L’Humanité,581 articles which focused on sexual issues and led some eminent representatives of the intelligentsia to qualify him as ‘reactionary’. He has since published a book on the topic of human sexuality, as well as an extensive essay focused on Freud (Editeurs français réunis, 1976) in which he strives to reconcile Freudianism and Marxism with the principles of a reasonably well-thought out sort of eroticism.

  In L’Humanité, on 30th October, 1970, he made the following declaration: ‘We must not be afraid to say it: the topic of sexual freedom is profoundly mystifying’.

  Such ‘socialist prudishness’ is not a complete novelty.

  Already in 1915, two years before the October Revolution, Lenin wrote to Clara Zetkin, a pioneer militant who published her memories in Reminiscences of Lenin: ‘I have heard that during a lecture and discussion evening with female workers, you expressed particular interest in issues of sex and marriage. I could not believe my ears! Excesses in one’s sexual life are a sign of bourgeois degeneration. The proletariat is a rising class: it has no need of being aroused!’

  During that same period, Lenin wrote to Inessa Armand,582 who was working on a propaganda pamphlet: ‘I advise you to remove the passage that deals with women demanding free love. Such a requirement is not proletarian, but bourgeois’.

  To which he then added: ‘Love necessitates two people and may result in a third life. This leads to social interest, a duty towards society’.

  Lenin’s indignation can still be heard today. Communists and socialists are in disagreement with regard to sexuality. In May 1968, one could read the following words on the walls of the Sorbonne: ‘The more I make love, the more I participate in the Revolution’. The demand for sexual liberty is nowadays part of all revolutionary programmes. And yet the purpose is not so much to achieve a mere ‘liberalisation of mores’ as it is to cast doubt upon the notion of couples and families.

  ‘Group Reproduction’

  According to Leftists, sexual prohibition is a product of the capitalist society. It represents an ‘alienation’. In the name of biology, Doctor Muldworf responds to this claim: what is forbidden is ‘inscribed into the very nature of our sexual impulse’. Man must learn to defer the latter’s fulfilment. Desire, which is rooted in sexual instinct, only arouses pleasure to the extent that it anticipates it: it only exists in the interval or ‘hollow’ created by deferred satisfaction. To eliminate this satisfaction is thus to extinguish desire.

  Doctor Muldworf quotes Freud, who, at the age of twenty-seven, wrote to his fiancée, saying: ‘The vulgar give free rein to their appetites; as for us, we choose to deprive ourselves. We do so in order to retain our integrity, and take care of our health, our capacity to enjoy life, and our emotions; we save ourselves for a purpose, without ever knowing why. And it is this habit of constantly repressing our natural impulses that defines us as refined beings’.

  In June of 1968, the Leftist action committee known as ‘Nous sommes en marche’583 published a principial declaration in which it defined the couple as a ‘spontaneous union of two autonomies lasting 5 minutes or longer’.

  In its first report, one could read the following words: ‘There is no such thing as a family. The family is unreal and only subsists through the fascination it exerts upon alienated minds. All sexual education bestowed upon children by their own parents inevitably falls into such an alienating scheme. At the moment, reproduction is a fool’s game in which men and women objectively conspire to victimise their child. There are no fathers and no mothers. Since every individual represents a complete unit, he or she has no reason to desire a child of their own. It is the group that actually reproduces’.

  Doctor Muldworf disagrees and says: ‘Both psychology and psychoanalysis confirm the personalising aspect of sexual love, as well as the formative character of stable and lasting couples. The same modern psychological data demonstrates the imperious necessity of the respective and specific roles of mothers and fathers in their children’s psycho-affective development’.

  ‘Tribal communism’ is an illusion. As proven by Westermarck584 in The History of Human Marriage, Günther585 in Marriage, Its Shapes and Origin,586 and Rivers587 in Kinship and Social Organisation, couples and families surfaced at the very dawn of humanity.

  What about eroticism? ‘There is nothing inherently immoral about it, but a mobilisation of sensuality on the sole basis of our imaginative capacity, one that excludes any and all affective dimensions, impoverishes the individual and may, at times, be dangerous for particularly fragile personalities’, says Mr Muldworf.

  Le Nouvel observateur protested against this. Its editors caught a whiff of biological fatalism in the words of the communist neuropsychiatrist. They also felt that his statements contradicted the Marxist doctrine. If couples and families do indeed represent an inherent structure of the human phenomenon, could the resulting society still be considered an ‘alienating and artificial superstructure’?

  Marx proposed that, instead of explaining the world, we focus on changing it; but can life be changed?

  The argument is not a recent one. In October of 1966, Partisans magazine, which is run by editor François Maspéro,588 published a special issue entitled Sexualité et répression.589 Wilhelm Reich, the mystical theoretician who coined the notion of ‘Orgone’590 and founded the Freudian-Marxist movement known as ‘Sexpol’ (‘for a proletarian sexual policy’), is often quoted in it, as is Georges Bataille591 (on the topic of Eros and Thanatos): eroticism is seen as a means of universal fusion, of living entropy.

  Contradicting the Party’s view, Simone de Beauvoir592 once wrote that ‘a woman’s freedom begins in her belly’.

  Jeannette Thorez-Vermeersch593 responds, stating that ‘although birth cont
rol and voluntary maternity are but a ploy for the popular masses, they do serve as a weapon against social laws when in the hands of the bourgeoisie!’

  In a letter published in L’Humanité on 18th May, 1956, Maurice Thorez shared the ‘Communist Party’s resolute opposition to neo-Malthusianism’ with Mrs. Lagroua Weill-Hallé, a member of Familial Planning. Without any reservations whatsoever, he denounced birth control and stated that Lenin, ‘despite condemning the hypocritical laws of the ruling classes, never declared himself in favour of contraceptive methods’.

  Registered Marriage Versus ‘De Facto Marriage’

  The Party’s positions have hardly changed at all. In a report published by the Women’s Central Labour Commission under the title Les communistes et la condition feminine 594 (Ed. Sociales, 1970), one could read the following: ‘Women’s liberation begins with the economic, social and political liberation of the working masses’.

  Through experience, communist leaders are well aware that in political matters, certain facts must be taken into account.

  In the 21st point of his preliminary draft of the Communist Manifesto, Engels wrote: ‘The advent of the communist regime shall transform the relations between the sexes into strictly private ones, which concern no one but those who participate in them and do not require society’s intervention. This transformation will be made possible the moment property is abolished, children are all brought up together, and the two bases of contemporary marriage, namely the dependence of women upon men and that of children upon their own parents, are destroyed’.