Mr Baechler then proceeds to analyse the physiology, nature and functions of ideological discourse, before focusing on the laws of ideological offer and demand, ideological consumption, nuclei, systems, and other aspects as well. Last but not least, what he attempts to evaluate is not the veracity nor moral quality of ideologies (since no ideology is essentially true or false, nor even righteous or wicked), but their respective efficacy, with the latter being assessed on the basis of the more or less high likelihood of fulfilling a more or less great number of passions among a more or less significant number of members.
In his view, ‘the main award must undoubtedly go to nationalism’, with socialism and liberalism tying for second place. ‘Nationalism is certain to come first, and by far, because it has all the necessary prerogatives to appeal to people’. As for fascism, Mr Baechler believes that, nowadays, its chances go hand in hand with those of a certain evolution taking place within the Leftist domain; for what the two ideologies have in common, albeit from contrasting points of view, is the denunciation of modernity, the consumerist society, bureaucracy, and gregariousness, as well as the exaltation of ludic and heroic values. ‘Leftism has failed owing to its reliance on marginal forces and as a result of expressing itself using a Marxist and socialist vocabulary that displeased the majority. A future avatar may yet succeed’, he writes.
He then offers the following clarification: ‘At the risk of upsetting the gentle hearts and noble souls out there, the parallel between the declarations made under the Weimar Republic and those issued during the 1960s is absolute on the principial level; it is merely the verbal coating that differs. And what about the nationalism that Leftism obviously lacks, one might ask? It is my opinion that its absence is due to chance, not essence. There is a historical law which dictates that natural communities ultimately take form at any level where wars between different communities may occur. In the West, for centuries on end, this level was determined to be that of castellany and, at a later point, that of principalities. Ever since 1945, however, war has been excluded from the level of European nations, due to modifications that were introduced into the diplomatic-strategic system. When a certain level is precluded, a twofold movement is manifested. A part of the energies fixates upon the lower level, attempting to revive the communities that have been abolished by history. De facto, there is a fraction of contemporary Leftism that is now attempting to resuscitate the ancient principalities. The term that is used to designate this movement is ethnicism. Another part of the energies is, on the other hand, allocated for the potential emergence of a higher level. The establishment of a political Europe or Atlantis would provide Leftism with a fixation point. It is entirely possible that at such a stage, anti-modernity will experience the presence of a new avatar, with a new word assigned to it’.
Ideological ‘Evacuation’?
There is a great deal of truth in these statements, but the initial analysis conducted by Mr Baechler remains rather ambiguous. On the one hand, he acknowledges the fact that one cannot disassociate politics and ideology (although there might not necessarily be any reciprocity: for if every policy is, whether explicitly or not, ideological in essence, it does not follow that every ideology generates a policy); on the other hand, he deplores the presence of ideologies, while simultaneously underestimating their real influence. In harmony with solid logical reasoning, this amounts to stating that the best possible governance system is the least ideological one, and therefore the least political one. What we are faced with here is a contradiction of terms: one cannot ‘evacuate’ the political dimension of human societies; on the contrary, should we ever ‘depoliticise’ the authority of the state, we would witness the emergence of politics in other domains, as it begins to spread in all directions.
The fact of reducing ideology to a certain number of ‘nuclei’ embodied by passions is not any more fulfilling either. It is certain that the ‘non-variables that are an inherent part of the human psyche’ play a certain role in the formation of ideological systems. These non-variables, however, do not suffice to describe the notion of ‘consciousness states’. One must also take into account the existence of collective mentalities, of a plurality of ‘mental forms’ that define an equal number of ideological worldviews on which passions exert a real, albeit secondary action (otherwise, the study of ideologies would only serve as an annex in the psychology of feelings). Mr Baechler is right when highlighting the fact that man’s specificity, compared to animals, lies in the ‘widening of the field of possibilities and the latitude that one enjoys when it comes to choosing between the possibilities’ (‘In short, man’s fundamental characteristic resides in the very plurality of his choices. The latter generates the possibility of disagreement and divergence and thus conflict’; this is why ‘the essence of the political must be sought in the sphere of conflicts’). He is nonetheless mistaken when not mentioning the fact that the collective configuration of the ‘field of possibilities’ presents itself, at least potentially speaking, in different forms that vary in accordance with the time and place in question, defining the resulting ‘states of consciousness’ in structurally diverging ways of perceiving and ‘feeling’ the world.
Last but not least, the contradiction between the ‘ideological’, i.e. the domain of subjectivities and passions, and ‘science’, which is said to be the field of certitudes and facts, only conveys partial truth. For this distinction is founded upon the illusion of the supposedly absolute objectivity of scientific procedure. The scientific perspective, however, which is but one of many worldviews, is far from being sheltered against the impact of ideology. Because it does not embody an end in itself, but is, instead, restricted to a means that serves the needs of men and the societies that the latter form, it is inevitably tainted with different and even contradictory significances. This is why, unlike what Mr Baechler claims, it is not absurd for us to speak of ‘proletarian genetics’ and ‘bourgeois genetics’ in one way or another, just as Marxist theoreticians have done in the past. For the manner in which facts are organised so as be rendered significant matters as much as the facts themselves; and the organisational method depends, in turn, on our ‘states of consciousness’ and passions.
Epistemologically speaking, science does not, ultimately, eliminate a single ounce of subjectivity. As precise as our scientific appreciations of reality may be, they will always be conducted in relation to our own particular position in the world; and we all know that the very appearance under which an observed object is perceived depends on the observer’s position as well.
Furthermore, as demonstrated by Popper, there are no ‘absolute scientific truths’: all that there is are scientific proposals that are deemed true because they have yet to be disproved. The notion of a complete and accomplished science is, in itself, not scientific at all. Hence the following fact, as acknowledged by Mr Baechler: ‘For the time being and an indeterminate future to come, science must coexist with other mental formations’.
In harmony with what Oswald Spengler wrote (in Man and Technology, Gallimard, 1958 and 1969), all scientific theories (in the West, at least) are both ‘a myth relating to the interpretation of the forces of nature’ and a working hypothesis whose focus is not so much on unveiling the secrets of the universe as on rendering the latter suitable for use towards the accomplishment of specific goals; hence the development of mathematical methods and experimentation.
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Les nuisances idéologiques,801 an essay by Raymond Ruyer. Calmann-Lévy, 342 pages.
Qu’est-ce que l’idéologie,802 an essay by Jean Baechler. Gallimard, 406 pages.
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Anti-‘Sinistrosis’
Mr Jean Servier, a university professor and a great admirer of the Bible, once wrote the following words: ‘Should Western civilisation ever disappear, mankind would not be affected’. Commenting on this claim, Mr Louis Pauwels stated: ‘I can already picture it: among the ruins and a good billion corpses, the professor wanders through the l
andscape, picking wild berries and completely unaffected’.
Gripping an ‘open letter’ tightly in his clenched fist, Mr Pauwels sets out to wage war upon the ‘vociferous midgets of negativity’: the tearful, the petitioners and the doctors. Tough luck. ‘There is no truth in the claim that our civilisation is inhumane, nor is there any in the assertion that progress is catastrophic or that our society is not fit to be lived in’.
It was already twenty centuries ago that we witnessed half-starved anchorites hurl anathemas at both the world’s pleasures and the very exaltation of life as a result of feeling excluded from or foreign to society: ‘These men condemned all pleasures and distractions, shattered social distinctions through property-based egalitarianism, made no differentiation between masters and slaves in their faith, and poured out their prideful contempt for the entire century’ (Charles Guignebert, Le christianisme antique,803 Flammarion, 1928).
Whether today or in the past, the ‘vociferous midgets’ hurl their curses upon a ‘lewd Babylon’, asserting that our society is immoral and that economic efficacy is detestable as long as it comes at the price of inequality; they join Tertullian saying: Legis injustae honor nullis (one is not required to respect an unjust law). These prophets of doom belong to the ‘church of Western pessimism’. They juggle a certain number of key words: alienation, mutation, malaise, despair, trepidation, and neurosis.
Mr Pauwels categorises them into ‘pessimists with a mission of interest’, snobs and malcontents. The former are deliberate propagandists. They are well aware of who will benefit from their demoralisation campaigns. As for the others, they abide by current trends and go with the flow. They unleash stupidity just as Nero unleashed fire upon Rome — in order to watch the city burn.
Like all other tyrants, the church of pessimism strives to appeal to our youths. This is because young people ‘bear the vices of rapid prosperity within’. Consumed by inner fury for having been given everything without there being anything to gain, they try to convince themselves of their own misery and extreme oppression. From psychodrama to psychotropics, they settle into despair the way others would into an armchair. ‘These novel vagrants take a Boeing to fly to Kathmandu, while some of them spew endless indictments against technology — on the radio’.
The church of pessimism ‘extends its benediction to all that is adverse’; for it is ever so ‘ordinary’ to be for something. Since the supreme snobbism of a decadent society lies in savouring the luxury of encouraging those who would insult it, one declares that Europe is dying as a result of its excessive desire for ‘possession’ or that Sweden has been stricken with ‘the disease of happiness’. Switzerland, they say, will soon fall prey to poverty and anguish. In parallel, one surrenders to entire litanies on the natural nobility of the Pygmies and that of Bantu philosophy. Following the dress rehearsal to Montherlant’s La ville dont le prince est un enfant,804 a certain French weekly offered us the following headline: ‘An Unbearable Work of Art’. Following that of Thierry Maulnier’s Soir du conquérant,805 one was treated to this statement in Le Monde: ‘Although it is indeed beautiful, no one writes in this manner anymore’. Self-negation is the trend these days. ‘A mind that embraces mournfulness only because others do so is damned: such is the mea culpa of the civilised, one that crowns the Barbarian king’.
Those genuinely desperate are, however, few, totalling a mere 5% or so of the general population. ‘Of which 2% are hopeless cretins’, Mr Pauwels specifies, before adding: ‘Jacques Bergier806 advocates the establishment of cretin reserves. One readily preserves pink flamingos, whose Intelligence Quotient (I.Q.) is actually lower. It is indeed a noble view, but a gullible one nonetheless. For the cretins have already found their own ghetto in the mass media’.
An Inversion Frenzy
Half a century ago, ‘scientism’ was still, more or less, part of the Left. Communism was defined as ‘the Soviets, and electricity’. As for the Right, it declared itself to be ‘spiritual’. The advocacy of ‘natural life’ and ‘rural values’ was quite simply reactionary. Since then, however, we have witnessed a criss-crossing of sorts. The rebirth of egalitarian ontology and the ‘spontaneism’807 that is so dear to barricaders808 have triggered a new wave of delirium. ‘There is a certain manner of using words that is utterly logicidal.809 We are faced with a great and repetitive folly that hypnotises all common sense’. A triumphant phraseology has reclaimed its own rights: ‘Words hover above France just as flies hover above a field’.
As indicated by its own name, ‘sinistrosis’ is a Leftist disease (in French, senestre means ‘Left’).810 Over and over again, those that have been afflicted by it repeat the catchphrase of the madman that thumps away at his own skull: it feels so good when one stops.
In May 1968, Mr Louis Pauwels himself fell prey, as did many others. However, as soon as the tree bore its fruits, he found himself completely disillusioned. He now writes: ‘It was a time marked by an inversion frenzy. The truth was declared reactionary and reason fascistic’. In fact, it is rationality that is banished because it generates a kind of discrimination. During the interwar period, surrealist André Breton811 declared: ‘Arrest all physicians! Shut down all laboratories!’ Today, one would rather exclaim: ‘Lock up all biologists!’ Leftists target computers just as the silk workers of Lyons attack weaving looms. Where then does one situate the notion of ‘progress’ nowadays?
As the new Cathars, the ‘vociferous midgets’ detect the demon’s imprint in this world. The eternal bliss that they promise us is not to be found in the ‘beyond’, but ‘straight ahead’, in a novel theocracy erected upon the ruins. The apocalypse awaits. Alas, this Parousia812 is taking forever to manifest. Weary of making predictions and overwhelmed with the frustration of being constantly proven wrong, all the Cassandras813 are now exerting themselves to lend fate a helping hand. And it is then that they are at their most fearsome: the world had better perish than contradict their claims.
In The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind (1934), H. G. Wells814 predicted that the coming class struggle would not target the rich, but rather the capable. Indeed, this is precisely what we are now witnessing.
‘All things considered, I find the presence of two unequal but free individuals preferable to that of two equal men in prison’, Mr Pauwels specifies. In the eyes of the church of pessimism, whose reasoning is channelled in the very opposite direction, this statement is utter blasphemy. Is suffering intolerable? Well, then, let everyone suffer, for it is the health enjoyed by some that is responsible for the loathsome fate of the sick. Are some people impoverished? Let us, then, eliminate the rich. Oh, so the Third-World is disadvantaged? By all means, let the West become the latter’s expiatory victim.
This is where we touch upon the core of the issue. Mr Pauwels has gathered perfectly well that fashionable ideologists have their own hidden motives for attempting to persuade their contemporaries of their misery. It is their very self that is stricken: the horror that they display in the face of the world is none other than the morbid repugnance with which certain incurable individuals regard what Nietzsche called the ‘great health’. Those that are naturally anguished thus transfer upon the world the angst that they bear within, assigning their own defects to it and accusing it of having made them what they are. ‘The perverted open their mouths and loudly bemoan the fact that “nothing is worth it anymore”, instead of making the following honest acknowledgement: “Alas! It is I that am no longer worth anything”’.
With Arrabal, it is an entire segment of the intelligentsia that whispers: ‘Viva la muerte!’815 The conclusion is as follows: ‘Separated from them by a period of 60 years, Chesterton816 was actually right. These saviours of mankind are passionate about death. Their radical dissenting feeds upon a radical hatred of life. Red neuroses reek of corpses’.
Louis Pauwels declares: ‘To my mind, heroes are men that have chosen to side with happiness’. Anouilh’s Antigone,817 however, exclaims: ‘Happiness! You weary me
with your happiness!’ And yet there is no contradiction here, for what Mr Pauwels terms ‘happiness’ is simply a pronounced taste for life, an epicurean sort of pantheism, our certainty of the fact that it is actually our own responsibility to shape this world according to our perception of it. A single step further would suffice to bestow upon this realism its one true name: the tragic sense of life.
The most quoted authors in this respect are incidentally Marcus Aurelius818 and Montherlant. The latter writes: ‘There is no greater proof of intelligence than perceiving the world as it actually is and finding it to be good, which, in familiar terms, means feeling comfortable in one’s own skin’ (Carnets,819 Gallimard 1963).
Planète magazine has a certain propensity for celebrating the charms of the Orient. Mr Pauwels now writes: ‘I shall not travel towards sublime peace with oriental slippers on my feet, in a display of hatred for my own world. I shall, instead, keep marching upon my Western path, in full awareness of my heritage and with utter faith in my own power’.
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Lettre ouverte aux gens heureux,820 an essay by Louis Pauwels. Albin Michel, 212 pages.
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Angst
This is how Mr Louis Pauwels once described the militant students of May 1968: ‘They are fraught with the vices of rapid prosperity’. Mr Paul Sérant821 asks: ‘Does this rapid prosperity that you credit our new world with thus have some unfortunate counterpart?’ To which he then adds: ‘Looking around, what I discover in others is angst rather than euphoria, more worries than tranquillity, more fatigue than enthusiasm and more dejection than energy’.
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