Systems and Debates

by Alain de Benoist

  Gramsci draws a fundamental distinction between politics and metapolitics, as well as between a political society and a civil one. In developed societies, a political takeover is impossible as long as ‘cultural power’ has not yet been seized: all that a revolution does is politically mirror a state of affairs that has already been achieved in people’s minds. The ‘passage to socialism’ thus implies a slow subversion, a subversion that impacts culture, the mass media and universities.

  So as to accomplish this programme, Gramsci invests all his hopes into those he labels ‘organic intellectuals’. The latter’s role is to provide the opposition with the necessary ideological homogeneity to become dominant on the infrastructural level. A new historical bloc shall thus be born, one that is run by the working class (as for ‘traditional’ intellectuals, they shall either be assimilated or destroyed).

  Faced with this ‘intellectual’ menace, the ruling power finds itself virtually disarmed, having become a prisoner of its own principles. It may be able to ban people’s ownership of both weapons and explosives, but it can prohibit neither the distribution and selling of a book nor the performance of a show without violating people’s ‘freedom of expression’, although they may both be used as weapons against it. Within the pluralistic political spectrum, the right to competition is guaranteed for all rival ideologies to enjoy, and society cannot target totalitarian ideologies without becoming tyrannical itself. As a result of this, it commits slow suicide, since pluralism can only be durable when it benefits from a consensus that brings together most members of the given society (it is this very contradiction that liberal societies have never managed to resolve). The established power thus gradually gives in, while the arsenals are never depleted — ‘unisex’ fashion, cubic architecture, Arte Informale, avantgarde theatre, and a musique concrète that correspond to the different aspects of a single undertaking of value substitution, one that is all the more fearsome for not being clearly perceived as such.

  ‘It is always possible to contrast reasons with other reasons’, says Mr Lepage, one of the heroes in Marcel Aymé’s Confort intellectuel. ‘And yet an obscure poem, a violent image, a beautiful verse that is both gloomy and vague, an ambiguous harmony, a rare sonority, and the mystery radiated by a sumptuous but insignificant word affect people the way alcohol does, injecting into the organism emotional and mental habits that had previously remained unattainable by reasonable means. To welcome revolution in poetic art and taste its novelty is to familiarise oneself with plain and simple revolution and, oftentimes, with the very rudiments of its vocabulary’.

  Antonio Gramsci died in 1937. The events that occurred forty years later served as evidence of his views’ soundness. Never has the power wielded by intellectuals been so great within society. Most of them are, furthermore, committed to receiving working wages. This is what accounts for the significant position enjoyed by culture in the ‘historical’ resolution presented by the French Communist Party’s Central Committee, whose meeting was held in Argenteuil in March 1966.

  This situation has now been aggravated by two new facts: the growing importance of leisure, which facilitates the spreading of a certain culture, and that of the media, which, to a great extent, lie in the hands of the intelligentsia (any event that is not covered by the media is basically one that has never taken place).

  In The New Industrial State (Gallimard, 1968), economist John K. Galbraith draws attention to the birth of an intellectual ‘counter-power’ in the United Sates, a counter-power that has not ceased to reinforce its position since.

  According to what Raymond Cartier (the now former head of Paris-Match) declared in Nice, the Watergate affair laid bare the actual power enjoyed by intellectual pressure groups. The campaign, devised by the journalists of the New York Times and the Washington Post, was, in actual fact, a totalitarian one, since it negated a sovereign popular judgement.

  The May 1968 crisis that occurred in France was, most and foremost, an intellectual one. In this regard, it marked the beginning of an era. Mr Suffert writes: ‘Nowadays, the intelligentsia can be found everywhere: not only in publishing houses, but also in editorial rooms, televisions studios, film producer offices, and so on. The proof is that one encounters the very same topics, fashions, and passions everywhere. It is as if there was some sort of indeterminate central committee lurking behind and imposing its own directives. There is none, of course, and there are no directives either. The phenomenon is admittedly subtle, but in a different way. What has occurred is a substitution in which intellectuals have replaced literature with politics, espousing the latter as their supreme value’.

  In his Cinéma et politique949 (Seghers, 1974), Mr Christian Zimmer950 presents us with a list of 120 politically significant films. 109 of them are of Marxist inspiration, with as many as seventy-five of them released in the post-1968 period.

  When the Bourgeoisie Beats Its Breast

  Through a series of portraits (in which one can effortlessly recognise Edgar Morin, Michel Bosquet,951 Delphine Seyrig952 and some other personalities), Georges Suffert has ultimately conducted a sort of ethnographic study, one that unveils the habits of intellectual mafiosos, who come together in fractious and buzzing swarms and parasitize the taps of profit.

  This is how he describes one’s adherence to the ‘party’: ‘All that it takes for one to access the rank of catechumen is a random degree or, at least, university attendance; membership in any group that preaches counter-culture; and participation in demonstrations in support of Cuba, Vietnam, Larzac farmers or the Lip affair.953 The next step is a lounge dancing event: to gain virtual entry into the party, it is enough to be received in one of the countless locations where revolution is discussed’. The fact of publishing two or three articles in Le Nouvel Observateur or the opinion column of Le Monde and knowing the right people in both Pariscop and Charlie-Hebdo is a great way to get started. Next, all one has to do is to ‘repeat what one has heard, flowing like rain water into the torrent bed and taking bends in a most timely fashion. One must, in addition, choose their acquaintances carefully and sign petitions’.

  Attracted through sheer snobbism to values that are no longer its own, the bourgeoisie has turned itself into the objective accomplice of all those who attempt to strip it of its power. ‘Hypnotised by a word that ended up assuming a certain aura of metaphysical mystery, the bourgeoisie has espoused self-denial and coldly declared that being bourgeois is synonymous with being a beast. It therefore comes as no surprise that damned poets are, at present, pouring their creative drunkenness into the precious resources of heavy industry, while posh people devour books published by writers who, in an effort to appeal to them, actually deride them and promise them a most ignominious death’ (as written by Marcel Aymé in Le confort intellectuel).

  In Les écuries de l’Occident, Jean Cau clarifies: ‘Due to the fact that it has never given birth to any values of life, the bourgeoisie allows an ultra-Christian Left to slap it around, despite declaring itself to be godless’.

  Magazines such as Change, Tel Quel, and Séméiotikè, which are only read by a small number of select individuals but appreciated by the ‘party’s’ critics, are all run by complacent editors. Having scarcely dismantled their barricades, Krivine,954 Geismar955 and Cohn-Bendit956 were offered publication contracts. One proceeded to translate the works of Bernadette Devlin, Angela Davis, Rudi Dutschke, George Jackson, and Timothy Leary. Comprising a total of twenty volumes, the Encyclopedia Universalis (‘Universalistic’ would have been a more honest choice of words) commits itself to every conceivable New Leftist myth, without any exception.

  Published in September 1974, the Robert Dictionary of Proper Nouns (Dictionnaire Robert des noms propres) based its launch campaign on the following statement: ‘With the Robert dictionary, you can now be as well-informed on Lenin as you once were on the topic of revolutions’. In Le Nouvel Observateur (7th October, 1974), Mr Michel Cournot gave it his immediate approval, pointing out the fact that
the Robert focused more on May 1968 than on Machiavelli, the Pieds Nickelés957 comic series or Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables; furthermore, it mentioned958 Peanuts, the Larzac and the Grenelle Agreements. And here is the conclusion: ‘It is an antiracist and anti-conformist work of art’.

  Faced with readers who were all stunned to see entire pages of ‘bourgeois’ advertisements in Rouge,959 Alain Krivine’s magazine responded as follows: ‘Why not take advantage of the contradictions of a bourgeoisie which, in its hunger for immediate profit and an easier circulation of its own goods, is willing to pay for its advertisements to be published in the revolutionary press?’

  In Tel Quel, Mr Philippe Sollers highlights the lesson to be learnt from such a development: ‘One of the essential characteristics of our time and age is that the bourgeoisie, which remains, altogether, economically and politically strong, is experiencing a situation of rapid cultural and ideological decline. Any analysis that lacks understanding of this fact is rendered meaningless today’.

  Intellectual Terrorism

  There also those who represent a ‘New Right’, of course. Georges Suffert proceeds to describe them using the following words: ‘Life is hard for these young people. Unless they have already managed to attain some sort of fame, they are forced to grovel so as to be admitted into publishing houses or magazines; which is normal, since the latter are all Left-oriented. There are some who are infuriated by this situation, suffer a rush of blood to the head and pen vengeful pamphlets whose purpose is to blow up the new intelligentsia’s citadel. The latter then assesses the work in question and may choose to publish it, watching the resulting spectacle unfold. What an amusing sight indeed: a whole mob of critics voraciously descends upon the buffoon, tearing him apart with its huge, sharp teeth and declaring his work fascistic. If the author displays sufficient talent, another tactic is used: not a single line will be written about his work. After this misadventure, our young man will perhaps realise that in order to succeed in literature, one must be a member of the party’.

  The manner in which the intelligentsia welcomes sun lounger intellectuals is, in itself, highly revealing. An entire implicit strategy thus comes to light.

  At the time when he was the editor-in-chief of Témoignage chrétien, Mr Suffert was said to be extremely talented. As for Jean Cau, he was once Jean-Paul Sartre’s secretary and thus the darling child of a certain part of the Left. As soon as they slid elsewhere, however, their qualities somehow evaporated. Those who had, until very recently, praised them suddenly became their prosecutors. The ‘party’s’ own theologians declared them to be heretics, schismatics and backsliders. All that was left was for them to be excommunicated. And they were.

  As seen in Le Nouvel Observateur, Mr Claude Roy considers Mr Suffert’s essay to be ‘incoherent prattle’, ‘small-scale pamphleteering chaos’ and ‘a small book that lacks genuine seriousness and remains utterly disorganised’. On its part, Politique-Hebdo denounced the ‘mud-like flabbiness pervading’ the book’s ‘views’, detecting several ‘troubling’ passages in it. Mr Jean Daniel declared it to be ‘boring’ (undoubtedly in contrast with Philippe Sollers’ and Marguerite Duras’ books, whose buoyant charm and sparkling humour we are all familiar with). As for Le Monde, it opted for the following headline: ‘Georges Suffert, the New Conformist’.

  Had we ever lacked evidence pointing to the existence of the intellectual party, these reactions would have given us ample proof.

  The case has thus been tried. Mr Suffert was made to join the ranks of the accused alongside Cau, Dutourd, Pauwels and others. ‘As far as I’m concerned, the issue is now resolved’, Jean Cau writes in Paris-Match. ‘Having been given a life sentence by the I.P. (Intellectual Party), I accepted my situation with increasing joy; and it is a joyful soul that I now weave as I savour my books’ success, sitting firmly and tranquilly on the bench of infamy to which I was condemned by my repulsed peers-prosecutors so many ages ago’.

  It was Nietzsche who once wrote: ‘They spew out their bile and call it a newspaper’ (Thus Spake Zarathustra). And it is from such an attitude that intellectual terrorism stems, an intellectual terrorism that has been so skilfully inaugurated by Merleau-Ponty960 (in Humanisme et terreur).961 In this regard, Mr Pierre Thuillier962 remarks: ‘In some Leftist milieus, a simultaneously inexplicable and undeniable form of terrorism reigns supreme. Even students themselves sometimes lack the courage to express their own thoughts; they fear being accused of having bourgeois and deviationist ulterior motives’.

  The intelligentsia resorts to three methods to discredit its opponents.

  Silence is the first means and is common practice at the very beginning; which may lead people to believe that intelligence is somehow hemiplegic, with the ‘party’s’ intellectuals remaining in the courtyard and tough-looking activists wandering the gardens in their helmets and boots, throwing grenades as they drift down the planet’s ‘black paths’.

  Next in line is the use of blackmail. It is the perfect recourse when silence is no longer possible, and consists in claiming that the reason why a certain ‘avantgarde’ work is deemed unacceptable lies in the fact that it has not been understood. Mr Suffert makes the following observation: ‘There are two groups: those who understand and the rest. The first ones are intelligent and culturally developed; as for the latter, they can only be half-wits’.

  Should an adversary state a number of strong facts, one targets him with a commiseration which, in Molière’s plays, is reserved for servants. One declares that what he is producing are ‘commonalities’ and ‘banalities’ and labels him ‘a pompous thinker’. Whenever necessary, the intelligentsia does not hesitate to fall into red-heeled aristocratism. In L’Express, a certain hack had already compared Jean Cau to ‘a Sempé character,963 with a Basque beret screwed to his skull and a French baguette under the armpit’. As far as Mr Georges Suffert is concerned, Le Nouvel Observateur claims that he is ‘the prototype of the Good Fatso, his large sabots completely stuffed with the thick straw of common sense’.

  Last but not least, there is the major excommunication that results from being accused of fascism. One is subjected to it through the combined action of defamatory proceedings (Hitler loved dogs; those who appreciate animal companionship are, therefore, Hitlerian) and trials by public opinion (Mr So-and-so says this, but actually means that). To be absolutely clear, any endeavour that represents a genuine threat to the intelligentsia’s positions is declared ‘fascist’ (or ‘Nazi’). What does it matter if those being accused have never written a single line on either Hitler or Mussolini, that they were born in the post-1945 period and that they are, in some cases, former members of the French Resistance? One can be fascistic by thought nowadays, by action and even by omission (the latter being considered the surest and most trustworthy indication of a ‘barbarism’ that is all the more dangerous because of its insidiousness).

  Following the publication of his Ecuries de l’Occident, Jean Cau was described by L’Express as ‘progressing down the gibbet-infested path of pre-war intellectual fascists’. Having challenged the intelligentsia’s monopoly, Mr Maurice Druon found himself being compared to Goebbels. When Mr Suffert stated that ‘the intellectual party has succeeded in unifying the world of literature with that of showbiz, universities and songs’, Mr Claude Roy, who formerly collaborated with Je suis partout,964 compared this ‘nonsensical statement’ to ‘the theory of a global Jewish conspiracy’ founded on the contents of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

  Denying the Right to Deny

  In all cases, the purpose is always the same: to trigger a retraction and prompt denial; to lead the person down the humiliating road to Canossa.965 And since being labelled an imbecile or a war criminal is never a pleasant experience, the accused sometimes attempt to justify themselves, thus participating in their adversaries’ game. It is in this very fashion that, in the name of freedom, one strips the ‘presumed’ enemies of freedom of theirs. Such schemes are, in fact, nothing new (
‘Burning is not synonymous with answering’, Camille Desmoulins966 used to say). In May 1968, one was ‘prohibited from prohibiting’. Nowadays, one is denied the right to deny.

  In parallel to this, the intellectual party passes judgement upon people’s views just as Jean-Paul Sartre ‘re-read’ Flaubert — through filtering glasses, meaning in harmony with how much the ideas in question suit their palate.

  Jean-François Revel has labelled this procedure ‘devotional’. He writes: ‘What I mean by devotion is the fact of regularly resorting to what could be called a “consequence-based argument”: whenever one is in the presence of some logical reasoning or the expression of a feeling, one takes into account the desirable or undesirable character of all drawn conclusions (with respect to the prosperity of a theory or the success of a way of thinking or feeling that one values), instead of pondering the actual weight of the evidence and facts which these conclusions are based on’ (La cabale des dévôts, Julliard, 1962).

  The ongoing debate that centres around the ‘pseudo-objectivity’ of science stems from such a state of mind. For centuries on end, science was seen as the domain of certitudes: whatever was certain was thus defined as ‘scientific’; but this is no longer the case today. Based on a self-evident fact (namely that scientists themselves are not indifferent to the ideologies that prevail in their era), one sets out to assert that all scientific discourse relates to some implicit ideology and must, therefore, be assessed accordingly. If there is no such thing as ‘innocent discourse’ anymore, all subjective claims must be considered equal. Scientific proposals must thus no longer be evaluated in accordance with how accurately they describe facts, but on the basis of their desirability in relation to an ideology that is deemed preferable for reasons that are never clearly unveiled. It is an arbitrary generalisation that conceals a disenchanted hunger for the absolute.