PART THREE THE ALIENATION OF THE INTELLECTUALS
chapter vii. THE INTELLECTUALS AND THEIR HOMELAND 203
On the Intelligentsia - Politics and the Intelligentsia -
The Intellectuals' Paradise — The Intellectuals' Hell
chapter VIII. THE INTELLECTUALS AND THEIR IDEOLOGIES 236
The Basic Factors - The National Debates - The
Japanese Intellectuals and the French Example - India
and British Influence
chapter IX. THE INTELLECTUALS IN SEARCH OF A RELIGION 265
Economic Opinion or Secular Religion - Militants and o
Sympathisers - From Civil Religion to Stalinism - Secular
Clericalism
THE DESTINY OF THE INTELLECTUALS 295
CONCLUSION THE END OF THE IDEOLOGICAL AGE? 305
APPENDIX
INDEX
====
====
APPENDIX FANATICISM, PRUDENCE, AND FAITH*
W hen one reviews the political attitudes of Sartre and
Merleau-Ponty since 1945 one has the impression of
having witnessed a kind of ballet or square dance. The
“new left” of the Merleau-Ponty of 1955 resembles the
Rassemblement democratique revolutionnaire of theJean-Paul Sartre
of 1948. The Marxist attentisme of Merleau-Ponty was closer to
the present pro-Communism of Sartre than to the a-Commu-
nism expounded in Les Adventures de la dialectique.
Since they are professional philosophers, each justifies his
current opinions by arguments which, if they were valid, would
hold true for centuries. They are all the more inclined to el¬
evate the episodes of their existence to the level of eternity be¬
cause they are obsessed by the examples of Marx and Lenin.
But existentialism, whether that of Sartre or that of Merleau-
Ponty, is not an essentially historical philosophy.
From Existentialism to Doctrinairism
Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, in their pre-political work, belong
to the tradition of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and the revolt
against Hegelianism. The individual and his destiny constitute
the central theme of their reflection. They disregard that totality
*This essay originally appeared in French in Preuves in February 1956 and in
Marxismes Imaginairey. Dune sainte famille a Vautre (Paris: Gallimard/Folio, 1970
and 1998). It is Aron’s best defense and articulation of political judgment as well
as his fullest response to the critics of The Opium of the Intellectuals. The present
translation is a significandy revised version of the one that appeared in Marxism
and the Existentialists (New York: Simon 8c Schuster, 1970).
326 THE OPIUM OF THE INTELLECTUALS
whose recognition by the philosopher marks the beginning of
wisdom. Unfinished history imposes no truth. Man’s freedom is
the capacity of self-creation, although one cannot make out, at
least in L'Etre et le neant, what law this creation should obey or
toward what objective it should tend.
Every man must find the answer to the situation without de¬
ducing it from books or receiving it from others, and yet this
answer imposes itself on the solitary and responsible actor. Au¬
thenticity—in other words, the courage to take responsibility
for oneself, one’s heritage, and one’s talents—and reciprocity—
the recognition of the other, the desire to respect him and to
help him fulfill himself—these seem to be the two cardinal vir¬
tues of homo existentialis.
The existentialists describe human existence as it is lived, with¬
out this description referring to a historical particularity. To be
sure, this description arises from experience and is related to
the latter as the work is related to the artist, but its validity is not
limited to one time. Whether it is a question of freedom or of
authenticity, it remains true for all men throughout the ages
that consciousness is fulfilled by liberating itself and is liberated
by becoming responsible for itself.
De Waehlens dismisses as a “bad joke” the objection of Karl
Lowith, who quotes a student’s remark, “I am resolved to do
something, only I don’t know what.” He writes, “Philosophy,
existential or otherwise, would destroy itself if, instead of teach¬
ing us to think, it pretended to provide everyone with formulas
which, on every occasion, could resolve the problems of his life.
The Sein-Zum-Tode, whatever else we may think of it, can only be
an inspiration, a light by which everyone confronted by his situ¬
ation has the duty and the privilege of deciding freely, without
ceasing to run the risk of being wrong or even of being unfaith¬
ful.” 1 The objection strikes me as little more than a bad joke.
No philosophy can ever provide “formulas” for solving the prob¬
lems raised by circumstances. But a philosophy which refers to
an ideal of virtue or wisdom, to the categorical imperative or to
the good will, offers “an inspiration, a light” which are different
from those offered by a philosophy which places the accent on
freedom, choice, invention. If the philosopher does not know
APPENDIX
327
the meaning of virtue and enjoins his disciples to be themselves,
is it so wrong of them to conclude that the act of resolution is
more important than its content?
Having ruled out a moral law which would govern intention,
resolved to ignore those virtues or that inner improvement which
the Greeks or the Christians proposed as an ideal, the existential¬
ists propose that each individual win his salvation according to his
own law, and they avoid anarchy only by the idea of a community
in which individuals would recognize each other reciprocally in
their humanity.
The idea of the authentic community in a philosophy which
puts the accent on the individual’s creation of values and even of
his own destiny seems to be an appeal to harmony against the
reality of the clash of individuals, a dream of universality in a
phenomenology of particular fatalities. In any case, this alto¬
gether formal idea is an idea of Reason (to use the Kantian
vocabulary); it is not and cannot be the object of a singular will
or the imminent end of the historical movement.
On the basis of this philosophy, should philosophers be fa¬
vorable to a democracy in the Western style or a democracy in
the Soviet style? In any case, they should not attribute an abso¬
lute value to either. Neither one wholly achieves the recipro¬
cal recognition of individuals. As for which of the two comes
closest to this ideal or deviates from it the least, this is a po¬
litical or historical question which neither L’Etre et le neant
nor La Phenomenologie de perception helps to answer. When it is a
question of the status of ownership, the functioning of the
economy, or the single or the multiple party system, sociologi¬
cal description is more instructive than transcendental phenom¬
enology.
The Marxism of the two philosophers is pardy accidental in
origin. Both men, living west of the Iron Curtain, have found
themselves hostile to bourgeois democracy and incapable of
espousing orthodox Communism. But this political preference
would not have found expression in philosophical writings if the
temptation of Marxism had not influenced the heirs of
Kierkegaard, if the existentialists, having begun with transcen¬
dental consciousness, fear and trembling, had not felt the need
328
THE OPIUM OF THE INTELLECTUALS
to reintegrate into a nonsystematic philosophy the fragments of
the Hegelian-Marxist historical totality.
In Leo Strauss’s Natural Right and History , at the end of the
chapter on Burke, the author writes:
Political theory became understanding of what practice has produced
or of the actual and ceased to be the quest for what ought to be; politi¬
cal theory ceased to be “theoretically practical” (i.e., deliberative at a
second remove) and became purely theoretical in the way in which
metaphysics (and physics) were traditionally understood to be purely
theoretical. There came into being a new type of theory, of metaphysics,
having as its highest theme human action and its product rather than
the whole, which is in no way the object of human action. Within the
whole and the metaphysic that is oriented upon it, human action occu¬
pies a high but subordinate place. When metaphysics came, as it now
did, to regard human action and its product as the end toward which all
other beings or processes are directed, metaphysics became philosophy
of history. Philosophy of history was primarily theory, i.e., contempla¬
tion, of human practice and therewith necessarily of completed human
practice; it presupposed that significant human action, History, was com¬
pleted. By becoming the highest theme of philosophy, practice ceased
to be practice proper, i.e., concern with agenda . The revolts against
Hegelianism on the part of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, insofar as they
now exercise a strong influence on public opinion, thus appear as at¬
tempts to recover the possibility of practice, i.e., of a human life which
has a significant and undetermined future. But these attempts increased
the confusion, since they destroyed, as far as in them lay, the very possi¬
bility of theory. “Doctrinairism” and “existentialism” appear to us as the
two faulty extremes.
Sartre and Merleau-Ponty combine in a curious way the two
attitudes which Leo Strauss calls the “extremes.” In the manner
of the doctrinaires, Merleau-Ponty (in 1948) andJean-Paul Sartre
(today) lean toward the unique truth of the classless society. They
glorify revolution in the manner of the theoreticians denounced
by Burke because they seem to ignore the historical diversities,
the slow creations, the unforeseeable accidents, the innumer¬
able variations on the same themes. But at the same time they
belong among the descendants of Kierkegaard rather than those
of Hegel since they regard individual consciousness as the pri¬
mary reality, the origin of all philosophy, and since the histori¬
cal totality—the total and complete human practice—seems in¬
compatible with their mode of thought. In certain respects Marx
APPENDIX
329
and Nietzsche are “opposite extremes”: but by many paths their
descendants come together.
Marx had reinstated the concern for agenda, that is, a “signifi¬
cant future,” without renouncing the advantages provided by
“completed human practice.” All he had to do was assert both
that the future is unforeseeable, since the negating action is the
essence of humanity, and that the proletarian revolution will
make a fundamental break in the course of human events. No¬
body knows what the Communist society will be like, but we do
know that the advent of the proletariat to the rank of ruling class
will be tantamount to the end of pre-history. Thus Marx takes
his position both before and after “human practice” is complete.
He is still following Hegel when he regards “human action
and its product as the end toward which all other beings or
processes are directed.” Not that he holds human history to be
the end toward which the cosmos tends or Communism to be
the conclusion toward which previous societies aspired. Marx,
especially in the second part of his life, claimed to perceive a
strict determinism; but if one refers to Engels’ dialectic of na¬
ture, it clearly appears that the levels of reality are arranged
according to a qualitative hierarchy. Similarly, the moments of
history are oriented toward the fulfillment of human nature
and the humanization of society, although this result has not
been willed by a mind, individual or collective, and has not
aroused in the consciences of men a desire which has finally
been satisfied.
The idea that history is creative of truth, although it has not
been conceived previously by anybody, does not constitute the
originality of Marx’s philosophy. The idea that the collective good
may be the necessary albeit unintentional result of non-virtuous
conduct is common to the majority of modern political and eco¬
nomic thinkers. It is essential to the philosophy of Machiavelli; it
is the foundation of political economy. Classical liberals adopt it
with no less conviction than Marxists. Both groups are a prey to
“doctrinairisms,” in spite of their fundamental opposition.
Indeed, both groups have revealed a mechanism of human
behavior which should lead infallibly to prosperity and peace.
The mechanism described by the liberals is that of prices: in-
330 THE OPIUM OF THE INTELLECTUALS
deed, some of them do not hesitate to predict imminent ser¬
vitude if state interventions jeopardize the functioning of this
mechanism. This same mechanism of individual ownership
and competition leads infallibly, according to Marx, to its
own paralysis. Suffice it to add that the inevitable movement
from one regime to another obeys a determinism compa¬
rable to that of equilibrium (according to the classical liber¬
als) or that of progressive paralysis (according to the Marx¬
ists), and culminates in the dialectic of the self-destruction of
capitalism.
Knowledge of the laws governing the functioning and trans¬
formation of capitalism permits Marxism to claim both the
privileges of history already made and the obligations of history
to be made. The future for a Marxist is significant in that it will
bring the solution to the conflicts, and it is partially undeter¬
mined in that the moment and modalities of fulfillment are not
foreseeable and are not, perhaps, rigorously determined.
Because of its ambiguity, this philosophy lends itself to many
interpretations, some of which are not unacceptable to existen¬
tialists. The latter have no theory in the sense of a contemplative
metaphysic embracing the whole of the cosmos and of humanity
but, at least in the French school, they come close to the Marx¬
ists in their anthropological conceptions. They detest contem¬
plative thought and the inner life, they see man essentially as the
creature who works, who transforms his milieu and domesti¬
cates natural forces. Why would they not accept the Marxist vi¬
sion of a historical development governed by an increase in the
forces of production and culminating in the mastery of man
over nature?
The Marxists and the existentialists come into conflict at the
point where the tradition of Kierkegaard cannot be reconciled
with that of Hegel: no social or economic regime can ever solve
the enigma of history; individual destiny transcends collective
life. 2 Individual consciousness always remains alone in the face
of the mystery of life and death, however well organized may be
the communal exploitation of the planet. The ultimate meaning
of the human adventure is not given by the classless society, even
if this society is inevitable.
APPENDIX
331
The existentialists came to Marxism by way of the youthful
writings of Marx. They adopted the dialectic of alienation and
the reconquest of the self; the proletariat, totally alienated, real¬
ized a true intersubjecdvity for this very reason. But at the same
time they unwittingly fell prey to “doctrinairism”: they referred
particular societies to a universal model and, in a double arbi¬
trary decree, they condemned certain societies and glorified
others on the pretext that the latter represented the model, el¬
evated to a supra-historical truth.
Marxism is by its very nature susceptible to doctrinairism. In
calling the future revolution the end of prehistory, Marx confers
on an action charged with the uncertainties peculiar to the hu¬
man condition in a state of becoming, the dignity of a theoreti¬
cal truth, the kind of truth that offers itself to the all-embracing
view of the philosopher who contemplates cosmos and history
at the end. In attributing to a particular class the function of
abolishing the division into classes, he justifies the transfigura¬
tion of one group of men into the agents of the common salva¬
tion. The contradictions are inseparable from capitalism; only
by violence can they be resolved. Thus we arrive at a strange
philosophy in which peace will result from war pushed to its
conclusion and the aggravation of the class struggle serves as a
preface to the reconciliation or even the obliteration of classes.
This is not all. Marx’s thinking was characterized by a radical
error: the error of attributing all alienations to a single origin
and of assuming that the end of economic alienation would re¬
sult in the end of all alienation. In his On the Jewish Question,
Marx justly contrasted the freedom and equality the citizen en¬
joys in the political empyrean with the enslavement he suffers in
bourgeois society (biirgerliche Gesellschaft ), that is, in his profes¬
sional activity. That the formal rights of the citizen are illusory
for a proletarian trapped by a starvation wage is a profound
truth. But this profound truth is transformed into a fatal illusion
if one assumes that the liberation of labor implies political free¬
dom and is identified with a certain status of ownership.
What curbed the potentialities of doctrinairism inherent in
Marxism was the determinism of history as asserted by the think¬
ers of the Second International. As long as one allowed a corre-
332 THE OPIUM OF THE INTELLECTUALS
spondence between the development of the productive forces,
the state of the relations of production, and the revolutionary
capacity of the proletariat, action was still consistent with non-
arbitrary circumstances, a predetermined development. An un¬
derdeveloped country could not arrive at socialism; socialism
without democracy was not socialism.
French existentialists have not adopted this “objective deter¬
minism” of history. For this reason they have amplified the doc-
trinairism and multiplied those confusions between universal and
particular to which all theoreticians are inclined and which are
the major sin of political thought.
By doctrinairism I mean the attribution of universal value to a
particular doctrine. Doctrinairism today is characterized by two
modalities. In the first, the principles of the ideal order are iden¬
tified with certain institutions. For example, one decrees that
the democratic principle—governors are legitimate only if vol¬
untarily accepted by the governed—is identical with free elec¬
tions according to the British or French procedures, and in¬
stead of studying hie et nunc whether or in what form you can
introduce elections in the Gold Coast or New Guinea, you dog¬
matically require that the electoral or parliamentary customs of
a country be reproduced everywhere without regard for circum¬
stances of time or place.
This type of doctrinairism involves two errors: the demo¬
cratic principle of consent is exalted to the single principle of
political order, and the institutional expression in one civiliza¬
tion—the electoral and parliamentary institutions of the West—
is mistaken for the principle itself and receives a validity equal
to this principle.
The second modality of doctrinairism is the historicist modal¬
ity. The ideal order of the city depends less on the reason or will
of men than on the necessary development of history. The move¬
ment of ideas and events will spontaneously realize the human
community. Now, the philosopher can assert this providential
character of history only if he knows or divines the distinguish¬
ing traits of the regime which will constitute its end. But how is
one to know that the next phase of history will be its end if it is
only in retrospect that one becomes aware of historical truth?
APPENDIX
333
Or again, by what right can one predict the imminent comple¬
tion of history if by definition the future is unforeseeable? This
contradiction is mitigated, if not eliminated, in the philosophy
of Hegel because of the circularity of the system: the fact that the
end refers back to the beginning and that at the end the contra¬
dictions that have set the system in motion are resolved gives
sense, if not substantiation, to the completion of history.
A vulgarization of Hegelian themes aggravates the doctrinair-
ism implicit in this way of thinking. If the end of history is iden¬
tified with the universal and homogeneous state, there is a risk
that the result will be the negation of particularities, of the rights
of collectivities. The economic and political regime, arbitrarily
likened to the universal and homogeneous state, is invested with
a universal dignity. The wisdom of Montesquieu—the same laws
are not good everywhere—disappears, because the historical
contingency is subordinated to the alleged logic of evolution.
Such a philosophy of history, which I propose to call historicist
doctrinairism, seems to contradict itself. Insofar as it is historicist,
it takes account of the diversity of customs, political regimes,
and values; it denies that one can determine a political truth a
priori or relate customs to a norm that is valid for all times and
all places. But at the same time it assumes that the historical
contingency obeys a rational law and automatically arrives at
the solution to the problems that confront humanity.
The Western democracies tend toward a moralistic doctri¬
nairism which is limited to politics. Governments are worthy to
the degree that they illustrate or approximate the only regime
that corresponds to the ideal, democracy (free elections and
representative institutions), a doctrinairism which usually is not
so much explicitly stated as vaguely felt and which is accompa¬
nied by the explicit rejection of any hierarchy of values between
the way of life of the Hottentots and the Pygmies and that of the
Americans or French of today. Soviet doctrinairism is histori¬
cist: it is the historical dialectic which will bring about the ideal
regime, elevated to universal acceptance.
Both forms of doctrinairism implicitly retain a philosophy of
progress: At a certain moment in history man has been capable
of grasping the truth for himself and of mastering natural forces.
334 THE OPIUM OF THE INTELLECTUALS
Moralism does not rigorously fix the stages of this discovery and
this mastery, whereas historicism specifies their order even if it
is sometimes forced to skip one stage or add another. Moralism
does not seek the conditions indispensable to this absolute, al¬
ways possible moment. Historicism, in theory, makes the benefi¬
cent rupture depend upon circumstances, but in practice both
doctrinairisms are inspired by the same confidence in the power
of the human will and the unlimited resources of technology.
The doctrinairism of the existentialists is particularly reveal¬
ing. It presents, exaggerated to the point of caricature, the intel¬
lectual errors which paralyze political thought. The existential¬
ists begin with an almost nihilistic denial of all human or social
constancy, only to end with a dogmatic affirmation of “a single
truth” in an area where the truth cannot be single. The critique
of dogmatism is at the same time a critique of nihilism. At least,
such was the objective of The Opium of the Intellectuals, although
people chose so see it as only a testimony to skepticism.
Economic Progress and Political Constancy
Many critics, even some of those who were sympathetic to the
book, criticized The Opium of the Intellectuals for being negative,
for abounding in refutations without providing anything con¬
structive. I earned this reproach by writing the last sentence—
“If they alone can abolish fanaticism, let us pray for the advent
of the skeptics”—although the whole of the last page means ex¬
actly the opposite of what hurried readers found there. As a
matter of fact, I expressed the fear, not the hope, that the loss of
so-called absolute truths might incline intellectuals toward skep¬
ticism: ‘Yet the man who no longer expects miraculous changes
either from a revolution or from an economic plan is not obliged
to resign himself to the unjustifiable. It is because he likes indi¬
vidual human beings, participates in living communities, and
respects the truth, that he refuses to surrender his soul to an
abstract ideal of humanity, a tyrannical party, and an absurd
scholasticism.”
Many of the writings that are termed “constructive” arejust as
futile as plans for a universal state or a new organization of
APPENDIX
335
business. The term “constructive” is applied even to projects
that are unrealizable, and the term “negative” to analyses which
tend to delimit what is possible and to form political judgment—
a judgment which is essentially historical in nature and which
must focus on the real or set itself an attainable objective. One is
sometimes tempted to invert the hierarchy of values and to take
the term “negative” as a compliment.
The only criticism that would deserve to be classified as nega¬
tive would be one which, while dispelling illusions, did not help
to discover or judge the present or permanent reality.
Before 1917, no Marxist 3 believed a socialist revolution to be
possible in a country where the industrial proletariat numbered
only three million workers and represented only a paltry mi¬
nority. Of course it is always possible to reconcile an interpreta¬
tion with reality by introducing a supplementary hypothesis:
Russia, because economic development had been retarded there,
constituted the weakest link in the capitalist chain; the industry
there was concentrated, largely financed by foreign capital, and
for this reason it aroused greater rebelliousness in the masses
than the national industry of the countries of western Europe,
although it had arrived at a later phase.
All these hypotheses do not explain away certain major facts
which we would not need to recall if certain left-wing intellectu¬
als did not go out of their way to forget them: The revolutions
which call themselves Marxist have succeeded only in countries
where the development typical of capitalism has not occurred;
the strength of the Communist parties in the West is in inverse
ratio to the development of capitalism; it is not the capitalist
dynamism which swells the ranks of the revolutionary parties in
France or Italy, but the paralysis of this dynamism.
From these major facts two conclusions may immediately be
drawn. The first of these, which is theoretical, involves one of
the classic versions of historical materialism, which is found in
the Introduction to the Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy. It is manifestly false that humanity sets itself only prob¬
lems that it is capable of solving, false that the relations of pro¬
duction correspond to the development of the forces of produc¬
tion, false that the state of ownership corresponds to the state of
336 THE OPIUM OF THE INTELLECTUALS
the forces of production, false that the movement of the economy
is autonomous or obeys a determinism of its own. The rise of
the Bolshevik party preceded the expansion of the proletariat
and of capitalism, due to exceptional circumstances (war, diffi¬
culties of food control, the collapse of the traditional regime).
Lenin and the Bolsheviks were able to seize power and so prove
that the form of the state and the conceptions of the governors
could determine, as well as reflect, the economic organization.
The second conclusion, which is historical, is that there is no
parallelism or correspondence between the development of the
forces of production and the shift from capitalism to socialism.
One cannot dogmatically decree that a country with a so-called
capitalist regime (individual ownership of the means of produc¬
tion, mechanisms of the market) will not someday arrive at a so-
called socialist regime (collective ownership, curtailment or elimi¬
nation of the mechanisms of the market). In this sense a non-
Stalinist Marxist could say that General Motors is no longer an
example of individual ownership since the shares are divided
among hundreds of thousands of persons. One would need only
subordinate the board of directors to the state or to a mixed
committee of shareholders, workers, and employees to arrive at
a state which certain Marxists would not hesitate to call socialist.
Similar observations might be made in regard to the mecha¬
nisms of the market, whose sphere of influence is shrinking, and
the planned economy, which is gradually gaining.
However valid these conclusions may be in the long run, if by
socialism one means the Soviet regime and by capitalism the
regime of the Western countries, the present rivalry between
socialism and capitalism has nothing in common with the struggle
between the future and the past, between two stages in the devel¬
opment of industrial society. For the moment we are witnessing
a rivalry between two methods of industrialization, and there is
no reason why the most effective way of running the American
economy must necessarily be the best way of initiating or accel¬
erating industrialization in India or China.
In other words, there is a Marxist critique of the Stalinist in¬
terpretation of the world situation. If one refers to the phases of
economic growth, a planned economy of the Soviet type is a
APPENDIX
337
crude technique for catching up with more advanced countries
at the price of imposing sacrifices on populations even more
severe than those imposed by industrialization in western Eu¬
rope during the first half of the nineteenth century.
A Marxist critique of this kind which adopted the primacy of
the forces of production would arrange the various economic
regimes in an order which would culminate in the regime of the
Western type, and in which the liberalism of nineteenth-century
Europe and the sovietism of the twentieth century would be two
modalities of an outmoded stage. Even if one does not subscribe
to this critique, the fact remains that one cannot discuss a social¬
ism which has built an enormous industry by reducing the stan¬
dard of living of the masses and a capitalism which has raised
the standard of living, reduced working hours, and permitted
the consolidation of labor unions, as if these were the same re¬
alities that Marx considered a century ago or that he anticipated
according to a system which has since been refuted by events.
We must therefore distinguish the choice between socialism
and capitalism from the choice between sovietism and a society
of the Western type, and raise separately the question of reforms
to be introduced to Western societies characterized by rapid
expansion (United States), societies characterized by slower ex¬
pansion (France), and the various underdeveloped societies.
To force the Chinese, Russian, North Korean, and Czech re¬
gimes into the same category of socialism, and the French, Ameri¬
can, Egyptian, and Indian regimes into the same category of
capitalism, is to be sure of understanding nothing and confus¬
ing everything. Reference to the theory of economic growth and
the phases of growth at least enable one to avoid an error which
some of us, whom no one will call reactionary, have been de¬
nouncing for ten years and which Merleau-Ponty condemns to¬
day: the error of defining the Soviet Union by public enterprise
and the United States by free enterprise.
In criticizing this historical error we thereby eliminate the
philosophical error which consisted in attributing a supra-his-
toric value to the Marxist dialectic of alienation, as identified
with the capitalism-socialism dialectic. Not that there is not a
supra-historical truth in the dialectic of alienation. Man creates
338
THE OPIUM OF THE INTELLECTUALS
institutions and loses himself in his creations. The challenging
of institutions by man, who feels a stranger to himself in his own
existence, is the source of the historical movement. The origin
of doctrinairism is the implicit or explicit assumption that eco¬
nomic alienation is the primary cause of all alienations and that
individual ownership of the means of production the primary
cause of all economic alienation. Once this monism has been
eliminated one can proceed to a reasonable comparison of the
economic, social, and political advantages and disadvantages of
the various regimes in themselves and according to the phases
of growth.
The two economic values most commonly invoked in our time
are increase of the gross national product and equalitarian dis¬
tribution of income. It is not certain that a concern for increase
inspires the same measures as a concern for equality. Nor has it
been proved that industrial societies are capable of the same
measure of equalization of income at various phases of their
development. It is possible that the broadening of the salary
range is favorable to productivity. Generally speaking one can
say that the two objectives—wealth and egalitarian justice—are
not contradictory, since the facts suggest a reduction of inequali¬
ties with an increase of wealth. But at a given moment these two
points of reference may compel one not to a radical choice, but
to an ambiguous compromise.
However, the two criteria which we have just indicated are
not the only ones. Limitation of the powers vested in the admin¬
istrators of collective labor seems consistent with a fundamental
requirement of a political nature. But the rigor of discipline
and the authority of the leaders may be favorable to productiv¬
ity. A comparison of the yield from private ownership and col¬
lective ownership, from public ownership where an absolute
power reigns and democratized public ownership, may reveal
contradictions between efficiency and a human ideal.
This way of raising the problems is imposed by a double cri¬
tique: a sociological critique of a causal monism in which a single
element (regime of ownership, a procedure for the establish¬
ment of equilibrium) determines the principle traits of an eco¬
nomic regime, and a philosophical critique of the use to which
APPENDIX
339
the existentialists have put the dialectic of alienation, a dialectic
which acquires concrete value in the sociological translation
which Marx gave it but which without this translation remains
formal and applicable to all regimes.
This plurality of considerations does not prevent one from
grasping wholes, from comprehending a political and economic
regime such as the Soviet regime or the American regime in
its unity or essence. This procedure, however precarious, is
scientifically legitimate and politically inevitable. It must be
prefaced by an analysis which has revealed the traits com¬
mon to all regimes and the advantages or disadvantages pecu¬
liar to each.
Every modern economic regime is characterized by factory
workers, and the proportion of skilled workers to non-skilled
workers depends more on technology than on the state of own¬
ership. The factory workers will be embedded in a collective
organization of administration and labor without being capable
of grasping fully the meaning of the tasks that are entrusted to
them. The condition of the workers nevertheless varies greatly
according to size of salaries, breadth of salary range, relations
within the factory or business, relations between labor unions
and leaders, private or public, and according to their sense of
participation or alienation, a sense that is partially determined
by the ideology to which the workers subscribe and the idea
they have of the society. To declare flatly that a worker in a capi¬
talist factory in France or the United States is by definition ex¬
ploited and that a worker in a Soviet factory is not, is not an
example of synthetic thought, it is pure nonsense. It is merely a
convenient way of substituting verbal gymnastics for a painstak¬
ing investigation of reality.
From Criticism to Reasonable Action
Politics is action: political theory is either the comprehension
of action crystallized in events or the determination of what ac¬
tion is possible or advisable in a given situation. Since to my way
of thinking completed action has not obeyed laws or a dialectic,
I cannot offer the equivalent of the Marxist doctrine in which
340 THE OPIUM OF THE INTELLECTUALS
past and future, knowledge and practice are united in a single
system. Since the present situation of the world, considered in
the context of an economic interpretation, gives rise to different
problems in underdeveloped countries, Western countries of
retarded growth, and Western countries of accelerated growth, 4
the true doctrine can only be one which shows the diversity of
solutions.
To be sure, I have not explicidy indicated either the objec¬
tives to be aimed at or the hierarchy to be established among
the objectives—I have deliberately refrained from discussing
objectives—but these, in fact, are imperatively suggested by
modern civilization. They are the objectives of the left, hence¬
forth victorious—a left which runs the risk of being defeated by
its own victory. I have not challenged the values of the left; one
need only define clearly all of these values to reveal their pos¬
sible contradiction and consequently the partial truth of the men
and doctrines of the right.
The major fact of our age is neither socialism, nor capital¬
ism, nor the intervention of the state, nor free enterprise: it is
the monstrous development of technology and industry, of which
the massive concentrations of workers in Detroit, Billancourt,
Moscow, and Coventry are the consequence and symbol. Indus¬
trial society is the genus of which Soviet and Western societies
are the species.
No nation and no party rejects or can consciously reject in¬
dustrial civilization, which is the foundation not only'of the liv¬
ing standard of the masses, but of military strength. It is conceiv¬
able that the ruling classes of certain Islamic or Asiatic countries
would tolerate the poverty of their populations (even with West¬
ern technology, they cannot be sure of remedying this poverty if
the birth rate remains too high); they would not tolerate a posi¬
tion of subservience to which they would be condemned by the
absence of industry. In the native land of Gandhi the rulers are
impressed by the Soviet example, which is an example of power
much more than an example of abundance.
The imperative of economic progress forces right-wing think¬
ers to accept the instability of the conditions of existence from
one generation to another. 5 This same imperative obliges left-
APPENDIX
341
wing thinkers to consider the compatibility or incompatibility of
their various ends.
It has been established that the standard of living of the work¬
ers depends more on the productivity of work than on the form
of ownership of businesses, that the distribution of income is
not necessarily less equitable under a regime of private owner¬
ship and competition than under a regime of planned economy.
If the two major objectives of the left in the economic realm are
growth and fair distribution, experimental proof exists to the
effect that public ownership and planned economy are not nec¬
essary means. Socialist doctrinairism is born of a devotion to
anachronistic ideologies. The critique of myths leads directly
not to a choice, but to a reasonable consideration of the re¬
gimes in which nations have to live.
But why should I have brought up the matter of choice? Nei¬
ther the Americans nor the British nor the French nor the Sovi¬
ets have to choose from among different regimes. The Ameri¬
cans and the British are satisfied with their regime and will modify
it in accordance with events. If a crisis should arise they will not
hesitate to intervene, even if it becomes necessary to move, with¬
out admitting it or while insisting on the contrary, toward a kind
of planned economy. One need only show that the economic
objectives of the left may be attained within the context of the
Western regimes to dispel the prestige of the revolutionary my¬
thology and encourage men to use reason to solve problems
which are more technological than ideological.
The case of France is unusual. It would seem that the French
economy suffers from an insufficiency of dynamism. Her geo¬
graphical situation and the sentiments of the people rule out
the imitation or importation of the Soviet regime, not to speak
of the repugnance that would be felt by the vast majority of
Frenchmen (including most of those who vote for the Commu¬
nist Party) for Soviet methods as soon as they had any direct
experience of them. So criticism, by dispelling nostalgia for
the beneficial upheaval, clears the way for the effort of con¬
struction.
There is not so much difference, in France, between a so-
called leftist economist, like Mr. Sauvy and a so-called rightist
342 THE OPIUM OF THE INTELLECTUALS
economist like myself. To be sure, Mr. Sauvy sometimes suggests
that the “feudal” powers are the principal persons responsible
for stagnation. He is not unaware that resistance to change comes
from the small at least as much as from the great and that work¬
ers’ unions or unions of civil servants or agricultural producers
are just as given to Malthusianism as employers’ unions. He some¬
times promotes the legend of an expansionist left against a
Malthusian right, although he has shown better than anyone to
what a degree the government of the Popular Front of 1936 had
been Malthusian out of ignorance.
To me loyalty to one party has never been a decision of fun¬
damental importance. To join the Communist Party is to accept
a theory of the world and of history. To join the Socialist Party
or the MRP ( Mouvement republicain populaire) is to demonstrate
one’s loyalty to or at least sympathy for a representation of soci¬
ety, a spiritual family. I do not believe in the validity of a system
comparable to that of that of the Communists; I feel detached
from the preferences or Weltanschauung of the left or the right,
the socialists or radicals, the MRP or the independents. Accord¬
ing to the circumstances I am in agreement or disagreement
with the action of a given movement or a given party. In 1941 or
1942 I disapproved of the passion with which the Gaullists, from
the outside, denounced the “treason” of Vichy. In 19471 favored
a revision of the Constitution or of constitutional procedure which
the Rassemblement du peuple franqais professed to want. When
the attempt of the RPF failed, the social republicans aggravated
the faults of the regime, and I could neither associate myself
with their action nor keep silent about its disastrous consequences.
Perhaps such an attitude is contrary to the morality (or immo¬
rality) of political action; it is not contrary to the obligations of
the writer.
If my criticisms seem to be directed primarily against the left,
the fault may lie with the desire which motivates me to convince
my friends. The fault also lies with the attitude adopted by the
majority of leftists today, an attitude which I see as a betrayal of
the “eternal” left.
The left came out of the movement of the Enlightenment. It
places intellectual freedom above all else, it wants to tear down
APPENDIX
343
all Bastilles, it aspires to the simultaneous flowering of wealth,
through the exploitation of natural resources, and justice,
through the decline of superstition and the reign of Reason.
That prejudice in favor of the tyranny of a single party which
elevates a pseudo-rationalist superstition into an official ideol¬
ogy is, in my opinion, the shame of the intellectuals of the left.
Not only are they sacrificing the best part of the legacy of the
Enlightenment—respect for reason, liberalism—but they are
sacrificing it in an age when there is no reason for the sacrifice,
at least in the West, since economic expansion in no sense re¬
quires the suppression of parliaments, parties, or the free dis¬
cussion of ideas.
Here again, the critique of myths has an immediate positive
function. How have the intellectuals been drawn into this de¬
nial? 6 Through the monist error: ultimately, the Marxist ignores
politics; he decrees that the economically dominant class is by
definition in possession of the power. The arrival of the pro¬
letariat to the rank of ruling class will be tantamount to the
liberation of the masses. Having traced the origin of eco¬
nomic alienation to private ownership of the instruments of
production, we arrive at the ludicrous conclusion that public
ownership of the instruments of production and the omnipo¬
tence of one party are tantamount to the classless society, by a
series of verbal equivalences (power of the party = power of the
proletariat = abolition of private ownership = abolition of classes
= human liberation).
Economic expansion, whether pursued by the Soviet method
or the Western method, never guarantees a respect for political
values. The increase of total wealth or even the reduction of
economic inequalities implies neither the safeguarding of per¬
sonal or intellectual freedom nor the maintaining of represen¬
tative institutions. Indeed, as Tocqueville and Burckhardt saw
clearly a century ago, societies without an aristocracy, motivated
by the spirit of commerce and the boundless desire for wealth,
are susceptible to the conformist tyranny of majorities and the
concentration of power in a monstrous state. Whatever tensions
may be created by the retardation of economic progress in
France, the most difficult task from a long-range historical point
344
THE OPIUM OF THE INTELLECTUALS
of view is not to assure the increase of collective resources, but
to stem the movement of mass societies toward tyranny.
I do not oppose those leftist intellectuals who demand the
acceleration of economic growth in France. Although I am prob¬
ably more aware than they are of the cost of growth, I am never¬
theless in agreement with them in principle, as long as they are
not fascinated by the Soviet model. I do condemn them for the
partiality that prompts them always to take sides against the
Westerners: though ready to accept Communism in the under¬
developed countries to promote industrialization, they never¬
theless remain hostile to the United States, which can give les¬
sons in industrialization to all of us. When it is a question of the
Soviet Union, economic progress justifies the destruction of na¬
tional independence in Asia or even in Europe. When it is a
question of European colonies, the right of peoples to self-de¬
termination is invoked in all its rigor. The semi-violent repres¬
sion practiced by the Westerners in Cyprus or Africa is de¬
nounced ruthlessly, while the radical repression in the Soviet
Union, with transfers of populations, is ignored or pardoned.
The democratic freedoms are invoked against the democratic
governments of the West, but their disappearance is excused
when it is the work of a regime that calls itself proletarian.
Skepticism and Faith
Have I fully explained why The Opium of the Intellectuals is
regarded as a negative book? Certainly not, and I see other
reasons myself.
Many readers are irritated by what one of my adversaries at
the Centre des Intellectuels catholiques has called “my dramatic
dryness.” I must confess to an extreme repugnance to reply to
this type of argument. Those who let it be known that their own
sentiments are noble and those of their adversaries selfish or
base strike me as exhibitionists. I have never considered that
there was any merit or difficulty in suffering or that sympa¬
thy for the misery of others was the prerogative of those who
write for Le Monde, Les Temps modernes, Esprit, or La Vie
intellectuelle. Political analysis gains by divesting itself of all senti-
APPENDIX
345
mentality. Lucidity demands effort: passion automatically goes
at a gallop.
I reproach Merleau-Ponty, to whom I feel so close, for having
written against Sartre that “one doesn’t get rid of poverty simply
by hailing the revolution from afar.” Of course one does not get
rid of it so cheaply, but how are we privileged persons to dis¬
charge our debt? All my life I have only known one person whom
the misery of others prevented from living: Simone Weil. She
followed her path and ended in quest of sainthood. We whom
the misery of men does not prevent from living—at least let it
not prevent us from thinking. Let us not believe ourselves obliged
to talk nonsense to bear witness to our noble sentiments.
Also, I refuse to pass those hastyjudgments to which so many
of my adversaries and even friends invite me. I refuse to say,
with Mr. Duverger, that “the left is the party of the weak, the
oppressed and the victims,” for that party, the party of Simone
Weil, is neither to the right nor to the left; it is eternally on the
side of the vanquished, and as everybody knows, Mr. Duverger
does not belong to it. I refuse to say that “at the present time
Marxism provides the only comprehensive theory of social in¬
justice,” for in that case the biologists would have to say that
Darwinism as expounded by Darwin provides the only compre¬
hensive theory of the evolution of the species. I refuse to de¬
nounce capitalism as such, or the bourgeoisie as such, to hold
the “feudal lords” (which ones?) responsible for the errors com¬
mitted in France over the past fifty years. Every society has a
ruling class, and the party which is volunteering today to take
over brings with it a society worse than the existing one. I con¬
sent to denounce social injustices but not social injustice itself,
of which private ownership is alleged to be the major cause and
Marxism the theory.
I am quite aware that Etienne Borne, who only wishes me
well, reproaches me in a friendly way for “deploying an immense
talent in order to explain with irrefutable reasons why things
cannot be otherwise than what they are.” It is true that I argue
against utopianism more often than against conservatism. In
France at the present time, the criticism of ideologies is one way
of hastening reforms. On the level of philosophy, not of the daily
346 THE OPIUM OF THE INTELLECTUALS
paper, Iitienne Borne as well as Father Leblond reproach me
for not indicating in the foreseeable future the reconciliation of
values which are temporarily incompatible. A strange reproach
coming from Catholics who believe the world to be corrupted
by sin!
It seems to me essential to reveal the plurality of considerations
on which political or economic action must depend. I do not re¬
gard this plurality as incoherent. In the economic realm the con¬
cern for production and the concern for equitable distribution
are not in the long run either contradictory or concordant. The
reconciliation of justice with growth requires a compromise be¬
tween equality and the adjustment of retribution to merit. The
economic objective of a better living standard often comes into
conflict with the political objective of power.
In the political realm it seems to me that the fundamental
problem is to reconcile the participation of all men in the com¬
munity with the diversity of tasks. Men have sought the solution
to this antinomy in two ways. The first way is to proclaim the
social and political equality of individuals in spite of the prestige
of the functions performed by each. No doubt modern societies
are the only ones to have extended universally the principle of
equality which the ancient cities limited to citizens alone and
which even the Roman Empire did not extend either to slaves
or to all conquered peoples. But the more democracy tries to
restore to complex societies that economic and social equality
which small, non-literate populations maintained with difficulty,
the more apparent becomes the contrast between law and fact.
Democratic societies and Soviet societies are doomed, albeit to
different extents, to hypocrisy, because the weight of things does
not permit them to effectively realize their ideal.
The second solution consists in sanctioning the inequality of
conditions and rendering it acceptable by convincing all non-
privileged persons that the hierarchy reflects a higher cosmic or
religious order and that it does not impair the dignity or oppor¬
tunity of the individual. The caste system is the extreme form of
the inegalitarian solution which has, at its worst, given rise to
horrors, but whose principle was not inherently hateful. Or at
least if the inegalitarian solution is inherently imperfect, the other
APPENDIX 347
solution is too, at least as long as circumstances do not make it
possible to realize it effectively.
Indeed, the religion of salvation has, throughout history, os¬
cillated between two extremes. Either it has sanctioned or ac¬
cepted the temporal inequalities by devaluating them: in com¬
parison to the sole essential, the salvation of the soul, what im¬
portance have the things of this world, wealth and power? Or
else it has denounced social and economic inequalities in the
name of evangelical truth and solemnly called upon men to re¬
organize institutions in accordance with the precepts of Christ
and the Church. Each of these two attitudes involves a danger to
the authenticity of religion. The first runs the risk of leading to a
kind of quietism, a complacent acceptance of injustices, and even
the sanctification of the established order. The second, carried
to its conclusion, would sustain the revolutionary impulse, since
societies have, up to the present, been so incapable of giving
their citizens that equality of condition or opportunity which is
solemnly granted to souls.
The Christian socialists (and by inspiration, the progressists
belong to this tradition) often have the conviction that they alone
are capable of saving the Church from compromising itself with
the established injustice, that they and they alone are faithful
to the teachings of Christ. Churches, even churches of salva¬
tion, never entirely avoid relapsing into what Bergson called
static religion. They are inclined to justify the powers which
accord them a monopoly (or, in our time, certain privileges)
in the realm of the administration of sacraments or the educa¬
tion of the young. The Christian, whose opinions are politically
conservative, and the clergy, concerned about schools or con¬
vents, tend, in order to excuse a lack of concern for social in¬
equalities, to invoke the idea that the real match is not played in
the political arena. At the other extreme the progressist carries
historical hope—i.e., temporal hope—as far as it will go.
I shall refrain from choosing between these two attitudes: ei¬
ther, in its authentic expression, may legitimately call itself Chris¬
tian. Perhaps the most profoundly Christian citizen would be
one who experienced at every moment the tension between these
two exigencies. He would never have the sense of having done
348 THE OPIUM OF THE INTELLECTUALS
enough for human justice, and yet he would feel that the results
of this tireless effort were negligible and must appear as such in
comparison with the only thing really at stake. He would be
neither resigned to human misery nor forgetful of sin.
In our day in France the pendulum is swinging toward evan¬
gelical socialism, at least in the intellectual Catholic circles of
the capital. The “hierarchy” is criticized for taking an exagger¬
ated interest in the schools and for compromising itself with the
“established disorder,” to quote E. Mounier, in a vain effort to
collect a few subsidies from the state. I have not taken sides in
this debate, and there was no reason why I should. It makes no
difference to me whether the Catholics vote for the left or for
the right. What interests me is the fact that some Catholics are
so attracted by the parties that promise the kingdom of God on
earth that they forgive them for persecutions inflicted on Chris¬
tians in China and eastern Europe.
I was quite surprised, at the Centre des Intellectuels catholiques,
to hear ajesuit father, as far as possible from progressism, present
the anticipation of the kingdom of God on earth as a hope, if
not a belief, that was necessary. What is the definition of this
kingdom of God? I am astonished at the facility with which Catho¬
lic thinkers are adopting the optimism of the Age of Enlighten¬
ment, amplified and vulgarized by Marxism. The attempt to
outflank the Communists on the left strikes me as politically fu¬
tile and, in terms of doctrine, if not of dogma, questionable.
Besides, this technological optimism belongs to the avant-garde
of yesterday rather than to that of today.
I have not even criticized this optimism as such; I have con¬
fined myself to tracing the steps by which one passes from the
classless society—the materialist version of the kingdom of God
on earth—to a theory of historical evolution, to one class, then
to one party as the agent of salvation.
Finally, the stages of profane history—the succession of social
regimes—are confused with the moments of sacred history, the
dialogue of men (and of each man) with God. It is necessary
and easy to mark the separation between these two histories and
to remember that anyone who believes totally in the first ceases
for that very reason to believe in the second.
APPENDIX
349
My friend Father Dubarle, in an intelligent article, begins by
agreeing with me so closely that he considers the point too obvi¬
ous to require proof. “Surely, then, history, the real and con¬
crete history which presents itself at the level of human experi¬
ence and reason, is not that secular substitute for divinity which
has fascinated so many contemporary minds with its dream. All
these things are very well said, and one feels, moreover, when
one reflects, a certain surprise (a surprise which is shared by
Mr. Aron) to find that there is such a need for them to be said in
our day....” Then he suggests by means of subtle questions that
the rigorous separations between temporal and eternal, pro¬
fane and sacred may provide more apparent clarity than real
light. I shall try, however, to reply to these questions which I am
not sure I really understand.
“A Christian,” he writes, “would therefore ask Mr. Aron
whether he can accept the idea that a sermon about eternity
tries also to confer, albeit in a subordinate and relative fashion,
a humanly important significance to the temporal history of the
human race.” I have never dreamed of refusing “a humanly
important significance to the temporal history of the human
race.” Not being a believer in the ordinary sense of the term,
how could I have denied this importance without falling into
out-and-out nihilism? The discussion does not concern “the im¬
portance of the temporal history”; the discussion concerns the
truth of an interpretation of history that shows humanity ad¬
vancing toward the classless society, with one class and one party
playing the role of savior in this adventure. Once this mythology
has been eliminated, temporal history remains important, but
it ceases to obey either a pre-established determinism or a dia¬
lectic; it imposes on men tasks that are constantly being renewed
and fundamentally permanent. Never will men finish subjecting
the weight of institutions to the desire for justice.
Let us not go into the problem of clericalism or the role of
the church in societies that reject a state religion: I have not
dealt with this problem, to which Father Dubarle for some rea¬
son alludes. In twentieth-century France the Church accepts the
fact that the state declares religion to be a “private affair.” It no
longer demands that the state impose by force the universal truth
350 THE OPIUM OF THE INTELLECTUALS
to which it continues, legitimately from its point of view, to lay
claim; it consents to civic and political equality being accorded
to nonbelievers. I do not believe that Father Dubarle is any less
a partisan of secularity than myself.
Secularity does not reduce the Church to the administration
of the sacraments or condemn her to silence in the realm or
politics or economics. The Church wants to imbue the organiza¬
tion of the City with the Christian spirit. In this sense all Chris¬
tians, and not progressist Christians alone, want to “introduce
the eternal into the temporal.” But they do not all think that this
introduction leads, according to a deterministic, or dialectical
order, to the kingdom of God on earth. But when I deny that the
evolution is orderly or that the vision is ever total, I am immedi¬
ately suspected of denying all significance to history and all com¬
merce between the eternal and the temporal. Strange misun¬
derstanding, or rather, one that reveals so much! Anyone who
has understood the nature of men and societies knows that “Chris¬
tianity” involves a secular effort and the acceptance of a role in
the game of history. He also knows that this game is never en¬
tirely won, or in any case that profane history, economic or so¬
cial history, will have no final fulfillment. Neither the Christian
nor the rationalist therefore turns away from the temporal drama,
for even if they know nothing about the future they do know the
principles of a human society. If so many Catholics are afraid to
renounce the historical dialectic it is because they too have lost
their principles and, like the existentialists, look to myths for the
certainties they lack.
The progressist Christians play among believers a role analo¬
gous to that of the existentialists among unbelievers. The latter
incorporate fragments of Marxism into a philosophy of extreme
individualism and quasi-nihilism because, denying any perma¬
nence to human nature, they oscillate between a lawless
voluntarism and a doctrinairism based on myths. The progressist
Christians refuse to judge regimes according to the conditions
imposed on churches and are ready to attribute an almost sa¬
cred value to an economic technique, the class struggle, or a
method of action. When I denounce the conversion of
Kierkegaard’s descendants to doctrinairism or the oscillation of
APPENDIX
351
the progressists between “revolutionarism” toward the liberal
societies and “secular clericalism” favoring the Communist soci¬
eties, I am accused of skepticism, as though the progressists pos¬
sessed authentic faith, when they really contemplate schemes,
models, and utopias.
This skepticism is useful or harmful according to whether fa¬
naticism or indifference is more to be feared; in any case it is
philosophically necessary insofar as it will put an end to the rav¬
ages of abstract passions and bring men back to the elementary
distinction between principles and judgments based on expedi¬
ency. For want of principles both existentialists and progressist
Christians count on a class or a historical dialectic to provide
them with conviction. Dogmatic when they should be prudent,
the existentialists have begun by denying what they should have
affirmed. They have no use for prudence, “the god of this lower
world” (Burke); they invest the historical movement with rea¬
son after having divested it of man. The progressists attribute to
Revolution that sacred quality which they are afraid of no longer
finding in the life of the Church and the adventures of souls.
Is it, then, so difficult to see that I have less against fanati¬
cism than I have against nihilism, which is its ultimate origin?
Notes
1. Unephilosophic de I’ambiguite, p. 306, note.
2. This doctrine, which is axiomatic for the author of L’Etre et le neant,
cannot be attributed without reservation to the author of La
Phenomenologie de perception.
3. One can find passages in which Marx foresaw that the revolution
would break out in Russia, whose social and political structure was
more fragile than that of the West. But this idea is difficult to recon¬
cile with the classic framework of the Contribution to the Critique of
Political Economy.
4. It goes without saying that these three types of countries are not the
only ones: I am presenting a simplified typology.
5. It would be worth reflecting on the significance of conservatism in an
economically progressive society.
6. I shall omit the psychological reasons, conscious or unconscious, to
which I alluded in The Opium of the Intellectuals and which provoked so
much criticism. An intellectual of the left has the right to regard all
businessmen and all right-wing writers as bigots or cynics. It is high
treason to suggest that “interests” are not confined to one side, and
352
THE OPIUM OF THE INTELLECTUALS
Mr. Duverger does not hesitate to draw an idealized portrait of the
intellectual whose sole concern is to defend the oppressed and com¬
bat injustice. The picture is edifying.
====
INDEX
A
Aesthetic modernism, 43, 45
Alain, 3,5,9,234
Alienation, 331,336
America, American society,
American way of life, 32-33,
41,226-227,240-244, 256,
296, 312-313
Aposdes, the, 69
Aristotle, 83, 209
Asia, 100,178-181,197, 238-
239,248-250,255,257, 260,
292,317
Atheism, 4,46,149,266,274,
278, 285,294, 321
Ataturk, Kernel, 40
Augustine, St., 192
B
Babeuf, 8
Balzac, Honore, 43,206
Bell, Daniel, xv
Benda, Julien, 300- 301
Bergson, Henri, 345
Beria, 320
Bemanos, Georges, 49, 89
Bernstein, Edouard, 107
Bevan, Aneurin, 78
Bismarck, 131
Bloch,Jean-Richard, 44
Bloy, Leon, 89
Bolsheviks, 42,77,108,124-125,
129,167, 271, 313, 335
Bolshevism, 13,15, 278
Borne, Etienne, 343
Bossuet, 148
Bowie, John, x
Breton, Andre, 44
Brinton, Crane, 208
Britain-France comparison, xi,
4, 24-32,215-216,221-222,
234-235, 248, 255-256
Brogan, D.W., 234
Bromfield, Louis, 230-231
Bukharin, 121-122,124,303,
320
Burckhardt, Jacob, 21,341
Burke, Edmund, 15,100,327-
328,348, 232
C
Caesar, Julius, 136-137,162
Camus, Albert, 51-57
Cezanne, 148
Chance, 134,162-165,168
Chiang Kai-shek, 196, 233
Christ, 274
Christian citizen, 345, 347
Church, Catholic, 4,278,286-
287, 291, 294,344-345, 347
Churchill, Winston, 28
‘Churchmen’, 135,156, 276
Clemenceau, George, 5,8,129
Cleveland, Grover, 231
Communism, 71,83, 111, 133,
197-199, 257,266, 269-270,
278-279, 282, 286, 309, 322
Communist(s), 57,85,108,112-
113,125-126,131-132,156,
265, 269-270, 276-277
353
354
INDEX
Communisants, ix-x, xiv, 52, 72,
92,116, 224
Compromise ,21,95,99,337,
344
Confucianism, 262
Confucius, 236
Contingency, 137,155,162,
165,168,184
‘Creed,’ Aron’s, xvi, 7,88, 120,
158, 258-259, 262,293, 303,
319, 322-324, 333, 338, 340,
343-344, 346
Criticism, technical, 210-211,343
moral, 211
ideological, 211
Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of
Law, 115
Cromwell, Oliver, 38
D
Dan ton, 130
Darkness at Noon, 123
Darwin, Charles, 82
DasKapital, 73,105-106,172,
174,197
Decolonization, 179-180,197,
261
De Gaulle, Charles, 59-60
Descartes, Rene, 206, 266
Determinism, accidental, 188-
189,193,195
aleatory, 163,187-188
of chance, 162-164
historical, 161-162,168
probabalistic, 167-169,187,
195
De Waehlens, 326
Diderot, 207
Dien-Bien-Phu, 62
Doctrinairism, 329-333, 336
Dreyfuss Affair, 3,5,9,226, 301
Dubarle, Father, 346-347
Duverger, M., 343,349
E
Economico-Political Manuscripts,
115
Economy, modern industrial,
252, 337-339
‘Eggheads’ controversy, 229-230
Einstein, Albert, 83
Eisenhower, President, 255
Emancipation, working class,
75-78,85,118
End of history, 55,150-151,154-
155, 328-330, 332
Engels, F., 329
Equality, 7,344
L’Esprit des Lois, xiii
L’Etre et le Neant, 326-327
Existentialism, x, 51,54-55,69,79-
80,84,90,115,149,325-327
Existentialists, 329-331, 333,
348
F
‘Faithful’, ‘true believers’, xiv,
135-136, 276
Ferrero, Guglielmo, 7
Feuerbach, L., 46
Flaubert, Gustave, 43
Foch, M., 5
Fourastie,Jean, 152
Fourth Republic, 59,62-64, 220
Franco, Francisco, 50
Franklin, Benjamin, 231
French Revolution, 4-7,15-18,
26, 35
G
Galbraith,J.K., 243
Gandhi, 236
George, Lloyd, 26
German Ideology, The, 115
Gide, Andre, 255
Great schism, 15,181-182,223,
236, 239, 271
INDEX
355
H
Hegel, G.W. F., 54,56,97,117,
198, 310, 328-330, 332
Hegelianism, 57,161,188, 283,
311,325, 328
Hegemony, American, 221-223
Herbert, Alan, ix
Herodotus, 65
Hierarchy, 19-20,88,92-93,144,
149-150,152,155
Hindenburg, 37, 282
Hiss, Alger, 232
Historical understanding, xii,
32.136- 143,145-146, 159,
165, 192-194
History, the control of, 197-200
the idolatry or cult of, v, ix,
xii, 135,192-193,198
Hitler, Adolph, 13-14, 37, 50,
119.136- 137,139,162-164,
167,169,185, 280, 282
Hobbes, Thomas, 280
Hobson, 249
Homais, M., 5
Homo politicus, 98-99,137,156
Hugo, Victor, 43
Humanisme et Terreur, 115,117,
123,127
Husserl, E., x
I
Ideologies, xv, 236,277, 285,
305, 307, 314,323
Ideology, age of, xv
end of, xv, 304
Imperialism, the Final Stage of
Capitalism, 197
Industrial civilization, society,
xii, 14,16,335, 339
Intelligentisia, ix, xi, 106, 205-
210,214,220, 243, 283, 285
Intellectuals, vi, ix-xii, 64, 70,
90,112,114,116,119,124,
203,206,208-210, 214-215,
217-218, 224,228,230-231,
238, 247-248,257,261-262,
277-278,283,290-291, 296,
301,334
J
Japan, 249-250
Jaures, Jean, 5,9
Jeanson, Francis, 51,54-55,68,
90
Jefferson, Thomas, 231
Joyce, William, 25
Justice, 130, 323, 347
K
Kafka, F„ 49
Kamenev, 121,129
Kerensky, 129
Khrushchev, N., xiii-xiv, 223
Kierkegaard, Soren, x, 49, 325,
327-328, 330, 348
Koestler, Arthur, 123,127, 129
L
LaBerthaonniere, 266
Lacroix, Jean, 82
Laski, Harold, 257
Lefort, Claude, 90
Left, the, ix, xii, 13-14,17,24,
32,39,89, 94-95,99,237-
238,248, 338
oldv. new, 4,8,13-14,26,35,
46, 94, 99, 238, 305-306,
311,319, 341
today’s dominant idea, 10
political, social and eco¬
nomic values, 11-12, 39,
338-339, 341
true or eternal, 24,32-34,341
Lenin, V., 38,52,54,77,109,
120,122,129,162,167,196,
249,292,310, 325,335
356
INDEX
Leninist, xiv
Lewis, Sinclair ,212
Liberalism, 26, 308-309
Liberals, American, xii, xv, 231-
232,242,319
classical, 329
French, 15
Liberty, liberties, 7, 32,90,237,
258-259, 286, 322
Lilienthal, David, 243
Lincoln, Abraham, 231,242
Lipset, S.M., xv
Louis-Napoleon, 6
Louis-Philippe, 6
Louis XVI, 18,163-164
Lowith, Karl, 326
Ludendorff, General, 281
M
Machiavelli, N„ 280-281,329
MacArthur, General, 244, 254
Malenkov, 320
Malraux, Andre, 48
Mao Tse-tung, 244,255,263,317
Marx, Karl, vii, 47-48,54-57,66,
69-71,87,89,105-106,108,
115-120,173-174,192,196,
198,231,236, 238,247,261,
274,291,310-311,325,328,
330, 331,337, 348
Marxism, vii, x, xii, 8,39,4647,
54,66,71-72,84,106-107,
117,183,192-193,196,263,
267,283-284,311,329-331,
338, 341
Mathiez, A., 281
Mauriac, Francois, 42
Maurras, Charles, 5,307
McCarthy, Joseph, 232,305
McCarthyism, 233-234
Mendes-France, 62,64
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 69,115,
117-118,120,123,127,129-
130,143,155,161,325,328,
336
Michelet, Jules, 282
Milosz, Czeslaw, 112
Montesquieu, xiii, 310, 332
Modern civilization, ideas,
world, 7,50,248,338,344
Monroe, James, 231
Mounier, E., 345
Mussolini, B., 14,50,119
Myth (s), v, ix, xii, 5-7,9-10,21,
35,4243,47,51,64-66,68-
69,94,99,339, 341,347
N
Napoleon Bonaparte, 12,122,
136-138, 164, 166-167, 216
Napoleon III, 37
Nation, nationalism, 306-307
National Socialism, 11,13-14
Nietzsche, F., 49,325, 328
Natural Bight and History, 327-328
Nevsky, Alexander, 112
New Deal, 242
Newton, Isaac, 187
Nihilism, 333, 346, 348
O
On theJewish Question, 331
Opium, vii, xiii, 257, 291-292
Origin of Species, The, 83
P
Party, The Communist, ix, xiv,
66,71,108-109,111,113,
124-125,196-199, 267-269,
275, 284, 288
Pascal, 206
Peron,Juan, 11
Petain, Marshal, 130
Peter the Great, 40
La Phenomenologie de Perception,
327, 348
INDEX
357
Plato, 209
Pluralism, 20, 31-32, 47, 157-
158,181,184, 322,337,343
in historical understanding,
138-139,142-143,145-146,
157,160
Poincare, Raymond, 60
Political choice, 158,184,199,
334
Political problem, the, 153,158,
344
Popular Front, 9,59,61,63,81
Positivism, Comtean, 279,282
Prediction(s), historical, 177
theoretical, 168-170
Prevost-Paradol, 40
Principles of political judgment
and action, 348-349
Prometheanism, xi, 196, 199
Progress, idea of, 34
economic, 151
Progressive thought, 106, 257-
258
Progressive or left-wing Chris¬
tianity, 50,79,81-85,90,196,
265, 272- 275, 293,345-346,
348
Proletariat, ix, 66-68,70-71, 79-
80,88,91,94-96,98,310
Proust, Marcel, 206
Prudence, 348
R
Rassemblement duPeuple Francois
(R.P.F.), 29-30,59,61,340
‘Recognition’, xi, 116-117,155-
156, 326-327
Renan, E.,21
Revolt, 48-51, 54
Revolution, ix, 35-43,46-48,57,
64-65,83,94-96,107-108,130
v. reform, xv, 39-40,42-43,
343
in Marxism, 41-42,47, 56
Road to Serfdom, The, 28
Robespierre, 128, 130
Rokossovsky, Marshal, 308
Rosenbergs, 224-226, 245
Rousseau, JeanJacques, 35,279-
282,310
Russell, Bertrand, 257
S
Sartre, Jean Paul, xiv, 51-57,65,
68-69, 71-72,80-81,115,219,
224, 255, 325, 328
Sauvay, M., 340
Scheler, Max, 145
Schumpeter,J., 209
Secular religion, xiii, 265, 270-
271, 274,277, 293-294,304,
319
Serge, Victor, 123,127,129
Shils,E., xv
Shintoism, 281
Skepticism, x, xv, 323-324,333,348
Social Contract, The, 279
Socialism, 8-9
Socialists, 18
Society’s immutable order,
ineluctable necessities
88, 98-100,137-138,153-
155,158,190
Spengler, Oswald, 146,148-149,
192, 194
Stalin, Joseph, xii-xiii, 45,52,91,
115-116,119, 123-124,129
Stalinism, xiii, 57,107-108, 111,
116,119-122,156,195,272,
288-289, 292-293
Stalinist(s), xiv, 56,83,108,113,
122-123
State, democratic, 20
State intervention, 74,184,329
Stevenson, Adelai, 230
Strauss, Leo, 327-328
358
INDEX
Study of History, The, 147
Stypolski ,121
Sue, Eugene, 206
Suvorov, 112
T
Taine, Hippolyte, 5
Technology, technological
civilization, technological
progress, 86, 88,106,150-
152,154,177,199, 248,283,
309, 312,314, 333, 338-339,
346
Third Republic, 6, 8, 58, 62-64
Tito, 120, 317
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 21, 341
Toynbee, Arnold, 68,146-147,
149,191-192,194, 319-320
Trotsky, Leon, 77,112,115,125,
151,162,303
Trotskyism, 114
Tulaev Affair, The, 123
U
United States, The, 227
V
Values, 11, 32-34,137-138,149,
157-158,194, 321
Left’s political and social,
11,39
Westerner’s true, 57,181,
258-259, 319
Vichy, 58,130
Voegeler, 121,126
Voltaire, 231,310
W
Weil, Simone, vii, 50,89,293,
343
Weissberg ,121
West, the free societies of the
93,181,237-238,258-259,
315, 321-322, 332
Western values, 259, 319
Westerner, true, 57
Z
Zinoviev, G., 121-122,129,320
