FRANCE: DEFECTION OF THE LEFTIST INTELLECTUALS

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• Publication Date: December 1, 1985
• Content Type: REPORT

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Directorate of
Intelligence
France: Defection of the
Leftist Intellectuals [
Confidential
EUR 85-10199
December 1985
Copy 3 14
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Directorate of
Intelligence
France: Defection of the
Leftist Intellectuals
Central Mediterranean Branch, EURA,
are welcome and may be directed to the Chief,
This paper was prepared byl the
Office of European Analysis. Comments and queries
Confidential
EUR 85-10199
December 1985
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Confidential
France: Defection of the
Leftist Intellectuals
Scope Note Intellectuals have traditionally played an influenti 1 role in French political
life. Even though they have seldom sought a direct part in formulating
policy, they have conditioned the atmosphere in which politics are conduct-
ed and have frequently served as important shapes of the political and
ideological trends that generate French policy. R cognizing that their
influence on policymaking is difficult to measure, his paper focuses on the
changing attitudes of French intellectuals and gauges, the probable impact
on the political environment in which policy is made.
Confidential
EUR 85-10199
December 1985
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Leftist Intellectuals
France: Defection of the
Key Judgments There is a new climate of intellectual opinion in F
Information available
as of 15 November 1985
was used in this report.
least in the medium term. President Mitterrand's
Moscow derives, at least in part, from this pervas
rance-a spirit of anti-
icult for anyone to
olicies. Nor will French
id before, to other West
he United States on
n policies are never
iet Union that is now on
likely to remain there at
notable coolness toward
the defensive with New Left intellectuals-and isj
Marxism and anti-Sovietism that will make it dif
mobilize significant intellectual opposition to US
intellectuals be likely to lend their weight, as they
European colleagues who have become hostile to
broad issues like disarmament. Although Americ,
immune to criticism in France, it is clearly the So
Mitterrand's failure to garner needed support am
powerful leftist intellectuals, moreover, reflects a
presage a new role for the intelligentsia. No long
rely on the intellectuals to provide a rationale for
and to sell that rationale to a French public that
great store in the explanations of its intellectual
vogue.
ng France's historically
historic shift that may
r can his Socialist Party
its policies and actions
as customarily placed
lites.
Mitterrand's policy failures and short-lived allia ce with the Communists
may have accelerated disaffection with his government, but leftist intellec-
tuals have been distancing themselves from soda ism-both the party and
the ideology-at least since the early 1970s. Led by a group of young
renegades from Communist ranks who billed themselves as New Philoso-
phers, many New Left intellectuals have rejected Marxism and developed
a deep-rooted antipathy toward the Soviet Union Anti-Sovietism, in fact,
has become the touchstone of legitimacy in leftist circles, weakening the
traditional anti-Americanism of the leftist intelle tuals and allowing
American culture-and even political and econo is policies-to find new
The wide acceptance of this more critical approa to Marxism and the So-
viet Union has been accompanied by a general decline of intellectual life in
France that has undermined the political involvement of leftist intellectu-
als. Although they are now less willing to become involved in partisan
affairs, we believe that New Left intellectuals wi 1 weigh in heavily on two
fronts:
? They will support moderate Socialists who are triving to create a broad-
based center-left alliance.
v Confidential
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? They will oppose any effort by hardline Socialists to reforge the now
defunct "unity of the left" with the French Communist Party in the
forthcoming legislative elections.
This New Left activism is likely to increase bickering between the two
leftist parties and within the Socialist Party, and it will probably increase
voter defection from both Socialist and Communist camps.
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Contents
Page
Scope Note
iii
Key Judgments
v
Introduction
1
A Traditional Role
1
A Historic Shift: The "Loud" Silence of the Leftist Intellectuals
3
The "New Philosophers"
4
"There Are No More Sartres, No More Gides"
6
Causes of Leftist Intellectual Defection
6
The Bankruptcy of Ideology
6
Anti-Sovietism
7
Prospects for Intellectual Influence
8
Decline of Intellectual Life
8
Limited Reengagement
10
French Intellectuals and US Interests
11
Appendixes
A. Cultural Aspects of New Right Thought
13
B. Important Books by Glucksmann and Levy
15
vii
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Leftist Intellectuals
There is a lethargy about intellectual life in this
country that is quite spectacular. Never before have I
known such silence, such emptiness. It's like a family
in which someone has died.
Introduction
Intellectuals matter in France, probably more than in
most Western democracies. They have traditionally
played a key role in the political process as apologists
for the positions of various parties and as important
window dressing in the quest for domestic and inter-
national respectability. Moreover, they are listened
to-talk shows and magazines featuring heavy doses
of intellectual debate are very popular. For a variety
of complex reasons, the left has claimed the vast
majority of intellectuals since World War II and has
provided some of them with substantial leadership
roles. French intellectuals have routinely defended the
domestic schemes of both Socialists (PS) and Commu-
nists (PCF), and they have led the charge against US
policies in Europe and the Third World. President
Mitterrand-an intellectual in his own right-has
surrounded himself with "thinkers" and offered many
important positions in his government to well-known
intellectuals.
Even before the Socialists took office in 1981, how-
ever, it was clear that this intellectual identification
with the left was fading. The worst kept secret in PCF
circles for the past decade was that virtually every
Communist intellectual of any stature had either died
or defected from the party. Although Socialists man-
aged to snag a few of the disillusioned, the newborn
critics of Marxism seemed to drift more easily into
neutrality or even to the right. With one or two
exceptions, important intellectuals-such as anthro-
pologist Michel Foucault-refused positions in Mit-
terrand's government. And when Socialists later tried
to arouse intellectuals to defend their foundering
policies against criticism from the right, the intellec-
tuals again refused, this time with a cascade of public
This analysis focuses on the changing relationship
between French intellectuals and political groups in
the context of broad-base intellectual change within
French society. It assesses the dramatic breakdown of
the dominant post-World War II alliance between
intellectuals and the left, t e more general decline of
the intellectuals' status in rench society, the pros-
pects for a resumption of i tellectual "engagement"
in politics, and the implic Lions of these trends for
both French politics and S interests.
A Traditional Role
French intellectuals-a tom encompassing journal-
ists, artists, writers, and teachers-have carved out a
special role for themselves as interpreters of political
tradition, especially as interpreters of the conse-
quences and implications of the French Revolution.
Frenchmen have looked to the permanent intellectual
debate about the meaning of their history as a basis
for understanding French ociety, and the course of
French politics has occasionally been shifted by a
strong stand on the part o intellectuals (see inset).
Leftists and rightists in Fr nce maintained a balance
of intellectual forces for most of the period before
World War II. In the 19t century and in the first
abuse on the government.
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The Dreyfus Affair of the late 19th century crystal-
lized public thinking about what sort of society
France had become and highlighted how various
groups-the church, the military, politicians, jour-
nalists-stood in relation to principles and values
associated with the revolutionary tradition. Intellec-
tuals, led by the novelist and journalist Emile Zola,
played a leading role in mobilizing public debate
about the issues in the affair. When Zola leveled his
famous pro-Dreyfus editorials against the govern-
ment and its allies, he accused them not only of
subverting justice and morality, but also, more im-
portant in the minds of his readers, of treachery
against the revolutionary tradition.
Dreyfus, a Jewish officer attached to the French
General Staff, was accused and convicted in 1896 of
passing military secrets to the Germans. Revelations
that Dreyfus was convicted on fabricated evidence
and that the government had concocted still more
evidence to cover up its subversion of justice polar-
ized French society and touched off a national soul
searching about public morality and historical
values.
three decades of the 20th, conservative critics of the
revolutionary tradition, such as de Maistre, Tocque-
ville, and Peguy, were evenly matched against leftist
intellectuals, like Babeuf, Proudhon, and Jaures, who
encompassed the radicalism of both the 18th-century
Revolution and 19th-century socialism.
This parity evaporated, however, in the war. On the
one hand, French conservatism stood discredited not
only by its xenophobic nationalism, its antiegalitarian-
ism, and its flirtation with fascism in the prewar
years, but also by the participation of many of its
leading exponents in the collaborationist Vichy re-
gime. On the other hand, the left (except for the PCF
in the brief era of the Nazi-Soviet Pact) had stood
squarely against fascism and the occupation. It
formed the backbone and largest block of fighters in
the Resistance, and among these the Communists
played a commanding (if often self-serving) role. The
Figure 2. Jean Jaures, paragon of leftist
intellectual activism, from an article by Andre
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Soviet Union, which was seen as standing alone for
years against Germany, became a shining example to
the Resistance; former Communist and leading
French intellectual Annie Kriegel explains, "It's true
that the Americans liberated us-but the turning
point in the war was Stalingrad. It was the Red Army
that gave us hope."
While the French right was intellectually shattered by
the war, the left emerged ready to claim the spoils of
its success in the Resistance and the allegiance of all
those who loved liberty and equality. In the postwar
era the Socialists, and especially the Communists,
attracted large numbers of intellectuals. The conser-
vatives maintained their hold on power, however, and
the left settled into the role of opposition in the 1950s
and 1960s. Leftist intellectuals became masters at
elaborating Socialist and Communist formulas for
reshaping French society and of producing a constant
barrage of criticism against the policies of successive
conservative governments.'
The Socialist and Communist Parties also tried in two
ways to establish and perpetuate what one critic
recently dubbed a leftist "intellocracy." First, they
financed numerous journals, reviews, and newspapers
through which intellectuals could channel their tor-
rent of invective against the regime and French
society. Second, they helped to institutionalize the
leftist intellectual establishment and to make it self-
perpetuating by underwriting the unionization of the
university and secondary school faculties. Both efforts
helped ensure that those who circulated into the
French intellectual elite were ideologically atuned to
its prejudices and partisan loyalties. This system
worked almost flawlessly for a time; only since the
late 1960s have renegades rejected the teachings of
their former academic masters and led the charge
against the left.
' Raymond Aron, one of the few significant thinkers to resist
absorption, deplored the affinity of his peers with the left-
especially their servility in accepting such outrages as the Stalinist
purges and the crushing of the Hungarian uprising, and their
hypocrisy in defending such shams as the Stalin personality cult.
Aron reasoned in his study of the phenomenon-The Opium of the
Intellectuals (1955)-that the contemporary left, particularly the
Communists, had succeeded in winning and holding the loyalties of
intellectuals because it had gratified two deeply felt needs: it
assured intellectuals of their relevance to the political process, and
it organized and gave full rein to their unbounded penchant for
A Historic Shift: The "Lou
of the Leftist Intellectuals
The situation had changed
the Socialists came to pow
kept secret in government i
cials were surprised and cc
of support from intellectua
of any stature-Max Gallc
toi.ne Blanca-had accepte
fered to them in the Mittel
openly criticized governme
especially the decision to ei
Communists. More often, i
of lapsing into an uncharac
generated disturbing quest:
relations between the govei
allies. Important journals c
sense even subtle shifts in 1
to question whether intellei
left" and to note the ironic
involvement in the governn
who was himself a well-est;
Mitterrand redoubled the e
the intellectuals after he whis expansionary economic
and adopt austerity measui
criticism from both the left
cially from conservatives of
where an "intellectual rena
(see inset). Almost certainli
government spokesman Ma
and historian-editorialize
mer of 1983 on the "silence
Gallo urged leftist intellect
that the vital issues of the c
ment's economic policies, b
cal issues such as terrorism
full public debate and that
rebuttal merely abandoned
Gallo's appeal drew a stron
als, most of whom explaine
"silence." At least one criti
the government would be a
the intellectuals as the best
dramatically by the time
r in 1981. It was a poorly
ircles that Socialist offi-
cerned about the dearth
s. Only a few intellectuals 25X1
Regis Debray, and An-
the numerous posts of-
rand government; some
t actions and policies,
trust four ministries to the
ntellectuals showed signs
teristic silence that quickly
ons from the press about
nment and its intellectual
f opinion, ever quick to
he political breezes, began
tuals were "always of the
ent of a leftist President
blished intellectual.
ffort to enlist support from
as forced by the failure of
policies to reverse course
-es that drew embarrassing
and the right, but espe-
France's New Right,
issance" was in full swing
i on Mitterrand's orders,
Lx Gallo-a noted novelist
3 in Le Monde in the sum-
of the intellectuals."
uals to speak out, arguing
lay-especially the govern-
ut also its record on politi-
and crime-demanded a
the absence of a leftist 25X1
public opinion to the right.
g response from intellectu-
d and defended their
c argued that Gallo and
riser to accept silence from
they could get, and that if
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"Intellectual Renaissance"on the Right
The rejuvenation of conservative intellectual activity
that forms part of the so-called New Right is largely
separate from the movement of the New Philosophers
or New Left. The spectacular effervescence of conser-
vative thought in recent years is associated most
closely with the work of Jean-Francois Revel and
other renegades from the Ecole Normale Superieure
who started with polemics against Jean-Paul Sartre's
ethical gymnastics in defense of the USSR and moved
on to exposes of the shallowness of Communist
intellectual life. Now, says the prominent historian
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, they have taken on the
grander task of reorienting intellectual discourse
from its traditional focus on "right versus left"
toward "totalitarianism versus liberty. "
Encouraged by writers and publishers who are associ-
ated in some way with rightwing press baron Robert
Hersant, the New Right in France has taken up the
idea of reviving classic European liberalism as the
elixir that France needs to recover from Socialist
"mismanagement. " More than this, liberalism-de-
scribed by its adherents as diminishing the role of
government and forcing people to be more self-suffi-
cient-has become a conservative prescription for
what has ailed French society for the entire postwar
era. The young conservative politicians who are tak-
ing up the refrain have argued in the press and in
private conversations with US diplomats that the
right should lead Frenchmen toward greater self-
reliance. A conservative government's principal task,
according to them, would be to shrink its own role-
whether as taxer, manager, director, or spender.
Allied to this concept of government, the new liberals
generally applaud the devolution of the massively
centralized French Government's powers and re-
sources to subnational governments, a slow process
that has recently gained momentum under the So-
cialists (see also appendix A).
leftists spoke out they would only join the legion of the
government's critics. The failure of Gallo's effort
strengthened the growing public perception that intel-
lectuals had deserted the left. When Gallo himself
departed from the government less than a year later-
Figure 3. Former official
Mitterrand spokesman Max
citing a desire to return to artistic life-most remain-
ing doubts about intellectual disaffection appeared to
evaporate.
The "New Philosophers." One reason for Gallo's
failure to mobilize the leftist intellectuals was that he
ignored a coterie of young intellectual firebrands who
for more than a decade had been making well-
publicized converts among leftist militants by assail-
ing the French left as dangerous and implicitly totali-
tarian. Billing themselves the "New Philosophers,"
they were mostly former Communists who had left
the party after the traumatic events of May 1968.'
Most of them were also graduates of France's most
3 Gallo drifted for a while, writing a book that, among other things,
criticized the PCF. When the ownership of the Socialist daily Le
Matin changed hands early this year, Gallo became its editor-
some have speculated, on the urging of Mitterrand. A colleague
told US Embassy officials that Gallo has used his editorials to
defend the government and whi up leftist support, but to little
effect.
In ay- une 1968, a ter months of intensfying protests, students
threw up barricades in the university section of Paris and initiated a
period of guerrilla warfare in the streets of the Latin Quarter. The
protest spread to other university cities; students were joined by 7
million striking workers (who occupied factories); transportation
and public services ground to a halt; and the 10-year-old govern-
ment of General de Gaulle tottered. Marxist students looked to the
Communist Party for leadership and declaration of a provisional
government, but PCF leaders were already trying to restrain the
worker revolt and denounced the student radicals as woolly-minded
anarchists. Many students concluded that the PCF had made a deal
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prestigious training school for teachers and thinkers,
the Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS), and they had in
common not just their experience in the Left Bank
student movement of the 1960s but also their rejection
of the Stalinist sophistries taught at ENS.
The New Philosophers were motivated by two devel-
opments. First, the traditional leftist parties' pusilla-
nimity during the student revolt of 1968 tore the
scales from their eyes, causing them to reject their
allegiance to the Communist Party, French socialism,
and even the essential tenets of Marxism. Second, by
the early 1970s most had also moved toward a
searching critique of the Soviet Union, a trend accel-
erated by the publication in France of Solzhenitsyn's
Gulag Archipelago in 1975. Under these stimuli they
reexamined the entire French and European leftist
tradition. Two leaders of 1968, Bernard-Henri Levy
and Andre Glucksmann, wrote a number of popular
books that tried to lay bare the fallacies of the leftist
intellectual tradition. They argued that no socialism
existed in France that was not implicitly Marxist and
that all Marxist thought is ultimately totalitarian.
their often abstruse prose
personalities, defending th
long, intellectualized telev
that the French relish. Th
negative, however, since t
Despite their sweeping de
professed continuing anti
came chief editor at the
one of France's largest-
that New Philosopher vie
public. Books by New Phi
ate best sellers-an amazi
e than compensated for 25X1
y becoming exciting media
it points of view in the
it influence was primarily
ey had little to offer in the
s for a new program.
unciation of what Levy
left, the New Philosophers
thy for Gaullism and only
of capitalism. Levy be-
rasset publishing house-
here he was able to ensure
s found easy access to the
g feat in an era when most
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philosophical works could achieve publication only
through the heavily subsidized university press. In-
formed observers across the political spectrum have
noted the profound influence of the New Philosophers
on the thinking of the post-1960s generation.
"There Are No More Sartres, No More Gides." The
defection of young intellectuals from Marxism and
the PCF left it to the aging Marxist mandarins to
uphold the tradition. Sartre, Roland Barthes, Jacques
Lacan, and Louis Althusser-the last clique of Com-
munist savants-came under relentless fire from their
former proteges, but none had any stomach for fight-
ing a rearguard defense of Marxism.' Critics-promi-
nent among them, the New Philosophers-have been
highly successful in persuading the present generation
of the "foolishness" of Sartre, the evils of Marxism,
and the barbarism of Soviet Communism (one New
Left wit jibed that calling the Soviets barbarians
slanders barbarians). As a result, the Communist
Youth Movement has atrophied even on university
campuses, Communist publications directed at young
intellectuals-such as the PCF's Revolution-are
languishing, and no intellectuals of stature now be-
long to or even support the PCF.'
Causes of Leftist Intellectual Defection
The Bankruptcy of Marxist Ideology. Disaffection
with Marxism as a philosophical system-part of a
broader retreat from ideology among intellectuals of
all political colors-was the source of the particularly
strong and widespread intellectual disillusionment
with the traditional left. Raymond Aron worked long
years to discredit his old college roommate Sartre
and, through him, the intellectual edifice of French
Marxism. Even more effective in undermining Marx-
ism, however, were those intellectuals who set out as
true believers to apply Marxist theory in the social
sciences but ended by rethinking and rejecting the
entire tradition (see inset).
' Althusser, who was Levy's and Glucksmann's mentor at ENS,
strangled his wife in 1980 and spent the next five years in prison. In
his last television interview Sartre admitted that Marxism had
proved a failure.
Defunct Marxist Scholarship in the Social Sciences
Among postwar French historians, the influential
school of thought associated with Marc Bloch, Lu-
cien Febvre, and Fernand Braudel has overwhelmed
the traditional Marxist historians. The Annales
school, as it is known from its principal journal,
turned French historical scholarship on its head in
the 1950s and 1960s, primarily by challenging and
later rejecting the hitherto dominant Marxist theo-
ries of historical progress. Although many of its
exponents maintain that they are "in the Marxist
tradition, " they mean only that they use Marxism as
a critical point of departure for trying to discover the
actual patterns of social history. For the most part,
they have concluded that Marxist notions of the
structure of the past-of social relationships, of
patterns of events, and of their influence in the long
term-are simplistic and invalid.
In the field of anthropology, the influential structur-
alist school associated with Claude Levi-Strauss,
Foucault, and others performed virtually the same
mission. Although both structuralism and Annales
methodology have fallen on hard times (critics accuse
them of being too difficult for the uninitiated to
follow), we believe their critical demolition of Marx-
ist influence in the social sciences is likely to endure
as a profound contribution to modern scholarship
both in France and elsewhere in Western Europe.
Leftist intellectuals who were not already hostile to
socialism-Max Gallo may be the best example-
were driven to defection by the obvious failure of
leftist ideology implicit in Mitterrand's early attempts
to socialize France. By 1983 most Socialists were
ready to admit that their program of economic expan-
sion and beefed-up budgets for social welfare would
not work, and the dose of austerity that these policies
eventually forced rang the death knell of leftist
ideology for many informed observers. Alain Tou-
raine-leftist sociologist and sometime editorialist for
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The US and USSR in French Public Opinion
Recent opinion polls show that the Soviet Union has
declined steadily in French esteem over the past three
years, while the United States has gained substantial-
ly. Surveys taken by France's most respected polling
firm just before the recent Reagan-Gorbachev sum-
mit show, for example, that 59 percent of the French
have an unfavorable opinion of the USSR, as opposed
to only 9 percent favorable.a In contrast, opinions of
the United States were 43 percent favorable and 27
percent unfavorable-a notable improvement over a
similar poll in 1982 that showed 30 percent favorable
and 51 percent unfavorable. Questioned on specific
issues, those polled strongly approved Washington's
record over Moscow's on economic development, wor-
kers' rights, individual liberties, antiracism, reducing
social inequalities, raising the standard of living,
access to health care, and aid to the Third World.
According to the US Embassy in Paris, other pub-
lished polls showed similar dramatic advances in
public confidence in the United States at the expense
of the USSR.
published in Le Monde, 19 November 1985
the Socialist daily Le Malin-may have written the
epitaph of socialism: "The essential merit of the
leftwing government has been to rid us of Socialist
ideology." One noted academic recently remarked
how doubly ironic it has been in the Fifth Republic
that it fell to de Gaulle to rid France of colonialism,
and to Mitterrand to rid it of socialism.
Anti-Sovietism. According to various knowledgeable
observers, hatred of Soviet totalitarianism has taken
deep root in the French left (see inset), motivated
partly by the searching and relentless polemics of
Glucksmann and Levy. Academic studies and press
articles on the bankruptcy of Marxism in France have
credited the New Philosophers with a central role in
convincing an entire generation of French intellectu-
als that:
? The Soviet state is proof that "Marxist Revolution
is a myth," a cynical hoax that, far from causing the
state to wither away, imposes a monstrous reaction-
ary machine.'
? The quintessential mark of intellectual distinction
and freedom in the mod rn world is to have a decent
loathing for the Soviet Union.
The persistent cult of Stalinism within the PCF and
the party's obsequious support for Soviet interests,
manifest in all PCF newspapers and journals, helped
to translate anti-Sovietism into revulsion for the PCF.
The recent publication of secret documents concern-
ing French Communist re ations with the Kremlin
during the invasion of Cz choslovakia have shown
vividly how meekly the Fr nch party accepted Mos-
cow's direction and justifications. Remembrances of
the strength of the Stalin rsonality cult in the
French party-especially n its heyday in the 1950s,
when party intellectuals heaped ludicrous praise (in
prose and poems) on the S viet leader at every
excuse-have made the reaction of Sovietism all the
more personal and heartfe t, according to academic
analyses. Both academic servers and journalists 25X1
gentsia and French Com unism (see inset).F_ ~ 25X1
have also noted that the i tellectual bias against
Marxism, combined with iewly fashionable disdain
for the Soviet Union, has thrown up an apparently
impregnable barricade between the New Left intelli-
This aversion even figure to an extent in the strong
antipathy of leftist intellectuals toward the Mitter-
rand government. When t e Socialists forged the
"union of the left" as an election tactic in the late
1970s, the New Philosoph rs criticized them; when
the same alliance resurfaced in 1980, the New Philos- 25X1
ophers prepared to desert he Socialist Party; and
when Mitterrand invited me Communists into his
government in 1981, they moved into full opposition.
6 In their popular books (see appendix B), Glucksmann and Levy
argue that the machine feeds on gullible humanity in part through
the sophistries of corrupted intellectuals. In fact, says Levy, "The
only successful revolution of this century is totalitarianism," of
which the Soviet state has prove the durable and consummate
master. Hence, also, the New Philosopher equation, popularized by
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New Left thinker and defector from the Spanish
Communist Party Jorge Semprun mirrored the think-
ing of the present generation in responding to a
question in the intellectual journal Le debat.
LD. What is it to be a leftist [intellectual] in
France, today?
S. Today, the touchstone of leftist thought is a
critical attitude toward the USSR, of which one of
the corollaries is to reject the parties issuing from
the Comintern tradition [the PCF] .... The essen-
tial question is not the barbarism of Pinochet, nor
the demolition of the Lorrain steel manufacture,
nor even the imperial redeployment of Reagan.
The fundamental question is that of an attitude
toward the USSR.
Jacques Rouknique, expert on Soviet affairs at
France's respected Institute de Science Politique,
keeps a close eye on both the Soviet Union and
French opinions of it. He told one interviewer before
General Secretary Gorbachev's recent visit to Paris,
"There's been a dramatic change in the Soviet Un-
ion's image here over the past 10 years. The intellec-
tuals have abandoned Marxism, discovered the gu-
lag, discovered the horrors of the Soviet system.
Generally speaking ... [Marxism] no longer inspires
people on the left, or even within the Communist
Party [where] there are strong critical voices.'
Intellectuals who remained in Socialist ranks lapsed
into silence. Nothing Mitterrand has done-including
the Socialists' hard line with the Soviet Union, Mit-
terrand's explanation that he needed to name some
Communist ministers to buy labor peace from the
Communist-controlled trade union, and the Commun-
ists' departure from the government in 1984-has
reversed the New Philosophers' hostility. Levy re-
marked scathingly that it was like "having four fascist
ministers in the government." Thus far, New Left
intellectuals have shown no inclination to forgive
Mitterrand for his flirtation with the Communists or
to commiserate with his spectacular failure to make
Prospects for Intellectual Influence
Although leftist intellectuals have played a key role
for more than a decade in hardening public attitudes
toward Marxism and the Soviet Union, their influence
appears to be waning, and they are unlikely to have
much direct impact on political affairs any time soon.
Anti-Marxism and anti-Sovietism, which cut such a
swath in the early 1970s, have taken on a life of their
own and become so much a part of French intellectual
orthodoxy that the New Philosophers no longer seem
to have anything new to say. Moreover, there has been
a popular trend away from ideology and toward a
more pragmatic approach to political problems, and
this has tended to undermine the stature of intellectu-
als of all stripes.
Decline of Intellectual Life. Many leftist intellectuals
appear to have succumbed to a kind of listlessness
following their vigorous rejection of ideology and
party affiliation; others-like Emmanuel Le Roy La-
durie, Pierre Chanou, and Michel Sarre-have tried
to stir a national debate on the noticeable decline of
French intellectual life. Some have pegged the decline
of the intellectuals' stature to the rise of a high-
technology economy and society in France, and there
is no gainsaying that French youth, who once joined
every new intellectual fad, now think of careers in
science or business:
? Opinion polls show that "intellectual professions"
have lost significant ground to business and techni-
cal careers in the esteem of young people.
? Last year, student elections across the board pro-
duced an overwhelming number of new university
officers who were either nonideological or conserva-
tive, according to press reports. Historian and for-
mer Communist Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie wrote
that he was surprised to find how much students and
junior staff at the University of Paris have shifted
away from the left.
? Additional proof of the shift in attitude is obvious in
the classroom. Educational reforms of the past
decade designed to push students into business and
socialism work.
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Some Responses to Interview Questions About
Marxism and Radicalism on the Nanterre
Campus of the University of Paris
Guy Lachenaud, a junior professor in 1968 and now,
at 46, vice-president of Nanterre:
There is no longer a student movement. The only
groups that still survive combine a minimum of
militant rhetoric with a lot of photocopying.
The operator of the campus newsstand on sales of
Marxist publications, such as Rouge, Revolution, and
Lutte ouvriere:
I order five copies [of each] per week, and I have
trouble selling two or three.
A student:
In '68, papa was on the barricades. Me, I'm going
to do my thing in the bank.
Anonymous:
Today? This is the permanent nonrevolution.
technical courses were at first fiercely resisted by
students and professors in the 1970s. As recently as
the spring of 1983, when Mitterrand tried to extend
these reforms, students rioted in several university
cities. Now, the rioters' younger brothers and sis-
ters swell business and science classrooms to over-
flowing, even on formerly red-hot campuses like the
University of Paris at Nanterre, where Marxist
intellectual chic ruled supreme as late as the mid-
1970s (see inset).
? Intellectual careers, once almost guaranteed to
those who attended the elite schools, are apparently
no longer assured. The Fabius government, for
example, recently announced a program to find jobs
in local and national governments and in business
for the unemployed graduates of the ENS. Social-
ists have also moved to force resident foreigners out
of low-level teaching jobs, presumably to free scarce
positions for French teachers.
Some critics, like the philosopher Michel Serres,
argue that intellectuals, particularly on the left, are
merely "revving up," but others point to a decline of
intellectual vitality. Marc iglet, editor of France-
Political Studies, argued that French intellectuals are
unable to mobilize and entage in a lively discourse
because they are not as ca0able as they once were. He
viewed this development a~ part of a decade-old
Other intellectuals like Al in Besancon
conservative thinkers agre with Riglet
guishing of the intellectua Is is part of a
cultural decline. They arg a persuasivel
and books as well as on to evision-that
indeed no Flauberts, Prou ts, or Baudel
over, keen observers, like istorians Bes
Pierre Goubert, say there s no reason t
soon. Mitterrand and Cull ure Minister
despite more than doubling, the Culture
and numerous
that the lan-
cycle of
y-in articles
there are
aires; more-
ancon and
o expect any
Jack Lang,
Ministry
mplaints that
that, across
inovation is
budget, have failed to ste the tide of co
"creativity is in a slump i France," ani
the cultural spectrum, "thJe absence of i
striking."
A conference in Paris last year, organized to consider
the issue of "French ident ty," turned quickly to the
lethargy of French intellectuals and its implications
for their future political role. Participants appeared to
agree that ideology-left or right-was unlikely to
mobilize intellectuals in t e future. The bad taste left
by disillusionment with Marxism in the mouths of
virtually every leftist intel ectual has translated di-
rectly into a kind of neutr lism that has contributed
to their immobilization. Even "liberalism"-meaning
' Lang's well-publicized attack o "American cultural imperialism"
in 1981 and his later convocatio of an international conference of
leftist intellectuals drew stingin criticisms, notably from the Wall
Street Journal, about the recent poverty of French cultural produc-
tivity, especially in comparison with American accomplishments.
These charges gave rise to a gre t deal of self-criticism on the part
of French intellectuals, like Bes ncon and Riglet
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less government and more self-sufficiency-has only
weak support in both intellectual and public opinion,
judging from recent polls and media reports.
Limited Reengagement. Nevertheless, some issues
will probably continue to draw intellectuals into the
fray. In a recent survey, most prominent writers
indicated that they are prepared to resume much of
the political involvement once characteristic of leftist
intellectuals-but that they would stop short of mobi-
lizing for parties and ideology. A more likely theme to
reengage intellectuals would be French cultural iden-
tity, which is tied closely to the emotional issues of
alien influences in France, immigration, and racism.
Anti-immigrant rhetoric and the racism associated
with the rise of the extreme right National Front have
galvanized many leftist intellectuals into action,
largely in street protests organized by an antiracist
group called S.O.S. Racisme.
Anti-Sovietism, currently a fixture in the mentality
and writing of intellectuals, continues to have great
potential for stirring ferment. General Secretary Gor-
bachev's visit to France this fall generated protests not
just from rightists: the New Left, and especially
dissident intellectuals, used the visit as an opportunity
to vent frustration about Soviet brutality in Afghani-
stan, continuing repression in Poland, and disregard
of the human rights provisions of the Helsinki accord.
Thousands of students turned out for Left Bank
demonstrations, shouting "Gorbachev Gulag!" The
Sakharov case also excites continuing fascination in
French intellectual circles. Although the government
probably short-circuited some planned protests by
promising publicly to take the lead in broaching
human rights with Gorbachev and by prohibiting
street demonstrations during the visit, intellectuals
nonetheless used the visit to press for the release of
Sakharov and his wife and for a tougher French line
with Moscow.
This antitotalitarian and anti-Soviet sentiment among
French intellectuals will militate against any signifi-
cant modification of the government's already tough
stand against Moscow. By now, in fact, most Socialist
leaders must calculate that a tough attitude toward
both the PCF and Moscow is the only way they can
hope to galvanize the intellectuals into backing them
in the 1986 legislative election. The intellectuals will
also make it difficult for any rightwing government to
engineer a resumption of the "special relationship"
with Moscow that characterized the presidency of
Valery Giscard d'Estaing.
In our view, the strong currents of anti-Marxism,
anti-Sovietism, and disillusionment with ideology
among leftist intellectuals may also have a powerful
effect on the Socialist Party. Mounting evidence
suggests that the Socialists face a significant electoral
disaster in next year's legislative elections. As the
party heads for the political wilderness and tries to
make sense of its experience in government, the New
Left intellectuals are likely to play an important role
in this soul searching and in reshaping the Socialists'
attitudes and self-image.
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In particular, deep anti-PCF sentiment among intel-
lectuals may prove decisive in subverting machina-
tions by Socialist Party chief Jospin and others on the
left of the party to rekindle enthusiasm for the "union
of the left"-the myth that the Socialists came to
power in 1981 only through their alliance with the
PCF and that the left can only achieve power in the
future through unity! Intellectuals are likely to weigh
in heavily against this notion and will probably sup-
port overwhelmingly the strategy-long touted by
Socialist dissident Michel Rocard, but now apparently
accepted by both Mitterrand and Prime Minister
Fabius-that the long-term future of Socialism lies in
forging a center-left alliance.
In sum, New Left activism is likely to increase
bickering both between Communists and Socialists
and within the Socialist Party. It will also probably
lead to increased voter defection from both camps.
French Intellectuals and US Interests
In the postwar era, French intellectuals helped signifi-
cantly to generate and shape international hostility to
US policies, both in Europe and in the Third World.
From Beirut to Lisbon to Mexico City, influential
intellectual elites listened to and mimicked the think-
ing and prejudices of cafe savants like Regis Debray.
Now, on the other hand, anti-Marxism and anti-
Sovietism appear to have permitted the younger gen-
eration of French intellectuals to adopt a more open
attitude toward the United States. This in turn has
given rise to a new wave of genuinely pro-American
sentiment, rooted in the vogue of American popular
culture, in respect for the American economic vitality
of the 1980s, and in admiration for the new image of
self-confidence that the United States now projects in
the world.
In France, the anti-Americanism that used to be
taken in polite circles as circumstantial evidence of an
adequate education is no longer in vogue. Knee-jerk
slander of the United States-what the New Left
8 Mitterrand's Socialists benefited far more in 1981 from the 16
percent of Jacques Chirac's Neo-Gaullists who stayed home rather
than vote for Giscard d'Estaing and from the 5 percent of centrist
voters, previously in Giscard's camp, who crossed over to give the
intellectuals have taken to calling "primitive anti-
Americanism"-is now identified with the Commu-
nist daily I'Humanite and is considered bad form.
Anti-Americanism former y also stood as a mark of
intellectual status, separat ng thinkers from ordinary
folk (who were generally s spected of harboring good
opinions of the United Sta es, even in the Vietnam
era). Now, just the opposite is true; finding virtues in
America-even identifying good things about US
Government policies-is 1 oked upon as an indication
of discerning judgment. A tempts by some to revive
significant and sweeping c iticisms of US policies are
seen as transparent effort to divert critics from their
legitimate target, the acti ities of the Soviet Union. 25X1
This climate of intellectua opinion will almost cer-
tainly make it very difficu t for anyone to mobilize
significant opposition among intellectual elites to US
policies in Central America, for example. It is also
likely to deny to other European intellectuals-nota-
bly, in Scandinavia and est Germany-who are
hostile to US policies and interests the powerful
leadership they formerly r ceived from the French (in
the era of US involvement in Vietnam) and the
support they now need to create a West European
consensus on transnationa issues, such as disarma-
ment. The heated debate in the West German press
between Glucksmann and leading German intellectu-
als over pacifism and INF basing provided graphic
evidence of the distance between the two and of the
ability and readiness of New Left French intellectuals
to argue persuasively agai 1st attitudes that play into
Soviet hands. Although U policies are certainly not
immune to powerful intell ctual criticism in France,
even on the right, it is the Soviet Union that is now
clearly on the defensive a d likely to remain there, at
least in the medium term.
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Appendix A
Cultural Aspects
of New Right Thought
The more esoteric side of New Right intellectuality
has focused surprising energy on demands for cultural
renewal, arguing that what is essentially wrong with
France is that its culture has been eroded by external
influences and degraded by neglect. Conservative
writers, many of them associated with the Group for
Research and Study of European Civilization
(GRECE) and the Clock Club (Club de l'Horloge)-
both composed mainly of young graduates of France's
elite school of administration, ENA-have found an
outlet for their arguments in Hersant publications,
notably Figaro Magazine, which is edited by GRECE
kindred spirit Louis Pauwels.
Pauwels and two proteges, Jean-Claude Valla and
Alain de Benoist, have worked overtime to give the
New Right a stridently elitist ethic. Led by Benoist,
all three charge that cultural decline in France is
linked directly to egalitarianism-to the allegedly
foolish denial of the essential superiority of some men,
and to the imposition of man-in-the-street mediocracy
on French society. Pauwels and others have encour-
aged rightist anthropology that looks beyond the
Revolution to Christianity as the source of egalitarian
weakness in European civilization. Pauwels and Ben-
oist have often praised the "perceptive elitism" in pre-
Christian European societies as the source of cultural
virtues to which modern Europeans should look for
revival and renewal.
This insistence on the reasonableness of elitism dove-
tails with the New Right's predilection for classic
liberalism in the vision of a society in which govern-
ment refuses to impose an artificial equality on
citizens and in which individuals are free to realize
the full advantages of their talents. Some New Right
intellectuals argue also that because egalitarianism is
artificial it requires a heavyhanded, enforcer role for
government. This they believe is the root of totalitar-
ianism
Elitism in the thinking of the New Right is almost
certainly one important reason that few French intel-
lectuals have made the journey from the left to
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GRECE.' In our view, the
many will do so in the futti
sional similarities and alli2
ly, New Right intellectual;
antiegalitarian and even ai
GRECE/Horloge thinking
and conservatives like Re
v
"men of the left" are still i
the essence of the democr~
France. Conservative polite
gladhand the faithful at
Pauwels seldom ruminate
paganism and elites.
' There are two near exceptions t
Jean-Edern Hallier are prone to
smack of invention by GRECE.
Hersant daily Figaro, but as crit
New Right ideas
e is little prospect that
re, notwithstanding occa-
have played down the
, but leftist intellectuals
el who consider themselves
tic-republican tradition in
orloge functions, and even
now on the virtues of
nnie Kriegel writes for the
of the left and not as exponent of
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Reaction to the controversial social and ethical posi-
tions of the New Right intellectuals has been varied.
Marxist intellectuals who remained faithful to the
ideas and biases of the left have rejected them
outright; others who belong to neither New Right nor
old left circles have found virtues in them. Regis
Debray, for example, who still touts the agenda and
ideology of the left and (sometimes) advises Mitter-
rand on foreign policy, writes diatribes against the
modern intellectual renegades, condemning them for
forsaking written discourse in favor of becoming glib
media personalities (mediatics). He charges that the
leftist New Philosophers especially have been re-
shaped intellectually by the TV medium into shallow
talking heads, incapable of precise philosophical
writing.a
Raymond Aron, the revered dean of contemporary
conservative thought in France, detested the New
Right intellectuals, often equating their elitist anti-
egalitarianism with the worst antidemocratic strains
in French conservatism. Annie Kriegel joined Aron in
fearing that racist and fascist sentiments lurked in
New Right hostility to alien cultural influences and
in their thinking about genetics, heredity, and
ethnology.
But Aron is dead, Debray is no longer taken seriously
as a thinker, and Kriegel has never commanded a
large public following. Against these critics, the New
Right can point to kudos from Michel Foucault,
France's most profound and influential thinker. Fou-
cault has praised the upstarts for, among other
things, reminding philosophers of the "bloody" conse-
quences that have flowed from the rationalist social
theory of the 18th-century Enlightenment and the
Revolutionary era.
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Appendix B
Important Books by Glucksmann and Levy
Andre Glucksmann La cuisiniere et le mangeur-d'hommes (The Cook and
Read as a commentary on The Gulag Archipelago, this
tween the state, Marxism, and the concentration camp
detailed survey of the disastrous economic and political
seen against the high-minded declarations of its leader
the Man-Eater), 1975.
"essay on the relations be-
," is a painstakingly
history of the USSR, as
Les Maitres Penseurs (The Master Thinkers), 1977. lucksmann's acclaimed
examination of the impact of 19th-century German philosophy on the forging of
the German state and on the 20th century. Most important, it exposes the
relationship between philosophers such as Marx and Nietzsche and modern
tyrannies.
Bernard-Henri Levy Barbarie a visage humain (Barbarism With a Human ace), 1977. Levy locates
the roots of modern totalitarianism in the optimism an rationalism of the 18th-
century Enlightenment, which, he argues, first defined the state as the agent of
progress. In this role, says Levy, the state has invariably demanded absolute
power, and in one degree or another has diminished the authority of the individual.
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VIII
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