I CAME NE.1.R BEING A FASCIST
21
tion, one which they had forced upon me, of the true significance of my
adversaries' attitude.
l\1y
previous acquaintance with Marxism proved to be my salvation.
I have to thank: my university apprenticeship for having afforded me the
opportunity, in 1916, to commentate Marx's
Capital
for the benefit of
revolutionary socialist students of the Sorbonne. Once one has liad a good
dose of 1\tlarxism, one may permit oneself to be seduced by inJolence or
cowardice, but it ·still gnaws away at you; it is like Freudism, only a good
deal vmrse. Just as a Freudian can never mistake his sexual instit1ct for
a philanthropic urge, so a Marxist-even a 1\tlarxist by reading only–
can never confuse the defense of a ministerial portfolio with a "re-awaken–
ing of the national consciousness." It is as impossible as it would be to
believe that two and two make five.
With this, I wrote for the N.R.F., for the month of March, a short
article entiled
For Unity of Actio11.
I still posted myself, out
oi
conscientious scruple, within the confines of the bourgeoisie of the Left.
I merely took care to insert, by way of conclusion, the following sentence:
"In tbe pursuit of a heretofore chimerical unity, it is well for those of
the Left to reflect upon a certain enormous advantage which those of
the Right have over them: namely, a unity naturally created by possession
and a joint interest iri possession." May my enemies forgive me, it was
a species of trap. And the game fell into it. At once, the story was
started that the walls of Paris were covered with sanguinary proclama–
tions (whether of communistic or anarchistic inspiration wa,; not quite
clear) bearing my signature. All the drawingrooms which I was in the
habit of frequenting, as luck would have it, now closed to me.
Certain ones, assuming from m}'l name that I was a foreigner, pro–
ceeded to threaten me with the fate of those undesirables who, some day
or other, were going to have to be driven out of a long-suffering France.
Others, better informed as to my civil status, thought seriously of having
me de-naturalized. M. Fran<;ois Mauriac, who insists upon making
public an argument which, out of friendship for him, I should have pre–
ferred to keep private, grew indignant, · in
Sept
and in the
Echo de Paris,
at my having "dared" to speak of possession and an interest in possession;
and yet, all the while, on the 6th of February, the Place de la Concorde
was paclced with the poor and the small of station, protesting against
corruption. Seeing that I had very clearly stated in my article that
all
shades
of opinion were represented in the Place de Ia Concorde, the only
conclusion I can come to is, that M. Mauriac, and his friend!> as well,
