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PARTISAN REVIEW
impose the people's front tactic on all countries, regardless of their
internal needs, so
DEspoir
exhibits a war situation, one that calls for
exceptional modes of action, and then expands these into universal
values. The libertarian intellectual, at any rate, is significantly sha-
dowed by his political counterpart, the humble Anarchist rank-and-
filer. We have already seen him in action in Barcelona, but as the
crisis over coordination sharpens, he is shown in a light less and less
sympathetic, and in the Toledo scenes he reaches his nadir. Ignorant
of military science, he is sullen under discipline, and at critical mo-
ments he turns "ugly." Suspicious of treason among his superiors, he
nevertheless harbors spies in his own organizations. One minute he is
brave to the point of madness, and a moment later he is running away.
We know the type: he has strayed out of one of Victor Hugo's "mob"
scenes.
Now it is one thing to question the moral values of libertarianism:
in doing this Malraux is only exposing, with whatever simplifications,
an obsolete ideology. But it is another thing altogether to travesty the
Anarchist worker, for here he is attacking the Spanish proletariat itself.
What are the real features behind this contemptuous caricature of the
Anarchists? Their "suspicion" is simply the vigilance of a class many
times betrayed. Their repugnance to "discipline" is the canny reluc-
tance of the worker to accept the bourgeois discipline of the people's
front. And their "cult of sacrifice"-ugliest parody of them all!-
what is this but the native miltancy of the exploited?
Vigilance, militancy-to these, the dynamic virtues of the revo-
lution, Malraux opposes ...
"prudence, rigor, discipline." Manuel,
the young Communist of the first chapter is perhaps the best example
of the total morality of
L'Espoir;
and he is, in fact, represented in a
symbolic light by Malraux himself. An intellectual before the war,
Manuel's past seems to have been designed expressly to set off his
present state of mind. For it is as a soldier who has repudiated the
vagaries of intellectualism that he figures in
DEspoir.
He has put aside
the "cult of dissidence" for the "cult of action." He has exchanged
ideas for ideology. He has put off his obsessionsand put on a uniform.
And he proceeds to demonstrate the intensiveness of his conversion by
climbing in a few short weeks from the Communist ranks to a lieu-
tenant-colonelship in the Republican Army. But the curious thing
about Manuel is that he acquires his new wisdom, not from his com-
rades, but from a colonel of the Civil Guard, under whom he serves.
This Catholic and police chief, who has been shooting workers for
years, has for reasons only vaguely specified thrown in his lot with
the Loyalists. He has been transformed, we gather, by the "strange
fraternity" of the people's front, which Malraux habitually represents
