PARTISAN REVIEW
Gaullism
is
the same he eventually gave
in
defense of
his
Communist
stand, namely that there is no other
force
capable of doing what has
to be done. Once Communism is rejected, Gaullism is the only pos–
sible bet. And, when one is Malraux, one has to bet.
Like all political realists, Malraux (in
his
own peculiar way)
applies to the present social situation the principle of the excluded
middle. But, as Valery once said, "there is always a middle term, and
it cannot be excluded." In social matters, this seems to be particu–
larly true, since society is what least resembles a logical problem, or
a
Kriegspiel.
There are millions of people in Europe, today, who feel
bewildered, disillusioned, and worse, and who still resist the either/or
logic which the situation seems to impose. They are too distressed to
believe in wholesale solutions. In fact, for many of them wholesale
solutions are synonymous with catastrophe. They may occasionally
cast their ballots for
this
or that party, but at bottom they are filled
with doubt. Their doubt, too, is a sort of gamble. Namely a gamble
on the chance that some sensible choice might be offered to them: a
choice that makes sense in terms of their own daily existence rather
than in the abstract language of geopolitics.
If,
in the meantime,
they are confronted with Fate, they will, of course, be unable to do
anything but bow to it. These people may not be a political force,
but they certainly constitute a political fact. Couldn't even a man
of action be tempted to take up their cause? In any case, such people
cannot be treated with contempt just because they are too scattered
and uncertain to constitute a mass. Mter all, Western culture owes
much of its "vigor" precisely to the fact that, in the face of dogma–
tism, Western man has known how to insist on the positive value
of doubt and disbelief. Doubt, of course, is not a political act. But
the burden of the proof falls on
him
who asserts. When Malraux
proclaims that only by making the State strong can freedom be saved,
his is
an assertion which, in 1948, is adequately answered by disbelief.
The truth of the matter is that Malraux may be proved right
only in one sense: the weakness of the Third Force, combined with
the disintegration of the Left so successfully brought about by the
Stalinists, migh well result in De Gaulle's coming to power.
As
for
the rest, there is no more connection between the "restoration of
structure and vigor" to Western culture and the State machine which
De Gaulle might be able to build up, than there was in the past
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