596
PARTISAN REVIEW
against absolutism and hierarchy. The cause of the people was identified
with that of liberty, and the proletariat and the liberal bourgeoisie
joined together against war and fascism.
The various ideologies current in France during this period (and
there was no lack of them) scarcely influenced the political sentiment–
ality of the majority of the French intellectuals. When Alain or Jaures
led the Left, their disciples among the intellectuals did not distinguish
their concern for liberty on the one hand, and their solidarity with
the proletariat or the people
in
the struggle for social equality on the
other. But the advent of Communism rudely challenged this sentiment,
for it became apparent that no necessary identity existed between the
cause of liberty and the cause of the proletariat (or what the Com–
munists call the cause of the proletariat). You will object that between
1917 and 1929 the French intellectuals had ample opportunity to ap–
praise the significance and consequences of Communism. And doubt–
less many did so. Before the '30's, however, the Russian Revolution had
seemed a faraway thing, holding no threat for France. And in the last
decade before the war the struggle against fascism obsessed all minds
and absorbed all energies.
It
was enough that Stalinism was on the side
of the angels, the side of the people and liberty. This apparent moral
unity of the Left was strengthened still more in the period of the
Resistance, despite the internecine armed struggles which, it has at last
been revealed, were waged between Communists and anti-Communists.
But in the period following the Resistance the rupture was nakedly
r~vealed.
The Socialists know that in the event of a Soviet victory they are
ccrtain to be liquidated. The rationalists realize that in this present
conflict they are one with the Catholics in opposing the camp of the
"dialectical materialists." The Socialists still look to a collectivist society
and a planned economy as their principal goal, but not to the point of
accepting planning and collectivization in their Stalinist form. Such
being the case, a front extending from the Socialists to the traditional
Right is politically conceivable and has even on occasion been put into
effect. But this realignment of parties, because it corresponds neither
to the sentimentalities nor to the ideologies of the French intellectuals
(and above all of the French electorate), is an extremely precarious
thing.
These, then, are the two great changes that have forced themselves
into the consc.iousness of the French intelligentsia. These are the two
problems which they are trying more or less confusedly to resolve: Find
a position or doctrine that would not be provincial, that would recover
