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PARTISAN REVIEW
oppose it. The Stalinist empire is at the gates of the West, the American
republic beyond the seas. Western Europe (what there is left of it) be–
lieves itself condemned in the event of war to invasion, and now knows
only too well what an occupation means (and what an eventual libera–
tion means
a~
well).
But, you will say, these myths and these fears are not peculiar
to France. They explain why a certain number of intellectuals should
rally to Stalinism, but they do not explain why this number, in France,
should be so much larger than elsewhere. This allegiance to the metropolis
of a conquering religion, this looking toward an expanding empire as to
the kingdom of God, is a pathological phenomenon, collective as well
as individual. Of what crisis is the success of the Stalinist mystique a
sign?
Does it not signify a rebellion of the scientists and engineers
against the inadequate technology of France? Because the moderniza–
tion of the country has proceeded at so slow a pace, because there is not
enough money forthcoming for the scientific laboratories or the en–
gineering projects, scientists and engineers dream of a society that
would accord them the first place and that would put unlimited resources
at their disposal. Are not the Christians, believers and non-believers
both, in rebellion against the petty-bourgeois selfishness of what in the
last analysis is a conservative nation? The Communist party offers them
a chance to devote themselves to a great cause. The intellectual, once
turned militant, appeases his bad conscience in action and by submitting
to an iron discipline rids himself of his anguish. There are further
distinctions one could make, if one cared to go into detail. Few first-rate
intellectuals, for example, profess an orthodox Stalinism, and those
who do so are rarely distinguished for their scholarly attainments in
history, economics, or sociology.
Yet one must pass beyond these partial analyses to arrive at the
e5sential explanation. For intellectuals, Stalinism is a way of disavowing
the West
in
favor of an illusory paradise buried in the foggy north
or in the future. The number of these disavowals is larger among the
French intellectuals than among others because France in its abasement
no longer satisfies their appetite for greatness. The rebellion against a
bankrupt ruling class, the confusion felt before the multitude of tasks
confronting the nation, a refusal to accept the slowness and modera–
tion inseparable from the democratic process-these are the things in
which the conversions to Stalinism originate. The intellectual no longer
sees a future either for France or Europe, he can no longer endure the
permanent tension that prevails, those never finished dialogues embody-
