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common: they all are against the Soviet Union; they are
agai~.~t
neutralism; they are fighting for the rights of man; and they thirik
that the Communist Party and the Soviet Union are illegitimate. To
be an intellectual now, you still have to be on the left, of course, but
you have to think that both the Soviet Union and the Communist
Party are bad.
All intellectuals now criticize totalitarianism. What we call the
liberal right, and the moderate left, which as you know in your coun–
try consists of those whom you call liberals, has reached a consensus.
That's entirely different from, let's say, the German situation, which
is completely reversed. And all the new magazines which have been
created in the last five or six years, such as
Le Debat, Liberti de
L 'Esprit, Commentaire,
are against totalitarianism. The so-called
"right" people and the so-called "left," Castoriadis, Finkielkraut,
Lefort, Glucksmann, thus have reached a sort of consensus. This is
absolutely new. Apparently the violence of the intellectual struggles
in the fifties and the sixties has in some way vaccinated the top in–
telligentsia against neutralist temptations and against any weakness
for the communist world.
So, you might ask, what is the difference between the so-called
right - the one we call liberal- and the so-called left? They are
separate groups with their own personal relationships and different
networks. But there are other differences. The left voted for Mitter–
rand and probably will next year. The right will vote for Barre . But
it is hard to explain their differences . On the right, of course, they
have a slightly different view of the welfare state. They believe it
shouldn't go too far, and, as you know, the welfare state in France
goes much further than it does in America. They think that there is a
lirriit to. the possibilities of sodal security; they think that private
enterprise should be expanded; and they might think that Renault
should become a private enterprise, instead of being a public one.
The left are in favor of more intervention from the state; they are
more in favor of defending social security, at all cost - and it costs
very much. But all these differences are rather technical, and there
can't be great ideological or moral debates among French intellec–
tuals.
It's nothing like the splits over the Dreyfus affair. You can't
fight about the privatization of Renault, as you did about the
Dreyfus case, or the role of the Soviet Union, or the Communist
Party. The Socialists, during the summer of '82 or '83, were ex–
tremely disappointed because not many intellectuals supported the
