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PARTISAN REVIEW
dits? This brings me back, by way of conclusion, to Jean-Marie Le Pen.
* *
*
Of all the questions raised in your letter, none strikes me as more im–
portant than this: how will the failure of communism affect radical criticism of
existing democratic societies? The latter are not only self-question ing in their
nature but also, as we are reminded by such gloomy prophets as Hayek and
Popper, inherently self-destructive. And France, in this respect, is no excep–
tion. The democratic institutions that have gradually emerged and taken root
here (prompting the historian Fran<;ois Furet to proclaim last year, on the
occasion of the bicentenary, that the French Revolution was finally over)
have been subjected to a constant crosssfire from both ends of the political
spectrum - the far right consisting of elements that never accepted
La gueuse
(the Republic) in the first place, reinforced as time passed by a variety of
other conservative forces, and the radical left which saw the bourgeois Re–
public as at best a prelude to the socialist or communist society of the future.
Now, of course, the French left is hardly in a position
to
engage in
"radical criticism of existing democratic society." Officially in power, its ethos
and sensibility still strongly present, perhaps dominant, in the media, the so–
cialists and their allies are nevertheless, for reasons mostly domestic but not
unrelated to what has happened in Eastern Europe, disoriented, divided, and
(after the fiasco of their last national congress, fully displayed on television)
conspicuously without an agreed program to offer the electorate - unless,
precisely, it be the defense of the Republic against Jean-Marie Le Pen.
1n other words, if Le Pen did not exist, it would be useful to invent him.
There are obvious problems with this prospect, not the least of which is
that Le Pen, in sharp distinction to so many of his predecessors on the far
right, does not profess
to
be against the Republic at all . On the contrary, he
and his cohorts put their hands on their hearts and swear that their deepest
concern is to save the constitutional order and traditional republican values –
not to forget French culture, history, cuisine, and whatnot - fj-om the hordes
of North Africans and other foreigners that have in recent years, through
negligence or evil design, been allowed to flood the country.
Now in point of fact the French have invested enormous effort over
many generations in centralizing and unifYing (first politically and then cultur–
ally) a country as diverse in its ethnic make-up as any in Europe. This has
not gone without arousing and even nurturing a certain xenophobia, but it
shou ld not be confused with what we call racism, which also exists here, to be
sure, but no more viru lently than, for instance, in the United States. In delib–
erately choosing to do so, it seems to me, the anti-Le Pen forces are playing
