500
PARTISAN REVIEW
France."
And yet, despite the new national harmony, Furet is ambivalent
about the new centrism which seems to indicate the depoliticization of a
country in which passionate political debate had been as common as
good wine. In
La
Republique
dll
centre,
Furet and Pierre Rosanvallon in
fact lament the decline of Gaul1ism as well as French communism, for the
old conflicts gave meaning to the debate over political ideas and the po–
litical future of France. Their disappearance leaves a void. The ideology
of the center is, at least for now, vague and nameless. The new France
has few political passions; instead, there is a taste for well-being and an
interest in the growth of the economy. The Revolution is over, and the
French have turned their attention from
liberte, ega lite,
and
Jratemite
to
prosperite.
However, underlying Furet's disenchantment with the depoliticiza–
tion of France is another fear. Furet and especially Rosanvallon suspect
that the new centrism is but a modern disguise for the old Rousseauian,
romantic myth of national unity. Consensus, they warn, still implies the
politics of exclusion. For Rosanvallon, the idea of consensus can be only
antidemocratic and a vehicle for exclusion and polarization. Indeed,
Furet argues that the rise of the Front National between 1981 and
1983
was a reaction to the Mauroy government's policy of excluding the
right. The longstanding desire or need of the French to experience (or
fantasize) their nation as mystically One rather than as democratically
plural may still undermine respect and tolerance for political debate and
comprol11lse.
The only consensus that should exist, Rosanvallon concludes, is an
agreement as to the
form
of government, not its political complexion.
Agreement on the system means that the system is no longer the source
of conflict but rather that it can be used to regulate conflict, that
political conflict may be acted out, according to rules, without violence,
and that the majority and an opposition respect each other and al–
ternately share power. The French Revolution will truly be over when
these shining ideas are fully appreciated around the globe.
SUSAN DUNN
