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2008

1968 and the Meaning of Democracy

Daniel J. Mahoney Assumption College, [email protected]

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Recommended Citation Mahoney, Daniel J. "1968 and the Meaning of Democracy." The Intercollegiate Review 43.2 (Fall 2008): 4-13. https://home.isi.org/1968-and-meaning-democracy.

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1968 and the Meaning of Democracy

During a recent visit to , I had an was . Some of this is the self-in- opportunity to witness the ongoing French dulgence of a generation that is no longer commemorations of the “May events” that so young. Some of it is compensation by a shook that country to the core forty years Left that now reluctantly admits that revo- ago. Parisian bookstores prominently dis- lution, even of a “mimetic” kind, is no lon- played a massive literature on those events, ger a serious option for France and Europe. while magazines were fi lled with nostal- But the “commemorative” character of the gic evocations of the three or four weeks French response to the fortieth anniver- that are said to have changed the world. sary of the May events risks obscuring the Le Monde, the house journal of the estab- farcical dimensions of that eruption; more lishment Left, went so far as to reproduce, seriously, it risks obscuring 1968’s truly each day, the front page of the newspaper revolutionary and ideological dimensions on the parallel day in May 1968. Those as well. Lost in the celebration of 1968 as old front pages perfectly captured both the birth pangs of an unproblematic “post- the obligatory leftism and the indulgence modern democracy” is a concrete feel for toward “Youth” that dominated that ven- the nature of the event itself. erable paper’s response to the implosion of the French social and political order. One article by Maurice Duverger was A Global Phenomenon representative of the atmosphere of 1968: We often forget that “1968” was a truly that famous political scientist cheerfully global phenomenon. Americans easily re- seconded the movement’s call for call Berkeley and Columbia, and Europe- the abolition of exams, since examina- ans recall and the . But that tions took professors away from precious momentous year also saw unrest in Dakar, scientifi c research and at the same time Mexico City, Tokyo, and elsewhere: the reinforced the alienation of the young. In the giddy, carnival-like atmosphere of the Daniel J. Mahoney is Professor of Politics at time, this passed for serious analysis. Assumption College in Worcester, MA. He is the Today, a majority of the French (or at author, most recently, of Bertrand de Jouvenel: The Conservative Liberal and the Illusions of Mo- least of the French class)—and dernity (ISI Books) and editor (with Edward E. not all of them on the Left—look back Ericson, Jr.) of The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and nostalgically to the “turning point” that Essential Writings, 1947-2005 (ISI Books).

4 the intercollegiate review / Fall 2008 Daniel J. Mahoney / 1968 and the Meaning of Democracy rise of a revolutionary through- structures” in the years immediately before out the Western world, and in a different 1968. Everywhere an ideology of liberation key the quasi-miraculous “” challenged the old bourgeois ethos of self- in Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia. The command and self-control. “1968” was in latter gave undue hope to some on the Left some important respects an explosion in a that Leninist-Stalinist tyranny could be dramatic process already well under way transformed into “ with a human rather than the unanticipated announce- face.” ment of a new world. There were both general and particu- lar causes at work. “1968” surely had deep roots in cultural and social developments May 1968 that were in the process of transforming Despite these major social and cultur- the entire Western world. After the Second al transformations, nothing in France Vatican Council (1962-1965), for example, seemed particularly out of the ordinary on the Roman Catholic Church suffered the eve of May 1968.1 No one anticipated from self-infl icted wounds. That hoary that ongoing disputes about the organiza- institution transformed itself seemingly tion of the French university system would overnight from an authoritative bastion give rise to momentous social and politi- of traditional wisdom to a church in appar- ent freefall. Its “pro- gressivist” elements did not hesitate “to kneel before the world,” cel- ebrating socialism and , secular hu- manitarianism, and every “democratic” de- velopment in society at large. In America, the moral promise of the , Paris, May 1968: violence at the carnival rooted in an appeal to American principles of and equal- cal upheavals. Unrest at the University of ity bolstered by biblical religion, were co- Nanterre, fueled by the activism of anar- opted by the movement and chist revolutionaries led by Daniel Cohn- other manifestations of identity politics. Bendit, soon spread to the Sorbonne. In The Women’s Liberation movement and the days after May 3, that august institu- the recently manufactured birth control tion was more or less commandeered by pill (it was introduced in France in 1967) student radicals. clashed with conspired, for better or worse, to sever sex- police even as they—and sympathetic uality from a natural order and individual professors—“contested” the traditional liberty from its larger familial and social structures of state and society. Student contexts. In France, social institutions as protesters combined violence with a festive diverse as the Church and the Boy Scouts atmosphere celebrating their emancipation scrambled to adopt less hierarchical “power from traditional educational obligations

the intercollegiate review / Fall 2008 5 Daniel J. Mahoney / 1968 and the Meaning of Democracy and social and cultural restraints. In the It took another couple of weeks (and three face of this rapidly deteriorating situation “nights of the barricades”) for order to (and of public opinion’s remarkable indul- be restored to the Sorbonne and the Left gence toward the student “revolutionar- Bank. In the elections at the end of June, ies”), the government of Prime Minister the Gaullists for the fi rst time won an ab- Pompidou began to lose nerve. solute majority in the National Assembly. The initial student phase of the May Things had come full circle. events was followed by a nation-wide gen- We have noted that revolutionaries of eral strike (of up to ten million workers) the Left (Trotskyites and Maoists of vari- that lasted two weeks and shut down the ous stripes) played a major role in radical- economic life of the country. This second, izing the student movement. These sub- “economic” phase of the crisis was followed terranean revolutionary “groupuscules” by a “political phase” that lasted from outmaneuvered the Communist Party and May 27 until . For the fi rst time, it claimed to speak for the young as a whole. looked like the strong, self-respecting con- Some of these militants (André Glucks- stitutional order inaugurated by Charles mann, Bernard-Henri Lévy, and the other de Gaulle in 1958 might collapse under the “new philosophers” of media fame come to combined assaults of a student revolution, mind) later broke with revolutionary ide- a , and the machinations of ology and became vocal defenders of “the leftist political forces. A takeover by the rights of man.” These soixante-huitards Communist Party and other “popular” (’68ers) now tend to read their own in- forces became a real possibility for the fi rst tellectual and political trajectory into the time. It was only on May 30 that France nature of the event itself. They remain began to step back from the abyss. partisans of 1968 even in their new cen- After initial hesitations—and a lacklus- trist or even conservative incarnations. ter television address on May 24—Presi- But in truth there is an element of bad dent de Gaulle seized the initiative with a faith and wishful thinking informing the truly decisive radio address to the nation “libertarian” reading of 1968. The “liber- on May 30, 1968.2 He announced his de- tarianism” of 1968 directed nearly all its cision to dissolve the National Assembly anti-authoritarian ire at bourgeois society and to call for elections. He denounced and was remarkably indulgent toward the the “intimidation, intoxication, and tyr- totalitarianism of the Left. The “Marxist anny” exercised by various revolutionary consensus” so abundantly on display that groups as well as the danger posed by a year did not at the time refl ect the slightest “party which is a totalitarian enterprise.” clarity about the real nature of communist He lamented the fact that as a result of this totalitarianism. That was to come later, intimidation teachers were prevented from under the impact of Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag teaching, students from studying, and Archipelago, a work that had a much more workers from working. And he reassured dramatic impact in France than anywhere the French people that “the Republic will else in the Western world. not abdicate.” Hundreds of thousands of citizens responded to de Gaulle’s radio ad- dress by descending on the Champs Ély- Aron’s Witness sées for a massive rally in support of the In retrospect, it is easy to forget the mas- Republic. The tide had now turned. The sive abdication of good sense by so many general strike began to run out of steam. who ought to have known better during

6 the intercollegiate review / Fall 2008 Daniel J. Mahoney / 1968 and the Meaning of Democracy the course of the May events. The great after do not want to feel that they were exception was the French political phi- caught up in what I persist in calling losopher, sociologist, and journalist Ray- collective madness. They do not accept mond Aron. His columns in Le Figaro and that they are out of their minds.5 his lively, eloquent, and insightful book La revolution introuvable (The Elusive Revo- Aron had long been a critic of the lution) were beacons of clarity and civic over-centralized and overcrowded French courage in the midst of the “revolutionary university system and had even left the psychodrama” (as he pointedly called it at Sorbonne “in disgust,” as he put it, some the time).3 Aron was the fi rst to expose the months before May ’68. And while he re- “imitative” character of students and intel- spected General de Gaulle as an authen- lectuals play-acting at revolution, risking tically great man, he also freely acknowl- the destruction of bourgeois society and edged the limits of Gaullist hauteur, the the liberal university with little or noth- quasi-monarchical style that had set the ing constructive to offer in their place. He tone for the French Fifth Republic. He recalled Flaubert’s and Tocqueville’s pow- was also critical of the civil service authori- erful critiques of the revolution of 1848 tarianism of the Fifth Republic’s govern- (where a similar “literary politics” guid- ing class and of the quasi-neutralist bent ed the pseudo-Jacobins of that time) to of French foreign policy. highlight the French propensity to make In Aron’s view, the Fifth Republic was revolution in the place of a serious effort a liberal order that respected fundamen- to bring about reforms.4 A man of remark- tal political and personal liberties. But ably balanced judgment, Aron was angered its approach to governing was excessively by the inability and unwillingness of those aloof and oligarchic and thus insuffi - in positions of responsibility to resist the ciently “republican” in character. A neces- delirium of the time. In The Elusive Revo- sary strengthening of executive authority lution he eloquently defends his refusal to had led to an excessive depoliticization “take too seriously” the various actors in of French society. Still, if Aron could not the “revolutionary comedy”: simply accept the Gaullist vision of France he personally felt “closer to the Gaullists I refuse to salute our “admirable youth.” than to their opponents.” He was “deeply Too many grown men have done so. Bar- wounded by” 1968’s “radical negation of ricades which are symbolically effective patriotism and by the substitution of the seem to me to be neither an intellectual name of for that of a resis- nor a moral achievement. If young peo- tance hero [].”6 ple have some exalted memory of the Unfortunately, Aron’s voice was largely barricades, well and good. Why should absent from the French commemoration old people be obliged to counterfeit of the May events (although the distin- sentiments which they do not feel? If guished French quarterly Commentaire, the young denounce the brutality of the founded by Aron in 1978, published an C.R.S. (the French riot police) while in excerpt from La revolution introuvable and the same breath preaching the cult of two broadly Aronian refl ections on the violence themselves, the contradiction May events in its Summer 2008 issue). seems to me to be nothing more than a This relative absence of Aron’s perspective good technique of subversion. But men in the contemporary debate is problematic of my generation or of the generation for several reasons. Aron’s writings on 1968

the intercollegiate review / Fall 2008 7 Daniel J. Mahoney / 1968 and the Meaning of Democracy serve as a powerful corrective to the ongo- Soviet masters were broadly satisfi ed with ing French tendency to become “obsessed de Gaulle’s “independent” foreign policy. by their memories or the myths of their There was an implicit “pact” between the past” and to mistake “riots and disorder” Gaullists and the Communists that had in the streets of Paris “for a Promethean served to maintain order in France. But at exploit.” In addition, Aron’s writings on the time there was no guarantee that that 1968 make abundantly clear what was at pact would hold. And, in fact, after May stake in the fi nal “revolutionary” days of 27, the pact had dangerously frayed. The May before de Gaulle’s May 30 radio ad- Communists, stung by the opposition of dress awoke the good sense of France’s si- their own rank-and-fi le union members lent majority. to the Grenelle accords (dramatic conces- There were only two plausible political sions offered by the Pompidou government alternatives to the Fifth Republic. The fi rst to put an end to the general strike), and by was the rule of a “totalitarian enterprise,” revolutionary agitation on the ultra-Left, the Communist Party, which had been were increasingly prepared to cross the driven by the power vacuum at the end of Rubicon—to engage in real revolutionary May to call for a “popular government” (a action. De Gaulle was not being dema- government of the Left, dominated by the gogic in his speech to the nation on May Communist Party). The second possibil- 30: he genuinely feared that a Commu- ity was the establishment of a Sixth French nist takeover was a distinct possibility in Republic headed by an offi cial of the non- France. On the eve of the May 30 address, communist Left such as François Mitter- such anti-communist stalwarts (and critics rand or Pierre Mendès-France. Such a re- of May ’68) as Aron, Annie Kriegel, and public would be the product of lawlessness Alain Besançon seriously contemplated the and would be “truly unworthy” of a self- possibility of going into exile if everything respecting people and nation. As we have was indeed lost. Elegiac French accounts seen, Aron was ambivalent about the es- of 1968 as a legitimate “democratic” pro- tablished political regime in France. Yet he test against Gaullist authoritarianism and vigorously supported the continuity of the the stifl ing conformities of a hierarchical legal government. The Gaullist republic social order therefore grossly obscure the “was based on universal suffrage” and did political stakes of the May events. “1968” not violate “fundamental liberties.”7 All of was much more than an “eruption of the the available political alternatives—gener- social” as so many analysts suggest today. alized lawlessness, communist despotism, In May 1968 a “revolutionary psycho- or a power play by the opposition—were drama”—a seemingly harmless talkfest— much less acceptable. brought France, and France alone in the One can continue this sort of analysis. Western world, perilously close to a genu- The distinguished French historian Alain ine revolutionary confl agration. Besançon has written a masterful new memoir on May ’68 that appeared in the aforementioned Summer 2008 issue of The Thought of ’68 Commentaire.8 As Besançon observes, the Besançon has perceptively noted the yawn- Communist Party did not really want rev- ing gap between the heady language in olution. In part it feared the abyss opened which the actors of 1968 expressed them- up by a truly revolutionary situation; in selves and the “uniformity” of that event’s part the and its consequences. Understanding that gap is

8 the intercollegiate review / Fall 2008 Daniel J. Mahoney / 1968 and the Meaning of Democracy crucial to deciphering the “mystery” and Many higher have an in- “ambiguity” of 1968. The May events did credible scorn for facts. The formula not have a single or uniform profi le. The “there are no facts” is much acclaimed remarkably juvenile slogans—“Demand in Parisian circles. Of course, I am the impossible,” “It is forbidden to forbid,” aware that in a sense this formula is “Take your desires for realities”—in them- philosophically true. There are no facts selves are without any serious intellectual which have not been construed from interest or content. They are, however, documents by an historian. I am aware revealing popular expressions of a deep- of this kind of consideration—after all, seated antinomianism connected to the I began my career as a philosopher by thought underlying 1968. making speculations of this kind. But To the extent that the movement had a when all is said and done at times I am coherent ideological profi le it can be found tempted to...state that every society is in the conjunction of the philosophy cur- subject to the constraints of fact—the rent in France in the —“structural- need for production, for organization, ist,” Byzantine, obscure—with a diffuse for technical hierarchy, the need for “leftist” ideology that paid homage to techno-bureaucracy and so on. French Mao, Trotsky, and Castro. This ideology intellectuals are so subtle that they end had its “hard” core in the revolutionary up by forgetting the obvious.10 “groupuscules” mentioned above, which played a major role in radicalizing events In a famous book that has given rise in both the universities and the factories. to endless polemics, La pensée de 68,11 the This ideology’s “soft” core was anti-au- French philosophers Luc Ferry and Alain thoritarian and anti-hierarchical, what Renault analyzed “the thought of ’68,” the might broadly be called “left-libertarian” anti-humanist philosophical currents that in orientation. In both its soft and hard preceded, informed, and were given new manifestations, the radicals of 1968 evoked life by the revolutionary spectacle of that a revolutionary alternative to bourgeois so- year. Some of Ferry and Renault’s critics ciety that somehow would not culminate have vociferously denied that thinkers such in Soviet-style bureaucratic despotism (by as Foucault, Derrida, and Lacan had much now, the Soviet Union seemed hopelessly of a “causal” role in the May events. Their “petrifi ed” to them). writings were too abstract to infl uence a The partisans of 1968 were mesmerized broader public and some of them (Foucault by the vision of “” in an in particular) were initially skeptical of the industrial society and appealed to “partici- students and their motives. But all of this pation” (“autogestion”) as the only legitimate is beside the point. Ferry and Renault did governing principle within every educa- not claim that “anti-humanism” or sophis- tional, social, economic, and political in- ticated Parisian nihilism caused the May stitution.9 Authority as such was identifi ed events. They made the more limited and with domination and repression. Of course, plausible claim that the French philosophy this overlooked elementary social realities of the 1960s created an atmosphere that and necessities. Aron nicely highlights the nourished the spirit of ’68 and informed “scorn for facts,” for elementary social reali- the actions of many of its key players. In ties, that underlay the radically egalitarian important respects, Ferry and Renault were vision of the Parisian intellectuals: merely developing an insight that Aron had already highlighted in The Elusive Revolu-

the intercollegiate review / Fall 2008 9 Daniel J. Mahoney / 1968 and the Meaning of Democracy tion (they cite him generously at a crucial action, the cult of the cultural revolu- moment in their book). tion, spread in various forms. Sartre and As Aron noted in the midst of the Dialectical Reason, the groupe en fusion, events, Parisian intellectuals (with a few the revolutionary mob, had taken their notable exceptions) succumbed to nihilism revenge on the structure of society.12 of a particularly crude variety when they confused their “critical function” with an The intellectuals discussed by Aron “absolute condemnation of society.” They showed little regard for the fragility of practiced—even perfected—the “literary civilized order. They celebrated every as- politics” of the revolution of 1848 that had sault on established authority as a victory been condemned by Tocqueville in his Rec- for personal freedom and authenticity. ollections. Too many preached or tolerated One of the defi ning traits of the New “the cult of pure violence” with no thought Left everywhere was its confl ation of liber- of an alternative society except a vague vi- ty with “liberation” and its willful refusal sion of a radiant future without hierarchy to distinguish authority from authoritari- or vertical structures of authority. At the anism. Nor was this a passing phase. In the same time, the same fi gures showed lim- years after the May events, as Roger Kim- itless indulgence (and fascination) toward ball and among others have murderous tyrants in far-off lands about documented, “the thought of ’68” became which they knew little or nothing. the offi cial philosophy of the humanities Forsaking the Stalinism of old, Parisian in universities throughout the Western intellectuals succumbed to a gauchisme world. The scientism of the structuralists tinged by the fashionable intellectual ni- gave way to radical social constructivism hilism of the day. And in the midst of the and intemperate efforts to subvert—to crisis, the “cult of action” associated with “deconstruct”—traditional wisdom and the existentialist-cum-Marxist Jean-Paul established social institutions. Egalitarian Sartre, made a (temporary) comeback on moralism coexisted with a fanatical repu- the streets of Paris. Aron writes: diation of the idea of Truth, with a dog- matic insistence that morality and justice The god of the intellectuals of the six- have no other supports than the linguis- ties was no longer the Sartre who had tic categories and cultural assumptions of dominated the post-war period, but a a contingent social order. The academic mixture of Lévi-Strauss, Foucault, Al- partisans of “deconstruction” give no more thusser and Lacan. All passed for struc- thought than their forebears in France to turalists, although they were structural- the effects of such easy-going nihilism ists in different ways. The most refi ned on the capacity of free men and women of the intelligentsia watched Godard’s to live together in a spirit of responsibil- fi lms, read Lacan without understand- ity and mutual respect. Without some sort ing him, and swore by the scientifi city of of grounding, “equality” and “justice” be- Althusser and acclaimed Lévi-Strauss’s come will-o’-the-wisps, ideological slogans structuralism. Oddly, some of these to express contempt for a reality that does avant-garde intellectuals claimed to be not live up to the languid dreams of demi- scientifi c with respect to ethnology or intellectuals. economics, but Maoist when it came to action. During the May period the scientifi city disappeared and the cult of

10 the intercollegiate review / Fall 2008 Daniel J. Mahoney / 1968 and the Meaning of Democracy

“Social” Consequences of 1968 ues to transform and to undermine every If the quasi-revolutionaries of ’68 failed authoritative institution. Everything, in- to replace the existing political order in cluding truth itself, must bow before the France, they were far more successful on tribunal of autonomy and consent. the “social” plane. It is a mistake to deny The most convincing interpretations altogether the real benefi ts that accompa- of May ’68 bring together Aron’s political nied this upheaval. The democratization perspective with a broadly Tocquevillian of mores, the weakening of heavy-hand- appreciation for the ongoing effects of the ed “paternalist” authority in the family, modern “democratic revolution.” At the Church, and political order, the growing time of the May eruption Aron hesitated to demands for genuine consultation between endorse André Malraux’s interpretation of it employers and employees and rulers and as entailing the “end of a civilization.” This the ruled: all these did serve to revitalize kind of analysis seemed unduly apocalyp- the democratic energies of modern soci- tic to him. Ten years later, however, in his ety. These developments, legitimate within In Defense of Decadent Europe, Aron freely limits as a corrective to the rigidities of a spoke of the May events as inaugurating a traditional social order, were, however, well “crisis of civilization,” a systematic assault underway before 1968. With the explosions on all those authoritative institutions (e.g. of May they took on a strikingly destruc- the Church, the army, the university) that tive cast. As Chantal Delsol has pointed were necessary to sustain a free and civilized out, along with the (qualifi ed) benefi ts that human order. But rather than seeing May fl owed from the May events came excesses ’68 as the founding moment of authentic of every kind. New ideologies were com- democracy, Aron saw it as a profound “cor- mitted “to effac[ing] from the earth all the ruption” of the democratic principle. authority of the old societies, with the goal This pregnant line of argument has of installing their own.”13 This new authori- been developed by Dominique Schnap- tarianism was more illiberal than anything per, the distinguished French sociologist found in the old order since it showed limit- and member of the French Constitution- less contempt for the habits, practices, and al Court (who is also Raymond Aron’s judgments that had long served to support daughter). She writes suggestively about civilized human existence. a “philosophy of in-distinction” that has Alain Besançon also locates the deepest become widespread in the Western demo- meaning of 1968 in a broadly Tocquevil- cratic world.14 The democratic principle of lian framework. Besançon acknowledges human and civic equality has been radi- that the May movement had elements of calized, as Tocqueville predicted, into a psychodrama. Some of its features were passion for equality that perceives “every indeed “accidental and insignifi cant.” But distinction...as discriminatory, every dif- its deepest meaning only became apparent ference as inegalitarian, every inequality as later. If the American and French revolu- inequitable.” The relations between civic tions installed democracy in the political equals which is at the heart of democratic realm, “’68 has extended the fi eld of de- political life becomes the unchallenged mocracy to the whole of the social order.” model for all human relations. Moreover, With a comment (and pathos) worthy of a laudable respect for the accomplishments Tocqueville, Besançon notes that “the rev- of different cultures has given way to an olution is not fi nished.” By this he means absolute relativism that denies the very that the “democratic revolution” contin- idea of universal moral judgments and a

the intercollegiate review / Fall 2008 11 Daniel J. Mahoney / 1968 and the Meaning of Democracy universal human nature. Such “extreme criticism of their moral authority refl ects equality,” as Montesquieu already called it one of the most salient features of that in Book 8 of The Spirit of the Laws, is a cor- event: it undermined the moral and in- ruption of democracy lurking at the heart tellectual continuity of Western civiliza- of the “democratic” eruption that charac- tion. The partisans of 1968 date the birth terized May 1968. of a European democracy worthy of the name—humanitarian, open, postnation- al, and postreligious—to the social up- The Revolution Continues heavals of the late 1960s. The “old West,” The problem confronting the West to- all the old worlds (as Charles Péguy might day is that this corruption or radicaliza- put it), whether Christian, republican, or tion of democracy is too often confused classically liberal, are relegated to a “cul- with democracy itself. In his magisterial pable past.” That past is suspect precisely Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy because it recognized the importance of Pierre Manent refers to democracy’s “im- other values than “the rights of man” and moderate friends,” who are also its worst exhibited a now unacceptable toleration of enemies. They are its enemies because wars, colonialism, social paternalism, and they undermine the distinctions neces- religious authoritarianism. At most, this sary to preserve democracy’s moral health older liberal and Christian West is given and political vigor. In France today, a new its limited due as the “prehistory” of a self- intellectual industry has arisen dedicated confi dent, humanitarian, global democra- to safeguarding the ideological legacy cy. More frequently, it is looked at warily of 1968. The partisans of “humanitarian as a model to be studiously avoided. democracy” vehemently denounce critics The contemporary West which 1968 of 1968 and its legacy as “reactionaries,” has bequeathed to us above all defi nes even as they deny there is any discernable itself by its adherence to “democratic val- “pensée de 68.” A recent book, for example, ues.” For a long time, however, the old and expresses venomous disdain for “la pensée new dispensations, political democracy anti-68” even as it tries to save Aron (al- and older moral traditions and affi rma- though only half-heartedly) for the camp tions, coexisted without too much (practi- of “progress”! The important thing, its cal) diffi culty. In response to the inhuman author tells us, is to recognize 1968 as a totalitarianisms of the Left and the Right “precious moment,” the founding moment that were the scourge of the twentieth cen- of a democracy that broke down authori- tury, churchmen discovered the virtues tarian mores, liberated social energies, and of liberal constitutionalism and political defended citizenship in its new meaning as liberals rediscovered the moral law at the “participation.”15 The old historicist appeal heart of Western civilization. Faced with to the camps of “progress” and “reaction” the totalitarian negation of constitutional- lives on. But now everything stands or ism, the moral law, and the very ideas of falls not with one’s judgment of the Soviet unchanging truth and common humanity, Union, the homeland of “socialism,” but liberals and conservatives rallied in sup- with one’s commitment to the memory— port of a West that was still able to draw and the “values”—of 1968. Somehow, I do upon the best of both the modern and the not see decisive progress. premodern traditions. 1968 shattered this The censorious response of the ideo- anti-totalitarian consensus and gave birth logical guardians of 1968 to the slightest to “postmodern democracy.”

12 the intercollegiate review / Fall 2008 Daniel J. Mahoney / 1968 and the Meaning of Democracy

The relentless assault on the principle (Paris: Gallimard, 2005), 605–748. I have of authority proceeds apace. This process cited the English translation of that work, is so regularized that we have ceased to The Elusive Revolution, that was released by Praeger in 1969. In a few places I have notice or appreciate its truly revolutionary modifi ed the translation. character. Our political orders are bereft 4. See Aron’s references to Flaubert’s Senti- of statesmanship, the family is a shell of its mental Education and Tocqueville’s Rec- former self, and infl uential currents within ollections in The Elusive Revolution, 11, the churches no longer know how to dif- 151–154, and 162. 5. The Elusive Revolution, 122. ferentiate between the sublime demands 6. Ibid., 140. of Christian charity and demagogic ap- 7. Ibid., xvi. peals to democratic humanitarianism. Eu- 8. Alain Besançon, “Souvenirs et réfl exions sur ropeans have increasingly severed a le- mai 68” in Commentaire, 31, no. 122 (été gitimate and salutary concern for human 2008): 507–520. rights from its political context, which is 9. “Participation” was also a central tenet of de Gaulle’s political philosophy. But the self-government within a territorial state French statesman understood this notion indebted to the broad traditions of civi- in a more traditional, “Christian Demo- lization. They desire what Pierre Manent cratic” manner. calls “pure democracy.” They increasingly 10. Aron, The Elusive Revolution, 110-111. defer to an “idea of democracy” which 11. Luc Ferry and Alain Renault, La pensée 68 (Paris: Gallimard, 1988). Gallimard reis- has no tolerance for the crucial histori- sued the book for the fortieth anniversary cal, cultural, and political prerequisites of of May 1968. democratic self-government. 1968 played a 12. The Elusive Revolution, 125. central role, as both cause and effect, in 13. See the illuminating conversation with this reduction of a capacious tradition of Chantal Delsol (“Le père chasse de sa mai- liberty to an idea of democracy committed son”) dated May 15, 2008, at www.liberte- politique.com. to a single principle: the maximization of 14. Dominique Schnapper, “Relativisme” in individual autonomy and consent. One of Commentaire 31, no. 121 (printemps 2008): the enduring lessons of May 1968, there- 126–130. fore, is surely that the “idea” of democ- 15. See Daniel Lindenberg’s Le rappel à l’ordre: racy is never suffi cient unto itself. As pure enquête sur les nouveaux réactionnaires (Paris: Seuil, 2002) and Serge Audier’s abstraction or ideology, democracy risks pseudo-Aronian La pensée anti-68: Essai becoming a deadly enemy of self-govern- sur les origines d’une restauration intellectu- ment and of human liberty and dignity, ellit (Paris: La Decouverte, 2008). properly understood.

Notes 1. On this point, see Raymond Aron, Think- ing Politically: A Liberal in the Age of Ide- ology (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1997), 207–211. For the chronology of the May events, I have drawn on Aron and a wide variety of other sources. 2. De Gaulle’s “Discours du 30 mai 1968” is widely available on the internet. 3. La revolution introuvable can be found in the best available anthology of Aron’s writ- ings, Penser la liberté, penser la démocratie

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