heiss93
5th August 2009, 05:23
Bourgeois academia attempt to declaw Sartre by saying he unfortunately supported Stalinism, like Heidegger supported Nazism, and thats just a black spot on him being on the wrong side of history. In fact his politics were the natural outgrowth of Existentialism. His version of Direct Democracy was a dialectical unity between Communism collectivism and Existentialist individualism. It is only when the material and social need of Communism is fulfilled that the existential questions of the realization of the individual's purpose and meaning in existence have any meaning.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/1972/compagnon.htm
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/1974/right-to-rebel.htm
After the Liberation, the PC completely changed its attitude towards me: Les Lettres Françaises attacked me, as well as Action (less violently, but more insidiously). I attribute this break to the fact that I was beginning to become known, particularly as the author of Being and Nothingness, which could only displease them. One of the leaders said to me at the time that I was putting a brake on the movement that was leading young intellectuals to the Party. This was a moment of real confusion: it was the era when I could draw conclusions from what I was taught by the Resistance which, as we all know, had turned increasingly to the left and which, at that very moment, was beginning to be dismantled by De Gaulle. As for me, I’d become a convinced socialist, but anti-hierarchical and libertarian, that is, for direct democracy. I knew full well that my objectives weren’t those of the PC, but I thought we could travel along the same road for a while. This abrupt break profoundly disconcerted me.
And then there was my review, Les Temps Modernes. It was not yet militant, but I sought to perfect different forms of inquiry there, permitting a demonstration that all social realities equally reflect, though at different levels, the structures of the societies that produce them and that, in this regard, a fait divers is as meaningful as an event that is, properly speaking, political in the sense it then had. Something I’d translate now with these words: everything is political, i.e., everything puts in question society in its entirety, and opens onto contestation. This was the starting point of Temps Modernes. Obviously, this presupposed the taking of a political position (but not in the sense of political parties, rather in the sense of in how we should orient our inquiries), and I’d given Merleau-Ponty complete freedom in the area of political formulation. He had taken the same position as that of many Frenchmen, which consisted of relying on the Socialist Party (PS), and even sometimes the MRP, which at that time was tripartiste, in order to effect a rapprochement with the Communists. For example, he thought that the Rights of Man in our bourgeois republic were abstract and empty, and he counted on the attraction that the PC exercised on the two other parties to force them to give this some kind of social content. Personally, I didn’t do much on the political level, but I approved him. This was the attitude of the review around ’45-’50. The result was that the Communists, though distrustful of Merleau-Ponty, treated him better than they treated me. But this type of rapprochement was tainted from the start, because it presupposed a tripartiste government. The first breach was made during the strike wave that brought about the resignation of the PC from the government. From this point on, back in opposition, the PCF hardened its positions, while the PS, through an opposite movement, became more or less the left of the right. And people like us, who thought we could contribute to reestablishing a bridge between the PC and the parties in the government found ourselves with out backsides between two chairs. Our position was untenable. Merleau-Ponty couldn’t conceive of extending his hand to the PC unless it had support to its right.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/1972/compagnon.htm
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/1974/right-to-rebel.htm
After the Liberation, the PC completely changed its attitude towards me: Les Lettres Françaises attacked me, as well as Action (less violently, but more insidiously). I attribute this break to the fact that I was beginning to become known, particularly as the author of Being and Nothingness, which could only displease them. One of the leaders said to me at the time that I was putting a brake on the movement that was leading young intellectuals to the Party. This was a moment of real confusion: it was the era when I could draw conclusions from what I was taught by the Resistance which, as we all know, had turned increasingly to the left and which, at that very moment, was beginning to be dismantled by De Gaulle. As for me, I’d become a convinced socialist, but anti-hierarchical and libertarian, that is, for direct democracy. I knew full well that my objectives weren’t those of the PC, but I thought we could travel along the same road for a while. This abrupt break profoundly disconcerted me.
And then there was my review, Les Temps Modernes. It was not yet militant, but I sought to perfect different forms of inquiry there, permitting a demonstration that all social realities equally reflect, though at different levels, the structures of the societies that produce them and that, in this regard, a fait divers is as meaningful as an event that is, properly speaking, political in the sense it then had. Something I’d translate now with these words: everything is political, i.e., everything puts in question society in its entirety, and opens onto contestation. This was the starting point of Temps Modernes. Obviously, this presupposed the taking of a political position (but not in the sense of political parties, rather in the sense of in how we should orient our inquiries), and I’d given Merleau-Ponty complete freedom in the area of political formulation. He had taken the same position as that of many Frenchmen, which consisted of relying on the Socialist Party (PS), and even sometimes the MRP, which at that time was tripartiste, in order to effect a rapprochement with the Communists. For example, he thought that the Rights of Man in our bourgeois republic were abstract and empty, and he counted on the attraction that the PC exercised on the two other parties to force them to give this some kind of social content. Personally, I didn’t do much on the political level, but I approved him. This was the attitude of the review around ’45-’50. The result was that the Communists, though distrustful of Merleau-Ponty, treated him better than they treated me. But this type of rapprochement was tainted from the start, because it presupposed a tripartiste government. The first breach was made during the strike wave that brought about the resignation of the PC from the government. From this point on, back in opposition, the PCF hardened its positions, while the PS, through an opposite movement, became more or less the left of the right. And people like us, who thought we could contribute to reestablishing a bridge between the PC and the parties in the government found ourselves with out backsides between two chairs. Our position was untenable. Merleau-Ponty couldn’t conceive of extending his hand to the PC unless it had support to its right.