Makers of Mode 5. Jean-f Marxism

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Jean-Paul Sartre is probably everyone's identikit picture of a Left intellectual.

Philosopher, critic, novelist; playwright and political theorist, Sartre dominated French intellectual life. for over two decades; almost single-handedly, he invented a whole philosophical movement-existentialism-which swept through Europe in the post-war years.

In : 11960, now.. a convinced Marxist, Sartre published his Critique of Dialectical Reason, a massive contribution to Marxist theory which, whatever its glaring faults, reveals all his formidable originality.

Experience

Sartre's first political experience came with the Hrench recistance Second World War; but there is little evidence that he was particularly active, and his main response to the war can be found in his majot philosophical work Being and Nothingness (1943), the founding docur ment of existentialism. ' The philosophy of Being and Nothingness is almost unrelievedly tragic. Between human consciousness and the material world intervenes a fatal gap or 'nothingness': individuals strive for the self-completion of things, but their freedom lies in their inability to attain it.

Man, in a famous Sartrian phrase, is 'condemned to be free' thrown into an absurd, meaningless world where he must assume a crushing responsibility for all his action.

To act in accordance with anything but one's own authentic self-to pass responsibility for one's actions to God, the state, moral or political codes-is to be convicted of 'bad faith' Cancelled out But one individual's freedom tragically cancels. out another: human relationships are deathly power struggles, in which each tries to dominate the other as an object.

Being and Nothingness says nothing directly about the crisis of fascism and imperialism: but there can be no doubt that the tragic vision it projects belongs to a - disillusioned petty-bourgeois intelligentsia who convert an historical catastrophe into a metaphysical condition.

Existentialism was in part the philosophical death throes of the bourgeoisiethe final collapse of its grand rationalism, which detected order everywhere in the universe, into an agonised, nauseated vision of the isolated subject adrift in a purposeless world.

dramatisation of this con„dition).

Progressive features But existentialism must also be viewed dialectically. To dismiss it as mere petty-bourgeois decadence ignores its progressive features-its radical rejection of religious illusions, its scorn for the idea of a fixed 'human nature', its humanistic belief in the autonomy and responsibility.of mankind in making history.

The title 'existentialism' signifies a belief in 'existence' rather than essence': man has no given, unalterable essence to which he must be faithful, but is ceaselessly engaged in the historical project of producing, and transforming, his own existence.

It is above all by action that this is achieved: existentialism marks a break with the passive speculations of traditional bourgeois idealism, vehemently asserting the need for man to 'define' himself through active engagement with the world.

This view, developed by Sartre in Existentialism is a Humanism, ('1946) is still radically unhistorical, and so idealist.

It remains the dream of action of an historically impotent intelligensia, represented. by the protagonist of Sartre's impressive trilogy of novels Roads to Freedom. (1945-49). 'Freedom' , the obsessive theme of all Sartre's work, is still conceived of individualistically: it demands commitment, but commitment in an absurd world can only be arbitrary, without rational basis.

Heroism

It can thus easily degenerate into a form of romantic heroism, an academic fantasy of engagement.

Sartre's concern - for action, however, propelled him out of the study into an unholy alliande with resistance forces march 1944 Up to 1952 he had been severely critical of the Communist Party; the review he had launched in 1945, Les Temps Modernes, aimed to provide a 'humanistic' left alternative to Stalinist dogmatism and philistinism, and vitally contributed to the development of socialist cultural and intellectual work.

In 1952, however, appeared the infamous The Communists and Peace, which though still keeping the PCF at arm's length managed the impressive feat of apologising for the Nazi-Soviet pact, justifying Stalinism as historically necessary (even 'this bloodstained monster, Sartre writes, is a form of socialism), and asserting that the causes of the proletariat and the Soviet Union were 'indissolubly linked' Sartre's political dilemma was the classical one of the petty-bourgeois left' intel, lectual. Full commitment to Stalinist discipline was un-. thinkable, not least for a philosopher who treasured individual freedom above all, and who saw literature. as a supreme affirmation of individual autonomy.

Audience

But for a writer to write at all, he needed an audience; and since , that could no longer be the despicable bourgeoisie, it must be the working class.

But the working class were captivated by Stalinism; so the free-wheeling intellectual must embark on his fellow-travelling.

For their part, of course, the PCF welcomed the support, and could occasionally swallow the criticism, of such an apparently 'independent', august intellectual as Jean-Paul Sartre.

Sartre's courtship of the CP did not materialise in marriage. Revolted by the crushing of the Hungarian uprising, Sartre turned sharply against Stalinism, even though he had been silent on the 1953 Berlin insurrection and deeply ambiguous on Korea.

Maoism

In recent years he has been embroiled in the Maoist flirtations fashionable on the French intellectual 'left'; but in an interview a few months ago he announced that he no longer considered himself a Marxist.

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