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120 Neither Right nor Left
nism, and the other left-wing factions who had the greatest difficulty
coping with the intellectual crisis of socialism. Those who resisted best,
on the other hand, were the most orthodox elements, the absolute die
hards, because they had no willingness to venture. However, in the case
of De Man, it was not only the war that made him question Marxism
but also the German experience of the twenties: he felt that Marxism,
far from arresting the decline of the social-democratic movement, actu
ally encouraged it with its materialism!
Throughout the first thirty years of this century, the German Social
Democratic party played a crucial role in the history of European so
cialism. Its collapse and the breakdown of the Socialist International
shed a new light on the Marxist phenomenon. This distressing experi
ence widened still further the cracks of nonconformity that, even before
1914, had appeared on the polished surface of orthodoxy. De Man's the
oretical writings thus reflect a revision of the philosophical principles of
Marxism that went far beyond the experience of the war: the very es
sence of the system was questioned and not merely a given set of circum
stances. Immediately after the war, De Man took the trouble to note
down his reactions as he experienced them, producing a book of great
interest, although one should always be conscious of his state of mind
when he wrote it. He wrote the book in English, calling it The Remak
ing of a Mind. A more concise version appeared in French under the
title La Leon de la guerre.9
This book tells us that from that "tragic test" of an "ordeal by fire,"
the First World War, De Man learned one all-important lesson: the pro
letariat is not a revolutionary force and socialism is not an idea that can
change the world, for it is not one of those truths for which people are
willing to die. On the other hand, it must be recognized that millions of
human beings unflinchingly risked and sacrificed their lives not only for
the sake of the nation but also for other ideas of lesser importance. For
De Man, one essential fact overshadowed all the others: the laboring
masses in England, America, and France had consented to make far
greater sacrifices for ideals such as the autonomy and inviolability of
nations, justice in relations between states, and the self-government of
peoples than they had previously made when material class interests
had been at stake. From this he drew two major conclusions: that eco
nomic circumstances alone are not enough to explain every historical
development, and that socialism cannot be realized outside the frame
work of political democracy. He wrote, "I no longer believe that to
achieve socialism it is enough for us to appeal to the class interests of the
The Idealist Revision of Marxism 123
production. If there was any room for choice, it was only that of recog
nizing the inevitability of that evolution, but-and here is where, ac
cording to De Man, the "cunning of reason" comes in-this same prin
ciple of inevitability, operating according to iron laws, directs historical
progress toward a goal worthy of being pursued in itself: the abolition
of classes and an end of exploitation and oppression. This, then, is how
"the cunning of reason" operates: by means of material interests, power
struggles, and conflicts of interest, the ideal comes to pass through a
perfectly natural process. S l
Such, said De Man, was Marx's general intention. The father of sci
entific socialism had a moral end in view, and his doctrine was a bril
liant attempt to utilize to that end the efforts that capitalism had di
rected toward a material goal. In the heroic period of socialism, said De
Man, this was a fruitful and reasonable approach, quite simply because
"the motives of the combatants were in fact moral. Only fervent sup
porters of an eschatological ideal of justice then had the spirit of sacri
fice necessary for the slightest struggle for the most immediate material
goals." s2 That was why a spiritual end could be embodied in a material
means: for the socialist who fought on the barricades, who schemed, or
who made sacrifices or risked martyrdom simply by participating in the
struggle for political power, the ends and means were the same. It was
then both possible and logical to present socialism in the simple guise of
a struggle for class interests while being fully aware that this was only a
historical expedient.
Marxism, however, which "had counted on the cunning of reason,
itself became victim of the ruse of interest."S] De Man claimed that the
socialist movement, having grown into a mass movement directed by a
class of professionals and fragmented into national parties each defend
ing the interests of its own members, now entered a phase in which the
means increasingly became ends in themselves. He said that a spirit of
opportunism threatened to transform the socialist conquest of the in
. stitutions of bourgeois society into a conquest of socialism by those in
stitutions. This situation Marx could not have foreseen, just as he could
not have foreseen the embourgeoisement of the proletariat. He could
not have foreseen that, once it had reached maturity, Marxism would
give way to "opportunistic reformism and an adoption of bourgeois cul
ture," S4 any more than he could have known that his deterministic phi
losophy would serve the interests of a "bureaucratic conservatism" and
above all justify the resistance of the professional politicians to all ten
dencies of renewal within the movement.55 In the same way, said De
130 Neither Right nor Left
reactions: "Ideas are created by people and are not the result of a
parallelogram of social forces," said De Man.9 1 As his thought matured,
it developed in a direction commonly taken since the end of the nine
teenth century: toward a conception of socialism that involves no change
in social and economic relationships and aims not at revolution but at a
"fraternal society," a social order based on the "altruistic instincts" of
the "real man." 91
Indeed, the idea that "the concept of exploitation is ethical and not
economic" 93 played a major role in the development of the fascist phi
losophy both before and after the First World War. It underlay the nega
tion of the "mechanistic and materialistic conceptions that have been an
obstacle . . . to the ethical development" of the proletariat "and its sense
of solidarity." 94 De Man considered a doctrine that bases workers' soli
darity on class interests historically and psychologically indefensible
and even practically harmful.9s Class interests, he believed, "do not
create ethical motives," 96 and socialism cannot combat bourgeois ego
ism with labor materialism and hedonism.97
For, in the final analysis, socialism for De Man "is a faith. It is a pas
sion," 98 and not a science. ("Scientific socialism is as absurd as scientific
love." ) 99 Social science cannot predict the future, since it "has no need
to know it except insofar as concerns present activities." 100 For that rea
son-and here one seems to be reading a text by Sorel- "it is enough
that socialism should believe in its future." 101 One encounters here the
kind of reasoning found in Reflections on Violence: socialism, thought
De Man, cannot be mere collection of abstract ideas or a mere logical
deduction from the present state of the economy. Such a deduction, he
said, "would give it no image," whereas it is precisely the capacity to
provide an image that makes a socialist vision of the future conceiv
able. lol De Man was well aware that he was invoking the SoreHan notion
of a myth.IOl Just as the idea of a general strike was only a myth that
symbolized the collapse of the capitalist order, so, he maintained, the
basic notions of so-called "scientific" socialism-social revolution, the
dictatorship of the proletariat-were mere myths, symbols of belief,l04
which constituted, precisely, the very foundation of politics: the "masses'
need to believe." lOS
Sorel's revision of Marxism thus contained the seeds of the revision
undertaken a generation later by De Man. If one reads it carefully, one
finds that chapter 4 of Reflections on Violence, the central chapter of the
work, anticipates several ideas expressed by the Belgian writer.
Openly declaring his intentions, Sorel, indeed, was the first to at-
134 Neither Right nor Left .
here echoing the words of the thinkers of the beginning of the century.
"There is an emotional and affective current involved in the principle of
the formation of an idea," he said agaio.,09 Further 00, one seems to
hear the voice of Vacher de Lapouge, the social Darwinist who had also
been a socialist: "The moral consciousness," De Man wrote, "is an im
pulse of the subconscious. It is derived from a feeling of solidarity with
the species that is as deeply rooted in our physical organization as the
gregarious or maternal instinct in animals." 110
De Man, however, included in his analysis another idea, unknown to
the generation of 1890, namely, that the same experimental sciences that
prove the dependence of our spiritual life and the processes of the con
science on the instincts demonstrate that the most powerful forces in
man are his moral feelings. Thus, in the human subconscious is an ir
repressible need for consideration and self-respect. 111 De Man could
therefore claim that the findings of psychology allow us to conclude that
socialism has a truly scientific foundation. Psychology thus corrects,
complements, and sometimes, by divesting it of its material content,
even replaces Marxism. In psychology, De Man finally found a disci
pline that he could successfully oppose to historical materialism.
Psychology, said De Man, provides an entirely new conception of
man; it creates a veritable cultural and ideological revolution. The im
portance of Freud, he said, is comparable only to that of Marx, and the
point of contact between the new psychology and socialism can be seen
in the fact Uthat this psychology, with its individualization of man, has
at the same time overcome his materialization." 112 From Freud De Man
took the idea of the complex; from Adler he took two ideas, that of the
importance of human society for the creation of the values that man re
quires, and that of the significance of the sense of inferiority, III As he
wrote, "The chronic discontent of the working class ... is only one par
ticular aspect of a vast number of causes that bring about a social in
feriority complex... , If one states the problem in this way, one realizes
that the essential motivation of the labor movement is the sense of self
respect; or, to put the matter less prosaically, it is a question of dignity at
least as much as a question of interest." .. 4
Looking back some ten years later, De Man declared that in psychol
ogy he had discovered a discipline "that made the conscious ideal spring
from the subconscious motive force, the doctrine from the will, the aim
from movement, and the idea from suffering." IU Even if, as has been
argued, De Man's use of social psychology is ethically inspired,1I6 even if
it is his moral aspirations that lead him to make such an analysis and
136 Neither Right nor Leh
"the aim of our existence is not paradisiacal but heroic." 127 No fascist
ideologist has stated it better.
The idea of "joy in work" is important in De Man's thinking. For
him, the fact that in modern times the major processes of production
are in the hands of people who obtain no satisfaction from their work
constituted a grave danger to civilization.l28 He considered this lack of
satisfaction "a cause of discontent at least as important as the diminu
tion-problematic in any case-of their resources," 129 maintaining that
factors such as personal satisfaction, "human dignity," and "profes
sional capability" no are infinitely more important than those connected
with the ownership of the means of production or the distribution of
wealth. He gave psychological, affective, and emotional problems a
greater role than economic problems, and held that aesthetics play at
least as important a part in people's lives as economics. De Man's point
of view seems to imply that it may be possible, by satisfying the workers'
psychological requirements, to avoid having to tackle structural prob
lems inherent in the modem economy.
De Man also maintained that man's foremost aspiration is to express
in his work his most personal values. Thus, he claimed that all the social
problems of history "are but different aspects of the eternal social prob
lem that in the final analysis exceeds and epitomizes them all: how can
a human being find happiness not only through his work but in his
work?" 131 The full significance of this revision of Marxism is now clear:
.
it merges quite easily into the fascist view of things.
There were other elements in De Man's revisionism that lent them
selves even better to fascism. "The motive forces of the masses are essen
tially emotional," De Man wrote, taking up the old formula of Gustave
Le Bon.132 For that reason, the masses, like "Panurge's sheep," "will al
ways feel the need to run after a leader, who represents in their eyes all
that they would like to be." IJ3 This process of identifying with an ideal
self, he felt, is quite natural, in the same way as the social difference be
tween the leaders, with the status they necessarily have, and the masses
is natural. It is therefore a mere fiction that the leaders of a socialist
party, for instance, are simply representatives of the will of the mem
bers.134 It follows that any society, whatever its structure, and any orga
nization, needs leaders. A socialist society would not be different: it,
too, would have its hierarchy, its powerful figures and natural inequalities.
In a sense, De Man took up the tradition begun by Pareto, Mosca, and
Michels at the beginning of the century: like the founders of the social
138 Neither Right nor Left
De Man, Marxism was exactly what democracy had been for Maurras:
a "vapor."
A pronounced elitism was thus a major aspect of this revision of
Marxism. De Man himself detested the bourgeoisie: he declared that
the atmosphere of bourgeois society had "become unbreathable to
him," 145 but he knew that in some spheres-in the formation of taste,
for instance-there is generally no individual progress. "but a progress
through generations in the course of which one inherits culture like
property." 146 Alexis de Tocqueville might have spoken similarly, but then
the author of Democracy in America did not claim to be a socialist. It is
true that Michels also professed such ideas, as did Mosca and Pareto.
When such an elitism is superimposed on a more or less pronounced
negation of parliamentarianism and bourgeois values and on a con
tempt for a regime based on universal suffrage, there can be no doubt of
the result.
Further, De Man claimed that for a very long time the proletariat had
not lived in conditions resembling those of 1848. Today, organized in
syndicates and enjoying universal suffrage, compulsory education, and
an extensive social legislation, the workers, while permitting themselves
to be beguiled by the Marxist illusion, "would have many things to lose
by it that represent to them a part of the country." 147 First of ail, he said,
the workers had gained some influence in the state, and, still more im
portant, "their influence has become more and more identified with the
consolidation of the state itself." '48
De Man thought that it was in fact the role of the working class,
rather than the great industrial and financial monopolies, the stock ex
change, or the banks, to be the support of the state. Here the Belgian
socialist leader came once again to a conclusion of great significance:
"The more that socialism becomes the vehicle of the idea of the state,
the more it also becomes the vehicle of the idea of the nation that is em
bodied in the state." 149 Thus, the way was now clear for a new form of
socialism. This new conception of socialism could lead to social democ
racy or to some kind of parliamentary labor movement, or it could lead
to the position held by national socialism. This was all the more pos
sible because, as De Man insisted, in modern times "all the interests of
the workers are not necessarily opposed to those of the employers" : I SO
there is a solidarity of interests between workers and industrialists, and
the fate of both depends on the policies of their political and military
leaders, the international situation, and foreign competition. l S I On the
other hand, said De Man, to the degree that the working class "in-
140 Neither Right nor Left