[lit-ideas] A political thought (continued)
- From: John McCreery <mccreery@xxxxxxx>
- To: democratsabroadjapan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx,DemsAbroad@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, expatdelegatesfordean@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2004 11:32:31 +0900
Here is another bit from Mark Lilla's Harpers review of Raymond Aron's
_Dawn of Universal History_ that seems particularly relevant to what is
going on around us.
========
Although Aron's political sympathies had always been with the
non-Marxist left, the fact that he had broken with Sartre and wrote for
the conservative paper _Le Figaro_ meant that, in those polarized
times, he was considered a man of the right. He surprised everyone,
therefore, when he published two pamphlets in the late fifties in which
he argued that France should abandon her North African colonies as soon
as possible. By that time the simmering Algerian War had divided French
opinion into two hostile camps: on the one side were those who saw
French honor at stake in its colonies and worried about the fate of the
pieds noirs, Frenchmen who had long since made their homes in Algeria;
on the other were those who viewed decolonization as a simple matter of
justice and self-determination and were repelled by the brutal means
used to fight the war.
As was typical of him, Aron avoided terms like "honor" and "justice,"
and began with a cool historical analysis of the course of European
colonialism and its unsustainability in the modern world. In an age of
global politics and economics, remaining in Algeria would have
necessitated either raising the standard of living in Alteria to that
of France or tolerating massive immigration, options Aron considered
economically impossible and culturally unwise. In an era ruled by
nationalist and egalitarian ideologies, however, keeping Algeria in a
dependent, servile state was equally untenable. Even if the Algerians,
in terms of a crudely economic "standard of living," would be worse off
after independence than they had been as colonial subjects, the fact
that they had come to see themselves as a nation deserving of
independence had to be acknowledged and respected. "It hardly matters
whether this nationalism is the expression of a real or imaginary
nation," he remarked. "Nationalism is a passion resolved to create the
entity it invokes." Nor did Aron flinch at the prospect that Arab
nationalism might take on a religious character, a possibility
exploited by the right and ignored by the left: "So long as the human
race is divided up into sovereign units, those units will need a
dynastic, religious, or national principle, and that principle,
whatever it is, may cause conflict and be condemned by those who know
better. Everything that unites individuals also divides groups against
one another." He then added a sentence that deserves to be pondered by
those involved in the current reconstruction of Iraq: "A state that
declines to be linked either to a religion or to an ideology is the
work of centuries, not of a decision by the United Nations or by some
imperial authority about to withdraw voluntarily or under compulsion."
=====
These are, of course, words that Americans eager for quick
solutions--idealists both left and right--will find hard to stomach.
Unfortunately, they may, it appears, be altogether valid. If so, we
have a long and messy struggle ahead of us, a struggle that will demand
every bit of imagination, will and courage we can muster--and not just
in Iraq.
John L. McCreery
International Vice Chair, Democrats Abroad
Tel 81-45-314-9324
Email mccreery@xxxxxxx
>>Life isn't fair. Democracy should be. <<
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