[lit-ideas] A political thought (continued)

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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