JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

Existentialism53politics—which is however erroneous—it has become impossible to say so since thelast century. In these days to seek to re-establish, in any form whatsoever, a positionanterior to Marxism—I call that going back to radical-socialism.In so far as existentialism is engendering a will to revolution it ought, therefore, toundertake first of all a work of self-criticism. I do not think it will do this verycheerfully, but it must be done. It will have to undergo a crisis in the persons of thosewho advocate it—a dialectical crisis—if it is still to retain, in some sense, certainpositions not devoid of value which are held by some of its partisans. That seems tome all the more necessary because I have noted that some of them have been arguingfrom existentialism to social conclusions that are most disquieting, indeed obviouslyretrograde. One of them wrote, at the end of an analysis, that phenomenology couldperform a special social service today, by providing the petite-bourgeoisie with aphilosophy which would enable them to live and to become the vanguard of theinternational revolutionary movement. By this interpretation of conscientiousintentions, one could give the petite-bourgeoisie a philosophy corresponding to itsexistence, and it could become the advance guard of the world-revolutionary movement!I mention this as an example, and I could give you others of the same kind, showingthat a certain number of persons, who are moreover deeply committed, and findthemselves much drawn to the existential theme, are beginning to elaborate it intopolitical theories. But after all, and here I come back to what I said at the beginning,these are theories coloured with neo-liberalism, with neo-radical-socialism. That iscertainly a danger. What chiefly interests us is not any research into the dialecticalcoherence between all the different grounds touched upon by existentialism, but to seethe orientation of these themes. For little by little, perhaps unknown to their defenders,and undertaken as an enquiry, a theory, as an attitude, they do lead to something. Not,of course, to quietism; to talk of quietism in the present epoch would be a losing gameindeed, in fact an impossible one: but to something very like ‘attentism.’ 3 That may,perhaps, be not inconsistent with certain kinds of individual commitment; but it isinconsistent with any search for a commitment of collective value—especially of aprescriptive value. Why should existentialism not give any directions? In the name offreedom? But if this philosophy tends in the direction indicated by Sartre, it ought togive directives. It ought, in 1945, to tell us whether to join the U.D.S.R., 4 or theSocialist Party, the Communist Party or another: it ought to say whether it is on theside of the workers or on that of the petite-bourgeoisie.