fascism and individualism: the political thought of pierre drieu la rochelle

Southern Political Science Association

Fascism and Individualism: The Political Thought of Pierre Drieu La RochelleAuthor(s): William R. TuckerReviewed work(s):Source: The Journal of Politics, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Feb., 1965), pp. 153-177Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Southern Political Science AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2128005 .Accessed: 08/09/2012 17:27

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FASCISM AND INDIVIDUALISM: THE POLITICAL THOUGHT OF PIERRE DRIEU LA ROCHELLE*

WILLIAM R. TUCKER

Lamar State College of Technology

I N FRANCE THERE HAS rarely been a dearth of intellectuals who wrote brilliantly on any subject touching politics. While fascism

has not come to power in that country, she has produced writers who chose the fascist solution to France's difficulties during the inter- war period and who, in some cases, were active in the Collaboration movement during the German occupation. In their search for new values for man in the twentieth century, they participated in what now seems to have been a strange adventure ending abruptly with the military defeat of the fascist powers. While the passing of time has made of the Hitlers and the Doriots historical figures without the slightest positive accomplishment to their credit, fascist writers like Robert Brasillach and Pierre Drieu la Rochelle have survived the collapse of European fascism through their works. Partly as a result of scholarly inquiries, partly because of the revival of the Extreme Right in France and its self-interest in maintaining the intellectual tradition associated with it, these writers and others who participated in the same adventure are being rediscovered.' The revival of interest in their works is worth noting, for they managed to state, in a way the political leaders of their cause were incapable of doing, the moods and attitudes of some of those who were intellectual followers.

Since Drieu was the best known and, perhaps, the most distinguished personality among the French literary fascists during the crucial years of the Nazi regime, the attitudes behind his attraction to Nazi Germany as well as his disappointment with his own coun-

[ 153 ]

*I am grateful to the Lamar Research Center for the grant which made the research for this study possible.

'Brasillach's name is kept alive by a cult devoted to his memory, l'Associa- tion des Amis de Robert Brasillach, with headquarters in Lausanne. An attempt was made in 1960 by 'Claude Elsen, Dr. Jean-Paul Bonnafous, and Jean Bernier to found a similar organization on behalf of Drieu, but the opposition of the family to such an enterprise could not be overcome (com- munication from Claude Elsen, January 10, 1962).

154 THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS [Vol. 2 7

try are bound to assume major importance in any evaluation. His writings, however, transcend the circumstances of his own time, for what they seem to suggest is that the impulse behind fascism is not necessarily conformist and totalitarian, that it can stem from an individualist orientation with overtones of anarchism. That these implications were obscured by the propaganda and the performance of fascist regimes is evident; but that does not make them irrelevant. For despite the totalitarian reality of fascist systems, there were, no doubt, indeterminate numbers of men who were drawn to a fascist commitment by something like Drieu's heroic vision of the individual creating a new world.2

This probability is suggested by Drieu's attempts to explain fascism not from the point of view of the high priests of these systems but from the standpoint of the convert. It is this very capacity to view the fascist from the inside, to display his preoccupations and his purposes, that accounts for Drieu la Rochelle's relevance to political science. While literature is no substitute for scientific analysis, it can supplement the findings of science through insights that can only be gained subjectively.3

Born in Paris in January, 1893, to a family from Normandy, he passed from a childhood afflicted by parental conflict to the training ground for the French diplomatic service, the Ecole des Sciences Politiques. In spite of his brilliant promise he failed the final exami- nations because, he thought, of his non-conformist views. A seven- year period in military uniform followed. He fought in the Great War, participating in the campaigns of Charleroi, Champagne, the Dardanelles, and Verdun, and was wounded three times. In 1922, his reputation was established with his first major work, Mesure de la France. In his subsequent output of political essays, newspaper articles, and novels., he was always conscious of being a spokesman for the wartime generation and was invariably identified as such. Indeed, he re-entered civilian life with an intense expectation of seeing far-reaching changes in his own country and throughout the rest of Europe. The experiences in the trenches would be translated into

2See Philippe Meynier, Essai sur l'Id&alisme moderne (Paris-Limoges: Im- primerie Guillemot et Lamothe, 1957), pp. 90-92.

'Drieu himself commented, in an interview with Michel Dard ("Visites: M. Drieu la Rochelle," Action Franfaise, December 6, 1928, p. 5), "From every living work [of literature] a lesson in politics can be derived. I was going to say a pamphlet."

1965] POLITICAL THOUGHT OF LA ROCHELLE 155

the new golden age publicized by the political leaders during the war.4 In his search for evidence of the new spirit in the civilian world he was drawn successively to the Dadaists and the Surrealists. Still dissatisfied, and increasingly disenchanted, Drieu attempted to found a young conservative movement-and produced only a manifesto.5 Collaborating with Emmanuel Berl on the newspaper Les Derniers Jours in 1927, he placed his hopes in a militant, reformist capitalism; but then he turned to the "Young Turks" of Radicalism, Gaston Bergery, Pierre Dominique, and Bertrand de Jouvenel, seeing in these figures potential innovators in French politics. His discovery that action could not be expected from that quarter led him to an interest in socialism which endured; still, he was unable to see any hope in the parliamentary socialists. In 1934, when his pessimism had become oppressive, he declared himself a fascist and published a major political work, Socialisme jasciste. As a Parisian collaborator during the Occupation, Drieu accepted the responsibility of serving as editor of the distinguished Nouvelle Revue Franfaise in December, 1940. Aware of the approaching defeat of the Axis, he closed down the NRF in 1943, while continuing to publish in the newspaper Re'volution Nationale. In a state of uncontrollable despair and after two unsuccessful suicide attempts, Drieu succumbed to the third on March 15, 1945.6

'See Maurice Martin du Gard, Les Memorables (1924-1930), II, (Paris: Flammarion, 1960), p. 316.

'The manifesto was also published in Roger Giron and Robert de Saint- Jean, La Jeunesse litteraire devant la politique (Paris: Editions des Cahiers Libres, 1928), pp. 12-16. In it the "Young Right" was described as being (1) against dictatorship, (2) opposed to war, (3) anti-clerical, and (4) bourgeois.

'The major works on Drieu are: Pierre Andreu, Drieu: tgmoin et vision- naire (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1952); Pol Vandromme, Drieu la Rochelle (Paris: Editions Universitaires, 1958) ; Fred6ric J. Grover, Drieu la Rochelle and the Fiction of Testimony (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Cali- fornia Press, 1958), published in France as Drieu la Rochelle (Paris: Gal- limard, 1962); and Jean Mabire, Drieu parmi nous (Paris: Editions de la Table Ronde, 1963). Recent books relevant to the subject are: Michele Cotta, La Collaboration 1940-1944 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1964); Jean Plumyene and Raymond Lasierra, Les Fascismes franfais, 1923-1963 (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1963); and Maurice-Yvan Sicard (Saint-Paulien, pseud.), Histoire de collaboration (Paris: L'Esprit Nouveau, 1964). Pierre-Henri Simon's Proces du heros: Montherlant, Drieu la Rockelle, Jean Prevost (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1950) is valuable. Among the older studies mention should be made of Beatrice Corrigan's "Drieu La Rochelle: Study of a Collaborator," Universiky of Toronto Quarterly, XIV (January, 1945), pp. 199-205, and two essays, one


DRIEU AND THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION

Some of the French fascists passed directly from the Action franZaise movement of Charles Maurras to Hitlerism, but such was not the case with Drieu. Toward the end of his life he held that he had been a fascist since his demobilization, implying that he had emerged a fascist from the trenches. If that was the case, his fascism, born of his wartime emotions, was as subjective as it was utopian. It eventually was formulated in terms of an idealized Eu- ropeanism and a spiritualized socialism.7 Combining a passionate interest in politics with an artistic vision of a new age, he remained suspended between the two poles of attraction, never capable of identifying for long with anything that reminded him of the known and the stable but never able to satisfy his taste for radical innova- tion. His subjective search for values that transcended practical politics lifted him., to his mind at least, above classification in any traditional way. Even Franqois Mauriac, after describing Drieu as a Rightist, felt compelled to add, "I know that the expression is not exact." "Drieu," he suggested, "was rather to the center, not to the political center, but in the nervous center, in the magnetic center of the attractions and the temptations of a generation."8

Still, he had points of contact with political moods and ideas as well as personalities, and the major influences on his thought are discernible in spite of his claims to independence. His family back- ground was frankly bourgeois. But, as he explained, he was from a segment of the bourgeoisie recently transplanted from the provinces to the Parisian environment, with hardly any political experience and

by Paul Chauveau in his Caracteres (Paris: Editions des Cahiers Libres, 1933), the other by Raymond Aron in L'Homme contre les tyrans (Paris: Gallimard, 1946). Drieu is frequently memorialized in the press of the Extreme Right in France, as in the special issue devoted entirely to him, of Defense de I'Occident, Nos. 50-5 1, February-March, 1958; Maurice Martin du Gard, "Drieu et ses suicides," Ecrits de Paris, No. 86, December, 1951, pp. 56-70; Alfred Fabre- Luce, "Le tombeau de Drieu," ibid., No. 98, December, 1952 pp. 23-31; and Claude Elsen, "Drieu la Rochelle, temoin de notre temps," Rivarol, No. 411, November 27, 1958, pp. 8-9. Aspects of his political thought are dealt with by Paul Serant, Le Romantisme fasciste (Paris: Fasquelle, 1959), passim., and by Raoul Girardet, "Notes sur l'esprit d'un fascisme franqais, 1934-1939," Revue FranCaise de Science Politique, V. (July-September, 1955), pp. 529-546.

7In 1943 Drieu emphasized the continuity of his thought since 1917 in his preface to Chronique politique 1934-194'2 (Paris: Gallimard, 1943), p. 9.

8"Prisence de Drieu la Rochelle," Defense de l'Occident, No. 50-51, Febru- ary-March, 1958, p. 20.


addicted to vague and extremist opinions. In short, his immediate environment was that of the provincial "uprooted" described by Maurice Barres. Its spirit was that of latter-day Boulangism. Over- come by a vague feeling of malaise and unable to cope with the urban environment, this "world," by Drieu's admission, was domi- nated by the idea of decadence.9 There can be little doubt that Drieu's almost obsessive preoccupation with cultural decay was a projection of the existential anxieties of this milieu. His distaste for Parisian life, even while he tasted its pleasures, and the preference for the supposedly healthy mores of the countryside and the village were the attitudes of Barres.

There were still other affinities with Barres both as a thinker and as a personality. Drieu shared his pessimism bordering on nihilism.'0 Indeed, the conclusion that life is meaningless, that it becomes each day more absurd, could have come as readily from the pen of Drieu as from the great conservative writer from Lorraine. True enough, he wanted to believe, with Nietzsche, that life ought to be what each man wills it; but even this weak reed was eventually as unhelpful to Drieu, with his suicide, as it had been to the German master who, in the end, was confined to a lunatic asylum. Pessimism could not be overcome by either Drieu or Barr6s, although both approached politics as much for obsessional relief as for any other reason.' Nor were they ever capable of seeing themselves as anything but members of the bourgeoisie. This unshakable attachment to class origins was sufficient, in itself, to prevent a meaningful commitment to the Left.12

9"L'Idee de decadence" in Genave ou Moscou (Paris: Gallimard, 1928), p. 225.

"0See Henri Massis, Maurras et notre temps: entretiens et souvenirs (Paris: Plon, 1961), pp. 188-189.

11In 1927 Andre Gide commented on Drieu in his diary: "Met on the boulevard Drieu La Rochelle. ... All these young men are frightfully concerned with themselves. They never know how to get away from themselves. Barres was their very bad master; his teaching leads to despair, to boredom. It is to get away from this that many among them hurl themselves headlong into Catholicism, as he threw himself into politics. All this will be very severely judged twenty years from now." The Journals of AndrA Gide, trans. Justin O'Brien, II (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951), pp. 408-409.

"Drieu wrote in Socialisme fasciste (Paris: Gallimard, 1934), pp. 108-109: " . I am a petit-bourgeois and believe only in the petits-bourgeois. The kind

of petit-bourgeois descended from the minor nobility, the bourgeois of the free professions, the peasant, the artisan. But who likes neither the state em-


Indeed., Drieu's concern with his class led him to the conclusion that the proletariat as such had no real existence and no possibility whatever of independent action. Only insofar as the proletariat accepted bourgeois leadership could it make its mark in history. If will and energy could somehow be found, they would come from the bourgeoisie alone; and Drieu's career suggests that his political thought was one long effort to discover the means of energizing the individual members of his own class.

It was this quest for a revival of moral energy that placed him in the tradition of Sorel. As with the exponent of Syndicalism, Drieu's goal was a renewal of individual creativity and virile independence. Nothing short of a "new man" was needed for the regen- eration of a decaying civilization. While Drieu's preference was for the unlimited autonomous will rather than Sorel's general strike, he was nevertheless placing his faith too in a myth. Sorel's myth was essentially a means of lifting the proletariat above the morass of politics and opening up new vistas of creativity; but Drieu's was a rope offered to the bourgeoisie to help it climb out of the dark pit of political strife and put the course of history once more on its side. Since each vision was beyond precise definition and, more important, beyond politics as it is normally practiced, both writers were "outsiders," each in his own fashion.

Drieu's anti-democratic views bore a resemblance to those of the reactionary, monarchist leader Maurras. In at least one other respect Drieu shared a common concern with Maurras: an essentially aesthetic orientation. While Drieu did not write lyrical tributes to the statues of young men in museums, as Maurras did,13 he still could indulge himself in a relentless pursuit of physical beauty in his personal life and be driven to the brink of despair over the un- aesthetic appearance of his fellow countrymen. His pleasure in almost anything could be ruined by the perception of the slightest blemish.14 Nor was his vision of "young, conquering athletes build-

ployee nor the salaried worker, nor the factory worker when they have forgotten their concrete origins. Nothing has ever been accomplished without us." On Barres see Michael Curtis, Three Against the Republic: Sorel, Barres, and Maurras (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), p. 267.

'LOn Maurras's aestheticism see Edward R. Tannenbaum, The Action FranCaise: Die-Hard Reactionaries in Twentieth Century France (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1962), pp. 50-51.

"4Martin du Gard, Les Memorables, I, p. 176.


ing a new world,"''5 anything more than a conception of the future in aesthetic terms.

Drieu was close to Maurras's thinking when he commented that "The West is artistic and political-they are identical."'6 An artistic imagination can lay the groundwork for an intensely personal approach to politics, especially if no attempt is made to deal with ethical problems. And ethics was considered unimportant by both Drieu and Maurras, insofar as the philosophical tradition is concerned. Indeed, their neglect of ethics was as monumental as their lack of concern for economics. Thus, Drieu could no more admit the right of society to judge his personal positions or his actions than Maurras could accept his being tried on charges of intelligence with the enemy in 1945. Since the intellectual can be judged only by history, each remained convinced of the nobility of his motives. "I have got my feet dirty," Drieu wrote, "but my hands are clean."'>7 He saw himself even in the Collaboration movement as "one of those happy few . . . who were not there to collaborate, but in order not to be elsewhere, among the herd sweating with fear and hatred."']8 In his refusal to be judged he eventually asserted that it is the duty of the individual in the modern world to be anywhere but with the crowd. While this posture would place him not too far from the ideas of John Stuart Mill, it also revealed an inflexibility of mind and a disregard for social responsibility fashioned from the same cloth as Maurras's attitude of superiority.

Still, there were significant departures from these three dominant figures of the counter-revolution. While Drieu was closest in temperament, perhaps, to Barres, he could not accept the nationalism that was as much a part of his thought as conservatism. Drieu was unable to provide a psychological substructure for his thought as Sorel did, nor did he share the Syndicalist theorist's interest in history, besides having no faith in the proletariat.'9 But his differences with

"Andreu, Drieu, p. 139. 16Drieu, Journal (1944-1945) (Paris: Gallimard, 1951), p. 51. To Maurras,

"'Order in the state was akin to beauty in the arts," Curtis, Three Against the Republic, p. 121.

"7"Exorde" in Journal, p. 99. On the similar attitude displayed by Maurras and his followers, see Tannenbaum, Action FranCaise, pp. 250-251, 275.

"Journal, p. 83. "9On these aspects of Sorel's thought see Irving Louis Horwitz, Radicalismi

anzd the Revolt Against Reason (New York: The Humanities Press, 1961), pp. 90-163.


Maurras were especially striking, for he could never come to terms with Maurras's reactionary, royalist conservatism or with his integral nationalism.

DRIEU AND THE PARLIAMENTARY PARTIES

As a would-be revolutionary, Drieu had the deepest contempt for the bourgeois parties. The classical Right in France-the Moderates and other parliamentary groups advocating a free market economy- was to him the very symbol of decadent conservatism at its worst. The whole rationale of the republican Right, he thought, was the conservation of acquired economic privileges, and its concerns were exclusively materialistic. Indeed, French capitalism, under its direction, was as spiritually impoverished as its American counterpart.20 And, in his view, the free enterprise parties, cynically devoted to the self-interest of their clients, had long since arrived at an under- standing with the parliamentary Left for the division of the spoils offered by the political and economic system. As the system normally operated, the Moderates and their allies specialized in protecting fiscal fraud, while their opposite numbers were the perennial defenders of useless or lazy state employees.21 Thus, the classical Right emerged with no more credit in his eyes than the Left. True enough, he thought for a brief period in 1940, after the launching of the "National Revolution" under Petain, that at least the younger members of the traditional capitalist groups were now ready to par- ticipate in the building of a new order based on a rejection of materialism. But his hopes for the Vichy regime were quickly deflated, and his temporary benevolence toward the republican conservatives disappeared.22

The Radical Socialist Party was the oldest of the French parties and, from its center position, was prone constantly to oscillate between Left and Right, between conservatism and socialism. Drieu had no illusions about it; its only vocation, he thought, was the game of politics. Once the defenders of the petite bourgeoisie, it

20Geneve ou Moscou, p. 174. 2"Chronique politique, p. 18. The article was originally published in La

Lutte des Jeunes, April 22, 1934. 22Ne plus attendre (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1941), pp. 61, 86-89.


had long since become the party of total futility.23 Indeed, Radical spokesmen were too busy perorating on the gratuitous theme of France's mission in the world to approach the problem of rejuvenating France. As the traditional ballast in French governments, he held Radicalism responsible for the country's depopulation and for its being invaded by millions of foreigners, Jews, Arabs, negroes and Annamites.24 As early as 1926 he predicted the decline and eclipse of the Radical Party, comparable to that of the English Lib- erals and the German Centrists. Since self-styled center parties were destined to disappear, the Radical Party should frankly admit its secret affinity for the Moderates and openly join them in the defense of privilege.25

Too bourgeois to join the revolutionary Left, not believing in the reactionary Right's capacity for acting, and alienated from the status quo defended by the bourgeois parties, Drieu could only place his hope in a deliverer from within or without. It is true, of course, that he could have become apolitical, but this way out of the dilem- ma was not yet the fashion. The apolitical intellectual, in France at least, had to wait for the more complete and more pervasive disen- chantment with politics that appeared after World War II. Before this solution was quite possible Drieu and other intellectuals were to succumb to the fascist pretension of using violence to lift man above politics. It is no wonder that a student of the French Right has commented that "One has to be the victim of simplifications suggested by a [too] systematic mind to be able to confuse fascism and the Right."26 Drieu's intellectual battle was not, from his point of view at least, of the Right against the Left or of the Left against the Right, but one against senility, avarice, and hypocrisy wherever he found it.27

"8If Drieu saved his most violent language for the Radical Socialists it was perhaps because of his thesis that the party no longer had the will to repre- sent the petit-bourgeois point of view. His vitriolic description of Herriot (through the fictional character Chanteau in his novel Gilles [Paris: Gallimard, complete version, 1942]), is suggestive of this.

24Ibid., p. 394. 2"Gengve ou Moscou, pp. 249, 252. 26Rene Remond, "Droites classiques et droite romantique," Terre Humaine,

No. 6 (April, 1951), p. 67. 27Drieu, La Comedie de Charleroi (Paris: Gallimard, 1934), p. 97; Giles,

p. 390.


NATIONALISM AND EUROPEANISM

Drieu's repudiation of the system included a flanking attack on the Action francaise, for, to him, the reactionary movement was as much a part of the existing political pattern as were the parliamentary parties. Indeed, the Republic was indispensable to Maurras, for without it he would have no raison d'etre. Still, Drieu's differences with Maurras centered around specific problems concerning France's past, the dilemmas over foreign policy, and her future place in Eu- rope.

When Drieu began his own career as a writer Maurras's prestige was at its height. Indeed, his influence was so marked that the younger man felt the need to define his own thought with respect to that of the older. Drieu readily acknowledged both his admiration for the spirit of comradeship that characterized the Action fransaise and his awareness of the influence that Maurras had on his essay Mesure de la France.28 But he could go no further. Drieu accepted the results of the French Revolution., if not its liberal principles, and found the republic to be the form of state best suited to France. To be a monarchist was to be merely a reactionary hoping for the restoration of a dead past.29 Having no admiration for the France of Louis XIV, considered by Maurras to be that country's golden age, Drieu preferred the adventurous spirit of the Middle Ages to the classicism of the seventeenth century. For the real French tradition was not classicism, with its emphasis on form and proportion, in any case. It was, rather, the mystical spirit of the Crusades, in which France had furnished more participants than all the other European nations. And he could cite not only the Jacobins, precur- sors of fascism to Drieu,30 but Calvin and Napoleon as well. They were all among the greatest extremists in modern history, he thought. "There has been no great madness in human history in which the French have not voluptuously played their part and more than their part."'3L On these issues Drieu was at odds with the official doctrine of the Action francaise. But there was, above all, the practical con-

"Andreu, Drieu, p. 140. "Pierre Varillon and Henri Rambaud, Enque^te sur les ma'tres de la jeune

litt&rature (Paris: Librairie Bloud et Gay, 1923), pp. 69-70. "In L'Emancipation Nationale (July 18, 1936), p. 5; Chronique politique,

p. 66. "1Drieu, "Mesure et demesure de l'esprit fransais," Combat, July, 1937, n.p.


sideration that Maurras had more talent for editorializing than for action.

Until Drieu's public articulation of these differences, he was courted by the Action franqaise. Formal adherence in such cases was not necessarily required; a prominent young intellectual's nominal acknowledgement of Maurras as the master political thinker of the day, combined with not too independent a course, was often considered sufficient. His refusal led, not unexpectedly, to the familiar hostility with which the movement's spokesmen viewed such recalcitrance.32

The fundamental differences centered, however, around foreign policy, an area in which Maurras considered himself particularly infallible. To him, the national interest and the balance of power were the only conceivable cornerstones of French foreign policy. But what Drieu proposed was nothing less than the bypassing of nationalism and the creation of a European federation. On foreign policy Drieu and Maurras differed on method as well as substance. They were both critics of the Quai d'Orsay; but Maurras's "organi- zing empiricism," with its array of supporting evidence from the history of France, was rejected by Drieu in favor of demographic analysis and a belief in the need to overcome cultural decadence on a European scale. In brief, whatever the degree of attraction Drieu felt for integral nationalism during his youth., it was soon enough overcome for him to remain unaffiliated with the movement, its leader, and the bulk of its doctrine.33

"2See, for example, Brasillach's "Drieu La Rochelle ou le feu de paille," in his collection of critical essays, Portraits (Paris: Plon, 1935), pp. 227-238. Such young disciples of Maurras as Lucien Rebatet, Jean Azema, Dominique Sordet-and Brasillach-took a frankly fascist position in the late 1930's. But the "loyalist" wing of the Action franqaise never forgave Drieu for his independence. Note Maurras's comment: "I saw Drieu la Rochelle only once .. . .But we got nowhere. I read his book Mesure de la France . . . and I found in it a taste for paradox more than talent." Maurras to Henri Massis, June, 1951, in Maurras, Lettres de prison (Paris: 'Flammarion, 1958), p. 370. See also Massis's evaluation of Drieu in his Maurras, pp. 184-191.

33In Drieu's opinion, Maurras's movement had been well on the way before 1914 toward working out a new and significant synthesis of capitalism and syndicalism. But it had long since moved away from the spirit of the Cercle Proudhon and had become, after the first World War, nothing more than a refuge for all kinds of social debris in search of protection against the Red peril. Geneve ou Moscou, pp. 25-26. On the Cercle Proudhon see Pierre Andreu, "Fascisme 1913," Combat, February, 1936, n.p.; Tannenbaum, Action Fran,aise, pp. 191-193; Eugen Weber, Action Francaise: Royalism and Reac-

164 - THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS [Vol. 27

Even in the immediate post-war period, Drieu lashed out at the general euphoria that had settled over French opinion. To a country which appeared to be the dominant military and political force in Europe, he submitted unmistakable evidence of decline. France, he argued, with a population of thirty eight million, came fourth in Europe, after Germany, England, and Italy, whereas only a century before, the French had been the most numerous people in Europe. In the twentieth century, then, the "crime of France" (the title that he had wanted to give to Mesure de la France) was her failure to maintain her birth rate. Because of this failure, overpopulated Ger- many had succumbed in 1914 to what amounted to a French invita- tion to occupy French provinces that were being emptied of inhabi- tants. It was understandable, then, that underpopulated France could not stand up to the Central Powers unaided. But the inter- vention of non-European powers in the war had marked the begin- ning of a new era; for France, and the rest of Europe as well, was now squeezed between the two Anglo-Saxon empires and a Russian empire. Since the British Empire was already doomed to dissolution, the end result could only be increasing pressures on Europe from the United States and Russia.

That his analysis was not in the popular vein of the post-war years is apparent. And it was precisely during these years that French nationalists were urging a policy of strength, including the dismemberment of Germany and disregard of English, American, or Russian attitudes. To Maurras's "la France seule," Drieu retorted that no European nation alone, including France, could henceforth be strong enough to save itself from the expansionist drives of the new empires. Without European federation the continent would either devour itself in another war or be devoured. In any event, only the non-European empires would benefit.

Nationalism, to his mind, was an uncontrollable force driving Europe to war on the scale of 1914. Thus, he could argue in Geneve ou Moscou (1928) that a European Zollverein within ten years was a matter of life or death for Europe. Amidst the general state of disorganization of the continent a portion of Europe's

tion in Twentieth-Century France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962), pp. 75-76. It has been observed in this connection that fascism dreams of overthrow but that the Right in France wants only reassurance and stability. Rene Remond, La Droite en France de 1815 a nos jours (Paris: Aubier, 1954), p. 209.

1965] POLITICAL THOUGHT op LA ROCHELLE 165

strength was not being utilized. In the long run she would be forced to compensate for the loss of her colonies and the decline of her overseas markets by the rational arrangement of her interior market. "The Zollverein accomplished . . ., the European world consti- tuting an economic unit, American products will be thrown into the sea . . . , as a sign of rebellion against American economic imperialism."34 Furthermore, the threat of Russian imperialism would disappear if the European ruling classes would abandon their allegiance to the national state. He urged them to admit that the only alternative to domination by America-or by Russia-was an economic union guaranteed by political union.

But he was eventually driven to the conclusion that the European bourgeoisie could never bring themselves voluntarily to give up their national loyalties. By November, 1939, he believed that union could only be imposed "by others than those associated with Geneva, in another spirit, and by other means,"-a thinly veiled allusion to Nazi Germany.35 Then, with the German occupation a reality, he argued that in the light of so many missed opportunities between the wars there could be no federation without the hegemony of one nation.36 The real meaning of the succession of German military vic- tories, he hoped, was the expansion of National Socialism to the scope of a continental autarky.37 Only Germany had been far-sight- ed enough actively to; pursue the goal of European unification; it was evident that German domination of France and other coun- tries was the price which had to be paid for the organization of the continent. In any event there was no question now, nor had there been since the Great War, of France's following Maurras, with his hopes for a new age of French predominance in Europe.38 She could no longer freely choose her role, given the aspirations of the Great Powers-Germany, the United States, and Russia-toward domination on a continental scale. Thus, Drieu's assessment of France's position in 1940 was not far different from his views in 1922. The only new factor was his attitude toward Germany's un- expected bid for domination.

`4Gentve ou Moscou, p. 120; Martin du Gard, Les Me'morables, II, p. 374. 3"Originally in the Nouvelle Revue Francaise, November, 1939; republished

in Ne plus attendre, p. 17. "6lbid., p. 44. "Chronique politique, p. 371. "8"Maurras ou Geneve," La Nouvelle Revue Franqaise, LIV (February,

1940), pp. 243-246. See also his "Exorde," loc. cit., pp. 93-94.


FASCIST SOCIALISM

Drieu's analysis of France's power position was one long com- mentary on her external weakness. He was not even allowed the consolation of the argument that her superior civilization would triumph over mere numbers. For, to Drieu, French civilization was already in its death-throes. There existed, he believed, a crisis of the spirit caused by the onset of a generalized fatigue; and the consequence of fatigue was decadence. A civilization which fails to renew itself both physically and spiritually, which is not sufficiently virile and energetic, is already plunged into decadence. He was unable to accept Maurras's distinction between the pays lMgal and the pays r&l, for it meant that the rottenness of the regime should be considered apart from the society under it. Drieu's conviction was that no such separation existed since the corrupt political system was of a piece with an utterly decadent society.

To the Marxist view of an inexorable conflict between a dying capitalism and a rejuvenating socialism, ending in the inevitable victory of the proletariat,, Drieu opposed the thesis that capitalism and Marxist socialism were not antithetical at all. There was, in reality, no need to choose between them, since they were both in- volved in the degradation of modern man. Indeed, they were the two faces of one phenomenon-modern materialism. The whole world, before the appearance of Hitler at least, seemed to Drieu to be under the influence of Marx. Whether man lived under the private capitalism of the United States or the state capitalism of Russia -the two pacesetters of the twentieth century and, potentially, the two great protagonists in the capitalist-socialist conflict-his goal was the same: production for the sake of production. Lenin's Russia had at the outset been activated by a utopian dream, but Russia had plunged into the same collectivist, machine-oriented pattern as the United States. Similarly, capitalist societies were moving toward communism (i.e., toward a materialistic collectivism) in practice. In either case, social values were directed toward common rather than individual goals.39 And, Drieu observed, it mattered little whether the goals were determined by Lenin, Hugo Stinnes, or Henry Ford. For the result was that man, under these developments, was

"9Drieu, "La metamorphose du Capitalisme," La Revue Europiene (1928), p. 109.


increasingly lost among the intolerable mass-oriented abstractions of modern life and was well on the way toward losing his self-iden- tity.410

In fact, all the activities through which the individual had for- merly been able to maintain a sense of harmony and well-being within himself threatened to disappear from the earth. Even the most elementary function of man, reproduction, was being sapped by promiscuity.41 Urbanization and machine civilization were corrupt- ing morals and destroying the soul as well, he thought. Paris was inhabited by the exhausted and the degenerate, craze-ridden and vice-ridden; and the level of morality steadily declined.42 To the extent that the French had deserted their villages for cities they had become depersonalized, the rootless and empty survivors of a once- vigorous race.

The most appalling symptom of the slow agony of the individual in the modern world was the decay of aesthetics. The steady at- trition of man's creative capabilities was culminating in the religion of science. "Modern man is a frightful decadent," he wrote. "He has become scientific because he could no longer be an artist."43 Science is made for weaklings, and the results of science can only be commensurate with the capabilities of the originators. All that men are now capable of producing is ugly. Man as artist created beauty out of stone, but no splendor comes from cement. "For many years now," he concluded, "a beautiful building has not been constructed on the whole face of the earth."44 Even the physical appearance of his fellow countrymen gave evidence of decay: "these bent backs, these drooping shoulders, these bloated stomachs,, these thin thighs, these feeble faces."45 Beards, paunches, the anxious waiting for the aperitif, all symbolized the physical debility of a nation that was becoming little more than a vast assembly of weaklings and old men.46 For the first decade and a half after the armistice Drieu could see nothing but a void extending on into the future. "I believe

'0Drieu, Avec Doriot (Paris: Gallimard, 1937), p. 115. "Geneve ou Moscou, p. 209. Drieu maintained that man's main difficulties

in the modern world are of a sexual rather than a social nature. Andreu, Drieu, p. 119.

'2Varillon and Rambaud, Enquete, p. 65; Gilles, p. 262. 4"Ibid., p. 74. 44Quoted by Simon, Proces, pp. 131-132. 45 ocialisme fasciste, p. 111. I'Chronique politique, p. 53; Gilles, pp. 402-403.


in the decadence of the West," he wrote in 1927, "in the decadence of the planet."47

It was the rioting in Paris on February 6, 1934., interpreted by some at the time as being in the spirit of the Nazi revolution, that turned Drieu toward fascism as a political solution. He had seen Frenchmen in action and had been reminded of the heroism of the assaults on enemy positions during the war. Now he was certain that the downfall of the regime was only a matter of time. In 1936 Drieu saw in Jacques Doriot, renegade Communist turned fascist militant, a continuator of the spirit of February 6, and a leader who could restore the national energy. Drieu's thought now took on religious overtones. Fascism offered to a society that was already spiritually dead the possibility of a rebirth. The faith and the commitment could only come from individuals, but eventually a whole nation, even a continent, could be born again. Doriot was a leader, he suggested, at opposite poles from the corpulent intellectuals and com- placent Radicals of the parliamentary regime. He was, rather, "an athlete who embraces this debilitated body [of France] and who breathes into it his own bursting health."48 The Parti populaire francais, to Drieu's mind, was beckoning all the "spiritually dis- inherited" to make a total commitment in order to achieve salva- tion for themselves as individuals as well as for the future of the West. "Doriot," he wrote, "is going to reassure them with a single blow about the destiny of France, now slowly renewing herself, but who suddenly, purged of her dead weight and recharged, is going to erupt."49

But France did not choose to be embraced by Doriot and no eruption took place. Beset by growing doubts about French "pseudo- fascism," Drieu left the movement in November, 1938. And he was eventually driven to the conclusion that even Doriot ihad been nothing more than a Radical politician in disguise.50 Despite appearances, Drieu's allegiance to Doriot's cause had been more sympto- matic of desperation than of commitment. He apparently would have been willing to follow anyone who gave evidence of wanting to act.

'7Genave ou Moscou, p. 30. "Chronique politique, p. 54. "Avec Doriot, p. 90. "0"Exorde," loc. cit., p. 92; Andreu, Drieu, p. 277.


Much the same can be said about his collaborationist activities in support of Hitler. He saw in Hitler little more than an apostle of European unification and a reformer of the spirit through a new form of "socialism." As an intellectual fascist, Drieu had at best only a casual concern for the degree to which the realities of fascist regimes matched his own speculations. Indeed, he gave every indication of believing that they could not, in fact, do SO.51 Still, given his training in political science and his admiration for extremist prac- titioners of the political art, he should have given the closest scrutiny to the policies pursued by such leaders as Hitler. Even the term National Socialism should have given him pause; for Drieu was hardly a nationalist, certainly not a German nationalist; and while from 1934 on he openly advocated fascist "socialism," he appears not to have drawn any significant conclusions from Mussolini's career or from the fact that Hitler in that very year had turned on the left- wing elements in his own party and had only too obviously made his peace with German capitalism. Hitler's totalitarian national capitalism was not precisely the incarnation of Drieu's European and socialist fascism. But what Drieu was concerned with was a vision, subjective like all visions. Only in this light is his characterization of the corpulent Doriot as a "good athlete" comprehensible. Only through the smokescreen of his own intellectual construction could Drieu have seen socialism present in foreign fascist movements which, once in power, demonstrated a notable capacity for political opportunism by coming to terms with the very conservative and reactionary elements that he despised in his own country. Still, he had little interest in the socioeconomic substructure of politics. In this way he could still regard the new socialism as a spirit of revolt against the materialist world.

His argument was that under fascist socialism man would be left with his machines and his cities, but idealism would finally triumph over materialism. It would be a socialism in the spirit of Saint- Simon, Fourier, Cabet, and Proudhon. Marxism, he argued, had obscured these earlier socialist traditions, but they had undergone a brief revival before the first World War in the thought of Sorel and Pelloutier. The war had cut short the revival, but the earlier

51He wrote in 1934, "But am I finally committed [to fascism], I the intellectual? Indeed. Fascism as an inclination is one thing; but the particular and inevitably trite forms that fascism takes here and there, that is something else again." Socialisme fasciste, p. 235.


utopian traditions were still at hand for all those who were attempt- ing to escape from the fate that Marx had prescribed for them.52 The essence of this socialism lay not in the abstract rationalism of thought that had produced both Marxism and economic liberalism, but in the liberation of the creative will from all servitude. It was at the same time bourgeois and anti-capitalist. Drieu argued that ". . . the bourgeois should not believe that capitalism provides them with their raison d'etre. Lift capitalism from bourgeois shoulders- on which it weighs as heavily as on the shoulders of workers or peasants-and there remains men . . . . " Through utopian socialism man's oppressive subservience to machines would be abolish- ed and he could rediscover the countryside, the earth tilled by the peasantry, and fresh air. His spirit renewed, he could then consult his creative instincts in all their forms, including the cultivation of the arts.54 Thus, an aesthetically-oriented socialism would bring an end to man's alienation from the source of his inspiration and from the natural world. In practical terms, socialism so conceived meant the liberation of the petite bourgeoisie from its exclusively rentier mentality and its obsession with financial security.

He did not see the state as having any important role to play once socialism had been established. Just as he believed that nationalism was only an incidental aspect of fascism,55 to be used as a step- ping stone to Europeanism, he assumed that under fascist socialism the state would gradually weaken, becoming flexible and truly serv- iceable-a living thing rather than a corpse, in his phraseology.56 He gave no serious consideration to the possibility that the fascist

"2Ne plus attendre, p. 73; Drieu, "Journal 1945," in Difense de l'Occident, Nos. 50-51, February-March, 958, p. 149.

"3Avec Doriot, pp. 179-180. "4Notes pour comprendre, pp. 82-84. 55Chronique politique, pp. 317-321; Notes pour comprendre, pp. 163-164.

Drieu became aware of the nationalist content of fascism only toward the end. The fatal outcome, he believed, was the result of the nationalist wars under- taken by the fascist powers, wars which had interrupted their social develop- ment. Capitalist cadres, thought to be indispensable for the war effort, were retained, as were the military circles linked with the capitalist system. Fascism had allowed its enemies to survive during the war and was then killed off by them. Instead of suppressing them in blood, fascism had died from its own timidity. Hitler, he now realized, had never been able to see beyond the national concerns of Germany. "Notes sur l'Allemagne," Difense de l'Occident, Nos. 50-51, February-March, 1958, p. 150.

5'Socialisme fasciste, p. 106.


leader and his middle class coalition of artisans, small businessmen, peasants, and intellectuals, once in control of the state, might continue to find any number of reasons for maintaining or extending its power. In his thought, fascist socialism was to be the seedbed of "true, male liberalism,"57 with all the latitude for individualism that this term implies. "Kill off statism by making use of the state" was his prescription.58 While Marx and Engels could explain in dialectical terms the causes of the withering away of their proletar- ian state, Drieu could only suggest that once the individual had been restored to virile, joyful manhood, he would live on a plane of spiritual exaltation that would make the material cares that the state concerns itself with pale into insignificance. Since he believed that one of the major trends of the twentieth century was the abate- ment of the struggle of classes and interest groups, he seems to have assumed that fascist man would find in force and mysticism ade- quate tools for refashioning his world.59 Thus, to all appearances, the reign of Drieu's heroic individualists was little more than a reflection of the coming of Nietzsche's supermen.60

Drieu's concept of socialism was unsatisfactory as political theory not because it was utopian, but because he could never explain what ethical values would or ought to prevail. But this was inconsequen- tial from his point of view; for he believed that if the nineteenth century was an age of doctrines, the twentieth was exclusively an age of methods. The discovery of the most effective method for bringing about a complete reorientation of society was all that mattered. The fascist, to him, was by definition "a man who believes neither in ideas nor, by the same token, in doctrines."'61 Guided only by his subjective will, he could rise above his material environment. He was thereby able to lift himself above all fatality and subservience to supposedly inevitable historical processes.62 The will, implemented in terms of virility, courage, athletics, and action, could restore a sense of direction and self-mastery to the individual. Still, to say that the new man would recapture the enthusiasm of

"7Chronique politique, p. 38. "8Socialisme fasciste, p. 106. "9Notes pour comprendre, pp. 149-151. "0See Henry S. Kariel, "Nietzsche's Preface to Constitutionalism," The

Journal of Politics, XXV (May, 1963), p. 221. "1Notes pour comprendre, pp. 159-160. 62Ne plus attendre, p. 73.


such diverse types as the crusader, the buccaneer, and the American sportsman or gangster, gave some indication at least of what his behavioral pattern would be.63

The first requirement for passing into the new age, then, was the restoration of the body. "There exists before and apart from the economic problem a physical problem for man," he wrote.64 There were signs of change in this direction, he believed, as with those elements of French youth who were aware of the decadence of their environment and were taking to fresh air and sports in order to save themselves. The increasing popularity of athletics was, he thought, one of the main currents of the twentieth century and the fundamental fact separating the forces of rejuvenation from the forces of decadence.65 In short, Drieu had taken a tortuous intellectual journey only to reveal that athletics build character, lifting the practitioner out of the morass of apathy and sterile intellec- tualism. For once the body is reconditioned the soul can live once more. Thus, with body and soul reunited, action and thought are restored to a proper relationship. Man revitalized could aspire to be savior, artist, poet, musician, or hero and would reach the sum- mit of his possibilities.

CONCLUSION

Pol Vandromme has remarked that Drieu's thought commenced with facts but strayed off into a dream.66 That there was a dualism in his thought between reality and mysticism is clear. Given his artistic temperament, it was inevitable, perhaps, that the military defeat of Nazism, instead of confronting him with the physical and moral consequences of the regime and forcing him to make the realistic judgments that he had earlier been capable of, would only accentuate his search for the metaphysical ideal. Convinced that no hope was left for the West after the collapse of Nazism, he turned to Oriental philosophy, speculating on the soul in terms of Hindu mysticism.

Still, before reaching the stage of complete spirituality, he had not only marshaled statistics to buttress his arguments; he had

6"Ibid., pp. 158-160. "Chronique politique, p. 53. "5Notes pour comprendre, pp. 171-186. "6Drieu, p. 112.


speculated about problems that were of considerable social and political consequence. In particular, he gave voice to the fears of the independent "little man" who could see the shape of a future that he did not like looming on the horizon. Drieu was aware of the unsettling effect that the growth of bigness had on such individuals, just as he was aware of the important role that the petite bourgeoisie played in the rise of fascism in Germany and Italy.67 And it is possible that he expected some such overt class support for a fascist revolution in France. And yet in his writings Drieu gave not the slightest indication of having any capacity for sustained sociological analysis. While he used such terms as "elite" and "aristocracy," he seems not to have given the least attention to the writings of Pareto, Mosca, or Michels. Indeed, his speculations concerning the rebirth of European man were almost a model of the "soul-stuff" that Bentley disparaged.

In view of Drieu's bias against the world as it was, he would have allowed little in his utopia for sociologists-or economists- to analyze. The familiar scene of pressure groups, classes, parties, and even states., would have been, in his imagination, metamorpho- sized through fascism into a generalized anarchy in which the individual would have consulted only his own body and his own con- science. Despite his acute perception of the malaise that was stirring in the petite bourgeoisie, his conscious efforts, at least, seem to have been directed not so much toward the writing of a class doctrine as toward the simpler task of finding a method whereby the individual could leave the world while remaining in it. Thus, his interest in the petite bourgeoisie stemmed, apparently, only from his belief that this class had more individuals, like himself, who were uncon- taminated by the capitalist-Marxist spirit of the age than did any other class. This assumption was never subjected to any systematic investigation. Nor did his dream of athletes and poets bear any discernible relationship to French grocers, wine merchants, or artisans.

There was implicit in his vision of the new type of man something like Stirner's egoist who would assert his "right"; but in Drieu's aesthetic imagination, the physical hero would also serve as an inspiration to the artists inhabiting his utopia. "Each hero nourishes ten great artists," he wrote. He never made clear the

87"Notes sur I'Allemagne," loc. cit., p. 142.


meaning of the relationship between heroes and artists apart from the union of action and thought, but merely suggested toward the end that the hero would inspire the artist with his beauty.68

Such heroic and soulful figures might pursue their private ends under the inspiration of a visionary leader suggestive of Doriot or Hitler, and the state might continue a merely formal existence for a time; but as long as it did exist it would be a shell without any intervening social or economic layers separating the inner core, the savior and leader, from the people. Materialism would be eradicated, conflicts would be eliminated, leaving only the mystical interplay between the genius of the leader and the individuals under him. Both the leader and the led would allow no limits to their urge to self-fulfillment since, in Drieu's phrase, "Gods, like poets, need to live the blood of sacrifices."69

Nevertheless, Drieu did not believe in the permanence of this relationship between the man of genius and the creative follower. Taking himself as a model of the latter, he could write in 1934:

I shall work perhaps, no doubt I have always been working, for the establishment of a fascist regime in France, but I shall remain as unencumbered by it tomorrow as I was yesterday. Fate, having in- volved me as an intellectual with its conception, will separate me from it from the moment of its birth, from the first steps of the new regime in the world.70

And this independence was reaffirmed in 1942 in a statement that might have come from Alain: "I am not in power, I am never in power, my origins are not among those who are ever in power. I always arrange things so as to be on bad terms with those who are in power, even if they are on my side."'71

Drieu's temperament was that of the individualist who would have treasured his independence under any regime.72 It is doubt- ful that he could be identified as a totalitarian, as the term is ordi- narily used in political discourse. He was far from accepting the fuehrerprinzip in all of its implications; his sense' of nationalism was lukewarm at best; war was considered to be no longer defensible as an outlet for heroism; and even anti-semitism was, for him, not so much a racial bias as a dislike for Jews as the "representatives

68See Grover, Drieu, p. 227. "9Quoted in ibid., p. 228. "Socialisme fasciste, p. 235. 7'La fin des haricots," La Nouvelle Revue Franfaise, LVII (December,

1942), p. 748.


of the modern world."773 That politics, to him, was more a tempta- tion than an object of serious study was underlined by his admission that political involvement was usually his antidote for seizures of depressioi.74 It has been suggested, in this context, that in Drieu's subjective drama he approached politics as a means of overcoming a part of himself that he disliked.75 But whatever the cause, his political involvement and his thought suggest more than anything else a nihilist's desire to destroy a world that he disliked. Thus his mania for predicting disasters to come.

His real talent was the use of devastating satire in his novels to depict the social and political life of what appeared to be a nar- row, cramped society living on borrowed time. Even his vision of purity, insofar as it took on any tangible outline, was directed toward the opposite pole from the bourgeois France that he could not accept. Every authentically conservative sentiment of the day was made a target by the themes of his work, from his advocacy of socialism to his appeals to revolutionary violence and the abandon- ment of bourgeois goals. But, especially, a society dedicated in those years to inaction was urged to break with its main character- istic. That there was an air of unreality in his thought is undeni- able; but paradoxes and contradictions can abound when the object is to shock the bourgeoisie. Drieu's work shows the spirit of adolescent rebellion against the comfortable mediocrity of the materialistic view of life, the politicians who articulate its values, and the myths associated with it.76 His views went beyond the spirit of incivisme, which permeates all classes in France. Indeed, it appears that his flight was not so much toward totalitarian political systems as it was away from any conceivable regime in France. To remain at least a nominal collaborationist to the end was to give proof of one's nonconformity and spirit of total opposition to the majority, even if that majority consisted of one's own countrymen undergoing the rigors of the Occupation.

"2In July, 1944, an article that Drieu had written for Revolution Nationale was refused by the German censors because he clearly foresaw the total defeat of Germany. See Snerant, Romantisme fasciste, p. 233.

73Gilks, p. 99. "4Vandromme, Drieu, p. 110. 7'Jean-Paul Sartre, "Drieu la Rochelle, ou la haine de soi," Les Lettres

Franfaises, No. 6, April, 1943, pp. 3-4. 78In Massis's opinion, Drieu all his life kept the countenance and the

demeanor of the adolescent; he sugegsts that Drieu never left the stage of adolescence. Maurras, p. 187.


While the term "reactionary" was distrusted by Drieu himself, he nevertheless belonged to a French intellectual family of reactionaries. They recognize each other but they tend to stand either alone, Cassandras like Drieu; or above, like the autocratic Maur- ras; or beside, like the anarcho-fascist Cleine. If they organize in small cliques and groups even these eventually fall prey to dissen- sion and independent posturing.77 If today they seem to have a uniform nostalgia for the Vichy regime it is only because the National Revolution offered something to everybody of the reactionary per- suasion as it passed through its various phases. While the differences between Drieu and Maurras were real at the time, their quar- rels have been minimized or forgotten by the post-war reactionaries. It is evident that it was Maurras who, stubbornly holding to his nineteenth-century positions, was responsible for much of the inter- factional war of pens that beset the French reaction while it still had strength.78 With Maurras's disappearance, integral nationalism has been laid to rest by the reactionary group, to be taken up again by the leader of the Resistance. Today spokesmen for the Extreme Right can articulate the names of their mentors, paying homage equally to Drieu, C6line, Brasillach, Maurras, and even Bernanos and Saint Exupery. And the continuity of the reactionary position is underlined by Jean Devyver's comment that "The aristocracy of the mind is not dead. We must contribute to its strength by cul- tivating the true riches, which are not those of the bank account nor those of the facile and weak way of life."79

But despite the continued presence in the post-war period of

"The numerous schisms that befell the Action franqaise are a case in point. Eugen Weber has given a full description in his Action Fran aise, passim. But even the hard core of young fascists centered around the newspaper Je Suis Partout broke apart in 1943 when 'Brasillach wanted to soften the paper's belligerently pro-German tone. The dissensions that persisted among the remaining members who fled to Germany in 1944 were described by Jean Herold-Paquis in Des Illusions . . . Desillusions (Paris: Bourgoin, 1948), pp. 91-97.

78See Maurice Bardeche, "Reponse sur le fascisme," Defense de l'Occident, New Series, No. 22 (May, 1962), p. 34. Pierre Dominique has argued that it was Maurras, subordinating everything to the return of the monarchy, who kept French fascism from realizing its fullest potential even though the Action franqaise proclaimed principles that were in reality fascist. "Analyse et critique du Six Fivrier," Ecrits de Paris, No. 88 (February, 1952), p. 36.

79In the "Bulletin de l'Association des Amis de Robert Brasillach," (mimeo- graphed), No. 25, n.d., p. 6. Devyver is the head of the Belgian contingent of the Association.


these reactionary currents, it is possible that if Drieu had lived he would have abandoned politics altogether. That he would always have been a critical nonconformist is certain; but his rejection of the post-war order of things might have found purely literary expression apart from all participation in political affairs, as with the writers of the contemporary "Young Right" in France with their theme of non-engagement.80

In any event., Drieu's itinerary and his thought stand as remind- ers to the present generation in France and elsewhere that a furi- ous involvement with politics, intuitively conceived in terms of individualism, can lead to results that are more destructive than they are heroic. Such purity can be found through art or athletics or through metaphysics alone, but it cannot be found in contemporary politics.

80On the "Young Right" see Raoul Girardet, "L'Heritage de I'Action Fran- qaise," Revue FranSaise de Science Politique, VII (October-December, 1957), pp. 773-775; Giano Accame, "Contradictions d'un romantisme de droite, Defense de l'Occident, New Series, No. 23 (June, 1962), pp. 35-50 and No. 24 (July- August, 1962), pp. 27-40.

fascism and individualism: the political thought of pierre drieu la rochelle

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