The Prestige of Terror By Georges Henein To end up with feet in chains had been the aim of a life.

But it is a birdcage with bars. Indifferent, authoritarian, without embarrassment, the sound of the world flowed and reflowed through the bars; the prisoner, inside, was free: he could ta e part in e!erything, nothing on the outside escaped him; he could e!en abandon the cage; the bars were stretched a metre across; he was not e!en trapped. "#$%& '$"'$ $ugust (, )*+, This is not a thesis. Because a thesis should be written not only with sang-froid and all the usual literary precautions, but also re.uires an accumulation of references and general statistical data to which I am loathe to sacrifice the reaction of disgust and fury that dictates this te/t to me. 0n top of which, the former audience for theses, now deserting all prolonged reflection, wallows in the reading of the many copies of 12igests3 in circulation and the stories of intrigue, whether sentimental, diplomatic or criminal, that the press, worn-out by all sorts of ignominy, ser!es it each morning with brea fast. This is not a thesis and will not be satisfied with being simply a protest. This is ambitious. This needs to pro!o e men asleep in lies; to gi!e a sense, a target and a lasting impact to the disgust of an hour, the nausea of an instant. The !alues that presided o!er our idea of life and which loo ed after for us, here and there, those small islands of hope and inter!als of dignity, are being methodically wrec ed by e!ents at which, to ma e matters worse, we are in!ited to watch our !ictory, to salute the eternal destruction of a dragon eternally reborn. But as the scene is repeated are you not struc by the change that is ta ing place in the features of our heroes4 5!en when it6s easy for you to see that, with each new tournament, 7t. George appears unceasingly more and more to loo li e the dragon4 7oon 7t. George will be nothing more than a hideous !ariation of the dragon itself. $nd then, he will be a camouflaged dragon, an e/pert in ma ing us belie!e, that 8 with a stri e of his lance 8 he will stri e the 5!il 5mpire down9 $ugust (, )*+,, will remain for some an unbearable date. 0ne of greatest dates of infamy established by History. %ewspapers pass on with delight the effects of the atomic bomb 8 this future instrument of polemic 8 from

people to people. 5!ening radio shows announce the entry of the 7o!iet :nion into the war against the ashes and the ruins of ;apan. Two e!ents, probably of une.ual scale, but which both participate in the same horror. Ten years ago, world opinion was trained into a state of e/citement to protest against the use of mustard gas, dropped on 5thiopia by fascist a!iators. The bombing of the !illage of Guernica, ra<ed to the ground by German s.uadrons in 7pain, was enough to mobili<e 8 in a world still proud of its freedom 8 millions of =ust consciences. >hen ?ondon was in turn mutilated by fascist bombs, we new on which side of the fires the !alues to be defended were to be found. Then when Hamburg burned with the same fire as ?ondon, we were taught of the beneficial effects of a new bombing techni.ue called 1saturation bombing3 under co!er of which immense urban areas were destined to be ine!itably le!elled. These perfected practices, these supreme refinements in murder possessed nothing that could enhance the cause of freedom, the family of man. >e were more than a few, here, in Great Britain, in $merica, to belie!e them as detestable as the di!erse forms of torment perfected by the %a<is. 0ne day, it was an entire city 1cleaned3 by a terror raid; the ne/t day, a railway station, into which thousands of refugees were pac ed, was, than s to a scientific super!isor, riddled to death. These inhuman games appear suddenly derisory now that the atomic bomb has entered ser!ice and democratic bombers ha!e tested its benefits on the ;apanese people9 In effect, what does the premeditated assassination of ten thousand, a few hundred thousand ;apanese ci!ilians matter4 5!eryone nows that the ;apanese are yellow, and with e/tra impudence, e!il yellow people @the Ahinese represent the 1 ind3 yellow peopleB. 2id not a character who is far from being a 1war criminal3 but rather $dmiral >illiam Halsey declare: 1>e are drowning and burning the bestial apes all o!er the Pacific, and it is =ust as much pleasure to burn them as to drown them34 These words so e/ultant and reassuring about the idea that military chiefs would li e to do to human dignity, these words were pronounced in front of a news reporterC 7t. George e/aggerates. He is beginning to seem to us as more repugnant than the dragon. DDD The point to which we ha!e been carried by the latest de!elopments in politics and war means it is indispensable that the legitimacy of a cause be =udged, essentially and before

anything else, on the means that it puts into action. In aid of causes that still ris calling on the best of man, it is indispensable to establish an in!entory of means that are unli ely to obfuscate the stated aim. The recourse to denunciation when faced with a passing need is .uic ly translated into a bureaucracy of denunciation. In one section of the population, this .uic ly forms into a habit of denunciation; in another section, a shame of denunciation. 2irect the debate towards the ultimate aims for which people are calling, then we will stand up, chec the pillars and appearance of the staircase, before double-loc ing the door and e/pressing oursel!es only in measured terms and according to a suddenly academic type of thin ing. The middle-of-the-road has become an institution 8 and it cuts the life of a nation, the life of each man, in two. $nd the same is true of other means that were stolen from the enemy to better dominate and destroy it, but which we disco!er 8 at the moment of !ictory 8 ha!e been promoted to the ran of national deformities, intellectual defects carefully protected against possible re!olts of reason. This is how the cult of the leader6s infallibility, the ecstatic reinforcement of false hierarchies, the sei<ure of all sources of information and all the instruments of distribution, the frenetic organi<ation of lies by the 7tate at all times of day, growing police terror towards citi<ens who still wish to remain relati!ely lucid, ha!e become the generally accepted forms of political and social progress9 $nd it is precisely against such a powerful show of aberrations that we must repeat, without respite, the following ob!ious truth: That the proletariat would not consider rising up by recourse to the means by which its enemies debase themsel!es. That a type of socialism that owes its ad!ent to the mar!els of intrigue, denunciation, political blac mail and ideological fraud would be contaminated at its source by the !ery instruments of its !ictory and that man and peoples would sin through an e/cess of candour if they e/pected anything else from it but a change of the shadows. $ugust (, )*+,. >hile the gaping wound of Hiroshima still smo es 8 that martyr city chosen for the test of the first atomic bomb 8 7talin6s #ussia stri es a blow to ;apan with the famous stab-in-the-bac trademar ed by Eussolini. %e!ertheless he would be wrong to turn in his gra!e while dreaming of his copyright fees. Because we were not =ust happy to plagiari<e his beau/ gestes; we wanted to add to his historical contribution. Indeed, the te/t of the 7o!iet declaration of war informs us that the :77#6s entry into the war has no other aim than 1to shorten the war3 and 1sa!e human li!es39 $ ceasefire of small means 8 there it

is, an end in itself, an end that, none will contest, is difficult to e.ual in nobility. $nd during the centuries to come, the troubadours of 0uter Eongolia will ha!e the time to pro!ide the epilogue on the pacifist and humanist character of the Easter6s decision. $ugust (, )*+,, is one of the lowest dates in the career of humanity. OF JUST WARS AND THE DANGER OF WINNING THEM Eany years before the world hurried into a war against fascism, bitter discussions were rife in the mo!ements of the left between total pacifists and militants of the fight to the death against tyranny. 0ne of the themes that returned again and again in this long e/change of ideas and arguments was that of 1=ust wars.3 >ith a still imperfect s ill, total pacifists set about pro!ing that no =ust wars e/isted; that to pretend to fight tyranny through war was to deli!er oneself to the tyranny of a military machine without bra es, to pitiless e/ceptional laws, and politicians in!ested with the most arbitrary powers of which they were more or less freed of ha!ing to =ustify. >ar alone, in and of itself, constituted a tyranny that yielded nothing to the one you propose to defeat 8 or so said, without con!incing us, the theoreticians of total pacifism. They were wrong. ;ust wars do e/ist. But the peculiar of =ust wars is not ma ing them last long. 2o not forget that 1=ust3 wars, if they produce a Hoche or a Earceau, also produce a Bonaparte, which is a particularly diabolical way for them to cease being =ust. 0n the other hand 8 and with the absence of any Bonapartes on the hori<on 8 a 1=ust3 war differs from ordinary e/peditions of theft in what it imposes on those who lead it, a rhythm and a set of demands that are difficult for them to tolerate. To eep ali!e an underta ing based on popular fer!our, those responsible for running the war must ha!e the clear-minded boldness to let the mo!ing forces on which they draw their strength retain their character of masses on fire 8 the mass in full progress and conscious of the direction of its Flan. But the persistent rule with the leaders of peoples 8 often e!en those who appear to ha!e returned directly from the firing line or the factory-floor meeting 8 is to erode their hierarchical weight by dri!ing the moti!ating forces entrusted to them into the traditional framewor s of a country at war. $nd when I say 1traditional framewor s3 I mean the rationing of truth, the rationing of enthusiasm, the rationing of the ideal. I mean the arbitrary tightening of the mo!ing forces of a nation, on the order of those who fear, in the 1mo!ement3 of today, the 1uphea!al3 of tomorrow. These traditional framewor s 8 simple mas s placed on the face

of whiche!er war so as to erase the e/pression of its originality and render it similar to all the others 8 can sometimes be borrowed from the archi!es of the >ar Euseum, sometimes from the enemy6s practice. "or the former, this is called 1being inspired by the lessons of the past3; for the latter, 1profiting from what your enemy teaches you.3 The drabness of the li!ing !alues of the present that we always seem ready to en!elop in old sacramental formulae li e a shroud, the transfer of the enemy6s methods and mental routines into the camp of =ustice, the way this war against fascism has gone, all offer us too many e/amples. I clearly remember the first 7o!iet war communi.uF that finished by mentioning a German soldier, .uoted by name, who went towards a #ussian post declaring that he did not wish to ta e up arms against a proletarian 7tate. The simple sentence of this communi.uF ga!e off, in the face of history, a sound more stri ing than the motori<ed e/ploits that preceded and succeeded it. It bore witness, abo!e the roar of battle, to the fact that the brotherhood of wor ers ta es 8 and must continue to ta e 8 precedence o!er the di!ision of men into ethnic and national groups. The good to be ept between us all was there 8 the !irtue li ely to crac open the worm-eaten framewor of war between nations. $nd yet, once again, the wor ers were dri!en towards these traditional framewor s, and led astray. Instead of glorifying the #ussian or German popular heroes of the past who had reached out in the cause of similar struggles for freedom, the 7o!iet propaganda ser!ices .uic ly indulged in a dreadful pathos, from which emerged some of the most sinister figures in #ussian history. Prince $le/ander %e!s y once again new all the pomposity of glory because in )G+G he had the good luc to rout the 0rder of Teutonic 'nights. Het the memory of a Pugache! or a 7ten a #a<in 8 legendary champions of the peasant cause 8 was put on the bac burner because they were =udged to ha!e been too badly mistreated by the authorities at the time. 0n %o!ember I, )*+), addressing fighters of the #ed $rmy, 7talin offered up to their courage some strange precursors: 1Aould you be,3 he told them, 1inspired by the courageous figures of your ancestors: $le/ander %e!s y, 2imitri 2ons o!, 'u<ma Einin, 2imitri Po<hars y, $le/ander 7u!oro!, Ei hail 'utu<o!43 J)K $ncestral heroism has ne!er, in any army, had much hold o!er soldiers6 morale. $nd among those ancestors sculpted into icons by 7talin and presented to the pious iss of the masses, there was not a single one who had anything but a reactionary and detestable role in relation to the struggles of the #ussian people to rouse itself from its terrible bed of misery. That

such names of the heroic imagination could be twisted into defenders of the :77# pro!ides enough to render senile a war that some e/pected to impro!e the world. >hat followed was e.ual to its beginning. The e/humation of $le/ander %e!s y brought about a re!ision of eight centuries of 5uropean history. Borrowing not only from the past but the enemy, 7talin placed the Hitlerian theory of 5urope6s mobilisation in opposition to an $sian assault, a return 8 pure and simple 8 to the most narrow-minded form of pan-7la!ism. The debates in the different Pan-7la! Aongresses that ha!e been organi<ed on Eoscow6s initiati!e during this war ha!e put bac the intellect in the same way as #adio Berlin. The long de!elopment of 5urope is no longer seen as anything but a prete/t for racial di!isions, a de!elopment prone to an endlessly reborn conflict between 7la!s and Germans. The most recent Pan7la! Aongress @7ofia, "ebruary )*+,B was de!oted to the e/istence of a 7la! bloc, the inheritor of a union forged through centuries of battles that date bac to the !ictory of united 7la! armies against the Germanic peoples at GrLnewald @)+)MB. Thus we end up fighting bloc against bloc, race against race, insanity against insanity9 $nd so it is that 1=ust3 wars do not resist for long the slanderous contagion of ideas that they were as ed to crush. JGK I say that we are currently witnessing a penetration of Hitlerian political beha!iour into the ran s of democracy. This penetration scandali<es ne/t to nobody; too many people find in it material con!enience and moral comfort. This penetration sprawls across all the newspapers, in all the news that reaches us about the fate being prepared for the world. "or e/ample, the anne/ation of territories without the prior consent of their populations was generally considered as an outrage against the law, part of Hitler6s imperialistic fren<y. Het, today, loo how things are presented in a completely different way, with the only =ustification being national usefulness. This port is perfectly useful to me and I would li e it accorded to me, declares one power 8 and if it is pointed out that it has always been part of another national unit, the power replies that while that may well be possible it really needs it and anyway !ictory gi!es it the right to petty theft. 7o, from now on, will it get not simply a port or an isolated city, but !ast sets of territories that ha!e become perfectly mobile and able to change owner in the space of a night4 The transfer of populations also used to pass as a cruel process to which only the regimes of force allowed themsel!es recourse. These transfers are ne!ertheless today en!isaged on a scale not smaller than that of %a<ism6s dar est round-ups. Here, I will allow ?ouis Alair, one of the

principal contributors to $merican maga<ine Politics, whose capacity for indignation continues to help us breathe, to spea : The people are displaced li e cattle; if you gi!e me ,MM,MMM 7udeten-Germans, I will wor something out to hand o!er a certain number of Tyroliens; perhaps we could e/change a few Germans against some machine tools4 Hitler, once again, has started up a mechanism that is beginning to ta e on worrying proportionsC The speed with which the !ictorious powers are haggling o!er the only merchandise that, in spite of technical impro!ements, remains more in demand than e!er 8 sla!e labour 8 is something truly obscene. JNK FOR WANT OF ANYTHING BETTER >hen you as yourself about the reasons that tend to change a 1=ust3 war into an ordinary war, into a basic war, and more generally when you as yourself about the reasons that remo!e from the masses the control of the higher causes to which they are dedicated, you .uic ly find yourself shut inside a mind-blowing circuit. 0n the one hand, indeed, the scale and concentration of modern economic life has made of e!ery party, e!ery union, e!ery go!ernment .uasi-totalitarian organisms that carry out their role by gi!ing way to their own specific weight and not at all by referring to the indi!idual cells of which they are composed. These parties, these unions, these modern state go!ernments are protected against the wor ings of critical reason @as well as, by the way, against affecti!e =olts and the heart6s rebellionB by their own, so!ereign inertia. These disconcerting edifices function through the grace of a special part of humanity, a humanity of initiates. To be allowed to present a motion at the end of the congress of a left-wing party tolerant of the occasional e/change of opinions, you need a year of e/tremely delicate manoeu!res through a ma<e of secretariats and committees that can only remind you of the mysteries of the inaccessible Tribunal where 'af a lea!es J;osef '.K sha ing in The Trial 8 the endlessly reflected image of our own anguish. $nd if the original trials are fa!ourably o!ercome, if no fau/ pas has arisen to thwart the ad!ance of your motion, then its ob=ect will probably be sufficiently faded as to e/cite only a retrospecti!e interest, and almost pity for the person who ris ed gi!ing it his bac ing. 0n the other hand, clair!oyant and energetic citi<ens, or e!en better, indi!iduals who dispose of a certain intellectual prestige, who would be tempted to inter!ene so as to rectify the direction of a party, a union or a go!ernment, now too well that these different organi<ations ha!e the means to wea!e around them a deathly cloth 8 a

cloth of silence that in a short time will manage to cut them off from all public life. This cloth of silence has shut in fore!er a number of the most brilliant minds of 7o!iet society 8 writers, thin ers, =ournalists, acti!ists; it is increasingly tightening in 5urope and $merica, o!er other minds that are resistant and pure, e/aggeratedly in lo!e with freedomC There is something worse for the ci!ili<ed being than the loss of power o!er the organi<ations that represent him and act in his name; it is the resignation to this loss. It is a resignation we are informed about through innumerable and flagrant signs; a resignation we recogni<e 8 in wartime, as in peacetime 8 by the standard attitude of gifted and culti!ated people who are inclined to act 8 yet are ne!ertheless pic led in their own defeat. This resignation can be summed up in fi!e words: 1"or want of anything better.3 If one is a member of the Aommunist Party @or any otherB without being the least bit reassured about its present or future policies, it6s 1for want of anything better.3 If one ends up putting up with a redistribution of land that one nows will gi!e people neither happiness nor a smile nor wealth, it6s 1for want of anything better.3 If one !otes for a candidate whose moral character disgusts you and whose political steadfastness promises to be dubious, it6s 1for want of anything better.3 If one subscribes to a newspaper that willingly and blithely sacrifices the truth to ad!ertising and commercial considerations, it6s 1for want of anything better.3 The woman one isses fe!erishly while mumbling eternal !ows 8 1for want of anything better.3 The cinema into which one di!es, head down, to a!oid an hour of presence on 5arth 8 1for want of anything better.3 The boo with which we stay up late because it has recei!ed a pri<e, e!en though e!erything about it in!ites you to !omit up its contents 8 1for want of anything better.3 The sublime head of a cult to which one rallies while sighing, immersed as one is in the repertoire of its grandeur 8 1for want of anything better.3 1"or want of anything better3 becomes an in!estment, a philosophy, a ci!il status, a master, a witticism, an alibi, a prayer, a weapon, a whore, a sob, a waiting room, a pirouette, the art of begging for alms, a compass for trudging along without mo!ing, an epitaph, an $ugust (, )*+,C Two men, close in thought, are ne!ertheless capable of destroying each other because they ha!e the same idea of 1better3 and this 1better3 fails them, so they fall bac on two competing modes of compensatory e/istence, on two systems of beliefs and actions tangential to their common 1better,3 but non-tangential on the same side. 7o, from appro/imations to appro/imations, substitutions to substitutions,

one finds oneself pushed bac , imperceptibly, politely, into whiche!er ab=ect corner where woodlice grow. 0ne is alarmed, but wrongly: it isn6t a dungeon; it6s a home. It night and nothing moreC In the distance the trains are whistling as if to lea!eC 0ne would li e to scream, to bring out the imaginary guardsC Tomorrow morning, where will one be with oneself4 >ill you alone be allowed to pass4 Hes, probably, you will be allowed to flee, to create a second life in the Aongo. $ life in a house on stilts with, in the shadows, the same triumphant cancer where the forces of boredom and panic ed horror come to terms with freedom. THE RIGHT TO TERROR "or the past two centuries, e!erything has ta en place as if each in!ocation to freedom, each uprising mar ed by its name, had to be translated 8 through a political and statist machine risen up at full strength through these =umps 8 by an increase in oppressi!e rules to which man is beholden though a gradual shrin ing of life. Today, a new generation of 5ncyclopFdists who proceeded with the same impertinence as the earlier one, would be made illegal or .uic ly reduced to begging. 5!erything is ta ing place as if man were loo ing into this long series of unhappy ambitions for a certain form of security in the terror. 5rich "romm6s bitter and se!ere wor 8 The "ear of "reedom 8 teaches us =ust how much man fears a tOte-P-tOte with freedom, =ust how much he shir s the responsibilities that it assigns to him, =ust how much 8 in the current conditions of chaos 8 greyness, opa.ueness and anonymity are desirable refuges for him from the !ertigo of freedom. To this indi!idual tendency to be panic ed by the comple/ity of the world that assails us, large collecti!e organi<ations ha!e arri!ed with their decisi!e contribution. They ha!e established, with deliberate rigour, this pathetic minimum of human stances that can only be transgressed at the wrongdoer6s ris and e/pense. Good citi<ens can now afford to gi!e themsel!es a deep sleep, now that the atomic bomb protects themC The growing signs of terror cannot be mista en. The most important is the progressi!e obliteration of the right to asylum. It is a bad idea to mo!e somewhere as a political refugee in these deadly times9 7ince )*NM, ?eon Trots y has been hunted li e a wild boar across the whole 5uropean continent, from Tur ey to %orway !ia Paris. Then came Qichy, which, with a remorseless hand, deli!ered up Pietro %enni to Italy, Breitscheid to Germany and Aompanys to 7pain. Qichy has disappeared but not this ineradicable a!ersion of the authorities 8 whether

democratic or not 8 towards the political refugee, the last and most beautiful relic of human sedition. $nother sign of terror is the organi<ed deportation of wor ers, which will without .uestion continue with the defeat of %a<ism. 5conomists are on hand to eep watch o!er the growing efficiency of the cattle that ha!e been outsourced to them as raw material for their e/periments. The international conferences need rising figures9 $nother sign of terror: thousands of beings simply disappearing into the night. Gone without lea!ing a forwarding address because there is wood to be cut on the ban s of the >hite 7ea. Hou6!e been warned9 The final note of sadness, this time in the domain that has always nown how to escape from the pressures of the arbitrary regimes of the past, the domain of attac ing thin ing and political thought 8 which was yesterday still a beacon of hope 8 where we are witnessing a strange adaptation to the cruel and !ain order ta ing shape beneath our eyes. It can be seen in the embarrassed timidity of a maga<ine li e ?a PensFe, which, before the war, showed an agitating curiosity towards all the forms of our scientific and social future and, with an in.uisiti!e breath, brought bac to life the essential problems already won by the general aging of a society that does not tolerate if we do not age with it. In )*+,, the big names who run ?a PensFe co!er nothing more than a chorus of static formulae and debilitating reasoning. >e find oursel!es in the presence of a maga<ine that seems to ha!e no other mission than to warn us that Ear/ist thin ing is stuc in neutral. Today, that thin ing beha!es li e a force that, instead of dominating the contemporary nightmare and plotting its guiding a!enues of light, places itself in a secure test-tube where no e/plosi!e separation of the !iable and non-!iable, of the li!ely and the oppressi!e, of the actual and the out-of-date, need be feared for the present moment. $lso, do we not see $ragon, in a sensational article, demand the remo!al of the wor s of E. Aharles Eaurras from the boo shops of "rance4 $pparently, the author of such a demand does not reali<e that by doing this he admits the defeat of his own political message6s power of attraction. He would ha!e us belie!e that Eaurras and himself occupied positions diametrically opposed from one another, and that ha!ing renounced the idea of deciding between the two using reason, one after the other they lea!e it up to the less than recommendable arbitration of the police. Thus, when it is not wor ing in the open, terror remains always latent, ho!ering =ust abo!e the debate, ready to welcome the first wish, the first call of one of its loyal sub=ects. $s for e/traordinary indi!iduals 8 particularly certain categories of intellectuals and writers who

do not yet accept li!ing according to a common tra=ectory 8 they are, they also, caught up in the wind of terror. Their only hope is to turn the wind around; that is to say, to practise terror. They are fascinated not by a Gide or a Breton, but by a ?awrence of $rabia or a Ealrau/ in his Ahinese period. "or the most part, they lo!e this war because it has allowed them to come to terms with themsel!es by blowing up a train, demolishing a !iaduct, before returning to their apartment, to their dull mistresses and to their faithful daily routine of stri ing stories. The modern intellectual as s, deep down, for no other gratuity from a world he no longer has the honesty to challenge than the chance to embody, if only for the space of a chapter, the role of the outsider ad!enturer, using this artifice of a !ocation to sal!age some of the Flan that e!eryday life has amputated. THE SWITCHBLADE In the collecti!e slide towards a condition of security, who will release the switchblade4 >ho will do =ustice to what men are going to get used to ta ing as their right to terror and almost as a normal culmination of their old aspirations for freedom4 %ot a party, for sure, nor any of the totalitarian organi<ations destined to guard men. %ot a party, but perhaps supporters of a new type who will abandon classic forms of unrest for highly e/emplary gestures of uphea!al. Eany ha!e hoped that resistance mo!ements in 0ccupied 5urope would finally carefully handle a breach in the political and social impasse of our time. The mass parties ha!e been the first to sniff out this danger. #eally now, were people getting ready to get rid of the parties6 ser!ices4 >as the popular will now claiming it could do without an intermediary4 The scare did not last long. In the same way that the military forces of the resistance were .uic ly integrated into the permanent framewor of the army, so the political forces did not ta e long to follow suit 8 mi/ing flattery with intrigue 8 to win bac the mousetrap of the Big Parties. The episode 8 I nearly said 1incident3 8 was o!er. But something else became possible; in fact, it became the only possible thing. The era of guerrilla politics began and it is in this that we should entrust our reser!es of confidence and enthusiasm. It6s probably easy to announce the attraction that this guerrilla and the e/ploits that will ine!itably mar him out. >e could ne!ertheless consider the !aliantly independent attitude of Aamus 8 and, for other things, of a Breton, a Aalas, a #ougemont 8 as an indication of the future. The machinery of terror is still far from free of hesitations or crac s. Thus it is at the point where this machinery ma es itself the most

threatening 8 and as it ad!ances in its renewed threats 8 that all our spirit of refusal should be placed, all that there is in the world, at any gi!en moment, of beings in a state of refusal. $nd that it be done with brilliance9 That it be written as a troubling e/ample in the consciousness of the masses9 $nd that it be transmitted and amplified across the !ast human prairie, by contagious furrows of grandeur9 $t this point, I hear ringing out murderously sarcastic remar s: 17o9 Hou aim to discredit political parties, to destroy their prestige, to compromise their action; so you are following the insidious wor of the fascists before and after fascism, who threw doubt on all the instruments of relief and progress93 In reality, I am pursuing nothing; I do not want to pursue anything other than a certain logic of freedom. The fascist phenomenon, seen in the light of the e!olution of the parties, ser!ed only to speed up decisi!ely the de!elopment of the moral and material elephantiasis that affects the powerful institutions of the 1left,3 in which the !oices of the mass are lost almost as easily as those of indi!iduals. The ultimate aim of the guerrilla who signs up now is not to eliminate the parties in aid of some new system of e/ercising political life; it is to rip away from the parties the monopoly of social thought that is rusting away in their wor ing groups; it is to remo!e, in the ideological arena, their right to act onto which they hold all the more now that they ha!e clearly decided to do nothing with it, e/cept for the most ulterior and de!ious uses. It is about 8 to grasp the problem as tightly as possible 8 to reduce the parties to a condition of being purely recepti!e towards the ripening and general mo!ement of ideas, and purely administrati!e as to their e/ecution. In brief, it is about forcing the parties to recogni<e the ideological poc ets that are born outside of themsel!es and to drain towards practical action all that is !alid and that comes out of the turmoil thus fomented. >e should be on our guard: the ob=ecti!e situation of the parties has considerably changed o!er the past GM years. They are all tending towards becoming para-statist organi<ations, appendices of the 7tates, and the !ery idea 8 and the function 8 of a party of opposition is mortally affected by this change. In 5ngland, the :nited 7tates, in "rance and Belgium, the opposition is more often than not in solidarity with the powers-that-be, when it is not the enemy. The parties ha!e to fit their e!er-clearer obligations to independent thin ers to this role. The first of these obligations is the transfer of ideological acti!ities to groups that remain e/terior to the !icissitudes of the parties and their gradual collapse within the framewor of 7tates. But abo!e all, this guerrilla will only ha!e a lasting effect

in the measure that he nows how to encourage 8 in his struggle against the bureaucratic pragmatism of the parties 8 a di!e into the cold currents of utopia, a renaissance of utopian con=ecture with all that that entails of the edifying and =oyful. $ do<en or so years ago, we could ta e as a rallying cry words such as those of %i olai Bu harin, the penultimate great theoretician of socialism: $n analysis of the real state of things lets us glimpse not only the death of society, but also the death of its concrete historical form and the ine!itable passage towards a socialist society 8 a passage that has already begun, a passage towards a superior social structure. $nd it is not about only mo!ing to a superior way of li!ing, but one precisely superior to the one it has today. Aan we spea of this form of superior social form in general4 2oes this not lead us towards sub=ecti!ism4 Aan we spea of ordinary ob=ecti!e criticisms in this area4 >e thin so. In the material domain, such a criterion is represented by the power of the output of sociali<ed wor and the e!olution of this output, because this determines the sum of superfluous wor on which depends spiritual culture. In the domain of immediate inter-human relationships, such a criterion is gi!en by the si<e of the field of selection of talents-creators. It is precisely when the output of wor is e/tremely high and the field of selection e/tremely large that we see the ma/imum amount of interior impro!ement of life for the ma/imum number of men, ta en not as an arithmetical sum, but as a li!ing whole, li e a social collecti!e. J+K Today, we cannot do less than as oursel!es where is it this 1ma/imum of interior impro!ement of the ma/imum number of men34 $las, there is no doubt that the road ta en since $pril )*NR, that is to say, since we were thrown these words of hope, has only ta en us further away from these Bu harinian !iews; it has only been sealed up, stage by stage, by the ad!ent of an infle/ible conformity that reduces 1interior life3 to its most humble and fearful e/pression. There is no doubt that to this criterion of 1interior impro!ement3 has been substituted the re!erse criterion, and wishing only one proof among thousands, the most elo.uent is none other than the 1li.uidation3 of Bu harin himself and the lac of noise that this 1li.uidation3 made in the socialist camp and among the intelligentsia. To this conformism so rife in all domains 8 e/cepting certain terrorist refinements that these gentlemen always ta e great pleasure in inno!ating 8 it is only possible to oppose successfully those forces that Bu harin most critici<ed: the dream of Icarus, the wild spirit of anticipation of ?eonardo, the ad!enturous tests of utopian socialists, the generous and

softened humour of a Paul ?afargue9 "or its disciples scientific socialism has deteriorated to the point of being nothing more than a pompous e/ercise in recitation. The atmosphere and social ideas need to be aired out if we want to create a future for man that does not wither before it is born and which does not brea with, through un=ustifiable disciplines, its faculty to always begin again. $gainst this hideous union of conformism and terror, against the dictatorship of 1means3 obli!ious to the ends it itself recommends, the Eona ?isa of utopia can, perhaps not win, but release her smile fly and return to men the Promethean spar in which they will recogni<e their hidden freedom. IT I7 %0T TH5 TIE5 T0 #57T0#5 TH5 IE$G5 0" TH5 I??:7I0%7... ). 7talin and 5ternal #ussia, >alter 'olar< @?indsay and 2rummond, ?ondon, p.(IB. G. 12ragged by necessity, against our better wishes, to accomplish day after day, a series of acts in all ways similar to those of the enemy, how do we a!oid e/tending the shared limit43 worries $ndrF Breton. 1Be careful: from the !ery fact that we are forced to adopt his methods, we run the ris of being contaminated by that which we belie!e we are defeating.3 In ?umiSre %oire, $ndrF Breton, cf., 1?6$rche,3 no. I. N. 5uropean %ewsreel, ?ouis Alair, cf. Politics, ;une )*+,. +. 1The "undamental Problems of Aontemporary Aulture,3 %i olai Bu harin @?es documents de la #ussie neu!e, Paris, )*NRB.