Book Reviews: Conservative Politics in France, The Economics of Imperialism, The Death of Communal Liberty: A History of Freedom in a Swiss Mountain Canton, Building Coalitions: American Politics in the 1970's, A Source Book for the Study of Personality and Politics, Psychological Needs and Political Behavior: A Theory of Personality and Political Efficacy, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition
| Author | William Pickles,Iain Hampsher-Monk,Barry Sheerman,George K. Romoser,Andrew Mack,Hugh Berrington |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1976.tb00121.x |
| Date | 01 September 1976 |
| Published date | 01 September 1976 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
BOOK
REVIEWS
Malcolm
Anderson,
Conservative Politics
in
France,
Allen
and Unwin,
1974,
381
pp.,
This
important book ought to have been reviewed much earlier: the delay in
so
doing is wholly
the fault of the present reviewer. The book is important because no other work in English
covers the same field or anything like it, while most of the many French writers on the same
subject lack Dr. Anderson’s detachment, perspective and-in some cases-his knowledge of
detail.
It is, of course, about the Right, which includes not only Conservatives, but also some
Liberals at one end and some reactionaries-a very different species-at the other. But the
French Right,
as
Dr.
Anderson’s heavily documented study shows,
is
neither delimitable nor
definable. It
has
existed since
1789,
but for
a
century or more its boundaries have been imprecise
and its principles and characteristics variable. Political man is an observer’s distillation of the
conflicting and changing attitudes of a great number of human beings, who have tried to fit
themselves-r been
so
fitted by some outside observer, and by Procrustean methods-into
broad categories, each of which summarizes something that the informed student
knows
to
be
at the same time real and unreal-real when one compares each category with the others,
unreal
when one looks at each alone and in detail. There
is
something in France called ‘the
Right’, not merely because everybody uses the term, but also because it has always meant
something real to every Frenchman.
In the decades immediately following the Revolution, the distinction between Left and Right
was reasonably clear: for the Left, the Revolution had been a liberating uprising of the human
spirit, while the Right saw it
as
a
senseless tearing-up of roots, a ‘rationalist’ error, a defiance
of
history, and
a
denial
of
the will of God. Napoleon
III‘s
alliance with the Church added a new
division, between those who saw the intervention of the Church as a recognition of the moral
dimension in politics and those for whom it was an impermissible interference with democracy.
The later part of the nineteenth century found a third dividing element, separating those who
wanted more
(or
a great deal of) State intervention in economic life from those who wanted
less
(or
none) of it.
Other factors, more carefully studied by
Dr.
Anderson, became intermingled at different times
and in different milieuxwith those three main determinants. Nationalism, on which Dr. Anderson
casts his impartial eye, was
a
distinguishing mark of the Left through the middle years of the
last century, after which it was picked up by the Right. Class, religion and occupational dif-
ferences had varied influences,
as
time eroded that of the three principal factors. By
1945,
war-
time Resistance had turned the once feeble Catholic Democrats into
a
powerful force with
a
left-wing leadership, while at the same time State intervention in economic life had gone far
enough for most Radicals, and much too far for some. By then, the old bi-partite picture had
become meaningless. History chose the same moment to introduce General de Gaulle, who,
with his followers, bestrode both sides, being at different times
too
Left for some and too Right
for
others. The truth by then was, as
Dr.
Anderson amply demonstrates, that the survival of
imprecise concepts and outdated loyalties served only to confuse issues.
Dr. Anderson pursues these and related themes within a pattern very much his
own,
with an
abundance of detail which
will
add
to
the knowledge of most specialists and bewilder the
non-specialist. The latter type of reader will
be
confused too by the liberal bespattering of
gallicisms-that is, by literal renderings of words like
‘congrkgation’, ‘confessionnel‘, ‘moddrd’,
‘notable’, ‘ldgislature’, ‘militant’, ‘intpgral‘, ‘universitd’,
and dozens of others, which the specialist
can
re-translate for himself. The specialist
will
be
helped by the abundant lists of proper names,
important, in many cases, only
in
some limited context, but relevant to most of the author’s
themes. The non-specialist
will
find much of the book very hard going indeed, but
will
also find
illumination and measured judgement in the admirable chapters on ‘Conservative Societies’
E6.00.
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