Algeria and the French Left

In the early months of de Gaulle’s regime the French Left was stunned. For a while the Left seemed to have been bereft of a program, for whole sectors of it—Communist, non-Communist, and Marxist-Catholic—had answered de Gaulle’s nobly passionate call for unity and national resurgence. But now the Left has regained some of its old vigor and noise, as a result of two related circumstances: the continuing crisis in Algeria, and de Gaulle’s unchecked drift toward the invitingly vague formula of an “Algerian” Algeria.

The Leftist attitude toward Algeria divides itself, like the tricolor, into three fields. One group of Leftists still count themselves in de Gaulle’s camp. A second group, including socialists and radicals like Robert Lacoste, ex-premier Bourgè s-Maun-oury, and Max Lejeune, maintain that integration of Algeria and France is the only possible solution in the interest of civic peace in France and of Algeria’s own future; this group has not accepted the Gaullist plan of “self-determination,” nor has it accepted the etherized rhetoric of the intellectuals who foresee a closer rapport with Algeria, based on “fraternity” and “cultural ties,” if she becomes independent. Finally, the rigorously ideological progressives, like the members of the Jeanson spy-ring, Sartre, Servan-Schreiber, the Catholic R. Barrat and Professor Mandouze, follow their abstractions to the absurd terminal point at which it becomes the highest act of patriotism to collaborate with the sworn enemy of their nation.

In the early months of de Gaulle’s regime the French Left was stunned. For a while the Left seemed to have been bereft of a program, for whole sectors of it—Communist, non-Communist, and Marxist-Catholic—had answered de Gaulle’s nobly passionate call for unity and national resurgence. But now the Left has regained some of its old vigor and noise, as a result of two related circumstances: the continuing crisis in Algeria, and de Gaulle’s unchecked drift toward the invitingly vague formula of an “Algerian” Algeria.

The Leftist attitude toward Algeria divides itself, like the tricolor, into three fields. One group of Leftists still count themselves in de Gaulle’s camp. A second group, including socialists and radicals like Robert Lacoste, ex-premier Bourgè s-Maun-oury, and Max Lejeune, maintain that integration of Algeria and France is the only possible solution in the interest of civic peace in France and of Algeria’s own future; this group has not accepted the Gaullist plan of “self-determination,” nor has it accepted the etherized rhetoric of the intellectuals who foresee a closer rapport with Algeria, based on “fraternity” and “cultural ties,” if she becomes independent. Finally, the rigorously ideological progressives, like the members of the Jeanson spy-ring, Sartre, Servan-Schreiber, the Catholic R. Barrat and Professor Mandouze, follow their abstractions to the absurd terminal point at which it becomes the highest act of patriotism to collaborate with the sworn enemy of their nation.