Fascism and Individualism - William Tucker

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

Lamar

WILLIAM R. Tu c KER State College of Technology

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.1 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 intel­ lectual followers. Since Drieu was the best known and, perhaps, the most distin­ guished 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-

I

*I am grateful to the Lamar Research Center for the grant which made the research for this study possible. 1Brasillach's name is kept alive by a cult devoted to his memory, !'Associa­ tion des Amis de Robert Brasillach, with headquarters in Lausanne.

An at­

tempt 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 op­ position of the family to such an enterprise could not be overcome (com­ munication from Claude Elsen, January 10, 1962).

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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 individ­ ual 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 sys­ tems 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 Ia Rochelle's relevance to po­ litical science. While literature is no substitute for scientific analysis, it can supplement the findings of science through insights that can only be gained subjectively.a Born in Paris in January, 1893, to a family from Normandy, he passed from a childhood afflicted by parental conflict to the train­ ing ground for the French diplomatic service, the Ecole des Sciences Politiques. In spite of his briiiiant 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 see­ ing far-reaching changes in his own country and throughout the rest of Europe. The experiences in the trenches would be translated into •see Philippe Meynier, Essai sur l'Idealisme moderne (Paris-Limoges: Im­ primerie Guillemot et Lamothe, 195 7 ) , pp. 90-92. "Drieu himself commented, in an interview with Michel Dard ( "Visites: M. Drieu Ia Rochelle," Action Frant;aise, December 6, 1 928, p. 5 ) , "From every living work [of literature] a lesson in politics can be derived. I was going to say a pamphlet."

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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 mani­ festo.:; Collaborating with E mmanuel Berl on the newspaper Les Derniers lours 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, see­ ing in these figures potential innovators in French politics. His dis­ covery 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 pessi­ mism had become oppressive, he declared himself a fascist and pub­ lished a major political work, Socialisme Jasciste. As a Parisian col­ laborator during the Occupation, Drieu accepted the responsibility of serving as editor of the distinguished Nouvelle Revue Fra11faise 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 Revolution 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, 1 960) , 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 Rig'ht" was described as being ( 1 ) against dictatorship, (2) opposed to war, (3) anti-clerical, and (4) bour­ geois. "The major works on Drieu are: Pierre Andreu, Drieu: temoin et vision­ naire (P ' aris: Bernard Grasset, 1 952) ; Pol Vandromme, Drieu la Rochelle (Paris: Editions Universitaires, 1 958) ; Frederic 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 Plumy/me and Raymond Lasierra, Les Fascismes fran�ais, 1923-1963 (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1963 ) ; and Maurice-Yvan Sicard (Saint-Paulien, pseud.) , Histoire de c o llabo ration (Paris: L'Esprit Nouveau, 1964). Pierre-Henri Simon's Pr oc es du heros: M ontherlant, Drieu la Rochelle, 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," University of Toronto Quarterly, XIV (January, 1945), pp. 199-205, and two essays, one

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DRmu AND THE CouNTER-REVOLUTION

Some of the French fascists passed directly from the Action franc;aise 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 fas­ cism, born of his wartime emotions, was as subjective as it was utopian. It eventually was formulated in terms of ropeanism and a spiritualized socialism. 7

an

idealized Eu­

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 pol­ itics lifted him, to his mind at least, above classification in any traditional way.

Even Franc;;ois 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 !'Occident, Nos. 50-51, 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 Ia 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 !'esprit d'un fascisme fran�ais, 1934-1939," Revue Franr;aise de Science Politique, V. (July-September, 1955), pp. 529-546.

7ln 1943 Drieu emphasized the continuity of his thought since 1917 in his preface to Chronique politique 1934-1942 (Paris:

Gallimard, 1943), p. 9.

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

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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.10 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 Barres, although both approached politics as much for obsessional relief as for any other reason.11 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.l2 ""L'Idee de decadence" in Gen�ve ou Moscou (Paris: Gallimard, 1928) , p. 225. 10See Henri Massis, Mau"as et notre temps: entretiens et souvenirs (Paris: Pion, 1961 ) , pp. 188-189. 111n 1927 Andre Gide commented on Drieu in his diary: "Met on the boulevard Drieu La Rochelle. . . . All these young men are frightfully con­ cerned 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 Andre! Gide, trans. Justin O'Brien, II (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951 ) , pp. 408-409. "Drieu wrote in Socialisme jasciste (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"·

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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 inde­ pendence. 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 im­ portant, 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,IB 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 al­ most anything could be ruined by the perception of the slightest blemish.14 Nor was his vision of "young, conquering athletes buildployee nor the salaried worker, nor the factory worker when they have for­ gotten 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 Univers.ity Press, 1959), p. 267.

''l()n Maurras's aestheticism see Edward R. Tannenbaum, The Action Frant;aise: Die-Hard Reactionaries in Twentieth Century France (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1962), pp. 50-51. "Martin du Gard, Les Memorables, I, p. 176.

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ing a new world,"ll5 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."16 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 con­ cerned. 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 his­ tory, each remained convinced of the nobility of his motives. "I have got my feet dirty," Drieu wrote, "but my hands are clean.''l7 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 elsewher�, among the herd sweating with fear and hatred."lS 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 temper­ ament, perhaps, to Barres, he could not accept the nationalism that was as much a part of his thought as conservatism. Drieu was un­ able 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.l9 But his differences with 15Andreu, Drieu, p. 139. 16Drieu, Journal (19