Democracy, Yes

A French critique of Utopia

Is democracy synonymous with decadence? France's indefatigable political pundit, Raymond Aron, 74, for one, answers a thunderous "No!" His 28th book, In Defense of Decadent Europe (Regnery/Gateway; $14.95), published in the U.S. in June, makes a formidable case for the democratic pluralism he has upheld for 30 years, often against periodic leftist tides in Western Europe. Perhaps best known for his ironic aphorism, "Marxism is the opium of the intellectuals," Aron has produced a challenging critique of the messianic illusions about a Communist Utopia.

Defense was originally written, as Aron concedes, to influence the 1978 French parliamentary election campaign, when there were fears that Eurocommunism might come to power as a major bloc within the Western alliance. Nevertheless, the English-language version has a lingering and vivid resonance. For example, the book poses a still pertinent question on the eve of the SALT II debate in the Senate: "Faced with an increasingly powerful and militant Soviet Union, do the Americans still have the same resolution they did 30 years ago?"

Aron does not fret over the specifics of the East-West strategic arms controversy. What he most fears is a loss of nerve among the Western democracies, resulting from a tenacious feeling of inferiority to the Soviet system. Many American analysts would disagree, believing that the U.S. has become complacent because of its sense of military superiority to the U.S.S.R. But Aron maintains that Westerners sometimes feel that the Soviet leaders "possess an infernal machine capable of blowing capitalism sky-high or else some virtually infallible instrument for guiding their strategy." This crisis of confidence has been accelerated in Europe by the Third World's pervasive contempt for the West. Aron believes that the tendency of Africans and Latin Americans to blame the persistence of poverty on colonialism is a major victory of the Marxist-Leninists. He writes: "The propaganda message is that the Europeans owe their prosperity not to their own work but to the exploitation of the poor; imperialists, even when they withdraw from all their possessions, are still the opponents of the developing world."

Aron has marshaled a huge arsenal of facts to prove that the U.S.S.R has lagged behind the West in productivity, living standards, scientific progress and human rights. His summary: "If the virtues of an economic regime are measured by its capacity to answer the wishes of the population, organize the rational allocation of resources and efficiently produce the goods necessary to the physical and moral well-being of individual people, the Soviet experience remains to this day the most spectacular failure in history."

In an interview with TIME, Aron last week reflected on some of the changes in the world and in his views since publication of the first French edition of his book. "The defeat of the left in the 1978 elections removed many of the dangers we feared in France," he said. "But the crisis provoked by oil may be worse than I described in the book. I am also more pessimistic about the fact that the military superiority of the Soviet Union is less and less balanced by the force and the will of the U.S. At the same time, I feel more optimistic because the West seems less likely now to be disturbed by the idiocies of the so-called Common Program of [France's] leftist parties."

Still, Aron feels disheartened by the U.S. "I am exasperated that you have a President who is not competent and who is paralyzed by Congress. The U.S. has still not managed to get over Viet Nam. You will come out of it in the long run, but the present is not very encouraging.''

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