THE COMPANION TO RAYMOND ARON

RECOVERING POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

SERIES EDITORS: THOMAS L. PANGLE AND TIMOTHY BURNS

PUBLISHED BY PALGRAVE MACMILLAN:

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By Eric Buzzetti
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Modern Democracy and the Theological-Political Problem in Spinoza, Rousseau,
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The Companion to Raymond Aron
Edited by José Colen and Elisabeth Dutartre-Michaut
THE COMPANION
TO
RAYMOND ARON

Edited by
José Colen and Elisabeth Dutartre-Michaut
THE COMPANION TO RAYMOND ARON
Copyright © José Colen and Elisabeth Dutartre-Michaut, 2015.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-52242-9
All rights reserved.
First published in 2015 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The companion to Raymond Aron / edited by Jose Colen and
Elisabeth Dutartre-Michaut.
pages cm.—(Recovering political philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Aron, Raymond, 1905–1983. 2. Political science—
Philosophy—History—20th century. 3. International relations—
Philosophy. 4. Liberalism—France—History—20th century.
5. France—Intellectual life—20th century. I. Colen, José, editor of
compilation. II. Dutartre-Michaut, Élisabeth, editor of compilation.
JC261.A7.C66 2015
320.51092—dc23 2015009822
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: September 2015
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS

Foreword ix
Pierre Manent
Series Editors’ Preface xi

Introduction 1
Elisabeth Dutartre-Michaut and José Colen
1. Life and Works: Raymond Aron, Philosopher and Freedom Fighter 3
Nicolas Baverez

Part I International Relations: “History Is on the Move” 15

José Colen and Bryan-Paul Frost
2. Raymond Aron on War and Strategy: A Framework for
Conceptualizing International Relations Today 19
Jean-Vincent Holeindre
3. In the “Era of Tyrannies”: The International Order from
Nazism to the Cold War 31
Matthias Oppermann
4. Aron and the Cold War: “Brother Enemies” 45
Carlos Gaspar
5. Forward to the Past: History and Theory in Raymond Aron’s
Peace and War 59
Bryan-Paul Frost
6. “Citizen Clausewitz”: Aron’s Clausewitz in Defense of
Political Freedom 77
Joël Mouric
7. Fin de siècle: Aron and the End of the Bipolar System 91
Carlos Gaspar
vi CONTENTS

Part II Theory, History, Philosophy: The Primacy of

the Political 101
José Colen and Scott Nelson
8. Raymond Aron and the Notion of History: Taking
Part in History 105
Perrine Simon-Nahum
9. The Question of Political Regime and the Problems of
Democracy: Aron and the Alternative of Tocqueville 119
Giulio De Ligio
10. The Totalitarian Negation of Man: Raymond Aron on
Ideology and Totalitarianism 137
Daniel J. Mahoney
11. A Machiavellian Conception of Democracy?
Democracy and Confl ict 149
Serge Audier
12. Revisiting Aron’s The Class Struggle: Rereading
Fifty Years After 163
Serge Paugam
13. The Origins of the “End of Ideology?”: Raymond Aron
and Industrial Civilization 177
Iain Stewart

Part III Voices of the Great Men of the Past:

Perennial Debates 191
Scott Nelson and José Colen
14. Raymond Aron and Immanuel Kant: Politics between
Morality and History 197
Pierre Hassner
15. Statesmanship and Ethics: Aron, Max Weber, and Politics as
a Vocation 205
Scott Nelson and José Colen
16. Aron and Marxism: The Aronian Interpretation of Marx 217
Sylvie Mesure
17. “Moderate Machiavellianism”: Aron, Machiavelli, and the
Modern Machiavellians 231
Diogo Pires Aurélio
18. Montesquieu and Aron on Democracy’s Virtues and Corruption:
The Question of Political Legitimacy 245
Miguel Morgado
 CONTENTS vii

19. Raymond Aron and Alexis de Tocqueville: Political Moderation,

Liberty, and the Role of the Intellectuals 261
Aurelian Craiutu
Epilogue: Raymond Aron and History in the Making 275
Christian Bachelier

Bibliographical Guide 293

Elisabeth Dutartre-Michaut
Index 301
FOREWORD

Pierre Manent

T his volume succeeds in bringing to light, with sobriety and nuance, the rare
virtues and uncommon merits of an outstanding political thinker. After his
death in 1983, friends and foes alike were inclined to think that Raymond Aron’s
star would dim with the passing of the political order on which he had shed so
much light. The demise of communism and the ensuing end of the Cold War
were supposed to usher us into a new world definitively safe for democracy, and
which was more in need of brand new “democratic theories” cleverly deduced
than of old-fashioned political wisdom painstakingly acquired. The events of
September 11 cruelly dispelled these fond illusions. We were confronted anew
with the tragedy of history. Raymond Aron, while well aware of the variety of
“processes” which brought peace, comfort and order to the life of modern man,
had always been alert to the uncertainty, accidents, and disorder, to the “drama”
of human history. However impressive the accomplishments of modern science,
economy and politics, they have not freed human beings from the risks, the
greatness and misery of political life. Raymond Aron is a writer and thinker for
difficult times, and human beings always live in difficult times.
Raymond Aron was a learned man, and he constantly improved on an impres-
sive command of social sciences, including sociology, economics, strategy, and
political science and philosophy. While he delighted in analyzing the theoretical
subtleties of these sciences, and mapping out their relations and respective limits,
and thus greatly contributed to enlightening his various listeners and readers, he
never lost sight of their practical, especially political bearing. In this sense, he
was this very rare bird, a theoretical man who took very seriously the realm of
action. On the one hand, he never tired of questioning the limits of historical
knowledge, the relationship between economy and politics, or the possibility of
a science of international relations; on the other hand, he was constantly, even
anxiously asking the question: “what is to be done?” The cynosure of his deep-
est ambition was the producing of what he called “praxeology,” or theory of
action, a theoretical endeavor for which Clausewitz’s theory of war provided the
template. Using more traditional terms, we could say that his multifaceted œuvre
x F OR E WOR D

embodies one of the most successful efforts in the twentieth century to elaborate
a political philosophy as practical philosophy.
The most potent and enduring hindrance to practical philosophy in the past
century was the prestige of History and the prevalence of what was called “phi-
losophy of history.” While very different in their style and content, the theo-
retical endeavors belonging to this genus have this character in common: they
consider that the innumerable human actions in the past constitute a coherent
system that gives us the clue to future human actions. What has been done is
the clue to what is to be done. From the time of writing his dissertation to his
last courses and publications, Aron made strenuous efforts to break free from
the stranglehold of this kind of “evolutionist” or necessitarian thinking. The
most politically influential of these doctrines was of course Marxism, of which
Aron became the nemesis in France. But he was also very interested in Comte’s
positivism which, while no friend of socialism, nourished the hope of bringing
action under the rule of a demonstrative science. Marxism and Comteanism
shared the ambition to fi nally substitute the administration of things for the
governing of men. Now, Aron maintained that men could not rid themselves
of the burden of politics because it was up to them as free and moral beings to
manage and order their lives. This inescapable end or purpose calls for two kinds
of theoretical endeavors.
The fi rst deals with the internal order of the political association, which
comes under the jurisdiction of a fairly complete and rigorous, but not demon-
strative, knowledge: following on the examples of Aristotle and Montesquieu,
Aron understood his task as the elucidation, by means of comparison, of the
several modern political régimes. For him, just as for his predecessors, this the-
oretical or analytical effort had an immediate practical import: Aron did not
tire of explaining that modern people had to choose between a “constitutional-
pluralist” regime or a one-party, totalitarian regime. The sobriety, justice, and
fi rmness with which Aron conducted this effort are for the reader a political
education by itself.
The second deals, so to speak, with the political disorder that obtains between
political bodies or nations. It is much less amenable to a complete and rigorous
knowledge. In a sense, Aron was even more interested in understanding inter-
national disorder than national (relative) order. It was more of a challenge. How
do you give an account of what has been done or what should be done in a realm
where laws are unavailable and which lacks the (relative) stability and predict-
ability of a cohesive society? He gave much thought to what Thucydides in
ancient times and Clausewitz in modern times accomplished. I am confident that
the next generation, if they are thoughtful, will ponder what Aron accomplished
on this score in the twentieth century.
The contributors to this volume originate from various European coun-
tries and from the United States of America. They are witness to the breadth of
Raymond Aron’s appeal, which their contributions will enlarge and deepen.
SERIES EDITORS’ PREFACE

P algrave’s Recovering Political Philosophy series is committed to publishing

works on important thinkers in the history of political thought—including
works by philosophers, poets, artists, theologians and scientists who may not be
regarded conventionally as political theorists. The series was founded with an
eye to postmodernism’s challenge to the very possibility of a rational foundation
for and guidance of our political lives, a challenge that has provoked a searching
re-examination of the texts of past political philosophers and political thinkers.
We are especially keen to find and to publish works that help to recover the clas-
sical grounding for civic reason, as well as works that clarify the strengths and
weaknesses of modern philosophic rationalism. The series aims to make available
outstanding scholarship in the history of political philosophy that is inspired by
the rediscovery of the diverse rhetorical strategies employed by political phi-
losophers. Our interpretive studies will be particularly attentive to historical
context and language, and to the ways in which censorship and didactic concerns
impelled prudent thinkers, in widely diverse cultural conditions, to employ
manifold strategies of writing—strategies that allowed them to aim at different
audiences with various degrees of openness to unconventional thinking. The
series offers close readings of ancient, medieval, early modern and late modern
works that illuminate the human condition by attempting to answer its deepest,
enduring questions, and that have (in the modern periods) laid the foundations
for contemporary political, social, and economic life. The editors welcome work
from both established and emerging scholars that offer analyses of a single text or
a thematic study of a problem or question in a number of texts.
We are pleased to present the English version of The Companion to Raymond
Aron—one of the most clear-sighted political thinkers of the past century, whose
influence and legacy extends from contemporary French liberal thinkers to all
points of the globe. The particular situation that Aron confronted, bravely, dur-
ing his lifetime was that of the Cold War, during which he was often a lone
but compelling voice reminding French, European, and Western leaders of the
necessities and duties that confronted them. But the principles of political life
and international relations that he articulated are not confi ned to any time or
place; they are of enduring significance. Anyone wishing to learn from Aron’s
work faces a daunting prospect: Aron was prolific, publishing over 35 books and
hundreds of articles, and leaving almost as much for posthumous publication.
xii S E R I E S E DI TOR S’ PR E FAC E

This Companion offers a guide to the most important themes in those works. Its
editors have assembled a group of outstanding scholars intimately familiar with
both Aron’s work and the work of the thinkers with whom he entered into dia-
logue. Their essays offer valuable guidance in the three major strands of Aron’s
thought: the theory and history of international relations, political sociology and
philosophy, and the history of ideas.
INTRODUCTION

Elisabeth Dutartre-Michaut and José Colen

R aymond Aron, certainly one of the great political thinkers of the twentieth
century, is known especially for his criticism of and committed struggle
against totalitarianism. While even his contemporaries had become increasingly
aware that his work in this connection was wide ranging and significant, it is
clear today that he is a major figure among twentieth-century French intellectu-
als, and that his inf luence is especially pronounced among French liberals of the
twenty-first century. We are therefore pleased to introduce, or to reintroduce,
English readers to a lucid and demanding body of thought that makes no conces-
sions to intellectual indolence or cowardice. Henry Kissinger loved to speak of
Raymond Aron as his teacher, as someone who encouraged the effort to under-
stand, explain, and interpret the movement of modern society by confronting
reality and our awareness of it.
Many people have already paid homage to Aron’s unusual intellectual cour-
age: he often ran against the current and found himself ostracized, and his exam-
ple is still inspiring. Nicolas Baverez, author of the fi nest biography of Aron,
will briefly give us such an account in the initial chapter of this work. However,
many scholars have recently devoted serious academic studies to his thought and
his theories, if not his philosophy. The rich legacy of this thinker is coming into
ever-sharper focus.
The Companion to Raymond Aron is meant to supplement Raymond Aron’s
autobiography (Mémoires), biographies, and main works that are still read in uni-
versities in the Anglo-Saxon world, and to help guide the reader through his
thought. While the book does not entirely ignore his political commitments and
activities, its main purpose will be to aid in the study of Aron’s political, socio-
logical, and philosophical thought and writings. This is especially important,
even necessary, due to the breadth of Aron’s corpus and the lack of good English
translations of many of his works. He is one of the few important modern politi-
cal thinkers currently lacking a companion of this sort.
Aron’s work ranges over the most diverse academic disciplines, from nuclear
strategy to sociology to the philosophy of history, making it almost impossible
for any researcher to address his thought in all these areas. Aron published more
than 35 books during his lifetime, some with hundreds or even thousands of
2 E L I S A BE T H DU TA RT R E - M IC H AU T A N D JO S É C OL E N

pages, and almost as many posthumous texts of equal length have been pub-
lished as well (and these do not include his more than 200 academic articles and
countless editorials for newspapers.) In the words of Hoff mann, “the breadth of
Raymond Aron’s work has always led commentators, and even his disciples, to
despair.”1 To forestall this despair, we have gathered here a rare group of fi rst-
rate experts and thinkers, all animated by a desire to provide a comprehensive
Companion to this most comprehensive of thinkers, which is long overdue. In
addition, this book offers a useful guide to English translations of Aron’s work as
well as to a selection of the secondary literature on it in the fi nal chapter.
The book is organized into three parts that together encompass the three main
strands of his thought: theory and history of international relations, political soci-
ology and philosophy, and the history of ideas. After a brief presentation of the
theme, prepared with the help of Bryan-Paul Frost and Scott Nelson, the open-
ing chapter of each part presents an account of Aron’s main works on the sub-
ject within the framework of his thought. Each part is composed of six chapters
written by contributors from different countries with different backgrounds and
viewpoints, with their scholarship on Raymond Aron being the only common
denominator among them. The fi nal part was the most challenging to accomplish,
since it required both an excellent knowledge of Aron’s own work and a mastery
of the thinkers and philosophers with whom Aron engaged in fruitful dialogue.
Some subjects and a few of Aron’s works are approached in different chapters,
and hence there is a certain degree of overlap. The editors have not tried to
force any consensus among the perspectives offered here, and so they have limited
themselves simply to pointing out, at the beginning of each part, the “meeting
points” of this plurality. Michael Oakeshott, the British philosopher, suggests that
a conversation is a meeting-place among different universes of discourse, and that
such a conversation “is impossible in the absence of a diversity of voices” mutually
recognizing each other,2 that there is no place in it, however, for a symposiarch
or arbiter, and, if there are at times arguments and answers, that there does not
exactly need to be a conclusion or an assimilation of the various theories. Such an
approach is in harmony with the spirit of Aron’s work itself.
We would like to thank all the contributors and we are grateful for the sup-
port of the Societé des Amis de Raymond Aron as well as the encouragement of
Dominique Schnapper. We also would like to thank the editors at Palgrave
for their patience and help and Chris Schaefer and Linda Haapajärvi for their
translations. But special acknowledgments should go to Scott Nelson, Samuel
Wigutow, Gabriel Bartlett, and Daniel Mahoney, whose assistance and boundless
efforts have helped make this volume possible.

Notes
1. Stanley Hoffmann, “Raymond Aron et la théorie des relations internationales,”
Politique étrangère, no. 4, 2006, [reimp. 1983], 723.
2. Michael Oakeshott, “The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of Mankind,”
Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays. Foreword by Timothy Fuller, Indianapolis,
Liberty Press, 1991, 490.
CHAPTER 1

LIFE AND WORKS:

RAYMOND ARON, PHILOSOPHER AND
FREEDOM FIGHTER

Nicolas Baverez

R aymond Aron is the greatest figure in French liberalism of the twentieth

century. In the tradition of Montesquieu, Constant, Tocqueville, and Élie
Halévy, he is part of the French school of political sociology, which he defined in
his Les Etapes de la pensée sociologique: “This is mostly a non-dogmatic school of soci-
ologists, primarily interested in politics, who, without ignoring the social infra-
structure, respect the autonomy of the political order and think as liberals.” His
liberalism, his lucidity in the face of the upheavals of that period, and his posture as
a committed observer anxious to ensure consistency among his thoughts, words,
and deeds, give him a unique place among French intellectuals, distinguishing him
both from his masters—such as Alain, Léon Brunschvicg, and Célestin Bouglé—
and his contemporaries—Jean-Paul Sartre, Nizan, and Simone Weil.
Raymond Aron’s life and work are deeply intertwined with the violent his-
tory of the twentieth century, which was, in keeping with the prediction of
Nietzsche, the time of “great wars waged in the name of ideologies.” Born in
March 1905, 9 years before the Great War and 12 years before the Bolshevik
Revolution, Raymond Aron died in 1983 at the center of the European missile
crisis, that last avatar of the Cold War before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the
collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989.
Having been a teenager during the First World War, which was the matrix
of the century and which marked the suicide of liberal Europe, Aron shared the
pacifism of most youths in the 1920s. While in Berlin in 1930, and facing the
agony of the Weimar Republic, he soon realized the real nature of Nazism and
the need to combat it by any means, including weapons. During the 1930s, he
was one of the fi rst, along with Élie Halévy, to compare Stalinism and Hitlerism
and to develop an analysis of totalitarianism—the modern Machiavellianism.
Drafted into the army in 1939, he answered General de Gaulle’s call and joined
4 N I C O L A S B AV E R E Z

the ranks of “Free France” to wage war against Hitler’s Germany. In 1945, con-
tinuing his reflections on ideologies as secular religions, he exposed the totalitar-
ian and expansionist nature of the USSR, which was leading inevitably to the
bipolarization of the world. During the 1950s, he became a proponent of the
strategic revolution carried out by nuclear deterrence and of the balance of ter-
ror that regulated the Cold War, defi ned by the formula, “Peace impossible; war
improbable.”1 In 1957, in his work La Tragédie algérienne, he exposed the political
and strategic reasons that made Algeria’s independence inevitable in a continu-
ation of the disintegration of the European empires.2 From the 1960s onward,
he cast light on the contradictions of modern freedom and democracy, always
recalling their political and moral superiority to Soviet totalitarianism, includ-
ing its post-Stalinist versions. Finally, as far as economics were concerned, he
was a proponent of the market economy of the Trente Glorieuses (postwar boom)
and the reopening of planned and administered production systems, up to the
evolution of the Bretton-Woods system, and passing through the creation of the
European common market.
Aron’s thinking was both fully political and fully liberal, and it influenced
French philosophy and sociology profoundly. Aron contributed in a decisive way
to introducing Max Weber’s work in particular, and German phenomenology
and sociology in general, to France, thereby paving the way for the criticism
of positivism and the birth of French philosophy of history—as Jean Cavaillès
emphasizes. He was one of the fathers of existentialism, his dissertation having
been a clear existentialist manifesto. He rediscovered Tocqueville, and paved the
way for François Furet’s work. He was the best French scholar on Marx, making
allowances, on the one hand, for the fertile analyst of industrial society, and on
the other for the accursed prophet of revolution. He was also a biographer and an
interpreter of Clausewitz, on the basis of whose works he examined the muta-
tions of that chameleon—war.
Historically and politically, Raymond Aron remains one of the heroes of the
struggle for freedom and reason in the twentieth century: “When we fight for
something,” he insists in Le Spectateur engagé, “we don’t calculate the probabilities
of winning or losing . . . when the choice is to survive or to die, we do not cal-
culate, we fight.”3 His essays, editorials, and interventions served as an antidote
to the dominant influence of Marxism and contributed primarily—both to the
resistance of French society to communism and to the conversion of intellectuals
to anti-totalitarianism. He was also one of the few Frenchmen to gain a truly
international audience, a fact that led him to have contacts among great scholarly
figures (Hayek, Oppenheimer, and Polanyi), political leaders (Kissinger), and
dissidents from Eastern Europe (Solzhenitsyn) who had their books circulated in
samizdat form. As for the French and their rulers, Aron served, in the formula-
tion of Claude Lévi-Strauss, as the “teacher of intellectual hygiene.” As for other
countries, he was one of the very few who saved the honor of French intellectuals
through his action against Nazism in the ranks of Free France, against Stalinism
during the Cold War, thereby serving freedom and the victims of totalitarian-
ism, and supporting both Eastern dissidents and boat people. His choices show
 L I F E A N D WOR K S 5

that courage is not the monopoly of men of action, but can also be the privilege
of men of thought.

* * *

The life of Raymond Aron, whose career should have followed the path of a
conventional scholar and philosopher, was telescoped by the very history that he
had chosen as his subject of study, marked by ruptures and personal trials.
Raymond Aron was born in 1905 into a family of Jewish origin that was,
however, fully integrated, patriotic, and republican. A brilliant school record
led him to the École normale supérieure in 1924, where he befriended Sartre
and Nizan while at the same time he met frequently with Alain. After obtain-
ing a graduate diploma (agrégation) in philosophy, Aron lived in Germany from
1930 to 1933—fi rst in Cologne and then in Berlin. His fi rst turning point was
intellectual: reading Max Weber and the phenomenologists—including Husserl
and Heidegger—he parted ways with the idealism and positivism that then
dominated the Sorbonne. He decided upon his destiny during a walk along the
Rhine: “to understand or know my time as honestly as possible, without losing
awareness of the limits of my knowledge; to detach myself from the current time
without being resigned to the role of a spectator.”4 His second turning point was
political: the rise of Nazism and the elimination of the Weimar Republic led him
to break with the pacifi sm of his youth.
Assigned on his return from Germany first to a high school in Le Havre, and
then to the Centre de documentation économique et sociale at the École normale
supérieure, Aron worked on his dissertation while publishing an essay on German
sociology—“La Sociologie allemande contemporaine” (1935)—and assiduously
attending Alexandre Kojève’s seminars (on the Phenomenology of Spirit), which
introduced Hegel to French philosophy. The dissertation dedicated to the phi-
losophy of history5 that he defended in 1938 under the supervision of Brunschvicg
caused a scandal in France by inaugurating the “epistemology of suspicion” within
the social sciences. The 1930s therefore passed under the shadow of a growing
tension between Aron’s personal happiness and intellectual success, on the one
hand, and his desperation as a citizen faced with the passivity of democracies and
the paralysis of France in the face of the Great Depression and the rise of totalitari-
anism, on the other. Alongside Élie Halévy, Raymond Aron was therefore among
the first to highlight the novelty of, and the common traits linking, Fascism,
Nazism, and Communism, their common opposition to democracy, and the lack
of any solution other than war to the challenge they presented. This became espe-
cially clear during a communication to the French Philosophical Society (Société
française de philosophie) that he delivered on June 17, 1939.
Drafted into the army in 1939 and assigned as chief of a weather station to the
north of Mézières, which proved to be at the center of the German onslaught,
Aron managed to withdraw his platoon just north of Paris, and then cross the
Loire to reach Bordeaux. He answered General de Gaulle’s call in June of 1940
and left for London, where he headed the magazine France Libre, until the allied
6 N I C O L A S B AV E R E Z

liberation. The Second World War was a sequence of shocks, what with the mul-
tiple dramas of defeat, the exile that forced him to leave his wife Suzanne and his
daughter Dominique behind, his dismissal from the university due to the statute
against the Jews that the Vichy regime applied, the destruction of his books, and
fi nally, above all else, the genocide of the Jews.
On his return to France, Raymond Aron chose not to take up the post from
which he had been dismissed at the University of Toulouse, and instead became
a journalist; fi rst in Point de Vue, and then, after the short-lived direction of the
Ministry of Information by André Malraux on behalf of General de Gaulle, in
Combat and Le Figaro. The launching of the Cold War by Stalin saw Aron stand
with André Malraux as one of the few French intellectuals to oppose commu-
nism directly, and this led him to campaign in the RPF and participate in the
Movement for Cultural Freedom especially. This commitment to democracy
against the Soviet system brought him into complete isolation. Ostracized by the
university and the intelligentsia, he quarreled with his classmate, Sartre, as well
as with most of his friends from his years at the École normale supérieure. From
1947 to 1955, he was a lonely man.
Aron made his return to the University in 1955. Despite the smear cam-
paign fueled by the publication of The Opium of the Intellectuals,6 he was elected
with a majority of one vote to the chair in sociology at the Sorbonne in June of
1955. Aron then pursued, until his death in 1983, a fruitful double activity as a
scholar—at the Sorbonne and at the Collège de France, to which he was elected
in 1970 while passing through the École des hautes études—and as a columnist,
fi rst for Le Figaro (1947–1977) and then for L’Express (1977–1983).
Fully recognized abroad both as a scholar and as a leading analyst, in France,
Aron remained in a marginal position while always defending the minority view.
He unleashed the fury of the nationalist right—to the point of becoming a target
of the OAS—by taking a stand in 1957 in favor of Algerian independence. He
became the Gaullists’ bête noire owing to his criticism of de Gaulle’s concept of
national independence and the resulting weakness of the democracies against
the Soviet Union. While he had initially been one of the harshest critics of the
university’s archaism and a strong advocate for its reform, in May of 1968, his
stance against the nihilism of the students and their mythical revolution (révolu-
tion introuvable) made him the scapegoat of the furious revolutionaries and their
sycophants, including Sartre. Aron wanted to reform the university, not destroy
it. Again, the facts proved him right.
Even though the defense of democracy and anti-totalitarianism prevailed
in the 1970s—especially under the influence of the shocking revelations of
Solzhenitsyn—Aron’s reconciliation with the family of leftist intellectuals from
which he had come had to be deferred until the end of the decade: a symbolic
handshake with Sartre took place on June 20, 1979, on the occasion of a press
conference in the Hotel Lutétia gathered in support of the boat people fleeing
communist Vietnam. The French reserved their enthusiasm for the Spectateur
engagé (1981) and Mémoires (1983), which remain the greatest commentaries on
the history of the twentieth century. Raymond Aron died a few weeks after
their publication in October 17, 1983, while working on a new book about the
 L I F E A N D WOR K S 7

last years of the twentieth century,7 succumbing to a heart attack while leaving
the law courts to which he had come in order to testify on behalf of Bertrand de
Jouvenel, whom Zeev Sternhell had accused of fascism.
Aron did not see the outcome of the history of the twentieth century in 1989,
with the fall of the Berlin Wall marking the victory of democracy against the
Soviet system and of nations against empires, things for which he had fought
so hard. He paid a high price for his struggle on behalf of freedom and reason,
but his lucidity and courage enabled him to overcome both the attacks—the
violence and the bad faith that are illustrated by the absurd dictum that “it is
better to be wrong with Sartre than to be right with Raymond Aron”—and
the personal misfortunes that marked his life. The latter involved the collapse
of his father Gustave, who was ruined by the crisis of the 1930s, the death of
his mother Suzanne in May 1940, the debacle of his departure for London and
the anguish of leaving his wife and daughter in France, the shock of the Shoah,
the birth of his daughter Laurence with Down’s Syndrome, and the death of
his daughter Emmanuelle, who suffered from a devastating case of leukemia in
1950.
Aron defi ned his work as “a reflection on the twentieth century in the light of
Marxism, and an attempt to illuminate all areas of modern society—the economy,
social relations, class relations, political systems, and relations between nations
and ideological discussions.”8 He followed the principle of thinking about his-
tory as it is and not as we dream of it.
Freeing himself from the traditional divisions among academic disciplines,
Aron explored many fields of knowledge—philosophy, sociology, history, inter-
national relations, ideological controversy, and commentary on current events.
His thought fi nds its unity in a conception of the human condition that he devel-
oped in his thesis, Introduction to the Philosophy of History (1938)9. It is summarized
in one formula: “Man is in history; man is historical; man is a history.” Human
existence is tragic, which requires each person to decide his fate based on partial
knowledge and limited reasoning. However, that does not mean that we are
doomed to despair and absurdity, because commitment allows one to overcome
the relativity of history and the conditioned character of knowledge in order
to access a part of freedom and truth. For Aron, freedom comes fi rst, but this
primacy is historical and not philosophical. It should both be built and defended
while taking into account the geopolitical configurations, the political and social
institutions, the economic systems, and the values of the age.
In light of the fact that the twentieth century took place under the shadow of
ideologies,—secular religions that intended to supplant democracy—Aron dedi-
cated a large part of his work to a critical commentary on Marx—in which he
separates the sociologist of the industrial revolution from the accursed prophet
of the revolution—and on Marxists—fi rst and foremost among them Sartre,
Merleau-Ponty, and Althusser. He demonstrated the impossibility of reconcil-
ing the idea of a predetermined direction of history with liberty; he contrasted
Western economies’ development with the prediction that capitalism would
meet an inevitable crisis; and he emphasized the perverse mixture of faith and
terror that served as the cement of the Soviet empire. He found himself regularly
8 N I C O L A S B AV E R E Z

opposed to Sartre, the “petit camarade” (little companion) of his Normale School
years, with whom he fell out in 1947 when the Cold War began.
Both Aron and Sartre are philosophers of freedom and commitment. Man
is what he chooses to be, and it is by deciding about himself that he establishes
himself and translates his freedom into actions. However, while such freedom
is rooted in history and democratic institutions for Aron, for Sartre, it takes the
shape of a metaphysics of violence. For Sartre, consciousness, which is in essence
free, fi nds itself alienated by others; it can only overcome this contradiction and
gain freedom by engaging in a collective revolt, welded by a pact of mutual
terror. Personal rebellion and collective violence are at once the instrument of
empowerment of individuals and the motor of history. This anarcho-metaphysi-
cal theory contains three risks: absolute freedom of conscience allows all options,
including that of totalitarian ventures; fragmentation and discontinuity of con-
sciousness in time eliminate any accountability; and the glorification, especially
of violence and terrorism, is sheer historical nonsense in a century character-
ized by mass killings and terror. Aron, by contrast, starts by noting the fragility
of political freedom and the need to preserve it. A miraculous creation of the
European Enlightenment is gradually consolidated by the joining of the demo-
cratic movement and the radical transformation of capitalism, on the one hand,
and comes under fi re from totalitarianism, nationalism, and other threats, on
the other. Deprived of a transcendent foundation or a unitary principle, it fi nds
itself torn by the heterogeneity of political, civil, and social equality, undermined
by egalitarian tensions, and threatened by collective passions and demagogues.
Freedom is always something to be won, the result of the daily action of citizens
and peoples who, with the help of the institutions, govern their impulses toward
violence, chaos, and unreason.
From this point of view, Aron’s sociology of industrial societies explores the
similarities and differences between liberal and socialist regimes through his
trilogy, which consists of Eighteen Lectures on Industrial Society (1962), The Class
Struggle (1964), and Democracy and Totalitarianism (1965).10 For Aron, “industrial
society is the society in which large companies are the characteristic form of
labor organization” that is associated with the accumulation of capital and the
generalization of economic calculation. The traits that capitalist and communist
societies share do not necessarily converge, since their political structures remain
implacably antagonistic. Pluralism is opposed to a single party, fundamental free-
doms to the existence of a state “truth,” the independence of social agents to
their political control, the rule of law to a bloated apparatus of repression, and
the market to central planning. The primacy of political variables excludes any
symmetry between the two blocs. He also fights the urge to convert pluralism or
the market into “values” in themselves; they are means, not ends. Aron’s politi-
cal liberalism is thus clearly different from liberalism in the utilitarian tradition,
the most complete version of which is presented by Hayek in The Constitution
of Liberty.11 Aron reserves a prominent place for the state, to which it falls to
establish a “civil state” within society and to defend the sovereignty of the nation
within the state of nature that governs the global system.
The study of international relations represents a natural counterpoint to the
analysis of industrial society. On one hand there is the upsurge in violence, with
 L I F E A N D WOR K S 9

the alternation of war and peace and the struggles of nations and empires; on the
other hand there is the logic of the market society, bearer at the same time of
a peaceful competition and an individualism that seeks to free itself from state
supervision. His analysis of the operational theaters of World War II, carried out
during his stay in London, led him to the strategic studies field, which he con-
nected early on with his reflections on the conceptualization of the use of nuclear
weapons. He was also a regular commentator on international affairs. In Paix et
guerre (1962), Aron suggests a theoretical interpretation of the global diplomatic
and strategic system based on the key role of states as the only referees in any
recourse to arms. This prominence attributed to sovereign states with respect to
movements in civil societies won him a reputation outside France as the deviser
of Gaullist foreign policy, even though within France he was considered the most
severe critic of General de Gaulle’s “grand design.” Penser la guerre, Clausewitz
(1976) continues the exploration of the paradoxical relationship between vio-
lence and reason, sovereignty and empire. From the ambivalence of the thought
of Clausewitz, who is the theorist both of total war and of limited confl ict, of
the rise to extremes and of the restraint of force, Aron shows how the different
configurations of the international system during the twentieth century—the
European age inherited from the nineteenth century, the period between the
two world wars, and the Cold War—combine popular passions and the interests
of states, the vision of strategists, and the unstable balance of rival powers.
In addition to his academic work, Aron exercised a moral and intellec-
tual authority over French public opinion through his articles in Le Figaro and
L’Express, the liberal journals Preuves, Contrepoint or Commentaire—the last of
which he founded—and even more importantly through his essays shedding
light on geopolitical developments and the domestic situation. The Opium of the
Intellectuals, published in 1955 just before the Soviet invasion of Hungary, awak-
ened a fi rst generation of communist fellow travelers, including François Furet.
Starting in 1957, he took a stance in favor of Algerian independence, which
caused a great scandal among conservatives. In 1968, he analyzed the events
of May as a pseudo-revolution: ideological talk masked the lack of a political
project, leading to a destructive nihilism for both the Republic and the universi-
ties. Les Désillusions du progrès (1969) sets out a meditation on disenchantment in
democratic societies, while Plaidoyer pour l’Europe décadente (1977) urges Europe,
rich and vulnerable, to regain its status as a major political player, escaping the
alternatives of integration into the United States’ sphere of influence or submis-
sion within the Soviet empire.
Aron’s thought combines a philosophy of history and a moral code of action
based on both statesmen’s wisdom and citizens’ engagement. It challenges the
traditional divide between liberalism and politics, for liberalism often under-
estimates the weight of history, the strength of passions and the clash of ambi-
tions, and politics is quick to exonerate itself from any connection with truth
and reason. The formulation of the multiple dimensions of modern societies
reveals the complicated interactions existing between structural changes, the
play of political forces and rival interests and, in sum, men’s irreducible freedom:
“Men create their own history, even if they do not know the history they cre-
ate.” Hence, his method is both realistic, probabilistic, and dialectic. It is realistic
10 N I C O L A S B AV E R E Z

because it rejects any transcendent principle and constantly calls for a moral code
of responsibility; it is probabilistic because it seeks to shed light on the complex-
ity of decisions in history by studying the full range of possible choices; and it is
dialectical because it refuses determinism and Manichaeism, and tries to handle
complexity and uncertainty.
Raymond Aron’s liberal political science fi nds its ultimate horizon in a gam-
ble for the idea of reason, in Kant’s sense. Nothing is more false than to accuse
him of pessimism or to blame him for a kind of resignation. History is only
tragic because man is in the end free to act for better or for worse. This does not
legitimize withdrawal or indifference, but is instead a call to action, a salutary
invitation to citizens and leaders to take charge of their own destiny. Aron’s
ultimate message is made of optimism and hope. It is not inevitable that the last
word should be one of hatred and violence. Against fanatics and cynics, the best
antidote remains reason: “If all civilizations, both ambitious and precarious, are
to achieve the prophets’ dreams in a distant future, what universal vocation could
unite them other than Reason?”12
Aron respected religious faith, for which he reserved a place to which he him-
self did not have access, the idea of a revelation or sacred history remaining funda-
mentally alien to him. He instead considered reason “a hidden universal,” capable
of releasing man from naturalism and historicity, which opens up the possibility
of a reconciliation between power and freedom. After the “death of God” and the
end of ideologies, at the heart of the struggle against the barbarism of genocide and
the mass terror of totalitarian regimes, Aron puts together and traces the outlines
of a moderate and sensible policy, mobilizing the margins of freedom and human
reason to contain unbridled passions and violence. He reminds statesmen that
there is something above politics, namely truth; he reminds men of science and
faith that only partial knowledge is possible; and he reminds citizens that freedom
is never a given but must always be conquered with hard work, determination,
and sometimes the use of arms. A patriot, a cosmopolitan, and a fierce opponent
of totalitarianism, Aron remains one of the major thinkers about freedom in the
twentieth century. His liberal definition of freedom remains just as topical in the
open economy and society of the twenty-fi rst century.
Raymond Aron’s life and work were caught up in the violent history of the
twentieth century and in his fight against totalitarian ideologies. It can therefore
be tempting to celebrate his vision but to lock it up in the past and reduce it to a
historical record: Raymond Aron, a victim of his willingness to look closely into
politics and history, is invaluable for explaining the twentieth century but would
be useless for understanding the twenty-fi rst century.
In fact, the globalization era is radically different from the century of ideolo-
gies, which have been permanently transformed by the disintegration of the Soviet
Union. Capitalism has become universal, and at the same time, its center of grav-
ity has been swinging to Asia and the south. The digital economy has replaced
industrial society. The confl ict between democracy and totalitarianism has faded
before the violent confrontation between identities, cultures, and religious faiths.
The bipolar world of the Cold War, dominated by the two superpowers and regu-
lated by nuclear deterrence, has given way to a very unstable multi-polar system.
 L I F E A N D WOR K S 11

The actors are multiplying and diversifying at the same time as states are losing
the monopoly of international politics to markets, and the monopoly of violence
with the rise of terrorist and criminal organizations that now control large areas
and even entire populations. A power capable of preventing strategic or economic
shocks, like the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century or the United States
in the second half of the twentieth century, no longer exists.
Crises, revolutions, and wars have in no way disappeared; they have changed.
Keynesian regulation of closed and administered economies has been replaced by
a globalized capitalism and a growth model characterized by speculative bubbles,
the implosion of which in 2008 came close to causing a new great deflation.
Revolutions are no longer guided by the secular religions of race and class, but
by nationalism, by the revival of empires, and by the reawakening of ancient
religions—from Islamism to orthodoxy. War is reoccupying the front stage of
history, even in democracies. It is no longer cold but hot; it is permanent, in spite
of its varying intensity; it is no longer peripheral but central—from American
defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan to the rising tensions in the South China Sea or
to Russian intervention in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, while the chaos of civil
war devastates Iraq, Syria, and Libya, and a terrorist arc runs from Senegal to
Afghanistan, and from Boko Haram to the Taliban, via ISIS.
The conceptual framework underlying the Aronian analysis of the history of
the twentieth century as resulting from the confluence of the Enlightenment and
the German philosophy of history is now called into question. It was based, on
the one hand, on a clear distinction between the civil state governing the internal
affairs of nations and the jungle dominating international relations and, on the
other, on the central role of the state as the guarantor of civil peace and national
sovereignty. It was thus around the state, including in particular the form of
the nation-state emerging in Europe from the sixteenth century onwards, that
both the international system and societies were organized. But globalization
has blown these categories apart. The West has lost its monopoly of rule over
capitalism and world history. An international society is emerging, with its own
institutions, norms, and mores, while whole swathes of territory and populations
have gone back to a state of nature. States are bypassed from above, by the open
economy and the birth of continental blocs, and from below, with individuals’
and societies’ increasing independence.
Nothing could be further from the truth, however, than to conclude from this
that Aron’s thinking is out of date, and for at least four reasons.
Aron was one of the fi rst theorists to recognize the advent of the global age,
even if he did not foresee either the collapse of the Soviet Union from inside or
the advent of global capitalism. Starting in 1960, he imagined the future prin-
ciples of globalization—a concept he used starting in 196913 —in a conference
on “The Dawn of Universal History,” which he defi ned as the birth of a human
society living a single history. The globalization age rests precisely on a dialecti-
cal movement between the universal nature of capitalism and technology, on the
one hand, and the instability of a multi-polar system, with a radical heterogene-
ity of values and political institutions, on the other. Twenty-fi rst-century men
share the same history but live in very different places and times: the competition
12 N I C O L A S B AV E R E Z

for leadership between China and the United States; the legacy of the twentieth
century in Cuba or Korea; national rivalries and territorial disputes in Asia, as
in nineteenth-century Europe; the African enlightenment and economic take-
off; and religious wars tearing apart the Arab-Muslim world; all these lie in
seventeenth-century Europe. The fundamental dilemma of our time therefore
appears to be the one that Aron explained in these terms: “Never have men had
so many reasons not to kill each other. Never have they had so many reasons to
feel involved in a single venture. I do not conclude that the age of universal his-
tory will be peaceful. We know that man is a reasonable being, but are men?”14
History, according to Aron, is neither linear nor fi xed. It moves, in accor-
dance with the formula of Arnold Toynbee that he appreciated: “history is again
on the move.” There is a sudden and brutal acceleration of history when the
destinies of individuals, peoples, and states are at stake. In the age of universal
history, cold societies, in Lévi-Strauss’s sense of the word, are confi ned to a few
peoples in Amazonia and Oceania, while almost all of humanity lives in warm
societies, where change is permanent. There are three engines: the long-lasting
evolutions of capitalism, of the international system, and of mentalities; the con-
figuration of power and power relations between states; and political leaders’
will, imagination, and vision.
Far from representing the end of history, globalization has re-ignited history
after the glacial period of the Cold War. If the historical pattern has changed, the
critical issues are still those upon which Aron sought to shed light. The three dia-
lectical transformations he discerned at the heart of modern society—the issues of
equality, socialization, and universality—are still at work, but have spread across
the globe and gained hold in the emerging countries. The contradictions of mod-
ern liberty—torn between an increasingly demanding rationalization of technol-
ogy, behavior, and institutions, on the one hand, and soaring collective passions
on the other, remain: the contradictions of the democracies, which have lost their
ideals and their force as a result of individualism, the atomization of society, the
rise of populism and demagoguery, and the loss of trust in institutions, and which
therefore prove powerless in the face of economic shocks such as the 2008 crash
or the multiplication of external threats—from China’s ambitions to the Russian
imperial revival to the disintegration of the Middle East or the ascent of ISIS and
its project of reconstituting the caliphate; the difficulty of reforming free nations
that have lost control of capitalism and world history; the decisive choice of war or
peace, in the context of the great fatigue from confl ict that has gripped the United
States and launched it on the path of a new isolationism while Europe is trapped
in the illusion of an escape from reality and a farewell to arms; the conditions for
the development and the regulation of global capitalism, when it swings toward
the south and has to tackle the challenges of an aging population, information
technologies, over-indebtedness, and unemployment caused by the bursting of
the speculative bubbles of the 2000s; and fi nally the ecological crisis.
Political liberalism, of which Aron was the greatest representative in the France
of the twentieth century, is the key to the future of democracies. The conclusion
at which Aron arrives in his Opium of the Intellectuals15 has lost none of its urgency:
“Freedom is the essence of Western culture, the foundation of its success, the
secret of its size and influence.” However, this freedom is primarily political, not
 L I F E A N D WOR K S 13

economic; it cannot be reduced to the market, which falls within the category of
means, not values; it must, in Karl Popper’s words, “be defended against its own
fanatics.” Aron’s political liberalism is thus an effective antidote to the excesses
that gripped the American superpower in the 1990s and, at the same time, a call
to action issued to the rulers and citizens of the democracies, which need to be
reinvented in order to meet economic and geopolitical upheavals. Free nations are
simultaneously confronted with the legacy of the shock of 2008—low growth,
mass unemployment, and public and private debt—and the rise of populist and
extremist parties, as well as the desire for revenge on the part of new powers in the
south and the revival of empires and jihad launched by part of the Muslim world.
Faced with these shocks in a chain that destabilizes the middle classes constitut-
ing its base, the temptation is to yield to demagoguery or resignation. Aron is a
valuable guide: he calls us to reason and moderation, but also to mobilization and
action. The spiral of violence, the threat to freedom, the exaltation of national-
ism, and the use of protectionism constitute the best services that can be done to
the enemies of freedom. But prudence and equanimity do not necessarily imply
the dissolution of public authority or paralysis—at least passivity—in the face of
groups, forces, and powers whose purpose is to destroy democracy.
Raymond Aron always avoided developing a dogmatic system, imposing a
fi xed doctrine, or founding a school. Aronianism does not gather together the
faithful in receiving communion from the hand of their master. It is a mindset,
an intellectual attitude, and a pedagogy. The mindset consists in constantly com-
paring ideas and facts, and analyzing the course of history without losing sight
of the universality of certain values. His method is composed of four stages—
history, analysis, interpretation, criticism—which make it possible to understand
before judging and committing to action. His pedagogy is one of freedom that is
not innate but that results from the patient work of education. Neither prophet
nor guru, Aron does not give us a recipe that we should apply regardless of
historical configurations, but he warns us against giving up the defense of the
values that enabled the West, particularly in Europe, to invent capitalism and
democracy. At a time when developed countries are subjected to the crossfi re
of competition from the South and the revival of imperial ambitions, Raymond
Aron emphasizes that the leadership won by the West over the modern world
from the late fi fteenth century to the late twentieth century was not the result of
innate advances in the fields of economics, technology, politics, or culture, but
of the ability to bring about a civilization that respects freedoms and the dignity
of men, of the ability to question itself, and of the protection of pluralism and
critical thought. Far from reproducing the patterns of the past and sinking into
the laziness of conservatism, each generation is called to reflect on the principles
of the historical age in which it is immersed, to find in it the will and the means
to adapt to it, without leaving its fate in the hands of an illusory Providence or
an improbable savior.

* * *

Globalization is another great historic transformation. It is neither fortunate

nor evil. It offers a unique configuration where democracies must fi nd the keys
14 N I C O L A S B AV E R E Z

to enhance the considerable potential for progress it contains and master the risks
involved. Deifying or cursing it is equally inconsequential. We need to think
about it and take action to put it at the service of freedom. This history can have
no meaning or purpose. Its course is determined entirely by men who can make
it swing toward a radical violence and inhumanity, multiplied by technology,
or put it at the service of prosperity, justice, and peace. In the age of “univer-
sal history,” in the face of the return to major economic crises, the revival of
national and religious fanaticism, and the rebirth of empires, the survival of
freedom requires mobilization and commitment, but also knowledge and politi-
cal reason. This is why Raymond Aron remains inextricably the greatest figure
in French liberal thought of the twentieth century and, at the same time, our
contemporary.

Notes
1. Raymond Aron, Le Grand Schisme, Paris, Gallimard, 1948; Les Guerres en chaîne,
Paris, Gallimard, 1951.
2. Raymond Aron, La Tragédie algérienne, Paris, Plon, 1957.
3. Raymond Aron, Le Spectateur engagé, Paris, Julliard, 1981, 286.
4. Raymond Aron, Mémoires. 50 ans de réflexion politique, Paris, Julliard, 1983, 53.
5. Raymond Aron, Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire: Essai sur les limites de
l’objectivité historique, Paris, Gallimard, “Bibliothèque des Idées,” 1938.
6. Raymond Aron, L’Opium des intellectuels, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, “Liberté de
l’esprit,” 1955.
7. Raymond Aron, Les Dernières Années du siècle, Paris, Julliard, 1984.
8. Raymond Aron, Le Spectateur engagé, Paris, Julliard, 1981, 299–300.
9. Raymond Aron, Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire. Essai sur les limites de
l’objectivité historique, Paris, Gallimard. « Bibliothèque des Idées », 1938.
10. Raymond Aron, Dix-Huit Leçons sur la société industrielle, Paris, Gallimard, “Idées”,
1962 ; La Lutte de classes. Nouvelles leçons sur les sociétés industrielles, Paris, Gallimard,
« Idées », 1964 ; Démocratie et totalitarisme, Paris, Gallimard, « Idées », 1965.
11. Friedrich A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, Chicago, University, of Chicago
Press, 1960.
12. Aron, Mémoires, 729.
13. Raymond Aron, Les Désillusions du progrès. Essai sur la dialectique de la modernité,
Paris, Calmann-Lévy, “Liberté de l’esprit,” 1969, 231.
14. Raymond Aron, “L’Aube de l’histoire universelle,” conference given in London
on February 18, 1960, under the sponsorship of the Society of Friends of the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, published in Dimensions de la Conscience histo-
rique, Paris, Plon, 1961, 295.
15. 11 Raymond Aron, L’Opium des intellectuels, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, “Liberté de
l’esprit,” 1955, 315.
PART I

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS:
“HISTORY IS ON THE MOVE”

José Colen and Bryan-Paul Frost

A lthough Aron believed that a “sociological” approach to war (and peace)

was possible, and even necessary, he also argued that the absence of “val-
ues” in that approach or description would greatly impoverish—indeed, com-
pletely distort—it. This does not mean that all approaches and descriptions are
equivalent or of equal worth: reason may not be able to appreciate the complex
arrangements of an international system using a single criterion, but this does
not mean that it should gratuitously relinquish its own powers. Simply put, war
can be understood from a variety of better and worse perspectives, but it is never
“value-free.” It is therefore no surprise that Aron was skeptical of the hoped-for
convergence between political theory and economic science through the use of
such concepts as the “logic of choice,” “the principle of balance,” or “quanti-
tative variables.” The economic model of politics “does not offer a simplified
or schematic portrait of political conduct, as it deforms and falsifies this same
conduct.” Of course, political scientists were free to define and to use whatever
models they liked (provided they were tested a posteriori); but any model that
did not take account of the subjective meaning that political, diplomatic, and/or
military agents ascribed to their conduct would not ref lect reality and so would
not exemplify or comport with an authentic political science. Even if the eco-
nomic model is used simply as a heuristic tool, it still runs the risk, “under the
pretext of defining an abstract theory,” of suggesting a cynical interpretation of
politics as the sole truth.
Each of the chapters in this part tries—as Aron himself tried—to avoid these
pitfalls. In the fi rst place, they present a sociological analysis of a diplomatic or
historical constellation without being value-free. In the second place, they present
a genuinely political analysis and show that history and war cannot be reduced to
economics (or any other such “rigorous” science) without fundamentally distort-
ing them. All of the chapters therefore focus largely on the intersection between
16 J O S É C O L E N A N D B RYA N - PAU L F RO S T

history and praxeology, and how each informs the other. Aron was one of the
few international relations theorists who put praxeology at the forefront of his
analysis, but only because he had so carefully surveyed the historical landscape
(and vice versa).
Jean-Vincent Holeindre’s chapter explores Aron’s writings on war and strat-
egy. Holeindre begins by reminding us of the essentially interdisciplinary char-
acter of Aron’s oeuvre. This is apparent from even a cursory glance at the table
of contents of his massive work Peace and War, which comprehensively analyzes
international relations by systematizing theory, sociology, history, and praxeol-
ogy. As Holeindre reminds us, Aron was the fi rst to introduce into France a
sociological theory of international relations, refusing to reduce such a crucial
project to the study of history or legal rules (although he integrated these two
topics into his analysis as well). Holeindre also fi nds room for the applicability
of Aron’s observations to the state of war today. Aron had a great deal to say
about the decisive effect that atomic weapons had on diplomacy in his era, but
he also recognized the impact of psychological and guerrilla warfare, terror-
ism, and irregular confl icts—as waged, for example, by the Algerians and the
Vietnamese.
In the next chapter, Matthias Oppermann argues that we should understand
Aron’s spirited defense of liberal democracy in light of his experience of the
convulsions of German politics and society in the 1930s. For Aron’s sojourn in
Germany from 1930 to 1933 had not only introduced him to a wide array of
important German thinkers, it had also underscored the fundamental fragil-
ity of liberal democracy, especially in France, and thus awakened him from his
pacifist slumber and brought him back to French Republican patriotism. His
commentary during the lead-up to the Second World War was a plea to his
countrymen—and to any defender of liberal democracy more generally—for
them to demonstrate the bravery and resolution necessary to conserve their cur-
rent political system, however great its faults, in the face of the much greater
threat of tyranny. Aron also discovered after the war that “history was again on
the move,” and he would spend much more time and effort rephrasing and reiter-
ating his stance on totalitarianism in order to deal with its deceptively friendlier
incarnation.
Raymond Aron’s ongoing commentary on the Cold War is the topic of Carlos
Gaspar’s chapters. Here Gaspar makes extensive use of Aron’s works on histoire-
se-faisant, including his many articles published in Le Figaro and L’Express. Aron’s
versatility in political commentary, sociology, international relations, and phi-
losophy placed him at a unique vantage point from which he could survey the
unfolding of history little by little and integrate these details within a broader
vision of the main trends of the twentieth century in particular and his philoso-
phy of history in general. Gaspar confirms the validity of Aron’s central insights
into the nature of the Cold War: decolonization brought about the end of the
old empires, and while the rivalry between the West and the Soviet Union never
erupted into nuclear war, it nevertheless remained a “bellicose peace.” Even
though the liberal democracies began to reveal problems of their own, namely,
 I N T E R NAT IONA L R E L AT ION S 17

a diminished capacity for collective action, Aron had faith that the confl ict
between the West and the Soviet Union would result in liberty.
Peace and War among Nations is clearly Aron’s masterpiece in the field of inter-
national relations, and Bryan-Paul Frost seeks here to unpack its main tenets.
Beginning with Aron’s rich historical analysis, Frost shows that although the
twentieth century was unique (what with nuclear weapons and the worldwide
extension of the diplomatic field), it could still be understood by using the same
conceptual tools used previously—most notably, those elaborated by Clausewitz
and others. In fact, Frost shows that Aron did not believe that nuclear weapons
had effaced traditional notions of diplomatic, strategic, and moral conduct: the
Machiavellian and Kantian dilemmas faced in the past were the same ones faced
in the present. Consequently, Aron’s theoretical and sociological framework was
equally applicable during the Cold War as it had been in the past.
Joël Mouric discusses Aron’s gradual discovery of Clausewitz, as well as the
many misinterpretations and injustices from which both the German strategist’s
magnum opus, Vom Kriege, and what one might also call Aron’s magnum opus,
Penser la guerre, Clausewitz, suffered. Although it is a shame that Aron did not
write the great work expected of him on Marx, his opting for Clausewitz as the
subject of a major study should come as no surprise: both Clausewitz and Aron
had lost their homelands for some time during a war; moreover, of all the think-
ers Aron had dealt with, Clausewitz most accurately fit the description of a man
who made critical decisions and who withdrew to ponder the nature of his field.
In Aron’s in-depth study of that man we are made privy to the various facets of
Aron’s thinking that justify this Companion: the relation between knowledge or
theory and action; the interweaving of process and drama; the need to explain
how our era is both fundamentally the same and fundamentally different (for
Clausewitz the new factor was Napoleon and total war; for Aron it was nuclear
weapons); the desire to mitigate the increasingly destructive effects of war, even
if it is inevitable.
Carlos Gaspar rounds off this part with a chapter on Aron and the end of the
Cold War, an end that caught everyone by surprise, but would have comforted
Raymond Aron.
CHAPTER 2

RAYMOND ARON ON WAR AND STRATEGY:

A FRAMEWORK FOR CONCEPTUALIZING
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS TODAY

Jean-Vincent Holeindre

A re Raymond Aron’s views on war and strategy still relevant to twenty-first-

century scholars who try to think about war?1 Many scholars doubt this,
suggesting that the analyses of Aron belong to the bygone age of twentieth-
century wars.2 A child during the event in Sarajevo that triggered the Great War
in 1914, Aron died a mere six years before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the
event that brought the Soviet Union’s confrontation with the United States to an
end. Since then, international relations have significantly changed: the USSR has
disappeared, making way for liberal democracy and the dynamics of globaliza-
tion; interstate wars have gradually been replaced by internal wars and irregular
conf licts that pit regular armies against actors who are subnational (“insurgents,”
“rebels,” guerrilla fighters) or transnational (terrorist groups, mafias).3
Aron’s century is undeniably behind us, but his strategic thought and, more
generally, his theory of international relations, are still relevant for us. His work
continues to inform our thinking about strategic problems and that is why he
should be considered as a classical theorist, not only as a “cold warrior,” a jour-
nalist, or a professor.
I shall organize my contribution along three main lines: first, I shall illustrate
the link between his theory of war and his political philosophy; then, I shall
present his main books and theories in the field of strategy; and fi nally, I shall
show that his strategic thought is a major contribution to efforts to understand
the armed confl icts of our time, especially irregular warfare.

A Political Philosopher of War

Aron’s strategic thought is often interpreted in light of his journalism and of
his posture as a “cold warrior,” a friend of American power, and a supporter
20 J E A N -V I NC E N T HOL E I N DR E

of Atlanticism against what used to be regarded as the “Soviet threat.” This

perspective is narrow-minded. Aron indeed regarded himself as a “committed
spectator”4 of the confl icts of his time; however, his research on war took place
within the wider-scope of the theoretical project that was initially presented in
his doctoral dissertation, Introduction to the Philosophy of History, published in 1938.
To a large extent, the works that Aron dedicated to war are but a continuation of
this fi rst book, the scope of which is clearly philosophical.
Aron was a political philosopher of war who would have gladly conversed
with his most prominent forerunners, from Thucydides to Clausewitz, from
Machiavelli to Kant. As an “educator,”5 he made them accessible, as every good
professor should, but this pedagogical approach was only a fi rst step in a critical
dialogue. He remained faithful to the fi rst ambition of the ancient philosophers
as expressed by Plato in the Academy and Aristotle in the Lyceum: questioning
the nature of things while practicing oral teaching. It is worth noting on this
point that, with the exception of Introduction to the Philosophy of History, all of
Aron’s major works were based on lectures he delivered. The two major works
of Aron on international relations and strategy, Peace and War and Clausewitz,
were initially courses that he taught at the Sorbonne and the Collège de France,
respectively.
Yet Aron is different from the ancient philosophers in that philosophy for
him must be linked with history. Any philosophical reflection should articulate
history’s three temporal modes: the past, the present, and the future. For every
event, for every political problem—and for wars in particular—he deemed it
essential to assess the weight of the past, while also attempting to grasp history in
the making and, fi nally, to identify the directions of a possible future.
His goal was to forge a philosophy of history that was not dependent on a
deterministic teleological vision (such as that of Hegel or the later Marx), but that
was capable of reinjecting human freedom into history, thanks to the conceptual
tools of historicism (notably Dilthey’s) and Kant’s critical philosophy. We know
Marx’s famous remark that “men make their own history, but they do not make
it as they please.” Aron wanted men to be better acquainted with the history they
made and to better understand how politics determines major historical trends.
In this respect, the political thinker is no different from the committed spectator:
the Aronian interest in politics is primarily linked to a desire to understand and
to shed light on the historical action of human beings, and specifically, on the
strategic choices made by states through their politicians.
In light of this project, we can better understand Aron’s interest in strategic
questions and the way he approaches them. For a child of the twentieth cen-
tury, the issue of war was an obvious one. Aron could not exclude war from
his field of analysis, for he had assigned himself the task of seeking to grasp the
present without losing sight of universal concerns. From this point of view, the
historical context in which Aron lived and his theoretical project are intrin-
sically linked. First, they are chronologically connected, since Aron put his
Introduction to the Philosophy of History to the test of history itself, the epicenter of
which was Germany, a country in which he had witnessed the rise of Nazism,
 R A Y M O N D A R O N O N WA R A N D S T R A T E G Y 21

which paved the way to the war. They are also conceptually connected, as
“thinking history” has, according to Aron, a double meaning: it implies, on
the one hand, that you must think history in the making, and, on the other
hand, that you must consider events comprehensively within the framework of
universal history.
As a committed spectator and as a philosopher, Aron questioned both real-
ism and pacifism. He indeed pointed to the fact that both these radical views led
to a cul-de sac: the realist gives in to fatalism (“history as usual”) and fails to
identify any progress in history while the pacifist is not fully aware of the tragic
dimension of history and of the reasons why humans are led to resort to violence.
Trained by Alain, the pacifist philosopher, and Leon Brunschvicg, a prominent
representative of French Neo-Kantianism, the young Aron broke with the ideal-
ism of his masters when he was a teaching fellow in Germany in the early 1930s.
A witness to the Second World War, he converted to the classical form of realism
inherited from Machiavelli and Hobbes. He remained, however, faithful to the
rationalism inherited from Kant, as he considered that men could still learn from
history and act more reasonably.
Because he placed war and the state at the center of international relations,
Aron was often regarded as a member of the realist school of international rela-
tions (with Hans Morgenthau and Henry Kissinger as the most prominent fig-
ures). Aron himself rejected this label, considering that international reality
never fits in frozen theoretical models and never corresponds to academic appel-
lations. This is not merely a political issue; it is an epistemological one. Unlike
Morgenthau, Aron did not believe it was possible to develop a general theory
of international politics with one sole, essential criterion of analysis, namely the
national interest of states defi ned in terms of power. For Aron, national interest
largely determines the behavior of states, but the latter cannot be reduced to the
former. Aron argued that passions are added to the national interest defi ned as a
rational choice. Aron never despaired of reason, but he could not accept the idea
that reason was no more than the theory of “rational choice.”
These controversies illustrate a fundamental discussion on the status and scope
of theory in political science, more specifically, in international relations. For
Aron, there could not be any theory of international relations if what that meant
was a set of patterns that would make it possible to explain and predict the actors’
actions and behaviors. Aron favored a comprehensive theory of international
relations, which relied on fi ne sociological studies of the actors that make up the
international system. He was in line with the Weberian project of interpretative
sociology that built on the achievements of philosophy and on the empirical
material provided by history. In this context, the critical philosophy of history,
inherited from Kant and Hegel, has led to a political science that relies on the
contributions of the Weber-inspired historical sociology.
In short, the essential part of Aron’s intellectual effort was to take war, as a
part of politics, seriously. He considered it possible to lay the foundation of a
political science that was to help us understand reality and to enlighten us when we
have to choose between several political options.
22 J E A N -V I NC E N T HOL E I N DR E

Aron’s Oeuvre
Before considering Aron’s actual strategic oeuvre, it is important to recall a few
details of his biography. When Aron became a doctor of philosophy on March
26, 1938, Hitler had just annexed Austria, thereby challenging the European
democracies. Then, after General de Gaulle established himself as the leader
of the opposition to the Vichy government and denounced collaboration in his
June 18, 1940 radio appeal, Aron decided to follow him to London. He became
one of the leading figures of the Resistance journal, La France libre. He wrote
a number of articles on current events, in which he attempted to identify the
issues at stake in the confl ict while expressing his commitment to the cause of
the Resistance. At this time, he developed an interest in strategic thought and
the study of international relations, which became his favorite subject. There is
therefore no doubt that the immediate context played a major role in Aron’s stra-
tegic thought. However, while his project was initially closely linked to personal
experience, it also had a far wider scope.
At the end of the Second World War, Raymond Aron published his first two
works of strategic analysis, Le Grand Schisme (1948) and Les Guerres en chaîne
(1951),6 with a view to exploring in reasoned discourse the idea that the old
world had just come to an end and the new one was just being born. As early as
1948, he was one of the fi rst observers to shed light on the specific nature of the
Cold War by coining what was to become a famous phrase: “impossible peace,
improbable war.” Aron indeed explained that peace was impossible between the
two great victors of World War II, namely the United States and the USSR,
because the ideological opposition between American liberalism and Soviet
communism was a radical one.
War was, however, improbable, as the two Great Powers each possessed atomic
weapons, the power of which had been proven in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in
1945. The atomic bomb completely transformed the strategic landscape: hence-
forth, it would be possible to annihilate the entire planet simply by pressing a
button. The world had entered a cycle of nuclear deterrence and the “balance of
terror,” according to the theory developed by Albert Wohlstetter, the American
strategist of the Rand Corporation, whom Aron first introduced in France in
Le Grand Débat (1963).7 Aron explained that France had no other option than
to become an ally of the United States, so that it might be protected by the
American nuclear umbrella by way of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO).
On this point, he disagreed with De Gaulle, who, following his return to
power in 1958, gambled on French strategic independence from the United
States, notably in the nuclear realm. At the time, Aron was one of the main
defenders of the American democracy and one of the main opponents of the
Soviet regime. Yet he was also critical of American policy, warning Europeans
about the American tendency to build an “imperial hegemonic republic.”8 But
most of Aron’s arrows were directed at the Soviets, who, he maintained, were
guilty of depriving their citizens of freedom in the name of equality. This has to
be understood in the context of France’s intellectual battle between the liberals
 R A Y M O N D A R O N O N WA R A N D S T R A T E G Y 23

(with Aron as a leading figure) and the communists and their fellow-travelers
(supported by Jean-Paul Sartre, his classmate at the École normale supérieure).
For Aron, depriving citizens of their freedom could never be justified, not
even for the noblest purposes. In his view, socialist collectivism was doomed
because it disregarded the fact that in the modern world, society as a free and
orderly entity is the creation of individuals themselves. The social order can never
be imposed from the top down, by the power of the state. According to Aron,
progressives also err when they claim that perpetual peace can be achieved, as
the human condition feeds on confl ict and the division of the political order into
particular nations.
Raymond Aron’s election as a professor of sociology in the Sorbonne in 1955
allowed him to dedicate himself completely to the theory of international rela-
tions. He then set himself a new challenge, as demanding as his dissertation on
the philosophy of history. He undertook to write a theoretical treatise on inter-
national relations and war, which he published in 1962 under the title Peace and
War: A Theory of International Relations.9 With this book, Raymond Aron sought
to introduce one of the fields of political science to France: international rela-
tions. This field had long been recognized in the Anglo-American world, but in
French universities, it had until this point been explored only by historians and
legal scholars.
Raymond Aron pleaded for a sociological theory of international relations,
arguing that its aim was not merely to study military and diplomatic history, or
the legal rules that structured the international order, but to analyze the relations
between the various actors who made up the “international system.” At the core
of his analysis was the state, which he saw as the key actor in the international
arena. He also argued that as long as there was no world government, states lived
permanently “in the shadow of war.” For Aron, two figures loomed large in
interstate relations: the diplomat, on the one hand, who represents the state in
peacetime; and the soldier, on the other, who wears the nation’s colors in times
of war.
“War is not a man-to-man relation, but a state-to-state relation.” This quota-
tion from Rousseau provided Aron with his initial hypothesis. Aron analyzed
the relations between states in peacetime (through the play of diplomacy) as well
as in wartime (when soldiers and strategists intervene). The book consists of two
main parts. First, Aron explains the theoretical tools and the sociological patterns
that shed light on international relations in general, regardless of the particular
circumstances. Then Aron puts his theory to the test by examining the history
of the Cold War, inviting his readers “to think and to act with the fi rm intention
that the absence of war will be prolonged until the day when peace has become
possible—supposing it ever will.”10 We can see here Aron’s constant concern for
linking the past, the present, and the future.
Peace and War is a pioneering book that opened fertile paths in the area of
strategic and international studies on issues that are still topical at the beginning
of the twenty-fi rst century. For example, Raymond Aron analyzed with great
acumen the terrorist phenomenon in which the use of physical force is closely
related to its psychological effects. Aron explained that terrorism differed from
24 J E A N -V I NC E N T HOL E I N DR E

other forms of violent action in that it generates fear in the civilian population.
Terrorism consists in acting in the midst of populations, making no distinction
between civilians and the military. It does not necessarily cause many casual-
ties, but it triggers a feeling of public fear. Since no one is targeted in particular,
everyone becomes a potential target. This absence of discrimination makes ter-
rorism akin to guerrilla tactics, which themselves operate in the midst of the
population. War, in the classic sense of the term, is based on the discrimination
between fighters and civilians, a discrimination that today tends to disappear. In
fact, most of the victims of today’s confl icts are civilians. Terrorism can therefore
be regarded as the spearhead of the transformation in war. But can we still speak
of war when suicide bombers attack civilians? Does terrorism fall within the
scope of military strategy or of police work?
Aron also analyzed the concept of power, which is often reduced to the mili-
tary and economic capabilities of a state. Being powerful, however, cannot be
reduced to having a set number of weapons or a high GDP. Power depends not
only on having human and material resources available, but also on being able to
deploy them in order to defeat the enemy. In this sense, power is not so much a
possession as a “relationship.” This view of Aron’s has a specific echo in the cur-
rent policy context. Indeed, in today’s confl icts, no matter how competent, over-
equipped, and highly trained armies are, they often fail to make a difference
strategically and politically. The examples of Iraq and Afghanistan are illustra-
tive of this fact: US military supremacy has not prevented political failure. The
United States may still be the world’s largest military power, but US hegemony
has been greatly undermined by the difficulties encountered since the attacks of
September 11, 2001. As early as the 1960s, Aron foresaw the fragility of states
in the face of the guerrilla strategies carried out by groups of “insurgents.” The
issues these groups present have now become central in strategic thinking.
Let us now turn to Aron’s second great strategic piece, Clausewitz, Philosopher
of War (1976)11. This book is divided into two volumes: the fi rst, The European
Age, is dedicated to a meticulous reconstruction of the political and military
thought of Clausewitz; the second, The Global Age, questions the Prussian strate-
gist’s legacy in a context in which war had become protean. After World War II,
“conventional” war between states had indeed been supplanted by the threat of
a nuclear apocalypse, as well as by asymmetric confl icts, such as those between
former European empires (France, the United Kingdom) and colonized peoples
striving for independence.
This last work echoed Aron’s fi rst doctoral dissertation, in which he con-
fronted the German philosophers of history. In his Clausewitz, Aron once again
summoned his core philosophical theory, which he had neglected in works of
more limited scope. Finally, this book allowed him to contribute to a Franco-
German dialogue, to which he was predisposed, owing to the time he had spent
as a young man on the other side of the Rhine and his love of German civiliza-
tion. Thus, analyzing war via Clausewitz was a way for Aron to consider not
only twentieth-century Europe, but also his own personal story.
From a theoretical point of view, this work reflected Aron’s one and only
ambition: to consider with Clausewitz the nature of war while recognizing the
 R A Y M O N D A R O N O N WA R A N D S T R A T E G Y 25

diversity of its forms. For Aron, the Prussian strategist had hesitated between
two conceptions of war: war as “a duel” and “a rise to extremes,” and war as an
instrument of politics. Aron believed that Clausewitz had opted for the second
view toward the end of his life (see on this point Joël Mouric’s chapter in this
book): war was, fi rst and foremost, a means to settle through the force of arms
a confl ict that diplomacy had failed to resolve. The role of the ruler was then to
adapt military means to political ends. The ruler had to identify which type of
war he might have to deal with in order to resort to adequate means.
Aron’s “Clausewitz” is a great book not only because it deeply reinvigorated
the interpretation of Clausewitz’s ideas, but mainly because it underlined the
relevance of the Prussian strategist for thinking about the twentieth century wars
marked by totalitarianism. Aron analyzed the way totalitarian ideologues such as
Lenin, then Stalin, Mao and Hitler read Clausewitz. He showed how totalitari-
anism reversed Clausewitz’s formula both in theory and in practice. In totalitar-
ian regimes, war is no longer a military means to achieve a political objective;
war becomes the very purpose of a policy that seeks legitimacy by resorting to
force coupled with terror. War infects the entire political arena, blurring the
distinction between war and politics. The exception becomes the rule; terror is
institutionalized and justified. In the face of totalitarian excesses, democratic and
liberal regimes are given an even greater responsibility. They must perpetuate
Clausewitz’s legacy of a limited and politically controlled war. This responsibil-
ity is all the greater as nuclear power has dramatically altered the strategic land-
scape. With the atomic bomb, politicians now have the power of life and death
over the planet itself. It is up to politicians to prevent the Apocalypse by seeking
diplomatic solutions. By a set of chain reactions, any war may indeed entail the
extinction of humankind. In this new thermonuclear world, politics recovers
a prominent role and democracy is the main warden of a peace that remains
precarious.

Aron’s Legacy
Having clarified the driving ideas of Aron’s strategic thought, let us turn next to
his legacy. To what extent is his approach still relevant to understanding strategic
problems today? As we shall see, Aron did not confi ne himself to interstate con-
fl icts. In the age of “asymmetric” confl icts and nuclear proliferation, his theory
of war remains highly relevant.
The transformation of war12 is undoubtedly one of the major emerging stra-
tegic problems of recent times. The post-Cold War military situation is charac-
terized by a growing vagueness concerning the nature of contemporary armed
confl icts. We may even wonder if interstate wars, which so clearly marked the
twentieth century, have not disappeared for good.
Can terrorism and irregular confl icts, which seem to dominate the strategic
arena today, be considered actual wars? Has war been transformed to the point
that we should abandon the very concept of war and, by the same token, the
Clausewitzian legacy that Aron evokes? We have only to read Aron—among
others—to realize that, in fact, these transformations do not date back to the end
26 J E A N -V I NC E N T HOL E I N DR E

of the Cold War. If we simply consider the modern period (after the French and
American revolutions), we realize that transformations have regularly occurred
in the past. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, during the wars of the
Revolution and the Empire, Clausewitz pointed to a change from the ancien
régime’s limited wars to mass wars employing a greater share of the population
through mass conscription.
A century later, during World War I, the question also arose as to whether the
mechanization of war did not imply a profound transformation of the methods
of war—Aron called it the “technical surprise” in the fi rst chapter of Les Guerres
en chaîne. By “technical surprise,” we must understand the combination of the
unpredictable nature of any war, on the one hand, and the technical progress that
has made weapons, including artillery, deadlier than they were in previous con-
fl icts, on the other. For Aron, the destructive effects of new military techniques
have stirred up hatred between enemies and introduced the logic of total war.
The excesses of technology have reduced the chances for diplomatic success to
naught. Thus, World War I inaugurated the age of total wars, in which all tech-
nological means were deployed to achieve the destruction of the enemy.
From this point of view, the Second World War can be interpreted as a con-
tinuation of the first one. The invention of the nuclear bomb in 1945 is to be
understood in the context of technical bidding; it was the culmination of a process
begun in 1914. It then became possible to destroy the planet by means of nuclear
weapons. The atomic bomb is thus merely a continuation of the “technical sur-
prise” that appeared in World War I. At the same time, the year 1945 is also a
turning point, because the invention of the atomic bomb created an unbridgeable
gap between those countries that had the weapon and those that did not. In Les
Guerres en chaîne, Aron explained that during World War II there were two types
of armed violence—violence linked to the weapons of mass destruction that were
themselves linked to scientific advances, on the one hand, and the violence of
individuals fighting not as soldiers but as rebels clad as civilians, on the other.
After 1945, the world split into two: the West continued to pursue the idea of
a scientific war as it entered “the atomic age,” while Asia and Africa turned to
guerrilla warfare as they fought for independence. And alongside the soldier, the
traditional symbol of interstate wars, two new figures appeared in these confl icts:
the fi rst was the nonhuman, purely technical figure of the atomic bomb; the
second was a human, all-too-human, figure—the partisan. In this new strategic
context, interstate war is caught, on the one hand, between a war of ultimate ends
based on technology and the threat of total destruction and irregular warfare,
in which technological omnipotence is thwarted through psychological means,
on the other. Societies and parties that do not possess either regular armies or
industries or nuclear weapons will respond with guerrilla warfare.
The so-called cold war period that began in 1945 combined two strategic
trends—the nuclear powers’ military superiority on the one hand and the former
colonies’ claims by means of guerrillas on the other.

The cold war, Aron says, “is located at the meeting point of two historical series,
one leading to the development of thermonuclear bombs and ballistic missiles, to
the incessant increase of ever more destructive weapons and even swifter carrying
 R A Y M O N D A R O N O N WA R A N D S T R A T E G Y 27

vehicles, the other accentuating the psychological element of the conf lict at the
cost of physical violence. The conjunction of these two series is in itself intelligible:
the more the instruments of force exceed the human scale, the less usable they are.
Technological excess brings war back to its essence as a trial of wills, either because
threat is substituted for action, or because the reciprocal impotence of the great
powers forbids direct conf licts and thereby enlarges the spaces in which clandes-
tine or scattered violence f lourishes, without too much risk to humanity.”13

We fi nd here an echo of the current strategic situation. The wars of our time
seem to oscillate between two options—the technological option, with the
atomic weapon as its traditional symbol, and the rebellion option, for those who
have no access to technology. On one side, the western armies resort to alleg-
edly “surgical” warfare, employing drones and satellites; on the other side, those
whom we name “insurgents,” “rebels,” and “terrorists” engage in psychological
warfare, using individual fights, ambushes, and terrorist attacks in the hearts of
the cities as they mock the West’s obsession with zero-casualty confl icts.
Conventional wars, which were prevalent in Europe and elsewhere during
the twentieth century, have therefore been superseded by both “nuclear” warfare
and “partisan” warfare. At the same time, globalization has not resulted in a stan-
dardization of confl icts. Rather, it has made war even more polymorphous and
indecipherable: “the more unified the planet becomes, the less does diplomacy
seem to obey the ordinary circulations of force and the more military technique
differs from continent to continent and confl ict to confl ict. It is as though some
artistic genius were trying to reunite in a grand finale every method of warfare
practiced by men for thousands of years, on the eve of the day when the progress
of science condemns the human race to choose between wisdom and death.”14
At the crossroads of philosophy and sociology, Aron proposes a typology of
war that draws from the long history of war and strategy, but that is also relevant
to the contemporary situation. As he sees it, there have been three forms of war
since 1945: interstate war, which is also known as “conventional war” and which
did not disappear with the Second World War (one thinks, e.g., of the Six-Day
War in 1967, or the war between India and Pakistan in 1971); next, nuclear war,
based on scientific and technological knowledge, which is a war that leaves no
footprints, as it is based on deterrence, that is, the fact that weapons are not used
as such but are wielded as threats (according to the famous principle of the non-
use of weapons that Guy Brossollet names the “non-battle”); and, fi nally, guer-
rilla or popular warfare, which sets groups of rebels against regular armies.
These “intra-state” confl icts pit an organized power against populations that
refuse to obey. These confl icts (the Jews against Rome, the Chouans against the
French Revolution, pro-independence Algerians against the French army) are
most often civil wars, but Aron rightly explains that guerrilla warfare or subver-
sion is not resorted to in all civil wars (the American Civil War being a case in
point).
We should notice here that the Aronian typology of war is not “state-cen-
tered.” If Aron makes the state the cornerstone of international relations, he
does not reduce the phenomenon of war to its interstate dimension. His interest
in guerrilla warfare is obvious in his fi rst books on international relations (The
28 J E A N -V I NC E N T HOL E I N DR E

Grand Schism, The Century of Total War) and in other writings that are wrongly
considered secondary (the chapter titled “On War” in Hope and Fear of the Century,
for example).
Regarding guerrilla warfare, there are several ways of defi ning the armed
confl icts in which the weakest party compensates for its inferiority with strate-
gies that seek to harass and wear out its enemies in order to undermine them psy-
chologically. It is significant that this type of confl ict has many names: “popular
war,” “supporter’s war,” “revolutionary war,” “national war of liberation,” or,
again, “subversive war.”
Aron suggests a method to make things somewhat clearer: we should start
studying the military dimension (with both strategy and tactics) and then con-
sider politics. For the French thinker, there is no guerrilla warfare or subversive
war; there are only techniques of guerrilla warfare and subversion. The common
point of all the forms of guerrilla warfare is the refusal to leave the monopoly of
fighting to regular armies. Therefore, guerrilla warfare is “a fighting technique,
not a political action. But this fighting technique (individual attacks, surprise
attacks by small groups, rejection of the battle) is admirably suited to revolution-
ary action.”15 Aron very seriously considers guerrilla warfare as an instrument
for revolutionary action; he even argues that guerrilla warfare “could change
the map of the world.”16 From a tactical and strategic point of view, he also calls
attention to the subtlety of this kind of fighting; it should not be regarded as a
“wild” form of war, as opposed to “civilized” or interstate war. Aron rejects this
distinction: “Fighting between archaic tribes, however different in other ways,
is no less organized than the wars of civilized peoples. Guerrilla warfare is not
the original form of human hostilities, any more than the individuals or families
necessarily preceded clans.”17 And later on: “guerrilla warfare is not a return to
anarchy. It is a form of organized combat, although the organization is at the
opposite extreme from nuclear war.”18
If guerrilla warfare is capable of success, it has, however, never triumphed
over a regular army during the twentieth century. To win, guerrillas must be
associated with either a counter-administration or a counter-state (as in China
or Vietnam). In the case of wars of decolonization, such as the Algerian War,
the political context, not the military factor, proved decisive in resolving these
confl icts (independence, in this particular case).
“The Europeans’ loss of prestige, the weakening of the imperialist will of the
British and the French, the enthusiasm of a minority inspired by nationalism,
Communism, or both, the vague inspiration of the masses to an independence
which promises both the foreigner’s departure and the beginning of an era of
prosperity: all the facts together prepare the ground on which guerrilla action
eventually triumphs.”19
If one studies the case of Algeria, political criteria, not military factors, made
the difference. Aron fi nds here an asymmetry between the West’s large armies
and rebellious troops. In reality, the rebels of the FLN did not need a decisive
success to win, whereas, on the contrary, for France, even a “total” military vic-
tory of the French army would not have been enough: “what the French army
could not do in Algeria was reply to Algerian patriotism by creating a French
 R A Y M O N D A R O N O N WA R A N D S T R A T E G Y 29

patriotism; nor could it inspire the metropolitan French with the will to main-
tain French sovereignty over Algeria at any price so as to make a million fellow
countrymen permanently safe.”20
In the case of contemporary guerrilla warfare, “it would be enough for the
rebel side not to lose militarily in order to gain politically.”21 Even if the strong
have military superiority, they cannot win as long as the popular will of local
populations is against them. On the contrary, in the confl icts that oppose the
weak to the strong, the weak need only not to lose in order to hope for victory.
In wars of attrition, political concerns will always override military concerns.
As with any war, guerrilla warfare must thus be studied according to political
criteria. Whatever the strategies, on both sides, the success of guerrilla warfare is
dependent upon the support provided by the local population.
Aron here shares the views of Gérard Chaliand, the contemporary specialist
on irregular wars. As we saw in Sri Lanka, the guerrilla warfare of the Tamil
Tigers failed because it ran contrary to the people’s wish to become independent.
In Algeria, guerrilla warfare eventually won because it succeeded in lasting in
spite of the imbalance of power and because most Algerians desired indepen-
dence or, in any case, no longer accepted French domination.
All these points highlight the relevance of Aron’s strategic thought to under-
standing the present. The arguments of the French thinker on guerrilla warfare
are still valid approaches for considering the confl icts in Iraq and in Afghanistan,
which ended with tactical and strategic successes, but also with political fail-
ures, as the Western armies proved incapable of imposing their will on reluctant
peoples. The problem for interventions today lies in the fact that military success
is not transformed into political success, in particular because Western armies
run into the wall of public opinion: for one, Western public opinion does not
accept the war effort, which is necessarily long and entails human loss; and on
the other side, local public opinion refuses to bend before outside powers who
resort to strength. Here is Aron’s main message, in the wake of Clausewitz: at a
fundamental level, war not only raises the strategic issue of victory; it also raises
the highly political question of legitimacy.
For Aron, war is never an end in itself. It is primarily a military means that
is always resorted to for political purposes once diplomacy has failed. It is above
all an indicator of permanence and change in human history: fi rst, war reveals
the centrality and permanence of politics as a structuring element of society; sec-
ondly, the polymorphism of war reveals the intrinsic diversity of human experi-
ence in time and in space. War is both the product of political action and a mirror
in which the aspirations and weaknesses of the societies involved are reflected.

Notes
1. I would like to thank Michael C. Behrent, José Colen, Giulio De Ligio, Elisabeth
Dutartre-Michaut, Annie Lhérété, Daniel J. Mahoney, and Pierre Manent for
their comments and their help.
2. See for example Frédéric Gros, Etats de violence: Essai sur la fin de la guerre, Paris,
Gallimard, 2007.
30 J E A N -V I NC E N T HOL E I N DR E

3. Jean-Vincent Holeindre and Frédéric Ramel (ed.), La Fin des guerres majeures?,
Paris, Economica, 2010.
4. This is a quotation from the title of a book of conversations with Jean-Louis
Missika and Dominique Wolton that was published shortly before his Memoirs.
Aron considered himself a committed spectator, standing aloof from political
action, yet he never renounced expressing his views on political action.
5. Pierre Manent, “Aron éducateur,” in Pierre Manent, Enquête sur la démocratie.
Études de philosophie politique, Paris, Gallimard, 2007.
6. Raymond Aron, The Century of Total War, New York, Doubleday, 1954.
7. Raymond Aron, The Great Debate: Theories of Nuclear Strategy, New York,
Doubleday, 1965.
8. Raymond Aron, The Imperial Republic: The United States and the World 1945–1973,
Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice Hall, 1974; New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction
Publishers, 2009 (with a new introduction by Irving Louis Horowitz).
9. Raymond Aron, Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations, New York,
Doubleday, 1966; New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction Publishers, 2003 (with a new
introduction by Daniel J. Mahoney and Brian C. Anderson).
10. Ibid., 787.
11. Raymond Aron, Clausewitz: Philosopher of War (1976), New York, Simon and
Schuster, 1986,
12. On this subject the debate was started by Martin Van Creveld, The Transformation
of War, New York, Free Press, 1991.
13. Aron, Peace and War, 173.
14. Raymond Aron, On War: Atomic Weapons and Global Diplomacy, New York,
Doubleday, 1959, 71.
15. Ibid., 74.
16. Ibid., 75.
17. Ibid., 79–80.
18. Ibid., 85.
19. Ibid., 83.
20. Raymond Aron, Clausewitz: Philosopher of War, New York, Simon and Schuster,
1986, 370.
21. Aron, Peace and War, 34.
CHAPTER 3

IN THE “ERA OF TYRANNIES”:

THE INTERNATIONAL ORDER FROM NAZISM TO
THE COLD WAR

Matthias Oppermann

I t all started with Germany. Without having experienced German politics and
philosophy during the first three years of the 1930s, Raymond Aron would
have hardly become the thinker we know today. In this respect, many of those
who have dealt with his thought have made much of his academic or philosophi-
cal experience—of his discovery of the newer German philosophy of history,
of phenomenology, of Marx’s original thought, and of Max Weber’s political
sociology. All this was important, of course. Studying German philosophy and
sociology helped Aron to overcome what he regarded as the shortcomings of the
academic education he received in his native France. However, this academic or
philosophical discovery only put him on the path to political liberalism. It was
not congruent with it. Far from it: Although Weber gave Aron the munition
to repel the positivistic trust in progress, based on several varieties of historical
determinism he had been confronted with during his studies at the prestigious
École normale supérieure in Paris, the great German sociologist bequeathed him
another problem: the naive faith in value-free science totally unfit to an age
of ideologies. It took him nearly twenty years to free himself from this intel-
lectual burden, but after the Second World War he came to regard Weber as a
“nearly Nietzschean”1 nihilist. By contrast, the political insights Aron received
in Germany were much more inf luential in bringing about his own brand of
conservative liberalism. One should never forget that he denied being the repre-
sentative of an abstract liberalism based on any speculative theory.
His liberalism was, as he used to say, the result of the study of reality; that
is to say, of his analysis of the history of the twentieth century, in particular,
of the confl ict between liberal democracies and totalitarian regimes in all their
variations. In order to find the sources of this Aristotelian or Burkean approach
to politics, we must thus analyze Aron’s historical reasoning about the twen-
tieth century, motivated in the fi rst place by his witnessing the crisis of the
32 M AT T H I A S OPPE R M A N N

Weimar Republic.2 Germany was the scene of what he later called his “political
education.”3

Facing Hitler
When Aron arrived in Cologne in the spring of 1930, he was a well-meaning pac-
ifist with socialist leanings who thought France always in the wrong when it came
to her policy vis-à-vis Germany. Like German nationalists, but for other reasons,
the young philosopher considered the Treaty of Versailles as in some ways a cruel
diktat and perceived France as a “wealthy Bourgeois who defends his strongbox.”4
He was very similar in his views to British Liberals like John Maynard Keynes,
who spoke of a “Carthaginian Peace.”5 It is not that Aron did not care about the
security of France, but in his eyes there could be no security without a general
disarmament in Europe; and he was certain that France had to start it, because
when “France does not disarm, Germany will rearm, and legitimately, even if
not legally.”6 In particular, he never linked his desire for peace and security to the
slightest patriotic feeling. This was by all means remarkable, for patriotism was
quite natural in the upper-middle-class-family of Jewish descent into which he
was born on 14 March 1905. Having lost nearly all bonds with the faith of their
ancestors, the Arons were intransigent Republicans. The French Republic was at
the heart of their social and political identity, and therefore patriotism was not a
choice but an obligation. But already in his last grammar-school year, as a student
of the classe de philosophie at the Lycée Hoche in Versailles, Raymond Aron took
a different path than his father and grand-father had.
Discovering philosophy totally changed his political consciousness. “Whatever
may be the politics of the teacher,” he later wrote in his memoirs, “the climate of
a classe de philosophie usually nourishes left-wing sentiments.” 7 Aron substituted a
certain kind of philosophical pacifism, inspired by the then-famous philosopher
Alain, for his inherited patriotism.
When he decided to spend some years in Germany, he was still marked by this
pacifism. Of course, it could not last. It could not survive the daily experience of
German politics. The “passionate pacifist”8 had to face a country where politi-
cal passions ran even higher than in France; a country where the armed wings
of parties grimly fought each other, a country where nearly everyone wanted to
alter the consequences of the Great War. Moreover, he witnessed the crisis of the
Weimar Republic—in other words, the total corruption of a liberal-democratic
regime—and the rise of Hitler. How could pacifism, the longing for the preser-
vation of peace, have triggered his foremost political interest? In fact, in Weimar
Germany, he felt for the fi rst time that not only peace, but the entire European
civilization was endangered. Or, in the words he used thirty years later in his
inaugural lecture at the Collège de France:

From 1930 onwards, as lecturer at the University of Cologne or as fellow at the

Maison académique in Berlin, I apprehended nearly physically the coming of his-
torical tempests. “History is again on the move,” according to Arnold Toynbee’s
wording. I am scarred for life by that experience, which inclined me towards an
 IN TH E “ER A OF T Y R A NNIES” 33

active pessimism. I ceased forever believing that History voluntarily follows the
imperatives of reason or the wishes of well-meaning men. I lost my faith, but made
an effort to preserve hope. I discovered the enemy that I do not grow tired of chas-
ing: totalitarianism.9

In Germany, Aron learned that evil was not a mere religious category. It was a
trait of humankind: “there was Hitler, and I apprehended his satanic nature.”
Little by little, he reached the conclusion that “the totalitarian régime was the
absolute evil.”10 Here lies the main reason for his conversion from an irresponsi-
ble, left-leaning pacifism to a realistic and militant liberalism, by which he would
abide through the rest of his life. Hitler and his recently erected tyranny freed
Aron of nearly all of his youthful illusions and later, in his memoirs, he explained
that his “conversion” had been accomplished when he returned to France in
the autumn of 1933. There is good reason, however, to assume that he had
arrived at this point already some months earlier. In February of the same year he
described his position in an article published in Esprit, the illustrious magazine of
the French Catholic left, in terms of an unorthodox middle course between some
of the main political currents of the Third Republic: “I am neither on the left
nor on the right, neither communist nor nationalist, no more a Radical than a
socialist. I do not know whether I will fi nd kindred spirits.”11 Interestingly, there
was one political group he did not mention: the Moderates, the liberals of the
republic and the conservative liberals of the Alliance démocratique.12 Though,
publicly, he never professed support for any party, I do not shrink from locating
him intellectually during these years in that region of the political spectrum. It
seems quite obvious: after the Second World War, he expressed a great deal of
admiration for Paul Reynaud, of whom he said that he should have been the
“guiding star”13 of his generation; and he took up positions—both in economics
and in foreign policy—close to those of moderate politicians like Reynaud and
André Tardieu.14
Aron drew near to these politicians by substituting the advocacy of absolute
peace for the defense of freedom in all its facets. And there was one great ques-
tion that bound together all his academic and journalistic writings: how could
liberals preserve freedom in an “era of tyrannies”?15 The postwar period seemed
to be over. Without the majority of politicians and intellectuals knowing it,
Western liberal democracies were by now travelling on the road to war. There is
no proof that Aron had already gained certainty by 1933 that war with Hitler’s
Germany would be inevitable, as he later claimed in his memoirs.16 But at least
he could no longer ignore the friction that burdened Franco-German relations.
He thus asked the French political left to stop moralizing and to move on to a
foreign policy guided by pursuit of interests and realism: they should not forget
that “a good policy was defi ned by its effectiveness and not by its moral virtue”.17
Aron knew very well that this plea only could irritate the left-wing intellectuals
for whom he was writing. So, in 1933, he still restrained himself from being too
explicit. Some years later he became much bolder. In a now famous talk called
États démocratiques et États totalitaires, which Aron delivered before the Société
française de philosophie in June of 1939, he explained that it would be dangerous
34 M AT T H I A S OPPE R M A N N

to close one’s eyes to the political reality of a continent divided between liberal
and authoritarian or even totalitarian régimes.18

The Conservative Mission of Liberalism

No one who had witnessed the decline of the Weimar Republic at the begin-
ning of the 1930s could doubt that Western liberalism had entered a deep crisis.
Raymond Aron had the strong conviction that this crisis was not a German
phenomenon alone, but that it was the characteristic of an entire age. A philoso-
pher particularly interested in the cause of freedom could choose between dif-
ferent approaches of looking for the origins of this historical condition. Unlike
Leo Strauss, whom Aron had met at the end of his stay in Berlin and whom he
greatly admired later on, he did not try to dissect the frailties of modern liberal
thought. He certainly was sensitive to the reasons for the softness liberal democ-
racy showed toward the “modern tyrannies.”19 But he was less interested in the
answers the study of the history of ideas could offer than in a sociological analysis
of liberal democracy as a political regime. What was a good regime? Was the
good regime distinguished by its moral virtue or by its efficiency, by its capac-
ity to defend itself? Was it necessary to choose between them? Aron thought
not. In the course of the 1930s, he realized, that this was a false dichotomy—a
dichotomy that totalitarian regimes wanted to impose on the liberal mind. On
the contrary, Aron reasoned that liberal democracy must be willing and capable
to defend itself. Everything that could harm this willingness and capacity was to
be avoided. This conviction explains Aron’s opposition to the developing anti-
fascist movement in France. He was by no means less anti-fascist than his Parisian
left-wing friends, but he declined membership of the Comité de vigilance des
intellectuels antifascistes.20 On the one hand, he did not believe that France was
threatened by internal fascism; on the other hand, which was more important,
he feared for national unity: all “movements of partisan passions” were bound
to weaken the country and to add to the danger already coming from Hitler’s
Germany.21
While staying in Weimar Germany Aron had gotten an idea of what inexo-
rable political divisions meant, and he decided not to be a part of any kind of
“cold civil war”22 in his own country. Placing his recently resumed patriotism
above all party considerations, he felt no sympathy for the passions of the intel-
lectuals, as he wrote in the spring of 1938 in a letter addressed to the writer and
literary critic Jean Paulhan, “I for my part wished that the intellectuals who have
done so much harm to France by fuelling civil hatred will fi nally remember that
the welfare of the fatherland counts as much as or even more than their cher-
ished ideologies.”23 The defense of the French nation and the liberal-democratic
regime was Aron’s fi rst priority. So, after his own political education, he started
on the education of his country, which became one of his main tasks after the
Second World War.24 For the time being, political education meant explaining
to politicians and intellectuals the differences between liberal and totalitarian
regimes and the inescapable confrontation that arose from them. This was the
object of Aron’s 1939 talk at the Societé francaise de philosophie.
 IN TH E “ER A OF T Y R A NNIES” 35

Democracy, Aron explained, was in an awkward position vis-à-vis all sorts of

tyrannical governments, because of all political regimes it was the most suscep-
tible to its enemies’ assaults and because the zeitgeist seemed to direct all Western
countries toward some kind of totalitarian tyranny. Moreover, totalitarian tyr-
annies cultivated certain virtues difficult to attain by liberal democracy, that is
to say, “mainly military virtues, the virtues of action, asceticism, and devotion.”
The question was whether French and British citizens would be capable of dem-
onstrating that they were ready to fight for their liberties. Aron was skeptical
about this. The lamentable internal state of France and the British policy of
appeasement promised nothing good. To Aron there was but one cause for this
obvious weakness of both guarantor powers of the Parisian peace settlement—a
deep crisis of liberalism: “The ongoing corruption of democracies appears not
only on the material level. To a great extent it can be found in the attitude of the
democratic peoples who, at least in France, do not believe any more in the value
of the regime they live under.”25
Nevertheless, that lack of faith in liberalism and democracy was just one side
of the problem. The other one was the natural consequence of the fi rst, namely
the wish of many French people to live under a regime other than a liberal
democracy. In pointing out this grievance, Aron both accused the left-wing
parties of being unable to build a stable government and accused the right-wing
parties of wishing for a “conservative” revolution.26 He stood up against the
defeatism of both political extremes that threatened to wreck the vitality of the
Republic. This was necessary to him because he believed that the majority of the
French did not realize how serious the situation was. From Aron’s point of view,
the fi rst striking evidence for this general apathy was the remilitarization of the
Rhineland in 1936, by which Hitler bluntly violated the Versailles treaty, know-
ing that the Western allies would not react. Convinced that it had been a grave
mistake not to prevent that action, Aron believed that the entire French system
of military alliances was broken down. In the future, it would be very difficult to
assist other Eastern European countries, like Czechoslovakia or Poland.27
If Aron had harbored any doubts about the existence of the deep moral crisis
into which France had plunged herself, they were removed by the signing of the
Munich Agreement in the September of 1938. As he wrote to the philosopher
and Jesuit Father Gaston Féssard,

this September was awful to witness, as is the current “peace.” . . . To a philosopher

and, as I believe, to a real Frenchman, it is outrageous that all those who reminded
us of commitments we had entered into are called ‘warmongers’ and that a craven
or overly-cunning pacifism was used to turn upside down the authentic hierarchy
of values. And nowadays it is certain that France, if she does not manage to over-
come her discord and lift herself up, in ten years, with or without war, she will
cease to exist by a Hitlerization coming from within or without.28

This was not just a rejection of the spirit of capitulation, but also the fi rst allusion
to the fact that the confl ict between liberal democracies and totalitarian states
took place not only in international relations, but also inside the liberal system.
36 M AT T H I A S OPPE R M A N N

As we have already mentioned, Aron did not think that the French Republic
could be destroyed by the few fascist-like but sectarian right-wing groups that
existed in France; rather, he was worried by the sympathy some members of the
political right felt for National Socialism. He was occupied with a problem that
also applied to the French Communist Party, namely the danger that totalitarian
regimes could weaken liberal democracies by using “fi fth columns.”29 Hence,
there was only one task for every patriotic Frenchmen, as he wrote to Roger
Martin du Gard: “Amongst the men of my age I only meet people who are like
me ashamed, repelled and desperate. Warmongering was not my specialty. The
feeling of French decadence is general and intense: everyone wonders what to
do. Nobody dares to call himself a pacifist or a democrat . . . There is a sole ques-
tion for us: how could one work for the resurrection of France?”30
These insights were, of course, the fruits of political observation and historical
reflection. But they also had a philosophical underpinning. In his doctoral the-
sis, Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire, written in the same year, he explained
that “peoples who would forget in the name of ethics the abiding necessities of
the internal order of international competition would sentence themselves to
decadence.”31 Consistently, he stressed in États démocratiques et États totalitaires the
duty of the Western liberal democracies in one sentence: “Be capable of the same
virtues!”32 How could one be surprised that Aron’s left-wing audience criticized
him severely for this phrase?33 How could a democracy cultivate the same vir-
tues as a totalitarian regime? What did he actually mean by virtues? Aron left
no doubt that it did not make sense to advocate pacifi sm in the face of regimes
that vaunted themselves as heroic and thought democracies to be weak-kneed,
because this only would confi rm their opinion that democracies were prone
to die. Considering the threat of war-mongering totalitarian tyrannies, liberal
regimes had no choice but to demonstrate that they too could be brave.
To Aron there were three necessary steps to strengthen the ability of liberal
democracies to put up a fight: fi rst, liberal democrats should stop warning of
“fascism” whenever somebody encourages the strengthening of authority or the
use some methods practiced by totalitarian regimes. Aron told his audience that
as political techniques, “some measures taken by totalitarian regimes are excel-
lent” and democracies would not make a blunder in adopting them, “for example
in encouraging procreation or in the field of welfare policy.”34 It was certainly
no mistake to reflect about a way to fight unemployment as effectively as Hitler
did. Having said this, he qualified his remarks by stating that state intervention
in the economy must be restricted carefully because a liberal system could not be
sustained without a large degree of economic liberty.
Secondly, democracies had to possess a “governing elite” that “would be nei-
ther cynical nor craven,” that “would have political courage without lapsing into
a pure and simple Machiavellianism,” and that “would have confidence in itself
and in its own mission.”35 True, such a democratic and dutiful elite could not
make the community work by itself. Thus, it was vital to a liberal-democratic
regime, thirdly, to care for a “minimum of common faith or will.”36 And that
task, Aron thought, was the most difficult of all. After all, in contrast to a totali-
tarian tyranny a liberal system could not decree something like civic virtue.37
 IN TH E “ER A OF T Y R A NNIES” 37

Liberal democracy was a complicated matter, and Aron had a rather complex idea
of it. Aron displayed this idea for the fi rst time in his lecture États démocratiques
et États totalitaires. His democracy was not defi ned by the ambiguous notion of
“popular sovereignty,” which could be claimed by liberal and totalitarian states
alike, but by the rule of law and a mixed constitution for the purpose of pre-
venting the holders of political office from abusing their power. In speaking of
democracy, Aron referred only to liberal democracy, that is to say a blend of
liberalism and democracy. Of course, he could have learned about the nature of
mixed constitutions by perusing the history of political philosophy from Aristotle
to Edmund Burke or François Guizot. Instead, his insights into the nature of lib-
eral democracy were occasioned by his examination of Hitler’s tyranny. After the
Second World War, he chose for his defi nition of liberal democracy as a mixed
system the more accurate term “constitutional-pluralist régime.”38
In a way, Aron’s entire oeuvre can be read as a defense of this complicated
political regime. The experience of National Socialism in Germany and the
German threat after 1933 taught him that liberal democracy was the only politi-
cal regime capable in the twentieth century of preserving the fundamental tenets
of liberalism and human dignity. Those who wanted to destroy this system were
revolutionaries to him. He thus told his audience at the Société française de phi-
losophie that the defense of democracy was a conservative task. And, what was
more, compared to revolutionary totalitarian regimes, liberal democracy was
a conservative regime: “I think that democracies are fundamentally conserva-
tive insofar as they want to conserve the traditional values our civilization is
grounded on. Compared to those who want to establish a completely new life—a
military life grounded on permanent mobilization—we are conservatives. And,
compared to those who want to control the entire economy, to those who want
to deploy the means of technology for the use of propaganda, to men who want
to misuse all men as objects of propaganda, we are all the more conservatives
because we are liberals who want to preserve something of personal dignity and
autonomy.”39
The threat of National Socialist Germany taught Aron that in the “era of tyr-
annies,” a liberal was inevitably a conservative as well. Citizens in the 1930s had
to make a “historical choice,”40 as Aron called it in the Introduction à la philosophie
de l’histoire, between two models of politics.41 They had to choose between revo-
lution or conservation and reform—in domestic politics as much as in foreign
policy. In a somewhat Burkean manner, Aron expressed his anxiety that in this
confl ict the wrong side could still enjoy the greater prestige among French intel-
lectuals: “I am afraid that people appreciate the term ‘revolutionary’ and despise
the term ‘conservative.’ From a historical perspective it is important to know if
we want to conserve something by transforming and ameliorating it, whereas
revolution means destruction. I am not in favor of the radical destruction of our
existing society.”42
It was necessary for Aron to expound his thought about the confl ict between
democratic and totalitarian states at length because they were instrumental in the
development of his later political thought. If Aron was a kind of conservative, his
conservatism was nothing more than the temperamental disposition explained
38 M AT T H I A S OPPE R M A N N

by Michael Oakeshott.43 The threat of National Socialism made Aron aware

of that disposition and induced him to put it into the service of liberalism and
democracy. In the “era of tyrannies,” liberals had a conservative mission. And the
political dimension of Aron’s work can be interpreted as a permanent struggle
against the revolutionary forces on both the right and the left that haunted lib-
eralism during most of the twentieth century. One could deal extensively with
Aron’s analysis of communism, of Soviet imperialism, and of the conventions of
the Cold War. However, such an examination would be useless without a clear
understanding of the premise from which Aron started. What he wrote about
the Soviet Union must be seen in the light of his experiences during the 1930s
and 1940s.

The Two Faces of Totalitarian Imperialism:

From Hitler to the Cold War
As soon as France had surrendered to National Socialist Germany in June 1940,
Aron immigrated to London to join Charles de Gaulle’s Free France Movement.
As editor of the journal La France libre, he began a deep reflection about the
origins of National Socialist imperialism and the character of the war. While
he had underestimated the influence of ideologies on foreign policy by speak-
ing of a “modern Machiavellianism” in the 1930s, he quickly grasped the real
nature of National Socialist expansionism in the 1940s. Admittedly, in 1943
he still believed that National Socialist imperialism was the sole product of an
older German foreign-policy tradition, of a characteristic “German imperial-
ism.”44 But it did not take long for him to understand that the originality of
Hitlerism as a “secular religion,” which he had already recognized in the 1930s,
excluded the idea of that movement as a “modern Machiavellianism.”45 In some
sense, National Socialism was rooted in German history. But in another sense it
broke with German history, as it broke with the rules and traditions of Western
civilization. It was a phenomenon sui generis. Hitler, whom the German journal-
ist and historian Joachim Fest once called “the man from nowhere,”46 was no
Machiavellian; he was a believer who thought of himself as a providential man,
as the only person capable of accomplishing his ideology’s sinister mission.
Moreover, he was a man with a plan. While in 1933 Aron had still thought
that Hitler’s foreign policy or war aims were not very clear, he concluded during
the war that the tyrant indeed had a kind of “program”:

the first step was the invasion of Poland. At that time it was not about more than
the extension, the rounding off, if one might say, of Greater Germany as the basis
of the imperial project. The second step was the invasion of France, which had
already a greater outlook. It was about placing all Europe, from the Vistula to the
Atlantic and from the Baltic Sea to the Aegean, at the disposal of the Wehrmacht.
But he who wants to erect the empire of the world today firstly has to erect the
empire of old Europe, which is the intellectual and moral center of the world.
Germany first would have to secure the maritime connections with the tracts of
land that possess indispensable additional resources, the tropical products of Africa
 IN TH E “ER A OF T Y R A NNIES” 39

or the mineral deposits of the Orient. In particular, she would have to subjugate
Russia in order to form a continental block and to make it invincible; in other
words, to bring about that unity of the ‘Heartland’ which, as Mackinder said,
would earn the conqueror dominion of the world.” 47

Hence, to Aron, Hitler’s fi nal aim was world domination, and this aim was
motivated by ideological convictions or rather by ideological chimera. In twenti-
eth-century international politics, ideology mattered; and, as Aron apprehended
in the course of the Second World War, it made the confl ict between totalitarian
and liberal-democratic regimes inevitable. Tyrannies like the “Third Reich”
were driven by a “secular religion” to seek the annihilation of liberal Western
civilization. Moreover, the clash between National Socialism and liberalism
turned the war started by Hitler into a very special kind of war, as Aron noted as
early as 1942, “Regarding the clash of ideologies it is similar to a war of religion.”
Did not the liberal democracies fight for much more than their material survival,
that is to say, for a just cause? Aron was sure about it: “A war that aims to save
the independence of the small nations, the equality of races and peoples, and
the principles proper to a humane order is just par excellence. This is not even
explicit enough. Our idea of justice and injustice is at stake in this confl ict.”48
Though Aron certainly was no Manichaean, he did believe that the Second
World War was about justice and injustice. Like the American protestant theolo-
gian Reinhold Niebuhr, he regarded the war as a struggle between the “Children
of Light” and the “Children of Darkness.”49 But what about the Soviet Union?
Undoubtedly, in this struggle, the communist empire fought on the side of the
just. However, to be on the side of the “Children of Light” does not necessar-
ily mean to belong to them. In fact, in Aron’s eyes, the Soviets were “Children
of Darkness” whose assistance was temporarily required by the “Children of
Light.” They were needed to overcome a greater and, above all, more urgent
threat. Very soon after the war, Aron applied the principles that had guided him
in his intellectual struggle against National Socialism against Soviet communism
as well. Though he allowed for subtle differences between National Socialism
and Soviet communism in his conception of totalitarianism, he thought that
these differences did not matter very much on the international stage. True,
unlike Hitler, Stalin and his successor were not adventurers who wanted to
accomplish all foreign policy goals in one lifetime. They did not see themselves
as providential men but as high priests of Marxism-Leninism, and as believers in
their hyper-rationalist “secular religion” they were sure that communism would
prevail in the historical struggle with liberalism. But in principle their hostility
toward the West was as absolute as Hitler’s had been. As Aron himself wrote,
“Stalin had stepped into Hitler’s shoes.”50
As early as 1945, he had suspected that the West’s most urgent responsibil-
ity would be to contain Soviet expansionism. And after Harry S. Truman had
announced the policy of containment on March 12, 1947, Aron was sure that
the time for a new “historical choice” had come. “History was again on the
move,” but this time the confl ict would be long and probably remain below
the threshold of war. As he wrote in 1948 in one of his most political books, Le
40 M AT T H I A S OPPE R M A N N

Grand Schisme, Stalin and his successor would try everything to annihilate the
West without daring war: “Peace impossible, war improbable.”51 Nevertheless,
no citizen of a Western democracy could shrink from making his choice. There
was no neutrality possible. We could deal at great length with Aron’s political
commentaries about the Cold War. We could look at many of his judgments
about Western policy, about the character of the Soviet Union and the develop-
ment of different crises. But I daresay that all that is not necessary to grasp the
meaning of the role Aron played in France during the Cold War. To put the
whole matter in a nutshell, let us confi ne ourselves to two points. Firstly, during
the Cold War—or the “warlike peace,”52 as Aron himself called it—he acted in
accordance with the militant and in some ways conservative liberalism he had
acquired in the 1930s. There was no great difference between the anti-National
Socialist of the 1930s and the time of the Second World War on the one hand and
the anti-communist of the Cold War on the other. He was not simply a “Cold
War Liberal”53 but, since the 1930s, just a political liberal who applied his prin-
ciples in all seasons. He stood up against all forms of modern tyranny. Secondly,
Aron observed the developments of the Cold War era from the perspective of a
conception of international relations that was not a mere theory, but was rooted
in historical experiences collected in the 1930s and 1940s.
Aron was no orthodox realist like Hans J. Morgenthau, who believed that all
foreign policy was, independently of the domestic regime of the state in question,
“a struggle for power.”54 Ideology mattered to Aron, and so did internal regimes.
With this insight, he grounded the concept that he presented in 1962 in Paix et
guerre entre les nations, his magnum opus on international relations: “true realism
consists nowadays in acknowledging the effect of ideologies on diplomacy and
strategy. In our time, instead of repeating over and over again that all regimes
have got ‘the same kind of foreign policy,’ we should be adamant about a truth
that is not contradictory but complementary: nobody understands the diplomacy
and strategy of a state without knowing the regime, without scrutinizing which
philosophy motivates the political leaders of that state.”55
As a staunch defender of liberal democracy as a kind of best regime—that is
to say, the best of the regimes possible in the twentieth century—Aron naturally
had moral objections to orthodox realism as well. He was afraid that the empha-
sis on the national interest and the accumulation of power could lead realists
toward an amoral Machiavellianism. Though he shared their critique of foreign
policy idealism, he denied a clear dividing line between realism and idealism.
Despite the fact that state sovereignty was defi ned by the possibility to decide
when to fight or not to fight, there always had been, as Aron thought, norms
that states had respected. However, they did not respect them because they were
forced by a supranational power, but for the sole reason of prudence.56 To Aron,
the international order was subjected to two different kinds of moralities: the
“morality of law” and the “morality of combat.”57 He believed that the oscilla-
tion of the international order between Kant and Machiavelli should withhold
statesmen from deciding for one of the two sorts of moralities alone. They had
to fi nd a middle course, because “what tradition teaches is not cynicism but
 IN TH E “ER A OF T Y R A NNIES” 41

Aristotelian prudence—the supreme virtue in this world under the now-visited

moon.”58
For this middle course between the two extreme kinds of moralities, Aron
found the name “morality of prudence.”59 He thereby joined a long tradition
starting with Aristotle and encompassing, for example, political philosophers
like Edmund Burke and nineteenth-century statesmen like George Canning.
But Aron did not reach this position by studying great books alone. As a mat-
ter of fact, the tradition of Western political philosophy was not his starting
point but his terminal. He started with the observation of history, the observa-
tion of Hitlerism and the “Third Reich” as a modern tyranny. From there he
became, in the 1930s and 1940s, an advocate of the “morality of prudence,”
which enabled him during the long course of the Cold War to be right about
nearly everything. He understood better than any other Western European
political thinker the character of the Soviet Union and the conventions of the
Cold War.
When the Soviet Empire cracked down in 1989 and the following years,
many liberals believed that the “era of tyranny” was defi nitely over. Liberalism
had triumphed, and the world had reached the “End of History.” Raymond Aron
did not see this alleged end of all tyrannies, because he had already passed away
in 1983. Had he lived, he could have warned his fellow liberals, as an advocate
of the “morality of prudence,” that liberalism still had enemies and that new
ones could rise. Today, in a time when Western democracies realize that this is
actually the case, it may be no mistake to turn again to Aron’s insights about the
“era of tyrannies.”

Notes
1. Raymond Aron, “Introduction,” in Max Weber, Le Savant et le politique, Paris,
Plon, 1959, 9–57, 42.
2. For an explanation of Aron’s Aristotelian approach to politics, see Pierre Manent,
“La politique comme science et comme souci,” in Raymond Aron, Liberté et
égalité. Cours au Collège de France. Édition établie et présentée par Pierre Manent,
Paris, Éditions de l'École des hautes études en sciences sociales, 2013, 5–26, in
particular 20–23. For two attempts to dissect the Burkean features of Aron’s
political thought, see Joël Mouric, Raymond Aron et l’Europe. Préface de Fabrice
Bouthillon, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2013, 69–70, 88–89, 97,
106, 234–235, and Matthias Oppermann, “Burkeanischer Liberalismus. Raymond
Aron und die Tugend der Klugheit,” in Tobias Bevc and Matthias Oppermann
(eds.), Der souveräne Nationalstaat. Das politische Denken Raymond Arons, Stuttgart,
Franz Steiner Verlag, 2012, 157–179.
3. Raymond Aron, Mémoires. 50 ans de réflexion politique, Paris, Juillard, 1983, 7.
4. Raymond Aron, “Simples propositions du pacifisme,” Libres Propos vol. 5, no. 2,
1931, 81–83, 81–82.
5. John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, London, Macmillan,
1920, 51.
6. Aron, “Simples propositions du pacifisme,” 82.
7. Aron, Mémoires, 22.
42 M AT T H I A S OPPE R M A N N

8. Raymond Aron, Le Spectateur engagé. Entretiens avec Jean-Louis Missika et Dominique

Wolton, Paris, Julliard, 1981; reissue Paris, Le Livre de poche, “Références.
Sciences sociales,” 2005, 26.
9. Raymond Aron, “De la condition historique du sociologue. Leçon inaugurale au
Collège de France (1971),” in Raymond Aron, Études sociologiques, Paris, Presses
universitaires de France, 1988, 281–309, 288. See also Raymond Aron, L’Opium
des intellectuels. Nouvelle édition. Introduction de Nicolas Baverez, Paris, 2002
[originally 1955], 202.
10. Aron, Mémoires, 76; Aron, Le Spectateur engagé, 184.
11. Raymond Aron, “Lettre ouverte d’un jeune Français à l’Allemagne,” Esprit,
February 1933, 735–743, 735.
12. For the Alliance démocratique in the 1930s, see Jean-Marie Mayeur, La Vie poli-
tique sous la Troisième République 1870–1940, Paris, Seuil, 1984, 302–302; René
Rémond, Les Droites en France, Paris, Aubier, 1982, 190–192.
13. Aron, Le Spectateur engagé, 61.
14. For Aron’s economic thought in that period, see his trenchant critique of the eco-
nomic policy of the Popular Front, which governed France from 1936 to 1938:
Raymond Aron, “Réf lexions sur les problèmes économiques français,” Revue de
métaphysique et de morale vol. 44, 1937, 793–822.
15. Élie Halévy, L’Ère des tyrannies. Études sur le socialisme et la guerre, Préface de Célestin
Bouglé. Postface de Raymond Aron, Paris, Gallimard, 1990 [originally 1938].
16. See Aron, Spectateur engagé, 3; Aron, Mémoires, 62.
17. Aron, “Lettre ouverte d’un jeune Français,” 739f.
18. See Aron, “États démocratiques et États totalitaires. Communication à la Société
française de philosophie. Juin 1939.” Commentaire, vol. 6, 1983–1984, 701–719.
19. For an examination of this term, see Raymond Aron, “Essais sur le machia-
vélisme moderne (1938–1940),” in Raymond Aron, Machiavel et les tyrannies
modernes, Texte établi, présenté et annoté par Rémy Freymond, Paris, Fallois,
1993, 57–154; Raymond Aron, “Le machiavélisme, doctrine des tyrannies mod-
ernes (1940),” in Raymond Aron, Chroniques de guerre: La France libre 1940–1945.
Préface de Jean-Marie Soutou. Édition revue et annotée par Christian Bachelier,
Paris, Gallimard, 1990, 417–426. At that early period, Aron regarded Italian fas-
cism and German national-socialism as a kind of modern Machiavellianism. He
had not yet grasped the ideological originality of Hitlerism.
20. See Aron, Mémoires, 132. Cf. Nicolas Baverez, Raymond Aron: un moraliste au temps
des idéologies, Paris, Flammarion, 1993; new edition Paris, Flammarion, “Grandes
biographies,” 2005; reissue Paris, Perrin, “Tempus,” 2006, 104.
21. Aron, “États démocratiques et États totalitaires,” 714. See Raymond Aron,
“Le socialisme et la guerre” (1939 as: “L’Ère des tyrannies d’Élie Halévy”), in
Raymond Aron, Machiavel et les tyrannies modernes, Paris, Éditions de Fallois, 1993,
309–331, 323. Cf. Aron, Mémoires, 132–133, 151; Aron, Spectateur engagé, 46, 74.
22. Aron, Mémoires, 151.
23. Institut mémoire de l’édition contemporaine, Paris, Fonds Paulhan, PLH2.
C4–03.07, Raymond Aron to Jean Paulhan, March 15, 1938. Cf. furthermore
an article written during the Second World War: Raymond Aron, “Démocratie
et enthousiasme (1942),” in Raymond Aron, Chroniques de guerre. La France libre
1940–1945, Paris, Gallimard, 1990, 649–660, 655: “The excess of partisan loyal-
ism sometimes threatened to choke the higher loyalty we owe our fatherland. But
democracies that experience ideological and political conf licts perish once the
ferocity of these conf licts becomes fratricidal.”
 IN TH E “ER A OF T Y R A NNIES” 43

24. See Pierre Manent, “Raymond Aron éducateur,” Commentaire, vol. 8, 1985:
155–168.
25. Aron, “États démocratiques et États totalitaires,” 705, 707–708, 710. Cf. in
addition Ibid., 715.
26. See Ibid., 708.
27. See Aron, Mémoires, 136; Aron, Spectateur engagé, 44. Furthermore Raymond
Aron, “Contribution to Golo Mann’s Talk in Front of the Académie des sci-
ences morales et politiques (Structure et accident en histoire politique),” Revue des
travaux de l’Académie des sciences morales et politiques, vol. 129, no. 4, 1976, 381–384,
382. This view was inspired by a lucid article by Alfred Fabre-Luce, as Aron
stated at different occasions. See Alfred Fabre-Luce, “Le tragique de la politique
extérieure française,” L’Europe nouvelle, January 25, 1936. Cf. Aron, Mémoires,
140–141; Raymond Aron’s Papers, Box 206, Raymond Aron to Alfred Fabre-
Luce, May 11, 1980 (Copy). I worked through Aron’s private papers while they
were kept at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. In the
meantime they were transferred to the Bibliothèque Nationale. All materials
quoted here can be found by means of Élisabeth Dutartre, Fonds Raymond Aron:
Inventaire, Paris, BNF, 2007.
28. Raymond Aron to Father Gaston Fessard, October 28, 1938, in Raymond Aron,
“Lettres inédites,” Commentaire, vol. 26, 2003, 611–615, 613–614.
29. See Aron, “Essais sur le machiavélisme modern,” 118, 132. The term “fifth col-
umn” originates from the Spanish Civil War. See Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, La
Décadence, 1932–1939, Paris, Imprimerie nationale, 1979, 208.
30. Aron Papers, Box 208, Aron to Roger Martin du Gard, October 7, 1938.
31. Raymond Aron, Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire: Essai sur les limites de
l’objectivité historique. Nouvelle édition revue et annotée par Sylvie Mesure, Paris,
Gallimard, 1986 [originally 1938], 398.
32. Aron, “États démocratiques et États totalitaires,” 708.
33. For the following see Ibid., 708–709.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid.
37. For the following see Ibid., 708–710.
38. Raymond Aron, Démocratie et totalitarisme, reprint, Paris, Gallimard, 1985 [origi-
nally 1965], 111. See furthermore Ibid., passim.
39. Aron, “États démocratiques et États totalitaires,” 711–712. See also Ibid., p. 710.
40. Aron, Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire, 408.
41. See Aron, “États démocratiques et États totalitaires,” 716.
42. Ibid., 712.
43. See Michael Oakeshott, “On Being Conservative (1956),” in Rationalism in
Politics and Other Essays: New and Expanded Edition. Foreword by Timothy Fuller,
Indianapolis, Liberty Fund, 1991 [originally 1962], 407–437.
44. See Raymond Aron, “Les racines de l’impérialisme allemand (1943),” in
Raymond Aron, Chroniques de guerre: La France libre 1940–1945, Paris, Gallimard,
1990, 596–607.
45. For the 1930s, see Raymond Aron, “La révolution nationale en Allemagne
(1933),” in Raymond Aron, Machiavel et les tyrannies modernes, Paris, Éditions de
Fallois, 1993; reissue Paris, Le Livre de Poche, “Biblio Essais,” 1995, 271–285,
284; Raymond Aron, “Une révolution antiprolétarienne. Idéologie et réalité du
national-socialisme (1936),” Commentaire, vol. 8, 1985, 299–310, 304, 306. For a
44 M AT T H I A S OPPE R M A N N

full development of the concept, see Raymond Aron, “L’avenir des religions sécu-
lières, part I and II (1944),” in Raymond Aron, Chroniques de guerres, 925–948. For
an explanation of the development of the concept in Aron’s thought, cf. further-
more Matthias Oppermann, Raymond Aron und Deutschland. Die Verteidigung der
Freiheit und das Problem des Totalitarismus, Ostfildern, Thorbecke, 2008, 124–140,
178–200.
46. Joachim Fest, Der Untergang: Hitler und das Ende des Dritten Reiches. Eine historische
Skizze, 5th paperback edition, Hamburg, Rowohlt, 2005, 58.
47. Raymond Aron, “Pour l’alliance de l’Occident (1944),” in Chroniques de guerre,
949–961, 951. For Aron’s opinion in 1933, see Aron, “La Révolution nationale
en Allemagne,” 285. For other discussions of Hitler’s “program” in Aron’s writ-
ings dating from the Second World War and the postwar period, cf. Raymond
Aron and Stanislas Szymonzyk, L’Année cruciale. Juin 1940–juin 1941, London,
Hamilton, 1944, 7–6, 13–14; Raymond Aron, “Philosophie du pacifisme (1941),”
in Chroniques de guerre, 481–491, 489; Raymond Aron, “Mythe révolutionnaire
et impérialisme germanique (1941),” in Chroniques de guerre, 440–451, 440;
Raymond Aron, “La menace des Césars (1942),” in Chroniques de guerre, 584–595,
591; Aron Papers, Box 1, École Normale d’Administration, La Crise du XXe
siècle. Cours dactylographiés, 5e cours, May 4, 1946, 111; Raymond Aron, Les
Guerres en chaîne, Paris, Gallimard, 1951, 49, 52–55, 108–109; Raymond Aron,
“Des comparaisons historiques,” in Raymond Aron, Études politiques, Paris,
Gallimard, 1972, 426–445, 439.
48. Raymond Aron, “La stratégie totalitaire et l’avenir des démocraties (1942),” in
Raymond Aron, Chroniques de guerre, 559–571, 563; Aron, “Philosophie du paci-
fisme,” 485.
49. See Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A
Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of Its Traditional Defense, New York, Scribner,
1944.
50. Raymond Aron, “France in the Cold War,” The Political Quarterly, vol. 22, no. 1,
1951, 57–66, 63. Cf. Raymond Aron, Le Grand Schisme, Paris, Gallimard, 1948,
13: “Hitler is dead and for good. But a new Caesar’s shadow tarnishes the world.”
Cf. furthermore Aron, Mémoires, 447. For Aron’s conception of totalitarianism,
see Oppermann, Raymond Aron und Deutschland, 363–387.
51. Aron, Le Grand Schisme, 13. For the year 1945 see Raymond Aron, “Le partage
de l’Europe,” Point de vue, July 26, 1945.
52. Raymond Aron, “La paix belliqueuse (1946),” Commentaire, vol. 19, 1996–1997,
S. 913–917, p. 914.
53. For a short discussion of this problematic term, see Matthias Oppermann, “Ein
transatlantisches Vital Center? Raymond Aron und der amerikanische Liberalismus
(1945–1983),” Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, vol. 3–4, 2014, 161–176,
166–167.
54. Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 5th
ed., New York, Knopf, 1972 [originally 1948], 27.
55. Raymond Aron, Paix et guerre entre les nations, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1962, 587.
56. See Ibid., 20, 595.
57. Ibid.
58. Raymond Aron, “Is Isolationism Possible?” Commentary, vol. 57, no. 4, 1974,
41–46, 46. Cf. Aron, Paix et guerre, 596.
59. Ibid.
CHAPTER 4

ARON AND THE COLD WAR:

“BROTHER ENEMIES”

Carlos Gaspar

R aymond Aron was deeply engaged with the Cold War as a philosopher and
university professor, as a commentator and political scientist, and as a com-
mitted intellectual and citizen.
On returning to Paris from his exile in London, Aron could see the profound
transformation in the international system brought about by the Second World
War. Instead of returning to the university, he decided to immerse himself in the
struggle for freedom and peace, which were threatened by Soviet totalitarianism,
and he sought to combine his political and journalistic activities with teach-
ing and research. This was essentially tantamount to a continuation of his fight
against Nazism as a member of the French Resistance.
The Cold War was at the core of his reflections, writings, and political action.
In 1947, he became “diplomatic correspondent” at Le Figaro, for which he wrote
every week over the course of the next 30 years. This instilled in him the dis-
cipline of political analysis and granted him an important place in all the rel-
evant debates of the Cold War. This involvement was complemented by the
controversial positions he took, in particular in L’Opium des intellectuels, pub-
lished in 1955, which confi rmed his parting of ways with Jean-Paul Sartre and
his left-wing friends, who couldn’t refrain from wanting to be revolutionaries,
and in La Tragédie algérienne, published in 1957, which left this cold-warrior, for
whom decolonization was both historically inevitable and politically necessary
in the name of consistency in Western opposition to Communism, isolated on
the right. In the same way, on the “ideological front” of the Cold War, he was
a major international figure in the Congress for Cultural Freedom; he edited an
important collection of books—Liberté de l’esprit—in which he published essays
by James Burnham, Arthur Koestler, and Hannah Arendt; and later on, during
the 1970s, he founded the journal Commentaire.
In 1948 he published Le Grand Schisme and in 1951, Les Guerres en chaîne, his
fi rst books on the Cold War in which his theoretical rigor and historical vision
46 C A R L O S G A S PA R

combined with his experience of political analysis to portray the diplomatic con-
stellations and point out the hidden conventions of the Cold War and grasp the
main trends of the international system. This hybrid model would be repeated
over the following decades in the successive writings updating his ideas about
the Cold War, such as Espoir et peur du siècle, published in 1957, Le Grand Débat,
published in 1963, the Plaidoyer pour l’Europe décadente, published in 1977, and
Dernières Années du siècle, his last book, published posthumously.
The Cold War also had an impact on his theoretical works. In his sociological
triptych about modern times—Dix-Huit Leçons sur la société industrielle, La Lutte de
classes, and Démocratie et totalitarisme—he chose as a central issue the comparison
between the liberal and totalitarian models of industrial society, a key issue in
the strategic competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. His
masterpiece of international relations theory—Paix et guerre entre les nations—
would not have been complete without its extensive analysis of the Cold War. In
his erudite study on Clausewitz—Penser la guerre, Clausewitz—he dealt with the
nuclear revolution, which played a decisive role in the peaceful impasse in bipolar
competition, calling into question the validity of the classic formula stating that
war was but the continuation of politics by other means.
The combination of different genres—political commentary, ideological
debate, historical and sociological essays, and treatises on international theory
and strategy—is a quality unique to Aron. Hans Morgenthau, Martin Wight,
and Kenneth Waltz recognized him as a peer in the field of international relations
theory, but none of them had either his experience as a journalist or a compa-
rable level of political activity. The columnist for Le Figaro and L’Express wrote
thousands of newspaper articles, just like his friend Walter Lippmann, the great
American journalist, but the latter did not, like Aron, produce scholarly works or
theoretical essays. George Kennan and Henry Kissinger—diplomats, academics,
and fellow cold-warriors—also published key studies about international poli-
tics, but they could not claim the Parisian master’s journalistic résumé, did not
produce theoretical works, and lacked Aron’s level of philosophical insight.
Similarly, the permanent dialectic between history, political science, and the-
ory of international relations is a specific quality of his work, which reinvented
the way in which the critical issues of the Cold War were thenceforward studied.
His approach considered the dilemmas of universality and division in the inter-
national system, the tensions between the inertia of states and the dynamics of
industrialization, and the heterogeneity imposed by the incompatibility between
constitutional regimes and totalitarian regimes.
His fundamental ideas about the Cold War, set out in his fi rst essays, withstood
the test of time: nuclear war did not take place, a lasting collaboration between
the American republic and the Soviet empire was never made possible, and the
unification of the international system was completed with decolonization and
the end of the old empires. His core liberal beliefs and political positions—
opposition to “secular religions” and the old and new imperialisms, and defense
of the Western alliance and European integration—remained intact in both his
less pessimistic and his more pessimistic periods, without preventing him from
recognizing the changes that shaped the “bellicose peace” over the years.
 A R O N A N D T H E C O L D WA R 47

Pessimism dominated both an initial period, corresponding to the postwar

decade and the institutionalization of the bipolar system, particularly owing to
the division of Germany, and his final period, characterized by Western decline
and the rise of the Soviet Union after the fall of Saigon and the Portuguese
revolution. In between, following the Suez crisis and the Hungarian revolution,
a moderate optimism seemed to mark his thinking about the fate of the “enemy
brothers,” who oscillated between a “shared hegemony” and global competition,
between the convergence of the industrial societies and the divergence of their
universalist utopias, and between imperial unification and a plurality of interna-
tional power centers.
These variations may justify a differentiation between three periods in Aron’s
trajectory without jeopardizing the essential unity of his analysis or consistency
of his fight, which came to a close before the end of the Cold War could fi nally
decide that the human adventure would go on under the banner of freedom.

The Great Schism

From the outset, Raymond Aron acknowledged the transformation of the inter-
national system at the end of the Second World War: “The world we are entering
is completely new.”1 The war made planetary unity a reality, and any disturbance
from then on would bring infi nite repercussions.2 The “age of empires” replaced
the principle of nationalities: by virtue of their nature, scale, and interests, the
United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union were empires, and none of
them was strictly a European power. Western Europe as such was no longer rep-
resented in the international board and was reduced to a handful of lesser states,3
within which the power of the victors, especially in the case of the Soviet Union,
was prolonged by the parties they supported: the relationship between “the party
map and the world map” seemed obvious to him.4
His proposals for ensuring European reconstruction were clear. Firstly,
European stability depended on the restoration of the principle of democratic
legitimacy;5 secondly, balance in the postwar world required a “Western entente”
between the United States, Britain and France;6 and, thirdly, Western Europe,
if it wished to be part of the new world order, should speak with one voice and
fi nd a way to reconcile its unity with the diversity of its national states in order
to respect the independence of the democracies.
This realistic framework, conceived at the end of World War II, changed
with the breakdown of the United Nations alliance. The truce between the
“Big Three” did not come to exist, and the “great schism”—strategic, political,
ideological, moral—between the United States and the Soviet Union confi rmed
not only the reduction of the number of the original “superpowers” to two, but
also the heterogeneity of the international system resulting from the ideological
opposition between them. The successive installation of communist regimes in
the territories conquered by the Soviet Army, the Marshall Plan, and the creation
of the Kominfor, institutionalized the bipolar division of Europe.
In 1948, Aron completed his fi rst overall analysis of the Cold War system, in
which he identified two stable and lasting changes and two others of a transitional
48 C A R L O S G A S PA R

nature. The fi rst were the “unification of the diplomatic field” and a bipolar divi-
sion arising from the “concentration of power in two giant states placed at the
periphery of the Western world.” 7 These changes imposed a permanent tension
between the unity of the system and the duality of its structure, which could
only be overcome either by imperial unification or by the return of multipolar-
ity. Hitler’s war, and the progress in science and technology, had accelerated the
emergence of a “fi nite world,” and the new great powers both dreamed of a uni-
versal empire. This made for the inherent instability of bipolarity: “Between two
candidates to empire, rivalry, not entente, is the natural order of things.”8 The
greater dangers of their confl ict, however, were limited by the atomic bomb,
because no one knew whether this would not be the “absolute weapon” that
could destroy civilization; and this unprecedented circumstance created a form
of equilibrium that, however fragile, could be long-lasting: “This uncertainty
favors peace. One does not decide upon the fate of humankind with a throw of
the dice.”9
The transitional changes were the destruction of “partial balances” and the
amplification of the rivalry between the empires into a “global diplomacy.” The
preponderance of the United States and the Soviet Union in Europe and Asia
could only be an exceptional state of affairs and by defi nition was but a tem-
porary one. The resurgence of European and Asian powers would restore the
relative autonomy of regional balances, demarcating “intermediate spaces,” and
reducing the extent of the imperial contest. This possibility, however, was ham-
pered by the ideological dimension of the bipolar division: “what is at stake is
both power and ideas.”10 The stable distribution of spheres of influence was not
possible while the totalitarian nature of the Soviet regime persisted, despite the
fact that Stalin’s imperialism was less impatient than Hitler’s.11
Aron summarized the strategic impasse of the Cold War with the classic for-
mula “paix impossible, guerre improbable” (peace impossible, war improbable).12 The
claims to universality of both empires prevented an agreement on the terms of
the peace, or even a defi nition of the strategic boundaries between the United
States and the Soviet Union; but the fundamental balance between the two great
powers, consolidated by the atomic surprise, made a return to total war unlikely,
at least temporarily.
In this context, the “bellicose peace” was at once a continuation of the
sequence of total wars and totalitarian revolutions and an interruption of the
cycle of “hyperbolic wars.” The Cold War was going to be fought everywhere,
and the two superpowers seemed determined to fight for their empire in every
way except one: war. The Cold War was a “third way on which both camps are
engaged since 1946: neither peace, nor war.”13
International changes and the shift represented by the Cold War demanded
a revision of the major powers’ strategies. This issue was at the center of a great
debate in which Aron took part, looking for alternatives to both imperial peace
and the ascension aux extrêmes (rise to the extremes), the escalation leading to total
nuclear war.14
The outcome of World War II was at the same time the end of a nightmare
and a catastrophe. The dynamics of total war, which demanded the annihilation
 A R O N A N D T H E C O L D WA R 49

of the enemy, created the conditions for a new war. The United States and
Britain imposed unconditional surrender and forced Germany and Japan to con-
tinue hostilities until their destruction, which opened the doors of Europe and
Asia to the Soviet Union. Britain and France ceased to be fi rst-rank powers: in
the new system, “the European concert no longer exists; there is only a world
concert.”15
What was to be done? To begin with, it was necessary to avoid repeating
the scenario in which the democracies capitulated before the totalitarian threat.
The Munich syndrome persisted both in the tendency to surrender before the
strength of the Soviet Union and in the unconditional defense of the United
Nations alliance. At the end of the war, the Soviet Union had a unique prestige,
and communism could become the “wave of the future,” even if only the most
fanatical communists in the West refused to recognize the victory of commu-
nism as a calamity equivalent to Nazism.16 However, it was also necessary to
reject the temptations of a preventive nuclear war against the Soviet Union, tak-
ing advantage of the atomic monopoly of the United States: “the victory of one
state at the cost of the total destruction of its rival infl icts a wound from which
civilization cannot heal.”17
Between the extremes of capitulation and war, Aron defended the virtues of
the strategy of containment as contemplated by George Kennan: “The imme-
diate aim is containment. The ulterior aim is fi lling up the no man’s land with
regimes that are not subordinate to communism. The means to achieve them
are economic and political aid under the protection of the nuclear threat.”18 The
American strategy was defensive, moderate, and patient: its essence was time. If
totalitarian expansion was to be stopped, internal forces needed time to make
their way, whether in the Soviet Union or inside the communist bloc. Change
would thus be possible without war: Tito’s survival, after being expelled from the
Kominform, meant a serious defeat for the Soviet Union.19 Communist totali-
tarianism turned out not to be invulnerable after all, and the Soviet empire was
not indestructible.
Playing for time was the only possible strategy for Europe, where the immedi-
ate alternative to the Cold War would be a third world war, which would inevi-
tably be a nuclear war.20 To ensure the duration of a precarious truce, it seemed
crucial to establish a European balance at the center of the bipolar competition
through the division of Germany, the consolidation of the principle of demo-
cratic legitimacy, and the defi nition of a political program with a vision of the
future centered on European integration. Germany was the key to the European
problem, and its division, which was imposed by the breaking up of the war alli-
ance, made the creation of a democratic regime in Western Germany, Franco-
German reconciliation, and Western integration imperative.
Hitler’s war caused the total defeat of Germany and closed the cycle of its
imperial power: “The defeat of Germany in 1945 is comparable to that of France
in 1815. It marks the end of a period of hegemony.” 21 The German question, no
longer about the threat of the resurgence of the old Reich as the leading power,
was reduced to its future alignment in the bipolar division:22 “Only a Germany
converted to communism, as the avant-garde of the Stalinist empire, could once
50 C A R L O S G A S PA R

more represent a danger at our borders.”23 European peace depended on the

political and strategic defi nition of the status of Germany, occupied by the Four
Powers.24
The break-up of the United Nations began immediately in 1945, with the
“Sovietization” of the Eastern zone of occupation, which made the perma-
nent division of Germany inevitable. The Soviet decision was followed by the
Western powers, which created the Federal Republic in the Western zones of
occupation and, at the same time, established the North Atlantic Pact, a diplo-
matic revolution that ensured that the United States remained militarily engaged
in Europe, a prerequisite for Franco-German reconciliation: there could never
be a more appropriate moment for the French and the Germans to “put an end
to a secular confl ict which has become anachronistic with the transformation of
the world.”25
The Soviet Union responded with the formation of the German Democratic
Republic, but the issue of unification remained open in both camps: “One can-
not tell at this moment how the two Germanies are to live permanently apart, nor
how they might come together again.”26 The future of West Germany remained
uncertain, and France called for an initiative on European unity in May 1950:
“The Schuman project’s essential aim is reconciliation between France and
Germany.”27 The United States supported the French strategy of European inte-
gration and the creation of a coal and steel pool, but after the Communist inva-
sion of South Korea, they called for the reestablishment of a German army, which
would be integrated into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
France countered with the creation of a European Defence Community (EDC),
against which the Soviet Union launched an impressive campaign while multi-
plying its proposals for the reunification of a neutral Germany.
Aron declared himself in favor of the creation of a European Army. Like
Winston Churchill, he understood that the unification of the French and German
armies was the only way to achieve a European union rapidly: “It would be an
unprecedented revolution if the soldiers who fought one another so often in
the past would tomorrow serve side by side.”28 But, on the other hand, taking
into account the state of French politics, he preferred the military integration of
Germany into NATO: “Paradoxically, the most distrustful chose the method
demanding the greater trust. Those who fear Germany as a NATO ally are
willing to accept her within a European confederation.”29 Finally, he expressed
his opposition on Soviet proposals for the unification of Germany; but he did
not reject such unification as part of a Western strategy, on the condition that
the choice of the Germans should be free and democratic, in order to ensure
the permanence of a unified Germany within the transatlantic community. On
this question, his position varied only once, when, in responding to the new
détente policy of Stalin’s successors, he admitted that in compensation for Soviet
concessions Western diplomacy could accept “an agreement limiting the right
of Germany to integrate militarily into Europe or the Atlantic Alliance.”30 The
strategy of the new Soviet leadership, however, ultimately moved in the opposite
direction:31 “They are adapting to the status quo of the division of Germany and
Europe.”32
 A R O N A N D T H E C O L D WA R 51

At the peak of the fi rst transatlantic crisis, France itself destroyed the EDC.
The refusal of the National Assembly to ratify the Treaty of Paris brought into
question European and Western integration and forced Britain to intervene in
order to save both: the Federal Republic was thus permitted to enter NATO,33
and that decision cemented the division of Germany, which would last as long as
the division of Europe.34 Ten years after the end of World War II, the reversal of
alliances was complete and institutionalized in both NATO and the European
Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). The postwar period of turbulence ended
and Europe returned to normal.35

Enemy Brothers
In 1955, after a brief period as a member of the Rassemblement du Peuple
Français (RPF) party, Aron returned to the university and, between courses at
the Sorbonne and during a sabbatical at Harvard in 1960, found time for traveling
and writing his treatise on international relations, Paix et guerre entre les nations.36
After the perfect ending to the EDC crisis, Aron reformulated his analysis
about “the unity and plurality of the diplomatic field,” the main characteristics
of which were dominated by the cleavages of the Cold War: the supremacy of
two states, their presence all over the planet, the mutual hostility of their ideolo-
gies, and, of course, their possession of weapons of mass destruction, including
atomic weapons: “none of these traits was unprecedented, except for the last one,
but their combination was original.”37 For the fi rst time, bipolarity was treated
in a systematic way, with the identification of four possible configurations: in
the new system, the two states could rule together the civilization of which both
were part, draw a demarcation line between the areas in which each one of them
constituted an empire, wage a fight to the death, or co-exist in opposition. The
most likely scenario, however, was a mixed one: “Total agreement and the fight
to the death being excluded, reality pointed to a combination between dividing
the world into spheres of influence and a rivalry for the defi nition of borders and
the allegiance of neutral states.”38
In this framework, in which the two superpowers were determined not to
make war between themselves but were also unable to come to terms with each
other, relations between the United States and the Soviet Union alternated
between a “Cold War” and “Peaceful Coexistence.”39 The main virtue of bipo-
larity was the mutual neutralization of the two great powers, which returned
some degree of independence to other states. This mechanism explained the
survival of the Tito heresy in Eastern Europe, despite the fact that Yugoslav dissi-
dents challenged the constitutive principle of the Soviet empire itself by defying
the authority of the Moscow center: in Europe, “none of the great powers will
dare to employ its armies against a reluctant small state, for there exists another
great power.”40
In the new context, the power of the United States and the Soviet Union
had not only decreased, it had also reached its limits. First, the Soviet-Russian
empire was no longer invulnerable to “ideas of the century.” On the other
hand, the rise of new peripheral powers such as China and India was going to
52 C A R L O S G A S PA R

change the strategic balance and reinforce the reasons for the two superpowers’
mutual containment: a total war between them could only make them more
vulnerable with respect to the poor and non-aligned states.41 Finally, and most
importantly, neither of the ideological rivals was able to unite humanity in a
universal empire.42
By defi nition, the risk of war remained: “States are cold monsters whose law
is always to suspect one another, to fight one another often and to sometimes
destroy one another. Science helps men to kill one another, it does not entrust
them with wisdom.”43 However, the nuclear revolution was the proof of the
thesis of the “powerlessness of victory:” the political and strategic survival of the
United States and the Soviet Union ensured their joint commitment to prevent-
ing a suicidal war. Under these conditions, total war, rather than an “improbable
war,” was a guerre introuvable.44 The wars of the Cold War, as it became clear fol-
lowing the Korean War, were limited wars as far as the number of belligerents,
their theater, the weapons used, and the objectives were concerned.45 The armed
forces of the United States were present, but there was no military intervention
by the Soviet Union, despite its responsibility for the decision to invade South
Korea; the fighting never went beyond the Korean border, despite the tempta-
tion to cross the Yalu; no weapons of mass destruction were used, despite threats
of nuclear retaliation against the People’s Republic of China; and the issue was
restricted to the Korean question.
The dual crisis of Suez and Hungary challenged the rules of the Cold War.
Aron followed the two events, step by step, in his articles in Le Figaro, and often
returned to the question during the following years.
In July 1956, the surprise of the nationalization of the Suez Canal by the
Egyptian Rais was received as an unbearable humiliation by France and Britain,
a humiliation due to the indifference of the United States, which chose to dis-
tance itself from its allies in a dispute that pitted the old colonial powers against
their former protectorates. Aron began by defending the mainstream opinion,
both when he defended the use of force—essential for Paris and London not to
lose face, as the only alternative to capitulation—and when he considered the
issue decisive for the Western alliance and criticized Washington’s passivity.46
The upheaval in Eastern Europe, however, created a new situation. Gomulka’s
success in the Polish crisis marked a fi rst turning point, which it seemed possible
to repeat in the Hungarian Revolution: “In the long run men and their desire for
freedom prevail over the tanks.”47 Then Khrushchev decided to invade Hungary
while the Anglo-French expedition was landing at Suez.
In this extraordinary situation, Aron noted the general immobility in the face
of Hungary’s agony and expressed his skepticism regarding the circumstances
of the belated intervention of France and Britain. Recognizing how this deci-
sion caused “violent and confl icting emotions,” he warned that in Suez no one
could expect to fi nd the answer to the Algerian problems and he stressed the
emotional context of the intervention: “The French and the British were driven
less by political calculation and more by their revolt against their humiliation
and their wish to remind the world that they were not in decay.”48 At the same
time, he deplored the two military actions taking place concurrently, although
 A R O N A N D T H E C O L D WA R 53

he did not accept any comparison between the Franco-British expedition and
the Soviet invasion, and he criticized the position of the United States: “fearing
war, American diplomacy implicitly condoned the Soviet empire as a permanent
feature. The two great powers agreed to respect each other’s possessions.”49 The
Soviet Union had become a nuclear power, and the United States would do
nothing that could precipitate a confrontation: “The Soviet-American alliance
against war was stronger than the Western alliance against the Soviet bloc.”50
The dual crisis confirmed that “the supreme interest of the two great powers
(coinciding with that of humanity) is not to engage in a total war.”51 But the
Franco-British intervention also revealed that the assumption of mutual neu-
tralization between the two superpowers was wrong,52 while the invasion of
Hungary showed not only that the Soviet Union was determined to preserve the
integrity of its empire, but also that it was authorized to do anything it wished
within its own area.53 The recognition of this fact required an amendment of the
rule that did not allow regular armies to cross national borders: in its new ver-
sion, this prohibition applied only to “contested areas.”54
In the absence of war, the crises of the Cold War were decisive for defi n-
ing the main trends and the rules of the game. In this context, the dual crisis
was important in the triple sense that the Hungarian anti-totalitarian revolution
destroyed the credibility of Soviet communism for the coming generations,55 the
European revolt against the two great powers confi rmed the limits to their polit-
ical hegemony, and the Soviet-American convergence revealed the complicity, if
not collusion, of the two “enemy brothers.”56 The Suez crisis and the Hungarian
revolution marked the end of illusions.57, 58 By then, Aron was focused on the
global problématique determined by the systemic competition between the two
political, economic, and social models of industrial society, which were the sub-
ject of his fi rst courses on his return to the Sorbonne in 1955.59
In his view, Comte’s industrial society,60 more than Tocqueville’s democratic
society or Marx’s capitalist society, was the paradigm of modernity, “the avant-
garde of humanity,” the universal vocation which might ensure a dynamic of
world unification contrary to the inertia of the past, represented by the empires,
nationalisms, and ideologies responsible for the wars of the twentieth century.
These catastrophes, in turn, had accelerated the “unification of the diplomatic
field” and the diff usion of the model of industrial society on a global scale that
characterized the international system, where three orders converged: the anar-
chy of the powers, the uneven development of economies, and the heterogeneity
of values.61
In this situation, the issue of the opposing models of organization of indus-
trial society, represented respectively by the pluralist democratic regimes and
the market economies of the Western camp, on the one hand, and the Leninist
single-party regimes and planned economies typical of the Soviet bloc, on the
other, constituted a crucial dimension of the competition between the super-
powers. The bipolar balance was dependent on economic growth, scientific and
technical innovation, increases in living standards, and the quality of political
institutions. Moreover, the demonstration of the relative merits of the two com-
peting models was decisive for the competition between the two superpowers,
54 C A R L O S G A S PA R

as the choice of one of the systems entailed an alignment with one of the fields
of the bipolar divide.62
At the same time, the globalization of “industrial civilization” was creating a
new divide between advanced societies and developing countries such as China
and India, which would become great powers in the future.63 The “law of num-
bers” would impose a new hierarchy: “As the technical equipment gaps between
countries diminish, God takes the side of the largest battalions.”64 In the compar-
ison between the United States and the Soviet Union on the one hand and China
and India on the other, the structural convergence between the two models of an
advanced industrial society was stronger than the divergence between them and
the developing countries. This bipolar convergence was enhanced by a common
interest in containing the emergence of future major powers.
Nevertheless, the differences between the political and ideological “super-
structures” of the two models persisted, since it was not possible to separate forms
of organization of production from cultures and political regimes: it was not the
aim of communism “to achieve total tyranny in the name of abundance and of
liberation.”65 In a sense, the homogenization imposed by industrial globaliza-
tion made it more important to appreciate the value of political, ideological, and
cultural heterogeneity in order to ensure the independence of states and political
plurality in the international system.
For Aron, the duality of the history of the twentieth century set the banality
of hegemonic wars—“history as usual,” to use Arnold Toynbee’s formulation—
against the originality of industrial society, “an intellectual, technical, and eco-
nomic revolution which pushes humanity towards an unknown future like a
cosmic force.”66 In the past, the dialectic between the inertia of empires and the
dynamics of industrial society had caused a tragic succession of wars and revo-
lutions.67 After World War II, the tension between international unity and the
bipolar division confi rmed the persistence of this duality, but the convergence
of the expansion of the international system and the globalization of industrial
society announced “the dawn of universal history.”68

Notes
1. Raymond Aron, “L’âge des empires,” in Chroniques de guerre: La France libre
(1940–1945), Paris, Gallimard, 1990, 976.
2. Raymond Aron, “Pour l’alliance de l’Occident,” in Chroniques de guerre: La France
libre (1940–1945), Paris, Gallimard, 1990, 950.
3. In his own words: “une poussière d’États nationaux,” in Chroniques de guerre: La
France libre (1940–1945), Paris, Gallimard, 1990, 978.
4. Aron, “L’âge des empires,” 984.
5. Raymond Aron, “De la violence à la loi,” in Chroniques de guerre: La France libre
(1940–1945), Paris, Gallimard, 1990, 672.
6. Aron, “Pour l’alliance de l’Occident,” 958.
7. Raymond Aron, Le Grand Schisme, Paris, Gallimard, 1948, 17.
8. Ibid., 19.
9. Ibid., 30.
10. Ibid., 23.
 A R O N A N D T H E C O L D WA R 55

11. Ibid., 31.

12. Raymond Aron, “Stupide résignation,” in Raymond Aron, Les Articles du Figaro,
Tome 1: La Guerre Froide (1945–1955), vol. 1, Paris, Editions de Fallois, 1990, 49.
13. James Burnham, Contenir ou libérer? Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1953, 293–294.
14. Carlos Gaspar, “Raymond Aron and the Origins of the Cold War,” in Bryan-
Paul Frost and Daniel Mahoney (eds.), Political Reason in the Age of Ideology: Essays
in Honor of Raymond Aron, New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction Publishers, 2007,
175–193.
15. Aron, Le Grand Schisme, 14.
16. Ibid., 71.
17. Raymond Aron, Les Guerres en chaîne, Paris, Gallimard, 1951, 219.
18. Ibid., 47.
19. Raymond Aron, “L’hérésie nationale,” in Raymond Aron, Les Articles du Figaro,
Tome 1: La Guerre Froide (1945–1955), vol. 1, Paris, Editions de Fallois, 1990,
114.
20. Raymond Aron, “A l’âge atomique, peut-on limiter la guerre?” in Raymond
Aron, Études politiques, Paris, Gallimard, 1972, 488.
21. Aron, Le Grand Schisme, 81.
22. Ibid., 84.
23. Raymond Aron, “Les deux Allemagnes. La reconstruction des zones occiden-
tales,” in Raymond Aron, Les Articles du Figaro, Tome 1: La Guerre Froide (1945–
1955), vol. 1, Paris, Editions de Fallois, 1990, 141.
24. Raymond Aron, “Les chances d’un règlement européen,” Politique etrangère, vol.
14, no. 6, 1949, 253.
25. Raymond Aron, “La politique allemande,” in Raymond Aron, Les Articles du
Figaro, Tome 1: La Guerre Froide (1945–1955), vol. 1, Paris, Editions de Fallois,
1990, 198.
26. Raymond Aron, “L’unification de l’Allemagne est-elle prochaine?” in Raymond
Aron, Les Articles du Figaro, Tome 1: La Guerre Froide (1945–1955), vol. 1, Paris,
Editions de Fallois, 375.
27. Raymond Aron, “L’autorité internationale,” in Raymond Aron, Les Articles du
Figaro, Tome 1: La Guerre Froide (1945–1955), vol. 1, Paris, Editions de Fallois, 418.
See also Raymond Aron, “Choix d’une politique,” in Raymond Aron, Les Articles
du Figaro, Tome 1: La Guerre Froide (1945–1955), vol. 1, Paris, Editions de Fallois,
389 and Raymond Aron, “L’initiative française,” in Raymond Aron, Les Articles du
Figaro, Tome 1: La Guerre Froide (1945–1955), vol. 1, Paris, Editions de Fallois, 401.
28. Aron, Les Guerres en chaîne, 413.
29. Raymond Aron, “L’armée européenne: un pari sur l’avenir qu’on ne peut refuser,”
in Raymond Aron, Les Articles du Figaro, Tome 1: La Guerre Froide (1945–1955),
vol. 1, Paris, Editions de Fallois, 1990, 732. See also Raymond Aron, Le Spectateur
engagé, Paris, Julliard, 1981, 160–161.
30. Raymond Aron, “Unité allemande?” in Raymond Aron, Les Articles du Figaro,
Tome 1: La Guerre Froide (1945–1955), vol. 1, Paris, Editions de Fallois, 1990,
788.
31. Ibid., 1075.
32. Raymond Aron, “La stratégie des successeurs,” in Raymond Aron, Les Articles
du Figaro, Tome 1: La Guerre Froide (1945–1955), vol. 1, Paris, Editions de Fallois,
1990, 1080. See also Christian Mallis, Raymond Aron et le débat stratégique français
(1930–1966), Paris, Economica, 2005, 395 and Georges Henri-Soutou, La Guerre
de cinquante ans, Paris, Fayard, 2001, 292–293.
56 C A R L O S G A S PA R

33. Raymond Aron, “L’accord de Londres,” in Raymond Aron, Les Articles du Figaro,
Tome 1: La Guerre Froide (1945–1955), vol. 1, Paris, Editions de Fallois, 1990,
1289–1293 and Raymond Aron, “Les accords de Paris,” Raymond Aron, Les
Articles du Figaro, Tome 1: La Guerre Froide (1945–1955), vol. 1, Paris, Editions de
Fallois, 1990, 1300–1305.
34. Aron always stood by this analysis and criticized Kennan for his defense of
German unity in the 1957 Reith Lectures. George Kennan, Memoirs 1950–1963,
New York, Pantheon, 1972, 229–266 and Raymond Aron, Mémoires. 50 ans de
réflexion politique, Paris, Julliard, 1983, 279–283, Aron, Le Spectateur engagé, 142.
35. Raymond Aron, “Le règlement européen” in Raymond Aron, Les Articles du
Figaro, Tome 1: La Guerre Froide (1945–1955), vol. 1, Paris, Editions de Fallois,
1990, 1312.
36. Aron, Mémoires, 455–467.
37. Raymond Aron, Espoir et peur du siècle. Essais non partisans, Paris, Calmann-Lévy,
1957, 273.
38. Ibid., 274.
39. François Houtisse, La Coexistence pacifique, Paris, Monde Nouveau, 1953.
40. Aron, Espoir et peur du siècle, 276.
41. Raymond Aron, “Nations et empires,” in Raymond Aron, Une histoire du XXe
siècle, Paris, Plon, 1996, 6; Aron, Espoir et peur du siècle, 304.
42. Ibid., 344.
43. Ibid., 259.
44. Aron, Espoir et peur du siècle, 304.
45. Ibid., 263. Aron, Les Guerres en chaîne, 207–220.
46. Raymond Aron, “La crise continue,” in Raymond Aron, Les Articles du Figaro,
Tome 2: La Coexistence (1955–1965), vol. 2, Paris, Editions de Fallois, 1993, 230–
231 and Raymond Aron, “L’unité atlantique enjeu de la crise de Suez,” in Les
Articles du Figaro, Tome 2: La Coexistence (1955–1965), vol. 2, Paris, Editions de
Fallois, 1993, 232–233. See also Aron, Mémoires, 357–359.
47. Raymond Aron, “La force n’est qu’un moyen,” in Raymond Aron, Les Articles du
Figaro, Tome 2: La Coexistence (1955–1965), vol. 2, Paris, Editions de Fallois, 1993,
257.
48. Ibid., 257.
49. Raymond Aron, “Tragique faillite à New York,” in Raymond Aron, Les Articles
du Figaro, Tome 2: La Coexistence (1955–1965), vol. 2, Paris, Editions de Fallois,
1993, 261.
50. Aron, Espoir et peur du siècle, 348.
51. Ibid., 349.
52. Ibid.
53. Raymond Aron, “L’Europe en quête de son unité,” in Raymond Aron, Les Articles
du Figaro, Tome 2: La Coexistence (1955–1965), vol. 2, Paris, Editions de Fallois,
1993, 276.
54. Raymond Aron, “La révolution hongroise,” in Raymond Aron, Penser la liberté,
penser la démocratie, Paris, Gallimard, 2005, 408.
55. Ibid., 402.
56. Raymond Aron, Paix et guerre entre les nations, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1962, 553.
57. Raymond Aron, La République impériale, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1973, 85.
58. Aron returned to the crisis to underline that the Hungarian revolution was part
of universal history while the Suez episode was a quarrel between old enemies.
 A R O N A N D T H E C O L D WA R 57

Raymond Aron, Penser la liberté, penser la démocratie, Paris, Gallimard, 2005, 387;
Aron, La République impériale, 85.
59. Raymond Aron, Dix-Huit Leçons sur la société industrielle, Paris, Gallimard, 1962;
Raymond Aron, La Lutte de classes, Paris, Gallimard, 1964; Raymond Aron,
Démocratie et totalitarisme, Paris, Gallimard, 1965. See also Raymond Aron, La
Société industrielle et la guerre, Paris, Plon, 1959; Raymond Aron, George Kennan,
Robert Oppenheimer, et al., Les Colloques de Rheinfelden, Paris, Calmann-Lévy,
1960; Aron, Penser la liberté, penser la démocratie, 1469–1782.
60. Aron, Kennan, Oppenheimer, et al., Les Colloques de Rheinfelden, 80–81.
61. Aron, Penser la liberté, penser la démocratie, 1651–1730.
62. Aron, “Nations et empires,” 63.
63. Aron predicted that by 2007 China would have a larger industrial output than the
Soviet Union. Aron, Espoir et peur du siècle, 1957, 221, and 228. See also Abramo
Organski, World Politics, New York, Alfred Knopf, 1958.
64. Aron, “Nations et empires,” 61.
65. Aron, “La société industrielle et les dialogues politiques de l’Occident,” in
Raymond Aron, George Kennan, Robert Oppenheimer et al. (eds.), Les Colloques
de Rheinfelden, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1960, 22.
66. Raymond Aron, “L’aube de l’histoire universelle,” in Raymond Aron, Une his-
toire du XXe siècle, Paris, Plon, 1996, 1792.
67. Aron, Les Guerres en chaîne, 203.
68. Aron, “L’aube de l’histoire universelle,” 1803.
CHAPTER 5

FORWARD TO THE PAST:

HISTORY AND THEORY IN RAYMOND ARON’S
PEACE AND WAR

Bryan-Paul Frost

I n a corpus as capacious as Raymond Aron’s, many books might qualify as his

chef-d’oeuvre. For example, Introduction to the Philosophy of History could be
considered his most foundational work in that the character and limits of histori-
cal intelligibility are first discussed here, and this theme would animate nearly
all of Aron’s postwar writings. The Century of Total War, by contrast, is a master-
ful historical account of the military, economic, and political revolutions of the
twentieth century that reads as true and insightful today as it did when it was
first published. In Clausewitz: Philosopher of War, Aron produces perhaps his most
academic or scholarly book, rediscovering and reengaging in the old debates sur-
rounding this central thinker. And finally, The Opium of the Intellectuals is a deli-
cious (albeit trenchant) polemic where Aron repeatedly punctures such sacrosanct
ideas as the “Left,” “Revolution,” and the “Proletariat.”1 But however impressive
each of these works is, Peace and War surely deserves to be mentioned alongside
them as one of Aron’s finest intellectual achievements—and this in many ways
because it combines all of the aforementioned elements into a systematic whole.
Foundationally, Peace and War enabled Aron to concretize his long meditations
on the character or nature of international politics; historically, he presents a
lucid analysis of the postwar international system in order to pinpoint its unique
attributes; academically, he enters into a range of debates with philosophers and
scholars both past and present, from Montesquieu to Morgenthau; and finally,
polemically, he def lates the pretensions of behaviorists, positivists, and others
who continue to argue and to hope that international relations can be devel-
oped into a rigorous science akin to economics.2 As for his own estimation of
the book, Aron himself revealed that he spent nearly a “decade” thinking about
it and that he judged its publication “significant” (even if, in typically Aronian
fashion, he also admitted that he probably overestimated its value).3
60 B RYA N - PAU L F RO S T

Although students of Aron continue to draw inspiration from this massive

(and daunting) tome, and although it is still considered a classic of twentieth-
century international relations scholarship, one suspects (to paraphrase a com-
ment by John A. Hall) that the book is more likely skimmed over rather than
read and studied in its entirety.4 While many reasons might account for this, two
in particular stand out. In the fi rst place, Aron is considered by many (whether
rightly or wrongly) as belonging to that long tradition of classical realism: his
defi ning events were the two world wars and the Cold War, and his defi ning
adversary was the Soviet Union. However, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the
Cold War has ended and the Soviet Union has ceased to exist: Aron’s concerns
and questions are therefore no longer our own. Indeed, one could argue that
realism itself has been superseded or even rendered passé. In other words, the
fundamentals of international relations have decisively changed, a clear sign of
this being the introduction of so many new “-isms,” “neos-,” and “posts-“ to
describe the changing landscape of politics, from terrorism to environmental-
ism, neo-realism to neo-institutionalism, post-positivism to post-structuralism.
Aron is simply no longer the signpost he might have once been. In the second
place, there is the character of Aron’s conclusions—or to exaggerate for the pur-
pose of clarity, the lack of any solid conclusions at all in his 800-page book!
Stanley Hoff mann, arguably Aron’s greatest North American advocate, suggests
that it was precisely this moderation that contributed to Peace and War having a
much less greater influence on the field of international relations than it right-
fully deserved. In comparing the academic community’s reception of Peace and
War to that of Hans Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations, Hoff mann noted that
the reason the former “incited no comparable reaction from scholarly readers
may well have been the greater judiciousness and modesty of Aron’s normative
conclusions. Humane skeptics invite nods and sighs, not sound and fury; and
sound and fury are good for creative scholarship. Moreover, Aron’s own scholar-
ship was overwhelming enough to be discouraging; Morgenthau’s was just shaky
enough to inspire improvements.”5 One hears Hoff mann’s claim echoed in the
remarks of a sympathetic critic like David Thomson, who wondered whether or
not it was possible to formulate “more daring generalisation” based upon Aron’s
“extremely cautious,” almost “disappointing” conclusions.6 Consequently, even
if Henry Kissinger is correct in observing in his review of Peace and War that
Aron accomplishes the more important task of pointing us to the right questions
to ask without necessarily dictating the right answers, it is easy to see why a
theorist who claims to have those answers would be more popular.7 Moderation
is seldom exciting to most.
The purpose of this essay is similarly modest: we will attempt to limn some
of the high points and distinctive characteristics of Aron’s understanding of,
and approach to, international relations in order to introduce this book to a
new generation of students, scholars, and learned citizens. We propose to do
this, however, in a somewhat unorthodox way—namely, to begin in the middle
of the book with his discussion of “History” (Part Three), and then to move
through “Praxeology” (Part Four), before returning to the beginning “Theory”
(Part One), and “Sociology” (Part Two). One of the reasons it is unorthodox is
 F O RWA R D T O T H E P A S T 61

that Aron himself did not want his analysis of a specific historical constellation
to detract from the theoretical framework elaborated in the book as a whole.8
But it is undeniable that Aron must have ruminated for a very long time upon
the new emerging international order if only to determine whether the basic
Clausewitzian framework elaborated in Part One was applicable in the Cold
War era: if not, then his book would simply have been a history of international
relations up until the end of World War II. Moreover, by starting with Part
Three, we can also begin to address concerns as to whether Aron’s “realism” is
relevant and applicable in the twenty-fi rst century. There is a tendency of every
generation (and especially of the “intellectuals” of that generation) to claim that
their epoch is unique from all that came before it—that utterly new concepts,
ideas, paradigms, and theories are needed to understand it fully. It is no surprise,
therefore, to hear a chorus of individuals proclaim that September 11 ushered in
a wholly new international order, or that the telecommunications revolution—
to say nothing of other transnational and global problems—poses challenges that
are simply different in kind from those faced in the past: new theoretical frame-
works must be created to comprehend and to confront them. But we can ask, in
response to these claims, a very commonsensical question: Were there any more
massive changes in such a short period of time than those that Aron experienced
during his lifetime? Born into a secularized Jewish, bourgeois family, Aron lived
through World War I as a child and watched his father lose much of his fortune
during the Great Depression; Aron taught in Germany during the early 1930s,
saw and accurately assessed the meaning of the rise of Hitler and Nazism, and
fled to London when France fell in the summer of 1940; and after the war,
Aron became an influential editorialist, writer, and later university professor,
and he was always in the very thick of the heated debates surrounding the his-
toric choices facing France, in particular, and Europe, in general, in respect to
such issues as communism, NATO, German rearmament, the Common Market,
Gaullism, Algerian independence, and the events of May 1968. And yet what
is most shocking is that after analyzing these momentous changes—from the
Holocaust to Hiroshima—he did not argue that the fundamentals of human
nature or international relations had changed: while there were significant—and
very significant—differences between the beginning and aftermath of World
War II, these difference were quantitative rather than qualitative, and politics
between nations could still be grasped through Clausewitz and others. Aron’s
moderation, therefore, is on full display in Peace and War, and that example may
help to instill in us a healthy dose of the same in order that we might be able to
analyze accurately our own historical epoch and to determine what is genuinely
new and original (if anything) and what is not. Indeed, we might come to see
that moderation is often the hallmark of a sound theory in the social sciences.9

The Character of the Twentieth Century

As mentioned above, Aron did not want his historical analysis to detract from
his theoretical framework: “Ultimately, although this book deals chiefly with
the world today, its deepest aim is not linked to the present. My goal is to
62 B RYA N - PAU L F RO S T

comprehend the implicit logic of relations among politically organized collectiv-

ities” (“Acknowledgments”). Consequently, Part Three reads like a massive case
study of what turned out to be the height of the Cold War. Moreover, like any
thoughtful and comprehensive case study, Aron fi rst turns to pinpoint why this
case is worth discussing and what makes it unique from other possible objects
of study. According to Aron, “the circumstances of 1960 [are] dominated by
two major facts: the technological revolution, origin of both the enormous capacity
to destroy (thermonuclear weapons) and to produce (the futility of conquests),
[and] the global extension of the diplomatic field, origin of both real heterogene-
ity (diversity of the principles of state legitimacy, dimensions of the political
units) and of juridical homogeneity (United Nations, equality and sovereignty of
states).”10 It is important to note that although there are two “major facts” of the
twentieth century (i.e., technology and extension), each of these facts has two
additional aspects: the technological revolution has yielded both an incredible
destructive and productive capacity while the extension of the diplomatic field
has resulted in both political heterogeneity and juridical homogeneity. There are
then four distinctive characteristics of the new post-World War II system, each of
which is fundamentally independent of the others; for it is perfectly conceivable
that the technological revolution could have yielded destructive and not produc-
tive capacity while the extension of the diplomatic field could have resulted in
political heterogeneity and not juridical homogeneity (and vice versa). Of course,
while these four aspects are independent of one another, they are also elaborately
interconnected, and Aron unpacks the internal dynamics of each as well as how
each one affects the other aspects of the international system.
Admittedly, Aron spends much less time in Part Three speaking about the
new productive capacity of the world (perhaps because he had already discussed
these themes in what is called his Sorbonne Trilogy [1955–1958]).11 Nonetheless,
we begin to get a glimpse of the new complexity of the Cold War when look-
ing at economics and how it interacts with diplomatic extension.12 Because all
political units now have political and juridical sovereignty and equality with all
others, all states collectively belong to humanity or the international commu-
nity as a whole: there is thus no apparently valid moral reason why some states
should be richer than others, or to say nearly the same thing, every economically
advanced state has a duty to help its more impoverished brethren.13 Economic
assistance and humanitarian aid are now central issues in global politics—indeed,
these issues have been transformed from considerations of generosity (on the part
of the rich) and thankfulness (on the part of the poor) into issues of obligation
(on the part of the rich) and right (on the part of the poor).14 But while some
states and leaders may genuinely believe they have either a duty or a right to
humanitarian aid and economic assistance, Aron is keenly aware that political
heterogeneity complicates global politics even further: poor states can cynically
demand aid and assistance even when the leaders are the ones who have impov-
erished the nation, or they can play one superpower off against the other in order
to get the best economic deal for their country. And in the zero-sum game of
the Cold War, the superpowers themselves are often more than willing to give
such aid and assistance (even when knowing better) in the hopes of increasing the
 F O RWA R D T O T H E P A S T 63

power of their alliance structure and/or of creating a more “just” and “caring”
image internationally.15 Smaller states, whose power is exponentially eclipsed by
the two superpowers, are thus able to enjoy and even to flaunt in various forms
of neutrality, neutralism, and/or non-alignment an unreal or virtual indepen-
dence, using their newfound juridical homogeneity to bolster their importance
and influence in a starkly heterogeneous political environment.16 There would
now seem to be three kinds of aid and assistance in the world: genuine, cynical,
and that by extortion.
However, as unprecedented as the world’s new productive capacity is, as
well as the worldwide extension of the diplomatic field, Aron considers that the
“most truly revolutionary” feature of the twentieth century is thermonuclear
weapons: “For the fi rst time, men are preparing a war they do not want, a war
they hope not to wage.”17 Indeed, for the fi rst time in human history, a tradi-
tional notion of defense has been rendered obsolete: there exists the ability to
annihilate opponents without fi rst disarming them.18 Now it is simply impossible
to do justice to Aron’s description of nuclear strategy in Part Three as it would
require us merely to repeat the multiple scenarios and complicated layers that
he can envision in the heterogeneous, bipolar world of the superpowers. What
is therefore essential to emphasize are two underlying principles that animate
his analysis. First, despite the unprecedented destructive capacity of nuclear
weapons, Aron never rules out their use in extreme circumstances (e.g., a Soviet
invasion of Western Europe); and second, he does not believe that the fi rst- (or
second-) strike use of these weapons would necessarily lead to an all-out con-
fl ict. While thermonuclear bombs seem to be weapons unlike any other in his-
tory, they are still weapons: Aron can consequently imagine (and he believes the
superpowers can as well, under extreme circumstances) the possibility of a lim-
ited nuclear war.19 It should go without saying that Aron repeatedly deplores (and
is indeed sickened by) such a thought; nevertheless, he never lets his emotions
get in the way of his reason. He famously observed as early as 1948 in Le Grand
Schisme that the emerging diplomatic constellation between the superpowers
was a “bellicose peace,” and that while peace between the blocs was impos-
sible, war was highly improbable—but it was improbable and not impossible.20
In other words, the improbability (or unattractiveness) of nuclear war had the
effect of making the Soviets and Americans les frères ennemis, and their collective
interest in avoiding nuclear war overrode and to some extent moderated their
ideological antagonism.21 Of course, this dynamic tension between the blocs
also had repercussions within the blocs (as well as outside of them): les frères
ennemis then became les grands frères within their respective alliance structures,
the particular internal diplomatic relations of which were strongly influenced
by the different internal regimes of the Soviets, Americans, and their various
allies.22 Nevertheless, despite these complicated, worldwide dynamics, Aron
maintains that the strategy of deterrence has not been rendered obsolete with
the introduction of nuclear weapons, and a diplomat’s decision-making process
in the nuclear age remains “formally” the same as in any other age.23 As Aron
sees it, the global extension (and juridical homogeneity) of the diplomatic field
in the post-world war era has not eclipsed the necessarily “oligopolistic” nature
64 B RYA N - PAU L F RO S T

of the international system and its various sub-systems.24 Indeed, it has only
accentuated it.
The conclusion of this massive case study is announced in the opening pages
of Part Three and demonstrated throughout: “What are called weapons of mass
destruction have changed something in the course of relations between what are
called sovereign states. They have changed neither the nature of men nor that of
political units.”25 In fact, Aron goes even further in restricting the revolutionary
character of these weapons: “The formation of blocs owes little or nothing to the
introduction of atomic weapons. It has been a mechanical effect of the situation
created by the Second World War. Two states had emerged reinforced from the
turmoil.” Despite the horrendous devastation incurred by the Soviet Union, it
alone possessed a massive army in the heart of central Europe, while the United
States, having been spared a destructive invasion on its mainland, possessed great
industrial capacity as well as (at least for a short time) the sole possession of
nuclear weapons. Therefore, the “constitution of a Soviet zone of influence in
Eastern Europe provoked a regrouping in the West which, in its turn, provoked
a reply in the form of a tightening of the links between the People’s Democracies
and the Soviet Union.”26 Aron concludes: “The dialectic of the blocs is, as such,
classical, in accord with the predictable logic of a bipolar equilibrium.”27 What
we now see is a “permanent combination of deterrence, persuasion and subversion,”
which, while new, does not change the essentially Clausewitzian character of
international politics: “war is the continuation of policy by other means.”28 The
twentieth century is certainly novel, but it is not fundamentally unique.

The Conduct of Policy

Aron states that Part Three “constitutes a necessary introduction to the last part
[Praxeology: The Antinomies of Diplomatic-Strategic Conduct], which is both
normative and philosophical, and in which the initial hypotheses are re-exam-
ined.”29 There are at least two reasons for this. In the fi rst place, Aron under-
stands that “normative implications are inherent” in every theory of the social
sciences, and he is honest and forthright enough to detail his own. 30 In the second
place, Aron certainly knew that he was an influential writer, and that his works
were (and would be) read by a number of leading political figures worldwide:
after all, Robert McNamara reportedly claimed that The Great Debate: Theories
of Nuclear Strategy was his “preferred” book on the subject.31 In other words, as
a civic-minded theorist, Aron had to remind his audience—and especially the
practitioners of politics—that the implicit logic of modern diplomacy was not
revolutionary and could still be understood in the terms of Clausewitz. The
“History” section had proved this practically; the “Praxeology” section would
prove this morally.32
After discussing realism and idealism in academic scholarship in chapter
19, Aron turns in chapter 20 to discuss the oft-heard claim that the idealist’s
or pacifist’s renunciation of the use and even possession of nuclear weapons
is the only moral one available. Aron begins by noting that as states have not
renounced being the final arbiters of the use of force, it is the diplomat’s duty to
 F O RWA R D T O T H E P A S T 65

be concerned with the balance of forces and the survival of the state. As such, a
diplomat must renounce all “Christian virtues” that condemn or are in tension
with the actions required to prepare for the sometimes-bellicose rivalry between
states.33 According to Aron, the particular virtue of a diplomat is to act in accor-
dance with the precepts of prudence: “To be prudent is to act in accordance
with the particular situation and the concrete data, and not in accordance with
some system or out of passive obedience to a norm or pseudo-norm; it is to pre-
fer the limitation of violence to the punishment of the presumably guilty party
or to a so-called absolute justice; it is to establish concrete accessible objectives
conforming to the secular law of international relations.” Aron therefore rejects
what he describes as “limitless” and therefore “perhaps meaningless objectives,
such as ‘a world safe for democracy’ or ‘a world from which power politics will
have disappeared.’ ”34 The morality of prudence is a morality of responsibility,
and prudent diplomats, unlike those acting from conviction alone, always take
into consideration the likely consequences of their decisions and act accord-
ingly.35 As Aron is able to envisage circumstances that would require and justify
the launching of nuclear missiles, he rejects the arguments of those who categori-
cally refuse to consider their use. Rather than being the only moral alternative,
the idealist’s or pacifist’s renunciation of nuclear weapons risks turning into its
opposite. The existence of nuclear weapons, then, has not changed “the nature
of the morality of diplomatic-strategic action.”36
In chapters 21 and 22, Aron developed a military and political strategy that
would help the West achieve its aims in the Cold War. Those aims, as Aron saw
them, were the physical survival of the West by avoiding nuclear war and the
moral survival of its liberal civilization by forcing the Soviet bloc to accept its
right to exist. Forcing the Soviets to live in peaceful coexistence with the capi-
talist West would translate into a victory for the West because the Soviets would
have to renounce their universalist Marxist-Leninist ideology. Aron counseled,
on the one hand, the maintenance of a military equilibrium in both conven-
tional and nuclear weapons, and, on the other hand, the continued solidarity
and strengthening of the Atlantic Alliance. Although Aron encouraged Western
leaders to confront the Soviets in the Third World, he emphasized that the pri-
mary stake in the confl ict was Europe.37
In the fi nal two chapters, Aron more or less reexamines his entire theoreti-
cal approach by asking what the conditions for and prospects of peace through
law and peace through empire are. Aron does not believe that universal peace
depends upon the progressive development and articulation of a body of inter-
national law but rather upon the universality of republican regimes, the rigor-
ous homogeneity of the international community, and the renunciation of the
recourse to arms. These same conditions would also be necessary in order to
achieve peace through empire. Aron is highly skeptical that these conditions
could be realized in the near or distant future. Indeed, he wonders whether a
universal empire would not require the transformation of human nature.38
The sober manner in which Aron analyzes foreign policy decisions strikes a
balance between the immoderate hopes of idealists and the gloomy pessimism of
realists. Aron’s morality of prudence or responsibility emerges from what he sees
66 B RYA N - PAU L F RO S T

as the two “praxeological problems” inherent in diplomatic-strategic conduct:

the “Machiavellian problem” of the legitimate recourse to force (or the “morality
of struggle”) and the “Kantian problem” of collective security and universal peace
(or the “morality of law”).39 As long as states remain what they are, Aron does
not believe that this antinomy can ever be overcome. On the one hand, even
though states share certain norms of behavior, they reserve the right to use force
as they see fit, and diplomats who neglect to calculate the balance of forces fail
in their duty; on the other hand, states have rarely considered every recourse to
arms legitimate, and they have often sincerely aimed at promoting and defend-
ing higher goals and values. Aron is neither a cynic nor an idealist, and he is able
to avoid both a vulgar Machiavellianism and a naive Kantianism. The bellicose
character of international politics cannot be transcended, only moderated, but
such moderation can come neither from opportunism divorced from reflection
upon higher principles nor from the single-minded pursuit of heartfelt convic-
tions divorced from considerations of the consequences of those actions. It is this
that allows Aron to uncover the fallacies of thinkers who categorically reject the
use of nuclear weapons: “The original aspect of our age of thermonuclear bombs
is the propensity to give an air of responsibility to decisions made for motives
of conscience and without calculating the risks and advantages. For that matter,
why should this be so surprising? Never has the statement ‘none of the evils men
claim to avoid by war is as great an evil as war itself ’ seemed so true as it does
today: and yet it is not true.” While it is certainly true that nuclear weapons
“make it possible to exterminate the enemy population in the course of hostili-
ties,” Aron also reminds his readers that “extermination after capitulation has
always been one of the possible expressions of victory. The capitulation of one of
the duopolists would not necessarily mark the end of the danger. This capitula-
tion being out of the question, it is futile to transfigure a partial measure which
may be opportune or which may be more dangerous than useful, and to pretend
that it alone opens a path to salvation.”40 Certainly, Aron’s observations on the
morality of prudence or responsibility are formal: no concrete moral evaluation
can be made unless one knows the particular event and the objectives pursued by
the states involved. Nonetheless, Aron’s own judgments on the Cold War and the
strategy he advocated give content to that form, and they suggest how we might
evaluate those current confl icts where realists and idealists alternately decry and
praise policy decisions.
Given that Aron wanted to show practically and morally that the fundamen-
tals of international politics had not changed in the nuclear era, it is not surpris-
ing that he concludes Peace and War with an extended analysis of game theory
(“Final Note: Rational Strategy and Reasonable Policy”).41 While not denying
its potential usefulness in helping to clarify certain aspects of diplomatic-strate-
gic conduct, Aron emphasizes that it is not possible to quantify mathematically a
concrete situation: the number of players changes, the possible courses of action
are virtually endless, the stakes of the game alter during the course of a confl ict,
the information with which leaders make decisions is never complete or perfect,
and so forth. Moreover, the very attempt at mathematical quantification is likely
to lead theorists and diplomats to ignore or to distort a whole range of critical
 F O RWA R D T O T H E P A S T 67

variables that are notoriously impossible or difficult to quantify—for example,

glory, justice, prestige, or religion—and yet which are so often decisive in under-
standing a given event. What gives these criticisms their urgency is Aron’s keen
awareness that diplomats will inevitably use and be influenced by theoretical
knowledge, and that such mathematically inspired or oriented models will likely
result in misunderstanding and misguided policies: diplomats may become pris-
oners of a certain theoretical outlook, unable to comprehend the genuine moti-
vations of allies and enemies, and thereafter to propose innovative solutions in
times of crisis.42 Theory and theoretical models might be useful in helping to
clarify or to pinpoint the unique character of a particular event or historical
epoch, but no theorist should foist upon the diplomat the dangerous illusion
that theoretical knowledge and quantification can sharply reduce uncertainty,
ambiguity, and risk. One might say that theorists who engage in or encourage
such hopes are not only poor theorists but they also fail in their civic duty as
political educators. Thus, one massive problem with game theory and other such
methods and/or models is that they make political scientists and politicians forget
the inherently fluid nature of politics—that it cannot be scripted, and that the
attempt to do so by behaviorists and positivists could lead to disastrous conse-
quences. As Aron trenchantly observed, “To approach human affairs in the spirit
of geometry is catastrophic.”43 Aron is anything but faddish.

Conceptualizing International Relations

The most widely read and quoted section of Peace and War is certainly Part One
(“Theory: Concepts and Systems”), and students who come to this book for the
fi rst time will fi nd themselves in rather familiar territory. Aron sounds many
themes in the very broad tradition of (classical) realism across the centuries: he
affirms the anarchic nature of the international system; he maintains that states
must therefore closely monitor their relative power, force, and collective capac-
ity for action vis-à-vis other states; and he concludes that international politics is
animated by the omnipresent possibility of peace or war between nations. In this
respect, Aron makes no claim to originality here, and simply follows the well-
trodden path of philosophers, jurists, diplomats, and soldiers before him, from
Grotius to Vattel, and Montesquieu to Clausewitz. To reveal Aron’s originality
and thoughtfulness, we must probe a bit deeper. Three examples must suffice.
In the first place, Aron always emphasizes what might be loosely termed
“moral” considerations in his conceptual framework. For example, when Aron
begins to delineate the specific focus of international relations, he stresses the
fact that the alternatives of war and peace often (if not always) involve a claim to
justice: international relations deal with “the relations between political units, each of
which claims the right to take justice into its own hands and to be the sole arbiter of the deci-
sion to fight or not to fight.”44 Although some may claim that all politics is ultimately
“power” politics, Aron adds that all political claims inevitably contain a greater
or lesser degree of justice, and that these assertions must be properly weighted,
assessed, and appreciated by a prospective theorist. War (as with peace) rarely
takes place outside the arena of justice and morality, even if those claims are not
68 B RYA N - PAU L F RO S T

always as robust as one would hope, and are often mixed with other, less “noble”
motives. Nonetheless, the distinctive arena of international relations can never
be severed irrevocably from considerations of justice and morality: wars between
political units cannot be explained by or reduced to mere self-interest or the
accumulation of power because the human beings who represent their political
units do not always act in this fashion. In the second place, Aron is continually
reformulating his own assumptions in manifold ways, as if to remind his read-
ers that there is not—and cannot be—a single, privileged historical perspective.
For example, when Aron discusses the goals or ends states seek (chapter 3), he
argues that at the most general level of abstraction or conceptualization, they
have sought three objectives: security (either by increasing their own force or
weakening a rival’s), power (the ability of imposing one’s will on another), and
glory (to be recognized by others in a certain way or for a certain quality). Aron
nicely distinguishes these three goals from one another (the first of which he calls
a “material” objective, the latter two “moral” ones) by contrasting three famous
French leaders: “Clemenceau sought the security, Napoleon the power, Louis XIV
the glory of France.”45 As the chapter proceeds, Aron reconceptualizes these objec-
tives as he deepens his analysis of them. The ternary series security, power, and glory
could also be reformulated as space (to conquer more territory), men (to conquer
more subjects), and souls (to convert others to a political, social, or religious idea),
or again as body (to accumulate material objectives such as space or resources
or force), heart (to satisfy a state’s amour-propre by prevailing over its rivals), and
mind (to spread an idea of which the state represents a unique incarnation).46 And
finally, in the third place, Aron centers much of his attention on the unit (and
individual) level of analysis. More specifically, he argues that it is imperative for a
theorist to be cognizant of a state’s regime, for it is only here that one will discover
its conception of justice and its over-arching political objectives. Certainly, Aron
is attuned to whether any particular international system is bipolar or multipolar,
and he is aware of the dynamics that often prevail in such systems. Nonetheless,
it is the compatibility or confl ict among the regimes of the major powers in any
given international system (or sub-system) that is most decisive in influencing the
character of that system. As Aron observes (perhaps thinking of Germany in the
1930s), “A change of regime within one of the chief powers suffices to change the
style and sometimes the course of international relations.”47 This makes Aron’s
theorizing much more akin to classical philosophers such as Thucydides and
Aristotle than it does to many a contemporary theorist, where the separation
between international and comparative politics is much more stark. At the end of
the day, all three of these examples punctuate the fact that Aron does not believe
in a “theory of undetermined behavior,” one that divorces the political unit’s
intentions from the forces it possesses. Aron thus rejects any “science that gives to
the forms of behavior it studies explanations contrary to or divorced from the mean-
ing understood by the participants” themselves.48
Although much more could be said about what we might call Aron’s posi-
tive theoretical originality, his negative or cautionary originality is equally sig-
nificant. In other words, Peace and War is as distinctive in revealing what Aron
stood for as in what he stood against. Aron sounds one of his massive warnings
 F O RWA R D T O T H E P A S T 69

about international relations theory from the opening pages: “the limits of our
knowledge.”49 The “limits” to which he is referring are not so much a lack of
historical evidence or information (although he certainly means this as well)
but rather the inherent limits of theoretical knowledge itself. Aron argues that
there is no single goal or objective which all states pursue, and attempts to claim
that there is some such overarching end (e.g., “national interest” or “power and
security”) are either hopelessly vague or distorting simplifications. This is not
to say that efforts at conceptualizing international relations are fruitless—on the
contrary, Aron is at pains to point out that all political units must be mindful
of the alternatives of war and peace, and that “the risk of war obliges [states] to
calculate forces or means.”50 Nevertheless, the alternatives of war and peace do
not and cannot tell the theorist what specific goals political units will pursue, and
absent this, theorists are relatively constrained in what they can say or predict:
“[L]acking a single goal of diplomatic behavior, the rational analysis of interna-
tional relations cannot be developed into an inclusive theory.”51
These early cautionary remarks reach a crescendo at the end of chapter 3 (the
last of the three chapters that articulate his fundamental theoretical concepts
before he turns to the development of typical diplomatic systems in chapters
4–6). Here, Aron most fully develops the difference between economic behav-
ior and diplomatic-strategic behavior, and in so doing he clarifies why the for-
mer has had (and will continue to have) far more “success” when it comes to
theory. Although Aron admits that “homo economicus exists only in our ratio-
nalizing reconstruction,” that reconstruction resembles a “concrete economic
subject” far more accurately than any imagined or postulated homo diplomaticus
resembles any historical diplomat: the concrete economic subject more often
than not does seek a single objective (the “maximization” of some quantity,
whether it be income, profit, or production) while diplomats have not. In other
words, there is no comparable variable in international relations that serves the
same function as “utility” does in economics, and to claim that there is would be
to create a “caricatured simplification of certain diplomatic personages at certain
periods” and not the much sought-after “idealized portrait of the diplomats of all
ages.”52 Aron’s humble—and to some, disappointing—conclusion is that “there is
no general theory of international relations comparable to the general theory of economics.”
While the necessity of calculating forces or means makes it possible to elabo-
rate a conceptual framework, the multiplicity of goals (or the indeterminacy
of diplomatic-strategic behavior) prevents the articulation of theories similar to
those in economics.53
Given these inherent limitations, Aron repeatedly cautions theorists against
the attempt of transforming international relations into an operational or predict-
able science. Despite the best of intentions, international relations scholars will
never discover a “grand theory” that enables them to predict diplomatic-strategic
behavior, and the effort to do so is itself potentially irresponsible: it is not a lack of
historical knowledge that thwarts scholars but the inherent limitations of theory
itself. Aron stood squarely against the dominant trends in international relations,
and this, in part, helps to explain why he had such a limited impact on Anglo-
American social science.
70 B RYA N - PAU L F RO S T

Variables and Philosophers

Part Two of Peace and War (“Sociology: Determinants and Constants”) is perhaps
the most alien part of the work as a whole, and this precisely because Aron does
not engage in articulating a system of interconnected hypotheses attempting to
explain certain limited aspects of international relations. Instead, Aron’s concern
is discussing what we might call the “big” or even “eternal” variables of politi-
cal life, namely those ideas, themes, and questions that have been the subject of
philosophic conversation throughout the ages. Not surprisingly, then, each of
the chapters in Part Two tends to highlight a particular political thinker and
what they surmised might explain (to a greater or lesser degree) the fundamentals
of the international system.
In contrast to the historian, who recounts a particular event, the sociolo-
gist attempts to establish propositions of a general nature, relative “either to the
action which a certain cause produces . . . or to regular series or patterns of development.”
Sociology investigates two types of causes, material and moral. Material or
physical causes are space (geography), population (demography), and resources
(economics); the moral or social determinants are nations “with their regimes,
civilizations, [and] human and social nature.” Material and moral determinants
can be the stakes as well as the means of policy, and the sociologist must look
at a specific historical event in order to discover the relevant determinants that
influenced that event.54
As every international system has been territorial, the sociologist must exam-
ine the role of space or geography in each of its three aspects: as the environment,
theater, and/or stake of international relations. Considered as the environment,
Aron turns to Montesquieu’s discussion of the influence of geography and cli-
mate in The Spirit of the Laws, arguing that while the environment induces and
limits the character and actions of political units, it does not determine them.
Considered as the theater of events, Aron examines Sir Halford Mackinder’s
essays on geopolitics as well as several ideologies of space. And finally, consid-
ered as the stake of a confl ict, Aron concludes that despite the fact that political
units can prosper economically without territorial conquests, space may still
continue to exert an important influence on international politics.55 Turning
to number or demography, Aron fi rst notes that it is often difficult to establish
with certainty the number of troops in battle and the size of populations. He
then directs his inquiry toward two issues: “the influence of number on strength
or power, and the relation between population (or overpopulation) and wars.”56
In discussing the former issue, Aron compares the different role and impact of
demography in the ancient cities of Greece and Rome, and the French nation in
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; in discussing the latter, he turns to the
work of Gaston Bouthoul. If it is difficult to isolate the exact effect of demog-
raphy on the strength of a city or state, it is even more problematic to establish
a demographic theory of war, especially in the industrial and atomic eras.57 As
for the relationship between resources or economics and war and peace, Aron
fi rst presents the answers of four schools of thought: mercantilism, liberalism,
national economy, and socialism. Thereafter, he demonstrates how each school,
 F O RWA R D T O T H E P A S T 71

at various times and places, has captured a portion of the truth without being
true tout court. Aron then offers a trenchant critique of the Marxist-Leninist
theory of imperialism and colonialism, concluding that no economic system,
“whether capitalist or socialist, makes war inevitable; none suppresses all occa-
sions for it.”58
In contradistinction to material or physical causes, the moral or social deter-
minants refer to political units’ “styles of being and behaving.”59 Here, Aron
wants to see if he can discover a recognizable pattern of action or change. Not
surprisingly, his conclusions are negative. While not denying the tremendous
impact of a political unit’s regime on the conduct of foreign policy, Aron does
not believe that certain regimes, national characters, military organizations, or
even the nation itself are inherently “bellicose or peaceful.”60 At a higher level
of abstraction, Aron also fails to discern a pattern of change or development in
the succession of nations and civilizations, or in the so-called historical process
itself.61 As for the biological, psychological, and sociological roots of war, Aron
cautiously surmises: “The human animal is aggressive, but does not fight by
instinct, and [while] war is an expression, it is not a necessary expression of human
combativity . . . It is contrary to the nature of individuals and groups that the con-
fl icts between individuals or among groups disappear. But it is not proved that
these confl icts must be manifested in the phenomenon of war.”62

The Realism of Historical Sociology

As this essay began with “History” and has ended with “Sociology”—and as
Aron himself was both a historian and a sociologist (as well as a philosopher,
political scientist, economist, editorialist, and so forth)—it would be appropri-
ate to conclude with a brief discussion of the methodology employed through-
out Peace and War, namely historical sociology. According to Aron, a theorist
must walk a tightrope between using general sociological concepts, on the one
hand, and paying close attention to unique historical events, on the other hand.
Historical sociology assists the individual in walking this tightrope by begin-
ning with the claim (or observation) that, before any theoretical framework
can be elaborated, an individual must have a detailed understanding of the his-
torical record. By making history the ineluctable source of theory, Aron wants
to emphasize how important it is to begin as closely as possible to historical
phenomena as they are presented to the potential theorist and not as they are
fi ltered through or subsumed under abstract systems and universal propositions.
However, while history is the touchstone for theory, Aron knows that a theorist
cannot remain on the level of history alone—sociological analysis must inform
historical research. Sociology gains its strength by bringing to the foreground
variables or factors that a historian is likely to dismiss or to ignore altogether by
paying too close attention to the details of an event. By codifying these vari-
ables, sociology is able to draw up a “list of questions to be answered by analysis
of the diplomatic complex,” giving the theorist the conceptual and analytical
tools necessary to distinguish “the essential from the subsidiary, and deep-lying
trends from accidents” in and across different historical periods. This method
72 B RYA N - PAU L F RO S T

gives historical sociology its distinctive characteristic, namely “comparative

study.”63 Through such comparative studies, historical sociology not only checks
the historical veracity of general causal propositions (and helps to prevent the
over-simplification and distortion to which such explanations are prone), but it
also isolates and highlights variables that might have caused a particular confl ict
or which influenced the pursuit of a certain foreign policy. Historical sociology
is for Aron the only method that continually shuffles back and forth between the
general (macroscopic or sociological analysis) and the particular (microscopic or
historical studies), which alone can lead to as full and as accurate an understand-
ing of international politics as possible. By plunging sociological analysis back
into history, Aron prevents his theoretical analysis from becoming too deter-
ministic and abstract; and by stepping back from the historical landscape, Aron
avoids the mistake of claiming that international relations displays no recurrent
patterns of behavior.
In print since its original publication in 1962, Raymond Aron’s Peace and War
remains a towering intellectual achievement. Afficionados of Aron will more than
likely concur with this assessment. But whether it is students or learned citizens
coming to the book for the fi rst time, or scholars who disagree in whole or in
part with Aron’s analysis, this essay has hopefully demonstrated the incredible
breadth (theory, sociology, history, and praxeology) that is necessary to under-
stand the implicit logic and character of international politics, in the past and
surely in the present and future.

Notes
1. See, respectively, Raymond Aron, Introduction to the Philosophy of History: An Essay
on the Limits of Historical Objectivity, trans. George J. Irwin, Boston, MA, Beacon
Press, 1961, and Raymond Aron, “Introduction,” in Miriam Bernheim Conant
(ed. and trans.), Politics and History: Selected Essays by Raymond Aron, New York,
The Free Press, 1978, xix; Raymond Aron, The Century of Total War, Boston,
MA, Beacon Press, 1954, as well as Pierre Hassner, “Raymond Aron and the
History of the Twentieth Century,” International Studies Quarterly, vol. 29, no.
4, 1985, 29–37; Raymond Aron, Clausewitz: Philosopher of War, trans. Christine
Booker and Norman Stone, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983, and
Raymond Aron, Memoirs: Fifty Years of Political Reflection, trans. George Holoch,
New York, Holmes & Meier, 1990, 407–411; and Raymond Aron, The Opium of
the Intellectuals, trans. Terence Kilmartin, New York, W. W. Norton, 1962.
2. Raymond Aron, Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations, trans. Richard
Howard and Annette Baker Fox, Garden City, Doubleday, 1966, reissued (with
a new introduction by Daniel J. Mahoney and Brian C. Anderson) by New
Brunswick, NJ, Transaction Publishers, 2003. All emphasized words in quota-
tions are contained in the original.
3. Aron, Memoirs, 302. For a discussion of the critical reception of the book in
Europe (where it received widespread praise) and America (where its reception
was more reserved and sometimes downright chilly), see Robert Colquhoun,
Raymond Aron: The Sociologist in Society, 1955–1983, vol. 2, London, Sage, 1986,
191–197. Ibid., 166–169, also has a very useful set of schematic tables that shows
how Peace and War is organized.
 F O RWA R D T O T H E P A S T 73

4. John Hall, Diagnoses of Our Time: Six Views on Our Social Condition, London,
Heinemann Educational Books, 1981, 164, conjectured the following more than
30 years ago, and it reads as true today as it did then: “one suspects that [Peace and
War] is more quoted than read.”
5. Stanley Hoffmann, “An American Social Science: International Relations,”
Daedalus, vol. 106, no. 3, 1977, 45.
6. David Thomson, “The Three Worlds of Raymond Aron,” International Affairs,
vol. 39, no. 1, 1963, 53–55.
7. Henry Kissinger, “Fuller Explanation,” New York Times Book Review, February
12, 1967, 3.
8. Raymond Aron, Mémoires: 50 ans de réflexion politique, Paris, Julliard, 1983, 453.
9. The unorthodox method we propose here is in many ways endorsed by Stanley
Hoffmann, “Minerva and Janus,” in his The State of War: Essays on the Theory
and Practice of International Politics, New York, Frederick A. Praeger, 1965, 32–33,
whose compressed summary of Peace and War accurately captures the importance
of history throughout the book. “[E]ach aspect of research depends on the results
achieved at the previous level; they are parts of the same undertaking and the
same conception. But each one activates different qualities of the mind, requires
different forms of reasoning or methods of verification. At every level [of con-
ceptualization], the research is inseparable from history, but the role of history is
not the same in all four cases. At the level of theory in the narrow sense, it is the
primary raw material, and the concepts and types defined by theory are drawn
from the systematic comparative study of concrete data. At the second level [soci-
ology], where hypotheses about material and moral causes are filtered through
historical analysis, history is the touchstone. At the third level [history], it is an
object of direct investigation. At the level of philosophy [or praxeology], history
is being judged.”
10. Aron, Peace and War, 371.
11. Raymond Aron, 18 Lectures on Industrial Society, trans. Mary K. Bottomore,
London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967; Raymond Aron, La Lutte de classes:
Nouvelles leçons sur les sociétés industrielles, Paris, Gallimard, 1964; Raymond Aron,
Democracy and Totalitarianism, trans. Valence Ionescu, New York, Praeger, 1969.
12. Aron, Peace and War, 506–535.
13. See Ibid., 373–381.
14. Ibid., 506–507, 513.
15. Ibid., 513–522.
16. Ibid., 507–513.
17. Ibid., 371.
18. Ibid., 396, 435.
19. Ibid., 404–440, 476ff, 494, 641.
20. Raymond Aron, Le Grand Schisme, Paris, Gallimard, 1948, 1–31. Although Aron
does not say so specifically, clearly weapons of mass destruction in the hands of
religious fanatics will have a different dynamic from such weapons in the hands
of ideological extremists (especially extremists who ostensibly maintain that reli-
gion is the opium of the people).
21. Aron, Peace and War, 389, 407, 428, 536ff, 546, 564.
22. Ibid., 441–475.
23. Ibid., 404–408, 435–436, 636.
24. Ibid., 95; cf. 389–394.
25. Ibid., 371.
74 B RYA N - PAU L F RO S T

26. Ibid., 371–372.

27. Ibid., 372; cf. 476.
28. Ibid., 369, 382, 398, 439–440, 506–535.
29. Ibid., 18.
30. Ibid., 575.
31. Raymond Aron, The Great Debate: Theories of Nuclear Strategy, trans. Ernst Pawel,
Garden City, NY, Doubleday, 1965, and Aron, Memoirs, 308.
32. Aron, Peace and War, 636.
33. Ibid., 579–580.
34. Ibid., 585.
35. Ibid., 609, 634.
36. Ibid., 636; cf. 577, 605, 613, 631, 634.
37. Ibid., 665, 676–677, 689–699.
38. Ibid., 703–704, 734–738, 753, 755–755. The final chapter of Peace and War reads
in many ways like a commentary upon the end of history thesis, most recently
popularized by Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, New
York, The Free Press, 1992. This should not come as a surprise. Fukuyama’s
philosophic source is Alexandre Kojève, the Russian emigré who inf luenced a
generation of French intellectuals through his lectures on Hegel’s Phenomenology
of Spirit at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in the 1930s. In his Memoirs,
65–70, 465–66, Aron describes the lectures and testifies to Kojève’s acumen,
rigor, and erudition. Certainly if Aron were alive today, he would have much to
say about Fukuyama’s book.
39. Aron, Peace and War, 577, 608–609.
40. Ibid., 634–665.
41. Ibid., 767–787.
42. According to Hall, Diagnoses of Our Time, 173, this is precisely what Aron said
happened in Vietnam. The United States employed and became trapped by a false
theoretical understanding of the conf lict, and it treated the “situation under the
aegis of a strategic theory designed to deal with a superpower.” Consequently, the
United States failed to see the actual “stakes” involved in the war and was unable
to imagine or to devise an effective response.
43. Raymond Aron, On War, trans. Terence Kilmartin, New York, W. W. Norton,
1968, 117–118.
44. Aron, Peace and War, 8.
45. It is also worth mentioning in this context that Aron thus avoids reifying the
state and treating it as a “rational actor,” pure and simple. There is no doubt that
Aron often speaks of a state acting, and he was acutely aware that a state’s tradi-
tions and customs will obviously affect the way its leaders act and the goals that
they seek. But at the end of the day, he also recognized that states do not behave
independently of their decision-makers, and this means that the individual level
of analysis enjoys a priority in Aron’s theoretical framework that is often missing
in realist and especially neo-realist theories.
46. Aron, Peace and War, 72–77. Another fine example of this occurs in chapter 6,
150–173, where Aron takes peace as his conceptual starting point rather than the
possibility of war. He then develops a four-fold typology: peace by equilibrium,
by hegemony, by empire, and by terror, the latter being characteristic of the Cold
War.
47. Ibid., 95.
 F O RWA R D T O T H E P A S T 75

48. See Hoffmann, “An American Social Science,” 52, as well as Hoffmann, “Minerva
and Janus,” 25.
49. Aron, Peace and War, 4.
50. Ibid., 16.
51. Ibid., 17.
52. Ibid., 91.
53. Ibid., 93; cf. 285.
54. Ibid., 178–180, 279.
55. Ibid., 181–209, 757–766.
56. Ibid., 213.
57. Ibid., 215–242.
58. Ibid., 278.
59. Ibid., 279.
60. Ibid., 306.
61. Ibid., 308–309, 316–317, 320, 324–325, 333.
62. Ibid., 365–366.
63. Raymond Aron, “Conf lict and War from the Viewpoint of Historical Sociology,”
in The Nature of Conflict: Studies on the Sociological Aspects of International Relations,
Paris, UNESCO, 1957, 190–198. Of course, Aron notes that theorists who focus
primarily on sociological factors to the exclusion of historical ones are likely to
commit two related errors: “they tend to establish ‘causes’ where, at most, there
are trends, and they do not take account of all the factors involved but exaggerate
the inf luence of those that are considered.” One might say that one of the great
virtues of historical sociology is that it compels a theorist to give due consider-
ation and weight to the authentic political perspective of those actors whose deci-
sions are the object of theoretical or scientific investigation.
CHAPTER 6

“CITIZEN CLAUSEWITZ”:
ARON’S CLAUSEWITZ IN DEFENSE OF
POLITICAL FREEDOM

Joël Mouric

I n the Aronian interpretation of Clausewitz’s thought, the essential fact is that

war is by nature a political act, and this political nature may limit the violence
of war. If it is not surprising that Raymond Aron, awakened to political philoso-
phy by the experience of “chain-wars,”1 was led to such a conclusion, it is, how-
ever, surprising that he discovered its best example in the thought of the Prussian
general. In fact, Clausewitz was considered the ultimate reference for practi-
tioners of total war, from Ludendorff to Hitler. Cornered in the bunker, it was
in Clausewitz that the latter found the ultimate justification for his obstinacy.2
Lenin and Mao Zedong were also avid readers of Clausewitz. If their interest
in the theorist strengthened that of Raymond Aron, none of them was distin-
guished by moderation. In fact, Clausewitz himself wrote that “to introduce the
principle of moderation into the theory of war itself would always lead to logical
absurdity.”3 Despite the warning of Clausewitz, who stated that by destruction
(Vernichtung) we do not mean outright annihilation but rather disarmament or
putting the enemy out of combat,4 it is often through direct experience, and
therefore for the worse, that his lesson has been learned, since the Wilhelmine
era.5 For Basil Liddell Hart, Clausewitz, the “Mahdi of the masses,” “carried
away by his passion for pure logic,”6 erected it into a dogma that the destruction
of enemy forces would be the only purpose of strategy.
This is the difficult thesis that Raymond Aron argued in 1976 in his last major
scholarly book: Penser la guerre, Clausewitz.7 In his Mémoires, Aron remembers how
the choice of subject may have been surprising: “A Marx or any other figure in
the philosophy of history would have responded better to the logic of my life and
my career.”8 To understand the singular dialogue between Aron and Clausewitz,
it would be best, first of all, to trace the long history of the French philosopher’s
experience with the Prussian strategist from his discovery of Clausewitz in Weimar
78 JOËL MOU RIC

Germany until his first systematic reading of his work in 1955.9 Then comes the
central question: that of the Aronian interpretation of Clausewitz, developed from
1955 to 1976 in the context of the Cold War and then culminating in Penser la guerre.
Finally, we will question the scope of this interpretation, separating the political
issues from the criticism, sometimes very harsh, to which it has given rise.

From Berlin to Korea: A Reading Long Delayed

Raymond Aron waited a long time to read Clausewitz. Born in 1905, he was
marked by the trauma of the Great War, which inspired in him, as in many
Frenchmen of his generation, a passionate pacifism. A supporter of the Locarno
agreements, committed to Franco-German reconciliation, he was one of the clos-
est disciples of Alain, and it was as a knight of peace that he came to Germany in
the spring of 1930. But Aron arrived in a Germany of exacerbated nationalism.
That is when the attention of Raymond Aron was first drawn to the author of
Vom Kriege.10 In Penser la guerre, he recalled that he had discussed it with Herbert
Rosinski in Berlin in 1932.11 The latter was contemplating a study of the suc-
cessive changes in the thought of Clausewitz in the last years of his life, between
1827 and 1831. In exile in London in 1938, he sent Aron an article12 in which
he expressed his ideas,13 but Rosinski failed to interest Aron in the Prussian
strategist.14 Perhaps because of his own prejudices, perhaps because of the chasm
between civilians and the military, Aron, as emphasized by Christian Malis, had
“an almost complete ignorance”15 of strategic issues. It was in London, where
he had been exiled after the disaster of May-June of 1940, that Raymond Aron
was schooled in strategic thought by Stanislas Szymonzyk, known as “Staro,”16
a Hungarian-born former communist and an avid reader of Clausewitz. Aron
began editing military articles from “Staro” for the magazine La France libre.
Then they produced a work of propaganda, The Critical Year,17 which extolled the
war, all the more heroic because it was all alone, of the United Kingdom against
Nazi Germany from June 1940 to June 1941. “This time,” Aron wrote, “my con-
tribution was important, for in 1940 I thought for the fi rst time about military
things. I was indignant, in retrospect, at the ignorance of all of us about strategy
and tactics, just as I was outraged before by our ignorance of the economy.”18
However, in the writings of Aron during the war, references to Clausewitz
are rare. In May 1942, Aron still considered that Ludendorff, when he reversed
Clausewitz’s formula19 —“War is the continuation of politics with the addition
of other means”20 —into “politics should be, in time of peace, controlled by the
demands of war,” was “in line with Clausewitz’s logic.”21 Up until that point,
Aron had considered Clausewitz the thinker of the enemy, the ultimate symbol
of Prussian militarism. But six months later, Aron turned toward a diametrically
opposite interpretation.22 This turnaround was nourished by the reading of the
monumental work by Hans Delbrück, Die Geschichte der Kriegskunst im Rahmen
der politischen Geschichte.23 It was also contemporaneous with the turning point
in the war: the failure of the second summer offensive of the Wehrmacht on the
Eastern Front. Aron faithfully continued the analysis of Delbrück, in which the
latter showed that despite his failure, Hannibal’s greatness as a strategist had been
 “C I T I Z E N C L AU S E W I T Z” 79

to understand that he had no serious chance of occupying Rome or blockad-

ing the city. Therefore, unable to wipe out the Romans, he had to wear them
down or tire them out in order to reach a negotiated peace.24 Where Ludendorff
reduced politics to war, to the point of reaching a strategic vacuum,25 Aron
tended, following Delbrück, to restore the rights of strategy, based on the pri-
macy of the political. The purpose of the war was, according to Aron, to pre-
serve the physical existence and political freedom of the European nations. It
was therefore necessary to defi ne an appropriate strategy based on a superior
understanding of the war as a sociological phenomenon, achieving victory by
limiting as much as possible the destructive effects of war, to which Europe was
then directly exposed.
Thereafter, Aron remained concerned with limiting the violence of war—not
that he thought that Hitler could be overcome by a negotiated peace, but because
he doubted if the American demand for unconditional surrender, endorsed by
Churchill in Casablanca, could be effective; he feared that such a demand would
make Goebbels’ task easier. Indeed, Goebbels reacted to the initiative of the
Allies by urging the Germans to wage a total war. Aron was particularly appalled
by the area bombing carried out by the Anglo-Americans against German and
Japanese cities at the end of the war, attacks of questionable strategic value, but
even more dangerous because they were likely to break the roots of societies with
their past, and thus generate a political chaos that might become the bedrock for
new tyrannies.26 Aron especially believed that by separating the conduct of war
from political goals the Americans had offered half of Europe to Stalin. A better
articulation of the conduct of the war and its political and strategic objectives
could have avoided the division of Germany and the Soviet hegemony over the
Eastern half of Europe. Aron thus criticized the American propensity to dissoci-
ate warfare from politics, postponing the political settlement until the day after
the victory. Aron then read with interest the book by Hanson W. Baldwin, Great
Mistakes of the War, which, in 1949, drew up an indictment against the American
strategy from a Clausewitzian perspective.27
However, Aron thought at the end of the Second World War that a new war
was unlikely both in the case of Germany, which he noted disappeared as a great
power—“1945 was Germany’s 1815”—and, when the Cold War began in 1947,
in the case of the USSR. Afterwards Aron would summarize in the famous
sentence “paix impossible, guerre improbable” his judgment on what he soon called
the “bellicose peace”28 instead of the Cold War. He had considered the fight
against Nazism “a fight to the death,”29 but he had always rejected such thoughts
about Soviet communism.30 Mobilized to defend the existence of Western liberal
society in Europe against the double threat of communist ideology and Soviet
aggression, he thought that a third world war could be avoided.
The Korean War shook this optimism.31 It was through the study of this war
that Raymond Aron, again via Delbrück, came back to Clausewitz. Indeed, the
beginning of the Korean War exemplified strategies of devastation: the initial
attack from the North, the lightning attack of MacArthur from Inchon to the
Yalu, and fi nally the massive influx of “Chinese volunteers.” But it was a defen-
sive strategy of attrition that later prevailed: to avoid defeat, but not to seek at
80 JOËL MOU RIC

the local level a decisive victory, which might escalate the confl ict and make it
worldwide. Having made that decision, Harry Truman relieved MacArthur of
his duties. Hence, the article “Peace without Victory,”32 in which Aron, draw-
ing upon the idea of the primacy of politics in Clausewitz—“war may have
its own grammar, but not its own logic”33 —called attention to the analogies
between Clausewitz’s concept of absolute war and the ideal type of Max Weber.
Aron recalled the criticism of Ludendorff by Delbrück, based on the distinction
between a strategy of overthrow (Niederwerfungsstrategie) and a strategy of harass-
ment 34 (Ermattungsstrategie), and stated that, as war is a trial of will, “the strategy
of harassment tends to wear down the will of the enemy.” The Cold War then
appeared as “a limited war . . . where one side seeks total victory and the other just
a partial victory.” The resistance of the West would force Stalin to adopt a strat-
egy of harassment to move toward his goal, but “in that case, the coincidence of
two strategies of harassment, with limited means, can lead to an extended trial of
strength over a generation.”35

Clausewitz in the Atomic Age

Considering the thought of Clausewitz still relevant in the age of nuclear weap-
ons was anything but obvious. Many experts considered him obsolete.36 Aron,
however, ended up thinking that “the modern strategy of the atomic age brings
us closer than ever to Clausewitz.”37 Indeed, Aron assumed that “the strategy of
deterrence is a test of wills, of which the use of weapons and vehicles determine
the conditions but not the outcome.”38 The atomic bomb was above all a politi-
cal weapon, able to restore the primacy of politics over the military. In 1956, in
the essay “On War” in Espoir et peur du siècle,39 Aron occupied the middle ground
among the realists, as opposed to the pessimistic prophets of nuclear apocalypse
and optimistic apologists of “peace through the atom.”40 He developed the para-
doxical idea of “saving the war”:41 the choice of all or nothing is not tenable;
deterrence requires the ability to carry out limited conventional confl icts, even a
limited nuclear war. In this sense, as pointed out by Christian Malis, Aron was,
from neo-Clausewitzian positions, one of the fi rst theorists of limited war and
flexible response, one year before the publication of Robert E. Osgood’s Limited
War42 and Henry Kissinger’s Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy.43
Moreover, Aron reinterprets the formula of Clausewitz, “war is a true
chameleon,”44 showing that war in the atomic age is also likely to take the form
of asymmetric confl icts, as in the colonies’ revolt against the imperial powers.
“At one end are the laboratories which are preparing for war without soldiers; at
the other end, a few thousand professional revolutionaries raise the masses and
change the map of the planet. In between, France (and Europe) lost their autono-
mous national defense, unable to compete with either atomic technology or the
tactics of rebellion.”45 Aron thus distinguished within the “disintegration of the
diplomatic field”46 of 1956 three kinds of wars, all of Western origin: “the war
of mechanics, comparable to that fought by Rommel and Montgomery,” and for
which the Arabs and Israelis were now preparing; the “guerrilla warfare” of the
Algerians; and “the absent war of atomic weapons.”47 But Europe was the central
 “C I T I Z E N C L AU S E W I T Z” 81

issue of the Cold War. Aron then observed that it was “exclusively in relation to
Europe that the problem of the scale of retaliation and action [was] raised.”48
Thus, Aron naturally placed Clausewitz at the heart of his own theory of
international relations articulated in Peace and War: A Theory of International
Relations. Out of realism, one must acknowledge war: “War is present in all his-
torical ages and in all civilizations.”49 But Aron maintains Clausewitz’s praise of
prudence, a virtue as essential to the war leader as to the statesman, as evidenced
by the quote highlighted in his essay On War: “The art of war will shrivel into
prudence, and its main concern will be to make sure the delicate balance is not
suddenly upset in the enemy’s favor and the half-hearted war does not become a
real war after all.”50 Based on a grasp of the concrete and on a sense of responsi-
bility, caution should not be confused with moderation,51 much less with pusil-
lanimity. It consists in “preferring the limitation of violence to the punishment
of the alleged culprit or to a justice called absolute,” in “aiming at goals that are
concrete, accessible, consistent with the millennial law of international relations
and giving up unlimited objectives.”52
In Peace and War, published in 1962, Aron offered to the Europeans, in con-
tinuity with the interpretation of Clausewitz by Delbrück, a strategy to wear
down Soviet expansionism through the American alliance and a clearly stated
spirit of defense. He summed it up in the phrase “to survive is to win,”53 which
extends the intuition of “De la paix sans victoire”: the ideological confl ict, since
it would be impossible to end it by force due to the fact of nuclear weapons,
would in the long run be a test of will.
Aron meant neither to accept the factual situation in Europe nor to endorse
the idea, so fashionable then, of the convergence54 between East and West. He
meant to deter “the men in the Kremlin” by an appropriate defense effort, and
to challenge their ideological ambitions by engaging in “the competition of
ideas.”55 Aron emphasized that the Soviets, also disciples of Clausewitz,56 did
not intend to resolve the confl ict militarily, but did continue to aim for the total
victory prescribed by their ideology.
Clausewitz compared decision by arms to payment in cash.57 On the issue of
the Traites de la dissuasion (“the bills of deterrence”)—“If the threat, according to
the theory, has no other purpose than to prevent its own enforcement, does there
not follow a kind contradiction: can we live indefi nitely on credit?”58 —Aron
responds with “betting on reason,”59 a gamble on the prudence and fi rmness of
leaders capable of managing arms control and, in emergencies, to preserve the
essential. In his inaugural lecture at the Collège de France,60 Raymond Aron had
insisted on what he owed to Clausewitz and Delbrück of his vocation as a soci-
ologist and theorist of international relations—hence his return to Clausewitz in
the Collège de France lectures,61 followed by Penser la guerre, in 1976. Aron felt a
strong empathy for the Prussian theorist, to the point of overlooking Clausewitz’s
anti-Semitism.62 He insisted instead on what unites their fates: “To understand
the mindset of Clausewitz between 1806 and 1813, it is probably necessary to suf-
fer a trauma comparable to the one that Clausewitz suffered at the collapse of the
state and the loss of his homeland. Clausewitz wrote that, from then on, being no
longer the Bürger of a respected state, he would owe respect to the compassion of
82 JOËL MOU RIC

strangers abroad, but would not enjoy it as a right; I just had to recall my experi-
ences of 1940, when I arrived in England with nothing more than the uniform
I wore, to sympathize with the contradictory feelings that stir the prisoner in
France, and later on with the reformer returned to Prussia, where there was a
party that, in the twentieth century, we would call the collaborationists.”63
The elective affinity between Aron and Clausewitz was primarily intellec-
tual—the ambition of outlining a theory of war that would be neither an irrel-
evant manual nor a false science, such as that of Heinrich von Bülow,64 whom
Clausewitz criticized for his obsession with mathematical formalism: “The the-
ory of war,” Aron writes about Clausewitz, “will be the theory of an art or prac-
tice (in modern terms a praxeology).”65 Aron points out the similarities between
the approaches of Clausewitz and Montesquieu.66 The theoretical requirements
indeed distinguish the Treatise of Clausewitz, whose first two books are devoted
to the defi nition and theory of war, from the views of Ludendorff, who, in Total
War, began by proclaiming himself “the enemy of all theories,”67 an utterly anti-
Clausewitzian approach. Clausewitz, like Aron in the Introduction to the Philosophy
of History,68 focused on the understanding (Verstehen) of historical situations—
through analysis of available data, an estimate of the likely intentions of the
various players—rather than their explanation (Erklärung).69 Theory is observa-
tion, not doctrine, “Betrachtung, nicht Lehre,” Aron concluded in his Leçons sur
l’histoire.70
But the Aronian interpretation of Clausewitz in the direction of moderation
depends ultimately on chapter 1 of Book I of the Treatise, in which Clausewitz
described war as absolute war in accordance with his concept; in other words, in
the language of Aron, as an ideal type. This is the same text where Clausewitz
describes war as a “strange trinity”: “natural blind passion,” “free action of the
soul,” or “pure understanding,” 71 depending on whether it relates to the people,
the war-leader, or the statesman. This distinction corresponds to the two types
of war, as outlined in the Foreword of 1827 and in the eleventh paragraph of
Chapter 1 in Book I: “These two kinds of war are as follows: one has as an end to
defeat the opponent, either to destroy him politically or to disarm him by forcing
him to accept peace at any price; the other kind consists of just a few conquests
at the country’s borders, either to keep them or to use them as a bargaining chip
at the moment of peace. It will of course be necessary to take into account the
intermediate types, but their entirely different nature should be apparent every-
where and mark the separation between the irreconcilable elements.” 72
The political goal “returns” after being “somehow swallowed up by the law of
extremes.” 73 Aron points out that Clausewitz warned against a false interpreta-
tion of his system, which would be the confusion between absolute war and real
war.74 But Clausewitz, who died of cholera in 1831, had not the time to reor-
ganize the Treatise according to this fi nal conception of his subject. Aron notes
that “Clausewitz laid the foundation for his conceptual cathedral, namely the
absolute unreality of absolute war, only in the last two years of his life, between
1827 and 1830 . . . In order to establish the status-equality of the two kinds of war,
he had to recognize the unreality of absolute war, which he presented, in many
texts, as the only one consistent with the concept.” 75
 “C I T I Z E N C L AU S E W I T Z” 83

Hence Aron’s use of Delbrück, like him “a teacher, a civilian, who indulged,
and in what a tone, in criticizing the military.” 76 Delbrück launched in 1878 the
“strategic debate,” 77 distinguishing the strategy of annihilation (Vernichtung) or
of overthrow (Niederwerfung) on the one hand from the strategy of harassment
(Ermattung) on the other. This approach was challenged, not only because the
term Ermattung was absent from Clausewitz’s Treatise, but also because it contra-
dicted the prevailing doctrine in the Prussian army, which only knew the fi rst
kind of war. 1870 had been a triumph of the Niederwerfungsstrategie. However,
in a parody article, Delbrück demonstrated that Frederick would have been a
coward if one were to judge his conduct in the Seven Years War in terms of
Napoleonic strategy. Moreover, Delbrück then presented the strategy of Pericles
as a great example of a strategy of harassment:78 “the comparison between
Pericles and Frederick the Great led to a comparison of Athens on the eve of
the Peloponnesian War and Germany at the end of the nineteenth century. In
advance, H. Delbrück criticized the strategy of annihilation or decisive victory
that the Hindenburg-Ludendorff team would choose until the summer of 1918
and up to the fi nal catastrophe.” 79 Faced with a united coalition opposed to its
rise, Germany should have led a defensive policy, intended to wear down the will
of the Entente. Yet Delbrück was not listened to, instead, “mistaken for Verdun,
with mutual slaughter, without ideas and without maneuver, Delbrück’s harass-
ment strategy fell into total and unjust disrepute.”80
Raymond Aron criticized Delbrück for remaining a historian and not having
“cleared the joints of the conceptual system”81 of Clausewitz, but he approved
of the Prussian historian for his rehabilitation of the second kind of war and his
understanding of Clausewitz in the direction of moderation, distinguishing the
end in the war (military goals or Ziel) and the end of the war (political aims or
Zweck 82).

Challenges: Aron’s Interpretation in Light of His Critics

Aron mentioned that in Penser la guerre, he was aiming fi rst at the German public.83
The interpretation of Clausewitz was one of his intersections with Carl Schmitt,
but also the friction between them. Aron had borrowed from the thought of
Schmitt when he built his international theory around the fact of war in Paix et
guerre entre les nations. In 1967, Schmitt admitted that “enmity and war are inevi-
table; what is at stake is their limitation,” recognizing the distinction between
war as a concept and real war: “In Clausewitz himself, the so-called ‘battle of
annihilation’ is designed as a showdown between two organized armies, therefore
quite different from the premeditated extermination in the name of humanity, of
part of it by another part.”84 Aron and Schmitt shared philosophies based on the
primacy of politics, but differed in their ideas of the political. Moreover, they did
not have the same references in the work of Clausewitz, where Schmitt,85 like
Hitler,86 based himself primarily on Bekenntnisse, the Professions of Faith 87 writ-
ten in 1812, just before the Tauroggen convention, where Clausewitz swears to
devote himself to his homeland and fight to the end the true enemy, Napoleon.
Raymond Aron saw here mere “writings of circumstance,” impossible to fit
84 JOËL MOU RIC

“into a coherent theory.”88 According to him, the true Clausewitzian thought

was found in his “time for reflection,”89 when the distinction between absolute
war and real war appeared, between 1827 and 1830. Only Ludendorff and Hitler,
Aron wrote in Penser la guerre, “gave a defi nite meaning to what Carl Schmitt
called ‘absolute hostility’—something that neither the drafters of the Treaty of
Versailles nor the Marxist-Leninists nor the victors of the Second World War
in the West ever made. Ludendorff and Hitler posited the racial community as
the agent of history and the enemies of this racial community as trans-historic
enemies of the German people, if not of all people. I say that only this hostility,
and this alone, deserves the term absolute because it leads logically to massacre
or genocide.”90
Aron also criticized Schmitt because, in his Theory of the Partisan,91 he com-
mitted the “staggering mistake” of comparing General Salan to Yorck and
Clausewitz.92 For Aron, it was not admissible to raise the head of the OAS to the
same level as Prussian officers who continued the fight against the enemy of their
homeland. “Schmitt’s conceptual errors,” Aron noted in the manuscript of Penser
la guerre, “are evidently manifested in his historical comparisons.”93
Aron, who had kept for him this last remark, attached great importance to the
judgment of Schmitt and had the pleasure of receiving, even though privately,
his warm approval: “I felt reassured about my accuracy: the book was acceptable
to conservatives or reactionaries.”94 But Aron was caught by surprise, among
the almost unanimously rave reactions, to suffer the attack of a young German
nationalist, Robert Hepp,95 a disciple of Schmitt, who accused him of having
sweetened and denatured Clausewitz’s thought by bringing it toward modera-
tion. Hepp attacked violently the very purpose of Raymond Aron, which was to
promote Franco-German reconciliation by bringing an intellectual Clausewitz
toward the liberal side of his thought.
These illiberal attacks96 against Aron’s interpretation continued beyond the
death of the philosopher. One year after, Günther Maschke wrote a review
of The Latest Years of the Century 97 in Elemente, the journal of the New Right
in Germany.98 Maschke had gone from one extreme to the other, from Fidel
Castro’s Cuba to the company of Carl Schmitt. He wrote that “instead of the
famous Aronian lucidity, we have only a middle ground Atlanticism, good for
discussions by the fi re.” Maschke criticized Aron for defending the division of
Germany and Europe—a false accusation—and of preferring the deployment of
the euromissiles to prior negotiations with the Soviet Union. Maschke regretted
that the Introduction to the Philosophy of History, which found favor in his eyes due
to the young Aron’s “decisionist” stance, was not republished instead.
However, through the experience of war and his reading of Delbrück, and
later Clausewitz, Aron had abandoned decisionism for prudence. If, in 1938, he
spoke in his thesis of “the absoluteness of decision,” and called democracies in the
following year to a start, an act of will “capable of the same virtues” of civic dedi-
cation found in totalitarian states, he later pondered not only about the risk of the
rise to extremes, but about the impotence of victory—die Ohnmacht des Sieges:99
Aron had rightly seen, indeed, that for Clausewitz victory is always tactical.100 A
victory can certainly be decisive if it puts an end to war and allows the winner to
 “C I T I Z E N C L AU S E W I T Z” 85

achieve his political goal, but examples abound of war leaders, from Napoleon to
Hitler, who accumulated tactical victories only to achieve a strategic failure.
The refusal to reverse Clausewitz’s formula is fundamental in what concerns
the very possibility of a liberal policy. Indeed, the autonomy of the political and
the distinction between war and peace depend on it. The philosophy of Raymond
Aron teaches us, in fact, contrary to the illiberal ideologies he criticized, fascism
and Marxism, that politics is not a war. As Bernhard Schlink wrote in criticism
of Carl Schmitt “there are situations that call for action, but there are also cer-
tainly some situations that cannot be overcome, unless the underlying tension
can be undone, not by a decision, but by endurance.”101
These anti-liberal attacks were the price to pay for Raymond Aron’s support
of the Federal Republic of Germany. Aron had always considered the Franco-
German reconciliation essential and indispensable to the possibility of a defense
of Western Europe.102 Rehabilitating a Prussian liberal tradition, albeit a more
conservative one, Aron supported the regime of the FRG, which since 1956 he
had described as a “peaceful democracy.”103 However, at the time of publication
of Clausewitz, West Germany was suffering terrorist attacks at the hands of the
Red Army Faction of Baader. Aron’s intellectual and political support for the
democracy of Bonn was rewarded with the Goethe Prize in 1979.
After the end of the Cold War, the work of Aron was partly forgotten or
neglected as it was presumed outdated. In Achever Clausewitz,104 René Girard criti-
cizes Aron for his rationalist optimism, “one of the last fi res of Enlightenment.”105
Penser la guerre, “a very brilliant essay,” “is marked by its time . . . let us say, by
the time of the Cold War, when nuclear deterrence still carried credibility, and
politics still meant much. It no longer makes sense today.”106 René Girard chal-
lenges Aron’s moderate interpretation according to which “absolute war is only
a concept.”107 He thus restores the perspective of the rise to the extremes, of
which Clausewitz had an “apocalyptic insight.” Girard, like Aron, resumes the
unfi nished work of Clausewitz, but is in a sense diametrically opposite, since he
in turn reverses Clausewitz’s formula.108 Finding in Wechselwirkung and the rise
to the extremes his own conception of mimetic rivalry, he abandons the paths of
political philosophy for those of anthropology and Christian eschatology.
Very different was the reaction of the military. Since Raymond Aron had a
strained relationship with some generals and theorists of national atomic force,
including Pierre Marie Gallois, because they wished to think about deterrence
in exclusively technical or mechanical terms, regardless of the diversity of con-
crete political situations, contemporary military authors have reassessed the
value of the Aronian interpretation of Clausewitz. This is particularly the case
with General Durieux, who qualifies it as “enlightening.”109 When considering
Clausewitz as “a strategist for Europe,”110 he took into his account the basic idea
of Raymond Aron.

* * *

“What I reject,” Aron wrote in his Mémoires, “is the accusation of having belittled
Clausewitz, to having reduced him to a harmless thinker, unaware of historical
86 JOËL MOU RIC

tragedy. Tragedy, I have seen it, I have felt it, and I have tried until the last page
to make its presence felt. Israel was born through violence, lasts only through
violence, and risks dying tomorrow through violence.”111 And, in fact, Penser
la guerre ends with a reminder to Europeans tempted to say “farewell to arms”
not to give up their civic duty, that is to say, their duty to defend themselves.
“French, Jewish by birth, how could I forget that France owes its liberation to
the strength of its allies, Israel its existence to its arms, a chance of survival to its
resolution and to the American determination to fight if necessary?”112 Aron’s
Clausewitz is a European citizen, committed to defending political freedom.

Notes
1. Raymond Aron, Les Guerres en chaîne, Paris, Gallimard, 1951, 502; English trans-
lation: Raymond Aron, The Century of Total War, New York, Doubleday, 1954.
2. See Fabrice Bouthillon, Et le Bunker était vide. Lecture du testament politique d’Adolf
Hitler, précédé de la traduction inédite des testaments d’Adolf Hitler, Paris, Hermann,
2007.
3. Clausewitz, De la guerre, I, 1, 3. We refer to the French translation by Denise
Naville, Paris, Les éditions de Minuit, 1955. This edition is the one that was used
by Aron. See 52. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. Michael Howard and Peter
Paret, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1976.
4. Ibid., I, 2, 70: “The fighting forces must be destroyed: that is, they must be put in
such a condition that they can no longer carry on the fight. Whenever we use the phrase
‘destruction of the enemy’s forces’ this alone is what we mean.”
5. Isabel V. Hull, Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in
Imperial Germany, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 2005, 400.
6. Basil Liddell Hart, The Ghost of Napoleon, London, Faber, 1933, 118–122.
7. Raymond Aron, Penser la guerre, Clausewitz, Tome I, L’Âge européen, Tome II, L’Âge
planétaire, Paris, Gallimard, 1976. English translation: Clausewitz: Philosopher of
War, New York, Simon and Schuster, 198.
8. Raymond Aron, Mémoires, Paris, Robert Laffont, 2003 [1st ed. Julliard 1983],
645.
9. Ibid., 10.
10. Clausewitz, Vom Kriege. Hinterlassenes Werk des Generals Carl von Clausewitz, her-
ausgegeben von Werner Hahlweg, Dümmler, Bonn 1952, 1165.
11. Aron, Penser la guerre, 9.
12. NAF 28060, boîte 209, letter from H. Rosinski to Raymond Aron from June 11,
1938.
13. Herbert Rosinski, “Die Entwicklung von Clausewitz’ Werk Vom Kriege im
Lichte seiner ‘Vorreden’ und ‘Nachrichten,’ ” Historische Zeitschrift, no. 151, 1935,
278–293.
14. Aron, Mémoires, 72.
15. Christian Malis, Raymond Aron et le débat stratégique français, 1930–1966, Paris,
Economica, 2005, 27.
16. Aron, Mémoires, 171–173.
17. L’Année cruciale, par le critique militaire de la revue La France libre, London,
Hamish Hamilton, 1944, 100.
18. Aron, Mémoires, 171.
19. Erich Ludendorff, Der totale Krieg, Munich, Ludendorff, 1935.
 “C I T I Z E N C L AU S E W I T Z” 87

20. The formula appears twice in On War: I, 1, 24 (67): “war is merely the continuation
of policy by other means,” and VIII, 6B (703): “war is simply a continuation of political
intercourse, with the addition of other means. We deliberately use the phrase ‘with the
addition of other means’ because we also want to make it clear that war in itself
does not suspend political intercourse or change it into something entirely differ-
ent.” Aron preferred the latter version, because it suggests, with more emphasis
than the former, the permanence of policy during the war and the subordination
of warfare to political aims.
21. Raymond Aron, “La stratégie totalitaire et l’avenir des démocraties” (May 1942),
reprinted in Chroniques de guerre: La France libre 1940–1945, Paris, Gallimard,
1990, 561.
22. Raymond Aron, “La menace des Césars,” La France libre, vol. V, no. 25, November
1942, 24–31.
23. Hans Delbrück, Geschichte der Kriegskunst im Rahmen der politischen Geschichte,
Berlin, Stilke, 1900–1920 (4 vols.); new edition: Hamburg, Nikol, 2003.
24. Ibid., 396.
25. Hull, Absolute Destruction, Chapter 9: “Waging War, 1914–1916: Risk, Extremes,
and Limits, Strategic Vacuum.”
26. Raymond Aron, “Discours à des étudiants allemands sur l’avenir de l’Europe,” La
Table ronde, no. 1, January 1948, 63–86.
27. Hanson W. Baldwin, Great Mistakes of the War, London, Alvin Redman, 1950,
105. See also Aron, Penser la guerre, II, n. xviii, 332–334.
28. Raymond Aron, Le Grand Schisme, Paris, Gallimard, 1948, 13.
29. Raymond Aron, “Bataille des propagandes,” La France libre, vol. IV, no. 23, 372–
379. Reprinted in Chroniques de guerre: La France libre 1940–1945, Paris, Gallimard,
1990, 583.
30. Aron, Le Grand Schisme, 30.
31. Raymond Aron, “Zwischen dem begrenzten und dem totalen Krieg,” Der Monat,
vol. 22–23, July–August 1950, 455 sqq.
32. Raymond Aron, “De la paix sans victoire. Note sur les relations de la stratégie et
de la politique,” Revue française de science politique, vol. 1, no. 3, 1951, 241–255.
33. Clausewitz, De la guerre, 703.
34. While the Niederwerfungsstrategie focuses on battle alone to destroy enemy forces,
the Ermattungsstrategie (a term coined by Delbrück) combines maneuvers and
small-scale fighting when will or resources are limited. “Strategy of attrition,”
a designation that is being used for Verdun, does not match the type of limited
war envisioned by Clausewitz as “war of the second kind” and by Delbrück as
Ermattungsstrategie. By the same token, we prefer to translate Niederwerfungsstrategie
by “strategy of overthrow” instead of “strategy of annihilation” (a choice made in
many publications), because, as we have seen, Clausewitz insists that by “destruc-
tion of enemy forces,” he means to disarm them, not to destroy them physically.
Physical destruction may be the outcome, it should not be the aim of warfare.
35. Aron, “De la paix sans victoire,” 253.
36. So did Admiral Sanguinetti. Alexandre Sanguinetti, La France et l’arme atomique,
Paris, Juillard, 1964, 21.
37. NAF 28060, boîte 88, letter from Raymond Aron to Bernard Brodie, November
23, 1965. Quoted in Malis, Raymond Aron et le débat stratégique français, 1930–1966,
729.
38. Raymond Aron, Paix et guerre entre les nations, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1962, 409.
88 JOËL MOU RIC

39. Raymond Aron, Espoir et peur du siècle. Essais non partisans, Paris, Calmann-Lévy,
1957, 367.
40. Ibid., 241.
41. Ibid., 270. See also “La course à l’arme absolue,” Le Figaro, December 2, 1955.
42. Robert E. Osgood, Limited War: The Challenge to American Strategy, Chicago,
University of Chicago Press, 1957, 315.
43. Henry A. Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, New York, Harper, 1957,
463.
44. Clausewitz, De la guerre, I, 1, 28.
45. Aron, Espoir et peur du siècle, 292.
46. Raymond Aron, La Société industrielle et la guerre, Paris, Plon, 1959, 300: “The
strategy of deterrence divides the diplomatic field which communications and
production technologies tend to unify.”
47. Aron, Espoir et peur du siècle, 300.
48. Ibid., 310.
49. Aron, Paix et guerre entre les nations, 794. See 157.
50. Clausewitz, De la guerre, 703.
51. Aron, Paix et guerre entre les nations, 586–587.
52. Ibid., 572.
53. Ibid., Chapter XXII: En quête d’une stratégie, II: Survivre, c’est vaincre. Aron’s
formula was later challenged by Richard Pipes in Survival Is Not Enough, New
York, Simon and Schuster, 1984, 302.
54. Aron, Paix et guerre entre les nations, 557–558.
55. Conferences at the Institute for European studies at the Université libre de
Bruxelles, April 28–30, 1975, in L’Europe des crises, Bibliothèque de la fondation
Paul-Henri Spaak, Bruxelles, Bruylant, 1976, 105.
56. Berthold C. Friedl, Les Fondements théoriques de la guerre et de la paix en URSS, suivi
du Cahier de Lénine sur Clausewitz, Paris, Médicis, 1945, 205.
57. Clausewitz, De la guerre, 70.
58. Aron, Penser la guerre, II, 139–140.
59. Ibid., II, 174. Aron nevertheless liked the idea of an unlimited line of credit. See
I, 296: “Besides, the English f leet in the last century only maintained its rule on
credit: no enemy ever challenged it, nor forced it to honor its bills through a pay-
ment in cash.”
60. Raymond Aron, De la condition historique du sociologue, Paris, Gallimard, 1971,
58.
61. Carl von Clausewitz en son temps et aujourd’hui (1971–1972). NAF 28060, boxes
23– 26. The lectures of 1972–1973 and 1973–1974 were published as Leçons sur
l’histoire, Paris, de Fallois, 1989, 455.
62. Aron, Penser la guerre, I, 13.
63. Raymond Aron, “Clausewitz et l’État,” Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, vol. 32,
no. 6, 1977, 1262.
64. Heinrich Dietrich von Bülow, Théorèmes de la guerre moderne ou stratégie pure et
appliquée, taken from l’Esprit du système de la guerre moderne, Berlin, Fröhlich,
1805.
65. Aron, Penser la guerre, I, 82.
66. Ibid., especially 343–346 and 371–374.
67. Ludendorff, Der totale Krieg, 3.
68. Raymond Aron, Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire: Essai sur les limites de
l’objectivité historique, Paris, Gallimard, 1938.
 “C I T I Z E N C L AU S E W I T Z” 89

69. Clausewitz, De la guerre, 133: “A positive doctrine is impossible.”

70. Aron, Leçons sur l’histoire, 560.
71. Aron, Penser la guerre, I, 109.
72. Clausewitz, De la guerre, 42.
73. Ibid., I, 1, 11, 58–59.
74. Aron, Penser la guerre, I, 113 and Clausewitz, De la guerre, I, 1, 6.
75. Ibid., I, 118.
76. Ibid., n. xx, 412–414.
77. Ibid., I, 122.
78. Hans Delbrück, Die Strategie des Perikles erläutert durch die Strategie Friedrichs des
Großen, Berlin, Reimer, 1890, 235.
79. Aron, Penser la guerre, I, 123.
80. Ibid., II, 51.
81. Ibid., I, 137.
82. Ibid., I, 92, n. xvi, 405.
83. Aron, Mémoires, 650.
84. Carl Schmitt, “Clausewitz als politischer Denker: Bemerkungen und Hinweise,”
Der Staat, 6, 1967.
85. Ibid.
86. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Eher, 1925, 759–760.
87. Carl von Clausewitz, Bekenntnisdenkschrift, in Schriften, Aufsätze, Studien, Briefe,
herausgegeben von Werner Hahlweg, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1966, 678–750
88. Aron, review of “Clausewitz et l’État,” by Peter Paret, 1255–1267.
89. Aron, Penser la guerre, I, 118.
90. Ibid., II, 217.
91. Carl Schmitt, La Notion de politique suivi de Théorie du Partisan, Paris, Calmann-
Lévy, 1972, 331.
92. Ibid., 220.
93. NAF 28060, boîte 225, manuscript of Penser la guerre, Tome II, Chapter 2, folio
19.
94. Aron, Mémoires, 651.
95. Robert Hepp, “Der harmlose Clausewitz,” Zeitschrift für Politik, 1978, 303–318
and 390–429.
96. See Matthias Oppermann, Raymond Aron und Deutschland. Die Verteidigung der
Freiheit und das Problem des Totalitarismus, Ostfildern, J. Thorbecke, 2008, 280–
301: “Gleichgewicht und Mäßigung: Carl von Clausewitz.”
97. Aron, Les Dernières Années du siècle, Paris, Julliard, 1984, 248.
98. Günther Maschke, “Das Post-Histoire des Raymond Aron,” Elemente, vol. 3,
June–September 1987, 42–43.
99. Aron, Penser la guerre, II, 19.
100. Ibid., I, 164.
101. Bernhard Schlink, “Why Carl Schmitt?” Rechtshistorisches Journal, vol. 10, 1991,
160–176, 168.
102. Aron, Les Guerres en chaîne, 413.
103. Aron, Espoir et peur du siècle, 59.
104. René Girard, Achever Clausewitz, Paris, Carnets Nord, 2007, 364. English transla-
tion: Battling to the End, East Lansing: Michigan State University, 2009, 256.
105. Girard, Achever Clausewitz, 34.
106. Ibid., 27.
90 JOËL MOU RIC

107. Ibid., 33.

108. Ibid., 171. See also Jean-Vincent Holeindre, “Violence, guerre et politique. Étude
sur le retournement de la ‘Formule’ de Clausewitz,” Res Militaris, vol. 1, no. 3, été
2011.
109. Benoît Durieux, Relire De la guerre de Clausewitz, Paris, Economica, 2005, 5. See
also Benoît Durieux, Clausewitz en France: Deux siècles de réflexion sur la guerre
(1807–2007), Paris, Economica, 2008, 861.
110. Ibid.
111. Aron, Mémoires, 658.
112. Aron, Penser la guerre, II, 286.
CHAPTER 7

FIN DE SIÈCLE:
ARON AND THE END OF THE BIPOLAR SYSTEM

Carlos Gaspar

T he stabilization of bipolar instability,1 based on the shared fear of nuclear

war, was the requirement for the human adventure to be able to continue.
The United States and the Soviet Union, “enemies by position,”2 strategic adver-
saries and ideological rivals, transformed their relationship into a routine, partic-
ularly after the Cuban missile crisis, which preceded their joint efforts to control
the proliferation of nuclear weapons.3 The “double hegemony” of the “enemy
brothers” seemed to create conditions for greater autonomy in Europe and Asia,
expressed both in the Sino-Soviet split and the “Prague Spring,” and in Gaullism
and Ostpolitik. Decolonization accelerated the integration of Europe, and the
invasion of Czechoslovakia confirmed the nature of Soviet imperialism as well
as the passivity of the Western democracies and the recognition of the demarca-
tion line between the two camps. Nevertheless, although the evolution of the
Cold War corresponded to Aron’s predictions, the period of relative optimism
was about to end.

Fin de siècle
According to Kissinger, the consolidation of the bipolar system made possible the
creation of a “peace structure.” The new diplomatic configuration was based, on
the one hand, on the equality between the two superpowers and on a “peaceful
competition”—almost an alliance—between the two great powers and, on the
other, on the growing European and Asian autonomy, marked by the emergence
for the fi rst time in history of a “world concert,” including a système à quatre (sys-
tem of four) formed by the United States, the Soviet Union, China, and Japan.4
The détente summits signaled not only the end of the Cold War, but also the end
of the postwar era.5
92 C A R L O S G A S PA R

This system began to crumble with the Yom Kippur War in October 1973,
the most serious confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union
since the Cuban missile crisis. Contrary to theories about a Soviet-American
condominium, the confl ict in the Middle East confi rmed the divergences in the
superpowers’ interests and purposes. At the crucial moment, no one remembered
the rules of détente that were part of the code of conduct solemnly adopted by
the United States and the Soviet Union at their last summit before the confl ict.6
The limits to détente were confi rmed during the following months. After
Nixon’s resignation, the United States accumulated defeats, both in Europe,
with the prospect of “Portugal sliding towards a pro-communist authoritarian
regime,” and in Asia, when Congress refused to approve the funds necessary for
supporting its allies in Saigon.7 At the same time, there was a succession of crises
in the bilateral relations between the two superpowers, fi rst at the Vladivostok
summit and later when the Soviet Union was refused the status of “most favored
nation.” Bipolar tension took the place of Soviet-American détente, without
any substantial change: “None of the two great powers has a serious chance of
obtaining a decisive superiority.”8
The fall of Saigon, the Portuguese Revolution, and the Soviet-Cuban inter-
vention in Angola confi rmed this turning point. The decline of the United States
and Western Europe, the economic crisis, and the internal divisions among the
Western democracies were creating “a fi n de siècle climate.”9
The crisis in Portugal proved decisive. Right from the start, the Portuguese
revolution had the ability to affect the transition in Spain and how things evolved
in France: in Portugal and Spain, “Communists may advance without violating
the unwritten rules of the division of Europe. France will be next.”10 Italy was
also at stake, with the Communists’ increasing electoral strength. The strategy of
the Portuguese Communist Party for gaining political power had the fi rm sup-
port of the Kremlin, in spite of the détente, Kissinger’s warnings, and opposition
from the Italian and Spanish Communists: “The action taken by the Portuguese
Communist Party, under Moscow’s influence, bothers the Italians, who reject
it, and the French, who claim their solidarity. Cunhal and his party have osten-
sibly applied Lenin’s 1917 tactics and this should awaken the fear of Soviet
Communism both in France and in Italy.”11 European Communists achieved a
position unprecedented since the end of World War II, and their advances could
undermine both democracy and the regional balance: “the fate of Europe is
being decided in Portugal, Spain, and Italy.”12
The Soviet-Cuban military intervention in Angola ensured the victory of
the MPLA and completed the change in Moscow’s strategy. Apparently, in the
autumn of 1974, after the Soviet Union had reached “global parity” with the
United States, the Kremlin leaders decided that the “correlation of forces” was
favorable for consolidating their European sphere of influence with the Helsinki
accords and simultaneously taking the offensive in Vietnam, Portugal, and
Angola, while restoring ideological discipline against the Eurocommunists’
democratic delusions: “The party of Alvaro Cunhal in Portugal and the soldiers
of Fidel Castro in Angola behave in accordance with the rules of that strategy,
 FIN DE SIÈCLE 93

while the Marxist-Leninist community, threatened by Western ideological infi l-

trations, is being brought under control.”13
The Soviet shift marked a turning point in the Cold War: “A new period starts
in 1975–76, with the planetary expansion of the Soviet Union.”14 In Western
opinion, the offensive was presented as the “end of détente,” but the Soviet
policy of détente and the new expansion cycle were perfectly compatible with
each other: “According to Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy, détente is a conquest, a
victory of socialism. It does not exclude assertiveness in Angola, Portugal, or the
Middle East.”15
The strategy of Soviet expansion, which began in the spring of 1975 with the
unification of Vietnam, opened “a period of uncertainty and movement.”16 The
conventions of the Cold War were changing: in the past, both the West and the
Soviet Union sent weapons and resources to support their adherents, but “they
did not send regular troops to ensure the victory of one of the camps in an exter-
nal civil war.”17 The balance of weapons played in favor of the Soviet Union,
which had become a “planetary power” and could claim military preponder-
ance in the European theater. China then switched to considering the largest
communist power as its principal enemy and, for the fi rst time in world history,
“Western Europe perceives China as an ally against the Soviet empire.”18
The theme of decadence, a permanent fi xture of Aron’s reflections since his
doctoral thesis on the German philosophy of history,19 resurfaced in his texts as
the Western elites grew more pessimistic. The end of American hegemony is
the theme of his book in the République impériale, published in 1973; and Aron
chose Western decadence as the subject of his courses at the Collège de France in
1975–1976, before accepting a proposal to write about European decadence, to
which he returned in his Memoirs.20
Aron made a fundamental distinction between decline and decadence. Decline
was a normal phenomenon: powers could not always keep the same rank, and
it would be unreasonable to draw defi nitive conclusions from a temporary and
reversible abaissement (decay) in the international hierarchy. Decline, as a decrease
in the relative power of a given state, could be measured with quantitative rigor
in its material dimension, while decadence was a qualitative change referring to
Machiavellian virtù, to the “historical vitality” of a political community, and to
the state’s “capacity for collective action.”21
At the beginning of the Cold War, the claim that Europe was in decline
was made without illusions, but in a confident and combative spirit. Europe
had ceased to be the center of the international system, but even so, it could be
said that “the decline of Europe is not ahead of us but behind us.”22 Ten years
later, international unification and industrial globalization confi rmed Europe’s
decline: “When industrial civilization becomes a world civilization, Europe will
be brought back to its place on the map.”23 But, again, nothing was lost: if
Europe managed to unite, rising above its history and maintaining its liberal val-
ues, it could recover the continental scale of the new superpowers and reverse its
decline. Decadence was not inevitable: “Does the loss of power entail decadence?
If one admits that the greatness of a culture is inseparable from military might,
94 C A R L O S G A S PA R

the answer is obvious. But if one rejects such a confusion, the future remains
open.”24
In 1975, pessimism prevailed once more, but without the confidence of the
early years of the Cold War. Aron felt, as he did in 1930 on his fi rst trip to
Germany, that “history is again on the move.”25 The distinction between decline
and decadence remained valid and, in this sense, it was still possible for him to
make a fi nal defense of decadent Europe:26 the decline of Europe on the interna-
tional balance was undeniable, but the destiny of the West, as Arnold Toynbee
upheld against Oswald Spengler, was not yet decided. The main problem in the
crisis was the Europeans’ loss of confidence in themselves, which was in turn
inseparable from the triple economic, political, and social crisis undermining the
political legitimacy of the democracies. In 1973, the energy crisis precipitated the
fi rst Western economic recession since the war, ending nearly three decades of
continuous growth. In the years that followed the rise of the Communist parties,
the radicalization of the Socialist left, and the polarization of the political system,
particularly in Italy and in France, seemed to justify the reference to a “Weimar
syndrome”: “a distribution of votes which forces upon democracy the choice
between two forms of suicide, either by giving power to those that will destroy
it, or by violating its own principle of legitimacy.”27 At the same time, there was
a growing social crisis, where the excesses of freedom and the idols of moder-
nity were diluting the traditional values sustaining authority and order, as in the
“civilization crises” described by Vilfredo Pareto: “Liberty dissolves beliefs and
prejudices, accelerates the downfall of the existing order, and makes for the rise
of a new, less skeptical, and more brutal ruling minority.”28
The three crises converged in a crisis of legitimacy for European democra-
cies, exposed to “Tocqueville’s Law” of “failed liberalizations” and therefore
threatened by the risk of political revolution.29 The Portuguese revolution was
yet another demonstration of the perils of late liberalization, but the democratic
outcome of the post-authoritarian transition demonstrated the greater strength
of liberalization in advanced industrial societies, also confi rmed by the success of
the regime-changes in Greece and Spain.30 In a sense, liberalization in Southern
Europe, as well as parallel trends in Eastern Europe, marked the end of the his-
torical period of revolutions. For the more optimistic, such as Ernest Gellner,
the functional elites in the modern societies of Eastern Europe, like their peers
in Western Europe, had no use for communist ideology, while growing eco-
nomic affluence made repressive Leninist regimes superfluous: between indus-
trial modernity and ideological boredom, communist regimes would eventually
yield to the spirit of the time.31
These arguments paid homage to his thesis on industrial society, but Aron,
without denying the trends toward liberalization in Poland, Hungary, or
Czechoslovakia, doubted that the time had come for political change in the
Soviet Union.32 On the contrary, for him the Soviet regime was as much stable
and durable as it appeared original: “A regime which is the outgrowth of Asiatic
despotism or, rather, a military empire under a centralized bureaucracy, is histor-
ically one of the most lasting and stable political forms, as long as its ruling class
retains its coherence.”33 At this juncture, dominated by the decline of the United
 FIN DE SIÈCLE 95

States and the rise of the Soviet Union, it was not possible to exclude the pos-
sibility of a European suicide—“L’Europe éclatante peut être l’Europe condamnée”34 (a
flourishing Europe may become a condemned Europe).
Realism and moderation tempered his pessimism. It was unlikely that the
prolonged impasse between the incomplete decadence of the declining European
democracies and the imperfect stability of the expanding Soviet empire would
give rise to some catastrophic decision: “It does not seem to me that the next
years will present an exceptional opportunity” that the Soviets could not miss if
they wanted to “conquer Western Europe without destroying it.”35
The “geopolitical map” of the world had not changed fundamentally: the
system continued to embrace all five continents and to be divided into two
sub-systems with different rules; the dominant ideology was still a national
one, in contrast with the empires’ transnational ideologies; most states, unlike
the European nations, did not rule over a homogenous people; and the same
contrast continued to set “the apparent stability of the abnormal status quo in
Europe against the multiple changes in the rest of the world.”36 Soviet hege-
mony, denounced before and after the invasion of Afghanistan,37 was but a result
of the short-term superiority of their weapons on the European theater and the
ability to project military force anywhere in the world: “The Soviets have not
replaced the Americans in their imperial function.”38 Continuity still prevailed
over change: “From here to the end of the century, the United States and the
Soviet Union will keep their position as the two major powers.”39

Envoi
The cunning of reason decided otherwise. Raymond Aron did not foresee, just
as almost no one else did, the end of the Cold War,40 but he never stopped
thinking about this question.41 In the early years, the settling of the bipolar dis-
pute was expected to be short-term: “It would be absurd to consider the acci-
dental constellation which came out of World War II as more lasting than the
one existing at the beginning of the century.”42 The alternative scenarios of a
Soviet or a Western victory formed the totalitarian nightmare, anticipating “the
wars among the irreconcilable disciples of the prophet” against a comparatively
benign American hegemony: “a semi-pacification imposed by the domination of
an industrial republic has nothing in common with the end of history.”43
The end of Stalinism made possible an end to the international divide in the
best possible way, through an internal change of the Soviet regime. The dif-
ficult choice between the stability of the “new class” and the totalitarian move-
ment was evident: “The Soviet bourgeoisie wants the end of revolution but the
regime is condemned to a perpetual fuite en avant [headlong rush].”44 At the same
time, the Hungarian revolution marked “the defeat of Russian communism in
Europe—a defeat which is, in my view, a defi nitive defeat.”45 Soviet commu-
nism lost its international prestige and the Leninist regime its ideological élan:
“The regime may survive without faith,” but it could no longer deny the Soviet
elites’ desire for openness, which could cause a fatal “ideological indiscipline.”46
Similarly, the structural tensions between the modern production system and
96 C A R L O S G A S PA R

the Asian political regime would become more pronounced if the Soviet Union
resisted liberalization: “A regime which is an extension of Oriental despotism is
hostage to a permanent contradiction as long as it pretends to be the achieve-
ment of Western rationalism . . . Does industrial society fit into the framework
of Oriental despotism?”47 But the dual crisis of Suez and Hungary also demon-
strated the complicity of the “enemy brothers” and the Soviet determination to
protect its empire: the Cold War would last.
The debates about Soviet liberalization and international détente went on for
a decade. Against Kennan or Kissinger, Aron emphasized the “ideocratic” nature
of the communist regime,48 which not only limited the conditions for internal
liberalization49 but also prevented the Soviet Union from being a country like all
the others and becoming a partner in a world order: the Cold War could only end
by the transformation of its political system. In any case, his original defi nition—
“Communism is at once an army and a church”50 —gained new meaning with
the transformation of the secular Leninist religion into a theocratic bureaucracy
and the metamorphosis of the Soviet Union into a military empire.
For Aron, it was obvious that Soviet communism had failed, and it was
unlikely that an empire could extend its domination without an underlying
political legitimacy: “Empires live and die. If the one in Moscow relies solely
on brute force, is it destined to last for very long?”51 The stability of the Soviet
Union depended on the cohesion of its elites, and succession could lead to a crisis:
“When a new generation assumes the supreme responsibilities, they will perhaps
ask two questions: Why so many weapons? Why should we be denied the means
of prosperity? The destiny of the Soviet Union, as well as our own, depends on
their answer to those questions.”52
Eventually, Mikhail Gorbachev would answer those questions and pave the
way for the peaceful end of the Cold War, but Aron was aware of the shortcom-
ings of his reflections on the subject and at his last meeting with Hedley Bull told
the latter: “It is my view that the most important and indeed the most neglected
question in contemporary International Relations scholarship is: what will the
West do when and if the Soviets decline? How we answer this question will per-
haps determine whether there will be war or peace in our time.”53
Raymond Aron was the greatest chronicler of the Cold War; he devised a
formula summarizing its strategic dilemma and developed complex models for
analyzing the “diplomatic constellations,” where he combined three dimen-
sions—the unity of the international system and the bipolar structure, the uni-
versal diff usion of the secular religion of the Soviet empire, and the nuclear
revolution and total war54 —while never failing to place the age dominated by
the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union within twenti-
eth-century history, the fi nal direction of which he anticipated in a rare moment
of enthusiasm: “History is moving towards liberty.”55

Notes
1. Raymond Aron, “Les chances d’un règlement européen,” Politique étrangère, vol.
14, no. 6, 1949, 255.
 FIN DE SIÈCLE 97

2. Raymond Aron, Paix et guerre entre les nations, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1962, 147.
3. Georges-Henri Soutou, “Raymond Aron et la crise de Cuba,” in Maurice Vaïsse
(coord.), L’Europe et la crise de Cuba, Paris, Fayard, 1993.
4. Raymond Aron, “La fin du système bipolaire,” in Raymond Aron, Les Articles
du Figaro, Tome 3: Les Crises (1965–1977), vol. 3, Paris, Editions de Fallois, 1997,
970; Raymond Aron, “Après l’après-guerre” in Les Articles du Figaro, Tome 3: Les
Crises (1965–1977), vol. 3, Paris, Editions de Fallois, 1997.
5. Raymond Aron, République impériale: Les États-Unis dans le monde 1945–1972,
Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1973, 325.
6. Raymond Aron, “Détente et condominium,” in Raymond Aron, Les Articles du
Figaro, Tome 3: Les Crises (1965–1977), vol. 3, Paris, Editions de Fallois, 1997, 1318.
See also Raymond Aron, “De Yalta à Moscou,” in Raymond Aron, Les Articles du
Figaro, Tome 3: Les Crises (1965–1977), vol. 3, Paris, Editions de Fallois, 1997.
7. Raymond Aron, “Défaite au Vietnam,” in Raymond Aron, Les Articles du Figaro,
Tome 3: Les Crises (1965–1977), vol. 3, Paris, Editions de Fallois, 1997, 1501.
8. Raymond Aron, “Le ciel ne va pas tomber sur nos têtes,” in Raymond Aron,
Les Articles du Figaro, Tome 3: Les Crises (1965–1977), vol. 3, Paris, Editions de
Fallois, 1997, 1469. See also Raymond Aron, “La mystification de Vladivostok,”
in Raymond Aron, Les Articles du Figaro, Tome 3: Les Crises (1965–1977), vol. 3,
Paris, Editions de Fallois, 1997, 1433.
9. Aron dialogue avec Alexandre Soljénitsyne, “La IIIe guerre mondiale n’aura pas
lieu,” in Raymond Aron, Les Articles du Figaro, Tome 3: Les Crises (1965–1977),
vol. 3, Paris, Editions de Fallois, 1997, 1543.
10. Raymond Aron, “Décrispation tous azimuts,” in Raymond Aron, Les Articles
du Figaro, Tome 3: Les Crises (1965–1977), vol. 3, Paris, Editions de Fallois, 1997,
1552.
11. Raymond Aron, “Conférence introuvable,” in Raymond Aron, Les Articles du
Figaro, Tome 3: Les Crises (1965–1977), vol. 3, Paris, Editions de Fallois, 1997,
1604. See also Pierre Hassner, “Détente and the Politics of Instability in Southern
Europe,” in Johan Holst and Uwe Nehrlich (eds.), Beyond Nuclear Deterrence: New
Aims, New Arms, New York, Crane, Russak, 1977, 41–59 and Pierre Hassner,
“The Communist Parties of Southern Europe: The International Dimension,”
Lo Spettatore Internazionale, vol. 13, no. 3, 237–266.
12. Raymond Aron, “Limites de la coopération franco-soviétique” in Raymond
Aron, Les Articles du Figaro, Tome 3: Les Crises (1965–1977), vol. 3, Paris, Editions
de Fallois, 1997, 1580–1581.
13. Raymond Aron, “Les communistes français et Moscou I. Les deux volets du dyp-
tique,” in Raymond Aron, Les Articles du Figaro, Tome 3: Les crises (1965–1977),
vol. 3, Paris, Editions de Fallois, 1997, 1658.
14. Raymond Aron, “Directoire européen?” in Raymond Aron, Les Articles du Figaro,
Tome 3: Les Crises (1965–1977), vol. 3, Paris, Editions de Fallois, 1997, 1650.
15. Raymond Aron, “Contre la psychose de guerre,” in Raymond Aron, Les Articles
du Figaro, Tome 3: Les Crises (1965–1977), vol. 3, Paris, Editions de Fallois, 1997,
1625.
16. Raymond Aron, “Diplomatie française en crise,” in Raymond Aron, Les Articles
du Figaro, Tome 3: Les Crises (1965–1977), vol. 3, Paris, Editions de Fallois, 1997,
1664.
17. Raymond Aron, “La France en première ligne,” in Raymond Aron, De Giscard
à Mitterrand (1977–1983), Paris, Editions de Fallois, 2005, 167. See also Odd
Arne Westad, “Moscow and the Angolan Crisis, 1974–1976: A New Pattern
98 C A R L O S G A S PA R

of Intervention,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no. 8–9, 1996,
21–37.
18. Raymond Aron, “La détente après Helsinki,” in Raymond Aron, Les Articles du
Figaro, Tome 3: Les Crises (1965–1977), vol. 3, Paris, Editions de Fallois, 1997,
1625.
19. Raymond Aron, Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire: Essai sur les limites de
l’objectivité historique, Paris, Gallimard, 1938; Raymond Aron, Essai sur la théorie
de l’histoire dans l’Allemagne contemporaine. La philosophie critique de l’histoire, Paris,
Gallimard, 1938.
20. Raymond Aron, Mémoires, Paris, Julliard, 1983, 666–680.
21. Raymond Aron, Plaidoyer pour l’Europe décadente, Paris, Laffont, 1977, 26.
22. Raymond Aron, Le Grand Schisme, Paris, Gallimard, 1948, 337.
23. Raymond Aron, Espoir et peur du siècle. Essais non partisans, Paris, Calmann-Lévy,
1957, 228.
24. Ibid., 229.
25. Raymond Aron, “La crise et les successions. Les incertitudes du Kremlin,” in
Raymond Aron, Les Articles du Figaro, Tome 3: Les Crises (1965–1977), vol. 3,
Paris, Editions de Fallois, 1997, 1589.
26. Aron explains in his Memoirs the ambiguity and the irony of the title he chose
against the best wishes of his publisher. Aron, Mémoires, 675. Raymond Aron,
“My Defense of Our Decadent Europe,” Encounter, vol. 49, no. 3, 1977, 11–32.
27. Aron, Plaidoyer pour l’Europe décadente, 27. See also Raymond Aron, “Démocraties
en crise le syndrome de Weimar,” in Raymond Aron, Les Articles du Figaro, Tome
3: Les Crises (1965–1977), vol. 3, Paris, Editions de Fallois, 1997, 1721–1725.
28. Aron, Plaidoyer pour l’Europe décadente, 28, 420–421.
29. Raymond Aron makes a clear distinction between the European and the American
crises. In the United States democracy is not on the verge of breakdown: “The
United States are a young country capable of recovery. At a given moment they
seem crushed and, a few years later, they will be in a state of delirious opti-
mism. They are a historically young people and they are able to forget.” Aron,
Plaidoyer pour l’Europe décadente, 438. Cfr. Raymond Aron, Le Spectateur engagé,
Paris, Julliard, 1981, 280.
30. Raymond Aron, “La victoire de Caramanlis de l’exil à l’investiture,” in Raymond
Aron, Les Articles du Figaro, Tome 3: Les Crises (1965–1977), vol. 3, Paris, Editions
de Fallois, 1997; Raymond Aron, “Après Franco les équivoques de la transition,”
in Raymond Aron, Les Articles du Figaro, Tome 3: Les Crises (1965–1977), vol. 3,
Paris, Editions de Fallois, 1997. Raymond Aron, “Rien de nouveau à Madrid,”
in Les Articles du Figaro, Tome 3: Les Crises (1965–1977), vol. 3, Paris, Editions de
Fallois, 1997.
31. Ernest Gellner, “Plaidoyer pour une libéralisation manquée,” in Ernest Gellner,
Spectacles and Predicaments, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1979, 339–
340. See also John Hall, Power and Liberties, Harmondsworth, Pelican, 1986,
203–210.
32. Aron, Plaidoyer pour l’Europe décadente, 469, 474. On the exchange between Aron
and Gellner, see Ernest Gellner, “From Revolution to Liberalisation,” Government
and Opposition, vol. 11, no. 3, 1976, 252–272; Aron, Plaidoyer pour l’Europe déca-
dente, 457–474. Raymond Aron, “On Liberalization,” Government and Opposition,
vol. 14, no. 1, 1979, 37–57. Ernest Gellner, “Plaidoyer pour une libéralisation
manquée,” Government and Opposition, vol. 14, no. 1, 1979, 58–65.
 FIN DE SIÈCLE 99

33. Aron, Plaidoyer pour l’Europe décadente, 472.

34. Aron, Le Spectateur engagé, 294.
35. Raymond Aron, “La nature du régime soviétique,” in Raymond Aron, Les
Dernières Années du siècle, Paris, Julliard, 1984, 139–140.
36. Ibid., 151–152.
37. Raymond Aron, “De l’impérialisme américain à l’hégémonisme soviétique,”
Commentaire, vol. 1, no. 5, 1979, 3–14. Raymond Aron, “L’hégémonisme sovié-
tique An I,” Commentaire, vol. 3, no. 11, 1980, 349–362.
38. Raymond Aron, Les Dernières Années du siècle, Paris, Julliard, 1984, 242–244.
39. Ibid., 238.
40. Exceptions include Andrei Amalrik and Emmanuel Todd. Andrei Amalrik, Will
the Soviet Union Survive in 1984? London, Allen Lane, 1970. Emmanuel Todd,
La Chute finale, Paris, Laffont, 1976. See also Adam Watson, “An ‘Incredibly
Swift Transition’ Ref lections on the End of the Cold War,” in Melvyn Leff ler
and Odd Arne Westad (eds.), The Cambridge History of the Cold War III: Endings,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010, 509.
41. Marco Cesa, “Realist Visions of the End of the Cold War Morgenthau, Aron,
Waltz,” British Journal of Politics and International Relations, vol. 11, no. 2, 2009,
177–191.
42. Raymond Aron, Les Guerres en chaîne, Paris, Gallimard, 1951, 133.
43. Ibid., 495.
44. Raymond Aron, The Century of Total War, Boston, MA, Beacon Press, 1954,
336.
45. Raymond Aron, “L’histoire va dans le sens de la liberté,” in Raymond Aron,
Les Articles du Figaro, Tome 2: La Coexistence (1956–1964), vol. 2, Paris, Editions
de Fallois, 1994, 252–253. Raymond Aron, “La force n’est qu’un moyen,” in Les
Articles du Figaro, Tome 2: La Coexistence (1956–1964), vol. 2, Paris, Editions de
Fallois, 1994, 257.
46. Raymond Aron, Penser la liberté, penser la démocratie, Paris, Gallimard, 2005, 406.
47. Ibid., 405–406.
48. Alain Besançon, Court traité de soviétologie à l’usage des autorités civiles, militaires et
religieuses, Paris, Hachette, 1976, 9–17.
49. In a debate with Kennan, Aron emphasized the importance of the “particular
virtues of the man who is the Soviet no 1” in order to postpone or to accelerate
the liberalization of the Soviet Union. Raymond Aron, George Kennan, Robert
Oppenheimer, et al., Les Colloques de Rheinfelden, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1960,
101–122.
50. Aron, Le Grand Schisme, 171.
51. Raymond Aron, “La doctrine Sonnenfeldt,” in Raymond Aron, Les Articles du
Figaro, Tome 3: Les Crises (1965–1977), vol. 3, Paris, Editions de Fallois, 1997,
1674.
52. Raymond Aron, “La France en première ligne,” in Raymond Aron, De Giscard à
Mitterrand (1977–1983), Paris, Editions de Fallois, 2005, 138.
53. Kurt Campbell, “Prospects and Consequences of Soviet Decline,” in Joseph
Nye, Graham Allison, Albert Carnesales (eds.), Fateful Visions: Avoiding Nuclear
Catastrophe, Cambridge, MA, Ballinger, 1988, 153.
54. Pierre Hassner, “L’Histoire du XXe siècle,” in Raymond Aron. 1905–1983, Histoire
et Politique, Paris, Julliard, 1985, 231.
55. Aron, “L’histoire va dans le sens de la liberté.”
PART II

THEORY, HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY:

THE PRIMACY OF THE POLITICAL

José Colen and Scott Nelson

R aymond Aron spent his life defending “liberal democracy.” What is the
status of liberal democracy and the study of it today? Any “casual look”
shows a close relationship between authoritarian and poor countries, on the one
hand, and democratic regimes and rich countries, on the other. This question has
been part of the research agenda since at least 1960, when Lipset1 questioned the
relationship between democracy and development. Empirical research distin-
guishes two “causal mechanisms” in order to explain the correlation: democra-
cies emerge in economically developing dictatorships either by an “endogenous”
process or for other “exogenous” reasons, but they survive longer in developed
countries and so there is an accumulation of democratic regimes in these coun-
tries. The first mechanism assumes that dictatorships die when countries ruled
by them develop because such countries can no longer be governed effectively
by command or because—more crudely stated—the political systems there are
determined by economic factors. This is a mechanism consistent with modern-
ization theory: there is one general process, which begins with industrialization
and urbanization, goes through education and mass communication, and culmi-
nates in social and political mobilization and democratization. Adam Przeworski
summarizes thus: GDP per capita is the most suitable indicator predicting the
type of regime.2 If so, China will be democratic when it develops. A second
type of mechanism was also ambiguously suggested by Lipset,3 but has only
recently been explored. It is based on the assumption that if democracies emerge
randomly during the development stage, they are more likely to survive in a
rich country, and there is also a cumulative effect of monotonic convergence,4
which is also consistent with the correlation between the two factors. This sec-
ond hypothesis is consistent with the role of human freedom in history. Men
make democracies emerge and the environment is responsible only for allowing
102 JOSÉ COLEN A N D SCOTT N ELSON

them to survive, and so the level of development seems to have an explanatory

power for the survival of democracies.5
And yet the discovery that in some countries dictatorships survive develop-
ment and in others democracies flourish against all odds has led researchers to
conclude that there is no single explanation. Despite these negative lessons, which
compel us to weaken the correlations, we are still reluctant to admit the histori-
cal diversity implicit in the object of our research. One of the presuppositions
of the type of data-handling common today in empirical political science is that
what we are discussing are unvarying phenomena (democracy, development),
and that these maintain constant relationships with each other that are capable
of appearing in correlation. Democracy is therefore always the same old phe-
nomenon that we have seen spread, to some extent, across the globe over the last
century. Moreover, it is supposed that there are constant relationships between
the sectors of reality, the economic and political system, religion, and so on, even
when the sociological regularities detected do not appear timeless.
In Raymond Aron, we encounter a respect for, and a persistent desire to
tackle head-on, the irreducible plurality of causes complicating the world we
inhabit. The tendencies he observes are never declared to be laws, and so we
never fi nd him prophesying the “end of history” or the “victory of the market.”
In our exuberance to push ahead mercilessly in search of irrefutable scientific
explanations for change, we occasionally forget that the conditions for change
are themselves susceptible to change, and sometimes very rapid change. The web
of causality is complex, and democracy comes in many different forms, for many
different reasons. Nevertheless, for all of its numerous variations throughout his-
tory, democracy retains certain core features and principles. Part of Aron’s proj-
ect on industrial society was to investigate what is essential and what is variable
in democracy or the constitutional-pluralist regime, as he preferred to call it.
Perrine Simon-Nahum’s chapter traces the evolution of Aron’s philosophy
of history over the course of his lifetime. We are privy to the early intellectual
considerations of the young French philosopher in the 1930s and how he shaped
even his sociological approach around his ongoing engagement with determin-
ing man’s understanding of and role in history.
Giulio De Ligio’s chapter on “The Question of Political Regime and the
Problems of Democracy” situates Aron’s political insights in the French liberal
school of Montesquieu and Tocqueville. What these thinkers did was to take the
importance of a sociological approach into account while at the same time never
losing sight of the decisive influence of the political sphere on society—that is,
the primacy of the political. De Ligio places Aron within this venerable tradition
and also establishes a continuity between him and the ancient Greeks.
Daniel Mahoney’s chapter examines Aron’s defense of the constitutional-
pluralist regime in the face of totalitarianism in both its Nazi and Soviet forms.
Aron’s later work suggests that the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union might not
have been an aberration from Marx’s ideas, but in fact a necessary consequence
of them, for those ideas try to remake the human condition. In this light, Aron’s
arguments against totalitarianism constitute a defense, not only of constitutional-
pluralist regimes, but also of humanity.
 T H E O R Y, H I S T O R Y, P H I L O S O P H Y 103

Serge Audier encourages us to examine Aron’s conception of constitutional-

pluralist regimes through the lens of Machiavelli, whose works aided Aron in
understanding both the totalitarian and the constitutional-pluralist regimes of
his epoch. As regards the latter, the relevant and perhaps shocking insight—no
more in Aron’s time than in Machiavelli’s own time—is that constitutional-
pluralist regimes thrive on confl ict.
Serge Paugam revisits Aron’s course on class struggle, using it as a starting
point for conceptualizing class relations in our time, by updating Aron’s research
in three areas that Aron himself considered worthy of analysis: the increasing
heterogeneity of the working class, the transformation of social confl icts, and the
problem of persistent poverty in wealthy societies.
A question that has assumed greater importance today is whether increasing
government intervention in the economy will set us on the “road to serfdom.”
Although Aron sympathized with Hayek’s defense of liberty, he was never able
to embrace the unfettered free market as warmly as Hayek did. Iain Stewart illus-
trates Aron’s middle-ground approach by setting Aron’s economic views within
the context of the debates occurring in France at the time, thereby suggesting
that we might come to a better understanding of Aron’s “cold war liberalism” if
we see this as a continuation of the attempts to revise liberal economic theory
during the Great Depression.

Notes
1. Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics, New York,
Doubleday, 1960, 27–65.
2. Adam Przeworski, Michel Alvarez, José António Cheibub, and Fernando
Limogi, Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well Being in the World,
1950–1999, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000, 78, 111; 87–89, on
the indicators 79 and 88; David L. Epstein, Robert Bates, Jack Goldstone, Ida
Kristiensen, and Sharyn O’Halloran, “Democratic Transitions,” American Journal
of Political Science, vol. 50, no. 3, July 2006, Appendix, 26–27. Cf. also Samuel
Huntington, “Vinte anos depois: o futuro da terceira vaga,” in AAVV, A invenção
da democracia, Lisboa, Fundação Mário Soares—ICS, 2000, 20.
3. Lipset, Political Man, 29 and 61, also suggests that democracy can be a cause (facili-
tator) of economic development.
4. Przeworski, Alvarez, Cheibub, and Limogi, Democracy and Development, 90.
5. Not only life expectancy arises from 8 to 18 years with a GDP per capita greater
than $1,000, but if it is greater than $6,000 then we have a miracle: no democ-
racy ever returns to a dictatorship. Robert Dahl, while denying that there was a
linear tendency, nevertheless established one at a GDP per capita of $800 in 1957.
Robert A. Dahl, Polyarchy. Participation and Opposition, New Haven and London,
Yale University Press, 1971, 67–68.
CHAPTER 8

RAYMOND ARON AND THE NOTION OF HISTORY:

TAKING PART IN HISTORY

Perrine Simon-Nahum

“To achieve one’s secular salvation.” As he neared the end of his life, it was
with these words that Raymond Aron summarized his intellectual journey in
his Mémoires. History was at his life’s center. Above all else, the notion of history
provided a framework for a philosophy that turned its back on the idealism of the
preceding philosophical generation. Instead, it sought to rethink the inscription
of the individual in the historical world in light of the tension between freedom
and determinism. In both Raymond Aron’s World War II participation in the
Resistance in London and his ideological positioning during Cold War clashes
between supporters of the Soviet Union and defenders of Western democracies,
history was one of his works’ central themes. In France, he pioneered histori-
cal analysis of both international relations and modern societies threatened by
nuclear extinction. This critical research continued all the way through the 1970s
right up to his 1984 posthumous book Les Dernières Années du siècle. Furthermore,
his dialogue with sociology helped him redefi ne a notion of history that was able
to meet the demands of a critical philosophy.

The Introduction to the Philosophy of History

Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire (The Introduction to the Philosophy of History),
the main thesis that Aron defended in March 1938 just as the Anschluss was put-
ting Austria under Hitler’s control, was devoted to a consideration of the “limits
of historical objectivity” whereas his secondary thesis1 La Philosophie critique de
l’histoire attempted to turn the rejection of Hegelianism into the foundation of
a “modern philosophy of history.” In that work, Aron outlined a philosophy
that defi ned the individual from his own point of view and examined the way
in which he might understand the general laws of his environment from that
singular position. “As a Frenchman and a Jew in this historical moment, can I
106 PER RIN E SIMON-NA HUM

comprehend the ensemble of which I am only an atom, one among a hundred

million?”2 Aron presented it as a revelatory moment that was the direct result
of the rise of Nazism (“one day, on the banks of the Rhine, I made a decision
regarding myself ”3), but if we are to believe Georges Canguilhem, his fellow
student at the École normale, Aron’s precocious interest in Marxist thought and
historical materialism had previously been made apparent in a class taught by
Celestin Bouglé at the Sorbonne.4 On that day in 1930, on the banks of the
Rhine, Aron did not just abandon his plan to become a biologist so he could
devote himself to the study of history. By taking up a line of inquiry fi rst for-
mulated as a purely biographical insight and then applying it to politics, Aron
substituted the laws of scientific causality with genuinely philosophical concerns.
He sought to do justice to the full force of events that nullified the validity
of a merely statistical series. He was part of that historical “moment of exis-
tence” (Frédéric Worms) during which the generation of the 1930s broke with
their philosophical elders. Against Bergson and Brunschvicg, his teachers at the
Sorbonne who remained, in Aron’s view, caught up in an “ahistoric universal-
ism,” he undertook to define a notion of history that would cast off the shackles
of ontology. This was necessary before a thorough critique of historical reason
could take place. The Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire examined the possible
conditions of historical knowledge. Aron’s argument was built around three pil-
lars: epistemological, transcendental, and philosophical. Given that man is essen-
tially an individual immersed in history, he cannot claim knowledge of events in
the same sense that science understands nature. Rather, it must be from his his-
torically situated circumstances, understood as the point where the contingency
of the real intersects with the freedom of the individual immersed in it; that he
must stake out a new status for history that avoids the twin dangers of positiv-
ism and metaphysics. For causal determinism, Aron substituted a conception of
the event based on comprehension and interpretation, two concepts borrowed
from the human sciences and from Max Weber in particular. The latter was
the subject of a small book he had written in 1935 called La Sociologie allemande
contemporaine. The goal of the historian is to actually understand the actors and
to grasp the motives of their actions. Necessary for this task is both an analysis
of the motivations that led them to act as they did and a contextualization of
that action. In so doing, a hermeneutic circle is established that unites the actor
and his time, as well as the singular event and the general context in which it
occurs. The meaning of an event can only be comprehended if a connection—no
matter how tenuous—to historical totality is established. Historical comprehen-
sion functions as “a retrospective calculation of probabilities.”5 Comprehension
brings into relief the immanent intelligibility of facts. Just as the historian’s point
of view can never be absolute, the historical object is never immediately given,
but always constructed. Aron thus highlighted the limits of historical objectivity,
as the subtitle of his thesis indicated, in order to show how the historian should
take his own situation into account. Even though history is primarily an attempt
to conceptualize an event that has been and will never be again, it cannot merge
into a pure event.
 R AY M O N D A RO N A N D T H E N O T I O N O F H I S T O RY 107

Contingence and Plurality

If the phenomenological dimension at the heart of the Introduction à la philosophie
de l’histoire quickly faded from Aron’s notion of history, the issues outlined in his
thesis continued to preoccupy him in his later works. In theoretical form, they
were taken up at different moments, in essay collections such as Dimensions de la
conscience historique (1961), the classes he taught at the Sorbonne in the 1960s, or
the lectures he gave at the Collège de France between 1972 and 1974 under the
titles De l’historisme allemand à la philosophie analytique de l’histoire and L’édifi cation
du monde historique.6 The historical point of view also takes center stage in Aron’s
analysis of international relations, to which he dedicated an important part of
his postwar reflections from Les Guerres en chaîne to Dernières Années du siècle. He
scrutinized decolonization, the United States, Europe, or followed on the heels
of Clausewitz in considering war as an object worthy of epistemological consid-
eration. Aron’s critique of philosophies of history lies behind both his critique
of Marxism and his condemnation of the positions of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty.
We must therefore consider Aron’s notion of history in its three constitutive
dimensions: theoretical, strategic, and philosophical.
Although Aron, toward the end of the Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire,
announced a follow-up volume that would have applied the conclusions of his
thesis to the “interpretation of the current situation of man,” the project was
thwarted by the outbreak of the war and came to nothing. Taking its place were
the articles published by Aron in La France libre, the publication of the London-
based branch of the French Resistance. The articles written between November
1940 and May 1944 under the title “Chroniques de la France” were gathered
together and published in 1945–1946 as De l’Armistice à l’insurrection nationale,
L’Homme contre les tyrans, and fi nally L’Âge des empires et l’avenir de la France. In line
with his pre-war writings, Aron articulated an understanding of Vichy France
that was located at the intersection of human actions and their representations.
Furthermore, this conception of history owed as much to Élie Halévy as it did
to Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War 7. Aron tells us that in an 1896 let-
ter Élie Halévy assumed the mantle of the Greek historian, confiding the secret
of his vocation to Celestin Bouglé: to provide a philosophical framework for
historical observation by attributing meaning to the human passions and their
resulting actions.8 This was precisely what Aron endeavored to do in his wartime
articles on Vichy. As in Halévy’s study of English radicalism, Aron analyzed the
politics of the French state by comparing ideas, legal and economic institutions,
the policies to which they lead, and human behavior. What is more striking
than a mere absence of Manichaeism or strong political bias—what some were
already calling Aron’s lucidity—is the way in which events are made compre-
hensible by shedding light on the motives that determine them and that put them
into perspective. Despite irreducible ambivalences, ambiguities, and contradic-
tions, Aron maintained that intelligibility was within the historian’s grasp. To
denounce the mere existence of the French state would not make any sense in
Aron’s view. What stands out from a reading of his articles is the way in which
a pluralist analysis takes into account a reality that is itself plural. Refusing both
108 PER RIN E SIMON-NA HUM

moral condemnation and political indignation, Aron’s approach paradoxically

paved the way for a form of political engagement that was all the more effective.
If the defeat of May 1940 and the armistice in no way heralded the inevitable
victory of Nazism or the disappearance of Republican France, the shift that
materialized after Stalingrad should not, according to Aron, be conflated with a
democratic happy ending to history.

Ref lecting on Twentieth Century Postwar History

In the 1950s, Aron’s work on history attempted to make sense of these chains
of events. It was necessary to preserve history’s irreducible pluralism, which was
the basis of the multiplicity of points of view constitutive of historical research.
Nevertheless, in the context of the Cold War, ominous trends were material-
izing that Aron interpreted as markers of the postwar twentieth century. Two
factors emerged that would relativize pluralism. On the one hand, there was the
beginning of the nuclear era, with its influence felt widely in international rela-
tions. On the other, great technical progress was transforming Western industrial
societies. In light of these two facts, the philosopher had to modify the notion of
history so as to take into account the anthropological change they brought about
without therefore abolishing history altogether. Aron put forward the notion
of historical consciousness that designated the link between “the problems of
historical knowledge and our existence in history.”9 The 1961 essay collection
Dimensions de la conscience historique set out to tackle these issues. Political and stra-
tegic changes and the development of atomic weapons laid to rest the idea that
historical actors in the nation-state were masters of their own destiny. This new
situation made a deterministic understanding of what Aron called deep historical
forces deceptively plausible. A humanity capable of total self-annihilation lived
under a regime of historicity. The engagement in history required of people
“living in the atomic age in societies governed by science” necessitated a history
of the present. We are primarily actors bound by the time we live in. According
to Aron, three characteristics defi ne historical consciousness: “the consciousness
of a dialectic between tradition and liberty, the effort to grasp the reality or the
truth of the past, the sense that the developments of different forms of social
organization . . . across time are neither trivial nor unimportant, for they touch
on the essence of man.”10 At fi rst a characteristic of the modern West, in the
twentieth century, historical consciousness becomes the operative framework for
the diversity of humanity’s actions. The philosophical dimension of history is a
necessary antidote to the temptation to subsume humanity under the category
of a single destiny and to create an opening for a future shaped by the precepts
of reason. Nevertheless, this was to be a reason constructed in opposition to the
hubris of nuclear arms or the fantasies of uninterrupted technical progress.

What Are Historic Ensembles? Discussion with

Spengler and Toynbee
The explicitly philosophical dimension that Aron grants to historical conscious-
ness stems from his desire to respond to the accusations of relativism that had
 R AY M O N D A RO N A N D T H E N O T I O N O F H I S T O RY 109

been leveled against him at the time of his thesis. However, it also follows from
his view of the dangers posed by theories that identify history with quasi-bi-
ological cycles of civilization, thus subjecting each civilization’s existence to a
unique ideal and rendering the fate of one irreducible to that of all the others.
The plurality of the historical objects we call events, like the plurality of inter-
pretations historians offer to account for them, does not, according to Aron,
under any circumstances signify that the search for historical truths must be
abandoned. In a 1958 colloquium at Cerisy, Aron engaged in a dialogue with the
philosopher Arnold Toynbee on the danger that plurality poses for truth. Aron
sought to refute the idea championed by Toynbee (and Spengler before him)
that the diversity of civilizations would prohibit the conceptualization of a unity
of human spirit. If all civilizations are equal, each is accountable only to itself,
expressing nothing but its singular nature. Consequently, in Toynbee’s theory,
history oscillates between each culture’s specific destiny and that of humanity
taken as a whole, thereby preventing all intermediate distinctions and compari-
sons. Therefore, the essential question raised for the philosopher hinges on the
formation of historic ensembles and the reality of history’s objects. The notions
of causality and coherence that Aron invokes as the basis of the historian’s work
are thus diametrically opposed to Spenglerian relativism, which rules out com-
parisons of one civilization with another. In a similar way, these two notions
undermine the empirical schema advanced by Toynbee, which can only explain
cultures as expressions of an abstract humanity, thus depriving the historian lost
in the universality of viewpoints of any explanatory power. In the absence of
a reflexive principle, historical construction becomes impossible. Instead, it is
actually driven by external principles based on implicit value judgments.
There must be a response other than metaphysics (Spengler) or theology
(Toynbee) to the constituent tension that Aron sees at work in the postwar
twentieth century, a tension that forged the consciousness of an unprecedent-
edly unified destiny of peoples. Potential nuclear destruction and rapid technical
progress had made it possible, but different peoples still had the distinct feeling
that their ways of life remained singular. This tension provides the starting point
for Aron’s critique of historical reason, a critique that legitimized itself through
recourse to a reflective causality that structures the field of historical experience
and its possible interpretations. The historian constructs his object, following a
logic at least partly dictated by the reality of the events he intends to study. This
logic is at the same time immanent and counterfactual. Philosophy operates in
this tension between the reality it seeks to explain and the constructions it uses
to conceptually create this reality in the first place. The Aron of the 1960s was
thus no less a philosopher in his reflections than the young doctoral student of
the 1930s. Philosophy is vital to remind the historian that he always works with
historical objects he himself has constructed, but also, in the same way, to recall
the arbitrary nature of that construction. This arbitrariness is twofold. If Aron
insists on the historical situation of the historian himself, but only to a certain
extent, contingence is also at work in the application of epistemological concepts
to objects. It is at this level of analysis that Aron will later situate sociology.
Plurality is not just derived from the empirical observation of contemporary
events, even if one of the characteristics of the modern predicament consists
110 PER RIN E SIMON-NA HUM

precisely, according to Aron, in the conscience we have of our own diversity.

Plurality is essential to a human condition Aron qualifies as “tragic” in the con-
clusion of his thesis: “Human existence is dialectical . . . since it acts in an incoher-
ent world, commits without knowing the outcome, and seeks a truth that flees,
without any assurance other than fragmentary science and formal reflection.”11
Plurality occurs at two levels: that of events and that of their interpretation.
Understood in this sense, the study of a historical object invariably turns the
investigation toward the historian’s intentions. Historical reality is not immedi-
ately concrete but constituted, Aron says, of a multiplicity of individual experi-
ences of which each one refers to its own vision of the world (Weltanschauung).
The work of the historian must reflect this situation when periodizing and
determining historical units on various scales. These are endowed with a cer-
tain explanatory power, but one ought to resist taking them as a reflection of
a preexisting reality. The multiplicity of interpretations is the corollary to an
ambivalent reality. In 1958, the article titled “Evidence/Inference” and published
in Daedalus was concerned with the ways in which the historian deploys various
forms of causality that structure a whole, entirely of his own making. The whole,
however, does not exist prior to the act of comprehension. Rather, the whole
appears as the act of comprehension takes shape. The interpretive freedom of the
historian is counterbalanced by the restrictions imposed by the critical approach.
The freedom of the historian reaches its zenith when he does not handle distant
events whose outcomes he already knows, but when studying current events
where the evidence is still part of his own world. This complicates eyewitness
accounts just as much as it does the access to archives. The history of the present
that historical consciousness demands grants the historian the greatest freedom
even as it imposes the greatest constraints. It is in response to these constraints
that historical argument can take on a highly technical form and, in order to
ground its interpretations, often seeks refuge in myriad historical sources. The
greatest freedom goes hand in hand with a room for maneuvering as narrowly
circumscribed as that of the protagonists the historian studies. They are his con-
temporaries. Regardless of whether that freedom is called “imagination” or, as
Aron would have it, “retrospective prediction,” it defi nes the new task of the
historian of the present.12 Aron was to remain faithful to this conception in his
following works on international relations and contemporary industrial societ-
ies. His investigations are often driven by counterfactual questions: what would
have happened had things gone otherwise? The ultimate decision rests with the
man of action; the historian weighs freedom of action against the necessity of
circumstances.
Such is the great lesson from Thucydides, introducing a reflection on the
nature of the historical object and allowing Aron to turn his attention to the
nature of the historian’s narrative. Aron’s investigations focus on the decision-
making process and the motivations of the key figures. In Aron’s works, there
is a dialogue between Thucydides and Max Weber. Thucydides organizes the
narrative of his history around his analysis of human action. This allows him to
integrate chance into his narrative and to render even the irrational tendencies
intelligible, thus comprehending an event that no one desired. “Thucydides, by
 R AY M O N D A RO N A N D T H E N O T I O N O F H I S T O RY 111

extending the domain of intelligibility from conscious individual action to an

event that as such no individual person wished to bring about, raises the event,
regardless of whether it actually conforms to the actors’ intentions, through the
use of psychological, sociological, or abstract terms.”13 This enabled the Greek
historian to show that neither the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War nor its
course responded to unique and identifiable causes. The war reveals “eternal
man, pushed by unchanging motives that are revealed in that tragic event, the
result of actors conscious of their actions but not conscious of their destiny.”14
Thucydides’ viewpoint allows Aron to revisit his earlier defi nition of the histori-
cal event as the crossroads between liberty and determinism. This conception
situates the historian at the appropriate level between Lavisse’s history of singular
events and a sociological history concerned above all with structures. This is
the reason why Aron considered the role of chance and the Cournot series that
figures in the opening chapter of his thesis to be of such importance. The way
in which the Greek historian worked with the polarity between accident and
necessity inspired Aron to conduct historical research on different levels and to
use flexible periodizations. There is nevertheless one crucial difference between
the ancient way of interpreting events and that of the twentieth century histo-
rian: the role played by the individual. World War I serves as a point of reference
for Aron, not to highlight, as Toynbee had done, the parallelism of the cycles of
human history across the ages, but as an illustration of the unprecedented deper-
sonalization that characterizes the events of the twentieth century. Similarly, in a
long article published in 1970 in the revue Annales he opposes the point of view
of those, like the historian of Ancient Greece Paul Veyne, which introduced the
linguistic turn to the writing of history. For Aron, this amounted to little more
than the mise en récit of always varying interpretations.15

Against Messianism and the Philosophy of History

In a piece titled “La guerre a eu lieu” that was published in the fi rst edition
of Les Temps modernes16 in 1945, Maurice Merleau-Ponty issued a retrospective
injunction to his contemporaries. He argued that henceforth the historical situ-
ation must always be taken into account. Needless to say, Merleau-Ponty was
not speaking to Raymond Aron. Since the mid-1930s, Aron had been incor-
porating history in his analysis of the confrontation between democracies and
totalitarianisms and his evaluations of the possible conditions for a liberal demo-
cratic victory. After 1947 history became a front separating former friends, a
front where Aron battled Marxist prophecy and the concomitant philosophies of
history. Aron refused a messianic and overly ideological reading of the postwar
situation. In retribution, Aron was excommunicated by his former classmates
at the École normale supérieure, including by Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, and
shunned by other French intellectuals, who in the 1950s were predominantly
Marxist and Third-Worldist. In one way or another, this ostracism would con-
tinue until his death. If his Mémoires retrace the bitterness of those intellectual
battles, we must also bear in mind the violence of those debates all the way up
through the 1970s. Aron’s reflections on the notion of history from 1950 to 1975
112 PER RIN E SIMON-NA HUM

provided him with a way to enter into a dialogue with Marxism and to combat
its disciples’ messianic interpretations of history. By elaborating the notion of
secular religions and on the belief implied by adherence to the Soviet model,
Aron continuously challenged the teleological reading of history propagated by
Soviet Communism’s fellow travelers. Key French intellectuals, such as Sartre
and Merleau-Ponty, figured prominently among them. This argument was at the
center of a series of articles that Aron published in the revue Preuves, the publica-
tion of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, as well as in the 1955 book L’Opium
des intellectuels, published contemporaneously with Merleau-Ponty’s Aventures de
la Dialectique17. It also surfaced in a large number of the articles in Dimensions de la
conscience historique, continuing well into the 1970s in his lectures at the Collège
de France, Marxismes imaginaires, and D’une Sainte Famille à l’autre. Too often, the
violence of these debates concealed the philosophical depth of what was at stake.
Like others in the generation of the 1930s, Aron wanted to rethink the articula-
tion of freedom and determinism without recourse to any transcendent prin-
ciple. For a long while, Aron remained Sartre’s preferred sparring partner, even
if the latter sought to conceal it. Thus Sartre’s Les Carnets de la drôle de guerre18 and
his 1943 thesis L’Etre et le Néant 19claimed to be a response to the Introduction à la
philosophie de l’histoire. L’Opium des intellectuels, which subjected Aron to scandal
and anathema from the bien-pensante French left, should be read as a continuation
of his 1938 thesis. The three parts that compose it—Mythes politiques, Idolâtrie de
l’histoire et Aliénation des intellectuels—seek to probe the principal characteristics
of the European left and to submit them to a historical critique. Aron analyzes
Stalinism as an ideology that remains indebted to a kind of historicist gnosis. His
critique unfolds in two parts. In the fi rst, Aron takes the fellow travelers to task
for their philosophical thoughtlessness, taking Merleau-Ponty and later Sartre as
his main targets. Aron condemns the idea of a philosophy of existence in which
the individual’s absolute freedom is at the same time inscribed in the temporality
of a collective history over which he has no control and to which he must submit
if he wishes to fulfi ll his own essence. In the second, Aron rebukes interpreta-
tions of Marxism that pass political reality through the prism of a history whose
meaning is already predefi ned as the realization of humanity’s flourishing by the
Communist regime. His criticism is incontrovertible. In the Marxist concep-
tion of history, individual actors have no place. A classless society, communism’s
objective, “comes about spontaneously, necessarily, as a result of the actions and
reactions between individuals and groups,”20 without the intervention of some
kind of Providence. At the end of time man will see his own mystery revealed at
the same time as history’s. “But why,” asks Aron, “must the adventure draw to a
close?”21 and by virtue of what should it come to an end? Aron sees no explana-
tion other than faith and messianic conviction. For Christians, messianism desig-
nates a divine transcendence, but for the man of communist faith, it refers to the
transcendence of history. Aron condemns the deformation of history infl icted by
philosophies of history. From the point of view of the critic of historical reason,
nothing can guarantee our predictions of the future, nor even that there is such
a thing as the meaning of history. If we consider the situation of industrial soci-
eties that he investigates at the beginning of the 1960s, judging by the available
 R AY M O N D A RO N A N D T H E N O T I O N O F H I S T O RY 113

information, nothing can assure the triumph of one model over another in the
competition between the centralized authoritarian socialist economy and a plu-
ralist constitutional regime espousing capitalist values. Adhering to the idea of
a meaning of history amounts to a disavowal of philosophical distance and the
adoption of a theological position. This is true not just of Sartre and Merleau-
Ponty but also of Toynbee. The political consequences are immediately visible. A
reign of terror is necessary if one is to uphold an ideological regime enamored of
its faith in historical eschatology. In the same way, thinkers espousing a form of
these teleologies are often led to justify violence. Aron’s critique of philosophies
of history, which broadened his pre-war analysis of totalitarianism, contained
the seeds of his 1950s critique of Third-Worldist thinkers. Aron’s appraisal of
the historical event thus allows us to comprehend the specificity of his political
position in the postwar period. His ability to articulate the different levels of cau-
sality, while remaining attentive to the role of uncertainty in individual actions,
explains why he did not cease to condemn the Soviet Union’s stranglehold on its
satellite states. This was true both for his endorsement of the decolonization of
French territories after 1956, notably in Algeria, where he had long anticipated
independence, and for the warnings he sounded from the 1960s onward about
policies that presupposed exponential and continuous economic progress.

History and Social Science

History and International Relations
After 1944, an important part of Aron’s historical work was devoted to the study
of international relations. He was among the fi rst in France to break with the tra-
dition of diplomatic history and elaborate a strategy-based conception of inter-
national relations that integrated various levels of analysis—political, economic,
military—while clearly distinguishing foreign policy from domestic policy. As
pointed out by Pierre Hassner, one of the foremost specialists of this part of
Aron’s work, “it hasn’t been fully appreciated just how much the historian owed
to the philosopher” even in this domain.22 Aron applied the previously defi ned
dialectic of historical reason to the study of international relations. Eschewing
both ideological presuppositions and the determinist framework of military or
sociological works, he developed and put into practice a dynamic analysis of
international order that did not sacrifice the intentions of individual actors to
the supposedly hard facts of politics. However, Aron’s analysis also treated war
and violence as factors that needed to be taken seriously in their own right.
This was already evident in the fi rst part of Guerres en chaîne, where Aron high-
lighted the novelty of World War I. The strength of this philosophical approach
explains why, during the postwar years, Aron’s thought unfolded independently
of the incipient fractures of the Cold War and binary ideological oppositions.
Nevertheless, this does not mean that Aron did not take these developments into
account. In the section titled “À l’aube de l’histoire universelle” of Dimensions
de la conscience historique, he singled out three aspects as fundamental traits of the
postwar era, the combination of which structured the particular profi le of each
114 PER RIN E SIMON-NA HUM

of the international crises that were to follow: the bipolar schism, the shared des-
tiny of a humanity in the shadow of technological and economic progress, and
the spread of communist messianism. Certain variations notwithstanding, the
diagnosis fi rst outlined in 1951 in Guerres en chaîne remained valid throughout
the next half century because it allowed Aron to simultaneously shed light on the
motives of individual actors as well as on the equilibrium—or rather, disequilib-
rium—between productive, economic, political, cultural, and military-strategic
factors. He deployed a logic that combined the various levels of analysis, while
acknowledging not only the rational implementation of policies but also the role
of chance and accidents. Aron’s reflections on strategy ultimately lead back to his
interpretive conception of history and the idea of humanity’s uncertain future.
The most that could be expected from the latter is that it remains within the
horizon of a regulative ideal of reason. All of Aron’s work on international rela-
tions, from Paix et guerre entre les nations—considered by Aron himself to be his
third thesis, not least because it follows a similar structure as the Introduction à la
philosophie de l’histoire—to La République impériale, an analysis of US policy from
1945 to 1972, and the late works Penser la guerre, Clausewitz, and Dernières Années
du siècle, are based on a conception of history as “drama and process.”

History or Sociology?
The 1965 Gifford Lectures and a series of 1967 talks published as La Conscience
historique dans la pensée et dans l’action presented Aron with an occasion to revisit
his theory of history and to continue his engagement with Thucydides’ analysis
of political action and warfare. The debate over history came to hinge on the
issue of a possible space for critical thought. Does this mean that Aron’s thought
underwent a “sociological turn”? Numerous scholars have argued that, toward
the end of the 1960s, a sociological point of view seemed to have supplanted
Aron’s earlier historical approach to describe modern societies. But Aron, in fact,
indirectly reaffirmed history’s superiority by insisting on the primacy of politics
in contemporary societies. In the early 1970s, Aron sought to establish a research
methodology that was more interested in practical applicability even as it refused
to renounce its quest for objectivity. This ambition came to the fore in his lec-
tures at the Collège de France where Aron confronted the legacy of German
phenomenology with contributions from Anglophone analytic philosophy.
During those years, regardless of whether he worked on international relations
or the operations of different political regimes, Aron maintained a keen interest
in the epistemological issues raised by the interpretation of these phenomena. He
registered the rise of political science and sociology and attempted to critically
integrate the results of these two flourishing disciplines into his own analysis
of society. Yet, according to Aron, at no point did this disciplinary enrichment
call into question a notion of history that is uniquely capable of satisfying the
demands of critical reason. The comparative study of the advantages of these var-
ious disciplines constituted, fi rst and foremost, a reflection on the forms of con-
ceptualization they rely on. This was also a time when Aron engaged with the
uses of the concept of the model that became widespread throughout the social
 R AY M O N D A RO N A N D T H E N O T I O N O F H I S T O RY 115

sciences in the 1960s. The anti-history that anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss

called for, Aron argued, ultimately boiled down to but another kind of history
based on the description of cultural and anthropological factors. It is impossible
for humankind to conceive of itself outside of a temporal framework.
Nevertheless, when confronting the issue of the validity of the science of his-
tory, Aron adopted a position of considerable novelty. He took as his point of
departure the idea of the construction of the historical world that Dilthey had
opposed to narrative, but also to the representations so dear to the social sciences.
Aron identified three main modes through which individuals objectify their his-
torical situation: language, classes, and organizations. Aron’s conclusions remain
within the bounds of the notion of history for, whatever the degree of objectivity
attained by scientific discourses such as sociology, the fact remained that “men
make their history but they don’t know the history they’re making”—in the last
instance, the adventure of humanity is one built on uncertainty.23

War as the Extreme Case of Historical Analysis

The ongoing dialogue with Thucydides indicated to what degree war was a
key element of Aron’s notion of history. In Penser la guerre, Clausewitz, a book
he continued to hold dear, Aron elaborated a philosophical analysis of war. In
many ways, this is where he reached the ultimate point of his notion of history.
Interestingly, Aron’s analytical reconstruction of the writings of the Prussian
military strategist, which coincided with the publication of his late texts on
Marx, served to delineate a sphere where decision-making is subject to primar-
ily political constraints. Aron’s philosophical interest in the strategist was driven
by the foundational tension between politics and war that was at the heart of
Clausewitz’s work and the novel way he conceived of the relationship between
ends and means. At a time when humanity had developed the capacity for total
self-destruction, Aron’s reading of Clausewitz underlined the primacy of politics
over military matters. This also meant paying closer attention to psychological
factors. Aron abandoned traditional conceptions of war, writing his consider-
ation of Clausewitz in a suspension between strategic menace and political goal.
The nuclear bomb would henceforth appear not only as one of the defi ning
characteristics of man’s relationship with nature and his fellow men; it also pro-
foundly disrupted decision-making mechanisms.
Aron was not only fascinated by Clausewitz as a military theorist. Aron’s
Clausewitz also investigated the personality of the thinker. Reconstructing the
treatise on war alongside Clausewitz’s biography, he exemplified what it really
means to read an author. Yet Aron’s interpretations of Marx, Tocqueville, or
Clausewitz were much more than purely hermeneutical exercises. They were
shadowed by Aron’s notion of history and they never separated thought from
action. Two full years of his lecture course were devoted to studying the Prussian
general. Other than a spirit of resistance that echoes Aron’s own experience of war,
one fi nds an even deeper kind of companionship between these thinkers. Two of
the traits Aron ascribed to Clausewitz say just as much about their author. There
was, fi rstly, the urge to conceptualize action that led Aron to consider himself
116 PER RIN E SIMON-NA HUM

as always already a part of a political dynamic. Secondly, Clausewitz knew very

early in his intellectual trajectory what themes would continue to preoccupy him
but it was only toward the end of his life that he was able to articulate them in
a system. What Aron was interested in above all was Clausewitz’ considerations
on a “theory of a praxis subject to historical changes.”24 It was not so much the
systematic qualities of Clausewitz’s treatise, which anyway remained unfi nished,
as the plurality of interpretations and the way in which each of them rationally
mediates between ideas and reality that caught Aron’s attention. Even so, there
can be little doubt that in the later stages of his life, Clausewitz saw many of his
claims confi rmed by reality. Reading Clausewitz consolidated Aron’s convic-
tion that it was important and necessary for the prince to be well advised and for
the counselor to be aware of the fragility of his position. The conclusion of the
Dimensions de la conscience historique clearly stated the problem that was to be at
the center of Aron’s writings on history throughout the 1960s and 1970s: that of
the “social responsibility of the philosopher.” It is indeed history that helps the
sociologist and the political historian avoid the pitfalls they encounter in their
research. Neither a prisoner of structures nor beholden to a series of unconnected
conjunctures, the political historian proceeds from the particular to the univer-
sal. But he must also be able to identify the singularities that express themselves
in collective action. However, it would be too easy to leave things there. The real
difficulty for the historian, the one that also accounts for his strength, consists in
the constant back and forth between thought and its implementation that he has
to accomplish, in the movement between abstraction and reality. According to
Aron, in political thought there is an irreducible ambivalence linked to the pos-
tulation of an ideal and its application to reality. This uncertainty between what
is desirable and what is real, between intentions and implementations defines
the very essence of history. Throughout the twentieth century, in the triangular
relationship between the figures of the technician, the sophist, and the philoso-
pher, the philosopher must have recourse to history if his voice is to be heard.
Only the familiarity with history makes value judgments that can claim to be
rooted in experienced reality. Only history grants the philosopher the authority
to judge reality by subjecting it to a critique of the ideals to which it gave birth.
Time thus represents a value-creating axis, even though it is up to the philoso-
pher to construct the exact relationship between past, present, and future. The
philosopher can perhaps turn away from the sophist, but he cannot feign indiffer-
ence vis-à-vis the technician. Technical knowledge can prevent him from suc-
cumbing to the dangerously seductive force of ideas. In the early 1960s, Aron’s
reflections occurred in the context of totalitarian regimes, particularly in the
Soviet Union, a reality that he unfl inchingly denounced.
By the second half of the 1970s, with the Soviet menace slowly starting to
fade, Aron continued to insist on the political role of the philosopher and reaf-
fi rmed the latter’s legitimacy to intervene in public affairs. This, Aron claimed,
was part of philosophy’s principal tasks. His notion of history turned out to be
closely entwined with practical philosophy. If sociology deals with moral behav-
ior, philosophy is nonetheless required to formalize this behavior. Philosophy,
in other words, bestows universality on it while simultaneously relativizing
 R AY M O N D A RO N A N D T H E N O T I O N O F H I S T O RY 117

its pretentions. The philosopher casts doubt on the idea of a historical totality.
However, he also faces up to his political responsibilities. Between philosophy
and action, Aron carved out a space that he surveyed as an engaged spectator.

Notes
1. [Translator’s note]: Up until 1968 French doctoral dissertations involved both a
thèse and a thèse complémentaire, that is a main thesis and a secondary thesis.
2. Raymond Aron, Mémoires. 50 ans de réflexion politique, Paris, Editions Julliard,
1983, 53.
3. Ibid.
4. Georges Canguilhem, “La problématique de la philosophie de l’histoire au début
des années trente,” in Alain Boyer, et al. (eds.), Raymond Aron, la philosophie de
l’histoire et les sciences sociales, Paris, Éditions de la rue d’Ulm, 2005, 19–32.
5. Raymond Aron, Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire: Essai sur les limites de
l’objectivité historique, Paris, Gallimard, “Bibliothèque des Idées,” 1938, 205.
6. These courses have been collected and edited by Sylvie Mesure in the volume
titled Leçons sur l’histoire, Paris, Éditions de Fallois, 1989.
7. Thucydide, Histoire de la guerre du Péloponnèse, Paris, Gallimard, “Folio Classique,”
2000.
8. Correspondence of Alain with Florence and Élie Halévy, cited in Raymond Aron
(1905–1983). Histoire et politique, Commentaire, 1985, 344.
9. Raymond Aron, Dimensions de la conscience historique, Paris, Editions Plon, 1985
[originally 1961], preface.
10. Ibid., 87.
11. L’Histoire et ses représentations. Entretiens autour de Arnold Toynbee, sous la direction
de R. Aron, Paris, Mouton, 1961, 37–46.
12. Aron, Dimensions de la conscience historique, 70.
13. Ibid., 121.
14. Ibid., 126.
15. Raymond Aron, “Comment l’historien écrit l’épistémologie: à propos du livre de
Paul Veyne,” Annales E.S.C., vol. 26, 6, 1971, 1319–1354.
16. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “La guerre a eu lieu,” Œuvres, Paris, Gallimard,
“Quarto,” 2010.
17. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Les Aventures de la dialectique, Paris, Gallimard, “Folio,”
2000.
18. Jean-Paul Sartre, Les Carnets de la drôle de guerre, Paris, Gallimard, 1995.
19. Jean-Paul Sartre, L’Etre et le Néant, Paris, Gallimard, “Tel,” 1976.
20. Raymond Aron, “La notion de sens de l’histoire,” in Raymond Aron, Dimensions
de la conscience historique, Paris, Plon, 1961, 32–45, 35.
21. Ibid.
22. Pierre Hassner, “L’histoire au XXème siècle,” Commentaire, Op. cit., 226–233,
228.
23. Aron, Leçons sur l’histoire, 442.
24. Raymond Aron, Penser la guerre, Clausewitz, vol. 1, Paris, Gallimard, 2009 [orig.
1976], 23–24.
CHAPTER 9

THE QUESTION OF POLITICAL REGIME AND

THE PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY:
ARON AND THE ALTERNATIVE OF TOCQUEVILLE

Giulio De Ligio

T he question of the political regime is at the heart of the work—and one

could say the life—of Raymond Aron. The thinking of this French philoso-
pher and sociologist demonstrates how and to what extent this question is at the
heart of the human problem qua political problem. Aron’s lucidity in the face of
a century marked by hyperbolic drama and process, by extreme hopes and fears,
is well known. It is useful to recall the starting point of his intellectual journey
in order to introduce our ref lection on the science that informed his judgment
of historical actuality.
The horizon of Aron’s political education was the somber and stormy sky cre-
ated by the agony of the Weimar Republic between 1930 and 1933 and by the
capitulation of French democracy before the totalitarian threat. This experience
cast a long shadow over all of Aron’s thought which would never stop trying to
understand it. Aron’s “Seventh Letter,” his inaugural lecture at the Collège de
France in 1971, also recapitulates the meaning of this foundational moment in his
intellectual journey, of this pathei mathos. The dissolution of German democracy
and the impotence of French democracy in the 1930s—these two corruptions of
liberal regimes, these two democratic tragedies—are the original experiences of
a philosopher who would consequently become a political philosopher, a philoso-
pher of the historical condition of man.
The human and civic concern that Aron felt as the war approached became an
analysis of the limits of every political regime; it did not become a philosophical
refutation of democracy. These two themes accompanied and reinforced each
other. Aron recalled and demonstrated the political nature of democracy, nei-
ther despairing of it nor identifying the necessary laws of its triumph in History.
Aron’s choices in the 1930s—his rejection of the two totalitarian regimes whose
120 GIU LIO DE LIGIO

dynamism underscored the paralysis of democracy—bring us back to his way of

thinking, to his conception of political life and modern society. They call for
an examination of the theoretical presuppositions of his attitude in the face of
history. Indeed, Aron tried to extend and concretize the fundamental questions
of life in common—what he sometimes called the “old Socratic questions” of
the good life and the good society1—in history, in an element where the social
matter sometimes seems to change “like a cosmic power” and where justice is
always related to force. Our understanding of the deeper meaning of Aron’s work
is aided by viewing his analysis of the best regime in the twentieth century as a
continuation of the classic inquiry about political regimes. Aron examines the
ends of the city in the wake of war and tragedy, the norm in a time of permanent
exception, the criteria of the modern movement, entirely accepting the dialectic
imposed by this investigation.
One can begin to comprehend Aron’s understanding of the question of the
political regime by starting with Aron’s own interpretation of the unity of his
work, with the starting point that we have just mentioned. In his inaugural
lecture as Chair of Sociology of Modern Civilization at the Collège de France
Aron reminds us that his discovery of politics and its tyrannical shadows in the
1930s also inspired in the young philosopher a revolt against his earlier educa-
tion in France, that is, against the “spiritualism of philosophers” and “the pen-
chant of certain sociologists to ignore the impact of regimes under the pretext
of analyzing deeper and more durable realities.”2 Introduction à la philosophie de
l’histoire (1938), the capstone of Aron’s second education, reasserts the eminent
importance of the choice of regime and of the initial and original engagement
with respect to the society in which one lives. In Aron’s thought, this “engage-
ment” would become ever more the result of a reflection on the world and of
a political deliberation. All of Aron’s works developed an intention he made
explicit at the end of his life: they attempt to “think political action philosophi-
cally,” the action by which men decide for themselves, and “to shed light on
all of the sectors of modern society,” that is of the society where human action
must now be exercised.3
This double intention is complementary—it clarifies the two aspects of the
philosophical reflection on history that Aron elaborated between German histori-
cism and the Thucydidean narrative. This double categorization, however, also
displays a certain tension. Man decides for himself through political action,
through an action that can be understood philosophically in its own nature, but, for
Aron, man also decides for himself in and with respect to modern society, which
then becomes the phenomenon that guides all of man’s reflection. This pos-
sible tension can be highlighted by a question: Did Aron’s profound grasp of the
tyrannies of his century depend above all on his understanding of politics or on
his knowledge of the unavoidable characteristics of modern societies? The terms
Aron uses to characterize the unity of his work in any case suggest a dialectic
that pervades all of his work and is most eminently illustrated when it comes to
the question of the political regime and modern democracy. It is necessary to
start by clarifying this fundamental point: to understand the nature of, and the
alternative between, the societies of his century, Aron reasserted the primacy of
 TH E QU ESTION OF POLITICA L R EGIM E 121

the political from a perspective defi ned by the decisive and unstable meeting point
between sociology and political philosophy.

The Primacy of the Political between Sociology and

Political Philosophy
The German experience thus prompted Aron to fi nd a way of thinking that
could understand action in history as well as the nature and metamorphoses of
human associations. Begun by the rigorous critique of the Marxist doctrine and
the study of German sociology, this search led Aron to develop a properly political
perspective. As he himself wrote, if his education is neo-Kantian and owes much
to German philosophy and even to the Auseinandersetzung with the mysteries of
Capital, his conclusions belong to a different spiritual family, or, one could say, to
a tradition that prolongs an older political approach right at the heart of moder-
nity: the school of Montesquieu and Tocqueville. The impact of the work of
Max Weber on both Aron’s elaboration of the scientific problem and his intellec-
tual ethic cannot be doubted, but the question of the political regime constitutes
one of the important points that gradually distanced Aron from the hero of his
youth. Despite the power of his insights, his probity, and his sense of tragedy,
Weber did not help, in Aron’s mind, to pose adequately the relation between sci-
ence and action, as well as the very question of the nature and the relations between
human societies as political bodies.
Once again we can return to Aron’s synthetic formulations and professions
of faith, where one fi nds his conclusions laid out which directly concern the
present topic of interest. Read attentively, they comprise the essentials of Aron’s
understanding of the political problem and modern society. In Les Etapes de la
pensée sociologique Aron presents the theoretical tradition of which he considers
himself to be a “latter-day descendant,” that is, “the French school of political
sociology, whose founders are Montesquieu and Tocqueville,” and to which Élie
Halévy also belongs: “it is a school of sociologists who are not very dogmatic,
who are essentially preoccupied with politics, who do not disregard the social
infrastructure but stress the autonomy of the political order, and think like liber-
als.” The clarification that follows completes the presentation of the fundamental
horizon of this perspective: in regards to this political school “modern society
is a democratic society that must be observed without transports of enthusiasm
or indignation. It possesses, to be sure, singular characteristics, but it is not the
ultimate fulfi llment of human destiny.”4
The conclusions at which Aron arrived also defi ne the terms of his under-
standing of the question of the political regime of modern societies. Such soci-
eties have their own characteristics that one cannot neglect. Their fundamental
character is a political quality, democracy, but comprehending this requires an
undogmatic analysis of politics and the social infrastructure. Despite their singu-
larity, they confi rm in any case the persistence of the political problem. Modern
society is not the end of history. It is not enough to conform to its paradigm
or resign oneself to its movement in order to fulfi ll human destiny. The search
for truth and the political condition of man are impetuses or arguments just as
122 GIU LIO DE LIGIO

powerful as adapting to modernity. While Aron in his Mémoires discusses his

attempt to attribute an “other ancestry” to the community of sociologists so that
they avoid the pitfalls of sociologism, and perhaps the ambivalence inherent in
the grandeur of Max Weber as well, his profession of faith is repeated and ful-
fi lled in ways that are particularly meaningful for our study. Montesquieu and
Tocqueville deserved to be reintroduced to sociologists because “they do not
break with the tradition of classical philosophy, although both of them stress the
connection between the social state and the political regime, therefore they shed
light on the conditions and social consequences of the political regime.”5 The
devaluation of politics that Aron ascribes to the sociological way of thinking of
Comte and Durkheim disregards the question of the “regime most suitable to
the spirit or demands of modern society.” If, on the contrary, Tocqueville “still
has something to say to us,” it is that “in the last analysis he set his sights on
politics.”6
The reference to the eternal question of the regime always follows the evoca-
tion of the tradition of classical philosophy and accompanies the affi rmation of
the political, even though Aron proposes a history, and elaborates a conception,
of sociology. In the same work where he tries to illustrate the sociological nature
of the thought of Montesquieu and Tocqueville, political philosophy arises when
it is a question of the political regime—considered crucial for Aron—or of the
determination of the differences of “value” between human societies. Thus,
Montesquieu proves to be the last of the classical philosophers and the fi rst of the
sociologists because, while reinterpreting classical thought in a sociological study
of all the aspects of society, he continues to maintain that the political regime
essentially defi nes society.7 As we will see, the case of Tocqueville is, according
to Aron, even more important for the theoretical lesson it contains. The com-
ments on Tocqueville in Les Etapes de la pensée sociologique reiterate the persistent
significance of his thought, which we have just explored by clarifying its char-
acteristics and the type of his approach. Tocqueville is indeed a sociologist for
Aron, but a sociologist who does not refrain from judging while he describes,
“he belongs to the tradition of classical political philosophers who would not
have conceived of analyzing regimes without judging them.”8 Aron writes else-
where that the Tocquevillean analysis “extends the Aristotelian tradition” by
emphasizing, for example, the stabilizing power of the middle class,9 or that it
“extends political philosophy at the same time that it takes up the sociological
project of Montesquieu.”10
The frequency of these classic characterizations of Tocqueville is revealing,
and leads us to meditate about their underlying arguments. The chapter that
Aron dedicates to Tocqueville in his history of sociology explains in what way
Tocqueville does not break with political philosophy: he extends the “analyti-
cal practice” of Aristotle and he does not think that the “fact” of a regime can
be understood and described as an abstract apart from its “quality.” The judg-
ment of a regime is intrinsically linked to its description. Knowledge of the
American politeia demands, for example, the individuation of the liberty that it
safeguards. Similarly, tyranny is the furthest from the best regime.11 We shall
see how Aron in turn extended this analytical practice in the twentieth century.
 TH E QU ESTION OF POLITICA L R EGIM E 123

The author of Démocratie et totalitarisme also rediscovered a classical interpretative

approach and certain classical themes in his attempt to understand the major
alternatives of his time, that is in his analysis of political regimes. The permanence
of the alternative between political regimes reaffirms for Aron why, in a sense,
“our political thought continues to live on our Greek inheritance” and similarly
why the critique of tyranny should be rounded out with “the sociological study
whose essential elements have been bequeathed to us by Plato, Aristotle, and
Thucydides.”12
If Aron insists on a certain continuity in the study of human associations, to
the point of referring to the anachronism of the Ancients’ “sociological study,”
it is because he wishes to preserve the consciousness of politics and the question
of the regime that determines it at the heart of the analysis of modern society.
His most synthetic and direct expression of this intention is undoubtedly to be
found in a text called Les sociologues et les institutions représentatives (1960). Here
Aron underlines the consequences of the fact that sociology could be defi ned
by the primacy of the concept of society over politics, by the scientific devaluation
of the regime or its subordination to the social totality. The experience itself of
modern societies in the twentieth century refutes this perspective. Aron outlines
the necessity of a true “conversion” of sociologists to a “way of thinking” that
will recognize the irreducible nature—or “autonomy”—of politics, as illustrated
by the impact of different representative institutions on societies. By addressing
the contemporary sociologist or the researcher, who is meant to study the spe-
cific traits of modern societies and their concomitant crises, Aron invites him
“to take more serious account of his relation to the political philosopher of yes-
terday.”13 This relation is defi ned by their common interests in the laws to be
given to a city, or the good government that could be considered suitable for a
society, without disregarding its social situation or limiting oneself to “explain-
ing tomorrow” the failure of its institutions. Aron thus links philosophy and
sociology around the political because the variables that sociologists use and the
problems they pose “resemble the variables that political philosophers used con-
fusedly and the problems that they posed clearly.”14 But can one measure the
variables adequately when the problems have not been posed clearly?
The political toward which sociologists should turn is presented by Aron as
the dimension of representative institutions, as an autonomous subsystem that
the other subsystems (economic, juridical, etc.) influence but do not determine,
and which is in fact susceptible to projecting its laws decisively onto all of the
other compartments of society. Its “logic” is irreducible and determinant but
it must also consider the “grammar” of the other sectors. One could then pre-
sent the political as a subsystem amongst the others that together compose the
whole, but also as an “architectonic subsystem”: it is in effect “through politics
that decisions are made that aim to attain the objectives of the entire collectiv-
ity.”15 Aron’s conception of the political helps us better understand, perhaps even
through its ambivalence itself, why he endorses a middle of the road perspective
shared by thinkers who are both liberal and interested above all in politics, both
sociologists of modern society and classical political philosophers. Aron himself
was not unaware of this ambivalence or dialectic in the text where he affi rmed
124 GIU LIO DE LIGIO

most clearly the theoretical proposition, clarifying judgment and action, of “the
primacy of the political.” In the introduction to Démocratie et totalitarisme Aron
begins by recalling the ambiguity, or rather three ambiguities, of the concept. He
introduces the issue in an Aristotelian fashion: the term politics is used in many
ways. First, he distinguishes between two meanings of the word by referring to
two English terms: policy—a program of action—and politics—the domain where
programs of action are in opposition to one another. Then the term indicates
both the reality and our consciousness of reality, where the latter is integral to
reality itself. The third ambiguity is what we have just mentioned, and for Aron
it is the most important: the word politics, according to its present usage, desig-
nates both a particular sector as well as the social whole itself. In a certain sense
the defi nition of that partial sector, this “fragment of the whole,”16 logically links
it to the social whole since the repercussions of political decisions on the entire
collectivity defi ne the conditions and characteristics of the other sectors.
As we shall see, in this way Aron ends up reviving another sense of the term
that includes its limited sense and its encompassing sense and is expressed by the
Greek word politeia. Nevertheless, this does not mean that he is suggesting any
sort of “unilateral determinism” where one phenomenon determines everything
else, in this case politics determining all other social domains (a sort of Marxist
doctrine in reverse). As a liberal sociologist, he does not seek to establish a pri-
mary cause—or “in the last analysis”—of the whole of society and to invest
political government with a power indifferent to social conditions. If he affirms
the primacy of the political—if the liberal sociologist rediscovers the classical
philosopher through the political—it is because “the way of living of the entire
community,” which distinguishes between collectivities belonging to the same
“type of society,” is defi ned by their type of partial political system, their form of
government. Aron goes one step further, or back, by asserting that the primacy
of the political maintains in his era above all “a human meaning.” The political
is more important than, for example, the economy “in regards to man,” because
it most directly concerns “the meaning of existence itself ” and the “relations of
men with each other.” It does not “determine” the relations within the family or
the church or the workplace, but the political organization of authority and the
form of government contribute toward fashioning all the relations between men
and their consciousness thereof. The primacy of which Aron speaks is then not
“causal” but it concerns nevertheless the “human or non-human character of the
entire collectivity.”17
However one interprets the dialectic at work in the Aronian understanding of
the limited sense and the encompassing sense, the political order proves to be one
of the “eternal problems” resulting from the human condition and which have
seen “changing and forever imperfect solutions through the ages,”18 “solutions”
by which men actualize their humanity. For Aron this is what the twentieth
century confi rmed in spite of, or even within, the great social, economic, and
technological transformations that marked it and brought it about. Just as drama
remains possible in the industrial age and war must therefore be understood and
governed, modern society does not resolve, by its own “process,” the question
of the best regime.
 TH E QU ESTION OF POLITICA L R EGIM E 125

The Classical Lesson of the Twentieth Century

If Aron was able to recommend meditating on the lessons of Thucydides just as
much as the works of Comte, it is because the problem of the forms of politics is
common to centuries that seem in other respects incommensurable. If the trans-
formations of the “matter”—technological means to produce or kill, volume
of societies, and so on—change the data, “to the extent that a human activity
is determined by an eternal problem and a constant fi nality, the similarity of
forms is neither arbitrary nor indifferent.”19 Therefore, one sees why Aron, in
the chapter of Démocratie et totalitarisme where he describes and justifies moving
in his analysis “from philosophy to sociology,” examines the stages that led to
the complete “dissolution of classical philosophy.” Whatever the state or impact
of the matter, even if one could say, for example, at what point the atomic issue
raises a serious and new concern, the question of the fi nality or criteria of politics
nevertheless remains, provided that the history is not knowable in its totality. As
has already been mentioned, this is one of the important aspects in which Aron
distanced himself from the Weberian approach. Weber himself seems to belong
to the posterity of Machiavelli and the era of Nietzsche in that “he would have
disregarded the old question of ‘what is the best regime?’ as devoid of mean-
ing.”20 In other words, in Aron’s mind Weber proved vulnerable to the same cri-
tique that the young French philosopher had addressed, albeit for other reasons,
to the “penchant” of certain sociologists who composed his early education in
France: he does not help pose the problem of political regime adequately. He
does not help distinguish, for example, between a tyrant, a Roman dictator, and
a “charismatic” though “constitutional” leader.
Before getting to his arguments we must clarify the meaning itself of the
extension of the question of regime in Aron’s work, which we had indicated
by pointing out his belonging to the political school of Montesquieu and
Tocqueville. The Aronian work dedicated to this subject is so vast and comprises
so many “literary genres” that one always risks forgetting the philosophical pre-
suppositions and unitary sense of his investigation. For Aron, the intelligibility
of the historical world and human groups necessitates a political science. Yet,
the most powerful theoretical perspectives of his era—historicism and positiv-
ism—led one to forget or reject the political questions themselves that defined
the human world. Another passage of Démocratie et totalitarisme brings out this
point and reformulates the relation between the social and the political that we
mentioned above: “A last phase in the dissolution of traditional political phi-
losophy is marked by what are called indiscriminately philosophies of history
or sociologies. Philosophies of history or sociology such as those of Marx or of
Auguste Comte, for example, have in common the subordination of the political
problem to the socio-economic one. Sociology, one can say, was founded in the
nineteenth century by reversing the traditional primacy of the political regime
over the economic and social structure.”21 The fundamental investigations change
as a result of this conceptual transformation. The defi nition of political regime
becomes the function or the response of another question, that is, the organiza-
tion of production or the historical evolution of societies. The criterion of judgment
126 GIU LIO DE LIGIO

also changes when one subordinates the political regime to the economic orga-
nization or to a historical stage of the collectivity. Aron sees the conceptions
affirming this transformation as subject to a double danger: total relativism and
dogmatism. In the two cases, the question of the ends of man or of the best regime
is not posed, because its response is given by history or because the question is
simply asked in vain.
As we have seen, Aron’s reaffi rmation of the question of the best regime does
not boil down to a simple return to classical philosophy. The work itself where
this theoretical proposition appears shows it clearly, although this is certainly not
Aron’s last word on the subject. Démocratie et totalitarisme was in effect intended to
serve as a sociological analysis of the political regimes of the twentieth century.
Originally, a set of lectures given at the Sorbonne in 1957–58, the work is note-
worthy in many respects. As the fi nale of a trilogy including Dix-Huit Leçons sur
la société industrielle and La Lutte de classes, it was meant to conclude a comparative
analysis of all the sectors of the two regimes that defi ned the twentieth century,
thereby completing the “true sense” of the investigation. Its original title, which
Aron thought was more accurate, encapsulated all the elements of the problem:
Sociologie des sociétés industrielles. Esquisse d’une théorie des régimes politiques. The
chapters introducing the analysis, whose importance we have already alluded to,
incorporate the terms of the dialectic that the title sums up. Aron reaffi rms the
primacy of the political regime and thus the persistence of that eminent question
in the twentieth century, all the while calling for a sociological investigation in
which Western democracy and Soviet totalitarianism are subsumed under the
same type of “industrial society.”
Without being able to enter into the details of Aron’s presentation, which
at times seem aporetic (although one should not forget Aron’s pedagogical or
“moderating” aim), one can underline the possible key, that is, the point at which
Aron’s approach is situated between philosophy and sociology. Aron justifies his
move from philosophical research to sociological study by the wish or neces-
sity to analyze how political institutions translate moral principles, on the one
hand, in a given social organization (in this case, industrial society) and, on the
other, taking into account the plurality of objectives pursued by the political
order. When he mentions the reasons that led him to “discard” the philosophical
search, a search whose sense he wishes on the other hand to extend, Aron means
to say that he has discarded the search for the best regime “in the abstract.”22
He does not reject the question “sociologically” because it “is part of the real-
ity itself.”23 Thus, in order to describe and judge the regimes of his time, Aron
does not reject classical philosophies (as does Hannah Arendt) but takes the cri-
terion of number, employed in that “venerable book” of Aristotle, and applies it
to an organization based on party representation (one or many).24 Furthermore,
he draws on Montesquieu’s notion of “principle” to bolster his explanation. It
would be necessary to see how this political analysis of the social dimension is
enlarged and complicated by taking into account the relation between spiritual
power and temporal power, the ideology, or the “metaphysical intention” at the
origin of the “secular religions.”25 In any case, it will suffice here to summa-
rize the two conclusions at which the entire Aronian reflection arrives without
 TH E QU ESTION OF POLITICA L R EGIM E 127

hesitation. It was possible to understand which of the two “industrial societies”

that divided the continents and souls of the twentieth century was compara-
tively the best. One cannot understand a society without considering the political
regime that defi nes its style and the hierarchy of its objectives, its distribution of
resources and the relation between its groups, its “type of man.”26
We have just said that it is crucial to understand the sense and theoretical
significance of the study of political regimes in Aron’s work. Such a study is
thus well founded and important, it is decisive or necessary in any case if pol-
itics is not substantially devalued by history or society, by a conception of the
historical or social totality. In the Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire, as in
L’Opium des intellectuels, Aron showed in what sense and with what consequences
the impossibility of determining the end of History, of realizing the Universal
and Homogeneous State, sustains and calls for the political thought to which he
has given himself. He establishes and illustrates the meaning of the comparison
of regimes by refuting systems of absolute interpretation of the future and by the
demystification of the dogmas that justified the pretensions of the totalitarians.
The rational discussion of regimes therefore accompanies the reestablishment of
a conception of history, the “delimitation” of an unaccomplished history where
one can nevertheless know criteria of judgment and “degrees” of good. The
impossibility of determining the future in advance is not the same thing as igno-
rance of the principles of a human society. This is why “in the political realm it
is wisdom that judges millenarianism.”27 An essay like Le fanatisme, la prudence et
la foi, written revealingly in 1956 to respond to objections raised against L’Opium
des intellectuels, powerfully presents the philosophical reasons that led Aron to
confi ne his thought to the distinctions which characterize the sublunar world.28
Aron’s history is a political history. An opaque experience, it does not forbid
knowing the character of wholes, the knowledge of what makes the unity and
the quality of a collectivity. Nor does it forbid what for Aron is the “scientifically
legitimate” and “politically inevitable” approach by which one discerns the traits
common to all societies, their advantages and disadvantages, and their unequal
imperfection. In a sense, the political is in effect both an architectonic and rel-
ative question because all regimes are “always imperfect solutions,” but their
imperfection is not of the same nature: constitutional-pluralist regimes are for
example imperfect in practice while totalitarian regimes are imperfect in essence.29
“Some arbitrary detentions (which one would be right to denounce) are insep-
arable from the imperfection of men and societies. A few million concentration
camp deportees reveal a system.”30 These differences of degree of imperfection
that distinguish human collectives concern the “quantities” that must be ana-
lyzed, but they require political distinctions, that is distinctions between polit-
ical wholes: “the liberal order continues to differ in nature from the tyrannical
order . . . Whoever can see only a difference of degree between the state ideology
in Moscow and the ‘symbolic violence’ in Paris is blinded by sociologism and
ends up obscuring the issues of our century.”31
Aron’s reading of the political regimes of modern societies also prolongs the
tradition of classical political philosophy. It is supported by a science or keen
awareness of the “precariousness of human affairs” and thus of the unprogressive
128 GIU LIO DE LIGIO

character of “political change.” This science leads Aron to pose the problem
and analyze the types of corruption, which is always possible and ever fatal, for
political regimes.32 It culminates in an attempt to classify political regimes that
Aron outlines and systematizes for the societies of his time. His Remarques sur la
classifi cation des régimes politiques (1965) applies “a method conforming more to
the tradition of Aristotle or Montesquieu” than to that of Weber.33 However, if
typology of principles of legitimacy elaborated by the German emperor of soci-
ology proves for Aron to be too formal to contribute to the historical discern-
ment of the essential characteristics of regimes, the Aristotelian classification itself
presupposes the infrastructure of a certain type of society, the Greek city. Once
again, one fi nds here the conclusions of the French political school. Aron again
reminds us that it is necessary to attempt an analytical combination: a classifica-
tion capable of rendering intelligible the realities of the twentieth century should
combine—following Montesquieu’s approach, although avoiding the difficulties
raised by some of his arguments that suggest an “inexorable determinism”—the
classification of social types and that of political regimes.34
We can now better understand “the lesson of the century,” which, for Aron,
should drive the sociologists to overcome their “simplistic conception of the
social totality,” to discard “the utopia of a unified and homogeneous soci-
ety,” therefore to come to recognize politics as “an eternal category of human
existence, a permanent sector of every society.” It was the old lesson given by
Tocqueville: “The political regime determines, for the most part, the form of the
collectivity . . . The sociologists of the West take up the alternative of Alexis de
Tocqueville. Certainly, modern societies are inevitably industrial, commercial,
democratic; but are they liberal or despotic? The choice depends on the political
regime.”35 The “lesson of Tocqueville” seems to reveal the core of the Aronian
approach. It is this manner of political thinking that helps one recognize the
essential alternatives, even if the social phenomena of an era are not reducible to
them. It is this analytical practice that preserves, within more or less providential
transformations, the question of the justice of the city, of the grandeur of man,
and of the ultimate meaning of the evolution of the world. It is this classical per-
spective that helps one see “further than the parties.” It is the voice that Aron
proclaims at the end of his inaugural lecture at the Collège de France because it
gives encouragement to those who bow neither before the modern Prometheus
nor before the despondent expectation of the last man. It is the “new political
science” that illuminates the thinker who is always interested in political choices
because he accepts the path of modern civilization, all the while knowing that
humanity has followed it “for good or for ill.” It is the “salutary fear” or the
“limpid and sad prose” that nourishes the philosophical concern of the sociolo-
gist, who, analyzing the course of history and its societies, tries to discern “what
is important” and asks himself: “by what right can one affirm that men will
lose or save their souls in the cathedrals of cement, glass, or metal, which they
build for themselves and their descendants?”36 By reading him politically, Aron
rediscovers in the thinker of the “two distinct humanities” a sociologist who is at
the same time a philosopher, a voice that echoes through the ages, and a classical
educator of modern democracy.
 TH E QU ESTION OF POLITICA L R EGIM E 129

Democracy as Political Regime

Aron came to discuss the “problem of Tocqueville” because the Norman phi-
losopher-sociologist had formulated in his eyes “the central problem of our
civilization.”37 It is the political problem of societies that seem marked by an
irresistible movement toward the equality of conditions, or rather by a move-
ment that is apparently irresistible but which can nevertheless preserve liberty
or transform itself into tyranny. Already at the end of the war Aron returns to
Tocqueville’s “prophecy” or science when he writes L’âge des empires38 or when
he gives his course Introduction à la philosophie politique in 1952. This latter lec-
ture anticipates, in a classical form, the fundamental traits of his sociological
lessons at the Sorbonne. Already, in this introduction, Aron moves from present
political realities to expose the alternatives of his time, or the decisive disorder
of his century, and to try to “return to the fundamental problems of collective
life.”39 Furthermore, while Aron the sociologist seems sometimes to consider the
immense development of industry and technology as the major factor of the era,
in this course he relies on Tocqueville because he seeks to discuss the “domi-
nant fact” of the century, which is the acceptance of the democratic regime, the
universalization of democratic legitimacy. The confrontation of the Cold War
turns out to be a confrontation between two interpretations or realizations of
this legitimacy. The major fact of the era can therefore be better described as the
rivalry between two regimes that are equally engaged in the industrial enterprise
and call themselves democracies. Aron proposes engaging and defi ning that rivalry
“sociologically and philosophically,”40 that is, by moving from political realities.
If Aron’s understanding of modern tyrannies showed his ethical and theoret-
ical virtues in full force, his insight into democracy was just as keen and reveal-
ing of those virtues, though displayed somewhat more subtly. As we discussed
at the outset, Aron did not lose hope in democracy even if, like in the Thirties,
he demonstrated its weaknesses or dangers. He has fulfi lled his role as a philoso-
pher and proven himself to be a classic through his defense and illustration of the
political nature of democracy. Aron did not hesitate to present explicitly liberal
democracy as the best, or the least imperfect, among all possible regimes,41 but he
was not silent about its contradictions, the kernel of truth contained within the
error of his enemies, or the theoretical and practical challenges that democracy
must inevitably and incessantly face. In the twentieth century, this theoretical
horizon led Aron to a confrontation with Marx and Nietzsche or their descen-
dants, and not to limit himself to the proclamation or speculative elaboration
of democratic “ideas.” The goods affi rmed or preserved by democracy, which
make it a regime essentially preferable to tyrannies, cannot be analyzed “in the
abstract.” In the “precariousness of human affairs,” or in an unaccomplished
history, understanding every society as a political regime means for Aron under-
standing “the problems that characterize it.”42 All the while being the best of
all possible regimes for modern societies, liberal democracy shares along with
the other regimes the imperfect nature inherent in political things. It also suf-
fers from a particular instability, from particularly acute tensions, on account
of its political characteristics—fi rst of all, its “pluralist” character—and as an
130 GIU LIO DE LIGIO

expression of the fragility and disillusions inherent to modern society.43 Aron’s

work confi rms that the experimentum crucis that totalitarianism constituted for
Western thought has its counterpart in the interpretation of democracy, which
continues to be an eminent case for political philosophy.
Aron’s presentation to the Société française de philosophie on July 17, 1939,
whose moral significance, historical lucidity, and theoretical rigor have rightly
been underscored, also presents certain strong Aronian insights regarding the
democratic experience.44 Aron invites the philosophers to recover, in the wake of
war, their specific “responsibility” in the city. To “save democracy” is not about
“crying out with the parties” but defi ning the problems posed by the situation
and the means necessary to resolving them. Even the “immediate problems” in
effect call for theoretical clarity so that action is not paralyzed. The conceptual
distinctions to which the philosopher should dedicate himself concern especially
the nature of the opposing regimes, États démocratiques et États totalitaires. If the
defi nition of tyrannies in the twentieth century poses fundamental problems, the
clarification of democracy itself presents difficulties: in a certain sense, it is nec-
essary to distinguish between liberal democracy and its immanent philosophy.
Aron endeavors in particular to reestablish an argument that runs counter to the
progressive conscience: democracies are essentially “conservative” since they aim
to conserve “the moral and social foundations” of European societies. An open
experience, democracy tries to “renew” the “principles of Western civilization”
from which it hails. Understood in its political sense revolution is not to be con-
fused necessarily with a liberation, since it denotes a regime change whose causes and
multiple consequences must be analyzed. The conceptual knot that concerns the
interpretation of history is not the only one that must be undone.
Aron also emphasizes that democracies are not reduced to humanitarianism
or to what he calls elsewhere an “ethic of enjoyment,” since they must be capa-
ble of political virtues, those virtues and ends that are mutilated and perverted by
totalitarian discourse: democracies must demonstrate their capability for com-
mon action and, indeed, even a sort of heroism well understood. The political
understanding of democratic morality, whose necessity Aron illustrates, likewise
allows one to discern the nature of wholes, to judge societies, all the while
proceeding discriminately. The people and the regime can be distinguished in
certain respects. The “growing decomposition of democracy” is not just in the
material order because it is born of the lack of faith in the regime and its inability
to respond to collective problems. In this decomposition, something announces
the passage to an authoritarian or tyrannical regime, but it does not result in
totalitarianism when a certain authority is restored in the face of tyrannies. Aron
indicates in what sense the modern experience has not overcome the demand for
a political art of such a sort. The administration of things does not replace the
government of people. It remains vain or insufficient to align oneself with these
“immortal principles” because they are nothing “if they are not motivated by
life and faith,” that is, in political terms, if they are not inscribed in history by
common actions and forms.
The Chroniques de guerre in London prolongs the echo of the examination
of one’s conscience that Aron proposes to the European democracies. The
 TH E QU ESTION OF POLITICA L R EGIM E 131

philosopher continues to fulfi ll his role in the middle of the war. Even when he
supports the democratic cause, Aron does not refrain from examining its nature
and its weaknesses. In his eyes, what is crucial is showing on the one hand that
democracy is the regime whose essence requires the enduring support of political
consciousness, and on the other, that, without responding fatally to a historical
necessity, “the progression of constitutions is not coincidental, it does not result
from pure accidents.”45 An article from June 1941, Naissance des tyrannies, unveils
something more of the classic approach that Aron resurrects in his attempt to
understand the singular phenomena of the twentieth century. It is revealing
that, while other eminent thinkers of the time had revisited the Greek politi-
cal philosophers to look for the most profound roots of modern totalitarianism,
Aron had consulted Plato and Aristotle in order to understand the “decomposi-
tion of democracy into tyranny” that he had observed in Germany. The affinity
between the corruption of ancient and modern democracies is justified for Aron
by a certain continuity of psychological and political phenomena. As different as the
economic, technological, or social circumstances might be, there are still anal-
ogous dynamics in human souls and in the relations between men. Aron thus
outlines “the translation in modern terms” of certain arguments of Greek politi-
cal philosophy that would continue to inspire his analyses and commentaries. Let
us cite the most important of them.
Aron derives first from Plato a hermeneutical principle of political life: polit-
ical regimes are what the men are who give them life. This also raises an argu-
ment about the dynamic of the soul and the city that Aron presents as ever fatal
but always possible: despotism can arise from license. The sign of the corrup-
tion of a democracy is par excellence the situation where “the rulers seem to be
ruled and the ruled seem to be rulers.”46 Aron draws attention to the poten-
tial for tyrannical mores, words, or practices to enter progressively into liberal
regimes—he discerns their moral and material causes as well as their social and
intellectual roots. He illustrates the effects of demagogy on the conception of
liberty or the experience of the law and the “immoderate” disequilibria that are
produced in the relations between poor and rich and which weaken the unity of
the city. This is why Aristotle offers him the political principle that, combined
with the “principle” and “politics” of Montesquieu, doubtlessly defines the core
of his perspective: “One must not push too far the application of the principle
inherent to each regime.”47
Aron developed the perspective outlined and practiced at the onset of the war
in the great courses that we have explored in this text as well as in other works
such as La Révolution introuvable and Plaidoyer pour l’Europe décadente. The words
addressed to public opinion illustrate the same concern to have others appre-
ciate the fragility of modern societies and to put others on guard against the
persistent risk of the “self-destruction of democracy.” Therefore, one must not
interpret these words as the jeremiads of an old thinker turned “pessimist” or as
the repetitive refrain of an “ancient” philosopher criticizing democracy. These
public speeches are motivated by the concern of the citizen; they are also held
up by the eternal problems that always question the minds of men. Their argu-
ments lay out a “way of political thinking” that “still has something to say to us.”
132 GIU LIO DE LIGIO

Since the appearance of these books, liberal democracy has neither reverted to an
opposed regime nor has it self-destructed, but, for example, one must still con-
sider the capacity for collective action that it preserves in Europe by pursuing the
movement that worried Aron. If one reads the lectures where he most rigorously
develops his arguments, one sees in any case that Aron invites the reader to con-
sider and judge democracy in light of a dialectic that characterizes every political
regime. If he holds liberal democracy to be the best of imperfect regimes, it is
that its institutions are at the service of personal liberties, that competition for
the exercise of power is peaceful, and that it is a moderate political order that can
integrate the matter of modern society. In other words, to take up the defi nition
established and developed in Démocratie et totalitarisme, Aron illustrates the merits
of Western democracy as a constitutional-pluralist regime. For Aron, it is this lib-
eral character of its institutions—and of its public spirit—that most adequately
defi nes the democratic “idea” in modern society. A descendant of Aristotle and
the school of Montesquieu and Tocqueville, Aron nevertheless does not hold to
this liberal formulation. We better understand the sense and the implications
of his “conclusions”: the experience of modern democracy remains political. It
must therefore preserve a political consciousness or science of itself.
The analytical developments of the Introduction à la philosophie politique and of
Démocratie et totalitarisme should also be read in terms of how they explain the
dialectics that defi ne political life and modern society. First of all it is necessary
that the regime be considered legitimate but that it also be effective, and that it man-
ages to respond to the fundamental problems posed by history to every political
community: for Aron the good of a regime must integrate what can safeguard it,
in the same way that virtue is distinct and inseparable from political virtue. We have
seen that Aron does not draw on the classical philosophers just for a critique of
tyranny. He is also attentive to their teachings on the education that common life
demands and brings with it. The political thinker thus alerts the theoretician of
liberalism: “before society can be free, it is necessary that it be.”48 Every political
community is in effect defi ned by a certain articulation between multiplicity and
unity.49 Every political community must be composed in a certain political way.
Reformulating the conclusions of Greek political science and of the French polit-
ical school, Aron thus summarizes the lesson concerning the democratic regime:
“Democracies are corrupted either by the exaggeration or by the negation of
their principles.”50 They are always exposed either to the default or to the exag-
geration of the sense of compromise,51 to an excess of oligarchy or demagogy, or
to a disequilibrium between political power and social power. They allow and
arouse a manifest and confl ictual plurality, but they rest on a certain collective
understanding and live only through a shared experience.52 This Aronian per-
spective implies a political explication that accompanies or contains the question
of the regime in an era characterized in Europe by the “contestation of the very
principle of political units,” the nation, and, outside of the old continent, by the
extension of democratic legitimacy to collectivities “without traditions of com-
mon political life,” that is to “still fragile political bodies.”53 Democracy implies,
to be sure, a social and human wager, but a wager whose terms can and must be
understood: the desire to create a common life and effective action from confl ict
 TH E QU ESTION OF POLITICA L R EGIM E 133

and plurality could never entirely disregard the demand for a certain “coherence
of the political body” capable of moderating and educating rivalries.
Whether it comes to its preconditions, causes of corruption or virtues, Aron
endeavors to bring liberal democracy back “to earth,” back to the opacity inher-
ent in human history. It is by taking account of the problems that character-
ize it that liberal democracy can be preserved in this sublunar world as the
best of the imperfect regimes. One could say that liberal democracy for Aron
always risks posing itself as a solution and lacking awareness of itself as a politi-
cal regime. In effect, it tends to consign the justice of the collective order to the
historical or economic ruse of reason, or to reduce internal and external action
to the spreading of human rights, even when this tendency makes it politically
impotent. Nonetheless, “recognition” is an operating principle of common life
only within a political order that makes clear its content.54 Similarly, the prin-
ciple of consent or liberty cannot be established as the “unique principle of the
political order”55 because men and regimes pursue a plurality of objectives.
Aron reformulates or completes these democratic or liberal questions by asking:
which equalities and inequalities must a community recognize in the “relations
between men”? Within which community can a private sphere be protected?56
External relations confi rm and accentuate the need to think the opacity in
which democratic man must also live. For Aron, the “doubtful combats” inher-
ent in foreign policy in effect could not be understood or conducted according
to the sole criterion of respect for rights: the fact that there is no country in
which all rights are always respected means that men are necessarily called to the
comparison of regimes (or of allies) and to a contingent deliberation.57 At times
believing itself to be a religion or the only regime “whose principles impose that
it does not have to defend itself against its enemies,”58 liberal democracy forgets
that no human association in history can be defined by the fact of not defending
its own principle, or its own existence. It also forgets that it continues to be the
object of more or less extreme criticism, which Aron shows as more or less just
or unjust, thereby fulfi lling his responsibility in regards to the city by searching
for its truth or the truth.59
Philosophy or sociology, philosophy and sociology, the political science that
allowed Aron to understand the “lesson of the century” endeavors to extend a
teaching whose pertinence and importance, in different forms, has been con-
fi rmed by the modern world. Man continues to “defi ne himself ” through politi-
cal action and historical judgment, even if “the quarrels of the Forum” do not
exhaust “the secret of man’s destiny.”60 This is why the liberal sociologist, in
order to understand and instruct democracy, questions it philosophically and
thinks it politically.

Notes
1. Cf. “La société industrielle et les dialogues politiques de l’Occident,” in Colloques
de Rheinfelden, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1960, 37–38.
2. “De la condition historique du sociologue” (1971), in Raymond Aron, Les Sociétés
modernes, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 2006, 1073.
134 GIU LIO DE LIGIO

3. Cf. Raymond Aron, Le Spectateur engagé. Entretiens avec Jean-Louis Missika et

Dominique Wolton, Paris, Julliard, 1981; Editions de Fallois, Paris, 2004, 73–74, 419.
4. Raymond Aron, Les Etapes de la pensée sociologique, Paris, Gallimard, 1967,
295–296.
5. Raymond Aron, Mémoires. 50 ans de réflexion politique, (1983) Paris, Laffont, 2003,
351–352.
6. Ibid.
7. Aron, Les Etapes de la pensée sociologique, 66.
8. Ibid., 239.
9. Raymond Aron, Les Désillusions du progrès. Essai sur la dialectique de la modernité,
Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1969, 20.
10. “Élie Halévy et l’ère des tyrannies,” in É. Halévy, L’Ere des tyrannies, Paris,
Gallimard, 1990, 273.
11. Ibid., 240.
12. “Introduction,” to A. Ponceau, Timoléon: réflexions sur la tyrannie, Edition du
Myrte, Paris, 1950, 13–14.
13. “Les sociologues et les institutions représentatives” (1960), in Raymond Aron, Les
Sociétés modernes, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 2006, 714.
14. Ibid., 713.
15. Ibid., 712–713.
16. Aron, Les Désillusions du progrès, 35.
17. Cf. Raymond Aron, Démocratie et totalitarisme, Paris, Gallimard, 1965, 32–37. On
the primacy of the political see also Raymond Aron, Paix et guerre entre les nations
(1962), Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 2004, 56–57; “Thucydide et le récit historique”
(1960), in Raymond Aron, Dimensions de la conscience historique, Paris, Plon, 1964,
146.
18. Aron, Les Désillusions du progrès, 36.
19. “Thucydide et le récit historique,” 141–142.
20. “Max Weber et la politique de puissance” (1964), in Raymond Aron, Machiavel et
les tyrannies modernes, Paris, Éditions de Fallois, 1993, 227.
21. Aron, Démocratie et totalitarisme, 47
22. Ibid., 54.
23. Ibid., 53.
24. Ibid., 97–98.
25. Cf. “L’avenir des religions séculières” (1944), in Raymond Aron, Chroniques
de guerre: La France libre 1940–1945, Paris, Gallimard, 1990; Raymond Aron,
Introduction à la philosophie politique: démocratie et révolution (1952), Paris, Le Livre de
Poche, 1997, 218–220; Aron, Paix et guerre entre les nations, 665–670.
26. Cf. Aron, Mémoires, 126.
27. “Millénarisme ou sagesse?” (1955), in Raymond Aron, Penser la liberté, penser la
démocratie, Paris, Gallimard, 2005, 457.
28. “Le fanatisme, la prudence et la foi” (1956), in Raymond Aron, Marxismes imag-
inaires, Paris, Gallimard, 1970, 146.
29. Cf. Aron, Démocratie et totalitarisme, 53, 264, 342, 354.
30. “Millénarisme ou sagesse?” 450.
31. Aron, Mémoires, 748.
32. “De la corruption des régimes politiques,” in Le Contrat social, no. 6, November
1958.
33. “Remarques sur la classification des régimes politiques” (1965), in Raymond
Aron, Les Sociétés modernes, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 2006, 765.
 TH E QU ESTION OF POLITICA L R EGIM E 135

34. Ibid., 767.

35. “Les sociologues et les institutions représentatives,” 716–717. On the alternative
of Tocqueville, see also Aron, Démocratie et totalitarisme, 34, 363–365; Aron, Les
Etapes de la pensée sociologique, 223–224; “L’aube de l’histoire universelle” (1960),
in Raymond Aron, Dimensions de la conscience historique, Paris, Plon, 1961, 233.
36. “De la condition historique du sociologue,” 1091–1092.
37. Aron, Introduction à la philosophie politique, 35–36.
38. “L’âge des empires” (1945), in Raymond Aron, Chroniques de guerre: La France libre
1940–1945, Paris, Gallimard, 1990, 984–985.
39. Aron, Introduction à la philosophie politique, 15.
40. Ibid., 31.
41. Ibid., 135–137.
42. Aron, Démocratie et totalitarisme, 128–129.
43. Cf. Aron, Les Désillusions du progrès.
44. Cf. “États démocratiques et états totalitaires” (1939), in Raymond Aron, Penser la
liberté, penser la démocratie, 55–106.
45. “Naissance des tyrannies” (1941), in Raymond Aron, Chroniques de guerre, 516.
46. Ibid., 508. Cf. also Aron, Introduction à la philosophie politique, 104; Aron, Démocratie
et totalitarisme, 179.
47. Ibid., 509.
48. “La définition libérale de la liberté” (1961), in Raymond Aron, Les Sociétés mod-
ernes, 642.
49. Aron, Démocratie et totalitarisme, 233.
50. Aron, Introduction à la philosophie politique, 99.
51. Cf. Aron, Démocratie et totalitarisme, 177.
52. Ibid., 78–79, 174.
53. La Démocratie à l’épreuve du XXe siècle, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1960, 49.
54. Raymond Aron, L’Opium des intellectuels, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1955; reissue:
Paris, Hachette, 2002, 127–128; “Millénarisme ou sagesse?” 455–457.
55. “Le fanatisme, la prudence et la foi,” 118.
56. “La définition libérale de la liberté,” 645.
57. Cf. Aron, Le Spectateur engagé, 400–409 (ch. “Les droits de l’homme ne font pas
une politique”).
58. Aron, Introduction à la philosophie politique, 92–93.
59. Cf. “La responsabilité sociale du philosophe” (1957), in Raymond Aron,
Dimensions de la conscience historique, 255–269.
60. Aron, L’Opium des intellectuels, 11. Cf. also Aron, Le Spectateur engagé, 73–74; Aron,
Introduction à la philosophie politique, 245.
CHAPTER 10

THE TOTALITARIAN NEGATION OF MAN:

RAYMOND ARON ON IDEOLOGY AND
TOTALITARIANISM

Daniel J. Mahoney

R aymond Aron’s life and political ref lection was coextensive with the totali-
tarian epoch that emerged with the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 and came
to an end with the implosion of the Soviet Union in the years immediately fol-
lowing his death in 1983. He did a great deal to educate western public opinion
about the nature of totalitarianism, but he did not live to see the final defeat of
the regime based upon the ideological Lie. His was a posthumous victory.
It was the rise of National Socialism in pre-Hitler Germany that cured Aron
of progressivist illusions and awakened him to the deadly threat that totalitarian-
ism posed to western civilization. Studying and teaching in Cologne and Berlin
between 1930 and 1933, Aron “felt, almost physically, the approach of historical
storms,”1 as he so suggestively put it in his Inaugural Address to the Collège de
France in 1970. As a result of that experience, he “ceased to believe that history
automatically obeys the dictates of reason or the desires of men of good will.”2 He
“lost faith and held on, not without effort, to hope.”3 He “discovered the enemy”
that he would relentlessly pursue all his adult life—“totalitarianism.”4 “In any
form of fanaticism, even one inspired by idealism, I suspect a new incarnation
of the monster,”5 he writes—a formulation that can serve as his mature politi-
cal credo. If National Socialism revealed the “diabolical essence”6 of a politics
bereft of all decency and any respect for common humanity, the Soviet Union
showed the monstrous consequences of all efforts to build heaven on earth. In the
years before 1945, Aron concentrated on analyzing and exposing the National
Socialist subversion of humanity. In the post-1945 years, he turned his attention
to a critique of Communist totalitarianism, while never forgetting its kinship
with, and differences from, its frère-ennemi (brother-enemy), National Socialism.
Aron’s critique of National Socialism as an essentially revolutionary and total-
itarian state and movement is expressed with rare eloquence and authority in his
138 DA N I E L J. M A HON E Y

June 17, 1939 address to the French Philosophical Society on “Democratic and
Totalitarian States.” 7 The 34-year-old Aron spoke as a self-declared adherent
of “democratic conservatism.”8 Drawing on intellectual categories provided by
Max Weber and Vilfredo Pareto, he drew a portrait of the new revolutionary
“elites” who set the tone for totalitarianism in Hitler’s Germany. These elites
had a debased “taste for violence.”9 National Socialist and fascist elites had mas-
tered techniques for moving men, a capacity for manipulation that was indis-
tinguishable from “scorn”10 for the masses. They reduced individuals to “means
of production”11 or “objects of propaganda”12 and mocked the traditional moral
categories of Western civilization. In the moral realm, they pursued a compre-
hensive transvaluation of values: all the “old forms of family life, of university
and intellectual life”13 were under assault. Totalitarian states repudiated the “old
virtues” held dear by bourgeois civilization: “respect for the person, respect for
the mind, . . . personal autonomy.”14 In their place, they cultivated harsh military
virtues, “virtues of action, of asceticism, of devotion.”15 In principle, they rec-
ognized no limit to the interventions and coercion of the State. They assaulted
political and economic liberty and “showed unmistakably . . . that when one
wants to administer everything, one is obliged to govern everything as well.”16
Writing on the eve of the Second World War, Aron feared that democratic
states were “hard to sustain” and that the future may lie with that “peculiar mix-
ture of demagogy, technique, irrational faith and police force”17 that character-
istically defined totalitarian states. This was all the more reason for saving what
was worth saving in the democratic idea. Those who cared for the future of
democracy needed to free themselves from what Aron would later call, in The
Opium of the Intellectuals, the “myth of revolution.”18 They needed to conserve a
liberal civilization worth conserving. This would demand discipline, respect for
authority, and technical competence. But above all, it demanded the “intellectual
courage” to face the totalitarian threat and the problems that threatened “the very
existence of a country like France.”19 Democratic regimes necessarily have to
remain faithful to the rule of law (the appeal to “popular sovereignty” could be
too easily abused by the totalitarians) while rejecting the notion that power could
ever be exercised without limits. Democratic regimes are defi ned by “a decent
respect for persons,”20 persons whom they refuse to treat as fodder for an omni-
competent state. Much of Aron’s analysis in the 1939 address also holds true for
Leninist-Stalinist totalitarianism. But he would not make an explicit comparison
of the two totalitarianisms until his two-part 1944 essay on “The Future of the
Secular Religions.” We will return to that essay in the course of our discussion.
The 1939 address on “Democratic and Totalitarian States” paved the way for
Aron’s fuller critical engagement with the nihilism and fanaticism of National
Socialism in the series of essays he wrote for La France libre between 1940 and
1945. For our purposes, the most relevant essays are those collected in the 1944
volume L’Homme contre les tyrans. These essays are among the most thoughtful
and moving that Aron ever composed. They are forthright about the weaknesses
of the democracies, even as they defend liberty and human dignity against the
menace of a tyranny devoted to total war, ideological fanaticism, and scorn for
ordinary humanity. Aron locates the roots of the new tyranny in an unabashed
 T H E TOTA LI TA R I A N N EGAT ION OF M A N 139

Machiavellianism that repudiates any moral or spiritual constraints on the use of

power. He does not hesitate to speak about a struggle unto death between civili-
zation and barbarism. The new barbarians openly celebrate cruelty and violence.
They no longer see it as the ultima ratio, the last resort of civilized peoples in
defense of civilized order.21 Violence becomes the supreme criterion for judg-
ing the virtues and vices of men. This “modern cult of violence”22 utilizes all
the tools of modernity and modern science at the service of an essentially ata-
vistic ideal. It was, indeed, what Churchill famously called a “new Dark Age,
made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted
science.”23
Aron knew that human beings were capable of great evil as well as consid-
erable good. His was a balanced evaluation of human nature. He adamantly
rejected the nihilistic pessimism of National Socialism that transformed pessi-
mism about human nature into open contempt for man. He uncovered the roots
of that pessimism in the thought of Machiavelli, Nietzsche, Schmitt, and Pareto
without holding any of these thinkers directly responsible for the crimes of the
Hitlerite regime.24 Against a cold-blooded doctrine that posited masters and
slaves, higher and lower types of human beings, Aron defended the integrity of
the human soul, “the idea of the presence, in each individual, of a soul or a mind,
a presence which founds dignity and the right to respect.”25 This affirmation was
at the same time biblical, liberal, and Kantian. It was the spiritual accompani-
ment and underpinning of Aron’s “democratic conservatism.” In his essays for
La France libre, he envisioned a Europe where men would not consent to being
instruments of “administrative machines, nor elements of fanaticized masses, nor
companions of conquering elites.”26 At its core, the critique of National Socialist
totalitarianism was a critique of a nihilism that romanticized violence and led to
a ferocious contempt for human beings as they really are.
Aron’s fi rst sustained comparison of National Socialist and Communist
totalitarianism can be found in his two-part 1944 essay “The Future of Secular
Religions.”27 He was one of a series of thinkers (Eric Voegelin and Jules Monnerot
also come to mind) who introduced the concept of “political religion” or “secu-
lar religion” as a means of capturing the distinctiveness of totalitarianism. His
1944 article highlights the Manicheanism of the secular religions, the division
of the world into two competing camps, one of which must be eliminated for
the sake of secular salvation. Marxist-Leninists fulminated against capitalists,
National Socialists against plutocrats and Jews. This Manicheanism went hand
in hand with an open repudiation of all universal ethics, whether secular or
Christian in character. We have seen that Aron could not accept that repudiation
which was nothing less than a rejection of the moral law and human dignity. He
also shrewdly pointed out the weaknesses of the secular religions. As “religions”
of collective salvation, they could not “offer individuals the same consolations
or hopes.”28 The worship of the collectivity and its leaders was nothing less than
“the pagan state resurrected,”29 as Georges Bernanos had incisively argued dur-
ing the war. Aron further suggested that secular religions were “undermined
from the outset by a secret unbelief.”30 “It is not easy for representatives of Homo
sapiens to believe that Mussolini is always right or that Hitler’s words defi ne good
140 DA N I E L J. M A HON E Y

and evil.”31 Against the subversion of ordinary moral judgment proffered by the
ideologists of Left and Right, Aron appealed to the power of conscience, that
reminder of the moral law within each human being.
If Aron fl irted with existentialism in his writings on the philosophy of history
in the 1930s, his essays in La France libre suggested that the totalitarian negation
of universal ethics had led him back to more traditional affirmations. The pathos
and beauty of these essays arises in no small part from Aron’s recognition of
precisely what was at stake in the struggle between National Socialism and the
remnant of western civilization. It should be added that Aron later turned away
from using the idiom of “secular religion” to describe twentieth century totali-
tarianism. He did so in no small part because of his respect for transcendental
religions whose faith he could not affirm, but whose ideals and affi rmations still
spoke to his soul. As he put it in his Mémoires at the end of his life, “I often sym-
pathize with the Catholics, loyal to their faith, who demonstrate a total freedom
of thought in all profane matters. The horror of secular religions makes me feel
some sympathy for transcendent religions.”32 He did not wish to disparage the
word religion by using it to describe those movements and regimes that repudiated
the best traditions of the West and that had nothing but contempt for conscience
and the age-old distinction between good and evil.
With the defeat of the Third Reich, Aron turned his attention to the surviv-
ing totalitarianism of the twentieth century. In an eloquent and discerning chap-
ter of Les Guerres en chaîne (1951), titled “Totalitarianism,” he made clear that the
struggle against Stalinism must continue unabated because the universal diff u-
sion of Communism demanded “the physical elimination of millions of men and
the moral elimination of ideas and secular traditions.”33 He did not hesitate to
call totalitarianism the “enemy” that must be resisted, since the totalitarian state
alone was capable of conducting such monstrous enterprises and its “philosophy”
or ideology was alone capable of inspiring them.34 Writing in 1951, Aron was
astonished by the persistence of revolutionary phenomena so late in the history of
the Soviet regime. The secret police and terror had lost none of their significance
30 years after Lenin’s victory in the Civil War.
Aron was one of the fi rst to acknowledge the Leninist roots of Stalinist totali-
tarianism. The Lenin of State and Revolution (1918) may have dreamed of a post-
revolutionary withering away of the State. “But in assimilating the power of the
Bolshevik party with that of the proletariat,” and by giving the party a dictato-
rial role during the “transition” to Communism, Lenin condemned the Soviet
Union to “enter into an infernal cycle of violence.”35 Aron was also sensitive
to the ideological Manicheanism that led to the creation of forced labor camps
and to the stigmatization of a bourgeoisie and nobility who were guilty not
because of anything they had done but because of who they were. The col-
lectivization of agriculture extended such ideological culpability to millions of
peasants (so-called “kulaks”), who were deemed class enemies and adversaries of
the Bolshevik state. Collectivization unleashed mass violence, a deadly famine
that took the lives of millions, and the destruction of an independent peasantry
in the Soviet Union. After 1930, the Soviet regime was totalitarian not only in
aspiration but in reality.
 T H E TOTA LI TA R I A N N EGAT ION OF M A N 141

The totalitarian state not only abhorred constitutional limitations on power,

but also those prohibitions of a moral or customary order which restrained
the action of governments under the European (and Russian) Old Regime.
Totalitarianism profoundly corrupted the moral imagination and showed con-
tempt for the very idea that there were limits to what men could imagine doing.
Hitlerians and Stalinists shared a common, deep-seated nihilism: they were
restrained “neither by tradition, nor by morality, nor by religion.”36 They were
revolutionaries in the manner of the Russian nihilists who conceived a total rup-
ture with the established order. They promoted the destruction of the cultural
inheritance of the past and they saw as “legitimate” the “employment of means
that the old ethics reproved.”37 Once more, the liberal Aron was also a conserva-
tive who fi rmly rejected a break with the moral and cultural inheritance of the
past. His enemy was nihilism no less than totalitarianism. Alternatively, perhaps
one could say that he discerned, as well as any of his contemporaries did, the
intrinsic connection between moral nihilism, ideological fanaticism, and twen-
tieth century totalitarianism.
It should be pointed out that Russia per se was never the enemy for Aron.
He had his doubts about whether a post-Communist Russia would evolve in the
direction of English or American democracy. However, he was certain that “the
concentration camps, the rupture of relations with the outside world, adminis-
trative and police violence are not tied to the vocation of Russia or the spirit of
the Russian people.”38 He believed that “they would disappear the day where
the governed would no longer be delivered, body and soul, to the arbitrariness
of those who govern them.”39 This judgment has been vindicated by events since
the fall of Communism. Whatever the limits of post-Communism in Russia,
there has been a repudiation of totalitarianism—even if the political order in that
country remains semi-authoritarian and thus far from ideal. Russia is, nonethe-
less, a long way from the reign of the Lie and an ideologically induced effort
to change human nature through terror and a repudiation of the spiritual and
cultural traditions of the past. It is an ordinary authoritarian regime living with
some of the residues of the totalitarian past.
After the death of Stalin and the attenuation of the most violent features of
the Soviet regime, Aron turned his attention to the sociology and politics of
industrial societies in the modern world. His Sorbonne trilogy (Eighteen Lectures
on Industrial Society, Class Struggle, and Democracy and Totalitarianism) were deliv-
ered as lectures at the Sorbonne between 1955 and 1958—they were published as
books later in the 1960s. They reflect a hopefulness that liberal and totalitarian
societies and polities could at least be compared and that the historicist claims of
Marxist ideology—its claims to historical inevitability—could be subjected to
sober critical analysis. Some mistakenly saw in these writings a qualified affirma-
tion of convergence theory—a position and doctrine that Aron always rejected.
Democracy and Totalitarianism, the third volume in the trilogy, made clear that
the differences between “constitutional-pluralistic” regimes and “monopolistic
party” regimes were radical indeed, totalitarian regimes being marked by an
“essential imperfection.”40 The book is torn between the sociological perspective
and an approach more indebted to classical political philosophy. Aron’s initial
142 DA N I E L J. M A HON E Y

sociological claim is that the number of parties provides the single most impor-
tant variable for analyzing political regimes in the contemporary world. However,
Aron’s analysis and critique of what he freely calls an ideocracy goes far beyond
sociological analysis to include fi rst-rate political philosophizing and acute spiri-
tual judgment.
Still, in his Mémoires, published months before his death in 1983, Aron defended
“the opposition between a single party and a plurality of parties as a criterion of
classification.”41 He admitted that this distinction was “open to question.”42 Yet,
democracy demands “legally organized competition for the exercise of power”
and the winning party’s acceptance in advance of “the possibility of its defeat at
the next election.”43 The party exercising power must do so in accordance “with
constitutional law and ordinary law.”44 Thus, well-constituted democracies are
by defi nition “constitutional-pluralistic regimes.”45 Where Aron’s claim of pur-
suing a sociological analysis of regimes breaks down is in his discussion of the
Soviet regime. Is a one-party system inevitably totalitarian, exercising supreme
secular, spiritual, and ideological authority? Doesn’t one need a philosophical
analysis of totalitarianism of precisely the kind Aron provides in Democracy and
Totalitarianism without fully acknowledging what he is doing?
Whatever Aron’s own “official” claim, in Democracy and Totalitarianism the
single party is never the sole variable for explaining totalitarianism. The party
is inseparable from an ideocratic state that has a “monopoly of the means of
coercion, and of the information and propaganda media.”46 Ideology is “neither
the sole end nor the exclusive means; there is a perpetual interaction or indeed
dialectic.”47 At times, ideology is a means to an end, at other times “force is used
to change society so that it will conform to ideology.”48 One party not only has
a monopoly of political activity, but it is also animated (or armed) by an ideol-
ogy “on which it confers absolute authority and which consequently becomes
the official truth of the state.”49 In the Aronian framework, ideology is at least as
important as the existence of a monopolistic party. Since the state is inseparable
from its ideology, “most economic and professional activities are colored by the
official truth.”50 Since all activity is state activity and subject to the reigning
ideology, any error or mishap becomes an ideological crime. The totalitarian or
ideological regime thus leads inexorably to “police and ideological terrorism.”51
Aron’s defi nition of totalitarianism depends not only on a monopolistic party,
but also on state control of economic life and on ideological terror. “The phe-
nomenon is complete when all these elements are united and fully achieved.”52
Aron was also as sensitive to the grotesque mendacity at the heart of the
totalitarian enterprise. Democracy and Totalitarianism contains some moving pas-
sages about the “world of macabre fiction”53 that accompanied the Great Terror
and show trials of the 1930s and that made ideological despotism so surreal. As we
shall see, under the impact of the writings of Solzhenitsyn and the French philo-
sophical historian Alain Besançon, the Aron of the 1970s and 1980s would come
to see the Ideological Lie to be at least as important as terror as a defi ning feature
of an ideocracy. One might say that violence and lies were the twin pillars of
the monopolistic party state—its “principle,” to use the idiom of Montesquieu’s
 T H E TOTA LI TA R I A N N EGAT ION OF M A N 143

political philosophy. Here, we are a long way from positivistic social science with
its concern for variables and its undue preoccupation with scientificity.
Some of the most striking pages in Democracy and Totalitarianism deal with the
comparison of the Soviet and Nazi undertakings. These pages have been sub-
jected to sustained criticism from sympathetic observers such as Alain Besançon
and Martin Malia. And as we shall see, Aron would later qualify his views on
this matter in very significant ways. What Besançon and Malia object to is Aron’s
identification of the Soviet enterprise with a “revolutionary will inspired by a
humanitarian ideal.”54 Aron does not endorse this “humanitarian ideal,” which
arguably is coextensive with rank utopianism. However, he seems to give the
Soviet leaders credit for good intentions. Soviet Communism is said to aim for a
universal, homogenous state where all men “could be treated as human beings,
in which classes would have disappeared or in which the homogeneity of society
would allow of mutual respect between people.”55 This “absolute goal,” this
desire to create a “completely good society,” can only be brought about by a
“merciless war”56 with capitalism. Aron remarks that the “different phases in the
Soviet regime sprang from a combination between a sublime goal and a ruthless
technique.”57 Political terror inevitably flowed from this effort to create human
perfection through class warfare and a dictatorship of the party in the name of a
historically privileged proletariat.
Alain Besançon has best expressed the limits of the Aronian analysis of the
Soviet regime in Democracy and Totalitarianism. As Besançon pointedly observes in
his classic 1976 article titled “On the Difficulty of Defi ning the Soviet Regime,”
“the ideological project is not humanitarian, precisely because it is ideological.”58 Contrary
to Aron’s analysis, “a part of humanity fi nds itself ontologically excluded”59 in
the new revolutionary state and society. The nobility, clergy, ordinary religious
believers, the bourgeoisie, so-called kulaks, and anyone who exercises indepen-
dence of thought is relegated to the category of “enemy of the people.” We have
seen that Aron had already highlighted that ontologically exclusionary fact in his
superb 1951 critique of totalitarianism in Les Guerres en chaîne. Besançon objects
to Aron’s failure to appreciate that the “universal and humanitarian ideals of reli-
gion and morality”60 are mutilated beyond recognition when the Soviets appro-
priate them at the service of a project of revolutionary negation. Aron appears to
be torn between a recognition of moral nihilism as the heart of the totalitarian
enterprise and his willingness in Democracy and Totalitarianism to conflate ideol-
ogy with a “humanitarian ideal,” albeit an ideal that is distorted in profoundly
important ways by “ruthless techniques.”
Aron continues to sharpen the contrast between Nazi and Communist totali-
tarianism. He insists that “the aim of Soviet terror is to create a society which
conforms completely to an ideal, while in the Nazi case, the aim was pure
and simple extermination.”61 He understates the eliminationist dimensions of
the Leninist-Stalinist project (the goal of “purging Russia of all the harmful
insects,”62 as Lenin wrote in 1918) and fails to appreciate that National Socialists
also upheld “ideals,” however perverse and inhumane. He sharply differentiates
the Soviet labor camp from the Nazi gas chamber and contrasts the construction
144 DA N I E L J. M A HON E Y

of a new regime “and perhaps a new man, regardless of means” from “the truly
daemonic will to destruction of a pseudo-race.”63
Aron’s fi nal summing-up of the totalitarian undertakings is more balanced
and persuasive. The Soviet regime reveals that efforts to “create an angel cre-
ate a beast.”64 Similarly, the Nazi undertaking shows that “man should not try
to resemble a beast of prey because, when he does so, he is only too success-
ful.”65 Without disagreeing with these admirable formulations and conclusions,
Besançon suggests that Soviet totalitarianism poses a diabolically enticing temp-
tation to those who accept humanitarian ideals and enlightenment principles.
Its “falsification of the good”66 is demonic because it destroys one’s sense of
justice and natural morality. Pseudo-humanitarian ideals are used at the ser-
vice of the subversion of the moral life and of any deference to civilized values.
“The creation of a new man and the expectation of the end of prehistory”67 are
superstitions—ideological fictions—that give rise to a regime built on limitless
violence and lies.
Aron later had serious reservations about the way he posed the contrast
between Nazi and Communist totalitarianism. It is fair to say that in the 1970s
his position grew closer to Besançon’s. Besançon was a faithful attendee of Aron’s
famous seminar. The two men would debate these matters over the course of a
decade and a half. Of course, Aron was a life-long anti-Communist who saw
in Leninist-Stalinism “a new incarnation of the monster.” Nevertheless, under
the influence of the writings of both Besançon and Solzhenitsyn, Aron came
to appreciate that Marxist-Leninism “as an ideology is the root of all ill (in the
Soviet regime), the source of falsehood, the principle of evil.”68 He endorsed and
summarized the message of Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago in two funda-
mental sentences: “there is something worse than poverty and repression—and
that something is the Lie, the lesson this century teaches us is to recognize the
deadly snare of ideology, the illusion that men and social organizations can be
transformed at a stroke.”69 Solzhenitsyn’s and Besançon’s influences are particu-
larly evident in 1977s Plaidoyer pour l’Europe décadente, where Aron holds Marx’s
“prophetism” partly responsible for the tragedies of the twentieth century.70
The effort to remake la condition humaine is indeed an exercise in nihilism, an
assault on human nature, and an “order of things” that fundamentally cannot
be changed. Aron acknowledged that Marx’s writings are often rich, subtle, and
worthy of serious engagement. But his fi nal conclusion was damning: “As an
economist-prophet, as a putative ancestor of Marxism-Leninism, [Marx] is an
accursed sophist who bears some responsibility for the horrors of the twentieth
century.” 71
Democracy and Totalitarianism is a book that is still worthy of reflection.
However, it should not be considered Aron’s fi rst or fi nal word on the subject.
Few books combine political sociology and political philosophizing in as sug-
gestive and fruitful manner. At the same time, its tone is somewhat skewed. One
suspects that Aron was trying to get a hearing for anti-totalitarianism from a Left
that was still blind to fundamental realities, hence his bending over backward
to give the Soviet undertaking an equitable hearing, even as he condemned its
“essential imperfection.” In his Mémoires, he concedes that the book, influenced
 T H E TOTA LI TA R I A N N EGAT ION OF M A N 145

by the Soviet thaw of the mid-1950s, was too optimistic about a reform of the
Soviet system short of the breakdown of the regime and ideology.72 He later came
to realize that the Soviet regime could only liberalize by ceasing to be itself.
Near the end of his Mémoires, Aron clearly states that “the argument that I
used more than once to distinguish class messianism from race messianism no
longer impresses me very much.” 73 “The apparent universality of the former
has become, in the last analysis, an illusion.” 74 Once a class-based organization
has come to power, it sanctifies confl icts and wars and becomes “involved with
a national or imperial messianism.” 75 In theory and practice, Communism is
an aff ront to the “fragile links of a common faith.” 76 Aron’s mature position is
indistinguishable from Besançon’s: ideology appropriates and mutilates authentic
“universality.” Aron forthrightly stated in 1983 that “Communism is no less
hateful to me than Nazism was.” 77 He professes “the systematic anticommunism
that has been attributed” to him “with a clear conscience.” 78
If Democracy and Totalitarianism was Aron’s fi rst and last word on totalitarianism,
he would indeed be vulnerable to the criticism of a friendly critic, Peter Baehr,
who writes that Aron’s “chief variable”—the nature of the political party—“falls
short of explaining the grotesque texture of the totalitarian world.” 79 But as we
have already suggested, the Aronian analysis of democracy and totalitarianism is
much more than a sociological account of political parties, “constitutional-plu-
ralistic” and ideocratic. Read in the context of Aron’s work as a whole, Democracy
and Totalitarianism makes a substantial contribution to understanding the totalitar-
ian mutilation of human and political liberty. Perhaps Baehr is right. One needs
to turn to earlier and later writings of Aron to experience the full “texture” of
totalitarianism, including the soul-wrenching experiences of Auschwitz and the
gulag archipelago. Thankfully, Aron’s work from the 1930s to the 1980s was
inseparable from a sustained, morally serious reflection on totalitarianism and all
its works. As The Opium of the Intellectuals (1955) particularly evidences, he was
an indefatigable critic of the indulgence that French intellectuals showed toward
Communist totalitarianism. He patiently exposed the myths of Revolution,
the Left, and the Proletariat.80 His long witness was vindicated in the 1970s by
Solzhenitsyn and the Soviet dissidents. As Pierre Manent has observed, Aron the
scholar was above all a public educator, a defender of the city and a defender of
man.81 If totalitarianism poses a permanent threat to civility and common life, to
the integrity of human bodies and souls, Aron’s engagement with this “monster”
remains as relevant as it was in “the age of ideology.” His is a rich and enduring
trove of anti-totalitarian wisdom that we ignore at our own peril.

Notes
1. Raymond Aron, “On the Historical Condition of the Sociologist,” in Raymond
Aron, Politics and History, ed. Myriam Bernheim Conant, New Brunswick, NJ,
Transaction, 1984, 65.
2. Ibid., 65.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
146 DA N I E L J. M A HON E Y

5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Raymond Aron, “États Démocratiques et États Totalitaires,” in Raymond
Aron, Penser la liberté, penser la démocratie, Paris, Gallimard, 2005, 55–106. I will
cite the English-language translation by Anthony M. Nazzaro in Raymond
Aron, Thinking Politically: A Liberal in the Age of Ideology, New Brunswick, NJ,
Transaction, 1997, 325–347.
8. Aron, Thinking Politically, 336–337.
9. Ibid., 327.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid., 336.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid., 329.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid., 336.
17. Ibid.
18. Raymond Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals, with a new Introduction by Harvey
C. Mansfield, Foreword by Daniel J. Mahoney and Brian C. Anderson, New
Brunswick, NJ, Transaction, 2001.
19. Aron, Thinking Politically, 337.
20. Ibid., 336.
21. Raymond Aron, “Le romantisme de la violence,” in Raymond Aron, Chroniques
de Guerre: La France libre, 1940–1945, Paris, Gallimard,1990, 438.
22. Ibid.
23. Winston Churchill, Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat: The Great Speeches, ed. David
Cannandine, London, Penguin, 2007, 177–178.
24. Raymond Aron, “Tyrannie et mépris des hommes,” in Raymond Aron, Chroniques
de guerre: La France libre, 1940–1945, Paris, Gallimard,1990, 466–478.
25. Ibid., 478.
26. Ibid.
27. See Raymond Aron, Chroniques de guerre: La France libre 1940–1945, Paris,
Gallimard, 1990, 925–948. I have cited the English-language edition, “The
Future of Secular Religions,” in F. Flagg Taylor IV (ed.), The Great Lie: Classic
and Recent Appraisals of Ideology and Totalitarianism, Wilmington, DE, ISI Books,
2011, 97–123.
28. Taylor, The Great Lie, 122.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid.
32. Raymond Aron, Memoirs: Fifty Years of Political Reflection, trans. George Holoch,
Foreword by Henry A. Kissinger, New York, Holmes & Meier, 1990, 477.
33. Raymond Aron, “Le totalitarisme,” in Raymond Aron, Les Guerres en chaîne,
Paris, Gallimard, 1951, 457.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid., 471.
36. Ibid., 474.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid., 481.
39. Ibid.
 T H E TOTA LI TA R I A N N EGAT ION OF M A N 147

40. Raymond Aron, Democracy and Totalitarianism, ed. and with an Introduction by
Roy Pierce, trans. Valence Ionescu, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press,
1990, 245.
41. Aron, Memoirs, 273.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid.
46. Aron, Democracy and Totalitarianism, 185.
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid.
49. Ibid., 193.
50. Ibid.
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid., 191.
54. Ibid., 198.
55. Ibid., 199.
56. Ibid.
57. Ibid.
58. Alain Besançon, “On the Difficulty of Defending the Soviet Regime,” in F.
Flagg Taylor IV (ed.), The Great Lie: Classic and Recent Appraisals of Ideology and
Totalitarianism, Wilmington, DE, ISI Books, 2011, 31–50. The quotation is from
44.
59. Ibid.
60. Ibid.
61. Aron, Democracy and Totalitarianism, 203.
62. Lenin wrote that revealing phrase in his incendiary 1918 essay “How to Organize
the Competition.”
63. Aron, Democracy and Totalitarianism, 204.
64. Ibid.
65. Ibid.
66. See the use of this evocative phrase in Alain Besançon, A Century of Horrors:
Communism, Nazism, and the Uniqueness of the Shoah, trans. Ralph C. Hancock and
Nathaniel H. Hancock, Wilmington, DE, ISI Books, 2007.
67. Aron, Democracy and Totalitarianism, 216.
68. Raymond Aron, “Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and European ‘Leftism’,” in F.
Flagg Taylor IV (ed.), The Great Lie: Classic and Recent Appraisals of Ideology and
Totalitarianism, Wilmington, DE, ISI Books, 2011, 369.
69. Ibid., 376.
70. Raymond Aron, In Defense of Decadent Europe, with a new Introduction by Daniel
J. Mahoney and Brian C. Anderson, New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction, 1996.
71. Aron, Memoirs, 468–469.
72. Ibid., 277.
73. Ibid., 471.
74. Ibid.
75. Ibid.
76. Ibid.
77. Ibid.
78. Ibid.
148 DA N I E L J. M A HON E Y

79. Peter Baehr, Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism and the Social Sciences, Palo Alto, CA,
Stanford University Press, 2010, 87.
80. See Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals, 3–93.
81. See Pierre Manent, “Raymond Aron éducateur,” Commentaire, no. 28–29, Février
1985, 155–168. For an unusually thoughtful and detailed account of Aron’s “phil-
osophical” engagement with modern tyranny, see Giulio De Ligio, “Tirannia,
totalitarismo e saggezza: Raymond Aron e il male della vita politica,” in G.
Chivilò, M. Mennon (eds.), Tirannide e filosofia, Venezia, Ca’ Foscari University
Press, 2014.
CHAPTER 11

A MACHIAVELLIAN CONCEPTION OF DEMOCRACY?

DEMOCRACY AND CONFLICT

Serge Audier

B etween the late 1970s and early 1980s, the French intellectual landscape
changed noticeably. It was a time when totalitarianism was being criti-
cized, liberal democracy rediscovered, and human rights rehabilitated. In this
context, the figure of Raymond Aron, long marginalized and in many ways
against the current, was the subject of a kind of retrospective recognition in
France—did he not, before many others, clearly distinguish liberal democracies
from “secular religions” and “totalitarianism?” However this may be, it is clear
that this belated recognition went hand in hand with a certain banalization of the
Aronian approach. Praised, to be sure, for his “lucidity,” Aron was considered a
rather unoriginal political thinker, since his conception of democracy basically
consisted in a prosaic defense of the rule of law and pluralism. It is striking that,
in contemporary French political philosophy, the references to Aron, outside the
small circle of his admirers, are few, or rather, almost nonexistent, while his pres-
ence in the Anglophone academic debate remains barely more than marginal. It
is especially in some areas of political sociology that the Aronian conception of
democracy is sometimes mobilized in a nebula that goes from a small group of
theorists concerned with the role of “elites”—Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto,
and Robert Michels—to Joseph Schumpeter, whose conception of democracy
is presented primarily in terms of a competitive elitism. Moreover, Aron’s view
of democracy, when it is not presented as similar to that of other political sci-
entists such as Robert Dahl or Giovanni Sartori, is often placed in a specifically
French tradition of liberalism, which, from Montesquieu to Élie Halévy, via
Tocqueville, favors pluralism, countervailing powers, and moderation.
These perspectives, of course, each contain some truth, but they do not exhaust
the originality of the Aronian approach. This chapter will try to show that in
Aron we can fi nd some features of a Machiavellian conception of democracy
that perhaps still today merits consideration as regards two different aspects. The
150 S E RG E AU DI E R

fi rst one is historiographical and concerns a type of reception and interpretation

of Machiavelli in the twentieth century that is still poorly understood. Among
several dominant interpretative currents—that of the school of Leo Strauss on
the one hand and that of the Cambridge or “neo-republican” school on the oth-
er—Aron, along with some other contemporaries of his such as Claude Lefort,
whose dissertation he supervised, outlined a very specific type of interpretation,
centered on the question of political and social confl ict. This is completely differ-
ent from the Straussian or Cambridge republican readings of Machiavelli. Aron’s
reading, though forged in the very specific context of a critique of totalitarianism,
is instructive in many ways. The second merit of this approach to Machiavelli,
more normative in nature, is that it was taken so that we could understand mod-
ern democracy. For Aron, liberal constitutionalism, human rights, and pluralism
are obviously the fundamental traits of pluralist democracies. But this is not all:
what distinguishes them from totalitarianism is also the fact that they recognize
the legitimacy of confl ict within them. In other words, democracies are plural-
ist-constitutional, but also pluralistic-conflictual regimes. Aron manages to base this
view of modern democracy on a certain reading of Machiavelli that continues to
be relevant in contemporary debates.

From the Criticism of Machiavellianism to the Rediscovery of

Machiavellian Freedom
It is well known that in a wide area of historical research and international philoso-
phy there has been a surprising resurgence of interest in the Florentine Secretary’s
thinking—from the pioneering work by Hans Baron on “civic humanism,”
going back to the 1930s, to the research by Quentin Skinner on republicanism
and the “neo-Roman” tradition of political freedom, by way of John Pocock’s
masterful and controversial work, The Machiavellian Moment. Despite differences
in emphasis, direction, and sometimes methodology, the Machiavelli who was
rediscovered in the Anglophone world is, overall, the theorist of republican-
ism, the author of the Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livy, and a member
of a long tradition stemming from Aristotle and Cicero and continuing in the
Renaissance involving the themes of political freedom, civic virtue, patriotism,
and the “common good.” This kind of reading, which is still very influential
and is illustrated by a researcher long tied to Skinner, Maurizio Viroli, is openly
opposed to another school of interpretation, that of Leo Strauss and his followers,
who, after Natural Right and History, consider Machiavelli to be the founder of
modern philosophy, which breaks with the “best regime” principles of classical
philosophy and anchors the truth about politics in the negative and “evil.” As
such, far from being the heir of classical political philosophy, as argued by the
Cambridge school, Machiavelli was rather the predecessor of Thomas Hobbes.
Between these two opposing schools, which occupy a large part of the debate
about Machiavelli and partially defi ne its terms, other points of view have had
much more difficulty imposing themselves, even when, in a different way, they
themselves endorse Machiavellian thought and its understanding of politics. This
is true of Lefort’s view, but also, in a way, of Aron’s.
 A M A C H I AV E L L I A N C O N C E P T I O N O F D E M O C R A C Y ? 151

The view that Aron initially presented of Machiavelli, however, was not so far
from those of the Florentine’s greatest critics, such as Strauss himself, or the neo-
Thomist philosopher Jacques Maritain. First formulated in the context of the late
1930s and early 1940s, Aron’s reading—in an unfi nished book he planned to title
Essais sur le machiavélisme moderne (Essays on Modern Machiavellianism), pub-
lished in 1993 under the title Machiavel et les tyrannies modernes, and also adum-
brated in his columns in La France libre—at fi rst unfurled to a great extent under
the banner of anti-Machiavellianism, or rather of the political literature of the
time, which considered Machiavelli more or less directly “responsible,” intellec-
tually, for Nazism and fascism. This happened in part because Mussolini himself
had claimed his debt to and admiration for the author of The Prince.
More specifically, one can only understand the importance attached by
Aron to the idea of Machiavellianism by considering the arguments previously
developed by Halévy in his famous lecture titled L’ère des tyrannies1 (The Age
of Tyranny). It is as though Aron had tried in Essays on Modern Machiavellianism
at once to continue and to alter Halévy’s analyses. Aron takes up the notion
of tyranny proposed by Halévy in order to describe the totalitarian regimes
then emerging, but he moves toward another interpretation, placing the idea of
“modern Machiavellianism” at the center of his reflections. By insisting on the
importance of a doctrine in the genesis of the tyrannical regimes of his time,
he was certainly aware that he was developing a bold and daring interpretation:
“Theory: the word may surprise us, and yet it is essential. National Socialism
and Communism do not appear Machiavellian to us only because they trick,
deceive, lie, violate their words, and murder. If Hitler’s Machiavellianism con-
sisted merely in the use of such methods, it would not be worth wasting much
time studying it. In reality, the use of such visibly Machiavellian means interests
us only as a symptom of a more profound Machiavellianism: namely, a certain
conception of man and politics.”2 Besides, the question is therefore not so much
one of describing this or that technique of lying as of analyzing the “rational-
ized systems,” the model on which modern Machiavellians conceive and build
the government of peoples.3 It is in from this point of view that, without mak-
ing Machiavelli directly responsible for the disaster of “modern tyrannies,” the
young Aron considers them to have emerged in the wake of the Machiavellian
rupture. In this sense, the Machiavellian Machiavelli cannot be considered a mere
legend. On the contrary, Aron says that the Florentine secretary can legitimately
be considered a Machiavellian thinker. He undoubtedly feels no sympathy for
tyranny, which he always analyzes with a theoretician’s coldness, but it is pre-
cisely in this neutrality that his Machiavellianism lies. Moreover, Machiavelli’s
preferences for republican liberty should not mislead us, Aron warns, since he
could, just as objectively as in The Prince, have developed a theory of monarchies
or republics. Certainly, such a detachment cannot make us doubt Machiavelli’s
sincere admiration for Republican Rome, and Rousseau was probably right, in
this sense, to ascribe a republican ideal to the Florentine—provided, however,
that we add that Machiavelli was too sensible to offer men an unattainable ideal
in most circumstances.4 Even if he prefers the life of republics to the actions of
an illegitimate prince, though, it is clear that these new princes are most often
152 S E RG E AU DI E R

the objects of his advice. Machiavelli, while a staunch Republican, therefore

“recognizes the need for legislators, dictators or absolute princes, when cor-
rupted people are unworthy and incapable of freedom.”5 The “theory of dicta-
torship” underlying The Prince and the “praise of Roman freedom” set out in the
Discourses on Livy—the inconsistency between these two works constituting the
problem most Machiavellian scholars concern themselves with—are therefore
not mutually exclusive, as is often asserted, but essentially respond to the same
goal of dealing objectively, indifferent to any personal preference, with a num-
ber of varying socio-political situations that call for specific responses. Aron also
believes that some features of modern tyrannies—anthropological pessimism,
cold realism, reduction of politics to coercion and power relations, and purely
technical views free from any moral purpose—were, arguably, already embed-
ded in Machiavellian thought.
In the 1930s and 1940s, however, Aron’s reading becomes more ambiva-
lent, and he himself sometimes seems to endorse some of the requirements of
Machiavellian realism, notably in his denunciation of the pacifism of modern
democracies in the face of the Nazi threat. It is after the war, however, that
his reading changes most markedly. Certainly, he continues to highlight the
cold Machiavellian realism, but his reading leaves aside the previously estab-
lished link between Machiavelli and “modern tyrannies” in order to proceed in
a new direction. Now Machiavellian thought helps him to conceive of the liberal
democracies in a realistic manner, and when used properly, even to justify them
against totalitarian regimes. Similarly, if, in the 1930s and 1940s, Aron associated
Machiavelli with the realist sociology of Vilfredo Pareto—then equated with
fascism—he later takes up this same approach from another perspective, more
favorable to Pareto, and incorporates the sociology of “elites” of Gaetano Mosca
and Robert Michels. In Les étapes de la pensée sociologique, Aron claims that the
work of Pareto is to be located “in the tradition of political thinkers, of whom
the fi rst and greatest was Machiavelli.” This was a movement in “Italian culture,”
the main features of which regard the question of elites: “The emphasis on the
duality of governors and governed, the detached, even cynical observation of
the role of elites and the blindness of crowds, form a sociology centered around
the political theme typical of an Italian tradition that produced, in addition to
Machiavelli, Guicciardini and Mosca.” This tradition also had an influence in
France, with authors such as Georges Sorel, who belong “to a school termed
Machiavellian.” Although, in his analysis, Aron does not abandon but, on the
contrary, suggests possible affinities between Italian fascism and Machiavellian
political thought, his interpretation moves in another direction. If the so-called
Machiavellian sociology of elites can lead to a “cynical” view of politics, Aron
himself suggests other uses that are more relevant and fruitful in his eyes.
The thesis that situates Italian sociology regarding “elites” in Machiavelli’s
wake was mainly upheld by the American, James Burnham, in his book The
Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom.6 A former Trotskyite who broke with Trotsky
himself to move toward a radical critique of totalitarianism, Burnham sought to
rebuild the way of conceiving political freedom in a “Machiavellian” framework.
The aim of his study is to show the inspiration common to all these “realistic”
political thinkers such as Mosca and Michels, and their respective dependence
 A M A C H I AV E L L I A N C O N C E P T I O N O F D E M O C R A C Y ? 153

on Machiavelli. Aron was familiar with this book, which has by now fallen into
total oblivion, and was not unaware of the author, whom he met personally, since
it was under his aegis that the book was translated and published in France. This
book, with its obviously provocative title, was much less successful in its time
than The Managerial Revolution, but it contributed greatly to the reconsideration
of Machiavelli as well as of Mosca, Pareto, and Michels, who until then had been
widely seen as harbingers of fascism. Burnham’s main thesis is that these think-
ers, like Machiavelli, were “defenders of freedom” inasmuch as they thought,
basing themselves on the observation that in all political societies there are rela-
tions of power and ruling elites, that the most important thing is for pluralism,
division, and confl icting forces to make possible the emergence of freedom.

Conf lictual Pluralism and Freedom

Like Burnham before him, Aron considered the presence of “elites” in every
society a fact, but one that should not lead us to become disillusioned or pessi-
mistic. The fragmentation or unification of elites is indeed a criterion for differ-
entiating democracy from totalitarianism. However, the defi nition of democracy
must not stop here, because the fragmentation of elites is only one of the dimen-
sions, albeit a fundamental one, of the political and social pluralism character-
izing democratic regimes. Aron returns not only to the Machiavellian problem,
but also to Machiavelli himself.
The view that Machiavelli can be considered a theorist of pluralism is in
fact expressed, albeit still marginally, in Sur le machiavélisme moderne. We have
observed that, unlike Maritain, Aron was immediately responsive to the com-
plexity of Machiavelli’s work. Aron argued that if the “political genius” of the
author of The Prince could lead some people to praise power, and therefore a
strong state, we should also not forget how much his thought remains dependent
on ancient or, if not ancient, then medieval ideas. As a humanist, Machiavelli
wanted nations to have “a balanced constitution” and virtuous citizens, mak-
ing a prince unnecessary. From his commitment to balanced constitutions, the
Florentine appears as a supporter of mixed government: “No form, by itself, is
free from evil. And so he recommends—to the extent that he recommends any-
thing—a mixed form, in order to balance the respective powers of the people,
the nobles, and the king. Moreover, it is less an ideal government than a realistic
synthesis. As each kind of government is based on a class (people, nobility, or
monarch), the most stable kind is composed of the three species, not to eliminate
conflict but to preserve freedom by maintaining rivalry within the law.” 7 So we should
recognize in Machiavelli a classical influence, that of the theory of mixed gov-
ernment, believed to ensure political stability. However, this praise of the mixed
form does not involve raising it to an ideal model: if Machiavelli prefers it, this
is not for its formal perfection, but because it reduces the defects of each of the
pure forms taken separately.
Although this aspect of Machiavelli’s work was not unknown to the young
Aron, it was still of little importance to him in the 1930s and 1940s. It was not
until after the war that we discover its reaffirmation and reformulation. It was
especially owing to Burnham’s influence that he would amply demonstrate how
154 S E RG E AU DI E R

Machiavelli was a theorist of the balance of confl icting social forces. The author
of The Machiavellians showed that the Florentine’s preference for a republic is not
inconsistent with his calling the prince to action to unify Italy. If a republic is the
best form of government in his eyes, it does not follow that the establishment of a
republican regime is possible in all situations. In addition, the republic portrayed
in the Discourses is not a utopia: Machiavelli shows both the defects and the vir-
tues of his ideal, and, unlike the utopian thinkers, does not attach any ultimate
importance to the form of government. Machiavelli’s concern is indeed free-
dom, understood as the independence of a city, itself based on the freedom of its
citizens. Only the government of the law curbing private interests can guarantee
this. For Machiavelli does not trust individuals as such to establish freedom. The
picture he draws is very pessimistic: driven by ambition and liars, men are always
corrupted by power. Nevertheless, the Florentine believes that the establishment
of freedom is not impossible. By the introduction of appropriate legislation, we
can, in fact, at least to some extent and for some time, discipline individual pas-
sions. Hence the insistence that no person or magistrate be above the law, that
there must be legal means for every citizen to prosecute, that punishments should
be impartial, and fi nally, that private ambitions must be channeled through pub-
lic institutions.
In short, if the author of the Discourses does not believe that individuals possess
a natural virtue—and, for Burnham, nothing is further away from Machiavellian
thought than the Aristotelian model of the “political animal,” the zoon poli-
tikon—he does believe, however, that a set of ingeniously developed laws can
contribute to political freedom. From this point of view, the critical importance
he ascribes to the balance of power becomes clear: “Machiavelli is not so naive
as to imagine that the law needs no other enforcement than itself. The law is
based on force, but force, in turn, destroys law, unless it is restrained; and force
cannot be restrained except by an opposing force. Sociologically, therefore, the
foundation of freedom consists in a balance of different powers and that is what
Machiavelli called “ ‘mixed’ ” government.”8 In support of this thesis, which
Aron foresaw in the 1930s, Burnham cites the famous passage from Chapter 4 of
Book I of the Discourses praising the confl ict between the plebeians and nobles as
decisive for the freedom of republican Rome. Anxious to promote not a utopian
freedom but a concrete one, Machiavelli shows how hypocritical the calls for
“unity” are, which are often no more than a lie aimed at suppressing opposition;
and how fallacious the idea is that freedom is a natural attribute, as it were, of an
individual or a particular group.
Among the Machiavellians, Mosca, according to Burnham, is the man in
the twentieth century who best remembered the Florentine Secretary’s lesson
on the role of balance in the confl ict between opposing forces. We must pause
again now for a moment because Burnham’s interpretation clearly led Aron to
enrich his own conception of democracy as a system based on the recognition
of confl ict. Contrary to the impression given by an overview of Elementi di sci-
enza politica, Burnham recognized the Italian sociologist’s normative options:
“Mosca, like Machiavelli, does not stop at a descriptive analysis of politics. He
clearly shows his own preferences and opinions about the best and worst forms of
 A M A C H I AV E L L I A N C O N C E P T I O N O F D E M O C R A C Y ? 155

government.”9 Certainly, like Machiavelli and other Machiavellians, Mosca does

not offer utopian dreams of an “absolute justice” or a “perfect State.” He suggests
instead that political theories seeking an absolute justice ultimately cause more
harm than those whose ambition initially seems more limited. The inability to
achieve an “absolute justice” does not in any way prevent working toward a “rel-
ative justice,” the only kind conceivable in this world. Like Machiavelli, Mosca
sees the possibility of regulating individual appetites in confl ict by a set of laws.
The Italian sociologist believes that freedom—understood as “legal defense”—
can only be born of the mutual opposition between the aspirations and the
instincts of each one of us. This means that “legal defense” not only depends on
a set of constitutional texts: it is not enough to declare a number of rules to make
the pluralism necessary for liberty effective. Pluralism must be supported, in fact,
by heterogeneous and antagonistic social groups: in practical terms, in social life,
only power can control power. Legal defense can only be guaranteed when there
are various and antagonistic tendencies and forces at work. Tyranny, the worst of
governments, means the disappearance of legal defense; and it always disappears
as soon as a social trend manages to absorb or remove all others. A real or sup-
posed disciple of Machiavelli, Mosca shows that man, being imperfect, is always
inclined to abuse his power. We should not therefore remove the basic instincts
of human nature—a move that is unrealistic and dangerous—but channel them
in order to get them to mutually balance each other. Thus, says Burnham, “free-
dom in the world as it is is the product of confl ict and differences, not of unity
and harmony”—an assertion that Aron probably could have taken up, provided
we add that for him, as for Burnham, it is not a question of glorifying confl ict as
such, or even any form of confl ict, but rather of understanding that a free society
is one that recognizes the legitimacy of confl ict.

A Conf lictual and Machiavellian Idea of Democracy

In Aron’s later texts and lectures there are echoes of this problem, centered on
the question of social antagonism. His typically “Machiavellian” method, in
Burnham’s sense, in fact leads him to conclusions about the essence of democracy.
In his 1950 seminar Introduction à la philosophie politique, Aron’s conceptualiza-
tion of the democratic system follows two main, historically and philosophically
divergent, trends. The fi rst is expressed in the political thought of an author
like John Locke, while the second one is clearly stated, if not in Jean-Jacques
Rousseau’s Social Contract itself, at least in its reformulation during the French
Revolution. The latter trend presents itself as “a quasi-mystical notion of popular
sovereignty” and minimizes the importance of the limitation of powers.10 At the
sources of these two trends—the popular and the liberal—we can fi nd two dif-
ferent philosophical orientations, one described as “pessimistic” and the other as
“optimistic.” The fi rst, constitutional or liberal, tends to limit the powers of the
State and, correspondingly, to seek greater protection for individual rights; as for
the second, which emphasizes “the omnipotence of the people” or the “major-
ity,” it is grounded on an optimistic view of human nature. This theory postu-
lates that it is sufficient to abolish irrational traditions and privileges in order for
156 S E RG E AU DI E R

men, fi nally emancipated, to be able to govern themselves. Yet it is also possible

to justify democracy—and this is the Machiavellian position—based on a pes-
simistic anthropology: “Rousseau justified democracy with the idea that men are
good. Machiavellians justify it with the idea that men are not good. Indeed, we
might say that men are good, so they should govern themselves, but we might
also say: men are not good, so we should limit the powers we give to some; the
worse men are, the less power we should leave to rulers.”11 It is true that, in
describing the “liberal” model, Aron seems to attach as much importance to
Locke as to the Machiavellians. Such eclecticism can seem daunting even if Aron
was not the fi rst to face the dilemma: it seems impossible to found a Lockean
liberal society on a Machiavellian anthropology. As Aron cannot ignore such a
contradiction, one might consider that it is more as a Machiavellian than as an
heir of Locke that he advances a defense of political liberalism. In accordance
with his methodological principles, he points to the merits of liberal democra-
cies, not in the name of a cosmological or metaphysical idea, but because they are
grounded in a realistic view of human nature.
Correspondingly, by contrasting Rousseau’s optimism with “Machiavellian”
pessimism, Aron’s approach generalizes a distinction formulated by Mosca him-
self and explained in Elementi di scienza politica, where he asserts that his own
views are the exact opposite of Rousseau’s. While for the author of the Social
Contract, human nature, by nature good, is corrupted by society, Mosca believes
that social organization should not suppress the inherently evil instincts of man,
but control and channel them using an institutional artifice leading them to
block each other.12 Only in this condition can “legal defense” (the central con-
cern of Mosca’s liberalism) be guaranteed. Like all Machiavellians, Aron does
not therefore see an “ideal state,” fi nally putting an end to confl ict, in liberal
democracy. On the contrary, democracy understood in this way implies the rec-
ognition of divisions as essential to freedom. The fragility of such a regime is
as evident as the acceptance that “turmoil” (the tumulti, in the terminology of
Machiavelli) can lead to anarchy. This is why it is necessary to examine the
causes of instability in democracies and the solutions that can be found for them.
Democracy, characterized by a peaceful competition aiming at the exercise of
rule, is an “inherently unstable” regime, and the question becomes how to man-
age to keep such instability “within tolerable limits.”13 Using Machiavelli as a
reference, Aron’s analysis defi nes the primary cause of instability as being “men’s
ambition” and the “appeal to the masses.” And, like the Florentine, he does
not condemn ambition as such or adopt a moralizing stance. Far from being
something “bad in itself,” this is normal behavior, linked to human nature, or at
least to the nature of humans who rule. Perhaps politics would be even worse if
ambitious men did not conduct it. The whole problem is simply to ensure that
such ambition proves useful to the State. In other words, we need to organize
“terms of competition” in such a way that men’s ambition does not threaten the
regime itself.14 By studying the instability of democracies from this point of view,
however, we are led to rediscover some issues that were raised by the author of
the Discourses himself: “All political regimes have, to use Machiavelli’s words,
ways to use men’s vices or selfishness for the good of the city. The problem in
 A M A C H I AV E L L I A N C O N C E P T I O N O F D E M O C R A C Y ? 157

a democracy is how to organize competition in a way that human ambition is

useful to the community.”15 Hence the importance to be given to constitutional
issues in order to ensure the stability of democracies—constitutions should be
considered as a way to “normalize the course of human ambitions.”16 Following
Machiavelli’s spirit, this means defi ning the conditions under which a democracy
can prevent the risk of corruption: the goal is to fi nd a way to channel human
passions by law, so that they can become useful to the common good of the
community.

Political Pluralism and Social Pluralism in

Machiavelli and the Machiavellians
Aron thus recovers the lesson of the Florentine secretary and also that of Mosca, in
particular, his praise of the “mixed regime” in Elementi di scienza politica.17 Mosca
maintains that the best regimes are mixed governments, namely, those in which
neither the autocratic system nor the liberal system prevails, and in which aristo-
cratic leanings are tempered by a continuous renewal of the ruling class. In short,
the best (or the least bad) government is one in which no single organizing prin-
ciple or single mode of selection of the ruling classes prevails.18 In the end, Aron
says the same thing. Noting that in the nineteenth century there was often talk
of the “party of resistance” and of the “party of movement,” he says that a stable
democracy is a regime “where the trend to morally devalue rulers and to renew
the ruling group is not pushed too far vis-à-vis the maintenance of the traditional
hierarchy and traditional privileges.”19 The stability of democracy presupposes a
“balance between these two forces,” while a state of high imbalance could lead
only to “an oscillation between revolutionary forms of right and left.”20 This tacit
praise of the mixed regime shows that, as with Mosca and other Machiavellians,
Aronian liberalism is the idea that political pluralism can only be guaranteed if
it is supported by pluralism in society. Pondering the compatibility between an
economy ruled by the state and the “competition system,” Aron explains that
the fi rst condition for preserving this latter system is “the existence of a plurality
of forces”—a condition that Machiavellian authors have also “always stressed.”21
The electoral and parliamentary game can indeed only make sense when power is
not concentrated in the same hands. However, if economic and political powers
are merged and there are no relatively independent groups capable of providing
a counterweight and competition—as is the case in communist regimes—then
elections are devoid of any meaning.22 In other words, democracy understood as
the recognition of regulated competition and antagonism between heterogeneous
groups for the exercise of power is unthinkable in regimes, the object of which is
the abolition of the distance between civil society and the state.

Democracy, the Least Imperfect Regime and,

in this Sense, the Best
This examination of Machiavelli and his successors’ confl ictual pluralism thus
warrants the conclusion that the Machiavellian tradition does not necessarily
158 S E RG E AU DI E R

lead to cynicism and relativism. The “science of power” initiated by Machiavelli

and his successors makes it possible to expose the fallacy of utopias and indicate
which ones are the least bad regimes in the world as it is. Indeed, the purpose
of The Machiavellians is to show that the Italian theory of elites generally points
to a regime that emphasizes the plurality and antagonism of political and social
forces. The proof is that Robert Michels himself, who in Political Parties impla-
cably demonstrates the oligarchic nature of democracy, still expresses his prefer-
ence for this regime as “the lesser of two evils”—and this because he leaves some
room for restricting the tendentiously absolute nature of oligarchic rule. The
Aronian justification of democracy is in turn part of this tradition. In weighing
the merits and drawbacks of the democratic system, Aron notes that democra-
cies are very fragile regimes, threatened by sterile confl icts that can escalate to
inefficiency and ruin. Here we can recognize a criticism by the Machiavellians,
including Pareto. But Machiavelli and the Machiavellians at the same time pro-
vide decisive arguments to prove the benefits of democracy: “The merits are
immense—and it is here that Machiavellianism intervenes—if you do not seek
a perfect regime. If one starts out from the idea that all plans are a reflection of
human nature, and democracy is among the worst regimes classified, the demo-
cratic system is probably by far the best of bad regimes, that is to say the best of
all possible regimes.”23
Starting from a “pessimistic and clearly Machiavellian” idea of human nature,
one can conclude that a good monarchy or a good aristocracy does not exist, so
to speak, but that “among all imperfect regimes, democracy is the least imperfect,
because it is the only one restricting the ruler’s range of action the most.”24 At the
heart of the idea of democracy, there is a distrust of power: “If we start from the
pessimistic idea that all power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely,
we conclude that, since democratic power is the weakest and most limited, it is
the one that corrupts the least and commits the least excesses.”25 Certainly, we
can present this idea in a more optimistic way by saying that democracy is the
regime introducing the strongest constitutional authority. Yet we should not
push this optimism too far by assuming that this regime is the best or strongest
in historical confl icts: “There is no reason why the regime most consistent with
our moral preferences should necessarily be called to triumph in history.”26 On
this point, Pareto’s real lesson is defi nitive. How can we say more clearly that we
cannot escape the lessons of the Machiavellians?
Aron expounds at length upon the Machiavellian theory of democracy in his
course on Democracy and Totalitarianism, even if he no longer explicitly claims to
be Machiavelli’s heir. But he shows, like Burnham, how constitutional-plural-
istic regimes are prosaic and possess essentially negative virtues, which explains
their necessarily disappointing nature: “Prosaic by defi nition, they accept the
imperfections of human nature; they accept power comes from competition
between groups and ideas; they try to limit authority, convinced that men
abuse power when they hold it.”27 No doubt, these regimes also have “positive
virtues,” such as the respect for constitutional and civil liberties; but the fact
remains that “their highest virtues” are perhaps “negative, because they have
the advantage of preventing what other regimes are powerless to prevent.”28 The
 A M A C H I AV E L L I A N C O N C E P T I O N O F D E M O C R A C Y ? 159

constitutional-pluralistic democracies, to the extent that they tolerate confl icts

between ideas, interests, groups, and individuals, reflect the character of men
who have to grapple with these very confl icts. Hence, they are still imperfect.
“It is permissible to dream of a constitutional regime the imperfections of which
have disappeared, but we cannot consider likely a regime where the politicians
are all aware at the same time of the special interests they represent and of the
collective interests they have to serve, where confl icts of ideas are fully devel-
oped but the press is objective, and where people keep their sense of solidarity
despite the quarrels dividing them.”29 Thus, against those accusing modern rep-
resentative regimes of being prone to confl icts between private interests, Aron
warns us that we should not compare an “actual regime” to “an ideal regime
that never existed.” Preventing a constitutional pluralistic regime from giving
the floor to various interest groups amounts to conceiving an “impossible and
contradictory regime.”30
Ultimately, it is necessary to distinguish, in a deeply Machiavellian mindset,
between the imperfection typical of constitutional-pluralistic regimes, on the
one hand, and that characteristic of one-party regimes on the other. The former
are imperfect either through “excessive oligarchy”—when, behind the maneu-
vering of political parties, there lies a very powerful minority—or “excessive
demagogy”—when the confl icting groups forget any sense of the common good.
Finally, constitutional-pluralistic regimes always experience “limited efficacy,”
since a regime in which all groups have the right to defend their interests can
hardly take drastic measures.31 The imperfection of a monopolistic party regime
is instead “different” and “fundamental,” since it is related to an insurmountable
contradiction. For if we assume a homogeneous society, as claimed by commu-
nist ideology, then the party’s monopoly ought to disappear; but if we ban free
expression of opinion, we reveal that, in fact, such a society is not homogeneous.
The regime that imposes its will through violence can certainly seek a “sublime”
purpose, but it cannot claim that this is the perfecting of democracy. Aron’s
reflections on the essence of democracy thus presuppose a conceptualization of
the Machiavellian kind, along the lines of Burnham’s interpretation: constitu-
tional-pluralistic regimes are imperfect because of their confrontational nature,
but it is also precisely this characteristic that makes them the least bad of political
regimes, because they are the most free.

Toward a Conf lictual Conception of Democracy

What lessons can we learn from Aron’s rereading of Machiavelli and the
Machiavellians? The fi rst concerns the interpretation of the author of The Prince
and the Discourses on the First Decade of Livy. Of course, except in a few analyses
performed during his youth or in ad hoc presentations, Aron never claimed to
attempt a strict interpretation, and we should not therefore read him in this way:
he used the Machiavellian legacy very freely, much more than he endeavored to
produce a historically contextualized exegesis. Therefore, it is pointless to seek
from him a true interpretation of the Florentine Secretary, as was attempted by
writers as varied as Renaudet, Strauss, Baron, and Skinner.
160 S E RG E AU DI E R

It is also true that, due to the influence of Burnham and the elite theorists,
Aron probably has a far too liberal and traditional view of Machiavelli, which
does not adequately scrutinize the destabilizing force of the desire of the peo-
ple for freedom in Machiavellian thought. As free and philologically question-
able as it is, however, this reading has the merit of paradoxically pointing out
some important features of Machiavellian thought that have sometimes escaped
the best-known scholars, including contemporary scholars. In the wake of
Burnham—and, as we have said, even before him, in the 1930s—Aron’s analysis
was in fact able to identify an innovative political approach in Machiavelli, which
is marked by a profound realism and which assigns a key role in the lives of free
societies, and particularly in democracies, to social and political confl icts. This
realism, difficult to contest, must lead to deeply profound reconsideration of
Pocock’s thesis about the “Machiavellian moment,” which placed Machiavelli’s
republicanism in the tradition of the Aristotelian conception of the citizen as a
“political animal.” Moreover, if there is an element for which Machiavelli stands
out in the history of republicanism from antiquity to the Italian Renaissance, it
is precisely his praise of “disunity” as an important factor in the freedom of the
Roman Republic. This view was shared neither by Aristotle nor by Cicero in
their presentations of republicanism, nor even by most theorists of civic human-
ism and Renaissance republicanism; and it deeply shocked Machiavelli’s con-
temporaries, such as Francesco Guicciardini. Moreover, this theory about the
fertility of “disunity” and “turmoil” is not found frequently outside of a small
portion of the modern republican tradition (it can be found, e.g., in seventeenth-
century England, in Algernon Sidney but not in James Harrington). It is there-
fore a very important point that identifies Machiavelli’s originality. Certainly,
neither Burnham nor Aron sufficiently emphasizes how Machiavelli describes
the confl ict between the people’s desire not to be oppressed and the desire of
the “great,” driven by their ambition to increase their power continuously and
to dominate the people. Their liberal and “elitist” reading of Machiavelli does
not adequately reflect all the links in his thought or his dynamic conception of
politics. In addition, because this is not what they are looking for in Machiavelli,
they quickly pass over the horizon of war that is at the heart of both The Prince
and the Discourses. (It should be noted, however, that, starting in the 1930s, when
he still saw Machiavelli as the forerunner of “modern tyrannies,” Aron was more
attentive than Burnham to this dimension.)
The reaffirmation of the centrality of confl ict in Machiavelli’s work is a key
to the reading of it that is still relevant today, especially vis-à-vis the “neo-
republican” interpretations that tend, more or less clearly, to erase it by placing
the author of the Discourses on the First Decade of Livy in a larger nebula—that
of “civic humanism,” “republicanism,” or “neo-Roman” freedom.32 However,
there are other interpreters who, against the grain in terms of the readings domi-
nant today, emphasize the centrality of social divisions. Whether they know it
or not, these interpreters follow at least partly in Burnham and Aron’s footsteps.
Furthermore, every argument that underscores the famous division between
“republicanism” and “liberalism,” advanced by Pocock and the Cambridge
school, is superficial—or debatable in any case—and fails to take into account
 A M A C H I AV E L L I A N C O N C E P T I O N O F D E M O C R A C Y ? 161

Machiavelli’s republican and liberal legacy.33 One need only think, for example,
of Thomas Gordon and John Trenchard’s Cato’s Letters (1720–1723), historically
an influential text, that combined unashamedly “Machiavellian” and “liberal”
elements from Locke; or one could think of Montesquieu’s writings, such as
Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline (1734),
which praises the tumults that went hand-in-hand with the greatness of republi-
can Rome. Machiavelli’s Discourses was in all likelihood the source of the praise
for republican Rome found in Montesquieu’s own work, and although he does
not indicate it, Aron himself knew and admired the work of the French aristo-
crat. In this sense, one could moreover say that in the wake of totalitarianism—a
regime built on the double refusal of civil discord and political liberty—Aron
had reawakened in his century a political thought that was at the crossroads of
apparent antagonists: a political thought that laid to rest the overly simplistic
division between liberalism and republicanism.
Rediscovering a Machiavellian philosophy of confl ict is noteworthy today not
only for historical reasons, but also for political and philosophical reasons. Many
contemporary theories of democracy, notably those of a contractarian variety, in
effect lay a great deal of stress on the idea of consensus. The collapse of Marxism
and of analyses in terms of “class struggle” has promoted a vision of democratic
societies that largely neglects any “antagonistic” paradigm, as if confl ict or dis-
cord were signs of regress. Democracy is undoubtedly represented as a type of
regime and society that is not monolithic, in which pluralism and fragmentation
constitute the fundamental traits, whether this be cause for concern or joy. But
it is rare to see today the emphasis placed on a trait that nevertheless remains
essential, even after the end of totalitarianism: democracy is a regime whose very
essence welcomes division and confl ict of opinions, philosophies, and interests.
Thinking the “common good” cannot exclude reflecting on this more or less
visible discord which remains fundamental in the life of democracies.

Notes
1. Élie Halévy, “L’ère des tyrannies,” communication à la Société Française de
Philosophie, [1936], in L’Ere des tyrannies, Paris, Gallimard, 1938, 213–249.
2. Raymond Aron, “Essais sur le machiavélisme moderne [1938–1940],” in
Raymond Aron, Machiavel et les tyrannies modernes, établi, présenté et annoté par
R. Freymond, Paris, Éditions de Fallois, 1993, 119.
3. Ibid., 120.
4. Ibid., 73.
5. Ibid., 61.
6. James Burnham, The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom. A Defense of Political Truth
against Wishful Thinkings, London, 1943, new ed. pref. S. Hook, Washington, DC,
Gateway Edition, 1963.
7. Aron, Essais sur le machiavélisme moderne, op.cit., pp. 72–73 (my italics).
8. James Burnham, The Machiavellians, 80.
9. Ibid., 119.
10. Raymond Aron, Introduction à la philosophie politique: démocratie et révolution, préf.
J.-C. Casanova, Paris, Le Livre de Poche, 1997, 72.
162 S E RG E AU DI E R

11. Ibid.
12. Gaetano Mosca, Elementi di scienza politica, in Ibid., Scritti politici, t.II, ed. G. Sola,
Torino, Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese, 1982, 681.
13. Aron, Introduction à la philosophie politique, 77.
14. Ibid., 79.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid., 80.
17. Mosca, Elementi di scienza politica, 692. On the importance of the theory of the
“mixed constitution” in Mosca, cf. N. Bobbio, “Mosca e il governo misto,” in
Ibid., Saggi sulla scienza politica in Italia, Rome and Bari, Laterza, 1996, 201–219.
18. Burnham, The Machiavellians, 126.
19. Aron, Introduction à la philosophie politique, 121.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid., 132.
22. Ibid., 133.
23. Ibid., 135.
24. Ibid., 136
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid., 137.
27. Raymond Aron, Démocratie et totalitarisme [1965], Paris, Gallimard, 1992, 166.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid., 167.
30. Ibid., 191.
31. Ibid., 342–343.
32. It is true that certain authors of the Cambridge school, like Skinner himself,
underscore the importance of “conf lict” in Machiavelli, but they do not derive
from this all of the possible—and in my mind, necessary—conclusions as to the
rupture effected by Machiavelli, and similarly concerning his different legacies.
33. Cf. Serge Audier, “Machiavel, héritier du républicanisme classique?” in A. Boyer
and S. Chauvier (eds.), Cahiers de philosophie de l’Université de Caen, no. 34, 2000,
9–35; Ibid., Machiavel, conflit et liberté, Paris, Vrin/EHESS, 2004; Ibid., Les Théories
de la République, Paris, La Découverte, 2004. See also V. Sullivan, Machiavelli,
Hobbes, and the Formation of Liberal Republicanism in England, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 2004.
CHAPTER 12

REVISITING ARON’S THE CLASS STRUGGLE:

REREADING FIFTY YEARS AFTER

Serge Paugam

A mong Raymond Aron’s sociological studies, the three essays on industrial

society (18 Lectures on Industrial Society, The Class Struggle, and Democracy
and Totalitarianism), publications derived from seminars given at the Sorbonne
between 1955 and 1958, constitute a representative sample of his sociologi-
cal thinking and method. Initially duplicated from the original stencils by the
Sorbonne’s center for documentation, seven years later, the texts were profession-
ally edited and made available to the larger public. After some hesitation, Aron
agreed to the publication of the texts that still contained sections improvised in
the lecture, as well as their use in teaching, even though they were not initially
destined for publication. According to Aron, what we have at hand corresponds
to “research minutes” or “a working tool for students,” rather than a completed
book comparable to his earlier publications. However, the three seminar texts
became widely read, and they occupy an important place in the overall set of
writings of the author. In his memoirs, Aron recognized their value by noting
that they embrace themes at the center of his attention for more than a decade:
“comparison of the economies and societies of both parts of Europe, the diversity
of regimes and patterns of growth, social structure as a function of the regime
and the stage of growth, the relative autonomy of the political system, and its
inf luence on style of life and class relations.”1
The fi rst of the published lectures concerns the economic domain, the second
concentrates on the social, and the third on the political sphere. According to
Aron, the interactions between the three dimensions constitute the very object
of the sociological enterprise, which should not restrict itself to its own par-
ticularity but rather incorporate elements of the economic and the political, and
hence offer a holistic interpretation of modern society. Aron starts out by defin-
ing an ideal type of industrial society, which he then seeks to empirically verify
164 S E RG E PAU G A M

by a series of systematic comparisons. All three lectures pursue an in-depth com-

parative analysis of the Western and the Soviet political regimes.
Our objective here is to revisit the second lecture series, which Aron himself
considered superior to the other two in scholarly terms. Rereading The Class
Struggle 2 50 years after its initial publication constitutes a stimulating task. On
the one hand, the volume refers to an economic, social, and political period radi-
cally different from the contemporary one and hence provides fertile ground for
comparison. On the other hand, it obliges us to reflexively evaluate the trans-
formation of the sociological perspective, and in this sense to engage in the very
exercise Aron himself recommended that all sociologists take up: the sociology
of sociology.
This second set of lectures is also the one sociologists have studied the
most. Even today, it is considered an apt synthesis of the problems one faces
when studying social stratification. Aron’s starting point is the statement that
“Western, especially European, societies are both obsessed with the notion of
class and unable to defi ne it” and that “if it is difficult to defi ne class it is because
it is not obvious to the observer in the way that a table or chair is, but rather it
is defi ned by the relation between consciences.”3 Having reminded us that the
various defi nitions of social class refer to different philosophical conceptions, as
well as to different political preferences and scientific interpretations, Aron pro-
poses an analytic distinction between consciousness and struggle. Furthermore,
he recommends studying the extent to which, in industrial societies, individuals
indeed group together in classes, the extent to which there is a class conscious-
ness, and whether people consider themselves in a state of confl ict within a class.
Aron’s essential idea of making explicit the relation between the concept under
study—here, the social structure—with the political regime in place springs
from his reflections on Marx and Pareto. Hence, he compares the structure
of the Western and Soviet societies, insisting especially on the status and role
of the leading elites in both cases. He observes that the income gap, as well
as differences in ways of life and prestige, exists in both. He highlights the
fact that while the struggle for income conforms to a certain normalized—or
constitutive—form in the West, this is officially absent in the Soviet societies. In
the Eastern European countries, each time the workers voiced economic griev-
ances in the form of political claims they denounced their low level of income,
whereas the privileged enjoyed the ruling categories and the absence of formal
liberties. Aron arrives at the following conclusion: “To the extent that class
struggle implies class consciousness and class organization, it depends on the
state, on legislation, whether that struggle will manifest itself and even, to some
extent, whether it will exist. It is probable that Soviet workers also make the
distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ the latter being the leaders, the privileged
who live differently from the workers and control their labor; but it may be, in
the absence of freedom of the press and of organization, that the proletarians
have not moved from consciousness of their identity to consciousness of opposi-
tion, challenge, and revolt.”4
In the preface to the fi rst edition of the second lecture series—dating to 1963,
ten years after the actual seminar—Aron briefly underlines three issues that he
 R E V I S I T I NG A RON ’ S T H E C L A S S S T RUG G L E 165

considers necessary to examine further. The fi rst issue concerns the increasing
heterogeneity of the working class, the second relates to the transformation of
social confl icts, and the third stresses the problem of sustained poverty in wealthy
societies. This article revisits these three issues and illustrates them with the help
of empirical materials drawn from contemporary research, which I hope allows
for a dialogue with Aron’s thought.

The Increasing Heterogeneity of the Working Class

The notion of social class is marred with passions and ambivalences, which Aron
works to demonstrate by drawing on Marxist theory. Marx’s defi nition and enu-
meration of different social classes changes from one text to another. Aron, how-
ever, retains the two essential points upon which Marx bases his analysis and
doctrine, namely, that class exists only through its consciousness of itself and that
this consciousness emerges through the recognition of the inevitability of class
struggle. Although Marx himself never claimed that only two classes—the bour-
geoisie and the proletariat—exist, he did believe that the evolution of modern
societies created favorable conditions for a polarization between two, and only
two, classes to come about.
Since the lectures were delivered at the Sorbonne in 1956 and 1957, a full cen-
tury after the publication of Capital, the reality of class has become more com-
plex. Barriers, where they exist, may not be legal, but at the same time, multiple
distinctions within society do exist. Social groups differ from each other in terms
of their economic conditions (with regard to property, work, and income) as well
as in the level of education and the degree of prestige, which no longer appears
as unequivocal. From this springs the following problems related to defi nition
and measurement: (1) If the assessment of economic and social hierarchy involves
multiple criteria, how are they distributed, what entities do they constitute, and
how do we distinguish them from one another? (2) Considering the fi rst set of
questions resolved, do they coincide with the moral ideals and values of each dis-
tinct entity? (3) Have the entities risen to such consciousness of themselves that
they consider themselves as distinct from others?
Aron begins his analysis with the working class, which is characterized by a
stronger internal homogeneity than the other classes.

In effect, it comprises wage-earners and factory workers who, with few excep-
tions, do not possess any property; they work and they live off of their salary, i.e.
the cost of their efforts to the owner of the means of production. Their incomes,
at least in Western societies, do not vary substantially. Therefore, you can see in
this unique case all of the defining criteria come together: the same situation in
regards to property and the same type of work and income. The workers are for
the most part assembled in their workplaces and, at least in the nineteenth century,
they also usually lived together or next to each other. And this is how a sort of
society is created, distinct from global society, with its way of living and thinking,
its level of income, and its situation in regards to property. The similarity of the
socio-economic conditions is such that almost inevitably a conscience of commu-
nity forms and, with it, the opposition to other social groups. 5
166 S E RG E PAU G A M

Aron notes, however, that the conjunction of criteria characterizing the working
class does not apply to any other class; this he proves by successively examining
the cases of the bourgeoisie, the middle classes, and the rural classes.
Notwithstanding the homogeneity of the working class, the notion of class
consciousness needs to be carefully examined. Aron submits the notion to trial
by testing it with studies available in his time. This brings him to the following
conclusion: “In a country like France the workers think about certain things
differently than other groups in the collective. But they are also French and they
have characteristics that classify them as members of the French collective, while
at the same time having characteristics that classify them as members of a class. It
is always important to determine the strength of the elements that defi ne them as
a class compared to those that defi ne them as part of the global collective. Finally,
their class consciousness cannot be total. Is the working class aware of itself?
Indeed, class consciousness is never present in the totality of French workers; it
is incited by a minority.”6
Without explicitly referring to social bonds, Aron invokes the plurality of
forms of attachment in modern societies. Although an individual’s relation to
his or her professional activity fi rst of all links the individual intimately to a
group defi ned by its economic function, and secondly constitutes a social iden-
tity with the potential to envelope several overlapping dimensions of belonging,
it is necessary to observe that not all social circles intertwine with as much ease,
even within the working class. The worker, however integrated in occupational
terms, does not belong solely to a world of workers. He can be a member of a
religious community, or feel deeply enmeshed in the community of citizens. In
other words, forms of diversification of practices and representations are quite
possible.
In reality, Aron’s analysis foregrounded, with striking accuracy, the research
fi ndings of the decade that was to follow. In the beginning of the 1960s, the
embourgeoisement of the working class was debated. During this period, substan-
tial research on the affluent worker was done among the manual workers of Luton
in the region of Bedfordshire, which at that time was a significant and expand-
ing industrial hub.7 The theory of embourgeoisement postulates the adoption by
the manual workers and their families of a way of life that aligns them with the
middle class, before progressively integrating with it as their income level and
living conditions rise. The choice of Luton as the research site was influenced
by a conscious search for an environment enabling embourgeoisement: indeed,
many of the local workers were geographically mobile and had opted for this
region in the hope of better living conditions. Many of them lived in residential
neighborhoods made up of private homes. Finally, the local companies had a
reputation of embracing a wage policy favorable to the professional promotion
and social mobility of their workers.
The affluent worker maintains an instrumental relationship to his work inso-
far as his behavior within the professional sphere is informed by ends exter-
nal to it. It is the remuneration, and not the intrinsic value of work itself, that
counts. Individual fulfi llment is mediated by the possibility of improved living
conditions by means of a rise in income. Work, then, merely corresponds to
 R E V I S I T I NG A RON ’ S T H E C L A S S S T RUG G L E 167

the accomplishment of mundane tasks yielding no pleasure per se but allowing

for attaining objectives related to consumption and wellbeing. The workers are
attached to the company by a purely economic bond. As work does not constitute
a center of their interest in its own right, the affluent workers are only margin-
ally engaged in the collective dynamics of the companies, and adopt a pragmatic
attitude toward trade unions, including a search for services adapted to their
personal plans and projects. In other words, the instrumental relation to work
can be described as a rational calculation expressing professional constraints in
economic terms. For the manual workers who were studied in Luton, earning a
good salary was an acceptable compensation for carrying out menial and repeti-
tive tasks. The English authors suggest an interpretation of a historical shift in
the condition of the working class. Insofar as the way of life of affluent workers
truly is distinguished from that of the traditional working class, the shift can be
interpreted as part of a progressive passage from a solidaristic to an instrumental
orientation toward work, occurring at the time of economic prosperity.
The social integration of these workers could be qualified as “laborious” in
the sense that it was hardly possible for them to fi nd personal fulfi llment in
highly routinized and little-valued work. On the other hand, job protection
and the guarantee of regular pay raises assured a progressive and regular increase
of the standard of living. To a certain extent, for the workers of the prosperous
years following World War II, wages were the sole motivation for working, as
the level of pay conditioned the realization of all and any plans made for better-
ing one’s living standard. This indeed conforms to the key principle of Fordism:
the augmentation of salaries as a means of encouraging mass consumption. The
English inquiry into the way of life of the affluent worker interestingly echoes
Aron’s analysis of the working class and, surprisingly, empirically examines the
hypothesis developed in The Class Struggle.
Since the time of the English study, several sociological inquiries have been
made into the new forms of company participation dynamics,8 and the way of
life of the working class has been described in several monographs.9 The forms
of professional integration have been profoundly transformed by the increases
in unemployment and precarious jobs, as well as by the changes in organization
of work within companies. It is worthwhile asking whether the instrumental
attitude to work remains an option for contemporary workers expressing dis-
satisfaction with their pay and worry in the face of an uncertain future. Does
not the precariousness of their labor and employment condemn them to put up
with economic constraints rather than to devise individual strategies related to
social mobility and better living standards? The research I carried out in the
1990s confi rms this hypothesis.10 Workers today face a high probability of being
subjected to what I have called disqualifying professional integration, referring to the
conjunction of an extreme dissatisfaction with work and a permanent risk of
unemployment.11
The thesis of the increasing heterogeneity of the working class can be con-
fi rmed by the phenomenon of the relative embourgeoisement of the workers in
the 1960s, on the one hand, and by the increasing precariousness of salaried work
since the mid-1970s, on the other. Aron’s skeptical analysis of the unity of the
168 S E RG E PAU G A M

working class is hence fully validated by the developments of the past 50 years.
More generally, and not pertaining solely to the working class, the traditional
differentiations between employees are likely to remain in place as long as the
different categories of employment continue to collectively claim their profes-
sional identity; these categories are distinguished from one another in companies
and in the overall society; and, fi nally, there remains a need for classifying com-
petencies and responsibilities. It is, however, clear that the developments in the
organization of work and the labor market lead to new forms of differentiation
springing not only from various hierarchies but also from the very principles of
professional integration. New forms of inequalities based on both self-fulfi llment
at work and professional status are being placed on top of the traditional forms
of inequalities today.

Toward New Class Struggles?

Aron devotes Chapter 12 of the essay—that is, his twelfth lesson—to the trans-
formation of social confl icts. The title of the lecture, “De la lutte des classes à
la satisfaction querelleuse,” neatly sums up the thesis and the general argument.
According to the sociologist, the struggle over the distribution of the national
income among different groups follows three tendencies: “Diminishing passiv-
ity, intensification of demands, and the weakening of revolutionary movements
and the propensity to use violence.”12
During the post-World War II era of economic prosperity, known as the Trente
Glorieuses in French and corresponding approximately to the period between
1945 and 1975, claims and confl icts over work proliferated despite the near-
nonexistence of unemployment, the narrowing income gap, and the embour-
geoisement of the working class. Aron underlines this heightened tendency to
make claims: “To the great dismay of a certain kind of conservative, industrial
societies typically raise both the collective resources and the demands made by
everyone.”13 The strength of this tendency can, in large part, be explained by the
strategies of distinction for which the different social groups opt. “The essence
of democracy, combined with industrial civilization, is a state of constant agita-
tion.”14 Has this contentious satisfaction come to its end with the crisis of the
wage-earner society since the end of the century? This seems to be the case.
Within the framework of the research I carried out in the 1990s, some wage-
earning workers, having witnessed the 1960s and 1970s, recounted that they
once participated in demonstrations in support of causes they now consider deri-
sory. They noted that today, the issues of contention are more important, yet,
paradoxically, they have developed a tendency to withdraw into themselves in
a pragmatic search for individual solutions to professional problems. This aptly
corresponds to the attitude encouraged by modern management policies.
However, we have to ask ourselves the question of whether the social disqual-
ification of the employed who are facing new forms of professional constraints
and concrete threats to their jobs does not lead, sooner or later, to a new type
of confrontation between those employed with full professional integration and
those whose employment is precarious. The results of my research offer resources
 R E V I S I T I NG A RON ’ S T H E C L A S S S T RUG G L E 169

for approaching this question, in dialogue with Aron’s projection concerning the
weakening of revolutionary movements and their propensity for violence.
We know that consciousness of oppression is a necessary condition for the
emergence of a social confl ict or struggle. We have confi rmed the thesis accord-
ing to which a penchant for radicalism gains impetus in the face of professional
precariousness. We are dealing with neither a spontaneous discontentment nor
an uncontrolled revolt. My in-depth interviews prove that precarious workers
possess a sense of social criticism and an inclination toward struggle. When their
jobs come under threat, they understand perfectly clearly that their future is
in the hands of large fi nancial corporations interested mainly in protecting the
profits of their shareholders. They also evaluate negatively the labor policies of
the successive governments and remain skeptical about the schemes of profes-
sional (re)integration, the latter being suspected as an additional element of their
being placed at risk. They see clearly into the causes of the difficulties they face
in their working life. In other words, it would be erroneous to take the current
weakness of protestations of precariousness for an incapacity of the workers to
form clear judgments about the objectives of a possible revolt. The research does
not provide support for the existence of a gap between the workers’ objective
situation and their consciousness of it.
However, concrete obstacles stand in the way of new social struggles—some
of which can certainly be overcome. Raymond Aron identified two conditions
for entering the phase of revolution: “Two contradictory feelings are necessary
and they go together: hope and despair. It is necessary that men fi nd themselves
in a situation that they judge essentially unacceptable and is necessary that men
conceive a different reality.”15 My research indicates high levels of despair among
the precarious workers—which may, at least partly, explain their radicalism—
while hope of change remains low or almost nonexistent.
The disillusionment of the workers can partly be explained by the nature of
power relations. In his acclaimed book on the conditions of the English working
class, Engels voiced a call for the class struggle with the following words: “Once
more the worker must choose, must either surrender himself to his fate, become
a ‘good’ workman, heed ‘faithfully’ the interest of the bourgeoisie, in which case
he most certainly becomes a brute, or else he must rebel, fight for his manhood to
the last, and this he can only do in the fight against the bourgeoisie.”16 A century
and a half have since passed, and the call sounds obsolete. This type of wording is
no longer expected from the parties of the left, including the Communist Party.
Just like the once-common claims made by the workers, the class struggle itself
has weakened. However, even if the style of Engels’ claims appears dated at the
beginning of the twenty-fi rst century, how can we judge the struggle of the pre-
carious workers itself as dated? Today, many wage-earning workers believe the
economic evolution to be scandalous. At the same time, they perceive themselves
as entangled in unequal power relations, at a time when even political parties and
trade unions have not kept in pace with the recent evolution. How do we launch
an attack against the bosses when we do not even know who they are in the
majority of cases? How do we face up to arguments infused by the logic of the
markets? Economic globalization often endows the heads of companies with an
170 S E RG E PAU G A M

elusive quality, as they steer fi nancial groups according to interests that transcend
national boundaries. The precarious workers are hence deprived of a point of
application for their discontent.
Nevertheless, it would be inaccurate to propose that no leeway exists for eco-
nomic processes that are not entirely determined by the autonomous forces of the
market. These processes are also shaped by the nature of the welfare state capable
of setting limits to capitalist development, particularly as the national popula-
tions express strong expectations regarding social protection. Social struggles
can hence target the public powers in general and call for fi rm policies in the face
of precariousness and unemployment. Precarious workers cannot, for instance,
accept the State’s lack of opposition to extensive lay-off s demanded by commer-
cial enterprises generating considerable profits. As it is, is there not an aberration
in a process with such a costly outcome for the workers and the collectivity alike?
Social struggles can thus locate a point of application in taking the welfare state as
their target, forcing its regulatory function on the economic and social system.
Bringing about a new configuration of power relations is not the only prereq-
uisite for the precarious workers to successfully see through new social struggles.
In order to make collective claims, the group formulating them needs to access
a certain level of consciousness of itself. If the group is split up into numer-
ous subgroups with diverging interests, chances are low that its activity will
be conducted in an organized manner. Given that professional precariousness
comes in many forms and concerns different levels of social hierarchy, and that
the subjective experiences of precariousness evolve over time, it is also unlikely
that the entire body of workers facing difficulties at work naturally possesses the
consciousness needed for forming a unified group.
Finally, a social movement of precarious workers implies the necessity of
means, fi nancial and symbolic alike. The self-identity of these workers is often
negative: they feel disqualified both at work and in the society at large. Social
movements are more likely to take shape when people consider their identity to
be unjustly tainted. We need to see whether the precarious workers are in a posi-
tion to perform a reversion of meaning—that is to say, to turn their discredit into
a collective force. If they feel that individual solutions are needed to address the
difficulties they face, collective action is also made void. Such a process is com-
monplace, as disadvantaged groups are in the majority of cases unable to defend
themselves. Nonetheless, the accumulated frustrations may eventually fi nd an
expression in sporadic revolts and radicalized movements.
Thus, 50 years after the publication of The Class Struggle, it is striking to assess
a radically transformed context of social confl icts. Even though expressions of
contentious satisfaction may not have disappeared altogether, it appears to have
been called into question by the conditions of the crisis of the society made up of
wage-earning workers. Nor can we say with certainty that future confl icts will
be non-violent.

The Persistence of Poverty

The question of the persistence of poverty is taken up in The Class Struggle in
Chapter 2, devoted to the discussion of Marx’s equivocal pauperization theory
 R E V I S I T I NG A RON ’ S T H E C L A S S S T RUG G L E 171

and, in particular, in Chapter 13, titled “Distinctions objectives, distance sociale

et conscience de classe.” In the preface to his book, Aron mentions that the ques-
tion would have indeed deserved a more profound treatment.
The dominating social issue of the relatively prosperous post-World War II era,
and especially of the 1960s, was the increase in inequality. During this period,
however, French society witnessed an unprecedented increase in the standards of
living and succeeded in eliminating, at least partially, the structural poverty that
had conditioned the lives of the past generations. The economist Jean Fourastié
has taken up the task of demonstrating this phenomenon. He notably shows that
the French GDP was three times greater in 1975 than in 1938.17 This evolution
has been beneficial to the entire population. The purchasing power of people
with the lowest salaries has multiplied three- to four-fold. This unprecedented
economic growth has also been significantly accompanied by a development of
social protections, which has resulted in the increased well-being of the majority
of the population. This very assessment appeared as somewhat self-evident, as is
demonstrated by some of the commonsensical designations of the time: the afflu-
ent era, the affluent society, and the affluent worker.
Jean Fourastié is not the only economist who has analyzed this phase of the
evolution of Western societies with an eager optimism. Before him, John Kenneth
Galbraith painted a bright picture of economic growth and social dynamics in
general in his 1958 publication The Affluent Society18. The key argument of the
book consisted of Galbraith’s suggestion that “Western man has escaped for the
moment the poverty which was for so long his all-embracing fate.” According to
him, “deprivation was the fate of everyone who worked without a specialization.
This universal bane disappeared thanks to growth in productivity. As imperfect
as the redistribution of wealth was, greater productivity nevertheless substantially
increased the income of those who were earning their living. The result was the
transformation of poverty from a problem for the majority to a problem for a
minority. It ceased to be a general case and instead became a particular case.”19
According to Galbraith, at the time of the writing of The Affluent Society, only
singular cases of poverty persisted in the United States. These could mostly be
found in the least developed rural areas, notably in southern Appalachia. Poverty
would have taken the shape of a marginal social phenomenon, more prevalent in
the countryside than in the cities.
In the face of this blind optimism, Raymond Aron was opposed to a cer-
tain sociological realism and in favor of a careful consideration of the objective
facts, along with the sense that different societies assign meaning to the latter
according to the consciousness they have of themselves and of the diversity of
subjective experiences of individual citizens.20 He asked, “to what extent does
the reduction in economic inequality eliminate extreme forms of poverty?” and
reached the following conclusion with regard to Western societies: “There is
no rigorous correlation between global economic growth and the extinction
of poverty.” Poverty, then, he added, “has been eliminated more effectively in
the Scandinavian countries or in Great Britain than in the United States even
though American wealth is greater. In other words, the necessary condition for
the elimination of poverty is a minimum level of development of the whole of
the collective, but this condition is not sufficient.”21
172 S E RG E PAU G A M

In order to fi nd an explanation for this paradox, Aron looked into the case of
the United States and took up his thesis grounding the persistence of an under-
class in the extreme national and racial diversity of the US population. He would
revisit this theme in 1963 in the lectures given at the University of California at
Berkeley (leading to the publication of Essai sur les libertés in 1965). He recalled
the relative character of wealth in the United States. According to Aron, a large
gap exists in most families between actual purchasing power and the purchas-
ing power necessary to satisfy the desires now considered as normal. Aron also
reflected on the sense of poverty at a time of strong economic growth. He under-
lined the fact that in each society a minimum threshold is determined to defi ne
someone as poor or not, and this is fashioned by collective opinion, a spontane-
ous but powerful judgment. It is probable that in no society is the minimal level
of subsistence guaranteed to everyone. Aron insisted:

But what is significant is that even in the richest country in the world, a com-
paratively large fraction of the population continues to fall below this collectively
determined minimum, a fraction representing between one-fifth and one-fourth
of the American population, between 36 and 50 million human beings. Moreover,
poverty is defined less in quantitative terms than in qualitative terms. The ques-
tion is whether the poverty which statisticians define arbitrarily when they decree
that it begins below a certain income actually involves misery in Péguy’s sense of
the word. Are the poor excluded from the community and robbed of their dignity,
as it were, by their condition? And it would seem, according to the investigations,
that this actually is the case, not for all, but for a fraction of the poor. 22

Upon the publication of The Class Struggle, Aron also included in his analyses
a series of concrete examples, some of which stem from Michael Harrington’s
The Other America, fi rst published in 1964.23 Harrington’s book had a major
impact in the United States, to the extent that some consider it as one of the
main factors influencing the commencement of the war on poverty in the 1960s. In
any case, it marked a clear turning point in the dominant representations of the
affluent society. Harrington strove to show that the poor—counted in millions
in the United States—tend to become invisible unless one makes a conscious
effort to see them. Contrary to Galbraith, the author insisted on the problem of
segregation, and in particular, its racialized dimension. The middle class com-
fortably living in suburban neighborhoods and aligning its way of life with the
bourgeoisie is easily convinced of the disappearance of poverty. Harrington,
however, stressed the fact that the poor who often feel ashamed of their lot come
to internalize their inferiority and hence accept poverty as their destiny. This is
precisely what Harrington referred to as “the other America,” the fl ipside of the
apparent affluence.
Aron was receptive to this analysis. He noted that unemployment persisted in
the United States (at a rate of 4–5%) despite strong economic growth. He even
spoke about it as a “poverty reserve” comparable to Marx’s “industrial reserve
army.”24 He also pointed out that in the developed countries inequalities are
likely to appear and be accentuated between people who hold the educational
 R E V I S I T I NG A RON ’ S T H E C L A S S S T RUG G L E 173

qualifications necessary to fi nd a job and those hindered by a lack of education.

Thus, a significant segment of the population may be severely disadvantaged
despite the gradual waning of economic inequalities. Aron traces the origin of
this kind of disqualification to the system of production, which, in the name of
rationality, seeks out the most qualified workers. Some years later, in Les désillu-
sions du progrès, Aron stated that

the accelerating development of technology, which rapidly makes entire occupa-

tions obsolete, requires retraining and thereby throws out of employment those
workers who are least able to adapt themselves to some different and perhaps more
highly skilled job. The very nature of technological society forces the weaker
members to pay a disproportionate part of the cost of social progress. Can it be
otherwise so long as wages are based on ability and not on need—and as so long as
society merely endeavors to alleviate the suffering of the victims? 25

What does the picture look like in France at the time of Aron’s lecture on
The Class Struggle? According to the author, the French case is an intermediate
one between the United States and Great Britain. In the 1950s, France was faced
with a serious housing crisis, and, furthermore, many of its economic sectors
remained unmodernized. A large part of the rural population still lived in con-
ditions of extreme poverty. However, Aron drew attention to the existence of a
system of family allocation that progressively acted toward eliminating extreme
destitution.26
At the time of Aron’s analysis of these problems, destitution had thus not
entirely disappeared, and educational and cultural inequalities remained strong
in most countries. Moreover, even though Aron observed a reduction in eco-
nomic inequalities, coinciding with the quasi-universal acceptance of progres-
sive income taxation, two aspects of inequality struck him as being in total
contradiction to the ideals of modern societies. Firstly, he remarked upon “the
destitution of some at a time when the wealth of the community makes it pos-
sible to provide everyone with the minimum income required for what society
regards as a decent standard of living,” and secondly, upon “the transmission of
privileges, whether through the inheritance of wealth or through those advan-
tages that children of the upper strata enjoy from the beginning.”27 In a period of
strong growth, Raymond Aron was thus sensitive to the progressive diminution
of economic and social inequalities, but, unlike many others, was wary of con-
cluding that differences had been eradicated altogether: “The operation of the
tendential laws weakens the reality of classes in many ways, but so long as social
stratification exists (and it appears to be inseparable from industrial society), an
interpretation in terms of classes will always be possible.”28
The job crisis marking the fi nal decades of the twentieth century contrib-
uted to the renewed visibility of poverty to such an extent that, in the mid-
1980s, the term “new poverty”29 was coined. During the 1980s, welfare agencies
saw a growth in the number of applications for fi nancial assistance. While the
social workers had become accustomed to intervening in families that had accu-
mulated different disadvantages, often labeled as “social misfits,” they now saw
174 S E RG E PAU G A M

applications made by deprived young adults coming from families with no pre-
vious experience of hardship, and by individuals excluded from the labor mar-
ket and, thus, in the process of being placed at risk. In other words, the “new
poverty” largely resulted from the erosion of the system of social protection that
left out increasingly large parts of the population. Also, one should note that
this poverty was not only fi nancial in nature. It touched upon the epicenter of
social integration—that is to say, job stability. It was therefore often expressed by
relational—as opposed to fi nancial—poverty, bringing, for instance, health or
housing problems. It is for this reason that the new poverty aroused and contin-
ues to arouse anxiety in modern societies.
Generally speaking, the developments following this period confi rm that the
process of social disqualification is not merely limited to a context of an excep-
tional economic conjuncture. On the contrary, it has been amplified and now
concerns ever-larger portions of the population. Once limited to the unemployed
and the more permanently dependent, social disqualification now looms over
precarious workers and especially the working poor, a population characteristic
of our times. In sum, the phenomenon does not touch only the most precarious
among us, but casts a shadow of collective anxiety over the entire society.
Based on research comparing several European countries,30 I have been able
to verify that disqualifying poverty (pauvreté disqualifiante) is one of the elemen-
tary forms of poverty, and that this analytic notion needs to be elaborated upon
in order to better understand the variability of poverty in time and space. Social
disqualification is more likely to operate in post-industrial societies, namely in
those confronted by a sharp rise in unemployment and a precarious labor mar-
ket. However, it appears necessary to come into dialogue with other concepts
in order to analyze the different social configurations. Receiving an equally low
income, it is one thing to live in Italy’s southern Mezzogiorno, and another to
make it in Paris. Being poor in the northern parts of France in the 1960s did not
mean the same thing as being poor in the same place today. The poor can obvi-
ously be defi ned by referring to a common objective measure that might just
appear as universally acceptable and applicable. However, what is the sense of this
measure if we do not take into account, at the same time, the social representa-
tions and the lived experiences of people living in poverty?
What I would like to insist upon is that an elementary form of poverty cor-
responds to a type of interdependent relation that is stable enough to persist in
time and to impose itself sui generis, and despite the individual elements that
may characterize it in a given place and at a given time. Such a form expresses a
relatively crystallized state of equilibrium of relation between unequal individu-
als (the poor and the nonpoor) within a social system forming a coherent entity.
Disqualifying poverty now appears as a durable social configuration in France
and in other European countries. This will not be cast aside unless significant
collective efforts are mobilized in order to rethink social integration, and pro-
found reforms securing the integration of not only the poor and the dependent,
but all members of a given society, are designed. This contemporary perspective
differs dramatically from the one imagined by Aron when he lectured on The
Class Struggle.
 R E V I S I T I NG A RON ’ S T H E C L A S S S T RUG G L E 175

In terms of this reassessment, The Class Struggle comes forth as an excellent

introduction to the sociology of social classes, such as it has evolved in the con-
text of exceptional economic growth and full employment: in other words, at
a historical moment that laid the ground for a society of wage-earning work-
ers. As long as contentious satisfaction was associated with collective claims for
a just distribution of the profits of growth, it also sustained social integration.
However, from the late 1980s onward, this process has started to reach its limits.
Today, we not only observe a halt in the decrease of economic inequalities, but
are also witnessing the worrisome development of unequal forms of social inte-
gration itself.31 The class struggle of yesterday is now merging with a struggle for
protection and recognition, the components of social integration that are slip-
ping out of the hands of a growing number of citizens.

Notes
1. Raymond Aron, Mémoires. 50 ans de réflexion politique, Paris, Julliard, 1983, 393;
Raymond Aron, Memoirs. Fifty Years of Political Reflection, New York and London,
Holmes & Meier, 1990, 266.
2. Raymond Aron, La Lutte de classes: Nouvelles Leçons sur les sociétés industrielles, Paris,
Gallimard, “Idées,” 1964.
3. Ibid., 92.
4. Aron, Mémoires, 398; Aron, Memoirs, 271.
5. Ibid., 98–99.
6. Ibid., 90.
7. J. H. Goldthorpe, D. Lockwood, F. Bechhofer, and J. Platt, The Affluent Worker,
vol. I: Industrial Attitudes and Behaviour, vol. II: Political Attitudes and Behaviour, vol.
III: The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, 1968–69.
8. For a review of research on these issues, see Christian Thuderoz, “Du lien social
dans l’entreprise. Travail et individualisme coopératif,” Revue française de sociologie,
vol. XXXVI, no. 2, 1995, 325–354.
9. Notably Stéphane Beaux et Michel Pialoux, Retour sur la condition ouvrière. Enquête
aux usines Peugeot de Sochaux-Montbéliard, Paris, Fayard, 1999.
10. Serge Paugam, Le Salarié de la précarité. Les nouvelles formes de l’intégration profession-
nelle, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, “le lien social,” 2000.
11. Serge Paugam, “La condition ouvrière: de l’intégration laborieuse à l’intégration
disqualifiante,” Cités, vol. 35, 2008, 13–32.
12. Aron, La Lutte de classes, 226 et sqq.
13. Ibid., 226.
14. Ibid., 227.
15. Ibid., 229.
16. Friedrich Engels, La Situation de la classe laborieuse en Angleterre, 1st edition in
German, 1845, Paris, Editions sociales, 1975, 166. NB. The English citation is
informed by the several versions of the book accessible online.
17. Jean Fourastié, Les Trente Glorieuses ou la révolution invisible, Paris, Fayard, 1979.
18. J. K. Galbraith, L’Ere de l’opulence, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1961.
19. Ibid., 13.
20. In his memoirs, Aron points out that the rate of economic growth in Europe
(5–6% of the GDP) is likely to slow down as the productivity of the old continent
176 S E RG E PAU G A M

catches up with that of the new world. The high rate did not appear sustainable
to the author in the long term. See Aron, Mémoires, 408 and Aron, Memoirs, 279.
21. Aron, La Lutte de classes, 235.
22. Raymond Aron, Essais sur les libertés, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1965, 116. An Essay of
Freedom, New York, World Publishing, 1970, 79.
23. The French edition appears in 1967 with the title L’Autre Amérique. La pauvreté aux
Etats-Unis, Paris, Gallimard.
24. Essai sur les Libertés, 118; An Essay on Freedom, 80.
25. Raymond Aron, Les Désillusions du progrès. Essai sur la dialectique de la modernité,
Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1969, 35; Raymond Aron, Progress and Disillusion: The
Dialectics of Modern Society, New York, Praeger, 1968, 12–13.
26. Aron, La Lutte de classes, 238.
27. Aron, Les Désillusions du progrès, 34; Aron, Progress and Disillusion, 12.
28. Aron, Les Désillusions du progrès, 32; Aron, Progress and Disillusion, 10.
29. See about this question Serge Paugam, La Disqualification sociale. Essai sur la nouvelle
pauvreté, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 1991.
30. Serge Paugam, Les Formes élémentaires de la pauvreté, Paris, Presses universitaires de
France, “Le lien social,” 2005.
31. Serge Paugam (dir), L’Intégration inégale. Force, fragilité et rupture des liens sociaux,
Paris, Presses universitaires de France, “Le lien social,” 2014.
CHAPTER 13

THE ORIGINS OF THE “END OF IDEOLOGY?”

RAYMOND ARON AND INDUSTRIAL CIVILIZATION

Iain Stewart

F rom the mid-1950s to the 1960s, Raymond Aron played an important role in
popularizing the notion that the postwar achievements of Europe’s partially
managed, mixed economies held out the possibility of an end to the “ideologi-
cal” politics of class conf lict and polarization between left and right. This “end
of ideology” argument has been identified as a distinguishing feature of “cold
war liberalism,” a rhetorical shift in the language of anti-communism marking
the dawn of a “golden age of capitalism.”1 Yet, in Aron’s writings, the origin of
this argument is to be found not in capitalism’s golden age but in its moment of
ultimate crisis during the Depression. This problematizes the notion of a clear
divide between Aron’s pre-war socialism and cold war liberalism, highlighting
the importance of reaching a more detailed knowledge of the former if we are to
reach a better understanding of the latter.
Toward the end of his life, Aron described his political orientation in the
1920s and 1930s as “vaguely socialist.”2 Most of his subsequent commentators
have been equally vague on this subject, emphasizing the strength of Aron’s
socialist convictions before the Cold War without analyzing their content.3 Yet
interwar French socialism was so heterogeneous that simply to assert Aron’s pas-
sionate commitment to socialism in this period does not tell us a great deal.
What, for instance, are we to make of the fact that from 1938, a year in which
Aron publicly reasserted his socialist convictions,4 he was also involved in some
of the earliest attempts to formulate a “neo-liberal” economic program? To
answer this question we must begin by reconsidering Aron’s peripheral involve-
ment in student socialist politics at the École normale supérieure between 1924
and 1928. From this starting point, it is possible to reach a clearer understanding
of the “mature” Aron’s relationship with his socialist past and his place in the
intellectual history of economic liberalism.
178 I A I N S T E WA R T

On the Margins of Neo-Socialism and Neo-Liberalism

The École normale was at the center of efforts to rethink the theory and practice
of socialism in interwar France.5 Disillusioned with the political and ideolog-
ical immobilism of the party leadership, in 1924 Georges Lefranc established
the Groupe d’études des socialistes des Écoles normales supérieures (GESENS).
This group conceived of itself as a French version of the Fabian Society, an inde-
pendent think tank using social scientific research to promote the doctrinal and
policy evolution of French socialism. Marcel Déat, an older normalien who was
one of the Socialist Party’s rising stars, was sympathetic to the GESENS. In 1925,
he became the secretary-archivist of the Centre de documentation sociale, the
École normale’s specialist social sciences library and an important resource for
Lefranc’s study group. The same year Déat reestablished the Socialist Party’s offi-
cial Groupe d’étudiants socialistes at the École normale. Most members of the
GESENS joined this group, and after Déat was elected to the National Assembly
in 1926, he helped them to cultivate ties with like-minded young Socialist depu-
ties. Regular collaboration through channels such as the party’s Bureau d’Études
continued until the expulsion of Déat and his followers from the Socialist Party
in November 1933. At this point, all of the former students and many sym-
pathetic deputies chose to remain within the SFIO, the term ‘neo-socialism’
henceforth designating Déat’s minority faction rather than the broader move-
ment for ideological renewal from which it had emerged.
The neo-socialist controversy showed that French socialist revisionism was
heterogeneous. But while disillusionment with the old guard did not translate
into an oppositional consensus, a few common preoccupations were widely dis-
persed across the revisionist nebula. First among these was a common desire for
empirically based doctrinal and policy innovation. This often translated into a
heightened sense of Marxism’s limitations as a guide to practical action. Instead
of preaching class struggle, Déat and his allies argued that the Socialist Party must
appeal to middle-class and proletarian electorates. Most revisionists regarded
the state not simply as an agent of class control but as a tool for implementing
structural economic reforms that would build socialism on a broad social base.
Progressive nationalization would play a part in this process, but less important
than state ownership was the ability of the state effectively to manage a mixed
economy through its monopoly of credit and collaboration with the unions.
Economic planning therefore became a major preoccupation of socialist revi-
sionists, whose approach to economic policy tended to be more productivist and
less redistributive than that of the socialist mainstream. It was also more open to
the lessons of foreign experience, most notably through its links to the socialist
movement in Belgium. The French revisionist critique of Marxism and inter-
est in economic planning drew heavily upon the work of the Belgian socialist
Hendrik de Man, whose international influence would expand beyond hetero-
dox socialist circles during the Depression.
Inspired by the example of de Man’s Belgian Plan du Travail, in the summer
of 1934 a vogue for economic planning swept Paris. It was at this point that
Raymond Aron returned to work permanently in the capital for the fi rst time
 TH E ORIGINS OF TH E “EN D OF IDEOLOGY?” 179

since leaving for Germany in 1930. Aron had become personally acquainted with
Hendrik de Man in Germany and had praised his work for its attempt to escape
the doctrinal cul-de-sacs of reformism and revolution.6 His concern with this
issue and attraction to de Man’s ideas were typical of the student socialist milieu
to which Aron had belonged as a member of the Groupe d’étudiants socialistes.
Aron’s fi rst published article had called on the Socialist Party to reject “the cult
of outdated formulas” and develop “an acute vision of current possibilities.” 7
As a student, he had also been an admirer of Marcel Déat, and now he was
returning to the École normale to follow in Déat’s footsteps as secretary-archivist
of its Centre de documentation sociale (CDS).8 It was here that Aron would
befriend the young economist Robert Marjolin, a member of the heterodox
socialist group Révolution constructive. This group was an outgrowth from the
GESENS and Déat’s Bureau d’Études, and it had belonged to the avant-garde
of French planism since the early 1930s. Yet soon Marjolin began to distance
himself from socialist planism, withdrawing his support from Jules Romain’s
famous Plan du 9 juillet in 1934 and resigning from Révolution constructive the
following year.
Robert Marjolin later attributed his increasing skepticism about socialist eco-
nomic planning in these years to the influence of Aron.9 From 1934 up to the war
the two men co-taught a course on political economy at the CDS and became so
close that, according to Marjolin, “our moral and intellectual universes and our
value systems were the same, not just in general but in detail.”10 In 1936, they
were united in opposition to the economic policies of the Popular Front gov-
ernment elected the same year. Marjolin was an advisor on the Popular Front’s
National Economic Council but was unable substantially to influence its poli-
cies. He vented his frustration by criticizing the government’s economic policy
in the pages of Le Populaire, the Socialist Party’s newspaper. In the summer of
1937, Aron published his own critique of the Popular Front in the Revue de
métaphysique et de morale.11
This article focused on two things that Aron regarded as having condemned
the Popular Front’s economic policy to failure: the refusal of currency devalua-
tion before September 1936 and the implementation of the 40-hour week in the
same month. It also attacked the redistributionist logic underlying the Blum gov-
ernment’s economic program. In conceding large wage rises and working-hour
reductions during the industrial unrest of the summer of 1936, the government
had failed to recognize that such reforms, however desirable, were ultimately
dependent upon long-term improvements in the productivity of the French
economy. Yet Aron was also skeptical of structural reforms promoted by the
planist left as an alternative. It was not clear, he argued, that nationalizing credit
would be an effective mechanism for managing the economy, and French civil
servants and politicians lacked the expertise for this task anyway.
Aron and Marjolin’s critiques of the Popular Front scandalized their friends
on the left but were warmly received within the economic think tank X-Crise.12
Founded at the École Polytechnique in 1931, X-Crise was committed to rethink-
ing liberal economics in response to the Depression. Its membership ranged from
more or less orthodox economic liberals like Jacques Rueff on the right through
180 I A I N S T E WA R T

to the heterodox socialist Jules Moch on the left. X-Crise was an inter-profes-
sional body and economists mixed with reformist industrialists and trade union-
ists at its meetings. Aron and Marjolin entered its orbit via Marjolin’s working
relationships with the economist Charles Rist and the statistician Alfred Sauvy.
Like Marjolin, Sauvy was a frustrated advisor to the Popular Front who belonged
to that section of X-Crise that was sympathetic to the Blum experiment but
dismayed by its economic policy. Jules Moch, like Marjolin, had a background
on the planist wing of the Socialist Party, and X-Crise, as a whole, had been
preoccupied with the issue of economic planning since its inception. However,
the “neo-liberal” planning vision that developed at X-Crise was more centrist
and technocratic than its revisionist socialist counterpart, articulated in “a lan-
guage not of statist command but of initiative, coordination, and productivity.”13
Although Aron became increasingly critical of socialist planism in the 1930s, he
was much more sympathetic toward the planning model developed at X-Crise,
as his wartime writings would later demonstrate.
As well as drawing him closer to the X-Crise group, it is likely that Aron’s
critique of the Popular Front also facilitated his invitation to the Colloque Walter
Lippmann in August 1938. This was the fi rst international attempt explicitly
to formulate a “neo-liberal” economic program.14 The event attracted partici-
pants from a range of opinions and professional backgrounds roughly comparable
to that which characterized X-Crise. No consensus as to what “neo-liberal-
ism” might mean in practice was reached at the conference, which was divided
between defenders of radical laissez-faire economics such as Ludwig von Mises,
more centrist German economists who would go on to found the school of
Ordoliberalism, and Keynesians from revisionist socialist backgrounds such as
Aron and Marjolin. There is no record of any intervention by Aron in the dis-
cussions at this gathering, but in 1939 he did give a speech at the opening of the
Centre d’études pour la rénovation du libéralisme, the short-lived precursor of
the Mont Pèlerin Society founded in the wake of the Lippmann event.15
Although the text of this speech appears to have been lost, the record of its
occurrence suggests that Aron’s involvement in early neo-liberal initiatives was
ideologically significant and not purely circumstantial. But how does this square
with his then on-going commitment to socialism? This is in fact less paradoxical
than it at fi rst appears. Raymond Aron’s early intellectual itinerary shows that
during a period of profound crisis when traditional ideological categories such
as left and right or liberal and socialist were being extensively rethought, the
boundaries between the right wing of neo-socialism (broadly defi ned) and the
left of the emergent neo-liberal movement partially overlapped. It was from this
starting point on the overlapping peripheries of the liberal and socialist revision-
ist movements that Aron’s “post-ideological” economic thought would emerge
in more detail during the war years.

Planning for Democratic Renewal

In June 1939, Raymond Aron outlined a triple economic, ideological, and elite-
based reform required for the survival of democratic regimes in the face of their
 TH E ORIGINS OF TH E “EN D OF IDEOLOGY?” 181

totalitarian enemies. Formulated in anticipation of war, this presentation at the

Société française de philosophie would also provide the basis for Aron’s reflec-
tion on postwar democratic recovery.16 Comparing democratic and totalitarian
regimes, he argued that democracies should learn from the strengths of their
enemies, and that certain imitative adaptations could be made without sacrific-
ing the values separating democracy and totalitarianism.17 That economic plan-
ning in totalitarian regimes was repressive and militaristic reflected the particular
political aims of those regimes’ new ruling elites; it was not the necessary out-
come of planning as such.18 This implied that democracies could adopt aspects of
totalitarian economic organization without sacrificing individual liberties alto-
gether, provided they were led by elites possessing the requisite technical capac-
ity and ideological commitment to democracy. Acknowledging that a minimum
of economic liberty was a prerequisite for political liberty, Aron suggested that
democratic planning should utilize capitalist industrial expertise, establishing
itself on the basis of class cooperation, not confl ict.19 As for the necessary renewal
of faith in democratic ideals, this called for reflection on precisely which of these
were essential and which secondary. Some form of representative government
was essential to democracy, but the ideal of popular sovereignty was not, because
it was sufficiently equivocal to risk being subverted in support of totalitarian
ends.20 Instead, he argued that

what is essential to the ideal of a democratic regime is firstly legality: it is a regime

where there are laws and where power is not arbitrary and without limits. I think
that democratic regimes are those which have a minimum of respect for the human
person and do not consider individuals uniquely as means of production or objects
of propaganda.21

Aron elaborated upon the interrelated themes of economic organization, elite

renewal, and ideological reinforcement in much of his writing for La France libre,
the journal he edited alongside André Labarthe in London during the war. In
an article published in May 1942 that had repeated his argument for a limited
imitative adaptation of democracies to the virtues of totalitarian organization,
Aron concluded with a reminder of the importance of renewing faith in dem-
ocratic values, since “while it may be possible to win the war without believ-
ing in democracy, it will not be possible to win the peace if we do not believe
in democracy.”22 In September 1942 he emphasized that allied victory would
require peacetime economic organization to be reoriented toward new goals:
“Finally, liberated from the Germans, liberated from tyranny, men must also
be liberated ‘from want and fear,’ the fear spread by war, the poverty spread
by unemployment.”23 Three months later, he reiterated that any such postwar
settlement must be based not on a politics of class confl ict, but on “the wider
collaborations that the economic technique . . . of our epoch demands.”24 Aron
repeated this argument in March 1943, in an article that reemphasized the deci-
sive moral and technical importance of elite renewal for a postwar recovery that
must combine enhanced state economic intervention with the safeguarding of
democratic values.25
182 I A I N S T E WA R T

During the winter of 1943–1944, Aron’s writing on these themes became more
detailed and specific in its recommendations. In an article dated November–
December 1943, he wrote that “it is an indisputable fact that the prosperity and
grandeur of a nation depends to a large extent on the minority which holds the
positions of command,” but warned against the technocratic illusion that the
administration of things would replace the government of people in a postwar
French democracy.26 It would, he argued, be essential to reanimate the faith of
the masses in the democratic system, but the organization of mass democratic
enthusiasm must be steered along non-partisan lines.27 The only way to avoid a
return to the radical polarization of the 1930s would be to learn the lesson of that
decade’s failed economic policies:

No economic, social or political equilibrium was possible as long as the stagna-

tion of economic activity obliged us to share a static revenue between growing
appetites. As long as the collective wealth was not growing, it was only possible to
satisfy the aspirations, however legitimate, of one section of the community at the
expense of meeting the expectations of others. 28

Returning to this theme in the spring of 1944, Aron attributed the failure
of French economic policy in the 1930s to a disconnect between technical
expertise and government.29 After the war, this would need to be addressed
by linking public administration and independent think tanks, and by over-
hauling civil service training to instill a culture that was “less bookish, more
international.”30 It was, he argued, “inadmissible that an inspector of fi nances
should not have completed sufficient work experience in a bank or large enter-
prise, that he should not have direct experience of English and American
markets.”31 Economic planning would thus be fundamental to stimulating the
French economy into the growth upon which postwar social stability depended,
but it should be based upon a consultative, cooperative relationship with private
enterprise. Favoring a targeted, indicative form of planning over more com-
prehensive socialist approaches, Aron also suggested that the extent of state-
led economic planning would reduce once the immediate demands of postwar
reconstruction had been met, allowing for a relative expansion of the private
sector within the mixed economy. 32
Written between March and April 1944, this article shows Aron diverging
somewhat from the social democratic mainstream of planning debate as rep-
resented in the then recently published program of the Conseil national de la
Résistance (CNR). This was also apparent in a later piece in which he discussed
the question of nationalization. Acknowledging the strength of public opinion
on this issue, Aron recognized the political case for nationalization, even if the
economic argument was sometimes unconvincing. He thus accepted in principle
the nationalization of the mining, insurance, transport, chemical, and electric-
ity industries, but emphasized that public ownership should not be viewed as a
panacea.33 Elsewhere, his favorable attitude toward comprehensive social insur-
ance was balanced with a similarly pragmatic warning that its long-term feasi-
bility would depend upon tackling France’s historically low birth rate. 34 Aron’s
 TH E ORIGINS OF TH E “EN D OF IDEOLOGY?” 183

moderation regarding such issues was not only rooted in an awareness of practi-
cal limitations; it was equally motivated by a political concern that any postwar
settlement should have a broad-based appeal and refrain from the kind of divisive
economic demagogy that he considered to have marred the experience of the
Popular Front. Later that year, he suggested that postwar economic planning
should be Saint-Simonian in inspiration rather than socialist because whereas
the socialist ideal would arouse confrontation, its Saint-Simonian counterpart
offered an opportunity for collaboration in good faith between social classes. 35
What this meant in practical terms, he later wrote, was that

the direction suggested by French experience is not towards integral planning of

the nation’s economic life . . . it is even less to return to a liberalism that is, momen-
tarily at least, excluded both by circumstances and the state of public opinion. The
direction suggested by French experience is to demand from state intervention
that it give the necessary impetus towards the modernization of our tools and our
working practices.36

While the CNR’s planning agenda was oriented toward the establishment of
an extensive social and economic democracy, with substantial worker control
at all levels and generous minimum wage guarantees, the vision promoted by
Aron stressed the need to subordinate the demands of both wages and prof-
itability to those of productivity: “Such a plan,” he wrote, “would transcend
partisan quarrels, offer the French people an opportunity to work together, and
create a space for reconciliation between political parties.”37 For Aron, then,
postwar economic planning would perform a socially didactic role in addition
to its immediate technical function: a broad-based, collaborative approach, cen-
tered on modernization and efficiency rather than socialization and redistribu-
tion, would ultimately serve to teach a lesson of civic virtue.38 Thus conceived,
planning offered an opportunity to break the cycle of moral and political crises
fueled by the historical recurrence of Manichean polarization in national politi-
cal debate since the French Revolution.39
While this vision stood in contrast to the socialist mainstream of wartime
planning debate, it would prove to be closely aligned with the planning model
that was eventually established by Jean Monnet, Robert Marjolin, and Étienne
Hirsch at the Commissariat-général au Plan in 1946.40 This is not to suggest that
men whose combined economic expertise greatly surpassed Aron’s were sub-
stantially influenced by his wartime writings. But the basic similarities between
their respective visions do point to a common historical origin that lay partly
in the heterodox economic theory developed in pre-war think tanks such as
X-Crise. This kind of economic thought, which had been relatively marginal
in the 1930s, became much less so after the war when it achieved hegemony
within France’s elite administrative training schools.41 Between 1946 and 1955
Aron participated in this ideological reorientation of French institutions, teach-
ing Keynesian economics at the new École nationale d’administration and at the
reformed Institut d’études politiques de Paris, previously a bastion of classical
economic liberalism.42
184 I A I N S T E WA R T

After Aron swapped these positions for a professorship in sociology at the

Sorbonne in 1955, his subsequent work on industrial society and the “end of
ideology” would popularize the new economic orthodoxy for a much wider
audience at home and abroad.

The End of Ideology?

On May 29, 1955, Raymond Aron’s editorial in Le Figaro took stock of Europe’s
postwar economic recovery:

Ten years after the end of the war, Europe has achieved a level of prosperity which
surpasses the most optimistic predictions formulated at the launch of the Marshall
Plan . . . [A] semi-dirigiste, semi-liberal commercial policy has brought the same
results which, theoretically, would have been induced through liberal mechanisms.
Impassioned controversies between the doctrinaires of liberty and the doctrinaires
of administrative control today take on an outdated and almost trivial character.43

This editorial echoed arguments advanced in Aron’s Opium of the Intellectuals,

published in France the same month. The strength of the postwar recovery in
Western Europe placed into question some of the fundamental assumptions
of Marxist socialism and classical economic liberalism. Capitalism had defied
Marxist predictions of self-destruction by incorporating the Welfare State, eco-
nomic planning, and the co-existence of nationalized and private sectors. Liberal
fears that this would lead to tyranny had not been realized. For Aron, this begged
the question raised in the conclusion of Opium of the Intellectuals: could the West
be approaching the “end of the ideological age?”44
This sense of being on the threshold of a post-ideological era also reflected
change in the Soviet world. The relaxation of domestic repression since the death
of Stalin in 1953 was accompanied by a de-escalation of the Cold War, as the
USSR’s new leaders unilaterally adopted a strategy of “peaceful co-existence”
with the West. By ostensibly shifting the locus of Cold War competition from
the military to the socioeconomic sphere, the new Soviet strategy posed a major
ideological challenge: effective anti-communist propaganda could no longer rely
only on fear. The concepts of “industrial society” and the “end of ideology”
pioneered by Aron in the mid-1950s were essential components of the western
response to this challenge.
Saint-Simonian in origin, the concept of industrial society had long fallen out
of intellectual favor by the mid-1950s when Aron revived it. What now made
the concept useful was that it offered a way of overcoming the dichotomy of
democracy and totalitarianism to consider capitalist and communist systems as
variants of the same industrial civilization. This opened the opportunity for an
empirically based comparative analysis of the two regimes’ economic, social, and
political systems.45 Rather than praise or condemn abstract models of capitalism
or socialism to which no existing regime corresponded, it would now be possi-
ble to compare the actual functioning of the industrial societies on either side of
the Cold War divide. What united these societies was a common preoccupation
 TH E ORIGINS OF TH E “EN D OF IDEOLOGY?” 185

with the achievement of economic growth through the application of science

and technology to production. By studying the nature and effects of economic
growth in capitalist democracies, it was possible to dispel both the Marxist myth
of capitalist self-destruction and liberal fears about the implications of planning
for economic performance and individual liberty. In this respect, the rediscovery
of the concept of industrial society was central to the debate over the end of ide-
ology that Aron had initiated with Opium of the Intellectuals.
The “end of ideology” provided the central theme for the Congress for Cultural
Freedom’s “Future of Freedom” conference held in Milan in September 1955.46
The Congress was a CIA front organization and the leading anti-communist
intellectual enterprise of the cultural Cold War. By 1955, Aron was arguably the
most influential figure within the institution and had been closely involved in
planning the Milan conference. Participants included anti-communist intellec-
tuals alongside moderate socialist politicians and trade unionists, civil servants,
and business leaders. The inter-professional nature of the event was reminiscent
of some of the revisionist think tanks and conferences of the interwar years, and
indeed the French contingent included several key figures with links to X-Crise
and planist socialism.47 In his speech at the opening session, Aron described
the inspiration behind the conference as the idea that socialist and liberal dog-
matism were both dead.48 This proposition achieved a considerable degree of
consensus in Milan, and the “end of ideology” argument subsequently became
a key component of what has been called “cold war liberalism.” The degree
of optimism with which it was articulated varied, but its different proponents
shared the assumption that sustained economic growth, managed by a moder-
ately interventionist state in cooperation with labor and enterprise, could simul-
taneously deliver increasing levels of wages, benefits, profits, and investment. By
thus aligning the interests of workers and employers, a new politics of productiv-
ity could gradually replace the old politics of class confl ict, rendering traditional
ideological distinctions between left and right redundant in the process.49
The “end of ideology” was an attempt at redefi ning the discursive parameters
of political reflection in capitalist industrial societies so as to delegitimize revo-
lutionary Marxist socialism and, to a lesser extent, traditional economic liberal-
ism.50 In this latter respect, it can be seen as descending partly from the kind of
left neo-liberalism articulated at the Lippmann conference of 1938. Indeed, in
the mid-to-late 1950s, the Congress for Cultural Freedom operated as a kind of
center-left alternative to the Mont Pèlerin Society, the organization founded by
Friedrich von Hayek in 1947 to promote the cause of economic liberalism inter-
nationally. Raymond Aron had joined Hayek’s organization but would resign
in 1961 over its unwavering commitment to radical laissez-faire economics.51
Hayek was a member of the Congress for Cultural Freedom and spoke at its
“Future of Freedom” conference. Unsurprisingly, given that the event sought
to marginalize his alternative liberal vision, Hayek was the event’s lone dissent-
ing voice. Instead of saving the cause of liberty, he argued, the mixed economic
model being promoted in Milan would ultimately bury it.52
The critique of Hayekian economic liberalism advanced within the “end
of ideology” argument was primarily empirical: the postwar development of
186 I A I N S T E WA R T

capitalist industrial society appeared to show that the fears expressed in Hayek’s
The Road to Serfdom were unfounded. Aron had been the chief architect of this
empirical critique, but the end of ideology was only one element of his critical
appraisal of radical laissez-faire economics. In an article written around the time
of his involvement in the Lippmann conference, Aron had criticized economic
liberalism on epistemological grounds.53 Using economics as an example to dem-
onstrate the limitations of objectivity in the social sciences, he criticized neo-
classical economic liberalism for transgressing the boundary between economic
theory and doctrine. What separated these domains, he argued, was the ability
to distinguish between two forms of truth, a “vérité logique” (logical truth) and
a “vérité de fait,” (factual truth) arising from the unavoidable interval separating
schema and reality. As Aron explained,

these uncertainties . . . do not result from the shortcomings of economists, but from
the complexity of economic reality. Economic subjects are men, their decisions are
only intelligible if they are rational: but they are not always rational. The economy
only exists as an abstraction of the economist, it unfolds in a complex of social insti-
tutions and is subject to the effects of political and social events . . . All parts of the
complex are interdependent, hence the multiplicity of possible actions and reactions
between these parts. In short, the situations analyzed by theoretical schemas are
precisely defined [whereas] concrete situations are always imperfectly known.54

This article anticipates the philosophical critique of Hayek that Aron would
develop following the publication of Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty in 1960.
The defense of economic liberalism in this book was based on a narrow defi ni-
tion of liberty as non-coercion. Although impressed by the logical coherence of
the liberal philosophy which Hayek constructed from this starting point, Aron
regarded it as an abstract model that ignored how feelings of liberty and coer-
cion were actually experienced in the real world.55 While Hayek considered
that liberty was a concept that could be applied only in relation to individuals,
Aron, writing as the Algerian War approached its bloody denouement, noted
the capacity of individuals willingly to sacrifice personal freedoms in the cause
of national liberation. That Hayek’s liberalism rested on an unsophisticated psy-
chological model coupled to a naively individualist social ontology was a theme
that Aron would develop when he reworked his critique of Hayek during his
lectures at the Collège de France in 1973–1974.56 By this point, however, an oil
crisis sparked by the Yom Kippur War was bringing about a shift in the global
economy, which would soon put into question some of the fundamental assump-
tions of the economic model that Aron had defended since the war. By the end
of the decade, Hayekian neo-liberalism, marginalized for much of the postwar
period, was on the ascendency.

* * *

France, of course, never experienced the kind of Hayekian revolution experi-

enced in Britain or the United States. In 1981, François Mitterrand was elected
 TH E ORIGINS OF TH E “EN D OF IDEOLOGY?” 187

president on a platform promising to break with capitalism. Aron’s economic

commentary in the years preceding this had been largely devoted to attacking the
Common Program of the Socialist and Communist parties.57 After Mitterrand
reversed the break with capitalism in the face of economic crisis and defeat in
the 1983 municipal elections, left-wing commentators railed against the emer-
gence of an “Arono-Hayekian consensus” in French economics.58 But as much as
Aron may have respected Hayek and claimed to share his fundamental political
values,59 their economic thought represented opposing neo-liberal visions whose
history dated back to the attempt to rethink liberal economic theory during the
Depression. This is significant because the theories of industrial society and the
end of ideology that Aron popularized in the 1950s and 1960s are usually seen as
components of his “cold war liberalism.” Yet, while it is true that the promotion
of these theories reflected a change in the terms of debate of the cultural Cold
War, much of their content had been anticipated in writings that Aron published
between 1937 and 1945, a period in his political development that is often con-
sidered “pre-liberal.” This suggests that the notion of a break between socialist
and liberal phases in Aron’s intellectual trajectory is problematic. It also helps to
explain why Aron never succumbed to the more optimistic predictions of other
“end of ideology” theorists, such as the American sociologist Seymour Martin
Lipset, who considered that the mixed economy and welfare state had “solved”
the fundamental political problems of the industrial revolution.60 Having lived
through the interwar crisis in Germany and France, Aron was haunted by a sense
of the permanent fragility of liberal democracy. While he saw economic growth
on the model pursued after the war as essential to overcoming the crisis that had
preceded it, he also recognized that it was a partial solution that posed its own
new challenges to the liberal order.61

Notes
1. Anthony Arblaster, The Rise and Decline of Western Liberalism, Oxford, Blackwell,
1984, 322–326; Giles Scott-Smith, “The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the
End of Ideology and the 1955 Milan Conference ‘Defining the Parameters of
Discourse,’ ” Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 37, July 2002, 437–455; Donald
Sassoon, One Hundred Years of Socialism: The West European Left in the Twentieth
Century, London, Fontana, 1997, 189–208.
2. Raymond Aron, Le Spectateur engagé. Entretiens avec Jean-Louis Missika et Dominique
Wolton, Paris, Julliard, 1981, 25–26.
3. Robert Colquhoun, Raymond Aron: The Philosopher in History, 1905–1955, vol. 1,
Beverly Hills, Sage, 1986, 32–33; Nicolas Baverez, Raymond Aron: un moraliste au
temps des idéologies, Paris, Flammarion, 1993, 53–56.
4. Colquhoun, Raymond Aron: The Philosopher in History, 1905–1955, 143.
5. The following discussion of French socialist revisionism draws upon Jean-François
Sirinelli, Génération intellectuelle: khâgneux et normaliens dans l’entre-deux-guerres,
Paris, Fayard, 1988; Georges Lefranc, Le Mouvement socialiste sous la troisième répub-
lique, Paris, PBP, 1977; Marcel Déat, Mémoires politiques, Paris, Éditions Denoël,
1989; Christophe Prochasson, Les Intellectuels, le socialisme et la guerre, 1900–1938,
Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1993; Jean Touchard, La Gauche en France depuis 1930,
188 I A I N S T E WA R T

Paris, Seuil, 1977; Olivier Dard, Le Rendez-vous manqué des relèves des années 30,
Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 2002.
6. Raymond Aron, De Giscard à Mitterrand, 1977–1983, Paris, Éditions de Fallois,
2005, 655; Raymond Aron, “Henri de Man: Au delà du marxisme,” Libres Propos,
January 1931, 43–47.
7. Raymond Aron, “Ce que pense la jeunesse universitaire d’Europe,” Revue de
Genève, December 1926, 789–794, 791–792.
8. Raymond Aron, Mémoires. 50 ans de réflexion politique, Paris, Julliard, 1983, 47–48,
69.
9. Robert Marjolin, “Les années 30,” Commentaire, vol. 8, February 1985, 19.
10. “nos univers moraux et intellectuels, nos systèmes de valeurs étaient les mêmes, non seule-
ment dans l’ensemble mais même dans le détail,” Robert Marjolin, Le Travail d’une vie:
mémoires 1911–1986, Paris, Robert Laffont, 1986, 56.
11. Raymond Aron, “Réf lexions sur les problèmes économiques français,” Revue de
métaphysique et de morale, vol. XLIV, 1937, 793–822.
12. Aron, Mémoires, 143.
13. Richard Kuisel, Capitalism and the State in Modern France, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 1981, 105–108; Philip Nord, France’s New Deal
from the Thirties to the Postwar Era, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press,
2010, 42.
14. Serge Audier, Le Colloque Lippmann: aux origines du néo-libéralisme, Paris, Bord de
l’Eau, 2008.
15. François Denord, Néolibéralisme version française: histoire d’une idéologie politique,
Paris, Demopolis, 2007, 156.
16. Raymond Aron, Penser la liberté, penser la démocratie, Paris, Gallimard, 2005,
57–106.
17. Ibid., 69.
18. Ibid., 57–61.
19. Ibid., 68–69, 89–90.
20. Ibid., 70.
21. “Ce qui est essentiel dans l’idée d’un régime démocratique, c’est d’abord la légal-
ité: régime où il y a des lois et où le pouvoir n’est pas arbitraire et sans limites.
Je pense que les régimes sont ceux qui ont un minimum de respect pour les
personnes et ne considèrent pas les individus uniquement comme des moyens de
production ou des objets de propagande.” Ibid., 70.
22. “ . . . si l’on peut gagner la guerre sans croire en la démocratie, on ne gagnera pas la
paix si l’on ne croit pas en elle,” Raymond Aron, L’Homme contre les tyrans, New
York, Éditions de la Maison Française, 1944, 247. See also 365–382.
23. “Enfin, libérés des Allemands, libérés de la tyrannie, les hommes doivent être
libérés aussi ‘du besoin et de la peur’, peur que répand la guerre, misère que
répand le chômage.” Ibid., 261–262.
24. “ . . . les collaborations élargies qu’exige la technique économique . . . de notre
époque,” Ibid., 284.
25. Ibid., 334–342.
26. “c’est une fait irrécusable que la prospérité et la grandeur d’une nation dépendent
en une large mesure de la minorité qui tient les postes de commande.” Raymond
Aron, L’Âge des empires et l’avenir de la France, Paris, Défense de la France, 1945,
92–93, 103.
27. Ibid., 99.
28. “ . . . il n’y avait pas d’équilibre économique, social, politique possible, aussi
longtemps que la stagnation de l’activité obligeait à partager, entre des appétits
 TH E ORIGINS OF TH E “EN D OF IDEOLOGY?” 189

croissants, un revenu stationnaire. Tant que la richesse collective n’augmentait

pas, on ne pouvait satisfaire les aspirations des uns, si légitimes fussent-elles,
qu’aux dépens des exigences accoutumées des autres,” Ibid., 106.
29. Ibid., 125–126.
30. “moins livresque, plus internationale.” Ibid., 148.
31. “ . . . inadmissible qu’un inspecteur des finances n’ait pas fait un stage suffisam-
ment long dans une banque ou une grande entreprise, qu’il n’ait pas l’expérience
directe des grandes places anglaises ou américaines.” Ibid., p. 148.
32. Ibid., 149–150.
33. Ibid., 223.
34. Ibid., 142–143.
35. Ibid., 177.
36. “Le sens de l’expérience française, ce n’est pas de diriger intégralement la vie
économique de la nation . . . c’est encore moins de revenir à un libéralisme,
momentanément au moins exclu par l’état des esprits et par les circonstances,
le sens de l’expérience française c’est de demander à l’intervention étatique de
donner l’impulsion nécessaire au renouvellement de notre outillage et de nos
pratiques.” Ibid., 227.
37. “Un tel plan se situerait en marge des querelles partisanes, il offrirait aux Français
une occasion de labour collectif, aux parties un terrain de conciliation.” Ibid.,
176–177. See also 221, 247–248.
38. Ibid., 277.
39. Ibid., 12–13.
40. See Nord, France’s New Deal from the Thirties to the Postwar Era, 101–109, 148–167.
See also Étienne Hirsch as quoted in Denord, Néolibéralisme, 188.
41. Ibid., 199–203.
42. Nord, France’s New Deal from the Thirties to the Postwar Era, 67–87, 130–144,
189–213.
43. “Dix ans après la fin de la guerre, l’Europe a atteint un niveau de prospérité
qui dépasse les prévisions les plus optimistes formulées au début du plan
Marshall . . . La politique semi-dirigiste, semi-libérale, menée en matière com-
merciale a . . . amené les mêmes déplacements qu’auraient, en théorie, provoqués
les mécanismes libéraux. Les controverses passionnées entre les doctrinaires de
la liberté et les doctrinaires du contrôle administratif prennent, aujourd’hui, un
caractère suranné et presque dérisoire.” Raymond Aron, “La reconstruction de
l’Europe,” [29/5/55] in Les Articles du Figaro. Tome 1, La Guerre froide 1947–1955,
Paris, Éditions de Fallois, 1990, 1379–1380.
44. Raymond Aron, L’Opium des intellectuels, Paris, Hachette, 2002, 315–334.
45. The key texts here are Raymond Aron, Dix-Huit Leçons sur la société industrielle,
Paris, Gallimard, 1962; Raymond Aron, La Lutte de classes: nouvelles leçons sur la
société industrielle, Paris, Gallimard, 1964; Raymond Aron, Démocratie et totalita-
risme, Paris, Gallimard, 1965.
46. Scott-Smith, “The Congress for Cultural Freedom,” 437–455.
47. For instance: Alfred Sauvy, Hyacinthe Dubreuil, Lucien Laurat, and André Philip.
Robert Marjolin was invited but did not attend. See Pierre Grémion, Intelligence
de l’anticommunisme: Le Congrès pour la liberté de la culture à Paris, 1950–1975, Paris,
Fayard, 1995, 160–167.
48. Ibid., 175.
49. The term “politics of productivity” is taken from Charles S. Maier, In Search of
Stability: Explorations in Historical Political Economy, New York, Cambridge, 1987,
121–152.
190 I A I N S T E WA R T

50. Scott-Smith, “The Congress for Cultural Freedom.”

51. Denord, Néolibéralisme, 56.
52. Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics, London,
Heinemann, 1960, 404–405.
53. Raymond Aron, “Remarques sur l’objectivité des sciences sociales,” Théoria, vol.
V, 1939, 161–194.
54. “Ces incertitudes . . . ne tiennent pas à l’insuffisance des économistes, mais à la
complexité de la réalité économique. Les sujets économiques sont des hommes,
leurs décisions ne sont intelligibles que si elles sont rationnelles: or elles ne le
sont pas toujours. L’économie n’existe que par l’abstraction de l’économiste, elle
se déroule dans un ensemble d’institutions et subit les contre-coups des événe-
ments politiques, sociaux . . . Tous les termes du système sont solidaires: d’où la
multiplicité des actions et réactions possibles entre ces termes. Enfin, les situations
qu’analysent les schémas théoriques sont définies avec précision: les situations
concrètes sont toujours imparfaitement connues.” Ibid., 179.
55. Raymond Aron, Études Politiques, Paris, Gallimard, 1972, 195–215.
56. Raymond Aron, Leçons sur l’histoire: cours du Collège de France, Paris, Fallois, 1989,
274–293.
57. See here the collection of Aron’s articles for L’Express gathered in De Giscard à
Mitterrand cited above. See also Raymond Aron, Les Élections de mars et la V e
République, Paris, Julliard, 1978.
58. Quoted in Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut, “Droits-libertés et droits-créances:
Raymond Aron critique de Friedrich von Hayek,” Droits, vol. 2, 1985, 75.
59. Aron, Études politiques, 206.
60. Lipset, Political Man, 403, 406.
61. For Aron’s more pessimistic ref lections on this theme see his Essai sur les libertés,
Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1965; Raymond Aron, Les Désillusions du progrès. essai sur la
dialectique de la modernité, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1969; Raymond Aron, Plaidoyer
pour l’Europe décadente, Paris, Laffont, 1977; Raymond Aron, Liberté et égalité:
cours au Collège de France, Paris, Editions de l'Ecole des hautes études en sciences
sociales, 2013.
PART III

VOICES OF THE GREAT MEN OF THE PAST:

PERENNIAL DEBATES

Scott Nelson and José Colen

M any analyses of Raymond Aron’s books refer to his exceptionally sharp

and subtle intelligence and stress his legacy as an educator, but neither his
intellectual subtlety nor his role as a teacher are themselves enough to endow
his work with a permanent value. Concerning this matter, Aron himself had
no doubts: the contact with exceptional intellects who aspired to be considered
at the same level as the “greats of the past” acted as reality’s alarm bell. Indeed,
while Aron clearly had a great gift for lucid commentary on the philosophy of
history, international relations, and political theory, he was also a generous and
careful critic of many contemporary and past thinkers. He once remarked that
he did not measure his thoughts against those great past thinkers, but preferred
to cite them, to interpret them, and to continue their efforts.1 He has offered
posterity some valuable praise and criticism of their ideas, to say nothing of his
refining their methods and concepts with a view to analyzing his own time. As
such, Aron’s insights into other thinkers often serve as an excellent introduction
to their own works as well as Aron’s, and they are also a starting point for the
analysis of today’s societies.
The chapters included in this section introduce us to some of the most impor-
tant conversations in which Aron participated. The texts in this section have
been ordered chronologically, roughly according to the period a thinker entered
Aron’s intellectual life. They will explore the issues that occupied Aron through-
out his lifetime: historical determinism, the nature of liberalism and democracy,
and ethics and political action.
The reader will notice a recurring theme in this section and even, more gen-
erally, in the book as a whole. That theme is the primacy of the political. We
shall often see in how many ways this crucial concept becomes manifest in Aron’s
interaction with the thinkers discussed. For now, it is sufficient to point the
reader to Aron’s own discussion of the primacy of the political. The primacy of
192 SCOTT N ELSON A N D JOSÉ COLEN

the political does not entail replacing a unilateral economic determinism, say,
with an equally dogmatic and uninstructive political determinism; it does not
refer to causal primacy. Nor does it suggest that our interest should be directed
solely to political phenomena. What it suggests, rather, is that, in a world that
is increasingly living the same history and speaking the same language of tech-
nology and economics, it is in the political realm that international actors’ dif-
ferences are most clearly displayed. More to the point, politics is a question of
human existence and human ends, to which there is no single answer—perhaps
save for on the horizon, as a regulatory idea. Behind every sociological analysis
or sober piece of journalism stands Aron the philosopher.
Some of the thinkers discussed in this section had a more difficult time than
others did in dealing with this uncomfortable uncertainty about man’s destiny.
At some point, though, they all confronted the fundamental questions about
man’s nature and the society in which he acts in their own way. The thinker
in whom changes in society had probably produced the most outrageous moral
indignation was Karl Marx, Aron’s most important and influential “interlocutor.”
Sylvie Mesure’s chapter examines Aron’s interpretation of Marx and Marxism.
She draws on Aron’s writings about Marx, especially the lectures about Marx
that Aron gave at the Sorbonne in the 1960s and at the Collège de France in
the 1970s. Published in 2002 as Le Marxisme de Marx, these lectures illustrate
Aron’s understanding of Marx and the various forms of Marxism that sprouted
up in twentieth-century France. One of the major questions in Mesure’s chapter
is how one should interpret an author. This becomes particularly troublesome
with a writer such as Marx, who posed alternately as a prophet and as a scien-
tist, preaching revolution and then illustrating the inevitable course of history.
Mesure shows us that Aron’s interpretation was in this regard far more hon-
est than the one-sided and diametrically opposed interpretations of Sartre and
Althusser. Ignoring the importance Marx attributed to his economic analyses
is just as egregious a disservice to the German thinker as postulating an epis-
temological break that negates all of his early works. In any case, regardless of
the interpretation, there are certain problems with Marx’s economics, sociology,
and philosophy of history, not the least of them being his historical determinism,
buffered by the primacy given to economic factors.
This is a mistake Montesquieu did not make, and if Aron has no problem
thinking of himself as an intellectual descendant of this French liberal, it is
because he found the latter’s respect for the plurality of causes deeply congenial
to his own interests. Indeed, Aron declared Montesquieu the founder of soci-
ology—more specifically, of political sociology, as Miguel Morgado points out
in his contribution. Morgado explores the similarities and differences between
Aron’s and Montesquieu’s approaches to political and social regimes and how
these regimes are unique in their respective time-periods. Montesquieu’s notion
of “principle” is reflected in Aron’s own analysis of political regimes as a method
of elucidating the struggle between democratic virtue and the sense of compro-
mise that is at the heart of democratic politics. If a polity leans too far in either
direction, it is prone to fall into corruption. Morgado concludes his chapter with
a discussion of the prosaic nature of democracy.
 VO I C E S O F T H E G R E AT M E N O F T H E PA S T 193

Any analysis of democracy must perforce lead us to another towering figure

within the French liberal tradition: Alexis de Tocqueville. Aurelian Craiutu’s
chapter looks at the intellectual affi nity between Tocqueville and Aron, both
of whom were “probabilists,” recognizing the essential importance of political
phenomena, and both having had the misfortune of fi nding themselves aligned
with the political center in a polarized society. Both saw democracy as one of
the fundamental features of their times and both had to contend with the farci-
cal revolutions of 1848 and 1968 and the risible role played by the intellectuals
involved. One of the most interesting aspects of this dialogue is the opportunity
to see how Aron supplements Tocqueville’s insights with some of Marx’s obser-
vations in order to gain a clearer understanding of industrial society. To some
extent, he surpasses both of their analyses in his emphasis on the advancement of
science and industry, and increasing productivity.
However, Aron did not measure his ideas against those of the sociologists
alone. As Craiutu notes, the primacy of the political also signifies respect for lib-
erties (in the plural) and for choices. Aron spent a great deal of time and energy
painstakingly scrutinizing the world in which he lived in order to demarcate
the boundaries within which political choices could be made. Thus, we enter
the domain of praxeology and Aron’s exchanges with two thinkers standing at
opposite ends of the ethical spectrum: Machiavelli and Kant.
Diogo Pires Aurélio’s chapter deals with Aron, Machiavelli, and
Machiavellianism. Had it not been for the Second World War, Aron would have
published a book on Machiavelli and Machiavellianism. We only have the rem-
nants of this initially intended project, which were, however, collected and pub-
lished in 1993 as Machiavel et les tyrannies modernes. As Aurélio observes, these
papers are less about Machiavelli than about the use to which “Machiavellian”
doctrines have been put in the totalitarian era. Aron sees traces of the Florentine’s
teachings in the politicians of his time as well as in the neo-Machiavellian schol-
ars, such as Gaetano Mosca, Robert Michels, James Burnham, and above all,
Vilfredo Pareto, whose intellectual ties to Machiavelli are investigated in this
chapter. Aurélio concludes with a discussion of democracy and Aron’s “moderate
Machiavellianism.”
Pierre Hassner’s chapter treats Kant, the subject of some of Aron’s earliest phil-
osophical reflections. For Aron the Kantian ideal of a unified humanity always
seemed to exist on the horizon, even if its imminent realization in this world was
doubtful. Hassner probes the similarities between the two thinkers—their devo-
tion to the aspirations of the Enlightenment and the idea of Reason—though this
connection was tempered by Aron’s acknowledgment of the tragedy of history
and his uncertainty about the “cunning of nature” and man’s ability to predict
the future. Hassner makes the intriguing observation that by examining Kant’s
later writings we might more accurately speak of Kant becoming more Aronian
than the other way around.
Machiavelli and Kant’s ethics are roughly analogous to two ethics later clas-
sified by Max Weber: the ethic of responsibility and the ethic of conviction.
In their chapter on Aron and Weber, Scott Nelson and José Colen investigate
Raymond Aron’s ongoing debate with the German sociologist about ethics and
194 SCOTT N ELSON A N D JOSÉ COLEN

political action. They historically contextualize Weber’s ideas and make use of
Aron’s numerous writings on Weber, especially two unpublished courses of his
from the 1970s, Théorie de l’action politique and Jeux et enjeux de la politique, in
which Aron reevaluates Weber’s two ethics. In the authors’ view Aron proves
to have a more coherent understanding of political ethics because he is more
attuned to the irreducible variety of political ends and the statesman’s need to
fulfi ll faithfully both his obligations and the demands of his conscience.

* * *

The analysis of history is the key to addressing the central political question.
Aron does so in the context of the confl icts that would be fought, as Nietzsche
foresaw and as Nicolas Baverez has recalled, in the name of man’s philosophies
and ideas. He has been justly called the “Thucydides of the twentieth century.”
Nevertheless, the philosophical world of Plato and Aristotle is different from
that of Thucydides. When we open the latter’s history of the Peloponnesian
War, the city is caught in a bloody war and we fi nd ourselves amid statesmen,
military commanders and armies, citizens, and demagogues. Aron’s city—like
Thucydides’ city—is in “motion.”2 One might think, however, that the Platonic
approach was theoretical or philosophical, and Thucydides’ merely historical or
descriptive. This would be unfair to Thucydides. As with Thucydides, Aron’s
theory is based on a philosophy of history—it is a theory and sometimes even
a philosophical theory, offering models, both static and dynamic, with deep
insights into the human condition and the ways of examining it. We can recall
some of them briefly: the “comparative method” which he used is capable of
close phenomenological analysis and fi ne-grained distinctions, vividly bringing
to light societies and political systems in their unity and diversity. He avoided the
idealization of any actual or potential society as wholly just, free, and equal. He
also never forgot values, goods, and the improvements that society and political
institutions can pursue.
“Values” or goods we cherish—truth, justice, liberty, equality—are neither
transcendental nor found in institutions, which are but imperfect arrangements.
There is no perfectly just society: not even democracy is the natural system
of the human species, but only one “perfectible artifact” or an “invention.”
Aron could not describe the best regime in the abstract, ignoring social mech-
anisms and their results. One consequence of this approach is that he shared
with Tocqueville the view that the best friend of democracy is not its flatterer.
Aron did not ignore the international scene—the modern nation is not isolated;
there are people and groups affected here and now, sometimes tragically, by
decisions made somewhere. His method leaves room for something beyond the
rational method. People may not behave reasonably despite hypothetical social
contracts, and all institutions represent choices related to a particular time and
place. But Aron’s attention to practical particularities is never merely pragmatic
or Machiavellian Realpolitik. There are many human activities that we do not
understand without the use of standards (truth in science, beauty in art, the good
 VO I C E S O F T H E G R E AT M E N O F T H E PA S T 195

in ethics). Aron was aware that, even in a fictitious original state, people can have
different principles because values and norms are the application of “reason” to
particular circumstances that we know empirically and must adapt to different
types of society; and, in the public sphere, the references are necessarily multiple,
but not unrelated to a reasonable choice. Finally, not being himself a politician,
he never ignored the role of the statesman, the recognition of which tends to be
absent in current political theory.
Less than clear-cut theories may disappoint. But it is worth remembering that
this is an old problem and that necessary simplifications do not always produce
even good theories. Someone once said that Plato wrote the Republic, a city in
the sky, to achieve a better city, and that Aristotle wrote the Politics just to make
a better theory. However, it is certainly easier to live in the city of Aristotle than
in the regime “according to prayer” of Plato. To Aron only possible political
regimes can be compared among themselves, and the city in motion was what
interested him above all. Only there can we fi nd the political speeches, propa-
ganda, confl ict, armies, voting, parties, and all the other elements that populate
his theories. Can we have a comprehensive theory about the city in motion? Aron
was attracted to those who had tried to discover one—Montesquieu, Clausewitz,
and even Marx. But if the power and fertility of this “praxeological” vision can
be shown, this can only be done through the study of Aron’s insights, hypoth-
eses, and innumerable concrete proposals when seen in light of his explicit or
implicit theoretical framework. His own political judgments are in debt to his
never-completely-fi nished-or-articulated theory. As Leo Strauss, who regarded
Aron’s Peace and War as “the best book on the subject in existence,”3 said, “it is
impossible to understand the biggest movement without understanding simulta-
neously the biggest rest,” and “one cannot understand the biggest war without
understanding the biggest peace, the peace which, as it were, culminates in the
biggest war.”4 That Aron’s reflections on “the biggest rest” are necessarily incom-
plete may, in a sense, be a misfortune, but it is also a challenge that the present
volume has attempted to address.

Notes
1. Raymond Aron, Mémoires. 50 ans de réflexion politique, Paris, Julliard, 1983, 746.
2. If we are allowed to borrow Leo Strauss’s words about Thucydides in The City and
Man, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1978.
3. Letter of June 11, 1963, Aron Archives.
4. Leo Strauss, The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, Chicago, University of
Chicago Press, 1988, 83.
CHAPTER 14

RAYMOND ARON AND IMMANUEL KANT:

POLITICS BETWEEN MORALITY AND HISTORY

Pierre Hassner

T he relationship between Raymond Aron and Immanuel Kant is both obvi-

ous and controversial. We all know that his master’s thesis in philosophy
(1928) was devoted to “Intemporality in Kant” and his first philosophical posi-
tion was that of a neo-Kantian, inspired by his teacher Brunschvicg. We also
know that after the 1930s, with the shock of his discovery of Germany and the
rise of Nazism, he devoted his life to ref lection and action, both objective and
nuanced, on the one hand, and engaged and passionate on the other, in politics.
Everyone can see that references to Kant often appeared in his writings, most
notably the concept of the “idea of Reason.”
For some of his interpreters, such as Sylvie Mesure in her excellent book,1
this notion is absolutely central to his work and applies to the idea of “the end
of history.”
Pierre Manent, who was his faithful assistant and brilliant interpreter, seems
to think that his references to Kant should be seen less as a sign of an authentic
lineage than as a nod to Aron’s own youth, and that he was in fact much closer
to Aristotle than to Kant.2
Yet his friend and constant interlocutor Georges Canguilhem said the fol-
lowing in a tribute published by the École normale supérieure in 1999: “I some-
times asked myself whether, whatever may be his disenchantment with the
Brunschvicgian neo-Kantism who appealed to him when he was a student, if
Aron did not fi nally remain more Kantian than he thought himself, Kantian
in the transcendental-idealist sense.” He cites this sentence of Aron in the lat-
ter’s Clausewitz: “What is missing in a mathematician or biologist, in an honest
teacher, is the sense of history and tragedy.”3 And he recalls the union in Aron’s
philosophy of history and tragedy. Did Aron not accuse Giscard of not knowing
that history is tragic?
198 PIER R E H ASSN ER

Parodying Irving Kristol, who once said that the “neo-conservative is a lib-
eral who was mugged by reality,” one could say that Aron was a Kantian who
had been mugged by history, especially by the rise of totalitarianism in the twen-
tieth century.
The difference is that the neoconservatives abandoned their prior liberalism
or leftism, while, for Aron, the discovery of tragedy converged with his episte-
mological position that begins from the subject involved in history rather than
from a panoramic or teleological vision of history, but he never gave up his
commitment to Kant or the Enlightenment. What he abandoned was the idea
of the “cunning of nature” or Providence (according to Kant), or the “cunning
of reason” (according to Hegel), leading to a happy ending for history. Aron’s
philosophy of history always starts from the committed subject who is ignorant
of the future.
Let me try to enumerate the similarities and differences between Aron and
Kant.
A key meeting point, it seems to me, is their common attitude toward the
diversity and possible contradictions between the different dimensions of anthro-
pological and historical experience. For those thinkers who want to fi nd an intel-
ligible order in such multiplicity, there are three possible attitudes.
The fi rst attitude belongs to those for whom diversity is ordered hierarchically
and harmoniously. This is the case for Plato and Aristotle, to whom the hierar-
chies of the soul and of the city run in parallel, whether the individual or society
are at stake. The passions of the people, slaves, workers or merchants; the thumos,
seat of honor and anger, characteristic of the guardians; and the theoretical or
contemplative reason characteristic of the philosophers; all of these are presented
in ascending order. Secondly, there are thinkers for whom dialectics allows either
the reversal of hierarchies or the combination of opposites, and who think that
they have arrived at the synthesis of the individual and the universal without sac-
rificing either the particular or the general. This is the case with the Hegelians.
And there are those, like Kant and Aron, who start by strictly separating differ-
ent dimensions according to their respective essence, and then strive to diminish
the gap, going to great lengths to construct bridges between them. Thus, for
Kant, the separation of noumenon and phenomenon, of the transcendental and the
empirical, of theoretical reason and practical reason, of education and the moral
leap that only will lead to peace (“an agreement pathologically extorted may, he
says, turn into a moral whole,”)4 the search for concepts (“which without intu-
itions are empty”) and intuitions (“which without concepts are blind”)5 which
are as indispensable as they are problematic. The indefi nite progress in the way
of morality as well as peace provokes an ironic smile from those who, like Hegel,
think that Kant’s “indefi nite” is the “bad infi nity,”6 or, like Leo Strauss, believe
that “a perpetual progress towards perpetual peace means perpetual war.” 7 This
objection plays on the fact that Kant is not clear as to whether it is through an
asymptotic progress that mankind would gradually attain peace by decreasing
the frequency and intensity of wars or, on the contrary, it is their frequency and
intensity, and, therefore, their cost, that are expected to produce a reversal whose
crowning would be moral conversion.
 R AY M O N D A RO N A N D I M M A N U E L K A N T 199

Aron goes in the same direction, but harbors more doubts about the fi nal out-
come. In his most unambiguous text, “L’Aube de l’histoire universelle,” gathered
in Dimensions de la conscience historique,8 Aron notes, as Kant did, that humanity
is in a “cosmopolitan situation,”9 where events spread from one country to the
other (the “process” driven by advances in science, technology, education, objec-
tive factors that demonstrate that nations no longer need to kill to survive) but,
at the same time, there is the drama of “the clash of passions and desires that
for the moment remain alive.” The peaceful outcome depends on the taming
(which is in no way assured) of social and political passions following the taming
of nature. He therefore expressed the same wishes as Kant, as he also believes
in the progress of reason. In a long article, “Pour le progrès, après la chute des
idoles,”10 he even defends modern society, not only against the absolute pessi-
mism of the “new philosophers” of the seventies (mainly Bernard-Henri Lévy
and André Glucksmann), but also against authors he revered, such as Tocqueville,
or admired, like Solzhenitsyn. His Kantian conclusions always contain, however,
a protestation of ignorance and a question mark following the profession of moral
faith.
Paix et guerre entre les nations ends with the following statement:

Nothing can prevent us from having two duties, duties that are not always compat-
ible, toward our people and toward all peoples: one is to participate in the conf licts
that constitute the web of history, and the other is to work for peace . . . Will we
be obliged to choose between a return to the pre-industrial age and the advent of
the post-belligerent age? . . . Will the age of wars end in an orgy of violence or in a
gradual pacification? We know that the answers to these questions remain uncer-
tain, but we do know that man will have surmounted the antinomies of action
only when he has finished with violence, or with hope. Let us leave to others
with more talent for illusions the privilege of speculating on the conclusion of the
adventure, and let us try not to fail in either of the obligations ordained for each of
us: not to run away from a belligerent history, not to betray the ideal; to think and
to act with the firm intention that the absence of war will be prolonged until the
day when peace has become possible—supposing it ever will.11

On the previous page, after reporting two new features, (the ability to manip-
ulate natural forces and the emergence of a universal consciousness at once moral
and pragmatic), he wonders: “Are these two new factors proof of a new phase
of the human enterprise?” His response is modeled on the three classic Kantian
questions (“What do I know? What should I do? What can I expect?”): “We can-
not know, we must desire, we are entitled to hope that it is so . . . To use Kantian
language, there is a regulatory use of the ideas of reason.”
In the text titled “L’Aube de l’histoire universelle,” he makes it clear that
mankind has entered what Kant called “the cosmopolitan situation,” which is
characterized, as we have seen, by the coexistence on the one hand of what Aron
calls the “process,” technical progress and material change of societies with, on
the other hand, the “drama,” the interaction and often the struggle of peoples and
social passions. Will the process eventually absorb the drama, or will the drama
put an abrupt end to the process? “It may be,” replied Aron, “that universal
200 PIER R E H ASSN ER

history will differ in this respect from the provincial histories of past ages. But it
is only a hope based on faith.”12
Kant is much more assertive, for two reasons that lead us to the center of the
difference between the two thinkers. First, his pamphlets on history attribute a
fundamental role to what he sometimes calls the “cunning of nature” and some-
times simply “Providence.”
Practical reason issues a clear verdict that has no exceptions: “there ought to
be no war, neither between me and you in the condition of Nature, nor between
us as members of States.”13 Both men and states must leave behind the state of
nature, a state of war, to enter a state of institutionalized peace. In his Idea for
a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View 14 Kant explains that “the
hidden plan of nature” should lead to the following result: “One day, in part
by the establishment of the most appropriate civil constitution domestically (a
republican government) and partly on the external side by a common conven-
tion and law, a state of things will emerge as a universal civil community that
can maintain itself as an automaton” (seventh proposal). In Perpetual Peace15 it
should be noted that, for Kant, this result is due to the “hidden plan of nature
for mankind,” a plan that men could have devised consciously but have not, yet
one that will be realized by them, in part, in spite of themselves: Volentem fata
ducunt, nolentem trahunt (The fates lead those who go willingly, and those who are
unwilling they drag). Moreover, it is precisely the passions and wars that are the
instruments of Providence.
Hence the paradox—a morality without concessions, but whose violations
apparently drive history, which should eventually allow the victory of moral
progress.
However, two surprises await the reader of Perpetual Peace: Kant says that this
universal civil community can only be achieved by a single move, the states
entering into a legal situation by submitting to a higher authority; and this legal
situation must be achieved through the second best (“surrogate”),16 that is to say,
“a free federalism which must necessarily relate to the concept of law.” Instead of
a universal republic, it would be the negative surrogate of a permanent alliance
extending further and further (Second Defi nitive Article).
If the defi nition of institutions destined to “move gradually towards perpetual
peace” admits some empirical flexibility, it is not the same for the relationship
between morality, law, and politics. There cannot, according to Kant, be a con-
fl ict between them. Politics is “the doctrine of legal practice,” morality is its
foundation, and there cannot be a confl ict between theory and practice, which
Kant devoted an entire pamphlet to proving: “Politics must bend the knee before
morality.” On the other hand, Kant criticizes the “political moralist” who takes
liberties with morality in the name of politics, and he praises the “moral politi-
cian,” who recognizes that “morality is the best policy.”
The political philosophy of Kant is not, strictly speaking, ultimately political.
It is a legal philosophy based on a moral philosophy and guaranteed by a philoso-
phy of history.
All these terms exist in Aron, but with a very different hierarchy of priorities.
 R AY M O N D A RO N A N D I M M A N U E L K A N T 201

The moral inspiration, and above all Kantian morality, is always present with
Aron, but in the background. He says in his Mémoires that he never forgot the
categorical imperative or the “Religion within the Limits of Reason,” and it is
true that some expressions he used, such as “I am not a believer in the ordinary
sense of the word” and “to achieve one’s secular salvation,” may be their echo. In
Chapter 19 of Peace and War between Nations, titled “In Search of a Morality,” he
arrives at a “morality of wisdom” which, if it is the “best in terms of both facts
and values, does not resolve the contradictions of the strategic-diplomatic behav-
ior, but tries to fi nd for each case the most acceptable compromise.” Between
“idealism and realism” and “conviction and responsibility” (the titles of two
sub-chapters), compromises are possible and desirable.
But Aron, who had engraved on his academician’s sword the (unfortunately
very optimistic!) phrase of Herodotus, “No man is so devoid of reason as to
prefer war to peace,” also chose for the epigraph to Peace and War a passage from
Montesquieu, “International law is based by nature upon this principle: that
the various nations ought to do, in peace, the most good to each other, and, in
war, the least harm possible, without detriment to their genuine interests.”17 He
continues to say that peace is in itself preferable to war from all points of view,
including the moral one, but not to unilateral disarmament. A posture of “all or
nothing,” even from a nuclear perspective, risks leading to war or oppression.
“The cost of bondage, for a people and a culture, may be more than the cost of
war, even nuclear war.” The center of his thinking and his positions is political
(even if the inspiration is often moral). He does not share the contempt of Kant
(and of Rousseau and Hegel) for theorists of war legislation, treated by Kant as
“miserable comforters,” but he shares even less than his masters the faith in inter-
national organizations like the United Nations and international courts like the
International Criminal Court. The idea of reason, “that of human reconciliation
and peace,” remains with him, albeit somewhat disembodied. In any case, it is
not defi ned in institutional terms.
And perhaps yet another surprise awaits us.
In Perpetual Peace, Kant says that humanity is in a cosmopolitan situation where
states depend on each other, and where a breach of human rights can be known
and its consequences felt on the other side of the earth. He concludes that these
neighboring states are entitled to intervene by offering mediation, or by their
disapproval, but not by force. Two years later, in paragraph 60 of the Doctrine of
Right (the fi rst part of the Metaphysics of Morals), Kant wrote:

The Right of a State against an unjust Enemy has no limits, at least in respect
of quality as distinguished from quantity or degree. In other words, the injured
State may use—not, indeed, any means, but yet—all those means that are per-
missible and in reasonable measure in so far as they are in its power, in order to
assert its Right to what is its own. But what then is an unjust enemy according to
the conceptions of the Right of Nations, when, as holds generally of the state of
Nature, every State is judge in its own cause? It is one whose publicly expressed
Will, whether in word or deed, betrays a maxim which, if it were taken as a
universal rule, would make a state of Peace among the nations impossible, and
202 PIER R E H ASSN ER

would necessarily perpetuate the state of Nature. Such is the violation of public
Treaties, with regard to which it may be assumed that any such violation concerns
all nations by threatening their freedom, and that they are thus summoned to
unite against such a wrong, and to take away the power of committing it. But
this does not include the Right to partition and appropriate the country, so as to
make a State as it were disappear from the earth; for this would be an injustice
to the people of that State, who cannot lose their original Right to unite into a
Commonwealth, and to adopt such a new Constitution as by its nature would be
unfavorable to the inclination for war.

Carl Schmitt violently attacked this text in an appendix to Nomos of the Earth,
arguing that considering a state as an enemy of humanity allows it to be treated
inhumanely. But does this text of Kant not make one think of Aron’s discovery
of Nazi totalitarianism, which made him abandon the pacifist temptations of his
youth?
On the other hand, in the conclusion of the section in this book dedicated to
cosmopolitan law, Kant writes:

Now, as a matter of fact, the morally practical reason utters within us its irrevo-
cable veto: There shall be no war. So there ought to be no war, neither between
me and you in the condition of nature, nor between us as members of states which,
although internally in a condition of law, are still externally in their relation to
each other in a condition of lawlessness; for this is not the way by which any one
should prosecute his right. Hence the question no longer is as to whether perpetual
peace is a real thing or not a real thing, or as to whether we may not be deceiving
ourselves when we adopt the former alternative, but we must act on the supposi-
tion of its being real. We must work for what may perhaps not be realized, and
establish that constitution which yet seems best adapted to bring it about (mayhap
republicanism in all states, together and separately). And thus we may put an end to
the evil of wars, which have been the chief interest of the internal arrangements of
all the states without exception. And although the realization of this purpose may
always remain but a pious wish, yet we do certainly not deceive ourselves in adopt-
ing the maxim of action that will guide us in working incessantly for it; for it is a
duty to do this. To suppose that the moral law within us is itself deceptive, would
be sufficient to excite the horrible wish rather to be deprived of all reason than to
live under such deception, and even to see oneself, according to such principles,
degraded like the lower animals to the level of the mechanical play of nature.18

Facing, on the one hand, this doubt about the fi nal outcome and, on the
other, the call to duty and reason, is it not tempting to think that at the end of
his life, it was Kant who was getting closer to Aron?

Notes
1. Sylvie Mesure, Raymond Aron et la raison historique, Paris, Vrin, 1984.
2. Pierre Manent, “La politique comme science et comme souci,” in Raymond
Aron, Liberté et égalité: cours au Collège de France, Édition établie et présentée par
 R AY M O N D A RO N A N D I M M A N U E L K A N T 203

Pierre Manent, Paris, Editions de l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales,
2013.
3. Georges Canguilhem, “La problématique de la philosophie de l’histoire au début
des années 30,” in Jean-Claude Chamboredon (ed.), Raymond Aron, la philosophie
de l’histoire et les sciences sociales, Paris, Editions rue d’Ulm, 1999, 9–23.
4. Raymond Aron, Intemporality in Kant, ms of master’s thesis (unpublished).
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, Manuscripts, Fonds Aron.
5. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. N. Kemp Smith, New York, St.
Martin’s Press, 1929, 93.
6. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel’s Science of Logic, trans. A. V. Miller,
London, Allen and Unwin, 1969.
7. Leo Strauss, Seminar on Kant, Chicago, University of Chicago Library, 1956–
1957, Special Collections.
8. Raymond Aron, “L’Aube de l’histoire universelle,” in Raymond Aron, Dimensions
de la conscience historique, Paris, Plon, “Recherches en sciences humaines,” 1961; new
edition Paris, Les Belles Lettres, “Le goût des idées,” 2011, 229–255. Raymond
Aron, The Dawn of Universal History, Londres, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1961;
reproduced in Politics and History, New York, Free Press, 1978, 212–233.
9. Kant’s expression is “Perpetual Peace.”
10. Raymond Aron, “Pour le progrès, après la chute des idoles,” Commentaire, no. 3,
1978, 233–245.
11. Raymond Aron, Paix et guerre entre les nations, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1962, 770;
Raymond Aron, Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations, New Brunswick,
NJ, Transaction, 2003, 787.
12. Raymond Aron, Dimensions de la conscience historique, Paris, Les Belles Lettres,
2011, 254; Politics and History, 232.
13. Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, “The Universal Rights of Mankind,”
Part III of “Public Right,” conclusion. In The Philosophy of Law: An Exposition of
the Fundamental Principles of Jurisprudence as the Science of Right, trans. W. Hastie,
Edinburgh, Clark, 1887.
14. Immanuel Kant, “Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher
Absicht,” Berlinische Monatsschrift, no. 4, 1784, 385–480.
15. Immanuel Kant, Zum ewigen Frieden. Ein philosophischer Entwurf, Königsberg, F.
Nicolovius, 1795.
16. Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace, Second Definitive Article: “The Right of
Nations Shall Be Founded on a Federation of Free States,” in Kant’s Principles
of Politics, Including His Essay on Perpetual Peace: A Contribution to Political Science,
trans. W. Hastie, Edinburgh, Clark, 1891.
17. Aron, Peace and War, 5.
18. Immanuel Kant, The Science of Right, conclusion, in Philosophy of Law: An Exposition
of the Fundamental Principles of Jurisprudence as the Science of Right, trans. W. Hastie,
Edinburgh, Clark, 1887.
CHAPTER 15

STATESMANSHIP AND ETHICS:

ARON, MAX WEBER, AND POLITICS AS A VOCATION

Scott Nelson and José Colen

R aymond Aron discovered Max Weber around the same time that he discov-
ered Karl Marx—in the early 1930s, during his sojourn in Germany. These
thinkers represented a fraction of the total number of German authors he delved
into at the time, including Husserl, Heidegger, and the Southwest School of neo-
Kantians (Heinrich Rickert and Wilhelm Windelband).1 It was in Max Weber’s
writings that Aron eventually found the resources and the words to express the
relationship between politics and morality.2 Moreover, Aron also found in Weber
an exposition of the tension between knowledge (science) and action (politics).
There are genuine trade-offs between a profession that demands the absolute pur-
suit of truth and one that demands the willingness to compromise not only one’s
own morals (anathema to the moralist) but even the truth itself (anathema to the
scientist). This variance at the root of science and politics is probably why Aron
was so fond of “failed” statesmen: Thucydides, Machiavelli, Clausewitz, and
Weber himself. All of them partook to some extent in politics or war, and they
were incredibly gifted thinkers who ref lected on the nature of politics or war.
The 1930s were rife with political agitation and a looming war, and thus
Weber confi rmed Aron’s intuition that history was once again on the move.
Compared to Émile Durkheim, who dominated Aron’s sociological education
at the École normale supérieure, Weber seemed to have caught on to the spirit
of the time in a most stimulating way.3 Weber’s methodology was also more
congenial to Aron’s approach because it takes individuals and their intentions as
the starting point. Hence, both thinkers can preserve some degree of freedom
for their actors. This freedom is crucial, for if they want to cross the bridge from
knowledge to action, then they must believe that actors have at least some role to
play in forming the future.
The young French student paid his respects to the imposing German thinker
by showering him with unabashed admiration and giving him pride of place in
206 SCOTT N ELSON A N D JOSÉ COLEN

his fi rst published work on German sociology.4 Thirty years later, he could not
help but continue to evince a profound, albeit mitigated, respect for Weber, even
when he disagreed with him.5 One of the most important influences of Weber
on Aron (and one of the explanations for the former’s methodology) was the rec-
ognition of the relation between knowledge and action, or science and politics.6
Both Raymond Aron and Max Weber were social scientists who commented on
the politics of their day and yet never managed to adapt to the conditions neces-
sary to partake fully of political life. We will now turn to Weber to investigate
those conditions.
On January 28, 1919, against the backdrop of the November Revolution
of 1918, Weber gave his famous Politik als Beruf lecture before the Münchner
Freistudentischer Bund. One could even say that politics surrounded the origins
of the lecture itself: Weber initially did not want to give the talk and recom-
mended Friedrich Naumann in his stead. Naumann was ill at the time and it
seemed like the opportunity might be passed to Kurt Eisner, whereupon Weber,
who cared deeply about the success of the new German democracy, rose to the
occasion in order to prevent Eisner from adding any more to the revolutionary
fervor of the students.7 Weber defi nes politics early on in this lecture as “striv-
ing for a share of power or influence over the division of power, be it between
states or between groups of people within states.”8 It is here that Weber also sets
forth the three qualities that are prerequisites to embarking on a political career:
passion (Leidenschaft), feeling of responsibility (Verantwortungsgefühl), and sense of
proportion (Augenmaß).
As far as Aron’s engagement with this particular teaching is concerned, he
focuses primarily on the dichotomy and implications of Weber’s ethic of convic-
tion (Gesinnungsethik) and ethic of responsibility (Verantwortungsethik). These two
ethics follow on Weber’s discussion of the relation between ethics and politics.
That the ethic required for effective statesmanship might be different from the
personal ethic necessary to be a good Christian, say, is an idea that goes as far
back as Machiavelli. Unlike his Florentine predecessor, the fulcrum of political
morality in Weber’s construct is not only about having the fortitude to choose
potentially disagreeable means in order to achieve desired ends, but also having
the fortitude to take responsibility for the consequences, intended and unin-
tended, of political action.

Max Weber’s Ethics and Politics

The moralist of conviction (Gesinnungsethiker), by contrast, seems at fi rst glance
to be content to turn a blind eye to the consequences of his actions—even if
such behavior is counterproductive to his goals—so long as his actions do not
betray his conscience. Weber gives the example of the syndicalist who would
be unmoved by the fact that his actions could provoke a greater reaction against
his social class and its interests. One might scoff at the absurdity of the moralist’s
tendency to abrogate concern for the repercussions of his actions, but what is
undeniable is that, within his own moral framework, he is doing right.
 STAT E SM A N SH I P A N D ET H IC S 207

Aron thought that Weber had in mind two different types of people when he
elaborated on his ethic of conviction: the pacifists of Christian inspiration and the
revolutionaries. Weber’s contention with respect to the former was that if their
moral position were entirely swept away, accepting the status of the defeated
party, they would be inviting the victors, now in complete control of the moral
high ground, to force them into a treaty so unfair that it would sow the seeds of
discontent and, in effect, undermine the very pacifism that was their creed. As
for the latter, the revolutionaries were guilty of positing their goal as an abso-
lute value whose price of attainment could never be too high.9 Aron knew that
whereof Weber spoke: he, too, had to stand up for reason and responsibility in
the carnival of French public life.
We cannot separate these two ethics so easily, for conceptual problems seem
to abound. On the one hand, how can there be an ethic of responsibility without
a reference point toward which responsibility is directed? Conviction is there-
fore a precondition for responsibility.10 On the other hand, to the extent that
the ethic of conviction also means satisfying one’s conscience, and not just the
exigencies of one’s faith, how can we be so certain that one’s conscience would
not be adversely affected by the failure to achieve an outcome consonant with
one’s convictions? In this sense, conviction could potentially presuppose respon-
sibility, that is, a concern for consequences. For Aron these two ethics might
not only be conceptually flawed, but even destructive, since they offer a sort of
justification to the false realists and false idealists: the former can disregard moral
injunctions with impunity, while the latter can wantonly blind themselves to the
critical role they are playing in contributing to the collapse of the existing order,
thereby paving the way for revolutionaries or tyrants to rule. There is an addi-
tional problem worth highlighting: if the dividing line between the two ethics
is characterized more or less by concern (or lack thereof ) for the consequences of
any given action, then it must be assumed that the actor in question has had the
opportunity to consider (or refuse to consider) the potential consequences of his
actions. This assumption prompts Aron to observe that Weber has conflated two
different antinomies: political action vs. Christian action and considered decision
vs. immediate choice.11
Max Weber himself seems to have an ambiguous view of the reconcilability of
the two ethics. At fi rst, he states that the decisive point is that there are two “fun-
damentally different, irrevocably opposed maxims,” which are the two ethics.
He is, however, also quick to add that neither ethic implies the absolute absence
of the other; that is, the ethic of conviction is not equivalent to a lack of respon-
sibility, and the ethic of responsibility is not equivalent to a lack of conviction. In
this sense they are ideal types and therefore function as heuristic tools to acquire
a keener understanding of the inevitable trade-offs that characterize politics as a
vocation. Toward the end of the lecture, though, Weber declares that politics is
not conducted with the head alone; and at that point, it would seem that it is not
enough, as one might earlier have thought, for a politician to act according to
the ethic of responsibility, but that the true politician must combine both ethics.
More pointedly, the politician’s conviction must be not just sterile excitement
208 SCOTT N ELSON A N D JOSÉ COLEN

(sterile Aufgeregtheit), but real passion (echte Leidenschaft) for the responsibility that
defi nes political life. For Weber it is a stirring sight to behold a politically mature
man, “who feels with his whole soul the responsibility he bears for the real con-
sequences of his actions, and who acts on the basis of an ethics of responsibility,
[and] says at some point, ‘Here I stand, I can do no other.’ ”12
One scholar, Hans Henrik Bruun, believes that Weber was hereby indicat-
ing a third ethic that he has termed the “responsible ethic of conviction.”13 The
politician must act with a feeling of responsibility, but also with awareness of the
values he is preserving or destroying in acting thus. Lastly, he must acknowledge
two other inconvenient facts: once he has initiated the causal chain, he may bring
about consequences contrary to his intentions, and the causal chain cannot necessar-
ily be stopped at will once it has been set in motion. This all amounts to a very
heavy moral burden for the politician.
Politics presents aspiring officeholders with certain pitfalls. It can be all too
easy to enjoy the feeling of empowerment and let oneself be swept away by proj-
ects of self-aggrandizement as opposed to dedicating oneself fully to the task at
hand. Like the revolutionary syndicalist and the Christian pacifist, Weber feels
that the man who works in politics only to serve his own vanity is weak and unfit
for the role. What, then, should be the goal of the politician’s constant struggle?
Weber lays out a platter of viable political ends with the only stipulation being
that “some kind of belief must always be present,” but in his case at least, it is quite
clear that devotion to Germany and its national interest is supreme.14 He goes as
far as to open one of his political writings by plainly declaring that he has always
viewed all politics from the national perspective.15 Raymond Aron saw a pattern
in his political writings, in which there is a theoretical component with an analy-
sis of the eternal, current, and personal conditions of political action (this section
is full of antinomies such as means-ends, responsibility-conviction, etc.) and a
historical component that consists of judgments of the concrete historical data.
We can detect two major areas of concern that pervade Weber’s political
writings with respect to Germany’s national interest: the preparation of the rul-
ing elite and the civilizing role of German culture. The fi rst area is in domestic
politics and is related to the problem of the power vacuum caused by Bismarck’s
dismissal from politics in 1890 by Emperor Wilhelm II. Weber’s chief concern
was that Bismarck, in pursuing policies of economic development and the fi rst
modern welfare state, had also inadvertently spared his citizens from having to
worry about public affairs by hindering the power of the German parliament and
creating a stifl ing bureaucracy that was the only force that could step in to gov-
ern after Bismarck’s departure.16 In effect, Bismarck had left behind a politically
immature ruling class. In response, Weber called for a constitutional democ-
racy that would allow men with the aforementioned prerequisite characteristics
for political leadership to compete for office and use the bureaucratic entity as
a means to govern (where hitherto it had been in the driver’s seat of policy-
making). Nationalism was a force that could support a mass political party and
transcend the useless parliamentary squabbling of the time. The fatherland was
not just any old value among others, but rather one of the few serious (unlike the
vain pursuit of power), non-illusory, this-worldly (unlike Christianity) political
 STAT E SM A N SH I P A N D ET H IC S 209

goals to which one could devote oneself.17 In his impassioned fury, Weber sought
out that charismatic Übermensch who would rescue Germany from Christian ser-
vility, revolutionary stupidity, and bureaucratic sterility.18
The second area concerns Germany’s prestige in Europe. Max Weber seems
to take it for granted that the international order is anarchic by nature and that
relations between nations are a function of the nations’ power. Indeed, as Aron
remarks, the closest Weber ever comes to a sociology of international relations is
in a few unfi nished pages of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft.19 That the international
order is characterized by power relations between nation-states is hardly a sur-
prising conclusion for those of the realist school of international-relations theory.
One might fancy Weber’s pessimistic worldview as a type of realism; but Aron
is right in reminding us that it is unrealistic to see the world not as it is but as
one wants it to be, and therefore Weber’s conception of a world shaped solely by
savage power politics is just as far removed from reality as is the extreme idealist’s
view of the world.20
Where Weber’s conception of world politics sounds much more dated and
indubitably German is in his emphasis on the uniqueness of German culture.
The link between German grandeur and power and culture never seems very
rigorously defi ned—we do not suspect that it would have demanded a thorough,
theoretical treatment at the time. Power appears to be the means to German
grandeur, which has less to do with the triumph of force than with the spreading
of German culture. This propagation of German culture is made to be a moral
imperative that the German nation must shoulder in its capacity as a Machtstaat.
Germany is in turn a Machtstaat because it has 70 million people,21 and therefore
it is saddled with the inescapable obligation to throw its weight into the balance
(on behalf of its own people as well as the Danes, the Swiss, the Dutch, and the
Norwegians) and prevent world power from being divided “between the regula-
tions of Russian officials on the one hand and the conventions of English-speaking
‘society’ on the other, with perhaps a dash of Latin raison thrown in.”22
Max Weber’s political thought centers on nationalism, albeit a nationalism
that transcends state borders and encompasses greater cultural or ethnic wholes.
Aron also points out the liberal and imperialist currents in Weber’s thinking.23
As for the latter, he was not of the mission civilisatrice stripe, nor did he advo-
cate geopolitical speculation or the plunder of far-off lands for the sole purpose
of economic exploitation,24 but he did have certain imperialist ambitions, such
as maintaining military bases in locations as distant as Warsaw and having the
German army occupy Liège and Namur for some twenty years. 25 As for the for-
mer, a brief look at Weber’s liberal side might shed some light on the peculiarities
of the German situation at the time.26
Unlike liberalism elsewhere, in Germany, the liberal tradition was not rooted
in metaphysics or natural law. Weber was a liberal in that he valued the individual
as an autonomous cultural being, but he did not indulge the conceit of elevating
this preference to the level of a universal principle. The rationalistic liberalism of
the French Enlightenment and Revolution, bestowed upon all of humanity, was
quite foreign to German sentiments. Similarly, English utilitarianism confl icted
with Germany’s conception of the role of the state, and so it should come as no
210 SCOTT N ELSON A N D JOSÉ COLEN

surprise that the latter rejected the negative liberty of the former in favor of posi-
tive liberty. Because principles in general were something of an embarrassment,
German liberalism accepted the primacy of the pragmatism of power as a matter
of fact and consequently admitted only a liberalism of results. Weber would not
live long enough to see the destructive and nihilistic implications such a political
position could have; Aron, by contrast, had direct experience of the outcome.
Whether it concerned Weber’s stance on German domestic politics or his
feelings with regard to Germany’s position in Europe, he was steadfast in his
loyalty to the German national interest alone, with everything else serving an
instrumental purpose. It is for this reason that there is a conspicuous lack of
ideological justification in Weber’s political arguments.27 Any ideological jus-
tification would have to rely on the unstable foundation of an arbitrary value
whose very bias would diminish its scientific worth.28 The problem with using
German power and grandeur alone as the justification is interpreted brilliantly
by Aron when he asks, “if the nation’s power is the supreme value, regardless of
the nation’s culture, regardless of its leaders, regardless of the means employed,
then on what grounds can one say no to what Max Weber would have rejected
with horror?”29
And this is perhaps the great tragic irony in Weber’s position on world poli-
tics: he expected that Germany’s acquisition of power would promote German
culture and grandeur, though he never conceived of power in terms of national
prosperity, for instance, instead of force of arms, and therefore he never thought
that the naked pursuit of power could destroy the culture he desperately wished
to defend.30 This oversight is a consequence of a metaphysics rooted in struggle
and confl ict, at times Darwinian, at times Nietzschean.31
This vision of struggle penetrating every sphere of human activity pervades
Weber’s work, both political and scientific. Aron noticed that it was one of the
great faults of the German thinker’s impossible philosophy—whose foundation
lay in his irrefutable methodology—that he never considered that one could
reconcile one’s confl icting values.32 Indeed, for all of his pontificating against the
pacifists, there remains something curiously Christian about Weber’s insistence
that one must choose one’s god (or demon, for that matter), and not one’s gods.33
Once a man has chosen his value, he must never waver in his devotion. This
unwillingness to compromise is fitting for the seeker of truth, but not for the
politician.
This would not be the last time that Aron would engage with Weber’s mind
on the ethics of conviction and responsibility. In two unpublished courses he
gave at the Collège de France, Aron would explore the theory of political action;
and this would lead him to reexamine the antinomies of conviction and respon-
sibility, means and ends. It is to Aron’s later meditation on Weber’s work that we
now turn.

Raymond Aron’s Reinterpretation of Max Weber

In two courses taught by Aron in 1972–1973 and 1973–1974, respectively titled
Théorie de l’action politique and Jeux et enjeux de la politique, two of his most original
 STAT E SM A N SH I P A N D ET H IC S 211

texts on political theory in spite of their being unfi nished, Raymond Aron
returns to Weber’s ideas and proceeds to a reinterpretation of the problem of
political morality.34 He begins by contrasting the approach of what a political
theory of action might be, with an analysis from an aerial perspective of inter-
state relations or political regimes. The latter describe systems or constitutions,
although not precisely in the legal but rather the sociological sense, as “sets of
rules under which a certain state functions” both domestically and international-
ly.35 But there is another approach to the political, which roughly corresponds to
what we would call policy, which seeks to examine the action of individuals, or
parties, or states, within those systems. Of this analysis of political behavior in a
strategic sense, “employing a range of means in accordance with a certain plan,”
or to achieve certain ends, we can fi nd models in Thucydides, Machiavelli or
Clausewitz. It is this analysis that often appears in the form of advice to princes—
how to win and how to succeed—and Aron calls it “praxeology” from Paix et
guerre onward. Political action has restrictions of its own, and its own efficacy
and internal logic.
In the fi rst of these courses, Aron comments on the arguments found in
Raymond Polin’s book, Ethique et politique. In this work, his colleague at the
Sorbonne argued that it was impossible to make separate judgments about means
and ends, since all techniques—including political technique—do not in them-
selves have an intrinsic moral significance, and are a mere assemblage of methods
to obtain a certain effect. A technique, as such, would be radically amoral if it
were not part of a human action. A human action is always performed in view
of certain ends, with which it forms a whole: “The use of a knife to cut meat is
a technique; it acquires a moral significance only when the knife is handled by a
butcher, a dinner-guest, a surgeon or a murderer.” According to Aron, Polin errs
in assuming that means cannot be evaluated both for their effectiveness and for
their ethical significance.
Polin’s approach is typical of moral consequentialism: human acts are not,
intrinsically, good or bad; they acquire a moral value depending on the results
and purposes sought. The author of the work further adds “the idea that there
may be a moral opposition between means and ends comes from the same con-
fusion; it is considered that a certain conduct may bring into play a purpose, or
means, which is not in agreement with them.” However, Polin does not help his
case any by concluding that “there is no confl ict between means and ends; there
is just an opposition between two conceptions of moral education, two global
conceptions of war,” in the end, two Weltanschauungen.
Raymond Aron presents and criticizes this position. He defends the legiti-
macy of evaluating means in themselves, an evaluation very distinct from that
of the legitimacy of the ends. It is true that the teleological calculation used
implicitly in the political technique of men endowed with free will implies the
assessment of possible effects. Aron gives an example, following the same line of
reasoning as Polin: “Does the knife, or the use of a knife, have a moral meaning,
an intrinsic moral value, when it is wielded by a soldier in the trenches? In other
words: what order of violence is it morally legitimate to use in war?” In war, we
are not just soldiers with a duty to overthrow the enemy; we also remain human
212 SCOTT N ELSON A N D JOSÉ COLEN

beings endowed with a sense of dignity and respect for others. Therefore, “even
in war there is the question of judging what is non-human, inhuman, what we
morally condemn, and what we do not morally condemn.” This is an issue that
the political philosopher cannot ignore. Is it indeed the case that the ends justify
the means? Even if the end is sublime, is it not the case that there might be a
“fundamental contradiction between what we ultimately want to achieve and
the means that we employ”?
Aron rejects two doctrines that he considers extreme. The fi rst is that “of cer-
tain moralists—and Maritain at times seemed to think along these lines—who
want to convince us that nothing good can ever come out of evil and that certain
means, obnoxious in themselves, always corrupt action and are not conducive to
achieving a valid end.”36 The other extreme is “the cynicism which suggests that
it is always the crueler or more radical means which are the most effective,” and
this also seems misplaced to him. In the end, Raymond Aron departs decisively
from Max Weber’s theory, explaining his previous hesitations and reservations.
The distinction between the ethic of responsibility and the ethic of conviction
led to numerous comments and had disturbed Aron for a long time because the
distinction had never given him complete satisfaction. He came to feel the flaw
was that Weber did not acknowledge that the ethic of conviction might incor-
porate both the absolute wish for certain ends, but also the absolute refusal to use
certain means.
The starting point for Aron’s own examination of the relationship between
morality and politics is instrumental thought. This instrumental thought is char-
acteristic of transitive action: “what we use, even without thinking, when it is a
question of achieving an end external to the action itself.”37 What he is investi-
gating is how a man of action evaluates his action, a man who wants to achieve
certain ends and employs certain means. The question is twofold: on the one
hand, how to defi ne the purpose, and, on the other, which means one has the
right to use.
According to Aron, the starting point for Max Weber is not the same, because
for him the ends are immediately given in world history. In his second course,
Aron explains his reinterpretation of Weber’s argument. This argument distin-
guishes between two types of ethics. The fi rst is an “ethic of personal perfec-
tion,” with a universal and timeless meaning, “subject as little as possible to
specific social institutions.” The second is an ethic “connected to the plurality of
values,” the roots of which are “the problems of action in this world,” not any
difficulty in determining the ends. The ends are written in activities themselves:
the wise man seeks the truth, the artist beauty. Only in the political field is there
a serious problem regarding the knowledge of values, or purposes, due to the
“historical condition of man.” Can the ends be easily determined in politics?
Even if they can, are the means that we employ in axiological agreement with
these ends?
It is true that, apart from these intrinsic difficulties of the political order, Max
Weber introduces a radical incompatibility between certain values, the contra-
diction between values, in which Aron does not believe and which does not
seem essential to him. This opposition between the ethic of personal perfection
 STAT E SM A N SH I P A N D ET H IC S 213

and the difficulties of political action “is a truism that we must often repeat,
for the essence of the intellectual, humanist, and utopian is to refuse it,” and to
build models in which an ideal society and the moral and political conduct of a
person are in harmony. For Aron, there is no “pre-established harmony between
the determinism of world history and desires for value”; that is, progress does
not have to coincide with the good, and the trends of history do not imply the
creation of a human ideal. Nevertheless, he strives to reconcile the ethic of con-
viction and the ethic of responsibility, as the opposition between them does not
need to be radical. Thus, it is conviction that determines the choice of ends to
which one is responsible.
Secondly, the ethic of conviction also implies the “unconditional refusal
to employ certain means.” Since Weber often uses the aphorism “each person
chooses his own god or demon,” he authorizes or at least suggests an interpreta-
tion of his philosophy as being a “decisionist or, to be strict, nihilistic” philoso-
phy, in which “determining the purposes completely escapes rational argument,”
and so the ends become a mere arbitrary choice. Raymond Aron chooses not
to interpret Weber in this way. For him, above or beyond the political decision
in terms of consequences, the German sociologist strives to preserve an ethical
sphere, which in itself has its own reward and motivation.
Instead, in the lectures of these courses, Aron reviews the distinction between
the two meanings of Weber’s ethics, a distinction rendered very mild and very
different from the traditional distinction: on the one hand, “a morality that is
simply defi ned by the Sermon on the Mount or Kantian morality,” to “obey the
unconditional imperative of Christianity not to resort to violence,” to “obey
the law out of respect for the law, without worrying about one’s own interest or
worrying about the consequences”; and, on the other hand, a worldly examina-
tion of the consequences of action in the political realm: “If we want to, we can
translate a morality of personal perfection into the language of means and ends,
but I think that this would be a falsification of the psycho-moral meaning of
ethical behavior; ethical conduct so conceived has no other purpose than to obey
a divine imperative or a human law.”

Aron’s Review of Weber’s Ethical-Sociological Approach to

Political Action
What does he want to retain from this analysis of Weber’s texts and theories? We
do not need to guess, for Aron himself presents the ideas that are central to his
own political philosophy. First of all, the “heterogeneity between instrumental
rationality and axiological rationality”: that is, there exists a rationality of means
that can be assessed on the basis of their fitness for the purpose, but means can
also be evaluated in terms of moral standards. Nevertheless, this heterogeneity
between efficacy and moral value should be corrected or limited by the axiologi-
cal consequences of the choice of means.
Secondly, he asserts “the inevitable plurality of ends that can be proposed in
the specifically political arena.” It is not certain that the least unfair society is
invariably the most liberal one. For example, a city’s prosperity and justice cannot
214 SCOTT N ELSON A N D JOSÉ COLEN

always go hand-in-hand, and justice and the common good have many meanings
in a society divided into rival groups. Perhaps this idea can be translated into
what Isaiah Berlin calls the “uncombinability” or complexity of moral goods,
transposed into the public domain. Finally, human ends are not always incom-
patible, nor are they a mere matter of preference, even if the idea of humanity
underlying the “reconciliation of all the political ends that can be proposed in an
ideal regime” is nothing but a regulatory idea, an idea of Reason in the Kantian
sense.
The essence of politics thus consists of the tensions between the exigencies
of the moment, the political morality that seeks to accommodate the citizens’
private moralities, and the statesman’s own private moralities (some of which
are reconcilable with each other, some of which are not), that exist both within
and between human beings. The great statesman is he who can navigate his way
through this stormy sea of uncertainty—knowing full well that many of his
decisions will leave him little-to-no time for reflection and therefore be based
entirely on political knack—and arrive at the action that is, given the circum-
stances, the least detestable both for himself and for the collectivity.
In any case, both Raymond Aron and Max Weber were more spectateurs enga-
gés than they were statesmen, even if they did possess Weber’s three aforemen-
tioned necessary qualities for politicians: passion, feeling of responsibility, and
sense of proportion. Aron nevertheless doubted that his character was resilient
enough to carry out some of the unpleasant but nevertheless necessary tasks that
politicians must sometimes perform. 38 Weber knew that his inability to com-
promise made him a poor match for the political life.39 He could never commit
himself fully to his views grounded in power politics because he had a feeling
of responsibility to values even greater than German grandeur. Aron, too, saw
beyond the nation and was an early and ardent supporter of Franco-German
reconciliation right after the war, when that was the last thing to be expected
from a French Jew. In the war of the gods, and in spite of it all, they sided with
liberty, nobility, and truth.

Notes
1. See Raymond Aron, Mémoires: Edition intégrale inédite, Paris, Editions Robert
Laffont, 2010 [1983], 102.
2. See Franciszek Draus, “La philosophie sociale de Raymond Aron,” PhD diss.,
École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1981, 9.
3. Aron, Mémoires, 105–106.
4. See Raymond Aron, La Sociologie allemande contemporaine, Paris, Quadrige, 2007
[1935], 81. The relevant pages from this work are 82 and 102–110.
5. See Raymond Aron, Les Étapes de la pensée sociologique, Paris, Gallimard, 2011
[1967]), 21.
6. See Ibid., 315; Raymond Aron, “Max Weber and Modern Social Science,” trans.
Charles Krance, in Franciszek Draus (ed.), History, Truth, Liberty: Selected Writings
of Raymond Aron, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1985, 336.
7. See Ralf Dahrendorf, afterword to Politik als Beruf, by Max Weber, Stuttgart,
Reclam, 1992, 85–86, 89, 92–93.
 STAT E SM A N SH I P A N D ET H IC S 215

8. Max Weber, “Politik als Beruf,” in Johannes Winckelmann (ed.), Gesammelte poli-
tische Schriften, Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck) Verlag, 1988 [1919], 506.
The relevant pages from this work are 545–552 and 558–559.
9. See Aron, “Max Weber and Modern Social Science,” 349–350.
10. See Aron, Les Étapes, 528.
11. See Raymond Aron, “Max Weber et la politique de puissance,” in Raymond
Aron, Les Étapes de la pensée sociologique, Paris, Gallimard, 654.
12. Max Weber, “The Profession and Vocation of Politics,” in Peter Lassman and
Ronald Speirs (eds.), Weber: Political Writings, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, 2000 [1994], 367.
13. See Hans Henrik Bruun, Science, Values and Politics in Max Weber’s Methodology,
Hampshire, Ashgate, 2007 [1972], Loc. 7956, 7978, and 1407, Kindle.
14. Weber, “The Profession and Vocation of Politics,” 355.
15. See Max Weber, “Deutschland unter den europäischen Weltmächten,” in
Johannes Winckelmann (ed.), Gesammelte Politische Schriften, Tübingen, J.C.B.
Mohr (Paul Siebeck) Verlag, 1988 [1919], 157.
16. See Sven Eliaeson, “Constitutional Caesarism: Weber’s politics in their German
context,” in Stephen Turner (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Weber, New York,
Cambridge University Press, 2000, 134–135; Tracy B. Strong, Politics without
Vision, London, University of Chicago Press, 2012, 115; Max Weber, “Parlament
und Regierung im neugeordneten Deutschland,” in Johannes Wicnkelmann
(ed.), Gesammelte politische Schriften, Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck) Verlag,
1988 [1919], 311–320.
17. See Stephen Turner, introduction to The Cambridge Companion to Weber, 17.
18. See H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, introduction to From Max Weber, by Max
Weber, Oxon, Routledge, 2009 [1948], 43.
19. See Aron, “Max Weber et la politique de puissance,” 645; Max Weber, Wirtschaft
und Gesellschaft: Grundriß der verstehenden Soziologie, ed. Johannes Winckelmann,
Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 2009 [1921], 520–530.
20. See Aron, “Max Weber et la politique de puissance,” 643.
21. See Weber, “Deutschland unter den europäischen Weltmächten,” 176.
22. Max Weber, “Between Two Laws,” in Peter Lassman and Ronald Speirs (eds.),
Weber: Political Writings, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000 [1994],
76.
23. See Aron, “Max Weber et la politique de puissance,” 644.
24. See Paolo Armellini, “Max Weber: scienza e realismo politico,” in Giovanni
Dessì and Maria Pia Paternò (eds.), Il realismo politico e la modernità, Rome, Edizioni
Nuova Cultura, 2012 [2005], 71.
25. See Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, 39.
26. See Eliaeson, “Constitutional Caesarism,” 136–139.
27. See Aron, “Max Weber et la politique de puissance,” 647.
28. See Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, ed. Johannes
Winckelmann, Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck) Verlag, 1988 [1922].
29. Aron, “Max Weber et la politique de puissance,” 655.
30. See Ibid., 656. For a contrasting view see Bruun, Science, Values and Politics in Max
Weber’s Methodology, Loc. 1316.
31. See Aron, “Max Weber et la politique de puissance,” 650; Max Weber, “Der
Nationalstaat und die Volkswirtschaftspolitik,” in Johannes Winckelmann (ed.),
Gesammelte politische Schriften, Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck) Verlag, 1988
[1919], 14.
216 SCOTT N ELSON A N D JOSÉ COLEN

32. See Aron, “Max Weber and Modern Social Science,” 371–372.
33. See Max Weber, “Wissenschaft als Beruf,” in Johannes Winckelmann (ed.),
Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck)
Verlag, 1988 [1919] 609; Carlo Antoni, Dallo storicismo alla sociologia, Firenze, G.
C. Sansoni, 1940, 142–143.
34. Both texts are posthumous and only summaries by Aron, which were published
in the Collège de France Annuaries, but the texts are at BNF, Manuscrits, NAF 28060
(024) and NAF 28060 (027).
35. See Raymond Aron, Théorie de l´action politique, Bibliothèque Nationale de France,
Manuscrits, NAF 28060 (024), Leçon 1, f l. 2. The relevant sections of this course
for the following discussion on Raymond Polin, Ethique et politique, Paris, Sirey,
1968, are Leçon 1, f ls. 3–4, 12, Leçon 6, f ls. 5–7, 10–11, 21–24, and Leçon 7, f l.
3.
36. Regarding the controversy with Maritain, see Raymond Aron, Machiavel et les
tyrannies modernes, ed. Rémy Freymond, Paris, Éditions de Fallois, 1993, 367–378,
405–416. See also Serge Audier, Machiavel, conflit et liberté, Paris, Editions EHESS,
2005, 73–87.
37. Raymond Aron, Jeux et enjeux de la politique, BNF, Manuscrits, NAF 28060 (027)
Leçon 2 from 15–01–1974, f l. 1. The relevant sections of this course for the
remainder of this chapter are Leçon 3, f ls. 5–9, 12–13, and Leçon 4, f ls. 3–5,
9–10.
38. See Raymond Aron, Le Spectateur engagé. Entretiens avec Jean-Louis Missika et
Dominique Wolton, Paris, Julliard,1981, 303.
39. See Eliaeson, “Constitutional Caesarism,” 131.
CHAPTER 16

ARON AND MARXISM:

THE ARONIAN INTERPRETATION OF MARX

Sylvie Mesure

T he purpose of evoking Aron’s “Marxism” is not, as one might suspect, to

“Marxize” Aron, but to question the Aronian interpretation of Marxism—to
interpret Aron interpreting Marxism1—in order to show that this French politi-
cal theorist developed his ideas about history and politics through a permanent
confrontation with Marx, whom he qualified without hesitation as a “genius.”
Aron used to say, “if we waited to fi nish reading everything that others have
written about Marx before writing ourselves, we would surely die before complet-
ing these preparatory studies.”2 As regards the Aronian interpretation of Marx,
we will limit the bulk of our analysis to Le Marxisme de Marx. First, because it is
a course transcript, published in 2002, for which we owe thanks to Jean-Claude
Casanova for his efforts in granting us access to it. Le Marxisme de Marx consists
of lectures from a postgraduate course held by Aron at the Sorbonne during the
year 1962–1963, complemented in Chapter 10 by material from a course at the
Collège de France in 1976–1977.3 These texts allow us to hear “the living words”
of the great Professor Aron on a subject that fascinated him.4 Furthermore, it is
one of the fi rst sketches of what would have become, according to the excellent
preface to the volume, “Aron’s great book on Marx”—if he could have fi nished
it. Circumstances unfortunately have prevented us from having at our disposal
this last great work, even if Aron himself claimed, at the end of his life, that he
did not feel it was a great loss.5 But if for once the interpreter can afford to “dis-
agree with Aron,” he is not thereby engaged in an interpretive frenzy, for in this
case we possess relevant materials and writings that allow us to draw an outline
of what might have been his fi nal interpretation. Aron himself had clearly stated
the project in his Mémoires: “To clarify the basic philosophical speculations of
the young Marx, to grasp the broad outlines of economics as he presents them in
the Critique, the Grundgrisse, and Capital, and to derive from these two parts the
various possible Marxes and the characteristics of the prophet-revolutionary.”6 In
218 S Y LV I E M E S U R E

his Mémoires, again, Aron said that “instead of summary presentations of Marxist
thought, instead of polemics against the Parisian Marxisms,” he would have pre-
sented “a synthetic analysis, not of the Marxist thought, but of various tenden-
cies of that thought, the origin of the historical movements that call themselves
Marxist.” 7 In this respect, the volume that appeared under the title The Marxism
of Marx indeed constitutes a sketch of the missing book,8 since from the very fi rst
page Aron describes his project like a scholarly study, both philosophical and
historical, of Marx’s thought. Moreover, it is clear at the outset that this is not an
attempt to state the whole truth about Marx, but to offer a solid and well-argued
interpretation, capable of both highlighting the complexity of his thought as
well as making intelligible the plurality of levels of analysis and of interpretations
presented by others.
This was an interpretive challenge for Aron, who was aware of the difficul-
ties in undertaking a task strongly related to the ambiguities of Marx’s work.9
However, whatever makes the analysis of the work of Marx as a scholar, man of
action, and prophet a difficult task, is, at the same time, its charm. Aron never
hid that he was fascinated, as well as put off, by the thought of “one who is both
scientific and revolutionary: revolutionary in the name of science and scientific
in the name of the Revolution,”10 to the point of having dedicated a substantial
part of his life to it. In Main Currents of Sociological Thought, he also does not hesi-
tate to say that he owes nothing in his intellectual training to the influence of
Montesquieu or Tocqueville, but almost everything to Marx.
This permanent confrontation with Marx began in Introduction to the Philosophy
of History, which is largely directed against dogmatic philosophies of history,
including Marxism. Aron developed his major theses on the limits of histori-
cal knowledge. I will present the major analysis of Introduction with regard to
Marxism and will then show how, in the course of time, the Aronian interpreta-
tion of Marxism was enriched and deepened, while remaining true to its original
interpretive schema.

Understanding Marx’s Marxism

Understanding Marx’s Marxism was a project that had interested Aron since the
1930s, as he relates in his Mémoires.11 Concerning his interpretation of Capital, he
writes, “In 1931, I did not have enough knowledge of economics to understand
competently or to judge Das Kapital. But two questions governed my reading.
One was economic: Does Marxist thought help to explain the great crisis ? The
other was more philosophical: Does the Marxism of Marx, as a philosophy of
history, free us from the heavy obligation that is nevertheless a constituent part
of our humanity, of choosing among different parties ? If the future is already
written, inevitable and redemptive, only those who are blind or confi ned by
their personal interests will reject its advent. In the contemporary interpreta-
tion of Marxism, it was the philosophy of history that simultaneously attracted
and repelled me.”12 “In 1930,” he writes in his Introduction, “I decided to study
Marxism to submit my own political views to a philosophical review,”13 a study
that one must understand, as he said during his defense of his “doctorat-en-
 A RON A N D M A R X I S M 219

lettres,” in the sense of “a reflection on the Marxist philosophy of history, the

heir to Hegel.”14
Aron subjected the Marxist philosophy of history to ruthless criticism,
denouncing it both in the Introduction and in La Philosophie critique de l’histoire as
a “metaphysics” claiming knowledge of the scientific laws of human develop-
ment, and then interpreting it in the Opium of the Intellectuals (1955) as a “secular
religion.” While highlighting the limits of historical knowledge, he was vigor-
ously fighting the idea that history obeyed an iron necessity, the thesis of his-
torical determinism, impossible to establish scientifically and incompatible with
any idea of choice and decision-making, freedom or responsibility in history.
He was highlighting the impossibility of isolating a determining factor (even in
the case of an economic factor) capable of accounting for and explaining all of
human history. On the contrary, he defended the idea that our essential finitude
as human beings engaged in history did not allow us to dispense with decision,
choice, and commitment founded on reason, but without scientific certainty.
No “science of history” would deliver us from such a need to choose, asserted
the young Aron in what he calls “his own version of the critique of historical
reason.” This theoretical framework would guide him all his life. In his Mémoires,
referring to the Introduction, he writes, “The book as a whole made explicit the
mode of political thought that I adopted from then on, and that has persisted into
the autumn of my life. In a slightly scholastic style, I distinguished three stages:
choice, decision, and the search for the truth.”15
In 1938, Aron possessed already a schema for interpreting Marx’s thought.
Even if it became more refi ned and complex later, it did not change essentially. He
criticized an alleged science of history and millenarianism, which are essentially
linked. He criticized economism and consequently reassessed the role of politics;
he criticized revolutionarism; he criticized the claims to articulate the knowl-
edge of the laws of history on the one hand and a militant activism on the other.
He criticized Marx as a prophet on the basis of the Marxist philosophy of history
itself. It is a criticism different from Tönnies’s, who boasted in the early twentieth
century that he was the fi rst to understand the “real Marx.” Tönnies believed that
Marx’s expectation of the imminent arrival of the impending revolution which,
establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat, would deliver humanity from its
chains and would mark the end of prehistory, was not within Marx’s logic, but
due to his psychology, if not “pathology.”16 On his part, Raymond Aron sees
the key to the problematic nature of Marxism in the unlikely reconciliation
between determinism and freedom. At the same time, it explains its immense
power of seduction, and perhaps its perverse effects. In Le Marxisme de Marx, he
in fact says, “I am tempted to say that all philosophical discussions of Marxism
have turned on this central point, the relationship between theory and practice,
between historical necessity and human action; in brief, between necessity and
freedom, and between reality and thought. All the paradoxes crystallize, as it
were, around this theme; all contradictions, all the difficulties of a philosophy
of history that at the very same time announces a necessary future and calls for
revolutionary action. This is, to me, the philosophical center of Marx’s thought,
his fascinating character and also the source of its difficulties.”17
220 S Y LV I E M E S U R E

Aron would not reassess this critical statement formulated in 1938.18 It is con-
sequently deployed in his course at the Sorbonne with all its argumentative force.
But it is no longer a question here, as it was in 1930, of an existential quest by
a young man trying to ground his political decisions on sound knowledge and
to engage history in a certain way (when only probability is our lot). Nor it is a
question, as in the 1950s, of carrying out an ideological critique of secular reli-
gions. It is the work of a teacher, questioning texts, raising translation problems,
flushing out misinterpretations, thinking along with his audience, and delivering
his personal interpretation of an “ambiguous and inexhaustible” work.19 Thus,
the tone is set; the project is a “scholarly” analysis of Marx.

Understanding an Author as He Understood Himself

It is preceded by the formulation of a set of “procedural rules,” which, in fact, are
grounded in a true interpretative ethic.
Analyzing Marx’s thought is not making Marx say what he would think
of the present era;20 it is not understanding Marx’s heirs, and even less creat-
ing a “fictitious Marx”21 starting from an abusive systematization, an approach
that Aron denounced in his Essai sur les marxismes imaginaires as regards Sartre’s
existentialized Marxism or Althusser’s structuralized Marxism. It is rather a
question of fi nding the author’s underlying intent behind the multiplicity of
periods in the stages and written works of the author’s life, the meaning he gave
to his work, the project he set himself: in a word, it is a question of trying to
“understand an author as he understood himself.” On this point, Aron’s inter-
pretive program is clear and his lectures are punctuated by the application of this
methodical rule: from the beginning, he advised “proceeding in good faith and
good will”;22 later, he asks “what Marx, between 1835 and 1883, thought and
meant,”23 and elsewhere he also states that it is necessary to “trust the author”
and to “take him at his word.”24 When an author’s thought is analyzed, Aron
says, “I see no reason, when it is an author of Marx’s greatness, not to take him
at his word.”25 To believe Marx’s “word” means, for Aron, approaching him in
particular as the author of Das Kapital, the author who wanted, and attempted,
to scientifically describe the laws governing the operation and decay of capi-
talism. To understand him as the author of Das Kapital is primarily to retrace
the route and intellectual adventure that led to the mature Marx, to interpret
the change that leads from Marx the philosopher to Marx the sociologist and
economist and, at a second stage, to address and evaluate Marx’s great work.
Comparing Marx to Proust, Aron did not hesitate to say that Marx is the author
of “one book”: “As a scholar, I would say that from 1849 to his death in 1883,
Marx worked on a single book. If the comparison appears surprising in many
ways, and with good reason, I would say that as a great author, Marx is like
Proust. He is the man of a single book. The comparison, I hasten to add, is only
valid on this particular point. Both devoted all their lives to one book which
neither of them fi nished.”26
The question for an interpreter is therefore to know how to articulate the two
parts of Marx’s work, and to know how, after having assimilated, criticized, and
 A RON A N D M A R X I S M 221

rejected the Hegelian system, he then immersed himself in classical economic

thought with a view to developing a Critique of Political Economy, of which
Das Kapital is only a partial realization. What relationship exists between the
young Marx, philosopher and author of the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts,
and the mature Marx, author of Capital? “Are they two different thinkers? The
question itself is divided into at least two particular questions: what did the Marx
of Capital think of Marx’s own Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts; or, in other
words, what did Marx in 1867 think of Hegelian philosophy, and what did he
think about the criticism that he had written in 1844 of Hegel’s Phenomenology?
To what extent did Marx himself consider that Capital involved the application
to the subject of economics of a philosophical method inspired by Hegel?”27 This
was, in Aron’s eyes, the “core Marxian debate.”28
The entire course attempts to answer this question, and there is no room
here to retrace all his analyses; but we will try to point out the interpretive prin-
ciples employed by Aron. “Taking Marx at his word,” understanding him as he
understood himself, requires an interpreter not radically contrasting the young
Marx with that of his maturity, not dividing his work into two heterogeneous
and radically distinct blocks, such as the existentialist Marxism and structuralist
Marxism then dominating the Parisian intelligentsia.29
Sartre appealed to the works of Marx’s youth to uphold a humanist and his-
toricist Marxism, leaving aside Capital in order to put action, the class struggle,
and alienation at the center of Marxism. Althusser, by contrast, rejected the
early texts and posited a true “epistemological break”30 between the two parts
of Marx’s work, a break that from 1845 onward led him to abandon the field
of ideology for that of science: “Existential-phenomenological Marxism fed on
praxis, alienation, humanism, history and historicity. Althusserian Marxism rejects
humanism or historicism. Praxis has vanished (temporarily). Only structures now
deserve the dignity of being the subject of knowledge: from now on only the
future (or diachrony or history) is problematic.”31
Against Sartre, Aron argues, in line with the interpretive principle stated above,
that it is against Marx’s own intent to reduce to philosophy what he considered
a scientific analysis of capitalism. “Poor Marx!” exclaims Aron in the lectures,
“if he was not interested in economic issues, why did he devote thirty-five years
to studying them?”32 And in Essai sur les marxismes imaginaires, he argues that if
one can indeed find both inspirational guidance and a critical humanism in the
mature Marx, insofar as Das Kapital is also a critique of the bourgeois political
economy and a denunciation of the alienated condition of human beings under
capitalism, it is wrong to find there, first and foremost, an existential analysis
rendering the changes that led Marx from Hegel to Ricardo totally incomprehen-
sible: “The young Marx’s texts gained a sudden importance in Germany between
1921 and 1933 and in France after 1945, when intellectuals desiring to be social-
ists, progressives, and communists traveled Marx’s route in the opposite direc-
tion. The latter, starting out from a kind of Hegelian existentialism, ended up in
socio-economics. The former went from socio-economics back to existential-
ism. Because they were unaware of economics, or because Marxist economics
had aged . . . because history followed an unexpected course, or because objective
222 S Y LV I E M E S U R E

determinism repelled them, in the speculations of the young Marx they found the
secret of an ‘ultimate’ Marxism that Marx believed he had overcome at thirty.”33
In the lectures at the Sorbonne, it is also on the incomplete and uneven char-
acter of Marx’s work that Aron bases his argument.
Marx’s early texts indeed have the character of an unfi nished work because
only The Holy Family (1845), The Poverty of Philosophy (1847) and two articles, one
on the “Jewish Question,” (1843), and the other bearing the title “Introduction
to the Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right” (1844)
were published during Marx’s lifetime ; while, as Aron says, “the two books that
are perhaps today considered the most important ones from this early period,
namely the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, written by Marx in Paris in 1844,
and German Ideology, written in 1846–1847, essential works for understanding
Marx’s intellectual itinerary, were published in full only from 1932 onwards.”34
However, Marx’s work is also unfi nished at the end of his journey because Marx
never came to grips with his critique of political economy, of which only the
fi rst book of Capital was published in 1867. In an important article, Michael R.
Krätke,35 taking stock of the various versions of Marx’s larger project, empha-
sizes that we have no less than four or five versions of the Critique of Political
Economy and that even after the publication of Book I of Capital, Marx never
stopped working on Books II and III, which remained in manuscript form and
were published posthumously by Engels.
The unfi nished nature of the work, therefore, but also the non-homogeneous
nature of the corpus, invites interpretative caution: as observed by Aron, many of
Marx’s writings remained in manuscript form, and there is a huge gap between
mere working notes for research and the publication in book form as approved by
the author. “There is a fundamental difference for all authors, including Marx,”
Aron pointedly explained, “between a fi nished and published manuscript, druck-
reif, as they say in German, and a manuscript kept among one’s papers because
one feels that it is not fully developed and worth reading. Now, Marxology and
even Marxist thought speculate indefi nitely on any fragment from Marx’s youth
which Marx himself, who was not entirely incompetent on the subject, thought
was unworthy of publication. Quasi-religious respect can sometimes go too far,
even in science.”36
We can see that Aron takes issue against any interpretation that would make
the young Marx a consistent thinker, who could be mobilized against the second
Marx or even overvalued to the point of providing new insights into the mature
Marx. This runs counter to any interpretation considering the 1844 Manuscript
the fi nal stage of Marx’s thought. The Parisian Manuscript does not constitute
one of Marx’s completed works, but the result of a posthumous compilation
(1932) of a set of texts not intended for publication: lecture notes and extracts
developed in different workbooks.37 Aron noted that, if this was an important
text—and perhaps the most important among the early works of Marx 38 because
it articulates for the fi rst time both his philosophy and economics and, therefore,
attempts a synthesis between Hegelian German philosophy and English political
economy—even so, it was no more than a step along the long road to Capital.
Analyzing Marx’s ideas in 1844, he wrote: “I would first like to repeat that no
 A RON A N D M A R X I S M 223

one has the right to consider this unfi nished manuscript the fi nal stage of Marx’s
thought. It has never been published and he completely lost interest in it after
writing it.”39
However, against Althusser, Aron argues that restricting Marx’s work to Capital
is akin to betraying him. Here we only discuss the principles of the Aronian crit-
icism of Althusser because we seek mainly to highlight the interpretive principles
employed by Aron in his reading of Marx. In the same way as it is impossible
to do without reading Histoire et dialectique de la violence if we wish to understand
the subtlety of the Aronian critique of Sartre’s Marxified humanism, we can-
not dispense with reading Essai sur les marxismes imaginaires if we want to be
aware of the magnitude of the charge brought against Althusser’s “structuralist
mystification.”40 The latter, in search of a scientific Marxism, not a philosophi-
cal or ideological one, introduced an epistemological break between the young
Marx, heir to Hegel, and the Marx of Capital. Aron vigorously denounces the
relevance of such a break, which seems to go against Marx’s own intentions.41
For the Marx of Capital, the scientist, the economist, is also the same one who
used Critique of Political Economy as a subtitle to his book and did not abandon the
Promethean ambitions of his youth: Marx’s Marxism began with a critique of
religion, arrived at a critique of law and politics, and then extended this critique
to the economic field. Aron was astonished that such an obvious fact was not
perceived in full scope by others: “What I reproach almost all interpreters for
is that they do not hold the two ends of the chain and do not see that in Marx’s
thought there is an organic unity between the economic reasoning and the phil-
osophical and historical meaning of this reasoning. I repeat: the condition for this
synthesis is the notion of a critique of political economy, i.e., the simultaneous
critique of reality and of the awareness of our grasp of it.”42 Therefore, “if we
agree to think as Marx himself did,” the reconciliation between the two stages
of his work is not mysterious. Moreover, the unveiling of the synthetic unity
of Marx’s Marxism made possible by the concept of “criticism” invalidates the
symmetrical and inverse interpretations of Sartre and Althusser: it is impossible
to interpret Marxism as a humanism free of economism, and also impossible to
see it as a structuralism purified of all humanism. Returning in his Mémoires to
Althusser’s break, Aron writes, “As part of Marxology, Louis Althusser’s argu-
ment does not stand up even for a moment when compared with the reading
of the texts. The Grundrisse of 1857–1858 are steeped in Hegelianism. Marx
reread Hegel’s Logic before writing Capital. Indefensible as a historical thesis,
the notion of an epistemological break points to the ambiguity of Marx’s own
philosophy, closer, depending on the moment and on his mood, to either Hegel’s
version or Althusser’s. The strength of Marxism is, in part at least, this ambigu-
ity. The theory of profit is the basis of that of exploitation (inherent unfairness
of the exchange economy) and that of alienation (things come between people).
Marxist economics is simultaneously a moral criticism and an existential one.”43
As opposed to the unilateral readings of a Sartre or an Althusser, Aron’s inter-
pretation of Marx therefore tries to “hold together the two ends of the chain,”
as Marx conceived his own thought. This means understanding what leads him
to this fi nal stage but also what prepares what follows. It means following a
224 S Y LV I E M E S U R E

constantly evolving thought without freezing or petrifying it at a particular

stage. Finally, it means distinguishing what is constant in the author’s mind from
what is circumstantial, in accordance with the fi rst interpretative rule inaugurat-
ing the course. Aron, in fact, wrote then, “The fi rst rule is: it is illegitimate to
talk about the young Marx’s thought as if it constituted a whole. There is even
a certain absurdity in doing what most authors do when dealing with his youth,
which is to contrast outright the young Marx with the mature Marx, while quite
clearly the young Marx’s thought was never a completed whole and is almost by
defi nition a philosophical journey. But to understand a philosophical journey,
one needs to follow it during its development and try to distinguish between
themes or aspirations that were constant along this route and stages in his think-
ing that changed from moment to moment.”44
In order to achieve this, Aron identifies two major periods in Marx’s thought,
that of the early writings stretching from 1835 to 1848, the date of the publica-
tion of the Communist Manifesto, in which he develops historical materialism,
and another one corresponding to his maturity, from 1848 onward; to put it
briefly, another period, during which Marx gradually evolved from Hegelianism
to Marxism. Moreover, in accordance with his interpretative principles, Aron
shows how the mind of the young Marx was built up through several signifi-
cant milestones. The period of his youth is thus broken down into three phases
(sometimes reduced to two by Aron).45 We need to read the whole course to
understand the arguments for such a division into periods, to read again with
this brilliant interpreter the texts on which he relies, something that is out of the
question here. It is enough to emphasize how in Aron’s eyes the notion of “criti-
cism” became “the core” of his interpretation of Marx.46

Understanding Capital
But to understand Marx is also to understand Capital. In this second part of the
course, devoted to Capital, Aron’s interpretation is enriched compared to the
analysis of Introduction to the Philosophy of History. Aron does not abandon his core
critical argument or the denunciation of the explosive synthesis of necessity and
freedom—in other words, the uncertain combination of two contradictory log-
ics, the logic of human action and the logic of capital47—but he intends not only
to understand but also to evaluate the economic thought of Marx. In his Mémoires
Aron states that he did not in the 1930s have “enough economic knowledge to
understand and judge Capital.”48
Understanding and evaluating Capital is therefore Aron’s program, and he
warned his audience that such an analysis could not be without value judgments:
“The second part of this course will be naturally uncertain, more open to criti-
cism than the fi rst one. Because for me it will be much more difficult, in this
section, to distinguish a mere exposition from an effort to interpret and from
a discussion that is as honest as possible. In the case of Capital, it is impossible
to provide an interpretation that does not simultaneously include a judgment
of the economic or philosophical value of the book. I’m sorry. I would have
loved to completely separate both types of consideration, as it was possible in the
 A RON A N D M A R X I S M 225

fi rst part, where I was just trying to explain how Marx became Marxist based
on Hegelianism, but, when we study the economic part of Capital, it is inevi-
table that any interpretation I attempt to suggest will seem laden with judgments
about the value and the scope of Capital.”49
The professor’s analysis in this part of the course thus follows the fi rst Book
of Capital (Chapter 3), which develops the theory of value, and later focuses on
Book 3 (Chapter 12), where Marx tries to go from value to price. It demonstrates
that his program is certainly a critique of political economy, that is, a critique
of economic reality and of the consciousness that reflects it (critique of classical
political economy and critique of vulgar economics, to use Marx’s words). It also
shows how the logic of Capital is a process unveiling the essence of capitalism, the
only way to account for the phenomenal reality and its contradictions. Aron puts
forward a meticulous explanation of the key concepts of Capital: merchandise
and its value, exchange, the notion of surplus value linked to exploitation and
profit, the tendency for profit rates to fall, which must lead capitalism, in its fi nal
phase of antagonism between production forces and production relationships, to
self-destruction. We would refer the reader here to the corresponding passages
in the course for a more detailed examination of the Aronian interpretation.
What does Aron as a sociologist consider necessary to take from Capital—the
distinction between essence and phenomena? This is totally outdated for mod-
ern economists who only work on the basis of the numerical manipulation of
phenomenal reality.50 The theory of surplus value? It is false.51 The theory of the
falling rate of profit? It is not supported by the facts and does not make it possible
to demonstrate the necessary trend toward fi nal catastrophe.52 The project of
deducing the laws of historical development from a logical sequence of abstract
categories? An unachievable and unrealistic project considered doomed since
Introduction to the Philosophy of History. Understanding Marx as he understood
himself also means understanding the history of a failure: Marx failed in Capital
to fi nd a scientific basis for his theory of the collapse of capitalism.53 He failed to
theoretically explain the movement of history.54
What is left in Capital? This was the decisive question when Aron gave his
course, during the Cold War, in an era dominated by strong ideological and
political tensions between East and West—a bold question in this context! As
usual, Aron answers in a clear and nuanced manner, without the rigidity of
unambiguous positions and a sterile logic of “tout ou rien” (all or nothing). Before
discussing what he retains from Marx, we shall begin by noting what he fiercely
condemns.
Aron found in Marx, and rejects totally, the idea of a radical critique of capi-
talism, one with no leftovers, which is presented as an external criticism, since
it evaluates the capitalist system by comparing it to a social state, radically dif-
ferent in kind, where man, after a necessary evolution, will fulfi ll his vocation.
For Marxism in fact, capitalism is “condemned for its injustice” because it is
based on exploitation, just as it is “condemned to death” because of its contra-
dictions.55 Moral condemnation is coupled here with theoretical condemnation,
which explains the immense seductive power of Marxism, which the young Aron
himself had difficulty escaping, as he confesses in a lecture in 1968: “How can
226 S Y LV I E M E S U R E

one resist the seduction of such a system where science shows that necessity will
handle the execution of the verdicts of consciousness? Capitalism sentenced to
death not for but by its inherent unfairness. When I read Capital for the fi rst time,
I passionately wanted to be convinced; my wishes, alas! remained unfulfi lled.”56
However, the Aronian criticism of Marxism is not a complete demolition
since it discerns a partial truth (une part de vérité) by asking the legitimate ques-
tion of social justice.57 Noting the gap between the great principles of liberty
and equality, on which democratic systems are based, and the real inequalities
that remain, Aron was never himself tempted by political inaction and conser-
vatism. In An Essay on Freedom, published in 1966, after contrasting Tocqueville
and Marx, he does not hesitate to say in conclusion that “We are all Marxists
in the sense that we believe that men are responsible for circumstances and that
they must change circumstances when they deprive certain individuals of the
resources regarded as indispensable to a decent life.”58 Aron bases his reformism
on this legacy of Marxism.59 For him, the man who does not expect a miracu-
lous solution from a bloody revolution does not necessarily resign himself to
the unjustifiable. His reformism was as different from revolutionary activism
as it was from the quietism (and conservatism) of “laissez-faire” economics. He
upholds a liberalism that confronts and indeed opposes the neo-liberalism of
Hayek, about which he wrote in 1961 a critical and uncompromising review.
In his article “The Liberal Defi nition of Freedom,” centered on a discussion
of Hayek’s book The Constitution of Liberty (1960), Aron emphasizes the impor-
tance of the liberal defi nition of freedom understood as “negative liberty,” as
“freedom as independence” or “freedom as non-prohibition,” but he also shows
its limits and insists, in the vein of a young Marx denouncing formal freedoms
in the name of real freedoms, on the need to articulate a “positive” defi nition,
conceived as an “effective capacity for freedom.” In this search for a possible syn-
thesis between political rights and entitlements,60 which we can also fi nd in his
1968 text “Sociological Thought and Human Rights,” dedicated to the analysis
of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1848, we can see how deeply
Marx impregnates Aron’s thinking.
The relation between Aron and Marx is complex, a mix of distance and close-
ness. Closeness in the attention to the element of truth in the Marxist critique
of capitalism, which throws light on the unique nature of Aronian liberalism.61
But there is also a considerable distance between Aron and Marx owing to the
former’s denial of millenarianism and the “catastrophic optimism” that goes with
it.62 If the critique of capitalist democracies is legitimate in Aron’s eyes, it can
only remain so if it renounces revolutionarism, the unrealistic and dangerous
ambition of fully achieving social justice here and now, and if it keeps the idea
of social justice as a regulatory ideal (in Kant’s sense), guiding political action
concerned with the common good.
Aron was indeed too aware of the tragedies of the twentieth century to sub-
scribe to any revolutionary romanticism, even when he was speaking for the
West under the banner of progressivism and modernity. With courage and tenac-
ity, he evaluated the distance between the ideal of brotherhood proclaimed by
Marxism and the monstrous reality it created. Understanding Marx’s Marxism is
 A RON A N D M A R X I S M 227

also to understand what led to the denial and the reversal of the ideals he claimed.
It is beyond Marx, and therefore better than Marx, to understand the theoretical
and practical implications that can be drawn from his thought.

Understanding an Author Better than He Understood Himself

“Understanding an author better than he understood himself,” is the main inter-
pretative principle developed by Schleiermacher in his Hermeneutics (1838).63 But
this principle, which has attracted numerous comments, does not imply that
the interpreter has to go beyond the intentions of the author, ignoring what he
wanted to transmit; it means that fi nding an author’s intentions is only one step,
albeit certainly a fundamental but preliminary one, in the search for the meaning
of his work. A second step is to place the work in the socio-historical context
that defi nes it intellectually, which is not a psychological determination but an
“unconscious discourse.”64 A strict interpretative approach cannot avoid think-
ing about the multiplicity of interpretations that a work is likely to generate and
nurture.
Going back to the Aronian understanding of Marxism, the interpretation
of Capital is not limited to fi nding the author’s intentions; it also highlights the
multiple philosophical backgrounds that led to its development, as it evaluates all
the ideological and historical consequences that it made possible or promoted. If,
on this point, Aron recognizes Marx to be one of the richest and most exciting
economists, he does not fail to note that “As an economist-prophet, as a puta-
tive ancestor of Marxism-Leninism, he is an accursed sophist who bears some
responsibility for the horrors of the twentieth century.”65 As reaffirmed in the
Mémoires, “The mystification begins with Marx himself, when he baptizes his
prophetism as science.”66 In this sense, understanding Marx is also, for Aron,
thinking beyond Marx’s intentions.

Notes
1. On Raymond Aron’s “Marxism,” see also Max Likin, “ ‘Nothing Fails Like
Success’: The Marxism of Raymond Aron,” French Politics, Culture and Society, vol.
26, no. 3, Winter 2008, 43–60, who tackles the subject from a more historic point
of view, and D. J. Mahoney, “Aron, Marx, and Marxism: An Interpretation,”
European Journal of Political Theory, vol. 2, no. 4, 2003, 415–427.
2. Raymond Aron, Le Marxisme de Marx, Préface et notes par Jean-Claude Casanova
et Christian Bachelier, Paris, Éditions de Fallois, 2002, 33.
3. A summary of this course appeared in the journal Le Débat, January 1984, no. 28,
18–29.
4. Jean-Jacques Salomon, “Marx vu par Aron. A propos du marxisme de Marx,”
Futuribles, no. 293, janvier 2004.
5. See Raymond Aron, Memoirs: Fifty Years of Political Reflection, New York and
London, Holmes & Meier, 1990, 468: “I doubt that I still have the time to write
this essay, sketched in my 1976–77 lecture course at the Collège de France. It
would fill an empty space in the body of my writings. But, all things considered,
the loss does not seem to me to be serious, even for me.”
228 S Y LV I E M E S U R E

6. Ibid., 468.
7. Ibid., 435.
8. We should also mention the chapter of Main Currents of Sociological Thought dedi-
cated to Marx, which constitutes an important link in Aron’s analysis.
9. See Le Marxisme de Marx where Aron writes: “I think there is no doctrine so
grandiose in its ambiguity and ambiguous in its grandeur.”
10. Aron, Le Marxisme de Marx, 607.
11. On the young Aron see notably Jean-François Sirinelli, “Raymond Aron avant
R. Aron (1923–1933),” Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’histoire, vol. 2, no. 2, 1984, 15–30,
as well as Nicolas Baverez, Raymond Aron: un moraliste au temps des idéologies, Paris,
Flammarion, 2005.
12. Aron, Memoirs, 40–41.
13. Raymond Aron, Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire: Essai sur les limites de
l’objectivité historique, nouvelle éd. revue et annotée par Sylvie Mesure, Paris,
Gallimard, 1986 [originally 1938], 448. See, also, Raymond Aron, Thinking
Politically: A Liberal in the Age of Ideology, Transaction, 1997, 41: “When I chose
my intellectual itinerary, when I decided to be both an observer of, and an actor
in, history, I began by studying Marx, in particular Das Kapital. I hoped to find
a true philosophy of history that would provide the incomparative advantage of
teaching us simultaneously that which is and that which ought to be.”
14. Ibid.
15. Aron, Memoirs, 85.
16. Ferdinand Tönnies, Karl Marx. Sa vie et son œuvre, traduction et présentation par
Sylvie Mesure, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 2012 [originally 1921],
132–133.
17. Aron, Le Marxisme de Marx, 74.
18. Sylvie Mesure, Raymond Aron et la raison historique, Paris, Vrin, 1984.
19. Raymond Aron, D’une Sainte Famille à l’autre. Essai sur les marxismes imaginaires,
Paris, Gallimard, 1969, 277.
20. See also Raymond Aron, Main Currents in Sociological Thought, vol. 1, Transaction,
1998, 161: “When Marx analyzed value, exchange, exploitation, surplus value,
and profit, he wanted to be a pure economist, and he would not have dreamed
of justifying some scientifically inaccurate or questionable statement by invok-
ing a philosophical intent. Marx took science seriously, and I think we must do
likewise.”
21. Aron, Le Marxisme de Marx, 73.
22. Ibid., 20.
23. Ibid., 31.
24. Ibid., 595.
25. Ibid., 449.
26. Ibid., 23.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid., 31.
29. On the ideological atmosphere in France at that time, see Pietro Chiodi, Sartre
and Marxism, Sussex, Harvester Press, 1976 [1965]; William S. Lewis, Louis
Althusser and the Tradition of French Marxism, Lanham, MD, Lexington Books,
2005; Emmanuel Barot (dir.), Sartre et le marxisme, Paris, La Dispute, 2011.
30. Roberto Nigro, “La question de l’anthropologie dans l’interprétation althusséri-
enne de Marx,” in Jean-Claude Bourdin (dir.), Althusser: une lecture de Marx, Paris,
Presses universitaires de France, 2008, 103–104.
31. Aron, D’une Sainte Famille à l’autre, 75.
 A RON A N D M A R X I S M 229

32. Aron, Le Marxisme de Marx, 441.

33. Aron, D’une Sainte Famille à l’autre, 43–44. Aron refers to Sartre who argued in his
Critique of Dialectical Reason that Marxism was “ultimate.”
34. Aron, Le Marxisme de Marx, 21.
35. M. R. Krätke, “Le dernier Marx et le Capital,” Actuel Marx, vol. 2, no. 38, 2005
[1985], 145–160.
36. Ibid., 25.
37. Franck Fischbach, “Présentation,” in Karl Marx, Manuscrits économico-philosophiques
de 1844, Paris, Vrin, 2007; Renault, “Comment lire les Manuscrits de 1844?” in
E. Renault (dir.), Lire les Manuscrits de 1844, Paris, Presses universitaires de France,
2008.
38. Ibid., 205.
39. Ibid., 176.
40. Aron, D’une Sainte Famille à l’autre, 70.
41. Ibid., 446.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid., 583.
44. Ibid., 72.
45. Ibid., 111.
46. Ibid., 443.
47. P. Dardot and C. Laval, Marx, prénom: Karl, Paris, Gallimard, 2012.
48. Aron, Memoirs, 54. It is interesting to point out that, like Marx, Aron moved from
philosophy to the sociological study of modern societies. After his course on Marx
at the Sorbonne, he published: Raymond Aron, La Lutte de classes: Nouvelles leçons
sur les sociétés industrielles, Paris, Gallimard, 1964; Raymond Aron, Démocratie et
totalitarisme, Paris, Gallimard, 1965; Raymond Aron, Trois Essais sur l’âge industriel,
Paris, Plon, 1966; Raymond Aron, Les Désillusions du progrès. Essai sur la dialectique
de la modernité, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1969.
49. Aron, Le Marxisme de Marx, 333–334.
50. Ibid., 459.
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid., 470.
53. Ibid., 516.
54. Ibid., 182.
55. Ibid., 625.
56. Aron, D’une Sainte Famille à l’autre, 300.
57. Serge Paugam, “Raymond Aron et la question sociale,” in S. Audier, M. O.
Baruch, and P. Simon (eds.), Raymond Aron philosophe dans l’histoire, Paris, Éditions
de Fallois, 2008, 191–204.
58. Raymond Aron, An Essay of Freedom, New York, Norton, “Perspective in
Humanism,” 1970 [originally 1965], 213.
59. Serge Audier, Raymond Aron: la démocratie conflictuelle, Paris, Michalon, 2004, 61.
60. Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut, “Droits-libertés et droits-créances: Raymond Aron
critique de Friedrich-A Hayek,” Droits, no. 2, 1985, 75–84.
61. This is why it is uneasy to classify Aron as on the “Left” or on the “Right,”
Christophe Prochasson, “Raymond Aron est-il un intellectuel de gauche?”
in Serge Audier, Marc Olivier Baruch and Perrine Simon-Nahum (eds.),
Raymond Aron philosophe dans l’histoire, Paris, Éditions de Fallois, 2008, 219–
228. Ironically, he presented himself sometimes as a “Left Wing Aronian,”
Yann Coudé du Foresto, “Conversation avec R. Aron,” Pouvoirs, vol. 28, 1983,
175.
230 S Y LV I E M E S U R E

62. Raymond Aron, Thinking Politically: A Liberal in the Age of Ideology, New Brunswick,
NJ, Transaction, 1997 [originally 1981], 157.
63. Friedrich Schleiermacher, Hermeneutics and Criticism, Berlin, G. Reimer, 1838.
64. Christian Berner, La Philosophie de Schleiermacher, Paris, Ed. du Cerf, 1995, 78.
65. Aron, Memoirs, 468–469.
66. Ibid., 414.
CHAPTER 17

“MODERATE MACHIAVELLIANISM”:
ARON, MACHIAVELLI, AND THE MODERN
MACHIAVELLIANS

Diogo Pires Aurélio

R aymond Aron did not write very much on Machiavelli. Moreover, he did
not especially appreciate what he had written on that subject, as he con-
fessed, 40 years later: “when the war came, I was working on . . . a study on
Machiavelli, from which only about thirty pages survived. They are not worth
much. The knowledge I had of Machiavelli was insufficient.”1 However, beyond
a first text strictly focused on Machiavelli’s thought, the study that Aron men-
tions included three other essays, adding up to more than one hundred pages,
focusing, on the whole, on what the author calls “modern Machiavellianism.”
It would have been part of a book, as Aron says, that he intended to finish.
Unfortunately, in 1940, when Germany occupied France and he went into exile
in London, he gave up that project and published those pages, which eventually
came to light only posthumously.2
More than a hermeneutic approach to Machiavelli’s writings, in that project,
Aron aims to understand the phenomenon of Machiavellianism, which he sees
as a kind of government that resorts to any means and ignores all values, caring
about nothing but the success of political decisions. This phenomenon is usu-
ally termed tyranny. All over history, long before Machiavelli, there have been
frequent examples of such a way of ruling, and it may be seen, once again, in
the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century. Aron reads Machiavelli “as a
contemporary of Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini,” in order “to look for the secret of
Machiavellianism.”3 According to him, whenever tyranny arises, Machiavellianism
comes into question, and far from being its creator, Machiavelli is just one more
witness of an oft-observed political practice. Machiavellianism, at least from
Aron’s perspective, is not exactly synonymous with Machiavelli’s thought.
Why is the name of the author of The Prince used to label a phenomenon appar-
ently as old as politics? The answer is easy to fi nd if one reads Machiavelli’s work.
232 DIO G O PI R E S AU R É L IO

In fact, besides the boldness of his contentions, he framed the different aspects of
Machiavellianism in a coherent theory. Boldly, he put into words a well-known
set of political techniques and simultaneously presented a method through which
some regularity can be found in the diversity of human actions, both individual
and collective, thus providing some efficient resources to whoever leads or wants
to lead a group. The method consists of several rules, explained in The Prince,
chapter 15, which are based on the observation of facts; that is, on what men
really do and are, not on speculation about what they should be or do. In essence,
it does not differ from the epistemological principles that several historians and
sociologists of the late nineteenth century would adopt in their scientific prac-
tice. Vilfredo Pareto, for instance, calls it the “logico-experimental method,”
expressly assuming Machiavelli’s heritage and largely sharing the way the lat-
ter thought about man and society. As Aron says, commenting on Pareto, “the
same themes, the same method, the same historical view, the same conception of
politics, lead us to an art of ruling which is similar to that of Machiavelli.”4 No
wonder the book that Aron intended to write attached the utmost importance
to this follower of Machiavelli, who is said to have inspired Mussolini’s fascism.
Furthermore, this makes clear both the structure of the four posthumous essays,
in which Pareto plays a main role, and the reason Aron gives for not starting
the work with a history of Machiavellianism: “That history has been written
several times . . . So it will be enough to bring Machiavelli closer to the most
Machiavellian modern theorist to describe the doctrine whose consequences in
the present situation I will try to follow.”5
This does not mean that Machiavelli himself is a minor character in Aron’s
work. On the contrary, Aron’s reading of Machiavelli, starting from the mean-
ing of Machiavellianism as it is understood by the main historians in the fi rst half
of the twentieth century, casts a new light on both The Prince and the Discourses
on Livy. First of all, it reveals the undeniable yet complicated gap between the
Machiavellian text and its current interpretation; secondly, it will enable Aron to
diverge from Pareto and to present a new theory of the democratic regime.

How Aron Reads Machiavelli

On the fi rst page of Introduction to Political Philosophy, Aron calls Machiavelli “per-
haps the greatest, or at least one of the greatest, western political thinkers.”6
At fi rst glance, it sounds very different from the more reluctant appreciation
we found in the essay “The Machiavellianism of Machiavelli,” written 15 years
before, in which the Florentine was said to ignore “the natural and economic
conditions of collective life,” being just a psychologist, although a brilliant one,
who studied human passions and analyzed with “unsurpassable lucidity” the fight
for power among human beings.7 There are interpreters who speak of a change
in Aron’s understanding of Machiavelli’s thought. According to S. Audier, after
World War II, he would accept a “moderate Machiavellianism.” In other words,
Machiavelli would no longer be “only the precursor of a purely technical and
cynical conception of power,” as Aron had previously stated, “since his work
proves to be also essential to approach the antinomies of politics.”8
 “ M O D E R A T E M A C H I AV E L L I A N I S M ” 233

It is important to heed the above-mentioned text on Machiavelli. It begins by

dismissing the traditional question about the difference between the two main
works by the Florentine: The Prince, allegedly supporting tyranny, and Discourses
on Livy, a praise of the republic. For Raymond Aron there is no real question
here, because The Prince is just a description, not a defense, of a tyrannical tech-
nique of ruling. If one considers Machiavelli’s preferences, it is clear that he pre-
fers the Roman republic as described in the Discourses. However, what he states
comes from the observation of series of events, in order to mark the regularities
found and extract practical advice from them. In addition, sometimes tyranny
can be the “advice” that experience supplies. It is therefore a question of method,
not of belief. However, this method, reducing politics to a technical problem,
unleashed an intellectual revolution. In the past, politics was commonly under-
stood as an effort on behalf of collective welfare. Its main goal was justice. For
Machiavelli, politics deals with nothing but a set of means—personal virtues,
social support, favorable circumstances, etc.—that are necessary to obtain the
results one desires. In short, politics is just a question of effectiveness. There are
no values, no common good, nothing beyond what the individual wants and
can obtain. In Aron’s words, “political science after Machiavelli remains a secret
science, a shameful one, as long as politics, isolating itself, becomes inhuman as
an art of power.”9
Does this framework ascribe some regularity to human actions, allowing for
rational choice and providing experience for leadership? Apparently, the link
between what happens today and what one can expect for tomorrow is very
weak, since there are many unforeseen events that can determine the forthcom-
ing ones. Every decision involves risks as well as a coefficient of uncertainty.
Nevertheless, according to Aron, the Machiavellian theory of history would pro-
vide some guidelines that make a political science possible, namely the principle of
perpetuity, the principle of corruption, and the idea of cycles.
The fi rst principle states that human passions do not change throughout his-
tory, and thus men and groups come into confl ict with each other. Beneath the
fluctuation of events, there remains a fi xed element: human beings are funda-
mentally similar. But why do the events seem so different from one century to
another, if men do not change in their essence? Machiavelli, along with the whole
of antiquity and the Renaissance, appeals to a second principle: the principle of cor-
ruption. Nature, despite remaining the same, is in constant evolution. This does
not mean that it is constantly improving. On the contrary, human associations,
just like everything on Earth, are always declining. In fact, their core is a mix-
ture of good and evil, in different and changeable proportions. Human organiza-
tions can remain for a certain time, increasing their power and even the welfare
of their members. Nevertheless, the evil inside them is already working toward
their corruption. Regimes and laws are means to deal with the factors of decline,
but they are unable to resist forever. Instability and contingency remain. There
is no progress, since there is no end to which the events would be going; but, on
the other hand, there is no chaos. Societies change permanently, but order always
returns, even if it comes each time in a different shape. As Aron remarks, “the
increasing evil of democracy, that is, licentiousness and anarchy, produces the
234 DIO G O PI R E S AU R É L IO

return of monarchy or tyranny, which in turn gives rise to aristocracy, through

the same process.”10 This is the old idea of cycles, which reappears in Machiavelli,
representing the third element of his theory of history.
Besides those three elements, Machiavelli’s theory presumes a pessimistic
anthropology: man is inherently nasty and ambitious, although in his common
life he is neither totally bad nor totally good. Moreover, his unlimited desire is not
restrained by moral rules. Only the threat of violence is able to stop him. Therefore,
leaders must be feared more than loved, although they must avoid being hated as
long as possible. This pessimism is Machiavelli’s postulate and a basic point in all
the modern Machiavellianisms, whose main “dogma,” according to Aron, is the
functional distinction between masses and leaders.11 Stating that every multitude
depends on its leadership to survive as a group, and that the leaders want nothing
but their own power, modern Machiavellianism defines politics as a set of means
to obtain or maintain power. The main means are strength and propaganda, the
latter being the least expensive and the most efficient. In fact, people are usually
naïve. The more efficient the propaganda, the less the elites will have to resort
to the army or the police. It explains the importance that Machiavelli gave to
the religious phenomenon and the interest a leader has in broadcasting narratives
which legitimize his power, either through religion or rational discourse, accord-
ing to the times and society. Legitimation is always a matter of consent and, to
obtain the consent of the masses, a leader needs to be or at least seem to be what
they believe he should be. However, there are situations in which recourse to
tricks, like religion or ideology, is not enough to maintain power. Therefore,
every leader should be, in Machiavelli’s words, both a fox and a lion—that is,
gifted with both sagacity and courage, being very rare to fi nd someone with both
of these virtues. At best, one is either more sagacious than courageous or vice
versa. So, each one tends to a certain kind of decision, whose success depends
on the particular situations they have to face. As Pareto writes, there are young
and violent elites, who tend to war and to belief in ideals, such as the homeland
or revolution, and there are decadent elites, who incline toward commerce and
the support of humanitarian ideals. Writing at the end of the 1930s, Aron states,
“Russian, German and Italian elites are, surely, violent elites.”
How much does Machiavelli’s thought support this totalitarian approach
to leadership? Although modern Machiavellians expressly lay claim to the
Machiavellian heritage, the Florentine’s work does not allow so strict a conclu-
sion. In fact, he often condemns tyranny; he praises freedom; his favorite form
of government is the republic; he admires institutions that restrain the power of
the king, like Parliament in France. Until the middle of the twentieth century, a
very common opinion maintained that these republican opinions were expressed
in the Discourses, while The Prince was the real compendium of Machiavellianism.
Aron disagrees, remarking that both works share the same perspective on politics,
since whenever Machiavelli speaks of the new principalities he repeats the same
“techniques”—violence and ploys—as a necessary resource to win and maintain
power. How can we combine the exhibition of these techniques with the alleged
neutrality of the author? Is it enough to claim that he thinks as a scientist, not
caring about the morality of the means used?
 “ M O D E R A T E M A C H I AV E L L I A N I S M ” 235

Aron’s answer may be analyzed in two steps. Firstly, he recognizes that

Machiavelli’s favorite society is a republic, but he raises some doubts about the
allegedly scientific attitude of the Florentine. Regardless of his own intentions,
whoever writes the things that Machiavelli wrote is already justifying the use of
all the means a politician may think useful: “Machiavelli does not deny Christian
or human morality, and he often notices the contradiction between that morality
and the political means. However, he does not look for a solution to this confl ict,
and seems more concerned with making his prince an expert on the political art
than making him someone who obeys religion.”12
Secondly, Aron remarks that Machiavelli condemns cunning and violence
taken to the extreme, but only for political, not moral, reasons. The same means
can be praised or criticized, depending on their results. In short, what Machiavelli
is judging is political efficiency. Does this imply immorality? It would, if he sup-
ported the Machiavellianism of the leader, that is, tyranny. However, what he
really intends “is not tyranny, but a strong, flourishing, ordered, and legal state.”13
On many issues, Aron sees Machiavelli as close to ancient and medieval thinkers.
However, the core of his interpretation is clearly influenced by what comes from
Hegel and is renewed in the twentieth century by Friedrich Meinecke, for whom
Machiavelli is the predecessor of the so-called “reason of state.” According to
this interpretation, the author of The Prince places public health—salus populi—
above every kind of consideration. And it is true that Machiavelli supports the
supremacy of political power, regardless of the decisions it obliges one to make.
However, political power is not synonymous with state. For Machiavelli a state
is just a personal domain, not an impersonal form of rule with a “monopoly on
the legitimate use of violence,” as Max Weber would defi ne it. Therefore, when
he places the state as the fi rst principle in politics, from which every decision
must be deduced, he is not defending the supremacy of something as the com-
mon good, nor the precedence of an entity that personifies the people or the
nation. He is just saying that the defense of power, regardless of who wields it,
must be unconditional in order to be efficient. However, this is not exactly the
interpretation that Raymond Aron supports. At least, when he wrote the chapter
on Machiavelli, he still shared the traditional prejudice that credits the Florentine
with the invention of the modern state. As a result, in spite of noticing the num-
ber of pre-modern ideas found both in The Prince and the Discourses, his conclu-
sion does not hide a certain ambiguity: “perhaps it was in ancient thought that
Machiavelli found the formula of the modern doctrine of the reason of state.”14
Within such a perspective that understands the state as an ultima ratio, the
defense of its interest cannot stop at the limit between ethics and immorality,
even between law and murder; it shall go as far as the circumstances require.
Before other states, as well as in domestic policy, this may be cunning, lies or sim-
ply violence. If necessary, a state wages war against its enemies and uses violence
against its people; it seals agreements with its neighbors and makes promises to
its citizens; it can be unfaithful to what was agreed and promised. Nevertheless,
Machiavelli’s theory, as Aron underlines,15 cannot be reduced to the use of such
tricks, unless one confuses politics with tyranny. Moreover, even in tyranny,
tricks may turn out to be harmful to the state itself, and violence may be too
236 DIO G O PI R E S AU R É L IO

expensive and so not pay. As Machiavelli says, “there are two ways of fighting:
by law or by force.”16 In the abstract, it is not possible to refuse either of them,
and everything can become a useful means. Religion, for instance, is one of the
best means of maintaining power. All the leaders in history have recommended
it, not because it is true or false, but just because it is the best way to reinforce
obedience and maintain social order and power.
Power for what? To maintain power. The fi rst purpose of power is to main-
tain itself, that is, to endure. Machiavelli also values the prosperity of the city, as
is underlined by Aron. However, this prosperity is not synonymous with com-
mon welfare. A prosperous city in Machiavelli’s sense is a city strong enough to
remain independent, that is to say a powerful city, be it a republic or a principal-
ity. Power does not have any goal or any meaning beyond itself. On the contrary,
every human activity can become a means to obtain and maintain power. This
lack of a transcendent purpose to political action is the main difference between
Machiavelli and every thinker since antiquity, even in humanist culture both
before and after the Florentine. Is it a distinctive belief or a logical deduction from
the principle according to which science must refuse to incorporate transcendent
or metaphysical goals—what men should be—and restrict itself to reality? Aron,
following the common interpretation that credits Machiavelli with the founda-
tion of political science, states that it is nothing but a realistic conclusion made by
“a fanatic of abstract logic.”17 Accepting only facts and working within a logical-
deductive epistemology, Machiavelli would be obliged to put aside his personal
values. Such an epistemology, by undermining the relevance of his convictions,
made people read his work as a simple theory of means, whose aim is nothing
but power. Therefore, “there is a risk of Machiavellianism spreading when it no
longer works for public greatness, but only for individual ventures.”18

Aron’s Opinion of Modern Machiavellianism

Machiavellianism, in Aron’s opinion, is just a theory of tyranny. As a model
for a regime, its maintenance requires a system of techniques, as well as a set
of virtues, mainly on the part of the leaders, who must be able to cross moral
limits. The problem with modern Machiavellianism is that it reads The Prince
as if it constituted Machiavelli’s entire oeuvre. As Aron explains, in the past,
“Machiavelli was unknown or falsely interpreted, because people read The Prince
but not the Discourses and took a theory of new principalities as if it were a
theory of all governments. But modern Machiavellianism tends to the same sim-
plification: . . . it ignores the virtuous citizens and the moderate republic, which
Machiavelli preferred—at least as an ideal—to the princes’ excesses.”19
This criticism is important to understand Aron’s thought. In fact, his
reading of the Florentine shares the basic tenets that are adopted by modern
Machiavellianism. Although he denies a substantive distinction between the
two books, the only proof he presents is a short reiteration, in the Discourses,
of what had already been developed in The Prince about tyranny. No atten-
tion is paid, for instance, to the democratic or, at least, republican elements also
 “ M O D E R A T E M A C H I AV E L L I A N I S M ” 237

visible in the book considered by tradition a compendium of the most immoral

advice to tyrants. In a certain way, Aron reads Machiavelli through glasses that
are inherited from the past and often used by adversaries and representatives of
Machiavellianism, both seeing The Prince’s author as tolerant of unscrupulous
politics and either approving or disapproving of him. He states, it is true, that
Machiavelli is not a supporter of such a government, sustaining that he is just a
scientist as faithful to his methodology as indifferent to the fact that his theory
also presents the hypothesis of a tyrannical regime. Nevertheless, through a kind
of chiasmatic reasoning, Aron reads Machiavelli under the influence of modern
Machiavellianism and reads Pareto under the influence of Machiavelli, stating
that it is in The Prince that “we can fi nd the theory by which the practice of
totalitarian regimes is inspired.”20
Both Machiavelli and Pareto maintain the existence of a passionate spirit that
remains constant in the human heart. The Florentine termed it feeling, Pareto
speaks of “residues.” However, both underline regularities over the course of
centuries. And although Pareto, contrary to Machiavelli, presupposes the exis-
tence of a certain progress, he maintains that it happens more slowly than the
ideologies of the nineteenth century proclaim. Regimes and states change;
human groups reconstitute themselves, perhaps into a different shape, but always
renewing the tension between a minority and the masses. Machiavelli spoke of
“cycles,” Pareto speaks of “swells.” Where do those swells come from? In addi-
tion, why does such a dialectic between elites and masses reappear systematically?
First of all, men and societies have different histories, which develop different
kinds of residues. Pareto distinguishes the residues of combination or innovation
from the residues of conservation. The former tend toward the association of
facts and experiences, providing the capacity to foresee, reason, and innovate.
This makes those in whom such residues are predominant more ambitious and
daring, enabling them both to rule and to change the law. The latter, on the con-
trary, tend to resist all change, making them dependent on those who are able to
lead processes of change. However, both the residues of combination and those
of conservation will always be crystallized in institutions—custom, law, religion,
ideologies, even theories—labeled as “derivations” by Pareto.
This is not a rewriting of the traditional narrative that speaks of a battle
between reason and passions. Men, at least in society, always act driven by resi-
dues, although believing that they are following derivations. They reason, but
they are not reasonable, as Aron summarizes.21 They reason because they need a
justification for what they do. However, justifications have the same instinctual
ground, whatever their level of sophistication, and Pareto “attaches science to the
same ‘instincts of combination’ as magic.”22 The basic distinction is not between
derivations and residues, reason and unreason; it is between the two kinds of
residues—one innovative and the other conservative. In fact, the former leads to
science and civilization, but induces criticism, disrespect toward collective val-
ues, and a resort to cunning instead of courage. The latter in turn leads to love
for the homeland, obedience to law, and belief in traditional values, but induces
backwardness, superstition, and inability to improve. It turns out that a state
238 DIO G O PI R E S AU R É L IO

needs a feeling of conservation as much as a feeling of innovation. On the one

hand, it needs the obedience of the masses, and too many feelings of innovation
undermine its strength. On the other hand, the elites must be as courageous as
they are shrewd, able to head the group and increase its power. In short, Pareto,
like Machiavelli, denies both the idea of a society without an oligarchy that leads
the group and the idea of a humanistic world in which there would not be room
for violence and war.
How is it possible to maintain the naïveté of the masses, in order to obtain
their obedience as well as their willingness to go to the front lines of war? How
can we preserve the belief in values and ideologies that the elite knows to be feel-
ings and which science labels as illusions? According to Pareto, the only available
means to reach that aim are violence and propaganda. Violence instils fear. Since
the elites face the masses as they face an enemy, they have to be able to hold
power against external and internal threats. Otherwise, they will be defeated by
the violence of the masses and replaced. Propaganda, in its turn, leads people to
believe in speeches, ideologies, slogans, and myths made to support power. An
elite must be cynical enough to promote those beliefs, though still conscious
of the fact that they are just feelings and simultaneously that they are needed
to obtain from the masses consent to their own power: “What will this elite
believe? They will believe that men shall believe.”23 Skeptical by nature, these
elites do not recognize any action as logical but the one which achieves a certain
goal. Paradoxically, propaganda, although despised by scientists, is justified by
social science as a rational means, provided it makes people accept what would
otherwise be unpopular measures.
This set of ideas is extensively described by Raymond Aron. “Our time,”
as he wrote in 1943, “seems to be Machiavellian fi rst of all because the vio-
lent elites, who caused the revolutions of the twentieth century, spontaneously
approach politics in a Machiavellian way.”24 These are the elites who head fascist,
national socialist, and communist regimes. All these have in common the apol-
ogy for strength and unrestricted recourse to propaganda. Italian fascism and
German National Socialism had attained power through legal means, but once
they acquired it they tried to maintain it by cultivating violence; Soviet socialism
obtained power through a revolution, and it went on using violence. But the main
weapon to which all these resort is propaganda. They share the Machiavellian
disregard for the masses, with which they deal as material fit for molding. They
consider the law and institutions to be Paretian derivations, because it is impossi-
ble to identify any common purpose in a multitude of desires and interests. They
assign themselves the role of imposing their own purpose on the masses. And
propaganda is their technique par excellence, the new political skill that shapes
the mind of the people. Propaganda converts society into a homogeneous block
that views dissidents as if they were enemies. Quoting Lenin, Aron remarks that
“the Communist Party affi liate must be an orthodox one. The active members
must absolutely obey the masters, whatever their own opinion.”25 From this
point of view, the only difference between communism and the other totalitar-
ian regimes lies in the ideology: instead of fascism, for which propaganda and
 “ M O D E R A T E M A C H I AV E L L I A N I S M ” 239

violence will always be necessary, for communism they will disappear after the
achievement of a classless society. Until then, “the prince has no doubts that he is
working for truth when he is lying, and for a happy humanity when he is impos-
ing a realm of terror.”26
Later on, Aron would appreciate Pareto’s sociological doctrine from a notice-
ably different perspective.27 But even in his fi rst essays, he already showed
Machiavelli’s influence. Aron makes two objections to Machiavellians, clearly
inspired by the Florentine himself: the fi rst is the impossibility of identifying
politics as simply a collection of techniques; the second is the ambiguous char-
acter of modern tyranny, which on the one hand seems to be a regime, that is,
a juridical order and a system of government with a stabilized set of procedures,
but whose head, on the other hand, rules in a discretionary way, beyond any rule
or rational ground.
Pareto differs from Machiavelli as a forerunner of “scientific politics” in
despising any aim grounded on ideology or myths, like progress, humanitar-
ian values, universal peace or justice, collective interests, and so on. The way to
achieve such aims cannot be drawn from facts, so they are undetermined and
subjective. Any action oriented toward them is not rational, since their goals,
remaining subjective, make it impossible to choose the right means to achieve
them. Only the actions resorting to means whose efficiency is known through
experience can be called rational, such as “technical action, self-interested action
in the economic field, and the kind of action usually called Machiavellian.”28 Of
course, Pareto underlines the importance of utopian goals as ideological beliefs
that support the domination of an elite. In a way, politics is always the ratio-
nal use of irrational actions. The problem, Aron stresses, is that human actions
are never oriented only toward immediate goals. Commenting on Max Weber,
whom Meinecke called “the German Machiavelli,” and his notion of “political
ethic of responsibility,” Aron remarks that “such a political ethic is also grounded
on a total adhesion to a cultural or human value.”29 The same idea appears in
one of the essays on Machiavellianism: “If one wants to interpret human action,
one needs to bring out the kind of motivation which it obeys, as well as the goals
to which it tends, besides the immediate goals one can detect. However, Pareto
despises the fi nal goals, he ignores them . . . Everything that science does not fi nd
in reality is non-existent for science. However, without its orientation to the
future, human existence is no longer humanity, but only nature.”30
Regardless of Pareto’s personal beliefs, his idea of society and politics, as Aron
often notes, leads to Machiavellianism. Refusing, as a scientist, to attend to
notions like human values, he reduces politics to technique. And since violence
and cunning have always proved to be the most efficient techniques, Pareto’s
work can be read as an apology for tyranny. The problem with tyranny is that it
arises from a revolution or some other break in the established order and wants
to become a new order without sacrificing its original exceptional character:
“Legalization of tyranny is nothing but an effort to translate into institutions the
customs of revolutionary practice, in order to make plebiscites the norm, but this
legalization is just a matter of form and appearance.”31
240 DIO G O PI R E S AU R É L IO

Aron’s Moderate Machiavellianism

Modern Machiavellianism, as mentioned above, influences Aron’s reading
of Machiavelli, whom he sees as a scientist and a “fanatic of abstract logic.”
Aron also notes that Machiavelli’s work goes far beyond such a summary, since
besides tyranny he describes other types of possible regimes, and is a supporter
of freedom—of both individuals and peoples. However, Aron concludes that the
Florentine’s methodology, in spite of his love for liberty, leads to Machiavellianism
and gives a rational basis for those who would apply the techniques of tyranny in
the twentieth century.
Such a conclusion seems to change later on, in other essays in which Aron
refers once again to Machiavelli. But this is less a change than a development.
Alongside Machiavelli the “scientist,” we fi nd that Machiavelli the theorist of
political action is present in the first essays. The point, in fact, was already in
his studies of German sociologists, but acquires new relevance when faced with
modern Machiavellianism: “if success is obtained most of the time through pro-
cesses of violence and cunning, the study of politics as it is really conducted
leads to cynicism.”32 Looking at what was happening in Italy, Germany, and the
Soviet Union, Aron comes to a double conclusion. On the one hand, he refuses
to consider politics in a way in which “there is only room for confl icts between
the individuals and the people, both impatient to prove, through victory and
strength, their claims to a superior form of life.”33 On the other hand, he agrees
with the basic claims of Machiavellianism: the impossibility of thinking of a
group without a distinction between elites and masses; the reality of confl ict;
the paradox of politics, since every action tends toward success, and success in
politics may depend on immoral means. Thus the question is: what shall a leader
do when an immoral decision must be taken in order to defeat the enemies and
save the people? Can he not resort to violence to prevent violence against him
and his people? Can he not lie when truth is dangerous for the common interest?
In short, can he undervalue the power of the state, for which he is responsible, to
remain faithful to his own principles?
These are questions that have been raised since Machiavelli himself. Aron
develops them in several passages of his forewords to The Prince and to Weber’s
lectures, as well as in his criticism of pacifists like his mentor Alain, or Bertrand
Russell, or Jacques Maritain, with whom he quarrels. 34 Being a European at the
end of the 1930s, “moderate Machiavellianism” appears to him as the only pos-
sible attitude in face of the war and the only framework within which it is pos-
sible to think politics in its real, and not utopian, dimension. Against Maritain’s
idealism, he will support the idea, both Machiavellian and Weberian, according
to which “what gives to political life its shadow of greatness is that statesmen
have to comply with acts which they hate, because in their soul and conscience
they believe they are responsible for the common destiny.”35 More precisely, in
the foreword to Weber: “The vocation of science is unconditional truth; the job
of the politician does not always allow him to express it.”36
This moderate Machiavellianism goes beyond the relationship between poli-
tics and morality. It concerns also the way of thinking of democracy against
 “ M O D E R A T E M A C H I AV E L L I A N I S M ” 241

totalitarianism. In fact, totalitarian doctrines also present themselves as demo-

cratic, making it necessary to clarify what a realist can argue against such a pre-
tension. Totalitarianism, that of Mussolini and Hitler and Stalin alike, presents
itself as a government coming from the people. It is possible to doubt whether
it is factually true, as some critics have done.37 But Aron does not argue with
simple facts; he looks for a theoretical distinction between democracy and totali-
tarianism, without denying the main thesis of Machiavellianism: all political
regimes are plutocracies, whatever their ideologies may claim.
Social scientists like Mosca, Pareto, Michels, and J. Burnham,38 who state
that science is based only on facts, concluded that in all societies a small num-
ber of individuals impose their own will. Thus, a government by the people is
an infeasible ideal. Liberal democracies, it is true, claim that the people govern
through representatives. But this is only a legitimating discourse: in reality, rep-
resentatives make up another plutocracy. Liberal or popular, democracy is an
oligarchy. Aron does not disagree with this conclusion. However, he raises an
important set of questions that Machiavellianism tends to ignore: “it is true that
all regimes, including democracy, are oligarchies, but what is really interest-
ing to see is the constitution of the dominant oligarchy and the relationship
between this dominant oligarchy and the great number, or, more precisely still,
the capacity of action of this dominant oligarchy concerning the mass of citi-
zens, and on the other hand the guarantees given to its citizens concerning the
government.”39 For Aron, regimes are different means of dealing with confl icts,
so they are all imperfect: totalitarianism, seeing confl icts as a threat, represses
any opinion different from dominant ideology, falling into a dictatorship; liberal
democracy for its part recognizes confl ict as an element of the human condition
and adopts institutions able to allow its peaceful expression, but it is unable to
prevent corruption, the power of oligarchies, the demagogy of political parties,
the incompetence of politicians. The influence of Machiavelli, who praised con-
fl icts between patricians and the people in the Roman republic as the main way
of preserving freedom,40 is clearly behind this realist conception. Moreover, we
can say the same about the antinomy concerning the gap between democratic
ideology and practice: theoretically, democracy provides an equal power for all
the people; in reality, there is also a ruling elite in it. Marx was right, as Pareto
and Aron emphasize, when he argued that liberal democracy was grounded on
a myth, the myth of equality, although he was wrong when he thought that it
would be overcome in the future through proletarian revolution and the advent
of a utopian true democracy.
In the end, is there a real difference between Aron’s notion of democracy and
modern Machiavellianism? Aron deals with this question by claiming that in
spite of his realism, which brings him close to the Machiavellians, his concept
of politics places him far from them: “Men have never thought of politics as if
it were only a fight for power. Whoever does not see the aspect of the ‘fight for
power’ is naïve; whoever sees only the aspect of the ‘fight for power’ is a false
realist.”41 Aron differs from utopians in recognizing that democracy will always
be in jeopardy; he differs from modern Machiavellians, in stressing not only
power, but the question of its legitimacy, which demands elections, rules, and
242 DIO G O PI R E S AU R É L IO

institutions to restrain arbitrariness: “Once rulers are elected, they care perma-
nently about their popularity as well as the consent of their ruled people.”42 Both
totalitarian and democratic powers are imperfect. However, the latter assumes its
imperfection as a consequence of confl icts, and organizes itself to resist them; the
former, on the contrary, is organized over a denial of confl icts and, anticipating a
utopian homogeneous community, attempts to destroy the institutions in which
difference of interests and opinions could survive peacefully. Such a distinction,
it is true, may be thought insufficient. As Claude Lefort remarks,43 democracy
is more than a set of juridico-political institutions; it is also a rejection of all
kinds of absolutism, whoever the possessor of absolute power is—state, market,
technology, media, and so on. Furthermore, it is the submission of power to the
multiplicity of demands from the mass of citizens, not to an abstract noun like
the state, the people, or the nation. It might be the case that Aron’s defi nition
of democracy risks seeming too formal. But Lefort’s remark does not deny its
main insight. On the contrary, it can be read as a deepening of Aron’s moderate
Machiavellianism.

Notes
1. Raymond Aron, Mémoires. 50 ans de réflexion politique, Paris, Robert Laffont, 2003
[1983], 152.
2. Raymond Aron, Machiavel et les tyrannies modernes, ed. Rémy Freymond, Paris,
Éditions de Fallois, 1993.
3. Ibid., 59.
4. Ibid., 84.
5. “Le machiavélisme de Machiavel,” in Machiavel et les tyrannies modernes, 60,
footnote.
6. Raymond Aron, Introduction à la philosophie politique: démocratie et révolution, Paris,
Éditions de Fallois, 1997, 131.
7. Aron, Machiavel et les tyrannies modernes, 83.
8. See Serge Audier, Raymond Aron: la démocratie conflictuelle, Paris, Michalon, 2004,
44; Serge Audier, Machiavel, conflit et liberté, Paris, Vrin, 2005, 66.
9. Aron, Machiavel et les tyrannies modernes, 62.
10. Ibid., 65.
11. Ibid., 70.
12. Ibid., 76.
13. Ibid., 77.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., 79.
16. Machiavelli, The Prince, 18, London, Penguin, 1981, 99.
17. Aron, Machiavel et les tyrannies modernes, 75.
18. Ibid., 74.
19. Ibid., 119.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid., 93.
22. Ibid., 92.
23. Ibid., 105.
 “ M O D E R A T E M A C H I AV E L L I A N I S M ” 243

24. “Le machiavélisme, doctrine des tyrannies modernes,” in Raymond Aron,

Chroniques de Guerre: La France libre 1940–1945, Paris, Gallimard, 1990, 418.
25. Aron, Machiavel et les tyrannies modernes, 128.
26. “Machiavel et Marx,” in Raymond Aron, Études Politiques, Paris, Gallimard,
1972, 67.
27. See, for instance, Les Etapes de la pensée sociologique, Paris, Gallimard, 1967, 407–
496, especially 475–479 and 485–486.
28. Aron, Machiavel et les tyrannies modernes, 102.
29. Raymond Aron, La Sociologie allemande contemporaine, Paris, Presses universitaires
de France, 1981–1989.
30. Aron, Machiavel et les tyrannies modernes, 103.
31. Ibid., 150.
32. “Le machiavélisme, doctrine des tyrannies modernes,” in Raymond Aron,
Chroniques de guerre: La France libre, 1940–1945, Paris, Gallimard, 1990, 419.
33. Ibid., 477.
34. See Jacques Maritain, “The End of Machiavellianism,” Review of Politics, January
1942; Raymond Aron, “La querelle du machiavélisme,” in Raymond Aron,
Machiavel et les tyrannies modernes, Paris, Éditions de Fallois, 1993, 367–378;
Raymond Aron, “Sur le machiavélisme. Dialogue avec Jacques Maritain,” in
Raymond Aron, Machiavel et les tyrannies modernes, Paris, Éditions de Fallois, 1993,
408–416. This text will be published again in Principes d’une politique humaniste,
chap. 5, New York, Éditions de la Maison Française, 1944, as well as in The Range
of Reason, chap. 11, London, Bles, 1952.
35. Aron, Machiavel et les tyrannies modernes, 378.
36. Max Weber, Le savant et le politique, trad. française, Préface de R. Aron, Paris,
Plon, 1963.
37. See Herman Heller, Europa und der Faschismus, Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, 1929.
38. See James Burnham, The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom. A Defence of Political
Truth against Wishful Thinking, Washington, DC, Gateway Editions, 1943, a work
for whose edition in France Aron was responsible.
39. Aron, Introduction à la philosophie politique, 57–58.
40. Machiavelli, Discorsi, 1, 4.4
41. Raymond Aron, Démocratie et totalitarisme, Paris, Gallimard, 1965, 53.
42. Ibid., 136.
43. Claude Lefort, Écrire. À l´épreuve du politique, Paris, Calman-Lévy, 1992,
374–382.
CHAPTER 18

MONTESQUIEU AND ARON ON DEMOCRACY’S

VIRTUES AND CORRUPTION:
THE QUESTION OF POLITICAL LEGITIMACY

Miguel Morgado

The Political Regime

In his Contribution de Montesquieu à la constitution de la science sociale, Émile
Durkheim, perhaps the fi rst great thinker to name Montesquieu as the precursor
of the new social science, calls attention to an important difficulty in his work.
Philosophers before Montesquieu used to derive natural right and political right
from one single source. There could be no division between society and its
movement on the one hand, and nature and individual moral conduct on the
other. Since, for these earlier philosophers, political and natural right derived
from the same principle, they shied away from confrontation with one problem-
atic fact: sometimes, natural right and political right indicated two different, not
to say contradictory, courses of action. This is tantamount to saying that they
refused to decide which course of action the individual, once he is faced with this
contradiction, should follow. Unable and unwilling to solve this problem, they
came short of a thorough and coherent theory of obligation.
For Durkheim, Montesquieu began the solution to this problem. He admitted
that moral life and social life had different natures and therefore placed different
demands on the individual. But, being perhaps too attached to the tradition, he
failed to take the indispensable second step forward. He reaffirmed natural right’s
priority over political right—the priority of morality over society. Moreover,
he converted this priority into a complete theory of obligation. Durkheim was
not convinced. “Why is man’s nature in every single case more sacred than the
nature of society?” he asked. The way forward from this stalemate would have to
be, in his judgment, to unite all rules of right and mores, “even those concerning
individual life,” as resulting from “social life.”1 That is why Montesquieu was in
Durkheim’s reading merely the forerunner of social science, not its founder, as he
246 M IG U E L MORG A D O

would be for Aron. It goes without saying that for generations of Montesquieu’s
readers this interpretation of the great French political philosopher’s thought
was not obvious. Many would not agree without the greatest resistance that
Montesquieu accepted this priority of natural right over “society’s laws,” or that
he made it a pillar of a so-called theory of obligation.2
It is not the purpose of this chapter to deal with this important question. Nor
will we try to discuss whether Montesquieu even held a coherent structure of
natural right as a basis for his political philosophy. But it is important to stress that
Aron also left many disappointed with his openness to historical contingency,
or with his unwillingness to use “thick” (or strong) natural-rights language to
condemn regrettable political choices or outcomes. Many are still unsatisfied by
Aron’s simultaneous acknowledgment of historical necessity and affi rmation of
free human action. This apparent ambiguity in his interpretation of the human
adventure was not without its detractors among the readers of Montesquieu as
well. Rousseau was among the fi rst to protest.3 Destutt de Tracy, whom Thomas
Jefferson was counting on to rid America of Montesquieu’s hegemonic influ-
ence, denounced Montesquieu’s “plan,” which was “to speak always about fact,
and never discuss right.”4 On the opposite side of the political argument, Louis de
Bonald was also very disappointed with Montesquieu because of the primacy he
had given to “what is,” leaving “what ought to be” far behind.5
Regarding the relationship between Aron and Montesquieu, perhaps the fi rst
thing to do is to recall the former’s remark that he was not influenced by the
latter (nor by Tocqueville). He explicitly says that he arrived at Montesquieu’s
thought late in his intellectual life. His philosophical mind had already been
formed by then, as it were, by German philosophy. However, he concedes that
his “conclusions” have obvious affinities with the “English school” of French
sociologists, although his intellectual education had been mainly “German.”6
In The Spirit of Laws, Montesquieu famously remarked that “Many things
determine man: climate, religion, laws, the maxims of the government, exam-
ples of past things, mores and manners.” 7 He was presenting, of course, his con-
cept of “the general spirit of the nation.” In this passage, some have detected the
precise moment of the birth of the sociological perspective. It seemed that with
Montesquieu the primacy of the political regime, distinctive of classical politi-
cal philosophy and abandoned by early modern political philosophy, was being
rejected in the name of an altogether different approach. Aron singles out this
particular passage in The Spirit of Laws for elaborating the “principle of unifica-
tion of the social whole.”8 For him, the concept of the general spirit of the nation
is “the true apex of Montesquieu’s sociology.”9 The general spirit of the nation is
the “way of being, acting, thinking, and feeling of a particular collectivity, such
as it was made by geography and history.”10 The totality of human national real-
ity was now being determined, not by the political regime, nor by a particular
physical or moral cause, but by a host of determining factors. Human existence is
determined by the synthesis of several causes—political, moral, religious, physi-
cal. In some cases, one category of causes might be stronger as a determining
force of human existence, while in other historical experiences an altogether
different category of causes would be paramount. Apparently, there was no fi xed
 MON T E S QU I E U A N D A RON 247

hierarchy of determining causes, and that left the sociological point of view
ready to affirm itself. It paved the way for the foundation of a new human sci-
ence. Yet Montesquieu had already said that the “form of government” had some
kind of priority, albeit not clearly explained, over other determining factors of
human existence. And this is the explicit reason why he began his examination
of human reality by analyzing forms of government before everything else.11
According to Aron, Montesquieu’s text does not allow for a defi nitive removal
of this ambiguity.12
Although Aron reaffirms Montesquieu’s place as the founder of sociology,
perhaps one should consider that for him Montesquieu is the founder of political
sociology, precisely the kind of sociology that Aron claims to profess.13 More
notably in Main Currents of Sociological Thought, Aron presents Montesquieu as a
sociologist and as a political philosopher. He was a sociologist because he exam-
ined all realms of social activity, the parts of the social as such, and tried to
establish the relationships between all of those parts. He was a sociologist because
his work is “defi ned by a specific intention, to know scientifically the social as
such.”14 There are deep explanatory “causes” behind the almost infi nite human
diversity in mores, religions, and political arrangements, and also behind the
historical succession of events. To use Montesquieu’s succinct formulation, “it is
not Fortune who dominates the world.”15
The second aspect that qualifies Montesquieu as the founder of sociology is
his organization of human diversity into a small number of “types or concepts.”16
Both static diversity and historical change become intelligible through socio-
logical reasoning. Nevertheless, Montesquieu was also a political philosopher,
because he continued to formulate a typology of political regimes in the spirit of
classical philosophy. For Aron, this means the more or less explicit postulation of
the primacy of the political.17
His dedication to sociology notwithstanding, it is fair to say that Aron shares
Montesquieu’s general approach, though not without qualifications. In other
words, from this Aronian(-Montesquieuan) perspective, one still concedes a sort
of political primacy over other nonpolitical factors but, at the same time, deep-
ens the study of political units by linking the political form to a certain “social
type.” Indeed, each political regime is “characterized by a social type.”18 Political
form is not independent of certain economic or social forms—not to mention
demographical and spatial realities.19
But when confronting the question of the primacy of either politics or econom-
ics, that is to say, the idea that a certain social dimension of reality (the political or
the economic) unilaterally determines the whole of social reality, Aron fi nds such
dogmatism “arbitrary.” Moreover, “it can be shown quite easily that every theory
of the unilateral determinism of the community as a whole by one single element
of collective reality is false.”20 In other words, it is demonstrably false that starting
from one political (or economic) form a specific type of economy (or politics) will
ensue. He goes on raising the stakes of skepticism: the notion that “one particular
order of things is more important than any other order is a misleading idea.” It
may be argued that here Aron is breaking with Montesquieu, who claimed that
the political was, in a certain way, the most important element among several
248 M IG U E L MORG A D O

in determining human existence. In a not-quite-persuasive fashion, Aron says

that all hierarchies of “importance” depend directly upon the “observer’s inter-
est.” So, if I am focused on economic results, the economic factor becomes more
“important” to me. All hierarchies of this sort seem to reflect an observer’s bias—
regardless of how legitimate from a moral, political, or scientific point of view
that bias may be. The observer’s subjectivity becomes, then, the main ingredient
of hierarchies of determining social factors.21
To be sure, one must examine beforehand, albeit briefly, whether
Montesquieu’s notion of “political regime” or “political form” is already socio-
logical; or whether, on the contrary, it is still indebted to the ancient or classi-
cal notion. After Max Weber, this question inevitably came to be formulated
as whether political regimes for Montesquieu are “ideal types” or something
else. If Montesquieu had exhausted his analysis of the political regime with
the classification of “nature”—that is, its institutional and juridical structure—
then perhaps Montesquieu’s approach would be scarcely different from Weber’s.
Indeed, he began his study of the nature of the form of government by postu-
lating three “facts,”22 and while making this claim he appealed directly to the
common experience of political life. From these “facts,” Montesquieu derived the
“nature” of republics, monarchies, and despotisms, as well as their constitutional
consequences. With this approach, Montesquieu’s characterization of political
regimes would fi nd merely an asymptotical approximation of concrete historical
examples. The defi nition of monarchy, for example, would have more or less the
same character as a geometrical theorem. However, Montesquieu’s analysis of the
political regime did not stop there.
Instead, he next developed the notion of the “principle” of the regime in
a way that introduces the reader to the historical movement, or inner life, of
each political regime. Therefore, by examining the passions that make political
regimes “move,” Montesquieu was tapping into each political community’s self-
interpretation and way of life. This notion—the “principle”—does not allow as
much geometrical detachment from concrete historical experience as could the
notion of “nature.”

The “object” or Goal of the Regime

Usually, commentators stop here at the notions of “nature” and “principle” while
describing Montesquieu’s analysis of the political regime. However, this can be
a serious mistake. For Montesquieu introduced a third element that is integral
to his deeper study of the regime. The importance of this neglected concept is
realized once it is understood that without it Montesquieu would not have been
able to introduce the most novel of all historical regimes: the English form of
government. Montesquieu called this third concept the “goal” or the “object” of
the regime.23 Let us recall that the political experience of England, important as
it is in Montesquieu’s work, could only be invoked by him because England had
set a different, historically novel, collective purpose for itself—the goal of politi-
cal liberty. This is interesting for several reasons, among which is the insight that
political liberty is a collective political project, and not the spontaneous work
 MON T E S QU I E U A N D A RON 249

of particular social forces. It cannot be understood as a simple historical process

of subtracting those restraints that are viewed as hindering individual human
action. Aron would make precisely the same argument—a reason to part ways
with classic liberal thinkers such as Hayek, for example.
Political regimes have historically concrete tasks before them. These are often
neglected by political scientists. For example, the French Fourth Republic “had
to rebuild its ruins, had to fi nd its place in a diplomatic situation without prec-
edent, had to agree to a united Europe, modernize her economy, and trans-
form fundamentally, and fi nally give up, her empire.”24 The fact that political
regimes have tasks which confront them also opens the question of how (or even
whether) different regimes can be compared. If political regimes are engaged in
collective projects that defi ne them, then all that matters is whether they are suc-
cessful in the pursuit of those goals. Therefore, when we want to make a value
judgment on a certain regime’s goodness, and on its superiority or inferiority to
other regimes, we have to assess its legitimacy, but also its efficacy.25 Historical
experience may well present cases in which we can have one without the other,
or in which one regime is better according to the former criterion but worse
according to the latter. And political sociology may be left without a simple,
clear-cut way to compare regimes. Does this complexity forbid us from saying
that one regime is better than the other? It surely does not force upon us the
nonsensical conclusion that all regimes are equivalent. But it makes many, if not
all, comparisons problematic to a certain extent. Above all, it calls for nuanced
evaluations and judging degrees of “evil” and “goodness,” instead of resorting to
rigid binary modes of approbation or condemnation.26 A clearer point of contact
between Montesquieu and Aron is impossible to fi nd.
One further point in the discussion of the regime’s “goal” is in order.
Montesquieu explicitly said that the “goal” of the regime is always double. First
of all, the goal of every single regime—both in theory as well as in historical
experience—is its self-preservation; it moves in the direction of what it supposes
to be its own survival. That is the goal that makes all political regimes equal; it is
shared by every regime. Collective political self-preservation, it seems, has com-
mon rules irrespective of the diversity of regimes. But, secondly, each regime has
its own particular goal. Now, any of these particular goals can either be openly
proclaimed or tacitly pursued in history. And it is only in historical experience
that the political philosopher, or the sociologist, can discover them. Of course,
historical experience may be deduced or projected into the future. However,
the regime’s particular “goal” requires a specific organization of society, and it
conditions its way of being and acting very deeply. Therefore, the political phi-
losopher, or the sociologist, needs to discern actual validating historical experi-
ence in order to identify the regime’s “goal.” Again, this third element separates
Montesquieu even more from the Weberian approach to “ideal types.”

Ideal Types?
On the question of whether or not Montesquieu’s forms of government are
identical to Max Weber’s “ideal types,” Aron argues that a peremptory answer
250 M IG U E L MORG A D O

one way or the other would be a gross simplification of the French nobleman’s
thought. When all perspectives of analysis are taken into account, it is indeed
risky to say otherwise. It is easy to fi nd Montesquieu scholars on both sides of
the divide.27 For example, Carcassonne rejected the notion that the regimes pre-
sented in The Spirit of Laws are abstractions from historical experience. Focusing
on the case of monarchy, he claimed that Montesquieu’s forms of government
were in fact specific moral and social conditions of human experience.28 Hegel
argued that Montesquieu had avoided the partiality of both idealism and empiri-
cism because he “did not merely deduce individual institutions and laws from so-
called reason, nor merely abstract them from experience to raise them thereafter
to some universal”; Montesquieu “comprehended both the higher relationships
of constitutional law and the lower specifications of civil relationships,” and did
so “entirely from the [national] whole and its individuality.”29
Montesquieu himself left us with one or two reflections that remove almost all
our doubts. There we can see Montesquieu avoiding the partiality both of ideal-
ism and empiricism, confi rming Hegel’s reading. On the one hand, the analysis
of the English regime is closer to an “ideal type” approach. The typological
content of The Spirit of Laws (XI.6 and XIX.27) seems to indicate the probable
result of the development of previously defi ned constitutional principles. Perhaps
that can explain the use of the conditional tense in The Spirit of Laws (XIX.27);
that is to say, Montesquieu chose to use an “if-then” formulation because he
was positing an “ideal” form of government less connected to concrete political
experience.30 However, on the other hand, Montesquieu considered the other
forms of government as corresponding to representations, as reliable as possible,
of actual political experience. A case in point in The Spirit of Laws is China. At
a certain stage, Montesquieu believed that he had to reply to some of the travel
literature—a privileged source of knowledge of politics and society in faraway
lands in the eighteenth-century—that allegedly put the Chinese empire outside
the typological orbit presented in The Spirit of Laws. Although he was ready to
acknowledge the problems posed by China’s heterogeneity of social and political
structure, he strove to demonstrate that China was indeed a despotic state. By
implication, he was making the claim that the empirical (not “ideal”) reliability
of his typology becomes irrefutable after being tested—on the basis, of course,
of empirical elements.
Another point at which Montesquieu seems to follow a similar orientation is
in his critique of Aristotle’s conception of monarchy. According to Montesquieu,
Aristotle’s views on monarchy became so confusing because the historical age of
real (gothic) monarchies had yet to emerge in classical antiquity; Aristotle could
not analyze monarchies properly due to the simple fact that they did not yet have
historical existence. For example, the nobility as a social and political part of the
regime is a central element of monarchies; therefore, it did not exist in ancient
times either.31 This allows the conclusion to be drawn that for Montesquieu
regimes must fi rst become historically manifest before they can be categorized.
Was England an exception to this rule, then? Perhaps not, since England—with
its proclaimed political and constitutional basis—was already “ideally” real.
 MON T E S QU I E U A N D A RON 251

To Aron, things are somewhat more complex, albeit not dramatically dif-
ferent. In Aron’s own approach the political regime has to be examined in the
light of its “historical environment,” for it is “influenced, if not determined” by
a whole array of nonpolitical factors such as traditions, values, ways of thought
and of action, peculiar to each country. This may be seen as just an update to
Montesquieu’s insight concerning the general spirit of the nation. Additionally,
all regimes share one basic “function”—the maintenance of internal peace and
protection from external aggression. It must be added that they all strive to ful-
fi ll another basic condition—the obedience of their citizens, or a more-or-less
universal acceptance of their legitimacy. Lastly, every regime advances ethical or
existential goals which deserve the loyalty of the governed and, at the same time,
binds the regime’s self-interpretation, or the representation of its “own picture of
itself.”32 Regardless of how far the regime’s actual conduct may be from its self-
interpretation, this last aspect retains a great deal of flexibility. Explicit coher-
ence, even if at a general level, becomes decisive for the regime’s integrity and
even survival. This insight also reveals the rather narrow limits of “cynical politi-
cal philosophy,” or the notion that politics is simply the realm of the struggle for
power and that outright institutionalized hypocrisy is not a political liability.
Still, and with all these caveats in mind, Aron does argue in favor of a limited
primacy of the political. This can be justified by historical comparisons as well
as on anthropological grounds. First, given that industrial society is the modern
social type par excellence, the dissimilarities between historically concrete indus-
trial societies fi nd their reasons in political differences. In a word, “it is politics
which determines the different variations.” Second, since society is essentially
the organization of human relationships, and because living with other people is
an essential aspect of being human, it is politics that is “concerned more directly
with the very meaning of existence.” Science, and sociology in particular, can-
not be abstracted from men’s own interpretation of politics and its place in the
world.33 As a matter of fact, Aron perceived in Montesquieu a similar under-
standing when he described Montesquieu’s primacy of the political as being in
an anthropological sense, rather than a strictly causal one.34 “Cynical political
philosophy,” rooted in Machiavelli’s conception that politics is the mere struggle
for power, evades this fundamental question with a false realism. It is nihil-
ism disguised as pseudo-social science, and is conducive to swinging between
skepticism and fanaticism. This leads to the sociological conclusion that “the
constitution of authority affects ways of life more directly than any other aspect
of society.”35 We should say “more directly,” but not absolutely. Again, this does
not allow for the ancient postulation of a primacy of politics in which all human
relationships in society are determined by it—at least according to the particu-
lar concept of politics which only encompasses the domain in which rulers are
selected and then act. Interestingly, Aron thought that the claim of the abso-
lute primacy of politics was characteristic of “Greek” political philosophers—
presumably, classical political philosophers. It goes without saying that Marxists
were on the exact opposite side of the argument—the absolute primacy of the
economic factors in determining the whole of society. But it has to be said that
252 M IG U E L MORG A D O

sociology was born from the reversal of classical political-philosophy dogmatism.

At its birth, sociology consciously turned Greek absolutism on its head.36
As to Montesquieu, Aron fi nds in him a reliable general guide in this particu-
lar matter. Politics should not be evaded. It cannot be ignored. History is unin-
telligible if we leave politics completely aside, as a sort of lifeless superstructure.
Free action, exercise of power, and obedience—all are primordial elements of
the political. Politics even “reveals to us the human or inhuman character of the
whole community,” for “men are only human if they obey and rule humanely.”37
However, as Aron tacitly admits, this most important meditation falls outside of
sociology as such and jumps right into the very realm of political philosophy.
And yet (political) sociology cannot completely ignore it. In the fi nal analysis,
the only inflexible boundary between philosophy and sociology is drawn at the
search for the best political order. Apparently, that is non-sociological territory—
although, in fact, a teleological conception of human nature is the ultimate test
or borderline case for the differentiation between philosophy and sociology.38
True, Aron in his analysis of “constitutional-pluralist” regimes and “monopo-
listic party” regimes did begin with ideal types. But he did not stop there. The
construction of ideal types requires the combination of a small number of vari-
ables, chosen by the sociologist. But then the sociologist must realize that those
characteristics may not be mutually dependent. Distinctions must be drawn, sep-
arations of facts must be made. The result of these operations, which depend on
empirical analysis, opens the way for differentiations between regimes.39

The Democratic “Principle”

Aron directly applied the Montesquieuan notion of “principle” to constitution-
al-pluralist and monopolistic party regimes. In Montesquieu, the “principle” of
the regime discloses the political community’s psychological fabric. It describes
the content of expectations, of moral demands, of educational needs, of political
mobilization, on the part of the regime, connecting rulers and the ruled. It is the
source of movement and the energy required by the regime in order to exist. It
also provides the regime’s inner standard of justice and injustice, of good and bad,
of the acceptable and the intolerable. Aron submits as the principle of pluralistic
regimes the “respect for legality” and “the respect for and the sense of com-
promise.” He offers, however, a much-sanitized interpretation of Montesquieu’s
principle of democratic republics—virtue. On his reading, this is “virtue defi ned
by respect for the laws and by concern for legality.” Hence, as a matter of defini-
tion, no great adjustments need to be made to the old defi nition of the principle
of democracies.40 Respect for the law is decisive because law, including consti-
tutional law, is the appropriate framework of the requisite general unity among
citizens, and the basis upon which confl icts can arise without degenerating into
war.41
Nevertheless, the modern traits of democratic government—political repre-
sentation (already understood by Montesquieu)42 and competition among par-
ties—call for an innovation. On the one hand, citizens are required to present
their views and publicly make their claims. He even suggests that citizens should
 MON T E S QU I E U A N D A RON 253

have “strong party feeling” in order to counteract the pressure of “uniformity.”

On the other hand, partisanship should not degenerate into sectarianism, that is,
the outright refusal to accept any sort of agreement with other political views.
The “sense of compromise” is, therefore, a necessary addition to the notion of
democratic “virtue,” as respect for the rule of law is not enough.43
Why compromise? A good compromise aims at not alienating any part of the
community. Trying to be more precise than this most general formulation is not
possible; concrete circumstances have a strong influence over what makes a good
compromise.44 However, a “sense of compromise” is required because modern
democracies involve peaceful competition between parties: all politics, including
democratic pluralistic politics, is confl ict. Nevertheless, this does not lead to an
agonistic or nihilistic conception of politics, and, even less, to a glorification of
confl ict. Paradoxically, politics is confl ict because at a fundamental level political
living-together is a cooperative activity. However, in order to coordinate such
cooperation between men, authority must exist. That is where confl ict begins—
although it does not stop there.45 The exercise of political authority in pluralistic
regimes is a constant dialectic between rulers and ruled, as well as between the
government and its opposition—which, of course, as the saying goes, is tomor-
row’s government. This is tantamount to saying that there is a minimum level
of communication between the different parts of the community that must be
cultivated. It also implies that such communication is possible. For communi-
cation to be possible, as well as for it to be cultivated, moderation must be the
cornerstone of society. A “sense of compromise” becomes, then, a synonym for
moderation, which is never guaranteed and requires constant cultivation.
On this point, we fi nd another important source of the unity between both
thinkers. It is something that profoundly connects the spirit of their thought
throughout all their works. For we would do well to recall here that moderation,
not freedom, is the practical aim of Montesquieu’s thought.46 Neither exemplary
virtues nor freedom, but moderation, is the moral or attitudinal good that serves
society’s goals in the most important way—and best protects man and his social
community. In the end, it is even the most reasonable standard of judgment for
political societies, mores, and religions. We fi nd a similar approach in Aron’s
thought, perhaps with the proviso that individual liberties as developed in the
West would have to be somehow integrated into a broader notion of moderation.
To him, both liberties and moderation are probably inseparable, at least under
the conditions of modern industrial societies.
The decent society is the society of moderation and compromise. Moderation
also possesses the virtue of leaving somewhat undetermined, or at least under-
determined, the many possible social and constitutional arrangements that
nations through their historical experience produce to respond to their specific
aspirations and cultural background. In other words, moderation prevents the
development of totalitarian regimes and other milder unfree forms of govern-
ment. However, it does not lead to a homogeneous world of liberal democracies
all with the same economic, social, and political institutions, and cultural refer-
ences. With his characteristic realism, Aron argued that we should not expect
all societies to develop liberal, constitutional, pluralist regimes, those that really
254 M IG U E L MORG A D O

protect the rights of man and improve social conditions, for the simple reason
that not every nation is capable of ruling itself this way. Following Montesquieu,
Aron, like Rousseau before him, could have said then that “freedom, not being a
fruit of all climates, is not within the reach of all peoples”47—as long as “climate”
is understood very broadly.
Let us make one fi nal remark about moderation. Aron indicates that
Montesquieu combined a political typology of three different forms of govern-
ment (republics, monarchies, despotic states) with another implicit classification
distinguishing moderate from immoderate regimes.48 This simple observa-
tion has important consequences. For Aron reads Montesquieu as saying that
“social life” will be different depending on whether the political community is
ruled moderately (according to law and rules) or immoderately (arbitrarily and
with violence). No present-day sociology of political analysis should forget this
insight and fundamental division.49 Moreover, even though Aron commented
that Montesquieu was a “representative of the aristocracy” and therefore had
elaborated a notion of social balance typical of the “model of an aristocratic soci-
ety,” he suggested that Montesquieu’s general idea of social and political balance
preserves its relevance in present-day conditions. Social and political balance
resulting from a diversity of powers, social orders, and categories is a condition
for moderation and freedom. A free and moderate democratic society in the pres-
ent world cannot be simply built on the spurious notion of the sovereignty of the
people. The Montesquieuan distinction between the power of the people and
the liberty of citizens is undoubtedly relevant to present-day political sociology,
not to mention his doctrine of the need to limit power in order to bring about a
moderate regime.50

Corruption
No regime is immune to corruption. Montesquieu warned that “the corruption
of each government almost always begins with that of its principles.”51 The cor-
ruption of a regime’s political principle was for Montesquieu the main reason for
its eventual fall—and possible transformation into another historically available
regime. Corruption, we might say, is a matter of principle.
Aron was also concerned with the problem of “corruption” as understood in
a classical and Montesquieuan sense. Let us recall again that, according to Aron,
the democratic political principles are respect for the law and a “sense of compro-
mise.” And let us recall that for Montesquieu the democratic republican principle
is “virtue.” In Aron’s thought, democracy has “negative virtues” and “positive
virtues.” “Negative virtues” are those related to the limitation of the authority
of groups and their opinions in public discussion and party competition, includ-
ing the limitation of political power. “Positive virtues,” in turn, are respect for
the law and basic political rules and respect for individual liberties. These virtues
are more responsible for the avoidance of evils than for the performance of great
heroic achievements. In its modesty, constitutional-pluralist democracy is able
to protect society and individuals from evils that other regimes cannot.52 This
 MON T E S QU I E U A N D A RON 255

is nothing that will inspire men to poetic greatness, to be sure; but, like one’s
health, one only appreciates it fully once it is already lost.
Aron argues that the loss of “public spirit” is definitely a manifestation of the
corruption of the principle of modern democracies. In Montesquieu’s thought,
the corruption of republican “virtue” may be expressed in these terms. However,
Montesquieu thought that insofar as “virtue” is patriotism, its corruption would
mean, for instance, the return of the individual to his own private concerns and
desires, deserting communal action for the sake of the fatherland. Insofar as “vir-
tue” is love of equality, its corruption would mean either the toleration of great
inequalities or a fanatical view of equality that wants to abolish every source
of inequality or distinction, regardless of how temporary or how respectful of
republican government it may be, thereby compromising the very structure of
republican political power and the justification of obedience. Insofar as “virtue”
consists of willingly obeying the laws, its corruption would mean contempt for
the discipline introduced by legality and disregard for obeying common rules—ev-
ery man thinks of himself as an exception. Finally, insofar as “virtue” is the love of
“frugality,” its corruption would be the openness of men and women to indulge
in their subjective private pleasures and promote their unrestrained growth, and
the loosening of restraints on the desire of leading an ever-more-comfortable
prosperous existence, even at the price of detachment from the bonds that tie the
republican citizen to his duties.
All this is reasoned against the backdrop of the small ancient city, whereas
Aron has in mind modern industrial societies. Industrial societies are mobilized
to produce more—in fact, to produce as much as possible. The quest for affluence is
inimical to frugality.53 So what is the meaning of “public spirit” in these modern
conditions? Interestingly, it means two extreme behaviors: either party sectari-
anism to the point at which people lose sight of the most tenuous notion of the
common good (which, one may add, is a classic republican remark against the
“spirit of faction”) or a hyperbolic “sense of compromise” that paralyses decision-
making and undermines the possibility of pursuing a coherent and stable political
strategy. Compromise, as Aron acknowledges, is not always a good thing. Not
only may compromise be a euphemism for inaction and paralysis but, very often,
political choices themselves are not open to compromise. Sometimes it simply
must be one way or another. Combinations of alternate choices are occasionally
impossible. In these cases, a desperate search for compromise will bring about
an unequivocally bad solution to the national problem at hand. There can be
indeed an “excess use of compromise,” which is another aspect of political cor-
ruption.54 In other words, corruption of “public spirit” can be either too much
“sense of compromise” or too little. There is, then, a golden mean of the “sense
of compromise” which can only be determined in the context of actual concrete
circumstances and appeals to prudent political judgment. Vitality in a democ-
racy, then, presupposes and points to a proper, but difficult to ascertain, balance
between, on the one hand, the forces that divide—decision-making, pluralism
of opinion, and diversity of interests—and, on the other hand, the need for com-
monality and general consensus regarding basic rules and behavior.
256 M IG U E L MORG A D O

There are other important aspects of corruption, though. First, corruption

may affect political institutions. This is what today is usually called the “crisis of
representation.” Political institutions may be said to be corrupted when there is
a crisis of representation between parties and society, or when party competition
fundamentally undermines the organization of stable political authority. We may
describe as corrupt a party-system that is out of joint with the social content that
it is supposed to represent. Second, corruption may arise from the “social infra-
structure.” Aron seems to be indicating widespread confl ict at the level of social
and economic relations—in other words, intense class struggle in an industrial
society that may reach the point of a civil war.55
However, Aron asserts that he is not completely persuaded by this approach.
It is too impressionistic, as it were: he admits its usefulness but regrets its lack
of precision. He tries, then, to use the notion of democracy as a fair balance
between the twin evils of too much democracy and too little democracy. (In a
sense, Montesquieu also employs this distinction: he suggests a difficult balance
while describing the corruption of republican “virtue.”) If democracy becomes
an oligarchy it can no longer remain a constitutional-pluralist regime. The way
to oligarchy is the way of corruption; that is the most predictable point this
analysis makes. The less obvious point is Aron’s claim that constitutional-plu-
ralist regimes can be equally corrupted when oligarchy is “too eroded.” This
possibility is developed in Progress and Disillusion: The Dialectics of Modern Society,
a later book in which he explores the tension between the technical demand for
hierarchy and the democratic dynamics of equality in industrial society. Already
in the Dix-Huit Leçons one reads that “all regimes are an endeavor to conciliate
hierarchy with equality, power’s hierarchy with equal human dignity.”56
But ultimately, Aron fi nds this approach too “abstract.” Perhaps, then, the
question of corruption should be extended to the regime’s goal—not only its
principle. We fi nd corruption whenever the goal’s content is corrupted, that is to
say, contradictory with democracy’s principles. However, we also fi nd corrup-
tion whenever the political system reveals itself to be inefficacious in realizing its
goal. And we should not exclude the possibility that political corruption may be
found whenever the goal, as a collective project, is rejected by the citizens, not
because of its specific content but because it is a collective, common project. The
citizens’ retreat to the condition of mere producers and consumers, the avoid-
ance of common responsibilities and duties, a devitalized citizenship—these can
indeed be forms of corruption.

Democratic Poetry and Historical Prose

Aron believes that the purpose of studying political regimes exceeds the aca-
demic boundaries of political science as such. It may prove decisive for the pro-
fessional historian as well; this is especially relevant in the twentieth century.
For, as Aron says, the “rivalry” between specific political regimes characterizes
our “epoch.”57 The history of the twentieth century is not intelligible without
understanding this rivalry. Regimes compete with one another. Moreover, this
race against one another is not only military, or a fight for accumulating more
 MON T E S QU I E U A N D A RON 257

power in order to be stronger than the competitors in military terms. Such a

rivalry, we may presume, is also a fight for the hearts and souls of the people
who live under the competitor’s regime. Ideology-justification is a major part of
this rivalry. Its weapons include intellectual argument, rhetoric and propaganda.
And that is perhaps a major novelty in the sense that, for Montesquieu, the intel-
ligibility of history required the thorough knowledge of the sequence of political
regimes (ancient republics, gothic monarchies, the regime of political liberty and
commerce), not their rivalry, especially when rivalry is understood to include
ideological competition. And yet, since despotism is not historically conditioned
but rather an eternal possibility, the dialectic—if not rivalry—between moderate
and immoderate regimes is an integral part of human history as well.
When Montesquieu began his interpretation of modern commerce as a trans-
formative historical force that pointed in the direction of a certain form of politi-
cal community, he realized that he was discussing a prosaic matter—the pursuit
of economic security and prosperity. Maybe one of the reasons he did choose to
begin book XX of The Spirit of Laws with an Invocation of the Muses—a prerog-
ative and professional necessity of the poet, not of the economist—was precisely
because the philosophical importance of this historical transformation should
not be lost on the minds of those more open to great deeds and heroic promises,
to spiritual devotion and transcendental horizons. Aron, on the other hand, has
no such ambition. He prefers to put modern democratic prose out in the open
in order to show the tension between inevitable disappointment it brings and
the human goods that result from it: prosperity, liberties, security, and above all
moderation. The disclosure of this tension is necessary to make evident one of
the great dangers facing modern democracies. The danger is the sirens’ song of
literary politics, with its promise not only of human redemption through politi-
cal means, but also of breaking the dull, prosaic routine of democratic industrial
societies into a poetical (maybe even heroic) albeit illusory horizon. In addition,
constitutional-pluralist regimes are associated with a skeptical conception of the
exercise of political power. They reject the prejudice of the infallibility of human
knowledge and the purity of political intentions. As a consequence, they cher-
ish discussion and competition between opinions, as well as limitations on the
exercise of power.
Aronian critical realism reminds us of the limits of political idealism. It is
an antidote, of course, against totalitarian utopias and reactionary promises to
return to a romanticized past. Nevertheless, it is also an intellectual antidote to
liberal democratic idealism with sobering effects. Aron puts it plainly: “there
never was a perfect regime.”58 Every single political regime is an “imperfect
solution” to the “fundamental antinomy of political order” that is the pursuance
and conciliation of collective goals, as well as factual inequalities, with “some
participation of all men in the community.”59
For Aron, modern democracies are condemned to be an object of disappoint-
ment. However, that should not be mistaken for a sign of their corruption. They
disappoint both citizens and scientists because democracies are “pedestrian.” The
best thing we can do is to view our democratic regimes with skepticism, at
least to avoid the disillusionment that we suffer when we compare the “idea” of
258 M IG U E L MORG A D O

democracy with everyday, historically concrete democratic experience. “Every

democracy is oligarchical, every institution is imperfectly representative, every
government that has to obtain the agreement of groups and multiple persons acts
slowly and should take into account human selfishness and foolishness.” A few
paragraphs afterward, Aron puts forward the summarizing statement: “democ-
racy is the only regime, at bottom, that confesses, nay, that proclaims that the
history of states is, and should be, written not in verse but in prose.” Democracy
is prosaic by nature: by nature of its goals, by nature of its procedures, by nature
of its virtues. Moderation is, ultimately, prosaic, in contradistinction to the
drunkenness or madness of poetic frenzy.60 We do democracy a dangerous dis-
service if we present it otherwise.
Moreover, Aron is warning us to resist the temptation of democratic evange-
lism when he declares that “it is not the function of democratic regimes to create
states or to unite nations.” Reading this warning with the benefit of hindsight,
it almost sounds like a prophetic preemptive argument against democratic state
building or nation building. “No one has ever created a nation by telling men
to go and debate.” Already in his day, Aron saw an unwise tendency among
Western policy-makers to dangerously advise recently independent countries
to “create power out of their division.” Instead, we should acknowledge that
the best democracy can do is to “enable the unity of the state and of the nation
to resist the permanent rivalry of men and ideas.”61 This is a less ambitious, but
perhaps more realistic, appraisal of democracy’s possibilities: a more prosaic, less
poetic, lesson on the limits of democratic politics.

Notes
1. Émile Durkheim, “Contribution de Montesquieu à la constitution de la science
sociale,” in Émile Durkheim, Montesquieu et Rousseau. Précurseurs de la sociologie,
Paris, Librairie Marcel Rivière et Cie, 1966, 54, 50.
2. In his widely quoted biography of Montesquieu, Robert Shackleton held a rela-
tivistic reading of his work. Robert Shackleton, Montesquieu: A Critical Biography
Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1961, 45.
3. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Émile, Œuvres complètes, vol. IV, Paris, Gallimard, 1959–
1969, 836.
4. Destutt de Tracy, Commentaire sur l’Esprit des Lois de Montesquieu in Œuvres de
Montesquieu, vol. VIII, Paris, Dalibon, 1827, 82.
5. Louis de Bonald, Théorie du pouvoir politique et religieux dans la société civile, vol. I,
Paris, A. Le Clere, 1843, 12.
6. Raymond Aron, Les Etapes de la pensée sociologique, vol. I, Paris, Gallimard, 1967,
21.
7. Charles de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, eds. Anne M. Cohler, Basia
Carolyn Miller, and Harold Samuel, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,
1989, XIX.4.
8. Aron, Les Étapes de la pensée sociologique, 30.
9. Ibid., 46. See Raymond Aron, Dix-Huit Leçons sur la société industrielle, Paris,
Gallimard, 1962, 70.
10. Aron, Les Étapes de la pensée sociologique, 52.
 MON T E S QU I E U A N D A RON 259

11. See Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, I.3.

12. Aron, Les Étapes de la pensée sociologique, 52. See Aron, Dix-Huit Leçons, 65, 69.
13. See Raymond Aron, Democracy and Totalitarianism, trans. Valence Ionescu, Ann
Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1990, 23. See also Aron’s interview with
Yann Coudé du Foresto, on February 4, 1983, printed as “Conversation avec
Raymond Aron,” Pouvoirs, vol. 28, 1983, 176. Aron described his lifetime work as
the work of a “sociologist of the political or of the economical” in contradistinc-
tion to Durkheim, a “sociologist of the social.”
14. Aron, Les Étapes de la pensée sociologique, 27.
15. Montesquieu, Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur déca-
dence, Oeuvres complètes, ed. Roger Caillois, Paris, Gallimard, 1958, chapter
XVIII.
16. Aron, Les Étapes de la pensée sociologique, 29.
17. Ibid., 18, 27, 29.
18. Ibid., 17.
19. Take as an example Montesquieu’s claim that large states were strongly linked to
despotism, small states were a necessary condition for democratic republics, and
monarchies suited medium-sized territories and populations.
20. Aron, Democracy and Totalitarianism, 10.
21. Ibid., 10–11.
22. Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, II.1.
23. Ibid., XI.5.
24. Aron, Democracy and Totalitarianism, xii.
25. Ibid., 24.
26. This is precisely how Larrère very sensibly describes the normative implications
of Montesquieu’s work. See Catherine Larrère, “Montesquieu and Liberalism:
The Question of Pluralism,” in Rebecca Kingston (ed.), Montesquieu and His
Legacy, Albany, State University of New York Press, 2009, 287.
27. On the side of “ideal types” as the correct categorical description of Montesquieu’s
forms of government, see for example Jean Starobinski, Montesquieu, Paris, Editions
du Seuil, Points, 1997; David W. Carrithers, “Democratic and Aristocratic Republics:
Ancient and Modern,” in David W. Carrithers, Michael A. Mosher, and Paul A.
Rahe (eds.), Montesquieu’s Science of Politics: Essays on The Spirit of Laws, Lanham, MD,
Rowman & Littlefield, 2001; Tzvetan Todorov, “Montesquieu,” in Alain Renaut
(ed.), Histoire de La Philosophie Politique, vol. 3, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1999.
28. Élie Carcassonne, Montesquieu et le problème de la constitution française au XVIIIe
siècle, Geneva, Slatkine Reprints, 1978, 679.
29. G. W. F. Hegel, Natural Law: The Scientific Ways of Treating Natural Law, Its Place in
Moral Philosophy, and Its Relation to the Positive Sciences of Law, trans. T. M. Knox,
Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975, 128.
30. See Paul A. Rahe, “Forms of Government,” in David W. Carrithers, Michael A.
Mosher, and Paul A. Rahe (eds.), Montesquieu’s Science of Politics, Lanham, MD,
Rowman & Littlefield, 2001, 82. See also Claude Morilhat, Montesquieu: Politique
et Richesses, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 1996, 84.
31. Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, XI.8–9.
32. Aron, Democracy and Totalitarianism, 31, 33.
33. Ibid., 11.
34. Aron, Dix-Huit Leçons, 69.
35. Aron, Democracy and Totalitarianism, 27.
36. Ibid., 20.
260 M IG U E L MORG A D O

37. Ibid., 12.

38. Ibid., 19.
39. Ibid., 52.
40. Ibid., 47.
41. Ibid., 115.
42. Ibid., 58.
43. Ibid., 116.
44. Ibid., 47–48.
45. Ibid., 5.
46. Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, XXIX.1.
47. Aron, “Conversation avec Raymond Aron,” 170; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du
Contrat Social, Amsterdam, Marc-Michel Rey, 1762, III.8. See Montesquieu, The
Spirit of the Laws , XVII.6.
48. Aron, Les Étapes de la pensée sociologique, 36.
49. Ibid., 38.
50. Ibid., 42.
51. Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, VIII.1.
52. Aron, Democracy and Totalitarianism, 108.
53. Ibid., 115.
54. Ibid., 109, 116.
55. Ibid., 109.
56. Aron, Dix-Huit Leçons, 87.
57. Aron, Democracy and Totalitarianism, 64.
58. Aron, introduction to Max Weber, Le Savant et le politique, trans. Julien Freund,
Paris, Union Générale d’Éditions, 1959, 20.
59. Aron, Dix-Huit Leçons, 87.
60. Ibid., 23.
61. Aron, Democracy and Totalitarianism, 113–114.
CHAPTER 19

RAYMOND ARON AND ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE:

POLITICAL MODERATION, LIBERTY, AND
THE ROLE OF THE INTELLECTUALS1

Aurelian Craiutu

I n the French school of political sociology, whose origins can be traced back to
Montesquieu and which also includes Alexis de Tocqueville, Raymond Aron
(1905–1983) occupies a prominent place. He felt close to those political sociolo-
gists who displayed an unfailing commitment to political liberty, emphasized the
importance of civil society and intermediary bodies, underscored the autonomy
of the political sphere, and defended political moderation.2 Although he lived
in an age of extremes, Aron retained his moderate voice up to the end of his
life. He wrote against the arguments of those with whom he disagreed (first and
foremost, Jean-Paul Sartre), but never against them personally, distinguishing
sharply between ideas and persons. As Edward Shils once remarked, Aron “was
never abusive even when he was abused; he wrote polemics, but they were fac-
tual and logical, and he never insulted his adversaries as they insulted him.”3 He
was, to use a memorable phrase of Claude Lévi-Strauss, “notre dernier professeur
d’hygiène intellectuelle.”4
Since Aron lived in a country with a revolutionary soul, he often found him-
self in the minority, but he was in good company in this regard. A century before
him, Tocqueville, too, had found himself marginalized in the middle, between
the prophets of the past, the apostles of the new bourgeoisie, and the enthusiast
advocates of a radiant (socialist) future. “Politically,” Aron noted, “Tocqueville
belonged to that liberal party which probably had little chance of fi nding even a
disputatious satisfaction in the course of French politics.”5 Tocqueville was well
aware of his solitary situation and in a letter to his mentor, Pierre Royer-Collard,
he admitted that “the liberal but not revolutionary party, which alone suits me,
does not exist.”6 Tocqueville’s words can also be applied, mutatis mutandis, to
Aron who was and remained to the very end a lonely friend of constitutional
262 AU R E L I A N C R A I U T U

liberty and parliamentary government in a country too often seduced by political

radicalism and bold narratives of equality and solidarity. His passion for critical
and objective analysis led him to criticize people on all sides in politics; even
including those who in general terms thought along similar lines.7
It is not sure when Raymond Aron fi rst read Tocqueville’s works, but we
do know that the intellectual encounter with the author of De la démocratie en
Amérique occurred after that with Max Weber. Tocqueville’s name was surpris-
ingly absent from Aron’s texts written in the 1930s as he witnessed, fi rst in
Germany, and then in France, the descent of Europe into the abyss and came to
reflect on the prerequisites of liberal democracy confronted with the rise of total-
itarianism. For Aron, the years lived in Germany between 1930 and 1933 were
an eye-opening experience and constituted his real political education. National
Socialism taught Aron, a French patriot and a secular Jew committed to the
ideals of the Enlightenment, an important lesson about the power of irrational
forces in history and reminded him of the fragility of the liberal institutions and
values of Western civilization. In June 1939, Aron delivered at the Société fran-
çaise de philosophie an important lecture (followed by a lively discussion) titled
“États democratiques et états totalitaires.”8 In this text, he outlined the differences
between the two types of states (democratic and totalitarian), showed the limits
of pacifism, and highlighted the conditions of survival for embattled democratic
regimes. He made no mention of Tocqueville, who had, however, something
important to say about the preservation of liberty in democratic regimes.
L’Homme contre les tyrans (1946)9 contained several essays on key figures of the
French political tradition, such as Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Constant; yet
Tocqueville was again absent from its pages. Perhaps even more surprisingly,
Aron’s L’Opium des intellectuels (1955), a book that offered a trenchant critique of
intellectuals in politics, made no mention of Tocqueville, in spite of the simi-
larity between their views on this issue. A few years later, Tocqueville would
fi nally receive the pride of place in Volume One of Les Étapes de la pensée socio-
logique (1967), which remains an essential starting point for studying the relation
between the two thinkers. Aron’s belated encounter with the author of Democracy
in America was a true intellectual coup de foudre, similar in many respects to his
eye-opening reading of Max Weber that exercised a decisive influence on Aron’s
early works such as Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire (1938). It has been
argued that Aron played an important role in the rediscovery of Tocqueville
in France after the 1950s. While this conventional narrative has been nuanced
by Serge Audier,10 it is beyond doubt that Aron had the great merit of placing
Tocqueville fi rmly in the larger tradition of the French school of political sociol-
ogy, on a par with Montesquieu, Comte, and Durkheim. It also made him, as it
were, our contemporary.
In what follows, I shall focus on the intellectual dialogue between Aron and
Tocqueville with regard only to several key topics: democracy, equality, lib-
erty, the autonomy of the political, and the role of intellectuals in politics. As
Stanley Hoff mann pointed out in an essay originally published in French three
decades ago,11 the affinity between Aron and Tocqueville was simultaneously
intellectual, methodological, and political, and their outlooks were convergent
 R AY M O N D A RO N A N D A L E X I S D E T O C Q U E V I L L E 263

in several important regards. Both espoused a sociological method of analysis,

starting not with abstract principles, but from the values, principles, and ideals
that people follow in their daily lives. Both analyzed in comparative perspective
the nature of modern democratic society, discussed the role of intellectuals in
politics, and criticized determinism in history. There were also several impor-
tant differences between them, the most important being the sustained attention
that Aron (unlike Tocqueville) paid to the field of international relations and
the development of science and industry which he saw at the core of the mod-
ern industrial society. Aron’s impressive journalistic output also distinguishes
him from the more sober Tocqueville, whose main ambition was to exercise
an influence upon his contemporaries through a couple of well-crafted books.
Furthermore, Aron thought that Tocqueville might have overstated his fear of
democratic (soft) despotism and might have exaggerated the uniformity of con-
ditions in modern society.

Democracy, Capitalism, Communism, and the Industrial Society

Aron’s engagement with Tocqueville’s ideas cannot be fully appreciated and
understood unless it is placed in the larger context of his intellectual dialogue
with the other giant of nineteenth-century social and political thought, Karl
Marx. Aron constantly reread Marx’s writings and, although in the end he
reached opposite conclusions about democracy and the future of modern soci-
ety, he admitted that the mysterious and difficult prose of Capital fascinated him
even more than the limpid and elegant yet sad tone of Democracy in America.
Many of Aron’s themes, from the antinomies of industrial society to the complex
relationship between the social, economic, and the political spheres, were also
important topics addressed by Marx and his followers. Yet Aron never con-
verted to Marxism, primarily because he understood early on the internal con-
tradictions of Marx’s economic, social, and political thought and was unable
to resolve them.12 Marx believed that in order to put an end to alienation, the
entire current economic system encompassing production, commerce, and pri-
vate property together with the market had to be abolished and must undergo
a radical transformation. Such a conclusion, Aron noted, was not warranted by
facts and made sense only in the eyes of the faithful ones who had resolved to
condemn capitalism altogether without trying to properly understand its nature
and tendencies.
Aron commented on several occasions—his Dix-Huit Leçons sur la société indus-
trielle (1962), Essai sur les libertés (1965), and Les Étapes de la pensée sociologique (1967)
come fi rst to mind—on the similarities and differences between the political and
social theories of Tocqueville and Marx and indicated in unambiguous terms his
intellectual debt to both thinkers. “In my reflections,” Aron remarked, “I started
from the Marxist problem and gradually discovered Tocqueville’s problem. At
the beginning, I asked myself what the nature of the capitalist regime was and
what were the laws of its development, and then I came to ask myself what
the characteristics of democratic societies were, a question which was part of
Tocqueville’s tradition.”13 Tocqueville and Marx were contemporaries, but they
264 AU R E L I A N C R A I U T U

ignored each other and never engaged with each other’s ideas, even if, as Aron
noted, they had many things in common, from their “disgust for opportunism”
to their “total fidelity to themselves and their ideas.”14
To be sure, the differences between them were insurmountable. One placed
above everything else the safeguarding of personal and political freedoms in
modern democratic societies, while the other gave priority to achieving eco-
nomic justice and eliminating the exploitation of man by man. One believed
in the possibility of gradual reforms and the improvement of living conditions,
while the other flatly rejected this approach in favor of a total revolution meant to
reshape the very foundations of society and the state.15 Aron remarked that both
Tocqueville and Marx believed in freedom, but they did it in significantly dif-
ferent ways, with major implications for their political agendas. For Tocqueville,
the essential condition of freedom was representative government and self-gov-
ernment, while for Marx it was the communist (economic and political) revolu-
tion that was supposed to be brought about by the dictatorship of the proletariat
and the elimination of private property. In Tocqueville’s eyes, the personal and
civil freedoms enjoyed by the citizens of liberal democracies were real and mean-
ingful, even if not all individuals fully enjoyed the freedom to actualize their
potential as human beings and forge their total liberation from domination.
Marx believed the contrary.
In the end, Aron claimed, Tocqueville’s long-term vision emphasizing the
gradual but unstoppable equalization of conditions and stressing the importance
of formal freedoms proved to be more “accurate,” while Marx, who predicted
the impoverishment of the masses and argued that formal freedoms were mere
veils hiding the truth of capitalist societies from the eyes of the public, offered
a “distorted”16 view of modern society. There was a paradox in all that, since
Tocqueville was certainly not as well read in economics as Marx who had stud-
ied with greater attention and interest the dynamics of modern capitalist econo-
mies. Yet, as Aron argued, the Frenchman managed to see “better” and farther
than the author of Das Kapital. He foresaw that modern society would evolve
toward a middle-class society with functional intermediary bodies that would
make revolutions less frequent in the future, as the desire for gain and the pos-
sibilities of acquiring wealth become more widespread. In turn, Marx assumed
that society would be disturbed by constant confl icts of interest between the
rich and the poor and would usher in a global communist revolution that would
profoundly transform the face of the earth. Marx’s prediction that the condition
of the masses would worsen with the development of capitalism (accompanied
by more frequent economic crises) was falsified by subsequent developments,
and he misread the conditions of economic growth in modern society. Socialism
(communism) or barbarism, as Marx put it, was not exactly the choice that the
twentieth-century faced.
Aron followed in Tocqueville’s footsteps in this regard. He remarked that
while liberal democratic societies are stratified and allow for significant eco-
nomic inequalities, they are not divided as sharply into antagonist classes as Marx
thought. Aron also shared Tocqueville’s sociological approach to democracy as
opposed to Marx’s economistic and deterministic methodology. As Tocqueville
 R AY M O N D A RO N A N D A L E X I S D E T O C Q U E V I L L E 265

argued, democracy has to be understood fi rst and foremost as a particular social

condition (état social) characterized not only by a growing equality of conditions
but also by a certain set of mores (“habits of the heart”) and egalitarian attitudes
and beliefs, along with a deep-seated “sentiment of equality” and individual dig-
nity. This approach marked a stark difference compared to that of Tocqueville’s
contemporaries such as Comte (who emphasized industry and administration
as the essence of modern society) and Marx (who emphasized the dynamics of
relations and forces of production). For Tocqueville, the inevitable and grad-
ual equalization of conditions was the essence of modern democracy, and this
explains why he did not view the latter as incompatible with the existence of
various forms and degrees of economic inequality. Such inequalities of fortunes
implied by commercial and industrial activity inevitably arise in modern demo-
cratic societies but, in Tocqueville’s view, they do not contradict the fundamen-
tal egalitarian tendency of modern societies. Modern democracy represents an
eminently fluid and highly mobile society in which wealth is no longer fi xed
forever in the hands of certain families and immutable hierarchies, and in which
individuals constantly climb up and down the social ladder as their fortunes shift
over time.
In his writings from the 1950s and 1960s, Aron highlighted another funda-
mental dimension of modern society, the development of science and industry
and the growth of productivity—two key traits of modern industrial societies to
which Tocqueville and to some extent Marx as well had paid insufficient atten-
tion in their writings. To the conceptual innovation introduced by Tocqueville’s
analysis of democracy as état social, Aron added (in the 1950s and 1960s) his own
original interpretation of what he called “industrial society” as an alternative
to the distinction between capitalism and socialism (or communism). What is
remarkable—and indeed paradoxical—about Aron’s approach is that it drew on
both Tocqueville and Marx,17 yet the synthesis he offered did not propose a
hypothetical third way between capitalism and communism, nor did it endorse
the once-fashionable theory of their alleged convergence. He believed instead
that “the major concept of our age is that of industrial society,” which is part of a
larger progressive “industrial civilization”18 encompassing both communist and
capitalist regimes.
As Pierre Manent pointed out three decades ago, Aron’s use of the “ireni-
cal” concept of industrial society was a calculated and successful strategy on his
part.19 On the one hand, it suggested the possibility of an objective comparison
between communist and capitalist regimes that had previously been regarded
as impossible to compare with each other; on the other, it sought to recon-
cile Marxist-leaning intellectuals who had lost their faith in Stalinism with the
complex reality of capitalism. At the same time, Aron continued to underscore
the key role played by ideology in determining the nature of political regimes
and made a clear distinction between one-party systems and pluralistic ones. As
“defensor civitatis,”20 he stood fi rm in his characterization of communist regimes
as ideocracies. By emphasizing the seminal role played by ideology, Aron went
a step further than Tocqueville, in whose writings ideology played an insignifi-
cant role. Yet, his approach was Tocquevillian in the sense that it claimed that
266 AU R E L I A N C R A I U T U

communism and capitalism were to be seen as variants of the same type—the

technical, scientific, or rationalized society—rather than irreducible opposites
as Marx, Lenin, and Stalin and their followers believed. If Aron distinguished
several types of industrial societies, varying with different models and phases of
growth, he also recognized (in Démocratie et totalitarisme)21 that all modern societ-
ies are “democratic” in the broad sense of the term, insofar as they are largely
incompatible with the existence of any distinctions based on personal status and
civil inequality. Nonetheless, these societies can be either despotic or liberal
depending on how authority is exercised and how the powers in the state are
organized and distributed.
At the same, time, as Daniel Bell remarked,22 Aron paid indirect homage to
Marx by emphasizing the importance of the forces of production, while also
criticizing Marx for distorting the philosophy of the Saint-Simonians “by sub-
stituting capital (or capitalism) for industrialism.”23 Aron’s was, indeed, a very
peculiar homage, which refused to endorse Marx’s deterministic understanding
of history and, in a genuinely Tocquevillian vein, left open the possibility that
modern industrial societies could choose the path to freedom or servitude. As
Aron himself noted in his memoirs, “just as Tocqueville, while accepting the
inevitability of democracy, left men the possibility of choosing between freedom
and servitude, I asserted that industrial society imposed neither a one-party state
along the lines of the Soviet model nor the pluralism of parties and ideologies
on which the West prides itself.”24 Like Tocqueville, Aron hoped that Western
industrial societies would remain liberal democracies, and his hopes were ful-
fi lled by subsequent events. Western societies today, Aron wrote in the 1950s,
have a triple ideal: equal citizenship, technological efficiency, and the right of
every individual to choose the path of his salvation. “Of these three ideals,” he
argued in a liberal vein, “none should be sacrificed.” Yet he also warned against
the illusion that it would be easy to achieve all three at the same time.25
It is worth noting that at a time when the very notions of “positive” liberty,
citizenship, and social justice were viewed with suspicion by classical liberals
who were equally skeptical toward the welfare state, Aron did not shy away
from acknowledging the importance of citizenship and social rights in modern
society. “Individuals in a democracy,” he argued, “are at once private persons
and citizens . . . Our societies, our democracies, are citizens’ countries.”26 The
functioning of our society, Aron believed, depends to a great extent on the edu-
cation of our citizens as citizens. This point was clearly expressed in Aron’s last
lecture on liberty and equality at the Collège de France in April 1978, but it can
be traced back to earlier writings such as The Opium of the Intellectuals. In the fore-
word to the latter dating from the 1950s, he had acknowledged that the greatest
danger facing modern societies might not be fanaticism as much as an extreme
form of skepticism, as the system of ideas and beliefs separating different camps
are slowly disintegrating and are being replaced by indifference and civic apathy.
It was this belief that led Aron to emphasize not only the centrality of mores to
the preservation of liberal democracy—a lesson he had learned from Tocqueville
and Aristotle—but also the need for a distinctive type of liberal civic education
meant to cultivate certain traits of character suitable to (and required of ) the
 R AY M O N D A RO N A N D A L E X I S D E T O C Q U E V I L L E 267

citizens living in modern liberal democracies. In his last lecture, Aron referred to
the “moral crisis” affecting our liberal democracies today. We may be freer than
before in negative terms, Aron claimed, but we no longer know for sure where to
locate virtue and how to think of it in our societies. If we are to remain free, he
concluded in a Tocquevillian vein, our efforts at protecting our individual rights
must be accompanied by a thorough reconsideration of our civic duties.27
In the end, Aron argued, the author of Democracy in America was a good analyst
and prophet. “The federation has endured . . . The institutions which he saw as the
expression and the guarantee of freedom—the role of citizens in the local admin-
istration, voluntary associations, reciprocal support of the democratic spirit, and
the religious spirit—have survived.”28 The society in which we live today, Aron
remarked, is basically democratic in the sense that there are no civil inequalities
anymore; it guarantees individual rights, personal freedoms, and constitutional
procedures, even if it also gives birth to significant economic inequalities. It was
one of Tocqueville’s greatest merits that he was not oblivious to the existence
of economic inequalities in the modern world. If, at times, he referred to the
“surprising equality” in fortunes that reigned in the New World, he noticed
the potential for the appearance of what he called an “industrial aristocracy” in
America. All things considered, Tocqueville did not believe, however, that the
existence of this type of aristocracy was enough to call into question the future
of the American democracy as long as social mobility and what he referred to as
“the sentiment of equality” continued to exist in the New World.29 Aron agreed
with him on this essential point.

Liberty and the Autonomy of the Political

Another point of convergence between Tocqueville and Aron stems from their
common concern for safeguarding liberty and reconciling it with the demands
for equality in modern democratic societies. What Tocqueville and Aron had to
say about liberty, equality, authority, and power derived from a thorough under-
standing of the types of society to which all of these concepts are related. Both
thinkers started from the existence of different types of society—aristocratic-
democratic in Tocqueville’s case, industrial-preindustrial in Aron’s writings—
and examined the ways in which political concepts reflect and spring out of
various social structures corresponding to these societies. Both of them argued
that it would be impossible to deduce a science of government from a narrow
set of principles governing human nature, entirely detached from a preliminary
knowledge of history, culture, and society. Instead, a proper study of politics
must rely on the insights and lessons provided by a philosophy of history that
accounts for the development of political institutions over time and highlights
their complex relations to a wide range of cultural, economic, political, and
social factors. A key concept such as liberty can only be analyzed in this socio-
logical manner.
Aron paid special attention to Tocqueville’s conception of liberty and com-
mented on it at length in the fi rst chapter (“Alexis de Tocqueville and Karl
Marx”) of Essai sur les libertés. Tocqueville’s aristocratic conception of liberty as
268 AU R E L I A N C R A I U T U

independence or privilege, he argued, is particularly relevant in democratic soci-

eties in which the taste for business and the love of gain become universal and the
prevailing conformity tends to stifle the development of strong individualities. In
a society in which the quest for well-being and material pleasures are the com-
mon passions (often encouraged by despotism), it is all the more important to
cultivate a love of liberty for liberty’s sake.30 At the same time, Aron believed that
the functioning of modern democratic society is predicated upon the existence
of a vibrant social, political, and economic pluralism, which, in turn, depends on
respecting formal liberties and individual rights. Tocqueville’s conception of lib-
erty “closely resembles Montesquieu’s”31 and includes security against arbitrary
power, constitutionalism, and plurality of political and administrative forces and
groups which balance each other. It is inseparable from administrative decentral-
ization, freedom of association, freedom of religion and the press, as well as from
self-government, political participation, religion, laws, federalism, and customs
and manners. For Tocqueville (as well as for Aron), freedom was a sum (or pack-
age) of many types of freedom: freedom as independence, freedom as privilege
(the aristocratic notion of freedom), but also the right to govern oneself, personal
and intellectual freedoms, security against arbitrary authority, and the right to
political participation through elected representatives. All of these freedoms are
important, Aron concluded, and it is “the totality of these freedoms that . . . con-
stitutes freedom which alone is capable of elevating egalitarian societies primar-
ily concerned with well-being to greatness.”32
Aron outlined his sociological conception of liberty in several of his writings,
including Démocratie et totalitarisme, but few of them shed more light on this issue
than his substantial review of Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty, published in
1961 under the title “The Liberal Defi nition of Freedom.”33 Although Aron and
Hayek shared many principles and ideas, they differed in one important respect.
Aron believed that the nature of the checks on government and their effective-
ness could not be decided upon once and for all in light of an abstract theory such
as the rule of law, as Hayek claimed. He took the latter to task for espousing an
ideological style of politics that partly ignored the variety of social and political
life and the reality of international relations. Another good expression of Aron’s
position on this issue can be found in the conclusion to Essai sur les libertés,34
where he acknowledged the limitations of those approaches relying upon a single
defi nition of liberty, either as freedom from constraint (negative liberty) or as
freedom to participate in government (positive liberty). Aron argued instead in
favor of a combination of negative and positive liberty, thus continuing a line
of thought that originated in the writings of Madame de Staël and Benjamin
Constant. Liberty, Aron claimed, “is not adequately defi ned by sole reference
to the rule of law.”35 A society can be interpreted as more or less free according
to several criteria: the degree to which power lies in the hands of the people or
their representatives, the degree to which the authority of the rulers is limited
in practice, and the extent to which ordinary citizens are (or are not) depen-
dent upon the will of their leaders. None of these criteria in itself is decisive
for defi ning freedom or discrimination, Aron insisted, but taken together they
 R AY M O N D A RO N A N D A L E X I S D E T O C Q U E V I L L E 269

point to a free and open society that leaves to individuals a margin of operation
as large as possible and would protect their rights from undue interference and
discrimination.36
We can examine further the similarities and differences between Aron and
Tocqueville’s views on liberty by taking into account their views on the rela-
tionship between the political and social spheres. Both were “probabilists” who
shied away from endorsing a purely deterministic view of history, society, and
politics. Instead, they emphasized the important role played by a wide array of
fortuitous circumstances and non-economic factors in determining the nature of
political regimes. On Aron’s interpretation, one of the reasons for the superior-
ity of Tocqueville’s vision compared to Marx lies in the fact that he refused to
subordinate politics to economics and did not believe that the administration of
things would ever replace the rule of men. In other words, for Tocqueville, the
political remained an autonomous sphere in modern society, one that is never fully
determined only by the economic sphere. Aron was sympathetic to this argu-
ment and believed that all notions of absolute determination are excessive and
ultimately devoid of meaning. He went further than Tocqueville in highlighting
the importance of the nature of political regimes, emphasizing “la primauté de la
politique”37 vis-à-vis the economic sphere, and thus reaffirming the importance
of individual liberty and political choice.
While making a seminal distinction between social and political order, both
Tocqueville and Aron underscored the complex and unique nature of the politi-
cal sphere as a distinctive dimension of human life that cannot be reduced to
a mere epiphenomenon of economics or administration, as Marx and Comte
claimed. Neither Tocqueville nor Aron accepted at face value the claims made by
Marx and Comte, who pretended to eliminate from politics allegedly vague and
ill-defi ned notions and attempted to discover apodictic laws by using methods
similar to those to be found in natural sciences. Such goals were never achieved
in practice, and one good example was the Soviet economy. As Aron remarked,
we can understand neither the mode of allocation of resources nor the strategy
of economic growth if we ignore the peculiarities of the Soviet political regime
and its ideology.38 The latter explains how and why the scarce resources were
allocated in a certain way that privileged certain economic sectors and social
categories over others. In Aron’s view, it would be a simplification (and error)
to regard power as nothing other than the organized power of one class for the
oppression of another; political superstructure is always much more than a mere
reflection of social and economic forces. “The political order,” Aron claimed,
“is as essential and autonomous as the economic order,”39 and the idea of the
state’s disappearance announced by Marxists is nothing but a myth. In reality,
the power of the state “does not and cannot disappear in a planned society, even
when private ownership of the instruments of production has disappeared.”40
As history demonstrated, a centrally planned economy required an even stron-
ger state than a market-based one, and the economic allocation of resources in
Soviet-type economies always followed important political decisions and priori-
ties made by political elites.
270 AU R E L I A N C R A I U T U

The Revolutionary Spirit and the Role of Intellectuals in Politics

Last but not least, both Tocqueville and Aron addressed in their writings the
issue of the weakness of civil society in France, along with the country’s strong
tradition of centralization and the prominent role played by its intellectuals. In
these respects, they were in agreement: France was a singular country whose
problems were inseparable from the political legacy of the Old Regime and the
Revolution. As Tocqueville once argued, France has always been a country of
paradoxes, “more capable of heroism than of virtue, of genius than of common
sense, ready to conceive vast plans rather than to complete great tasks.”41 One
reason for the singularity of France has to do with its intellectuals, the majority
of whom, in Aron’s words, “admire only destruction without conceiving of an
order susceptible of replacing the one that they want to destroy.”42 To be sure,
many (though not all) French thinkers and politicians followed in Rousseau’s
footsteps, shunning moderation and opting instead for various forms of radical-
ism that created chronic political instability.
Both Aron and Tocqueville were intrigued by the ways in which intellectuals
in general, and their French colleagues in particular, tend to interpret the social
and political reality in which they live. In a famous chapter from Book Three
of The Old Regime and the Revolution, Tocqueville took his eighteenth-century
predecessors to task for espousing a “literary” form of politics that ignored the
nature of politics and sought instead to judge by impressions rather than reason
and logical arguments. Aron shared Tocqueville’s concern and believed that it is
characteristic of intellectuals in general not to seek to understand the social and
political world, its institutions and complex social practices. Instead, they most
often denounce the social and political order in which they live because they feel
overwhelmed by its complexity and murkiness. Not surprisingly, Aron disliked
the slogans of 1968—“Demand the impossible!” “It is forbidden to forbid!” and
“Take your desires for realities!”—which he interpreted as examples of imma-
turity and political irresponsibility. These slogans, he believed, were mere word
games playing on the romantic themes of authenticity and self-realization that
had little to do with real politics. In this respect, Aron reiterated Tocqueville’s
point (in Souvenirs) that intellectuals tend to search in politics for what is ingenu-
ous and new instead of what is true, and are inclined to appreciate good acting,
grandiose gesturing, and fi ne speaking for their own sake and (often) without
reference to the facts themselves. Tocqueville went a step further and added that
this propensity was not confi ned to French writers, but could be found among
the general public as well: “To tell the truth, the whole nation shares it a little,
and the French public as a whole often takes a literary man’s view of politics.”43
Aron must have found Tocqueville’s claims compelling, since his analysis
of the myths of the Left in The Opium of the Intellectuals carried a distinctively
Tocquevillian ring. Aron criticized the tendency of the intellectuals to denounce
too quickly the capitalist civilization as excessively rationalistic and anti-heroic
without attempting to understand sine ira et studio the functioning of its institu-
tions or seeking to understand how the demands for equality and justice could be
reconciled in practice with freedom and rights. As Aron himself acknowledged,
 R AY M O N D A RO N A N D A L E X I S D E T O C Q U E V I L L E 271

the limitations of industrial civilization, the power of money, and the price of
economic success tend to offend the susceptibilities of intellectuals, who become
over-emotional in preaching a strange form of intellectual and political evange-
lism while claiming at the same time to be more competent than ordinary citi-
zens at judging the flaws of society.44 Moreover, the obscurity and compromise
inherent in political life tend to offend their aesthetic sensibilities, which can
hardly accept that the best is often the enemy of the better. Thus, many intellec-
tuals often refuse to think politically, and “prefer ideology that is a rather liter-
ary image of a desirable society, rather than to study the functioning of a given
economy, of a parliamentary system, and so forth.”45 As a result, intellectuals
tend to form opinions based on emotions and moral imperatives rather than a
careful analysis of each particular situation, and often come to conceive of their
political engagement only (or primarily) as a pretext for self-aggrandizement.
Aron’s conclusion was a restatement of Tocqueville’s analysis.
A comparison between their views on the revolutions of 1848 and 1968 might
shed additional light on this issue. In February and June 1848, as member of the
Chamber of Deputies, Tocqueville witnessed fi rst-hand the attempts at building
a republican regime in France. More than a century later, in May–June 1968,
Raymond Aron almost became a political actor against his will, writing a num-
ber of important articles in Le Figaro and later devoting an entire book to this
issue, La Révolution introuvable.46 As Hoff mann pointed out, in both its tone and
content Aron’s book is to some extent reminiscent of Tocqueville’s Souvenirs.47
Both books put forward trenchant critiques of French politics and suggested that
the deeper and enduring cause of the French problem lay not so much with the
incompetence of the central government and its leaders (Louis-Philippe, General
de Gaulle) as with the weakness of intermediary bodies in French society and
the absence of administrative decentralization. It is no accident that Aron himself
compared his skepticism toward the claims advanced by the revolutionaries of
1968 with Tocqueville’s critique of the revolution of 1848 in France. In his view,
the crisis of May 1968 unfolded much like the revolution of 1848, yet the two
revolutions left different legacies in their wake. Neither Aron nor Tocqueville
gave one-dimensional explanations of 1848 or 1968, and both believed that,
most of the time, individuals do not determine events as much as they are deter-
mined by them. In their accounts of the failure of 1848 and 1968, Tocqueville
and Aron bemoaned the fact that the French nation had not been cured yet of its
old “revolutionary virus”48 that had delayed much-needed political reforms and
made it possible for demonstrators in the streets to make and unmake govern-
ments at will.
Like Tocqueville in 1848, Aron could not take the political actors of 1968
seriously, and argued that the events of May–June of that year seemed a mediocre
drama played by immature actors. Aron had little patience for the intellectuals’
nostalgia for direct and authentic political action as illustrated by their idealiza-
tion of “action committees” and disregard for concrete political institutions. In
his view, the spirit of revolt undergirding the participatory practices proposed
by the famous comités d’action could hardly be reconciled in practice with the
principles of democratic legitimacy and liberal democracy. This was not only
272 AU R E L I A N C R A I U T U

because the leaders of the students and workers had a low regard for legality and
compromise, but also because their idea of a revolution opposed to any form of
domination was, in reality, an untenable concoction of pre-Marxist socialism,
anarcho-syndicalism, and Proudhonism that lacked an adequate understanding
of the constraints governing the political and economic spheres of modern soci-
ety. Without being a dogmatic partisan of the status quo, Aron argued that the
unconditional contestation of hierarchies was unlikely to usher in the discov-
ery of an original third way between—or beyond—communism and capitalism.
With the benefit of hindsight, he was right to make this claim.

Conclusion
“Libéral et démocrate, j’avais en politique deux passions: la France et la liberté.” These
words, serving as an epigraph for this essay, could have also been used to
describe Tocqueville’s political agenda. Both were probabilists who believed
that the progressive equalization of conditions could lead to liberty or despo-
tism, depending on the actual choices made by individuals. Both refused to hold
any of the given facts of social order as entirely eluding human control. This also
applies to democracy, which, they believed, could be moderated and educated
while being purified of its revolutionary excesses. Aron spent his entire career
defending the principles of liberal democracy in dark times. He once described
himself as “a man without party, who is all the more unbearable because he
takes his moderation to excess and hides his passions under his arguments.”49
In this regard, too, he shared important affi nities with Tocqueville. Their con-
servative liberalism was fundamentally a doctrine of political moderation seeking
to avoid the evils of the past and keeping the memory of past tragedies alive
as a source of instruction and a justification of the need for moderation.50 The
society for which they fought was based on a constitutional framework whose
main purpose was to prevent abuses of power and to create and sustain a vibrant
social and political pluralism. Their open-ended philosophy of history reflected
their trust in human freedom and their respect for human dignity, two values
which continue to inspire us today, as we are continuing our journey into the
twenty-fi rst century.

Notes
1. The author would like to acknowledge the support received from the James
Madison Program at Princeton University which provided an ideal research set-
ting for completing this chapter.
2. See Raymond Aron, “Élie Halévy et l’ère des tyrannies,” in Raymond Aron
(1905–1983): Histoire et politique, special issue of Commentaire, vol. 8, 28–29,
1985, 327–350. I have commented on this topic in Aurelian Craiutu, “Raymond
Aron and the French Tradition of Political Moderation” in Raf Geenens and
Helena Rosenblatt (eds.), French Liberalism: From Montesquieu to the Present Day,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2012, 271–290.
 R AY M O N D A RO N A N D A L E X I S D E T O C Q U E V I L L E 273

3. Edward Shils, “Raymond Aron: A Memoir,” in Franciszek Draus (ed.), History,

Truth, Liberty: Selected Writings of Raymond Aron, Chicago, University of Chicago
Press, 1985, 13.
4. Claude Lévi-Strauss, “Aron était un esprit droit,” Commentaire, vol. 28–29, 1985,
122.
5. Raymond Aron, Main Currents of Sociological Thought, vol. I, New Brunswick, NJ,
Transactions, 1998, 292–293.
6. Alexis de Tocqueville, Selected Letters on Politics and Society, ed. Roger Boesche,
Berkeley, University of California Press, 1985, 156.
7. Raymond Aron, Thinking Politically: A Liberal in the Age of Ideology, trans. James and
Marie McIntosh, ed. Daniel J. Mahoney and Brian Anderson, New Brunswick,
NJ, Transactions, 1997, 301.
8. The text was republished in Raymond Aron, Penser la liberté, penser la démocratie,
Paris, Gallimard, 2005, 55–106.
9. It was reprinted in Ibid., 107–384.
10. Serge Audier, Tocqueville retrouvé: Genèse et enjeux du renouveau tocquevillien français
Paris, Vrin/EHESS, 2004, 77–121.
11. The French version of Stanley Hoffmann’s text, “Aron et Tocqueville” appeared
in Commentaire, vol. 8, 28–29, 1985, 200–212. It was translated into English as
“Raymond Aron and Alexis de Tocqueville,” in Daniel Mahoney and Bryan-
Paul Frost (eds.), Political Reason in the Age of Ideology: Essays in Honor of Raymond
Aron, New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction, 2007, 105–123.
12. See Raymond Aron, Le Marxisme de Marx, ed. Jean-Claude Casanova and
Christian Bachelier, Paris, Éditions de Fallois, 2002. On Aron’s critique of Marx,
see Daniel J. Mahoney, “Aron, Marx, and Marxism,” European Journal of Political
Theory, vol. 2, 2002, 415–427; Brian Anderson, Raymond Aron: The Recovery of the
Political, Lanham, MD, Rowman & Littlefield, 1997, 61–87.
13. Raymond Aron, Dix-Huit Leçons sur la société industrielle, Paris, Gallimard, 1962;
reproduced in Penser la liberté, penser la démocratie, 782 (my translation).
14. Raymond Aron, An Essay on Freedom, trans. Helen Weaver, New York and
Cleveland, World Publishing Company and New American Library, 1970, 31.
15. See Ibid., 31.
16. Ibid., 33.
17. Aron wrote: “Il n’est pas impossible de combiner les problèmes de l’un et l’autre.”
(Penser la liberté, penser la démocratie, 779).
18. Ibid., 781.
19. Pierre Manent, “Raymond Aron: Political Educator,” in Daniel Mahoney and
Bryan-Paul Frost (eds.), Political Reason in the Age of Ideology: Essays in Honor of
Raymond Aron, New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction, 2007, 25–26.
20. This is Manent’s phrase, Ibid., 26.
21. Aron, Penser la liberté, penser la démocratie, 1236–1237.
22. Daniel Bell, The Coming of the Post-Industrial Society, New York, Basic Books,
1973, 73–74.
23. Raymond Aron, Memoirs: Fifty Years of Political Reflection, trans. George Holoch,
New York, Holmes & Meier, 1990, 277.
24. Ibid., 276.
25. Aron, An Essay on Freedom, 48.
26. Aron, Thinking Politically, 248.
27. See Raymond Aron, Liberté et égalité: cours au Collège de France, Paris, Éditions de
l'École des hautes études en sciences sociales, 2013, 54–60.
274 AU R E L I A N C R A I U T U

28. Aron, An Essay on Freedom, 45–46.

29. See Alexis de Tocqueville, Journey to America, ed. J. Mayer, trans. George
Lawrence, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1962, 258–260.
30. Aron, An Essay on Freedom, 13.
31. Aron, Main Currents of Sociological Thought, vol. I, 245.
32. Aron, An Essay on Freedom, 14.
33. Translated in Raymond Aron, Politics and History: Selected Essays, ed. and trans.
Miriam B. Conant, New York, Free Press, 1978, 139–165.
34. See Raymond Aron, Essai sur les libertés, Paris, Hachette, 1998, 228–230.
35. Raymond Aron, “On Hayek and Liberalism,” in Daniel J. Mahoney (ed.), In
Defense of Political Reason, Lanham, MD, Rowman & Littlefield, 1994, 85.
36. See Ibid., 82 and Aron, Essai sur les libertés, 230.
37. Aron, Penser la liberté, penser la démocratie, 1235; also see Ibid., 1229–1238.
38. See Ibid, 1235.
39. Aron, Main Currents of Sociological Thought, vol. I, 216.
40. Ibid.
41. Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution, ed. François Furet and
Françoise Mélonio, trans. Alan S. Kahan, vol. I, Chicago, University of Chicago
Press, 1988, 246.
42. Aron, Penser la démocratie, penser la liberté, 707. I have previously commented on
these issues in Aurelian Craiutu, “Thinking Politically: Raymond Aron and the
Revolution of 1968 in France,” in Vladimir Tismaneanu (ed.), Promises of 1968:
Crisis, Illusion, and Utopia, Budapest and New York, Central European University
Press, 2011, 101–127.
43. Alexis de Tocqueville, Recollections: The French Revolution of 1848, ed. J. Mayer
and A. Kerr, New Brunswick, NJ, Transactions, 1987, 67.
44. See Raymond Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals, New Brunswick, NJ,
Transaction, 2001, 213–235.
45. Aron, Thinking Politically, 154.
46. These articles were reprinted in Aron, Penser la liberté, penser la démocratie,
723–748.
47. Hoffmann, “Aron et Tocqueville,” 205; also see Audier, Tocqueville retrouvé,
109–117.
48. Aron, Penser la liberté, penser la démocratie, 629.
49. The phrase is from Aron’s speech on the occasion of his admission to the Institute
(Academy of Moral and Political Sciences) in 1965 (apud Nicolas Baverez, Raymond
Aron, Paris, Flammarion, 2005, 338). Also see Aron, Thinking Politically, 301.
50. I have previously commented on this issue in Aurelian Craiutu, “Faces of
Moderation: Raymond Aron’s Committed Observer,” in Daniel Mahoney and
Bryan-Paul Frost (eds.), Political Reason in the Age of Ideology: Essays in Honor of
Raymond Aron, New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction, 2007, 261–283.
EPILOGUE:
RAYMOND ARON AND HISTORY IN THE MAKING

Christian Bachelier

“. . . History is again on the move,” this famous remark of Toynbee was quoted
by Raymond Aron remembering his own mood in Cologne and Berlin at the
beginning of the 1930s . This moment was also the revelation of his “existential
project”: “On a beautiful day, walking along the Rhine, I thought I wanted to
be both spectator and engaged. A spectator of history being made and engaged
in this history in the making.”1
Aron’s relationship with history in the making rules the evolution of his
thought on peace and war among nations, from a belief in “integral pacifism” to
the analysis of a “warlike peace.”
Linked with history in the making, such evolution singled him out from his
generation,2 which can be seen by comparing his evolution to the paths of some
of his contemporaries. His generation was composed of such promising intel-
lectuals as Sartre, Nizan, Friedmann, Canguilhem, Cavaillès; and this genera-
tion early on was historically conscious of itself. In 1928, Bertrand de Jouvenel
wrote L’économie dirigée. Le programme de la nouvelle génération; and, in 1929, Jean
Luchaire, Une génération réaliste. The latter focuses on Franco-German relations.
Indeed, the slaughter of elders mowed down by the First World War marked
this generation. A very close friend of Aron, Georges Canguilhem, testified: “It
is not surprising that Aron and I, like all of our classmates, perceived in our elders
a spirit of pacifism not free of antimilitarism.”3 In his Mémoires, Aron empha-
sized that this loathing for war could lead to three kinds of positions: revolution
epitomized by communism, as in the case of his friend Paul Nizan; Franco-
German reconciliation or Briandism, as in the case of Jean Luchaire; or, fi nally,
the avoidance of military service in the form either of conscientious objection
or distrust of all authority, as in the case of Alain. An “integral pacifi st” and
professor occupying the prestigious and strategic position of chair of philosophy
for the senior class at the Lycée Henri-IV, Alain had a considerable influence on
this intellectual youth, as evidenced by the novel Dix-huitième année, written by
his former student Jean Prévost and published in 1929. This Alainian influence
was also exerted over Aron, who in the very words of his Mémoires described
276 CH R I ST I A N BACH E LI E R

himself as a “passionate pacifist.” But though Aron wrote for Alain’s periodical,
he rightly claimed, in his Mémoires, to have adhered to the Briandist position.
Indeed, Aron was then advocating the policy of Franco-German reconciliation
connected with the principle of pacifism, the possible with the desirable.
From the post-First World War period to the drôle de guerre (phony war),
his “political education,” according his own words, takes place. This educa-
tion took the form of a conversion to political realism, triggered fi rst by his
years in Germany and then ratified by his pre-World War II writings. Later, he
remembers this intellectual evolution, whose mover can be linked to the ethics
of responsibility that Weber applied to political thought: “It is not very reason-
able for a man of thought to have political opinions without thinking, without
knowing what can be said about them from the point of view of social sciences,
even if these are imperfect.”4
The German experience of Aron, especially his relation to “history in the
making,” indeed caused a “conversion.”5 Although most French students in
Berlin were then attempting to analyze the Nazi phenomenon, this stay was not
in itself decisive, as one could see when, for the next academic year of 1933–
1934, Sartre succeeded his friend Aron to the Berlin Französisches Akademiker
Haus. Despite German events such as the Gleichschaltung (the coercive reorga-
nization of politics and society), the impact of these circumstances did not have
a significant effect upon Sartre’s mood. A few years later, in his Carnets de la
drôle de guerre, Sartre wrote: “I spent holidays in Berlin; there I rediscovered the
irresponsibility of youth.”6 And once more, he corroborates upon this way of
thinking thirty years later: “Yes, Hitler was in power . . . I saw Nazism, and I also
saw a quasi-dictatorship in France with the Doumergue’s policy.” 7 Regarding
the intellectual side of his stay in Berlin, Sartre studied Heidegger and Husserl,
wrote La Transcendance de l’ego, and began working on La Nausée. Therefore,
some of the major characteristics of Aron’s intellectual evolution during his years
in Germany must be specified.
First of all, this was the moment when Aron confronted politics. This time
period in Germany saw the rise of Nazism and the seizure of power by Hitler:
“I was no longer colliding with the mysteries of intemporality in the thought
of Immanuel Kant but with Germans, students, teachers, and ordinary bour-
geois who cursed the Treaty of Versailles, the French, and the economic crisis
altogether.”8 Therefore, he transferred this confrontation into the knowledge of
the self and of the other: “Lévi-Strauss discovered the other in archaic societies;
I, myself, discovered the other in modern society embodied by Hitler and his
followers.”9
In his Mémoires, Aron wrote about this period of his life: “I left a postwar
world to enter the prewar world.” Therefore, in this moment, he discovered the
concrete conditions of politics and the reality of power interests.
These troubling times inspired his fi rst observations that he would share in
Alain’s Libres Propos and Romain Rolland’s Europe. In his Mémoires, he criticizes
his correspondence from Germany without indulgence: “To become a commen-
tator on history in the making, I had a lot to learn.”10 In addition, these reviews
had little weight: “A spectator of the success of the Third Reich, voiceless and
 EPILOGU E 277

without tribune, I could not, like others, ignore the question of the gigantic
struggle that I foresaw. This question concerned all of mankind, but also my
own being.”11 Therefore, focusing on peace and on the totalitarian regime, the
subjects of these writings belonged to universal history.
His “Réflexions de politique réaliste,” in Libres Propos, April 1932, dwell upon,
first, the permanent rivalry between States; then, the principle of the balance of
power; and, fi nally, the need for a common will to avoid confl icts. Furthermore,
Aron emphasizes the principle of reality by stating in his “Lettre ouverte d’un
jeune Français en Allemagne,” in Esprit, February 1933, that “good politics is
specified by effectiveness, not by virtue.” In addition, he links domestic politics
and foreign policy in his article “Hitler et le désarmement,” published in Europe,
the periodical of another proponent of French pacifism, Romain Rolland, in
July 1933. Indeed, after noticing that the leaders of the German left had found
the Nazi program “reactionary and utopian” and were consequently unable to
understand the “driving force” of Nazism, Aron sent a warning: “this same dan-
ger can be replicated at the level of world politics.”
First, seeking reasonable thought applied to social reality, Raymond Aron
began reading Marx in 1931 and would be one of the fi rst French readers of
the famous Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, published at Berlin in
1932. Also, later, he describes relevantly the link between Marxism and history
in the chapter “L’homme dans l’histoire: choix et action” of his thesis disserta-
tion, Introduction à la philosophie de l’Histoire, where he exposes the fundamental
antinomy between two ideal types, the politician of reason and the politician of
understanding, this antinomy being based on the criterion of the relationship
to history in the making. The politician of reason, that is, the Marxist claiming
to be the confidant of Providence, “is certain of the inevitable disappearance of
capitalism” and foresees “the next stage of evolution.”12
As for the politician of understanding—or “politician of compromise”—fac-
ing history, “he is like a pilot navigating without knowledge of the port. There is
dualism of means and ends, of the reality and values; there is no current totality or
predestinated future; every moment is new to him.” This is the Weberian politi-
cal ideal that Aron maintains: “To take in situations, to discern the complexity
of determinism, and to fit into reality the new fact which gives the greatest
chance of attaining the goal which has been set.”13 Indeed, the other discovery
of the moment was German sociology, notably the sociology of Max Weber:
“What struck me in Max Weber was his vision of world history, his enlightening
perspective on the originality of modern science, and his reflection on the his-
torical and political condition of mankind.”14 Therefore, Weberian concepts—
understanding, value judgment, ideal type, ethics of responsibility and ethics of
conviction, forms of domination, universality and singularity, search for truth
and plurality of interpretations—would structure the Aronian relationship with
history in the making.15 Nonetheless, in his presentation of German sociology,
Aron notes the limitations of Weber’s thought;16 and, in particular, by regarding
Weber’s plurality of interpretations, he objects to Weber’s theory of hypothetical
objectivity: “Furthermore, relativism is itself transcended as soon as the historian
ceases to claim a detachment that is impossible, identifies his point of view, and
278 CH R I ST I A N BACH E LI E R

consequently puts himself into a position to be able to recognize the points of

view of others.”17
On the whole, this is his encounter with the critical philosophy of histo-
ry—Dilthey, Rickert, Simmel, and Weber rejecting the Providence inspired
by Hegelianism—that would be the content of his complementary dissertation.
This secondary dissertation concludes that “the critique of historical reason
determines the limits and not the foundations of historical objectivity,” and, that
the historical man from the doctrine of Dilthey and Weber is “a concrete being,
citizen, poet or merchant, a man of faith and action, a sole man placed in unique
circumstances”: “And Weber was a philosopher par excellence (although he him-
self denied being one), since he thought about the conditions of politics and the
necessity of choices, that is, he thought about the fate of each and every one.”18
Thus, a disciple of Dilthey, Bernard Groethuysen, in his Nouvelle Revue Française
review of the Aron’s complementary dissertation, noted his emphasis on “the
worries and concerns of citizens,” the “category of the present.”19
This critical approach against political idealism is therefore based on another
important aspect of the intellectual evolution of Aron during his stay in Germany,
on his confrontation with German theories of politics, philosophies of history,
and strategic reflections.
His change from the ethics of conviction to the ethics of responsibility leads
him to the question, “what is possible?” He approaches this question peculiarly in
the pages dedicated to pacifism in the chapter about Max Weber in La Sociologie
allemande contemporaine, published in 1935. Incidentally, Aron points out that Weber
was called the “German Machiavelli.” In this regard, Aron follows the Weberian
line of reasoning: “Every politician is in some degree Machiavellian” and politi-
cians ought to resolve antinomies, especially means and ends. To solve this antin-
omy, “Weber accepted the rules of politics and chose a morality of responsibility,
the only one compatible with politics and not condemned to perpetual contradic-
tions.” Indeed, an ethics of conviction depends on “the optimistic view that ‘from
good only good can come’,” which seems puerile in Weber’s view. Aron resumes
that Weber “never said or thought that the end justifies any means; for instance,
he did not invoke the policy of realism to excuse the violation of Belgian neutral-
ity” in 1914.20 Precisely in this book, for the first time, Aron evokes the expres-
sion “What would you do if you were a Cabinet minister?,” which the French
sub-secretary of State for Foreign Affairs said to Aron in 1932 after the latter gave
him an insightful report on the German situation. Also in Berlin Aron had a fi rst
glimpse of Clausewitz’s thought, through Herbert Rosinski.
The last fact to observe from Aron’s German years is his criticism of integral
pacifism. It appeared gradually in his articles. Facing the exacerbation of German
nationalism, he wrote in December 1932 that “the formulas of universal paci-
fism are alas! out of season.” After his “Réflexions sur le pacifisme intégral” in
Libres Propos, February 1933, where he differed more clearly from Alainism, he
directed his criticism to some manifestations of pacifism in “De l’objection de
conscience,” in the Revue de métaphysique et de morale, January of 1934. In this
publication, he came to the conclusion that “we have no right to be a citizen only
until the war arrives.”
 EPILOGU E 279

In this prewar period actuated by the momentum of totalitarianism, Aron was

building a theory of action.
“De l’objection de conscience” had received the approval of one of the two
editors of the Revue de métaphysique et de morale, Élie Halévy. He probably was
the first liberal political thinker Raymond Aron met. Although a “true friend”
of Alain, mainly because he was “his only honest friend,” Halévy was openly
hostile to Alain’s pacifism; this historian of the English parliamentary system and
of European socialism was also one of the first analysts of totalitarianism. Halévy
read his paper on “L’Ère des tyrannies” before the French Philosophical Society
on November 28, 1936.21 He observed, firstly, that “all tyrannies, communist and
fascist, have a common origin: the European war,” (Aron would resume this view
in May 1942 in his article on “La stratégie totalitaire et l’avenir des démocraties,”
published in La France libre); and, secondly, that both tyrannies “on the one hand,
and starting from an integral socialism, tend towards a kind of nationalism, and,
on the other hand, and starting from an integral nationalism, they tend towards a
kind of socialism” (an idea that Aron would evoke in September 1943 in his article
on Mussolini, “Homme d’État ou démagogue?” stressing that “fascism attempted
to exploit for its own benefit the two most powerful ideologies of our time affect-
ing the minds of men”). In his speech, Halévy linked total war and totalitarian
states. Despite his sudden death in August 1937, Halévy contributed to Aron’s
intellectual evolution from political idealism to realism.
Following Halévy’s perspective, on June 17, 1939, again before the French
Philosophical Society, Aron read a paper on “États démocratiques et États totali-
taires.” He is one of the few, especially in France, to have highlighted that “total-
itarian regimes are genuinely revolutionary.” Indeed, in Europe, July 1933, he
insisted on “the driving force” of Nazism, and, in September of the same year, he
titled one article “La révolution nationale en Allemagne,” and another in 1936,
in the fi rst issue of Inventaires, “Allemagne: une révolution anti-prolétarienne.” In
an outline of his 1939 lecture paper he emphasized the dynamism of totalitarian
states: “The totalitarian regimes have undoubtedly been technically successful
on the economic, political, and military levels.” In terms of relations among the
states, some points in this paper written a few weeks before the outbreak of the
Second World War deserve to be quoted: “Item 3. Diplomatic confl icts do not
arise out of ideological confl icts”; “Item 4. There is no economic solution to the
present diplomatic confl icts.” And, introducing his paper, Aron wanted to “show
the subordination in totalitarian regimes of ideology and economics to specifi-
cally political aims.”
On March 23, 1938, a few days after the Anschluss, Raymond Aron defended
his dissertation, Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire. This “Essay on the limits of
historical objectivity” opened on action. He stated the formula, “man is in his-
tory; man is historical; man is history” and expressed his theory of action, choice,
and decision. In the chapter “L’homme historique: la décision,” he resumed his
criticism of pacifism. Also, he pointed to the importance of war in the conscious-
ness of historical existence.
“Because he is at once both brute and spirit, man must be capable of over-
coming minor fatalities, those of passions by will power, that of blind impulse
280 CH R I ST I A N BACH E LI E R

by consciousness, that of vague thought by decision. In this way, freedom, at

each instant, puts everything at stake, and asserts itself in action in which man
is reunited with himself,” wrote Aron in “Temps historique et liberté,” the last
chapter of his dissertation. The primacy of freedom, which is the result of man’s
confrontation with history in the making, is then the constant theme in Aronian
thought. His main dissertation ends with a thought on the tragic sense of his-
tory. Later, he reported, “To the jury president, Léon Brunschvicg, who asked
me about my future plans, I answered that the vast shadow of war darkened the
horizon; beyond this blackness what projects were possible?”22
While on his constrained vacation during the drôle de guerre, Aron carried on
his work about modern Machiavellianism, a task he had undertaken, he said,
imbued by the events happening since the spring of 1937. He then began writ-
ing a “passionately hostile article”23 titled “La sociologie de Pareto,” in which
Aron linked Machiavelli and Pareto to the current practices of modern tyran-
nies. “The events, and his quest for rational politics,”24 led him to Machiavelli.
With this reference to Machiavelli, the primacy of politics asserts itself in the
Aronian thought. However, his approach did not, at this point, lead him to think
about war. He explains: “Before 1940, because I detested war, I did not study it.
During the war, I have been forced to think about the subject.”25
In times of crisis, interest in Machiavellian thinking is revived. Thus a nor-
malien friend of Aron, Georges Friedmann, carefully reread The Prince. A com-
munist intellectual who had to endure a lot of harassment from the staff of the
Communist Party, he was particularly shocked by the Nazi-Soviet Pact and
consequently left the party. In his diary, after noting that “Machiavelli, in our
time of great totalitarian states, is singularly up-to-date and his work acquires a
new echo,” Friedmann wryly observed that “since August 23 [the signature of
the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact]—if not before—the policies of the Soviet lead-
ers reflect a deep contempt for man and, perhaps above all else, of the men who
follow and serve them.”26 In these circumstances, Nizan also decided to break
with communism, when, during the drôle de guerre, his friend Sartre gave himself
up to his devouring autobiographical passion in writing his Carnets, facing his
“historical ego” through his reading of Aron’s dissertation. The war, however,
was present fi rst of all through his personal relationship to the situation: Sartre
was a kind of 1940 Fabrice del Dongo, in the image of Stendhal’s hero. Sartrean
thought on the ongoing war was a mixed bag: a moderate Stoicism instilled by
reading Alain’s Mars ou la guerre jugée, which he tries to connect with the con-
cepts of Heideggerian existentialism; he becomes enthusiastic in an analysis of
the “Peace-War” described in the Revue des Deux Mondes (August 15, 1939),
which, some argue later, has a style like De Gaulle’s, while adopting the fi ndings
of Nizan’s analysis of Munich in Chronique de Septembre, then so Stalinist that
he thought he could detect a deceptive action to “provoke a state of anxiety in
populations in order to draw maximum political and social advantages from the
relief caused by concerted peacekeeping.”27
Nizan met his death on the battlefield in June 1940; Sartre became a prisoner-
of-war for a while; Friedmann, pushed by the debacle to Toulouse, expelled
from the University by the anti-Semitic laws, participated in the resistance,
 EPILOGU E 281

and prepared his Leibniz et Spinoza, which would be published after the war.
Raymond Aron suffered the German attacks in May 1940 in Ardennes, was in
Bordeaux on June 20, then in Toulouse, decided to go to England, and finally
enlisted with Free French Forces.
For Aron, the shock of war brought the necessity to think about war and to
develop strategic concepts to extend and develop his pre-war thought: “The
catastrophe that, in a few days, struck down the army and the French nation
made me swell with indignation,” Aron resumed, “less against ‘the responsible’
than against ourselves, all of us who, men of thought, never devoted time and
our attention to studying this endemic disease of human societies: war.”28
The inability to think about the war in advance was regretted by Aron. He
saw this, among others, as one of the baneful effects of Alain’s pacifi stic influ-
ence. He therefore wrote an article titled “Philosophie du pacifisme” published
in the fi rst issue of the monthly La France libre, November 1940. He cited the
military historian Hans Delbrück, who described pacifism as a weapon at the
service of the enemy, and he highlighted the harmful combination of pacifism
with Hitler’s “peace offensive” during the drôle de guerre. Alainism showed itself
to be nothing but a fallacy.
Indeed, the more doctrinaire Alainian pacifi sts became, precisely in the name
of integral pacifi sm, supporters—explicitly or implicitly—of Franco-German
collaboration. To these can be added the path followed by Jean Luchaire, who
transited from Briandism to collaboration via the Franco-German reconcilia-
tion, which led him before the fi ring squad after the war. Therefore, the dif-
ferent destinies of Aron’s contemporaries under the Occupation offer a mixed
picture. The resistance activity of Sartre is often questioned. After a brief
moment of reflecting on resistance in informal intellectual circles on his return
from the Stalag, he devoted himself to his works: L’Être et le Néant, published in
1943, the year of the fi rst performance of Les Mouches, which was followed by
Huis-Clos, before an audience made up partly of Germans—all this while he was
visiting the underground National Committee of Writers, founded by com-
munist intellectuals. A member of this Committee, awarded by the Académie
française in 1943 for his dissertation, La Création chez Stendhal, Jean Prévost was
killed by Germans during the uprising of the Maquis du Vercors. Canguilhem,
this prewar Alainian pacifi st, became a very resolute and active member of the
resistance. The same occurred with Jean Cavaillès, although the latter would
meet a tragic fate. When, in July 1945, his body was found in the moat of Arras’
citadel, Aron, in a moving tribute to his dear friend, wrote that “the warrior
remained a philosopher.”29
Indeed, the art of politics and the art of war are objects of knowledge. And
Aron attended to his shortcomings in these areas during the war.
The learning phase from 1940 to 194230 was facilitated by his encounter with
Stanislas Szymonzyk, a former officer and a great connoisseur of Clausewitz’s
work. It was Clausewitzian science that had passed through operating experi-
ence. Aron also submitted to General De Gaulle the article “La bataille de
France,” that would be published in January 1941 under the signature of the
“War Chronicler of La France libre,” that is, Szymonzyk’s remarks rethought
282 CH R I ST I A N BACH E LI E R

and reformulated by Aron and connected with Aron’s thinking on history and
politics.
In a long article, “La capitulation,” published in the fi rst issue of La France
libre, November 1940, Aron offered a light and shade analysis of the armistice.
This understanding of the confl ict did not prevent him from being unequivocally
enlisted in the camp of those continuing the struggle. This critical conscience at
work was an Aronian constant—and distanced Aron from orthodox Gaullism, as
any orthodoxy. For instance, when war was coming and extended to the world,
geostrategic thinking was revived. But, and even if German geopolitics frequently
ended up justifying Nazi and expansionist propaganda, Anglo-Saxon geopoli-
tics, for instance, Mackinder, was not exempt from Aron’s critical analysis either,
peculiarly against deterministic “geographical causation in universal history.”31
In this history in the making taking place under the dominion of war, there
appeared notably, as part of the strategic thought undertaken by Aron, his key-
article: “La stratégie totalitaire et l’avenir des démocraties,” May 1942. The
article deserves to be analyzed because it shows the junction of Aron’s political
thought and his strategic thinking.
Here, Aron develops the concepts of “military revolution” and “early mobi-
lization,” two concepts already discussed in “La bataille de France,” January
1941. He connects these concepts to the revolutionary dynamism he had previ-
ously identified as an essential datum of totalitarian states. This connection con-
tinues and develops Delbrück’s sociology of war. Thus, between total war and
total State, between which Halévy had observed the affinity or even connection,
the missing link of “early mobilization” is inserted. Moreover, Aron resumes
Guglielmo Ferrero’s notion of “hyperbolic war” and Ludendorff ’s “total war.”
Indeed, the total State is able to engage in a total war through the anticipated
mobilization enabled by its political structures. All of this is done in such a way
that it is able to avoid a hyperbolic war, which is a war of annihilation.
In this article of May 1942, Aron also emphasizes the development of his
thinking on modern Machiavellianism. He had already dealt with Machiavellian
Machiavellianism in his article “Le machiavélisme, doctrine des tyrannies mod-
ernes,” published in the fi rst issue of La France libre, November 1940. Later,
September 1943, the fall of il duce gave Aron an opportunity to illustrate vulgar
Machiavellianism: the cynicism of the “master of Mussolini” comes to punish
the clumsy disciple. With “La stratégie totalitaire et l’avenir des démocraties,”
Aron considers a moderate Machiavellianism, which includes elements inspired
by the “German Machiavelli,” Max Weber.
During the war, Aron frequently consulted the analysis of totalitarianism by
Élie Halévy. Aron introduced a new concept, “secular religions”: “doctrines
that, in the souls of our contemporaries, take the place of the faith that is no
more, placing the salvation of mankind in this world, in the more or less distant
future, and in the form of a social order yet to be invented.” He goes on to ethical
consequences: “The followers of these religions of collective salvation know of
nothing—not even the Ten Commandments, not even the rules of the catechism
or of any formal ethic—that is superior in dignity or authority to the aims of
their own movement.”32
 EPILOGU E 283

With war ending, Aron questioned the power of France and the future of
Germany, and then he turned to the analysis of the incipient warlike peace.
Back in Paris at the end of September 1944, Aron wrote his fi rst article for
Combat published on October 25. In the postwar period, Aron opted for journal-
ism in order to be a “commentator on history in the making.” He fulfi lled this
role by working at the daily Combat, then Le Figaro for three decades, and fi nally
at the weekly L’Express, but also by publishing some important books.
His fi rst article for Combat, “Les conditions de la grandeur,” analyzed the
power of France, which seemed weakened by “poverty.” Aron witnessed France’s
relegation to second-rate status. In particular, he considered how demographic
and economic factors outweighed France’s geographical assets. Indeed, from the
fall of 1944 until May 1945, it was the time of the “disillusions of liberty.”
As Hitler’s defeat grew nearer, so too did the question of Germany’s fate. In
September 1944, Henry Morgenthau, the American Secretary of the Treasury,
proposed a pastoralization plan for Germany, consisting of deindustrialization and
dismembering of the country, most of the Western part of which was to go
to France. At the end of October 1944, Roosevelt completely renounced this
bucolic project.
The German question remained—especially in France, where numerous
lively debates took place in the form of press controversies, public conferences,
and political meetings. In an article in the weekly Point de Vue, July 5, 1945,
titled “Deux Allemagnes,” Aron took a position against dismemberment but in
favor of the economic integration of the Saar and industrial cooperation between
the Ruhr and Lorraine. Nonetheless, he concluded that it was probably neces-
sary to convince the Germans that “their defeat was irreversible,” to offer them
an “acceptable peace.” He defended a similar position in most of his articles in
another weekly Terre des Hommes in October and November 1945.
However, parallel to the evolution of his strategic thinking on the postwar
world, he abandoned his 1945 positions about Germany and thus wrote at the
beginning of 1947: “Two years ago the separation of the Ruhr and the Rhine
seemed the best solution. Today everyone knows that this position, rejected by
the three great powers, has no chance of success.”33
Germany was, indeed, the central stake for the great powers. Early on, Aron
evoked the “iron curtain,” for example in his article “Le partage de l’Europe”
in Point de Vue, July 26, 1945. The French position on the German question
was under the sway of the global rivalry and, consequently, under the risk “that
Germany was being used by Russia against the Anglo-Saxon powers,” or vice
versa. Furthermore, it was then acknowledged that the great powers wished
to rebuild Germany. In a series of articles published in Combat in January and
February 1947, Aron developed a new position: it was necessary to avoid, in De
Gaulle’s terms, a “new Rapallo,” that is, the German-Soviet collusion. However,
while rejecting the dismemberment of Germany desired by the Bainvillian
Gaullists, Aron nevertheless did consider the risks posed by a united Germany in
the future. This, coupled with the necessity of a balance of power in Europe, led
him to favor the rapprochement between France and the three Western occupa-
tion zones of Germany: “Nothing therefore opposed the assertion of a French
284 CH R I ST I A N BACH E LI E R

doctrine, a positive and constructive doctrine whose purpose is a reconstituted

Germany in a peaceful Europe.”34 A few years after the creation of German
Federal Republic, in 1952, in his talk to students in Frankfurt, he reminded
them that he belonged to “a generation whose experience of the First World
War convinced them that their obligation was pacification and reconstruction of
Europe,” and concluded that “the European community or the Atlantic com-
munity are not themes for ephemeral enthusiasm, but rather aims of the efforts
that give meaning to a life or give an objective to a generation.”35
Whether analyzing the German question or the power of France in the world,
Aron’s positions evolved based on his analysis of world affairs. In fact, the lower-
ing of France’s status was also the result of the supremacy of the two great pow-
ers. From that moment onward, the chief actors in international relations were
no longer the European nation-states, but the multinational and extra-European
empires, “universes,” to employ one of Aron’s terms. The Concert of Europe
gave way to the Concert of the world, and thus, regarding European integration,
he noted, “Whatever the problem, one always faces the same obstacle: the rivalry
of the two universes, Slavic and Atlantic.”
This rivalry constituted the “warlike peace,” a concept elaborated by Aron
from the fall in 1945 to the spring of 1948. This work was synthetized in the
article “Paix impossible, guerre improbable,” which is published in the third
issue of La Table ronde, March 1948, and formed the fi rst chapter of “Schisme
diplomatique. La paix belliqueuse,” the fi rst part of Le Grand Schisme, which
came from Aron’s need “to formulate a general view of the world in order, so to
speak, to frame my commentaries on international affairs.”36
The “warlike peace” reflected “the structure of the world in the age of
empires.” This structure was characterized fi rstly, according to Aron, by “the
unification of the field of action, defi ned simultaneously by technological prog-
ress and the political and military solidarity of the continents”; and, secondly,
by “the concentration of power in two giant states situated at the periphery of
Western civilization.”
From there emerged an inevitable rivalry: “There is no need to ascribe a
constant will of hegemony to the rivals. It is enough that each suspects the inten-
tions of the other.” This rivalry was therefore equally inexpiable. Furthermore,
the rivalry affected not just two states, but “two social and ideological systems,”
“which view each other as enemies and claim a vocation of universality.”
Aron noted the specific traits of Soviet diplomacy: fi rstly, “the iron curtain
is not an accident . . . it is the fatal consequence of poverty”—this could compare
to Delbrück’s relationship between foreign politics and domestic politics—and,
secondly, this isolation of the Soviets induces their universal distrust. In other
words, Aron remarked that “the alleged post-capitalist world reproduces the cru-
elties of infantile capitalism, and, prisoner of the antinomy between ideology and
reality, it forbids peace founded upon exchanges and truth.”
Moreover, the atomic weapon cannot be the absolute weapon, the one which
decisively strikes, which, as Aron noted, consolidated his statement on “warlike
peace”: “This classic confl ict between a continental power and a maritime power,
enlarged to encompass the whole planet and putting to use modern technology,
 EPILOGU E 285

assumes a form without precedent . . . uncertainty is favorable to the (warlike)

peace. No one ought to play mankind’s fate on one cast of the dice.”
To this conclusion of the article published in March 1948, Aron added a sup-
plement in Le Grand Schisme, the preface of which was dated April and pub-
lished in July, following a time of strained relations, such as the Czech coup and
Western worries concerning, among other things, the part demobilization of
American forces in Europe. And so, Aron reaffirmed, “Once again, the probable
response seems to me: everything but war.”
In the second part of Le Grand Schisme, titled “Le schisme idéologique,” Aron
developed, peculiarly, a critique of political existentialism: “It is not enough to
ignore all historical engagements in the name of a philosophy of engagement
in order to attain the security of an intellectual. A bit of common sense would
be indispensable, and also perhaps a bit of realism, which these philosophers of
existence never get tired of assaulting with the same ease with which they avoid
exploring reality.”37 Understanding reality, even war, this “violence between
human collectivities,” was the task that Aron assigned to himself. He was thus
more faithful to the ideals of his youth than were the idealistic pacifi sts during
World War II or fellow travelers of communism during the Cold War. Indeed,
Aron had in common with his contemporaries three major distinctive traits of
his generation: realism, political voluntarism, and the importance accorded to
international relations. However, at the same time, he stood out because of his
imperative for understanding and the evolution of his thinking: “One of the
probable reasons why my political evolution was so different from the ones of
my friends, those of my generation, is because I studied sociology, history, and
political economy as scientifically as possible.”38
He thus combined economics, sociology, political regimes, relations among
nations, and ideological debates in Les Guerres en chaîne, one of his great works
on history.39 Here, Aron developed the framework—inspired methodologically
by Weber—of his interpretation of the wars and revolutions of the twentieth
century: with technological civilization, the dialectic of the industrial revolution
and totalitarianism developed into total war and the militarized state. Focusing
his analysis on Europe,40 he judged European integration by history: “Patriotism
is not made to order . . . Popular feeling does not change with the same speed as
industrial progress.”41 In the preface, he remarked: “The study of the immediate
past does not allow us to foresee the future. It helps us, in any case, to interpret
the present . . . No one knows the future, and favorable accidents are always pos-
sible. The horrors of a total war prohibit oneself from resigning in advance.
Now, we still need to avoid a misunderstanding. The reasonable determination
of objectives has nothing in common with a semi-skepticism or form of indif-
ference. Modern technological warfare puts an end to any dreams of crusades.
Atomic bombs are not a good way of spreading liberty. But it remains as true
today as it was yesterday that, be it the era of B-36s or the epoch where pikes
were used, only those who preserve their heritage are those who are ready to
defend it.”42
“Inexhaustible, historical reality is at the same time equivocal.” This statement
formulated by Aron in his dissertation is resumed here and developed: “The lag
286 CH R I ST I A N BACH E LI E R

between the causes and the results of events, between human passions and the
effects of the acts they inspire, between confl icts of ideology and power and the
real issue of wars, fascinates the observer, who is tempted at one moment to
denounce the absurdity of history and at another its broad rationality. The only
truth accessible to positive cognition is the recognition of these contradictions.”
And the ignorance of these contradictions leads to mythology: “Mythologies
consist of the substitution of a single factor for the plurality of causes, of lending
unconditional value to a desired objective, and of failure to realize the distance
between the dreams of men and the destiny of societies.”43
This inclination to a facile Manicheanism that diverts oneself from interpret-
ing history in the making gave cause for Aron’s 1955 analysis of “the attitude of
the intellectuals, merciless toward the failings of the democracies but ready to
tolerate the worst crimes as long as they are committed in the name of proper
doctrines.”44 In this sense, L’Opium des intellectuels was also a work on history.
In the fi rst part, “Mythes politiques,” he analyzed the myths of the Left, of the
Revolution, and of the Proletariat: “These notions cease to be reasonable and
become mythical in consequence of an intellectual error . . . The common source
of these errors is a kind of visionary optimism combined with a pessimistic view
of reality.”45 Therefore, in the second part, “Idolâtrie de l’histoire,” he empha-
sizes that “neither the wars nor the revolutions of the twentieth century fit into
the theory which Marx adumbrated.”46 Aron thus proceeds to write a critique of
“the revolutionary idealism” contained in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Humanisme
et Terreur. Regarding “the alienation of the intellectuals,” Aron indicates the
effects on the intelligentsia of secular religion, and concludes interrogatively
with “Fin de l’âge idéologique?” and a wish: “If they alone can abolish fanati-
cism, let us pray for the advent of the skeptics.”47
The euphoric dreams of some of these intellectual fellow travelers vanished
the following year with the Hungarian uprising. Aron then thoroughly analyzed
this anti-totalitarian revolution.48 On the tenth anniversary of the Hungarian
revolution, he reiterated the essential and well-founded points of his past inter-
pretations and made some remarks about this history: “Thanks to the sacrifice of
the Hungarian people, other peoples in Eastern Europe have learned that their
hope for a ‘liberation from the outside’ is vain, and they are currently trying to
fi nd other ways less dramatic but perhaps not any less effective for ensuring their
own ‘inner’ liberation.” With emotion, Aron concluded on the moral signifi-
cance: “Historical tragedy, triumph in defeat, the Hungarian revolution will for-
ever remain one of those rare events that give men back some faith in themselves
and remind them, through their destiny, of the meaning of their destination: the
truth.”49
“Be true in everything, even on the subject of one’s Country. Every citizen
is obliged to die for his Country; no one is obliged to lie for it.” This quotation
of Montesquieu introduced Aron’s pamphlet, La Tragédie algérienne, comprised of
two memos (April 1956 and May 1957), and alluded to the duplicity of French
politicians about the Algerian question and Aron concluded his second memo by
asking: “What can an ordinary citizen do but express the anguish he feels and
appeal to everyone to have the courage to face the truth?” Here as well there is
 EPILOGU E 287

the difficulty of judging the history that we experience. History in the making is
tragic, for it forces us to choose, and yet the rulers procrastinate in doing so: “No
miraculous solution will spare us the effort and pain of adapting to a changed
world.”50
Aron had more to say on the relations between events and will, history and
myth, in 1959 on the occasion of the publishing of the French translation of Politik
als Beruf, Weber’s famous lecture held in 1919: “History encourages mythologiz-
ing by its very structure, by the contrast between partial intelligibility and the
mystery of the whole, between the apparent role of human wills and the no less
apparent refutations which events infl ict on them by the hesitation of the spec-
tator between indignation, as if we were all responsible for what happens, and
passive horror, as if we were in the presence of a human inevitability.”51
His study of totalitarianisms was continued in one of his three courses at the
Sorbonne dedicated to industrial societies. This 1957–1958 course, Démocratie
et totalitarisme, was given in an atmosphere characterized by the events of 1958
and the relative liberalization of the Soviet regime. In his presentation of the
“concepts and variables,” he summed up that “the fundamental characteristic
of collectivities is the organization of powers” and established two categories
of industrial societies: constitutional-pluralistic regimes and monopolistic party
regimes.
A quarter of a century after his dissertation Introduction à la philosophie de
l’histoire, Aron appended to it a compilation of his articles published between
1946 and 1961. These articles could “enlighten, from different points of view,
one and the same problem, that of the history that we live through and try to
think.”52 This collection was published under the title Dimensions de la conscience
historique. This work, his thesis dissertation, and his Mémoires, constitute the trip-
tych of his thoughts on history.53 In Dimensions, Aron asks himself, on the one
hand, about the difficulty of judging one’s own epoch, and on the other hand,
about the relation between historical knowledge and human action. Regarding
the former, Aron reaffirmed the historian’s liberty, in particular with the present
that is both plural and restrictive. This is reflected to a certain extent in the latter
aspect: the uncertainty, unpredictability, and element of surprise that restores the
politician’s freedom to act. Nevertheless, this was a cause of regret for Aron and
he would express it in his Mémoires: “Are we prisoners of a system of beliefs that
we internalize since a very early age and that governs our distinction between
good and evil?”54
The last chapter of Dimensions, “L’Aube de l’histoire universelle,” the Third
Herbert Samuel Lecture delivered on February 18, 1960, announced a proj-
ect never realized: a History of the World since 1914, in which Aron wanted
“to convey to the reader the twofold feeling of human action and necessity, of
drama and process, of history as usual and the originality of industrial society.”55
The movement toward the unification of the world, “based solely on material,
technical, or economic factors,”56 led him to contemplate the divisions, “schism
between the communist world and the free world,” “rivalry for power and ideo-
logical competition,” “inequality of development,” and “diversity of customs
and beliefs,” this last type of division appearing more problematic to resolve: “we
288 CH R I ST I A N BACH E LI E R

will have to build a spiritual community—as the superstructure, or the founda-

tion, of the material community now arising from the scientific, technical, and
economic unity imposed by historical destiny on a mankind more conscious of
its confl icts than of its solidarity.”57 This future, reflected by probabilism, rein-
troduces human responsibility, but also the choice of what Aron called practical-
theoretical engagement for liberty, democracy,58 and progress.59
With a long quotation of Rousseau describing the state of nature, Raymond
Aron introduced the eighth edition (published posthumously in 1984) of his
strategic masterpiece published in 1962, Paix et guerre entre les nations, the product
of decades of thinking and commentaries on international politics day after day.
Although the analysis carried out in the section “Histoire. Le système plané-
taire à l’âge thermonucléaire” was the study of a singular historical combination
“according to an einmalig and einzigartig, unique in time and unique in its particu-
larities, view,” this History shed light on some durable facts from the atomic era:
“Deterrence, persuasion and subversion, these three words evoke three of the
main aspects of this combination: the nuclear weapon, the rivalry between pro-
pagandas, and the revolt of the masses or of the minorities.”60 The fi nal section,
“Praxéologie,” deals with the essence of relations among states, “the Machiavellian
problem and the Kantian problem: one being the problem of legitimate means, the
other being the problem of universal peace.”61
The system of antinomies62 was resumed in Les Désillusions du progrès, with the
dialectics of equality, socialization, and universality: “Men have never known
the history they were making, nor do they know it today . . . History remains
human, dramatic, and consequently, in certain aspects, irrational . . . By what
miracle could science and technology, both cursed by J.-J. Rousseau, bring man-
kind back to innocence and peace, to the warm ties of those small and close
communities of which the ethnologists claim to perceive the faint presence at the
origins of the Neolithic?”63
Aron pursued his thoughts on history in the Gifford Lectures in 1965 and
1967, as well as in his courses at the Collège de France between 1972 and 1974,64
and also in his historical works, Penser la guerre, Clausewitz,65 République impériale,
les États-Unis dans le monde 1945–1972, and Plaidoyer pour l’Europe décadente. There
was a continuous dialectic between his thought on history and his historian’s
work. Thus, République impériale was followed by a “methodological postface,”
“Récit, analyse, interprétation, explication, critique: de quelques problèmes de la
connaissance historique”: “I do not claim, of course, to have attained impartial-
ity, but I do claim that impartiality comes from the method whose stages I have
delineated in order that they should not be confused—narrative, analysis, inter-
pretation, explanation, and critique.”66 As Pierre Manent noted, “in a certain
sense, Raymond Aron never stopped working out his thesis dissertation on the
‘limits of historical objectivity’ in the most difficult way: by interpreting history
in the making day after day.”67
In December 1981, when a state of emergency had just been decreed by
the communist power in Poland in the wake of workers unrest, Aron evoked
Spinoza’s famous sentence extract from the fi rst chapter of his Political Treatise—“I
have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor hate them,
 EPILOGU E 289

but to understand them”—and wrote: “Valid for a philosophical treatise, this

imperative is not applicable to the commentary of such a recent event, still full
of the misfortune that suddenly strikes a people and still full of the resentment
felt by the powerless spectators. Protests and demonstrations come from the heart
and, despite everything, they exert a certain influence on what happens there, in
a country separated from the outside world, in which man can no longer speak
to man because telephone communications have been cut off and travel is strictly
controlled. This said, one must not forget Spinoza’s maxim: understand.”68
In his 1938 dissertation, Aron was distrustful of history of the immediate past.
His fi nal note, November 1945, in one of his selections of chronicles of the war,
De l’Armistice à l’insurrection nationale, began by affirming that “there is no history
of the present. The contemporary observer is lacking not so much—as it is usu-
ally said—in impartiality or distance, but the knowledge of what constitutes the
true sense of events: the aftermaths. By re-reading the chronicles of the recent
past, we feel more than once tempted to match our opinions expressed on the
spur of the moment against our current views, now enriched with all the expe-
rience of the actual future.” Yet he thought that “on the other hand, it is not
useless to resume, coldly and sine studio et ira, the investigation of what happened
between June 1940 and November 1942, the two moments where the fatal deci-
sions were taken. Maybe this investigation will lead us to give a different shade
to our opinions. In any case, it will help us to become aware of the legacy of
those last four years—a legacy we must assume and overcome altogether.” In his
Mémoires, Aron concluded that he would with pleasure erase from his dissertation
“the sentence that seems to condemn the history of the present”: “there is nowa-
days a genre that we might name immediate history or history of the present,
whose right to exist I do not refuse, although it constitutes, to a certain extent,
the subject for a future historian.”69
All through Aron’s works, there is a constant question: how does one under-
stand the links between human action and history?70 In particular, his later books,
Le Spectateur engagé and obviously his Mémoires, return to the link between the
problems of historical knowledge and the problems of existence in history. The
link between self-knowledge and historical knowledge is thus especially appar-
ent in his Mémoires: “Living in history” is what Aron wrote above the provi-
sional title of his Mémoires, “Mémoires d’un Français juif,” from the rough draft.
Already in 1979, in the draft of the introduction to an unpublished work (now
published posthumously) that was supposed to continue Histoire et Dialectique de
la violence, Aron evoked his dissertation and emphasized the significance of “the
movement from the knowledge of oneself to historical knowledge and to the
existential conditions of the political decision”:

“The Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire could have been entitled Introduction à la

pensée politique or à la pensée historique . . . The essential, for my part, was and remains
always the process from the knowledge of the self to the knowledge of history and
the existential conditions of the political decision. Everyone internalizes the values
with which he judges the environment that has formed his being. How, over the
course of all these happy and anxious years, could I have ignored that each political
290 CH R I ST I A N BACH E LI E R

decision is based, consciously or not, on an interpretation of man and of his future?

And the critique—Kantian-inspired critique—reminded me, in a merciless man-
ner, of the limitations of knowledge of history in the making.” 71

Notes
1. Raymond Aron au Collège de France, documentary film directed by Alexandre
Astruc, FR3 (3rd French TV channel), October 30, 1977, transcription in
Raymond Aron, “Autoportrait,” Commentaire, no. 116, Winter 2006–2007, 904.
2. See Jean-François Sirinelli, Génération intellectuelle. Khâgneux et normaliens dans
l’entre-deux-guerres, Paris, Fayard, 1988.
3. Georges Canguilhem, “La problématique de la philosophie de l’histoire au début
des années 30,” in Alain Boyer, et al., Raymond Aron, La Philosophie de l’histoire et
les sciences sociales, Paris, Éditions de la Rue d’Ulm, 1999.
4. Raymond Aron au Collège de France, 904.
5. See Christian Malis, Raymond Aron et le débat stratégique 1930–1966, Paris,
Economica, 2005, 36ff.
6. Jean-Paul Sartre, Carnets de la drôle de guerre, augmented edition, Paris, Gallimard,
1995, 273.
7. Sartre, un film réalisé par Alexandre Astruc et Michel Contat, Paris, Gallimard, 1977,
44–45.
8. Raymond Aron, “De l’existence historique” (1979), manuscript published in
Cahiers de philosophie politique et juridique, no. 15, La politique historique de Raymond
Aron, 1989, 147.
9. Raymond Aron au Collège de France, loc. cit., 904.
10. Raymond Aron, Mémoires. 50 ans de réflexion politique, Paris, Julliard, 1983, com-
plete edition, Robert Laffont, 2010, 86.
11. Aron, “De l’existence historique,” 148.
12. Raymond Aron, Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire: Essai sur les limites de
l’objectivité historique, Paris, Gallimard, 1938, 331.
13. Ibid.
14. Aron, Mémoires, 105.
15. See Nicolas Baverez, Raymond Aron: un moraliste au temps des idéologies, Paris,
Flammarion, 1993, revised edition, 2005, 80; Philippe Raynaud, “Raymond
Aron et Max Weber. Épistémologie des sciences sociales et rationalisme critique,”
Commentaire, no. 28–29, Winter 1984–1985, 213–221.
16. See Raymond Aron, La Sociologie allemande contemporaine, Paris, Alcan, 1935,
197ff.
17. Raymond Aron, “The Philosophy of History,”Chambers’s Encyclopædia, London
and Edinburgh, 1950, 150–155.
18. Raymond Aron, Essai sur la théorie de l’histoire dans l’Allemagne contemporaine. La
philosophie critique de l’histoire, Paris, Vrin, 1938, new edition, Le Seuil, 1991,
290–291.
19. Bernard Groethuysen, “Une philosophie critique de l’histoire,” La Nouvelle Revue
française, no. 313, October 1, 1939, 623–629.
20. Aron, La Sociologie allemande contemporaine, 123–133.
21. See Raymond Aron, “L’Ère des tyrannies d’Élie Halévy,” Revue de métaphysique et
de morale, May 1939, 283–307.
22. Aron, “De l’existence historique,” 148.
 EPILOGU E 291

23. Raymond Aron, Foreword to Vilfredo Pareto, Théorie de la Sociologie générale

(Œuvres complètes, volume 12), Genève, Droz, 1968.
24. Aron, “De l’existence historique,” 150.
25. Raymond Aron, Le Spectateur engagé, conversations with Jean-Louis Missika and
Dominique Wolton, Paris, Julliard, 1981, 226.
26. Georges Friedmann, Journal de guerre, Paris, Gallimard, 1988, 93, 97.
27. Paul Nizan, Chronique de Septembre, Paris, Gallimard, 1939, new edition, 1978,
193.
28. Aron, “De l’existence historique,” 152.
29. Raymond Aron, “Jean Cavaillès,” Le Monde, July 12, 1945.
30. See Malis, Raymond Aron et le débat stratégique, 69ff.
31. Raymond Aron, Paix et guerre entre les nations, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1962; 8th
edition, 1984, 202–228.
32. Raymond Aron, “L’Avenir des religions séculières [I],” La France libre, June 1944,
and Ibid. [II], July 1944.
33. Raymond Aron, “La France peut-elle avoir une politique étrangère?” Combat,
January 25, 1947.
34. Raymond Aron, “Une autre Allemagne,” Combat, February 7, 1947.
35. Raymond Aron, “Discours aux étudiants allemands,” Preuves, no. 18–19, August
1952, 9–11.
36. Aron, Mémoires, 267.
37. Raymond Aron, Le Grand Schisme, Paris, Gallimard, 1948, 318–319.
38. Raymond Aron au Collège de France, loc. cit, 37.
39. See Pierre Hassner, “L’histoire du XXe siècle,” Commentaire, no. 28–29, Winter
1984–1985, 226–233.
40. See Joël Mouric, Raymond Aron et l’Europe, Rennes, Presses universitaires de
Rennes, 2013, 186–198.
41. Raymond Aron, Les Guerres en chaîne, Paris, Gallimard, 1951, 415.
42. Ibid., 8–9
43. Ibid., 111–112.
44. Raymond Aron, L’Opium des intellectuels, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1955, 9.
45. Ibid., 107–108.
46. Ibid., 116.
47. Ibid., 334.
48. Raymond Aron, “Une Révolution antitotalitaire,” in Melvin Laski and François
Bondy (eds.), La Révolution hongroise: histoire du soulèvement d’Octobre, Paris, Plon,
1956, I–XIV.
49. Raymond Aron, “Budapest 1956: destin d’une révolution,” Preuves, no. 188,
October 1966, 3–10.
50. Raymond Aron, La Tragédie algérienne, Paris, Plon, 1957.
51. Raymond Aron, Introduction to Max Weber, Le Savant et le politique, Paris, Plon,
1959, 24.
52. Raymond Aron, Dimensions de la conscience historique, Paris, Plon, 1961, 1.
53. See Perrine Simon-Nahum, “Dimensions de la conscience historique, la réconciliation
du savant et du politique,” in Serge Audier, Marc Olivier Baruch, and Perrine
Simon-Nahum (eds.), Aron, philosophe dans l’histoire: armer la sagesse, Paris, Éditions
de Fallois, 2008, 155–167.
54. Aron, Mémoires, 980.
55. Aron, Dimensions de la conscience historique, 272.
56. Ibid., 289.
292 CH R I ST I A N BACH E LI E R

57. Ibid., 292.

58. See Daniel J. Mahoney, The Liberal Political Science of Raymond Aron: A Critical
Introduction, Lanham, MD, Rowman & Littlefield, 1992.
59. See Sylvie Mesure, Raymond Aron et la raison historique, Paris, Vrin, 1984.
60. Aron, Mémoires, 588.
61. Aron, Paix et guerre entre les nations, 565.
62. See Stephen Launay, La Pensée politique de Raymond Aron, Paris, Presses universi-
taires de France, 1995, 237ff.
63. Raymond Aron, Les Désillusions du progrès. Essai sur la dialectique de la modernité,
Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1969, 294.
64. Raymond Aron, Leçons sur l’histoire: cours du Collège de France, ed. Sylvie Mesure,
Paris, Éditions de Fallois, 1989.
65. See Launay, La Pensée politique de Raymond Aron, 155ff.
66. Raymond Aron, “Récit, analyse, interprétation, explication, critique: de quelques
problèmes de la connaissance historique,” Annales ESC, vol. XV, no. 2, 1974,
206–242.
67. Pierre Manent, “Raymond Aron éducateur,” Commentaire, no. 28–29, Winter
1984–1985, 155–168.
68. Raymond Aron, “La junte communiste,” L’Express, December 18–23, 1981.
69. Aron, Mémoires, 174.
70. Pierre Manent, “Aron et l’histoire,” in Serge Audier, Marc Olivier Baruch, and
Perrine Simon-Nahum (eds.), Raymond Aron, philosophe dans l’histoire: armer la
sagesse, Paris, Éditions de Fallois, 2008, 127–132.
71. Aron, “De l’existence historique,” 148.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL GUIDE

Elisabeth Dutartre-Michaut

The complete bibliography of works by and about Raymond Aron is available on the
website dedicated to Raymond Aron: http://raymond-aron.ehess.fr. So the proposed ref-
erences below are just a bibliographical guide. When there is an American translation of
a book by Raymond Aron, it appears under the original title.

Books of Raymond Aron

* La Sociologie allemande contemporaine, Paris, Alcan, 1935; new edition Paris, Presses uni-
versitaires de France, “Quadrige,” 1981.
German Sociology, Westport (CT), Greenwood Press, 1982.
* Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire: Essai sur les limites de l’objectivité historique, Paris,
Gallimard, “Bibliothèque des Idées,” 1938; new edition Paris, Gallimard, “Bibliothèque
des Sciences humaines,” 1986; reissue Paris, Gallimard, “Tel,” 1991.
Introduction to the Philosophy of History: An Essay on the Limits of Historical Objectivity,
Westport (CT), Greenwood Press, 1976.
* Essai sur la théorie de l’histoire dans l’Allemagne contemporaine. La philosophie critique de
l’histoire, Paris, Vrin, 1938; new edition in La Philosophie critique de l’histoire, Paris, Julliard,
1987; reissue Paris, Seuil, “Points Essais,” 1991.
* L’Homme contre les tyrans, New York, Éditions de la Maison française, 1944; Paris,
Gallimard, 1945; new edition in Chroniques de guerre: La France libre 1940–1945, Paris,
Gallimard, 1990.
* De l’Armistice à l’insurrection nationale, Paris, Gallimard, “Problèmes et documents,” 1945;
new edition in Chroniques de guerre: La France libre 1940–1945, Paris, Gallimard, 1990.
* L’Âge des empires et l’avenir de la France, Paris, Défense de la France, 1945; new edition in
Chroniques de guerre: La France libre 1940–1945, Paris, Gallimard, 1990.
* Les Français devant la Constitution (with Francis Clairens), Paris, Éditions Défense de la
France, 1946.
* Le Grand Schisme, Paris, Gallimard, 1948.
* Les Guerres en chaîne, Paris, Gallimard, 1951.
The Century of Total War, Lanham (MD), University Press of America, 1985.
294 BI BLIOGR A PHICA L GUIDE

* La Coexistence pacifique, essai d’analyse (under the pseudonym of François Houtisse),

Paris, Éditions Monde nouveau, 1953.
* L’Opium des Intellectuels, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, “Liberté de l’esprit,” 1955; reissue Paris,
Hachette, “Pluriel,” 2010.
The Opium of the Intellectuals, New Brunswick (NJ), Transaction Publishers, 2001 (with a
new introduction by Harvey Mansfield and a foreword by Daniel J. Mahoney and Brian
C. Anderson).
* Polémiques, Paris, Gallimard, “Les Essais LXXI,” 1955.
* La Querelle de la C.E.D. (with Daniel Lerner), Paris, A. Colin, 1956.
* Espoir et peur du siècle. Essais non partisans, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, “Liberté de l’esprit,”
1957.
On War: Atomic Weapons and Global Diplomacy, 1st edition, New York, Doubleday, 1959;
New York, Norton, 1968 with a new foreword.
* La Tragédie algérienne, Paris, Plon, “Tribune libre,” 1957.
* L’Algérie et la République, Paris, Plon, “Tribune libre,” 1958.
* War and Industrial Society, Wesport (CT), Greenwood Press, 1980.
* Immuable et changeante, de la IV e à la V e République, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, “Liberté de
l’esprit,” 1959.
France Steadfast and Changing: The Fourth to the Fifth Republic, Cambridge (MA), Harvard
University Press, 1960.
* La Société industrielle et la guerre, suivi d’un Tableau de la diplomatie mondiale en 1958, Paris,
Plon, 1959.
* France: The New Republic, New York, Oceana Publications, 1960.
* Dimensions de la conscience historique, Paris, Plon, “Recherches en sciences humaines,”
1961; new edition Paris, Les Belles Lettres, “Le goût des idées,” 2011.
* The Dawn of Universal History, New York, Praeger, 1961.
* Paix et guerre entre les nations, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1962; new edition Paris, Calmann-
Lévy, “Liberté de l’esprit,” 2001.
Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations, New Brunswick (NJ), Transaction
Publishers, 2003 (with a new introduction by Daniel J. Mahoney and Brian C.
Anderson).
* Dix-Huit Leçons sur la société industrielle, Paris, Gallimard, “Idées,” 1962; reissue Paris,
Gallimard, “Folio Essais,” 1988; reproduced in Penser la liberté, penser la démocratie, Paris,
Gallimard, “Quarto,” 2005.
* Le Grand Débat: Initiation à la stratégie atomique, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1963.
The Great Debate: Theories of Nuclear Strategy, Lanham (MD), University Press of America,
1985.
* La Lutte de classes: Nouvelles leçons sur les sociétés industrielles, Paris, Gallimard, “Idées,”
1964; reissue Paris, Gallimard, 1981; reproduced in Penser la liberté, penser la démocratie,
Paris, Gallimard, “Quarto,” 2005.
* Démocratie et totalitarisme, Paris, Gallimard, “Idées,” 1965; reissue Paris, Gallimard,
“Folio Essais,” 2007; reproduced in Penser la liberté, penser la démocratie, Paris, Gallimard,
“Quarto,” 2005.
 BI BLIOGR A PHICA L GUIDE 295

Democracy and Totalitarianism, New York, Praeger, 1969.

* Essai sur les libertés, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, “Liberté de l’esprit.” 1965; new edition Paris,
Hachette, “Pluriel,” 2005.
An Essay on Freedom, New York, World Publisher, 1970.
* Trois Essais sur l’âge industriel, Paris, Plon, “Preuves,” 1966.
* Les Étapes de la pensée sociologique, Paris, Gallimard, “Bibliothèque des Sciences
Humaines,” 1967; reissue Paris, Gallimard, “Tel,” 2008.
Main Currents of Sociological Thought, New Brunswick (NJ), Transaction Publishers, 1998
(with a new introduction by Daniel J. Mahoney and Brian Anderson and a foreword by
Pierre Manent).
* De Gaulle, Israël et les Juifs, Paris, Plon, “Tribune libre,” 1968; reproduced in Essais sur
la condition juive contemporaine, Paris, Editions de Fallois, 1989.
De Gaulle, Israël and the Jews, New Brunswick (NJ), Transaction Publishers, 2004 (with a
new introduction by Michael Curtis).
* La Révolution introuvable, réflexions sur les événements de mai, Paris, Fayard, “En toute
liberté,” 1968.
The Elusive Revolution: Anatomy of a Student Revolt, New York, Praeger, 1969.
* Les Désillusions du progrès. Essai sur la dialectique de la modernité, Paris, Calmann-Lévy,
“Liberté de l’esprit,” 1969; reissue Paris, Gallimard, “Tel,” 1996; reproduced in Penser la
liberté, penser la démocratie, Paris, Gallimard, “Quarto,” 2005.
Progress and Disillusion: The Dialectics of Modern Society, New York, Praeger, 1968.
* D’une Sainte Famille à l’autre. Essai sur les marxismes imaginaires, Paris, Gallimard, “Les
Essais,” 1969; new edition Paris, Gallimard, “Folio Essais,” 1998.
Marxism and the Existentialists, NewYork, Simon and Schuster, “Clarion Book,” 1970.
* De la condition historique du sociologue, Paris, Gallimard, 1971; reissue Paris, Gallimard,
1983; reproduced in Les Sociétés modernes, Paris, Presses universitaires de France,
“Quadrige/Grands Textes,” 2006.
* Études politiques, Paris, Gallimard, “Bibliothèque des Sciences Humaines,” 1972.
* Histoire et dialectique de la violence, Paris, Gallimard, “Les Essais CLXXXI,” 1973.
History and the Dialectic of Violence: An Analysis of Sartre’s “Critique de la Raison Dialectique,”
New York, Harper and Row, “Harper Torchbooks,” 1975.
* République impériale: Les États-Unis dans le monde 1945–1972, Paris, Calmann-Lévy,
1973.
The Imperial Republic: The United States and the World 1945–1973, New Brunswick (NJ),
Transaction Publishers, 2009 (with a new introduction by Irving Louis Horowitz).
* Penser la guerre, Clausewitz, Tome I, L’Âge européen, Tome II, L’Âge planétaire, Paris,
Gallimard, “Bibliothèque des Sciences Humaines,” 1976; reissue Paris, Gallimard, 1989
(I) and 1995 (II).
Clausewitz: Philosopher of War, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1986.
* Plaidoyer pour l’Europe décadente, Paris, Laffont, 1977; new edition Paris, Librairie
générale française, “Le Livre de poche,” 1978.
In Defense of Decadent Europe, New Brunswick (NJ), Transaction Publishers, 1996 (with a
new introduction by Daniel J. Mahoney et Brian C. Anderson).
296 BI BLIOGR A PHICA L GUIDE

* Les Élections de mars et la Ve République, Paris, Julliard, 1978.

* Politics and History, New York, Free Press, 1978; New Brunswick (NJ), Transaction
Books, 1984 (with a new introduction by Michael A. Ledeen).
* Le Spectateur engagé. Entretiens avec Jean-Louis Missika et Dominique Wolton, Paris,
Julliard,1981; reissue Paris, Le Livre de poche, “Références. Sciences sociales,” 2005.
Thinking Politically: A Liberal in the Age of Ideology, New Brunswick (NJ), Transaction
Publishers, 1997 (with a new introduction by Daniel J. Mahoney and Brian C.
Anderson).
* Mémoires. 50 ans de réflexion politique, Paris, Julliard, 1983; reissue Paris, Julliard, 1993;
new edition Paris, Robert Laffont, “Bouquins,” 2010.
Memoirs: Fifty Years of Political Reflection [abridged version], New York, Holmes and Meier,
1990 (with a foreword by Henry A. Kissinger).

Posthumous Works
* Les Dernières Années du siècle, Paris, Julliard, “Commentaire,” 1984.
* History, Truth, Liberty, Selected Writings of Raymond Aron, Chicago, University of Chicago
Press, 1985 (with a memoir of Edward Shils).
* Sur Clausewitz, Bruxelles, Complexe, “Historiques,” 1987; reissue Bruxelles, Complexe,
2005.
* Études sociologiques, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, “Sociologies,” 1988.
* Essais sur la condition juive contemporaine, Paris, Éditions de Fallois, 1989.
* Leçons sur l’histoire: cours du Collège de France, Paris, Éditions de Fallois, 1989; reissue
Paris, Le Livre de Poche, “Références Histoire,” 2007.
* Chroniques de guerre: La France libre 1940–1945, Paris, Gallimard, 1990.
* Les Articles du Figaro, t. I: La Guerre froide 1947–1955, Paris, Éditions de Fallois, 1990.
* Les Articles du Figaro, t. II: La Coexistence 1955–1965, Paris, Éditions de Fallois, 1994.
* Les Articles du Figaro, t. III: Les Crises 1965–1977, Paris, Éditions de Fallois, 1997.
* Machiavel et les tyrannies modernes, Paris, Éditions de Fallois, 1993; reissue Paris, Le Livre
de Poche, “Biblio Essais,” 1995.
* Une histoire du XX e siècle, Paris, Plon, 1996; reissue Paris, Perrin, “Tempus,” 2012.
* Introduction à la philosophie politique: démocratie et révolution, Paris, Le Livre de Poche,
“Références. Inédit sciences sociales,” 1997.
* Le Marxisme de Marx, Paris, Éditions de Fallois, 2002; reissue Paris, Le Livre de poche,
“Références. Histoire,” 2004.
* De Giscard à Mitterrand 1977–1983, Paris, Éditions de Fallois, 2005.
* Penser la liberté, penser la démocratie, Paris, Gallimard, “Quarto,” 2005.
* Les Sociétés modernes, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, “Quadrige/Grands Textes,”
2006.
* Liberté et égalité: cours au Collège de France, Paris, Éditions de l’École des hautes études en
sciences sociales, “Audiographie,” 2013.
 BI BLIOGR A PHICA L GUIDE 297

Selection of Books about Raymond Aron

* Science et conscience de la société. Mélanges en l’honneur de Raymond Aron, Paris, Calmann-
Lévy, 1976.
* Raymond Aron (1905–1983): Histoire et politique, Commentaire, vol. 8, no. 28–29, February
1985.
* Anderson, Brian, Raymond Aron: The Recovery of the Political, Lanham (MD), Rowman
and Littlefied, 1997.
* Audier, Serge, Raymond Aron: la démocratie conflictuelle, Paris, Michalon, 2004.
* Audier, Serge, Marc Olivier Baruch, and Perrine Simon-Nahum (eds.), Raymond Aron,
philosophe dans l’histoire: armer la sagesse: actes des colloques scientifiques “Raymond Aron, genèse
et actualité d’une pensée politique,” École normale supérieure, Paris, 25–26 novembre 2005 et
“Raymond Aron et l’histoire,” École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris, 7–8 décembre
2005, Paris, Éditions de Fallois, 2008.
* Bachelier, Christian, Raymond Aron, Paris, CulturesFrance Éditions, 2006.
* Bachelier, Christian and Elisabeth Dutartre (eds.), Raymond Aron et la liberté politique:
actes du colloque international de Budapest tenu les 6 et 7 octobre 2000, Paris, Éditions de
Fallois, 2002.
* Barilier, Étienne, Les Petits Camarades: essai sur Jean-Paul Sartre et Raymond Aron, Paris,
Julliard, L’Age d’homme, 1987.
* Baverez, Nicolas, Raymond Aron: un moraliste au temps des idéologies, Paris, Flammarion,
1993; new edition Paris, Flammarion, “Grandes biographies,” 2005; reissue Paris, Perrin,
“Tempus,” 2006.
* Baverez, Nicolas, Raymond Aron, Qui suis-je?, Lyon, La Manufacture, 1986.
* Bevc, Tobias and Matthias Oppermann (eds.), Der souveräne Nationalstaat. Das politische
Denken Raymond Arons, Stuttgart, F. Steiner, 2012.
* Bonfreschi, Lucia, Raymond Aron e il gollismo 1940–1969, Soveria Mannelli, Rubbettino,
2014.
* Boyer, Alain et al., Raymond Aron, La philosophie de l’histoire et les sciences sociales, Paris,
Éditions rue d’Ulm, 1st edition, 1999; 2nd edition, 2005.
* Camardi, Giovanni, Individuo e storia: saggio su Raymond Aron, Naples, Morano Editore,
1990.
* Campi, Alessandro (ed.), Pensare la politica: saggi su Raymond Aron, Rome, Idezione
Editrice, 2005.
* Colen, José, Futuro do politico, passado do historiador. O “historicismo” o pensamento de
Raymond Aron e outros adversários: Leo Strauss, Isaiah Berlin, Friedrich Hayeck e Karl Popper,
Lisboa, Moinho Velho—Loja de edição, Lda, 2010.
* Colen, José, Facts and Values: A Conversation between Raymond Aron, Leo Strauss, Isaiah
Berlin and Others, London, Plusprint, 2011.
* Colen, José, Introdução à filosofia da história de Raymond Aron, Lisbonne, Aster, 2011.
* Colen, José, Short Guide to the Introduction to the Philosophy of History of Raymond Aron,
Vienna, Epigramm; Lisboa, Aster, 2013.
* Colquhoun, Robert, Raymond Aron. Vol. 1: The Philosopher in History (1905–1955), Vol
2: The Sociologist in Society (1955–1983), London, Sage, 1986.
298 BI BLIOGR A PHICA L GUIDE

* Davis, Reed M., A Politics of Understanding: The International Thought of Raymond Aron,
Baton Rouge, LSU Press, 2009.
* De Ligio, Giulio, La Tristezza del pensatore politico: Raymond Aron e il primato del politico,
Bologna, 2007.
* De Ligio, Giulio (ed.), Raymond Aron, penseur de l’Europe et de la nation, Bruxelles, Peter
Lang, 2012.
* Dobek, Rafał, Raymond Aron: Dialog z histori ą i polityk ą, Pozna ń, Wydawnictwo
Pozna ń skie, 2005.
* Dutartre, Élisabeth, Fonds Raymond Aron: inventaire, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de
France, École des hautes études en sciences sociales, 2007.
* Dutartre, Élisabeth (ed.), La Démocratie au XXIe siècle. Centenaire de la naissance de Raymond
Aron: colloque international de Paris tenu les 11 et 12 mars 2005 à l’École des hautes études en
sciences sociales, Paris, Éditions de Fallois, 2007.
* Fessard, Gaston, La Philosophie historique de Raymond Aron, Paris, Julliard, 1980.
* Guibernau i Berdún, Maria Montserrat, El Pensament sociològic de Raymond Aron, Moià,
Raima, 1988.
* Holeindre, Jean-Vincent (ed.), “Raymond Aron et les relations internationales. 50 ans après
Paix et guerre entre les nations,” Etudes internationales (Université Laval, Québec), vol. 43,
no. 3, September 2012, 319–457.
* Judt, Tony, The Burden of Responsibility: Blum, Camus, Aron and the French Twentieth
Century, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1998.
* Lapparent, Olivier de, Raymond Aron et l’Europe. Itinéraire d’un Européen dans le siècle,
Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Peter Lang, 2010.
* Lassalle, José Maria (ed.), Raymond Aron: un liberal resistente, Madrid, FAES, 2005.
* Launay, Stephen, La Pensée politique de R. Aron, Paris, Presses universitaires de France,
1995.
* Mahoney, Daniel, The Liberal Political Science of Raymond Aron: A Critical Introduction,
Lanham (MD), Rowman and Littlefield, 1992.
* Mahoney, Daniel and Bryan-Paul Frost (eds.), Political Reason in the Age of Ideology:
Essays in Honor of Raymond Aron, New Brunswick (NJ), Transaction Publishers, 2007.
* Malis, Christian, Raymond Aron et le débat stratégique français 1930–1966, Paris,
Économica, 2005.
* Mesure, Sylvie, Raymond Aron et la raison historique, Paris, Vrin, 1984.
* Molina Cano, Jerónimo, Raymond Aron, realista político. Del maquiavelismo a la crítica de
las religiones seculares, Madrid, Ediciones Sequitur, 2013.
* Mouric, Joël, Raymond Aron et l’Europe, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes,
2013.
* Novák, Miroslav, Mezi demokracií a totalitarismem. Aronova politická sociologie industriálních
spole čnosti 20. stoleti, Brno, Masarykova univerzita, 2007.
* Oppermann, Matthias, Raymond Aron und Deutschland. Die erteidigung der Freiheit und das
Problem des Totalitarismus, Ostfildern, J. Thorbecke, 2008.
* Piquemal, Alain, Raymond Aron et l’ordre international, Paris, Albatros, 1978.
 BI BLIOGR A PHICA L GUIDE 299

* Sirinelli, Jean-François, Deux intellectuels dans le siècle: Sartre et Aron, Paris, Fayard,
1995.
* Stark, Joachim, Das unvollendete Abenteuer: Geschichte, Gesellschaft und Politik im Werk
Raymond Arons, Würzburg, Königshausen und Neumann, 1986.
* Van Velthoven, Paul, Het verantwoorde engagement: filosofie en politiek bij Raymond Aron,
Stesterberg, Uitgeverij Aspekt, 2005.
* Zuniga, Luis R., Raymond Aron y la sociedad industrial, Madrid, Instituto de la opinion
publica, 1973.
INDEX

Alain, 3, 5, 21, 32, 78, 240, 275–6, Cavaillès, Jean, 4, 275, 281
279–81 Chaliand, Gérard, 29
Alainism, 278, 281 Churchill, Winston, 50, 79, 139
Althusser, Louis, 7, 192, 220, 221, 223 Cicero, 150, 160
America. See United States Clausewitz, Carl von, 4, 9, 17, 20, 24–6,
antinomy, 64, 66, 199, 207, 208, 210, 232, 29, 46, 61, 64, 67, 77–90, 107, 115–16,
241, 257, 263, 277, 278, 284, 288 195, 205, 211, 278, 281
Arendt, Hannah, 45, 126 Clausewitzian, 25, 61, 64, 79, 80, 82, 84,
Aristotelian, 31, 41, 122, 124, 128, 154, 281
160 Cold War, 3, 4, 6, 8–10, 12, 16–17, 22–3,
Aristotle, 20, 37, 41, 68, 122–3, 126, 128, 25–6, 38, 40–1, 45–9, 51–3, 60–2,
131–2, 150, 160, 194–5, 197, 198, 250, 65–6, 74, 78–81, 85, 91, 93–6, 103,
266 105, 108, 113, 129, 177, 184–5, 187,
225, 285
Baehr, Peter, 145 communism, 4–6, 22, 28, 38–9, 45, 49,
Baldwin, Hanson W., 79 53–4, 61, 79, 92, 95–6, 112, 140–1,
Baron, Hans, 150, 159 143, 145, 151, 177, 238–9, 264–6, 272,
Bell, Daniel, 266 275, 280, 285
Berlin, Isaiah, 214 Comte, August, 53, 122, 125, 262, 265,
Bernanos, Georges, 139 269
Besançon, Alain, 142–5 Constant, Benjamin, 3, 262, 268
Bismarck, Otto von, 208 constitutional-pluralist regime, 37, 102,
Bonald, Louis de, 246 103, 127, 132, 141, 142, 145, 158, 159,
Bouglé, Célestin, 3, 106, 107 252, 254, 256, 257, 287
Bouthoul, Gaston, 70 Cunhal, Alvaro, 92
Britain, 47, 49, 51, 52, 171, 173, 186
Brossollet, Guy, 27 Dahl, Robert, 103, 149
Brunschvicg, Léon, 3, 5, 21, 106, 197, 280 de Gaulle, Charles, 3, 5, 6, 9, 22, 38, 271,
Bruun, Hans Henrik, 208 280, 281, 283
Bülow, Heinrich von, 82 de Man, Hendrik, 178–9
Burke, Edmund, 37, 41 de Staël, Germaine, 268
Burkean, 31, 37, 41 Déat, Marcel, 178–9
Burnham, James, 45, 152–5, 158–60, 193, Delbrück, Hans, 78–81, 83–4, 87, 281,
241 282, 284
Dilthey, Wilhelm, 20, 115, 278
Canguilhem, Georges, 106, 197, 275, 281 Durieux, Benoît, 85
Carcassonne, Élie, 250 Durkheim, Émile, 122, 205, 245, 259,
Castro, Fidel, 84, 92 262
302 IN DEX

Engels, Friedrich, 169, 222 Hitler, Adolf, 4, 22, 25, 32–9, 44, 48, 49,
ethic/ethics, 36, 121, 130, 139–41, 191, 61, 77, 79, 83–5, 105, 137–9, 151, 231,
193, 194–5, 206–8, 210, 212–13, 220, 241, 276, 281, 283
235, 239, 276–8, 282 Hitlerian/Hitlerism/Hitlerite/
Hitlerization, 3, 35, 38, 41, 42, 139,
Fessard, Father Gaston, 35 141
Fest, Joachim, 38 Hobbes, Thomas, 21, 150
Fourastié, Jean, 171 Hoffmann, Stanley, 60, 73, 262
France, 4–7, 9, 12, 16, 22–4, 28, 31–6, Husserl, Edmund, 5, 205, 276
38, 40, 42, 47, 49, 50–2, 61, 68, 80,
82, 86, 92, 94, 103, 105, 108, 113, international relations, 2, 7, 8, 11, 16, 17,
120, 125, 138, 149, 152–3, 166, 173–4, 19–23, 27, 35, 40, 46, 51, 59–61, 65,
178, 182–4, 186–7, 192, 221, 228, 67–70, 72, 81, 96, 105, 107–8, 110,
231, 234, 243, 262, 270–1, 276, 279, 113–14, 191, 209, 263, 268, 284–5
283–4
Frederick the Great, 83 Jew/Jewish, 5, 6, 27, 32, 61, 86, 105, 139,
Friedmann, Georges, 275, 280 214, 262
Furet, François, 4, 9 Jouvenel, Bertrand de, 7, 275

Galbraith, John Kenneth, 171–2 Kant, Immanuel, 10, 20, 21, 40, 193,
Gallois, Pierre Marie, 85 197–203, 226, 276
Gellner, Ernest, 94, 98 Kantian/Kantianism, 17, 21, 66, 121, 139,
Germany, 4–5, 16, 20–1, 31–4, 37–8, 47, 193, 197–9, 201, 205, 213, 214, 288,
49–51, 61, 68, 77–9, 83–5, 94, 131, 290
137–8, 179, 187, 197, 205, 208–10, 221, Kennan, George, 46, 49, 56, 96, 99
231, 240, 262, 276, 278, 283–4 Keynes, John Maynard, 32
Girard, René, 85 Keynesian, 11, 180, 183
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 96 Khrushchev, Nikita, 52
Gordon, Thomas, 161 Kissinger, Henry, 1, 4, 21, 46, 60, 80, 91,
Grotius, 67 92, 96
Guicciardini, Francesco, 152, 160 Kojève, Alexandre, 5, 74
Krätke, Michael R., 222
Halévy, Elie, 3, 5, 107, 121, 149, 151, 279, Kristol, Irving, 198
282
Hannibal, 78 Labarthe, André, 181
Harrington, James, 160 Lefort, Claude, 150, 242
Harrington, Michael, 172 Lefranc, Georges, 178
Hassner, Pierre, 113 Lenin, Vladimir, 25, 77, 92, 140, 143, 147,
Hayek, Friedrich, 4, 8, 103, 185–7, 226, 238, 266
249, 268 Leninist/Leninism, 39, 53, 65, 71, 84,
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 5, 20, 93–6, 138–40, 143–4, 227
21, 74, 198, 201, 219, 221–3, 235, 250 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 4, 12, 115, 261,
Hegelian/Hegelianism, 105, 198, 221–5, 276
278 liberalism, 3, 8, 9, 12–13, 22, 31, 33–5,
Heidegger, Martin, 5, 205, 276 37–41, 70, 103, 132, 149, 156–7, 160–1,
Heideggerian, 280 177, 180, 183–7, 189, 191, 198, 209–10,
Hepp, Robert, 84 226, 272
Herodotus, 201 Lipset, Seymour Martin, 101, 187
Hirsch, Étienne, 183 Locke, John, 155–6, 161
historicism, 20, 108–9, 120, 125–6, 158, Luchaire, Jean, 275, 281
221, 258, 277 Ludendorff, Erich, 77–80, 82–4, 282
 IN DEX 303

MacArthur, Douglas, 79–80 Niebuhr, Reinhold, 39

Machiavelli, Niccolò, 20, 21, 40, 103, Nietzsche, Friedrich, 3, 125, 129, 139, 194
125, 139, 150–62, 193, 205, 206, 211, Nietzschean, 31, 210
231–41, 251, 278, 280, 282 nihilistic/nihilism, 6, 9, 31, 138, 139, 141,
Machiavellianism, 3, 17, 36, 38, 40, 42, 143, 144, 210, 213, 251, 253
66, 93, 139, 149–61, 193, 194, 231–42, Nizan, Paul, 3, 5, 275, 280
278, 280, 282, 288
Mackinder, Sir Halford, 39, 70, 282 Oakeshott, Michael, 2, 38
Malia, Martin, 143
Malis, Christian, 78, 80 Pareto, Vilfredo, 94, 138, 139, 149, 152–3,
Malraux, André, 6 158, 164, 193, 232, 234, 237–9, 241,
Manent, Pierre, 145, 197, 265, 273, 288 280
Maritain, Jacques, 151, 153, 212, 216, 240 peace, 4, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 22, 23, 25,
Marjolin, Robert, 179–80, 183, 189 32–3, 35, 40, 45, 46, 48, 50, 63, 65–7,
Martin du Gard, Roger, 36 69, 70, 74, 78, 79, 80, 82, 85, 91, 96,
Marx, Karl, 4, 7, 17, 20, 31, 53, 77, 102, 181, 195, 198–203, 239, 251, 275, 277,
115, 125, 129, 144, 164–5, 170, 172, 280–1, 283–5, 288
192, 193, 195, 205, 217–29, 241, 263–7, Pericles, 83
269, 277, 286 philosophy of history, 1, 4, 5, 9, 11, 16,
Marxist/Marxism, 4, 7, 39, 65, 71, 84, 85, 20–1, 23, 31, 77, 93, 102, 105, 140, 191,
93, 106, 107, 111, 112, 121, 124, 139, 192, 194, 197, 198, 200, 218–19, 228,
141, 144, 161, 165, 178, 184, 185, 192, 267, 272, 278
217–27, 229, 251, 263, 265, 269, 272, Plato, 20, 123, 131, 194, 195, 198
277 pluralism, 8, 13, 108, 109, 116, 149, 150,
Maschke, Günther, 84 153, 155, 157, 161, 255, 266, 268, 272,
McNamara, Robert, 64 277
Meinecke, Friedrich, 235, 239 plurality of interpretations. See pluralism
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 7, 107, 111–13, Pocock, J. G. A., 150, 160
286 Polin, Raymond, 211
Michels, Robert, 149, 152–3, 158, 193, 241 politician, 20, 25, 33, 34, 67, 159, 179,
Mises, Ludwig von, 180 185, 193, 195, 200, 207–8, 210, 214,
Mitterrand, François, 186, 187 235, 240–1, 270, 277, 278, 286, 287
Moch, Jules, 180 Popper, Karl, 13
moderation, 13, 60, 61, 66, 77, 81–4, 95, praxeology, 16, 60, 64, 72, 73, 82, 193,
149, 183, 253–4, 257, 258, 261, 270, 211
272 Prévost, Jean, 275, 281
Monnet, Jean, 183 Proust, Marcel, 220
monopolistic party regime, 141, 142, 159, prudence, 13, 40–1, 65–6, 81, 84
252, 287 Przeworski, Adam, 101
Montesquieu, Charles de, 3, 59, 67, 70,
82, 102, 121–2, 125, 126, 128, 131, relativism. See historicism
132, 142, 149, 161, 192, 195, 201, 218, revolution, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 11, 26, 27, 35, 37,
245–57, 259, 261, 262, 268, 286 46–8, 50, 52–4, 59, 61, 62, 92, 94–6,
Morgenthau, Hans, 21, 40, 46, 59, 60 130, 137, 138, 140, 145, 153, 155, 169,
Morgenthau, Henry, 283 179, 183, 186, 187, 192, 193, 206, 207,
Mosca, Gaetano, 149, 152–7, 193, 241 209, 218, 219, 226, 233, 234, 238, 239,
Mussolini, Benito, 139, 151, 231, 232, 241, 264, 270–2, 275, 282, 285, 286
241, 279, 282 Reynaud, Paul, 33
Rickert, Heinrich, 205, 278
Nazism, 3–5, 20, 45, 49, 61, 79, 106, 108, Rist, Charles, 180
145, 151, 197, 276–7, 279 Rolland, Romain, 276, 277
304 IN DEX

Romain, Jules, 179 Thomson, David, 60

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 283 Thucydides, 20, 68, 107, 110–11, 114, 115,
Rosinski, Herbert, 78, 278 123, 125, 194, 195, 205, 211
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 23, 151, 155, 156, Tocqueville, Alexis de, 3, 4, 53, 94, 102,
201, 246, 254, 262, 270, 288 115, 121–2, 125, 128, 129, 132, 135,
Royer-Collard, Pierre, 261 149, 193, 194, 199, 218, 226, 246,
Rueff, Jacques, 179 261–72
Tönnies, Ferdinand, 219
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 3, 5–8, 23, 45, 107, totalitarian/totalitarianism, 1, 3–6, 8, 10,
111–13, 192, 220–1, 223, 229, 261, 275, 16, 25, 31, 33–9, 44–6, 48, 49, 53, 84,
276, 280, 281 95, 102, 103, 111, 113, 116, 119, 126,
Sauvy, Alfred, 180, 189 127, 130–1, 137–45, 149–53, 161, 181,
Schlink, Bernhard, 85 184, 193, 198, 202, 231, 234, 237, 238,
Schmitt, Carl, 83–5, 139, 202 241, 242, 253, 257, 262, 277, 279, 280,
Schumpeter, Joseph, 149 282, 285–7
Sidney, Algernon, 160 Toynbee, Arnold, 12, 32, 54, 94, 109, 111,
Simmel, Georg, 278 113, 275
Skinner, Quentin, 150, 159, 162 Trenchard, John, 161
sociology, 1–8, 16, 21, 23, 27, 31, 60, Truman, Harry S., 39, 80
70–3, 75, 105, 109, 114–16, 121–3, tyrant/tyranny/tyrannical, 16, 33–41, 54,
125, 126, 128, 133, 141, 144, 149, 152, 79, 120, 122, 123, 125, 127, 129–32,
164, 175, 184, 192, 206, 209, 246, 138, 148, 151, 152, 155, 160, 181, 184,
247, 249, 251–2, 254, 261–2, 277, 282, 188, 207, 231, 233–7, 239, 240, 279, 280
285
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, 4, 6, 142, 144, United States, the, 9, 11, 12, 19, 22, 24,
145, 199 46–54, 64, 72, 74, 91–2, 95, 96, 98,
Sorel, Georges, 152 107, 171–3, 186, 246, 267
Soviet Union, the, 3, 4, 6, 10, 11, 16–17, USSR. See Soviet Union
19, 22, 38, 39–41, 46–54, 57, 60, 64,
79, 84, 91–6, 99, 102, 105, 113, 116, Vattel, 67
137, 140, 184, 240 Veyne, Paul, 111
Spengler, Oswald, 94, 109 Viroli, Maurizio, 150
Stalin, Joseph, 6, 25, 39–40, 48, 50, 79,
80, 141, 184, 231, 241, 266 Weber, Max, 4, 5, 21, 31, 80, 106,
Stalinist/Stalinism, 3, 4, 49, 95, 112, 138, 110, 121, 122, 125, 128, 138, 193–4,
140, 141, 143, 144, 265, 280 205–14, 235, 239, 240, 248, 249, 262,
statesman, 9, 40–1, 81, 82, 194, 195, 205, 276–8, 282, 285, 287
214, 240 Weberian, 21, 125, 240, 249, 277, 278
Sternhell, Zeev, 7 Wilhelm II, Emperor, 208
Strauss, Leo, 34, 150, 151, 159, 195, 198 Wohlstetter, Albert, 22
Szymonzyk, Stanislas, 78, 281 Worms, Frédéric, 106