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Bernard-Henri Lévy's new book starts in January 2007, with a telephone call from Nicolas Sarkozy. The edited and choreographed version of the conversation is a tiny gem of desultory character assassination and self-congratulatory storytelling. One morning, we are told, in the wake of an article written by another famous left-wing French intellectual in support of Sarkozy's presidential campaign, Lévy's phone rings. A playfully boisterous but needy Sarkozy wants to know when exactly his long-time friend Bernard-Henri will be writing his "own little piece" in support of his candidacy. The exchange between the two men is revealing: the left-wing philosopher and public intellectual struggling to explain his ill-expressed but steadfast reluctance to abandon the left, his "political family," as he puts it; the argumentative politician irately reminding him of the barrage of insults that this so-called "political family" has heaped on its son over the years. Ruthlessly evoking the criticisms levelled against Lévy by his own misguided comrades, despite his status as one of the main architects of the left's nouvelle philosophie, the future president of France boils it down to: "How can you still support these people after all they've done to you?" The exchange, as it is recounted—by a writer not overly given to modesty—is a vivid account of Sarkozy's unctuous petulance and a prescient glimpse of his capacity to mix hand-wringing concern, charm, impatience and threat. According to Lévy, his own tongue-tied incapacity to justify his refusal to write his "own little piece," coupled with the visceral certainty that he and Sarkozy were at odds on a number of crucial political values, is what prompted him to write this book.
The title, Ce grand cadavre à la renverse ("this great collapsing corpse"), is borrowed from Sartre, who in a review of a book by Paul Nizan in 1960 referred to the left in his own time as just such a corpse. The title characteristically (re)-places Lévy squarely within a tradition of "lament for the left." And indeed the book, while forceful and quasi-lyrical in its commitment to the great precepts of the left, is relentless in its pessimism.
Where, asks Lévy, does his sometimes inexplicable political commitment to the French and European left come from? Even when the political ideal is so poorly embodied; even when defeat is near certain; even when, according to the author, the main actors are felt to be traitors to the cause. Lévy's questions have particular resonance in France, where Segolène Royal's presidential campaign—and the behaviour of her so-called allies—left many on the centre left feeling puzzled, let down and rudderless (though it's worth noting that Lévy supported her throughout). But Lévy's questions are more than relevant for the British centre left, echoing our own confusion or dismay when, for instance, Tony Blair does not hesitate to do his "own little piece" on stage for Sarkozy.
To try and get at the roots of his allegiance, Lévy (pictured, right, at the Elysée Palace with other intellectuals in 2007) marshals three organising principles: images, events and what he calls "reflexes." The three often exhibit a striking similarity to one another, and are distinguishable only through the conceit that "images"—Léon Blum's raised fist in 1936, Portugal in 1974, Bosnia in the early 1990s—are presented as a kind of backdrop against which we articulate and construct our left allegiance, whereas "events"—Vichy, the Algerian war, May 1968—are evoked as the founding moments of the left because they involve shared choices. Rather niftily, in BHL land, the combination of these two gives rise to "reflexes": the "Dreyfusard reflex," which should prompt us to take the defence of the isolated human being in the face of a mob; the "Vichy (or anti-Vichy) reflex," a revolt against any form of racism and antisemitism; the "68er reflex," a knee-jerk reaction against authoritarianism; and, finally, an "anti-colonial reflex," which triggers revulsion at and collective repentance for the oppression of one people in the name of another.
His organising principles serve, among other things, to damn the "neo-progressive" left, since only stupidity, pettiness and insensitivity could lead one to be "of the left" and choose to remain impervious to these lessons or reflexes. To Lévy, this imbecile, misguided left is very real: it's the one with which he can't quite reconcile himself, and often recoils from; the one he detects in the janus-faced support given to Segolène Royal by some socialist grandees; the one brandished by Sarkozy in that morning telephone call.
Lévy's central diagnosis is that the left in Europe has vanquished one set of totalitarian demons in order to give in to another, equally dangerous set. Having moved away from its first "totalitarian temptation" (communism), it fell under the spell of another, whose roots are nourished by a misguided anti-liberalism and unthinking anti-Americanism.
The author's near-apoplectic condemnation of the current French left's anti-liberalism is a useful reminder of how much we take for granted in Britain and the US—and how much more contentious, and contested, liberalism's status is in the rest of Europe. (This makes it worth asking, of course, whether this is a trait just of the left, as Lévy suggests, or one that spans the political spectrum in continental Europe.) But, Lévy reminds us, it was France's own Montesquieu who came to the conclusion that there could be no political freedom without economic freedom. Anti-Americanism flows directly from this liberal blind spot, in what Lévy regards as a kind of historical amnesia.
None of this is particularly original. Accusing sections of the left of allowing their anti-Americanism to cloud their judgement on abject regimes is hardly new. Arguing that these same sections of the left seem to grow dangerously close to social conservatism, or to a cultural relativism that can give rise to tolerating inhuman practices, is well-trodden ground. It leads Lévy to write that the left now trades on a mix of Nazi and fascist ideas: since there's no Marx on the menu, we'll have some Carl Schmitt. But this is facile caricature. Is the problem of the left really that it is turning into the far right? Or is this merely the paranoia of the politically disappointed?
Nonetheless, for all its excesses, this is a book full of brilliantly argued, exquisitely illustrated ideas. It is evidence that audacity of thought can be more effective than carefully argued political theory when it comes to persuading readers to re-examine their own positions. Something else that struck me is that the author's relapse into cliché is mainly reserved for his defence of universal precepts. This defence is not so much irrelevant—a good defence of universalism is always welcome—as parochial. What emerges through the book is not how exotic or "other" French politics remain, but how familiar; how much we in the west have come to agree on our shared defence of universalism. In the end, the book's main contribution is to highlight a paradox of globalisation: that it has made us all a little more parochial.
