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Jun. 10th, 2014
This excerpt elaborates on Sartre’s philosophical move away from the primacy of the individual to a perceived greater good of a social cause in his moment of history, that of Soviet communism in the war and early post-war years. We also see the foreshadowing of Orwell’s “1984”.
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The PCF [the French Communist Party] brought the cult of Stalin home; indeed, it doubled it in the cult of its own general secretary, Maurice Thorez. “The comrades tell us …” was the way PCF leaders brought the latest directives from Moscow to their Central Committee meetings. The USSR’s survival and prosperity were arguably the single most important barometer of the Communist cause, and Stalin did everything to ensure that the national parties were controlled by disciplined, trusted, and - especially - obedient loyalists. The Party created its own ideal type, illustrated by Sartre in the character Brunet in the trilogy Roads to Freedom. It was the militant who surrendered his subjectivity to a universal, historically ordained cause and who was able to justify every twist and turn in the Party line, even a reversal of yesterday’s line.
-- Ronald Aronson, “Camus and Sartre”
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For Sartre, the evils of Western capitalism were powerful enough for him to overcome any cognitive dissonance in towing the tangled, nefarious party line of the Kremlin, at least for a time; Stalin was the lesser evil on the way to a brighter future. Camus believed that the individual ought never to sacrifice his conscience.
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The PCF [the French Communist Party] brought the cult of Stalin home; indeed, it doubled it in the cult of its own general secretary, Maurice Thorez. “The comrades tell us …” was the way PCF leaders brought the latest directives from Moscow to their Central Committee meetings. The USSR’s survival and prosperity were arguably the single most important barometer of the Communist cause, and Stalin did everything to ensure that the national parties were controlled by disciplined, trusted, and - especially - obedient loyalists. The Party created its own ideal type, illustrated by Sartre in the character Brunet in the trilogy Roads to Freedom. It was the militant who surrendered his subjectivity to a universal, historically ordained cause and who was able to justify every twist and turn in the Party line, even a reversal of yesterday’s line.
-- Ronald Aronson, “Camus and Sartre”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
For Sartre, the evils of Western capitalism were powerful enough for him to overcome any cognitive dissonance in towing the tangled, nefarious party line of the Kremlin, at least for a time; Stalin was the lesser evil on the way to a brighter future. Camus believed that the individual ought never to sacrifice his conscience.