The Stalinists of Anti-Communism

Abstract

Paris today is the capital of European intellectual reaction', writes Perry Anderson in his recent In The Tracks of Historical materialism. His formulation is terse, provocative and quite justified. An intelligentsia which was, almost by definition, considered to be on the left has packed up its bags and gone over to the other side. It now addresses iqs criticisms, not to French society, but to those who dare to think of transforming it. It no longer turns its anger against the injustice of a system which dominates, exploits and alienates the people of France, but against the injustice which prevails 'elsewhere', and in the present context 'elsewhere' means the other side, the Communist camp. Anti-communism has helped to reconcile many Parisian intellectuals-Anderson rightly notes that provincial intellectuals have not been affected to the same extent-to 'western pluralist democracy'. It is probably difficult for an outsider to imagine the degree of anti-communism that now prevails in France. Except for the Communists themselves, almost everyone has been affected by it.