Jean-François Revel, champion of democracy
Revel was France's most forceful advocate for Western values in the 20th century. His ideas are more valid than ever
2024 marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of the political essayist Jean-François Revel. Tributes have been muted: of France's major media outlets, only Le Point magazine paid homage to its late columnist.
Such neglect is in keeping with the way Revel was treated by cultural elites during his lifetime. He had a wide audience. Without Marx or Jesus, his 1970 book arguing that the US, not Cuba or any guerrilla movement, stood at the forefront of a world revolution, was the first a string of international best-sellers. But Revel's simple, trenchant style led the cognoscenti to dismiss him as a lightweight.
At home, his fierce opposition to both General de Gaulle and communism made him a controversial figure right up until his death in 2006. Abroad, despite his large readership (or perhaps because of it) he was equally out of step with smart opinion. In the 1970s and 1980s, Revel remained a leading advocate for Cold War liberalism – opposition to the Soviet Union and its ideology from a moderate, not conservative, standpoint – long after "vital centre" ideas had fallen out of favour in the US, where they had originated.
The hostility of the intelligentsia could take comical forms. The publisher of the Greek translation of The Totalitarian Temptation (1976) added a preface calling Revel's ideas on Stalinism outdated. The Italian translator tried to insert footnotes explaining how the author was wrong, before venting his objections in interviews.
The collapse of the Soviet Union was seized upon by Revel's critics as proof of his irrelevance. His warnings about the totalitarian danger facing democracies, they said, had been proven wrong. And after the Cold War, who needed Cold War liberals anyway?
But Revel was not done. In retrospect, his thoughts in the early 1990s on the fragility of the "democratic revival" seem prescient. And he remained stubbornly influential. His 1997 memoir The Thief in an Empty House was another huge success. That same year he was elected to the Académie française, that most unfashionable of bodies. His last essay, Anti-Americanism (2002), an update on Without Marx or Jesus that explores the widespread belief that the US is the root of all evil, was in turn translated into many languages.
Revel's ideas were never obsolete. And they continue to illuminate current events. Take the latest political drama unfolding in France: as I have argued, at the heart of the country's predicament is the socialists' reluctance to break with the radical left. Almost 50 years ago Revel exposed the myth of "union la gauche" – the idea among socialists that they have more in common with revolutionaries than with centrists, and everything to gain from pretending so.
Revel subscribed to socialism in its market-friendly, social-democratic version. He rued the fact that, in France and elsewhere, many on the centre-left engaged in state worship. On the opening page of The Totalitarian Temptation, he writes:
The main obstacle to socialism is not capitalism but communism… The key question is whether socialists will succeed in removing the two obstacles that stand in the way of a socialist world: the state and communism. Or will they persist in serving them and reinforcing each with the other, thereby working towards their own annihilation with tireless abnegation and contributing to the creation of new totalitarian states.
The far left of France's political spectrum is no longer occupied by communists but by progressives who combine Venezuelan-style economics with identity politics. But the dynamic described by Revel almost 50 years ago is as worrying as ever at a time when authoritarians are on the march around the world, not least in France.
Revel's writings are all the more relevant as many of the arguments used to appease Moscow during the Cold War are being recycled. Take the "fear of encirclement". According to this theory, Russia's expansionism is a defensive strategy at a time when NATO takes in more of its neighbours.
This is what Revel, with his trademark irony, had to say on the subject in How Democracies Perish (1983):
It is obvious that as the perimeter of your borders expands, so does the number of nations you come into contact with. And those represent potential centres for aggression against you… Let's be logical: the only way to secure the borders of the Soviet Union is to ensure that there are no longer any Soviet borders – in other words that the territory of the USSR coincides with that of the entire planet. Only then will "peace and security" be guaranteed.
What would Revel have made of Donald Trump? It's always difficult to second-guess the dead. But it's even more difficult to imagine a liberal interventionist and foe of absolutism supporting an isolationist president who thinks of himself as superman. Revel abhorred a style of demagoguery that first gained traction in 1990s Italy. He called Umberto Bossi, the leader of the right-wing Lega Nord, a "moronic populist loudmouth" ("braillard populiste et débile"). Revel stood for everything Trump is steering away from: democratic solidarity against aggressive dictatorships, open trade and fiscal restraint. It is highly likely that today he would agree with US intellectual never-Trumpers such as Anne Applebaum, David Frum, Jonathan Rauch, George Will or Megan McCardle.
There is much more to Revel's work than politics. His articles cover subjects as diverse as art, gastronomy and horse races. He wrote a book on Proust and a History of Western Philosophy. The unifying theme is an attention to facts and the awareness that the human mind is all too prompt to ignore them. I've discussed his oeuvre and its timelessness in this article (in French).
Sixteen years after his death, left-wing rancour towards Revel has plumbed new depths. In June 2024, the daily Libération accused him of having been not just a reactionary – an old canard – but also a child abuser. This is based on the testimony of a woman who says that at the age of five, over four decades ago, she recognised Revel among masked men who watched on while she was submitted to sexual torture. Libération printed the allegation without offering the slightest corroboration. By way of evidence, it only resorts to intellectual contortions such as: Le Monde once compared Revel to Socrates; Socrates liked young boys; QED. (I co-wrote a piece deconstructing this shocking instance of journalistic malpractice – also in French.)
Libération's investigation did uncover criminal activity. But as the crimes happened so long ago, the police inquiry is likely to be filed without further action. This will allow unproven allegations to fester and lastingly stain the legacy of France's greatest liberal thinker since Tocqueville.