Between Democracy and Totalitarianism

I dedicate this book to the memory of Alain Besançon (1932–2023).

Contents

1. Introduction

2. Part I Industrial Societies

   1. 1. From philosophy to political sociology

   2. 2. Conceptual questions

   3. 3. Political Power between Democratic Prose and Maniacal Poetry

   4. 4. Industrial societies

   5. 5. From social classes to political domination

   6. 6. The Primacy of Politics according to Aron

   7. 7. What is economic power?

3. Part II Ideology and Totalitarianism

   1. 8. The End of the Ideological Age?

   2. 9. Aron and “convergence theory”: for or against?

   3. 10. From Marx to Lenin and the Communist Regimes: Raymond Aron and Leszek Kołakowski

   4. 11. Aron and the discussion of possible changes in communism

   5. 12. Aron’s early conception of totalitarianism

   6. 13. The Debate over Machiavelism: Raymond Aron and Jacques Maritain

   7. 14. Aron’s more recent work on totalitarianism: his relationship to Arendt and to Friedrich and Brzezinski

4. Part III Aron’s Legacy

   1. 15. Aron and his (sympathizing) critics Besançon and Todorov on the relationship between Nazism and Communism

   2. 16. Between Liberalism and Democracy: Aron, Hayek, Solzhenitsyn, Zakaria and Popper

   3. 17. In search of stability and efficiency

   4. 18. Was Aron a Eurosceptic?

   5. 19. Why did Aron oppose the European Defence Community?

   6. 20. Is multinational citizenship possible?

   7. 21. Between the fervor of a European activist and the cold detachment of a sociologist

   8. 22. Are there real European political parties?

   9. 23. Democracy on a global scale?

   10. 24. Is the conversion of history possible? The limits of Carl Schmitt’s influence on Raymond Aron

   11. 25. Aron’s concept of sovereignty and Schmitt’s critique of the universal state

   12. 26. Is it only Nazi ideology that logically leads to absolute hostility?

   13. 27. Where to place Aron within comparative political sociology?

5. Conclusion: What Remains from Aron’s Political Sociology of Twentieth-Century Societies?

6. Bibliography

7. Index of Names

Introduction

Nobody who reads again Raymond Aron’s enormous work can fail to be struck by its originality. (Hoffmann 1985, 13)

The political regime largely decides the character of a community. In the industrial age, it is the political regime that constitutes the differentia specifica (specific difference) between societies that belong to the same type. Western sociologists adopt Alexis de Tocqueville’s alternative: Modern societies are necessarily industrial, commercial and democratic.¹ But will they be liberal or despotic? That depends on the political regime. (Aron [1960] 1972 c, 290, reprinted in Aron 2006, 717)

From the rich work of the eminent French political sociologist, theorist of international relations and strategic studies, philosopher of history, essayist and political commentator Raymond Aron, whose birth was 120 years ago this year 2025, a key part represents his conception of the “industrial society,” which he elaborated, notably in his trilogy Dix-huit leçons sur la société industrielle (see Aron 1962; translated into English as 18 lectures on industrial society), La lutte de classes (The Class Struggle; see Aron 1964) and Démocratie et totalitarisme (see Aron 1965 a; translated into English as Democracy and totalitarianism), and which has long enjoyed great success. It can be seen as a kind of core of his political sociology of modern societies in the twentieth century, the main features of which I examine in this essay.

Aron’s conception is subtle, and although it is formulated with typical “Cartesian” clarity, it is often interpreted quite differently. Aron, for example, is often referred to as the representative of the so-called convergence theory, but it can be assumed that he was actually more of an opponent of it and that his opposition to it grew over time. Similarly with his relationship to the role of ideology, in his famous book L’Opium des intellectuels (see Aron [1955] 1968; translated into English as The Opium of the Intellectuals), the last chapter is entitled “Fin de l’âge idéologique?” (“The End of the Ideological Age?”), so that he was sometimes lumped with Daniel Bell (1919–2011) with those who proclaimed “the end of ideology,” but in a number of other texts Aron defends the idea that ideology plays a substantial role, especially in Soviet-type regimes—one need only recall in particular Plaidoyer pour l’Europe décadente (see Aron 1977 a; translated into English as In Defense of Decadent Europe) and his important collection Trois essais sur l’âge industriel (see Aron 1966 a, reprinted in Aron 2006; translated into English as The Industrial Society, Three Essays on Ideology and Development). All this deserves a thorough analysis. Although Aron draws on the economic structure and similarities of twentieth-century “industrial” societies, he concludes that there are fundamental differences between them, stemming mainly from their political regimes.²

Related to this is also the question of the development of Aron’s political thought. Starting from his works written after World War II, one cannot fail to notice the basic coherence of his political sociology of modern societies. He may have modified his views on certain points (for example, his comparison between Nazism and Communism), but these cases are not numerous.³

As Aron states several times, his intellectual development began on the threshold of the 1930s by thinking about Marxism. In a lecture given at a conference in May 1968 commemorating the 150th anniversary of Marx’s birth, he writes of this: “When I first read (Marx’s) Capital, I wished passionately to be convinced. Unfortunately, this wish remained unfulfilled” (Aron 1970, 371). He then subjected his original left-wing views, a kind of socialist-oriented pacifism,⁴ to criticism. He focused above all on the confrontation between “Marx’s Marxism” (Le marxisme de Marx), as Aron most often puts it,⁵ on the one hand, and the development of modern societies on the other.