Introduction here, Chapter 6 here, Chapter 8 here
Translated by F. Roger Devlin
“To be on the Right is to be afraid for what exists,” said Jules Romains. A nice definition. We find it again in many authors. (more…)
6,046 words
Introduction here, Chapter 5 Part 1 here, Chapter 6 here
Translated by F. Roger Devlin
No doubt we should have expected this. The views developed by Jean-Claude Michéa were not slow to earn him many critiques, mostly directed at two of his books, Orpheus’s Complex and Mysteries of the Left. (more…)
5,916 words
Introduction here, Chapter 4 Part 2 here, Chapter 5 Part 2 here
Translated by F. Roger Devlin
In January 1905, the regulations of the French Section of the Workers’ International, the Socialist Party of the time, still indicated that it was a “class party whose goal was to socialize the means of production and exchange, i.e. to transform capitalist society into a collectivist or Communist society, and that its means to this end was the economic and political organization of the proletariat.” Of course, no “socialist” party would dare say this today. Socialists have mutated into social-democrats and, increasingly, into social-liberals. (more…)
5,779 words
Introduction here, Chapter 4 Part 1 here, Chapter 5 Part 1 here
Translated by F. Roger Devlin
Like “communitarism,” “populism” has today become a garbage-bag term. The proof is that this label has been applied to people as different as Donald Trump, Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales, Nigel Farage, Beppe Grillo, Viktor Orbán, Nicolas Sarkozy, Georges Marchais, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, (more…)
France’s Estates-General of 1789, where the concepts of a political Left and Right were allegedly born.
5,436 words
Introduction here, Chapter 2 Part 1 here
Translated by F. Roger Devlin
Many people who sincerely consider themselves to be on the Left or Right are glad to give a definition, often quite clear, of what this means, but their definition is rarely accepted by others of the Left or Right. (more…)
Introduction here, Chapter 1 here, Chapter 2 Part 2 here
Translated by F. Roger Devlin
Everyone is familiar with Alain’s frequently quoted remark: “When someone asks me if the distinction between parties of the Right and Left, men of the Right and Left, is still meaningful, my first thought is that the man asking the question is certainly not a man of the Left.” (more…)
6,688 words
Introduction here; Chapter 2 Part 1 here
Translated by F. Roger Devlin
Opinion democracy? Televisual democracy? Market democracy? Democracy is in crisis, and the pathologies which affect contemporary democracies increasingly occupy observers’ attention. The common opinion is that these pathologies, far from being inherent in democracy itself, result from a corruption of its principles. (more…)
Dietmar Friedhoff
Denken wir Afrika: Eine konservative Grundsatz-Strategie zur Selbstentwicklung unseres Nachbarkontinents
Bad Schussenried: Gerhard Hess Verlag, 2021
A canny financier in the British situation comedy series Only Fools and Horses proposes a new investment future: “Get your hands round this” he exclaims, then pauses dramatically and utters one word: “Africa.” (more…)
10,344 words
Chapter 1 here
Translated by F. Roger Devlin
In September 2016, a poll revealed that for 85% of Frenchmen the presidential election of May 2017 would be “disappointing” no matter what the result. That figure says it all. The extraordinary distrust of ever larger layers of the population toward the “government parties” and the political class in general, to the benefit of movements of a new type called “populist,” is undoubtedly the most striking fact about the changing political landscape of at least the past two decades. (more…)