FRANCE: Bourgeoisophobes or ourselves as some others see us

Mike Sullivan has sent me an extremely long article, "Among the Bourgeoisophobes. Why the Europeans and Arabs, each in their own way, hate America and Israel" by David Brooks (Weekly Standard, 4/15/02). It really refers to France. Here is the opening section, with comments drawn from my own experience in France:

"AROUND 1830, a group of French artists and intellectuals looked around and noticed that people who were their spiritual inferiors were running the world. Suddenly a large crowd of merchants, managers, and traders were making lots of money, living in the big houses, and holding the key posts. They had none of the high style of the aristocracy, or even the earthy integrity of the peasants. Instead, they were gross. They were vulgar materialists, shallow conformists, and self-absorbed philistines, who half the time failed even to acknowledge their moral and spiritual inferiority to the artists and intellectuals. What's more, it was their very mediocrity that accounted for their success. Through some screw-up in the great scheme of the universe, their narrow-minded greed had brought them vast wealth, unstoppable power, and growing social prestige.

Naturally, the artists and intellectuals were outraged. Hatred of the bourgeoisie became the official emotion of the French intelligentsia. Stendhal said traders and merchants made him want to "weep and vomit at the same time." Flaubert thought they were "plodding and avaricious." Hatred of the bourgeoisie, he wrote, "is the beginning of all virtue." He signed his letters "Bourgeoisophobus" to show how much he despised "stupid grocers and their ilk."

Of all the great creeds of the 19th century, pretty much the only one still thriving is this one, bourgeoisophobia. Marxism is dead. Freudianism is dead. Social Darwinism is dead, along with all those theories about racial purity that grew up around it. But the emotions and reactions that Flaubert, Stendhal, and all the others articulated in the 1830s are still with us, bigger than ever. In fact, bourgeoisophobia, which has flowered variously and spread to places as diverse as Baghdad, Ramallah, and Beijing, is the major reactionary creed of our age.

This is because today, in much of the world's eyes, two peoples--the Americans and the Jews--have emerged as the great exemplars of undeserved success. Americans and Israelis, in this view, are the money-mad molochs of the earth, the vulgarizers of morals, corrupters of culture, and proselytizers of idolatrous values. These two nations, it is said, practice conquest capitalism, overrunning poorer nations and exploiting weaker neighbors in their endless desire for more and more. These two peoples, the Americans and the Jews, in the view of the bourgeoisophobes, thrive precisely because they are spiritually stunted. It is their obliviousness to the holy things in life, their feverish energy, their injustice, their shallow pursuit of power and gain, that allow them to build fortunes, construct weapons, and play the role of hyperpower".

My comment: What is says about France historically is partly correct. The motto of the Louis-Philippe regime was "get rich!" ("Enrichissez-vous!). The regime collapsed in the revolution of 1848, in which a variety of ideologies bloomed, of which Marxism was only one. Victor Hugo's Les Misérables expressed compassion for what later would be called the disinherited of the earth.. Christian Socialism shared that compassion. The problem is still very much with us. Freudianism is not dead; the problem of sex is still very real. Social Darwinism is not dead: Schumpeter still is an influential voice. Dislike of Israel is not based on its success. It is based on its treatment of the Arabs. The republic which came to power in 1870 made the Jews in French North Africa automatically French citizens, whereas it was very difficult for Arabs to obtain citizenship. This was an important cause of the anti-Jewish riots in Constantine just before I visited it in 1935. Hitherto Arabs and Jews had lived together in peace. Europe today is generally prosperous and has little reason to envy America.

There is a general feeling in Europe that the US has led the way to the cultural decline exemplified by the obvious gap between Shakespeare and Hollywood, although the US led the way technologically. The problem was that French intellectuals could not offer a viable alternative to the bourgeois ideal, even though it should be evident that the middle class forms the backbone of any modern nation. When I was in France, épicier (grocer) was an insult undeserved by a trade which is socially indispensable. The intellectuals scorned the good manners for which the French were proud. "Epater le bourgeois" (scandalize the bourgeois) led to all the -isms (dadaism, etc) of which Paris was the center.

French culture still enjoyed a great prestige, and I felt obliges to go along with the current, especially since my major was French. However, when I read Cocteau, I thought his stuff was crazy, but Oxford gave him an honorary degree. Spanish, my minor, was short of prestige, but my gut feeling was that Spanish culture was more human, except for those who, like Picasso and Dali, aped France. When I express my contempt for Picasso, even my American friends think I must be a bourgeois..But no; I live on the Farm and can lift up mine eyes unto the foothills, whence cometh something much more profound than than the doodlings of Picasso and the stuttering of the dadaists.

Ronald Hilton - 4/16/02