France: an End to Politics

Let me go directly to the heart of the matter: at present, there is no more politics in France.

No more politics, that is, if we mean by politics a reasonable calculation of the balance of those forces able to maintain some pressure on the state power. We have in France today a strange kind of regime relying upon one man who does not represent politics in the classical democratic sense. And this, for two reasons.

First, because he tries to create a role quite without precedent in modern democracy, the role of the supreme arbiter, the chef d’etat who presents himself as above all forces within his country, as a body without weight or gravity. That is De Gaulle’s claim: he represents himself, De Gaulle, and in representing himself he represents France as an undefined and undetermined political force.

Second, not only is De Gaulle a man alone, outside of the political game, but more important, he is also trying to create the kind of power that Max Weber called charismatic power: the politics of inspiration. But this is no longer really politics as we know it in democratic states; it is a kind of psychology or a politics relying on the magical effects of personal prestige and language. D...