Views on Albert Camus?
May 24 2009 10:55
Can he really be called an anarchist? Especially with his attitude towards Algeria... Thanks
May 24 2009 13:09
#2
Quote:
Can he really be called an anarchist?
I don't think so. To put it simplistically, he was basically the French Orwell. Despite his criticism of Soviet brutality and his opposition to totalitarianism in general, politically he was ultimately a left-leaning progressive liberal.
One of the reasons he broke with Sartre I think was because he thought that Marxism and "mass movements" in general would degenerate into totalitarian regimes.
Pretty good writer though; remember reading The Plague in high school and thinking it was the coolest shit ever (in terms of angsty French shit that is)
May 24 2009 13:19
#3
Quote:
politically he was ultimately a left-leaning progressive liberal.
Not really:
May 24 2009 13:21
#4
Camus was basically an honest cynical left liberal, Sartre was a Marxist poser.
May 24 2009 13:37
#5
Parker wrote:
Quote:
politically he was ultimately a left-leaning progressive liberal.Not really:
Interesting article, but despite his support for revolutionary syndicalism, he was still pretty critical of any idea of violent revolution, thinking that it would inevitably lead to big brotherism (The Rebel).
Maybe "liberal" is a bit unfair, but I still don't think he was an anarchist/communist.
As for stance on Algeria, he sided with the French colonists (at least in the beginning) as far as I know.
May 24 2009 13:45
#6
he didn't side with the French colonialists, that's incredibly simplistic.
Camus wrote:
As far as Algeria is concerned, national independence is a formula driven by nothing other than passion. There has never yet been an Algerian nation. The Jews, the Turks, Greeks, Italians, or Berbers would be as entitled to claim the leadership of this potential nation. As things stand, the Arabs do not comprise the whole of Algeria … The French of Algeria are also natives, in the strong sense of the word. Moreover, a purely Arab Algeria could not achieve that economic independence without which political independence is nothing but an illusion.
He wasn't wrong.
May 24 2009 13:49
#7
If you read the Rebel, at the end he sides with revolutionary syndicalism, which that article I linked to also makes clear.
To my mind, left-leaning liberal = Gore Vidal etc.
May 24 2009 13:55
#8
revol68 wrote:
He wasn't wrong.
yeah, that's a fair point ultimately, but it does sound a bit apologetic. If no one "nation" could claim Alegeria, did that mean that Algerians should've just stuck to French colonialism?
The same criticism could go for any self-described "nation" of the time, but I don't think Camus ever said that the French weren't a nation.
If he had added to that passage that it is the role of the Algerian working classes, regardless of race and religion, to assert their interests and fight the schemings of Arab nationalists as well as French imperialists, then I could've agreed with him wholeheartedly. But I don't know that he saw the situation in those terms.
May 24 2009 15:34
#9
Camus was a supporter of French Algeria, how is that not taking side with the French colonialists?
I find the quote fairly racist and pretty typical of the western colonialists' attitude towards colonized countries and their so-called inability to organize without the help of some external 'civilized' country.
'National independence is a formula driven by nothing other than passion'? What about driven by the will to fight oppression, massacres, exploitation, racism, looting? Oh no these would be rational arguments, and surely Arabs cannot reason properly. Only an 'enlightened' Frenchman can.
How exactly the French of Algeria are 'natives, in the strong sense of the word'? Invading a territory with a people and a history, occupy it by force, send people to live there and exploit the local population... to me that doesnt make the French living there 'natives in the strong sense of the term'. Thats a statement thats made only to justify the colonialist ambitions of France.
Bourdieu, who was in Algeria at the same time, explains well how the colonial war is a war between two different societies.
What about arabs being unable to make the place economically viable? Thats patronizing to say the least and again thats justifying the French occupation there. 'White man's burden' and all that. We're here to help...
This is the position that Camus is defending, as late as in 1957. And this is even more tragic as Camus's literature is meant to be putting forward the cause of the universal human.
To me, he is case in point of the hypocrisy of humanist philosophy.
At the end of the passage, he also says : 'However inadequate the French efforts have been, it is of such proportions that no other country would today agree to take over the responsibility'
This shows that his agenda is to defend the colonialist ambitions of the bourgeois French state. He is defending nationalism and imperialism, definitely not the need for an independent struggle by the Algerian working class, or its interests.
An anarchist, Camus?
May 24 2009 15:49
#10
But the facts are the political national independence has done nothing for the working class. To me Camus's position is no worse than Sartre's support for nationalism, they both deliver fuck all squared.
Camus's point was the the french algerians were as native as of the other groups who had came into Algeria through wave after wave of invasion? The notion of an almost primordial native and native culture is patronising racism? As if white christian culture is the only one that can spread by force or otherwise? Do you know fuck all about the history of Isam and how it spread?
May 24 2009 19:01
#11
No. The facts of what is being discussed here are that Camus was a supporter of nationalism and colonialism.
Who said national independence was a good thing for the working class?
Who said christian culture is the only one that spreads by force?
No one.
Because islam invasions were as bad as christian invasions doesnt make Camus right to support French colonialism.
The point is that he talks about nation, leadership and what have you and that hes only trying to justify the French occupation there which i think he regards as a good, possibly necessary, thing for the majority of the people there.
So ultimately the point is that this is not consistent with an anarchist position.
Thats my main point anyway, and i think thats the subject of the thread.
May 25 2009 10:53
#12
I thought Camus was a good writer, I especially enjoyed the existential despair of The Outsider and The Plague, much more touching than the ideas of Sartre or Beckett, however I would not describe him as an anarchist and as some have suggested here he was certainly a supporter of the French occupation of Algeria. As someone very much aware of the effects of spectacular society and the absurdity of everyday life and although he toyed with syndicalist concepts (Revolutionary Union Movement) he seemed unable to take his political observations to, what we would believe, would be their logical conclusion i.e. anarchism.
May 25 2009 13:37
#13
I reckon Meursault from L’Étranger should've just shot everyone in Algeria, that'd have solved all their problems. Anyway, I'm a big fanboy of Camus, and of De Beauvoir and Sartre - they may not be anarchists as such, but then Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, George Orwell, Bertolt Brecht, Walter Benjamin, and Chris Morris weren't anarchist-communists either, and there's still lots of things I find inspiring about them.
Also, here's an Organise! article defending the idea of Camus being an anarchist, or at least very close to it: http://www.afed.org.uk/org/issue68/anarchism_albert_camus.html
Key sections: "The general secretary of the Fédération Anarchiste, Georges Fontenis, also reviewed Camus’s book in Le Libertaire. To the title question “Is the revolt of Camus the same as ours?”, Fontenis replied that it was. However he faulted him for not giving due space to the revolutions in the Ukraine and Spain, and for portraying Bakunin as a hardened Nihilist and not giving credit to his specific anarchist positions. He ended by admitting that the book contained some admirable pages. A review by Jean Vita the following week in Le Libertaire was warmer and more positive...
Again in 1954 Camus came to the aid of the anarchists. Maurice Laisant, propaganda secretary of the Forces Libres de la Paix (Free Forces of Peace) as well as an editor of Le Monde Libertaire, paper of the Fédération Anarchiste, had produced an antimilitarist poster using the format of official army propaganda. As a result he was indicted for subversion. Camus was a character witness at his trial, recalling how he had first met him at the Spanish public meeting...
Later in 1955 Camus gave his support to Pierre Morain, a member of the Fédération Communiste Libertaire (the Fédération Anarchiste had changed its name in 1954 following rancourous struggles within the organisation). Morain was the very first Frenchman to be imprisoned for an anti-colonialist stand on Algeria. Camus expressed his support in the pages of the national daily L’Express of 8th November 1955. "
What attitude are you referring to?
Who called Camus an anarchist?