In this combination of current affairs survey, political analysis and conservative jeremiad, French commentator Revel ( How Democracies Perish ) cautions those who believe in "the inevitable triumph of liberal democracy." While some of his analysis is questionable--Has Sweden's social democratic model really collapsed? Is Franz Fanon "junk"?--Revel's defense of his previous polemics is forceful. He argues thoughtfully that the rebellions against communism do not constitute revolutions but rather "an attempt to return to square one, that is to say the position before communism." His diatribe against anti-democratic Third World plutocrats, if somewhat overbroad and dated, nonetheless does make clear his case for liberalism. Revel is less convincing when he addresses the problems of democratic countries, citing as the causes the usual triad of corruption, media-driven politics and the decline of citizenship. His reliance on the example of his home country leads him to damn the "French egalitarian passion'; others might argue that the United States could use a dose of such egalitarianism.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
The elder-statesman/philosopher of the French right ponderously warns that humanity must choose between ``democratic capitalism or extinction,'' and calls for ``liberal democracies'' to assert their ``right to intervene'' in other nations' affairs. Revel (The Flight from Truth, 1991, etc.) marginalizes his argument by noting that this book is about ``the search for the best political system available, or at any rate the least pernicious one.'' He never specifies exactly which democracies should intervene against the likes of a Saddam Hussein, or by whose authority or at whose behest. But Revel believes that, however imperfect, it's the Free World's responsibility to forcefully curb arms proliferation in the Third World, to stop the spread of AIDS, to mandate agrarian reform, and to level punitive measures against any country that allows destructive fishing practices. As for the ``collapse'' of Communism, we must still be vigilant: The rise to democracy is incomplete, and it's ``easier to return to democracy from a fascist military dictatorship than from a socialist- progressive dictatorship.'' While ``liberal democratic capitalism'' may have its imperfections, ``what we know about all the tested alternatives...is that they have no qualities.'' Former Communist states are ``abnormal societies'' that can become normal again--but not through the reforms of a Gorbachev or ``the celebrated `third way' '' of democratic socialism. Normalcy can be achieved only by destroying all vestiges of totalitarianism. As democracy spreads, though, problems arise due ``to a return of national, local, and individual particularities''--and so does Revel explain and seem to excuse the strife in Bosnia, French racism, and the rise of neo- Nazism in Germany. In Revel's view, apparently, ``democracy'' need no longer be representative or born of idealism: It need only claim the name. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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