Nausea

 Although particular acts of the ‘socialist’ states can be criticised, it is accepted that they are ‘unconsciously’ moving towards socialism. In a recent edition of Temps Moderne Sartre wrote a piece on Togliatti. Even Michael Foot’s biography of Bevan was not written in such sycophantic terms. Togliatti’s support for Kadar and his ilk was seen as being of only minor significance; his role in restoring capitalism in Italy ignored. Perhaps this provides an apt commentary on Sartre’s book. The intellectual inadequacies of Stalinism – its theoretical crudity, its bureaucratic manipulation of fact – are rejected. It is hard to see today how any self-respecting intellectual in bourgeois society could do otherwise. But its overriding claims are accepted. Sartre tries to find a new method transcending traditional Marxism. In doing so he says much that is interesting. But the end result of this labour is only to offer an existentialist conscience to the Stalinist hack.