Husserl’s apodictic grasp of an essence or intelligible contour, the other
one of praxis, much more in line with a pragmatist theory where the
“apodictic” is really the “nonnegotiable” in Quine’s famous thesis.^8
Merleau-Ponty, Sartre and ultra-Bolshevism
During the first years of his fellow-traveling with the PCF Sartre
published a set of essays inLes Temps Modernes(July 1952 –April 1954 )
that appeared as “The Communists and Peace” inSituationsvolumevi
( 1964 ). Written in anger against the French government, especially its
police (“The Forces of Order”), Sartre focused on two events: the May
28 , 1952 violent demonstration against the visit of General Ridgway
to Paris as the new head of NATO, and the strike of June 2 against
the arrest of several prominent Party members after the previous
demonstration turned violent. The conservative press interpreted the
relatively sparse participation in the strike as evidence that the workers
had abandoned the PCF. The entire scene moved Sartre to side with
the Party but as usual, on his principles, not theirs. His justification
for supporting the practices of the PCF is that he had come to believe
no other political entity could effectively serve the French proletariat
at that time.^9
It is this text in particular that Merleau-Ponty seems to have had
in mind when he launched his uncharacteristically acerbic attack on
Sartre’s “Ultra-Bolshevism.” Merleau-Ponty had resigned from the
editorial committee ofLTMin May of 1953 , though his subsequent
(^8) See my “Praxis and Vision: Elements of a Sartrean Epistemology,”Philosophical Forum 8 (fall
1976 ): 21 – 43 , and Willard V. O. Quine, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,”Philosophical Review
60 : 20 – 43 , widely anthologized.
(^9) “The ‘proletariat shaped into a distinct political party’ – what is it in France today if not the
totality of the workers organized by the CP? If the working class wants to detach itself from
the Party, it has only one means at its disposal: to crumble into dust” (CP 88 ). I should add
that Sartre’sA Reply to Claude Lefortwas directed against the founder of the “third way”
group “Socialism or Barbarism” and a friend of Merleau’s. He had published an essay in
LTMno. 89 (April 1953 ) critical ofThe Communists and Peace. Sartre’s reply, when it was not
personal, touched on matters that Merleau will criticize inAdventuresas well. So I shall
not pursue this exchange in favor of that between Merleau and Sartre, except to note
that Lefort, in his reply inLTMfifteen months later, sought to show that the PCF is
counterrevolutionary. This is the very claim that a chastened Sartre will repeat during the
“Events of May, 1968 ” in an essay entitled “The Communists are Afraid of Revolution.”
Merleau-Ponty, Sartre and ultra-Bolshevism 319