A Foreign Vision of the Coming American Revolution

The European's compulsive fascination with what was once called the American Experiment often translates itself into harsh criticism. At a time of so much American self-doubt, one European, however, offers a generously sympathetic vision. French Author-Critic Jean-Franc,ois Revel has taken measure of America in stress and has found there hope not only for the U.S. but for the rest of the world. In his new book, Ni Marx Ni Jesus (Neither Marx nor Jesus), to be published in the U.S. this fall by Doubleday under the title The New American Revolution, Revel argues that a "revolution" has already begun in the U.S.--a movement capable of success without violent upheaval. Revel sees not a world revolution against the U.S. as most of the country's leftist critics imagine. Rather it is a beneficial one which America will create. The view of America as a model to others is overwhelmingly unfashionable just now, but that is how Revel views it. The new America, he predicts, will generate a new "world revolution."

As Revel sees it, the phenomenon has no relation to the familiar, violent historical event, which, as happened in Russia, merely exchanges one form of tyranny for another. He asserts that there has been only one world revolution, which he places in the second half of the 18th century with the advent of egalitarian societies. The second world revolution, he says, will have as its goal the establishment of "economic and social equality by and through cultural and personal liberty; the guarantee of security through the participation of all in the political decisions," and eventually the creation of a world government.

Why is the U.S. to be the privileged vanguard of the second world revolution? Because, says Revel, America has invented a new revolutionary method that other nations have been incapable of engendering on their own. That method is dissent, "a revolutionary judo without precedent," an "all-enveloping and erratic sedition" with which governments cannot cope. For the revolution to succeed, there must be widespread criticism of:

>Injustice in economic, social and racial relationships;

> Inefficiency in management, use of materials and human resources, and wrongful use of technical progress;

> Misuse of political power;

> The state of present-day culture--morals, religion, philosophy, literature and the arts; >Adverse effects of civilization upon personal liberty.

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All these criticisms exist today in the U.S., writes Revel, and all are accelerated by modern mass communications, notably television, which does not stultify American viewers but offers them a great variety of political, cultural and economic information. "Far from being television's slave, the viewer can use it as a library." Thus it is free access to information, Revel argues, that has created such widespread criticism of the war. "We tend too often to ignore the fact that for the first time in world history, a foreign war--and particularly a colonial expedition and a war that is supposed to be in the interests of national security--is meeting with such strong opposition within the country that is waging the war . . . The transition from internal democracy to democracy in external affairs, or at least to preoccupation with democracy in external affairs, represents a giant step--a step that the United States has been the first to take. Americans were able to make that transition because of the freedom of information in their country. It means that there has been real progress toward suppression of the right to commit crime in the name of foreign policy."

To overcome war and other world evils, there must first come a change in "political civilization," explains Revel. The pioneer country for this is the U.S., where the signs of change are already visible: "Culturally, it is oriented toward the future rather than the past, and it is undergoing a revolution in mores and an affirmation of the freedom and equality of individuals. It rejects authoritarian controls and hence multiplies creative initiative in art, ways of life, forms of sensibility, allowing for a diversity of mutually complementary or alternative subcultures . . . Finally, an important revolution has the best chance of coming about in a situation where the forces of change are faced with a broad fundamental goodwill, allowing them to gain enormous ground without recourse to a real civil war. In other words, the higher the threshold of absorption of change by the existing system, the greater the revolutionary chances of success." Not violence but co-optation by the Establishment is the surest means to successful revolution in the U.S.

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Revel is convinced that the revolution will succeed. Pointing out that it was the European who invented imperialism. Revel concludes: "Today in this America, daughter of our imperialism, a new revolution is rising. It is the revolution of our time. It is the only one which, at the first radical, moral and practical confrontation with nationalism, combines a culture, an economic and technological power and, finally, a total affirmation of freedom for all as opposed to archaic restraints. It therefore offers the only possible way out for today's humanity: acceptance of technological civilization as a means and not as an end and thus--since we cannot be saved either by destroying it or going on with it--to reshape that civilization without annihilating it."

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In Paris last week, Revel took note of what he terms the "breathing spell" in the U.S. "This is a period of stabilization," he said. "The radicals, the Weatherman, the Black Panthers have put water in their wine. They're not backtracking, but they now understand better what must be done if they're to be effective. They realize that extremism, pure violence, cuts them off from protesting youth." But the revolution, in Revel's terms, has not been defused. "The left's ideas of five or six years ago have been adopted and are now being digested by large sectors of the American people. An awful lot happened in the past decade. There was a great deal of revising of values, and this is a digestive phase . . . Both the Establishment and the protesters are reflecting about events."

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