Jean-François Revel

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Here is a tasty paradox: How did the Leftist legions regroup after history delivered its fatal blow to the Soviet system? Simple, argues Jean-Francois Revel: the Left retreated to the impregnable fortress of the Utopian ideal. After all, socialism incarnate was always vulnerable to criticism. Utopia, on the other hand, lies by definition beyond reproach. With the demise of the Soviet system, there is no longer a vast and flailing embodiment of their vision, and Utopia’s haughty champions can again rage boundlessly.

In Last Exit to Utopia, the latest English language translation of one of Europe’s most controversial intellectuals, Jean-Francois Revel takes aim at socialist apologists who have attempted to erase or invert the manifest failures of socialist ideology. As the tide of Big Government rises in America, Revel’s forewarnings here are as prescient as they are frightening.

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Revel probes the origins of the notion that America is the source of all evil: imperialistic, greedy, ruthlessly competitive–a hyperpower whose riches are acquired at the expense of the Third World.

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Jean Francois-Revel, a pillar of French intellectual life in our time, became world famous for his challenges to both Communism and Christianity. Twenty-seven years ago, his son, Matthieu Ricard, gave up a promising career as a scientist to study Tibetan Buddhism — not as a detached observer but by immersing himself in its practice under the guidance of its greatest living masters.

Meeting in an inn overlooking Katmandu, these two profoundly thoughtful men explored the questions that have occupied humankind throughout its history. Does life have meaning? What is consciousness? Is man free? What is the value of scientific and material progress? Why is there suffering, war, and hatred? Their conversation is not merely abstract: they ask each other questions about ethics, rights, and responsibilities, about knowledge and belief, and they discuss frankly the differences in the way each has tried to make sense of his life.

Utterly absorbing, inspiring, and accessible, this remarkable dialogue engages East with West, ideas with life, and science with the humanities, providing wisdom on how to enrich the way we live our lives.

Presentation (From Publishers Weekly)

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.

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In the tradition of Without Marx or Jesus and How Democrats Perish, Revel issues a call to arms against the most insidious and pervasive force in the world today: the dissemination of false information, the withholding of truths, the distrtions of the day. A brilliant, impassioned, well-argued book.

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Argues that the modern democracies are endangered by an excess of self-criticism and misinterpretations of moral positions and asserts that the democracies must cease to be the complacent victims of communism.