Is Sartre being communist paradoxical?

After we studied Sartre in class, I really wanted to study his engagement in the communist party because it had always looked paradoxical to me. I’ll first talk about the reactions of the communists to existentialism, then we’ll study how Sartre lived his engagement and finally we’ll see on a theoretical side if it is actually paradoxical.

Indeed, my first argument would be the misunderstanding of the existentialist doctrine by the communists. As we’ve seen, they reproached Sartre to have created a passive doctrine, with no action. This analysis I completely wrong, the main conclusion of Sartre’s study is that engagement is the paroxysm of human liberty. You are only human when you express your liberty at its utmost, thus when you engage yourself. Therefore, how could communist say it’s a passive doctrine when it defends engagement that way? It may be because Sartre explains liberty is innate and not a right to be fought for. The fact that liberty is innate does not mean you have to stop fighting for it, only that you do not fight for its existence but its free expression in your society. This theory implies the fact that you always have a choice, even it seems that you don’t, that also means not to get engaged is also a choice, and also an of human liberty, even if it’s a weak one because not enlightened. It is not to be judged. Indeed, communists may have seen this lack of judgement toward those who don’t engage as a defence. In the end, Sartre had to hold the very well-known conference “Existentialism is a humanism” (which was lately turned in to a book) to answer this critic (along with the one that I was a Godless doctrine and so without morale). It wasn’t very effective and Simone de Beauvoir had to help him out in Ethics of ambiguity.

When he was younger, Sartre displayed no political opinions whatsoever except for a side of anarchism common to the intellectual elite. It’s the Second World War that woke up its political instincts. He revealed himself to be pacifist and anti-militarist. With the defeat, hi is made a prisoner by the Germans and he learns life in a community and solidarity through his experience. When he was before an individualist, he started to re-evaluate his role inside a community. He published The being and nothingness just at the end of the war, meaning before his most important engagement in the communist party, we can suppose his thoughts had evolved. Moreover, he didn’t act as a resistant during the war, and even published articled in right-wing reviews. We can see his political engagement is really ambiguous. In the few years following the end of the war, he wants to create a third road between capitalism and Stalinism, both denying the human rights. He even creates a political party. But the events in Korea and the repression of communist protesters lead him to engage in the communist party where he becomes a lead figure. Then, he decides to support the USSR whereas Camus thinks the abysmal treatment of the population is a reason to denounce it: their friendship is broken up and Sartre will go on on this line until the Budapest insurrection where he finally decide to cut all ties with the party. We have seen his orientation towards communism has been wobbly. We can ask ourselves why he decided to engage in this party among others. Obviously, his ideological positions were close but we can think of others factors. Firstly, at the end of the war, there were only two parties that had resisted and for an existentialist humanist, he couldn’t engage in any other: they were the party of De Gaulle which was overtly capitalist and was a bit light on human rights and then the communist party. Then, the latter hosted all of his closest friends and the intellectual elite he hanged out with, there’s a kind of emulation.

Finally we’ll see how his philosophy can be linked with communism. Freedom is at the center of existentialism meaning everyone always has a choice. It implies there is no determinism, someone using excuses like God, a lack of opportunities or a weakest social standing to explain his shortcomings is full of bad faith. Therefore, engaging in apolitical party which defends the idea everyone is equal and promotes equality instead of liberty seems paradoxical. Furthermore, the Stalinist regime denied basic human rights which go against the humanist part of existentialism. But, in the light of the action of the French communist party back then, meaning they mainly sought to achieve rights equality and basic life decency for everyone, it’s quite logical. It’s the alignment with Moscow which is not understandable and defensible. However, if it was nowadays, the engagement of Sartre in the communist party would truly be a paradox! Why? What was sought before has been achieved, they now work for equality of opportunities and equality in the situations, and for the reasons explained before, and as it relies on the notion of determinism it is thus unreliable to existentialism.

In the end, I’ll say the relation linking Sartre and communism was very ambiguous. On one hand, he was one of the lead figures of the movement in France and this doctrine was present in its works (Les mains sales). However, his personal attachment to communism looks very fleeting and in light of the existentialist philosophy, it’s not the most logical choice ever!