Word: aron
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...democracy synonymous with decadence? France's indefatigable political pundit, Raymond Aron, 74, for one, answers a thunderous "No!" His 28th book, In Defense of Decadent Europe (Regnery/Gateway; $14.95), published in the U.S. in June, makes a formidable case for the democratic pluralism he has upheld for 30 years, often against periodic leftist tides in Western Europe. Perhaps best known for his ironic aphorism, "Marxism is the opium of the intellectuals," Aron has produced a challenging critique of the messianic illusions about a Communist Utopia...
Defense was originally written, as Aron concedes, to influence the 1978 French parliamentary election campaign, when there were fears that Eurocommunism might come to power as a major bloc within the Western alliance. Nevertheless, the English-language version has a lingering and vivid resonance. For example, the book poses a still pertinent question on the eve of the SALT II debate in the Senate: "Faced with an increasingly powerful and militant Soviet Union, do the Americans still have the same resolution they did 30 years...
...Aron does not fret over the specifics of the East-West strategic arms controversy. What he most fears is a loss of nerve among the Western democracies, resulting from a tenacious feeling of inferiority to the Soviet system. Many American analysts would disagree, believing that the U.S. has become complacent because of its sense of military superiority to the U.S.S.R. But Aron maintains that Westerners sometimes feel that the Soviet leaders "possess an infernal machine capable of blowing capitalism sky-high or else some virtually infallible instrument for guiding their strategy." This crisis of confidence has been accelerated in Europe...
...Aron has marshaled a huge arsenal of facts to prove that the U.S.S.R has lagged behind the West in productivity, living standards, scientific progress and human rights. His summary: "If the virtues of an economic regime are measured by its capacity to answer the wishes of the population, organize the rational allocation of resources and efficiently produce the goods necessary to the physical and moral well-being of individual people, the Soviet experience remains to this day the most spectacular failure in history...
...diplomatic friction between Washington and Bonn eventually led to fears that Bonn's assertively independent approach, which French Pundit Raymond Aron dubbed "Gaullism in a minor key," might prove a threat to Western solidarity. The first hint that West Germany might possibly be distancing itself from NATO was delivered by a leading figure of the left wing of Schmidt's own Social Democratic Party. Just as General Alexander Haig and other NATO commanders were warning about the Soviet Union's ominous military buildup, the S.P.D.'s parliamentary floor leader, Herbert Wehner, insisted that Moscow's moves were "defensive...