FRANCE: The New Philosophers

A coterie of young writers attacks Marxism as evil

It is probably the liveliest intellectual hubbub to hit Paris since the early 1950s, when Existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre startled other leftist intellectuals by defending Stalin's ironfisted regime, in spite of its excesses. This time the furor revolves around a group of young intellectuals, most of them lapsed Marxists, who are now attacking Marxism as an evil, obsolete ideology that leads inevitably to totalitarianism. The "New Philosophers," as they are known, have become overnight celebrities—featured on magazine covers and on TV talk shows. The...

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