Forgotten Camus?

Albert Camus is a canonized literary figure. No one leaves high school without having to confront "The Stranger". His philosophy, however, occupies a strange interstice in the philosophical canon. Not overly academic and rigorous, not totally minimalist, he has been relegated to the French existentialists of the mid 20th century, a kind of lesser Jean-Paul Sartre. But it is precisely today that he needs to be revived as more then a literary giant, that his insights are the most pressing, and his call for contemplative action the most urgent.
"The Rebel" stands out as Camus' most concise political treatise--part literature, part poetry, part historical reflection, but everywhere suffused with a call to action. His dual opponents are the polar extremes at work in ideology today: the complete nihilistic fatalism of those who have resigned themselves to carrying out the tasks of international capitalism, accepting their fate as representing a certain value of expendable labor and those who recognize the necessity of change whom have determined that the only effective recourse is violent revolution.
He begins with a literary exploration of the origins of rebellion. What are its psychological motivations? What is the trigger of individual revolt? He concludes that, "Rebellion is born of the spectacle of irrationality, confronted with an unjust and incomprehensible condition...It protests, it demands, it insists that the outrage be brought to an end, and that what has up to now been built upon shifting sands should henceforth be founded on rock." There will always be the oppressed that declares a metaphysical "No, I will obey up until this point, but beyond this line, beneath my submission, is the last remnants of human dignity that you cannot have". With this metaphysical "No", the rebel recognizes simultaneously his/her own worth and the minimum equality of human value. The difficulty, Camus says, lies not in the origins of rebellion, which are universal, but in the means in which rebellion attempts to found itself on rock.
In an illuminated survey Camus analyzes the forms that philosophical rebellion, historical rebellion, and artistic rebellion have taken in the past. All rebellions, he concludes end up in a form of totalitarianism. Sade, the malcontent despiser of cultural constrictions, whose work cries out for libertarian freedoms ends in the formulation of a closed city of executioners where all are killed by all (murder being the fulfillment of nihilistic freedom). The French revolutionaries affirm the fraternity of humanity only to institute an order that crushes all who resist the expression of the general will, namely, themselves. The Russian nihilists come close to ethical revolution when they recognize that by violent terrorism they surrender their own right to enter the fraternity of man. Knowing it could not take place in their own life time they appeal to future generations to vindicate their actions. This same appeal to future vindication is what fuels the later Communist revolutionaries; everything is expendable now in order to guarantee the ideal society of the future. The ideological offspring of the French nihilists and the Russian revolutionaries are respectively, Hitler's Fascism and Stalinist Communism.
In the first case, the humiliated Germany of the 1930's exerts itself against divinity in the form of national mobilization. With no transcendental reference, no God, and no religion to foster the reconciliation of there shattered national status only results, only victory, and only subservience to the state equate to true freedom and morality. It is not that the Nazi expansion is too precipitous, it must advance for there is no other measurement of freedom besides conquest. What begins in the French Revolution as the denial of the divine right of kingship ends in the attempt to impose the despotic kingdom of man on earth.
In the case of Stalinist Russia, there is the same result with an opposing operating ideology. The divine mechanism of history will eventually justify the "dictatorship of the proletariat". The solidification of the totalitarian regime was done, not for itself as with the above case, but to protect the revolution until it could be employed on a worldwide basis. Stalin saw himself, not as a dictator, but as a mechanism of history, the harbinger and protector of the communist revolution.
Camus concludes with both a warning and a imprecation to future generations. The rebel, if he is to avoid both the above ideological traps must "undoubtedly demand a certain degree of freedom for himself; but in no case, if he is consistent, does he demand the right to destroy the existence and the freedom of others". Simultaneously he must, "Instead of saying, with Hegel and Marx, that all is necessary, he only repeats that all is possible and that, at a certain point on the farthest frontier, it is worth making the supreme sacrifice for the sake of the possible". Whatever rebellion longs for, it betrays itself as soon as it solidifies into a totalitarian order. However, authentic rebellion "indefatigably confronts evil, from which it can only derive a new impetus". Rebellion, if it is to remain alive and creative, must never impose order and demand what it cannot give. "Real generosity toward the future", says Camus, "lies in giving all to the present".
In the United States today, we are confronted by both pervasive nihilism and appeal to history as justification for actions. When President Bush commented that "Iraq will only be a comma in the history books" or that "History will justify my actions" we can immediately see-if we are able to learn from the past-the direction in which he is leading American foreign policy. The agenda of perennial worldwide American economic and military hegemony is an admitted goal of conservative think-tanks throughout the country. What we are witnessing is the rise of historical justification to vindicate oppressive contemporary action. One wonders if the cold war was not so much decided in favor of one country but dissolved into a triumph of western capitalism as a means of production and concurrent Russian historical determinism as a ruling ideology. It is important in this instance to heed Camus' warning: "History only exists, in the final analysis, for God. Thus it is impossible to act according to plans embracing the totality of universal history...In so far as it is a risk it cannot be used to justify any excess or any ruthless and absolutist position".
At the same time, those who recognize the totalitarian nature of the prevailing political ideology respond in two ways. There are those who admit the exploitation of labor and life but acquiesce when confronted with the monumental task of revolution. On the other hand, there are those who recognize global injustice and, for lack of any other alternative, resort to impotently hurling rocks and protesting "the world order" at the entrance of WTO meetings. For Camus, and imperative for us today, is the ability to recognize that rebellion remains effective only when it is creative; it is this creativity which will "arithmetically decrease human suffering". Rebellion today cannot effectively take the form of 19th century riots or 20th century non-violent protests. Rather, rebellion must adapt to and utilize current institutions (and the law) to alleviate suffering. "In history, as in psychology, rebellion is an irregular pendulum, which swings in an erratic arc because it is looking for its most perfect and profound rhythm. But its irregularity is not total: it functions around a pivot. Rebellion, at the same time that it suggests a nature common to all men, brings to light the measure and the limit which are the very principle of this nature."