Simone de Beauvoir and the Existential Basis of Socialism

Author(s): Bob Stone

Source: Social Text , Autumn, 1987, No. 17 (Autumn, 1987), pp. 123-133
Published by: Duke University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/466483

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Duke University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Social Text

This content downloaded from

181.47.144.210 on Mon, 12 Jul 2021 23:00:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Simone de Beauvoir and the Existential Basis of
Socialism

BOB STONE

For Beauvoir, existential ethics moves from reflection on myself to c

of interdependence with others and from thence to socialism. In reflectio
that I am a situated freedom: I am sexed, of a certain height, race, cla
also spontaneously give meaning to these things through my percepti
and actions-in short, I am also free. In a given situation, I can choose
as this freedom or against it. To choose against it is to wish vainly to be
defined thing. Choosing myself as this concrete freedom means assu
actively transcending my situation toward an open future-a free moveme
greater freedom. If I am oppressed, I must want liberation. And if m
differs from another's-or even if I am not oppressed-I must also wan
and every other, to be free as well. But why? Can't I consistently choose
and be indifferent to that of others? May I not pursue my freedom alone,
being required to promote anyone else's? And even if my liberation rests
sion of others, so what? Why not?
We encounter here an idea in Beauvoir's ethics that I would like to
"To will oneself free is also to will others free."' This conception
interdependence of concrete freedoms-separates bourgeois from exis
dom. It is present only dogmatically in Sartre. But in Beauvoir's Th
Ambiguity and, especially, Pyrrhus et Cineas, it is argued for. The id
unless it is true, there is no basis for existentialists' commitments to
and to socialist revolution. For if my freedom can be fully developed wit
ing that of others, solidarity and revolutionism become whim or sup
Moreover, an existential socialism-one free of elitism and patriarch
only if concrete liberations imply each other thereby ruling out all form
tion. In this regard, one of Beauvoir's post-structuralist critics allege
cepted too much of traditional power discourse on "freedom" and "su
be able to point radically beyond it.2 But if we attend to the content of h
in Pyrrhus et Cineas-an elegant, overlooked essay published just after the
that remains, oddly, untranslated-we see she escapes these concepti
some past. In this article I shall: explain the idea of the interdependence o

123

This content downloaded from

181.47.144.210 on Mon, 12 Jul 2021 23:00:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 124 Bob Stone

freedoms and
illustrate its
p
Sartre puts th
for freedom's
freedom, we di
freedom of oth
tion of man d
obliged to want
can take my o
Thomas C. And
promote them
remarks: "in so
my freedom b
not appear to b
doms. Indeed, i
all, all that co
value" (Ander
Beauvoir's answ
freedom would
firm" its desi
ontologically c
ing forth of em
to be meaningf
nized, needed
possible in adv
provide absolut
must come fr
339, 344). If w
constraining o
others that I n
having chosen
Beauvoir write
further good
recognition if
see an obstacle
rule: it is th
pp. 357-358).
Anderson admires existentialists' activism, but finds this argument to be un-
sound, and hence inadequate as a bridge between choosing my own freedom and
socialist activism. "Is it true, as she claims," he asks, "that man desires positive

This content downloaded from

181.47.144.210 on Mon, 12 Jul 2021 23:00:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Simone de Beauvoir and the Existential Basis of Socialism
125

recognition from all men and, therefore, that he wants all to become his peers? Is it
not rather the case that the good opinion of a select few is enough to satisfy him"
(Anderson, p. 94)? He remarks in his own case that his plumber's recognition would
be nice, and that of all humanity would be welcome, but that it is "hardly a strongly
felt need." Anderson argues that Beauvoir herself admits recognition by small groups
is enough to "confirm" my freedom.6 Since recognition within a group or class (e.g.,
the ruling class) is thus sufficient, and since presumably its freedom alone is needed,
Anderson concludes there is no obligation to "promote the freedom of a vast number
on this planet." A socialist-or at least classless-society is thus not implied in
choosing my own freedom.
In defense of Beauvoir's argument I'll make three points. First, Anderson seems
to think our native freedom for Beauvoir is a sort of property or possession, that is,
something I can have in isolation from everyone else. To be sure, bridging the gap
between such bourgeois freedom and socialism is indeed impossible, and this is what
Anderson demonstrates. But, much conventional wisdom on existentialism to the
contrary notwithstanding, Beauvoir's starting point is not that of bourgeois freedom
for whom "the unemployed, the prisoner, the ill are as free as I am" (Pyrrhus,
p. 330). True: she rejects all attempts to guarantee interpersonal relations by merging
subjectivities into some wider pre-existing substance (e.g. God, Humanity or the
Proletariat). But for Beauvoir I am not related to my freedom as a thing is to its
properties since I am not a thing; rather, I exist my freedom as my own constant
self-transcendence of my "properties" (Pyrrhus, p. 245). Indeed it is this perpetual
intentionality within and toward the world and others that decides what "self" and
"other" are to be. Thus understood, freedom is inherently opened onto other people.
Bourgeois "freedom"--opting out of interpersonal relationships-is arrived at only
by inwardly repressing this promiscuous self-transcendence toward others, a choice
which in turn compels me to wish for, if not to effect, suppression of others' freedom.
Now since our native freedom is thus other-oriented, electing to expand rather than
to repress it--"to set freedom free" as she puts it7-means electing a free world, a
social space in which others do not repress one because they do not repress them-
selves. Self-determination also necessarily determines in part my relations with
others; so, having affirmed my native openness toward others, it would be inconsis-
tent to then wish limits and servitude upon them.
Secondly, presuming to grant the interdependence of concrete freedoms, Ander-
son nevertheless fails to grasp the two corollaries that immediately follow from it:
(1) diminishing others' freedom will return negatively to diminish my own, and
(2) promoting others' liberation will return positively to enlarge my own possibilities
and powers. Whether we enter the negative or the positive dialectical circle depends
on our original choice against or for our own freedom. Beauvoir notes that "If I wish
myself to be courageous, deft, or intelligent, I cannot disdain courage, dexterity, and

This content downloaded from

181.47.144.210 on Mon, 12 Jul 2021 23:00:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
126 Bob Stone

intelligence in
tion, if I follo
dexterity and
from acquiring
me since my sl
and also since m
will have chose
that forcing ot
freedom; only
mere things th
p. 46). Alternat
my service will
not count in m
freedom-woul
attainment com
their own free
323, 324). A "r
even by "the
blandishment,
marking on the
"What time and
plexes, in talk
liberated in the
promote the fr
Finally, as to
Beauvoir. First
but neither do
Anderson's: sh
local
freedom o
meaningful life
need universal
and, therefore,
of being want
situations from
their freedom
demand for me
shall not be co
emphasis adde
me, that is, be
be ubiquitous

This content downloaded from

181.47.144.210 on Mon, 12 Jul 2021 23:00:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Simone de Beauvoir and the Existential Basis of Socialism 127

required here is obviously the kind of material freedom from want that a
relationships to flourish. But with this transition from existentialist p
universal material freedom from want, we must recognize we have already
ple entered socialist discourse.
To illustrate the preferability of Beauvoir's unlimited to Anderson's loc
tion, let's look briefly at Mark Twain's characters Huck Finn and the ru
ger" Jim, once they are living an unfettered life on the raft in the Missis
Do we find that, amidst slave society, in isolated circumstances that give t
mon needs, true friendship a la Anderson becomes possible between th
Twain shows the pair's developing closeness, it is part of his greatness
point up the impossibility of a friendship that grasps itself as an island of
indifferent to the surrounding sea of unfreedom. Friendship is pushed
when one of the parties (in this case Huck) refuses, or simply omits
himself from the forces aimed at destroying the other's (Jim's) freedom. Ji
just doesn't know if he can trust Huck.l" Thus it is only when Huck at
joins Jim against that wider unfreedom, taking on similar risks, that thei
is first actually won. The subjectivity of those (like Huck) accidentally priv
skin color, sex, or class, must lie overlooked in any society where-due to p
like racism, sexism, and classism-only the surface "status," not the sub
the privileged can be "recognized" by the oppressed. Anderson, Huck, and e
imagine a relationship can guarantee positive reciprocal recognition me
it is itself voluntary and appears to be isolated from oppression. But T
that unless friendships (and we can generalize to other forms of mutual re
consciously combat the wider oppressions that surround and haunt t
oppressions will ultimately undermine the reciprocity required precisely f
of such supposedly private relations. The freedom required by even sm
groupings thus itself implies ever-widening liberatory struggles against op
Beauvoir's early ethical works provide not just a vision of socialism
mediations for us to grasp the outlines of a political praxis. Two years befo
Pyrrhus et Cineas, in April 1941, she had joined with other existentialists i
an early resistance writers' group; indeed it was formed well before th
on the Soviet Union permitted French Communist militants-up to the
by the Hitler-Stalin non-aggression pact-to at last join them in resistan
occupation of their homeland. Significantly for us, the group was calle
and Freedom."'12 Beauvoir calls for a process of liberation toward universal
over against liberalism's call for respect for all present freedoms. Whereas
would tolerate the freedom of oppressors, Beauvoir respects it only as her
combat. Beauvoir is not philosophically non-violent (Pyrrhus, p. 362)
doubt conditioned by the then evident necessity of violence in combatting
am oppressed," she writes, "if I am thrown into prison, but not if I am

This content downloaded from

181.47.144.210 on Mon, 12 Jul 2021 23:00:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
128 Bob Stone

throwing my
freedom deser
sor does not r
the freedom o
recognition n
freedom of th
interdependen
of all.13
The "human
a priori, it is
common inter
nature, as po
pp. 278-287,
Beauvoir share
rejections of a
pp. 18-19). Ab
of man from
rather the li
Beauvoir ech
condition for
tialism that or
according to B
may begin to
p. 135). Beauv
"official" mar
has stirred m
so-called "pes
This tie of m
world-wide s
solidarity of
pp. 314, 333;
toward or "op
In dated term
fight for the
Spaniard in S
tradict the w
onto the tota
oppression w
pp. 88-89), an
circumstance

This content downloaded from

181.47.144.210 on Mon, 12 Jul 2021 23:00:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Simone de Beauvoir and the Existential Basis of Socialism 129

Beauvoir's conception implies the connection of particular liberatory stru

each other: oppressed groups must want the liberation of other groups whos
sions they do not share, since, as efforts at liberation, each depends on the
conditions for everyone's recognition are to be secured (Ethics, pp. 86-87
freedoms are interdependent, then, in three ways: phenomenologically, in t
not be liberated alone; ethically, in that choosing my own implies a moveme
everyone's; and politically, in that a liberation ignorant of others' oppre
possible. "Our freedoms support each other," Beauvoir writes, "like the s
arch" (Pyrrhus, p. 367). Thus the connection of my election of freedo
process that is fulfilled only with universal material freedom effectively cl
between choosing my freedom and socialist activism. For under capita
bureaucratic socialism, we might add) the time, well-being, and control n
to undertake our own free acts, and then to recognize the free acts of
stolen from us in the form of profits or benefits for others. Authentic socia
tion is therefore needed to secure the freedom necessary to valida
recognition. 15
What shall we say, then, as we look back on these works of Beauvoir's?16
the idea of the interdependence of concrete freedoms still seems true and us
illustrate, I offer four current examples of the negative dialectical circles m
earlier, wherein ignoring or diminishing the freedom of others within thei
presently comes back to diminish one's own freedom in one's own situat
(1) A defense worker, in voting for politicians who make nuclear t
distant communists, also thereby moves wealth through taxation from work
cluding herself) directly to owners-especially owners in the vast arms
thus conferring on those over her greater social power in the form of capit
objective interest in further threats, thereby personally losing social power
wages and also making war more rather than less likely.
(2) The support a worker in the metropoles of imperialism gives to
insurgency on imperialism's periphery (whether such counter-insurgency is
as in the case of Grenada or not, as in the cases of Algeria, Vietnam, an
Nicaragua) inevitably adds obstacles to liberation movements generally, t
taining conditions for moving capital to areas of cheap labor, thereby d
minishing his bargaining power vis a vis his own bosses at home and i
threatening his job.
(3) The worker who blames minorities rather than capitalist practic
falling buying power, usually votes for undercutting public support for hea
tion and welfare, so minorities will be forced to "get a job." However, h
adds education and other costs to the burden his own dwindling wage m
and-by helping force unorganized workers into the job market to
needs-he correspondingly increases pressures on himself to accept what

This content downloaded from

181.47.144.210 on Mon, 12 Jul 2021 23:00:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
130 Bob Stone

offered, at wha
as much as he
system that or
(4) The worke
daughter doubl
wage in sparing
daughter perf
women's supere
value), such th
income for him
Might there
Beauvoir, to po
in the exampl
paper over the
so long as the
authentic unit
solidarity so lo
of multination
Beauvoir prov
formed by disp
outionary "we
ences between d
each of such a
others lest, sep
Yet Beauvoir's
Ethics of Amb
independent o
philosophy of h
p. 67). I find th
situated hersel
phenomenolog
cally, detailing
ent in it. Taken
valid and usefu
ideal or eterna
morality so mu
But when we
depend on each
parallel, forev
not have. Disp

This content downloaded from

181.47.144.210 on Mon, 12 Jul 2021 23:00:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Simone de Beauvoir and the Existential Basis of Socialism 131

Marx observes, labor is a "nature-imposed necessity."20 They do not enjoy, a

Beauvoir following Hegel seems to imply, a direct freedom-to-freedom relation
mediated by materiality. Each individual's relation to everyone else is mediat
through a requirement on the species to make its living. This is done historically, t
is, through a particular mode of production. This overarching collective mater
relationship of the species to nature ultimately relates the acts, and thus the freedo
of every individual to every other.
Since certain classes have historically laid advance claim to our collective p
ductive access to nature, others have been a priori excluded before birth and h
before the moral game starts. Due to habitual collective toleration of this ac
preemptive arrogation, a natural-looking social hierarchy springs up whole am
us, like crystallization of frigid water, and spaces are thereby created at the bottom
be filled by someone or other. Freedoms must be coded before birth for these wait
spaces: blacks, women, Jews, but also the aged, children. To account for these facts
ethical inquiry itself, and not just its results, must be even more historically s
conscious than were Beauvoir's early efforts. Lives and deaths are plotted by a syste
before they can express themselves as freedoms at all-whether for moral good or il
It would be morally insensitive in this situation to ponder the various ethical princ
ples and recipes for individually being a good and virtuous person. In such a contex
no one who leaves that system untouched can just be morally good, as such ponderi
suggests. Traditional, and even existentialist, ethics get subverted, then, if they do
aim first to dismantle the system that grinds up freedoms, using perhaps a provisi
morality in which revolutionary praxis enjoys primacy. Only in that context
moral discourse on individual virtue become meaningful, since in that case the
crete conditions which undermine all morality will themselves at last be direc
addressed.
Of course Beauvoir herself later recognized this. Writing in 1963 of some early
"idealistic" essays that followed Pyrrhus et Cineas she asks herself harshly, ". . .wh
did I take the circuitous route through other values besides need to justify the fun
mental importance I assigned to need itself? Why did I write concrete liberty inste
of bread, and subordinate the will to live to a search for the meaning of life? I nev
brought matters down to saying: People must eat because they are hungry."21
these self-criticisms are not renunciations; rather, they charge the span of Beauvoi
works with presence and immediacy.
For existentialism, then, the postmodern era is a dialectically richer extension
the preference for thing-like existence that has long been so typical of capitalism a
bureaucratic socialism, with their massive capacities to serialize, coopt and dissi
liberatory initiatives. A response to postmodernism that willingly yields up concep
like "agency," "subjectivity," and "autonomy"-mistakenly thinking them to
infected with ruling class hegemony-partakes of the pathology it would cur

This content downloaded from

181.4ff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff on Thu, 01 Jan 1976 12:34:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 132 Bob Stone

yields to the
tools needed
throw.

NOTES

1. The Ethics of Ambiguity, trans. Bernard Frechtman (New York: Philosophical Library
p. 73. (Cited hereafter as "Ethics.") This article is based on a paper given at the Colloquium on Sim
Beauvoir at Columbia University, April 1985. I thank Carol Ascher, Elizabeth Bowman and Sohny
for helpful discussions and the C. W. Post College Research Committee for research support.
2. Emily Erwin Culpepper writes: "De Beauvoir realized and elaborately explored the gen
correlation of the Self/Other split, but she still seems to accept this model as the way conscious
constructed" ("Simone de Beauvoir and the Revolt of the Symbols," Trivia #6, Winter 1985), p. 9
evidence (beyond their theoretical works) that early existentialism never accepted the authoritaria
cations in some of the theory-laden language it used, see Beauvoir's account in Force of Circu
trans. Richard Howard (New York: Putnam's, 1964), p. 40.
3. Existentialism and Humanism, trans. Phillip Mairet (London: Methuen, 1973), pp. 51-5
4. The Foundation and Structure of Sartrean Ethics (Lawrence: The Regents' Press of Kansas,
p. 82. (Cited hereafter as "Anderson.")
5. Ethics of Ambiguity, p. 71: "Only the freedom of others keeps each one of us from hardening i
absurdity of facticity." See also Pyrrhus et Cineas in Pour une morale de l'ambiguite, suivi de Py
Cineas (1944: rpt. Paris: Gallimard, Idles edition, 1972), p. 338, and esp. p. 355: "I need other f
because, were I alone, once I had attained my own ends my acts would fall back upon themselves, i
useless, not having been carried forward by new projects toward a new future." Further citation of Py
et Cineas will be as "Pyrrhus." All translations are mine.
6. Anderson quotes the following paragraph in this regard: "The scholar can communicate on
persons who have arrived at a degree of knowledge equal to his own; he then proposes his theory t
as a basis for new work.... If our appeals to the freedom of others are not to be lost in the void,
have men near me who are ready to understand me; other men must be my peers" (Pyrrhus, p. 3
see below for an alternative reading of this passage.
7. The Prime of Life, trans. Peter Green (Cleveland: World, 1962), p. 434.
8. The Second Sex, trans. H.M. Parshley (New York: Vintage, 1974), p. 800.
9. "The Kantian ethic enjoins me to seek the approval of humanity in its entirety; but we hav
that no heaven exists in which the reconciliation of human judgments might be attained" (Py
pp. 344-345). Beauvoir seems to misunderstand Kant here, but it is clear she does not envision un
recognition.
10. That liberation from oppression must be universal follows from Beauvoir's statement that local
oppression anywhere endangers the conditions for my freedom, and thus must be opposed: "If I make a
group of men a herd, mere cattle, I diminish the human domain by that amount. And even if I only oppress
a single man, then it is in him that all humanity appears to me as pure thing. If a man is an ant that one can
crush without scruple, then all men taken together are only an anthill" (Pyrrhus, p. 362).
11. Had Huck not violated his pro-slavery conscience in an "abolitionist" act, the friendship between
Jim and Huck would have evaporated. Jim conveys as much when he calls tendentiously after the ambiva-
lent Huck, as the latter starts an excursion into "civilization": "Dah he goes, de ole true Huck: de on'y
white genlman dat ever kep' his promise to ole Jim." The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1912; rpt. New
York: Harper's, 1884), p. 119.

This content downloaded from

181.47.144.210 on Mon, 12 Jul 2021 23:00:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Simone de Beauvoir and the Existential Basis of Socialism 133

12. Prime of Life, p. 383; Annie Cohen-Solal, Sartre (Paris: Gallimard, 1985), pp. 224-
late 50s, during the Algerian Revolution, the existentialists again undertook "illegitima
support of insurgent forces, again well in advance of the supposedly anti-imperialist Commun
Force of Circumstance, pp. 460, 491, 545-548 and my introduction to Francis Jeanson, Sa
Problem of Morality (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), pp. xix-xxii.
13. I am not moved by Kantian respect for the present wills of others, taken as ends, sin
determine a priori what another's will is (Pyrrhus, p. 314). Nor am I moved by Christian
liberation does not entail an indiscriminate generosity toward all God's creatures), or b
self-interest (since the freedom that I am is not necessarily a source of benefits to me).
14. "On the Jewish Question," in The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd Edition, ed. Robert C. T
York: W.W. Norton, 1978), p. 42, Marx's emphasis. For cognate passages in The Ethics of Am
pp. 71, 81, 91.
15. Support of socialist revolution is indirect in Pyrrhus et Cindas, being derivable from the inevitabil-
ity of struggle and the need for liberation from classes in the direction of universal freedom (p. 282). More
explicit are: The Ethics of Ambiguity, pp. 18-19; The Second Sex, pp. 61-62, 65-66, 131, 160-161; and
The Long March, trans. Austryn Wainhouse (Cleveland: World, 1958), esp. Ch. 4. She reaffirmed this
position in an interview with John Gerassi: "Simone de Beauvoir: The Second Sex 25 Years Later," Society
(Jan.-Feb., 1976), p. 81. However, in her later years her views on socialism evolved further. See After "The
Second Sex": Conversations with Simone de Beauvoir, by Alice Aschwarzer, trans. Marianne Howarth
(New York: Pantheon, 1984), pp. 31-33, 38, 40, 44, 70-71.
16. Of course my account of Beauvoir's position leaves many questions unanswered. For instance:
Why choose freedom in the first place? How is this socialism to be structured? Are there ways of determin-
ing permissible from impermissible revolutionary means? I believe they have answers, but they take us
beyond this essay.
17. For this point I am indebted to Nancy Holmstrom's "Women's Work, The Family and
Capitalism" in Science and Society (Summer 1981). But see also, Beauvoir, The Second Sex, pp. xxvii,
128-131.

18. The Second Sex, p. 131.

19. The Second Sex, p. xxii.
20. Capital, Vol. 1, trans. S. Moore and E. Aveling (New York: International Publishers, 1967), p
This fact is later recognized by existentialism. See Force of Circumstance, Ch. 2.
21. Force of Circumstance, p. 68. See also Prime of Life, p. 435.

This content downloaded from

181.47.144.210 on Mon, 12 Jul 2021 23:00:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms