ABSTRACT

Political ideologies always combine, more or less felicitously, factual propositions and value judgments. They express an outlook on the world and a will orientated towards the future. The pre-established link between the denunciation of capitalism in the nineteenth century by a Western intellectual and the passions of the Asian and African intellectuals of today constitutes a third basic factor of our time. In Great Britain the debate is essentially technical rather than ideological because there is a general awareness of the ultimate compatibility of conflicting values. In Japan, as in France, the intellectuals feel humiliated by the fact that their country is supported and protected by the United States. In the Asian countries which were ruled by the British and which achieved their independence after the Second World War the situation is quite different. No European country ever went through the phase of economic development which India and China are now experiencing, under a regime that was representative and democratic.