Communitarian Third Way: Alexandre Marc and Ordre Nouveau, 1930-2000

Marc helped Le Corbusier launch Plans, imported the existential philosophy of Husserl and Heidegger to France, helped Mounier start Esprit, and was an important force in revitalizing traditional French Catholic political culture. Hellman uses interviews, unpublished correspondence, and diaries to situate Marc and the Ordre Nouveau group in the context of the French, German, and Belgian political culture of that time and explains the degree to which the ON group succeeded in institutionalizing their new order under Pétain. Hellman also examines their post-war legacy, represented by Alain de Benoist and the contemporary European New Right, shedding new light on the linkages between early national socialism and the political culture of Charles de Gaulle, François Mitterrand, and pioneers of the post World War II European movement.