and after 1970 at the Collège de France as well as the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS). In 1953, he befriended the young American philosopher Allan Bloom, who was teaching at the Sorbonne. A lifelong journalist, Aron in 1947 became an influential columnist for Le Figaro, a position he held for thirty years until he joined L'Express, where he wrote a political column up to his death. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1960 and an International member of the American Philosophical Society in 1966. In 1978 he founded Commentaire, a quarterly journal of ideas and debate, together with Jean-Claude Casanova who was the venture's founding director. Aron died of a heart attack in Paris on 17 October 1983. Political commitment In Berlin, Aron witnessed the rise to power of the Nazi Party and developed an aversion to all totalitarian systems. In 1938, he participated in the Colloque Walter Lippmann in Paris. By the 1950s, he had grown very critical of the Austrian School and described their obsession with private property as an "inverted Marxism". Aron always promoted an "immoderately moderate" form of liberalism which accepted a mixed economy as the normal economic model of the age. Political thought Aron is the author of books on Karl Marx and on Carl von Clausewitz. In Peace and War, he set out a theory of international relations. He argues that Max Weber's claim that the state has a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force does not apply to the relationship between states. In the field of international relations in the 1950s, Aron hypothesized that despite the advent of nuclear weapons, nations would still require conventional military forces. The usefulness of such forces would be made necessary by what he called a "nuclear taboo." Works A prolific author, he "wrote several thousand editorials and several hundred academic articles, essays, and comments, as well as about forty books", which include: La Sociologie allemande contemporaine, Paris: Alcan, 1935; German Sociology, London: Heinemann, 1957 Introduction à la philosophie de l'histoire. Essai sur les limites de l'objectivité historique, Paris: Gallimard, 1938; Introduction to the Philosophy of History: An Essay on the Limits of Historical Objectivity, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1948 Essai sur la théorie de l'histoire dans l'Allemagne contemporaine. La philosophie critique de l'histoire, Paris: Vrin, 1938 L'Homme contre les tyrans, New