In a ’tribune’ in Le Monde on May 3rd [1], some distinguished German intellectuals (including Jürgen Habermas, Günter Grass and Wolf Biermann), called their “French friends” to account. They exhorted them to approve the constitutional treaty. Our German friends are welcome in the French debate, but they seem ill-informed of its content. This is no […]
Letter to the comrades of the Democracia socialista (DS-PT), Brazil
Dear friends and comrades of DS, Lula’s presidency has reached the halfway mark, and the November municipal elections are a good occasion for a kind of provisional balance sheet, on the threshold of a period already characterized by preparations for the 2006 campaign. Since we are unable to participate in the upcoming World Social Forum […]
Alain Badiou and the Miracle of the Event
Marx had the temerity to declare that philosophy would eventually wither away through the accomplishment of its own strategic development: it was now no longer merely a matter of interpreting the world, but of changing it. Today, by way of contrast, Alain Badiou proposes to reiterate the philosophical gesture par excellence; a ‘Platonic gesture’ in […]
Principles flouted: on the PT (Brazil)
Brazil’s Workers’ Party (PT) has, in the course of the past 20 years, developed a politics of class independence while accumulating a quantity of experiences in social struggles and municipal government, notably through ’participatory democracy’. These founding principles are being flouted in the run-up to the country’s presidential elections. The PT was born out of […]
Operation “Bullshit Unlimited”
An article by Daniel Bensaid on the response of French intellectuals to the “war on terror”. 1. Only yesterday, French intellectuals overflowed with compassion. From Bosnia to Chechnya, by way of Kosovo, on every front of the new world disorder. Their silence before the imperial crusade in Afghanistan and before the criminal policy of the […]
Gli Irriducibili
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In.folio.asterios
Inventare l’ignoto
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Alegre
Leninism Today
Daniel Bensaïd, a central leader of the French Ligue communiste révolutionnaire (LCR), spoke on ’Leninism in the 21st century’ at the ’Marxism 2001’ event organised by the British SWP. Phil Hearse spoke to him there. International Viewpoint: Lenin made important contributions to Marxist thinking about imperialism, the national question, revolutionary strategy and socialist democracy. But […]
France: Neo-Liberal Reform and Popular Rebellion
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Tenacious and combative strikes in the public services, millions of demonstrators on the streets, broad support from public opinion: last December’s events in France were a lot more than a strike, indeed it is no exaggeration to call them an uprising by the working, producing, caring, teaching population. For the past several years political pundits […]
Mort d’un intellectuel organique
Daniel Bensaïd, un des derniers et des plus insistants théoriciens marxistes (tendance trotskiste), est décédé hier à Paris. Il a été emporté par un cancer. Il avait 63 ans et sera resté jusqu’au bout fidèle à ses idéaux de jeunesse, forgés et coulés dans la frange la plus radicale du mouvement de protestation de Mai […]