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 […]
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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 […]
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
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 […]
Le Marx de Daniel Bensaïd : déconstruction, reconstruction
« On dit que l’attente est toujours longue. Mais elle est aussi bien ou même plus exactement courte, parce qu’elle dévore des quantités de temps, sans qu’on les vive, ni les utilise pour elles-mêmes. On pourrait dire que celui qui ne fait qu’attendre ressemble à un gros mangeur dont l’organe digestif chasserait la nourriture en […]
Sur la langue occitane
Nous ne savons pas si ce courrier, non daté, a fait l’objet d’une quelconque parution. Cher ami, Je vous remercie d’avoir pensé à moi pour votre enquête. Malheureusement, bien que natif de Toulouse, je dois avouer mon incompétence sur les questions que vous posez. En réalité, depuis les débats animés des années soixante-dix (lorsque nous […]
L’Écologie de Marx
Marx’Ecology. Materialism and Nature de John Bellamy FosterNew York, Monthly Review Press, 2000 Un préjugé tenace veut que le marxisme ait peu apporté à la critique écologique, du moins jusqu’aux années soixante-dix. Pourtant, la dimension écologique de la critique de l’économie politique n’était pas méconnue des héritiers les plus directs de Marx et d’Engels. Elle […]