[Fwd: [Marxism] Daniel Bensa ïd, a revol utionary for our times]

[Antid Oto]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1793

IV Online magazine : IV420 - January 2010
Obituary
Daniel Bensaïd, a revolutionary for our times
by Josep María Antentas

On Tuesday January 12, 2010 our friend Daniel Bensaid, “Bensa” died.
Those familiar with Daniel knew he was incurably ill, and had
regretfully expected for some weeks news which, though we knew it to be
inevitable, we always fought to believe would not come.

In Daniel we have lost one of the most prominent figures of the European
anti-capitalist left. Daniel Bensaïd was one of the founders of the
French JCR in 1966 and the Communist League in 1969 (later renamed the
LCR in 1973 after being banned). A key figure in the events of May 1968
through the March 22 movement, he remained faithful to his revolutionary
commitment until the end of his life, unlike many illustrious names of
his generation who became "repentant rebels".

A leader of the LCR until the early 1990s, he played a key role in the
life and development of what would become one of the most emblematic
formations of the European revolutionary left. A militant
internationalist, he was a leader of the Fourth International for a long
period and devoted much his political activity to internationalist work,
playing a key role in the FI’s construction in several countries. In his
memoirs published in 2003, Une lente impatience [A Slow Impatience], he
noted, humbly: “leadership inspires in me a holy repulsion: I prefer to
do than to have done. This could be due to egalitarian virtue. It may
also, equally, be the sign of a disorganised inability to delegate and
confer trust.”

Daniel Bensaïd’s influence marked several generations of revolutionary
militants in France and around the world. For my generation, for those
that joined the same current and project as Daniel in the 2000s, he was
an irreplaceable reference. For us, the anti-capitalist left activists
forged in the heat of the anti-globalization movement, the student
movement, the revolutionary youth camps, the reference point of the
French LCR, the debates of the European anti-capitalist left, Daniel was
our most beloved and respected international figure.

We felt an irrepressible attraction for somebody capable of writing
about Walter Benjamin or elucidating on the political alliances of the
LCR, publishing a work on Joan of Arc or talking about the dilemmas of
the Brazilian left before Lula, or sympathizing with the thought of
Derrida or August Blanqui. In Daniel Bensaïd a man of action, an
international political leader and an intellectual of the first level
converged. A combination of qualities that made him very unique in the
panorama of the international left and one of those figures of lasting
impact.

The Daniel Bensaïd that some knew was a man of precarious health and
fragile appearance, "spectral" some would say, but possessed of an iron
strength and will. Daniel was a good sort, friendly and affectionate,
modest, personable, always willing to listen and talk a while. Someone
we always invited to the most special occasions. The last time was to
participate with us in Madrid and Barcelona in our commemorations of the
events of May 1968 organized under the title "May 1968-May 2008, we
continue the fight".

Since the 1990s, sick and in ill health, he devoted his efforts to
theoretical and intellectual work, withdrawing from the tasks of
political leadership, without therefore renouncing militant activity and
his multiple commitments, talks and travels. At a time of disclaimers,
capitulations and bewilderment, his voice helped maintain an essential
reference for moving forward. He undertook a huge task of renewal and
revitalization of Marxist thought, leaving a vast written legacy and
countless books, published with an unsurprising frequency. Taking
advantage of militant meetings in Paris to drop by the La Brèche
bookstore and get hold of the "latest" by Bensa became over the years
one of my most enjoyable routines. Daniel also encouraged publishing
projects, collections, and a tremendous work of intellectual discussion
and search for convergence between different critical traditions through
the magazine Contre-Temps.

He devoted much of his time to the study of Marx’s thought in works such
as Marx l’intempestif (1995 – published in English as Marx For Our
Times), or its companion volume La Discordance des temps (1995), both
resulting from teaching and study work during the 1980s, in his position
as a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Paris VIII, at a time
of retrogression and decline of leftist thinking. However, published on
the eve of the November-December 1995 strikes against the Juppé plan
that marked a return of mobilization and the social question, both works
presented a stimulating reading of Marx, liberated from dogmas and
fetishes. They are, possibly, his most significant works.

He would continue his study of Marx in multiple books. In 2001 a
meticulous biography, Passion Karl Marx was published, with
reproductions of the correspondence between Marx and Engels and images
and illustrations of the era, where he sought to "put in context the
critical spirit of a time, emphasizing the resonances between the
globalization of then and now" and proposed we read Capital as "the
dialectical elucidation of the mysteries of capital in the manner of
Edgar Allen Poe’s Dupin or Sherlock Holmes: a crime has been committed;
surplus value has been stolen; and the booty passes from hand to hand,
is split between accessories, rascals, money launderers, so that we
forget its origin...."

He also published studies on concrete aspects of Marx’s thought, like
the complete critical edition of On the Jewish question, a study of
Marx’s writings about the theft of firewood, taken as a starting point
for analyzing the dynamics of contemporary globalization, or a developed
analysis of Marx’s political though, Penser l’Inconnu (2008), a critical
edition of the texts of Marx and Engels on the Commune. In it he
portrayed Marx as a "brilliant analyst of conjunctures and a virtuoso of
politics, not as a simple effect or reflection of economic and social
determinations, but as the art of mediation "."

Recently, he published a presentation of some of Marx’s texts on
economic crises where he reviews Marx’s interpretation of the nature of
crisis, and begins a strategic discussion of the thinking of Keynes and
Marx on this topic, looking for their points of confluence and
divergence: "as a political project as a whole, and not as a sum of
partial measures, Keynes’s programme openly proclaims, aims to save
capital from his own demons. That of Marx aims to overthrow it."

One of his last books was a pleasing introduction to Marx, Marx mode
d’emploi (2009) published with illustrations by the artist Charb, well
received by militants of the NPA and by youth keen to venture into the
"critical adventure" of Marx’s thought. Conceived as "an invitation to
discovery and controversy", not intended to "restore the true thought of
an authentic Marx" but "to propose one of his possible modes of use",
reviewing Marx’s ideas about the logic of capitalism, communism,
political organization, internationalism, the relationship between
humans and nature and so on.

Much of his work is marked by its concern for questions of strategy,
rethinking revolutionary strategy for the 21st century. He dedicated
much of his thought to analysis of the "spatial and temporal
transformations of political activity" within the framework of
capitalist globalisation. In Le Pari Melancolique (1997) he addressed
the "metamorphosis and mismatches in the world" in the light of
globalization, defending the need, before a "century ending on the ruins
of its inaugural hopes", a politics of commitment and "support for
revolution" based "in the act, not in the evidence of the secured
solution, but in the irreducible contingency of the hypothesis". A
revolution "not as model, prefabricated schema, but as strategic
hypothesis and ruling horizon”.

In Le Sourire du Spectre (2000), he considered on the 150th anniversary
of the Communist Manifesto the possibilities of a recurrence of the
"spectre of communism", at a time where already the resistance to
globalization that buried the "end of history" discourse of Fukuyama and
neoliberal triumphalism was emerging. His Irreductibles. Théorèmes de la
resístance a l ’ air du temps (2001) presented in the form of five
elegantly written theorems attacked the "cynical rhetoric of
resignation", and defended the “irreducible strength of indignation,
which is exactly the opposite of the customary and of resignation..
Indignation is a start. A way to stand up and make progress. One is
outraged, is disturbed, and then we’ll see. One is outraged
passionately, before even finding the reasons for this passion".

Resistances. Essai de Taupologie genérale continues this search for a
politics of resistance, through the figure of the mole, a "metaphor for
someone who moves stubbornly, for underground resistance and sudden
eruption "." Starting in the period of Victorian globalization and
critically linking the thought of Althusser, Badiou, Derrida, and Negri,
the book examines what the conditions of a revolutionary politics are
and develops the "strategic notion of crisis" understood as "a moment of
decision and truth, when history hesitates before the point of a fork "."

Strategic thinking also has a central place in Éloge de la Politique
Profane (2009) an important work which analyzes the transformation of
the basic political categories of Modernity, the "eclipse of politics"
and "strategic reason” before the neoliberal offensive, and discusses
the various "contemporary utopias ", specific to the periods subsequent
to great defeats “where the possible and the necessary are no longer
points in contact"

Within the framework of this concern for strategy, he also entered with
passion into writing about the "anti-globalization" movement and the
controversies within it, arguing with authors as Negri or Holloway, in
works such as Changer le monde (2003), or analyzing the historical
significance of the movement in Le nouvel internationalisme (2003). He
participated in significant debates in several World and European Social
Forums and countless international meetings, seminars and initiatives
linked to "anti-globalization".

In spite of this great intellectual effort he continued his involvement
with the life of the LCR and the Fourth International and the
vicissitudes of the international left. He also devoted much of his work
to discussing issues of political orientation in France, criticizing
Jospin’s plural left in Lionel, qu’as tu fait de notre victoire (1997),
to delving into discussions on identity in the context of the crisis of
the French Fifth Republic in Fragments Mécreants (2005), and
polemicising with characters such as Bernard-Henri Lévy and the "new
philosophers" against whom he wrote Un nouveau theologicien B-H. Levy
(2007).

In 2003 he published his memoirs, Une lente impatience, tracing his
personal, political and intellectual itinerary. Modestly, he defined his
book as a "simple testimony to help understand what we have done and
what we want". Looking back he stated:"We have sometimes, even often,
been wrong, and on quite a few things. At least we have not made a
mistake either in combat or in enemies." A combat he wrote about with
his usual prose of high literary quality, covering the events of May
1968 and its aftermath, the Algerian war, the times "when history was
biting us on the neck", the fight against the Franco dictatorship, the
figures of the left in Latin America, the neoliberal restoration, the
rise of the global justice movement or the state of contemporary Marxist
thought.

Memory, transmission and inheritance occupied much of the writings and
militant concerns of Daniel Bensaïd. He polemicised with François Furet
and authors of the Black Book on Communism and its historical
falsifications, and devoted his work Qui est le juge? (1999) to
questioning the "Court of history" and the "temptations of appeal to the
old fetishes, History or Humanity "rather than the acceptance “of the
fragile uncertainty of human judgment "and” deciphering the subtlety of
the three handed game between legal justice, historical justice and
political justice."

Among his multiple and varied intellectual influences we can highlight
Walter Benjamin, to whom he devoted the book Walter Benjamin Sentinelle
Mesianique (1990), part of a trilogy beginning with Moi, the revolution
(1989) published on the occasion of the bicentenary of the French
Revolution, and finishing with Jeanne de Guerre lasse (1991), devoted to
Joan of Arc. If the trilogy could seem far from Marx, Daniel indicated
in his biography that actually "it – the dates show it - follows a
parallel path to better return to the issue of communism, the untamed
road of the heretics, by the detour of messianic rationality along the
steep path of a logic of the event."

He became an unquestionable moral and intellectual authority, acting as
a transmitter, a bridge between two different epochs providing an
invaluable polítical-intellectual reference by which we incorporate
ourselves in the completed militancy of the "short 20th century". He
never missed an appointment at the LCR summer universities or the
revolutionary youth camps where his educational talks were always the
stellar moment that everyone anticipated. “Les Trotskismes” (2002 –
published in English as “Who Are the Trotskyists?”) revealed the
trajectory of a minority current in the history of the labour movement,
at the beginning of a new century, "that will not be an effortless
theoretical and practical advance", claiming "a true Trotskyism whose"
inheritance without practice is, without doubt, insufficient, but at
less necessary to undo the amalgam between Stalinism and communism, to
free the living from the dead and turn the page on disappointments."

He participated in the birth of the NPA, accompanying the passage of the
LCR to the new project. Shortly before its creation he wrote in Penser
Agir! (2008): "in proportion to the closeness of the time of passing
from the Ligue to the new party, there are those who question ever more
insistently the dozens of "veterans", founders of the League in 1969 or
those expelled from the Communist students, the JCR, if they do not feel
nostalgia to see it disappear to grow into a new force. To answer them I
would say that we rather have the feeling (and a bit of pride, let us
face it) of work realised and a road travelled. It was much longer than
we imagined in the youthful enthusiasm of the 1960s and not easy to stay
so long being ’ revolutionaries without revolution ’." ,

Daniel has died a year after the creation of the NPA, where he would
have had a major role to play in training of its militants, in the
consolidation of the strategic and programmatic framework of the party
and the transmission of a heritage "without directions for use" to
militant generations. He summarized better than anyone the objectives of
the new project, to create: "a new party, as faithful to the dominated
and the dispossessed as the right is to the owners and the rulers, that
makes no apologies for being anti-capitalist and wanting to change the
world." On the eve of its foundation he published with Olivier
Besancenot “Prenons Parti! Pour le socialisme du XXIème siècle” (2009) a
good book for arming anti-capitalist activists with ideas, proposals and
strategic perspectives.

The last time I saw Daniel was at the first summer university of the NPA
in Port Leucate last August, where he gave several talks and presented
the Societé Louise Michel, a foundation set up in order to create a
pluralist space for theoretical reflection and debate. We talked about
the NPA, our recent campaign in the European elections, and the
possibility of a Castilian edition of his book Marx, mode d’emploi, and
his critical edition of Marx’s texts on economic crises. Despite the
persistent disease, and the fact that he looked weak and tired, nothing
presaged the tragic outcome that came only a few months later.

It is hard to accept that Daniel is no longer with us. His death is a
hard blow to all those who valued his presence, his books and his talks,
one of the most stimulating elements of our militant adventure.

-Josep María Antentas is a member of the editorial board of the magazine
Viento Sur, and a professor of sociology at the Autonomous University of
Barcelona.

**********
Dit bericht is verzonden via de informele D66 discussielijst (D66 at nic.surfnet.nl).
Aanmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SUBSCRIBE D66 uwvoornaam uwachternaam
Afmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SIGNOFF D66
Het on-line archief is te vinden op: http://listserv.surfnet.nl/archives/d66.html
**********