THE FRENCH LEFT by Arthur Hirsh. Black Rose Books, Montreal, 1982.

It's always a bittersweet experience to try and retrace the steps that led one to where one is. This is true even if the journey is not physical but political, tt was just such a trip down memory lane that I embarked on as ! read the pages of The French Left, and for anyone who spent their first teething period of leftism in the heady atmosphere of the late sixties I am sure that this book will prove equally as moving. There was more than one old relic of the way I've come to view the world— relics so old that! had lost all track of where they originated—that was waiting to greet me in this book. It was also something of a surprise to find neo-Marxism, like an old friend that! haven't met since the early 70s, and to follow up on what he's been doing since then. Seems the poor fellow hasn't been doing at al I well. He appears to have an almost certainly fatal disease called "the crisis of Marxism". What is worst is that the poor man insists on parading his scars like a perversely proud patient in the terminal ward.

How did he get in this condition? Hirsh traces three lines of criticism

of classical Marxism that developed after the second World War in France. These were the "existentialist challenge" of Sartre and de Beauvoir, the "French revisionism" of Henri Lefebvre and the "gauchisme" of Carlos Castoriadis and the Socialism or Barbarism review/group. The existentialists also had their organ in "Les Temps Moderne", as did the revisionists in Lefebvre's "Arguments." Hirsh says that, "the existentialist, the revisionist, and the gauchiste critiques of Marxism developed in the late 1940s and 1950s, and more or less converged in the1960s as a French new left social theory.

Hirsh has a separate section devoted to the events of May, 1968, which he sees as both the culmination and the beginning of the decline of this "classical new left" He deals with the aftermath of the May events in his final section. There were the attempts at theoretical (and practical) recuperation by the still stalking ghost of Stalinism. This is exemplified by the outright intellectual prostitution of Althussar(l can think of no other descriptive and accurate term)

and his structuralism, as well as by the chief theoretician of Eurocommunism, Poulantzas. Yet, the forces of criticism which had been concentrated on breaking the chains of Marxist thought previous to 1968 had not faded but had instead been transmuted to the practical realm, as seen in the 'new movements' of autoges-tion, feminism, and ecology. There was a definite connection between these new movements (however much many of their enthusiasts might try to deny it) and the old new left, both in their personnel and in the continuity of much of their thought The growth of these new movements, in France as elsewhere, knocked the props out of one of the major continued attractions of Marxism for radicals. Now there was a visible pole of power, a movement; and Moscow and its pale shadows were not the only "realistic" game in town. This combined with the continued determinism of each and every workers' paradise to prove itself a hell, the ever stage-shy proletariat (always reluctant to play the role assigned it by Marxism), and the obvious failure of ultra-left Leninism, to produce the now famous "crisis of Marxism" i.e. the belated realization by Marxists that Marxism is a poor tool to explain the world with.

AH of the critiques of Marxism began their attack by reference to the "early Marx." At the time revealed

revelation could only be attacked by the discovery of other sacred writ. This, however, had its limitations, and the various critics soon went beyond this inchoate stage. The existentialists focused on Marxism's lack of a theory of human subjectivity. This accounted for Marxism's peculiar bareness, its inability to do other than lay the grand scheme of history down, a scheme that continually failed to explain the specifics of who did what—even in retrospect. Sartre concocted his theory of "series and groups" (not what they might appear to be from a casual glance) and his "progressive-regression" dialectics to attempt to provide such a theory of subjectivity. He also took the concept of alienation and developed it far beyond Marx's idea. Alienation became rooted in human social existence rather than being merely a matter of labour.

Hirsh traces the formation of Lefebvre's revision through its predecessors in Lukacs, Gramsci and Korsch. Lefebvre's Marxism is one that tries to construct a theory of everyday life. A very large part of the situational ists' often turgid prose is, in fact, a direct lift from Lefebvre's ideas. Lefebvre also attempted to challenge the "economism" of classical Marxism and to construct a theory of institutions/everyday life that would allow him to explain the persistence of capitalism. Marxism was

very much a theory of the (expected) crises of capitalism. It had little or nothing to say on why capitalists continued to survive and even prosper. In his formulation of the whys and wherefores of capitalism's survival Lefebvre also formulated a detailed description of how the "margins" of a society such as ours are closely integrated into the total system, whether their citizens (unlike many crude anarchist theoreticians who think of the marginals as a revolutionary class) realize it or not

Both Sartre and Lefebvre carried the frontier of Marxism into realms with which it had been previously unconcerned. Yet, despite this they remained Marxists, for the territory which they were exploring held its challenges to the holy writ in a veiled and indirect form. A similar event occurs among the proponents of the "new movements", for, despite the fact that say feminism is in direct contradiction to Marxism, few people take the time or have the intellectual honesty to plumb these contradictions to their depth and draw the necessary conclusion. Thus an "unhappy marriage" takes place. The old stately but decaying mansion of Marxism is left standing, neglected but standing, and new additions are constructed in what becomes an increasingly ramshackle affair. Marxism remains a compelling force, even if severely wounded, because

neither challenge it directly on its own ground—that of class struggle and economics.

Castoriadis provides just this frontal assault. While Castoriadis is certainly the most 'Marxist' of Marxism's opponents, in terms of his subject matter and method, he provides the strongest case against Marxism. Hirsh says that "Castoriadis eventually rejected Marxism by subjecting it to a 'Marxisf critique. That is, by applying the concepts of class analysis and class struggle, he found Marxism incapable of explaining the major tendencies in modern society." Socialism or Barbarism began as a group of dissident Trotskyites, but they rapidly progressed from a critique of the bureaucracy as the ruling class in the Eastern bloc to a generalized critique of "managerialism" and to the advocacy of self management as a revolutionary alternative to managerial Marxism or managerial "capitalism" (it is debatable at what point in the growth of the technobureaucracy a society ceases to be "capitalist"). Castoriadis rejects Marxist economics in toto (I agreed with him here). Hirsh states that, for Castoriadis, "its chief concepts—the crises of overproduction, pauperization of the proletariat, increasing unemployment, decreasing rate of profit, etc.—do not correspond to the reality of adVanced capitalism". In sum, Castoriadis

rejects Marx by using Marx's own method of situating a theory within the time and place in which it developed, from this vantage point Marxism is seen as the theory of the declasse intellectual of the 19th century, with all its belief in technological determinism. It is later seen as the ideology of an aspiring ruling class.

This is, of course, the merest summary. The author treats the theories and theoreticians in far greater depth than I can hope to convey here. Althussar's structuralism is similarly dissected at length (a rather messy task as the guts spill all over the table and reveal a very diseased and inflated animal}, as is the rise of Eurocommunism, as exemplified in the realm of theory by Poulantzas' theory of the state as "relatively autonomous", and as a "condensation of the class struggle". This theory is, as should be apparent to any anarchist, the epitomy of statism for it is admirably suited for justifying the transfer of the focus of a// struggles to the state—and, of course, the battle for control of the state.

Hirsh also surveys the bizarre metamorphosis of numerous Maoists into the "new philosophers". He characterizes this as a retreat from one unreality (Maoism) to another, and he finds it particularly strange as most of the new philosophers claim

to have been influenced in their change by the revelations of Sotzhenitsyn concerning the Gulag. Yet, as Maoists, they presumably believed that the Soviet Union was a 'social fascist dictatorship' anyway. So why should these revelations move them? The answer is lost in.the murky depths of leftist psycho-pathology. The supposed critique of the new philosophers is seen as a merely a poor rehash of what other ex-communists have said before them in a far more intelligent manner.

The book ends with a study of the "new movements", concentrating on self management, feminism and the ecology movement. Andre Gorz is taken as the theoretician representative of this stage of Marxism's decay. It is interesting to compare Hirsch's characterization of Gorz with Book-chin's polemic against him in 'Toward an Ecological Society'. All told I think that Hirsh is more correct in his point of view than is Bookchin. Bookchin may be right in his claim that the theories of the likes of Gorz represent an attempt to meld the unmeldable, to meld a libertarian consciousness, as exemplified by the 'new movements', with an authoritarian Marxism. He is, however, wrong on a far larger point—his inability to put the "crises of Marxism" into any sort of perspective beyond that of a "betrayer" of the new movements. Hirsh provides the historical back-

ground, a background that shows Gorz and other Marxists in what is, to me, a far more truthful light—as confused rather than sinister. Hirsh also possesses a far broader outlook than Bookchin, and he is able to situate the crisis of Marxism of which Gorz is representative in a far larger (and therefore truer) picture than is Bookchin. Bookchin's overenthusiastic polemic against "economism" and "scientism" has, unfortunately, blinded him to much of what is necessary to understand the world we live in. This book argues for a more balanced and realistic approach.

There's much more that could be said about this book, for it covers such a range of subjects as to defy description. The style is comprehensible but not "light". Considering the nature of much of the subject matter, Hirsh has accomplished a miracle of clarity.! have never seen the almost incomprehensible system of Sartre's existentialism presented better, and the author even manages to make Althussar almost comprehensible. The organization is the product of considerable planning, and its sparkling coherence makes this book a pleasure to read.

This book is especially important for anarchists. Not that it is going to provide us with any of the big answers to any of the big questions. Neither is there much worth borrowing from the neo-Marxists that has not already

been incorporated into the anarchist canon. Yet, what Hirsh does provide is the best description to date of the slow evolution of the remains of the left towards a libertarian socialism. This evolution is certainly slow enough, and it will take all too many regressive steps {such as quixotic attempts to infiltrate socialist and labour parties and the mulligan stew politics of the "green parties"). Yet, the fact is that our opponents on the left are evolving, and we would be well advised to take note of this. One reason might be that we shouldn't waste too much breath in condemnation of an "economism" that is not the dominant orthodoxy amongst the Marxists. Another is that the evolution of the rest of the left away from Marxism presents us with numerous opportunities to give little extra shoves in the right direction. Finally, the way in which many Marxists have thrown their dogma overboard has left them as rational thinking people rather than religionists, and we can certainly expect creative thought to come from these people in the future. As a matter of fact this creative process has already begun in the last few years, and there is much that might be of value to a libertarian socialism that could be developed by an amiable dialogue with the (almost) ex-Marxists.

— PatMurtagh