Daniel Bensaïd wrote the Preface to Livio Maitan’s history of the Fourth International Per una storia della IV internazionale. La testimonia di un comunista controcorrente published in 2006.
Resistance Books and the IIRE have launched an appeal to fiund publication in English. It has almost reached the first goal of 5,000 euros, thanks to a substantial donation in the form of translation work.
To give an idea of the book, and of the person of Livio, we publish here the English translation of Daniel Bensaïd’s preface.
We hope to raise 1,000 euros more to pay for the design and promotion of the book. Details on how to make a donation can be found below.
“Leaps Leaps Leaps”: Lenin and politics
24 November 2014, byHannah Arendt was worried that politics might disappear completely from the world. The century had seen such disasters that the question of whether ‘politics still has any meaning at all’ had become unavoidable”. The issues at stake in these fears were eminently practical: ‘The lack of meaning in which the whole of politics has ended up is confirmed by the dead end into which specific political questions are flocking.’
The Notion of the Revolutionary Crisis in Lenin
12 November 2014, byThis text was the “Mémoire de maîtrise” for Daniel Bensaïd’s MA in Philosophy under the supervision of Henri Lefebvre in 1968. The original version of this text can be found at Le site de Daniel Bensaïd. It was translated by Patrick King for the online Viewpoint Magazine.
“We are the heirs of May 68”
1 July 2014, by ,This chapter from the book Mai Si! Rebelles et repentis by Daniel Bensaïd and Alain Krivine was first published in English in International Marxist Review Volume 3 number 2, Autumn 1988.
The rising waves of mass opposition to the Chilean dictatorship
20 September 2013, byThis article was published in International Viewpoint No 36, 19 September 1983 for the anniversary of the 1973 coup d’état in Chile. It was signed “Daniel Jebrac”, one of the pen names that was frequently used by Daniel Bensaïd in that period.
The crisis of French Marxism
18 July 2011, byThis article was first published in English in "International Marxist Review" No 14, Winter 1992.
Strategy and Party
5 July 2011, byThis is based on the transcription of a talk Daniel Bensaïd gave at the Fourth International youth camp in Barbaste, France in July 2007. The subheadings have been added.
Marxisms, theory, yesterday and today
4 October 2010, byMembers of Vpered, an organisation of mainly young members in a number of cities in Russia, now the section of the Fourth International, met Daniel Bensaïd in Paris in December 2006 and asked him, as a leading Marxist philosopher, teacher and activist, for his opinion on the relevance of Marxism today.
The powers of communism
20 January 2010, byThis essay was probably among the last written by Daniel Bensaïd. It appears in the latest issue of Contretemps, the journal where Daniel was one of three publishing editors. The piece is a contribution to a series of essays on the meaning of communism put together as part of a symposium on the same topic being held in Paris on January 22nd and 23rd. Daniel was looking forward to the symposium.
A page has been turned (the formation of the NPA)
8 January 2010, byWe never saw the reference to Trotskyism as a way to shut ourselves off from others. For us, it was more like a polemical challenge. We accepted the Trotskyist tag in our conflict with the Stalinists — but without building a neurotic identity out of it or, conversely, downplaying the importance of this heritage.