I was reading this immensely interesting and insightful article about the recomposition of the Left in Europe by Daniel Bensaïd only last week as I was mulling over the the state of the Left in Britain.
So I was truly sad to hear the news that he has died. Over the years, and as a former member of the 4th International, I had read much of his writings. I will leave the final words to the obit from Socialist Resistance.
A leader of the May 68 movement, he was one of those people with a very sure feeling for political initiative. He had been one of the leaders of the 22nd March Movement. Grasping the dynamic of social movements, in particular the link between the student movement and workers’ general strike, he was also one of those who understood the necessity of building a political organisation, of accumulating the forces for building a revolutionary party.
The quality of Daniel’s intelligence was to combine theory and practice, intuition and political understanding, ideas and organisation. He could, at the same time, lead a stewarding force and write a theoretical text.
He was one of those who inspired a fight which combined principles and political boundaries with openness and a rejection of sectarianism. Daniel, his own political convictions deeply rooted in him, was always the first to want to discuss, to try to convince, to exchange opinions, and to renew his own thinking.
That’s very sad. I only met Daniel once, and very often I didn’t agree with what he wrote, but he was a really powerful and creative thinker on the right side. And so soon after Chris Harman, that’s a very serious loss to the broader left.
[...] Liam has a rough translation of the article that appeared in the daily Liberation here. The Junius Blog offers their thoughts as does Socialist Unity and Harpymarx. [...]
some good texts now online: http://marxists.org/archive/bensaid/index.htm
¡Daniel presente!