Michael
Chazoule
Book
review
Les gauches françaises: 1762-2012 : Histoire, politique et imaginaire
By Jacques Julliard
This
book had an interesting analysis to the back-story of the French left as a
whole, which was brought up to my attention through the controversy of the
book. It starts with the 18th century, through the age of
enlightenment up to Francois Hollande. The book attempts to show the progress
of the political ideology through “les droits de l’homme” in the revolution,
the parliamentary monarchy and much more, but I try to focus on the events from
Francois Mitterrand and after. People were upset by the intention to completely
define and classify the French left. In
the book, Jacques Julliard goes through the history of France and the role of the
left, describing with certain detail the various shades of the political
spectrum and how it was adaptive to its time. He speaks of the various forms of
the “left” such as Liberal, Jacobin, collectivist and libertarian. When he
talks about the liberal left (which is the dominant form of the left today),
drawing bridges with the liberal right, also called Orleanism. He interestingly
argues that its success is behind the fact that liberalism is the mainstream of
the late twentieth century enjoying the irresistible rise of individualism in
Western societies. An interesting argument he makes is on the Collectivist Left
and the notion of interdependence, which was only ever present when the PCF
(Party Communist Francais) and was highly criticized for hypocrisy. The Jacobin
left was quite a complicated approach, where the author talks about the fact
that with that philosophy, the state should be the cause of social change. A
critic of the book likes to call it the “Republican Left.” The author claims
that while it came to power, mostly under Mitterrand, but it eventually died
down to let liberalism take its place. Controversial articles claim that it is
still very much present, but without much representation.
According to the
general feeling of the book, the authors tries to define the Left like a will
to operate a transformation in society towards “equality and justice” while
there are things that get priority, such as: those who backup that philosophy
try to give the role to the State, which would promote the ideology and
transformation through laws. The book is interesting in itself but feels a bit
insufficient, without much argument, it leaves the skeleton for future (and
ongoing) debates which seem more interesting as a whole than the book itself.
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