The next wave of the Left

“As a cohort, throughout the world, our generation didn't "solve it." We didn't solve the problems of health, education, food, and injustice in the world,” writes one of my oldest comrades in struggle, Daniel del Solar in some recent reflections. He and I are Zeitgenossen, to use Heinrich Böll's unimprovable term -- comrades of our era, in our case, those who reached voting age right around the time of the Cuban missile crisis (October 1962).

Danny's right. We didn't accomplish all the things we dreamed of, but he and I and tens or even hundreds of thousands of us sure made the effort. Not always wisely -- we were young and inexperienced, and for the most part without the benefit of counsel from older cohorts of struggle, for the reasons I noted in last Friday's note ("My '68"). And even if we had been wiser, we still would have made mistakes because the world is complicated, and one can never quite predict the consequences of any change we make. But those sit-ins, mass demonstrations, confrontations with police, leafletting and (Danny's specialty) radio and TV broadcasts to make more people aware and to mobilize them to demand civil rights for people of all races, an end to the war in Vietnam, and all the other issues we took on, all of that did make a difference. Even beyond the specific, usually small victories (securing the release of particular political prisoners, forcing the state to explain its actions, and so on), we helped save the dignity of the human race. We kept the ancestral tradition of protest against inequality alive, the tradition of the Left. And now, though some of us (including Danny) are still in the struggle, it's approaching time to hand over that tradition to the next generations.

The problems they face include some that we were only dimly aware of. Global warming and deterioration of the habitability of the planet are the biggest ones. Dangers of nuclear war, depredations of trans- and multinational enterprises in weaker countries, and racism -- such as the latest assaults on Rumanian gypsies in Italy -- are ones we are very familiar with.

The left that we, my Zeitgenossen, the generation of the Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam and so on, knew came apart around the same time, and for the same reasons, as the Soviet Union and its bloc. Most of us had long since abandoned the illusion that the USSR could be the model for world revolution, but its sudden disappearance gave force to the new slogan, "There is no alternative" (TINA) -- that is, no alternative to capitalist domination.

There are and always will be alternatives. Capitalism, the reduction of all things and all humans to commodities and/or factors of production, runs counter to the inerradicable human drive of solidarity which has permitted our race to survive this long. So there will always be resistence, and there is right now, under a dozen different slogans. "Another world is possible," "Greenpeace," groups focusing on women's rights, others on "Third World," others on amnesty for prisoners of conscience, and more. The task now, as it was for us (combining civil rights and antiwar movements into one big movement) and for our immediate predecessors (the "Popular Front" of the 1930s) and for their predecessors, is to bring enough of these narrower causes together to make an impact.

And the task for us, my Zeitgenossen, is to offer what experience and energy we can to help the new guys and gals. They should be smart enough to ignore us when we're spouting irrelevancies, and to find in our successes and our mistakes lessons they can use. Some of them may even be curious enough to look at this and other blogs of us '60s people.

I'm enthusiastic about a lot of the newest Leftists. Here's just one I think we should be watching: Olivier Besancenot, who is only 34 and already a force in France. He is now seen by François Hollande and other leaders of the Parti socialiste as their biggest threat on the left, far more dangerous than the once-feared Parti communiste. His proposals make sense to me, and he makes sense to enough Frenchfolk that he got 4.25% of their votes in presidential elections in 2002 (when he was 28).

Which way is 'Left'? Spain, France, the U.S.

Now isn't this a curious image? A weary, desperately hopeful Bush, nearly friendless in the world and with no support from either the American people or even his party, seems to be leaning on Sarkozy, who is much shorter but at the moment much sturdier. Sarkozy has announced that France will always be "a friend of the United States" and, while making no commitment to Bush's lost war in Iraq, promises to maintain troops in Afghanistan "as long as necessary."

Contrast this with a March 2003 photo of a healthier, much more confident Bush with Spain's then-president José María Aznar, who had just committed Spanish lives to Bush's Iraq adventure in exchange for a little petting. Aznar reveled in that caress in his "best friend" role in Bush's western; Sarkozy knows that this show is not John Ford but Molière, where he plays the clever scamp who happily relieves the pretentious nincompoop of a good part of his fortune.

On Wednesday we flew back from Paris to Madrid, and then on Thursday took the train to Almería, an occasion to catch up on the papers and reflect on the contrasting "Rights" and "Lefts" of Spain and France.

In Spain, the Right can't agree on what direction to take, the major party riven by in-fighting while its supposed leaders take disastrously extreme positions that even many of its usual voters find ridiculous (claiming against all evidence that Atocha train station bombings were really a Socialist plot to take power, for example). In France, it's the Left that doesn't know where it's going, or to say the same thing another way, is trying to go in all directions at once. In both cases, disorganization is both cause and consequence of being out of power.

Aznar's phony nationalism (claiming to promote the ancient values of Spain while surrendering its sovereignty to the U.S. neo-cons) turned into an electoral disaster for his Popular Party in 2003, as many Spanish conservatives now realize, but the PP leadership has been reluctant openly to disavow Aznar's odd mix of neo-liberal economics and medieval social policies. The PP factions are at war with one another (notably in Madrid, with PP Madrid Community president Esperanza Aguirre v. PP Madrid mayor Ruiz-Gallardón, and in Valencia, with former Generalitat president and now PP spokesman Eduardo Zaplana in open conflict with current Generalitat president, also PP, Camps), and has alienated its some-time allies in the other nationalist parties. In contrast, the Socialists (PSOE) now in government have been able to establish the direction of the Left, holding together (mostly) its own internal factions and keeping the support of the other parties that define themselves as Left.

Sarkozy, who is as far right as Aznar economically but not as medieval -- he doesn't openly voice nostalgia for the Reconquista (i.e., expulsion of Muslims) or the Inquisition -- is seeking to impose his vision on France's fractious Right while exploiting the notorious divisions on the Left, seducing some of the Socialist Party's best-known figures to join his government. His successes reveal the utter confusion of the Left, that famous socialists such as Kouchner et al. could think that Sarkozy's echo of Louis-Phillipe's 1840 cry "Enrichissez-vous" could be a left slogan today. Sarkozy's gestures (mostly mediatic) so far have been possible because he faces no concerted, united opposition. The big strikes scheduled for next week will be a major test.

I haven't yet got to what I wanted to talk about here, the parallel and divergent histories of the two countries' Socialist and Communist Parties, which explain a lot of what is going on now and, I think, will help us predict where and in what form the new European Left will take. But this note is already too long and it's late. Those thoughts for a future note.

Les petites nouvelles.

Il fait froid à Paris. But otherwise, there are some great treats here. One is the free Internet, at Wi-Fi spots throughout the city and paid for by City Hall (that is, the taxpayers). Right now we're in the Mairie (town hall) of the 3rd Arrondissment, along with a couple of dozen other people all with laptops (Apple iBooks like mine seem to be the most popular). That's because the city government (one overall mayor, plus local mayors for each of the arrondissments) is all or mostly Socialist (Parti socialiste), in contrast to the national government under Sarkozy (UMP), pushing hard to the right. We are lucky to be here between strikes. The big one of the subway and other transit workers two weeks ago has been lifted, in preparation for a more massive one that threatens to paralyze the country beginning November 13.

My French is no where near as fluent as my Spanish or English but so far I've been able to make myself understood, and to understand most of the replies, in the brasseries, la pharmacie and, most complicated, with the hôte du logement, and I've been reading the papers. So far I haven't found any -- not Le Monde, certainly not Libération -- as good for world news as Spain's El País. Libération is very interesting on the labor conflicts and the effects of Sarkozy's new measures on local households, and carries interesting literary reviews, but has almost nothing on events outside France that don't directly affect France. Le Monde has a little more, including the other day an essay on the coming Mideast conference by, of all people, Henry Kissinger, noted Christmas bomber. More when I learn something interesting enough to share with you. À bientôt.

Bad news, not just for France

Segolène was hardly inspiring, but consider the alternative! Sarkozy is José María Aznar on steroids, even more narcissistic, opportunistic and cruel, and (unfortunately) a lot smarter than his Spanish counterpart, and therefore more dangerous. Doug Ireland: Why Sarkozy is dangerous

Madness seen from within

Bond, Alma H. Camille Claudel: A Novel. Baltimore: PublishAmerica, 2006.


"In my humble opinion, a woman who hasn't been made love to by a sculptor hasn't been made love to at all." (p. 119)

Camille Claudel (1864-1943) is remembered for her exquisite and emotionally disturbing sculptures, for her passionate 10-year love affair and complex professional relationship with Auguste Rodin, and the utter insanity of her last three decades, when she was persuaded that Rodin was out to destroy her and steal her work and ideas. This treatment of her intense, tortured life is very effectively written from her own, increasingly paranoid point of view. She is supposedly writing this account herself, in the last months of her life, on scraps of paper supplied her by a sympathetic nurse in the Montdevergues Asylum for the insane. The reader must accept the impossible premise that someone who has been so mad for so long could write so coherently, but will probably do so willingly; this is a literary device for understanding a brilliant, paranoid woman's world as she herself sees it. She is a classically unreliable narrator, but her paranoia did have some basis in fact. She clearly was a victim of stultifying anti-erotic and antifeminist attitudes, including those of her provincial mother and her super-Catholic reactionary brother, the writer Paul Claudel. And Rodin no doubt did steal some of her ideas, though on the whole he seems to have treated her better than most of the men she dealt with. Alma Bond's experience as a psychoanalyst and her deep familiarity with the Parisian artistic milieu of the period make the fantastic premise a tool for uncovering what feels like psychological truth. And it's very sexy, as was la petite Claudel.

For examples of her work, see Some Beautiful (If Tortured) Works
of Camille Claudel and these shots of L'age mûr (The Age of Maturity)

For more biographical details and chronology (with photos) in French, see Biographie de Camille Claudel. There you will find images of Oeuvres graphiques (sketches), Sculptures, Liens (links) and much else. There is also a musical about her.

Readers may also enjoy my story about another artist in Paris, exactly 10 years before the 17-year old Camille got there: Courbet and the Red Virgin.

At top: Photo of Camille as a young woman; her bust of Rodin