Suchergebnisse

Abstract
Michel Onfray's L'Ordre libertaire is a passionate defence of Camus as a philosopher, and an attempt to co-opt him as a representative of Onfray's own Nietzschean, hedonistic, libertarian, atheist beliefs. But the account is far from successful. Onfray's presentation is highly repetitive, and though he promises us a 'careful reading', in fact his work contains many errors and misrepresentations. His vituperative attacks on Marxism in general, and on Sartre in particular, are often based on serious inaccuracies. His attempt to defend Camus en bloc makes him frequently insensitive to the complexities and contradictions of Camus's thought, and in particular of his political stance. The treatment of Camus's views on the Algerian War in particular, and the role of violence in history in general, is equally unsatisfactory.

AbstractThe French journal Clarté had its origins in a movement launched just after the end of World War I by Henri Barbusse. It was soon taken over by a group of more radical intellectuals, who were close to the French Communist Party but not under its direct control. The journal combined politics and culture. It attempted to analyse the changing world-conjuncture, and in particular the significance of the defeated revolutions in Germany and China. But it also developed a theory of culture under the influence of the Russian proletcult, Victor Serge, Georges Sorel and surrealism. In 1927, under the influence of Pierre Naville, Clarté broke with the Moscow-dominated Communist Party and became the organ of the French Left Opposition. Cuenot has given a well-researched and balanced account of its development.

Paul Levi was leader of the German Communist Party in the vital years 1919 and 1920; he was subsequently expelled for his opposition to the adventurist March Action in 1921. Three recent books cast new light on this complex figure: David Fernbach's selection of his writings, Frédéric Cyr's biography and Paul Frölich's memoirs. Levi was a man of great talent and courage, but his leadership style was defective; he was neither Leninist nor Luxemburgist, and his greatest weakness was his inability to relate to ultra-leftism. His limitations are revealed by a comparison with his comrade Clara Zetkin.

AbstractRomain Ducoulombier, author ofCamarades!, a study of the origins of the French Communist Party, belongs to a different ideological context to earlier authors on the subject, such as Kriegel, Wohl or Robrieux. But though Ducoulombier claims originality for his work, there is little genuinely new here. He fails to grasp the impact of the Russian Revolution on the French working class and has little understanding of the dynamics of the Communist International. He stresses the 'asceticism' and 'messianism' of the early Communist Party without giving a precise meaning to these terms. Worst of all, Ducoulombier concentrates on archival material while saying remarkably little about the French Communist Party's actual activities, notably work in the trade unions, anti-militarism and anti-colonialism.