La discordance des temps, by Daniel Bensaïd

Le discordance des temps; Essais sur les crises, les classes, I'nistoire by Daniel Bensaid, Editions de la passion, Paris, 1995, 180 FFR This [French language] book by our comrade Daniel Bensaid has three main sections, consecrated to economic rhythms and crisis, the relationship between the class struggle and other forms of social conflict, and thirdly a number of essays on historical reason (Péguy, Derrida, Benjamin, Blanqui and Bloch). Ten of the book's 13 chapters are unpublished material. The first section deals with the specific logic of Marx's Capital. Bensaid underlines the coherence of Marx's logic, and makes a number of reflections concerning crises, long waves, and the relationship between the market and modernity. In the second section he discusses the theory of bureaucracy, the articulation between the class relationship and sexual domination, and the place of national and ethnic questions in this epoch of globalisation. This work represents a complement to what promises to be Bensaid's major work to date, Marx l'impestif, published by Editions Fayard in October 1995. The final lines of La discordance des temps resume Bensaid's project, in his own, very literary style: "''Marxism"'... is accused of having preached a religion of terrestrial salvation, of having let loose the blind forces of productionism, of having blessed the weapons of science and technology, of having organised the idolatrous cult of the proletariat, and of having brought to its full realisation the totalitarian tyranny of historical reason. The prosecutors have evidence texts and citations which they put forward. In a scholastic quarrel, the defence could produce its own, symmetrical pieces of evidence, which would contradict or refute those of their opponents. But this is not some pious attempt to go "back to Marx". This is a necessary 'detour". Reviewed by Jean-Michel Krivine