The French New Left: An Intellectual History from Sartre to Gorz

Abstract

PrefaceThis study is not a history of the new left itself, but rather of its theoretical dimension as it evolved in its most developed form --i.e., in France. For it is in France that the intellectual origins of new left social theory are most obvious in the work of Jean-Paul Sartre and others. And it is also in France that the clearest political expression of the new left occurred -- the May 1968 upheaval. Thus, an intellectual history of the French new left covers a rich field of experience. It surveys the efforts by radical social theorists both to confront the historically experienced limitations of marxism as a liberating social theory and to continue and extend the critical role of marxism by analyzing the new contradictions engendered in advanced industrial societies, as well as proposing strategies for liberating social change.The study begins, in Part I, with a critical appraisal of the intellectual origins of French new left social theory as it emerged from the radical critiques of traditional marxism carried out by Sartre, Henri Lefebvre, and Cornelius Castoria- dis in the period 1945 to 1968. Sartre's existentialist critique revolved around what he considered to be the lack of a marxist theory of subjectivity. Lefebvre's revisionist critique questioned the validity of the traditional marxist view of advanced industrial society. Castoriadis' gauchiste critique denied marxism revolutionary status, claiming it had been transformed into a bureaucratic ideology.The existentialist, the revisionist, and the gauchiste critiques developed in the late 1940s and 1950s, and converged in the 1960s as a French new left social theory. Its main themes focused on the project of discovering egalitarian solutions to the problems of alienation and bureaucracy in advanced industrial society. The explosion of May 1968 -- which is discussed in Part II -- appeared to confirm the relevance of this project and opened a new era of social contestation. In this sense May 1968 was an important turning point. It represented the culmination of new left social theory and opened the way for the incorporation of its assumptions and themes into the political and social movements of the 1970s.In Part III I survey the legacy of the French new left in the aftermath of May 1968. On the one hand, we witness the resurgence of structuralism in the domain of theory, and the rise of Eurocommunism and left electoralism in the political arena. But more significantly, the social movements of selfmanagement, feminism, and ecology emerge to continue the new left project and expand its meaning. It is toward these movements, I argue, that radical social theory must turn if it is to move beyond its present fragmentation and confusion to achieve a coherent vision capable of inspiring progressive social change.As an essay in intellectual history, this work does not claim to be exhaustive of all the material which could conceivably be classified under the heading of the French new left. Rather, I have attempted to select what I think are the basic themes and to develop them in the context of a broad survey of recent French social theory. It is hoped that the result of such an approach is a work that may be of use for the general reader as well as for specialists in social theory and intellectual history.