A philosopher and activist, eager to live according to ideals forged in
study and discussion, Daniel Bensaïd was a man deeply entrenched in both
the French and the international left. Raised in a staunchly red
neighbourhood of Toulouse, where his family owned a bistro, he grew to
be France's leading Marxist public intellectual, much in demand on talk
shows and in the press. A lyrical essayist and powerful public speaker,
at his best expounding large ideas to crowds of students and workers, he
was a founder member of the Ligue Communiste and thrived at the heart of
a resurgent far left in the 1960s, which nurtured many of the leading
figures of today's French establishment.
The path from the joyous explosion of May 1968, through the painful
experience of defeat in Latin America and the world-shaking collapse of
the USSR, to the neoliberal world of today, dominated as it is by global
finance, is narrated in An Impatient Life with Bensaïd's
characteristic elegance of phrase and clarity of vision. His memoir
relates a life of ideological and practical struggle, a never-resting
endeavour to comprehend the workings of capitalism in the pursuit of
revolution.
