International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

The tragic solitude of the Palestinians

Daniel Bensaïd — 2025-04-10T16:10:52Z

The late Daniel Bensaïd (1946–2010) on the silence of academics and his dissent as an anti-Zionist.

- Daniel Bensaïd archive / Palestine, Fourth International, Daniel Bensaid

Myths and legends of domination

Daniel Bensaïd — 2024-03-30T18:41:41Z

In 1964 Herbert Marcuse asked in One-Dimensional Man whether it was still possible to ‘break the vicious circle of domination'. In other words, he questioned whether revolution was still possible in developed capitalist countries, where ‘the pure form of domination' had taken shape. The working class, now linked to the system of needs ‘but not to its negation',ii seemed bound to lose all its subversive capacity in the ‘affluent society [1]'. [2]

- Daniel Bensaïd archive / Marxism, Iran, Daniel Bensaid

Do you know Lefrançais?

Daniel Bensaïd — 2021-03-25T07:31:04Z

“With Lefrançais, one is in good company. One simply feels at home.” [1]

- Daniel Bensaïd archive / France, Daniel Bensaid, Historical events and figures

‘What it means to be Marxist'

Daniel Bensaïd — 2021-03-25T07:30:27Z

March 25, 2021 would have been the 75th birthday of our comrade Daniel Bensaïd. We publish here a translation of an interview with Éric Hazan, first published in 2007.

- Daniel Bensaïd archive / Marxism, Daniel Bensaid

Trotsky, a guiding light of the century

Daniel Bensaïd — 2020-08-21T07:38:38Z

This year we commemorate the deaths of three leading figures of our movement. Daniel Bensaïd Marxist activist and philosopher, emerging from the May 1968 movement in France, who died too early in 2010 after a life as leader of the French section and the Fourth International. Ernest Mandel whose political activity started in resistance to the rise of Nazism, was an outstanding Marxist economist and a central leader of the Fourth International from the postwar period until his death in 1995. Léon Trotsky, leader of the Russian Revolution and of the fight against the counter-revolution, founder of the Fourth International, was assasinated by a Stalinist agent and died on 21 August 1940.

On this sad anniversary we publish an article by Daniel BensaÃ¯d on Trotsky written in 2000.

- Daniel Bensaïd archive / Fourth International, Daniel Bensaid, Historical events and figures

Livio Maitan: History wrinkle-free

Daniel Bensaïd — 2018-11-16T15:09:11Z

Daniel BensaÃ¯d wrote the Preface to Livio Maitan's history of the Fourth International Per una storia della IV internazionale. La testimonia di un comunista controcorrente published in 2006.

Resistance Books and the IIRE have launched an appeal to fiund publication in English. It has almost reached the first goal of 5,000 euros, thanks to a substantial donation in the form of translation work.

To give an idea of the book, and of the person of Livio, we publish here the English translation of Daniel BensaÃ¯d's preface.

We hope to raise 1,000 euros more to pay for the design and promotion of the book. Details on how to make a donation can be found below.

- Daniel Bensaïd archive / Fourth International, Daniel Bensaid

1968 – It was just the beginning

Daniel Bensaïd — 2018-06-07T16:15:38Z

Although the fiftieth anniversary of May 1968 provides the opportunity for new celebrations, new tributes and testimonies, for extensions of previous historiographical research, few writings take seriously the political questions raised by this event. However, ten years after the beautiful month of May, in 1978, the event was still live, and even though social setbacks were being announced and the crisis was beginning to install itself, it was still politics and not history that people were discussing with regard to May 1968. Hence the interest in plunging back into the debates of that time, with this article by Daniel BensaÃ¯d, published in 1978 in a review of the Revolutionary Communist League, Les Cahiers de la taupe (No. 23, dated May-June 1978).[Contretemps]

- Daniel Bensaïd archive / France, Daniel Bensaid, Historical events and figures, 1968

The event itself and its effects... Looking back on May ‘68

Daniel Bensaïd — 2018-05-02T13:34:49Z

In 2008, in an interview with Francis Sitel for the journal Critique communiste (No. 188) Daniel BensaÃ¯d looked back over the strategic debates which took place in May 1968, and especially in its immediate aftermath, among the militants of what became in 1969 the Communist League. Between enthusiasm for the rise of struggles and fear of being swept away by the ebb tide of the mobilizations, between predictions about the coming revolution and reformist dead ends, it was the question of organization, of the political party, that was posed at that time in new terms for a far left that was overwhelmingly composed of students. Contretemps

- Daniel Bensaïd archive / France, Fourth International, Daniel Bensaid, Historical events and figures, 1968

Thinking politics

Daniel Bensaïd — 2018-02-06T16:02:08Z

Eight years ago, on January 12, 2010, Daniel Bensaïd passed away. We republish here a not very well-known but thought-provoking interview, which he gave to the Argentinian review Praxis in May 2006. In the piece he develops the idea that neoliberal globalization makes it necessary for anti-capitalists to think again about "a common strategic space [which] presupposes a sort of sliding scale of strategic spaces involving actions at the local, national, and international levels”.

- IV517 - February 2018 / Marxism, Daniel Bensaid

“Leaps Leaps Leaps”: Lenin and politics

Daniel Bensaïd — 2014-11-24T15:31:27Z

Hannah Arendt was worried that politics might disappear completely from the world. The century had seen such disasters that the question of whether 'politics still has any meaning at all' had become unavoidable”. The issues at stake in these fears were eminently practical: 'The lack of meaning in which the whole of politics has ended up is confirmed by the dead end into which specific political questions are flocking.'

- Daniel Bensaïd archive / Marxism, Daniel Bensaid, Features