Arguing Revolution: The Intellectual Left in Postwar France

The collapse of the revolutionary identity of the Left has been more spectacular in France than anywhere else in the West. For three decades after World War II, Marxism held a key position within French intellectual culture; the language of revolutionary politics was widely articulated and practised, while at the same time the French government remained staunchly right-wing. However, at some point in the 1970s Marxism lost its grip on the French intellectual imagination - an event which coincided with the growth of academic Marxism in England, and with the achievement of political success by the French Left at 30 years in opposition. This book seeks to explain this massive and seemingly irrational shift in intellectural preferences, asking why this happended in France? How do France's intellectual and political histories relate? And what is it about the French mentality that can first champion and then obliterate a particular set of beliefs?