Thank you for forwarding this. It celebrates Singer much better than did The
Nation's obit. Perhaps the latter will do a memorial issue; it certainly is
called for.

----- Original Message -----
From: frank scott <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2001 6:07 PM
Subject: [CHOMSKY] fwd: RIP, a wonderful man...


> Daniel Singer
>
>  Gifted commentator on the French
>  political scene
>
>  Douglas Johnson
>  Wednesday January 10, 2001
>  The Guardian (London and Manchester)
>
>
>  Daniel Singer, who has died in Paris aged
>  74, had all the qualities of a great
>  journalist. Writing for the Economist in
>  Britain, and for the Nation in the United
>  States, his articles were forceful,
>  well-informed and revealing. He made his
>  readers reflect, influenced their thinking
>  and had the essential quality of being, at
>  times, controversial. He was a historian
>  and a political thinker; an intellectual who
>  longed for, and dreamed of, action.
>
>  The son of Bernard Singer, himself a
>  famous journalist, Daniel was born in
>  Warsaw, but found himself, with his
>  mother, in France when war broke out.
>  They took refuge in the south after the
>  armistice, but were tracked down by the
>  French police. With the help of the
>  resistance, they escaped to Switzerland.
>  Bernard Singer, who had been imprisoned
>  by the Russians, was released after the
>  Nazi attack on the Soviet Union, and made
>  his way to London. Daniel studied in
>  Geneva until after the war, when he joined
>  his father.
>
>  Leftwing politics and discussions were the
>  vogue in postwar London, and Daniel
>  formed a lasting friendship with the
>  Marxist historian Isaac Deutscher. It was,
>  in part, thanks to his influence that Singer
>  began to work for the Economist in 1948.
>  He wrote about eastern Europe, especially
>  Poland and the Soviet Union, but was
>  always particularly interested in France.
>
>  In 1956, he married a French expert on
>  economic matters, Jeanne Kérel (who
>  survives him), and his ambition to become
>  Paris correspondent of the Economist was
>  realised two years later.
>
>  The political situation of France in 1958
>  was particularly dramatic. Singer was only
>  moderately impressed by General de
>  Gaulle, who was in danger of mistaking
>  "the France of today for the France in the
>  world of 1919". As the general was
>  enthroned as president of the republic,
>  Singer wrote that "the stroke of
>  retrenchment that the French economy
>  needs most is in General de Gaulle's own
>  idea of national ambition".
>
>  What interested him was the inactivity of
>  the French Communist party (PCF). It
>  would have been possible to prevent de
>  Gaulle from coming to power if the party
>  had supported, or at least tolerated, a
>  government that functioned with the
>  normal parliamentary majority.
>
>  Singer was fascinated by all those
>  movements that were disillusioned by the
>  PCF and the Soviet Union, whether they
>  were Trotskyist, anarchist or inspired by
>  the new humanistic or structuralist
>  versions of Marxism. He took an active
>  part in all these discussions, while
>  remaining devoted, as he had been since
>  his youth, to the Polish-born
>  revolutionary socialist Rosa Luxemburg.
>
>  The student revolts of 1968, and the
>  strikes that followed, seemed to fulfil
>  Singer's dreams of mass revolution aimed
>  at freedom. In 1970, he published Prelude
>  To Revolution, a challenging and defiant
>  book that hailed the events as quickening
>  the pace of historical change in Europe.
>  He proclaimed that the PCF had been
>  shown to be a bureaucratic,
>  anti-revolutionary organisation, and that
>  the students and workers could proudly
>  look forward to the future.
>
>  The first effect of May 1968 was the
>  rejection of de Gaulle, and, in a longer
>  perspective, Singer believed that the
>  year's events had asserted the importance
>  of rights, a point of view that seemed to be
>  confirmed in November 1986, when some
>  600,000 students protested successfully
>  against the proposed Devaquet law
>  introducing a selection process to
>  university recruitment.
>
>  Although Singer lived in the Rue Bièvre in
>  Paris, the same street as François
>  Mitterrand, he did not admire his
>  presidency. In 1988, he published Is
>  Socialism Doomed? The Meaning Of
>  Mitterrand, which attacked the president
>  for the decline of the non-communist left,
>  and for his lack of ideas and ideals.
>
>  After 1970, Singer worked for the Nation.
>  He continued to write, and to follow the
>  ideas of Rosa Luxemburg; his last book,
>  Whose Millennium: Theirs Or Yours?, put
>  forward an alternative to capitalism and to
>  the notion that we had reached the end of
>  history.
>
>  At his request, the announcement of his
>  death was accompanied by a quotation
>  from Luxemburg: "Tomorrow, the
>  revolution will raise its head again,
>  Proclaiming to your horror amidst a blaze
>  of trumpets, I was, I am, I always shall be."
>
>  . Daniel Singer, writer and journalist, born
>  September 26 1926; died December 2 2000
>
>  ----------------------------------------------