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

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