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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