Ecrire [Postmortems]

The French political memoir, in the years following Francois Mitterrand, was written according to what almost could be called a formula, readily recognizable to American readers. The author devotes a few pages or chapters, according to his whim or vanity, to his "political education", taking care to explain where he was at the key moments of recent history and how stimulated or shaken he was by them. Serge Halimi, one of the editors of Le Monde Diplomatique, views France as having succumbed to this new international regime, but he considers the French case in the context of the history of the French left. He believes the history of the French left is, in practice, one of proclaiming a revolutionary goal, attempting reform when it has power, and finally giving in to the right when reform without revolution proves impossible.