THE MYSTERIES OF THE LEFT, JEAN-CLAUDE MICHÉA, ÉDITIONS CLIMATS/ FLAMMARION, 2013

At the request of Paul Ariès, editor-in-chief of the magazine Les z’indignés, the author responds to a letter from Florian Gulli, a philosopher and communist activist, who asks Michéaël to explain his refusal to call « left » or « left-wing » criticism of the 

liberalism. The answer that Michéa proposes in the review constitutes the basis of this new book, which is completed by a hundred pages of « scolies », characteristic of the method and the thought of this professor from Montpellier. J.C. Michéa expands on what he marked with force in his previous book (Le complexe d’Orphée: La gauche, les gens ordinaires et la religion du progrès, éditions Climats/Flammarion, 2013), proposes additional avenues on what could make a decent society, and on political ways out of capitalism, which he deems total. The heart of the critique is the inability of the left to perceive the historical and political reconstruction of the « left » as a political category (Marx never called himself a leftist), and therefore to grasp its current liberal nature, and consequently the inability of this tendency to propose concrete philosophical and political ways out of capitalism that articulate with violent coherence economic, political and cultural liberalism. The left, the supreme stage of capitalism? A sometimes arduous reading, which calls for developments on how to conceive philosophically a decent society, but a very stimulating and essential reading for those who want to think about the exit from productivism, and act. 

The mysteries of the left. Of the ideal of the lights
to the triumph of absolute capitalism,
Jean-Claude Michéa, editions Climats/Flammarion, 2013