Léon Blum, and: Pierre Mendès-France (review)

292 SAIS REVIEW nineteenth century French socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. To keep up with the intellectual ruminations of the French Left, it is always helpful to consult books like this one by K. Steven Vincent, which places Proudhon and his ideas in the general context of nineteenth-century French thought and society. Vincent defends Proudhon against twentieth century misinterpretations by biased critics and political parvenus. He provides a useful and coherent study of Proudhon and the intellectual tradition from which he comes. The book is divided into two parts, "Republican Socialism: 1809-1846" and "Associational Socialism", which roughly coincide with a split in Proudhon's writings and career between an earlier philosophical phase and a later programmatic and more political period. As the title of the book might indicate, the first part is the more interesting and original of the two. Vincent provides the details of Proudhon's early life as a printer and writer and discusses the social and intellectual context in which he developed his general principles of republican socialism. Vincent's description of the early nineteenth century "horror of the void" in French society—the desire to integrate and provide social solidarity with a moral basis—and the influence of Montesquieu's and Rousseau's "republicanism" on French thought are especially rich and insightful. The second part of the book is a detailed analysis of Proudhon's well-known conception of producers' and consumers' cooperatives and mutualist associations . Vincent challenges the notion that Proudhon was a "utopian" socialist and holds up Proudhon's individuality and ideas against those of many of his contemporaries, including Charles Fourier, Louis Blanc, and Philippe Joseph Bûchez. Overall, this book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the social and intellectual roots of French socialism. Léon Blum. By Jean Lacouture. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1982. Pierre Mendès-France. By Jean Lacouture. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1984. Reviewed by Aekyong Chung, M.A. candidate, SAIS. Though France's economic prospects look grim, she may find momentary solace in remembering her many legendary heroes. Jean Lacouture, biographer of André Malraux, Francois Mauriac, and Charles de Gaulle, has written accounts of the lives of two more of the century's major figures, Léon Blum and Pierre Mendès-France. All of these have made a lasting contribution to French intellectual and political life. Now that English translations of Léon Blum and PierreMendès-France have been published in the United States, American readers canjudge for themselves what the French have been saying all along about their political and intellectual contribution to world civilization. Léon Blum is an excellent survey of the subject's brilliant if tragic career, written in an admiring and sympathetic manner. A Jewish intellectual of Alsation origin, young Blum moved in the literary world of Gide, Proust, and Mallarmé. The Dreyfus affair marked the beginning of his political involvement, and after the assassination of Jean Jaurès Blum led the Socialist Party to its greatest success in the creation of the Popular Front, whose government he headed in 1936. But just as the Dreyfus affair politicized Blum, another of the most controversial events in contemporary French history depoliticized him—his decision not to intervene in the Spanish Civil War brought an end to the Popular BOOK REVIEWS 293 Front and to Blum's career. Lacouture's biography will not dislodgeJoel Colton's comprehensive study, Léon Blum: Humanist in Politics, but as Lacouture was granted access to previously private papers, the new edition will further inspire Blum admirers and scholars. Lacouture's most recent work, Pierre Mendès-France, is not the best of his fine biographies, perhaps for the obvious reason that he was too close to his subject. He nevertheless presents a thorough picture of a very complex man. MendèsFrance was the youngest deputy to enter the Assemblée Nationale, one of the formulators of Blum's economic policy, and de Gaulle's Minister of the Economy during his provisional government, but the world knows him best as the man who risked his career to get France out of Indo-China. He eventually lost his wager on another colonial issue...