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terms. It had based its innovative social ideas against the presence of
politics and the powerful presence of the State, on the role of social
activists, socialist militants, community forces, and trade unions.
But these forces, once the left had come to power, proceeded to fight
for ever narrower and more selfish interests, instead of fostering a
new democratic spirit in which the "general will" could triumph.
La
Deuxieme Gauche
had relied on greater democracy and individual
responsibility to produce a more dynamic civil society.
Because of its intellectual emphasis on the autonomy of civil
society, its opposition to
Ie tout politique,
its approval of multiple poles
of authority,
La Deuxieme Gauche
found itself in a highly dubious posi–
tion
vis-a~vis
the neoliberal democratic currents on the other half of
the left-right divide. Strengthened by their stay in the opposition,
neoliberals such as Yves Cannac, Guy Sorman, Michel Cicurel,
could argue on behalf of the liberal marketplace, the need for a less
overwhelming state, the transparence of economic life, greater social
flexibility and openness, and the responsibility of individuals in rela–
tion to the public sector. Furthermore, their argument in favor of
staying within the international community has been perceived as
virtually identical to those of
La Deuxieme Gauche,
if carried to its logi–
cal conclusions. In order to expand their audience and intellectual
legitimacy, the neoliberals stressed at first the link with
La Deuxieme
Gauche,
thus pinning its back against the wall, in an intellectual "em–
brace" it had tried to elude for political and psychological reasons of
deep historical identity.
Because
La Deuxieme Gauche
could not bring itself to be iden–
tified with the market mechanism as the regulator of society (even
though it admitted its central role), because it could not equate its
criticism of the state with that of the liberals, and because in its mind
civil society was more than the sum of its individual actors, it slowly
moved toward a greater appreciation of the state as the ultimate
mediator of society. In the words of Paul Thibaud, "L'Etat est aussi
instrument de prise de conscience, d'eclaircissement et de suscita–
tion."
Contact with power destroyed the ideological edifice of the First
Left (the revolutionary, Jacobin one), as it broke the romantic,
critical spirit of the Second Left. In power, hard pragmatism has had
to supplant facile ideological categories, but pragmatism has never
been enough as a French political category . Only a noble ideal could
sustain the socialist family, just as the notion of "grandeur" had served
de Gaulle. The socialists came to power, in the words of Jacques
