Clear, precise, and decisive, the speech by Manuel Valls signifies a death blow: he delivers a final stroke to an aging French left, “imprisoned,” according to him, by Marxist ideology, a paranoid left “locked in an outdated view of the world” and “incapable” of adapting to the “realities of the time.” By launching his club “A gauche, besoin d’optimisme!” (On the Left, Need for Optimism!) on June 29th, the Deputy Mayor of Evry struck at rue de Solférino. Going far beyond mere “renovation” or “re-foundation,” which he mocks as the circumstantial and short-lived calls of his leadership, this man, with his Catalonian cultural background distancing him significantly from the “dusty Spanish antics” of the bullfighting arena, has conducted himself as a true matador.
Unlike the “socialist project” of Martine Aubry, which condemns the “reflex of the available post,” reaffirms the imperative need for the “collective” and recalls the primacy of the “program” over the leader, Manuel Valls resolutely defends the vision of “autonomy” and “individual responsibility.” He aims to free the latter from overbearing tutelage, probably perceived as too maternal and not sufficiently emancipatory. Along the way, he claims lineage from “two of the greatest Prime Ministers” – Michel Rocard and Lionel Jospin – praising the famous “method” of the former and rejoicing that he can “use the experience” of globalization so effectively assumed by Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Against the “post-materialism” proposed by the First Secretary of the PS, a value he might easily include in his critique of “dogmas that have become obsolete,” the Deputy of Essonne prefers, undeterred by the horrified cries of a “Jaurèsian left” and the temptations apparently shared with the President of the Republic of a blurring of the “left-right” lines, those of “work, nation, and security.” Their disagreement over the interpretation of the “phenomenon” Barack Obama is significant: for Martine Aubry, it’s her question “in what kind of world do we want to live?” that gave strength to the president. Mistake, responds Manuel Valls, it is the fact of having known how to “embody” this question that convinced the Americans. The divergence could not be clearer.
There is no doubt that with this determination, Manuel Valls enters the court of Tony Blair, José Luis Zapatero, and other Frank-Walter Steinmeier of European social-democracy. Several questions nonetheless remain about the long and tumultuous initiatory journey he is preparing to undertake. Firstly, the distance that separates his starting point from his goals: like the “new proletariat,” certain expressions by the socialist leader suggest he may not have completely made this transition for himself. Proof that he is not unaware of the risks, so to speak, of losing his way, Manuel Valls then shows his hesitations to leave the “common house”: borrowed sometimes from Churchill, sometimes from John Paul II, the various references that pepper here and there the conclusions of his speech testify to this identity search, that of a “left that no longer wants to be socialist.” Finally, every revolution devours its children: the one started by Manuel Valls might also risk sacrificing its author, because of a “timing,” the deadline of 2012, likely to impede the authenticity of his approach. Manuel Valls certainly has good reason to bet on his “desire” for the left. He knows, however, that it is in the constraint that this desire finds the conditions of enjoyment.
