Stephane Hessel, a 93-year-old hero of the French Resistance
and former diplomat has become the latest best-selling author in France. His
13-page pamphlet , Indignez vous,
variously translated as Cry Out, Resist or Be Indignant has struck a
chord in France,
where it quickly sold 600,000 copies. M. Hessel urges younger generations everywhere to reject the "insolent,
selfish" power of money and markets and
defend the social "values of modern democracy". M.Hessel
takes a philosophical view of the ravages of capitalism and calls for a return
to the more humane values that dominated in the early post-WWII world. "The productivist obsession of the West
has plunged the world into a crisis which can only be resolved by a radical
shift away from the 'ever more', in the world of finance but also in science
and technology .
It is high time that ethics, justice and a sustainable balance
prevailed..."
A veteran of Nazi concentration camps, M.Hessel contributed
to the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights after the war. While he has been besieged
with requests to translate the work into other languages, for the moment, no
English translation exists. It is available in the original French from Amazon.co.uk
and from download
websites which charge a modest membership fee. A radio interview in English
courtesy of rfi can be heard online here. Let us hope that the English translation goes
on sale very soon. The American Left needs all of the indignation it can
muster.
