PEACE MOVEMENT END convention THE SEVENTH convention of European Nuclear Disarmament will take place this year in Lund, Sweden, from June 29 to July 2. The END convention has always been a focus for peace activists from all over the world to discuss the issues of the day. Previous conventions have been held in Brussels, West Berlin, Perugia, Amsterdam,
Daniel Guérin: farewell to a friend and comrade harassment of the Trotskyists who joined this formation
ONE OF THE BEST KNOWN and most courageous and the disciplinary measures that followed against them.
of French left intellectuals, Daniel Guérin, died in
During this entire period, which was to continue into late April at the age of 84. He was an activist and a
World War II, Guérin moved toward Trotsky and Trotskyscholar and leaves behind a number of works that ism. He admired the Old Man's extraordinary clearremain basic references for revolutionary Marxists.
mindedness. But he accused him of suffering from a tacti-
In the latter part of his life, he was a leading figure in cal rigidity that had supposedly encouraged his French the gay rights' movement in France.
followers to fall into sectarianism and maneuvers.
The last word on the detailed questions belongs to history. All this seems very far away today. But no one can deny, in the light of history, that the fundamental options
ANIEL GUERIN died recently, after a long and were not tactical but political and strategic. On these,
D painful illness. With him has disappeared one of
Trotsky was right. In the mid-1940s, Guerin himself large ly recognized this. This is what led him to join the Fourth the leading personalities on the French far left for
International for a brief period at that time a half century.
Guérin came to socialism through opposition to colonial-
The whole conflict-wrought process of Daniel Guerin's ism, which was not so common in the early 1930s. He rerapprochement with revolutionary Marxism, Trotskyism, over the 1933-40 period is described sincerely in his book mained an anti-colonialist activist all his life. You find the
Front-Populaire, revolution manquée ["Popular Front, quintessence of this fierce loyalty to proletarian internationalism in the collection of his writings on this subject,
In the wake of World War II, Daniel Guérin produced his
Ci-git le Colonialisme ["Here lies colonialism"].
However, very quickly this initial motivation was broadmost valuable book, one that would continue to be a landmark in the writing of history in general and in the history ened by the fascist peril, which rose throughout Europe in of Marxism. La Lutte de Classe sous la Premiére Réputhe wake of the Nazis seizure of power in 1933. His book blique ["Class struggle under the First Republic"] extend-
Fascism and big business was the first detailed explanaed the analysis based on the theory of the permanent tion of the fascist phenomenon from a revolutionaryrevolution to the French Revolution.
Marxist standpoint. It was largely inspired by Trotsky's
Today it remains a task for young Marxist historians to penetrating analyses, which were far superior to those of re-examine the history of all the bourgeois revolutions - the Comintern. Despite a slightly mechanistic approach, not as a three-cornered struggle between the nobility, the his analysis remains valid to this day, although we now bourgeoisie and the peasantry, but as a four-cornered have a great mass of documents at our disposal that were one in which a pre-proletariat, a semi-proletariat or even not available to Guerin at the time.
The young Daniel Guérin joined Léon Blum's SFIO an incipient proletariat were beginning to appear as an in-
[French section of the Workers' International, the social-democratic party of the time]. But the vulgar electoralism of the "old home" repelled him. Quickly, he moved to the left wing of the party, the celebrated "revolutionary left" around
Marceau-Pivert. This current had its moment of glory in June 1936, but it did not manage to translate its revolutionary convictions into organized and organizational action.
It ended up being expelled from the
SFIO In 1938, when workers' struggles were in a declining
In the Parti Socialiste Ouvrier et
Paysan (Socialist Workers' and
Peasants' Party), which was formed after this expulsion, Daniel
Guérin was again in the left wing.
In particular, he opposed the
10
International Viewpoint #143 • June 13, 1988 aborted revolution"].
100 YEARS of
LABOR in the USA
FISHER -NO.
1.1272
10/22
Daniel Guérin
At a time when preparations are underway for the bicentenary of the French Revolution, French Marxists should take inspiration from Daniel Guérin's clear-sighted work to continue this line of research.
From general history, Guérin turned toward sociology and the history of the workers' movement in several works devoted to the United States. I collaborated on one of them, Où va le Peuple Américain? ["Whither the American people?"), contributing an analysis of capitalist concentration in the USA. The book was published in 1950. My friendship with Daniel Guérin began then. It was renewed during the Algerian war. It was never broken off after that, despite our manifest political and theoretical differences. *
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