Gauche prolétarienne

Proletarian Left
Gauche prolétarienne
AbbreviationGP
LeaderBenny Lévy
FoundedSeptember 1968 (1968-09)
DissolvedNovember 1973 (1973-11)
Split fromUJC(ml)
NewspaperLa Cause du peuple
IdeologyMao-Spontex
Maoism
Libertarian Marxism
Political positionFar-left

The Gauche prolétarienne (GP) was a French Maoist political party which existed from 1968 to 1974. As Christophe Bourseiller has put it, "Of all the Maoist organizations after May 1968, the most important numerically as well as in cultural influence was without question the Gauche prolétarienne".[1]

History

The GP was formed in October 1968. After a split in the Union des jeunesses communistes marxistes-léninistes (UJC-ML), several members - including Olivier Rolin, Jean-Pierre Le Dantec, Jean-Claude Vernier, the brothers Tony and Benny Lévy, Jean Schiavo, Maurice Brover and Jean-Claude Zancarini - formed the new party. In 1969 the former student union leaders Alain Geismar and Serge July joined the group.[1]

Several members of the group were involved with the founding of the French daily Libération which evolved into a centre left mainstream mass circulation daily newspaper.[2]

The group was also known as "Mao-Spontex", or Maoist-spontaneists. The connection to Spontex, a cleaning sponge brand, was intended as a pejorative to disparage the GP's antiauthoritarianism approach to revolution.[3]

Prominent people who were at one point members of the GP include Serge July, Olivier Rolin, Frédéric H. Fajardie, Gérard Miller, Jean-Claude Milner, Marin Karmitz, André Glucksmann, Gilles Susong, Christian Jambet, Guy Lardreau, Daniel Rondeau, Olivier Roy, Judith Miller, Dominique Grange and Gilles Millet. A group of former members became core members of the New Philosophers in the 1970s.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Bourg, Julian (2007). "Violence and the Gauche prolétarienne". From Revolution to Ethics: May 1968 and Contemporary French Thought. McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. pp. 51–60. ISBN 978-0-7735-8100-5. Retrieved 26 January 2013 – via Google Books.
  2. ^ Ali, Tariq (26 November 2013). "What the Maoist slavery sect tells us about the far left". The Guardian.
  3. ^ Bourg, Julian (2017). From Revolution to Ethics, Second Edition: May 1968 and Contemporary French Thought. MQUP. p. 86. ISBN 978-0-7735-5247-0 – via Google Books. It did not take long for the GP-ists to become known as "Mao-spontex," or Maoist-spontaneists. The name was originally an insult—Spontex was the brand name of a cleaning sponge—intended to belittle the group's embrace of antiauthoritarianism as an element of revolutionary contestation. The marxisant tradition had long criticized spontaneism as an anarchistic error.
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