Severe Repression of Maoists in France

James Farmelant farmelantj at juno.com
Wed Jan 13 05:58:13 PST 1999


On Tue, 12 Jan 1999 19:49:01 -0800 Brad De Long <delong at econ.Berkeley.EDU> writes:
>>Sartre did not entirely
>>agree with Levy's then-Maoist politics but he was willing to lend
>>his name and prestige to help the young Maoists were facing
>>severe repression from the Gaullist regime during the early
>>1970s...
>>
>> Jim Farmelant
>>
>
>"Severe repression"? Details?...
>
>Brad DeLong
>
>
>
Really Brad, you are going to start giving economists a bad name.

As for details, the Gaullist government initiated a crackdown on the Maoists in 1970. Jean-Pierre Le Dantec, who was editor-in- chief of the newspaper, "La Cause du peuple" - published by the Maoist group Proletarian Left was arrested and his paper seized. He was immediately replaced by a new editor, Michel Le Bris, who was then arrested ten days later. In other words the French government was most intent on suppressing the Maoist press at that time. Since the government had made it clear that it would arrest anybody who would take charge of the paper, the Maoists decided to turn to Sartre. So on April 28, 1970, Sartre after meeting with a number of leading Maoists including Benny Levy (then known as Pierre Victor) accepted the post of editor-in-chief. Later that year Sartre accepted the same position at several other Maoist papers that were also facing suppression by the French government. In the meantime, the French National Assembly passed legislation restricting demonstrations, which gave the minister of the interior the power to dissolve the Proletarian Left, which he ordered on May 27, 1970.

Sartre's acceptance of the post of editor-in-chief with several Maoist papers lent his name, his prestige and indeed his active participation in the campaign against the attempts by the government to suppress the Maoists. For this Sartre was attacked by most of the bourgeois press which charged him with grandstanding and self-promotion, while the Communist paper, "L'Humanite" attacked him for endorsing the "vulgar provocations" of the Maoists. Only "Le Monde" was in any way supportive.

When the cases of the two arrested editors of "La Cause du peuple" was taken to the courts, the decision to outlaw the paper was revoked but the editors were still found guilty of violating the law. That verdict was followed by outbreaks of violent demonstrations. In June Sartre and his friends founded the Association of the Friends of "La Cause du peuple," with Simone de Beauvoir and Liliane Siegel as fronts. They organized public distributions of the paper in Paris with Sartre, Beauvoir, and many leading intellectuals and journalists publicly hawking the paper. Sartre no stranger to publicity made sure that there was a photographer from Gallimard to photograph the whole thing. Sartre was arrested, questioned by the police, then released.

Following that incident Sartre who had been called as a witness in the trial of a Maoist leader, Alain Geismar, refused to come to the court. Instead, he harangued the workers at the Renault Billancourt plants where he called upon the workers to support Geismar's cause. Most of the workers ignored his speech. Sartre was widely ridiculed in the French press.

Sartre's active involvement with the Maoist continued until 1973. His relations with them were often quite stormy but his involvement did help beat back the governments attempts to suppress or censor the radical press.

Jim Farmelant

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