Georges Marchais

Georges Marchais ( born June 7, 1920 in Hoguette, Calvados, † November 16, 1997 in Paris) was a French politician and trade unionist. From 1972 to 1994 he was head of the French Communist Party.

Life

After an apprenticeship as a machinist in 1940, he worked as a laborer in an aircraft engine factory. As a volunteer - according to his own version as forced laborers - he took in 1942 at the Service du travail obligatoire in Germany as an aircraft mechanic on a German Air Force Base and at Messerschmitt in Munich in part and sat from 1943 to France. An episode of his life, which was the goal of polemical and legal attacks 1977-1980. 1943-1945 is Marchais was underground. From a commitment to the Resistance is not known.

In 1946 he became secretary of the metalworkers' union of Issy -les -Moulineaux. In 1951, he rises there to the secretary of the CGT and was 1953-1956 Secretary of the Union of Metal Workers Trade Unions of the Seine region.

Since 1947, Marchais was a member of the French Communist Party (PCF ). In 1959 he became a candidate for his party's Central Committee and secretary of the Federation of Seine -South, the same year he was promoted to a member of the Central Committee and Politburo. Since 1961, Marchais organization Secretary and Deputy Secretary General since 1970 his party.

In May 1968, he attacked Daniel Cohn- Bendit as one of the heads of the student strikes as " German anarchists ".

In June 1972 he was a signatory to the joint government program, the PCF with the Parti Socialiste français (PS) and the radicaux de gauche under the heading of Union de la Gauche. In the same year, in December 1972 he was appointed as successor of Waldeck Rochet General Secretary of the PCF, who gave up his function due to illness. After the disappointing election results for the PCF in 1978 Marchais sought greater distance to PS.

Marchais met with the Secretary General of the Italian Communists Enrico Berlinguer, with whom he had the idea of ​​Euro -communism. At the Congress of the PCF in May 1979, the " dictatorship of the proletariat " was discarded. Unlike PCI, however, the PCF considered under the leadership of Georges Marchais as the party of the working class, which raised a claim to leadership in the transformation process itself. Together with the PCI was the policy of the USSR intervention in Czechoslovakia ( Prague Spring ), Poland, Afghanistan, and in particular the leadership of the CPSU over the world communist movement, the term " proletarian internationalism" rejected. On the other hand, held the PCF firmly to the traditional two-camp theory according to which the Communist Parties " vanguard of the world revolution " and that the " overall interests of the proletariat to perceive against the imperialist enemy in close cooperation " would. After more than five years Marchais traveled in early 1980 for the first time for talks with the CPSU to Moscow. In October 1982, Marchais supported the call for independent trade unions in Poland and came to the resumption of official relations with his party to a CCP. In July 1983, Marchais even called for a reduction of armaments in East and West, in which he demanded the French force de frappe called the PCF included in the disarmament negotiations between the U.S. and USSR.

In March 1973 Marchais was first elected in the constituency of Val -de- Marne ( Arcueil -Cachan - Villejuif ) for the Members of the National Assembly and regularly re-elected in each parliamentary term until 1997. At the top of the PCF list in the European elections in 1979, he was elected until 1989 for Members of the European Parliament.

As a candidate of the Communists in the choice of the French President in 1981 it reached 15.34 % of the votes in the first ballot against François Mitterrand, which is not qualified him for the second ballot and was regarded as a failure of his party in the election. Nevertheless, the PCF supported then Mitterrand in the second round and belonged to the government of Pierre Mauroy with four ministers. Due to the politics of austerity ( politique d' austérité ) by Finance Minister Jacques Delors, who abandoned the indexation of income to the price level increases, Marchais came in April 1983 in increasing criticism that aimed over his person to the fundamental role of the PCF in the coalition. In April 1984 Marchais reinforced the criticism of his party at the economic policies of the government. The French railway workers who are organized primarily in the CGT, and the Paris Metro on strike for weeks. After heavy losses of his party in the European elections on 17 June 1984, the coalition government ended with the PS with the withdrawal of the Communist ministers from the government. In September Marchais proclaimed a hard line against his former coalition partners and included a restoration of the governing coalition of practical. As a new goal, he sought a new popular front at the base. However, this could not prevent PS and PCF had exchanged their traditional roles as a result of the presidential Mitterrand: The PCF, which always was different than, for example, the DKP a member- strong party with nationwide better results than the pre-1971 decomposed into different parties Socialists, it has slowed continuously votes and meaning, while the PS the larger left-wing party in France and stayed.

In the 28th Congress of the PCF in 1994 Marchais left his position as general secretary Robert Hue, but remained nominally a member of the Politburo. In the same year he became President of the Committee of the PCF for the defense of human rights and freedoms in France and the world.

Marchais was a remarkable personality because of his mannerism ( C'est un scandaaaale - "This is a Skandaaaal " ) and brusque manners, for example, as he gave the journalist Jean -Pierre Elkabbach Taisez -vous Elkabbach ( " Hold your tongue, Elkabbach " ) abkanzelte and therefore was subject to numerous parodies of the sardonic comedian Thierry Le Luron.

Georges Marchais died in 1997 at Hôpital Lariboisière from the effects of heart disease.

Works

  • Les Communistes et les Paysans (1972 )
  • Le défi démocratique (1973 )
  • La politique du PCF (1974 )
  • Communistes et / ou chrétiens (1977 )
  • Parlons franchement (1977 )
  • Reponses (1977 )
  • L' espoir au présent (1980 )
  • Démocratie (1990 )
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