The Socialist left's tribune who wrote 'Everything is possible', the Popular Front's left frontier
'Everything is possible', the title and the conclusion of his front-page article in Le Populaire as the strikes surged, 27 May 1936
A schoolmaster who became the leader of the Socialist SFIO's left. In 1935 he founded the Revolutionary Left tendency, supporting the Popular Front while arguing for a revolutionary way beyond it, and at the height of the strikes in May 1936 he planted himself at the centre of the argument with 'Everything is possible' in Le Populaire. He ran the premier's press service under Blum without ceasing to radicalize, and when the party expelled him in 1938 he founded the Workers' and Peasants' Socialist Party (PSOP). Exiled in Mexico during the war, he returned to the SFIO afterward and stood on its left and in the anticolonial camp until his death.
Career Timeline
- 1895–1914Teacher's family in Seine-et-Marne; trained and worked as a schoolmaster
- 1914–1918The war turns him into an antimilitarist
- 1924–1935SFIO Paris federation; teachers' union activist
- 1935Founds the Revolutionary Left tendency inside the SFIO
- 1936.05Publishes 'Everything is possible'
- 1936–1937Runs the premier's press and information service
- 1938Expelled; founds the Workers' and Peasants' Socialist Party
- 1940–1946Exile in Mexico
- 1946–1958Returns to the SFIO; on its left and in the anticolonial camp
- 1958.06Dies in Paris