Ian Birchall is the author of Sartre Against Stalinism and many articles and essays on the work of Jean-Paul Sartre.
The unconventional artistic rebellion of surrealism may seem a long way removed from the sober, disciplined work of Marxist revolutionaries. But French writer Pierre Naville brought surrealism and Marxism together amid the turmoil of interwar Europe.
Jean-François Lyotard is best remembered today as a theorist of postmodernism. During the 1950s, Lyotard was actively involved in supporting Algeria’s freedom struggle, while realistically identifying the problems that would come after independence.
In 1940, did French elites roll out the welcome mat for Nazi Germany?
Socialist leader Marceau Pivert played a central role in the turbulent history of French politics during the 1930s. Pivert’s inside-outside strategy toward the established workers’ movement is an important case study in how to win mass support for socialism.
French socialist thinker Daniel Guérin lived a life of extraordinary political commitment, from anti-fascist and anti-colonial struggles to his pioneering advocacy of gay liberation. Guérin’s writings and record should be a touchstone for the modern left.
Sixty years ago today, French police under the command of a former Nazi collaborator massacred anti-imperialist Algerian demonstrators. For decades, the French authorities concealed the evidence of one of the worst atrocities in postwar Europe.
France waged a brutal colonial war in Algeria during the 1950s. But a group of writers clustered around Jean-Paul Sartre’s journal Les Temps modernes played a courageous role, exposing French war crimes and supporting the right of the Algerian people to self-determination.
Seventy-five years ago today, Vietnam launched a bid for national freedom with its Declaration of Independence. The French colonial regime answered with brutal repression, kick-starting thirty years of destructive conflict.
The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre died forty years ago today. Sartre’s philosophy and political values can still inspire struggles for freedom today.
For François Mitterrand, France’s atrocities in Algeria were stepping-stones to power.
The French secular ideal of laïcité is not a misused noble idea — it is deeply flawed at its roots.
As a young man in Paris, Ho Chi Minh embraced a radical internationalism.