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Title: Goodbye Daniel
Author: Workers Solidarity Movement
Date: 1988
Language: en
Topics: Daniel Guérin, obituary, Workers Solidarity
Source: Retrieved on 9th October 2021 from http://struggle.ws/ws88_89/ws29_guerin.html
Notes: Published in Workers Solidarity No. 29 — Autumn 1988.

Workers Solidarity Movement

Goodbye Daniel

DANIEL GUERIN DIED on the night of April 13^(th) last. He was 84 years

of age. The news reached us when the summer issue of Workers Solidarity

was already in preparation, hence this belated obituary.

One of France’s best revolutionary activists and thinkers, he was best

known in Ireland as the author of books such as Fascism and Big

Business, 100 Years of Labour in the USA and Anarchism.

Within France he was well known, not only for his prolific writings, but

also as a long standing trade union militant of the CGT; as a veteran

anti-imperialist who supported the victims of French aggression in

Indo-China, Algeria and today the Kanaks of New Caledonia; as a fighter

for gay rights (he was bisexual) in the ‘Homosexual Front for

Revolutionary Action’.

ANTI — COLONIALIST

Entering socialist politics as a convinced anti-colonialist, he joined

the Socialist Party and got involved with an internal opposition group

of non-Trotskyist revolutionaries &emdash; the “Revolutionary Left”.

This current was expelled from the party just before the outbreak of

World War 11. They attempted to form their own party &emdash; the

Workers and Peasants Socialist Party &emdash; but their new-born

organisation fell apart when the Nazis invaded. During the war years

Daniel took part in underground activity.

After the war he began working out where he stood politically. He had no

time for Stalinism, social democracy or the numerous would-be Bolshevik

Parties of Trotskyism. He gradually moved towards anarchism, though was

always clear about not taking on board useless parts of the anarchist

tradition or rejecting useful ones in Marxism. At the time of his death

he was a member of the French anarchist organisation, the Union of

Libertarian Communist Workers, His book Anarchism remains one of the

best available introductions to our tradition and its politics.

HELD IN RESPECT

Shortly after his burial the UTCL organised a commemoration ceremony.

The attendance indicated the high regard Daniel was held in. Speeches

were made by many including representatives of the liberation front of

New Caledonia, the gay movement, the proof-readers branch of the CGT and

a veteran of the Algerian War of Independence &emdash; Mohammed Harbi.

Messages were received from a multitude of organisations, a few of which

were the French Anarchist Federation, branches of the CFDT union, the

anarchist radio station in Paris (Radio Libertaire), the Spanish CNT,

the Italian Federation of Communist Anarchists, the Swiss Libertarian

Socialist Organisation and the Workers Solidarity Movement. There were

also messages from other left wing movements such as the United

Secretariat of the Fourth International, the main French Trotskyist

groups and the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

Sadly some Trotskyist organisations, notably the British SWP, have tried

to downplay Daniel’s anarchist politics. (See their obituary in

Socialist Worker Review, June 1988). As tribute and to set the record

straight we have translated the text. It was written as a Preface to his

1984 book ‘Towards a Libertarian Communism’.