An Exemplary Life
At about 7:80 on the evening of June 27, 1960, in a tiny book-crammed lodging of a workers' suburb of Paris, Pierre Monatte died. He was seventy-nine years old. Monatte entered the union...
...He was an awakener of vocation...
...His mind is deliberate, scrupulous, perfectly balanced...
...In 1904, he sat on the committee of the Labor Exchanges, then at Lens he edited L'Action Syndicale, the weekly paper of the newly organized miners' union...
...By virtue of his self-effacement, Monatte's life furnishes an extraordinarily valuable model...
...The same year he participated in the Congress of Amiens, out of which came the charter for the Con federation Generale du Travail (CGT...
...1909 found Monatte editing La Revolution, an ephemeral labor daily, which lasted only forty days...
...Romain Rolland testified at the trial, and took the oportunity to pay Monatte this homage: "I regard Monatte as one of the most honest persons I have ever met," he said...
...A born journalist, he always refused to make a career of journalism...
...In our hyperorganized society where gigantic administrations burgeon with headquarters, equipment, and are furnished with secretaries and astro...
...He became a proofreader and joined the Federation du livre, remaining a member until his death...
...Revolution Proletarienne still appears, and takes its stand today with the same courage and lucidity...
...He exercised an influence over several generations of militants so great that its extent and depth has not yet been finally determined...
...IT WOULD BE HARD to say too much of the exemplary character of Monatte's life...
...You read the book, take it up and put it down, you don't abandon yourself to it...
...Once again, Monatte was acquitted...
...At about 7:80 on the evening of June 27, 1960, in a tiny book-crammed lodging of a workers' suburb of Paris, Pierre Monatte died...
...yet it goes to the very end of an idea, never recoiling before the truth...
...he lived it...
...Next, he established the Vie Ouvriere, his greatest success...
...This action kept him in the trenches during the whole war, while many "leading" workers, tranquilly set up in government offices, proclaimed their patriotism and their willingness to pursue the total destruction of the enemy...
...But he was one of the first to combat Stalinism, claiming freedom of speech within the party from which he was expelled in 1924...
...For he gave to all who approached him the example and presentiment of what human relations could be...
...Reading Hugo's Les Miserables had, since adolescence, oriented him toward socialism...
...The reason is that "direct contagion through contact has much more effect than through a book...
...This magazine, which he directed until 1921, constitutes a precious source concerning the working-class movement...
...Monatte was well acquainted with prison: during the great miners' strike in March-April 1906 triggered by the catastrophe of CourriPres (1200 victims), an enraged government accused him of participation in a fantastic and totally imaginary plot...
...But the accusation did not stick, and Monatte was freed...
...In Paris he met Charles Guiyesse, at that time publisher of the review Pages Libres, and in this environment he came to know Pelloutier, Sorel, Merrheim, and Broutcheux...
...This statement of Blanqui became the principle of Monatte's life during his last years...
...Perhaps because of his profound humanity, his absence of dogmatism, he left behind him something better and greater than his considerable written work: disciples...
...He enthusiastically hailed the Rus sian Revolution, many of whose leaders he had known personally during their years of exile in Paris...
...Upon his discharge Monatte participated in all the workers' struggles which followed the armistice...
...Monatte entered the union movement in 1902, having been attracted to it by reading Fernand Pelloutier's l'Histoire des Bourses du Travail...
...Up to the age of seventy-one, he worked as a proofreader...
...Completely loyal and absolutely sincere, he is one of those very rare men who act as they speak, and who speak as they think...
...He was not content to preach his doctrine...
...In 1908 he stayed in Switzerland to escape the prosecution to which he, and all the other directors of the CGT, were subjected for their union activities...
...and for this he was again imprisoned during the 1920 railroad workers' strike...
...The son of a lacemaker and a blacksmith in a small mountain town, he had been a scholarship student at the Brioude college...
...WHEN WORLD WAR I was declared, Pierre Monatte, resigned from the central committee of the CGT, protesting againt the adherence of the top leaders to the Union Sacree (National Unity...
...nomical budgets, he has shown how a solitary man lacking power could, by virtue of intelligence, honesty and unostentatious devotion to an ideal, act more effectively upon man's spirit than all the mindless machines...
...On the other hand, direct human contact takes hold of the spirit and assimilates it...
...Then, in 1925, he founded Revolution Proletarienne in order to continue his agitation for trade union independence and unity...
Vol. 8 • January 1961 • No. 1
