Pierre Monatte was a French trade unionist who worked in the printing industry (ouvrier du livre). He was the responsible of the Confédération générale du travail

Confédération générale du travail

The General Confederation of Labour is a national trade union center, the first of the five major French confederations of trade unions.It is the largest in terms of votes , and second largest in terms of membership numbers.Its membership decreased to 650,000 members in 1995-96 The General...

(CGT, Generation Confederation of Labour) at the beginning of the 20th century, and founded its journal La Vie ouvrière (Workers' Life) on 5 October 1909. Monatte has been considered one of the great figures of revolutionary syndicalism.

During World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, Pierre Monatte opposed the Union sacrée national bloc, and resigned in 1915 from the confederal instances. Monatte often referred himself to Fernand Pelloutier

Fernand Pelloutier

Fernand Pelloutier was a French anarchist .He was the leader of the Bourses du Travail, a major French trade union, from 1895 until his death in 1901. He was succeeded by Yvetot...

 and did not disguise his anarchist

Anarchism in France

Thinker Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who grew up during the Restoration was the first self-described anarchist. French anarchists fought in the Spanish Civil War as volunteers in the International Brigades. French anarchism reached its height in the late 19th century...

 sympathies, although he drifted away from this current of Socialism

Socialism

Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...

 after the International Anarchist Congress of Amsterdam

International Anarchist Congress of Amsterdam

The International Anarchist Congress of Amsterdam took place from 24 August to 31 August 1907. It gathered delegates from 14 different countries, among which important figures of the anarchist movement, including Errico Malatesta, Luigi Fabbri, Benoît Broutchoux, Pierre Monatte, Amédée Dunois, Emma...

 in 1907. During this congress, Monatte argued in particular with Errico Malatesta

Errico Malatesta

Errico Malatesta was an Italian anarcho-communist. He was an insurrectionary anarchist early in his life. He spent much of his life exiled from his homeland of Italy and in total spent more than ten years in prison. He wrote and edited a number of radical newspapers and was also a friend of...

 concerning the methods of organisation: invoking the 1906 Charter of Amiens

Charter of Amiens

The Charter of Amiens was adopted at the 9th Congress of the Confédération générale du travail French trade-union, which took place in Amiens in October 1906. Its main proposal was the separation between the union movement and the political parties...

 which established the principle of "political neutrality" of the trade-unions, Monatte considered syndicalism itself to be revolutionary, while Malatesta advocated the creation of some sort of anarchist organisation to superate internal conflicts among the workers' movement itself.

Heading the internal opposition in the CGT, he founded in April 1919 the Comités syndicalistes révolutionnaires (Revolutionary Syndicalist Committees) inside the CGT. In 1923, he joined the French Communist Party

French Communist Party

The French Communist Party is a political party in France which advocates the principles of communism.Although its electoral support has declined in recent decades, the PCF retains a large membership, behind only that of the Union for a Popular Movement , and considerable influence in French...

 (PCF) and was close to Boris Souvarine

Boris Souvarine

Boris Souvarine was an Imperial Russian-born French socialist, communist activist, essayist, and journalist.-Early years:...

 and Alfred Rosmer

Alfred Rosmer

Alfred Rosmer was a syndicalist leader before World War I and one of the few leaders of that movement to oppose the war from a revolutionary internationalist position....

. Along with them, he was excluded at the end of 1924 of the party at the occasion of an internal purge against "leftist"s elements

Left Opposition

The Left Opposition was a faction within the Bolshevik Party from 1923 to 1927, headed de facto by Leon Trotsky. The Left Opposition formed as part of the power struggle within the party leadership that began with the Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin's illness and intensified with his death in January...

 of the party who supported Leon Trotsky

Leon Trotsky

Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....

. Then, Monatte founded in January 1925 the journal La Révolution prolétarienne (The Proletarian Revolution), along with Robert Louzon

Robert Louzon

Robert Louzon was a French engineer, revolutionary syndicalist, anarchist and socialist.Louzon was involved in the Confédération générale du travail and then in the anarchist Confédération nationale du travail...

. The journal enjoyed an appreciated audience among trade-unionists and left-wing activists during the inter-war period.

External links

• Pierre Monatte on the Marxist Archives (texts, etc.)
• Journal La Révolution prolétarienne
• Several texts on and by Monatte