- Pierre Lambert
:"This article is about the French Trotskyist leader. Pierre Lambert Boussel should not be confused with Pierre Lambert, the United Nations interpreter."
Pierre Lambert (
June 9 ,1920 –January 16 ,2008 ) (real name Pierre Boussel) was a French Trotskyist leader, who, for many years acted as the central leader of the FrenchCourant Communiste Internationaliste (CCI) which founded the Parti des Travailleurs.He was born in
Paris to a family of Russian Jewish immigrants. Lambert began his activity as a Trotskyist militant before theSecond World War when he was a member of theInternationalist Workers Party (POI) led byRaymond Molinier . After the war he continued his activism, as a member of the now united French section of theFourth International , theParti Communiste Internationaliste (PCI).In the PCI he was known as a specialist in
trade union matters and rarely took a stand on international issues. WhenMichel Pablo , the secretary of the Fourth International, raised the question ofentrism sui generis he took no stand until his field of operation in the trade unions was threatened. He then backed the PCI leadership aroundMarcel Bleibtreu (also known as Pierre Favre).However in time Lambert moved against Bleibtreu and Favre and they were expelled from the small PCI. By this time, 1952, the PCI had split into two mutually hostile groups on the question of entrism sui generis and the associated perspective of hundreds of years of
deformed workers state s propagated by Pablo. Despite their having led the struggle against Pablo this made no difference to Lambert in expelling Bleibtreu and Favre.Fully in control of the PCI by 1954 Lambert forged an alliance with the
Socialist Workers Party (USA) and joined with it in theInternational Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). This alliance would last for nearly a decade at which point the SWP (US) and its international faction fused with theInternational Secretariat of the Fourth International , within which Pablo was now marginalised, to form theUnited Secretariat of the Fourth International .Lambert was left in 1963 to continue the ICFI in an alliance with the
Gerry Healy -ledSocialist Labour League , based in Britain. The much shrunken ICFI consisted at this point of the SLL, Lambert'sOrganisation Communiste Internationaliste (the PCI as rebranded in 1966) and very little else. By the time of the ICFI's congress in 1966, pressures were building between the OCI (which thought the SLL to be "ultimatistic") and the SLL. In 1971 the OCI left the ICFI to form theOrganising Committee for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International and in 1973 and 1974 proposed discussions to the USFI, but instead eventually united withNahuel Moreno 's group to form theParity Committee for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International . The parity commission failed, leaving Lambert's supporters organised in theFourth International (ICR) .Under his real name of Pierre Boussel, Lambert was candidate at the presidential election in 1988. He gathered 116,823 votes (0.39 % of validly cast ballots).
External links
* [http://www.marxists.org/francais/4int/bios/lambert.htm Lambert biography (in French)]
* [http://www.liberation.fr/actualite/politiques/304292.FR.php De la IVe Internationale au Parti des travailleurs] Tribute inLibération , 16 January 2008
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