Georges Politzer


Georges Politzer was a Hungarian-born French philosopher and Marxist theoretician of Hungarian Jewish origin, affectionately referred to by some as the "red-headed philosopher". He was a native of Oradea, a city in present-day Romania. He was murdered in Fort Mont-Valérien in Suresnes in the Holocaust.

Biography

Politzer had already been a militant by the time of his involvement in the Hungarian insurrection of 1919, when he was 17, and by joining the Hungarian Communist Party during the Hungarian Soviet Republic, led by Béla Kun. He went into exile during the White Terror that preceded the establishment of a right-wing government under the regency of Admiral Miklós Horthy. In 1929, on a train, he met Marie Larcade, known as "Maï," a midwife who would become his second wife in 1931.
After meeting Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi in Vienna, he settled in Paris in 1921. He joined the French Communist Party between 1929 and 1931.
During the early 1930s, the party founded the Workers' University of Paris, which lasted until its dissolution by German occupation in 1939. During his tenure at the university, Politzer was entrusted with and given charge of a course on dialectical materialism.
Meanwhile, he occupied the post of professor of philosophy at Lycée Marcelin Berthelot in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés.
Mobilized to Paris in 1940, he remained close to the French Communist Party's secret command. Demobilized in July 1940, he oversaw the publication of a clandestine bulletin. After his comrade and friend Paul Langevin, a physicist of world renown, was arrested in October 1940, Politzer published the first edition of The Free University , which told of the imprisonment of scholars and denounced the extortions committed by invading fascists during World War II. He worked with other writers like Jacques Decour, Jacques Solomon and Valentin Feldman. All were executed by the Nazis in 1942.
In February 1942, Politzer's operations were stopped; he was arrested along with his wife, Mai, who was also a Communist and a member of La Résistance, for violating the law banning the Communist Party. He underwent torture, was turned over to the Nazis on 20 March 1942 and underwent execution by firing squad at their hands on 23 May of that year just after he had secretly published a French academic journal. His wife was transported to Auschwitz, where she was murdered in March 1943.

Contributions

A disciple of Marx and Lenin, Politzer was interested in psychology, preaching aspects of it and considered traditional psychology as abstract. He also took an interest in the nascent Freudian theory and its uses before eventually distancing himself from it.

Works

  • Against Bergson and some other writers, Philosophical Writings , 1924-1939
  • Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom, French translation of Schelling, 1926
  • Critique of the Foundations of Psychology , 1928
  • Bergsonism, a Philosophical Hoax , 1929, under the name of François Arouet
  • The Great Problems of Contemporary Philosophy , 1938
  • Philosophy and Myths , 1939
  • Philosophy of the Enlightment and Modern Thought , 1939
  • What is Rationalism? , 1939
  • The End of Psychoanalysis , 1939
  • In the Cellar of the Blind, Chronicles on Nowadays Obscurantism , 1939
  • Blood and Gold or Gold Vanquished by Blood , November 1940
  • Revolution and Counter-revolution in the 20th Century , Éditions Sociales, March 1941
  • Antisemitism, Racism and the Jewish Problem , 1941
  • Obscurantism in the 20th century , 1941
  • A Course on Marxism , 1935-1936
  • Elementary Principles of Philosophy , 1946, notes taken in the course taught at l'Université Ouvrière from 1935 to 1936
  • Crisis of Nowadays Psychology , 1947
  • Foundamental Principles of Philosophy , edited by Guy Besse and Maurice Caveing, 1954
  • Writings 1 Philosophy and Myths , Éditions Sociales, 1973
  • Writings 2 The Foundations of Psychology , Éditions Sociales