Georges Valois

Georges Valois (; born Alfred-Georges Gressent; 7 October 1878 – February 1945) was a French journalist and national syndicalist politician. He was a member of the French Resistance and died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Life and career Born in a working-class and peasant family in Paris, Georges Valois went to Singapore at the age of 17, returning to Paris in 1898. In his early years, he was an anarcho-syndicalist. He found work as a secretary at L'Humanité Nouvelle where he met Georges Sorel. It was assisted by major entrepreneurs in their fight against the agitation of the French Communist Party (PCF). After some initial success (it was joined by such extremist figures as Hubert Lagardelle and Marcel Bucard), it disappeared in 1928, when Valois had already been excluded from the party. The middle class may have withdrawn its support because of its lack of confidence in fascism as a plausible solution for France or because it considered, following a trend established by the Roman Catholic Church (which in 1926 excommunicated the Action française), that the best solution was to infiltrate the Third Republic's institutions.

Valois lost financial support, the Faisceau was dissolved, he founded the Republican Syndicalist Party (PRS). Jacques Arthuys was also a leader of the party. During the second Cartel des gauches (Left-wing Coalition), the party published the Cahiers bleus (1928–1932), which hosted essays by widely-different personalities, including Marcel Déat (a future neo-socialist who had been excluded from the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) who would later be a collaborationist), Bertrand de Jouvenel (co-founder of the Mont Pelerin Society, a liberal organisation that still exists), Pierre Mendès France (one of the young guards, or jeunes loups, of the Radical-Socialist Party who would become French Prime Minister during the Fourth Republic), and Édouard Berth.

After the 6 February 1934 crisis, Valois founded Le Nouvel Âge ("The New Era"), which he presented as a left-wing review, along with the Cahiers bleus. However, Le Nouvel Âge promoted a post-capitalist economy using a corporatist economy. In 1935, he attempted to join the SFIO, but was turned down although he was backed by Marceau Pivert.

Valois took part in the French Resistance during Vichy France. During World War II, he moved near Lyon, where he launched a cultural co-operative project.

Valois was finally arrested by the Nazis on 18 May 1944, and died in February 1945 of typhus at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Works La Monarchie et la classe ouvrière, 1914 L'Économie Nouvelle, 1919 La révolution nationale, 1924 L'État syndical et la représentation corporative, les semaines économiques et la campagne pour les états généraux 1920-1924, 1927 Basile ou la politique de la calomnie, 1927 L'Homme contre l'argent, 1928 Un Nouvel âge de l'humanité, 1929 Finances italiennes, 1930 Économique, 1931 Guerre ou révolution, 1931 Journée d'Europe, 1932 1917-1941 : fin du bolchevisme, conséquences européennes de l'événement, 1941 L'Homme devant l'éternel (published posthumously), 1947