Politzer, Georges 1903–1942

(François Arouet)

PERSONAL: Born May 3, 1903, in Nagyvarad, Hungary; executed in Paris, France, May 23, 1942; married; wife's name Mai.

CAREER: Philosopher, writer, educator. Taught school in various places, including the cities of Moulins, Evreux, and Saint-Maur; also taught Workers' University; cofounder of La Pensée; founder of L'Université Libre and La Pensée Libre, c. 1940.

MEMBER: Teachers Union, French Communist Party (head of economic commission of the central committee).

WRITINGS:

Critique des fondements de la psychologie, Reider (Paris France), 1928, translation by Maurice Apprey published as Critique of the Foundations of Psychology: The Psychology of Psychoanalysis, Duquesne University Press (Pittsburgh, PA), 1994.

(As François Arouet) La fin d'une parade philosophique: le Bergsonism, Les Revues (Paris, France), 1929, reprinted under author's real name, J.J. Pauvert (Paris, France), 1969.

Les grands problèmes de la philosophie contemporaine, Bureau d'éditions (Paris, France), 1938.

Principes élémentaires de philosophie, Éditions Sociales (Paris, France), 1946, translation by Barbara L. Morris published as Elementary Principles of Philosophy, International Publishers (New York, NY), 1976.

Cours de philosophie, Éditions Sociales (Paris, France), 1946, translation by G.P. O'Day published as An Elementary Course in Philosophy, Curren Book Distributors (Sydney, Australia), 1950

Révolution et contre-revolution au XXe siècle, Éditions Sociales (Paris, France), 1947.

Bergsonisme: une mystification philosophique, Éditions Sociales (Paris, France), 1947.

La philosophie et les mythes (title means "The Philosophy and the Myths"), Éditions Sociales (Paris, France), 1969.

Les fondements de la psychologie, (title means "The Fundamentals of Psychology"), Éditions Sociales (Paris, France), 1969.

Ecrits (includes La philosophie et les mythes and Les fondements de la psychologie), edited by Jacques Debouzy, Editions Sociales (Paris, France), 1969.

Ecrits. II: les fondements de la psychologie (title means "The Fundamentals of Psychology"), Éditions Sociales (Paris, France), 1973.

Works published in several languages, including English, Polish, German, Kurdish, Turkish, Spanish, Italian, and Russian.

SIDELIGHTS: Hungarian Georges Politzer moved to France, where he gained fame as a leading Marxist theorist and psychologist. His first major work, Critique des fondements de la psychologie, sought to make psychology concrete and scientific. According to Terry Kupers in an essay for Science and Society, Politzer "designated the human Drama as the specific object for a scientific psychology. This Drama is the set of psychological facts that involve the subject as first person (Je) in acts that, while related to psychological processes that parallel them and to social and economic determinants that influence them, are themselves distinct as segments of the life of a particular individual." For Politzer, it was critical that psychology not be reduced to biology, physiology, or sociology. At the same time, he rejected nineteenth-century notions of purely interior life and Freudian unconscious. While greatly admiring Freud's theories of latent content and repression, Politzer thought the concept of an unconscious, where unacknowledged thoughts reside, gave thoughts themselves too much reality. "Politzer's contribution to the development of a scientific psychology rests secure on the basis of [Critique des fondements de la psychologie], in which he insisted on rigor, an adequate definition of objects for a science, and a concrete study of the subject of the human drama," wrote Kupers.

In addition to his writings on psychology, Politzer also contributed to an introduction to Principes élémentaires de philosophie, which was translated into English as Elementary Principles of Philosophy. "A little classic in France since it first appeared in the days before World War II," according to Science and Society contributor Henry Mins, it provides a summary of Marxist philosophical foundations aimed at the layman, specifically the working man. While faulting it for some logical discrepancies, Black Scholar contributor Jack Carson, Jr., noted that the book's "general approach to the subject matter … is articulate, informative, and almost always correct."

Politzer was executed by the Nazis during their occupation of France in 1942.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Black Scholar, May-June, 1978, Jack Carson, Jr., review of Elementary Principles of Philosophy, pp. 42-44.

Science and Society, spring, 1973, Terry Kupers, "Historical Materialism and Scientific Psychology," pp. 81-90; summer, 1977, Henry Mins, review of Elementary Principles of Philosophy, p. 254.