Marc Chirik | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1907-05-13)May 13, 1907 |
| Died | December 20, 1990(1990-12-20) (aged 83) |
| Other names | Marc Laverne, MC |
| Known for | One of the founders of theInternational Communist Current |
Marck Chirik (May 13, 1907 – December 20, 1990), also known asMarc Laverne or simplyMC, was a communist revolutionary and one of the founding militants of theInternational Communist Current.
Chirik was born into the family of arabbi. He had witnessed theOctober Revolution with his brother at the age of ten. His family moved to Palestine where he became an early member of theCommunist Party of Palestine's youth organization in 1922 but was later expelled because he disagreed with the positions of theCommunist International on thenational question, which supported the Arab national movements.[1]
He emigrated to France, where he joined theFrench Communist Party before being expelled at the same time as the members of theLeft Opposition. He became a member first of the (Trotskyist)Ligue Communiste and then ofUnion Communiste, which he left in 1938 to join theItalian Fraction of theInternational Communist Left (ICL), since he agreed with the latter’s position on theSpanish Civil War against that of Union Communiste. During the war and theGerman occupation of France, the ICL’s International Bureau led by Vercesi considered that there was no purpose in the fractions’ continuing their work. He however pushed for the reconstitution of the Italian Fraction around a small nucleus in Marseille. He joined theFraction Française de la Gauche Communiste Internationale which had been formed in 1943 and was close toAmadeo Bordiga. However, he split with the Bordigist tendency in May 1945, when he opposed the decision of the Italian Fraction’s conference to dissolve the fraction, its militants joining the recently formedPartito Comunista Internazionalista as individuals and formedGauche Communiste de France.[1]
After Gauche Communiste de France dissolved in 1952 he left France forVenezuela in anticipation of World War III. He stayed there until 1968, developing a small current of revolutionaries in a group calledInternationalism (Venezuela), then returned to France, where he and some of his Venezuelan recruits launchedRevolution Internationale (RI), the only Frenchleft communist group after 1968 that attempted to systematically build an organization in the shadow of the larger left communist groups.[2]
In 1975, theInternational Communist Current was founded byRevolution Internationale (France),World Revolution (UK),Internationalism (USA),Rivoluzione Internazionale (Italy),Internationalism (Venezuela) andAccion Proletaria (Spain). Chirik had been a leading member of two of these groups and he became a very important militant of the ICC until his death in 1990.[3][4]
Marc Chirik is one of the main characters inWorld Without Visas, a novel byJean Malaquais that takes place in Marseille during the Second World War.[5]
