Robert Louzon

French engineer, anarchist, revolutionary syndicalist and anti-fascist fighter.

Born into a bourgeois family, the son of Paul Louzon, a lawyer, and Eugénie Barast, without a profession, Robert Louzon studied extensively and entered the School of Mines.
Very early on he became interested in the socialist movement since in 1899 he joined the group of collectivist students and, in 1900, the central group of the 15th arr. of the Revolutionary Socialist Workers’ Party (POSR) at the same time that he frequented diligently the Emancipation, a popular university of the 15th arr.
However, revolutionary syndicalist ideas attracted him very early. In October 1931, he described in the Proletarian Revolution, about a note on Pouget, his evolution: “Every young person, carried by an instinctive force, irrevocable, towards the workers’ movement, I devoured everything I found in the then abundant literature published by the socialists of all schools: from the articles of Rochefort to the Communist Manifesto and the works of Kropotkin. One day, at the chance of a kiosk, I discovered Father Peinard. It was a revelation to me. Pouget revealed to myself my own ideas, those that since then I have not left.”

It was therefore natural that, while being, because of unity, a member in 1905 of the Socialist Party SFIO, he worked with the trade unionist elements of the party and collaborated in the Avant-Garde (April 1905-March 1906) and then with the Socialist Movement.
In 1906, he lent 90 000 francs to the CGT, the money necessary to buy his building on rue de la Grange-aux-Belles. This fact was known to the management of the Société du Gaz de Paris where he was an engineer and he was immediately dismissed.

From the foundation by Pierre Monatte de la Vie ouvrière, he participated in the meetings of the core and gave the magazine, in December 1909, a first article on the “Trust of the material of the gas factories”. He regularly collaborated with the writing of studies (“Opening and Mathematics”; “The two great revolutions of 19th century technique”), accounts of books, notes and documents.

In 1913 he left France for Tunisia where he took care of a farm.
After making the war as captain of the Zuaves, he joined Tunisia where he joined the Tunis section of the Socialist Party in 1919. The majority of this section voted, after the Congress of Tours, to join the Communist International. Robert Louzon was then asked to lead the management of the Social Future, the organ of the Tunisian Communist Federation, and then to take the secretariat of this federation. In 1921, he was prosecuted in the council of war for “defamation towards the officers of the French army” because of an article of the Social Future, and sentenced to 1 f of a suspended fine.

At the end of 1921, the Federation launched an Arabic-language daily newspaper that was banned after eight days. For about ten days, new daily newspapers in Arabic were launched every day under a different title and immediately banned. Following these publications, a decree was issued which submitted all publication of an Arab newspaper to prior authorization.

In 1922, the publication, under his responsibility, of a pamphlet and a poem in Arabic, earned R. Louzon new prosecutions for “attacking the rights and powers of the French Republic in Tunisia” and urging race hatred. He was sentenced to eight months in prison, reduced to six months on appeal in Algiers.
Upon his release from prison in August 1922, he was expelled from Tunisia and returned to France where he joined Monatte and the Workers' Life Group. In 1923, he began to collaborate with Humanity, essentially giving economic articles. Within the Communist Party it was in the trend of Monatte and Rosmer. Naturally, he resigned in December 1924 after the exclusion of Monatte, Rosmer and Delagarde.
1925, R. Louzon was of the “core” founder of the proletarian revolution and began a very regular collaboration. He published many in-depth articles and held a column: “Economic Notes”. For several years, the magazine was even the magazine, printing itself in Cannes where he resided.
In the Proletarian Revolution of March 10, 1933, he called on “the European proletariat” to engage in “a fight to the death against the regime of Hitler and Mussolini.” As an immediate first step, Louzon proposed “the boycott of all products from the two countries where fascism reigns.”

In August 1936, in agreement with the CNT of Spain, he went to Morocco to contact the Moroccans of the action committees to try to prevent Franco from recruiting Arabs in the Riff. His agreement with the Spanish Republicans was such that in February 1937 he committed himself but could not, given his age and health, stay more than a few months on the Spanish front. He published in the Proletarian Revolution numerous articles on the problems of the Spanish war and revolution and collaborated with SIA (International Anti-Fascist Solidarity). In July 1939, he was prosecuted for an article published in this weekly “Tunisia to the Tunisians” and was sentenced in default to fifteen months in prison.

Resolutely pacifist, Robert Louzon signed in October 1939 the leaflet “Immediate Peace” and was therefore pursued before the war council, but obtained a non-place.
He was arrested in May 1940 by order of Minister Mandel and sent to a detention camp, in France first, then to the Algerian South. Released in August 1941, he returned to Cannes where he lived the years of occupation away from any militant activity.

In 1947, when the Proletarian Revolution reappeared, he again became part of the core and began a sustained collaboration there from the first number. He has since regularly published “Notes of Economics and Politics”, with a very free and often paradoxical tone that have repeatedly aroused ardent polemics.

On 6 October 1908, Robert Louzon had married at the town hall of the 15th arrondissement of Paris Eliska Coquus, known for his anarchist opinions. Robert and Eliska Louzon both moved to Tunisia in 1913 to exploit small properties. Since 1936, Louzon had as companion "Nonore" Teissier, according to the memories of Martial Desmoulins, then Hélène Savanier, who survived him.

Robert Louzon died on 8 September 1976 at the age of 94.