Louis Sellier

Louis Sellier, born on November 6, 1885 in Dornes (Nièvre) is a French politician and syndicalist who was General Secretary (ad interim) of Communist Party-French Section of the Communist International after the demission of Albert Treint former leader of PC-SFIC . Appointed secretary general at the IVth Congress, he was outvoted at the 5th Congress of the PC and is replaced by Marcel Cachin.
Louis Sellier joined the PTT in 1904. He was appointed clerk for the services of the Gare du Nord in Paris; he participated in the strike movements affecting the PTT in March and May 1909. He is assistant secretary of the group of General Assosiation of PTT agents at the Gare du Nord. He then turns to political activism.
He joined the socialist party SFIO in 1909 or 1910. In June 1914, he was elected to the Paris City Council in the district of Goutte d'Or (18th arrondissement). He replaces Marcel Cachin who has just been elected deputy. Louis Sellier remains elected municipal of this district until now. He follows the same path as Marcel Cachin with regard to war and positioning within the Socialist Party. At the time of the Sacred Union in 1914, it adopted a centrist position, then in 1920, was in favor of joining the Communist International.
In December 1920, at the Congress of Tours, he joined the Steering Committee of the Communist Party and the Board of Directors of L'Humanité. In 1922, he participated in the Plenum of the Communist International in Moscow, which reorganized the leadership of the French Party. 
Following the resignation of Ludovic-Oscar Frossard in January 1923, he became Acting Secretary General of the Communist Party, along with Albert Treint. In January 1924, the 4th Congress of the PC-SFIC elected him sole secretary general of the Party. He is also a member of the Comintern Executive Committee. The results of the Communist Party in the legislative elections of 1924, confirms it in the organization which knows its first great success, it also follows the unionization of the PC-SFIC required by the Comintern as well as the unit of action with the CGTU, but in the course of 1925 calls into question the tactic of "United Front" and drifts more and more into an electoralism, as well as to put in the background the revolutionary objective of the party. And also by these calls to union with the SFIO, declaring itself ready to sacrifice the character "worker" of an alliance with the Socialists, hence implying a possible aliance with "bourgeois" parties. 
Taxed as "opportunist", he was outvoted at the beginning of 1926 and was dismissed from his position as a member of the Comintern Executive Committee. Replaced by a collective leadership, he loses all influence in the organization, he almost left the party but changed this option.
He then focuses on his mandate on the council of the city of Paris, he is re-elected to the politburo at the VIth congress of Saint-Denis.Category:French figures