Guy Besse
Guy Besse (25 November 1919 – 16 February 2004) was a French philosopher and politician, a member of the executive of the French Communist Party (PCF). Biography. A member of the Responsible du Front National while a student in Lyon under the pseudonym of "César", he was part of the Mouvement Jeunes Communistes de France during the Resistance, and was the national secretary of the Union of Communist Students from 1944 to 1945. Agrégé professor of philosophy, he graduated from lycée in Bourges, then studied at the University of Caen Lower Normandy, the Sorbonne and the French National Centre  for Scientific Research. He published a number of socialist texts for many years, and in March 1970, replaced Roger Garaudy as the head of the Centre d’études et de recherches marxistes. A member of the Central Committee of the PCF from 1956, he joined its Political Bureau 11 years later as an alternate member, and was its head in 1970. He retired from the PCF leadership in February 1985 at age 65, believing himself to have reached a "militant age limit". He continued to be a member of the PCF and published several books on Marxist philosophy afterwards. Guy Besse