Ludo Martens

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Ludo Martens (born March 12, 1946 in Torhout ; † June 5, 2011 ) was a Belgian socialist politician and political author. He was one of the founders and from 1979 to 2008 president of the communist Partij van de Arbeid (PVDA, French PTB).

Life

Martens studied medicine at the University of Leuven in the 1960s and was active in the student revolts in 1967, which wanted to establish the Flemish language at the University of Leuven and led to the division of the university (see History of the University of Leuven ). He then turned to communist currents in the 1968 movement , gave up his medical degree and became a full-time political activist who published a number of books on the left-wing political spectrum. Politically, he rejected the reforms and compromises of the Social Democrats and leaned towards radical ideas of a transformation of society associated with the names Mao and Stalin . He was instrumental in founding the left-wing student association, Studentenvak Moving (SVB) in the north of Flanders. Later he turned against Flemish nationalist currents and campaigned for the orientation of the PVDA (PTB), which stood above the Flemish-Walloon division.

In 1970 he was involved in the founding of the Mijnwerkersmacht (power of miners), then the communist Amada (Alle macht aan de arbeiders) and in 1979 the then Maoist- oriented PVDA (PTB), of which he was chairman from 1979 to 2008. Martens supported the struggle for civil rights in the US and promoted the organizational connection between students and workers. Within the PTB, he campaigned for a successful health care organization Médecine pour le Peuple (MPLP) . He was also behind the organization of the International Communist Seminars in Brussels, in which he advocated the reunification of different communist currents (Soviet Union, China, Albania, Cuba, independent groups) under a Marxist-Leninist umbrella. In 1999 he gave up the management of the PTB and was then particularly active in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the following years . He was political advisor to President Laurent-Désiré Kabila from 1997 until his assassination in 2001 and wrote a number of books on the political situation in Africa, such as the Mobutu regime, Patrice Lumumba , Pierre Mulele and Kabila in the Congo and Bénéwendé Stanislas Sankara in Burkina Faso .

Martens was the father of two children.

Stalin book

Martens' Stalin defense "Een Andere kijk op Stalin" / "Un autre regard sur Staline" (German: "Stalin - viewed differently") was translated into English, Spanish, Flemish, Russian and German. Martens describes Stalin as a “rational and self-critical”, “prudent, wise and forward-looking statesman with an eye on the class struggles still taking place in the former USSR”, “who defended and upholds the achievements of the October Revolution ” and of Trotsky wrongly as a bureaucrat had been scolded.

He described the great famines as a result of the forced collectivization of agriculture under Stalin as fascist propaganda picked up by the USA and Solzhenitsyn with his archipelago Gulag as the mouthpiece of the tsarists, bourgeoisie, speculators, kulaks, pimps, mafiosi and Vlasov supporters, who were rightly suppressed by the Stalinist Soviet Union .

Fonts

  • Ludo Martens and Kris Merckx : Dat was 1968 . Antwerp, 1978
  • Pierre Mulele, ou, La seconde vie de Patrice Lumumba . Antwerp, 1985 OCLC 23219832
  • Tien jaar revolution in the Congo. De strijd van Patrice Lumumba en Pierre Mulele . Antwerp, 1988
  • Ludo Martens and Hilde Meesters: Sankara, Compaoré et la révolution burkinabè . Antwerp, 1989 ( ISBN 2-87262-033-8 )
  • L'URSS et la contre-revolution de velours . Antwerp, 1991 ( ISBN 2-87262-057-5 ) / De USSR en de fluwelen contra-revolutie . Antwerp, 1994
  • Subscription: een vrouw in Congo . Breda, 1992) / Subscription: une femme du Congo . Antwerp, 1992 ( ISBN 2-87262-103-2 )
  • Een kwarteeuw mei 68 , Antwerp, 1993
  • Another kijk op Stalin / Un autre regard sur Staline . Antwerp, 1994 ( ISBN 2-87262-081-8 ), foreword in German translation , German edition, pdf
  • Kabila et la révolution congolaise: panafricanisme ou néocolonialisme? . Antwerp, 2002 / Kabila et la révolution congolaise: panafricanisme ou néocolonialisme? . Antwerp, 2002 ( ISBN 2-87262-191-1 )

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cover / blurb from Stalin viewed differently , Frankfurt / M. 2013, or presentation on the publisher's website ( memento of the original from October 6, 2014 in the archive.today web archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / zambon-verlag.de
  2. ^ English online edition, Another View of Stalin (see literature), p. 156

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Martens, Ludo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Belgian politician and political author
DATE OF BIRTH March 12, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH Torhout
DATE OF DEATH June 5, 2011