A. Dauphin-Meunier

Achille Dauphin-Meunier was the son of Joseph, Émile Dauphin-Meunier, an employee at the Seine Prefecture, historian of the Mirabeau family—he signed his books Dauphin Meunier, without any other first name—and then curator of the Administrative Library of the City of Paris. He studied at the Catholic college of Saint Aspais, then at the Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux. His father, a friend of Benoît Malon, is said to have "flirted with socialism" for a time, but Achille Dauphin-Meunier came from a predominantly Catholic background. In 1922, at the age of 16, he entered the Paris Faculty of Law before attending the School of Political Science and the School of Advanced Social Studies while working as a bank employee. Through his classmate Robert Longuet, great-grandson of Karl Marx, he came into contact with the anarchist Jean Grave.

Achille Dauphin-Meunier then became actively involved in the French and international anarchist movement. He considered Christian Cornelissen his mentor and frequented the widow and daughter of Kropotkin, Dr. Pierrot, and Paul Reclus. His partner was a Hungarian seamstress of peasant origin and anarchist, Böske Kovacs. She awakened in him a keen interest in the anarchist movement in Hungary and led him to publish a book on The Hungarian Commune and the Anarchists. In La Revue Anarchiste (April 1925), in Le Libertaire and again in 1928 in Le Populaire in Paris, he published a series of articles denouncing the Horthy regime.

Dauphin-Meunier was an active militant and prolific author in the anarchist movement between 1923 and 1930. He contributed to numerous French publications (Le libertaire by the Union Anarchiste (1923-1930), Jean Grave's Révolte et Temps nouveaux until 1935) and international publications (the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist journals Redencion, Cultura Libertaria, and Orto, and the Hungarian journal Manka by the anarchist poet Lajos Kassak). In 1924, he was secretary of the anarchist group in the 5th arrondissement, then of the Bourg-La-Reine groups from 1925 to 1930. Also in 1925, he created a Bakuninist Study Circle separate from the Anarchist Union.

In contact with the secretaries of the International Workers' Association, Lehning, Souchy, and Schapiro, he participated on February 12, 1927, in an individual capacity, in the preparatory meeting for the International Anarchist Congress held in L'Haÿ-les-Roses on March 20, which debated the Platform (see Makhno). Living in Bourg-La-Reine, he probably took charge of its practical organization.

The year 1930 seems to have been a turning point in his life: his partner died on June 25. It was also the year in which the Platformists lost their majority in the UACR. Dauphin Meunier took part in the controversies surrounding the congress. Following a report on the Anarchist Union congress of April 19 and 20, 1930, which he signed under the name Pierre Ganivet, he clashed with Sébastien Faure. He revisited the Malvy Affair and the "Manifesto of the Sixteen." Among the fifteen signatories were Dauphin-Meunier's friends: Jean Grave, Marc Pierrot, Paul Reclus, and Christian Cornelissen. Dauphin-Meunier remained very close to Cornelissen, with whom he corresponded, and to Jean Grave. He also contributed to Grave's last publication, Révolte et Temps nouveaux, a journal that Grave created after breaking with the Temps nouveaux team. He took up the arguments of the "fifteen" against Sébastien Faure: he accused Faure of collaborating with Mauricius, whom he described as an informer, and of accepting that his school, La Ruche, be financed by funds from the Ministry of the Interior during the war. He thus reignited the controversy against Faure over the Malvy affair.

Sébastien Faure responded very vigorously to Dauphin-Meunier's attacks, calling him a "false anarchist" and calling on the readers of Libertaire to leave him and his friends "to their vomit."

Dauphin-Meunier then broke with the Anarchist Union but joined the revolutionary syndicalist CGT.

From 1932 to 1939, he edited the magazine L’Homme réel, a “syndicalist and humanist magazine.” The magazine brought together a large number of more or less regular contributors, all intellectuals from the labor movement. Their political sensibilities within the socialist movement and their respective backgrounds were very diverse. We can assume that the contributions of Christian Cornelissen, Henri Poulaille, and Luigi Fabbri were the result of Dauphin-Meunier's links with the anarchist movement. But we also find other writers: socialists linked to Léon Jouhaux's CGT, such as René Belin, André Philip, and Robert Lacoste; thinkers close to revolutionary syndicalism such as Edouard Berth, Edouard Dolléans, Francis Delaisi, and Hubert Lagardelle. The journal became the cornerstone of planist thinking in France. The ideas of Henri De Man that it conveyed played a central role in the drift of a number of socialists towards fascism or Pétainism. Hubert Lagardelle seems to have been a very effective agent of fascist propaganda in this regard.

Dauphin-Meunier thus distanced himself from anarchism. In 1934, he joined the CGT. In February 1935, he fell out with Jean Grave over a controversy surrounding planning ideas in La révolte et les temps nouveaux, his last contribution to an anarchist journal.

Like some of the intellectuals of L’Homme Réel, he became involved in pacifist movements. In June 1935, he supported the idea of a national committee bringing together opponents of the war that seemed to be coming and of a possible military pact with the USSR. The Committee held two conferences, one in Saint-Denis on August 10-11, 1935, and the other in Paris, at the Salle de la Mutualité, on September 28, 1935.

A socialist activist and trade unionist, Dauphin-Meunier participated in Monatte's Révolution prolétarienne, and, together with Christian Pineau, edited the magazine Banque et bourse, the organ of the CGT's federal section of bank employees, for which he was responsible during the strikes of May and June 1936. In this latter capacity, he was a member of the Committee of Seven Experts responsible for reforming the status of the Banque de France. Like many "planists," he was disappointed by the attitude of the Blum government. He therefore distanced himself from the Socialists. At the same time, he became a recognized economist by publishing two volumes on the Banque de France in 1937. He became a professor at the Toulouse Law School.

During the war, after rediscovering his Catholic faith, he collaborated with many of his fellow planners, such as Bertrand de Jouvenel, René Belin, Delaisi, and Lagardelle. He wrote for several newspapers of the Vichy regime: Aujourd'hui, La vie industrielle, commerciale, agricole, financière, and Le Fait. In 1943, as director of the École Supérieure d'Organisation Professionnelle (Higher School of Professional Organization), he prefaced the first French translation of the work by German author August Winning, who, like him, had left German social democracy and trade unionism to become a pro-Nazi conservative and militant Christian.

After the Liberation, Dauphin-Meunier does not seem to have been troubled (although he did have to hide for a while in the Benedictine monastery of La Pierre-qui-vire), as he headed the economics department of the Free Faculty of Paris until 1968 (he had taken up this post in 1941). When this faculty disappeared in February 1968, he and a few colleagues founded the Autonomous and Co-managed Free Faculty of Law and Economics (FACO) in June 1968, of which he became dean. The faculty was financially supported by a number of industrial and commercial enterprises.

A renowned academic and advisor to the King of Cambodia, he wrote economic works on banking and became a specialist in the history of the social doctrine of the Church. At the same time, from 1954 to 1970, A. Dauphin-Meunier served as an international technical assistance expert in Cambodia, Central America, and Jordan. He corresponded with De Benoist's team until his death, when he considered himself an "anarcho-conservative." His sympathy for the far right remained unwavering, and he sponsored the "Nouvelle École" from its inception. The GRECE magazine dedicated an obituary to him upon his death in 1984. This obituary glosses over his anarchist, CGT unionist, and socialist past, as well as his time under Vichy, to emphasize the many decorations (Knight of the Legion of Honor, for example) awarded to this "respectable" gentleman.

Le Monde announced his death on September 2 and 3, 1984.

Source: https://maitron.fr/dauphin-meunier-achille-meunier-marie-achille-dauphin-pseudonyme-pierre-ganivet/