David Korner (also known as Barta, Albert, and A. Mathieu;
October 19, 1914 – September 6, 1976) was a Romanian and French communist
militant, trade unionist, and journalist. A Trotskyist for most of his life, he
was active in the labor movement of France from the 1930s to the 1960s. Born
into a Jewish family, Korner was a member of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR)
in 1932-1933. In July 1933, alongside Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, Constantin Doncea
and other PCR activists, he was brought to trial in front of a Bucharest court
for his part in convening the GriviĊ£a Strike, and ultimately sentenced to 18
months in jail. Recruited to Trotskyism as a student in Paris in the 1934, he
formed the Bolshevik Leninist Group of Romania upon his return to Romania
(April 1935).
The latter faction opposed the Stalinist PCR, as well as the
Social Democrats and the Unitary Socialist Party of Leon Ghelerter. When the
Spanish Civil War and the June 1936 strikes took place, Korner again returned
to France and was a member of the Internationalist Workers Party (POI). In line
with Leon Trotsky's advice to his French followers to enter the Workers and
Peasants Socialist Party (PSOP) he joined that party and stood on its far left
(see French Turn). Upon the start of World War II, as the PSOP collapsed, he
formed the tiny Trotskyist Group in opposition to what he considered the petty
bourgeois methods of organization of the other French Trotskyist groups, as
well as to the politics of mainstream socialist party (the French Section of
the Workers' International).
This group was active in clandestinity under the Nazi German
occupation of France, and later became the Communist Union (UC). The group
concentrated on factory work but also maintained the regular production of its
political publications and took part in agitation against the colonial politics
of France. The factory work came to fruition with the Renault strike of 1947,
which Korner's group helped lead and organize. The request for support
addressed by the newly-formed Democratic Trade Union of Renault (SDR) was
accepted by the UC, which effectively caused a merger between the two.
