Daniel Bensad

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French philosopher and a leader of the Trotskyist movement. Daniel Bensaid was one of the founders of the JCR, Revolutionary Communist Youth, a group of young rebels, inspired by Trotsky and Che Guevara, in 1966. In 1968 he launched the March 22 Movement, together with Daniel Cohn-Bendit and other radical students, and soon became one of the main leaders of the May ‘68 rebellion. In 1969 he organized, with Alain Krivine, Janette Habel and others, the LCR, Revolutionary Communist League, the French section of the Fourth International. Finally, in 2009 he took part, with Olivier Besancenot — with whom he wrote one of his last books, Prendre Parti — in the founding conference of the NPA, the New Anticapitalist Party. Unlike many other figures from ‘68, he remained obstinately faithful to his youthful dreams and struggles. He was a professor of philosophy at the University of Paris-VIII. He was also a Fellow at the International Institute for Research and Education. He was known for his studies of Walter Benjamin and Karl Marx, and a recent analysis of French postmodernism. On 12 January 2010 he died of cancer arising from the side effects of drugs used to treat AIDS, which he had had for the previous 16 years. Link to Wikipedia biography