Charles Bettelheim

Charles Bettelheim (20 November 1913, Paris – 20 July 2006, Paris) was a French Marxian economist and historian, founder of the Center for the Study of Modes of Industrialization (CEMI : Centre pour l'Étude des Modes d'Industrialisation) at the EHESS, economic advisor to the governments of several developing countries during the period of decolonization. He was very influential in France's New Left, and considered one of "the most visible Marxists in the capitalist world" (Le Monde, 4 April 1972), in France as well as in Spain, Italy, Latin America, and India.

Henri Bettelheim, the father of Charles Bettelheim, was a Viennese Austrian of Jewish origin, and a representative of a Swiss bank in Paris. The family had to leave France after the beginning of the First World War in 1914. The Bettelheims lived in Switzerland then in Egypt. In 1922, Charles Bettelheim returned to Paris with his French mother, during which time his father, who was living in Egypt, committed suicide.

After Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, Charles Bettelheim broke away from his familiar environment, first joining the "Young Communists" (Jeunesses communistes), and subsequently the French Communist Party. In addition to his studies in philosophy, sociology, law and psychology, he also learned Russian. In July 1936, he arrived in Moscow with a tourist visa. Thanks to his mastery of the language, he was able to get a resident permit for five months, during which time he worked as a tourist guide, and later on with the French edition of the Moscow Journal, and finally at Mosfilm, where he directed film dubbing. His experiences during his Moscow stay, in the anxious atmosphere at the beginning of the "purges" and the trials of the Bolshevik leaders who opposed Joseph Stalin, made him keep a critical distance from the Soviet Union, without actually abandoning his Communist convictions. He was excluded from the Communist Party for his "slanderous" remarks. In 1937, he married a young militant Communist, Lucette Beauvallet. During the German occupation, he cooperated with the French Trotskyites (the International Workers Party).

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