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'''Claude Lefort''' was [[born ]] in [[1924]] and was politically [[active ]] by [[1942]] under the influence of his tutor, the [[Phenomenology|phenomenologist]] [[Maurice Merleau-Ponty]] (whose posthumous publications Lefort later edited). By [[1943]] he was organising a faction of the [[Trotskyist]] [[Parti Communiste Internationaliste]] at the Lycée Henry IV in [[Paris]]. Lefort was impressed by [[Cornelius Castoriadis]] when he first met him. From [[1946]] he collaborated with him in the Chaulieu-Montal Tendency, from their noms-de guerre ''Pierre Chaulieu'' (Castoriadis) and ''Claude Montal'' (Lefort), publishing ''0n the [[Regime ]] and Against the [[Defence ]] of the USSR'', a critique of both the [[Soviet Union]] and its Trotskyist supporters. They suggested that the [[USSR]] was dominated by a [[social ]] layer of bureaucrats, and that it consisted of a new kind of [[society ]] as [[aggressive ]] as Western European societies. By [[1948]] having tried to persuade the [[other ]] [[trotskyists ]] of their viewpoint they broke away with [[about ]] a dozen [[others ]] and founded the [[libertarian socialist]] group [[Socialisme ou Barbarie]]. Lefort's [[text ]] "L'Expérience prolétarienne" was important in shifting the group's focus towards forms of [[self]]-organisation.

Lefort was for a long [[time ]] uncomfortable with Socialisme ou Barbarie's "organisationalist" tendencies. In [[1958]] he, [[Henri Simon]] and others [[left ]] and formed [[Informations et Liaison Ouvrières]].

In his academic career, Lefort taught at the [[University of São Paulo]], at the [[Sorbonne]] and at the [[École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales]]. He has written on the early [[political ]] writers [[Machievelli]] and [[Étienne de La Boétie]] and explored "the Totalitarian enterprise" in its "[[denial ]] of social [[division]]... [and] of the [[difference ]] between the [[order ]] of [[power]], the order of law and the order of [[knowledge]]" ("[[Philosopher]]?", 1985).

[[Category:Marxist theoristsPolitical theory|Lefort, Claude]]