Claude Alphandéry, resistance fighter and great man of the social and solidarity economy, has died

Europe 1 with AFP // Photo credits: JEAN-PIERRE CLATOT / AFP 5:01 p.m., March 26, 2024

Claude Alphandéry, an early resistance fighter and great man of the social and solidarity economy, died "peacefully" at 101, AFP learned on Tuesday from his family and two institutions he founded. "Mr. Alphandéry passed away peacefully yesterday evening, surrounded by his family," France Active, an association helping to create committed businesses that he had created, told AFP. The Social and Solidarity Economy Lab, which he also founded and of which he was honorary president, “unfortunately” confirmed this information. 

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“Multiple illnesses”

Claude Alphandéry died at the age of 101 following “multiple illnesses” Monday evening, around 10 p.m., Marc Alphandéry, one of his two sons, told AFP. At the end of his life, he was "very physically weakened", but until a week ago "still very active intellectually. He was even thinking about how we could still mobilize against the rise of extremism in France and barbarism in the world.

Born in Paris on November 27, 1922, to a father who was a general treasurer and paymaster and a mother who was president of a real estate company, the young Claude Alphandéry was barely 20 years old when he joined the Lyon resistance, abandoning the comfortable benches of his khâgne for the maquis. He distinguished himself there and in 1944 became president of the Liberation of Drôme committee. An experience that marked him forever. 

He founded France Active in 1988

Supporter of François Mitterrand in 1974 and benefactor of the PS, he brought his convictions to public policies and invested in what would become the social and solidarity economy (ESS), convinced that it constitutes the solution to liberalism and to unbridled capitalism. He founded France Active in 1988, then the ESS Lab in 2010 to promote this social and solidarity economy at national and European level. “The fights he led during the Second World War in the Drôme maquis and then his professional commitment to the ESS show continuity in his personal commitment,” said his son Marc Alphandéry.

He wanted to salute his "taste for life, his enthusiasm, his inveterate optimism in transforming things, his curiosity, his humanism", which, according to him, was evidenced by his father's last call "to fight against barbarism". published on March 4 in L’Obs. His funeral, open to the public, will take place on Wednesday April 3 at 2:00 p.m. at the Parisian cemetery of Montparnasse, his family said.