Chris Pallis

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</image> <group> <label>Aliases</label> <label>Relatives</label> <label>Affiliation</label> </group> <group> <header>Biographical information</header> <label>Marital status</label> <label>Date of birth</label> <label>Place of birth</label> <label>Date of death</label> <label>Place of death</label> </group> <group> <header>Physical description</header> <label>Species</label> <label>Gender</label> <label>Height</label> <label>Weight</label> <label>Eye color</label> </group> </infobox>Christopher Agamemnon Pallis was a neurologist (a doctor specialising in the nervous system), neuroscientist (science of the brain), translator, and libertarian socialist and marxist writer.

Life

Born to a prominent Anglo-Greek family of writers, poets and merchants living in India, he spent the first years of his life there before his family moved to Switzerland where he went to school and became fluent in English, French and Greek. During World War II, he and his family took the last boat that was evacuating citizens from France after the Nazi invasion. He studied medicine at Oxford and joined the Communist Party of Britain, but left over their support for the USSR and became a Trotskyist.

He married a working class French university student in 1947 and dropped out of politics to pursue his medical studies and career, but rejoined in 1957, writing under the name of Martin Grainger, but was quickly exposed, and not wanting to lose his job as a neurologist, began writing under the name Maurice Brinton.for the group Solidarity. He also wrote the accepted criteria for brainstem death and the entry of death for Encyclopaedia Britannica, a masterpiece of historical and medical summary.

He personally witnessed the Belgian General Strike in 1960, the May Events of 1968 in France and the Carnation Revolution in Portugal. He also befriended Ken Weller and was described as an intelligent, logical and charismatic man. He loved travelling Asia and studied many tropical diseases and cultures of Asia, and later became a witness for legal cases involving complex neurological issues. He also translated the writings of Cornelius Castoriadis from Greek into English.

Works

Books

• 1970: The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control
• 1970: The Irrational in Politics

Articles and Pamphlets

• 1960: Socialism Reaffirmed
• 1961: The Belgian General Strike
• 1961: Revolutionary Organization
• 1961: The Commune, Paris 1871
• 1965: The Balkanization of Utopia
• 1965: For Workers' Power
• 1967: As We See It
• 1967: Preface: The Kronstadt Commune (read here)
• 1968: France: Reform or Revolution
• 1968: Paris: May 1968
• 1968: Capitalism and Socialism
• 1969: Capitalism and Socialism: A Rejoinder
• 1969: France: The Theoretical Implications
• 1969: The Events in France
• 1969: A Question of Power
• 1972: Review: What is Class Consciousness?
• 1972: Review: Dialectical Materialism and Psychoanalysis
• 1972: As We Don't See It
• 1974: The Malaise on the Left
• 1975: Factory Committees and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat