Christopher Agamemnon Pallis (2 December 1923, in

Bombay Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — List of renamed Indian cities and states#Maharashtra, the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' fin ...

– 10 March 2005, in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

) was an Anglo-Greek

neurologist Neurology (from el, νεῦρον (neûron), "string, nerve" and the suffix -logia, "study of") is the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the brain, the spinal c ...

and

libertarian socialist Libertarian socialism, also known by various other names, is a left-wing,Diemer, Ulli (1997)"What Is Libertarian Socialism?" The Anarchist Library. Retrieved 4 August 2019. anti-authoritarian, anti-statist and libertarianLong, Roderick T. (20 ...

intellectual. Under the pen-names Martin Grainger and Maurice Brinton, he wrote and translated for the British group

Solidarity ''Solidarity'' is an awareness of shared interests, objectives, standards, and sympathies creating a psychological sense of unity of groups or classes. It is based on class collaboration.''Merriam Webster'', http://www.merriam-webster.com/dicti ...

from 1960 until the early 1980s. As a neurologist, he produced the accepted criteria for

brainstem death Brainstem death is a clinical syndrome defined by the absence of reflexes with pathways through the brainstem – the "stalk" of the brain, which connects the spinal cord to the mid-brain, cerebellum and cerebral hemispheres – in a dee ...

, and wrote the entry on death for ''

Encyclopædia Britannica The (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various t ...

''.

Life

Chris Pallis was born to a prominent Anglo-Greek family, "of whose intellectual achievements he was always extremely proud". The poet

Alexandros Pallis Alexandros Pallis ( el, Αλέξανδρος Πάλλης; 15 March 1851, in Piraeus – 17 March 1935, in Liverpool) was a Greek educational and language reformer who translated the New Testament into Modern Greek. The publication, in the '' Akro ...

was a great-uncle, and so the writers

Marietta Pallis Marietta Pallis (1882–1963) was a Greek-Briton ecologist and botanical artist. She is noted for research in aquatic botany, especially the Norfolk Broads and the Danube Delta as well as her creation of devotional landscapes. Biography Pallis ...

and

Marco Pallis Marco may refer to: People * Marco (given name), people with the given name Marco * Marco (actor) (born 1977), South Korean model and actor * Georg Marco (1863–1923), Romanian chess player of German origin * Tomás Marco (born 1942), Spanish ...

were also relatives. His father Alex was general manager of the family firm of merchant bankers, Ralli Brothers; when he retired, he returned from India to settle in

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

. Educated there, Chris Pallis became fluent in French, English and Greek. In 1940 the family managed to take the last boat out of France, and settled in England. Pallis went up to study medicine at

Balliol College, Oxford Balliol College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. One of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the ...

in 1941. He joined the

Communist Party of Great Britain The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPGB ...

, but he was quickly expelled for criticising its policy on the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

, and became a member of the

Trotskyist Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a ...

Revolutionary Communist Party. For the next 20 years he combined a distinguished medical career under his real name with pseudonymous revolutionary socialist writing and translation. After he was outed for his use of the name Martin Grainger in such left-wing journals as the ''

New Statesman The ''New Statesman'' is a British political and cultural magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first connected with Sidney and Beatrice Webb and other leading members ...

'' he changed his pseudonym. Subsequently his boss, Christopher Booth, defended him from further press criticism, saying that he was a fine neurologist entitled to his own political views. Pallis's published works include several eyewitness accounts of key moments in European left politics, such as the Belgian general strike of 1960, Paris in May 1968 and Portugal's

Carnation Revolution The Carnation Revolution ( pt, Revolução dos Cravos), also known as the 25 April ( pt, 25 de Abril, links=no), was a military coup by left-leaning military officers that overthrew the authoritarian Estado Novo regime on 25 April 1974 in Lisbo ...

in 1974–75; a substantial body of English translations of works by

Cornelius Castoriadis Cornelius Castoriadis ( el, Κορνήλιος Καστοριάδης; 11 March 1922 – 26 December 1997) was a Greek-FrenchMemos 2014, p. 18: "he was ... granted full French citizenship in 1970." philosopher, social critic, economist, ps ...

, the main thinker of the French group

Socialisme ou Barbarie Socialisme ou Barbarie () was a French-based radical libertarian socialist group of the post-World War II period whose name comes from a phrase which was misattributed to Friedrich Engels by Rosa Luxemburg in the '' Junius Pamphlet'', but which pr ...

; and two short books of his own: ''The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control'' (1970) and ''The Irrational in Politics'' (1974), which is largely concernd with sexual politics. The publishers of a recent online edition of ''The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control''The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control introduction
/ref> describe it as follows:

References

External links

Maurice Brinton ArchiveLibertarian Communist Library Maurice Brinton Archive
* Paul Anderson

''Gauche'', 25 September 2005 {{DEFAULTSORT:Pallis, Chris 1923 births 2005 deaths Writers from Mumbai British socialists British Marxists British people of Greek descent Communist Party of Great Britain members British Marxist writers Revolutionary Communist Party (UK, 1944) members Workers Revolutionary Party (UK) members Libertarian socialists Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford Greek–English translators 20th-century translators

Life

References

Further reading

External links