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Walesa, Lech (b. 1943)
Worked in Gdansk shipyards from 1967 as electrical mechanic; member of 1970 strike committee which met Gierek in January 1971; over following decade bore a sense of guilt over death of four workers at this time; member of works committee at shipyards until sacked in 1976 for criticising management; in Dec 1978 and 1979 organised meetings commemorating workers killed in 1970; in 1979, joined the inter-factory strike committee to seek political rights and wage increases. Selected to lead the occupation of Lenin Shipyard in August 1980, leading to founding of Solidarity. As chairman of Solidarity Walesa kissed the Pope’s hand, called for ’free enterprise’, and openly greeted Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher as friends. Arrested when martial law was instituted in December 1981 and jailed until November 1982. He led the negotiations with the government in February 1989 leading to the June 1989 elections in which Soldarity swept the board. In December 1990, Lech Walesa became President in an election marked by anti-Semitism. Walesa commented: ’Yes, I am still a capitalist and shall remain so. But I want to be an intelligent capitalist who has his eye on the long term’. His trail blazing of Polish capitalism, like all other attemps of capitalism after the collapse of Stalinism, was an immense failure. He lost the elections in 1995 by one percent of the vote – in 2000, he and his party attained less than one percent of the total vote.
Wallace, Henry (1888-1965) .
US Vice-president during F. F. Roosevelts third term. Wallace opposed Truman’s cold war anti-Soviet campaign, wanted a deal with Stalin. Stood in 1948 elections as presidential candidate of the Progressive Party. Wallace was strongly backed by the Communist Party and CP-controlled unions. Later Wallace left the Progressive Party and backed the US intervention in Korea.
Wallon, Henri (1879-1962)
Born in France in 1879. In 1902, he graduated in philosophy from the École Normale Supérior, and in 1908 received his degree in medicine. He lived in a period of marked social instability and political turbulence. In 1914 he was doctor in the French army, spending some months at the front. Contact with brain injuries among veterans caused Wallon the review the knowledge of neurology he had developed earlier in work with mentally disabled children.
Up till 1931, he was a doctor in psychiatric institutions, but in the meantime, he continued to consolidate his interest in child psychology. During the Second World War, he was active in the French Resistance, was wanted by the Gestapo, and had to live underground.
Between 1920 and 1937, Wallon was the person in charge of conferences on the child psychology at the Sorbonne and other universities. In 1925 he established a laboratory dedicated to research and care of mentally disabled children. In 1925 he published his doctoral thesis on “The Disturbed Child.” This initiated a period of intense work on child psychology. His last book on this subject was Origins of the thought in the child, 1945.
In 1931, he traveled to Moscow and was invited to join the “Circle of New Russia,” a group formed to attract intellectuals to study of the dialectical materialism and its application in various fields of science. In 1942, he joined the Communist Party, of which he already was a sympathizer, and he remained connected to the Communist Party for the remainder of his life.
In 1948, he launched the magazine Infancy, dedicated to publishing research on child psychology and education.
See Henri Wallon Archive,
Walras, Léon (1834-1910)
French-born economist who was one of the first to propound a comprehensive mathematical analysis of general economic equilibrium.
In 1865, Walras and Léon Say began a bank for producers’ cooperatives which failed in 1868. In 1870, Walras was appointed to the chair of political economy at the Academy of Lausanne, Switz. With Elements of Pure Economics (1874), Walras is generally credited with having founded the "Lausanne school" of economists later led by Vilfredo Pareto.
Walras applied to the economic universe techniques for treating systems of simultaneous equations that were well known in classical mechanics. Assuming a "regime of perfectly free competition," Walras constructed a mathematical model in which productive factors, products, and prices automatically adjust in equilibrium.
Walras also postulated reforms that he conceived to be necessary for the effective functioning of the system of free enterprise, notably land nationalization and modification of the gold standard.
Wang Ching-wei (1884-1944)
Leader of the Left Kuomintang and the government in industrial Wuhan whom the Communist International and the Communist Party supported after the Chiang Kaishek fiasco.
Warren, Fred (1872-?)
Managing Editor of The Appeal to Reason, the biggest American radical newspaper of the period 1900-1917.