Gaston René Léon Monmousseau (17 January 1883 – 11 July 1960) was a French railway worker, trade union leader, politician and author, from a rural working-class background.

"[4] At the first postwar congress of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT: Confédération générale du travail), held in Lyon from 15 to 21 September 1919, Monmousseau was among the leaders of the minority, with Pierre Monatte, Raymond Péricat and Joseph Tommasi.

The minority wanted the CGT to join the Communist International, seize power and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat.

[5] They led a committee of 26 minority unions that was formed in October 1919, later named the Comité Syndicaliste Révolutionnaire (CST).

[6] In April 1920 Monmousseau was elected propaganda secretary for the railway workers federation and was arrested, along with Souvarine and Monatte, for plotting against state security.

In January 1923 he participated in the International Congress on "Imperialism and War" organized against the occupation of the Ruhr by French troops.

[1] Monmousseau was pragmatic, and although he did not abandon his syndicalist beliefs, he could accept the need for a strong, repressive state to steer the revolution.

[1] In September 1929, as a deputy member of the Comintern Executive Committee, he was charged with plotting against state security and imprisoned until May 1930.

[1] After the Liberation of Paris Monmousseau was appointed one of the twelve members of the Confederal Bureau of the CGT in September 1944.

Monmousseau told the Paris region convention of the CGT in 1946, "Yesterday we were in the opposition, and we could permit ourselves some vagaries.

"[8] In 1952 the National Committee of the Communist Party decided to turn their boring weekly Le Peuple into a bimonthly journal, and to make La Vie Ouvrière their official organ.

[9] By this time his paper had become a strident and polemical sheet that had abandoned all pretense of concern with morality and individual dignity.