Benoit Malon

Militant working, communard, journalist and writer, born on June 23rd, 1841 with Invaluable (the Loire), and died with Asnières-sur-Seine on September 13rd, 1893.

Poor wire of peasants, it had the taste of the study: good pupil with the Invaluable elementary school, the but orphan one of father, it had to place himself as farm laborer in Ain. Patient, it returned in Drill and was collected by his brother Jean Malon, teacher, and profited during two years from his lessons; then he was pupil in Lyon of a clerical school which prepared with the small seminar. This formation explains how it could become then journalist and writer.

Having lost the faith, Benoit Malon renonça to enter to the seminar, gained Paris in 1863 and found an use of workman dyer in a factory of Puteaux. Camélinat made it adhere in 1865 to the International association of the workers (A). In 1866, in Puteaux, Malon organized the strike of the workmen dyers and founded a co-operative of consumption. Become with his/her friend Eugene Varlin, one of the leaders of the French section of the International association of the workers which had been prohibited, it was imprisoned twice (1868 and 1870). In 1870, become journalist with the Marseillaise , the newspaper of Rochefort, it returned account, in a series of noticed articles, great strike of the factories Schneider of Creusot. In 1870, at the time of the third lawsuit of International he is condemned to one year of prison. He had become the companion of the feminist novelist and revolutionary Léodile Champseix (pseudonym literary: André Léo) that it " marry librement" in 1872. It is released by the proclamation of the Republic on September 4th, 1870. during the seat of bets by the Germans (September 1870 - March 1871) it organizes with Eugene Varlin, the public assistance for Parisian the poorest. He is member of the republican Central committee of the Twenty districts and mayor-assistant of the XVIIe district. In February 1871, Benoît Malon was elected appointed, socialist revolutionist, of the Seine but resigned, with Victor Hugo republican and other deputies, to protest against the transfer of Alsace-Lorraine. March 26th he is elected with the Conseil of the Commune and mayor of the district of Batignolles of which he organized defense during the bloody Semaine. He sits at the commission of Work and the Exchange, and votes against the creation of the Comité of public Hello. After the bloody Week, it was exiled in Switzerland then in Italy where it took part in the labor movement. In December 1871, it adheres to the Jurassic Fédération of tendency bakouninist. It publishes the Third defeat of the French Proletariat .

Returned to France after the amnesty of 1880, Benoît Malon chaired the socialist congress of Saint-Etienne (1882) which saw the rupture between reformists (possibilists) carried out by Paul Brousse, of which it made from now on left, and guesdists (Marxist). Independent Socialist, he was the founder, with Elie Peyron and the first director, of 1885 with his death, the socialist Review which was opened with all the tendencies of French socialism. He published many works, of which the integral Socialism (1891) which influenced a whole generation of militants. With its death, 10.000 people accompanied her body with the Father-Lachaise. In 1913, a monument intended to collect its ashes was set up vis-a-vis the Wall of federated and Jean Jaurès made a speech.

Works of Benoit Malon

Manual of Social economy (1883
Moral social (1886)
integral , Alcan, Paris, 1891
Precise histories, theoretical and practical socialism of socialism (1892)
Benoit Malon, " Fragment of Mémoires" , Montbrison, Village of Drill, 1984.

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