Benoît Malon

Paris Commune (1871) Social democracy 1841–1893 ○ Natural causes

Dyer who led the International's French section, sat in the Commune and later founded La Revue socialiste as a reformist

Born to a poor peasant family at Précieux in 1841, he came to Paris in 1863 and worked as a dyer. Brought into the International Workingmen's Association by Camélinat in 1865, he became with Varlin one of the leaders of its French section, led the dyers' strike of 1866 and was imprisoned after the trials of 1868 and 1870. In the International's factional struggles he sided with the "anti-authoritarian" followers of Proudhon and Bakunin against the Marxists. Elected deputy for the Seine in February 1871, he resigned in protest against the cession of Alsace-Lorraine; a member of the Commune and mayor of the Batignolles, he voted against creating the Committee of Public Safety. In exile in Switzerland he joined the Jura Federation. Back in 1880, he founded La Revue socialiste and directed it until his death, sided with Brousse's possibilists in 1882 and wrote Le Socialisme intégral (1891).

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