Malon, Benoît

Born June 23, 1841, in Précieux; died Sept. 13, 1893, in Asnières. French petit bourgeois socialist.

Malon was an unskilled worker and a dyer. In 1865 he joined the First International. He was a defendant in the second (1868) and third (1870) trials of the French Section of the International. Malon was a member of the Central Committee of the National Guard and of the Paris Commune of 1871. After the suppression of the Commune, he emigrated to Switzerland, where he supported the Bakuninists in their struggle against K. Marx. Malon returned to France after the amnesty of 1880. As a leader of the right, petit bourgeois wing of the French Workers’ Party, he joined P. Brousse in a bitter struggle against the Marxist nucleus of the party and contributed to the party’s split. From 1882, Malon and Brousse led the party of Possibilists. In 1885, Malon founded the journal Revue socialiste. In 1889 he became the editor of the newspaper Egalité.