Eugène Varlin
| Eugène Varlin | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
Louis-Eugène Varlin October 5, 1839 Claye-Souilly, France |
| Died | May 28, 1871 (aged 31) Montmartre |
| Nationality | French |
| Occupation | Bookbinder, Revolutionary, Union organizer |
Eugène Varlin (5 October 1839 – 28 May 1871) was a French socialist, communard and member of the First International. He was one of the pioneers of French syndicalism.
Louis-Eugène Varlin was born at Claye-Souilly (Seine-et-Marne), into a poor peasant family. Apprenticed as a painter, he moved to Paris and became a bookbinder by profession. As a young man he read the writings of the anarchist social critic Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, which greatly influenced him. In 1857, Varlin participated in founding a bookbinders' mutual aid society, which became the nucleus of a bookbinders' trade union. Varlin was one of the principal organisers of the very first strike of the Parisian bookbinders in 1864. The strike was a success, so in 1865, the bookbinders repeated the exercise; this time the results were less encouraging. Varlin also founded the bookbinders' mutual savings and credit association, organised along Proudhonist lines. As a firm believer in the equality of the sexes, he promoted the anarchist and feminist Nathalie Lemel (1827–1921) to a leading position in the bank.
Varlin led the bookbinders' union into the International Working Men's Association (the First International), founded in 1864. He was a delegate to the London congress of the International in 1865, to the Geneva congress in 1866, along with Lemel, and to the Basel congress in 1869. He was a defendant in the second and third trials of the French section of the International in 1869 and 1870. In the controversy between Proudhonists and Marxists in the International, Varlin took the side of the Proudhonists. He became a close friend and associate of leading Proudhonists, such as Henri Tolain and Benoît Malon. Varlin believed that the nascent trade unions should overcome their professional, local and national particularism and form a united international labour movement, dedicated, as the statutes of his bookbinders' union put it, "to the constant improvement of the conditions of existence of ... the workers of all professions and all countries, and to [bringing] workers into possession of the instruments of their labour." On November 14, 1869, Varlin helped found the Parisian Federation of Workers' Associations, a confederation of trade unions that became the nucleus of the General Confederation of Labour (CGT), the main organisation of the syndicalist movement.
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