James Guillaume

James Guillaume

James Guillaume (born February 16, 1844 in London , † November 20, 1916 in Paris ) was a Swiss anarchist and writer . He was one of the leading members of the Jura Federation in the First International , from which the first anarchist movement in Switzerland emerged.

Life

James Guillaume was born in London as the son of a Swiss watch dealer. In 1848 his family returned to Switzerland after the people of Neuchâtel rose against the Prussian monarchs and passed a republican constitution. Guillaume's father became a judge, prefect in the new Republic of Neuchâtel and from 1853 to 1888 a councilor of state.

After high school, James Guillaume studied philosophy and literature at the University of Zurich from 1862 to 1864 . During his student days he translated Gottfried Keller's collection of novels, The People of Seldwyla, into French. After completing his studies, he became a teacher of history and literature at the trade school in Le Locle in 1864 . To educate the working class, he organized evening lectures for apprentices. He read u. a. the works of Ludwig Feuerbach , Charles Darwin , Charles Fourier and Louis Blanc .

James Guillaume was editor of Le Progrès , the first anarchist newspaper in Switzerland

The call to unite all workers of the First International , founded in London in 1864 , led to the formation of sections in the Jura and western Switzerland. Guillaume founded a section in Le Locle together with the old republican Constant Meuron in 1866. From 1868 to 1870 Guillaume was editor of Le Progrès , the first anarchist newspaper in Switzerland.

Ideological tensions divided the International into two groups. In 1871, the sections merged into the Jura Federation ( Fédération jurassienne ) called for the reorganization of the London International on a federal basis and the conversion of the General Council into a correspondence office in Sonvilier's circular . At the Hague Congress of the International of 1872, the majority of delegates decided in favor of Karl Marx's position that the conquest of political power was necessary and against the anarchists' demanded restriction to economic struggle and excluded Guillaume and Michail Bakunin .

The minority of the First International founded the anti-authoritarian International in Saint-Imier in 1872 , which from then on had its center in the Jura. The national federations of Belgium, England, Holland, Italy and Spain joined because they wanted to maintain their independence from the General Council in London. The Jura anarchism of the 1870s developed through free political discussions on the one hand based on the ideas of Michael Bakunin, who was friends with Guillaume, on the other hand, evaluating the experiences of his own practice. James Guillaume was instrumental in Peter Kropotkin's conversion to anarchism and helped him with the anarchist agitation in Switzerland in the 1870s.

Guillaume had already been dismissed in 1869 because of his political activities as a teacher. He moved to Neuchâtel, where he took over the family print shop. From 1872 to 1878, he published the Bulletin de la Fédération jurassienne , in which he further elaborated the libertarian socialist theory.

In 1878 political pressure became so great that Guillaume had to emigrate to Paris, where he was offered the opportunity to work on a pedagogical dictionary. He dealt with the education system of the French Revolution and later became the editorial secretary of the geographic lexicon of Hachette. Political activity was not possible in the post-commune climate.

He only became politically active again in 1905 when he noticed a continuation of his libertarian socialist ideas of the First International in the emerging anarcho-syndicalist movement.

Works

His four-volume book L'Internationale: Documents et Souvenirs is the most important source of information about the First International from an anarchist point of view.

Guillaume edited Bakunin's Collected Works , which were published in French in 1907.

Web links

Commons : James Guillaume  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Cyrille Gigandet: James Guillaume. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• James Guillaume on Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi