Virginie Barbet

Virginie Barbet (dates unknown) was a socialist and feminist in Lyon in the 1860s and 1870s and a leading member of the local section of the First International .

Life

Not much is known of her biographically, she probably came from Le Creuzot and ran a restaurant or wine shop in Lyon. In 1868, Barbet gave a lecture at a congress of the International Peace League in Bern as a representative of the Lyons social democracy , where she met the Russian revolutionary Michail Bakunin and his political companions. When they left the rather bourgeois-dominated Peace League shortly after the congress because they could not get their way there with their socialist demands and founded an "Alliance of Socialist Democracy", Barbet joined them and founded an Alliance section in Lyon.

The Alliance then joined the International. Virginie Barbet was soon one of the most important correspondents for the Allianz newspaper "Egalité", which Bakunin published in Geneva, where she mainly reported on the great strike of the Lyon silk workers in the summer of 1869, but also many articles on the theory of the labor movement and the Feminism wrote. During these years she also wrote several pamphlets on the International, atheism and similar subjects.

Virginie Barbet developed strategies of passive resistance for the labor movement , she advocated non-violent action - for example, she asked women in strike situations to stand between the striking men and the advancing military or to protest in front of prisons for the detainees.

In the International, Virginie Barbet was especially important as a champion for the abolition of inheritance law , which was a central point of contention between Bakunin and Karl Marx . Barbet made it clear that the abolition of inheritance law is not only an economic policy measure, but also has a cultural aspect, because women were particularly disadvantaged by inheritance law: firstly, they inherited less than men, and inheritance law was the cause of many Laws to the detriment of women, for example by prohibiting heterosexual intercourse outside of marriage for women in order to secure inheritance.

After the suppression of the Paris Commune in May 1871, Virginie Barbet - like many others - had to go into exile and probably joined the anarchist opposition in the International against the General Council and Karl Marx in Geneva.

Fonts

• Réponse d'un membre de l'Internationale à Mazzini , Lyon 1871
• Religions et Libre-Pensée. Conference faite à Genève, le 27 janvier 1881 , Geneva 1881

literature

• Antje Schrupp : Neither a Marxist nor an anarchist: women in the First International . Helmer, Königstein / Taunus 1999, ISBN 3-89741-022-2 , p. 50-99 .
• Antje Schrupp: Virginie Barbet, une lyonnaise dans l'Internationale. Atelier de creation libertaire, Lyon 2009