Pierre Monatte

Who was Pierre Monatte?

Pierre Monatte was a French trade unionist who worked in the printing industry. He was the responsible of the Confédération générale du travail at the beginning of the 20th century, and founded its journal La Vie ouvrière on 5 October 1909. Monatte has been considered one of the great figures of revolutionary syndicalism.

During World War I, Pierre Monatte opposed the Union sacrée national bloc, and resigned in 1915 from the confederal instances. Monatte often referred himself to Fernand Pelloutier and did not disguise his anarchist sympathies, although he drifted away from this current of Socialism after the International Anarchist Congress of Amsterdam in 1907. During this congress, Monatte argued in particular with Errico Malatesta concerning the methods of organisation: invoking the 1906 Charter of Amiens which established the principle of "political neutrality" of the trade-unions, Monatte considered syndicalism itself to be revolutionary, while Malatesta advocated the creation of some sort of anarchist organisation to superate internal conflicts among the workers' movement itself.