César De Paepe

César De Paepe (12 July 1841 in Ostend, Belgium – 1890 in Cannes, France) was a Belgian medical doctor, socialist activist and a prominent proponent of syndicalism whose work strongly influenced the Industrial Workers of the World and the syndicalist movement in general.

De Paepe was a leading member of the First International and was the principal leader of the Collectivist victory over the supporters of Proudhonian mutualism, like Henri Tolain, at the 1868 Brussels conference.

[1][2] At the end of 1877 De Paepe, Joseph Favre, Benoît Malon and Ippolito Perderzolli co-founded the review Le Socialisme progressif in Switzerland.

[3] Favre, Malon, Lodovico Nabruzzi and Tito Zanardelli had earlier founded the internationalist section of Lake Lugano.

[4] Because he flourished after The Communist Manifesto but before World War I, de Paepe's views are inevitably compared to those of Karl Marx.