Revolution and the Republic
Page 86
August 1914 and the end of 1916 Guesde served in the national unity government
of René Viviani as Minister without Portfolio, patriotism having got the better of
his intransigence and dogmatism.68
Still others, most notably Jean Jaurès and Charles Andler, tried manfully to
reinvigorate the principles of democratic socialism. To pass over the formidable
figure of Jaurès in a few sentences is to do a grave injustice to a man whose memory
still looms large in the imaginations of many French socialists. An impassioned
anti-militarist, if for nothing else he is remembered because of his assassination at
the hands of a young nationalist on the very eve of the First World War. His life,
however, was a remarkable one, his political commitment and rhetorical skills
matched by his immense erudition and scholarship. Jaurès’s views on politics
were best summarized in his Études socialistes, a collection of wide-ranging essays
he first published in Charles Péguy’s Cahiers de la Quinzaine in 1901, and then in
book form a year later. Distancing himself from the Marxist orthodoxy of Guesde,
Jaurès’s view was that the emancipation of the proletariat would best be achieved
through ‘the methodical and legal organization of its own forces under a regime of
democracy and universal suffrage’.69 This he defined as a process of ‘revolutionary
evolution’. Gradually, through the implementation of an extensive programme of
reforms, the proletariat was to take hold of the means of production and the State,
the new society slowly emerging from the dissolution of the old order. Such a
radical transformation was not to be the work of a minority. ‘A revolutionary
minority,’ Jaurès wrote, ‘no matter how intelligent and energetic it might be, is
not able in a modern society to carry out a revolution. It requires the support
and collaboration of the majority, indeed of the overwhelming majority.’70 The
Revolution of 1789, Jaurès added, had been the work of the majority.
68 For a selection of Guesde’s writings see Collectivisme et Révolution (1908), Questions d’Hier et
d’aujourd’hui (1911), and Essai de catéchisme socialiste (1912). Also of interest is the famous debate held
with Jean Jaurès in 1900 and available as Les Deux Méthodes (1925).
69 Études socialistes (1902), p. li. A selection of Jaurès’s work can be found in Jean-Pierre Rioux
(ed.), Jaurès: Rallumer tous les soleils (2006),
70 Études socialistes, 43.
406
Insurrection, Utopianism, and Socialism
It should come as no surprise that Jaurès was also the author and editor of a
multi-volume Histoire socialiste de la Révolution française, written in the years
following the loss of his parliamentary seat in 1898. In historiographical terms,
the novelty of Jaurès’s account lay in its attempt to be both a social and political
history of the Revolution, to draw inspiration, as he himself said, from the
approaches of Marx, Michelet, and Plutarch.71 Unlike many of his forebears Jaurès
did not identify himself with any of the actors in the great drama, expressing no
preference for either Danton or Robespierre, although he was unremittingly critical
of the scheming of the royal family and of the self-interested machinations of the
Girondins. Above all, he saw the Revolution as the consequence of the rise to
economic dominance of the bourgeoisie in the eighteenth century and for that
reason was unambiguous in his conviction, announced in the very first paragraph of
his first volume, that it ‘marked, at bottom, the political advent of the bourgeois
class’. Nevertheless at no point did Jaurès reduce his argument to one of crude
economic determinism. Rather, he saw the growing complexity of the Revolution
and of the class struggle internal to it, and in so doing also saw that the people had
played a decisive role in shaping its outcome. ‘The Revolution’, Jaurès wrote, ‘had a
logic and an impulse that not even the blindness and the narrow egoism of the
bourgeoisie could put a stop to.’72 In short, in realizing what Jaurès regarded as ‘the
two essential conditions of socialism’—democracy and capitalism—the Revolution
had also ‘indirectly prepared the advent of the proletariat’.73
With his return to parliament in 1902, and having written only the first four
volumes, Jaurès handed over the task of completing the Histoire socialiste de la
Révolution française to others of his colleagues in the socialist movement. He did,
however, write the conclusion to the twelfth and final volume, published in 1908.
In doing so, he was able to reaffirm the fundamental point that had informed his
account of the period from 1789 until the fall of Robespierre in 1794: democracy
was the indispensable vehicle for the emancipation of the proletariat. Without ever
idealizing the Revolution and without ever imagining that it could have given birth
to a socialist society, Jaurès believed that the Revolution had contained the germ of
an idea whose time had come, that at certain moments the Revolution had
transcended the class interests of the bourgeoisie, and that, after the long struggles
of the nineteenth century, the proletariat was now in a position to effect a ‘new and
more fundamental revolution’, not only in terms of the ownership of the means of
production but also with regard to the morality of society as a whole. In so arguing,
Jaurès recognized that he was writing not only against the enemies of socialism but
also at a time when socialists were in disagreement among themselves about their
methods and goals and thus when the accord between socialism and democracy and
the necessity of political action needed once again to be affirmed unambiguously.74
The Revolution, he believed, proved the validity of this argument.
71 Histoire Socialiste 1789–1900 (1902), i. 3.
72 Ibid. ii. 1049.
73 Ibid. i. 3.
74 For a sense of these disagreements, in addition to Les Deux Méthodes, see Jaurès, L’Action du parti
socialiste (1908).
Insurrection, Utopianism, and Socialism
407
Not the least of the many lessons that Jaurès imagined might be drawn from a
study of the Revolution was that socialism had no need or desire to make
permanent enemies. As a doctrine it was able to embrace both the material and
moral aspirations of the whole of humanity. The ambitions of socialism, in other
words, went beyond that of divesting the bourgeoisie of their property and were
focused upon the creation of a more equitable society and one where individuals
would live harmoniously together. All were to be treated with equal moral dignity.
It was this moral dimension of socialism that was brought to the fore by Charles
Andler, most notably in his essay La Civilisation socialiste.75 ‘To be a socialist’, he
there wrote, ‘is to have passed through a complete inner regeneration and through a
process of spiritual rebirth.’76 Unlike Jaurès, Andler never attained political promi-
nence within the socialist movement but he did exercise considerable influence in
intellectual circles. An academic working first at the École Normale Supérieure and
later at the Sorbonne, he had written his doctoral thesis on the origins of state
socialism in Germany and, as a fluent German speaker, was perfectly placed to
engage with the writings of Marx and his followers.77 In 1901 he published a long
historical introduction and commentary on The Communist Manifesto.78 He was
however unreservedly critical of orthodox Marxism, believing it to be flawed in
terms of both theory and practice. Marxist metaphysics, he argued, rested upon a
series of ‘unprovable hypotheses’ and it was incapable of generating an adequate
moral theory. As early as 1897 he had diagnosed what he termed ‘the decomposi-
tion of Marxism’.79
In its stead, Andler, like others of his left-leaning colleagues at the École Normale
Supérieure, was prepared to look to the example of Fabian socialism in England80
and, as a group, they came to recommend the attainment of socialism through
consumers’ co-operatives, educational programmes for the working class, the
municipalization of public services, and the state ownership of the means of
production. They were opposed to the control of industry by the workers them-
selves, on the grounds that it was both impracticable and undesirable. An institu-
tion would be required to coordinate production and this would inevitably be some
form of state. To counter the fear that this would lead to the creation of a
centralized and autocratic bureaucracy, an emphasis was placed upon occupational
associations as vital intermediaries between individuals and the government. How-
ever, this gradualist programme clearly envisaged an enhanced role for the State.
A key ingredient in this argument was that capitalism was a chaotic, wasteful,
and anarchic system and, by implication, that socialism would provide greater
75 Charles Andler, La Civilisation socialiste (1912).
76 Ibid. 6.
77 Les Origines du Socialisme d’État en Allemagne (1897).
78 Le Manifeste Communiste (1901).
79 ‘La conception matérialiste de l’Histoire’, Revue de métaphysique et de morale, 5 (1897), 644–58.
See Christophe Prochasson, ‘Sur la réception du Marxisme en France: Le Cas Andler (1890–1920)’,
Revue de synthèse, 4 (1989), 85–108.
80 See e.g. Edouard Pfeiffer, La Société Fabienne et le mouvement socialiste anglais contemporain
(1911) and Robert Hertz, ‘Le Socialisme en Angleterre: La Société Fabienne’, La Revue socialiste, 323
(1911), 426–31.
408
Insurrection, Utopianism, and Socialism
rationality in production and consumption. It was, then, perhaps no idle coinci-
dence that the 1890s saw a marked revival of interest in the ideas of Saint-Simon,
with Georges Weill and Sébastien Charléty publishing studies of his ideas between
1894 and 1896.81 In the hands of his disciples Saint-Simonianism developed into a
decidedly eccentric religious cult but there was enough in his writings to convince
some at least that Saint-Simon himself could be taken as a precursor of socialism. If
one of these ideas was that society should be so organized as to secure the
amelioration of the condition of the poorest and most numerous class, another
was that we should seek to move beyond the government of men to the adminis-
tration of things. What this attraction to Saint-Simon revealed was what Célestin
Bouglé was later to describe as ‘the double aspect of socialism’: namely, that
socialism was both a doctrine of emancipation and a doctrine of organization.82
Another writer who was influential in developing this theme was Émile Dur-
kheim. He was a major influence upon the socialist group at the École Normale
Supérieure and many of their ideas were developed in Durkheim’s journal, L’Année
sociologique. In 1895–6 Durkheim himself gave a course of lectures on socialism
and he too located Saint-Simon as a central figure in the socialist tradition.83
Needless to say, his approach was deeply sociological, and thus socialism was
explored ‘as a reality’ and as ‘an unknown phenomenon yet to be explored’.
Durkheim’s starting point, however, was that socialism was a ‘cry of anguish and,
sometimes, of anger uttered by the men who most keenly feel our collective
malaise’84 and, most importantly, that it was a response to the economic disorgani-
zation arising from industrialization. In contrast to communism, which Durkheim
saw as a pre-industrial form of utopianism akin to Christian asceticism, the
primary drive behind socialism was to overcome economic anarchy and the
injustice which arose from it. ‘We define as socialist’, Durkheim wrote, ‘every
doctrine which calls for the connection of all the economic functions, or of certain
among them, which are currently diffuse, to the directing and conscious centres
of society.’85 He stressed that ‘connection’ did not mean ‘subordination’ but the
crucial point was that the amelioration of the condition of the workers was
only the by-product and consequence of the reorganization of the economy.
Socialism, in brief, went beyond ‘the question of the workers’ and entailed
more than the introduction of a ‘higher morality’: it consisted ‘in the organization
and centralization of economic life’.86
On this account, socialism was not concerned to secure the dominance of the
proletariat or the negation of private property but was conceived primarily as an
aspiration to so restructure the economy that it would serve the greater interests of
the collectivity. The State was not seen as something that was antagonistic towards
81 Weill, Un Précurseur du Socialisme: Saint-Simon et son uvre (1894); L’École saint-simonienne, son
histoire, son influence jusqu’à nos jours (1896); and Charléty, Essai sur l’Histoire du saint-simonisme
(1896).
82 ‘Préface’, to Élie Halévy, L’Ère des tyrannies (1938), 10.
83 See Le Socialisme (1992). A selection of Durkheim’s writings on socialism can be found in
Anthony Giddens (ed.), Durkheim on Politics and the State (Cambridge, 1986), 97–153.
84 Le Socialisme, 37.
85 Ibid. 49.
86 Ibid. 75.
Insurrection, Utopianism, and Socialism
409
the individual but rather as an instrument that would allow the overcoming of
economic anomie. Socialism was not a doctrine of class war.
It is therefore not without interest that Durkheim was also very critical of the
ideas then being developed by the theorists of revolutionary syndicalism. This was
made most evident in 1906 when Durkheim debated the issue of anti-patriotism
with the editor of Le Mouvement socialiste, Hubert Lagardelle.87 Durkheim raised
three objections to the ideas advanced by Lagardelle. First, Durkheim believed that
it was possible for legal and moral institutions to progress in parallel to and in
harmony with progress in the economy and therefore that it was not necessary to
destroy the present economic order. Second, he argued that revolutionary syndical-
ism rested upon the false premise that ‘the worker is exclusively a producer’. In
Durkheim’s opinion, the worker also possessed an intellectual and moral life.
Finally, and most seriously, he believed that the syndicalist project of destroying
society would bring about a return to barbarism. Far from creating a new civiliza-
tion
, we would ‘enter into a time of darkness’. Underpinning each of these
arguments was Durkheim’s conviction that there was far more uniting the bour-
geois and the worker in society than the anti-patriotic Lagardelle would allow.
If Durkheim always kept his distance from the socialist movement, this was not
true of his academic followers in Paris.88 Predominantly bourgeois in background
they were drawn to socialism out of a sense of moral obligation and as intellectuals
armed with the discoveries of social science. Another important factor driving their
political commitment was the Dreyfus Affair and the momentous events that
surrounded it. When the campaign to release Captain Dreyfus began in the mid-
1890s the initial reaction across the left was one of indifference, if not downright
hostility. What, it was asked, had the wrongful imprisonment of a member of the
bourgeoisie to do with the cause of the proletariat? Such was the response of Jules
Guesde and his colleagues in the Parti ouvrier français. It was Jaurès who, almost
single-handedly, changed this view. In a series of newspaper articles—later pub-
lished as Les Preuves—he set out to convince his fellow socialists that not only was
Dreyfus innocent, but that if, as Jaurès argued powerfully, the cause of socialism
was that of justice and humanity, then he deserved their support, irrespective of his
class. ‘Without compromising our principles and without abandoning the class
struggle’, he wrote, ‘we can hear the call of pity.’89
As a result, the forces of the left mobilized in great numbers and one year later, in
June 1899, Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau formed a government of ‘republican defence’.
Among the members of that government, as Minister of Commerce and Industry,
was the socialist deputy Alexandre Millerand. Again there was division on the left,
the Guesdists and others condemning what they saw as a politics of compromise
and deviation. It was indeed true that, in 1892, Millerand had made a famous
speech at Saint-Mandé on the outskirts of Paris where he had outlined ‘a minimum
87 Libres entretiens (11 Mar. 1906), 389–436.
88 See the special issue devoted to ‘Les Durkheimiens’, Revue Française de Sociologie, 20 (1979).
89 Quoted in Vincent Duclert, ‘L’Affaire Dreyfus et la gauche’, in J.-J. Becker and G. Candar,