Abstract
Jean Jaurès’s socialism had deep roots in the heritage of the French Revolution of 1789. At first a moderate republican, he gradually became a socialist between 1889 and 1892. Yet unlike other socialists who insisted on seeing the Republic as nothing but the latest instrument of bourgeois domination, he never abandoned a republican political framework. This deep conviction was visible in his many battles, from his commitment to the Dreyfusard cause in 1898 to his stout secularism, and indeed everything from the value of strikes to the definition of peasant property and the merits of a partial nationalization of the economy. The great historian Ernest Labrousse once said that French socialism was a “maximalist republicanism.” Such a definition applies wonderfully to Jaurès’s texts included in this first part, dealing with different aspects of the republic (school, secularism, peasant condition…), with socialism and with the great republican debates (first of all, the one concerning the Dreyfus affair).
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Notes
- 1.
October 1890 congress of the Fédération nationale des syndicats ouvriers, dominated by partisans of Jules Guesde (1845–1922).
- 2.
October 1890 congress of the Fédération des travailleurs socialistes de France; the partisans of Jean Allemane (1843–1935) abandoned the hall and founded the so-called “Allemanist” Parti ouvrier socialiste révolutionnaire.
- 3.
The Halle Congress in 1890 was the German Social-Democrats’ first after twelve years in clandestinity.
- 4.
Indeed, Louis Blanc (1811–1882) considered the early phases of the Revolution of 1789 as primarily individualist and bourgeois.
- 5.
The Convention: the revolutionary assembly which governed France from September 1789 to October 1795.
- 6.
31 May 1793 (and 2 June) was marked by the fall of the Girondins, in favor of the Montagnards Robespierre and Danton.
- 7.
Henri Rochefort (1831–1913), a former communard at one time close to the socialists, was now one of the figures most implacably opposed to Dreyfus. The Abbé Garnier (1850–1920) was an antisemite hostile to the socialists.
- 8.
The head of the army’s statistical bureau, and himself an antisemite, Picquart was nonetheless convinced that Dreyfus was innocent. Sent abroad, he was arrested in July 1898 for having leaked secret documents, and thus became a Dreyfusard hero.
- 9.
Two figures who made every effort to frustrate the review process.
- 10.
Édouard Drumont (1844–1917) is one of the best-known exponents of antisemitism in France. His book La France juive (1886) had a major impact, as did his newspaper La Libre Parole.
- 11.
Boulanger (1837–1891): a French officer who caused a grave political crisis in the Third Republic in the latter half of the 1880s. Wielding demagogic themes, he managed to rally around his own person many who had been disappointed by Bonapartism and monarchism and even some socialists. His rise was brought to a halt in 1889.
- 12.
The former was the officer responsible for the indictment during the first trial of Dreyfus; the latter was rapporteur to the first war council in 1897, and responsible for the indictment against Esterhazy, whom he entirely covered up for.
- 13.
Colonel Henry, linked to Esterhazy, committed suicide in August 1898.
- 14.
Henry’s deputy.
- 15.
Military attache to the German embassy, he had become connected to Esterhazy in 1894 before breaking with him two years later.
- 16.
“Partageux,” referring to the idea that socialists wanted to share everything, including properties, equally; the term was used by conservatives to frighten the peasants and turn them away from socialism.
- 17.
An allusion to the Falloux Law of 15 March 1850 (on the freedom of secondary education), and to 2 December 1851 (Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte’s coup, which marked the end of the Second Republic).
- 18.
An allusion to his rival, the Marquess of Solages; 1885 was the year of Jaurès’s own first victorious election campaign in the Tarn.
- 19.
In 1904, the Radical Louis Vieu had been elected head of Castres city council as part of a united left-wing slate.
- 20.
The Prussians’ victory in 1870 was attributed to its soldiers’ superior education.
- 21.
“The heavens declare the glory of God”—Psalm 19.
- 22.
An allusion to Mgr Dupanloup (1802–1878), bishop of Orléans, member of the Académie française, MP and then senator. Émile Littré (1801–1881), author of the Dictionnaire, was elected to the Académie française 1871.
- 23.
The viscount Eugène de Vogüé (1848–1910), a writer, member of the Académie française, and onetime MP, and Ferdinand Brunetière (1849–1906), a member of the Académie française and editor of the Revue des Deux Mondes, were two important figures in Catholic circles.
- 24.
David Lloyd George (1863–1945), British Chancellor of the exchequer, developed a social programme for workers’ pensions and social insurance.
- 25.
Between 1880 and 1914 there was no sharp distinction between “communists” and “socialists”; one should not graft onto this period the later splits which resulted from the Russian Revolution of 1917.
- 26.
Gracchus Babeuf and Filippo Buonarroti were two of the main figures behind the “Conspiracy of equals” of 1796–1797, which Marx considered the embryo of the future “communist party in action.” Socialists thus granted them the greatest respect.
- 27.
Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) and August Bebel (1840–1913) were the main leaders of German social democracy. Both opposed the vote for war credits in 1870.
- 28.
Victor Griffuelhes (1874–1923) and Léon Jouhaux (1879–1954) were two of the main CGT leaders.
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Ducange, JN., Marcobelli, E. (2021). The Socialist and Republican. In: Ducange, JN., Marcobelli, E. (eds) Selected Writings of Jean Jaurès. Marx, Engels, and Marxisms. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71959-3_1
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