The Labor Movement in France. (1909)

From the August 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

Syndicalist and Anti-Militarist wins brought to declare for political action.

Translated from Proletary (Russian) by J. Kresswell and adapted from the Weekly People (New York).

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The late October, 1908, convention of the United Socialist Party and the General Confederation of Labor in France will undoubtedly serve as a turning point in the history of the French labor movement. The vacillating course and the somersaults, from “opportunistic” Socialism to “revolutionary anarcho-syndicalism” are destined to be relics of the past.

The tactics of the French proletariat, are becoming more and more similar to those of Germany, Austria and Scandinavia.

By attaching the “Socialist” Millerand to the Cabinet of the clever and masterful Waldeck-Rousseau, the French bourgeoisie succeeded in temporarily breaking down the ranks of the labor organisations. At the head of the General Confederation of Labor at that time were the reformers of the English trade unionist type, among whom were active adherents of Jaures’ theory of the co-operation of the classes. Geraud, the then secretary of the Confederation, used to support in the Federation Millerand, who opened wide the treasury of the ministry of Commerce to the labor syndicates. In those days the Confederation used to give banquets in honor of Millerand, and radical municipalities used to give to labor unions free lyceums and pecuniary subsidies. Consequently the demoralisation of labor organisations became so great that nothing better seemed to remain to honest Socialists but to join the anarcho-syndicalists in their conflict with the reformers.

In Bourges the anarcho-syndicalists, thanks to the active co-operation of the Guesdists trade unions, captured temporarily the G.C. of L. and became the moving spirits in theory and practice in the French labor movement. The reformers also prepared a fine field for anarcho-syndicalists. The hostility to political action which seized the laboring masses in the rising period of neo-syndicalism, appears only as a just reaction to the excesses of the parliamentary tactics. Only four years have passed since “revolutionary” syndicalism triumphed, yet it is now passing. We limit ourselves to a short review of the evolution this syndicalism has gone through in this time.

Arming themselves at Bourges with a complele arsenal of revolutionary phrases, our syndicalists imagined that we were on the eve of the grand sunset of the capitalist world. In their inflamed imagination the first important strike became almost the beginning of the Social Revolution. The words “general strike” became a sacred commandment. The Paris Convention of 1901 even decided to form a special committee to prepare for such a strike, and the syndicalists were convinced that the day when the working class would go on strike would be the last of the bourgeois regime. Syndicalists taught the workers that high dues, rich union treasuries and numerous syndicates lead to narrow English unionism only, that strikes must always be hastily improvised, and to prepare for them long is unnecessary. The general laboring masses they considered cowardly and apathetic, and they assigned the principal role to an active and energetic minority. These agitators being in most cases at the head of syndicates in embryo, acted with surprising self-assurance, and the unsuccessful outcome of strikes never worried them. Strikes in their eyes always served as “revolutionary gymnastics.”

With such views the syndicalists prepared themselves for the first decisive battle, which they were to give to “capital” on May 1st, 1906, in order to gain the eight hour day. Their impressive revolutionary proclamations and the previously raised hue and cry momentarily scared the French bourgeoisie. The radical ministry concentrated in proletarian centres enormous military forces. The French workingmen, without a sou in their union treasuries, without strong syndicates, temporarily influenced by the revolutionary phraseology of the demagogues, stumbled not only over the more perfectly organised capital, but also upon the government’s army. The result was the complete defeat of the workers. A great number of unions became almost wholly demoralised and disbanded. Others lost considerable of their membership—the metal workers, for instance, more than a third. The federation of pressmen, whose caution the syndicalists ridiculed and condemned, was the only one to carry on a successful struggle. This union succeeded in gaining a nine-hour day in a considerable part of France. How powerful was the blow delivered to the working class by this inflated first of May movement may be judged from the fact that the number of successful strikes for this year reached only 7 per cent., while the average for the previous ten years was 14 per cent. The Confederation of Labor, which, according to Pouget, had 250 thousand members in 1903, had at the convention of Amiens four years later only 203 thousand.

Far poorer results were shown from syndicalist practice the last two years, which even the revolutionary leaders, Pouget and Griffeulhes confess. At the same time the bourgeoisie had not remained idle. During one year the numbers in employers’ associations increased from 268 thousand to 315 thousand, a gain of 18 per cent. A more rapid progress is shown in the class-conscious organisation of capital in 1907. In the metallurgical, electrical, automobile, glass and chemical industries a series of trusts were formed almost embracing all the national industries. The league of merchants and shopkeepers alone, which was shortly formed to combat the Sunday rest idea, counts 100 thousand members. To these well organised forces of capital the Confederation of Labor proposed to give battle with the small undisciplined and provisionless army, composing only 27 per cent, of France’s working population, and only one-third of the organised labor of the land.

The revolutionary syndicalists, who during six years held noisy harangues about a general strike, understood the necessity of large and powerful organisations, when their attempt to call a general strike during the May agitation and the events at Draveil-Vigneux resulted in complete defeat. These events conclusively proved that their practical influence upon organised labor was absolutely nil. Pouget, the real head of the revolutionary syndicalists, wrote at the end of June in the Voice of the People:

“Unfortunately it must be acknowledged that if the idea of the general strike has made great theoretical gains in France, in practice we are behind even the Italian proletariat. The cause of this appears to be the state of illusion of the workers. To the practical syndicalists the lessons of the past have not been in vain, many of them have found out the errors of the past.” Griffeulhes, sec. cf the Confederation, confessed to the editor of L’Humanite that the empty revolutionary phraseology scared away the laboring masses, especially in the provinces, and instilled distrust in the trade unions. He added that what was wanted was less noise and more organisation work. Luke, the temporary secretary of the Confederation, wrote still more moderately

“What the proletariat wants are real results, i.e., real reforms. And it has come to the conclusion that for the realisation and preservation of such reforms strong organisations are absolutely necessary.”

The same revolutionary experience has been made by other “revolutionary” syndicates. They have lost the sarcastic and nagging tone in which they used to attack contemporary class-conscious proletarian organisations of Western Europe. As a result the majority of the trade unions established high membership dues. Their contempt for the necessity of numerous and powerful syndicates has vanished and such hot heads as the secretary of the metal workers’ union, advises the workers to carefully prepare for each strike and to survey the field of battle beforehand. A few ultra-syndicalists still pin their faith to “revolutionary manoeuvres.” But from the debates at Marseilles it is clearly seen how quickly the French proletariat is freeing itself from the guardianship of neo-syndicalism. 

In those debates no mention was even made of a general strike. The responsibility for the August 3rd events was by all present placed upon the government’s shoulders, but if the whole administration of the Confederation had not at that moment been behind prison bars, the “prehistoric” tactics of the “revolutionary” syndicalists would have been severely condemned there and then.

Latopy, another secretary of the metal worker’s union and a good “revolutionary” syndicalist, expressed himself thusly :

“I would like to know whether we will continue to pass resolutions, which in the future we are unable to carry out or defend. … I would that henceforth we shouldn’t enter the battlefield for the pleasure and vanity of a few leaders, who themselves remain in the security of their homes.”

This arrow was intended for the theoreticians and a few of the remaining supporters of syndicalism.

The syndicalists had to beat a retreat, as well in questions of anti-militarism and of the international trades union secretariat. At Amiens the syndicalists voted for the ultra-revolutionary resolution of Yvetot, binding them to carry on a strong anti-militarist and “anti-patriotic” propaganda, and at Marseilles, Marrheim, the prime mover of this resolution, brought forth another, in which there was not a word about “anti-militarism” or “anti-patriotism.” At Amiens the Confederation resolved to participate in the international conferences of trades union secretaries only under the condition that “anti-militarism” and the “general strike” should be deliberated. At Marseilles they were satisfied with a very moderate request: the international secretariat to be required to put on the order of the day the question of call for the convention of the international trades unions.

It is true that the “revolutionary” syndicalists have as yet preserved their majority in the central organisations, but this is because of the peculiar mode of representation at conventions, where every section of the syndicate has one vote, no matter what its numerical strength. Thus the produce union with 3 thousand members had 39 votes at Marseilles, while the miners’ union, numbering 30 thousand, had only 35. The weaker unions occupied in small production, were in fact rulers of these conventions. This is the real reason of the neglect of the majority of organised labor to obey the resolutions passed by a ficticious majority of delegates. No wonder the “revolutionary” syndicalists oppose with might and main a more just and proportional representation, for on the day of such realisation there will appear, at the head of those organisations, pure and simple reformers instead of reformers turned inside-out.

At Lyons, where the question of proportional representation was first raised, only five per cent. of the delegates present were in favour. At Montpelier this number rose to sixteen per cent., at Bourges to twenty-six per cent., and at Marseilles to thirty-four per cent., which, according to the minutest calculations, represents 160 thousand workers out of the total 170 in the Confederation. In fact, even now the majority of the trades unions, those who consider themselves “revolutionary,” do not in their practice differ from the reformers.

(To be concluded)

International Notes. (1908)

From the June 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

An Interesting Experiment

Paul Grados, in the May Day number of the Guesdist organ, states that in the course of an address at Limoges in 1892, Dr. Napias – who was later appointed chief of the Assistance Publique – recalled an experiment by Pattenkofer and Voit on the degree of resistance of the human organism to bodily fatigue.

A vigorous workman was selected who could take a normal repose, and who received a substantial nourishment; then, said Dr. Napias, he was made to exert a muscular effort that was calculated mathematically and which corresponded to the expenditure of average labour – and that during nine hours.

Well, it was ascertained that at the end of twenty-four hours his organism had a deficit of 192 grammes of oxygen which he had had to borrow from his own tissues. Neither the rest that he had taken nor the food that had been given him had sufficed to completely repair the tissues used up during nine hours’ work.

It is therefore shown scientifically that nine hours of daily labour exceed the forces of the human economy. This is doubtless mainly responsible for the much shorter duration of the lives of working men as compared with the longevity of members of the leisured class. The movement toward a lessening of the working day that is favoured by many capitalists is therefore not surprising. Its object, indeed, is simply to extort the maximum of effort – from the human machine.

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The Fetish of Unity.

To the gushing sentimentalist the word Unity is as the Ark of the Covenant. Insistence upon the necessity for agreement on principles, on methods, and above all on the object in view, is scorned as sectarianism and as heresy against most holy Unity by such worshippers of empty forms. True unity is a means to an end. First of all the essentials regarding the end to be sought and the means to that end must be agreed upon, for “unity”without this is unity in impotence, being without everything that makes unity useful, namely, common principles, methods, and aims. Unity under any other conditions than that of agreement on the essentials of aims and methods is like tying cats together by their tails.

Our French comrades are finding this out. Rappoport, after a word in praise of what he calls international discipline, lets the cats out of the bag when he says in Le Socialisme: “Besides, unity is not a restriction. It does not hinder even those who pine for the old ‘dangerous alliances’, and of the false households of three with the ‘Democracy’. It does not even prevent certain members of the party from calumniating fraternally their ‘dear comrades’, and from persecuting them with their deadly hate. Unity is therefore an excellent thing from every point of view, especially if, as we hope, American comrades will not inflict anarchists and those with anarchist methods upon themselves as companions of the road – the false road.”

Ch. Bonnier, in a later issue of the same journal, also confesses that “the great trouble with the French Parti Socialiste is that it falls continually from the fever of anarchism into the heat-sickness of radicalism; never can it grasp its true class policy, never can it understand that it is entirely apart, and that it has not to do the work of the others. How many times has not the spook of reaction caused it to fall into the arms of its born exploiters – the radicals?”

In short, the only unity worth worrying about is Socialist unity, and most of those who gush about the words have still to realise what they mean.

F. C. Watts

The First Duty of Socialists by Charles Vérecque. (1908)

From the June 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our class can only supplant another in controlling Society when it becomes conscious and organised. When the bourgeoisie brought about their revolution, they had been ready for it for a long time. Doubtless they didn’t amuse themselves by looking into all the details of the Society they were about to establish, but they knew what it was they had to realise in order to throw down all obstacles in the way of their development.

The working class, which is at the present time the lowest and the most downtrodden, can only acquire cohesion and strength and finally reach the goal aimed at, by organising and at the same time becoming class-conscious. This is the position they (the workers) must resolutely take up. They must, so far as possible, completely detach themselves from all sections of the bourgeoisie, republican as well as reactionary, insomuch as all these sections have, each in turn, deceived, bought, exploited and massacred them, and equal each other in defending the capitalist system, and in crushing down the proletariat.

What the workers have got to do is to establish their own party, as a class party: their only hope of freedom being their own united and disciplined forces.

The two things in question then are: education and organisation. It is to these that Socialists are directing their efforts. So long as the workers form the “tail”, the following of any section whatsoever of the bourgeoisie, they will remain tame and incapable of gaining their freedom. They will merely secure the ends of those very bourgeois against whom they think they are fighting; and since they are not looking after their own interests, they will either forget those interests or be unable to distinguish them.

It is incontestable that the political colours in which the bourgeoisie wrap themselves are only a means to bind the workers more closely to them, in order to keep intact their political power, and, consequently, their rule over Society.

Since 1789 the bourgeois have been masters of political power in France: every section – legitimist, royalist, imperialist, and republican of different degrees – has had its turn in arranging matters.

This power could have – ought to have – changed hands, but it has remained the business of the same class, the bourgeoisie, divided into sections for the purpose of sharing profits, but all of them united in order to defend these profits against the attacks of the workers.

Accordingly the workers ought never to favour any political colour borne by no matter what section of the bourgeoisie. The same ditch should be dug between the radicals and the workers, as between the workers and “reactionaries”. In what respect do the radicals differ from the last named? They are, perhaps, in favour of more advanced reforms, but like the “reactionaries”, they are all for keeping intact the status quo. That is enough to condemn them, and they must be fought just like the others.

In their struggle for the possession of political power, the workers should be and remain by themselves, in order to constitute the class army which the course of events will allow them to throw against and rout the bourgeois army. Besides, the class struggle teaches the proletariat that only to know the bourgeoisie is to treat its members as the enemy, and fight them upon every ground. This is what the congress at Marseilles in 1879 wanted to do.

At a time when Socialist doctrines were completely unknown, the workers might still cling to the skirts of these gentlemen, the bourgeoisie, awaiting at their hands a modification or change in their own wretched existence. Today, after 30 years of propaganda of scientific Socialism such an attitude is impossible of justification.

The organisation of the workers into a class party has been forced to shape itself in a two-fold way – one by way of trade unions, the other in politics.

Even as the very conditions of their labour, conditions under which production and distribution of commodities are carried on, force the workers to join unions in order to defend themselves against longer hours of work and lower wages, in a word to defend themselves against the masters; just so, with a view to overcoming the master class, are they obliged to look beyond their extremely limited everyday horizon, and form themselves into a political party, the Socialist Party, for the transformation of society by the socialisation of its productive forces.

The part to be played by the Socialist Party is one of adopting every useful means for gaining recruits, by propaganda and organisation; above all to spread far and wide, both in the towns and in the countryside, the idea of the political and economic expropriation of the bourgeoisie. By it the class consciousness of the workers must be awakened, in this way leading them towards their definite emancipation.

In order to bring about the speedy triumph of the socialist revolution, the thinkers of the working class must become familiar with Socialist principles and conclusions.

That is why the Socialist Party ought not to neglect any occasion that arises in order to marshal the workers under the red flag for an attack on bourgeois Society. Under actual present-day conditions the Socialist Party is only, to use an expression of Guesde’s, a kind of drill-sergeant and recruiting officer, and can only act as such, teaching and gaining recruits by every means in its power.

In order to lead up to it, the next social revolution needs a proletariat well taught and organised. To become conscious of its absolute right to every form of social wealth, and to be gathered into one class party; these are the two conditions which a proletariat intent on transforming Society must necessarily fulfil.

It cannot be too often repeated that what keeps the proletariat from its emancipation is the fact of its ignorance. If it could only understand it would free itself. The new form of Society is ready to take shape under its direction and for its benefit. Its consent is the only thing lacking. The daily task of Socialists is therefore to prepare the workers for the historic mission which they have to accomplish.

(Translated for the Socialist Party of Great Britain from Le Socialisme by Fritz)

Blogger's Note:

There's a French language wiki page for Vérecque at the following link. He was part of the Guesdist wing of French Social Democracy pre-1914. 

I'm unsure who 'Fritz' is. My first inclination is to say it's Hans Neumann but I really can't be sure.

Letter: Min or max? (2024)

From the 30th May 2024 issue of the Weekly Worker

Mike Macnair tries to argue that Karl Marx “advocated, wrote and defended the revolutionary minimum programme” (‘Minimal symmetrical errors’ Weekly Worker May 23). Marx certainly had no objection to a socialist workers’ party having a programme of immediate demands, but he wasn’t so illogical as to describe these as “revolutionary”.

A “revolutionary minimum programme” is in fact a contradiction in terms. The “immediate demands” (the term used in the 1880 programme of the French Parti Ouvrier) that constituted the minimum programme of the pre-World War I social democratic parties were all measures to be implemented within capitalism, even if (some of them) would strengthen the hand of the working class in the class struggle. Only the maximum programme can be described as revolutionary.

Mike Macnair argues (not very convincingly, since in practice the emphasis was placed on the social and economic, rather than political, “immediate demands”) that the essence of a minimum programme is a demand for complete - “extreme” - political democracy. He describes this as “revolutionary”, as it makes it easy, even inevitable, for the working class to win political control. But this, of course, presupposes a socialist-minded working class. It is the absence of this, not of “extreme democracy”, that is currently the barrier to socialism - as a society of common ownership and democratic control of the means of living, with production directly to satisfy people’s needs, not for profit.

In any event, it would take as much time and energy to get the working class to organise and vote for “extreme democracy” as it would to get them to organise and vote for socialism.

It is true that some degree of political democracy does make it easier for the working class both to organise for socialism and to wage the trade union struggle, but it doesn’t need to be perfect or “extreme”. In countries like Britain is it really necessary to set aside the revolutionary, maximum programme to demand, for instance, the abolition of the monarchy as a step towards “extreme democracy”?

The limited political democracy that exists today is enough to enable a socialist-minded working class majority to transform universal suffrage - in the words of the maximum programme of the Parti Ouvrier, “from the instrument of deception that it has been until now into an instrument of emancipation” - by using it to win political control and introduce socialism, including full democracy. This should be the “immediate demand” of socialists, not a list of reforms to capitalism, whether attractive or not. It’s what socialists today should be campaigning for, not chasing reforms.

Adam Buick 

Socialist Party of Great Britain

Fatalism and Historic Necessity. A Vindication of the Socialist Position. (1911)

From the April 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Perverted Vision.

The opponents of our method and theory – bourgeois scientists, and Syndicalist or Anarchist doctrinaires – are in accord in urging against Marxism the accusation which men like Guyot, of vulgar political economy, levelled of old against Socialism in general: they say we are guilty of an attack upon the individual, of an attempt upon liberty.

It is not the capitalist system which sacrifices the liberty of the many to the greater liberty of the privileged few; it is we who do so. It is not the regime of capitalist property which makes the “free” will of the immense majority of the population obey the hard law of labour for another; it is Socialism!

From the Frenchman De Molinari to the Prussian Eugene Richter, from the Englishman Herbert Spencer to the Italian Syndicalist Arturo Labriola, from the extreme right of the political horizon to the extreme left of “Socialist” opportunism, we hear vituperation against “the Socialist tyranny”, against “the future slavery”, and, above all, against the “suppression of individual liberty” – of capitalists!

But among our opponent there are, it seems, men of good faith who sincerely imagine that Marxism replaces "liberty" with the "fatalism" of immutable economic laws.

Note, in the first place, that the same accusation of fatalism has been made against all modern philosophers who proclaim the subordination of so-called moral phenomena to natural law. When Hippolyte Taine, the author of L’Intelligence, wrote that vice and virtue are as necessary products of certain conditions “as are vitriol and sugar”, he was stupidly accused of recommending the replacing of the consumption of sugar by that of vitriol. The minds of many moderns are so degraded by centuries of theological and metaphysical education that they take plain statements of fact for approvals or condemnations. They resemble the capricious woman who broke her mirror because it revealed the decline of her beauty.

This accusation of fatalism is somewhat comprehensible, and even excusable, when applied to those theories which subordinate human history to the influence of climate or the geographical environment. The climate, within certain limits, is practically invariable. The sky of Greece and of France has varied little from the most remote times; but how many revolutions have occurred under the same sun!

Man Makes History.

Thomas Buckle has been reproached for his climatic fatalism; but hardly with justice, because the celebration author of The History of Civilisation proved that as men developed they emancipated themselves from the influence of the geographical and climatic factors, and began to dominate nature.

But, I repeat, the geographical interpretation of history may well give rise to a fatalistic tendency. The semi-invariable nature of the geographical factor lends itself easily to this. One may say the same of all historic theories which subordinate history to external nature.

Such is not the case with the Marxian theory. Nothing is more human or more varied than the mode of production. To produce, said Marx in his Capital, man needs a plan, a consciousness of the work to be done. He know what he is doing. He thinks his work. After Vico,  Marx affirmed that history is made by man. Revolutions in the method of production which generate political and social revolutions are due to the great and small “inventions” – that is to say, to the products of human talents and genius.

Therefore Marx has not excluded man from history. He did not consider individuals as mannequins launching “new modes of production”, like modes of another kind are “launched” – that of the harem skirt, for example.

That is not all; it is the “dogmatic”, “sectarian”, and “orthodox” Marxians who have insisted, against Bernstein and his more or less idealistic school, on the necessity of affirming and propagating the “final aim” of Socialism.

Marxists alone are Constant.

It is they, and they alone, who have, in the great crisis of International Socialism (which is far from being terminated) remained unshakeably faithful to the Socialist ideal – without stupidly repeating the word – while opportunists of every order, or even of disorder, have allowed themselves to drift at the mercy of the political events of the day, along with the blind and fatal forces of the system which knows only the inexorable struggle of appetites and interests.

But the dialectical method is the enemy of all that is arbitrary. It does not place history in an aeroplane at the mercy of the winds of “His Majesty, Chance”. The movement of history is nothing like the zig-zag of a drunken man. It is governed by necessities. Humanity is not free to renounce its physical and intellectual needs. As it is not suicidally disposed, it submits, in order to live, to the necessities of production. Production gives rise to and determines the social system. To a given social system there correspond definite ideas and conceptions; religion, morality, philosophy, science.

It requires all the interested blindness, all the brutal selfishness, of the capitalist to say to the worker: You are free to cease to work. Absolute liberty is death.

A society is not transformed by the force of The Word, nor by strokes of will. It is necessary that all the forces of the past and present collaborate therein. Already Saint Simon, the true precursor of Marx, had clearly shown that the elements of the new system accumulate during centuries, and prepare themselves within the framework of ancient systems. according to him, the capitalist class has taken seven or eight centuries to become the dominant force in society.

Evolution Includes Revolution.

Isolated men, or small minorities, may, from time to time, indulge their gentle fantasies. They may dream of transformations in the twinkling of an eye. In the name of the “right of abortion” they may apply the forceps of “direct action” to the body social in order to bring the new society into the world before its time. But society as a whole – an entire class – only gives itself such aims as are in the domain of the realisable and possible. And when the time comes it shrinks from no necessary means. Evolution does not exclude revolution, any more than the gradual transformation of the earth excludes cataclysms. Births occur in blood, and are associated with cries and painful rendering. But only monsters come into the world before the normal hour.

A ship is launched. Does it deprive its captain of liberty to give him a nautical chart, prepared with scientific accuracy, and a compass? Would he be more free if he drifted at the will of the waves? The dialectic method, as used by Marx and Engels, provides us with chart and compass to determine the movement of history. It does not fetter us. It simply shows the way. In helping us toward the desired goal, it emancipates us from blind forces, from the fatality of chance. It is, therefore, an influence of freedom – not of slavery.

Primitive man is the slave of Nature. He is literally terrorised by natural phenomena. He seeks by cruel human sacrifices to obtain a mitigation of his lot. Natural science emancipates him. From being the slave of Nature he becomes master. Modern society is still at the mercy of blind, semi-natural forces. We are, in relation to society, what primitive man was in relation to nature. It is necessary to conquer our liberty. We must emancipate ourselves from the blind social forces which bind and oppress us. Society must become our thing, as the great forces of nature have become. We must become masters of society, just as we have become, more or less, the masters of our natural environment.

Science is Liberty.

But how have we conquered nature? By studying it; by learning its laws and making them serve our ends. It is the same with social laws. We shall only vanquish social oppression when we have discovered the laws of the working of society. Science is liberty. And the dialectical method, which powerfully aids toward that discovery, toward the edification of social science, is the tool of liberty, the instrument of precision of our emancipation.

The dialectical method is therefore quite the contrary of fatalism. In making us cognisant of historical necessities, it makes us able to effectively combat the fatalist decree of capitalist ignorance that there always have been poor, and always will be!

No, replies the dialectical method. Capitalist poverty is an “historical category”, which will disappear with the historical conditions which create and nourish it.

The dialectical method of Socialism is the method of science and of liberty.

[Ch. Rappoport in Le Socialisme. Translated by F. C. Watts.]

Jottings. (1911)

The Jottings Column from the April 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Will Thorne has introduced a Bill in the House for the Nationalisation of the Railways and Canals. What have the tripe shops done amiss ?

* * *

In a leading article describing the history of the Socialist Movement in France, which appeared in the “Labour Leader” (24.2.11), the writer, Mr. J. F. Mills, states:

“To Blanc must be accorded the credit for theoretically bringing Socialism down from the empyrean to the solid earth. The conquest of political power by the masses and the democratic State as the great instrument of social transformation, and the right to work, … all these principles reveal Blanc’s originality, and proclaim his right to be entitled ‘The Father of Modern Social-Democracy,’ or if Marxists dispute his right to the word ‘father,’ then let us say ‘grandfather.’ ”

* * *

As a Socialist, I am not in the least concerned about the principles of Louis Blanc, nor yet his right to the titles claimed for him by the writer quoted—except to suggest that “grandmother” would, perhaps, have been more appropriate. If by “originality” is meant Blanc’s experiment of the national workshops, then it is about on a par with the “originality” of the Labour Party in their schemes of social reform, and so on.

But to attribute to Blanc that which Marx really accomplished, is a piece of unblushing effrontery indeed. To Marx, and Marx alone, is to be attributed the placing of Socialism on a scientific basis. He it was who discovered and established the great law of economic determinism, which may be briefly stated thus : Morals, laws, and political conditions grow out of, and are determined by, economic conditions.

The application of this law spells revolution and the end of wage-slavery. But as the “Labour Leader’s” policy is anti-revolutionary, it must expect the opposition of Socialists.

* * *

The same writer in a further article (10.3.11), in the midst of a tirade against Marxists (whom he refers to as Ishmaelites, Irnpossibilists, etc.), says: “Revolutionary Socialism (Marxism) is becoming merely a catchword . . .” And he remarks further on upon the scanty following of Marx, which following, he alleges, is chiefly confined to the Continent. Yet on the front page of the same issue we find an advertisement of a biography of Marx (published by the people who issue the “Labour Leader”) eulogising him, and in which occurs this passage: “Karl Marx, founder of modern scientific Socialism, under whose banner ten million voters are enrolled.” No wonder the workers are misled !

It might interest our modern Rip Van Winkle to know that not only is Marxism not dead or dying, but that it is, on the contrary, very much alive indeed—though, perhaps, it is not apparent to those suffering from that aggravated form of mental myopia prevalent in the I.L.P.

* * *

Speaking of the forced labour in the Congo, and the necessity for its abolition, Sir Edward Grey said (27.7.07): “If it is to come to an end it is essential that without delay the natives should be put in possession of large tracts of territory, which will enable them to keep themselves. Otherwise they will have no means of livelihood.”

This must have preyed on the mind of Mr. W. H. Lever, for we learn from the Brussels correspondent of the “Standard” that “the Minister for the Colonies has just come to an agreement with Messrs. Lever Bros., Port Sunlight, for the formation of a limited company, with a capital of £1,000,000, for the planting of palm-oil trees, and the establishment of a factory for the manufacture of oil products in the Congo.”

Is Mr. Lever going to do for the poor natives what he has done for the Sunligliters—socialise and Christianise business relations ? Will he extend to them his noble scheme of co-partnership, with its five per cent. certificates and the “feeling of brotherhood and partnership” ? Or (as I strongly suspect) is he going out there in order to still further augment his already bloated income ? If the latter, then he will have an easy thing on, for the cruel treatment of the natives under the Belgian administration will have rendered them easy victims for the exploiting process upon which the success of the scheme will largely depend.

* * *

That Mr. Lever (like William the Little) fondly believes that he is endowed with a divine mission is evident from the following statement made by him in the first number of the “Anti-Socialist” (Feb., 1909) :

“We cannot wisely disregard the very basis on which human nature was founded by a Divine Creator, viz., self-interest. We can only direct self-interest, as its Creator in tended, into beneficent and utilitarian channels, and check and control it from becoming a curse and a clanger to society.”

No one, I am sure, will accuse Mr. Lever of disregarding the “Divine” authority. It has been left to Mr. Lever and his kind to “check and control” it from permeating the brains of the workers. When it does do so, and the workers begin to “check and control” for themselves, it will be a bad look out for the class to which Mr. Lever belongs.

* * *

Mr. J. C. Wedgwood, M.P., has resigned his membership of the Fabian Society because his opinions are no longer in accord with the aims of the society. He has not joined the S.P.G.B.

Tom Sala

50 Years Ago: French Workers Learn by Experiences (1987)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard 

In the meantime the French Labourites have tried a similar experiment, marked by the same infantile hopefulness in the impossible. In Great Britain in 1929 the Labour Government depended on Liberal votes in the House of Commons. In France the Labourites formed a coalition government with the Liberals, under the premiership, of Leon Blum. After running for a year Blum was forced to quit and hand over the premiership to a Liberal, still maintaining the "Popular Front,” though already the workers are sadly disappointed. It is to be hoped that they will learn how little can be done until capitalism has been got rid of.

The Daily Herald (June 22nd, 1937), in an editorial, says that Blum fell because “he did not possess the confidence of the big men of property, of the financiers, and the bankers"; which provokes the thought that if Blum went into office prepared to govern "within the present social regime” (his own words, The Times, May 2nd, 1936), yet supposed he could do so without having the confidence of those who own the present social regime, it is time he began to wake up to realities.

The Times Paris correspondent has shown a remarkably clear appreciation of the role of Labour Government and of the narrow limits within which they can diverge from traditional Liberal and Tory policy. On August 23rd, 1937, The Times published an article from him in which he wrote that Blum’s “Socialist” Minister of Finance

Does not seem to have realised that within the framework of the capitalist system social reform can be paid for only out of the profits of industry, and that if the entrepreneur is frightened out of his wits profits disappear. . . .

Two weeks later (The Times, September 7th, 1937), in another article, he wrote: —

M. Blum now supports the Radicals because he has realised that, short of provoking a dangerous upheaval, the problems of a capitalist system must, if they are to be resolved with capitalist support, be met by capitalist methods. . . .

[From an article in the Socialist Standard October 1937.]

Letter: Puzzled about Mélenchon (2022)

Letter to the Editors from the July 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Socialist Standard,

I am puzzled by the rather a-critical appraisal of Mélenchon and his allies in the last issue. We learn that Mélenchon enjoys ‘support in the working-class suburbs and a growing influence outside the metropolis’. While true in terms of votes expressed, this neglects to mention that the majority of voters, especially working class voters, abstained. It also abstracts away immigrant workers, who can’t vote. And while yes, during the first round of the presidential election. Mélenchon was in the lead in the ‘outer-seas departments and territories’, as they are pudically called in French official jargon, the article omits that Le Pen was in the lead in said territories in the second round.

We also learn of Mélenchon’s ‘vocal anti-racism’. While it is true that, compared with the other major candidates, Mélenchon is a paragon of anti-racism, there are limits to this. For example, one might recall that after the murder of a teacher, Samuel Paty, at the hands of an islamist fundamentalist, Mélenchon decided the best course of action was to attack the ethnicity of the killer, who was Chechen. Truly the anti-racist icon of our times!

More importantly, who cares if a bunch of bourgeois parties have huddled together in the wake of their failure? Since when does the Socialist Standard care about the well-being of reformist politics? This is addressed as the ‘darker side of Mitterrand’s legacy’. Not only does this suppose a lighter side of reformism but it exteriorises the problem as some ghost that can be shaken off. All in all, a shockingly warm embrace! If a French revolutionary paper had glorified Corbyn and his crowd, I doubt the Socialist Standard would have seen it in a good light.

E.M., 

Cardiff

Reply:

I agree with most of the points E. M. makes. The purpose of the article was purely journalistic and descriptive: to indicate the main events, introduce the more important actors on the stage and guess at the possible outcomes of the legislatives. It attempts to describe a complex reality without the usual precautionary ‘only a movement which rejects reformism and aims at the abolition of the capitalist system is worthy of support’, or ‘socialist’ and ‘communist’ in scare quotes and so on. Readers can find that elsewhere in the Socialist Standard. Then again I omitted many other things: the fact that a majority of voters abstain, particularly the working-class. A good number of these, when they do vote, vote for Le Pen. But then again I also omitted to mention that in the group of people who abstain, a good number seem quite happy with their lot. It’s annoying.

As for Mélenchon’s reformism, I fully agree. None of these politicians can make the slightest impact on the overall functioning of the capitalist system. But, to be fair, none of them have made an explicit call for the overthrow of capitalism. I could have mentioned the smaller Trotskyist outfits who seem to be ferociously anti-capitalist. But as we know they condemn reformism and recommend a raft of reforms.

I was, of course, painting with a broad brush. But what seems to have annoyed E.M. is, I suspect, that I mentioned that Mitterrand’s government did introduce reforms of some benefit to working-class voters. Retirement at 60, for example. Why deny this? As E. M. will know, these reforms are now being whittled away by his successors very much in the way predicted in the World Socialist brochure on ‘Why Mitterrand will fail’. I distributed this excellent brochure on the streets of Paris during the 1980s. Understanding reformism, I contend, often means holding these two ideas in one’s head at the same time.

Mélenchon crops up as someone who seems to have understood the electoral inertia implied by Fifth Republic politics: a trap which marginalises popular politics on the left and the right and leaves the way clear for ‘centrists’ like Holland, Macron and others. (The scare quotes again.) Centrism encourages abstaining. So Macron has just said that he will reintroduce his unpopular reform of retirement pensions next year, a way to pump up the vote of Le Pen’s voters and sweep the field on the back of the resulting confusion. But notice also that Mélenchon secretly contacted Macron between the two rounds of the Presidential election – a revelation of the Canard Enchainé – to make sure that the scarecrow mechanism was functioning correctly. This is the darker side of Mitterrand’s legacy I was referring to. It will result in people slaving away to 65. As a consequence people will abstain.

On the other points, it is of course true that ‘immigrants’ in France, including myself, don’t have the vote. This is a state of affairs that Mitterrand promised to change and didn’t. But should I have also mentioned that his government regularised the situation of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants giving them access to employment rights and, in the long term, citizenship? This created an uproar. For my part, I was, of course, talking about ‘immigrants’ who do now have the vote having gone through the two-year marathon of paperwork to get the passport. Wannabe French citizens have an interview in which they have to show an understanding of the secular education system and defend it (imagine that in Ulster). This conveniently brings me to Mélenchon’s comments on the man who killed the teacher as he left his school: Paty. Here there are many things to say. The teacher had his throat slit because he dared to show an image of the ‘Prophet’ (whatever he looks like) in his classroom. In France, where religion and the state are separate, Paty was raising a philosophical point about free-thinking. Bravo! Perhaps Paty’s murderer did not realise these facts because he was a new arrival – a refugee – from a war-torn country. We shall never know. The conventional parties – many of whom lean towards Catholicism – readily used the occasion to stigmatise Muslim ‘immigrants’ and Mélenchon saw the trap. It’s precisely the kind of jiggery-pokery which keeps the ‘centrists’ securely in power and the working-class vote at home.

M. M.

'Le Programme Commun': The General Election this month in France (1973)

From the March 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 27 June last year a programme commun de gouvernement was signed in France between the “Socialist Party” and the “Communist Party”. These two parties, together with some left Radicals (Liberals) who later endorsed the programme, thus enter the French elections this month with a common policy which they promise to implement if elected.

In 1905 the various self-styled Socialist groups in France came together in a “United Socialist Party” under the leadership of Jean Jaurès. Adopting Marxism as its theory this party was the French equivalent of the German Social Democratic Party. In 1920 a majority of the delegates to its conferences at Tours voted to affiliate to the Third International and to become the Communist Party of France. The anti-Bolshevik minority led by Leon Blum split off calling themselves the “Section Française de l'internationale Ouvrière” (SFIO), by which name they were known until June 1971 when they joined with various left radical clubs led by François Mitterrand to become “the Socialist Party”. Mitterrand, a typical bourgeois politician under the Fourth Republic and later joint candidate of the Left against de Gaulle in the 1965 Presidential election, became the leader of this new party.

Support for Reforms
In the 1930’s the SFIO was the largest party in France calling itself socialist, the French Communist Party (PCF) having lost ground as it came more and more under Moscow’s control. During the second world war (but only after the German invasion of Russia in June 1941 of course) the PCF regained this lost ground, and has been the larger party ever since. In fact at every election since the war the PCF has consistently retained the support of about 20 per cent of the electorate.

The new PS still claims to be Marxist in inspiration and it is still possible to find references in its literature to the abolition of the wages system as an eventual, albeit very eventual, aim. In practice, however, its stands for state capitalism to be achieved gradually by a series of social reform measures. Its main theoretical difference with the PCF has been its insistence on the importance of political democracy both as a means of achieving its state capitalist aim and as an essential feature of that society. In other words, it has stood for what might loosely be called “democratic state capitalism" as opposed to the bureaucratic state capitalism on the Russian model favoured by the PCF.

When the Cold War came, while the PCF — naturally — adopted a pro-Moscow attitude, the SFIO was pro-Washington. It supported NATO and the Common Market, took part in the CIA-sponsored split in the CGT, the main trade union centre in France, and denounced the Communists as agents of Russian imperialism. As one of its leaders once put it, cruelly perhaps but accurately: “the CP is not so much on the Left as in the East”. The PCF replied in kind. The SFIO, they said, were right-wing traitors to the working class and agents of American imperialism. A clear case of the pot and the kettle calling each other black.

Own Image Recognized
Now all this is forgiven, at least on the surface. The two parties have got together and drawn up a joint programme. If they win a parliamentary majority, Mitterrand would become the Prime Minister with Communist Ministers in his Cabinet. This is not the first time the two parties have collaborated on the electoral, and the governmental, fields. In 1934 the two parties made an electoral alliance which marked the end of the Comintern’s "social fascist” policy and paved the way for the Popular Front government of 1936 under the SFIO leader Léon Blum. For a couple of years after 1945 there were Communist Ministers, first under de Gaulle and then in coalition with the SFIO and the Christian Democrats. Then in 1947 came the outbreak of the Cold War and the unceremonious dismissal of the Communist Ministers. More recently the two parties agreed to field Mitterrand as the joint candidate of the Left against de Gaulle in 1965. Then in June last year came this agreement on a common government programme. What has really made this possible, it should be noted, has been the thaw during the past decade in relations between American and Russian imperialism. This has allowed the two parties to forget their foreign-policy differences and come together with a joint programme of reforms both of them had long been independently advocating.

For the much-vaunted Common Programme is merely this: a list of promised reforms of capitalism. There is nothing in it that would not be endorsed by the Labour Party in this country, except perhaps that the Labour Party with more recent experience of governing capitalism would be more cautious about promising so much at one time. The list of reforms is familiar: retirement at 60, a 40-hour week, a new Labour Code, a minimum wage, free medical treatment, a tax on increasing land values, 700,000 houses a year, votes at 18, a National Investment Bank, price controls, abolition of capital punishment, re-introduction of proportional representation, no French nuclear weapons or tests, etc, etc, etc. The arms, aerospace, nuclear energy and drugs industries, along with underground resources, are to be nationalised with compensation. So are parts of the computer and chemical industries. And the State will take a share in financing and running certain other industries like steel, petrol, telecommunications and water supply. But, as the programme itself is at pains to point out, “an important private sector” will still survive.

Letting a Tuck In

Now, nationalisation is state capitalism not Socialism, but it is what the PCF falsely says is Socialism. So how do their leaders explain watering down their aims and not fighting on a “socialist” programme? Georges Marchais, its general secretary, has, as our quotes show, [See the bottom of the article.] been quite frank with his followers. The Common Programme, he has told them, is not and is not meant to be a socialist one, even in the false Communist Party meaning of the word.

So, if the implementation of the Common Programme would not establish “socialism” what is it supposed to establish? According to the programme — and this part reflects PCF ideology — it would establish “a genuine political and economic democracy”. So yet another “transitional stage” is being introduced between capitalism and Socialism! Marx and Engels did indeed hold that between the capture of political power by the Socialist working class and the establishment of Socialism there would need to be a political transition period during which the capitalist class was dispossessed. By Socialism and Communism (the two words meant the same to them) they meant a wageless, moneyless, Stateless society. Lenin later inserted a further stage before such a society (for which he used the word Communist only). For him this new stage, “socialism”, would be characterised by the State ownership of the means of production, equal wages, etc. Then he inserted yet another stage, “state capitalism”, where the so-called proletarian state would control private capitalist industry. Now we have yet another stage — “a genuine political and economic democracy”, a reformed capitalism run by a PCF-PS coalition.

Same Old Problems

What does all this nonsense of a moneyless, wageless, Stateless society being reached via “a genuine political and economic democracy”, “state capitalism” and "socialism” mean? Is it not the old gradualist and reformist argument that capitalism can gradually be transformed into Socialism through a series of social reforms passed by a government claiming to represent the working class? Of course it is. The PCF, and its counterparts elsewhere, in fact have long been just as reformist as the Social Democratic and Labour Parties of the world. They too suffer from the illusion that it is possible for a political party to use government power to make capitalism function in the interest of the working class. The sad thing is that in France this illusion is obviously shared by many ordinary workers who are enthusiastically backing the Common Programme and are expecting great things from its implementation.

Will the PCF-PS alliance win a parliamentary majority? This is certainly a possibility, though the electoral system which over-represents the conservative countryside works against them. But if they do win, what then? Assuming that there is no constitutional conflict with President Pompidou, a Gaullist, we would predict that the new reformist government would get off to an enthusiastic start. Some of its more popular social reforms would be implemented. But then, in time, the new government will settle down to the job of governing French capitalism and the enthusiasm will wane as the workers notice no basic difference in their daily lives. The government will come into conflict with groups of workers demanding wage increases. Ministers will begin to appeal to workers not to strike and cause difficulties for “their” government. Lagging exports or balance of payments difficulties or an international monetary crisis or a too-slow rate of growth — the everyday problems of any government of capitalism — will force Ministers to make excuses for not implementing their reform programme as quickly as they would have liked. Workers will be urged to work harder and increase productivity. The familiar pattern workers in Britain experienced under the last Labour government. For many French workers, however, this will be something new since they haven’t been under a full “Labour government” since just after the war.

Needless to say the various Trotskyist groups in France (besides fielding their own candidates in the First Ballot) are saying: “Vote for the Common Programme” just as they say “Vote Labour" here. Our advice would be different. The best thing workers in France can do in these elections is to go to the polling booths and write the words "Socialisme Mondiale” across their ballot papers.

Adam Buick

Georges Marchais quotes:

  “Does this mean installing communism or even socialism? Evidently not. A socialist society has for its basis the collective ownership of the principal means of production and exchange, and the exercise of power by the working class in alliance with other segments of the toiling population. It suffices to look at the common programme to appreciate that its achievement would not lead to the installation of such a regime in France”. Georges Marchais, speech to the national congress of the French Communist Party on 13 December, reported in The Times, 14 December 1972.

  “Obviously by applying this programme we shall not establish communism, or even socialism, in France. But we can introduce democratic and anti-monopolistic reforms of unprecedented scope. And we think that this new democracy will be a step forward, a form of transition towards socialism, which is suited to the conditions of France today”. Georges Marchais, General Secretary of the French Communist Party, in an interview with The Times, 17 November 1972.

Farce or Tragedy? (1906)

From the May 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1901 at the French Trade Union Congress, the delegates, by an overwhelming majority, decided to inaugurate a general 8 hours strike on the First of May, 1906. At the time of writing this the period is near at hand when the unions will be expected to put to the test this anarchistic idea of which they are enamoured. The wretched betrayal of the workers by Millerand and the compromising policy that was pursued by the bloc in the Chamber had its effect by throwing the militant proletariat into a fierce anti-parliamentary campaign. One can only admire the spirit of revolt which animates these wage workers who are tired of the dilettante performances of their “Socialist” reformers ; still, in spite of, or perhaps because of, that admiration, we must not overlook the means by which, they are going to try and get the 8 hours’ day.

The General Strike as such, without being backed up by a political force (and an armed force at that), has never been successful. And although some may point to Russia as a refutation of this position, the fact is that even there it has simply been used in conjunction with an armed political movement. In Italy recently the general strike did not last long, and notwithstanding that on the railways the “passive resistance” of the employees, severely hindered the work of the railroads, it did not prevent them being used. After all, our comrades of the working class of France at this juncture only contemplate a general strike for an 8 hours day, and afterwards, presumably, whether won or not, they go back to work for their masters just as before. An 8 hours day, if attained, does not necessarily mean any permanent reduction of the unemployed. Machinery is used when it is cheaper than human labour, and a restriction of the hours of labour will only mean an impetus to the introduction of machinery, and a greater intensity of labour for those at work, with a quicker wearing out of the wage slaves.

An 8 hours day is not high enough goal for the workers to try to gain, by pitting their empty stomachs and pockets against the full ones of their masters. To enter into a prolonged struggle in this manner, and for such, an object, is somewhat foolish. They are going to strike by walking away from the workshops and factories and leaving them as the full and undisputed property of their masters to be kept by them till the workers return to be still farther exploited.

The French workers have not a sufficiently extensive economic and political organisation at present for a general strike to be a success. They will have to organise as a class on the political as well as on the economic field. There must be no division, no walling-off of skilled and unskilled, employed and unemployed, no splitting up of the workers in one industry into a number of antagonistic autonomous units, but their organisation as a whole in one body. When the workers are organised as a class, understanding what the aim of a militant body of workers should be (viz., the overthrow of the capitalist system of the private ownership in the means and instruments of producing and distributing the necessaries of life), they will not attempt a general strike for an eight hour day, but working intelligently with, and as part of, a revolutionary class party, they will use their organisation, not to the exclusion of their members from the workshops and factories, but to the end that the workers may run them in their co-operative capacity as the property of the working class. It will not be a general strike but a general lock-out of the master class.

The economic arm alone is not sufficient, it needs the political arm to break down the ramparts capitalism has erected in its defence. The political is not sufficient unless it has the economic to lay the foundation of the co-operative commonwealth. As the French workers are not organised in this wise, as the strike contemplated is not with the active co-operation of a revolutionary political force, and as the workers have evidently not yet grasped their mission, things point to it being a farce. A farce it will be unless the armed forces of the government are brought down on the strikers and convert a farce into a tragedy.

E. J. B. Allen

50 Years Ago: Imported nonsense (1956)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

The sapient gentleman whom the Daily News is pleased to claim as its own special correspondent in Paris, in referring to the appointments of Viviani and Briand to the Clemenceau Cabinet says: “The Socialist ideal is, of course, the substitution of “collective" exploitation for “capitalistic" exploitation. The Daily News gentleman had better try again. "The Socialist ideal is, of course"—nothing of the kind. It is the substitution of collective ownership and control for capitalistic ownership and control with the consequent extinction of exploitation altogether. The Daily News gent has been studying the work of those Socialists who unfortunately afflict the movement in France as in England. He has correctly stated their ideal. They are for State capitalism or collective exploitation. We are not concerned with State capitalism. We are concerned with Socialism. Socialism is the negation of capitalism. Consequently State capitalism cannot be the ideal of any Socialist. Ergo those who preach State capitalism or collective exploitation are not Socialists. The Daily News gent has been studying in the wrong school .

(From the Socialist Standard, December 1906).

Karl Marx’s Declaration of Principles (1980)

From the May 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

A hundred years ago this month four men met in the study of Marx’s house in North London: Marx himself, Engels, Paul Lafargue (who was then still living in London) and Jules Guesde, who had come over specially from France.

Guesde (pronounced “Ged”) had played a key role in persuading a conference of French political and trade union organisations in Marseilles in October 1879 to adopt  “the collective ownership of the soil, sub-soil, instruments of production, raw materials” as the aim “the Federation of the Party of Socialist Workers in France”. He was now in London to get Marx’s help in drawing up a declaration of principles for this new party.

Marx dictated to Lafargue, who acted as secretary of the meeting, the following preamble to a list of immediate demands which had been prepared by Guesde for the elections of 1881. We have translated it ourselves from the version which was published on the front page of L’Egalité of 30 June 1880 under the heading “Electoral Programme of the Socialist Workers”:

Considering, 

That the emancipation of the productive class is that of all human beings without distinction of sex or race; 

That the producers can be free only insofar as they are in possession of the means of production; 

That there are only two forms under which the means of production can belong to them:

 1. The individual form which has never existed generally and which is being more and more eliminated by the progress of industry;

2. The collective form whose material and intellectual elements are being formed by the very development of capitalist society; 

Considering, 

That this collective appropriation can only be the outcome of the revolutionary action of the productive class—or proletariat—organised in a separate political party; 

That such organisation must be pursued by all the means which the proletariat has at its disposal, including universal suffrage, thus transformed from the instrument of trickery which it has been up till now into an instrument of emancipation; 

The French socialist workers, in setting as the aim of their efforts in the economic field the return to the collectivity of all the means of production, have decided, as a means of organisation and struggle, to enter the elections with the following minimum programme.[1]

Guesde’s election programme which followed was a list of reforms such as full freedom of the press, assembly and organisation; separation of the Church and State; an eight-hour working day; a legal minimum wage and workmen’s compensation. Marx was not involved in drawing up this programme and was in fact critical of certain parts of it, especially the demand for a legal minimum wage, though he did not contest the desirability of the party adding such a programme of reforms to its socialist objective (one of the points on which we say he was in error).

It is quite clear that this excellent statement of basic socialist principles drawn up by Marx must have been one of the documents before those who drafted our Object and Declaration of Principles in 1904. Its first clause is incorporated, almost word for word, in our Clause 4 and the phrase “instrument of emancipation” appears in our Clause 6 as “agent of emancipation”. According to Bracke, who was a close collaborator of Guesde before the first World War, the words “thus transformed from the instrument of trickery which it has been up till now into an instrument of emancipation” were suggested by Guesde (see his foreword to Programmes Socialistes de Gotha, Erfurt, Le Havre, Spartacus, Paris, 1947). Presumably his source for saying this would have been Guesde (who died in 1922), though Guesde himself is not on record as making this claim. But in any event, whoever suggested the phrase, it was accepted and endorsed by Marx and became part of the terminology of Marxian socialism inherited by the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

All the currently available French versions of this preamble differ from the version published in L’Egalité (and various other French journals) in June 1880. One of these differences is important and has long been a source of embarrassment to us: the inclusion after “means of production” in the second clause of “(land, factories, ships, banks, credit, etc)”. The Pelican translation does not contain this but Aaron Noland, in his The Founding or the French Socialist Party (p.7), quotes this phrase as if it had been in the draft dictated by Marx.

Now, if Marx really had included this phrase, it would have detracted from the value of the document as a very good statement of socialist principles as well as calling into question his own theoretical consistency. For how can there be common ownership of “banks” and “credit” when, as buying and selling institutions, these are features only of a society where private property exists? When there is common ownership of the means of production there will be no money, no buying and selling and hence no banks or other financial institutions, as Marx made quite clear in other of his writings.[2] Besides, banks and other financial institutions are not “means of production” and Marx was always careful about the definition of economic terms.

There were thus two prima facie reasons for doubting that Marx had had a hand in including this phrase. Having looked up the issue of L’Egalité of 30 June 1880 we are now in a position to confirm that it was not inserted by Marx, since the phrase is nowhere to be found in the version published there. All the current French versions are therefore wrong, their publishers not having taken the elementary step of going back to the original source. We can only speculate why, but an important factor must have been that, being either Social Democrats or “Communists”, they saw no contradiction in Marx seeming to suggest that banks and credit would continue to exist in socialism.

Where, then, did this addition come from and who inserted it? In July 1880 the preamble and election programme were adopted by the Centre region (which included Paris) of the French party. The version they adopted, as published in L’Egalité of 28 July, does not contain this phrase nor, more importantly, does the version adopted by the party as a whole at its national congress held in Le Havre in November (Le Proletaire No.114, 4 December 1880).

The offending phrase first appears, together with a couple of other changes, in a version adopted at a Congress held in Roanne in September and October 1882 (see L’Egalité, 8 October 1882). The mystery is now near to solution, since this was the congress at which Guesde and his supporters, who had been outvoted on the issue of maintaining a single national election programme, broke away from the Federation of the Party of Socialist Workers and set up the Parti Ouvrier Francais (French Workers’ Party).

Because of its unwieldy name the Federation had been known popularly as the “parti ouvrier” but this was not its official title. It is thus inaccurate to describe, as has become customary, this document as the preamble or introduction to the programme of “the French Workers’ Party”. Marx did not draft it for this party since it did not exist as such in 1880 but for its predecessor, the Federation of the Party of Socialist Workers in France, to give it its full title. Naturally, as tends to happen when there are splits, the two organisations resulting from the 1882 split both claimed to be the inheritors of the original party and traced their origin back to it. In addition, Guesde, Lafargue and the others in the POF hoped to derive prestige from the fact that their declaration of principles had been drafted by Marx.

And in fact, from 1882 onwards, the POF was the recognised “Marxist” organisation in France and, like the Social Democratic Federation in Britain (formed about the same time), did carry out some useful work in introducing and spreading socialist ideas in France before finally getting bogged down in reformism. Consider, for instance, the following passage by Guesde, written in 1879, in an article “The Social Problem and its Solution” which was translated into English and published in the Socialist Standard  in January and February 1905:

Commercial production of exchange values with an end to realising profit will disappear, and be replaced by the cooperative production of use values for consumption with a view to satisfying social wants.

Alteration to Marx's draft
In view of this recognition that there would be no buying and selling in socialism, it is strange that Guesde and Lafargue should have taken it upon themselves to “complete” Marx’s draft in such a way as to suggest that banks and credit would exist in socialism. In doing so, they distorted Marx’s meaning and blurred the distinction between state capitalism and socialism, the beginning of a process which led to the Social Democratic parties of Europe, in which Marx and particularly Engels had placed such hopes, coming to work in practice for state capitalism rather than socialism.

Guesde and Lafargue had no right to change Marx’s draft and then claim that it had been dictated by him in the changed form in which they propagated it. A mark of their success—and damage—here  is the fact that most people in France who are aware of the document think that Marx accepted the contradiction in the POF version, that is, the “common ownership of banks”. It would be nice if Marx’s famous remark “One thing is certain, I’m not a Marxist” (Engels’ letter to Bernstein, 3 November 1882) had been occasioned by this change to his 1880 draft, but there is no evidence at all for this conclusion! It was, however, made in connection with the Guesdists.

We shouldn’t be too hard on the Guesdists though, since they had some influence on the early thinking of the SPGB. Marx’s preamble, for instance, would only have been known to our founder members in the form of the “considérants” to the programme of the Guesdist Party. The POF, after becoming “the Socialist Party of France” in 1901, joined the united Social Democratic party in France set up in 1905 under the auspices of the Second International. The Guesdists continued to exist as a group with their own publication Le Socialisme. The early Socialist Standards contain a number of articles translated from this journal. For instance, an article by Guesde on “Legality and Revolution” (February 1908), one by Lafargue on “The Law of Value and the Dearness of Commodities” (May 1908), two articles by Charles Rappoport, author of a number of books and later a leading theorist of the French “Communist” Party (September 1908 and April 1911) and a short, and not very consequential, article by the Bracke we have already mentioned (January 1910). There were others too. In addition, our traditional definition of the State as “the public power of coercion” comes from the early Guesdist (later an open reformist and top French diplomat) Gabriel Deville.

So, when our supporters in France are numerous enough, the declaration of principles of the party they will form will not be something totally alien to the French working class political tradition, but will include passages originally drafted by Marx for a French workers organisation.

Adam Buick

[1]  An English translation also appears in The First International and After, in the Pelican Marx Library, but contains a mistake, probably because it was re-translated from the German and not directly from the French. Instead of "That such consideration must be . . . " it has "That this collective appropriation must be . . ."

[2]  "As soon as the means of production cease being transformed into capital (which also includes the abolition of private property in land), credit as such no longer has any meaning" (Capital, Vol III, Moscow, p. 594).

Imported Nonsense (1906)

From the December 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

The sapient gentleman whom the Daily News is pleased to claim as its own special correspondent in Paris, in referring to the appointments of Viviani and Briand to the Clemenceau Cabinet says: "The Socialist ideal is, of course, the substitution of "collective" exploitation for "capitalistic" exploitation. The Daily News gentleman had better try again. “The Socialist ideal is of course" nothing of the kind. It is the substitution of collective ownership and control for capitalistic ownership and control with the consequent extinction of exploitation altogether. The Daily News gent has been studying the work of those Socialists who unfortunately afflict the movement in France as in England. He has correctly stated their ideal. They are for State capitalism or collective exploitation. We are not concerned with State capitalism. We are concerned with Socialism. Socialism is the negation of capitalism. Consequently State capitalism cannot be the ideal of any Socialist. Ergo those who preach State capitalism or collective exploitation are not Socialists. The Daily News gent has been studying in the wrong school.

Revolution in France (1969)

Book Review from the January 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marxism in Modern France by George Lichtheim. Columbia UP 20s.

France has provided many of the names well-known in the social democratic and anarchist movements: Saint-Simon. Proudhoun, Blanqui, Guesde, Jaurès, Sorel. Before the first world war the antics of reformists like Jaurès made the workers suspicious of parliamentary politics, a suspicion which expressed itself as Syndicalism, the view that the workers could only project their interests by direct action and the general strike leading to a regime of industrial unions.

After the war the bulk of the syndicalist workers backed the newly-formed Communist Party as they believed that Russia really was a soviet union and, of course, Leninism, with its conspiratorial vanguards and armed uprisings, fitted in well with the views of Blanqui. Today the Communist Party is a mass party, essentially reformist, but with a pseudo-revolutionary ideology. Its militants, however, are still influenced by syndicalism; hence their support for occupying the factories in 1968 as well as 1936.

Marx held that Socialism would be the outcome of the class struggle between the workers and the capitalists which would end with the workers winning political power and using it to convert the means of production into the common property of society as a whole. This view was inherited, in grossly distorted forms, by the Communists (PCF) and the Social Democrats (SFIO)who both saw themselves as expressions of the workers’ class struggle for Socialism.

In recent years they have had to face a crisis of theory: workers no longer seem interested in appeals to class and talk of revolution. Some have concluded that industrial workers are now played out as a revolutionary force and that Marx was wrong. The SFIO, characteristically, turned instead to the technocrats interested in extending state control, while the PCF always held in effect that the vanguard party, rather than the workers, would establish “socialism” (read “state capitalism”).

Lichtheim’s book, republished recently as a paperback, discusses both these views and those of their critics in what is a useful guide to French political thought.

Adam Buick