Anti-Fascism in France's General Confederation of Labor Between
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Wesleyan University The Honors College From Schism to Unity: Anti-Fascism in France’s General Confederation of Labor between 1922 and 1935 by Alec Shea Class of 2018 A thesis submitted to the faculty of Wesleyan University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors from the College of Social Studies Middletown, Connecticut April, 2018 Contents Abbreviations: ............................................................................................................... 2 Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................... 3 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 4 Sources and Translations ........................................................................................... 8 Existing Literature: Historical Perspectives on the Interwar CGT ......................... 11 1. Syndical Division and the Alignment of the New CGT ......................................... 14 Reform, Revolution and War: Syndical Politics Before The First World War ....... 15 The Organizational Road to Division ...................................................................... 25 The 1923 Congress: Anti-Communism, Centralized Propaganda and Confederal Identity .................................................................................................................... 36 2. First Impressions, Developing Confederal Anti-Fascism in the 1920’s ................. 45 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 45 Building Confederal Identity, Historical Perspectives ............................................ 48 Italy and Internationalism, the First Mentions of Fascism ...................................... 52 Observing and Organizing Against Italian Fascism ................................................ 61 The Domestic Far-Right: Opposing Fascism and Communism .............................. 69 Confederal Anti-Fascism on the Global Stage ........................................................ 79 3. From Economic Crisis to Popular Front: Anti-Fascism as a Confederal Identity .. 92 The Early 1930’s: Economic Crisis, the Plan, and the New Leagues ..................... 93 Before February 1934: Economic Crisis, Germany and the Leagues ................... 102 The CGT in the February Crisis ............................................................................ 116 Anti-Fascism and Reunification: Embracing Unified Action in 1935 .................. 133 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 138 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 142 Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 146 1 Abbreviations: CA - Administrative Comission CCN - National Confederal Committee CGT – General Confederation of Labor CGTU - Unified General Confederation of Labor ILO – International Labor Organization IFTU- International Federation of Trade Unions ISR - Internationale Syndicale Rouge, also called the Red International of Labor Unions PCF - French Communist Party SFIO - French Section of the Workers International, (Section Française de l’International Ouvriere) the French Socialist Party 2 Acknowledgements This thesis would not have been possible without the assistance of Professor Nathanael Greene. Indeed, it was Professor Greene’s course on fascism that first introduced me to the world of political affiliations in interwar France. In his capacity as my thesis adviser, his input has been incredibly valuable. His wealth of knowledge of both my topic and the related literature made him able to provide the best advice and criticism that I could imagine. Of my other instructors, several stand out as particular influences on this thesis. Wendy Rayack, who introduced me to college-level writing and helped me learn how to understand complex and subtle arguments in texts. Professor Victoria Smolkin, across two courses in the College of Social Studies, taught me the essentials of formulating historical arguments. Professor Erik Grimmer-Solem’s historiography course effectively helped me understand the way theories underlying history influence the product of research and criticism. I would also like to thank the Davenport Committee. Its generous funding permitted me to conduct primary source research that provided me not only with material important to this project, but also with experience in archival research that inspired me to continue to study history after I graduate. My research would have been impossible without the assistance of people working in the archives I visited, particularly Auréline Mazet at the CGT’s Institut d’Histoire Sociale who oriented me to the Confederation’s archives and introduced me to many of the sources I employ in this thesis. Beyond that academic help, I owe my ability to complete this thesis to my family, particularly my parents, to whom I owe any success I have been able to earn. 3 Introduction The C.G.T (Confederation General du Travail), France’s largest national trade- union organization, remains a powerful and present force in French society. Throughout its long history, it has been variously characterized as a dangerous group of revolutionary anarchists, an anti-Communist reactionary group and an extension of France’s Communist Party. At different points, each of these characterizations has been a fair description of the Confederation’s role and outlook. The CGT’s politically tumultuous history has made it a difficult subject in historical examinations. It has played profoundly different roles and fostered wildly different political and social identities during the various period of its history. This thesis looks at the CGT’s outlook towards one issue, the rise of fascism, during a specific period of the organization’s history, the years between the division of the Confederation in 1922 between supporters and opponents of Communism and its decision to reunify in 1935. This account aims to be as comprehensive as possible, but certainly does not exhaust the topic. In addition to the simple observation of change over time, I hope that this thesis sheds some light on alternate ways that the history of the CGT, and a given period of French history, can be understood. Because it is a labor organization, it can be tempting to focus on the Confederation mainly through the workplace struggles of its affiliated workers. Similarly, the broad importance and presence of electoral politics in interwar French life can make electoral, or at least party-political, organizations seem like the most important associational or political subjects in the study of the period. I believe that the CGT cannot be fit cleanly into either category. Interwar politics provided the CGT with deep political relevance and presence, but ideological and organizational limits made 4 direct electoral or industrial action a more difficult weapon to wield. In light of these changed circumstances, the Confederation outlined for itself a new way of existing. It dropped the radicalism of the general strike and the hope for a violent revolution in favor of a willingness to defend the political form of the French Republic and a belief that its interests could be best protected through participation in non-electoral governmental bodies and boards. That new form of political ideology was unique to the interwar period, and has only rarely been thoroughly considered by historians. That the Confederation’s new vision of its role with regard to electoral politics and the state was a profound transformation of its goals and ends is a historiographical claim that undergirds my investigation of the specific area that this thesis explores, the CGT’s attitude towards the emergence of fascism as an international and French phenomenon. The CGT, during the inter-war period was not, as some have portrayed it, a continuation of its pre-war predecessor hobbled by numerical obstacles. Nor was it, as some partisan accounts, like the official history of the CGT written in the 1960’s, would have it, a mere footnote on the way towards the organization that emerged after the end of the Second World War. The political nature of the interwar CGT cannot be treated as a footnote in any way if one wishes to understand either the history of French labor or French politics. The political tradition of the interwar CGT has connections to vital questions in French history, and indeed in society at large, like the widespread nature of collaboration during the German occupation, the development of ideological justifications for colonialism and the political realities of postwar France. The CGT’s structure and ideology were vitally linked symptoms of a 5 particular historical period, but they have had impacts that extend well beyond it. This thesis aims to define how the new kind of organization that was born after the First World War understood the emergence and development of fascism. The CGT never sympathized with Fascism, whether it was Italian, German or French, but the specific politics of the Confederation’s opposition expose both the unique structure and purpose of the interwar CGT as well as its specific approach to a perceived threat of fascism in France. In general,