Paul Lafargue and the Flowering of French Socialism, 1882–1911 Paul Lafargue and the Flowering of French Socialism 1882–1911 Leslie Derfler Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 1998 Copyright © 1998 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Derfler, Leslie. Paul Lafargue and the flowering of French socialism, 1882–1911 / Leslie Derfler. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-674-65912-0 1. Lafargue, Paul, 1842–1911. 2. Socialists—France—Biography. 3. Political activists—France. 4. Socialism—France—History. I. Title. HX264.7.L34D46 1998 335′.0092—dc21 [B] 97-42404 For Elliot and Helene Contents List of Illustrations ix Preface xi Introduction 1 1 Faults Enough and to Spare 4 2 Defending the Faith 17 3 Beyond All Possible Bounds 30 4 The Parisians Have Gone Mad 48 5 That Damned Congress 69 6 Fusillade at Fourmies 87 7 A Dangerous Dream 103 8 Peasants and Patriots 124 9 Beaten But Not Stoned 139 10 Let Us Storm the Forts 153 11 The Myth That Seems Absurd 169 12 Pleasantries or Naïvetés 182 13 Absurd and Incredible Conduct 196 14 Party of Opposition 216 15 Socialism and the Intellectuals 230 16 A Force Retarding Human Progress 245 viii Contents 17 The Unperceived Force 259 18 One Reform on Top of Another 270 19 Simply . Logical 288 Afterword 301 Notes 311 Index 365 Illustrations (following page 16) Karl Marx in 1882, the year before his death (from L. F. Ilyichov and others, Frederick Engels, A Biography. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1974). Paul Lafargue’s sister-in-law, Jenny, and her husband, Charles Longuet (Karl Marx Haus, Trier). Eleanor Marx-Aveling, Karl Marx’s youngest daughter (from Heinrich Gemkow and others, Frederick Engels, A Biography. Berlin: Dietz-Verlag, 1970). Edward Aveling, Eleanor Marx’s common-law husband, who drove her to suicide (from Heinrich Gemkow and others, Frederick Engels, A Biography. Berlin: Dietz-Verlag, 1970). Jules Guesde, Paul Lafargue’s longtime associate and sometime adversary (from L. F. Ilyichov and others, Frederick Engels, A Biography. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1974). Friedrich Engels, the great benefactor and revered friend of the Lafargues, in 1890 (from Reminiscences of Marx and Engels. Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d.). Karl Kautsky, whose newpaper first published many of Lafargue’s articles (from Heinrich Gemkow and others, Frederick Engels, A Biography. Berlin: Dietz-Verlag, 1970). Eduard Bernstein, whose attempts to revise Marxist thought outraged the Lafargues (from Heinrich Gemkow and others, Frederick Engels, A Biography. Berlin: Dietz-Verlag, 1970). Jean Jaurès, for Lafargue, “that devil of a man” (from Louis Lévy, Vieilles Histoires socialistes. Paris: Marcel Rivière, 1933). Paul Lafargue, in advanced years (from L. F. Ilyichov and others, Frederick Engels, A Biography. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1974). Preface Several years ago I published a book on “the socialist years” of Alex- andre Millerand. Millerand was a prominent and controversial figure in French—and European—socialism before he went on to become minister of war, prime minister, and ultraconservative president of the republic. As a socialist, he defended the “reformist” viewpoint, which argues that circumstances may so alter as to make revolution unneces- sary and works for change within existing democratic frameworks. His participation in a nonsocialist government (1899–1902) lay bare the conflict between orthodox, or revolutionary, Marxism and grow- ing social democracy. Millerand’s most outspoken opponent was Paul Lafargue. The dis- ciple and son-in-law of Karl Marx, Lafargue, together with Jules Guesde, founded the first French Marxist party, the Workers Party (Parti Ouvrier Français, or POF) in 1882. He served as the chief theo- retician and propagandist for Marxism in France during the three decades that followed, and he was the first Marxist to sit in the French legislature. His opposition to “Millerandism” was relentless, and aware of his fascinating origins and close ties to Marx and Engels, I eventually turned to his life story. I published the results of my investi- gation in a book that carried the account to the creation of the Parti Ouvrier and was titled Paul Lafargue and the Founding of French Marxism. The present volume—and I’m grateful to the reviewers of the first who requested it—can be read independently. It begins at this point and ends with the dramatic deaths of Paul Lafargue and his wife in 1911. It is a biography and not a history of French socialism or of the French socialist party. Nevertheless, reading about Lafargue can tell us much about both. During these years, French socialism—and the Marxist party within it—“flowered” and became a significant po- litical force. Whereas the earlier book placed emphasis on family iden- tity, the present volume explores Lafargue’s political strategies, spe- xii Preface cifically his break with Guesde in the Boulanger and Dreyfus episodes and over the question of socialist-syndicalist relations. A good deal of light is shed on the history of the unified party in the period between its emergence in 1905 and the outbreak of war in 1914, a period often glossed over in the history of French socialism. I have also tried to describe Lafargue’s pioneering efforts to apply Marxist methods of analysis to questions of anthropology, esthetics, and literary criticism. He was perhaps the first exponent of “cultural politics” and sought to confront the indirect forms of political dominance—over the schools, the media, and the family—and overturn a social order in which power was not only centralized and coercive but diffused and consen- sual. Consequently, Lafargue is important both as political activist and theorist. Emphasis, too, is put on the Marxists within the larger socialist and labor movements, particularly on their political and ideological con- tribution to the maintenance of a Marxist presence within these move- ments. I will describe and assess the Marxist formulation, and the importance of Lafargue’s part in that formulation, of such strategies as the promotion of a Second Workingmen’s International Association (1889); the pursuit of reform within the framework of the existent state but opposition to any socialist participation in nonsocialist gov- ernments (1893–1899); and the subordination of trade unionism (syn- dicalism) to political action (1892–1914), which led to the alienation of organized labor from the socialist party. Consequently, because it provides the context within which Lafargue worked, there is much here about “the flowering of French socialism.” Even so, I have tried to stick closely to Lafargue and to the issues with which he was most concerned, to his successes, and to his failures: for example, his inabil- ity to perform effectively in the Chamber of Deputies, his ultimate recognition of the legitimate claim by labor to play an independent role, and his support for the newly unified socialist party while at- tempting to keep it on a revolutionary course. An impassioned, violent polemicist, Lafargue worked to influence the development of the Workers Party: until about 1889, a modest messianic sect, reaching its apogee in the 1890s, when its ideology and revolutionary vocabulary softened and its internationalism gave way to parliamentarianism and patriotism, only to return in the first dec- ade of the new century to a militant posture and to embrace a reduc- tionist simplistic schema. In Lafargue’s politics, therefore, we are able Preface xiii to trace the options open to the Parti Ouvrier as well as its develop- ment during a critical period of transition. Despite the crucial part they played in the social and political changes of the past century, the first French Marxists are not widely known and even less widely appreciated, particularly in the English- speaking world.1 This is especially true of their theoretical accomplish- ments. There are few adequate biographies, perhaps because many French historians long regarded this form of analysis as less than es- sential. They instead limited themselves to anthologies and populari- zations of important party chiefs. Indeed, numerous writers, including those on the left, above all the disciples and admirers of Georges Sorel, have caricatured these early Marxists and particularly Lafargue: they have seen them as bringing to France not Marxism but merely distor- tions of it, and have regarded only the work of Labriola, Sorel, and Croce as able to repair the damage.2 The Marxists never won the allegiance of more than a minority of French workers, largely because Marxist party chiefs preferred political to economic combat. Because there were so few theorists (most socialist party leaders could not read German, and hence most of Marx’s writings, not yet translated, re- mained unknown to them), left-wing historians explain the failings of the first converts in terms of their theoretical ignorance. These his- torians lay stress on their incompetence in applying Marxist methods to the study of specific realities, and account for their inability to use dialectical reasoning and statistical analysis by pointing to their larger failure to have properly assimilated Marxist thought. While claim- ing scientific accuracy, late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Marxists instead produced the dogma that nourished revisions and allowed questions to be posed in contradictory terms, such as “revolu- tion and reform,” and “patriotism and internationalism.” With regard to the challenges they faced—reformism, revolutionary syndicalism, and the threat of war—their inadequate grasp of Marxist methodol- ogy and consequent intractability accounted for their impotence in meeting these challenges successfully.3 Other, more politically moderate writers, displaying a reformist standpoint, have also condemned the legacy left by the early Marxists. While party leader Jean Jaurès held sufficient prestige to prevent the total disappearance of reformist alternatives following the unification of the diverse socialist groups in 1905, after World War I what might be called Marxist leadership prevailed.