Marxism in Modern France

MARXISM IN MODERN FRANCE GEORGE LICHTHEIM Marxism in Modern France Marxism in Modern France by George Lichtheim Columbia University Press New York and London 1966 George Lichtheim was Visiting Professor of Modern European History at Stanford University in 1965-66. While completing work on this study he was a Research Associate at the Research Institute on Communist Affairs of Columbia University. Mr. Lichtheim has written two other books, Marxism: An Historical and Critical Study (1961), and The New Europe (1963). Copyright© 1966 Columbia University Press Library of Congress Catalo� Card Number: 66-14788 Munufaclured in the Umted States of America For S. S. The Research Institute on Communist Affairs Marxism in Modern France appears in a series of studies sponsored by the Research Institute on Communist Affairs of Columbia Uni versity. The Institute promotes studies on international Communism and on various aspects of Marxist theory and practice. While the Institute does not assume responsibility for the views of the authors, it feels that these studies contribute to a better understanding of the role of Communism in the world today. Preface The "end of ideology," so often proclaimed as a fact by contemporary writers, has never in practice signified anything but the end of socialist ideology. In the language of political analysis, as conducted under the conditions of advanced industrial society in the Western world, the term "ideology" denotes any critique transcending the official bound aries of those mental disciplines that have themselves grown up in response to the urgent practical and intellectual requirements of the new postbourgeois industrial order. The labor movement, as the tra ditional carrier of doctrines regarded as subversive by those in control, falls under the twofold suspicion of instinctive hostility to the status quo and of addiction to political myths stemming from the nineteenth century. In this perspective, Socialism and Syndicalism appear not as rational reactions to the social order of industrial capitalism, but as ideological survivals, due to be replaced by a pragmatic faith in piece meal progress. As for Marxism, its latter-day association with the Russian Revolution and the Communist movement is taken as proof of its inherent irrelevance to the analysis of Western society. From the voluminous literature devoted to this topic one would hardly infer the existence of a Marxist tradition centered on Western Europe and quite indifferent to the issues later brought into prominence by the East European turmoil after the First World War. It is a matter for regret that in harking back to the roots of the socialist faith in contemporary France one should be obliged to take viii Preface account simultaneously of subsidiary topics stirred up by the political tension between East and West. The necessity of doing so arises from a political phenomenon peculiar in Western Europe to only two coun tries, France and Italy: the existence of a Communist mass movement. As will be shown in the following pages, the rise of this movement on Western European soil after 1914 was a response to certain structural weaknesses (now largely overcome) in a part of Western Europe which had not been fully industrialized, and where democracy had come to birth in the nineteenth century under conditions of open class war between bourgeoisie and proletariat. West European Communism the latter term denoting a theory and practice stemming from the Russian Revolution and the rise of Soviet totalitarianism-was always anachronistic in relation to the real movement of contemporary society, but in France (and for different reasons in Italy) it was able to exploit the failures and weaknesses of liberal democracy, and to become for a time the main outlet for working-class hostility to the established order. In so doing, the Communist party inevitably fell heir to the theoretical and practical problems which had already con fronted its Socialist and Syndicalist precursors and rivals: notably the problem of fashioning a mass movement held together by faith in the advent of a "total" revolution which in the end failed to materialize. The consequent dissensions and debates are analyzed in the follow ing pages. The analysis proceeds from a theoretical starting point shared with those revisionist Socialists, in France and elsewhere, for whom the critique of modern industrial society is to be distinguished from the dissection of the defunct market society of liberal capitalism. The latter having ceased to exist, at any rate in Western Europe, classi cal liberalism and classical Marxism have both come to wear a some what old-fashioned look. A fortiori it is scarcely possible at the present day to take seriously the claims made for the practical relevance, in a country like France, of Marxism-Leninism. There are signs that this fact is beginning to be perceived even by Communists, who on these grounds may well come to revise the traditional view of the proletariat as the class destined to make an end of capitalism. But in an analytical study such as the present one, it would have been illegitimate to pursue this theme beyond the point of theoretical criticism. The student in search of source material bearing upon the current internal strains and Preface ix stresses of the French labor movement in its various branches Catholic, Socialist, and Communist-will have to look elsewhere. Work on this study has been made possible by a grant from the Research Institute on Communist Affairs at Columbia University. I take this opportunity of expressing my cordial thanks to the Institute and notably to its Director, Professor Zbigniew Brzezinski, not only for the help received, but for contriving to make my stay pleasant as well as useful. It would be agreeable to mention by name all those with whom I have come in contact during the months of working on this book, but the list is too long. I must, however, record the mental stimulus and technical help received from colleagues not directly associated with the work of the Institute, especially from Mr. Daniel Bell. My thanks are also due to personal friends and acquaintances in New York, Paris, and Strasbourg-notably Mr. Meyer Schapiro, Mr. Norbert Guterman, M. Maximilien Rubel, Mr. Norman Birnbaum, and the late Mr. Jacques Katel-for enabling me to procure informa tion and literary sources not easily available. To Mrs. Christine Dodson, of the Institute, my gratitude for facilitating my preliminary travels in Europe, and for mysteriously solving all the technical prob lems connected with the preparation of the manuscript, is too profound to find conventional expression. GEORGE LICHTHEIM Columbia University in the City of New York February, 1966 Contents Chapter 1: The Origins 1 Chapter 2: The Great Divide 34 Chapter 3: The Transformation of Marxist Theory 69 Chapter 4: State and Society 112 Chapter 5: The Logic of History 151 Conclusion 193 Bibliography 199 Index 208 1 The Origins Roots of Revolution The term "French Marxism" can stand for two things: the adaptation of Marxist theory to French conditions, or the growth and develop ment in France of a socialist (later also a Communist) movement which after a century still relates itself to Marx. In what follows, no attempt is made to discriminate between these meanings, or to emphasize one at the expense of theother. It is taken for granted that the "subjective" and the "objective" aspects are conjoined in the phenomenon of a revolutionary movement which for a number of decades has interpreted its aims in Marxian terms. If the present study is mainly concerned with the theoretical side, and moreover centered upon a particular period-the decades preceding and follow ing the Second World War-this artificial demarcation is to be under stood as a deliberate abstraction from the totality in question: a totality which is not just the sum of its parts (whatever such a de scription may signify) but an interconnected whole grounded in the concrete experience of millions of people. Even at the theoretical level, properly so called, the subject matter involves more than an analysis of concepts formulated by thinkers reflecting upon material conditions which they themselves did not share. Account must be taken of the propagandists who refracted, projected, and interpreted the new doctrine; of the political leaders and organizers who transformed it into an instrument of mass action; 2 The Origins and finally of the working-class movement as such. As if all this were not enough, the historical context-namely France itself: a country with an already ancient history and settled modes of thought-has to be kept in mind. At the very least, the phenomenon must be related to the transformation of French society under the impact of an industrial revolution starting in the 1830s, a few decades after the political upheaval of 1789-99 had disencumbered bourgeois society of its ancient trammels. This of course is equivalent to saying that no ade quate account can be drawn up; nor need it be. The aim of a critical study of this kind is not to reproduce the texture of reality, but to lay bare the dialectic of "being" and "consciousness" which keeps a movement going until its impetus has exhausted itself. And if in what follows the material substratum is systematically neglected, this pro cedure is to be understood as a deliberate departure from the true business of the social historian. Ideally, every controversy ought to be examined in terms of its material background. It is only the impos sibility of carrying through such a closely textured analysis that renders excusable the abstract concentration upon what is said and thought by the theorists of the movement: themselves involved in shifting political alignments, and in any event closely dependent upon forms of thought historically shaped by the culture to which they belong.

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