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The Guesdists and the Small Farmer: Early Erosion of French Marxism1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

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The internal conflicts of the socialist movement before 1914 grew out of the antagonism between orthodox Marxists and reformist Socialists, or were at least closely related to that antagonism, as for instance the conflict between the labor unions and the party leadership in Germany in 1905–6. This running battle of pre-war days, which set the scene for the splitting of the movement during the first World War, reached its most spectacular expression in Germany in Bebel's attack on the Revisionists at the Dresden party convention of 1903. But the conflict unfolded first in France, and it was in France rather than in Germany that the fundamental issues were posited most clearly. In 1882, nine years before Georg von Vollmar in his “Eldorado” addresses in Munich started the revolt of the German Revisionists and fourteen years before Eduard Bernstein in his “Evolutionary Socialism” published the first comprehensive exposition of Revisionist ideas, Paul Brousse broke with the Marxist leaders, Jules Guesde and Paul Lafargue, whom he forced out of the Fédération des travailleurs socialistes de France, thus transforming the latter into a Possibilist party, whereas the expelled Marxists formed the Parti ouvrier. Even the debates at Dresden – and subsequently at the International Socialist Congress at Amsterdam – developed from a French issue – namely, the acceptance of a position in a liberal cabinet by the French reformist, Alexandre Millerand.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1961

References

page 213 note 1 Weill, Georges, Histoire du mouvement social en France (1852–1924), Paris (Alcan) 1924, p. 308.Google Scholar

page 214 note 1 Noland, Aaron, The Founding of the French Socialist Party, Cambridge (Harvard University Press) 1956, p. 53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 214 note 2 The Marxist theorem was not formally abandoned, since the preamble to the program recognized that “the condition of agriculture characterized by parcellization of holdings is unavoidably doomed” and merely maintained that, “it is not up to the socialists to accelerate this development, since their task is not to seperate property from labor but to unite these two factors of production in the same persons.” Douzième Congrès National du Parti Ouvrier Français, tenuà Nantes du 14 au 16 Septembre 1894, Lille, (Imp. Ouvrière G. Delory) 1894, p. 19.Google Scholar The practical purpose of the proposed measures however, could only be to save small agricultural property from extinction.

page 215 note 1 Protokoll über die Verhandlungen des Parteitages der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands zu Frankfurt, Berlin (Verlag Vorwärts) 1894, p. 152.Google Scholar

page 215 note 2 Douzième Congrès National du Parti Ouvrier Français, p. 20.Google Scholar

page 215 note 3 Friedrich Engels, Die Bauernfrage, p. 301.Google Scholar

page 216 note 1 Ibid. What caused Engels publicly to criticize the socialist attempts to win farmer support was the simultaneous appearance of these attempts in the French and German movements; he apparently feared that these parallel tendencies might so reinforce each other as to drive the parties deep into opportunism. He viewed with some tolerance the content of the Nantes program, as distinguished from the circumstances leading to its adoption. On December 18, 1894, he wrote to Paul Lafargue: “The program itself contains only one article which is really objectionable [qui ne vaille rien]: the legal limitation of the interest rate, i.e. the restitution of the old usury laws…” Friedrich Engels, Paul, et Lafargue, Laura, Correspondance, Bottigelli, Emile, ed., Paris (Editions Sociales), 1959. Vol. III, p. 381.Google Scholar Previously, on November 22, he had written: “If I am not in accord with what the resolution of Nantes actually says, I am at least in accord with what it wanted to say”, and he assured Lafargue that in his forthcoming article in Die Neue Zeit he would try to be as conciliatory as possible; but he added: “…after the misuse of the resolution in Germany it is not possible to pass it over in silence. – Really, you have permitted yourselves to be drawn a little too much to the opportunist side. At Nantes you were at the point of sacrificing the future of the party to the success of the moment. There is still time for you to arrest the trend, and if my article contributes to this effect, I shall congratulate myself. In Germany, where Vollmar permits himself to extend to the large farmers of Bavaria with holdings of from 10 to 30 hectares the promises which you made to the small French farmers, Bebel has taken up the gauntlet…” (l.c., p. 373).

page 216 note 2 For instance, in criticizing the draft program which the agricultural committee of the German party had presented, Kautsky wrote that the task of the committee had been insoluble from the outset and added: “Some time ago, our French comrades have mobilized all their acumen for the purpose of drafting an agrarian program, only to produce a proposal even more objectionable than that of our committee.” Kautsky, Karl, Unser neuestes Programm, in: Die Neue Zeit, XIII: 2, 18941995, p. 617.Google Scholar

page 217 note 1 Sometimes, the ambassador seems to have aggravated rather than abated dissensions, for instance in 1893 when he conveyed to Engels the sense of grievance of the Parti ouvrier against the German Social Democrats for not living up to their alleged promises of stopping all work on May 1st. Engels remonstrated against the “idea of directing the European labor movement from Oxford,” spoke sarcastically of Bonnier's “enormous urge to activity” and called him “Cato censorius Bonnier.” (See Mayer, Gustav, Friedrich Engels, Den Haag (Martinus Nijhoff) 1934, vol. II, pp. 502f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Bonnier's relations to Engels are mentioned in several other passages of the book.) This episode, however, seems to have been only a temporary interruption of the generally friendly relations between Engels and Bonnier, and the latter also had amicable conversations with Eduard Bernstein, then living as an exile in London. (See Bernstein, Eduard, The Years of My Exile. Translated by Miall, Bernard, London (Parsons) 1921, pp. 213f.)Google Scholar

page 217 note 2 Kautsky's article (Erfurter, DasProgramm und die Landagitation, in: Die Neue Zeit, XIII: 1, 18941995, pp. 278ff.)Google Scholar is a defence against an attack on his Marxist orthodoxy. During the controversy about the agrarian program within the German party, some advocates of the new program had claimed that Kautsky in his commentary on the party program – Karl Kautsky, Das Erfurter Programm, Stuttgart (J. W. Dietz) 1892 – had also recommended a policy of protecting the small farmer. In his article Kautsky declares that he has been misunderstood and that he is as much as anybody opposed to a policy of promising the farmer any protection in his role as a producer cultivating his own property; in his commentary on the program Kautsky had explained that the party should make the farmer realize the hopelessness of his position and his interest in a new form of society which would give him another foundation for his existence. Those farmers who refused to accept this position of the party were to be regarded as enemies.

page 218 note 1 Bebel made this remark in a speech in Berlin in which he discussed the Frankfurt party congress, with bitter attacks on Vollmar, to which the South-Germans replied in the same vein. See Jansen, Reinhard, Georg von Vollmar, Düsseldorf 1958, p. 55.Google Scholar

page 218 note 2 Here the reference is apparently to the Frankfurt party Congress, which left Bebel dissatisfied, as he expressed in his Berlin speech (see above, footnote 1). The reason for his discontent and for Bonnier's belief that the congress had declared itself in Vollmar's favor was a resolution on the question of whether it was permissible for socialists to vote for state budgets, as the Bavarians, under Vollmar's leadership, had done in the Bavarian diet. The congress adopted a resolution, moved by Bebel, against such a positive vote only with a qualifying amendment that left the door open for a repetition of the Bavarian action. (See Protokoll über die Verhandlungen des Parteitages der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands zu Frankfurt, p. 133.) In spite of Bebel's wrath about the emasculation of his resolution, the outcome was at best only a half-victory for Vollmar.

page 218 note 3 About the “revolt” of this leftist faction against the party leadership, see Mehring, Franz, Geschichte der deutschen Sozialdemokratie, 6th and 7th ed., Stuttgart (J. H. W. Dietz) 1919, IV, pp. 328ff.Google Scholar; also Protokoll über die Verhandlungen des Parteitages der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands zu Erfurt (1891), pp. 53ff. and passim.Google Scholar

page 219 note 1 The reference is to Bismarck's antisocialist law, which deprived the German Social Demo-craticparty of legal status, forced its whole journalisticand propaganda activities underground or into camouflage, and led to imprisonment and banishment of leaders and subleaders.

page 219 note 2 “The life of society and of the state does not consist of leaps and somersaults, but of a series of fluctuations resulting in shifts of power, in partial successes (nicht aus sich über schlagenden Sprüngen, sondern aus einer Kette von wechselnden Verschiebungen der Machtverhältnisse, von Teilerfolgen). From the address by Vollmar at a meeting on June 6, 1891 in Munich (so-called second Eldorado address). See von Vollmar, Georg, Über die nächsten Aufgaben der deutschen Sozialdemokratie, München (M. Ernst) 1899, p. 18.Google Scholar

page 219 note 3 “The pilgrim on his long and hard way to a distant goal cannot maintain his vital strength merely by looking at the contour of the goal appearing through the mist in a distance; he would die from hunger and exhaustion long before reaching it. Therefore we shall have to turn from the ultimate (Zeitunbegrenzte) goal to the immediate, from the absolute to the positive, without losing sight of the universal purpose of our efforts; besides the permanent program, we must have working programs which are concerned with the immediate future, and we must concentrate our strength on those individual postulates, which answer to the most urgent needs and which have the greatest chance of realization.” Ibid., p. 19.

page 219 note 4 See the speeches by F. Kunert and by Vollmar himself at the Berlin party congress, 1892. Protokoll über die Verhandlungen des Parteitages, pp. 200, 206. Having no access to the files of Le Socialiste – a rare library title – I have not been able to identify the article in which the term was used.

page 220 note 1 See Mayer, , Friedrich Engels, vol. II, pp. 392f.Google Scholar

page 221 note 1 See Jaurès, Discours deà Amsterdam, in: La Revue Socialiste, XL (1904), p. 311Google Scholar; Auclair, Marcelle, La Vie de Jean Jaurès, Paris (Editions du Seuil) 1954, p. 468f.Google Scholar

page 222 note 1 See Bonnier, Charles, Die Gemeinderathswahlen in Frankreich, in: Die Neue Zeit, XIV: 2 (18951896), pp. 271 ff.Google Scholar The notes by Kautsky, are on pp. 273 and 276.Google Scholar

page 223 note 1 At the London International Congress, the discussion of the relationship of socialism and anarchism – leading up to the expulsion of all anarchists from the International – overshadowed the discussion of the agrarian problem; since there was not much time to present the two antagonistic views on the latter, a compromise resolution was the only way out, and it was adopted almost unanimously; its essence was the declaration that, as far as the class struggle in agrarian areas was concerned, “the Congress leaves it to every nation to formulate… the ways and means most suitable to the situation of their country.” International Socialist Workers and Trade Union Congress, London 1896. Report of Proceedings. London (Twentieth Century Press) n.d., p. 26.Google Scholar

page 223 note 2 This conflict over the deviations of this group from socialist internationalism came to a climax in 1913 when Gerhart Hildebrand, one of the extreme right-wingers, was expelled from the party. The extreme right wing controlled the editorial policies of the Sozialistische Monatshefte but was numerically insignificant.

page 223 note 3 See the article by Goldberg, Harvey, Jaurès and the Peasant, in: International Review of Social History, vol. II (1957), pp. 372ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for the share of Jean Jaurès in these policies. The only socialist group opposed to the spirit of the Nantes program seems to have been the Allemanists. See ibid., p. 382.

page 224 note 1 See Protokoll über Verhandlungen des Parteitages zu Breslau, Berlin (Vorwärts) 1895, esp. pp. 115ff.Google Scholar The Congress, however, rejected the draft of an agricultural program submitted by a committee of which Bebel as well as Vollmar and other advocates of a pro-farmer policy were members.