Histories of socialism in France normally begin in 1870, and have as their principal thread the spread of Marxist doctrine.
It is perfectly true that an organised socialist party developed only in the late nineteenth century and that its
Marxism had little in common with the socialism of the early utopians.
It is impossible, however, to understand the rapid
success of the socialist party without going back to 1848.
During the Second Republic, the vagueness and moderation
of early socialist thought meant that a very large number of people could sympathise with it, and the severe economic
crisis made many look to it for the solution of their difficulties.
It was in the years 1849-51 that substantial sections
of the peasantry were won to socialism, principally in the backward regions of the centre and south-east.
It took some forty years for the profound consequences of this event to be appreciated. The socialist party
of 1900 could become a major force in politics while France was still hardly industrialised and while there was still
only a small minority of industrial workers the obvious subjects of their propaganda because these rural areas gave it
mass support. By going back to 1848 one sees why the majority of the socialist vote in the early twentieth century came
from certain backward rural areas.
One sees also why its programme could not be a clear-cut Marxist one. Its peasant
backers had been won over to a brand of socialism current in 1848, and to a large extent this is what they still voted
for in 1900. The mark of the Second Republic was thus powerfully imprinted upon the movement.
In 1848 the socialists were diverse, individualistic, dispersed, organised at most into tiny societies but without
links between each other. The followers of the utopian thinkers did not form active political groups with mass support,
let alone one party.
The secret societies of revolutionaries in Paris involved only a couple of thousand men; those in
the provinces-usually not revolutionary but rather expressing traditional animosities and the relics of old antagonisms,
such as the White Terror of 1815 were isolated and parochial in outlook. This situation did not change in the early
months of the republic. The socialists could not stand as a party in the elections of 1848. Only in Paris were they
sufficiently numerous or self-conscious to act independently. Louis Blanc, in co-operation with socialist clubs, put
up a list of candidates which included twenty workers. All but one were defeated. The leading socialist celebritiesindeed were
generally defeated in Paris, except when supported by the moderates.
They had better luck in the provinces;
and altogether some 55 out of the 880 deputies to the constituent assembly were in some way socialist, or at least
partisans of a `democratic and social republic'. Already socialism revealed itself as having an appeal beyond the hothouse
of the capital, but the lines between parties were still too undefined to make it possible to distinguish at all clearly
between them. Men were often elected on this occasion as individuals, or as expressing peculiar local conditions, more
than for the precise nature of their opinions.
So the socialist deputies included both Blanquists like Martin Bernard, a
compositor with long experience of conspiracy, who criticised the workers for wanting to become bourgeois, but also the
mason Totain who, while seeking the improvement of the lot of the masses, wished to `lengthen the jackets without
shortening the frock-coats'.' They were at first isolated. They formed a separate group in the Assembly the Societe des
representants republicains. Ledru-Rollin and his followers (essentially Jacobins, looking back to the revolution of 1793)
went to some pains to dissociate themselves from them. Their impetuous involvement in demonstrations and insurrections
led to numerous arrests among them. One famous trial, at Bourges, was even more damaging because it revealed their
divisions, mutual hostilities and even treachery.
Extract from “France 1848 – 1945 Politics & Anger”, Written by Theodore Zeldin. Oxford University Press. Oxford New York Toronto Melbourne: 1979.
