French Section of the Workers' International
The French Section of the Workers' International was a major social democratic political party in France which was founded in 1905 and succeeded in 1969 by the present Socialist Party.
The SFIO was founded in 1905 as the French representative to the Second International, merging the Marxist Socialist Party of France led by Jules Guesde and the social-democratic French Socialist Party led by Jean Jaurès, who became the SFIO's leading figure. Electoral support for the party rose from 10 percent in the 1906 election to 17 percent in 1914, and during World War I it participated in France's national unity government, sacrificing its ideals of internationalist class struggle in favor of national patriotism, as did most other members of the Second International. In 1920, the SFIO split over views on the 1917 Russian Revolution; the majority became the French Communist Party, while the minority continued as the SFIO.
In the 1930s, mutual concern over fascism drew the communists and socialists together, prompting them to form the Popular Front. The coalition won the 1936 election and formed a government under SFIO leader Léon Blum, which lasted until 1938. After the outbreak of World War II and German conquest of France in 1940, the SFIO was banned, and many of its members took part in the Resistance. The SFIO was part of France's tripartisme government from 1944 to 1947, but after the war faced a resurgent Communist Party, which achieved a higher share of the vote in every election for the next three decades. From 1956 to 1957, SFIO leader Guy Mollet served as prime minister, but the party continued its period of decline and disunity. In 1969, the present Socialist Party of France was formed from a merger of the SFIO and smaller parties.
Between 1909 and 1920, the SFIO published the newspaper L'Humanité. In French politics, it affiliated with the Left Cartel, the Popular Front, the Tripartisme, and the Third Force. Internationally, the party was first affiliated with the Second International, then the Labour and Socialist International, and finally the Socialist International. The SFIO's symbol was a red and black circle with the Three Arrows.
Background
After the failure of the Paris Commune of 1871, French socialism was severely weakened, with its leaders dead or in exile. During the 1879 Marseille Congress, workers' associations created the Federation of the Socialist Workers of France. Three years later, Jules Guesde and Paul Lafargue left the federation, which they considered too moderate, and founded the French Workers' Party. The FTSF led by Paul Brousse was defined as possibilist because it advocated gradual reforms whereas the POF promoted Marxism. At the same time, Édouard Vaillant and the heirs of Louis Auguste Blanqui founded the Central Revolutionary Committee which represented the French revolutionary tradition.In the 1880s, the FTSF saw their first electoral success, winning control of some municipalities. Jean Allemane and some FTSF members criticised the focus on electoral goals. In 1890, they created the Revolutionary Socialist Workers' Party. Their main objective was to win power through the tactic of the general strike. Besides these groups, some politicians declared themselves as independent socialists outside of the political parties. They tended to have moderate opinions.
In the 1890s, the Dreyfus affair caused debate in the socialist movement. While Jules Guesde believed socialists should not intervene in this internal conflict of the bourgeoisie, Jean Jaurès urged the socialist movement to join the republican movement's struggle to defend republican values. In 1899, another debate polarised the socialist groups, pitted Guesde against Jaures over the participation of the socialist Alexandre Millerand in Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau's cabinet, which included the Marquis de Gallifet, who had directed the bloody repression of the Paris Commune. In 1902, Guesde and Vaillant founded the Socialist Party of France while Jaurès, Allemane and the possibilists formed the French Socialist Party. During the 1905 Globe Congress, the two groups merged into the French Section of the Workers' International under pressure from the Second International.
History
Foundation and early years
The new SFIO party was hemmed between the middle-class liberals of the Radical Party and the revolutionary syndicalists who dominated the trade unions. The General Confederation of Labour proclaimed its independence from political parties at this time and the non-distinction between political and industrial aims. In addition, some CGT members refused to join the SFIO because they considered it extremist. They created the Republican-Socialist Party.In contrast to other European socialist parties, the SFIO was a decentralised organization. Its national and executive institutions were weakened by the strong autonomy of its members and local levels of the party. Consequently, the function of secretary general, held by Louis Dubreuilh until 1918, was essentially administrative and the real political leader was Jean Jaurès, president of the parliamentary group and director of L'Humanité, the party's newspaper,
Unlike the PRS, SFIO members did not participate in Left Bloc governments, although they supported a part of its policy, notably the laïcité, based on the 1905 Act of separation between church and state. However, they criticized the ferocious repression of strikes by Radical prime minister Georges Clemenceau after 1906, following the creation of a Minister of Labour, a post held by PRS leader René Viviani.
During the July 1914 international crisis, the party was ideologically torn between its membership in the Socialist International and the wave of patriotism within France. The assassination of Jaurès on 31 July 1914 was a setback for the pacifist wing of the party and contributed to the massive increase in support for the wartime government of national unity. Participation in World War I caused divisions within the party which were accentuated after 1917. Furthermore, internal disagreements appeared about the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.
In 1919, the anti-war socialists were heavily defeated in elections by the National Bloc coalition which played on the middle-classes' fear of Bolshevism. The National Bloc won 70% of the seats, forming what became known as the Chambre bleue horizon.
Communist split and the Popular Front
During the Tours Congress on 25 December 1920, a majority of SFIO members voted to join the Communist International, also known as the Comintern and the Third International, created by the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution. Led by Boris Souvarine and Ludovic-Oscar Frossard, they created the French Section of the Communist International. Another smaller group also favoured membership in the Comintern, but not all 21 conditions. The minority led by Léon Blum and the majority of the Socialists' elected members decided in Blum's words to "keep the old house" and remain within the Second International. Marcel Sembat, Léon Blum and Albert Thomas refused to align themselves with Moscow. Paul Faure became secretary general of the SFIO, but its most influential figure was Blum, leader of the parliamentary group and director of a new party paper Le Populaire. L'Humanité, the previous party newspaper, was controlled by the founders of the SFIC. However, Frossard later resigned from the SFIC and rejoined the SFIO in January 1923. One year after the Tours Congress, the CGT trade union made the same split. Those who became Communists created the Confédération générale du travail unitaire which fused again with the CGT in 1936 during the Popular Front government. Léon Jouhaux was the CGT's main leader until 1947 and the new split leading to the creation of the reformist union confederation Workers' Force.In both 1924 and 1932, the Socialists joined with the Radicals in the Cartel des Gauches coalition. They supported the government led by Radical Édouard Herriot, but they did not participate. The first Cartel saw the right-wing terrorised and capital flight destabilised the government while the divided Radicals did not all support their Socialist allies. The monetary crisis, also due to the refusal of Germany to pay the World War I reparations, caused parliamentary instability. Édouard Herriot, Paul Painlevé and Aristide Briand succeeded each other as prime minister until 1926, when the French right came back to power with Raymond Poincaré. The newly elected Communist deputies also opposed the first Cartel, refusing to support bourgeois governments. The second Cartel acceded to power in 1932, but this time the SFIO only gave their support without the participation of the Radicals which allied themselves with right-wing radicals. After years of internal feuds, the reformist wing of the party led by Marcel Déat and Pierre Renaudel split from the SFIO in November 1933 to form a neosocialist movement and merged with the PRS to form the Socialist Republican Union. The Cartel was again the victim of parliamentary instability while various scandals led to the 6 February 1934 riots organised by far-right leagues. The Radical Édouard Daladier resigned on the next day, handing out the power to conservative Gaston Doumergue. It was the first time during the French Third Republic that a government had to resign because of street pressure.
Following 6 February 1934 crisis, which the whole of the socialist movement saw as a fascist conspiracy to overthrow the Republic, a goal pursued by the royalist Action Française and other far-right leagues, anti-fascist organisations were created. The Comintern abandoned its social-fascism directive of social democracy in favor of united front directives. The French Communist Party got closer to the SFIO, the USR and the Radical Party to form the coalition that would win the 1936 French legislative election and bring about the Popular Front. In June 1934, Leon Trotsky proposed the French Turn into the SFIO, the origin of the strategy of entrism. The Trotskyist leaders of the Communist League were divided over the issue of entering the SFIO. Raymond Molinier was the most supportive of Trotsky's proposal while Pierre Naville was opposed to it and Pierre Frank remained ambivalent. The League finally voted to dissolve into the SFIO in August 1934, where they formed the Bolshevik-Leninist Group. At the Mulhouse party congress of June 1935, the Trotskyists led a campaign to prevent the united front from expanding into a popular front which would include the liberal Radical Party.
The Popular Front strategy was adopted in the 1936 French legislative election and the coalition gained a majority, with SFIO obtaining for the first time more votes and seats than the Radical Party. Léon Blum became France's first Socialist prime minister in 1936 while the PCF supported without participation his government. A general strike applauded the socialists' victory while Marceau Pivert cried "Tout est possible!", but Pivert would later split and create the Workers and Peasants' Socialist Party, with historian Daniel Guérin also being a member of the latter. Trotsky advised the GBL to break with the SFIO, leading to a confused departure by the Trotskyists from the SFIO in early 1936, which drew only about six hundred people from the party. The Matignon Accords set up collective bargaining, and removed all obstacles to union organisation. The terms included a blanket 7–12% wage increase and allowed for paid vacation and a 40-hour work week. The eight-hour day had been established following the war of 1914–1918 of attrition and its mobilisation of industrial capacities.
Within a year, Blum's government collapsed over economic policy in the context of the Great Depression and also over the issue of the Spanish Civil War. The demoralised left fell apart and was unable to resist the collapse of the Third Republic after the fall of France in the military defeat of 1940 during World War II.