Section française de l'Internationale ouvrière
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"SFIO" redirects here. For other uses, see SFIO (disambiguation).
The Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière (SFIO, French section of the Workers' International), founded in 1905, was a French socialist political party, designed as the local section of the Second International (i.e. the Workers' International). After the 1917 October Revolution, it split up (during the 1920 Tours Congress) into two groups, the majority creating the Section française de l'Internationale communiste (SFIC), which became the French Communist Party (PCF).
Following the first unification of the French socialist movements in 1901, the Parti socialiste français and the Parti socialiste de France united during the 1905 Globe Congress in Paris, which followed the 1904 Amsterdam Congress of the Second International. The 1905 Globe Congress thus united the Marxist tendency represented by Jules Guesde' French Workers' Party with the social-democrat tendency represented by Jean Jaurès' Parti socialiste français. The "party of the workers' movement" was born, and continued existing until 1969, when it was replaced by the current Socialist Party (PS). The SFIO was led by Jules Guesde, Jean Jaurès - who quickly became its most influential figure, Edouard Vaillant and Paul Lafargue. It opposed itself to colonialism and to militarism, although following Jean Jaurès' assassination on 31 July 1914, four days before Germany's declaration of war to France, it abandoned its anti-militarist views and, as the whole of the Second International, replaced its internationalism conceptions about class struggle with patriotism, by supporting the National Union government (Union nationale). After the war, this was regarded as a major failure of the socialist movement and explains, in part, the split of the Tours Congress. Jaurès' ashes would be transferred to the Panthéon in 1924, while his assassin, Raoul Villain, who was judged but acquitted in 1919, would later be executed by the Spanish Republicans in 1936.
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[edit] Before the 1905 unification
- Further information: Paris Commune, French Third Republic, and France in the nineteenth century
After the failure of the Paris commune (1871), the French socialism was beheaded. Its leaders were died or exiled. In 1879, during the Marseille Congress, workers' associations created the Federation of the Socialist Workers of France (Fédération des travailleurs socialistes de France or FTSF). However, three years later, Jules Guesde and Paul Lafargue (the son-in-law of Karl Marx) left the federation, which considered so moderate, and founded the French Workers' Party (Parti ouvrier français or POF). The FTSF, led by Paul Brousse, was defined as "possibilist" because it advocated gradual reforms, whereas the POF promoted Marxism.
In the same time, Edouard Vaillant and the heirs of Auguste Blanqui founded the Central Revolutionary Committee (Comité révolutionnaire central or CRC), which represented the French revolutionary tradition.
In the 1880s, the Socialists knew their first electoral success, conquering some municipalities. Jean Allemane ans some FTSF members criticized the focus on electoral goals. In 1890, they created the Revolutionary Socialist Workers' Party (Parti ouvrier socialiste révolutionnaire or POSR). Their main objective was the "general strike". Besides, some deputies declared Socialist whereas they were not member of a party. They had moderate opinions.
In 1899, a debate opposed the Socialist groups about the participation of Alexandre Millerand in Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau's cabinet, which included the Marquis de Gallifet, best know for having directed the bloody repression during the Paris Commune. Furthemore, the participation in a "bourgeois government" sparked a controversy opposing Jules Guesde to Jean Jaurès. In 1902, Guesde and Vaillant founded the Socialist Party of France, while Jaurès, Allemane and the possibilists formed the French Socialist Party. In 1905, during the Globe Congress, under the pression of the Second International, the two groups merged in the French Section of the Workers' International.
It was hemmed in between the middle class liberals of the Radical Party and the revolutionary syndicalists who dominated the trade unions. Indeed, the General Confederation of Labour claimed its independance and the non-distinction between political and professional aims.
[edit] 1914-1920
During World War I, the Socialists suffered a severe split over participation in the wartime government of national unity. In 1919 the anti-war socialists were heavily defeated in elections by the Bloc national coalition which had played on the middle-classes' fear of the bolshevik (posters with a bolshevik with a knife between his teeth were used to discredit the socialist movement). The Bloc national won 70% of the seats, making the Chambre bleue horizon ("Blue Horizon Chamber").
On 25 December 1920, during the Tours Congress, the majority of SFIO members accepted to join the Third International (Comintern), created by the Bolsheviks after the 1917 October Revolution. Led by Boris Souvarine and Ludovic Frossard, they created the Section Française de l'Internationale Communiste (SFIC). Another smaller group also accepted the membership to the Comintern, but not all 21 conditions, while the minority, led by Léon Blum and the majority of the elected socialists members, decided to "keep the old house" (Blum) and remain within the Second International. Marcel Sembat, Léon Blum and Albert Thomas refused to align themselves on Moscow. Ludovic Frossard would resign from the SFIC and join again the SFIO in January 1923.
The next year, the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) trade union made the same split, those who became communists creating the Confédération Générale du Travail Unitaire (which fused again with the CGT in 1936 during the Popular Front government). Léon Jouhaux was CGT's main leader until 1947 and the new split leading to the creation of social-democrat Force Ouvrière (CGT-FO).
[edit] From the 1920 Tours Congress to the Popular Front
In 1922 and again in 1924, the Socialists joined with the Radicals in the Cartel des Gauches coalition. Although they took part in the first Cartel des gauches government (1924-26), led by Radical Edouard Herriot, they didn't participate in the second Cartel's government (1932-34) which was plagued by parliamentary instability.
The first Cartel saw the right-wing terrorized, and capital flight destabilized the government, while the divided Radicals didn't all support their socialist allies. The monetary crisis, also due to the refusal of Germany to pay the reparations, caused parliamentary unstability. Edouard Herriot, Paul Painlevé and Aristide Briand would succeeded themselves as president of the Council until 1926, when the right-wing 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 acceeded to power in 1932, but this time, the SFIO only gave their support without participation to the Radicals, which allied themselves with right-wing radicals. The Cartel was again the victim of parliamentary unstability, while various scandals led to the 6 February 1934 riots organized by far-right leagues. Radical Edouard Daladier resigned on the next day, handing out the power to conservative Gaston Doumergue. It was the first time during the Third Republic (1871-1940) that a government had to resign because of street pressure.
Following the 6 February 1934 crisis, which the whole of the socialist movement saw as a fascist conspiracy to overthrow the Republic, a dream followed on by the royalist Action Française and other far-right leagues, anti-fascist organizations were created. The PCF, supported by the Comintern's abandon of the "social-fascism" directives in favor of "united front" directives, got closer to the SFIO, to form the coalition that would win the 1936 elections and bring about the Popular Front. In June 1934, Leon Trotsky proposed the "French Turn" into the SFIO, which is where the entrism strategy takes its origins from. The trotskyist Communist League's (the French section of the International Left Opposition) leaders 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 (Groupe Bolchevik-Leniniste, GBL). 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 middle-class Radical Party.
However, the Popular Front strategy was adopted, and Léon Blum became France's first socialist president of the Council in 1936, while the PCF supported - without participation - his government. A general strike applauded the socialists' victory, while Marceau Pivert cried "Tout est possible!" ("Everything is possible!"). Pivert would later split and create the Workers and Peasants' Socialist Party (Parti socialiste ouvrier et paysan, PSOP); historian Daniel Guérin was also a member of the latter. Trotsky advised the GBL to break with the SFIO, leading to a confused departure by the Trotskyists from the Socialist Party in early 1936, which drew only about six hundred people from the party. The 1936 Matignon Accords set up collective bargaining, and removed all obstacles to union organization. The terms included a blanket 7-12 percent wage increase, and allowed for paid vacation (2 weeks) and a 40-hour work week — the eight-hour day had been established following the 1914-18 war of attrition and its mobilization of industrial capacities.
Within a year, however, Blum's government collapsed over economic policy (as during the Cartel des gauches, capital flight was an issue, giving rise to the so-called "myth of the 200 hundreds families") 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 military defeat of 1940 (during World War II).
[edit] After World War II
After the liberation of France in 1944 and the proclamation of the Fourth Republic (1947-58), the SFIO re-emerged under the new leadership of Guy Mollet, who was Prime Minister at the head of a minority government in 1956 and the SFIO's general secretary from 1946 to 1969. The Radicals were in steep decline, and the SFIO, along with the Christian-Democrat People's Republican Movement (MRP) created in 1947 by Georges Bidault and the powerful Communist Party were the three main parties governing the Fourth Republic, until Charles de Gaulle's return to power with the May 1958 crisis.
Because of the Cold War, the PCF had to leave the government in May 1947, exactly like the Italian Communist Party (PCI). Anti-communism prevented the left from forming a united front. The CGT trade union, which had been united again in 1936, was relatively weakened by the 1948 creation of a social-democrat trade union, Force Ouvrière (FO), which was supported by the CIA. The split was led by CGT's own secretary general, Léon Jouhaux, who was granted the Nobel peace prize three years later.
Moreover, the SFIO was divided about the repressive policy of Guy Mollet in Algeria and his support to De Gaulle's come back. If the party returned in opposition in 1959, it couldn't prevent the constitution of another Unified Socialist Party (Parti socialiste unifié or PSU) in 1960, joined the next year by Pierre Mendès-France, whom was trying to anchor the Radical party in the left-wing and opposed the colonial wars.
[edit] The Fifth Republic
The SFIO received its lowest vote in the 1960s. The Fifth Republic's Constitution had been tailored by Charles de Gaulle to satisfied his needs, and his gaullist movement managed to gather enough people from the left and the right-wing to govern without the parties' help. Furthemore, the SFIO hesitated between the alliance with the no-Gaullist center-right (that was the opinion of Gaston Defferre) and the reconciliation with the Communists. Guy Mollet refused to choose. The SFIO supported François Mitterrand to the 1965 presidential election although he was not member of the party. The SFIO then created with the Radicals the Federation of the Democratic and Socialist Left (Fédération de la gauche démocrate et socialiste or FGDS), a center-left coalition led by François Mitterrand. But it split after May 68 and the electoral disaster of June 1968.
Gaston Defferre was the SFIO candidate to the 1969 presidential election. He was eliminated in the first round with only 5% of votes. One month later, in the Issy-les-Moulineaux Congress, the SFIO was replaced by the current Socialist Party. Guy Mollet let the leadership to Alain Savary
