Griffiths - Anticapitalism and The French Extra-Parlamentary Right

Anticapitalism and the French Extra-Parliamentary Right, 1870-1940 Author(s): Richard Griffiths Source: Journal of Contemporary History, Vol.
13, No. 4, A Century of Conservatism (Oct., 1978), pp. 721-740 Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/260081 . Accessed: 04/11/2013 20:07
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Richard Griffiths
Anticapitalismand the French Extra-Parliamentary Right, 1870-1940
It has rightly been said that one of the constants of a certain form of conservatism is an opposition to the forces of capital, and to their deleterious effects upon society; in such a picture, those parliamentary conservatives who become the defenders of capital are seen as compromisers, opportunists or, at worst, liberals. The French extraparliamentary right, in the period 1870-1940, presents this picture in particularly clear form. Anticapitalism is, of course, a negative attitude which does not necessarily imply a positive solution. Much of its appeal can lie in the vagueness of its formulation, and in the destructive responses of many who feel themselves to be the victims of the capitalist system. When it comes to the formulation of positive policies, however, the choice must be made between different sections of the disinherited, and areas of support may well be narrowed, while at the same time being strengthened. The history of right-wing anticapitalism in this period is complicated by the strength, at times, of purely negative, emotional calls such as that of antisemitism; it takes the pattern of a series of different kinds of appeal, to different classes; but it maintains two constant threads of meaning: on the one hand, the ideal of the creation of a perfect society, in which the class struggle would have no place, and on the other, a specific commitment to the cause of the beleaguered lower middle classes, and of the working class. By the nature of things, the importance of the nationalist revival has tended, for historians, to leave these other questions in a secondary place. There has been some excellent treatment of individual
Journal of Contemporary History (SAGE, London and Beverly Hills), Vol 13 (1978), 721-40
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Journal of Contemporary History
situations,' but these have been seen as temporary side-tracks from the major aims and interests; and where the question has been approached more centrally, the anticapitalist strain has been seen as a particular form of 'radical conservatism' put forward by a few political philosophers.2One must not discount, of course, the importance of nationalism as a central tenet of the French right, particularly in the period from 1898 to 1918; but it is interesting to note that it is precisely in this same period that some of the most important pronouncements were made upon social matters. It was, after all, a period of social ferment, when such matters were at the forefront of most Frenchmen's minds. Nationalism was an important watchword, but no political thinker could ignore the realities of domestic policy, and a movement such as the Action FranSaise was no exception. That anticapitalism was central to the French right, and not just the product of a few radical conservatives, is shown by its importance in the thought of the right's most consistent area of support the Catholic public. For every Catholic industrialist (and these were represented in the parliamentary right far more strongly than their numbers warranted) there were many other categories for whom the industrial revolution, and the international capital that had created it, were anathema: Catholic landowners holding to the old virtues, and deploring not only the misery of the urban proletariat, but also the lack of the sense of social hierarchy in urban society; Catholic peasants, filled with preconceptions about the horrors of atheistic modern society; the Catholic lower middle classes, convinced that there was some sinister capitalistic plot to deprive them of their livelihood; Catholic small investors who had lost their savings in the krach de l'Union Generale; these, and many others, were appalled by the nature of le monde moderne, and laid much of the cause of it at the doors of capital. Only the Catholic bourgeoisie, and its representatives in the Chamber, were for obvious reasons exempt from this feeling. For this reason the term 'conservative', applied to deputies, is often misleading. The writers of the Catholic Revival, starting in the 1880s, were to a great extent the spokesmen for the haters of the modern world.3 Angry, outspoken and violent, they condemned not only capitalist society, but also those elements within their own Church which had compromised with it. Catholic anticlericalism is a common phenomenon in all ages, but in this period it took on a significant violence: 'Des qu'ily a de l'argent en jeu', wrote Huysmans to one of
Griffiths: The French Extra-Parliamentary Right
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his friends, 'I'infamiesort comme un pus et du clerge et des cloitres'.4 In their hatred of the rule of money, and of material things, it is hardly surprising that some of these writers found an affinity with the anarchists, who came so much before the public eye in the years of terrorist anarchism in Paris, 1890-93. While, in some cases, the enthusiasm for anarchism in contemporary literary circles may be ascribed to a form of dilettantism, a writer such as the young Paul Claudel, in his play La Ville, clearly shows the need for destruction of modern society; as he said of the anarchists at a later date, 'Je trouvais dans l'anarchie un geste presque instinctif contre ce monde congestionne, etouffant, qui etait autour de nous, et a l'egard duquel ils faisaient un geste, presque celui du noye qui cherche de l'air, jetant des bombes au hasard, presque sans savoir ou. 5 What is important is that for Claudel the destruction of the 'cite d'Henoch ... I'hydre grouillante, la Ville vomisseuse de fumee' 6 is not an end in itself; it is the necessary precondition for the reconstruction of society on a Christian basis. These tendencies in the thought of the writers of the Catholic Revival are not being produced here in order to suggest any kind of political link-up between Catholic reaction and anarchism; they simply exemplify the negative side of Catholic anticapitalism at its most violent. For Catholics of this kind, there was a perpetual harking-back to a golden age that had existed before the advent of the industrial revolution, a time when classes had known their duties as well as their rights, and when mankind had lived together in harmony; the modern world had destroyed this harmony, and capital was above all to blame. Such beliefs contributed in no small way to the popular support for movements which laid an emotional blame on groups or institutions; it was in the choice of positive solutions that the dilemma of retaining this support in its entirety revealed itself. It mattered little that a number of the main spokesmen, including Barres and Maurras, were not Catholics; Maurras, particularly, aimed his appeal at the Catholic public, and among their followers there was a preponderance of Catholics. For the purpose of this study, the era between the Franco-Prussian war and the first world war can be divided into three periods. The first, 1870-86, was marked by serious, but paternalistic, attempts to deal with the social question, mainly on the part of traditionalist Catholics. The second, which started with the publication of
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Drumont's La France Juive, and which contains Boulangism and the Panama Scandal, was a period of violent anticapitalistic appeals to the people by sections of the right, coinciding with other manifestations of social unrest. The third, from 1898 onwards, sees the rise of the Action Franqaisemovement, together with what appeared to be a crisis for capitalism. The period from 1870 to the mid-80s requires little discussion. On the right, the most interesting activity in relation to the social question was provided by the Oeuvre des Cercles Catholiques de Travail, founded by Count Albert de Mun and the Marquis de la Tour du Pin in 1871. This social experiment was basically paternalistic, and inspired by the principles of Le Play, who, together with La Tour du Pin himself, was to be one of the strongest influences on the French right. The Oeuvre des Cercles was based on the conception of a feudal and corporative social structure, necessitating a sense of duty on the part of the upper classes; its founders believed in the possibility of peaceful collaboration between the classes. The most favourable reaction to this enterprise came from intransigent rightwingers like Veuillot, and from provincial 'notables', who saw in De Mun's and La Tour du Pin's plans for industrial society a reflection of the harmony they felt still to exist in their rural domains. In a sense, such experiments might be enough, in political terms, to gain support in rural France; but what about the bourgeois capitalist society they aimed to reform? Certainly, the Oeuvre des Cercles, and other such experiments, failed to arouse much enthusiasm among the workers themselves, or among the urban population. They remained a well-meaning utopian experiment. As Rene Remond has put it, 'Le premier catholicisme social est d'inspiration conservatrice, d'intention contre-revolutionnaire, d'affinites legitimistes.'7 We shall see this tradition continuing in other forms of social catholicism. The two founders of the Oeuvre des Cercles followed very different courses thereafter. Albert de Mun became a parliamentary conservative, and eventually a rallie. Members of the extreme right castigated him for pusillanimity and for negating his early principles. La Tour du Pin was to become a member of the Action Franqaise, and to remain the social theorist who was to influence generations of right-wing social thinkers, from Maurras to Vichy. The appeal to urban anticapitalism, which became a feature of right-wing campaigns from the mid-80s onwards, was no doubt the product of a number of factors, including the squeezing of the lower middle class by major financial interests, and the realization that
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much ground was being gained, both there and in the working class, by the socialists. The alignments of the Boulanger Affair not only showed that right and left were united in their hatred of the Republic; it also showed that they were united in other hatreds as well, and that they could have an appeal to the same strata of society. The man who, however, above all pushed the right in this direction did so before the Boulanger Affair; and, though his policies were followed by many purely for the achievement of power, he himself seems to have been dominated more by a sense of divine mission to tell what he saw to be the truth. This man was Edouard Drumont, whose book La Francejuive (1886) started a completely new political movement. Drumont's name is above all associated with antisemitism. His antisemitism was, however, the outcome of his main political beliefs, rather than the cause of them. The Jew became the scapegoat, the incarnation of the faceless monster, capital. In the violence of Drumont's onslaught we find the traditional Catholic view of the modern world combined with the fury of a man who was himself one of the disinherited, a product of that lower middle class which was one of the losers in the capitalist system. Added to this, there was a strong sympathy for the conditions of the workers. The present regime, he claimed, weighed heavily on two categories of people, the revolutionary worker and the Christian conservative: 'L'un est atteint dans ses interets vitaux; I'autre est blesse dans ses croyances les plus chores.8 Things had been different before 1789, but 'le resultat le plus clair de la Revolution a ete de rendreplus dur la situation des petits et de fortifier au contraire la situation des grands et des riches en la delivrant de toute responsabilite morale. 9 The ancien regime had given everybody the possibility of resisting injustice: 'Le regime moderne, qui entend ne trouver patrout que des ames d'esclaves, s'efforce par tous les moyens de mettre les humbles dans l'impossibilite de tenir tete aux gros. '0 All the governments since the Revolution had been governments of the bourgeoisie:
I1 a fallu cinquante ans de luttes aux ouvriers pour briser les chaines si admirablement forgees que la Bourgeoisie triomphante en 1789 leur avait attachees aux pieds et aux mains pour exercer l'exploitation industrielle a son aise; c'est a peine si aujourd'hui ils se trouvent, au point de vue du droit d'association, a peu pres au meme point qu'a la veille de la Revolution.11
Above all, the propertied classes were stronger than ever: 'Jamais la propriete, nous l'avons constate d maintes reprises, n'a eu des droits
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semblables a ceux qu'elle exerce aujourd'hui avec une si jalouse aprete. '2 In his search for a scapegoat to blame for this state of affairs, Drumont turned on the Jews, who were responsible for the rule of money:
Aujourd'hui, grace au Juif, l'argent auquel le monde chretien n'attachait qu'une importance secondaire et n'assignait qu'un role subalterne est devenu toutpuissant. La puissance capitaliste concentree dans un petit nombre de mains gouverne a son gre toute la vie economique des peuples, asservit le travail et se repait des gains iniques acquis sans labeur.
It was thanks to the Jew that 'la vieille France s'est dissoute, decomposee. 'Rich Jews such as the Rothschilds were seen as having arrived from abroad, done no work, produced nothing, and yet made millions of francs through the financial system: 'Tout vient du Juif; tout revient au Juif. 13 The sales of La France juive were enormous, and its political effect incalculable. Drumont appealed not only to Christian conservatives, but to all those who hated the capitalist system. He soon found that his book had placed him firmly in the political arena; and his writings and actions, from 1886 onwards, were far more consciously political, culminating in the founding of the newspaper La Libre Parole (1892), the involvement in the Panama and Dreyfus Affairs, the founding of the Ligue Nationale Antisemitique franqaise, and his incursion into parliamentarypolitics. The strength of antisemitism as a political force has been a matter of some discussion. There is no doubt that, in the years immediately succeeding 1886, the theme became very influential. To many observers, any anticapitalistic traits in Drumont have appeared to be an offshoot of his antisemitism. It appears, on the contrary, from a reading of the texts, that anticapitalism was the major interest, and antisemitism its weapon. Like many others, Drumont sincerely believed the Republic to have been taken over by Jewish interests; but the results he abhorred were the ravages created by capital. It was for this that he was to be of such lasting influence, and that in the 1930s a man like Bernanos could still claim allegiance to him. Antisemitism was a rather shorter-lived political force only in the sense that it could never remain the major plank in a platform. For about fifteen years, with the help of the Panama and the Dreyfus scandals, it maintained a strong political presence. It is wrong, however, to suggest that thereafter it became something of a political
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albatross to those parties who took it up. In the French situation, it was a powerful emotive force when placed alongside other major preoccupations, such as nationalism or anticapitalism. In the 1880s it was a particularlygood way of bringing together the disparate forms of hatred of capital, and giving them a target to aim at. Above all, for Catholic traditionalists, it was a way of attractinga whole new area of public support. French socialism had always contained elements of antisemitism, and was later publicly to declare its attitude at the time of the Dreyfus Affair, in the Manifeste des deputes socialistes au proletariat, in which the Jews were accused of attempting 'pour garder leur part du butin de se rehabiliterun peu', and in which 'tout le groupe judaisant et panamisant' were depicted as wishing to 'laver d cette fontaine toutes les souillures d'Israel. "4 Popular support for such hatreds was something which could now, it was felt, be attracted to more traditional doctrines. The young Barres saw this, but saw the dangers of this approach as well. Shortly after the foundation of the Ligue nationale antisemitiquefranqaise, he described, in an article in La Figaro, the way in which antisemitism, a 'tradition un peu honteuse de l'ancienne France', had been rejuvenated by Drumont, and had now been made public in crowded and enthusiastic political meetings. 'C'est de la haine, simplement de la haine qu'on voit tout d'abord dans cetteformule antijuive', he declared. For capital was the enemy, and the crowds who were crying 'A bas les Juifs!' were really crying 'A bas les inegalites sociales!' The 80,000 Jews in France really meant nothing to these people. Their anger was against 'toute cette formidable organisation du capital qui les domine.' Barres was frightened by this antisemitism, because it would serve to divert attention from the real enemy. A movement which shouted 'A bas les Juifs!' would not last long. The moment one Jew was killed the whole thing would collapse. 'Lespartis uniquementfondes sur les passions demeurent a la merci des moindres evenements qui font tourner l'opinion.' State Socialism, declared Barres, was the answer to the antisemitic formula. 'II nous fournit un beau reve .... C'est une theorie d'amour.' The antisemites, with their furious imprecations, must realise the nature of modern society, and the formidable power of the capitalistic society they were attacking. Capitalist France would always laugh at mere agitators; what was needed was 'un homme installe dans la place, un pouvoir fort', which could 'imposer ses volontes, ouvrir les murs aux desherites.'5
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The use of the word socialism, in the mouths of people like Barres at this time, has little relation to the political term as it is generally understood. Any concern with social matters, with a desire for change, with an attack on capitalism, could be described in this way. Charles Maurras's description of Drumont, in a letter of 1890, is typical in its description of the new-style conservatism: 'IIy a deux partis conservateurs, l'un qui est vivant et I'autre. Le premier est avec Drumont et, par Drumont, il finira bien par joindre le parti socialiste, populaire, qui est la grande force aveugle, encore inemployee. '16
Drumont quite clearly saw himself, in electoral terms, as a Catholic conservative. In his description of his own candidature at a municipal election in Paris, he states how he counted on the votes of those French workers who would be aware of the Jewish danger, but that any any rate he felt that 'j'aurai toujours les voix de mesfreres les catholiques que, depuis de longues annees, je rencontre le dimanche a la Messe.' This was all the more so because he was not challenging anyone's interests, as there was no conservative adversary; he would not be troubling any 'droit acquis'. The obvious thing for the local Catholics to do was to 's'employer de leur mieux pour soutenir un candidat qui etait, par sa vie comme par ses ecrits, le representant de leurs idees.'17 He was not conservative in the parliamentary sense. To be so would be to associate himself with deputies like Baron Reille, who was 'I'oppose du Catholique tel que je le comprends', and who was 'par excellence le Catholique mele aux affaires financieres, s'accommodant tres bien du regime social actuel si monstrueux et si inique qu'il soit, en beneficiant tant qu'il peut.'18 It was the opposition of people like Reille to his anticapitalism, he claimed, that had caused his electoral defeat. Barres's own concern with social ideas in this period has led a number of writers, using his own contemporary terms, to describe it as his 'socialist' phase; some even go so far as to call it his 'leftist' phase.'9 Yet his political platform in this period fits in well with the right-wing trends we have been describing, and his later conservatism was a natural continuation of these earlier conservative tendencies. In the election of 1889 Barres stood as a Boulangist, and was returned for the third constituency of Nancy. Observershave rightly pointed to the varied support which General Boulanger achieved, ranging from extreme left to Royalism; this support was united in its hatred for the Third Republic, and the desire for a new regime. Patriotism was another binding factor. But what is not sufficiently
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realised is that fact that, in this unexpected alliance, further points of agreement were discovered, and a new form of political platform formed, in which anticapitalism, patriotism, and antiparliamentarianism were the watchwords. After the failure of the General, which removed the immediate possibility of a coup d'etat, these new policies were the basis for the first Boulangist electoral campaign. Barres's published programme included the suppression of the parliamentary regime, a separation of the legislative and executive powers, and a strong executive which, on major matters, could refer directly to the people by way of a referendum. On the social side, it called for the organization of retirement pensions for the workers, the abolition of laws restricting the right to strike or the right to unionise, more equitable taxation, and guarantees for French workers against foreign competition. The last of these aims was to lead to one of the main planks in Barres's platform in the 1893 election: protectionism led inexorably to an appeal for 'France for the French.' Impressed, perhaps, by the success of Drumont's tactics (which he had viewed with such scepticism in 1890), Barres claimed that the exclusion of foreign workers, which would protect French workers, was an issue which formed the meeting point of antisemitism, socialism and the patriotic current.20 Barres's programme in this election was one of socialisme nationaliste. Like many other traditionalist movements from this date onwards, it attacked both international socialism and international capitalism. Despite Barres's attacks on socialist thinkers from Fourier to Marx, he neverthelessinsisted in this period on thinking of himself as being a socialist, and on seeing men like Jaures and Sembat as 'garqons marchands de vin au comptoir oti je bois ma liqueur. '2 Both his supporters and his opponents saw his views in their true light, however, as being basically of the right. In La Cocarde, the newspaper which he edited from late 1894 to early 1895, he gathered together what Maurras, with hindsight, saw as a very motley array of collaborators.22 Yet the journal, which contained a number of former Boulangists, as well as an anarchist like Augustin Hamon, was united by a number of things: patriotism, anticapitalism and antiparliamentarianism, as well as decentralist policies. To those who suggest that Barres's social thought in this period had to be 'a balancing act, an attempt to maintain an equilibrium between both poles of his staff, between left-wing and right-wing doctrines,'23it could be answered that, in the fluid political situation of the 1890s,
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such distinctions were not so clear, and that Barres, who after all chose his own collaborators, appeared to be unaware of the contradictions. For him left and right, if they were national rather than international, were likely to take the same views upon social problems. Barres's own ideas, as expressed in the paper, appear to have been becoming more and more affected by Proudhon, who was to lie at the basis of so much right-wing social theory in the next fifty years. Barres's last campaign as a socialiste national was in 1898. His platform reiteratedthe need for tax reforms, workers' pensions, better schooling, etc., and levelled further attacks against high finance and against the foreigners who ran it. Nationalism was stressed more and more, as well it might in the year of the Dreyfus crisis; yet the 'Socialist' Barres and the 'Nationalist' Barres were a natural continuum, and if events after the Affair made Barres concentrate more on the latter doctrine, this was in no way a denial of the former. The basis for both was a desire for strong government, preferably by one man, who would put the country to rights; this leader would be elected by popular vote, and have recourse to the people over the heads of any other elected representatives, by means of referenda. In this mystical appeal to the people, and this hatred of parliamentarism, there is much which makes one think of the origins of the Fifth Republic. Barres is a case of particular interest. But he was not the only right-winger to make use of the title 'Socialist'. In 1890 the Marquis de Mores, Drumont's chief collaborator in the new Ligue antisemitique, had formed in Paris a 'comite revisionniste et socialiste'; and later on Pierre Bietry, the leader of the 'yellow' trade unionists, was to call his movement the Parti Socialiste National. That all this populist conservatism was an honest appeal to the working class can hardly be in doubt. Drumont's fierce attack on Jewish capital was based upon the contrast between the rich and the fact that there were 'des familles entieres [qui]s'asphyxiaient parce qu'elles ne pouvaient plus manger. 24 Again and again he stressed the appalling conditions under which sections of the poor lived. God had said, 'Thou shalt live by the sweat of thy brow', but He had not said: 'Tu vivras enferme dans une atmosphere meurtriere, tu epuiseras les ton sang.'25 forces de ton corps, tu videras tes moelles et tu brtuleras For Barres the important thing was to bring the working classes back into a relationship with the rest of the French nation; nationalism and 'socialism' of his particular type were therefore natural corollaries. Mores shared Barres's view of the need for an economic
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transformation of society and a new kind of leadership, while basing these views on 'la souverainete du peuple'26 and seeing the most urgent need as being to 'alleger . . la misere generale'.27 The suggestion that has been made by several historians, that such views were a conscious attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the proletariat, and that, unrelated as they were to true socialist theory, they were merely an attempt to improve the lot of the petite bourgeoisie, is hard to support. Some of the policies put forward were unrealistic and, in the case of Barrres,a growing concern for order and continuity meant that the most that would be likely to be achieved was a tinkering with the system. But in a period when working-class ideology and organization were poorly developed, when French socialism was divided, when strikes could be brutally suppressed with little in the way of retaliation, and when the Chamber of Deputies hardly discussed the 'Social Question' (occupied as it was by outdated problems such as the clerical threat), the conservative solutions, Boulangism, and the violence of the anarchists, must have seemed the only real contributions to the solution of the problem. The late growth of effective working-class organization in the mid-1890s was completely to change this picture. In the 1886-98 period, the Chamber of Deputies had devoted all too little attention to social problems, and when it did, it appeared to concentrate on the maintenance of the rights of the property-owning classes. Barres was out of the Chamber from 1893 onwards. Among the Conservatives, Albert de Mun, who in 1886 had founded his Association Catholique de la Jeunesse Franqaise, based on the concept of individual evangelisation which would bring individuals back to the true faith and to a sense of duty, which would thus gradually improve society, continued on his paternalistic way; but he appears to have done little, in parliamentary terms, to deal with social problems. Most of the Catholic deputies fitted Drumont's description of Baron Reille. Drumont asked himself what right such people had to 'traiter les Republicains d'affames et de jouisseurs. '28 At least the Republicans did not claim to be Christians. While not necessarily sharing the violence of Drumont's denunciations, we should perhaps nevertheless look fleetingly at the conservative parliamentariansof the time. They divide very much into provincial nobility and urban industrialistsand businessmen. The Ralliement was to be the great opportunity for some of the latter to show their colours, by supporting the status quo in the Republic. As Shapiro puts it in his study of this question, 'this makes political
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sense. They were men whose fortunes were most closely linked to the preservation of public order.'29 In the 1886-98 period, parliamentary conservatism was on the whole, despite varied opinions about the regime that was desirable, on social matters not very different from the capitalist liberalism which ruled France with such ease. It was the extra-parliamentary right which objected to the social order, and which, whether it looked for it within revolution or continuity, asked for change. It appealed both to the working class and to the lower middle class; but by the middle of the nineties new forces had begun to emerge which were to complicate what, until then, had been a fairly simple issue. Of these forces, the rapid expansion of the Socialist group in the Chamber of Deputies was, paradoxically, one of the least important. It was the founding of the Confederation generale du travail, and the sharp increase in strike action in the late 1890s, which showed the way forward for working-class action. The Dreyfus Affair, which was originally seen by the Socialist deputies as a fight between two bourgeois factions, which would merely succeed, by distracting attention from France's true problems, in furthering the exploitation of the people, eventually engulfed the leading Socialists Jaures and Millerand, as well as many of their followers. The aftermath of the Affair showed that, in Socialist terms, involvement on the Dreyfus side had been a mistake. Socialists might well enter government; but none of Millerand's proposed social reforms in 1900-02 ever led to anything, and the government alliance, after the elections of 1902, remained in the sidetrack of anticlerical activity which had been bequeathed to it by the Affair. Effective activity in relation to the social problem, on the left, was in the hands of the anarcho-syndicalists and the CGT. The extra-parliamentary right had been aware of the potential power of the mouvement ouvrier, which may have been one of the reasons that it had done so much to try to channel its forces. Parliamentarians had been far less aware. In the aftermath of the Fourmies strike, in July 1891, Deroulede, amid the smiles of the Centre, had warned them in the following terms, to no avail:
Vous pouvez vous reconcilier ainsi avec ce mouvement ouvrier qui se developpe, que vous ne pouvez arreter, et dont vous pourrez peut-etrealors reprendrela direction, cette direction qui vous echappe parce que dans la democratie revolutionnaire vous avez constitue I'aristocratiefinanciere, dont vous etes les fideles et tenaces representants.30
By 1898, at the height of the Dreyfus Affair, however, the right
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was far too concerned with the matters of the moment to devote much attention to the social problem. The various Ligues were more concerned either with nationalism or with antisemitism than with social reform, more with the defence of religion and order than with the defence of the poor. Deroulede's revived Ligue des Patriotes, together with Barres, the proponent of authoritarian Republicanism, saw the Affair as the opportunity for a change of regime; Guerin and the Ligue antisemite, in the wake of Drumont, used it as the opportunity for their last public achievements. The Ligue de la Patrie Franqaise was mainly concerned with defending the anti-Dreyfusard cause, and attacking the opposing forces (though, in its programme, it took advantage of Socialist inadequacy on the social question to make an appeal to the workers). The Action Franqaise movement, starting from very small beginnings, was the only one to have tendencies towards a real social policy; and these were not to become clear and fully developed until about 1906. In the Ligue de la Patrie Franqaise's programme there were, however, as Watson points out,31 certain significant trends. The danger from the left led to a declared opposition to collectivism. It was suggested that there was a 'secret alliance of Socialism and Jewish high finance'. This appeal to the lower middle class was matched by an appeal to potential Socialist supporters, through a claim that the Nationalists would do all that Socialism, despite all its promises, had failed to do - produce equitable taxation, old age pensions, a sickness fund, unemployment insurance, pensions, all based on the principle of free association instead of 'enforced collectivism' .32
The Action Franqaisewas eventually to be the main spokesman of the right on social affairs. In 1899, at its foundation, it consisted largely of a group of young people devoted, as its title suggests, to an active and violent pursuit of Nationalist aims. Its journal was nationalist, anti-parliamentarian, anticapitalist and (at this stage) Republican. Writing to Barres in February 1899 to ask him whether he would be a collaborator in the journal they were aiming to produce, Maurras wrote: 'Le groupe qui se reunit au Cafe Voltaire (Vaugeois, Pujo, etc.), et dont je suis toutes les deliberations, me charge de vous demander si l'on peut citer votre nom dans la liste des collaborateurs possibles du journal ... La nuance est nationaliste, avec quelques propensions au socialisme ... .33 Vaugeois, one of the two founders of the movement, saw its mission as to 'raviveren les mettant en presence, ces deux verites pures, celle du
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passe et celle de l'avenir, celle du parti reactionnaire et celle du parti socialiste, de faire voir leur egale noblesse et de preparer non pas le melange, mais la paix entre elles par une serie de discussions sinceres sur les questions vitales de la politique actuelle. 34 The political character of the journal, and the movement, had completely changed from Republican to Royalist by 1901. This was the work of Maurras, who in the years since La Cocarde had discovered his Royalist faith, and now succeeded in converting his collaborators. This new form of Royalism, far removed from the moribund Royalism of the Legitimists and Orleanists, was to be based on a coherent and rational assessment of the problems of society. The monarch became the equivalent of Barres's dictator who would reorganise society on suitable lines. Amid the other political interests of the first years of the Action Fran aise, one can perceive a coherent social policy growing up. This was largely based upon the teachings of La Tour du Pin, of whom Maurras said in 1905, 'I7est essentiel que l'on sache tout ce que nous devons a cet homme, qui est vraiment un maitre. 35La Tour du Pin, who joined the movement, had by now become the theorist of a whole social policy based on corporatism. In Vers un ordre social chretien he links this with a specific attack on capitalism, which he described as a modern form of usury.36 It was from 1906 onwards, however, that the Action Franqaise began to take a specific stance on social issues. This coincided with what appeared to many to be a potentially revolutionary situation. As Malcolm Anderson puts it, many people felt that 'the future of the bourgeois society was in doubt.' Between 1906 and 1911 there were perpetual strikes, 'accompanied by a commentary of revolutionary pronouncements by trade union leaders.' The 'social problem' replaced 'clericalism' as the main issue in parliament.37 It is significant that, in 1906, Clemenceau as Minister of the Interior claimed to have discovered a plot involving leaders of the CGT and 'certain members of the extreme extra-parliamentaryRight.'38 For, in opposition to the forces of capital and the bourgeoisie, these two forces were not entirely contradictory. Though no plot was ever proved, the belief in the likelihood of such a link-up was clearly there. The Action Franqaise's first social move, however, had been in the direction of the Parti Socialiste National of Bietry and his yellow trade unions. Bietry, who had become a rather idiosyncratic deputy by winning a Brest constituency in 1906, believed in the extension of
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property-owning to all classes. His platform combined violent antisocialism with a belief in the principle of the 'closed shop'. Bietry's unions were, however, basically blackleg organizations, and when he called for the CGT to be suppressed, in 1907, it was clear that his commitment was more to the economic status quo than to any attack on capitalism. The Action Franqaise broke with him, and turned to the trade unions themselves. Maurras, Leon Daudet, Pujo, Revain and Valois all spoke of the similarity of their aims.39 The strong support given by the Action Franqaiseto the strikersof Draveil and Villeneuve-St-Georges in 1908, when Clemenceau, the 'premierflic de France' saw it as his duty to put down such social disorders, is at first sight paradoxical; but it bears out the view that parliamentarians, whatever their political hue, stood for the maintenance of the interests of the bourgeoisie. Maurras's statements on the social question on the occasion of this strike40 showed his fundamental belief that the class struggle was inevitable in a democratic society. What was needed was a complete change of regime, the installation of a monarchy, which would show both employers and workers that they had common interests, and that any differences could be resolved by each class being aware of its own duties rather than asserting the duties of others. In his depiction of the present system, however, he made it clear that class struggle was inevitable, and that the needs of the workers should be understood by the bourgeoisie, rather than ignored. The attitudes of the employers created the reactions of the workers. So, in the present unsatisfactory world, faced by the reality of the class struggle, it was important not to side with the forces of capitalism. The workers, at least, were able to recognise the common enemy, democracy. This explains all the ventures which, up to 1914, the Action Franqaise undertook with syndicalists of various hues, and which have been documented in Weber's book.41They represent not so much a renunciation of traditional or corporatist theory, as a realistic assessment that, until the regime was overthrown, the present situation must be dealt with in its own terms. The movement's belief in the monarchy remained based not purely on nationalism and tradition, but also on the belief in a need for a new society which would, by a return to the old virtues, do away with the rule of capital. The preparednessto work with other revolutionary forces opposed to capital was not understood by a number of the movement's followers; indeed, La Tour du Pin himself broke off relations for a
736
while. But conservative corporatism and revolutionary syndicalism shared many negative attitudes, and even when combining with the latter Maurras was aware of the ultimate aim which transcended the present situation. The war appeared to change everything. By their alliance with Clemenceau in 1917, the Action Franqaise had subordinated what they saw as the national interest to all others. After the war, it was harder to see them as opponents of the Republic, even though they retained their Royalist policies. Leon Daudet's seat in the Chamber of Deputies denoted a complete change of political tactics. The Action Franqaise was becoming respectable. It was in this situation that a major policy split took place within the movement. A number of the members of the newly respectable Action Franqaise began to see the movement as being, above all, the defender of the interests of the bourgeoisie against revolutionary socialism and communism. Volumes and articles expatiating on the virtues of the bourgeoisie as the backbone of France were produced. Bainville wrote of 'le divin capital'.42At the same time some of the political and economic thinkers of the movement continued with the old line. Georges Valois was the leading figure on this side, and his Confederation de l'Intelligence et de la Production Franqaise, aimed at both workers and employers, was a serious attempt to introduce corporative ideas at the ground level. The Conf6deration had considerable success in the early twenties; Valois's appeal was based not merely on economic grounds, but on the sense of comradeship and heroism which all Frenchmen had found in the trenches, and which should now create the unity which would enable them to stamp out all the forces of plutocracy which had taken advantage of the war. This appeal to disappointed ex-servicemen was, later in the inter-war period, to be the strength of a number of the ligues. Valois's book, La Revolution nationale, in its call for a strong leader who would maintain the rights of all against the rights of capital, appeared the perfect answer to Rene Johannet, the most strident of the supporters of the bourgeoisie, for whom 'le capitalisme l'emporte et l'emportera toujours, parce qu'il est seul scientifique, parce qu'il correspond a la nature, parce qu'il s'appuie sur la tradition, parce qu'il existe. 43 The fact that it was Valois who left the Action Franqaise has led many people to believe that it was the triumph of the other faction which drove him out. In fact, it appears to have been, above all, impatience with what he saw as the moribund, respectable outlook of
737
the contemporary movement. As he later said, 'Ma volonte bien arretee etait d'entrainer toute l'Action Franqaisedans un mouvement revolutionnaire. Je la tenais pour gouvernee par des hommes parfaitement resolus a ne jamais agir.44 This appears to relate to the new 'respectability of the Action Franqaise, rather than necessarily to its rejection of all its former ideas; but the two things are naturally to some extent intermingled. Though Leon Daudet continued his violent attacks on plutocracy, and though many of the movement's supporters, like Adolphe Rette, found in Daudet's phrase 'tout en or' the true designation of 'les financiers qui opposent a l'Esprit la puissance brutale de leurs capitaux',45the Action Franqaise represented to many people, from now on, a bourgeois movement supporting the status quo against the communist threat. It is significant, nevertheless, that in a selection from his works published in 1937, under the title Mes Ides politiques, Maurras should have had reprinted some of his 'social' writings of the 1908 period. It is difficult, in the perpetual argument between political scientists about the fascist or non-fascist nature of the ligues of the inter-war period, to arrive at clear conclusions. But three movements, above all, appear to stem directly from that traditional right which we have been describing: Valois's Le Faisceau (despite its obeisance to Mussolini in its name), Taittinger's Jeunesses Patriotes, and La Rocque's Croix de Feu. Le Faisceau continued Valois's already-formed ideas; the Jeunesses Patriotes combined traditional nationalism with the corporatist ideas of La Tour du Pin; the Croix de Feu aimed specifically at ex-servicemen, calling for unity of the classes, respect for work and for the rights acquired by the workers, and authority and order.46It was these, rather than the other ligues, which attracted traditionalist support to the greatest extent; Doriot's movement, Le Parti Populaire Franqais, attracted, after its foundation in 1936, a very different kind of support, from the working class and from intellectuals, as did some of the other, smaller, movements whose true origins lay on the left. Le Faisceau did not have enormous success after 1926. It was the two traditionalist and patriotic ligues, the Jeunesses Patriotes and the Croix de Feu, which appeared, by the mid-thirties, to be capturing much of the lower-middle class support which the Action Franqaise had once enjoyed. A referendum, in the newspaper Le Petit Journal in late 1934, is a good witness to this change. The referendum was on the question of who should be the French dictator. The result put
738
Marshal Petain first, with 38,561 votes, with Pierre Laval second with 31,403. When it came to the heads of the ligues, Taittinger of the Jeunesses Patriotes did very well, with 11,163 votes. La Rocque of the Croix de Feu got 6,402. Maurras and Daudet had so few votes that they did not even appear on the final list, and the royalist candidates, between them, got only just over a thousand. The strength of anticapitalist views on the French right has often been underestimated. The solutions which were put forward were often either unrealistic, or paternalistic, or consciously or unconsciously advantageous to the very bourgeoisie they were attacking. But one must discount neither the possibility that these views were sincere, nor the effect that the negative attack on capitalism could have on whole sections of the community. The policies of the Revolution Nationale, in 1940, still bear the imprint of this anticapitalist tradition, and it is interesting to note, in July of that year, the concentration on these themes in the major statements aimed at winning over the French nation. The Expose des motifs du projet de loi constitutionnelle spoke of a redistribution of wealth, designed to avoid 'd'une part, la dictature de l'argent et de la ploutocratie, d'autre part, la misere et le chomage.'47Laval, presenting the expose to the Assembly on July 10th, spoke emotively, saying that 'Ce qui a corrompu surtout l'ame de la France, c'est l'or de l'etranger'.48 Petain, in his Appel du 11 juillet, spoke of 'le capitalisme international et le socialisme international' which had exploited and degraded the French workers: 's'opposant l'un a l'autre en apparence, ils se menageaient l'un et l'autre en secret.' Capital had been the enemy: 'Pour notre societe devoyee, I'argent, trop souvent serviteur et instrument du mensonge, etait un moyen de domination'.49 In the Revolution nationale we find an attempt to put many of the theories of the French right, in relation to capitalism, into practice. In the process the inevitable clashes between corporatism, 'back to the land' agriculturalism, utopian trust in the ultimate goodness of man, and meritocratic technocracy were revealed. It had taken the achievement of power to show the incoherence of the proposed practical solutions to a problem which, presented in negative terms, had appeared deceptively simple.
739
Notes
1. E.g. Weber's study of the Action Franqaise's relationship with syndicalism in the period 1911-14. 2. E.g. E. Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism (London 1965). 3. See Richard Griffiths, The Reactionary Revolution (London 1966). 4. Huysmans, Letter to Leclaire, 28 April 1903. 5. Paul Claudel, Memoires improvises, 73. 6. Paul Claudel, La Ville (2nd version, 1897). 7. Rene Remond, La Droite en France (Paris 1963), 136. 8. Edouard Drumont, La France Juive (1886). 9. Edouard Drumont, Testament d'un Antisemite (1891). 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. Drumont, La France Juive. 14. Manifeste des deputes socialistes au proletariat, 19 January 1898, quoted in Kedward, The Dreyfus Affair (London 1965), 101. 15. Maurice Barres, Le Figaro, 22 February 1890. 16. Charles Maurras, Letter to Maurice Barres, 22 February 1890. (Printed in La Republique ou le Roi (Paris 1970) 31-32. 17. Drumont, Testament d'un Antisemite. 18. Ibid., 403. 19. E.g. Robert Soucy, Fascism in France: The Case of Maurice Barres (Los Angeles 1972), 228. 20. Interview in Le Figaro, 31 July 1893, quoted in Soucy, op. cit., 235. 21. Quoted in Pierre Moreau, Maurice Barres (Paris 1946), 100. 22. Maurras, Au Signe de Flore, (Paris 1933), Livre premier, 'Confession politique'. 23. Soucy, op. cit., 237. 24. Drumont, Testament d'un Antisemite, 363. 25. Drumont, quoted in Bernanos, La Grande Peur des Bien-pensants (Paris 1931), 91. 26. Mores tract, 'La Fete du Travail, le 1ermai 1890'. 27. Mores et ses amis, Rothschild, Ravachol et Cie (Paris 1892), 48. 28. Drumont, Testament d'un Antisemite, 403. 29. David Shapiro, 'The Ralliement in the Politics of the 1890s' in The Right in France 1890-1919, (St. Anthony's Papers 13), 1962. 30. Debats parlementaires, 10 July 1891, quoted in Girardet, Le Nationalisme Franqais 1871-1914, (Paris 1966), 165-66. 31. D.R. Watson, 'The Nationalist Movement in Paris, 1900-1906'in The Right in France, 1890-1919, 62. 32. Lemaitre, election poster of 1900, quoted in Watson, op. cit., 63. 33. Maurras, Letter to Barres, 3 February 1899. (La Republique ou le Roi, 206-7). 34. Vaugeois, quoted in Girardet, op cit., 195. 35. Maurras, letter to Barres, 9 July 1905 (La Republique ou le Roi, 455). 36. La Tour du Pin, Vers un ordre social chretien (Paris s.d.), 351. 37. Malcolm Anderson, 'The Right and the Social Question in Parliament, 1905-1919' in The Right in France 1890-1919, 85-86. 38. Ibid, 85.
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39. See especially Georges Valois, 'La Revolution sociale et le roi' in Revue de I'Action Franqaise, 16 September 1907; idem, 'Royalisme et syndicalisme' in ibid., 15 October 1907; and Jean Rivain, 'L'Avenir du syndicalisme' in ibid., 15 September 1908. 40. See, particularly,the Action Franqaise, for 30 & 31 July and 1, 3 and 4 August 1908. 41. Weber, L'Action Franqaise, Part One, Chapter Three, 'Alarmes et Aventures'. 42. Jacques Bainville, 'L'Avenir de la civilisation' in Revue Universelle, 1 March 1922. 43. Rene Johannet, 'La Victoire du capitalisme en Allemagne' in Revue Universelle, 1 January 1922. 44. George Valois, L'Homme contre I'Argent, Souvenirs de Dix Ans, 1918-1928 (Paris 1928), 167. 45. Adophe Rette, 'Tout en or' in La Basse cour d'Apollon (Paris 1924), 156. 46 See J. Plumyene & R. Lasierra, Les Fascismes Franqais, 1923-1963 (Paris 1963), 53. 47. Expose des motifs, in Montigny, Toute la verite sur un mois dramatique de notre histoire, Clermont-Ferrand, 1940, p. 129-132. 48. Montigny, op. cit., p. 80. 49. Petain, Appel du 11juillet 1940.
Richard Griffiths Professor of French at University College, Cardiff, is the author of The Dramatic Technique of Montchrestien (Oxford 1970), The Reactionary Revolution: The Catholic Revival in French Literature 1870-1914 (Oxford 1966) and Marshal Petain (Constable 1970). He is currently working on a book entitled Reactions to the Dictators.

Griffiths - Anticapitalism and The French Extra-Parlamentary Right

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Anticapitalism and the French Extra-Parliamentary Right, 1870-1940 Author(s): Richard Griffiths Source: Journal of Contemporary History, Vol.

Anticapitalismand the French Extra-Parliamentary Right, 1870-1940

Journal of Contemporary History

Griffiths: The French Extra-Parliamentary Right

Journal of Contemporary History

Griffiths: The French Extra-Parliamentary Right

Journal of Contemporary History

Griffiths: The French Extra-Parliamentary Right

Journal of Contemporary History

Griffiths: The French Extra-Parliamentary Right

Journal of Contemporary History

Griffiths: The French Extra-Parliamentary Right

Journal of Contemporary History

By 1898, at the height of the Dreyfus Affair, however, the right

Griffiths: The French Extra-Parliamentary Right

Journal of Contemporary History

Griffiths: The French Extra-Parliamentary Right

Journal of Contemporary History

Griffiths: The French Extra-Parliamentary Right

Journal of Contemporary History

Griffiths: The French Extra-Parliamentary Right

Journal of Contemporary History

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