French Workers and German Workers: The Impossibility of Internationalism, 1900-1914

European History Quarterly

Volumn 15, Issue 1, 1985, Pages 71-97

  Howorth, Jolyon ^a  

^a ASTON UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 84972748154     PISSN: 02656914     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/026569148501500103     Document Type: Article

References (109)

1. This astonishment was implicit or explicit in all the standard works on the Second International cited in note 2. But it is still to be found in current work on the period. See, for example, Gary Steenson, ‘Not one man! Not one penny!’ German Social-Democracy, 1863-1914 (Pittsburgh 1981), xi.
2. M. M. Drachkoiitch, Les Socialismes français et allemand et le problème de la guerre, 1870-1914 (Geneva 1954).
3. Carl E. Schorske, German Social-Democracy, 1905-1917. The Development of the Great Schism (Cambridge, Mass. 1955)
4. James Joll, The Second International, 1889-1914 (London, second edition, 1974)
5. G.D.H. Cole, A History of Socialist Thought, Volume III, The Second International (London 1956)
6. Julius Braunthal, Geschichte des Internationale (Hannover 1961).
7. See, in particular, Richard J. Evans, ‘Introduction: The Sociological interpretation of German labour history’ in Richard J. Evans, ed., The German Working-Class, 1888-1933. The Politics of Everyday Life (London 1982).
8. See Georges Haupt & Jolyon Howrrth, ‘Edouard Vaillant, délégué au Bureau socialiste international: correspondance avec le Secrétariat international (1900-1915)’, Annali della Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, Milano 1976, 219-221 (this work hereafter cited as Haupt & Howorth, Vaillant Correspondence).
9. Georges Haupt, Michel Lowy, Claudie Weill, Les Marxistes et la Question nationale, 1848-1914 (Paris 1974).
10. Eric Cahm & Vladimir Fisera, eds., Socialism and Nationalism in Contemporary Europe, 1848-1945, Volume 1 (Nottingham 1978), 7-19.
11. Jean Jaurès and Edouard Vaillant, who were the principal French delegates to the Second International, both insisted on the reality and strength of national cultures. See M. Rebénoux, ‘Jaurès et la nation’ in Actes du Colloque Jaurès et la Nation (Toulouse 1965), 1-27.
12. Jolyon Howorth, Edouard Vaillant et la création de l'unité socialiste en France (Paris 1982), 313-21.
13. The Austro-Marxists, who reflected longest and hardest on ‘the national question’, attempted to preserve the cultural autonomy of national minoiities within an enlarged Austrian state. For a recent introduction to Austro-Marxism, see Tom Bottomore & Patrick Goode, eds. Austro-Marxism, (Oxford 1978).
14. See Giuliano Procacci, ‘Studi sulla Seconda Internazionale e sulla socialdemocrazia tedesca’, Annali, 1958, 105-46.
15. For some thoughts on the complex ‘public-relations’ aspect of international socialist gatherings and reflections, see Jolyon Howrrth, ‘The Left in France and Germany, Internationalism and War: a dialogue of the Deaf, 1900-1914’ in Cahm & Fisera, Annali, Vol. 2,85-86.
16. Georges Haupt's main works are: La lléme Internationale, 1889-1914. Etude critique des Sources, essai bibliographique (Paris 1964).
17. Le Congres manqué (Paris 1965)
18. Bureau Socialiste International, Vol. 1. 1900-1907. Comptes rendus des reunions, Manifestes, Circulaires (Paris 1969)
19. Socialism and the Great War. The Collapse of the Second International (Oxford 1972)
20. Correspondance entre Lénine et Camille Huysmans (Paris 1963), and the work cited in note 4 above. After Haupt's premature death in 1978, the archives of the Bureau Socialiste International, which he was engaged in editing, disappeared from his office at the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme in Paris. They have still not been traced.
21. A special issue of Le Mouvement Social (No. 111, April-June 1980) was devoted to Haupt's work.
22. See Haupt, Bureau Socialiste Internatinal, Vol. I, and Haupt & Howorth, Vaillant Correspondence.
23. Local studies of socialism in pre-1914 Europe invariably touch on this problem. See, e.g. Tony Judt, Socialism in Provence, 1871-1914 (Cambridge 1979), 85, 98.
24. Molly Nolan, Social Democracy and Society. Working-class radicalism in Dusseldorf, 1890-1920. (Cambridge 1981), 175-8, 246-8, 256-8
25. Claude Pennetier, Le Socialisme dans le Cher (Paris-La Charité, 1982), 138-41. But a systematic study of grass-roots attitudes has yet to appear.
26. The history of the International Secretariat of National Trade Union Centres (ISNTUC) — 1900-1913 — has yet to be written. Susan Milner is currently writing a Ph.D. dissertation on this topic at Aston University. Various volumes of Memiirs of actors in ISNTUC were published 50 years ago, most notably Johann Sassenbach, Twenty-Five Years of International Trade Unionism (Amsterdam 1925).
27. The classic ‘overview’ remains Lewis L. Lorwin, Labour and Internationalism (New York 1929).
28. More recently, there has been one Ph.D. dissertation on the creation of the World Federation of Trade Unions in 1913 by Wayne Westergard Thorpe, ‘Revolutionary Syndicalist Internationalism: 1913-1939. The Origins of the International Working Men's Association’, University of British Columbia 1979, and a study of the activities in international unionism of Alfred Rosmer: Christian Gras, Alfred Rosmer et le mouvement révolutionnaire international (Paris 1971).
29. In addition, there is a deplorable dearth of ‘single-nation’ studies of workers’ attitudes to war and militarism (as opposed to the attitudes of socialists). In France, a single article published twenty years ago: Jacques Julliard, ‘La CGT devant la guerre, 1900-1914’, Le Mouvement Social, No. 49, octobre/decembre 1964, 47-62.
30. Recently, there have been a number of studies of 1914 itself, notably by Jean-Jacques Becker, Comment les Français sont entrés dans la guerre (Paris 1977), but still nothing on the internationalist attitudes of organized workers.
31. Richard J. Evans, ‘Introduction’, in Evans, The German Working-Class, 30-46.
32. See especially, Michael Gruttner, ‘Working-class crime and the labour movement: pilfering in the Hamburg docks, 1888-1923’;
33. James S. Roberts, ‘Drink and the labour movement: the Schnapps boycott of 1909’; and Stefan Bajohr, ‘Illegitimacy and the Working-class: illegittmate mothers in Brunswick, 1900-1933’, all in Evans, The German Working Class.
34. The sentence is used by Dick Geary in European Labour Protest (London 1981), 116 and again in ‘Identifying Militancy’, in Evans, The German Working Class, 236. Perhaps this statement is true, but it nevertheless implies that in the last analysis, nation, was as important a reference as class for most European workers (if not stronger). We need to look much more closely at workers’ nationalism in this period.
35. It was Michel Winock who first examined the element of patriotism in the French working-class: ‘Socialisme et patriotisme en France 1891-1894’, in Revue d'Histoire moderneet contemporaine, XX, July-September 1973, 377-421.
36. More recently, articles by Eric Cahm and John Schwarzmantel in Cahm & Fisera, Socialism and Nationalism, Vol. 2, 48-64, have looked at nationalism in the working class during the Dreyfus affair and at left-wing attitudes towards colonialism.
37. Zeev Sternhell, in his controversial, La Droite révolutionnaire (Paris 1978), has examined working-class nationalism and ‘the origins of fascism’ in France prior to 1914.
38. I have examined the nationalism of the Blanquists in a number of publications: ‘The Myth of Blanquism under the Third Republic’, Journal of Modern History, Vol. 48, 3 (1976)
39. ‘L'Eclatement du blanquisme après la mort de Blanqui’, in P. Vigier & M. Agulhon, eds., Blanqui et les Blanquistes (Paris forth coming)
40. ‘Edouard Vaillant, Marxism and the “orthodox” Blanquists: the historical significance of anti-Marxism’, paper read to the Thirtieth annual Conference of the Society for French Historical Studies, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, April 1984.
41. F. H. Hinsley, Nationalism and the International System, (London 1973) 22-3.
42. It was Edouard Vaillant who imposed upon the Second International's International Socialist Bureau the structural form which it finally came to accept. His definition was that the ISB should be ‘un organe de corrélation’ and not ‘un organe de direction’. See Parti Socialiste (SFIO), 7ème Congrès national tenu à Paris les 15 et 16 juillet 1910. Compte rendu sténographique. (Paris 1910), 37-8.
43. Michelle Perrot, Les Ouvriers en Grève (Paris 1974), Vol. 1, 164-79. Mme Perrot shows that the vast majority of immigrant workers in France were Belgians (43 per cent) followed by Italians (24 per cent). There were only 8 per cent Germans among the immigrant worker population.
44. Claude Digeon, La Crise allemande de la pensée frangaise (Paris 1962); Raoul Girardet, Le Nationalisme français (Paris 1966); Allan Mitchlll, The German Influence in France after 1870 (Chapel Hill 1979).
45. See, for example, Manuel de Lecture courante à l'intention des jeunes écoliers qui veulent devenir de bons Français (Paris n.d. [1898?]); Girardet, 70-84; Paul Marie de la Gorce, La République et son armée (Paris 1963).
46. Paul Déroulède, Chants du Soldat (Paris 1872)
47. Claude Bellanger, ed., Histoire Générale de la Presse française, Tome III (de 1871 à 1940), (Paris 1972), 298, 303-9, 315.
48. Michael Palmer, Des Petits Journaux aux grandes agences. Naissance du journalisme moderne (Paris 1984).
49. Elisabeth & Michel Dixmier have studied the presentation of Germany in L'Assiette au Beurre (Paris 1974), 189-95; Madeleine Rebérioux, ‘Roman, Théâtre et Chanson: quelle Commnne?’ and Anne Roche & G. Delfau, ‘La Commune et le roman français have examined the extent to which the presentation of the Prussian in literature connected with the Paris Commune perpetuated the nationalist passions of the period. Robert Brécy, Fiorilège de la chanson révolutionnaire de 1789 au Front populaire (Paris 1978), reproduces essentially revolutionary and internationalist songs, but the albums recorded by Marc Ogeret: Autour de la Commune and Chansons Contre include a number of anti-German songs, especially ‘Suis ton chemin, fils d'Allemagne’. An ongoing Ph.D. dissertation by Ruth M. Brinton of the University of Bath looks at nationalistic jingles in children's playground skipping, dipping and ball games (I am grateful to Ruth Brinton for supplying me with extracts from her dissertation).
50. Michelle Perrot, Les Ouvriers en Grève, Vol. 1 (Paris 1974), 177-9.
51. Yves Lequin, Les Ouvriers de la région lyonnaise, 1848-1914, Vol. II (Lyon 1977), 352-61, especially 359.
52. Note, however, that the margin was 488 votes for to 310 votes against and 72 spoilt or empy ballot papers; not 488 for and 49 against as Henri Dubief states in Le Syndicalisme révolutionnaire (Paris 1969), 155. It was only the unrepresentative nature of CGT voting procedures (whereby each union, no matter how many members it embraced, had one vote) that allowed this motion through at all. In addition to the well-known ‘reformists’ of the larger unions (Keufer of the typographers, for instance), a number of ‘revolutionaries’ also voted against (Merrheim — metal-workers; Latapie — metal-workers; Pataud — electrical workrrs).
53. Lequin, Les ouvriers de la région lyonnaise, Vol. II, 462 note 350.
54. When the International was re-established in 1889, both socialist and labour organizations were invited to join (see Haupt, La Deuxième Internationale, 149).
55. At the London Congress, in an effort to rid the organization of syndicalists who rejected parliamentary politics, a motion was introduced to the effect that only those members of labour organizations which ‘recognized the necessity for political action’ would be admitted. This effectively disbarred the CGT. See, on this point, Augustin Hamon, Le Socialisme et le Congrès de Londres (Paris 1897).
56. In his biography of the CGT leader, Victor Griffuelhes, Bruce Vandervort suggests that the CGT was as keen as were the Germans for a trial of strength within this new organization, each hoping to use it as an instrument for modifying the position of the other — Jean Maitron, ed., Dictionnaire biographique du mouvement ouvrier français. (Paris 1975) Vol. 12, 332.
57. Griffuelhes himself implies as much in his retrospective article on the origins of the ISNTUC, ‘Dans 1’Internationale syndicale’, La Voix du Peuple, No. 366 13-20 October 1907.
58. Griffuelhes, in his report of the Dublin conference of 1903, refers to this proposal, which the French delegation was to repeat on numerous occasions, and expresses regret that the trade-union bureaucrats from the Nordic countries decided to reject the notion of a Congress — ‘Les Syndicats ouvriers: Angleterre: la 3ème conférence internationale des syndicats ouvriers’ in Le Mouvement socialiste, No. 127, 1 September 1903, 70-75.
59. Adolphe Braun, Paul Umrreit and Karl Legien himself contributed articles, in these early years, to the theoretical journal which Lagardelle had put at the service of syndicalism, Le Mouvement socialiste.
60. See, for instance, Paul Fauconnet, ‘Les Secrétariats ouvriers en Allemagne’, Le Mouvement socialiste, No. 15, 15 August 1899, 230-40.
61. Georges Weill, ‘Allemagne: les grèves, les coopératives, les syndicats’ in Le Mouvement socialiste, No. 77, 1 February 1902
62. Paul Umrreit ‘Les Bourses du travail en Allemagne’ in Le Mouvement socialiste, No. 98, 28 June, No. 99, 5 July and No. 100, 22 July 1902.
63. At the Amsterdam Congress of the Second International in 1904, Jaurès had delivered a devastating indictment of the SPD, calling the attention of the socialist world to what he called the ‘political impotence’ of German social-democracy: Sixième Congrès Socialiste International Amsterdam 1904, compte rendu analytique (Bruxelles 1904), 67-82.
64. For details of these events, see Georges Haupt, Bureau socialiste international, 146-56.
65. Richard Hottetter, ‘The SPD and the general strike as an anti-war weapon’, The Historian, XIII (1950-51), 38-39
66. Robert Michels speech to the SPD Congress of Jena — Protokoll über die Verhandlungen des Parteitages der Sozialdemocratischen Partei Deutschlands (Jena 1905), 216-17.
67. Victor Griffuelhes gives details in ‘Dans 1’Internationale‘, La VoixduPeuple, No. 271, 24 December 1905. The way in which Legien succeeded in burying the French proposal was to send it round for comment to the Nordic labour confederations accompanied with his personal recommendation that it should be ignored.
68. ‘Conférence internationale des centres syndicaux’, in La Voix du Peuple, No. 241, 28 May 1905.
69. La Voix du Peuple, Nos. 246 (2 July 1905) and 247 (9 July 1905). The tone of these articles showed a deep sense of offended national pride. ‘Quoique la France ouvrière ne soit pas si bien‘organisée'que l'Allemagne — ce qui ne nous empêche pas d'avoir davantage de grèves se terminant favorablement que l'Allemagne — elle peut désirer n’être pas traitée en quantité négligeable’.
70. The head of the hairdressers’ union, Luquet, had, prior to the Moroccan crisis, pleaded the cause of unilateralism: ‘Partirions-nous en guerre?’, La Voix du Peuple No. 241, 28 May 1905. But after the crisis, even as outspoken an anarchist as Emile Pouget argued that the German socialist and labour movement needed to reciprocate the French antimllitarist campaign much more clearly and unequivocllly: ‘Justification’, La Voix du Peuple, No. 261, 15 October 1905.
71. Griffuelhes, in criticizing the German stalling on joint antimllitarist activity in 1905, noted: ‘Vous répondrez peut-être que les liberies accordées au peuple allemand sont insuffisantes pour des maiifestations de cet ordre. Nous regrettons pour vous qu'il en soit ainsi, car nous savons apprecier toute la valeur de ces libertés conquises, il y a longtemps, par les travailleurs français.’ ‘Dans l'lnternationale’, La Voix du Peuple, No. 271, 24 December 1905.
72. For the first time ever, the CGT drew its memeers’ attention to the existence of a German ‘minority’ syndicalist movement which was in favour of the general strike: La Voix du Peuple, No. 246, 2 July 1905.
73. Victor Griffuelhes, ‘Dans 1’Internationale’, La Voix du Peuple, Nos 271, 272 & 273, 24 December 1905, 1 & 7 January 1906. In the second of these articles, Griffuelhes produces two and a half columns of statistics to prove that the CGT had organized more successful strikes than the GC.
74. This mission was accompanied by an effort, in the pages of La Voix du Peuple, to stress that German workers really were dedicated to peace; No. 274, 14 January 1906 (‘Guerre à la guerre’) and No. 275, 21 January 1906 (‘Redoublons d'Efforts’).
75. Vorwärts, 31 January 1906.
76. ‘Sur une délégation’, La Voix du Peuple, No. 277, 4 February 1906.
77. La Voix du Peuple, No. 279, 19 February 1906 (‘Le Conseil de Révision’) began the first of what were to become regular references to the ideas of the syndicalist opposition in Germany, through the mouthpiece of their journal Einigkiit. For further details on this syndicalist opposition, about which virtually nothing is known, see C. Gras, Alfred Rosmer, 77-8 and an unpublished paper by Klaus Tenfelde, ‘Anarcho-syndikalistische Strömungen in der ruhr Bergarbeiter schaft, 1906-1914’ cited in Dick Geary, European Labour Protest, 128, note 30.
78. V. Griffuelhes, ‘Dans I'Internationale’, La Voix du Peuple, No. 366, 13 October 1907. The stressed words were selected by VG himself.
79. Only a few weeks previously, the CGT had hailed the Vaillantiste motion presented to the SFIO Congress at Nancy by the Fédération du Cher as ‘excellent’ (E.S., ‘A Nancy’, La Voix du Peuple, No. 359, 25 August 1907). The Cher motion responded to the Charte d'Amiens’ declaration of syndicalist autonomy by promising the CGT that the SFIO would respect this decision and not seek to interfere with the policies and decisions of the CGT.
80. Returning from an international conference of hairdressers, Luquet noted that the German hairdressers’ unions were very much on the same wavelength as the CGT and ended his article by suggesting that ‘avant peu, la masse des syndiqués allemands, mieux informée, aura raison des résistances de ses “chefs’” (‘Conférence internationale des ouvniers coiffeurs’), La Voix du Peuple, No. 363, 22 September 1907. Similar ideas were expressed in Griffuelhes’ article in No. 364, 29 September 1907.
81. ‘Dans l'Internationale’, La Voix du Peuple, No. 367, 20 October 1907.
82. Even when the CGT paper was reporting what it considered to be positive developments in Germany, the tone was ironic or mocking. Thus when a mass meeting of the unemployed was held in Berlin, La Voix du Peuple, began its article thus: ‘Les travailleurs allemands secouent leur torpeur ⃨’ — ‘Bravo les Allemand!!‘, No. 381, 27 January 1908. Similarly, Emile Pouget, reporting on sporadic acts of sabotage in the printing industry in Leipzig, commented sarcastically, ‘Rien à ajouter! Du moment que les Allemands deviennent saboteurs, — les social-démocrates allemands ⃨ c'est la fin! C'est l'abomination de la desolation!’ — ‘Le Sabotage en Allemagne’, No. 384, 16 February 1908.
83. La Voix du Peuple, Nos. 368, 369, 371, 376, 377, 3 November 1907 — 29 December 1907. These articles carried on into 1908 under the title ‘Malfaiteurs internationaux’.
84. Le Temps’ praise for the German labour movement at the time of the Christiania conference had irritated the CGT considerably. Article in Le Temps, 26 September 1907 commented on in La Voix du Peuple, No. 364, 29 September 1907.
85. ‘La [commission générale] n'est nullement favorable au chomage le ler mai, où elle ne voit qu'une démonstration vaine et inutile’, Le Temps, 1 July 1908.
86. ‘Le Congrès des Syndicats d‘Allemagne’, La Voixdu Peuple, No. 405, 5 July 1908.
87. ‘La banqueroute de la méthode syndicaliste allemande’, La Voix du Peuple, No. 421-429, 18 October to 13 December 1908.
88. See Hervé’;s highly sarcastic account of the German left's inactivity during the Casablanca affair in La Guerre Sociale, No. 48, 11 November 1908. Full details of the attempts of French socialists to activate international peace demonstrations during the crisis (which the SPD vetoed) in Haupt and Howorth, Vaillant Correspondence, 275-8.
89. See, on this, Gras, Alfred Rosmer, 84-5.
90. Louis Lorwin, Labor and Internationalism, 105, says that the Paris conference was the biggest ever. The CGT took advantage of its situation as host to push very hard for the organization to be transformed into one based on fully-fledged congresses.
91. Emile Pouget called for ‘plusieurs centaines de délégués français’, ‘A Berlin!’, La Guerre Sociale, 7 June 1911.
92. Gustave Hervé called upon every Bourse, every Federation and as many individual syndicats as possible to send delegates, ‘Notre CGT à Berlin’, La Guerre Sociale, 5 July 1911.
93. Pouget, La Guerre Sociale, 7 June 1911.
94. ‘Notre voyage à Berlin’, La Bataillesyndicaliste, No. 84, 19 July 1911.
95. ‘France et Allemagne’, La Bataille syndicaiiste, 25 July 1911.
96. Un Sans-Patrie, ‘Le Voyage à Berlin’, La Guerre Sociale, 2 August 1911.
97. E. Merle, ‘Contre la Guerre’, La Guerre Sociale, 26 July 1911. In his untitled article of 2 August 1911, Merle wrote: ‘The French delegates were moved to tears ⃨ it is certain that if, in that moment of intense emotion, a French delegate had embraced a German, the entire assembly would have fallen into each other's arms. It was a veritable communion of two peoples. It was marvellous!’ The degree of wishful thinking in this account is clearly a function of previous fears and phobias about the Germans.
98. ‘Les socialistes allemands contre la guerre’, La Guerre Sociale, 13 September 1911.
99. Yvetot, ‘L'Orage vient’, La Bataille syndicaliste, 17 July 1911.
100. Ch. Rupert, ‘Le Syndicalisme allemand’, La Bataille syndicaliste, 26 July 1911.
101. Bataille syndicaliste, No. 95, 30 July 1911. It is true that, in the remainder of the article, Yvetot, trying to put as brave a face as possible on things, praises his German comrades for their courage and even claims that there is as much freedom in Germany as there is in France.
102. ‘Le Congrès du parti socialiste allemand’, La Bataille syndicaliste No. 511, 18 September 1912.
103. The report in La Vie ouvrière, 5 November 1912, does not even mention the expulsion of the ultra-nationalist Hildebrand, while Le Mouvement socialiste, No. 245, November 1912, considered this event not as revealing of a resurgent nationalism within the SPD but as a victory for internationalism.
104. ‘Etranges Propos’ Bataille syndicaliste, No. 553, 30 October 1912.
105. Hippe, ‘La Sozial-demokratie est patriote’, La Bataille syndicaliste, No. 558, 4 November 1912. This was a translation from an article published in the German syndicalist journal Einigkeit.
106. La Vie Ouvrière, Nos. 81, 5 February 1913, to 83, 5 March 1913. The French title of Andler's controversial attack was Le Socialisme impérialiste dans l'Allemagne contemporaine (Paris 1913).
107. La Vie Ouvrière, No. 81, 5 February 1913.
108. Jean Jacques Becker & Annie Kriegel, 1914: La Guerre et le Mouvement ouvrifr français (Paris 1964), 38-9.
109. Georges Lefranc, Le mouvement syndical sous la Troisième République (Paris 1967), 195.