On 11 November 1845, Jules Bazile came into the world. He was born on the Rue de la Femme-sans-tĂȘte, later the Rue le Regrattier, on Parisâs Ăźle Saint-Louis. He later chose to adopt his motherâs surname; from November 1945, the street would thus bear a plaque commemorating the âtireless theorist and apostle of socialismâ Jules Guesde.
It did, indeed, take decades of âtirelessâ battles for socialism to become a national political reality in France. What, after all, had âsocialismâ meant back in 1845? Since the 1830s the adjective âsocialistâ had designated a teeming array of doctrines that called for radical social change and aspired to a more egalitarian world. Fourier, Saint-Simon, Proudhon and, indeed, Louis Blanc, among many others, were its most eminent representatives in this period. It is impossible to understand their rise without grasping the intolerable destitution among the workers of this era, the result of the industrialisation of European societies. In his 1841 Tableau de lâĂ©tat physique et moral des ouvriers, the doctor VillermĂ© described the world this created:
For these unfortunates, the fatigue of a working day already long beyond all proportion, a day of at least fifteen hours, is combined with that of travels back-and-forth as frequent as they are arduous. The result is that they reach home at night overwhelmed by the need for sleep, and the next morning head out again before they are completely rested, in order to make it to the workshop for opening time.1
The material conditions of the poorest were appalling. As VillermĂ© continued âIn Mulhouse, in Dornach, from neighbouring houses I have seen these miserable lodgings where two families slept each in its own corner, on hay thrown on the tiles and supported by two planks of wood. All that lies over this hay are rags for a cover and a often a sort of feather mattress, of disgusting filthiness.â In a resounding speech to the National Assembly in 1851, Victor Hugo forever immortalised this early nineteenth-century destitution. Evoking the âcellars of Lilleâ, he cried:
Imagine streets, whole streets, where at each step we come across these spectacles, where the most lamentable distress pulsates everywhere and in all forms. My fellow-travellers and I stayed but one day in Lille; I repeat, it was by chance that we stumbled into these luckless districts; we entered the first houses we passed. Well! We did not even half-open a door without finding destitution, sometimes agony, behind it.2
It was in these lands of the working-class North that Guesdeâs socialism would sink lasting roots some four decades later. But when we take the moment in which Hugo gave his speech, we are still far from the development of the organisations of the 1880sâ1890s, which history has long remembered as âthe workersâ movementâ. So, when did this movement really begin? This is itself a point of controversy: recent historiography has included the first cooperative and guild forms of the early nineteenth century, which had previously been neglected and looked down upon, much like the bold conceptual sallies of the first socialisms of this era.3 We can grasp the essential point by following the British historian Eric Hobsbawm, when he said that âThe labour movement provided an answer to the poor manâs cryâ.4 To put an end to working-class destitution: thus could be summarised the shared objective of the many socialist theorists of the 1840sâ1860s.
Franceâs head of government in this era, François Guizotâa brilliant intellectual who has been attributed the famous line âenrich yourselves by work and savingsââhad no intention of allowing these subversive movements and doctrines to prosper. Indeed, he repressed them unceremoniously. For instance, a few months before Guesdeâs birth, the government ordered the expulsion of one of the many German Ă©migrĂ©s who had come to Paris and been won to socialist ideas: a certain Karl Marx, at that time known only to the initiated. Three years later, an oppositional campaign resulted in a spectacular return to the barricades, in February 1848. The last monarchy in French history gave way to the Second French Republic: this latter aroused many hopes, but they were rapidly swept away by the terrible clashes in June. The insurgent workers who rose up to demand a social republic were harshly repressed, indeed by a republican general, Cavaignac. Returning to Paris before he was again expelled, Marx described this moment as the âfirst great battle between the two classes of modern societyâ. For him, as for many socialists, there was no doubt: June 1848 showed that the class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat represented the great problem of the nineteenth century.
After June 1848, the socialistsâ hopes dissipated, giving way to the redoubtable Louis-NapolĂ©on Bonaparte . His skill for manoeuvre allowed him to re-establish the Empire of his illustrious uncle Napoleon I, himself taking the name Napoleon III. Clear-sighted about the developments of his time and exploiting the confusion among categories with some panache, the new emperor even managed to reconcile part of the socialist-inflected working-class circles to his own rule: although Proudhon was the first theorist of anarchism, at first he, too, was tempted by this adventure.
Jules Bazile grew up amidst this troubled political context. He was not a son of the people, the child of a working-class family immersed in destitution. Rather, his father, born in 1809, had come from Picardy to Paris and taught at a religious school in Passyâa commune that was not integrated into the capital until 1860. His mother, a Catholic from NiĂšvre, was a primary school teacher. Both were practicing Catholics. This was, indeed, a pious family if ever there was one: their five children were baptised and one of Julesâs sisters even entered an order as a nun. The family lived modestly, but its lifestyle was quite distinct from the destitution then experienced by much of France. Jules, who passed his baccalaureate aged 16, rapidly embraced republican convictions. A whole generation grew up in opposition to Napoleon IIIâs regime: these militants were inspired by the memory of the Revolution and the Republic, as they dreamed of doing away with the reign of âNapoleon le Petitâ. Again, this sobriquet for the Emperor owed to Victor Hugo. The young Guesde, who spent his days at the BibliothĂšque ImpĂ©riale reading books of philosophy and politics, greatly admired this writer, an emblematic figure of the opposition to Napoleon III. No other work marked the young Guesde more than Hugoâs Les ChĂątiments [âCastigationsâ], a collection of satirical poems that lampooned imperial power. âI became a republican under the Empire, secretly reading Victor Hugoâs Les ChĂątimentsâ, Guesde would claim in 1893.5 Such readings left an enduring mark: in the twilight of his life in the early 1920s, Guesde would still recite entire pages of Hugoâs verse to those close to him. He shared this reference point with a whole generation: for instance, Gustave Rouanet, born in 1855, the son of an outlaw under the Second Empire and himself a future socialist MP for Parisâs 18th arrondissement, had also learned by heart the âiron versesâ taken from Les ChĂątiments.6
Seeking to salve his familyâs material troubles, from age 19 Jules took up a series of administrative posts at the Seine police prefecture and the Ministry of the Interior. He then took the plunge by throwing himself into political journalism. In a context where calling oneself a republican entailed major risks, he took his motherâs surname in order to avoid seeing his father punished in his place. An oppositional left-republican, the young Parisian wrote for multiple newspapers. The militant journalist Jules Guesde was born. And his passion for politics would never leave him.
The Montpellier Radical
Guesde acquired a solid experience as a journalist, first of all working for the Paris, Bordeaux and Toulouse press. He soon made his name known thanks to his lively writing style. It was in Montpellier that he finally decided to make his home in July 1869; he remained there until June 1871. A journalist at La libertĂ© de lâHĂ©rault, he would especially devote himself to Les droits de lâhomme.
A fierce republican opponent of the Empire,7 his freedom of tone soon forced his resignation from La libertĂ©. More lastingâand interestingâwere his commitments at Les droits de lâhomme, which he helped found on 27 April 1870, as secretary to the editorial board. Here he rubbed shoulders with a medicine studentâa certain Paul Brousseâwho a decade later became one of his adversaries. Guesde affirmed himself as an ardent republican who supported major structural reforms. There was nothing very original about his ideas, which coincided with the concerns of many republicans: he defended the idea of national sovereignty against any return to the monarchy, sought increased civil liberties, and called for the separation of churches and state. Conversely, he said very little about economic questions. The few considerations we can find, in this regard, concerned the association among producers. At most, in some texts we can detect a certain Proudhonian inspirationâhence a somewhat anarchist bent, but which was on some occasions more statist. In these latter cases, Guesde drew closer to the ideas elaborated in lâOrganisation du travail, a work by Louis Blanc, for whom cooperatives would necessarily rely on state support. Moreover, Les droits de lâhomme also received some rather revealing messages of sympathy. Louis Blancâat that time one of the most visible socialist theoristsâhimself addressed a letter to Guesde on 1 June 1870, lyrically saluting the existence of such a paper: âThe idea of yours to publish a newspaper directed by men of the people, with the peopleâs savings and in the interest of the people, is a noble one. I associate myself with it, from the depths of my soul.â8 Guesde on occasion even defended members of the International Workingmenâs Association founded in 1864, which brought together the various anarchist and socialist sensibilities of the era. But he acted as a sincere republican democrat attached to public freedoms, not as a convinced socialist.
Above all, like all republicans in this period Guesde was an ardent patriot. France had to pursue its universal destiny, heralded by the French Revolution of 1789. After the terrible defeat against Prussia at Sedanâa death sentence for Napoleon IIIâs regimeâGuesde vigorously mobilised to defend the young Government of National Defence born of the proclamation of the Republic on 4 September 1870. Already on the following day, the 5th, he was at the head of a demonstration in Montpellier which proclaimed the Republic. The day after that, he published an ardent call for mobilisation in his newspaper: âSo arise and to arms, no longer like a month ago, in a dynastic interest, for the greater glory of a counterfeit Caesar, like the gladiators in the circus, but as free men, as citizens of a country that has come back into its own possession, for the defence of our reconquered freedoms and our invaded territoryâ.9
Guesde became one of the organisers of the popular movement for national defence in Montpellier. For several days he âcontinued to sound the alarm in favour of the Republic an...