Jean Allemane
Encyclopedia
Jean Allemane was a French socialist politician, veteran of the Paris Commune
of 1871, pioneer of syndicalism
, leader of the Socialist-Revolutionary Workers' Party
(POSR) and co-founder of the unified French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) in 1905. He was a deputy in the National Assembly of the Third French Republic.
conspired to radicalise Allemane early on. As a teenager he became involved in trade union activity, which was still illegal in France (unions were not legalised until 1906). In 1862, aged 19, he was arrested for his role in organising the first typesetters' strike in Paris. Subsequently he helped found the typesetters' union. Despite his youth, Allemane played an important role in the emerging French syndicalist movement and emphasised the need for workers to form their own organisations, independent of bourgois radicals.
In 1870 Allemane served in the Parisian National Guard, where he became a corporal. In this capacity he participated in the uprising of the Paris Commune at the end of the Franco-Prussian War
of 1871. Although he welcomed the fall of Napoléon III, he mistrusted the conservative republicans around Adolphe Thiers
who replaced him. In the Commune, Allemane sympathised with the Proudhonist faction. Allemane participated actively in the fighting. After the suppression of the Commune, he went into hiding but was captured, and in 1872, he was sentenced to hard labour in perpetuity and banished to the penal colony of New Caledonia. In 1876 he made an unsuccessful attempt to escape. In 1878, he was ordered to participate in suppressing a revolt of the native population but refused. This led to further penalties. However, in 1879, a general amnesty enabled Allemane to return to France.
(POF), founded by Jules Guesde
and Paul Lafargue
. Guesde and Lafargue were by then Marxists (and Lafargue was Marx
' son-in-law), but the POF was not yet a homogeneous Marxist party, and Allemane sympathised with non-Marxist, syndicalist and Proudhonist tendencies. In 1882, he supported the 'Possibilist' Paul Brousse
in his conflict with Guesde. Like Allemane and Guesde himself, Brousse had been a Communard and had once sympathised with anarchism, but in the 1880s, the party he led - the Federation of the Socialist Workers of France
(FTSF) - adopted an increasingly reformist course. Allemane became increasingly discenchanted with this. In his own journal, Parti Ouvrier, he called for a more radical course and advocated syndicalist ideas such as a general strike that was to precipitate a revolution, direct action (sabotage, strikes, factory occupations) and the formation of separate proletarian organisations not subject to bourgeois leadership.
Anti-Boulangist, Dreyfusard
During the Boulangist crisis of 1886-89, when the popular nationalist General Boulanger seemed to threaten a coup d'état, Allemane became one of the most vocal defenders of the Republic. This temporarily re-enforced his alliance with Brousse and with reformist socialists and republicans who opposed the general. (By contrast, the Guesdists and the Blanquists maintained an attitude of neutrality between the 'bourgeois general' and the 'bourgeois republic'.) However, once the crisis had passed, Allemane's radicalism put him at odds with the Possibilists and reformists. In 1890 he was expelled from the FTSF and formed his own party, the French Socialist-Revolutionary Workers' Party (Parti Ouvrier Socialiste-Révolutionnaire), which called for a general strike, worked closely with the trade union movement and rejected bourgeois parliamentary democracy as insufficiently democratic. Nevertheless, the Allemanists, as they were called, stood for elections, and Allemane later became a deputy in the National Assembly. The Guesdists, as orthodox Marxists, strongly criticised Allemanism: 'general strike is general nonsense' was their slogan, and trade unions should be placed firmly under the political leadership of a socialist party. By contrast, the Allemanists insisted on the autonomy of the trade unions and saw the socialist party merely as the political representative of the extra-parliamentary workers' movement.
Allemane's support of the labour movement and his involvement in the CGT
translated into working class support for his party. In 1901, he was first elected to the Chamber of Deputies, together with several other representativesof the POSR. He was subsequently elected again in 1906. During the Dreyfus Affair
, Allemane was a staunch defender of the Jewish officer, who, it turned out, was unjustly accused of treason. He denounced the rising tide of anti-Semitism. Again, this aligned him with the Broussists and reformist socialists around Jean Jaurès
. (The Guesdists and Blanquists regarded the Dreyfus Affair as a quarrel within the bourgeoisie.) In 1899, the Independent Socialist Alexandre Millerand
precipitated a fierce controversy in French and European socialism by joining a bourgeois republican cabinet - something no socialist had done since Louis Blanc
's ill-fated participation in the Provisional Government of the Second Republic
in 1848. The controversy over Millerandism coincided with the Revisionist controversy in German Social-Democracy and with the controversy over 'Economism' among Russian Marxists. Revolutionary socialists like Guesde and Édouard Vaillant
saw all three phenomena as a betrayal of the working class; Jaurès and the reformists supported Millerand, albeit reluctantly. Allemane took an intermediate position, sceptical of participation in bourgeois cabinets but willing to support reformist social legislation. Eventually, Millerand left the socialist party altogether.
was putting pressure on the many French socialist organisations to come together. In 1902, a first attempt at unification failed, because the differences between centralists and federalists, revolutionaries and reformists, were still too great. The centralist and revolutionary POF of Guesde united with Vaillant's Blanquist Socialist-Revolutionary Party (France)
and with the small Revolutionary Communist Alliance (ACR), which had splintered off from Allemane's POSR. These groups formed the Socialist Party of France (PSdF). Meanwhile, Allemane's POSR joined with Brousse's FTSF and the Independent Socialists of Jean Jaurès to form the French Socialist Party (PSF). The two rival socialist parties were finally merged in 1905 into the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO Party
). Allemane served as a deputy for the SFIO from 1906 to 1910, representing the XIth arrondissement of Paris. Even as deputy, Allemane maintained his work as a printer and founded a printers' co-operative called La Productrice, which serve as a socialist print shop. In 1910, he published his Memoirs of a Communard.
bitterly divided the French socialists (as it did the socialists of most countries). Allemane had been a staunch opponent of militarism in his previous writings, but in 1914, he supported war 'in defence of the nation'. Anti-war critics on the left saw this as a grave betrayal. However, after the war, Allemane turned once again to the left. Already in 1917, he had welcomed the Russian Revolution. Although he was sceptical of Leninism
and had never really embraced Marxism
, he accepted the October Revolution
. In 1920, at its 18th Congress in Tours, the SFIO split over the question whether to remain in the Second International or join Lenin's new Third International. The majority voted the join the Third International and henceforth called itself 'French Section of the Communist International', subsequntly renamed French Communist Party
(PCF). Allemane voted with the majority for adhesion to the Third International, because its radicalism appealed to him. Nevertheless, he did not join the PCF. Instead, in the 1920s, he flirted with the National Socialist party of Gustave Hervé
(formerly an anti-militarist socialist but, since 1914, a staunch nationalist). This group sought to unite socialists who had taken a 'patriotic' position during the First World War, but it also attracted old Boulangist and anti-Dreyfusard elements, as well as anti-Marxist syndicalists. In the course of the 1920s, this party developed more and more in a fascist direction. Allemane, however, never actually played a role in this party. Instead, in his last years he conentrated on the activities of his lodge of Free Masons. He died in 1935 at Herblay in Seine-et-Oise.
Paris Commune
The Paris Commune was a government that briefly ruled Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871. It existed before the split between anarchists and Marxists had taken place, and it is hailed by both groups as the first assumption of power by the working class during the Industrial Revolution...
of 1871, pioneer of syndicalism
Syndicalism
Syndicalism is a type of economic system proposed as a replacement for capitalism and an alternative to state socialism, which uses federations of collectivised trade unions or industrial unions...
, leader of the Socialist-Revolutionary Workers' Party
Revolutionary Socialist Workers' Party (France)
The Revolutionary Socialist Workers' Party was a French political party founded by Jean Allemane in 1890 and dissolved in 1901. It is indirectly one of the founding factions of the French Section of the Workers' International , founded in 1905....
(POSR) and co-founder of the unified French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) in 1905. He was a deputy in the National Assembly of the Third French Republic.
Early Life: Labour Activist and Communard
Jean Allemane was born into a working class family in Sauveterre-de-Comminges (Haute-Garonne) in southern France. In 1853 he came to Paris with his parents and was apprenticed as a printer. The hardship of working conditions, the republican sympathies of his family and the writings of Pierre-Joseph ProudhonPierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was a French politician, mutualist philosopher and socialist. He was a member of the French Parliament, and he was the first person to call himself an "anarchist". He is considered among the most influential theorists and organisers of anarchism...
conspired to radicalise Allemane early on. As a teenager he became involved in trade union activity, which was still illegal in France (unions were not legalised until 1906). In 1862, aged 19, he was arrested for his role in organising the first typesetters' strike in Paris. Subsequently he helped found the typesetters' union. Despite his youth, Allemane played an important role in the emerging French syndicalist movement and emphasised the need for workers to form their own organisations, independent of bourgois radicals.
In 1870 Allemane served in the Parisian National Guard, where he became a corporal. In this capacity he participated in the uprising of the Paris Commune at the end of the Franco-Prussian War
Franco-Prussian War
The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and...
of 1871. Although he welcomed the fall of Napoléon III, he mistrusted the conservative republicans around Adolphe Thiers
Adolphe Thiers
Marie Joseph Louis Adolphe Thiers was a French politician and historian. was a prime minister under King Louis-Philippe of France. Following the overthrow of the Second Empire he again came to prominence as the French leader who suppressed the revolutionary Paris Commune of 1871...
who replaced him. In the Commune, Allemane sympathised with the Proudhonist faction. Allemane participated actively in the fighting. After the suppression of the Commune, he went into hiding but was captured, and in 1872, he was sentenced to hard labour in perpetuity and banished to the penal colony of New Caledonia. In 1876 he made an unsuccessful attempt to escape. In 1878, he was ordered to participate in suppressing a revolt of the native population but refused. This led to further penalties. However, in 1879, a general amnesty enabled Allemane to return to France.
Socialist Partisan Politics: POF, FTSF, POSR
In 1880, Allemane became a typesetter at the radical newspaper L'Intransigeant, founded by the republican Henri Rochefort. That year, he became a founding member of the French Workers' PartyFrench Workers' Party
The Parti Ouvrier Français was the first Marxist party in France, created in 1880 by Jules Guesde and Paul Lafargue, Marx's son-in-law...
(POF), founded by Jules Guesde
Jules Guesde
Jules Basile Guesde was a French socialist journalist and politician.Guesde was the inspiration for a famous quotation by Karl Marx. Shortly before Marx died in 1883, he wrote a letter to Guesde and Paul Lafargue, both of whom already claimed to represent "Marxist" principles...
and Paul Lafargue
Paul Lafargue
Paul Lafargue was a French revolutionary Marxist socialist journalist, literary critic, political writer and activist; he was Karl Marx's son-in-law, having married his second daughter Laura. His best known work is The Right to Be Lazy...
. Guesde and Lafargue were by then Marxists (and Lafargue was Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
' son-in-law), but the POF was not yet a homogeneous Marxist party, and Allemane sympathised with non-Marxist, syndicalist and Proudhonist tendencies. In 1882, he supported the 'Possibilist' Paul Brousse
Paul Brousse
Paul Brousse was a French socialist, leader of the possibilistes group. He was active in the Jura Federation, a section of the International Working Men's Association , from the northwestern part of Switzerland and the Alsace. He helped edit the Bulletin de la Fédération Jurassienne, along with...
in his conflict with Guesde. Like Allemane and Guesde himself, Brousse had been a Communard and had once sympathised with anarchism, but in the 1880s, the party he led - the Federation of the Socialist Workers of France
Federation of the Socialist Workers of France
France's first socialist party, the Federation of the Socialist Workers of France , was founded in 1879. It was characterised as "possibilist" because it promoted gradual reforms.-Formation:...
(FTSF) - adopted an increasingly reformist course. Allemane became increasingly discenchanted with this. In his own journal, Parti Ouvrier, he called for a more radical course and advocated syndicalist ideas such as a general strike that was to precipitate a revolution, direct action (sabotage, strikes, factory occupations) and the formation of separate proletarian organisations not subject to bourgeois leadership.
Anti-Boulangist, Dreyfusard
During the Boulangist crisis of 1886-89, when the popular nationalist General Boulanger seemed to threaten a coup d'état, Allemane became one of the most vocal defenders of the Republic. This temporarily re-enforced his alliance with Brousse and with reformist socialists and republicans who opposed the general. (By contrast, the Guesdists and the Blanquists maintained an attitude of neutrality between the 'bourgeois general' and the 'bourgeois republic'.) However, once the crisis had passed, Allemane's radicalism put him at odds with the Possibilists and reformists. In 1890 he was expelled from the FTSF and formed his own party, the French Socialist-Revolutionary Workers' Party (Parti Ouvrier Socialiste-Révolutionnaire), which called for a general strike, worked closely with the trade union movement and rejected bourgeois parliamentary democracy as insufficiently democratic. Nevertheless, the Allemanists, as they were called, stood for elections, and Allemane later became a deputy in the National Assembly. The Guesdists, as orthodox Marxists, strongly criticised Allemanism: 'general strike is general nonsense' was their slogan, and trade unions should be placed firmly under the political leadership of a socialist party. By contrast, the Allemanists insisted on the autonomy of the trade unions and saw the socialist party merely as the political representative of the extra-parliamentary workers' movement.
Allemane's support of the labour movement and his involvement in the CGT
Confédération générale du travail
The General Confederation of Labour is a national trade union center, the first of the five major French confederations of trade unions.It is the largest in terms of votes , and second largest in terms of membership numbers.Its membership decreased to 650,000 members in 1995-96 The General...
translated into working class support for his party. In 1901, he was first elected to the Chamber of Deputies, together with several other representativesof the POSR. He was subsequently elected again in 1906. During the Dreyfus Affair
Dreyfus Affair
The Dreyfus affair was a political scandal that divided France in the 1890s and the early 1900s. It involved the conviction for treason in November 1894 of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish descent...
, Allemane was a staunch defender of the Jewish officer, who, it turned out, was unjustly accused of treason. He denounced the rising tide of anti-Semitism. Again, this aligned him with the Broussists and reformist socialists around Jean Jaurès
Jean Jaurès
Jean Léon Jaurès was a French Socialist leader. Initially an Opportunist Republican, he evolved into one of the first social democrats, becoming the leader, in 1902, of the French Socialist Party, which opposed Jules Guesde's revolutionary Socialist Party of France. Both parties merged in 1905 in...
. (The Guesdists and Blanquists regarded the Dreyfus Affair as a quarrel within the bourgeoisie.) In 1899, the Independent Socialist Alexandre Millerand
Alexandre Millerand
Alexandre Millerand was a French socialist politician. He was President of France from 23 September 1920 to 11 June 1924 and Prime Minister of France 20 January to 23 September 1920...
precipitated a fierce controversy in French and European socialism by joining a bourgeois republican cabinet - something no socialist had done since Louis Blanc
Louis Blanc
Louis Jean Joseph Charles Blanc was a French politician and historian. A socialist who favored reforms, he called for the creation of cooperatives in order to guarantee employment for the urban poor....
's ill-fated participation in the Provisional Government of the Second Republic
Second Republic
-Europe:* French Second Republic * Second Polish Republic * Second Hellenic Republic * Second Spanish Republic * Portuguese Second Republic, known as Estado Novo * Czechoslovak Second Republic...
in 1848. The controversy over Millerandism coincided with the Revisionist controversy in German Social-Democracy and with the controversy over 'Economism' among Russian Marxists. Revolutionary socialists like Guesde and Édouard Vaillant
Édouard Vaillant
Marie Édouard Vaillant was a French politician.Born in Vierzon, Cher, son of a lawyer, Édouard Vaillant studied engineering at the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures, graduating in 1862, and then law at the Sorbonne. In Paris he knew Charles Longuet, Louis-Auguste Rogeard, and Jules Vallès...
saw all three phenomena as a betrayal of the working class; Jaurès and the reformists supported Millerand, albeit reluctantly. Allemane took an intermediate position, sceptical of participation in bourgeois cabinets but willing to support reformist social legislation. Eventually, Millerand left the socialist party altogether.
Unification of French Socialism
Despite the quarrel over Millerandism, the Second InternationalSecond International
The Second International , the original Socialist International, was an organization of socialist and labour parties formed in Paris on July 14, 1889. At the Paris meeting delegations from 20 countries participated...
was putting pressure on the many French socialist organisations to come together. In 1902, a first attempt at unification failed, because the differences between centralists and federalists, revolutionaries and reformists, were still too great. The centralist and revolutionary POF of Guesde united with Vaillant's Blanquist Socialist-Revolutionary Party (France)
Socialist-Revolutionary Party
thumb|right|200px|Socialist-Revolutionary election poster, 1917. The caption in red reads "партия соц-рев" , short for Party of the Socialist Revolutionaries...
and with the small Revolutionary Communist Alliance (ACR), which had splintered off from Allemane's POSR. These groups formed the Socialist Party of France (PSdF). Meanwhile, Allemane's POSR joined with Brousse's FTSF and the Independent Socialists of Jean Jaurès to form the French Socialist Party (PSF). The two rival socialist parties were finally merged in 1905 into the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO Party
Sfio
Sfio, or Safe/Fast String/File I/O, is a C programming language I/O library developed by David Korn and Kiem-Phong Vo AT&T Labs Research, intended as a replacement for the standard C standard I/O library....
). Allemane served as a deputy for the SFIO from 1906 to 1910, representing the XIth arrondissement of Paris. Even as deputy, Allemane maintained his work as a printer and founded a printers' co-operative called La Productrice, which serve as a socialist print shop. In 1910, he published his Memoirs of a Communard.
War and the Appeal of Radicalism of the Left and Right
The outbreak of World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
bitterly divided the French socialists (as it did the socialists of most countries). Allemane had been a staunch opponent of militarism in his previous writings, but in 1914, he supported war 'in defence of the nation'. Anti-war critics on the left saw this as a grave betrayal. However, after the war, Allemane turned once again to the left. Already in 1917, he had welcomed the Russian Revolution. Although he was sceptical of Leninism
Leninism
In Marxist philosophy, Leninism is the body of political theory for the democratic organisation of a revolutionary vanguard party, and the achievement of a direct-democracy dictatorship of the proletariat, as political prelude to the establishment of socialism...
and had never really embraced Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
, he accepted the October Revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
. In 1920, at its 18th Congress in Tours, the SFIO split over the question whether to remain in the Second International or join Lenin's new Third International. The majority voted the join the Third International and henceforth called itself 'French Section of the Communist International', subsequntly renamed French Communist Party
French Communist Party
The French Communist Party is a political party in France which advocates the principles of communism.Although its electoral support has declined in recent decades, the PCF retains a large membership, behind only that of the Union for a Popular Movement , and considerable influence in French...
(PCF). Allemane voted with the majority for adhesion to the Third International, because its radicalism appealed to him. Nevertheless, he did not join the PCF. Instead, in the 1920s, he flirted with the National Socialist party of Gustave Hervé
Gustave Hervé
Gustave Hervé was a French politician. At first he was a fervent antimilitarist socialist and pacifist, but he later turned to equally zealous ultranationalism, declaring his patriotisme in 1912 when released from 26 months of imprisonment for anti-militarist publishing activities.Hervé in 1919...
(formerly an anti-militarist socialist but, since 1914, a staunch nationalist). This group sought to unite socialists who had taken a 'patriotic' position during the First World War, but it also attracted old Boulangist and anti-Dreyfusard elements, as well as anti-Marxist syndicalists. In the course of the 1920s, this party developed more and more in a fascist direction. Allemane, however, never actually played a role in this party. Instead, in his last years he conentrated on the activities of his lodge of Free Masons. He died in 1935 at Herblay in Seine-et-Oise.
Sources, References and Links
- Didier, B., L’Allemanisme 1890-1905. Reims, 1990.
- Reynolds, S., La vie de Jean Allemane (1843-1935). University of Paris (doctroral thesis), 1981.
- Bigorgne D., Les allemanistes (1882-1905). Itinéraires, place et rôle dans le mouvement socialiste français. University of Paris (doctoral thesis), 2001.
- Winock M., 'La naissance du parti allemaniste (1890-1891).' In: Le Mouvement social. No. 75, avril-juin 1971.
- Reynolds, S., 'Allemane, the Allemanists and Le Parti Ouvrier: The Problems of a Socialist Newspaper 1888-1900.' In: European History Quarterly, vol. 15, 1985, pp. 43-70.
- The Great Soviet Encyclopedia. Moscow, 1979.
- Cole, G.D.H., The Second International. New York, 1956.
- Noland, A., The Founding of the French Socialist Party (1893-1905). Cambridge, 1956.
- http://jeanallemane.free.fr/Les_Allemanistes.html
- http://jeanallemane.free.fr/Biographies_de_Jean_Allema.html