The Curious Case of the ‘French Marx’

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Notes

1. This is a theme of my Between Marxism and Anarchism.

2. Nicholls claims that the IWA was “an organization that, prior to the Paris Commune, French radicals and revolutionaries had largely displayed little interest in” (149). This underestimates its importance. In addition to James Guillaume’s classic L’Internationale: documents et souvenirs (1864–1878), especially t. 1 [originally published in 1905] (which Nicholls notes), there are older works, for example by Puech, Le Proudhonisme dans l’Association international des travailleurs. And there are newer articles and books that indicate the importance of the IWA: Archer’s various articles and especially his First International in France; Cordillot’s Eugène Varlin, and his Aux origins du socialisme moderne (this last one is noted by Nicholls).

3. One of the principal figures that Nicholls includes among the “Possibilists” is Benoît Malon. Malon knew of Marx’s ideas, but never used them as a framework for his own thought. In his 289-page book Exposé des écoles françaises (1872), he devoted less than a paragraph to Marx (236–37). In his 1,237-page three-volume Histoire du socialisme (1882, 1883, 1884), he devoted 37 pages (ca. 3%) to Marx and Engels. When he analyzed “collectivism” in 1887, Marxist collectivism was one of seven varieties that he considered.

4. This is how I framed the issue in Between Marxism and Anarchism, 100.

5. Nicholls includes me among those who, in her words,

constructed a different genealogy of French socialism, in which Marx was of little importance, and no French revolutionary socialists, even the Guesdist, were ‘really’ Marxists. The explanation for French socialism’s development and historical trajectory, they argued, was to be found not in the power of Marxism, but in a combination of its institutions and the continued appeal of a much longer, distinctly non-Marxist tradition. In Vincent’s words, in the early history of French socialism, the role of Marxism was marginal.” (151–52).

The position I articulated in 1992, and which I still hold today, is that before the Paris Commune Marx’s role was, indeed, marginal, and that after this date it was one ideological strain among others. This did not include an argument that “Marx was of little importance” in the longer history of the French Left. The passage from which Nicholls lifted this quote makes this clear. Here is the passage (with the lifted words italicized):

Few historians would contest the assertion that Marxism was an important element in the ideology of the French Left during the last years of the nineteenth century and for most of the twentieth; and Marx’s writings were indisputably significant in the intellectual development of numerous luminaries on the Left, from Sorel and Jaurès to Althusser. By the late nineteenth century, Marxism was a theory with which socialists had to come to terms, and debates between self-styled Marxists and their opponents were an important part of the socialists’ continuing efforts at self-definition. But it would be inaccurate to claim that Marxism was the dominant ideology. Indeed, in the early history of French socialism, the role of Marxism was marginal, and even after 1880 it remained only one ideological strain among many. (Vincent, 3)

6. In addition to the works mentioned above, there are (to mention a few): Willard, Le Mouvement socialiste en France, 11–26; Willard, Jules Guesde; Dommanget, L’Introduction du marxisme en France; Paquot, Les Faiseurs de nuages; and Derfler, Paul Lafargue and the Founding of French Marxism.

7. And it is exasperating, given that the footnote for this statement lists my book (among others), with reference to the exact page where I discussed the French translations of Marx’s writings during these years (Vincent, Between Marxism and Anarchism, 71).

8. In a footnote on this same page (274, note 4), Nicholls claims that I suggested “that revolutionaries only began to take the Republic and French politics seriously in the late 1880.” However, I argued in Between Marxism and Anarchism (on 137, not 136 as cited by Nicholls) that Malon had moved to reformism by the mid-1880s, not the late-1880s. Moreover, earlier in the book (84), I dated Malon’s split with the Guesdists (an important step in his move toward “reformism”) as having taken place in 1881–82. This is the generally-accepted chronology of the split of the French socialist Left. For a recent account, see Jousse, Les hommes révoltés, esp. 91–197.