Marxism at Work: Ideology, Class and French Socialism during the Third Republic
Cambridge University Press, 9/10/1992
EAN 9780521415262, ISBN10: 0521415268
Hardcover, 536 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 3.3 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
Despite a century of debate and criticism, Marxism as a mass ideological practice has remained an elusive topic. This book examines Marxist socialism as a mode of understanding and self-understanding treasured and transmitted by thousands of anonymous militants. It focuses upon the Parti Ouvrier Français, the 'Guesdists', an archetypal movement of Marxism's 'Golden Age' before the First World War, the period when Marxist socialism evolved from sect to mass movement. Thousands of French socialists adopted Marxism due to the effectiveness of vulgar Guesdist polemic rather than Marx's profound theoretical works, and entire communities were converted to an austere but messianic socialism which still affects French politics today. This book traces the doctrine's birth through conflict with liberals, proto-fascists, and anarchists; its 'making' of a working class, and its attempted seduction of the middle class; and its confusion before the alternative social visions of the Catholic devout, racist nationalists, and feminists.
Preface
1. Ideology, history, and the study of Marxism
2. The Parti Ouvrier Francais
its history and historiography
3. The axioms of class war
Part I. The Making of the French Working Class
4. The capitalist mode of production and proletarianisation
5. Problems of proletarianisation
6. Class and industrial organisation
7. The bourgeois state versus the proletarian party
8. Reform and revolution
Part II. The Unmaking of the French Working Class
9. Religion and the class war
10. Class versus blood and soil
11. Gender, generations, and class
Part III. History and Class Conflict
12. French Marxism and the bourgeoisie
13. The Guesdists and the petite bourgeoisie
14. Marxism and rural society
15. Marxists encounter the 'new middle class'
16. The proletarian revolution and the socialist utopia
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography.