Radicalism and Socialism in the Aude: Political Culture, Organization, and Ideology
Radicalism in southern France developed as a seemingly paradoxical mixture of liberalism and statism. On the one hand, radi-
cals defended small winegnowers' and artisans' independence, and on the other, they supported the nationalization of railroads and banks, lower rail rates for agriculture, the reduction of indirect wine taxes and land taxes, and the establishment of a progressive income tax.[1] In 1884, winegnowers in the Comice agricole de Narbonne who attacked the government's free trade policy on foreign wine supported radical programs for government intervention in the wine market and revision of tariffs.[2]
Radicals in lower Languedoc distinguished themselves as well by embracing the dual traditions of the Republic of 1792 and the démoc soc republicanism of 1848. As Leo Loubère has pointed out, these men supported improvements in workers' living and working conditions and, in the period before labor unions were legally sanctioned, championed workers' rights to organize and to strike. Clemenceau's left-leaning program of 1881 called for a shorter workday, employer responsibility for work safety, worker participation in the establishment and application of workshop regulations, and abolition of the law against the International Workingman's Association and the livret .[3] Camille Pelletan, who represented this strain of southern left radicalism, defended miners in the Gard against the government's attempts to break strikes in 1881 and 1893, and in 1901 proclaimed that the newly formed radical party united "all sons of the revolution, whatever their differences, against all men of the counterrevolution."[4]
The rich associational life of vineyard villages that favored the formation of démoc soc and republican organizations in the late 1840s also facilitated the formation of radical political groups in the Third Republic. By the late 1870s radicals who met in masonic lodges in Lézignan and Sigean and in "free thought" societies (sociétés de libre pensée ) in the Narbonnais and in the villages around Carcassonne were drawing vinedressers and rural artisans into their fold.[5] Thus, aided by a sympathetic press—newspapers such as La Fraternité , Le Bon Sens , and Le Républicain de Narbonne —radicals established an organizational base in the countryside well before they were a formal political party.
With the Aude's vineyards withering under the ravages of phylloxera, the return of formerly exiled Communards to political life (thanks to the amnesty of 1880) allowed socialism to establish itself in southern soil. In 1880 one of these men, Paul
Narbonne, founded the newspaper that eventually became the voice of socialism in the Aude, L'Emancipation sociale (to be renamed La République sociale when Ernest Ferroul took it over in 1891).[6] Devoted to the "eternal principles of justice and freedom," Narbonne's paper dedicated itself to fighting "authoritarianism in all three of its forms: the altar, the throne, and 'bourgeoisisme.'"[7]
Agricultural workers and artisans devastated by the depression flocked to political discussion groups such as the Cercle de l'union des travailleurs in Limoux or the groupes d'études sociales in villages like Coursan, Argelliers, and Cuxac. Socialist chambrées and societies sprang up in viticultural towns; by 1882 a groupe de libre pensée socialiste had formed in Lézignan, and a chambrée socialiste existed in Narbonne. Ernest Ferroul represented these groups at the St-Etienne congress, where Jules Guesde founded the Parti ouvrier français (POF).[8] Interested in class issues, these groups aimed to "study all economic, social, and political questions of interest to workers" and to "seek . . . all measures and reforms of such a nature as to improve the condition of the proletariat."[9] Like the secret societies of the 1840s and l850s, they allowed rural workers and urban workers to develop a shared political culture. By 1890–1891 socialist societies were active in ten villages in the Narbonnais: Armissan, Bagès, Coursan, Cuxac, Fabrézan, Fleury, Gruissan, Lézignan, Salles, and Vinassan. These and other villages—Bizanet, Marcorignan, Nevian, Moussan, Raissac, Montredon, Ouveillan, and St-Marcel—sent delegates to the eighth and ninth national congresses of the POF in Lille and Lyon. In 1891, the POF created a regional federation, based in Narbonne.[10] In addition to participating in national organizations, this impressive network of rural socialist groups organized election campaigns, distributed party propaganda, sponsored visits of socialist activists such as Guesde, Alexandre Millerand, and Paule Minck, and organized public celebrations commemorating the Paris and Narbonne communes and May Day.[11] Peasants and small winegrowers counted for almost 19 percent of POF membership in the Aude, and by 1896 socialists controlled thirteen municipalities in the department, including Narbonne.[12]
Socialism in the Aude before World War I was strongly influ-
enced by its most vocal activist, Ernest Ferroul. A physician and freemason (he was a member of the Carcassonne lodge Egalité, and in 1881 he headed the libre pensée society in Narbonne), Ferroul joined the Narbonne municipal council in 1881, seven years before he was elected deputy from the Aude and ten years before becoming mayor of Narbonne. Although Ferroul sided with the followers of Paul Brousse at the divided socialist congress at St-Etienne in 1882, he joined Guesde's Parti ouvrier français in 1890, collaborated with Guesde on the paper Egalité , and marched side by side with Guesde and Edouard Vaillant during the Paris May Day celebration of 1890. Ferroul represented socialist groups from the Aude at POF national congresses at Roubaix (1884), Troyes (1888), Lille (1890), Lyon (1891), Marseille (1892), Paris (1893), and Nantes (1894); in 1893 he was elected to the national council of the POF.[13]
Between 1891 and 1897, as socialist mayor of Narbonne, Ferroul created the social republic in microcosm, by providing urban workers with an alternative to competitive capitalism and a disinterested state.[14] Thus he provided aid programs for the poor, gave financial assistance to the Bourse du travail (labor exchange), and established public works projects and soupes populaires to provide relief for the unemployed.[15] In true Jacobin fashion, the municipality organized huge public celebrations on the anniversary of the First Republic and on May Day, and replaced the "République française" inscribed on public buildings with "République sociale."[16]
During this period, Ferroul's political rhetoric evolved. Although he remained committed to the international alliance of workers, socialization of the means of production, and the conquest of municipal governments, in the 1890s Ferroul downplayed the themes of class struggle and revolutionary seizure of power.[17] Nor did the Audois socialists who followed Ferroul promote the more revolutionary aspects of the Guesdist programme du Havre of 1880. Meeting in 1892 with agricultural workers in Lézignan, for example, Ferroul and his socialist colleague Félix Aldy supported a political solution to the social question, maintaining that their efforts to end unemployment, regulate working hours, and establish workers' retirement funds could be realized only in the context of the legally constituted
republic.[18] Audois socialists abandoned the rhetoric of revolution and collectivism in addressing the economic issues dear to the hearts of small winegrowers in the Narbonnais. They supported vintners' demands for tariffs on foreign wine, unlike Paul Lafargue and socialists in the Var, who opposed protection on the grounds that it would starve out the urban working class.[19]
The Ferroulists, moreover, actively cultivated their ties with radicals, appearing regularly at banquets and public forums to honor radical luminaries such as Camille Pelletan, Gustave Rouanet, and Léon Bourgeois.[20] Radicals and socialists also rubbed elbows in groupes d'études sociales in Coursan and Argelliers, and closed ranks during the antirepublican reaction of the 1890s. As the century ended, the rhetoric of Audois socialism bore an uncanny resemblance to that of southern radicalism. By 1898 Ferroul, now sounding more like Jaurès than Guesde, insisted on the centrality of the republic to the socialist project and on the importance of constitutional revision and measures such as the income tax. That year the congrès socialiste in the Aude designated Ferroul as the socialist candidate; it then appealed to the broad spectrum of "radical, radical-socialist, and socialist voters" to prepare an electoral strategy.[21]
Ferroul's moderate, evolutionary stance at this point was not so different from Guesde's strategy of emphasizing legislative reform to recruit workers to the POF between 1893 and 1898.[22] But the two men parted company on other issues. In 1899 both Aldy and Ferroul left the POF in protest over Guesde's condemnation of Alexandre Millerand's entry into the ministry of Waldeck-Rousseau alongside Minister of Defense General Gallifet, known as the "butcher of the Commune." Ferroul argued that socialists should exclude no activity that would help them to "improve their effectiveness and influence; tactical differences between men who agree about fundamental doctrinal principles should not divide socialists from one another."[23]