Books reviewed: Remembering Jean Jaurès
“Now that they have stopped believing in the great cataclysm, left-wing men and women must, here and now, take up a socialism that is inscribed in the immediate context of their behaviour and their moral actions.. Jaurès said no less..: “I myself ask socialists not to give me the date of socialism’s triumph – it’s impossible to determine; I tell them to live each day in a socialist state of grace, that is working constantly, each minute, each hour, for the coming of socialism, by devoting to it all the effort, the action, the strength of their thought and their life.” ...Jaurès knew that morality without politics and without rights will always tip into the category of hollow discourse.” - Christophe Prochasson, LA GAUCHE EST-ELLE MORALE?
Jaurès was ever concerned to engage with other minds, from other parts of the political spectrum, that sought to open their doctrines more broadly. Perhaps inspired by an initial encounter with the work of the social Catholic Albert de Mun, Jaurès believed, in 1891, that it was possible to contextualize the necessary anticlerical campaign of the far Left, opening it to larger discussions of the nature of humanity.
The historian Marion Fontaine insisted recently that the Left should try, before deciding whether to think with, against or without Jaurès.. to think! If Jaurès’s inspiration is good for anything, it must be that thinking, with or without the voluminous intellectual armoury he himself had to hand, is worthwhile in politics.
After brilliant studies at the École Normale Supérieure, Jean Jaurès pursued a career as a schoolmaster and passed his doctorate in philosophy; but he was rapidly successful in politics, winning a seat in the 1885 election in his mid-twenties. He lost his seat, but re-entered parliament in 1893 with the label of republican socialist, the representative of the Tarn, a department in south-west France with important mining and glass-working concerns that would help to define his political engagement. He was rapidly seen as the outstanding political leader of the far Left; his powerful oratory and dogged persistence in attacking injustice gave him national and international status – most importantly, during the Dreyfus Affair. He again lost his seat in 1898, and devoted some of the next few years to writing a monumental history of the French Revolution for a popular, left-wing audience. But he continued to dominate the socialist movement and returned to parliament in 1902, supporting the government of the radical and anticlerical leader Émile Combes, and becoming vice-president (Deputy Speaker) of the Chamber of Deputies.
From 1905, he was the keystone of the long-awaited project of socialist unity. Because his humanitarian mission for social justice involved him not just in reaching out across a divided Left in French politics, but also in campaigning for international peace, he acquired notoriety and a place in the French national memory unrivalled among other left-wing heroes. In the evening of July 31, 1914, after a day spent in close debate with ministers about the possibilities for international negotiation to avoid a European war, he was dining at the Café du Croissant in the rue Montmartre with fellow journalists on the paper he had founded a decade earlier, L’Humanité, when a deranged fantasist, Raoul Villain, shot and killed him.
Why do French socialists, in this spring of elections and uncertainty, remain fascinated by Jaurès? His hold over the left-wing imagination is not easy to fathom. In the first place, left-wing memories of Jaurès are surprisingly partial; the Left almost seems more concerned with protecting the Jaurès trademark than studying him in detail. Nicolas Sarkozy cheerfully played on this during the 2007 presidential campaign, invoking Jaurès and a later socialist leader, Léon Blum, frequently in speeches. Today, left-wing leaders are trying to make sure their hero is more firmly anchored within their own political rhetoric. There is something of a Jaurès publishing industry developing around this. Short pamphlets containing extracts of Jaurès’s better-known articles and speeches appear regularly, and one has even been specifically addressed to the 2012 presidential candidates (their responses can be read at www.jaurescandidat2012.com). François Hollande, the Socialist candidate for the presidency, has himself felt moved to write a detailed letter covering a number of the big “Jaurès themes”: peace and Europe; tolerance and anti-racism; a justice system that moves away from violence; the ever controversial French theme of laïcité (secularism); social reform and education.
The engagement with Jaurès is seen now as an essential reference if the Left is to avoid the humiliating situation of having its weightiest intellectual references deployed against it. Hollande, along with other left-wing leaders, including his former partner Ségolène Royal, has leapt at the opportunity to bask in the reflected light of Jaurès; though statements such as “The current President-candidate [Sarkozy] will wind up by saying that Jaurès was responsible for the 2011 crisis” simply perpetuate the impression that much of the Jaurès worship of the Left is too presentist. The great historian Madeleine Rebérioux, who combined left-wing activism with outstanding historical scholarship, insisted that to read Jaurès one must first of all place him in his context. There is now a powerful academic re- examination of Jaurès under way, frequently developed by historians with clear left-wing leanings. The Jaurès of the politicians remains, however, a more shadowy, abstract figure. Read more: http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1029552.ece
Jaurès was ever concerned to engage with other minds, from other parts of the political spectrum, that sought to open their doctrines more broadly. Perhaps inspired by an initial encounter with the work of the social Catholic Albert de Mun, Jaurès believed, in 1891, that it was possible to contextualize the necessary anticlerical campaign of the far Left, opening it to larger discussions of the nature of humanity.
The historian Marion Fontaine insisted recently that the Left should try, before deciding whether to think with, against or without Jaurès.. to think! If Jaurès’s inspiration is good for anything, it must be that thinking, with or without the voluminous intellectual armoury he himself had to hand, is worthwhile in politics.
After brilliant studies at the École Normale Supérieure, Jean Jaurès pursued a career as a schoolmaster and passed his doctorate in philosophy; but he was rapidly successful in politics, winning a seat in the 1885 election in his mid-twenties. He lost his seat, but re-entered parliament in 1893 with the label of republican socialist, the representative of the Tarn, a department in south-west France with important mining and glass-working concerns that would help to define his political engagement. He was rapidly seen as the outstanding political leader of the far Left; his powerful oratory and dogged persistence in attacking injustice gave him national and international status – most importantly, during the Dreyfus Affair. He again lost his seat in 1898, and devoted some of the next few years to writing a monumental history of the French Revolution for a popular, left-wing audience. But he continued to dominate the socialist movement and returned to parliament in 1902, supporting the government of the radical and anticlerical leader Émile Combes, and becoming vice-president (Deputy Speaker) of the Chamber of Deputies.
From 1905, he was the keystone of the long-awaited project of socialist unity. Because his humanitarian mission for social justice involved him not just in reaching out across a divided Left in French politics, but also in campaigning for international peace, he acquired notoriety and a place in the French national memory unrivalled among other left-wing heroes. In the evening of July 31, 1914, after a day spent in close debate with ministers about the possibilities for international negotiation to avoid a European war, he was dining at the Café du Croissant in the rue Montmartre with fellow journalists on the paper he had founded a decade earlier, L’Humanité, when a deranged fantasist, Raoul Villain, shot and killed him.
Why do French socialists, in this spring of elections and uncertainty, remain fascinated by Jaurès? His hold over the left-wing imagination is not easy to fathom. In the first place, left-wing memories of Jaurès are surprisingly partial; the Left almost seems more concerned with protecting the Jaurès trademark than studying him in detail. Nicolas Sarkozy cheerfully played on this during the 2007 presidential campaign, invoking Jaurès and a later socialist leader, Léon Blum, frequently in speeches. Today, left-wing leaders are trying to make sure their hero is more firmly anchored within their own political rhetoric. There is something of a Jaurès publishing industry developing around this. Short pamphlets containing extracts of Jaurès’s better-known articles and speeches appear regularly, and one has even been specifically addressed to the 2012 presidential candidates (their responses can be read at www.jaurescandidat2012.com). François Hollande, the Socialist candidate for the presidency, has himself felt moved to write a detailed letter covering a number of the big “Jaurès themes”: peace and Europe; tolerance and anti-racism; a justice system that moves away from violence; the ever controversial French theme of laïcité (secularism); social reform and education.
The engagement with Jaurès is seen now as an essential reference if the Left is to avoid the humiliating situation of having its weightiest intellectual references deployed against it. Hollande, along with other left-wing leaders, including his former partner Ségolène Royal, has leapt at the opportunity to bask in the reflected light of Jaurès; though statements such as “The current President-candidate [Sarkozy] will wind up by saying that Jaurès was responsible for the 2011 crisis” simply perpetuate the impression that much of the Jaurès worship of the Left is too presentist. The great historian Madeleine Rebérioux, who combined left-wing activism with outstanding historical scholarship, insisted that to read Jaurès one must first of all place him in his context. There is now a powerful academic re- examination of Jaurès under way, frequently developed by historians with clear left-wing leanings. The Jaurès of the politicians remains, however, a more shadowy, abstract figure. Read more: http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1029552.ece
