A fantastic essay from Paul Louis on the specific origins and features of French chauvinism as Europe drove headlong into the nationalist abyss.

‘French Chauvinism and the Socialists’ by Paul Louis from New Review. Vol. 1 No. 18. June, 1913.

For some months past the Socialist party in France has been forced to wage a bitter fight against chauvinism. The campaign against the re-establishment of the three years’ military service, of which I have spoken already in the NEW REVIEW, is only one aspect of the struggle.

What is chauvinism? It is a combination of ideas, of aspirations, of methods, quite analogous to English jingoism. It is the French manifestation of imperialism, a form degenerate, noisy, theatrical–a fine subject for caricature. Nevertheless it has played an important, a disastrous role in the life of France, and it merits attention particularly at this moment when armed Europe is the battlefield of conflicting brutal passions, threatening not only a militaristic crisis but a carnival of blood as well. There would be less cause for alarm if this French imperialism were operating singly in an atmosphere of moderation and reflection; but it is re-enforced by the pan-Germanism of Germany and Austria, by the pan-Slavism raging in Russia and the Balkan zone, not to speak of Italian pride fomented by the war on Tripoli. Here is a mixture of the highest explosive potentialities. How could the working classes, organized in their political party and in their unions, refrain from an attempt to prevent the explosion? They are the ones, in any case, even if the general interests of humanity be overlooked, to suffer most from such a catastrophe.

Chauvinism changes its color according to environment. The chauvinism of the capitalistic classes is not precisely identical with that of the unfortunate masses dominated by the capitalistic spirit. In the upper classes, there is a desire to militarize the people: they profess a limitless patriotism and vie with one another in setting the example. “A man without a country,” they call everyone who is not certain about the beauty of war, who doubts the necessity of racial and national antagonisms, who dares to speak of human brotherhood, of the pacific settlement of international quarrels. However, this species of religion stops just short of fanaticism. The moneyed classes have too much scepticism in regard to too many things, to be permeated by serious convictions of any kind. So, after all, the chauvinism of that minority which rules the French republic is only an expedient, an instrument of politics.

Unfortunately it found its prey ready made among those unthinking crowds who accept blindly the affirmations of the newspapers and of the bourgeois orators, and who rush headlong into the depths in a crisis of patriotic exaltation. By breaking forth from time to time into flaming glorifications of French superiority, it is easy to play upon the temperament of a people that has never been able to forget the glories of the Napoleonic escapade, notwithstanding the great suffering it occasioned not only while it lasted but long after it had ended. There has been no idea too vulgar, no literature too fraudulent, not to have served the purposes of chauvinism during recent months. The theatre, newspaper fiction, the songs of the music hall, everything has been turned to account: just to awaken a tumultuous patriotism, to revive the memories of the days when French armies were making and unmaking the thrones of Europe and everywhere creating states dependent upon France. The sentiments expressed by the chauvinists formed by this systematic campaign of excitement and historical falsehood are pitiably stupid, to an extent that arouses disgust and hatred, when it does not produce a smile. This soap-box patriotism of mountebanks and chorus girls is the symptom of a moral degeneracy, of a mental weakness, against which the enlightened proletariat will have to bestir itself in earnest.

Going back three quarters of a century to the reign of Louis Philippe, the chauvinists were shouting for the left bank of the Rhine, for the territories and cities seized by the Revolutionary armies and given back as a matter of course in 1815. Now it is the return to France of Alsace-Lorraine, snatched away by victorious Germany through the treaty of Frankfort in 1871. Or to be more accurate, it is not exactly this return that they are calling for. The people of Alsace-Lorraine themselves, the people who would have to bear most directly the frightful burden of a Franco-German war, and whose territory would become a charnel house, declare that for their part they would be content with neutrality or even with autonomy under mitigated German rule. The real fact is that the chauvinists are looking for revenge. The men who fought the war of 1870-71, the men who passed through those tragic hours, who heard the bullets whistling above their heads, these men are either in their declining years or else have already passed away. It is among their sons, who have seen nothing, that the champions of violence are recruited. These youngsters dream of nothing but decimated regiments, mashed skulls, and fields covered with carnage; for they are quite aware that a victory, if indeed it be victory, would be bought only at the price of appalling sacrifice. Theirs is the barbarous thirst for combat, the love of blood for blood. They hate the Germans, just as at the time of Fashoda and before the Entente Cordiale they hated the English. They feel only hatred, hatred for the man who is not of their clan, who has not their language, who has not their traditions.

The disease of chauvinism sweeps periodically like a destructive pestilence over French democracy. It is the result of the Caesarian virus, which has never completely died since Napoleon’s day, which lies dormant for longer or shorter spaces of time, as the case may be, only to break out again in all its power afterwards.

The Boulanger craze, which almost overthrew in 1888-9 the parliamentary republic (already ruined, for that matter, by its own scandals), was a first manifestation of chauvinism. General Boulanger, who was posing as the reviver of the Napoleonic idea, that is to say, the radicalism professed by Louis Bonaparte before his advent to power, was sung, was glorified in all the music halls as the apostle of revenge. When this chap had passed from the sublime to the ridiculous, there was ten years of peace. Then, all of a sudden, nationalism springs up with the same men who had succumbed to Boulangism, if not with the same doctrines, at least with the same spirit. Twelve years go by, and here we are at the third phase of chauvinism. Possibly it will be the last, though one dares not be too sure about it, much less proclaim it to the world.

As in 1889, as also in 1899-1901, from the stages of the melodramatic theatres, from the music halls, people are declaiming doggerel tirades, laborious and trivial couplets, sanctifying war, rendering homage to the French army, reviling an1 blasting everything that is German. It would seem that these appeals to the patriotism of the bar-room and the theatre corridors showed profits to the box office: they are to be found almost everywhere, in Paris and through the provinces. As usual, this attack of chauvinism coincides with a renewed vigor of anti-democratic, anti-Socialistic campaigns among those who represent the propertied bourgeoisie, the so-called republican factions and those expressing a preference for a monarchical restoration.

To find the origin of the chauvinistic impulse which is active to-day, one must go back really to 1905, that is, to the signing of the Entente Cordiale, which freed France from England, her great adversary in the colonial field. At that time, the French government, which for many years had been looking hungrily at Morocco and had been restrained from the conquest only by the ugly humor and the certain opposition of Great Britain, thought the time had come for realizing this old dream. From 1905 to 1913, by incessant expeditions, by laborious diplomatic dickering, with crises which brought Europe to the very brink of the abyss, France has been devoted to the annexation of Morocco. Socialist resistance has been tenacious, employing every argument, bracing itself on every occasion. It has failed. The occupation of Casablanca, Fez, Mequinez, and the city of Morocco represents the triumph of colonial imperialism. The only ones who profit by this vast activity are the professional manufacturers of chauvinism, the cliques which are constantly demanding the extension of the foreign domain, the financial establishments which speculate on the burdens of the state, which buy for a song vast areas of the conquered territory, which are bent on bagging the construction of roads, railroads, harbors, the development of the mines, etc., the great trusts which supply arms and ammunition to the state, the subsidized press in the employ of these companies, whose lucrative trade is to advertise continuously the necessity of extending the field of “pacification,” that is, of robbery and carnage.

These gentlemen realized fat profits from the Morocco steal. There has been likewise a revival of the military sentiment, and a return to militant nationalism. It could only be expected that the dominating class would further its everlasting purpose of greater domination by exploiting this fanatical and ignorant patriotism, unresponsive to all the subtler considerations of wisdom. An overdose of chauvinism was necessary to put to sleep the antagonism to the Morocco campaign. The injections are kept up in order to preserve this marvellous instrument of Caesarism, from which the French people, from atavistic tendencies, are with difficulty weaned. It was only necessary to shift in the direction of Germany the sentiments aroused and sustained by the Morocco question.

To be sure, the cause of chauvinism has been strangely facilitated by the policy of the German cabinet and by the spirit of pan-Germanism. German imperialism, which collided in Morocco with French imperialism, rests on the same economic foundations, on the same rapacity of the capitalistic classes, the same appetite for easy gain and for violent conquest. To listen to its apostles, it would seem that this whole globe is too small for Germany; she must despoil all the surrounding countries; she must claim the most desirable spots in the universe and erect an uncontested military supremacy. Three times during the Moroccan campaign German provocations replied to provocations from France. The Berlin cabinet is not more innocent than that of Paris. Morocco actually was a matter for international regulation. The proof is that in the Madrid concordat of 1880 France had manoeuvred to disinterest England and Spain. Between 1904 and 1905 France had had no conference with Germany on the subject. After the Algeciras conference, even after the Franco-German understanding of 1909, the Morocco government was largely internationalized; but France undertook the campaign of Chaouia then that of Fez. Fully three times, in 1905, in 1909 and in 1911 (this time it was Agadir), Germany rattled the sword. This furnished a brief to the French chauvinists, who, since the arrival of William II in Tangiers, have daily proclaimed the imminence of war.

The nationalist party, cleverly sustained by successive governments, has tried to show the urgency of increasing armaments. It has succeeded, through the complicity more or less brazen of those in high places, in fomenting a current of patriotic exaltation, which almost swept the country off its feet. The recent Nancy incident was a symptom of this deplorable state of mind. A few Germans, simply because they were Germans, were insulted, hustled, and some say even beaten, in that great frontier city of the East. Assuredly those who were so bitter against them were entirely without that French courtesy with which foreigners usually are only too glad to credit us. Whatever their social rank–we trust there was no one of the proletariat among them–they were sad witnesses to the influence that unbridled chauvinism has acquired among us. The incident was settled without serious trouble. Regrettable as it was intrinsically, it might prove salutary in certain respects, if it succeeded in causing a little reflection on the part of those who give way to sudden attacks of blind passion. Perhaps the episode will save us from other incidents of wider significance and more serious consequences. It occurred at a moment when a reaction against chauvinism was still possible, and when the most deadly effects of this madness had not yet become a fact.

If one asks why the French nationalists have, in recent years, so systematically pursued the policy of patriotic exaltation, and why, at the risk of provoking international conflicts of exceptional danger, they have harrowed the masses with every known device, from the pamphlet to the cabaret song, from the insult to the grandiloquent apostrophy, from the nightly marching of troops with bands and colors to the magnifying of the most trivial colonial skirmishes, one will find the most elementary of answers.

Socialism and syndicalism have made very considerable progress in France during the past years. The Right, to win back the positions it had lost; the Center, which feared the progress of the organized proletariat, since above all else the Center represents large banking and industrial interests; the Radicals, because they saw their following slipping over little by little to the Socialists, all have formed a coalition, not officially, of course, but in secret. The Clemenceau cabinet, seven years ago, first established that alliance, which the successive governments exploited to their own advantage. The declining parties welcomed the chance to play a role of importance denied them for many years, and to sell their assistance to the presidents of the council. When these men spoke of pacification and compromise, it was not to the advantage of the working classes but of the monarchistic factions, whose royalist, Bonapartist and Roman Catholic inclinations were more or less deftly kept from view. Many radical voters, not at all fond of the chateaux and hostile to the dominance of the priest–petty bourgeois, faithful to the democratic traditions of their class–protested intermittently against these unexpected deals. But the Radical party, which had welcomed into its ranks the more or less sincere deserters from the old Conservative parties, was glad to accept this strange amalgamation which had been brought about under the auspices and in the name of patriotism. Intensified chauvinism was the instrument with which they thought they could repel the claims of the wage earners.

What seemed to facilitate the enterprise, was the return to antiquated ideas of that portion of the intellectual bourgeoisie which had been tending toward Socialism during the last years of the Nineteenth and the first years of the Twentieth Century The entire university élite, professors of the Collège de France, of the Sorbonne, of the provincial universities, had come over to the cause of social democracy, justifying or approving Socialism, and carrying with them half, at least, of the youthful student body. But all that was rather a fad, a fashion of philosophical and sociological snobbery, than a meditated conviction, it was one of those temporary currents which quickly yield to contrary influences. Among such men, many came to fear Socialism the moment they perceived it was not a docile force, that the class struggle was a reality, that passing reforms were not enough to check the onrush of the masses, and that the workers were bent on getting all that belonged to them. The professors of the upper faculties still on the side of Socialism are few in number. Most of those who in 1900 greeted “in polished language, the advent of a new age, either are now contented with an impotent radicalism, or have retired completely into their shells. As for the young men of bourgeois families, they tend towards the purely reactionary parties. A great uproar has been made about a volume recently published by two young university men under the pseudonym of Agathon, which is the result of an investigation. The students to whom they applied for confidential expressions of feeling prove to be chauvinists, nationalists, adversaries of Socialism, deferential to the powers of the past, traditionalists, enemies of every sort of proletarian emancipation, loyalists of the social hierarchy. There is a chance that this investigation may not have been impartial. It has a practical value only for those indeed who accept the social hierarchy: it indicates in fact only the dominant state of mind of the young bourgeoisie, and only of this class. Socialism, which has never depended on this young bourgeoisie for its triumph, and which is no longer laboring under the hallucinations of 1848, aiming at social transformation through class compromise, is not at all worried at this defection from its ranks if defection it may be called, since there is no more reason to trust the sincerity of the Socialistic impulse of the students of 1900, than to trust the depth of their anarchistic individualism of 1895.

In this renaissance of chauvinism, the fundamental influence has been the press. As in all, or nearly all, the countries of the world, the newspaper is only a commercial enterprise, for which the diffusion of this or that idea has only an immediate market value. More than ever before, the adage “Silence for the poor,” which Lamennais uttered seventy-five years ago in the face of the enormous fiscal penalties oppressing freedom of speech, appears now in its naked truth, but we must interpret it in a special sense. Only those papers which have huge financial backing and which are supported by powerful financial interests, have a chance to live. That is why so many of them have fallen before the pressure of the great metal companies. It has been well said that for us the age of metal has supplanted the age of textile industry. The metal trade is to-day as fully in control as were the textile works between 1840 and 1860. States are now ruled by the metal companies and they have won over the newspapers by sheer financial power. Chauvinism was to serve their economic interests by exciting peoples to accept, even to demand, new armaments. They have stimulated, irritated, inflamed the chauvinistic spirit by every means which the press could put at their disposal. Few are the newspapers in France, outside the press of the Socialist party and the syndicalists, which have succeeded in evading the deadly influence. The exaltation of patriotism is a commercial and political enterprise; it has been furthered by commercial means. Publicity has sped it on its journey like any new make of automobiles or any new patent medicine. The Krupp scandal in Germany has called attention to armor-plate patriotism; in France we have shrapnel patriotism, thirteen-inch-gun patriotism, hard-tack patriotism, camp-bed patriotism. The chauvinistic impulse would be incomprehensible except for this fundamental element: newspaper advertisement.

In a preceding article we showed how the election of M. Poincaré was secured. The success of the former President of the Council, representing in the Senate one of the departments of the Eastern frontier, was in a sense the crowning moment of the chauvinistic enterprise. No wonder the chauvinists made use of the opportunity, believed themselves masters of France, and immediately after this presidential election considered themselves strong enough to force through the three years’ military service scheme.

Against this nationalistic impulse, so dangerous for the peace of France, so damaging to the working classes, so portentous for Europe as it comes into conflict with aggressive pan-Germanism, the Socialists are now fighting with might and main. They feel they are echoing a deep feeling of the working people; they have been brought into relations with the rural masses, hitherto but slightly affected by Socialism, but which do not want war, nor a burden of armament for which they alone would have to pay. Socialism stands as the champion of civilization, which can progress only in the peace and fraternity of neighboring peoples. Socialism will be the principal gainer from the struggle. The chauvinistic agitation has provoked the resistance of the proletariat which will break it, and the Socialists, mobilized in their groups, will henceforth exercise a much more far-reaching influence on the still scattered multitudes.

New Review was a New York-based, explicitly Marxist, sometimes weekly/sometimes monthly theoretical journal begun in 1913 and was an important vehicle for left discussion in the period before World War One. In the world of the Socialist Party, it included Max Eastman, Floyd Dell, Herman Simpson, Louis Boudin, William English Walling, Moses Oppenheimer, Walter Lippmann, William Bohn, Frank Bohn, John Spargo, Austin Lewis, WEB DuBois, Maurice Blumlein, Anton Pannekoek, Elsie Clews Parsons, and Isaac Hourwich as editors and contributors. Louis Fraina played an increasing role from 1914 on, leading the journal in a leftward direction as New Review addressed many of the leading international questions facing Marxists. The journal folded in June, 1916 for financial reasons. Its issues are a formidable archive of pre-war US Marxist and Socialist discussion.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/newreview/1913/v1n18-jul-1913.pdf