Jean Jaurès

“ And what power, when, in face of the increasing disorganisation of all the powers that be, Socialism stands forth one, visibly one!
What animation, also, when in the great periodic congresses all the questions of doctrine, of method, of tactics, which interest Socialism — that is to say, humanity — will be.publicly discussed! But we will be careful. A great party cannot change its belief without loss. In Germany, in that country which lays claim to discipline, to Socialist authoritarianism, all questions are agitated unceasingly. ”

“ Ever in France, for a century since, bourgeoisie revolutions have had at their head a Socialist glimmer. The bourgeoisie alone was prepared economically to reap the benefit of the Revolution. But the proletariat concentrated in the great towns played, in the period of combat, a decisive part. ”

“ It is necessary that all the Socialist portion of the nation should face these problems, and that suitable tactics should be debated and fixed before the great day, In order to be able to give a precise mandate to their delegates at the Congress, all groups, all Socialists, will be obliged to study the questions, to discuss them at their public meetings, and, thus an incessant agitation will prepare the revolutionary proletariat for its next great role. ”

“ But as Parliamentary life does not sure up the whole of life, does not cover all the activity of the Socialist party, it is necessary to nave a more extensive organisation — one which will comprise all the forces of Socialists and respond to every extension of its task. It is inevitable that unity, realised in the Parliamentary order ”

“ It does not suffice to pronounce always the two or three essential formulas to resolve all problems. The adaptation of these formulas to the movement of life, the incessant confronting them with facts, infers a perpetual awakening of thought. ”

“ They maintain, firstly, that it would be dangerous to directly summon to a national congress all the Socialist groups without the control of the organisations, because we should run the risk of putting the direction of our party and the interpretation of its doctrine into the hands of inexperienced men. Socialism grows rapidly, and many of the recruit’s who come into it are not yet sufficiently penetrated with the new idea. ”

“ But, from the first, this movement for Socialist unity exhibits itself everywhere, in every country. It appears in England as in France. There is not a nation where Socialism should be condemned, by a kind of atavist dispersion, to feebleness and incoherence. It is very true that the great Socialist organisations of our country represent historic forces, historic impulses. ”

“ Those who conceive the autonomy, of the organisations, with a common organ of deliberation, as the definitive type of French organisation, give two principal reasons, the value of which I do not ignore. ”

“ The Socialist group of the new Chamber numbers none but Socialists, and all the Socialists in the Chamber, whether they belong to the French Workers’ Party, the Revolutionary Socialist Party, the Federation of Socialist Workers of the Seine, the Revolutionary Socialist Workers party, or the Independents, are members of it. Thus, so far as Parliament is concerned, Socialist unity is definitely constituted. ”

“ That is the problem which confronts all those who are not willing that Socialist unity shall remain a vain word and an empty sound. It would be puerile to dissemble the fact that the great constituted organisations intend to limit very narrowly its action. They do not consider it as a distinct organism, having its own proper force. ”

“ This diversity of origin will at the outset give to unified French Socialism richness and life. We might fear that in this great single party daring initiative may be a little deadened; the more the mass increases, the more the changes of place are badly felt. ”

“ These recruits are found to-day in the great ancient organisations of solid framework. To break these frameworks would throw the party into all sorts of adventures. It would permit these new-comers, badly prepared, to confuse the form of our party, whose traits have been so laboriously fixed by a long effort of revolutionary thought. ”

“ In the second place, they object, and our friend Millerand said it with great force at the gathering in the Tivoli, that the diversity of the organisations in France is an historic fact, and that it will be unwise to do violence in any manner to the originality of French Socialism in accommodating it to the unitarian forms of Germany or Belgium. ”