Jean Jaurès

“ In the first place, if the proletariat is not strong enough to give the signal for the Revolution itself, if it is obliged to depend on the fortunate chances of the bourgeois revolution, how are we to be certain that it will have more strength to oppose to the victorious bourgeoisie than it had before the movement began? Two contingencies will arise. Either the bourgeoisie will be defeated in its attempt at revolt against the old world of feudalism and absolute power, and the proletariat will be overwhelmed long before it has had a chance to fight for its own hand ”

“ Is it indeed to be a world such as Jaurès conceived it, or a world of drill-sergeants and of well-drilled slaves that is to come forth from the storm? The death of Jaurès was the first effort of the brute, blind force. It crushed out the most vigorous son of man that it could find, the most living, loving, ardent soul, the clearest brain, the warmest heart, the one most conscious of the whole trend of things. It only needed two small balls, mechanical forces, unmeaning, foolish, and that life was gone, lost to France here and now, though not really lost for evermore. ”

“ For Jaurès beyond and above most men stood for Freedom, the Freedom of the unprivileged, the Freedom of all men. He stood for the whole nation against a class, and for the whole of humanity against predominating nations. He wanted a living society, each man in it sacred, free, all banded together for social ends, making up free nations also banded together for social ends, each respecting the other, each secure from tyranny. ”

“ And even in France, in a more modest degree, the capitalist class is ever on the alert. It is not from indifferent and drowsy classes, but from active, foresighted, and bold classes that the proletariat must wring its privileges. How can it do this if it has not the nation on its side? If the mass of the nation is hostile, it will be crushed. And if it is only distrustful, the manœuvres of the capitalist class will soon change that distrust to hostility. ”

“ In bringing out clearly the magnitude of the effort that must be made I hope that I am not discouraging but spurring on the energy and conscience of those to whom I speak. At all events, if the work to be accomplished is vast and entails the co-operation of innumerable wills, I shall also show that the resources and forces at our command are likewise vast, and that it only depends on us to march forward to an end both certain and victorious. But I maintain that the vehement effort of a Socialist minority will not suffice, and that we must rally round us almost the whole body of citizens. ”

“ I think that if the Socialist party refused to allow these thoughts to remain general formulas, if it embodied them in a political platform of broad and just evolution toward a well defined Communism, if it gave the impression of being at once generous and practical, ardent and the friend of peace, firm in its opposition to unjust institutions and decided in its resolution to do away with them methodically, and conciliatory, too, toward individuals, it would hasten the true Social Revolution by fifty years, the Revolution that will be embodied in conditions, in laws, and in our hearts ”

“ At first he was, as he tells us, so much under the influence of the older Socialist leaders that he may have appeared to accept that type of revolutionary Socialism which he afterwards opposed.
But Jaurès' mind was too practical, his grip on human life was too keen for him to remain long with those who confine their energies to propaganda. He was an idealist, but he was a realist too. He believed, if anyone ever believed, in a new earth in which all men would be free and equal, but he wanted to set about realizing this by adapting all the forces for progress that were to hand. ”

“ To Jaurès this national unit is intensely precious, and he saw that nearly all men felt it to be so. The yoke of Capitalism is heavy on the neck of the worker, but it is not apparent to the average imagination. Part of the reward of labour is constantly filched away from the labourer, but it is not obvious to him that it is so; he finds himself in a system, but it does not appear to him, any more than it does to the average capitalist, that it ought to be different. ”

“ He can neither work nor eat, clothe nor shelter himself, without paying a sort of ransom to the owning and capitalist class.
And not only his life but his very liberty suffers by this system. If labour is to be really free, all the workers should be called upon to take part in the management of the work. They should have a share in the economic government of the shop, just as universal suffrage gives them a share in the political government of the city. Now, in the capitalist organisation of labour, the labourers play a passive rôle. ”

“ All the social forces that were either refractory or inert would be such a drag on Socialist production, and would use up so much energy and elasticity in numberless jars and frictions, that the whole system would end in disaster. It can only succeed by the general and almost unanimous desire of the community. ”

“ Destined for the benefit of all, it must be prepared and accepted by almost all, practically indeed by all; because the hour inevitably arrives when the power behind an immense majority discourages the last efforts to resist its will. The noblest thing about Socialism is precisely that it is not the regime of a minority. ”

“ In spite of the often crushing weight of the present economic system, it is not altogether subdued; it is constantly making an effort to better itself. And if it often seeks its deliverance by the most reactionary ideas, the most detestable politics, and the most sterile and degrading jingo patriotism, it is none the less an active and passionate power. ”

“ The State, such a State as France at any rate, though it bears the vivid imprint of capitalism, also bears within itself the germ of the future, and by trying to influence it we are using the only certain means of influencing the future. Jaurès did not stop there. It is possible that if he had done so he would have gradually carried most of the Socialists along with him, for evidently to accept reforms, while pressing forward to greater ones, is a more attractive and hopeful way of working than always to be standing aside. ”

“ It is possible that the combined action of the democratic middle class and the working class will everywhere curtail the royal prerogative or the imperial autocracy to the point where monarchy has only a nominal existence. It is certain that the struggle for a complete democracy is not over in Europe, but in this struggle the bourgeoisie will have an insignificant part to play, such a part, for example, as it is now playing in Belgium. ”

“ In 1845 he announced as imminent and absolutely inevitable in England, a labour and Communist revolution, which was to be the bloodiest in history. The poor would butcher the rich and burn their castles. No doubt was possible on that score. "It is nowhere easier to prophesy than in England, because here all social developments are extremely well-defined and acute. The revolution must come, it is already too late to propose a pacific solution." Strange conception of that England, always so expert in compromise and evolutionary changes! ”

“ Thus, a little bit of the communist soul penetrates into the peasant labour and into the peasant conscience, and this lasts until the threshing-machine has done away with the last stack of the row into which the groups have spontaneously formed themselves.
The Socialists indeed have never expected to force peasant property into communistic form. Our predecessors and our leaders have always said that the example of agricultural production on a great scale would suffice to make the peasant proprietors abandon small field cultivation and divided properties. ”

“ Moving slowly, but irresistibly, the French Socialist Party makes towards unity; and unquestionably when in 1900 the international Socialist Congress assembles at Paris, French Socialism will be thoroughly organised to give a welcome to the proletariat of both worlds. No one in our party, any longer disputes the necessity for closer union of all its elements. The ancient organisations have rendered, and still render, excellent services, but their too-dispersed efforts have not been so efficacious as they might have been. ”

“ Democracy, the Republic, implied equality in the political spheres; the social and economic sphere had still to be conquered. This fundamental thought of Jaurès must be borne in mind in considering how he differed from some of the other French Socialists over the questions of how Socialism could be brought about. To those Socialists who did not feel this continuity of history, so present to the mind of Jaurès, a Republican was no more of a friend than any other upholder of Capitalism ”

“ The adhesion of the peasant proprietors is the more necessary because in comparison with them the number of large rural proprietors is constantly decreasing. But their adhesion is not to be won by a sudden movement, whose effects they have not been able to calculate. They will only support a movement that has been fully discussed with them, and one that, by constantly raising their productive power and standard of life, will reassure them completely as to the end and object of Socialist action. ”

“ Jaures was our thought, our living doctrine, it is from his image, his memory that we shall draw our force in the future. Impassioned for the fight which raises humanity and makes it better, he never had any doubts. ”

“ There are men better endowed with the graceful arts of oratory, but none who can better than he, because of their own sincerity and clearness of vision, make the minds of their listeners glow with enthusiasm and gleam under the revelation of great policies and fine ideals. With the memory of Jaurès in its possession, the movement of international democracy and Socialism can lift up its head with confident pride and open its heart to assured hope. ”

“ He declared that the substitution of an account of what had already been done by the Socialists in various countries was his own doing. It was not unusual for Jaurès to draft the resolutions to be passed at Socialist Conferences.
In France a storm of disapproval had followed the passing of these resolutions at the Stuttgart Congress, and the cry of the reactionaries was that of all Socialists the French were the most anti-patriotic. The Matin, for example, had written: "All the foreign Socialists are patriots. It is only the French who desert and detest their country." ”

“ It was no violent and tyrannical temper that caused men like Jaurès to join in the assault upon the Church. Jaurès was the most tolerant of men, but he knew that here, as France had many times learnt to her cost, tolerance meant playing into the hands of the everlasting foe of liberty. The Church was never content merely to dominate and enslave the minds of its pupils. It was always determined to be a political power as well, and in France it had shown itself the avowed enemy of the Republic. ”

“ At one point, the conflict may, as expected, result in a revolutionary movement; at another it will keep its legal form and be extinguished in inaction. The revolutionary movement, lacking that basis and solid foundation which the deliberate free-will of men alone can give, will be delivered into the power of local events, and the machinery of revolution will not take hold everywhere in the same way. ”

“ The democracy of small proprietors not only accepted the Republic but acclaimed it from the beginning. It did not take part in the battle against it. There is no bad feeling between the Socialist workman and the peasant. There will not be any. And we must see to it that no misunderstandings arise in the future, so that the rural democracy may come over gradually to Socialism as it has come over to the Republic. ”

“ Jaurès was a man of very great gifts which were never used for his own advancement but devoted to the service of the people. In a nation where the power to speak well is quite common he was recognized as the greatest orator. It is curious that in spite of being already so accomplished a speaker, when he first entered the Chamber of Deputies the mere thought of having to get up and speak caused him a terror which he found it very difficult to overcome. ”

“ He loved liberty and hated the hard formulæ which reduce men to mechanical lifelessness, but liberty did not, one recognizes, mean to him that individual determination of one's acts which has been held so precious by the Anglo-Saxon race. Jaurès considered that in a country like France freedom was guaranteed by the desire of the whole people for free institutions, and in such a country there appeared to him no danger in the absolute devotion of the individual to the State. ”

“ Important as it is to give the freest possible play to all the different groups of interests so that they may be able to express their ideas and their needs, and to allow the people to collaborate in legislation as fully as possible, it would be folly to abandon all legislation to the initiative of the people, folly from the point of view of the government and from that of Socialism as well. ”