Émile Jaurès

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Not one should be in danger of becoming the prey or the instrument of another individual. Not one should be deprived of the sure means of labouring freely without servile dependence on any other individual.
In the nation, therefore, the rights of all individuals are guaranteed, to-day, to-morrow, and for ever. If we transfer what was once the property of the capitalist class to the national community, we do not do this to make an idol of the nation, or to sacrifice to it the liberty of the individual. No, we do it that the nation may serve as a common basis for all individual activities. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Unity and the Interpenetrability of things, were the mental keynotes from which resulted all his ideas and acts, for Jaurès had a most harmonious nature and mind. In his philosophy Life was a whole, and the course of history a real development, so that he did not believe in cataclysms, and Socialism became to him simply a necessary result of all that had gone before. ”

“ He was the greatest democratic personal force in Europe—even in the world. We have popular politicians who make speeches, who fashion toys from ideas, and with the fickleness of children pass from cause to cause, and from emotion to emotion in response to the swaying of mass opinion. Jaurès was none of these. Jaures could say "I know in what I believe." Whether as editor and in great part writer of the monumental History of Socialism in France, or as author of L’Armée Nouvelle ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Most often the whole family sit in front of the door and scarcely is the sun set when thousands of grasshoppers do the same; they come out of their holes ... and are so happy that they make unending music.... I sleep near the barn and there is always some grasshopper lost in the dry fodder who lulls me to sleep with the monotonous noise of his song."
When he left the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Jaurès returned to the South and for two years taught in the lycée at Albi so as to be near his parents, whom he was able to see every week. ”

“ Jaurès is probably the most conspicuous and at the same time the strongest personality in French political life at present. He is continually before the public; his activity and versatility seem unlimited. His personal organ, L'Humanité contains almost daily articles signed by him, and represents his policy in every department of life: in its advanced interpretation of social legislation and social conditions in general, in its pacific attitude toward foreign affairs, even in its criticism of literature, art, and the stage. Jaurès is an intellectuel. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Jaurès was anxious that the schemes for future development should be well and clearly understood by the proletariat. He realized the folly of leaving the people without the necessary education for the Social Revolution and of expecting them all at once to take on themselves the task of adapting, altering, and arranging the whole social system. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The life and the thought of Jaurès have enriched the new democracy. They have lifted it up so that no man of honesty and intelligence can think of it as a mere thing of the appetites and the cupidities, of the cravings of hungry men and the ignorance of untutored ones. Cultured, in every good sense of the term, was Jaurès. He never took up or defended a cause except on broad and liberal grounds. Let readers note for instance what he wrote when attacked for allowing his daughter to join the Church. He always fought with his opponents in a wide field and in the open air. ”

“ On the contrary, the just organisation of the forces at the disposition of humanity will add to their productive power. The splendour of wealth will be a manifestation of the triumph of right, and happiness will be the halo of justice. Babeufism was not the negation of the Revolution but, on the contrary, its hardiest pulsation. So Fourierism and Saint-Simonism are not the negation or the restriction of modern life, but its passionate fulfilment. Everywhere, then, Socialism is a vital force moving in the direction of life itself and in its fiercest current. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They have begun to hold municipal office, they know that they make the deputies, the members of the provincial legislatures, and the senators, and they would have no tolerance for a great social movement in which they took no part.
I think it extremely short-sighted to say that if the peasants are neutral, that will be enough, that all Socialism asks of them is to stand aside passively. No social force can remain neutral when a great movement is on foot. If they are not with us, they will be against us. ”

“ And one went out better from the hall where Jaurès had been spreading forth the sonorous and limpid floods of his vigorous and healthy eloquence."
M. Romain Rolland has also described delightfully the impression that Jaurès made on him when he spoke: [6] "I have listened to him often in the Chamber, at socialist congresses, at meetings held on behalf of oppressed nations.... Again I see his full face calm and happy, like that of a kindly bearded ogre; his small eyes bright and smiling; eyes as quick to follow the flight of ideas as to observe human nature. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Jaurès' ideas with regard to the political action which ought to be taken by Socialists resulted from this sense of historical evolution. He believed that as the Republic had grown out of the Revolution so Socialism would grow out of the Republic. He was always reminding the Socialists that Republicans had much in common with them, and striving to increase the numbers of those who would be willing to help in some degree the Social Revolution. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It forms leagues, and in Paris it holds the Republican and Socialist democracy in check. That is to say, it will oppose a resistance that may be effective, to any social movement to which it has not been gradually converted, at least to a certain degree. In the same way the small peasant-proprietors have played a great rôle ever since the Revolution, sometimes on the side of reaction, sometimes on that of liberty. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”