Socialist Party

Socialist Party (PS), major French political party formally established in 1905.

The Socialist Party traces its roots to the French Revolution. Its predecessor parties, formed in the 19th century, drew inspiration from political and social theorists such as Charles Fourier, Henri de Saint-Simon, François-Noël Babeuf, Auguste Blanqui, and Louis Blanc. Four dominant varieties of socialism were represented: utopian, syndicalist (see syndicalism), revolutionary, and reformist. France’s first Marxist party, the French Workers’ Party (Parti Ouvrier Français), founded in 1880, claimed to represent the proletariat; its constitution was drafted largely by the radical labour leader Jules Guesde with input from Karl Marx (who wrote the preamble), Marx’s son-in-law Paul Lafargue, and Friedrich Engels. The French Workers’ Party gained support from various segments of the working class but was unable to integrate all of the country’s socialist forces. During the next two decades the party split and resplit, so that by the 1890s there were five major socialist parties in France. Despite efforts to unite the parties, no agreement could be reached at congresses held in 1899 and 1900. Following a third congress, held at Lyon in 1901, two parties emerged: the French Socialist Party (Parti Socialiste Français), consisting of Marxists and anti-Marxists who were prepared to participate in progressive governments; and the Socialist Party of France (Parti Socialiste de France), led by Guesde and Édouard-Marie Vaillant, both of whom opposed any participation in bourgeois coalitions. At a congress held in Paris in 1905, the two parties merged to become the French Section of the Workers’ International (Section Française de l’Internationale Ouvrière; SFIO)—i.e., of the Second International.

The SFIO, led by Jean Jaurès, grew quickly and became an influential political force in France. In legislative elections in 1906 it elected more than 50 members to the Chamber of Deputies and captured nearly 900,000 votes; in 1914 it won 102 seats and some 1.4 million votes. Nevertheless, its impact on public policy was limited, and it was plagued by internal tensions between those who advocated an uncompromising revolutionary program and those who were inclined toward gradual reform. Members also differed over the nationalization of industries, relations with trade unions, and cooperation with bourgeois parties.

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World War I produced a crisis for the SFIO. Jaurès, a pacifist, was assassinated by a nationalist fanatic who supported war against Germany. Despite the SFIO’s pacifist roots, its deputies supported military appropriations after Germany declared war on France, and most socialists favoured the formation of the union sacrée (“sacred union”), a national unity government including socialists and political parties of the far right. The Russian Revolution of 1917 further divided the SFIO, as much of the party’s rank-and-file members supported the Bolsheviks. In December 1920, at a party congress in Tours, more than three-fourths of delegates voted to separate from the SFIO and form the French Communist Party (Parti Communiste Français; PCF). Nevertheless, the SFIO rebuilt itself in the 1920s. By 1936 it was the largest party in the Chamber of Deputies and the core of the antifascist Popular Front government led by Léon Blum.

During World War II much of the SFIO participated in the Resistance and cooperated with General Charles de Gaulle; following liberation, the SFIO purged pacifists and supporters of the Vichy France government. In the legislative elections of 1945, the party emerged as the second largest in the country, winning 23 percent of the vote and 146 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, and it entered a coalition government with the PCF and the Christian Democratic Popular Republican Movement (Mouvement Républicain Populaire). However, party membership soon began a steep decline, dropping from about 300,000 in 1945 to 140,000 in 1951, and in subsequent elections in the 1940s and ’50s the SFIO averaged only about 15 percent of the vote, though it continued to participate in a number of governments. Through the 1950s its relationship with the PCF also deteriorated.

In 1958 the SFIO’s leadership supported the investiture of de Gaulle as president (former Socialist premier Guy Mollet joined de Gaulle’s government as a minister of state) and the creation of the Fifth Republic, prompting some party members to leave. The SFIO quickly became disillusioned with de Gaulle’s domestic policies. Throughout the 1960s a weakened SFIO made alliances with the PCF, including selective second-round support agreements during parliamentary elections. In the presidential elections of 1965, for example, the SFIO and PCF jointly supported the candidacy of François Mitterrand. The attempt at a rapprochement with left-of-centre formations the same year was reflected in the establishment of the Federation of the Democratic and Socialist Left (Fédération de la Gauche Démocrate et Socialiste), which included the SFIO, the Radical-Socialist Party (an anticlerical centrist party), and a number of democratic-left clubs. The SFIO was, however, unable to match the success it achieved in the 1945 election. It reached its nadir in 1969, when its presidential candidate received only 5 percent of the vote.

Soon after the 1969 presidential election, the SFIO formally ceased to exist. It was succeeded by (or renamed) the Socialist Party (Parti Socialiste; PS), a fusion of the SFIO and a number of democratic-left clubs. The new party gradually recovered under Mitterrand, who assumed leadership of the PS in 1971. It regained the support of much of the working class, retained its traditional base among the intelligentsia, and made inroads among farmers, white-collar employees, shopkeepers, and other elements of the petite bourgeoisie. In 1972 the PS and the PCF adopted a common program, which called for an expanded welfare state and the nationalization of major industries. The program was endorsed subsequently by the Left Radical Movement (Mouvement des Radicaux de Gauche), which later became the Left Radical Party (Parti Radical de Gauche). Despite some conflict between the PS and the PCF, the alliance held up reasonably well, and in 1981 Mitterrand was elected president and a left majority was returned in the National Assembly. The PS-PCF coalition government quickly enacted a vast number of reforms, including wage increases, improvements in social security benefits, administrative decentralization, and the nationalization of most banks and several large industrial firms. The inflation that quickly ensued prompted the government to retreat from several key reforms in favour of an austerity program, whereupon the PCF withdrew from the coalition. The PS gradually abandoned its commitment to nationalization and adopted a number of fiscally moderate policies. Its change of direction alienated some party members but won support from the public; Mitterrand was reelected in 1988, and the PS and its allies controlled the Chamber of Deputies for 10 of the 14 years in which Mitterrand was president.

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Mitterrand was succeeded in 1995 by the Gaullist candidate Jacques Chirac. In 1997 Chirac called early parliamentary elections, and the PS surprisingly won 255 seats, ousting a right-of-centre coalition from office and forming its own coalition government with the PCF and the Greens. The new Socialist premier, Lionel Jospin, followed a moderate course and tried with mixed success to manage sometimes difficult relations with his coalition partners. Disagreements persisted within the coalition over issues such as nuclear power, pensions, the length of the workweek, job protection, law and order, and the privatization of industries.

In 2002 the PS suffered two disastrous electoral defeats. In the first round of the presidential election, in April, Jospin finished third, behind both Chirac and the National Front candidate, Jean-Marie Le Pen; the party was forced to support Chirac in the runoff. In legislative elections in June, the PS lost 115 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. In the wake of these defeats, the PS was beset by confusion. Although the party no longer feared the electoral rivalry of the PCF (which generally won only about 5 percent of the vote in legislative elections), it entered a period of self-reflection and spirited internal debate over its ideology and its policies. At its party congress in 2003, the PS accepted the rule of the market but retained a commitment to secularity, solidarity, and the general welfare. Yet the party remained uncertain about the extent to which it embraced globalization, the privatization of public enterprises, and decentralization. Divergences on these issues and on European integration reflected the diversity of the party’s numerous factions.

In the 2004 elections for the European Parliament, the PS performed well, winning 31 of the 78 seats. However, divisions within the party continued, especially over the proposed European Union constitution (which France ultimately failed to ratify). In November 2006 Ségolène Royal—the partner of François Hollande, who had assumed the party’s leadership in 1997—was selected as the Socialists’ candidate for the French presidency. In April 2007 she finished second in the first round of voting and became the country’s first woman to advance to the second round of a presidential election. In the subsequent runoff, however, she lost to Nicolas Sarkozy of the centre-right Union for a Popular Movement party. In November 2008, with Hollande stepping down as leader of the PS, Royal (now estranged from Hollande) vied with Martine Aubry, mayor of Lille, for the position. Aubry lost the first round of the party contest but won the runoff with 50.02 percent of the vote. Royal, who garnered 49.98 percent, questioned the validity of the results. Although the PS ultimately declared Aubry the winner, the party appeared more divided than ever.

By 2010, with Aubry still at its helm, the PS had regained a measure of popular support. In regional elections that March, the Socialists and their allies were victorious in 21 of 22 French régions. The party was rocked in May 2011 when Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the International Monetary Fund director whom many believed would represent the PS in the 2012 presidential election, was arrested in New York City for alleged sexual assault. After questions arose about the credibility of Strauss-Kahn’s accuser, prosecutors dropped all charges in August 2011, but the PS had already excluded him from primary balloting. Those primary elections concluded in October, with Hollande securing the PS nomination by a comfortable margin in the final round of voting. In April 2012 Hollande earned the most votes in the first round of presidential balloting, securing himself a place in a runoff on May 6, 2012, against second-place finisher Sarkozy, which Hollande won to become the first Socialist elected president since Mitterrand.