Charles Péguy·Cahiers de la Quinzaine

I-8 · Huitième cahier de la premier série · 1900-04-20

Première annonce, deuxième annonce. La même Consultation internationale

Charles Péguy

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Charles Péguy

My friend, If you were still in Paris, you would have made it a duty and a pleasure to attend the lecture that citizen Paul Lafargue gave at the Hôtel des Sociétés Savantes, 28, rue Danton, on Friday March 23rd, at eight o’clock in the evening, under the chairmanship of citizen Édouard Vaillant and, as they say, under the auspices of the Group of Collectivist Students, adherents to the French Workers’ Party. You know, having been part of it, the Group of Collectivist Students of Paris. I shall not give you its history, because I do not know it, because you know it better than I, because two young citizens, who know it, will write it someday, among the history of the socialist movement in France since the Commune. Formerly adherent to the French Workers’ Party, the Group of Collectivist Students recently took a quite important part, if not preponderant, in the defense of the quarter against the anti-Semitic bands. This republican and revolutionary attitude could not please the National Council of the French Workers’ Party. The Students’ Group fell into disgrace. It remained insubordinate. Its delegates to the Montluçon Congress were particularly mistreated. It resolved thenceforth to recover its liberty. In vain did the Guesdists try to keep it agglomerated. After some rather troubled debates a conscious majority ended by voting for emancipation. Soon the Group of Collectivist Students adhered, as was fitting, to the Federation of Revolutionary Socialists, of the Confederation of Independent Socialists. Comrade Sarraute represented it at the Congress. The Group soon gave the measure of its effectiveness. One can say in effect that the Mouvement Socialiste, founded for January 15, 1899, emerged from it. Whatever the activity of the initiator and director, a review like the Mouvement is not born if it does not have so to speak a natural cradle, a prior entourage, a prepared laboratory, a forewarned clientele. The Group was for the Mouvement that cradle, that entourage, gave to the Mouvement that laboratory and that clientele. Now, one would have to have oneself never written a line or corrected a proof or read a printed page not to perceive all the utility, all the effectiveness, all the difficulty, all the timeliness, all the fitness of a review like the Mouvement. Similarly the appeal to Socialist Students for the organization of an international Congress of socialist students and former students, which you read in the Mouvement of April 1st, is signed for the most part by members of the Group. If you had been in Paris, you would have, at the beginning of this school year, distributed among the students of the Faculties the program of the Group. This program was arranged thus on the recto:

Founded in 1893 Headquarters: 23, rue de Pontoise (near the square Monge) To the Students of the University of Paris Comrades, On the morrow of the formidable crisis we have just passed through, when the most essential conquests of modern civilization have been threatened by an offensive return of reaction, many among you are wondering if the old bourgeois parties are still capable today of ensuring respect for the feeble liberties won, of guaranteeing the future of civilization itself. In the midst of the disorder of minds and of social anarchy, in the presence of the radical impotence of bourgeois liberalism to defend the essential democratic guarantees against the enterprises of medieval reactions and the savageries of nationalism, the socialist proletariat appears, at the present hour, as the sole hope of democracy and the unique safeguard of the ideas of progress and liberty. But the action of socialism does not stop there: theoretically, it substitutes for the old methods of reasoning the realistic methods of modern science. It is the observation of social phenomena, it is the very logic of history that have led us to communist conclusions: the socialization of the means of production and exchange realized by the international action of workers and the organization of the proletariat into an economic and political class party. You will come to us, Comrades, to study freely the doctrine and history of the socialist movement. You will encounter there, in the midst of universal skepticism, the purest devotions, and those among you whom a superficial pessimism may have affected will draw from it this conclusion that life is nonetheless worth the trouble of being lived. Comrades, The Group of Collectivist Students of Paris celebrated last year its sixth anniversary. Since its foundation, it has taken the initiative for all the demonstrations that have grouped the socialist students of the University of Paris, and it is without dispute, at the present hour, the most powerful hearth of new ideas in the Latin Quarter. It is broadly open to all those who accept the program and the tactics defined in the national and international workers’ congresses, and, notably, by the recent general congress of French socialism. Paris, December 1, 1899 N.B. — The Group of Collectivist Students of Paris meets every Friday evening at its headquarters, 23, rue de Pontoise (near the square Monge), for discussions, lectures, talks, elaboration of articles and pamphlets. It is in permanent relation with the groups of socialist students of Lille, Lyon, Montpellier, Toulouse, Rennes, Brussels, Liège, Geneva, Zurich, Berlin, Vienna, Prague, etc., and associates itself with all the manifestations of national and international socialist action.

It bore on the verso the table of the schedule: ACADEMIC YEAR 1899-1900 Public Lectures at the Hôtel des Sociétés Savantes DECEMBER 1899: FRANCIS DE PRESSENSÉ — The Transvaal conflict and Anglo-Saxon imperialism. JANUARY 1900: ÉMILE VANDERVELDE — Collectivism and capitalist concentration. FEBRUARY 1900: LOUIS DE BROUCKÈRE — Bernstein and the evolution of socialist doctrine. MARCH 1900: GUSTAVE ROUANET — The organization of militias and the suppression of standing armies. APRIL 1900: HECTOR DENIS — Socialism and evolution. Talks within the group, at its headquarters, 23, rue de Pontoise, near the square Monge. N.B. — Each Talk is followed by a general discussion on the question treated by the Lecturer. PROFESSOR at the College of Social Sciences — The theory of population in Malthus and in Marx. MEMBER of the Group — Socialism and democracy. PROFESSOR at the School of Morals — New socialist conceptions. PROFESSOR at the New University of Brussels — The crowd from the socialist point of view (essay on a socialist pedagogy). DIRECTOR of the Mouvement Socialiste — The evolution of socialism. MEMBER of the Group — Anti-Semitism. MEMBER of the Group — Analysis of Bernstein’s book. MEMBER of the Group — Socialism and the colonial question. MEMBER of the Group — The biological error in sociology. MEMBER of the Group — Communism and anarchism. DOCTOR FAUQUET, member of the Group — Labor inspection in France. MEMBER of the Group — The truck-system. AGRÉGÉ IN PHILOSOPHY — Wages in France. LICENTIATE IN SCIENCES — Wages in England. MEMBER of the Group — Projects for legislation against the large department stores. MEMBER of the Group — The new law on workers’ unions. MEMBER of the Group — The legal protection of women in childbirth in the working class. ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION: Member of the Consultative Commission of the Labor Exchange — The institutions of the Labor Exchange of Paris. Former general secretary of the Railway Union — The organization of transport workers. Secretary of the Employees’ Union — The corporate organization of employees. Agrégé in philosophy, member of the Group — The English trade-unions. Member of the Group — The American trade-unions. Agrégé in philosophy, member of the Group — Union organization in Germany. Member of the Group — Cooperation in France. POLITICAL ORGANIZATION: LOUIS RÉVELIN — Socialist unity in France. LOUIS DUBREUILH, editor at the Petite République — Socialist unity and the large organizations. ALBERT RICHARD, of the Revolutionary Socialist Workers’ Party — Political organization and union organization. Agrégé in philosophy, member of the Group — The German Social Democratic Party. Correspondent of the Avanti — The Austrian socialist party. Member of the Group — The Italian socialist party. Member of the Group — Socialism in Russia.

I do not know where the execution of the internal program stands. I think, according to precedents, that it was executed more or less regularly, a little freely, as one does with these programs, reducing as much as one could the friction, the delay, and the inevitable waste. I know, for having read the familiar posters put up on the walls of the quarter, that the public lectures announced in the program above were organized. The lecture of citizen Francis de Pressensé, the Transvaal and England, was given on Tuesday December 19, 1899, under the chairmanship of citizen Jaurès; we read it in the Mouvement Socialiste, issues of January 1st and February 1st, 1900. The lecture of Vandervelde, deputy from Charleroi, professor at the New University of Brussels, was given on Tuesday March 6th, under the chairmanship of citizen Albert Poulain, deputy from the Ardennes; doubtless because it was more general and of a vaster subject, it did not appear in the Mouvement. The lecture of Jaurès, announced thus in the Petite République: Bernstein and the evolution of socialist doctrine, was given on Friday February 16th; we read it in the Mouvement, issues of March 1st and 15th, titled thus: Bernstein and the Evolution of the Socialist Method. The lecture of Enrico Ferri, professor at the University of Rome and at the College of Social Sciences, socialist deputy in the Italian Parliament, Economic Evolution and Social Evolution, had been moved up and was given on Monday January 15th, under the chairmanship of citizen Jean Allemane. The lecture of Gaston Moch, on the suppression of standing armies and the creation of national militias, was given quite recently, on Friday April 6th, under the chairmanship of citizen Gérault-Richard. I believe that the Group has, by a recent vote, decided to add to its program a public lecture by Bernard Lazare on Anti-Semitism. The lectures given under the auspices of the Group of Collectivist Students of Paris, being more and more frequent, more and more frequented, better and better succeeded, take place according to a traditional ceremonial better and better established, which you know well, and which is announced almost invariably on the poster, in the bulletins and in the newspapers. Here is the schema of this announcement:

Monday January first, 1900, at half past eight in the evening 28, rue Serpente by citizen Professor at the College of Social Sciences, socialist deputy in the French Parliament UNDER the chairmanship of citizen Admission: fifty centimes; reserved seats: one franc. Starting at half past eight, reserved seats will no longer be guaranteed. At the end of the lecture, a punch will be offered to the citizen Lecturer, with the participation of the citizen Deputy, of the citizen Delegate, of the citizen member of the General Committee, of the citizen Municipal Councillor, of the citizen General Councillor, of the citizen District Councillor, of the citizen Candidate, of the citizen Future candidate, of the citizen Director, of the citizen Editor-in-chief, of the citizen Editor, of the citizen Secretary, of the citizen Treasurer and of several Simple citizens. A large number of citizen Militants will take the floor. Reserved tickets may be obtained in advance at the Hôtel des Sociétés savantes, at the Société nouvelle de librairie et d’édition, 17, rue Cujas, at the Petite République and at the Aurore.

These traditional, serious, useful lectures, half Latin Quarter half Paris itself, these well-rhythmed lectures take place traditionally, familiarly, almost familially. Habitual speakers, Jaurès, Ferri, Vandervelde especially, return there periodically. A habitual public returns there frequently. They are truly lectures of work and study, and not what one is unfortunately forced to call public meetings. All the more do they have nothing, but rigorously nothing in common with electoral meetings. Always the discussion there is serious and courteous. There is never any disagreeable incident there. Or rather there had never been any truly disagreeable incident there, when the Group of Collectivist Students resolved to sacrifice, it too, to that need for concord that evidently works upon the socialist world. Or else it wanted to give Jaurès the pleasure of inaugurating with him at the Sociétés Savantes the evangelical method recently instituted by the citizen tribune. The fact remains that for the Jaurès lecture the chairmanship was by common accord attributed to citizen Marcel Sembat. You read in the Petite République of Sunday February 18th the account by Gaston Gagniard: “A punch takes place in a neighboring room, where more than fifty people are gathered and fête Jaurès, Allemane, Sembat, Anatole France, Fournière, de Pressensé.” You read in the Mouvement the stenographed text of the lecture. You read and heard these beautiful words that I cannot help citing: “Therefore, either the proletariat will not act, or it will constantly be mingled with the action of other classes; the essential thing is that through this mêlée, this tumult of elements it always acts with its class consciousness, with its distinct and organized force, and if, a distinct party, it extends its surface of contact with other classes, I for one do not complain of it. We want the revolution, but we do not want eternal hatred… (Prolonged acclamations, applause) — And if, for a great cause, whatever it may be, union or cooperative, or of art, or of justice, even bourgeois, it happens that we oblige bourgeois to march with us, what strength for us to tell them: ah, what joy there is for men who hated and detested each other, to find themselves again in these momentary encounters, in these cooperations of a day… And what joy consequently it will be, sublime, universal, eternal, the day when it will be the definitive encounter of all men!… (Applause) “It is possible only through common property which is the sign of reconciliation. For myself, it does not displease me that, in its movement, in its development, the socialist party and the organized proletariat cut across, encounter all the great causes. I want, we want the socialist party to be the geometric locus of all great things, of all great ideas, and by that we are not deserting the combat for the social revolution, we are on the contrary arming ourselves with force, with dignity, with pride to hasten that revolutionary hour. “And now, comrades, let me tell you, all that is possible only on one condition, that is that, to conduct itself through this mêlée of events and of men, the socialist party be sure of itself, and to be sure of itself it must be organized and unified, to carry through events the light of its communist consciousness. That is why I consider that the class act, the most effective revolutionary act at the present hour, is the unification of our Party, and that is why to you, young socialist people, who dream of a great unified party, to which you will go without adopting the quarrels or the divisions or the distinctions of school, it is for you to help us all to realize this unity by breathing into us your generous cordiality, so that we may oppose socialist fraternity to the dissensions of bourgeois society!…” (Lively applause, prolonged acclamations and cries of: Long live Jaurès!…) But the good provincial who would willingly embark upon these friendly dreams would risk shipwreck. An incident occurred, of which I give you an account according to a witness: Citizen Sembat, presumptive chairman, arrived late. The chairmanship was therefore given to citizen Allemane. Citizen Sembat nonetheless took the floor, in the course of the ceremony, at the punch, explaining to the assembly that the students had asked him to be so kind as to accept the chairmanship to counterbalance, if not to correct the lecture of Jaurès, thinking well that Jaurès would not speak irreproachably, — the students had spoken nor thought of anything but free discussion, open discussion — that it was not a matter of imagining that the authors and signatories of the manifesto regretted it, but that they were happy and proud and content to maintain it, that this manifesto was well made. Such were more or less the words of the prince president. They cast a chill, as they say. Jaurès had to reply a few words. Several citizens let escape several severe assessments: “He makes us say what we never said. It is odious. It is infamous.” Thus several sincere young citizens let escape Dreyfusist words. A second witness gives me a second account of the same incident: “No,” he tells me, “it was not as bitter as you write it, only a little embarrassed, at the punch, but so little, that the people who were not in the know said: Well, that’s interesting, an exchange of ideas like that between Sembat and Jaurès.” A third witness tells me: “I was somewhat in the know. This incident caused me much, much pain. Only, it is better not to publish all that: it is too slight, for publicity. Then the publication, in itself, and even faithful, always falsifies a little.” And I say: You will arbitrate between these witnesses better than I. But I know well that these incidents introduce into action incessant insincerities, and uncertainties, and anxieties, and inconstancies, and inconsistencies, and incredible losses. When the Guesdist minority — infinitesimal, as befits the minority — had left the unfaithful Group of Collectivist Students of Paris, it industriously bethought itself that the word group is a common noun, masculine singular, the use and abuse of which no bourgeois law forbids to any French citizen, and even foreign: these ingenious citizens could therefore name themselves group. They named themselves Group. Then the industrious minority bethought itself that the word students is an almost as common noun, more properly masculine, but plural, the use and abuse of which all bourgeois laws and customs permit to most French citizens and their foreign fellow citizens: our ingenious citizens had somewhat studied; some were or had been true students; and those who had studied neither in letters, nor in sciences, nor in arts, nor in philosophy, nor in law, nor in medicine, had at least, in the rare intervals left them by the foundations of innumerable groups, vaguely glimpsed the Socialiste, Central Organ of the French Workers’ Party, appearing on Sunday; they could therefore name themselves students. They named themselves Students. They named themselves Collectivists. They named themselves of Paris. The fortuitous assemblage of these incontestably legitimate titles could almost give: Group of the Collectivist Students of Paris. But by a happy intervention of the modesty habitual to Guesdist citizens, the assemblage gave only these words: Group of Collectivist Students of Paris, adherent to the Parisian Agglomeration of the French Workers’ Party. I told this story in the Revue Blanche of last September 15th. Then I was assured that this was indeed serving socialism. Seven months intervened. I tell it today. I shall always tell it. Several will imagine that I am betraying socialism. Incoherence and sadness of tactics. — Wholesome solidity of history, immutable constancy and better sadness of truth. If the assemblage had given Group of the Collectivist Students of Paris, the former Group of Collectivist Students of Paris would have been much embarrassed, for I do not know why it did not at all seem to care for confusion to be established in the mind of the public. The new group sent the good communiqués to the press. I believe I recall that at least once, after the manifesto, the former group sent to the same newspapers the communiqué of distinction. At the beginning of the school year, the group of, as well as the group of the, distributed a program. I had it in my hands. I wanted to send it to you. I do not know where I put it. I believe I returned it to whoever had lent it to me. It is fitting moreover that this document figure among the documents and information that I shall doubtless gather on the French Workers’ Party, for the Group of is only a parcel of the Workers’ Party detached to the Latin Quarter of the fifth arrondissement. Having also faithfully imitated the names, acts and words of the former group, the new group could not fail to imitate the lectures at the Hôtel des Sociétés Savantes. But to give a lecture one must have a citizen lecturer. By an unfortunate chance most citizen lecturers are citizen intellectuals. By a no less unfortunate chance most citizen intellectuals are not Guesdist citizens. They are contaminated. It was necessary to imagine a lecturer who was not an intellectual, to invent an intellectual who was not non-Guesdist. There was only one, he who is officially the intellectual of the Party, charged with thinking for all the comrades, he who is an intellectual and who is not, he of whom one says proudly: “That one is an intellectual, but he is not an intellectual like you”: I have named citizen Lafargue. And naturally the subject chosen for his lecture was: Socialism and the Intellectuals. As soon as I saw on the walls the poster announcing the new lecture, my first thought was that this lecture was so to speak epoch-making in the life of the quarter, that all our comrades present would not fail to go there, that all our comrades absent would regret being unable to go there. I resolved thenceforth to give you a faithful image of it. I wanted to begin with the poster. Citizen Henri Boivin went quite recently to the printer, who is somewhat his neighbor. The printer declared that he had no more. I regretted it keenly. Industrious typesetters would have contrived to reproduce it for you in the cahiers. It must be renounced. So be it. This poster, half smaller, recalled rather faithfully the frequent posters of the Group of the. But the reserved tickets were not found at the same addresses. In particular the Giard and Brière bookstore, 16, rue Soufflot, replaced the Société nouvelle de librairie et d’édition. A rapid and unwarned passerby might not see and might not make the difference. The Group of the doubtless feared, this time again, the confusion, for I read in the Aurore of Thursday March 22nd, in the Social Bulletin, this warning: The group of collectivist students of Paris informs us that the lecture of Friday evening, at the hôtel des Sociétés savantes, is not organized by it. It is, in fact, organized by the group of collectivist students adherent to the French Workers’ Party. I resolved to send you a faithful image of the lecture itself. I could not attend it, for the geographical situation of my house and the medical prohibitions are conspired to prevent me from attending, for a long time, lectures that begin at half past eight in the evening at 28, rue Serpente or, which I think amounts to the same, at 28, rue Danton. And I would have been miserable, had I not opportunely recalled that skilled and faithful stenographers had authentically established the official text of the official account of the great national Congress, and that all the more could they, if such were their good pleasure, no less authentically establish the exact account of a simple lecture. The citizen brothers Corcos — I scarcely need reveal to you that they subscribed to our cahiers in the heroic times of doubt and suspicion — replied to me that they would be happy to collaborate thus in sending you our news. You will find in the next cahier, exactly, purely, sincerely, the text established by the citizen stenographers with diligent fingers. I beg you not to forget that most speeches delivered by stenography to the memory of men are before printing submitted, reread, amended, corrected, at least pruned by the speakers. It is not the same here, and you must take that into account to the advantage of those concerned. I permitted myself to add a few notes at most, having to underline, or to clarify some passages. But these notes do not exceed the expression of the interior reflections that would have been made during the lecture by an ordinary citizen, of average intelligence, simple, voluntarily discreet and mute. I permitted myself to attribute to the citizen stenographer the indispensable rectifications and the indicated conjectures. Although they were two, I preferred to name them the citizen stenographer, because these two brothers truly work as a single citizen, and because it pleased me to write impersonally the citizen stenographer, as mysteriously and with a knowing air, as one used to say the scholiast: here the scholiast supposes that the poet, despite appearances, is not talking nonsense. The Socialiste began in its issue of April 15th to give as a serial the Lafargue lecture. It will continue. This account is not stenographic, but edited, illustrated, supported, rather faithful, in several places amended and consolidated. Citizen Lafargue had the right to do so. It is admitted, convenient and fitting that the lecturer give for propaganda a second edition, a worked-over version. It is for the same reason that the Socialiste gave the lecture all alone, without the introduction of citizen Vaillant, without the interruptions and, doubtless, without the following discussion. We, for our part, have to present an image of all that.