Schism and Solidarity in Social Movements: The Politics of Labor in the French Third Republic (Structural Analysis in the Social Sciences, Series Number 20)

From the fall of the Paris Commune to the creation of the powerful French Communist Party, the French labor movement lurched between a pattern of ideological polarization and organizational fragmentation and one of broad-based solidarity. Ansell analyzes the dynamic interplay among political mobilization, organization-building, and ideological articulation that produced these shifts between schism and solidarity. The aim is to shed new light on the historical development of the French labor movement and to develop a more generic understanding of schism and solidarity in organizations and social movements. Cover......Page 1 Half-title......Page 3 Series-title......Page 5 Title......Page 7 Copyright......Page 8 Dedication......Page 9 Contents......Page 11 Acknowledgments......Page 13 1 The Struggle and the Conciliation......Page 17 Urban Populism and Communal Unionism......Page 18 Sectarian and Segmentary Systems......Page 23 Plan of the Book......Page 29 2 Schism and Solidarity......Page 31 The Basic Model......Page 32 Routinization versus Retraditionalization of Charisma......Page 37 Inverted Hierarchy......Page 41 Possibilities for Syncretism......Page 44 Summary of the Argument......Page 51 3 Vox Populi, Vox Dei......Page 53 The French Populist Tradition......Page 56 Religion, Revolution, and State Building......Page 58 The Populist Reformation......Page 62 The Populist Cycle......Page 69 Summary......Page 73 4 Esprit de Corps......Page 74 The Breakdown of Skill Hierarchies......Page 76 Industrial Districts and Labor Markets......Page 78 Sectoral and Solidaristic Unionism......Page 83 Workshop versus Community-based Mobilization......Page 87 Summary......Page 89 5 Organizing the Fourth Estate......Page 90 The Populist Republic Redux......Page 91 Fragmentation of the Collectivists: The Emergence of Anarchism......Page 100 Mythmaking and Role-playing: Exhuming the Commune......Page 104 Party of Labor or Labor Party?......Page 107 Summary......Page 113 6 The New Covenant......Page 115 From Boulangism to May 1st 1890......Page 116 Jacks-of-all-trades: The Bourses du travail......Page 126 The General Strike as Covenant......Page 133 Analysis of the 1894 Vote......Page 139 Summary......Page 143 7 “Above All We Are Syndicalists”......Page 145 The Bourses versus National Trade Federations......Page 146 Putting the Union House in Order......Page 151 Syndicalism as a Closed Inverted Hierarchy......Page 160 Summary......Page 166 8 From Congregation to Reformed Church......Page 168 Some Preliminaries......Page 170 Categorical Imperatives: Class or Nation?......Page 174 Bourse and Departmental Federation......Page 178 Jaurèsian Synthesis: Totemic Unity......Page 181 The Reformed Church Examined......Page 185 Summary......Page 190 9 Dealignment......Page 192 Old Fault Lines, New Pressures, 1907–1914......Page 193 The Fragile Alignment......Page 196 Revolutionary Populism Revisited......Page 201 Consolidation of War Corporatism......Page 207 A Return to Populism......Page 208 Summary......Page 212 10 The Party the Syndicalists Built......Page 214 “What Is to Be Done?”......Page 215 The Two Methods of Syndicalism......Page 217 Impacts on the SFIO......Page 221 Emerging Alignments: The 1920 Rail Strike......Page 223 Denouement: The Schisms of 1920 and 1921......Page 228 Bolshevization and the CGTSR......Page 241 Summary......Page 243 11 Conclusion......Page 244 Works Cited......Page 261 Index......Page 287 Like many organizations and social movements, the Third Republic French labour movement exhibited a marked tendency to schism into competing sectarian organizations. During the roughly 50-year period from the fall of the Paris Commune to the creation of the powerful French Communist Party, the French labour movement shifted from schism to broad-based solidarity and back to schism. In this 2001 book, Ansell analyses the dynamic interplay between political mobilization, organization-building, and ideological articulation that produced these shifts between schism and solidarity. The aim is not only to shed light on the evolution of the Third Republic French labour movement, but also to develop a more generic understanding of schism and solidarity in organizations and social movements. To develop this broader understanding, the book builds on insights drawn from sociological analyses of Protestant sects and anthropological studies of segmentary societies, as well as from organization and social movement theory. "Like many organizations and social movements, the Third Republic French labor movement exhibited a marked tendency toward schism into competing sectarian organizations. During the roughly fifty-year period from the fall of the Paris Commune to the creation of the powerful French Communist party, the French labor movement shifted from schism to broad-based solidarity and back to schism. Ansell analyzes the dynamic interplay between organization, ideology, and political mobilization, that produced these shifts between schism and solidarity. The aim is not only to shed new light on the evolution of the Third Republic French labor movement, but also to develop a more generic understanding of schism and solidarity in organizations and social movements. This book builds on insights drawn from sociological analyses of Protestant sects and anthropological studies of segmentary societies, as well as from organization and social movement theory."--Jacket The aim of this work is to shed new light on the historical development of the Third Republic French labor movement and to develop a more generic understanding of schism and solidarity in organizations and social movements