The adoption of the socialistic programme, however, rent the Congress in three, and the two opposite wings, the Co-operationists and the Anarchists, withdrew and established separate organizations of their own. The co-operationists, believing that the amelioration of the working class would only come by the gradual execution of practicable and suitable measures, and that these could only be successfully carried by means of skilful alliances with existing political parties, declared the Havre programme to be a programme for the year 2000, and that the true policy of the working-class now was a policy of possibilities. This last word is said to supply the origin of the term Possibilist, which has now come to be applied not to this co-operationist party, but to one of the two divisions into which the third or centre party of the Havre Congress—the socialists—shortly afterwards split up.
The co-operationists formed themselves into a body known as the Republican Socialist Alliance, which, as the name indicates, aims at social reforms under the existing republican form of State. They have held several congresses, their membership includes many well-known and even eminent Radical politicians—M. Clemenceau, for example—and they were supported by leading Radical journals, like Le Justice and L'Intransigeant; but their activity and their numbers have both dwindled away, probably because their work was done sufficiently well already by other political or working-class organizations.
The anarchists set up not a single organization, but a number of little independent clubs, which agree with one another mainly in their dislike of all constituted authority. They want to have all things in common, somehow or other; but for master or superior of any sort they will have none, be it king or committee. Their ideas find ready favour in France, because they are near allied with the theory of the Revolutionary Commune cherished among the Communards; and although there is no means of calculating their numbers exactly, they are believed to be pretty strong—at least, in the South of France. At the time of the Lyons Anarchist trial, at which Prince Krapotkin was convicted, they claimed themselves to have 8,000 adherents in Lyons alone. In 1886 the authorities knew of twenty little anarchist clubs in Paris, which had between them, however, only a membership of 1,500; and of these a considerable proportion were foreign immigrants, especially Austrians and Russians, with a few Spaniards. Some of these clubs are mainly convivial, with a dash of treason for pungency; but others have an almost devouring passion for "deeds," and are ever concerting some new method of waging their strange guerilla against "princes, proprietors, and parsons." When a new method is discovered, a new club is sometimes formed to carry it out. For instance, the Anti-propriétaires, which is said to be one of the best organized of the anarchist clubs, bind their members (1) to pay no house-rent,—rent, of course, being theft, and theft being really restitution; and (2) if the landlord at length resorts to law against any of them for this default, to come to their brother's help and remove his furniture to safer quarters before the moment of execution. The group La Panthère, to which Louise Michel belongs, and which has 500 members, and the group Experimental Chemie, as their names indicate, prefer less jocular methods. The best known of the anarchists are old Communards like Louise Michel herself and Élisée Reclus, the geographer.
The third section of the Havre Congress contained the majority of the 119 delegates, and they formed themselves into the Socialist Revolutionary Party of France, with the programme already mentioned, which was carried on the motion of M. Jules Guesde.
This programme sets out with the declaration that all instruments of production must be transferred to the possession of the community, and that this can only result from an act of revolution on the part of the working class organized as an independent political party, and then it goes on to say that one of the best means of promoting this end at present was to take part in the elections with the following platform:—
A. Political.
1. Abolition of all laws restricting freedom of the press, of association, or of meeting, and particularly the law against the International Working Men's Association. Abolition of "work-books."
2. Abolition of the budget of public worship, and secularization of ecclesiastical property.
3. Abolition of national debt.
4. Universal military service on the part of the people.