The Toulouse Congress showed, not the present position of the French Party or of the International, but the points on which Socialist revolutionists and reformers, everywhere else at sword's point, can agree. The reformers do not object to promising the revolutionaries that they shall have their own way in the relatively rare crises when revolutionary means are used or contemplated. The revolutionaries are willing to allow the reformers to claim all the credit for all reforms beneficial to the workers that happen to be enacted. Neither gives up their first principle, whether it be revolution or reform, but in the matter of secondary importance, reform or revolution, each side tolerates in the party an attitude in diametrical opposition to its principles and the tactics it requires. Both do this doubtless in the belief that by this opportunism they will some day capture the whole party, and that a split may thus be avoided in the meanwhile.
Since the Toulouse Congress the divisions within the French Party have become much more acute. Briand's conduct in the great railway strike in 1911 is discussed below. Yet in spite of this experience of how much the government is ready to pay for railways and how little it is ready to do to their employees, Jaurès's followers at the Party Congresses of 1911 and 1912 stood again for the policy of nationalization, and Guesde was impelled to warn the party that Briand's "State Socialism" was the gravest danger to the movement.
Briand's positive achievements are also defended by Jaurès. The recent workingmen's pension law, unlike that of England, demands a direct contribution from the employees. Nevertheless, it contained some slight advantages, and of the seventy-five Socialist members of the Chamber of Deputies, only Guesde voted against it. Even when the Federation of Labor was conducting a campaign against registration to secure these "benefits," Jaurès's organ, L'Humanité took the other side. The working people, as usual, followed their unions. Less than 5 per cent registered; in Paris only 2.5 per cent, and in Brest 22 out of 10,000.
The experience with Millerand and Briand has made it impossible for Jaurès to tie the French Party to "reformism." But reformism has brought it about that the Party is often split in its votes in the Chamber of Deputies. In the Party Congresses, however, Jaurès is outvoted where a clear difference arises, an outcome he does his best to avoid. The Congress of 1911 (at St. Quentin) reaffirmed the international decision at Amsterdam which prevents the party going in for reform as a part of a non-Socialist administration. It declared that "Socialists elected to office are the representatives of a party of fundamental and absolute opposition to the whole of the capitalist class, and to the State, its tool." And Vaillant said that since the Amsterdam Congress in 1904 the question of participation in capitalist ministries had ceased to exist in France.
It is true that Jaurès secured at this Congress, by a narrow majority, an indorsement of his policy of accepting the government pension offer. But the orthodox followers of Guesde and the revolutionary disciples of Hervé joined to secure its condemnation first by the Paris organization, and later by the National Council of the Party by the decisive vote of 87 to 51. This resolution which marks a great turning point in the French Party, is in part as follows:—
"The National Council declares that each time a labor question is to be decided, the Socialist Party should act in accord with the General Confederation of Labor."
As the Confederation has indorsed Socialism both as an end and as a means, few, if any, Socialist parties would object to this resolution. But the Confederation is also revolutionary, and this policy, if adhered to, marks an end to the influence of the "reformism" of Jaurès.
The precise objections to the government's insurance proposal are also significant. The National Council protested against the following features:—
(1) The compulsory contributions.
(2) The capitalization (of the fund).
(3) The ridiculous smallness of the pension.
(4) The age required to obtain the pension.
(5) The reëstablishment of workingmen's certificates.
Among the working people there is no doubt that the first feature was the chief cause of unpopularity. But Socialists know that, through indirect taxes or the automatic fall in wages or rise in prices, the same object of charging the bill to the workers may be reached. The capitalization refers to the investment and management of the large fund required by a capitalist government, thereby increasing its power. The last point has to do with the tendency to restrict the workers' liberty in return for the benefits granted—a tendency more visible with the pensions of the railway employees which were almost avowedly granted to sweeten the bitter pill of a law directed against their organizations.