Paul Lafargue 1885
Source: Commonweal, May 1885, p.34;
Transcribed: by Graham Seaman, February 2022
When the news reached Paris that the French troops were retreating before the Chinese, and that so hurriedly that the French army had abandoned a battery, and — even graver fact for bourgeois troops — the cash-box of the regiment, Paris went mad. The Chinese, who till then had been only grotesque figures, now presented themselves to French imaginations as terrible warriors, armed with all the destructive inventions of civilisation. There was but one cry, one spontaneous cry for the "execution" of Ferry; and thus poor Ferry, who had in spite of himself been dragged into the Tonkin war, was made the scapegoat.
And such was the anger of the crowd waiting outside the Palais Bourbon, that the Minister was obliged to wait for nightfall, to send for a ladder and escape from the Chamber of Deputies, across the garden, climbing over walls like a thief.
The majority in giving up Minister Ferry to the indignation of the populace thought it had done enough, and reckoned on appointing the next Ministry. During nearly ten days they caused every combination in which they did not rule to fail. M. Clemenceau and the Radicals under his orders on this occasion gave the full measure of their weakness and political imbecility ; they remained in Parliament and looked on with perfect tranquillity at all the jobbery of the late Gambetta's followers. They proved themselves infinitely inferior even to the Radicals who in England have attempted to agitate the public against the policy of the Gladstone Cabinet.
Nevertheless the Socialist parties offered to help the Radical left in a campaign. Every night, and in almost every quarter of Paris, the Socialists organised meetings in which they voted in favour of the demands of the Extreme Left, that is to say, the cessation of war and impeachment of the Ministry. It is true they added the confiscation of the property of all deputies who had voted for the Tonkin war to cover the expenses of the war. On the initiative of the Cri du Peuple a meeting of delegates from the Radical journals and the Socialist groups of Paris was held, demanding a large open-air manifestation.
In England and in America open-air meetings are common enough, and easy for an influential party to organise. But this is mot the case in France, and especially in Paris. Popular open-air manifestations, because they deeply move an excitable population, have till now in France ended in revolutions, or they have prepared the fall of the governments under which they took place, as for example did the funeral of Victor Noir, assassinated by Pierre Bonaparte.
Therefore the Gambettists have tried hard to make all street Manifestations distasteful to the people, and to attain this end they Save had recourse to the Anarchists, who, egged on by the police (which always has numbers of agents provocateurs in its ranks), without any preparation called meetings in the street, and this by oceans of posters in which there was foolish talk of slaying and burning all and sundry. Naturally these mass meetings were characterised by the absence of the masses.
And assuredly at these meetings where the people were called together no one but Parisian loafers appeared. Sightseers, French and foreign, rushed thither to see what was going to happen, and what did happen was that the police, bored at having nothing better to do, charged these sightseers. Hence at these meetings the greater number of persons arrested were newspaper reporters and good bourgeois, anything but Revolutionists, who had to be discharged the next day. These ridiculous manifestations have disgusted the mass of the people with all open-air meetings. The Socialists at the meeting called by the Cri du Peuple, taking into account this feeling, thought that the only way to make the people come to an open-air meeting would be by inducing the deputies of the Extreme Left to convoke it. They therefore sent a delegation of twelve members to the Chamber of Deputies to try and make the Radical deputies understand that since they were being made fools of by the majority of the Chamber, they ought, together with the Socialist groups, to appeal to the people, in order to acquire tne strength in which they were wanting.
But the Radicals fear the people far more than they fear the Opportunists; so they hastened to refuse any proposal of this kind. This refusal has exasperated not only Socialists, but the groups of Radical working men, who unfortunately are numerous in Paris and in France. The behaviour of these deputies will open their eyes, and will destroy the prestige of messieurs les radicaux.
Moreover, if the Radicals are not directly responsible for these international expeditions of brigandage that are called colonial wars, they are so indirectly. It is their narrow chauvinism, their love of militaryism, their desire to find new openings for commerce and French manufactures, that drives governments to launch into foreign wars, certain that they will conquer all votes if these succeed. Socialists, on the other hand, since they have recommenced their agitation in France—that is to say for the last six or seven years — have not ceased to protest energetically against all war adventures abroad, that could distract popular attention from social questions at home, and that might give prestige to the bourgeois government. Moreover, in France Socialists have quite a special reason for holding these colonial wars in horror, for the generals in command of these expeditions act with a barbarity that even surpasses that of European wars. And in the civil wars of France, in June 1848 and in May 1871, it was from amongst these butchers that the reactionists selected the generals who pitilessly massacred the people of Paris as they had massacred the Arabs of Africa and the Mexicans of America.
No capitalist nation can pretend to be safe from colonial wars, for the great question of modern industry is not to extend production, but to increase and to open up new markets. These wars are fatal for capitalist Europe. On the one hand they create and intensify the agitation in the interior; on the other they arm barbarians and the semi-civilised on the confines of civilisation. Capitalist Europe will in the near future succumb. It will be crushed between these two contrary forces, set into movement by itself.
PAUL LAFARGUE.