mazgaj, paul - the origins of the french radical right a historiographical essay

8/12/2019 MAZGAJ, Paul - The Origins of the French Radical Right a Historiographical Essay

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/mazgaj-paul-the-origins-of-the-french-radical-right-a-historiographical 1/30

Society for rench Historical Studies

The Origins of the French Radical Right: A Historiographical EssayAuthor(s): Paul MazgajSource: French Historical Studies, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Autumn, 1987), pp. 287-315Published by: Duke University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/286267 .

Accessed: 09/04/2014 18:51

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Duke University Press and Society for French Historical Studies are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,

preserve and extend access to French Historical Studies.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 146.175.105.47 on Wed, 9 Apr 2014 18:51:58 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=duke

http://www.jstor.org/stable/286267?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp





http://www.jstor.org/stable/286267?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=duke



288 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES

decades, a number of scholars have emphasized the connections

between the radical Right of the 1890s and the fascist leagues of

the 1920s and 1930s. Symptomatic has been the flurry of interest

in the early career of Maurice Barres, perhaps the most celebratedand articulate of the anti-Dreyfusard nationalists. Robert Soucy and

Zeev Sternhell, in political biographies published in the same year,

made a persuasive case for Barres as an exemplar of a fascist avant

la lettre.2

Their case rests on a number of parallels. Like many of the

interwar fascists, Barres combined a socialist nationalism with a

strident anti-intellectualism and a populist anti-Semitism. Also like

them, he promoted a cult of action and leadership while, at the

same time, opposing the divisiveness of parties, politicians, and

parliaments. Finally, both the young Barres of the 1890s and the

young fascists of the 1930s were obsessed with national decline and

decadence, despairing over their contemporaries' preoccupation

with security and petty pleasures, the flagging energy levels of those

who would lay claim to be leaders, and the decline of the truly

heoric-in short, over a civilization gone soft. What is more, beyond

a common pessimism, they shared a vision of the future heralding

a new generation that would "explode the shell of egotism" and

reawaken "the taste for risk, the confidence in self, the sense of

group, [and] the taste for collective elans." This could have been

written by Barres in the 1890s; in fact, it was written by Paul Marion,

a Doriot enthusiast, in 1938.3

Further, Barres's "protofascism" was not an isolated case. The

links between the fin de siecle extreme Right and interwar fascism

in France has been argued by Peter Rutkoff for Paul Deroulede

and his Ligue des patriotes, Patrick Hutton for a contingent of anti-

Dreyfusard Blanquists, Michel Winock for Edouard Drumont,

2 Robert Soucy, Fascismin France: The Case of MauriceBarres (Berkeley and Los Angeles,

1972); Zeev Sternhell, MauriceBarreset le nationalismefrancais(Paris, 1972). See also Sternhell,

"Barris et la gauche: Du Boulangisme a la Cocarde (1889-1895)," Le Mouvementsocial 75

(April-June 1971): 77-130; idem, "Irrationalism and Violence in the French Radical Right:

The Case of Maurice BarrKs," in Philip P. Wiener and John Fischer, eds., Violence and

Aggressionin the History of Ideas (Ithaca, N.Y., 1974), 79-98; idem, "National Socialism andAntisemitism: The Case of Maurice Barr-s," Journal of Contemporary istory8 (October 1973),

47-66. A third important biographer of the early career of BarrKs,C. Stewart Doty, has also

admitted a connection between Barr-s and later French fascism, but Doty makes much less

of this connection than either Soucy or Sternhell. According to Doty, only for a brief period

at the turn of the century did Barr-s articulate a position that brought together all of the

elements later to constitute fascism. C. Stewart Doty, From Cultural Rebellionto Counterrevo-

lution: The Politics of Maurice Barres (Athens, Ohio, 1976), 206-9, 245-47.

3 Soucy, Fascismin France, 286.







ORIGINS OF THE RADICAL RIGHT 289

Philip Nord for certain tendencies in Christian Democracy, and

most comprehensively, Zeev Sternhell for a number of late nine-

teenth-century individuals and organizations.4 In France as else-

where, as Eugen Weber has recently commented, the study of fas-cism is beginning to expand beyond the narrow interwar perimeters

to which it had once been confined.5

Though some measure of agreement seems to be emerging on

the connection between the anti-Dreyfusard extreme Right and

interwar fascism, the question of the origins of the radical Right

has recently been complicated by another set of problems. These

problems are related to the connection between the anti-Dreyfusard

radical Right of the late 1890s and the Boulangist agitation of adecade earlier. A generation ago, when Boulangism was generally

perceived as a machination of the Right, this connection might have

seemed unproblematic. Boulangism-with its hostility to parliamen-

tary institutions, its chauvinism, and its demagogic appeal to a chef-

could be convincingly portrayed as a first eruption of the "fever"

that became more virulent a decade later during the Dreyfus affair.

From this angle, if a compelling case could be made for a pre-1914

French "protofascism," its study would logically begin during thelate 1880s when the Boulangist movement momentarily threatened

the institutions of the Third Republic.

Peter Rutkoff, Revanche & Revision: The Ligue des Patriotesand the Origins of the Radical

Right in France (Athens, Ohio, 1981), 2-3, 165-67; Patrick Hutton, The Cult of the Revolutionary

Tradition:The Blanquistsin FrenchPolitics, 1864-1893 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1981), 171-

73; Michel Winock, "Edouard Drumont et l'antisemitisme en France avant l'affaire Dreyfus,"

Esprit (May 1971), 1085 and, more generally, the articles collected in EdouardDrumontet Cie:

Antisemitismeet fascisme en France (Paris, 1982); Philip Nord, "Three Views of ChristianDemocracy in Fin de Siele France,"Journal of ContemporaryHistory 19 (October 1984): 724;

Zeev Sternhell, La Droite revolutionnaire,1885-1914: Les Origines ranpaisesdu fascisme (Paris,

1978). See also the more guarded judgment of Stephen Wilson in Ideologyand Experience:

Antisemitismn France at the Time of the DreyfusAffair (Rutherford, N.J., 1982), 226.5 "Fascism(s) and Some Harbingers,"Journal of ModernHistory54 (December 1982): 746-

47. To be sure, not everyone concurs. Perhaps the strongest exception has been taken by

Edward R. Tannenbaum, who has characterized attempts to connect late nineteenth-century

nationalism with interwar fascism in the following manner: "The observation that two suc-

cessive things are similar does not prove that the later one has a direct connection with the

earlier one. To assert a connection without empirical evidence is a logical fallacy: post hoc,

ergo propterhoc. And to use similarities as the evidence is to argue in a circle." Review ofMaurice Barres et le nationalisms rancais, by Zeev Sternhell and Fascismin France, by Robert

Soucy, AmericanHistorical Review 78 (December 1973): 1479. This, of course, assumes that

World War I is a watershed separating "two successive things." Zeev Sternhell has questioned

the larger pretensions of the 1914 watershed arguing that important continuities-especially

cultural continuities-stretch from the 1890s to the 1930s and that to compartmentalize them

is not only artificial but misleading. See particularly, Ni Droiteni gauche: L'Ideologiefascisteen

France (Paris, 1983), 15-16, 289-90 and "Fascist Ideology," in Fascism:A Reader'sGuide, ed.

Walter Laqueur (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1976), 315-376.








However, the logic of these connections has been upset by the

very considerable revision of Boulangism that has taken place over

the last few years.6 The traditional interpretation, stressing the es-

sentially rightist inspiration of Boulangism, has been challenged bya newer view, which convincingly establishes its affinities with older

traditions of the French Left. Seemingly, this would separate Bou-

langism from the anti-Dreyfusard nationalism of the 1890s, con-

ventionally viewed as a phenomenon of the Right. And indeed,

certain historians have argued this separation. Yet others, though

largely accepting the Boulangist revisionism, have argued an essen-

tial continuity between Boulangist and anti-Dreyfusard nationalism.

It is clear that the pieces of this puzzle have not fallen neatly

into place. The issues raised, however, are critical not only for an

understanding of the nascent radical Right but also for a larger

appreciation of the political culture of the early Third Republic.

I

Ironically, many of the parties to this dispute find themselves

in substantial agreement concerning the interpretation of French

nationalism at either end of the contested decade between the Bou-

langer and Dreyfus affairs. First, there is little debate concerning

the nature of post-Dreyfusard nationalism. By the end of the affair,

those who employed the label "nationalist" were generally per-

ceived-and indeed, perceived themselves-as conservatives, if not

outright reactionaries. The Ligue de la patrie francaise, which be-

came the dominant force in the anti-Dreyfusard coalition in the

wake of the repression of the more radical leagues, steadily pushed

French nationalism toward conservative respectability. Though crit-

ical of the existing republic and selectively anti-Semitic on the

stump, it cautioned against street violence and prudently avoided

official anti-Semitic pronouncements. Likewise, it turned its back on

Barres's national-socialist experimentation of the 1890s, settling for

6 See especially, Jacques Nere, "La Crise industrielle de 1882 et le mouvement boulang-

iste," (doctorat es lettres, University of Paris, 1958); Frederic H. Seager, TheBoulangerAffair:Political Crossroadof France, 1886-1889 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1969); C. Stewart Doty, "Parliamentary

Boulangism after 1889," The Historian 32 (February 1970): 250-69; Patrick H. Hutton, "Pop-

ular Boulangism and the Advent of Mass Politics in France, 1886-90,"Journal of Contemporary

History 11 (January 1976): 85-106; idem, "The Role of the Blanquist Party in Left-Wing

Politics in France, 1879-90," Journal of Modern History46 (June 1974): 277-95; idem, "The

Impact of the Boulangist Crisis upon the Guesdist Party at Bordeaux," French Historical

Studies7 (Fall 1971): 226-44; Rutkoff, Revanche& Revision, 39-53; Sternhell, Droitereivolution-

naire, 33-119.








a reemphasis on Christian charity, paternalism, and antisocialism.

As D. R. Watson's studies of the municipal elections of 1900 and

the national elections of 1902 have shown, the electoral campaigns

of the nationalists, organized by the Ligue de la patrie francaise,

were successful in the more prosperous quartiers, eaving the poorer

ones to the Radicals or socialists.7 There can be little doubt that by

about 1902, at the electoral level at least, nationalism was a conser-

vative ideological force. Admittedly, some of nationalism's earlier

fire survived in the Action francaise, but in the first years of the

new century, Maurras's neoroyalist organization was more of a study

circle than a genuine populist movement on the model of the anti-

Dreyfusard leagues.8

As already noted, a second, though more precarious, area of

growing consensus among historians of the radical Right centers on

the revised picture of Boulangism that has emerged in recent years.9

The older and familiar textbook version told the story of how a

dashing but witless general forged a curious alliance of malcontents,

enabling him to launch a Caesarist attack on a momentarily weak-

ened republic. Though originally promoted by dissident Radicals,

Boulanger was soon captured-or, more accurately, purchased-by

the forces of the Right. The latter, finding their traditionalist mes-

sages had scant appeal in the newly democratized electoral arena,

were willing to experiment with American-style techniques of elec-

toral mobilization. Though begun as an intrigue, the conservative

connection soon became difficult to conceal, especially in the light

of growing ideological collusion between the Boulangists and the

Right. Antiparliamentarism, attacks on governmental weakness, and

appeals to the unity of nation above the divisiveness of class-all

commonplaces of the twentieth-century radical Right-emerged as

major themes in the frenetic Boulangist by-election campaigns. Be-

yond these telltale ideological traces, there were more concrete

7"The Nationalist Movement in Paris, 1900-1906," in The Right in France, 1890-1919,

ed. David Shapiro (London, 1962), 48-84. See also Sternhell, Droiteretvolutionnaire, 27-45.

8 See especially, Eugen Weber, ActionFran(aise: Royalismand Reaction in Twentieth-Century

France (Stanford, Calif., 1962), 3-43.9 I qualify this consensus as precarious, given the fact that there are still historians who

defend, in whole or in part, the position described in the following paragraph. Its most

recent defense-updated and refined in the light of revisionist criticism-is contained in a

doctoral dissertation by Steven Englund, "The Origin of Oppositional Nationalism in France,

(1881-1889)" (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1981). I would like to thank William D. Irvine

for pointing me to Englund's dissertation. Though I disagree with many of Englund's

interpretations, his study is informative and challenging; it needs to be included on the short

list of essential works on the politics of the 1880s.








evidences of Boulangism's connections with the Right: the increas-

ing flow of conservative money into the Boulangist campaign cof-

fers; electoral collusion between royalists, Bonapartists, and Bou-

langists (which rallied, especially in rural areas, large numbers ofhistorically conservative voters to Boulangism); and most ominously,

open talk of a coup against the republic-a coup which would

ultimately usher in some form of a conservative restoration.

The revisionists have challenged this interpretation, suggesting

that Boulangism is better understood as the coalescence of the

fragmented forces of the Left, pushed from below by popular un-

rest, rather than as a thinly disguised machination orchestrated by

the Right.'0 This revised picture has emerged from three related

avenues of research: the study of the severe economic distress of

the mid-80s and the resulting popular discontent; documentation

of the importance of the working-class vote in Boulanger's great

urban by-election victories; and the identification of the Left-in

many cases extreme Left-background of the Boulangist leadership

cadres." This was reflected, according to the revisionists, in the

Boulangist political agenda, largely borrowed from the "advanced"

republican Left. It included a reassertion of Jacobin nationalism, a

vague commitment to reform (which became more "social" as the

movement developed), and most importantly, a revision of the

"monarchist" constitution of 1875. "With its radical republican lead-

ership and urban popular following," one historian has concluded,

"the Boulangist movement in fact appeared to many contemporary

observers to be a configuration of protest not unlike those which

had preceded the revolutions of 1830 and 1848."12

10 See note 6 above.

" See, respectively, Ner6, "La Crise industrielle"; Seager, The Boulanger Affair; Doty,

"Parliamentary Boulangism."12 Hutton, Cult of the RevolutionaryTradition, 144. Interestingly, Englund makes a similar

argument, equating Boulangism with a regrouping of the historic alliance of the menu peuple

during the French Revolution. But his interpretation differs from the revisionists in that he

insists that these latter-day Jacobins must be considered as reactionaries by the 1880s because

they opposed "revolution in the social sense" (Englund, "Oppositional Nationalism," 573-76,

also 139-44). I find this argument unconvincing for reasons stated in note 18 below.

It should be noted that Boulangism as a species of urban popular protest did not

everywhere meet with the same degree of success. Whereas Ner- has shown that Boulangismsucceeded to a remarkable degree among the urban workers in the Nord, more recently,

Michael Burns has demonstrated that it failed to rally the urban workers in the Isere. Burns

suggests that the difference could be attributed to the fact that the Isere had already

developed strong Radical and socialist organizations whereas the cities of the Nord had not

(Rural Societyand French Politics:Boulangismand theDreyfusAffair, 1886-1900 [Princeton, N.J.,

1984], 96-100). The argument that Boulangism had its greatest appeal to certain kinds of

workers, those as yet unorganized by either the political parties or the labor movement, has

been made by others. See, for example, Doty, "Parliamentary Boulangism," 253-54.








If this, indeed, be the essence of Boulangism, how was it that

several generations of historians had got matters so wrong? Therevisionists have provided several persuasive arguments. First, as

Frederic Seager has pointed out, earlier historians were too readyto repeat the arguments provided by the Boulangists' political ene-mies (especially contemporary Opportunist politicians and journal-ists) or by the self-serving memoirs of ex-Boulangists written long

after the event. From these sources, never critically examined, camethe most familiar explanation of the dynamic of Boulangism: a

growing Caesarist "fever" aimed not only at republican institutions

but at democracy itself and fed by a remarkable series of by-election

successes. The fever broke, as it were, on the night of 27 January1889. At that point, in the wake of Boulanger's great triumph in

the Parisian by-election and amid shouts of "to the Elysee, to theElysee," Boulanger fell victim to an attack of faintheartedness, be-

traying his heroic public relations' image and dispiriting even the

inner circle of Boulangists. However, as Seager has demonstrated,neither the antidemocratic fever thesis nor the coupmanqueoorollaryhave a basis in the historical record. The thrust of Boulangist po-

lemics was directed neither against republicanism nor democracyper se but against the Opportunists' immobilisme;moreover, there isno evidence from newspapers or police reports of late January that

anyone so much as suggested a coup against the republic.13

Second, the revisionists argue that earlier historians have often

misinterpreted the financial and electoral ties between Boulangistsand the Right. There can be no question, the revisionists admit,that conservative subsidies were lavish. However, revelations of con-

servative financial support came only after the affair had run its

course. Meanwhile, not only did the Boulangist general staff remain

firmly in the hands of "advanced" republicans, but there is no

indication that the Boulangist message was in any way modified to

suit the Right. On the question of electoral strategy, both the Bou-

langists and traditionalists were pushed, by the logic of their re-

spective situations, into electoral alliances. In most areas, neither

could win without the support of the other, whereas their combined

13 Seager, Boulanger Affair, 98-108, 203-10. Englund, who is especially interested inDeroulide's role in the coup manqut',argues that "the traditional view of 27 January-a viewpromulgated by a wide range of latter-day sources-seems eminently compatible with what

we know of the poet's personality, temper, and future actions." But he admits as a "provisionalconclusion" that this traditional view "cannot be supported with the quality of evidence that

Seager has adduced to prove the contrary" (Englund, "Oppositional Nationalism," 527).








vote was often enough to defeat the Opportunist opposition. Ad-

mittedly, in a number of by-elections this meant that Boulangist

candidates were elected by a majority that had previously voted for

candidates of the Right. As Seager argues, however, this did not

mean ideological collusion. Nor did it lead most contemporaries-

despite promotings from Boulanger's Opportunist enemies-to

view Boulangism as veering off in the direction of reaction. These

contemporaries, according to Seager, could distinguish between

Boulangists (that is, those who subscribed to the "advanced" socio-

political program of the central committee) and temporary mem-

bers of the Boulangist electoral coalition (many of whom voted for

Boulanger solely as a means of voting against the Opportunist in

power).'4 Seager admits that, in a strict sense, this is not a "revision-

ist" argument at all, considering that, as early as 1913, Andre Sieg-

fried had separated "authentic Boulangists" from "those of the anti-

Republican coalition, who, while associating with the first [Boulang-

ists] for reasons of political tactics, did not cease for all that to be

what they had been previously: pure royalists and genuine Bona-

partists."5

Third, revisionists have argued that the traditional accounts

have anachronistically misrepresented the antiparliamentary thrust

of Boulangism. This, the revisionists claim, should not be read-as

it too often has been-as evidence of antidemocratic and rightist

influence. It is more correctly interpreted as part of traditional left-

14 "Those who voted for Boulanger were not all Boulangists.... Contemporary observers

generally agreed that only the dissident leftists who, for economic or ideological motives,

favored the general as a means of obtainingrevision of the constitution merited that label"

(Seager, Boulanger Affair, 167-68).

15 Cited in ibid., 255. In this regard, Englund has documented two important develop-

ments that the revisionists have tended to neglect. He documents, in the first instance, the

degree to which nationalism was finding its way into the political vocabulary of the tradition-

alist Right during the 1880s ("Oppositional Nationalism," 272-31 1). Yet it would seem that

this development has more relevance for the Dreyfus than for the Boulanger affair given

the fact that Englund finds precious few examples of genuine collusion. After carefully

searching out possible connections between Boulangists and their D1rouldist allies, on the

one hand, and representatives of the traditional Right, on the other, Englund candidly admits:

"In conclusion, the Jeromists were the only constituted group of the traditional right to join

or work hand-in-hand with the L.D.P. [Ligue des patriotes]. Other conservative parties and

notables, including the Victorists, limited themselves to de facto alliance with Deroulkde inthe Boulangist movement or to defending the League in the press" (ibid., 295-96).

Second, and more importantly, he argues that the Boulangist coalition was reinforced

by an important contingent of "rallies" from the Right. The latter were militants who disre-

garded "party directives" and either joined the Boulangists outright or worked closely with

them (ibid., 581). This was certainly a significant development which throws light on the

evolution of the French Right in the 1880s; but, again, Englund cannot show very persuasively

that it had much immediate effect on the Boulangist program or the urban constituencies

that continued to support it.








wing hostility to parliamentary regimes perceived as socially indif-

ferent and cut off from the popular will. This becomes less enig-

matic if it is understood that the common twentieth-century confla-

tion of the antiparliamentary with the antidemocratic isanachronistic when applied to nineteenth-century France. Here, as

Patrick Hutton has observed, parliamentary government, burdened

by Orleanist and elitist associations, was often pitted against the

insurrectional and egalitarian traditions of democratic populism.

From this angle, urban Boulangism can be seen as a latter-day

Jacobinism, fueled from below by economic hard times and sans-

culottes discontent. It challenged a political establishment that

seemed a reincarnation of the parliamentary regimes of the Second

and early Third Republics-regimes, it will be recalled, that crushed

urban populist revolts, first in 1848 and again in 1871.16

Finally, the revisionists have identified still another, even more

egregious, anachronism at the center of the traditional interpreta-

tion. Whereas the Boulangists had promoted themselves -as radicals

of the Left, many of the traditional accounts have taken some

pleasure in unmasking these pretensions in the light of their seem-

ingly pallid program of social reforms, their distrust of both class

conflict and collectivism, and their bellicose nationalism.'7 Yet, as

the revisionists have argued, much of this debunking of Boulangist

claims to social radicalism has been achieved by projecting later-

largely Marxist-categories back onto the 1880s. Class-exclusivism,

collectivism, and internationalism, were not yet signposts marking

off the boundaries of the radical Left. Large numbers of the menu

peuple, including workers, could still be rallied to the old Jacobin

alliance of the exploited-an alliance sealed with a renewed com-

mitment to patriotic vigilance and a promise of political reform in

the direction of popular control of the republic.18

16 Hutton, "'The Role of the Blanquist Party," 288; idem, "Popular Boulangism," 95-96;

Sternhell, "National Socialism and Antisemitism," 48-50.17 Englund nicely summarizes this point of view in the following terms: "The National

Party's strong concern about 'The Social Question' must ... not be confused with a coherent

radical program of socio-economic reform" ("Oppositional Nationalism," 575).

18 See below, 20-23. A comprehensive and updated defense of the traditional positionon this issue is to be found in Englund. Though he warns, at one point, of the danger of

seeing the French working class of the 1880s "through the optic of the dramatic permeation

of the workers with the vocabulary, institutions, and socio-political alignments of socialism

and revolutionary syndicalism that tookplace a decadeor two later,"he seems to forget his own

salutary advice ("Oppositional Nationalism," 183, my italics). After admitting that certain

Boulangists had "emerged from leftwing backgrounds," their rhetoric nevertheless betrayed

them, according to Englund, as "above politics and beyond class," and thus no longer

legitimtely part of the Left in light of the fact that "they appealed to the working class not








Moreover, those who argue the reactionary complexion of Bou-

langism tend to ignore its evolution in the immediate aftermath of

the affair. In his study of the voting record of the thirty-odd Bou-

langists elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1889 (a group thatincluded Maurice Barres), C. Stewart Doty has found that, though

nationalistic, they developed an extensive program of social re-

forms, making them virtually indistinguishable from the non-Bou-

langist socialists with whom they worked closely. In fact, owing to

their numerical superiority and impressive leadership cadre, the

Boulangists became the dominant partners on the parliamentary

"socialist" Left before 1893-a situation that seemed less incon-

gruous to the nondoctrinaire socialists of the early 90s than to manylater historians.'9

II

If one accepts, then, these arguments establishing urban Bou-

langism as basically radical, on the one hand, and post-Dreyfusard

nationalism as essentially conservative, on the other, one is left at

an uncomfortable impasse when attempting to characterize fin desiecle nationalism. How is the historian to account for the apparent

disjuncture between left-wing Boulangist nationalism, supported by

a popular clientele, and post-Dreyfusard conservative nationalism,

manifestly bourgeois in its base of support? And what of the anti-

Dreyfusard polemics of Barres and the leagues of Guerin and De-

roulede, which occupy a chronologically intermediate position yet

seem to be closer in spirit to post-Dreyfusard nationalism?

One approach to this problem is to argue that the urban Bou-langism of the late 80s was simply the last gasp of historic Jacobin

nationalism and that it shared virtually nothing save a common

label with the anti-Dreyfusard nationalism of the next decade. In

effect, one kind of nationalism died with Boulangism whereas an-

other, of a radically different kind, was born during the Dreyfus

affair. One appeal of this thesis is that it preserves the integrity of

the conventional political spectrum: Jacobin nationalism, "on the

qua class (as the socialists did) but to 'es ouvriers"' (ibid., 477). However, if one accepts the

Left as a historical category, defined by contemporary perceptions, then one must admit that

there were many French leftists in the 1880s who placed national unity high on their list of

concerns and saw the working class as merely one element in a potential revolutionary

alliance. To find certain socialists and syndicalists in the 1880s who had become "antipatriots"

or Marxists is not to prove-as Englund seems to believe-that nationalism or indifference

to Marx were henceforth telltale signs of a reactionary mentality.

'9 Doty, "Parliamentary Boulangism"; idem, CulturalRebellion,70-116.








Left," is one thing; anti-Dreyfusard nationalism, "on the Right," is

quite another.

In his recent study of Deroulede's Ligue des patriotes, Peter

Rutkoff takes this tack. Though Deroulede could be found at thecenter of both the Boulangist and anti-Dreyfusard coalitions, Rut-

koff claims that his Boulangist nationalism was radically different

from his anti-Dreyfusard nationalism, a claim he supports with

several kinds of evidence. First, Deroulede of the 1880s, however

much he criticized Opportunist politicians, was, on this view, the

very image of a Gambettist republican, committed to parliamentary

and reformist tactics.20The direct action politics of the 1890s, with

its street violence and attacks on republican legality, was not pre-saged, according to Rutkoff, in Deroulede's behavior during the

Boulanger affair. Second, his nationalism during the Boulangist

agitation "was still," in Rutkoff's words, "recognizably Jacobin"; it

bore little resemblance to the exclusivist, aggressive anti-Dreyfusard

nationalism of the next decade. Finally, anti-Semitism, so much a

part of radical anti-Dreyfusard nationalism, was wholly absent from

the early Deroulede. According to Rutkoff, Deroulede's movement

toward anti-Semitism, not completed until 1899, was dictated nei-ther by intellectual affinity nor personal resentment but by fierce

competition with Guerin's Ligue antisemitique for popular support.

"In short," Rutkoff concludes, "if one looks to the Boulangist epi-

sode . . . as the place where nationalism slipped quietly over the

line separating Left from Right, one will see shadow, not sub-

stance."92'

Starting from the same assumptions about the radicalism of

urban Boulangism and the conservatism of post-Dreyfusard nation-

alism, Zeev Sternhell paints a very different picture of the trajectory

of nationalism in the fin de siecle. Rather than arguing a sharp

break between two qualitatively different forms of nationalism,

Sternhell suggests an essentially evolutionary development, stress-

ing important continuities between the Boulangist radicalism of the

late 80s and the anti-Dreyfusard agitation of the late 90s. Sternhell,

also a student of Deroulede, challenges Rutkoff's portrait of the

nationalist leader. In the first instance, he questions whether De-

roulede's tactics in the late 80s were as unambiguously parliamen-

tary as suggested by Rutkoff. True, Sternhell agrees, the major

20 Rutkoff, Revanche & Revision, 47-48.21 Ibid., 160, 163, 161.








thrust of Boulangisin was toward an electoral mandate, but many

of Boulanger's lieutenants, Deroul&de especially, were not adverse

to mixing physical intimidation and street violence into their cam-paign repertoire. For example, as Sternhell points out, Deroulede's

ligueuirs were prominent in the massive popular demonstration at

the gare de Lvon, which attempted to block Boulanger's departure

I)P*-ART DE BOULANGER POUR CLERMONT

PHOT OG RAPHII FROM T HI t RF N(CII PERIOD(ICL , 1 I I S IA I ION (Artist uinknown I)








from Paris in July 1887.22 Their ability to intimidate by means of

street violence was demonstrated with even greater effect duringthe presidential crisis of late 1887 when, in cooperation with the

Blanquists, they helped block Ferry's bid for the presidency.23 Adeft alternation between intimidation through violence and freneticelectoral mobilization was a tactic also used with deadly effect, onemight remember, by later radicals of the Right-many of whom

also sought electoral mandates.

It was not, however, simply a matter of Deroulede's tacticalinnovations. According to Sternhell, Deroulede represents the side

of Boulangism that found an antidote for parliamentary liberalism

in an increasingly authoritarian populism. Like the original Bou-langists, Deroulede fought parliamentary elitism in the name of the

popular will. But Deroulede's populism, unlike that of the majorityon the Boulangist central committee, began to find expression in

the heroic leader who alone would have the wherewithal to riseabove divisive party and selfish faction.24

Second, Sternhell questions Rutkoff's sharp delineation be-tween Deroulede's early Jacobin and late anti-Dreyfusard nation-alism. In the mid-80s, Deroulede had already become contemptuousof the Jacobin conception of international fraternity and spokeopenly of "national egotism." "As to the brotherhood of peoples,"he could write even before the Boulanger affair, "we'll talk aboutthat when Cain has returned what he's taken from us."25Finally,Sternhell argues that the most fundamental change in the Liguedes patriotes did not come, as Rutkoff would have it, in the 1890s

but during the Boulanger affair. It is at that time that the organi-zation lost most of its moderate, provincial membership and became

largely Parisian, oriented toward the new politics of mass mobili-

zation.26

22 Sternhell, Droite rt'volutionnaire, 8; Hutton, "Popular Boulangism," 93-94.23 Sternhell, Droite rt'volutionnaire,98-99. For a more complete account, see Englund,

"Oppositional Nationalism," 422-32.24 Sternhell, Droite rt'volutionnaire,90-92. As Seager has shown, even the Boulangists of

the central committee, although united on the desirability of constitutional revision, were farfrom agreed as to what kind. The major division was between Alfred Naquet, who favoredincreased executive authority, and Henri Michelin, who wanted an executive authority sub-ordinated to a unicameral legislature (Seager, Boulanger Affair, 134-37).

25 Quoted in Sternhell, Droite rt'volutionnaire, 3.26 Ibid., 98-100. Rutkoff recognizes this shift of gravity from the provinces to Paris but

interprets it differently (Revanche& Revision, 45-51). For the most complete account of the

transformation of the Ligue des patriotes in the late 1880s, see Englund, "OppositionalNationalism," 338-498.







300 FRENCH HISTORICAL SrUDIES

Thus, for Sternhell, the continuities-in style of organization,

in urban clientele, in direct action techniques, and in radical na-

tionalist leanings-caution the historian from posing any sharp di-

chotomy between the Boulangist and the anti-Dreyfusard De-roulede. In all of these aspects, Deroulede is seen by Sternhell as a

harbinger of the new Right of the late 90s, but that does not lead

him to argue-as certain historians have-that the contemporary

perception of Deroulede as part of the Left in the 1880s needs to

be debunked.27 In fact, Deroulede, in bringing his Ligue des patri-

otes to Boulangism, was seen by contemporaries as moving farther

to the Left rather than drifting off to the Right. Attentive to these

contemporary perceptions, Sternhell concludes that important cluesto the origins of the radical Right must, therefore, be traced back

to a crisis on the historic radical Left, one component of which was

represented by the Boulangist Ligue des patriotes.

III

Maurice Barres presents a second case study. Like Deroulede,

Barres was involved-intimately and importantly involved-in boththe Boulangist and anti-Dreyfusard agitations. Also, as with De-

roulede, historians have not been of a single mind concerning the

relation between his Boulangist and anti-Dreyfusard politics.

Though Soucy and Sternhell, two of Barres's biographers, are gen-

erally agreed on his protofascism, they disagree sharply on its gen-

esis.

Soucy argues the more conventional, though finally the less

convincing, position that Barres's Boulangism represented neithera serious political stance nor a serious commitment to the radical

Left.28 Unfortunately, in reconstructing the Boulangist phase of his

career, Soucy yields to one of the most fatal temptations to which

biographers are susceptible: namely, accepting uncritically his sub-

ject's after-the-fact reconstruction of events and motives. Part of

this susceptibility is due, it would seem, to his eagerness to rally the

case of Barres as evidence for a larger thesis.

27 Most recently, Englund's "Oppositional Nationalism." Though Englund's study of

Dftoulede is the most complete account about his activities in the 1880s, it is marred-to my

mind-by his insistence that despite contemporary perceptions, Dfroulde was not "really"

on the Left. This, it seems, stems from Englund's methodological assumptions concerning

ideology. Namely, he perceives the role of the historian as one of exposing "the degree to

which ideology conceals certain aspects of reality and reifies elements of the imaginary"

("Oppositional Nationalism," 6, n. 11).28 Soucy, Fascismin France.








In an early and influential article on French fascism, Soucy

argued that historians, following the publication of Rene Remond'sLa Droite en France in 1954, have underestimated the links between

traditional conservatism and fascism.29 Barres's career seemed aready vindication of his argument. According to Soucy, there is no

incongruity and, indeed, much to be learned from the fact that the

Left Boulangist of the late 1880s and the protofascist radical of the

90s matured into the prototypical French conservative-pro-Cath-

olic, respectful of bourgeois proprieties, and a defender of the status

quo. Soucy was eager to demonstrate that Barres's "evolution" was

more apparent than real; beneath the facade of radicalism, Barres

had always been fundamentally conservative. For Soucy there wasnever anything genuinely revolutionary about the young Barres.

His initial involvement in Boulangist politics "was essentially a form

of sensation-seeking, little more than egoistic, nihilistic adventur-

ism... ."30 Nor, in Soucy's judgment, was there any real content to

his socialism-or at least nothing to satisfy "a Marxian revolution-

ary.")3'

By contrast, Sternhell persuasively argues that to portray

Barres as a conservative nationalist as early as the Boulanger affair,

although having the virtue of giving his career consistency, runs

counter to the evidence. Sternhell's argument on this issue has been

further confirmed by C. Stewart Doty's even more recent biography

of Barres.32 From Sternhell's and Doty's evidence, Soucy's account

of Barres's Boulangism relies too exclusively on Barres's later re-

construction of events-a reconstruction fabricated at a time when

he was eager to play up his anti-Dreyfusard brand of nationalism

and play down his earlier radicalism. As Sternhell and Doty estab-

lish, Barres, in effect, took the lessons he learned during the Drey-

fus affair and applied them to the Boulanger affair. The product,his famous L'Appelau soldat, was so skillfully executed that several

generations of historians misconstrued the nature of his Boulangist

politics.33

29

"The Nature of Fascism in France," Journal of ContemporaryHistory 1 (1966): 27-55.Remond's La Droite en France has been republished in several subsequent editions, includingan English translation (7he Right Wing in France: From 1815 to De Gaulle, trans., James M.

Laux [Philadelphia, 1969]) and a recent and significantly revised French edition (published

under the title Les Droites en France [Paris, 1982]).30 Soucy, Fascism in France, 64.3 Ibid., 228-29.32 See note 2 above.33 Sternhell, Barr6s, 21-22, 217-24; Doty, CulturalRebellion, 184-85.








In fact, Barres was, by almost any measure, a typical Left Bou-

langist well into the 1890s. His nationalism before the Dreyfus affair

was scarcely distinguishable from that of other Left Boulangists-

and considerably more moderate than Deroulede's.34 His attacks onparliamentary institutions were, likewise, framed in the neo-Jacobin

rhetoric typical of the radical Left in the 1880s. And, most impor-

tantly, his increasing commitment to socialist reform in the early

90s was, if anything, more marked than that of his fellow Boulang-

ists. Certainly, Sternhell and Doty admit that Barres's newly found

social concern was to an extent opportunistic, dictated by electoral

considerations, but both insist, persuasively, that Barres's deepening

interest in socialism cannot be written off as mere expediency. Norcan it be dismissed, they further argue, because it fails to measure

up to an anachronistically imposed Marxian yardstick. In the con-

text of the late 80s and early 90s, Barres's Proudhonian-style so-

cialism-with its populist anti-Semitism, its concern for socialjustice,

and its rejection of collectivism-was still very much part of the

large, inchoate socialist family.35

If Sternhell and Doty agree in their general reconstruction of

Barres's early Boulangism and radicalism, they part company on itsimplications for the later radical Right. In Doty's view, Barres's

politics took a sharp turn during the Dreyfus years: first he flirted

with protofascism and then settled comfortably on the moderate

Right.36 Sternhell, meanwhile, views Barres's movement from so-

cialism to anti-Dreyfusard nationalism in evolutionary terms, ar-

guing that there is little incongruity between Barres's Boulangist

brand of socialism and his later protofascism.

It is, in fact, part of Sternhell's more general thesis that radical

Right ideology in France is a kind of hybrid, bringing together

certain strains of non-Marxian socialism with currents of radical

nationalism, cultural pessimism, and popular anti-Semitism. Pre-

cisely how this ideological amalgam came together has been ob-

scured, according to Sternhell, by the conventional Left-Right di-

chotomization of political reality. To be sure, Sternhell admits,

radicalisms of the Right characteristically exhibit a virulent anti-

34 In the judgment of the young Barres, for example, not only did the revanchard

Deroulede write bad poetry, but his chauvinism blinded him to the fact that "humanity would

stagger" without the contributions of England and Germany to civilization (cited in Doty,

CulturalRebellion, 16).3 Sternhell, Barres, 120-213; Doty, CulturalRebellion,8-35, 48-49, 74-82, 114-16, 117-52.36 Doty, Barres, 176-236.








Marxism and, in time, are often absorbed by the forces of the

conservative Right. Yet from this it cannot be concluded that such

movements are merely disguised reaction. To bifurcate all positions

into a reformist or revolutionary Left and a conservative or reac-

tionary Right is to miss much of the ambiguity of fin de si'cle and

interwar politics where, in Sternhell's view, revolutionaries were not

confined to the Left nor conservatives to the Right.37

IV

This essential ambiguity of fin de si'cle politics and the failure ofconventional labels to clarify it have also been argued by Patrick

Hutton, historian of the Blanquist movement in the early Third

Republic.38 Though Blanqui himself died in 1881, his movement,

with grassroots organizations in a number of popular quartiersand

a forum in Henri Rochefort's L'Intransigeant,remained a force to

be reckoned with in the arena of fin de si'cle Parisian politics.

However, it has been a force difficult to characterize within the

conventional categories because, like Deroulede and Barres, manyBlanquists were transformed from "Left" Boulangists to "Right"

anti-Dreyfusards.

The potential significance of this transformation has been ob-

scured, according to Hutton, by the manner in which the evolution

of Blanquism has been depicted by the early historians of socialism.

These historians have focused attention on Edouard Vaillant's grav-

itation toward Marxism, as if it exemplified the general movement

of Blanquist politics between the Boulanger and Dreyfus affairs.Admittedly, a small group of the old-guard Blanquists followed

Vaillant into what was to become the unified socialist party, but

Hutton argues that a much larger and more representative group

followed Ernest Granger from Boulangism into anti-Dreyfusard

nationalism. The major reason for the neglect of this second faction

in traditionalist socialist histories has been the preoccupation with

the eventual unification of French socialism after the turn of the

century.39As a result, emphasis has been placed on those tendenciesthat found expression in the unified party-internationalism, col-

37An argument most fully developed in Sternhell, La Droite rgvolutionnaireand Ni Droite

ni gauche.38 Hutton, "The Role of the Blanquist Party," 277-95; idem, Cult of the Revolutionary

Tradition, 143-73.391 Ibid., 169-70.








lectivism, class struggle, and wariness before naive conspiratorial

conceits such as anti-Semitism.

Further, the distortion resulting from the anachronistic focus

on unification has been exacerbated by the often overtly hagio-graphic tone of many of the early histories of French socialism.

Considerable effort was expended in these accounts to separate

"authentic" socialism from bogus versions, a distinction made ex

post facto and with the presumption that virtue was inseparable

from "authentic" socialism. There is a growing appreciation, how-

ever, that the label "socialism," as employed before the Dreyfus

affair, entailed nothing so precise as a doctrine; as indicated above,

both nascent Marxists, at the one extreme, and national socialistslike Barres, at the other, were generally perceived by contempor-

aries as socialists. Boulangist-style nationalism, sympathy for the

plight of artisans and petty shopkeepers, and even strains of anti-

industrialism-all features of Barres's national socialism of the early

90s-did not yet set one off as a reactionary.

Attitudes concerning anti-Semitism are a good measure of this

general ambiguity.40 Many socialists of the 1880s, and some well

into the 90s, mixed their polemics with generous doses of anti-Semitism. During the 80s, for example, the pages of the influential

Revue socialistewere open to a variety of anti-Semitic influences. To

be sure, this anti-Semitic current did not go unopposed, beginning

with a forceful rejoinder in the Revue socialiste itself in 1890; yet

only with the Dreyfus affair were anti-Semitism and socialism

largely disassociated.4' For example, a figure like Henri Rochefort,

whose anti-Semitic viciousness could approach that of Drumont,

remained an immensely popular and influential figure on the rev-olutionary Left through the 1880s and into the 90s. That Rochefort

has been virtually ignored by historians (save for occasional dem-

onstrations that his socialism was inauthentic), whereas attention

40On the question of anti-Semitism and the early French socialism, see Robert F. Byrnes,

Antisemitism n Modern France: The Prologue to the Dreyfus Affair (New York, 1969), 156-78;

Michel Winock, Drumontet Cie, 80-114; Robert S. Wistrich, "French Socialism and the Dreyfus

Affair," WienerLibraryBulletin 28 (1975): 9-20; Harvey Goldberg, "JeanJaur6s and the Jewish

Question: The Evolution of a Position," Jewish Social Studies 20 (April 1958): 67-94; VictorM. Glasberg, "Intent and Consequences: The 'Jewish Question' in the French Socialist Move-

ment of the Late Nineteenth Century,"Jewish Social Studies36 (January 1974): 61-71; George

Lichtheim, "Socialism and the Jews," in CollectedEssays(New York, 1973), 413-57; Jeannine

Verdes-Leroux, Scandalefinancier et antisimitismecatholique:Le Krachde l'Union generate(Paris,

1969), 152-62; Sternhell, Droite rgvolutionnaire,177-96.

4' Sternhell, Droite revolutionnaire,46-48, 193-96. For evidence that anti-Semitism could

play a role in socialist and syndicalist politics even after the Dreyfus Affair, see Paul Mazgaj,

The Action Francaiseand RevolutionarySyndicalism Chapel Hill, N.C., 1979), 128-69.








republican party's Left that contributed to give birth to the radical

Right in France. ..."44

Sternhell's argument rests, at one level, on the considerable

ideological continuity between the Boulangist and anti-Dreyfusardmovements. Each attempted to reach the discontented with a mili-

tantly populist message; each invoked the solidarity of the national

community rather than call for class conflict; and each sealed its

populist nationalism with the bond of the new political anti-Semi-

tism. Here Sternhell challenges the more conventional view that

Boulangism, unlike anti-Dreyfusard nationalism, was largely free

from anti-Semitism.

It is true, Sternhell admits, anti-Semitism emerged late in thegame. It is also true, he admits, that Boulanger himself and a few

other leading Boulangists (notably, Alfred Naquet and Georges

Laguerre) stood against an anti-Semitic undercurrent growing

within the movement. But by 1889 this undercurrent had surfaced:

the campaigns of Barres and Gabriel at Nancy and those of Granger,

Roche, and Rochefort at Paris were blatantly anti-Semitic, and at

about the same time the notorious Jew baiter Marquis de Mores

attached himself to the movement.45 This issue of anti-Semitismforced a crisis within the leadersip ranks in early 1890 when Francis

Laur, a prominent Boulangist running for an invalidated seat at

Neuilly, formed a virtual alliance with Drumont and his newly

launched anti-Semitic league. Although Laur was finally disavowed

by the Boulangist central committee, anti-Semitic feeling had grown

so intense in Boulangist ranks by the spring of 1890 that Naquet

had to threaten resignation to prevent an open pact between Bou-

langism and Drumont's league.46 Moreover, Michael Burns, in hisstudy of the impact of the Boulanger and Dreyfus affairs in rural

France, has recently demonstrated that Boulangist anti-Semitism

was not a phenomenon confined to Nancy and Paris.47

In addition to ideological continuity, Sternhell also finds a con-

tinuity of personnel between Boulangist and anti-Dreyfusard na-

tionalism. The number of ex-Boulangists who later found their way

into the ranks of the anti-Dreyfusards is impressive. It certainly

44 Sternhell, "Irrationalism and Violence," 79-82; see also idem, "National Socialism and

Antisemitism," 47-52; idem, Droiterivolutionnaire,26-28.45 Sternhell, Droite revolutionnaire,201-14.

46 Byrnes, Antisemitism,236.47 The Boulangists in the Marne, he writes, "in a final attempt to save their moribund

movement, dropped the pretense of civilized politics and mounted a savage campaign aimed

at the department's significant Jewish population . . ." (Rural Societyand FrenchPolitics, 115).








impressed many contemporaries and has been, more recently, doc-

umented by scholars.48 Barres, though unique in many respects,was certainly not alone in his gravitation from the Boulangist Left

to the anti-Dreyfusard Right.However, for Sternhell, the evolution of an important segment

of the revolutionary Left to the radical Right is only one side in alarger paradox. The "progressive" side of the fin de si'cle revolu-

tionary imagination, while becoming steadily more Marxian was, atthe same time, becoming steadily less revolutionary. Unnerved first

by the popular anti-Dreyfusard groundswell and then by nationalistassaults against the republic, the marxisant socialist Left was pushed

inexorably toward an alliance with non-socialist republicans to de-fend the beleaguered republic. This alliance was sealed with the

Dreyfusard victory and in its train fostered further integration ofthe still rhetorically revolutionary socialists into republican parlia-mentary legality. Under these circumstances, beginning with theDreyfus affair and continuing into the interwar period, the more

credible threat to the status quo came not from the socialist Leftbut from the nationalist Right.49 Thus, in making his paradoxical

case, Sternhell challenges conventional wisdom on two counts: first,he questions the inviolability of the political spectrum, whose con-ventional dichotomization, he claims, isolates phenomena that aresometimes interrelated; second, he questions the presumption that

revolutionary challenges to the existing order are, always and every-

where, conducted by an insurrectionary Left and resisted by a re-

actionary Right.

Evidence of this dual paradox-a radical Right with part of its

origins on the radical Left and a rhetorically revolutionary move-

ment becoming the buttress of an essentially conservative republic-has been further illuminated by Patrick Hutton's studies of the

political consequences of Boulangism.50 Like Sternhell, Hutton ar-

gues that an understanding of the radical politics of the fin de sikcle

must begin with an appreciation of the bifurcated state of the

French revolutionary Left. For Hutton, the niain source of this

tension is located in the very different responses evoked by the

process of economic modernization. On the one side, among those

48 CF. Wilson, Ideologyand Experience, 383-85 and Englund, "Oppositional Nationalism,"587, n. 233.

49 Sternhell, Droite revolutionnaire,27-3 1.50 Hutton, "Popular Boulangism"; idem, "The Role of the Blanquist Party"; idem, Cult

of the RevolutionaryTradition,9-10, 119-73.








moving toward a Marxian socialism there was an essential optimism,

which included a positive attitude toward large-scale industrializa-

tion, a confidence that the seemingly worrisome concentration of

wealth was a necessary historical stage and a belief that long-termeconomic trends-however desperate the short-term political out-

look-were on the side of revolutionary change. On the other side,

however, there existed a less familiar component of the fin de sikcle

revolutionary imagination, a component that Hutton aptly labels

"populist." The outlook of the populists was colored by a set of

pervasive anxieties: that industrial trends were a threat to the in-

tegrity of the workshop; that the new wealth "was not a necessary

stage of economic development, but a retrogression toward a 'newfeudalism"'; that the growing collusion between financial and polit-

ical oligarchs would seal the fate of the many who were economically

and politically powerless.5'

Though it has received scant attention from historians, this

populism occupied an important place on the late nineteenth-cen-

tury French Left. In fact, according to Hutton, "in its suspicion of

a power elite and in its concern about the erosion of communal

values, populism rivaled Marxism as a critique of capitalism in the1880s."552

The Boulanger affair proved, according to Hutton, an impor-

tant watershed for both revolutionary tendencies. For a majority of

those moving toward Marxian socialism, the lessons learned from

the affair had less to do with the ideological program of the Bou-

langists than with their tactics of popular mobilization in an increas-

ingly democratized setting. Until the mid-1880s, most French so-

cialists bore the imprint of the elitist and insurrectionary politics of

the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In organizational style,

they remained small coteries of intellectuals, as much cut off from

the general populace as the republican notables whom they op-

posed. In their operational view of revolution-still heavily mort-

gaged to the "great days" of revolutions past-they continued to be

mesmerized by ''fantasies of impending popular insurrection."

However tentatively, the Boulangist experience pointed in new di-

rections. Deroulede and his Ligue des patriotes demonstrated how

a grassroots network of electoral committees could transform "the

inchoate enthusiasm of the crowd" into a more permanently mo-

52 Ibid., 138.52 Hutton, "Popular Boulangism," 87.








bilized and effectively disciplined mass party.53Meanwhile, the Bou-

langists elected to the Chamber in 1889 proved that parliamentary

politics could pay real, if limited, dividends in the form of legislative

reforms. As Hutton convincingly demonstrates, whatever the so-cialists might have said publicly about Boulangism, the lessons of

organizational expansion through electoral mobilization and piece-

meal reform through parliamentary means were not lost on the

socialists, particularly on the Guesdists.54 Thus, Hutton's work on

the impact of Boulangism on the French Left nicely complements

Sternhell's analysis of the impact of anti-Dreyfusard nationalism:

both of these experiences pushed Marxian-oriented socialists to-

ward greater integration into parliamentary and democratic politics,making them at once more pragmatically effective and less authen-

tically revolutionary.

Meanwhile, at the populist end of the fin de si'cle Left, the

lessons derived from Boulangism were largely ideological rather

than tactical, according to Hutton. To those animated by a fear of

a modernizing economy and, more concretely, its social and psy-

chological consequences, the Boulangist vision of national decad-

ence, as well as its corollary of heroic activism in the service ofnational redemption, had considerable appeal. When Boulangism

collapsed-or, perhaps more accurately, was repressed55-as a viable

political force, its least attractive aspects came to the foreground,

particularly the obsession with national decline and the penchant

for naive conspiratorialism. Here the reactions of the Blanquists

were symptomatic. By the 1890s they supported legal restrictions

on the entry of foreign workers, attacked Marxism as a "foreign

doctrine," and moved their earlier occasional anti-Semitism to thecenter of their concerns, after reconstructing it along fashionably

scientistic and racial lines.56

Moreover, following Sternhell, Hutton neither dismisses this

development as a curiosity nor sees it as a case of a few isolated

erstwhile revolutionaries lost to the camp of reaction:

The intellectual evolution of Granger . . . and the Blanquist old guard

from the Hebertism of their student years to the nationalism of theirmature years reveals a pattern of thought through which many Jacobins

passed in their migration from the revolutionary Left to the revolutionary

53 Ibid., 93.54 Hutton, "The Impact of the Boulangist Crisis."55 Seager, Boulanger Affair, 224-29; Doty, CulturalRebellion, 54, 66-67.56 Hutton, Cult of the RevolutionaryTradition, 156-61.








Right in the late nineteenth century. As fellow travelers with Rochefort,Paul D1roulede, Maurice Barr6s, and the Boulangist radicals, the Blan-quists became spokesmen for a point of view which sustained the radicalRight during the Dreyfus affair and which anticipated fascist thought in

the twentieth century.

In this respect Boulangism is improperly characterized as an ideo-

logical cul de sac or a failed adventure. It signaled, Hutton con-

cludes, "the fateful split of the revolutionary movement into two

new parties of the radical left and radical right," the first gravitating

toward "democratic socialism," the second toward "integral nation-

alism."57

Though the arguments of Sternhell and Hutton on the relationbetween the crisis of the radical Left and the origins of the radical

Right are persuasive, a note of caution should be sounded. If Stern-

hell and Hutton are read in isolation, one might well conclude that

the genesis of the radical Right had nothing to do with develop-

ments on the traditional Right. Yet, as has long been established,

an important segment of the traditional Right gravitated to radical

Right populism by the time of the Dreyfus affair. As Steven Englund

has documented, traditional rightists, as early as the 1880s, beganto incorporate nationalism-though hesitantly and incompletely-

into their ideological formulations.58 By the time of the anti-Drey-

fusard surge of the late 90s, important segments of the old Right,

armed with a populist nationalism, were ready for combat on the

new terrain of democratic politics. From this angle, the radical Right

of the 90s must be seen as an uneasy hybrid, bringing together

new-style rightists from the traditionalist ranks and old-style dissi-

dents from the radical Left.

V

Another and still more recent attempt to come to grips with

the ambiguity of fin de si'cle politics is Philip Nord's study of the

mobilization of shopkeepers.59 On appearance, Nord's book seems

curiously limited: not only is it restricted to Parisian shopkeepers

but it focuses primarily on that segment of center-city merchants

who joined the short-lived and long-forgotten Ligue syndicate du

travail, de l'industrie et du commerce. Nord, however, more than

justifies his seemingly narrow focus. He demonstrates, first of all,

57 Ibid., 17 1.

58 Englund, "Oppositional Nationalism," 272-31 1. See also note 15 above.59 Philip Nord, ParnsShopkeepers nd the Politics of Resentment Princeton, N.J., 1986).







ORIGINS OF.THE RADICAL RIGHT 311

that the Ligue syndicate, however brief its existence, represented a

significant mobilization of the discontented. At its height in the

1890s, it could claim more than one hundred forty thousand mem-

bers, an impressive figure given the typically low membership rollsof prewar French organizations. More importantly still, Nord's Pa-risian shopkeepers provide a concrete case study of a segment of

the declining lower middle class, a group that, like its cousin, the

rising bourgeoisie, has lived too much of its existence as a theoretical

construct. Finally, and most relevant to present concerns, Nord not

only gives a flesh-and-blood reality to his shopkeepers but illumi-

nates yet another perspective on the bifurcation of the old French

revolutionary tradition: like the subjects of Sternhell's and Hutton'sstudies, the militants of the Ligue syndicale were, successively, Left

Boulangists and anti-Dreyfusard nationalists.

The first part of Nord's study sets the socioeconomic backdrop

of the shopkeeper revolt. Though he is ever sensitive to the nuances

of their rhetoric, Nord argues that to understand the plight of the

shopkeepers one must move beyond their own symbolic explana-

tions, which tended to isolate the rise of the grands magasinsas the

source of all their troubles. Nord convincingly demonstrates thatthe department stores were more a symptom than a cause, a highlyvisible but limited aspect of the larger commercial transformation

of Paris begun during the Second Empire under Baron Haussmann.

In effect, this transformation created a second and rival "down-

town," running along the new boulevards that bordered the older

center-city. For a time, the economic prosperity of the late Empire

and early Third Republic supported both the rapidly growing new

downtown and the old center-city, whose decline was, as yet, onlyrelative. But the depression, which began in the 1880s and contin-

ued into the 90s, hit the center-city merchants especially hard.60

It is at this point that shopkeeper discontent began to take the

form of a political mobilization. And it is in his analysis of this

mobilization-which occupies the second part of his book-that

Nord's conclusions take on special relevance for the debate on the

origins of the radical Right. First of all, he challenges the widely

held notion that an economically frustrated and declining lowermiddle class translates, more or less automatically, into a politics of

reaction. The political mobilization of Parisian shopkeepers, Nord

demonstrates, began and continued for a number of years as a

61) Ibid., 2 1-204.








phenomenon of the Left. His ligueurs were not only firmly in the

republican camp, they were attracted to its radical wing, pressing

for measures like recall, referendum, and popular election of

judges. Moreover, there was a distinct social cast to their republi-canism: they supported an income tax and minimum wage legisla-

tion and even favored an alliance with socialists. Particularly telling

was the degree to which the men of the Ligue syndicate spoke in

the idiom of the French revolutionary tradition. They perceived

their enemies, the owners of the grands magasins, as "aristocrats"

imposing a "new feudalism" (and even plotting a "famine pact");

meanwhile, they cast themselves as "guardians of republican virtue,"

defending the "third estate" and the "little folk" from the machin-ations of the powerful and corrupt.6'

However, despite their clear programmatic and rhetorical iden-

tification with the republican Left, there were also, Nord shows,

important foreshadowings of their eventual evolution toward the

radical, anti-Dreyfusard Right. From the beginning, members of

the Ligue syndicate spoke in metaphors of decay and degeneration

and were especially concerned with the purported decomposition

of institutions that were to take on symbolic significance for thelater French Right-famille, travail, patrie. They also developed an

early propensity for conspiratorial scenarios in which anti-Semitism

held a prominent place. Finally, already in the late 80s, their Ja-

cobin-style patriotism began to "harden under pressure of urban

and economic dislocation into a shrill and inward-turning chauvin-

ism."62

It is not surprising, given this cluster of attitudes, that the Ligue

syndicale found itself pulled toward the Boulangist movement. For,as Nord recognizes, no other political force better combined the

"ambiguities of radical politics in the waning decades of the cen-

tury."63In general, Nord follows the revisionist line of Boulangism:

by their popular clientele, by their social and political programs,

and by their rhetorical conventions, the Parisian Boulangists were

unmistakably associated with the radical Left. At the same time, he

also recognizes "the reactionary potential" of the Boulangist move-

ment and the degree to which its cultural pessimism, its naive con-spiratorialism, and its increasingly bellicose nationalism paralleled

61fIbid., 261-301.62 Ibid., 300.

63 Ibid., 30(1.








that of his shopkeepers. Like Hutton, Nord views Boulangism as

both a beginning and an end: "From one angle, Boulangism appears

the culmination of a time-honored tradition of republican dissent,

from another the breeding ground of a Nationalist politics destinedto come to fruition with the outburst of the Dreyfus affair."64

There is much in the work of Sternhell, Hutton, and Nord that

points to an emerging consensus on the origins of the radical Right.

Each has painted a portrait of men moving between the radical Left

and the radical Right in the decade between the Boulanger and

Dreyfus affairs: Nord for the Parisian shopkeepers, Hutton for a

faction of Blanquists, Sternhell for a variety of fin de si'cle radicals.

In addition, each stresses that urban Boulangism, though properlycharacterized as a movement of the Left, had already begun to

exploit certain themes that later became central to anti-Dreyfusard

nationalism. In sum, each, though from a different perspective,

makes a connection between the crisis of Left republicanism in the

1880s and the radical Right of the 90s.

However, there are also significant differences in emphasis

among the three, particularly between Sternhell and Nord. Stern-

hell seems to suggest, at times, that a relentless, almost irresistiblelogic pushed Boulangists toward anti-Dreyfusard nationalism. The

Boulangist experience, he writes at one point, had demonstrated

"that populist democracy, whether Jacobin or Blanquist, could only

lead to rightist adventure."65

Nord, on the other hand, is at great pains to emphasize the

contingent factors-at times fortuitous-that pushed his shopkeep-

ers into the radical Right camp during the Dreyfus affair. For Nord,

it was not a case of Parisian shopkeepers abandoning the Left,driven inevitably by the forces of modernization; rather, it was a

case of the Left abandoning the shopkeepers and redefining itself

so as to exclude the petitebourgeoisie.Nord argues that the emerging

Marxian-style socialism of the 90s-rejecting the alliance of the menu

peuple so characteristic of historic Left republicanism in France-

became increasingly committed to collectivism, proletarian exclu-

siveness, and an internationalist critique of Jacobin nationalism.

Abandoned by the Left, Nord's shopkeepers could find scarcelygreater sympathy on the moderate Right, which became anxiously

preoccupied with the "social question" and the rise of an electorally

6" Ibid., 349.65 "Irrationalism and Violence," 82.








successful socialist movement. Only the radicals of the Right lent a

sympathetic ear to the plight of the shopkeepers and hence were

temporarily able to bring the Ligue syndicate into the anti-Dreyfu-

sard coalition. Thus, at Nord's hands, the Ligue syndicale's drift tothe radical Right was facilitated by a conjuncture of political circum-

stances, no element of which was inevitable.66

Moreover, as Nord points out, this manage de convenance be-

tween shopkeepers and radicals of the Right proved extremely

short-lived. Once the moderate Right demonstrated some measure

of solicitude for shopkeeper concerns, the shopkeepers were quick

to end their flirtation with the radical Right.67"All of which goes to

show that small business," writes Eugen Weber, aptly summarizingNord's position, "is not necessarily reactionary, let alone proto-

fascist. It simply looks out for itself and, in the process, makes the

best alliances and the best deals it can."68

In part, this difference in emphasis between Sternhell and

Nord stems from their very different perspectives. Each, it could

be argued, has its strengths and its corresponding limitations. Stern-

hell's perspective is clearly long-term: he is concerned with the

history of the radical Right, a history that he believes can only be

fully understood on a canvas stretching from the 1890s through

the 1940s. Unfortunately, this long perspective lures him, at critical

junctures, into overemphasizing connections and continuities and

investing them with a logic and an inevitability that he is often

ready, in his better moments, to qualify. The example just cited is

a case in point. Whereas, in his study of Barres, Sternhell makes a

careful distinction between those Boulangists who had become anti-

Dreyfusards and those who remained on the Left, he later argues

that Boulangism could only result in "rightist adventure."69

Nord's short-term perspective, on the other hand, allows him

to focus more sharply on the cluster of often contingent factors at

work in fin de si'cle politics. As indicated, Nord makes a convincing

case that the souring of his shopkeeper's populism was the result

of a temporary conjunction of economic and political forces. But

Nord's short-term perspective carries its own set of risks. Most

importantly, it allows him to sidestep any serious consideration of

66 Nord, Paris Shopkeepers, 51-464.67 Ibid., 465-77.68 "Business and Bigotry," review of Paris Shopkeepers,The New Republic (8 September

1986), 31.69 Cf. Sternhell, Barres, 249, n. 8 with Sternhell, "Irrationalism and Violence," 82.








the relation between fin de si'cle nationalism and later fascism. One

is left at the turn of the century with anti-Dreyfusard nationalism

in the process of being absorbed by the moderate Right. One is also

left with the impression that what might superficially appear as

shopkeeper "protofascism" was, in reality, only a brief and circum-

stantial flirtation, a short detour in the migration of shopkeepers

from the republican Left to the republican Right.

But once the issue of protofascism is raised, can the story be

cut off abruptly in this way? The crisis of the 1930s, of course, was

no simple repetition of that of the 1890s. Yet the parallels are more

than suggestive. Both crises were conditioned by severe economic

depressions. Both witnessed a surge of popular discontent, not only

with the parties in power but with parliamentary institutions them-

selves. Both were played out in an atmosphere of social and cultural

malaise, in which the challenge of a resurgent Left and questions

of national weakness were pushed to the center of public discourse.

And, finally, both crises saw the rise of militant nationalist leagues,

first overshadowing and then significantly reshaping the formations

of the more moderate Right.

Are these two crises, falling on either side of the presumed

watershed of the First World War, unconnected? Sternhell argues,

persuasively, that indeed they were connected and that analogous

eruptions of radical Right agitation is in fact one significant mani-

festation of continuity. This view, however, requires that one not

compartmentalize instances of radical Right activity in an arbitrarily

foreshortened time frame. As seen from Sternhell's long perspec-

tive, the radical Right lived an episodic existence, mushrooming

into a potent political force in bad times, shrinking to a skeleton

operation in good times. To be sure, it cannot be assumed, in

advance of the study of particulars, that all instances of fin de siecle

nationalism were protofascist. But the question of continuity is not

one that can be dismissed out of hand. Sternhell probably would

not be surprised to learn that Nord's shopkeepers went over to the

moderate Right after the turn of the century. Yet, for him, this

would not close the matter. He would presumably be interested in

asking what became of these shopkeepers-or their successors-

when the Third Republic, once again, fell on bad times.

mazgaj, paul - the origins of the french radical right a historiographical essay

Documents