Part I

Jaurès and his adherents justified Millerand’s entry into the Cabinet on three grounds: The Republic must be defended. It would be possible to put through social reforms of benefit to the working class. And, finally, the development of capitalist society into socialism must give birth to a transition period in which the political power is wielded in common by the bourgeoisie and the proletariat and finds its outward expression in the participation of socialists in the government.

After a time, the reference to the defense of the Republic became the chief argument.

The Republic is in danger! That is why it was necessary for a socialist to become the bourgeois Minister of Commerce. The Republic is in danger! That is why the socialist had to remain in the cabinet even after the massacre of the striking workers on the Island of Martinique and in Chalon. The Republic is in danger! As a result, inquiries into the massacres had to be blocked, the parliamentary investigations of the horrors perpetrated in the colonies had to be discarded, and the amnesty law accepted. All acts of the government, all positions and votes of the socialists are based upon a concern for the threatened Republic and its defense. It is time to analyze the situation calmly, undisturbed by the uproar of the daily struggle and its slogans. It is time to answer the question: just what do this danger and this defense consist of?

Despite violent class and party struggles, we do not hear of dangers threatening the republican form of government in the United States of America. This is entirely understandable, since the republic in America was won simultaneously with national independence. The Americans have never experienced monarchal rule as an independent nation. In France, on the contrary, the fears for the welfare of the Republic appear just as understandable, since it was twice established through violent struggle, only to be twice, after a short existence, overthrown by the monarchy. We, therefore, have these past experiences casting their ominous shadows on the present situation – shadows which conceal the vistas of historical development that lie between past and present.