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1919-1935 - Factions Between the Wars

In the November 1919 elections, although the party polled 1,700,000 votes, 24 percent of the total, and an increase of 8 percent since 1914, the representation fell from 105 to 55, out of a total 602, due to the operation of new election laws. The congress of Tours of December 1920 occured after the electoral failure of 1919 and the trade-union failure of the great strikes of 1920. Since the Russian Bolshevik Revolution the French Socialist Party was standing for uncompromising tactics. At the national congress held at Tours, Dec. 25, 1920, the party split on the question of the Third International. The congress saw the opposition between a reaffirmation of the French socialist tradition (internal democracy and respect of the vote for all), such as Jaurès had established (speech of Blum) and a revolutionary will (adhesion in IIIrd Internationale and acceptance of the "model" Bolshevik). The congress was divided by three factions: the Right wing opposing the conditions of the Third International; the Center requesting admission with maximum reserves; and the Left favoring admission according to the conditions imposed by the Third Internationale.

The three-quarters of the congress accepted the 21 conditions. They split from the SFIO to create the French Communist party (SFIC-PCF). This fracture between Communists and Socialists on the trade-union side was expressed with the break between CGT (near of the SFIO) and the CGT-U (known as "unit", related to PCF). The victory of the Communists resulted in the withdrawal of the Center and the Right wing and the formation by them of the Section Franchise de l'Internationale Ouvriere [French Section of International Workers]. The original party contained about 60 to 70 per cent of the party members, and is called Section Franchise de l'Internationale Communiste. Of the original 55 deputies, fifteen stayed with the party, the rest went with the new organisation.

The Socialist Congress at Tours in 1920 split up what was left of the Socialist Party into factions. There was the Dissident Party directed by such well-known Socialists as Albert Thomas, Renaudel, Paul Boncour, Moutet, and Bracke, who were known as Resisters. Then there was the section led by Jean Longuet, which would not accept all the Moscow conditions. Longuet's following was not by any means insignificant. The grandson of Karl Marx, author of the treatise, Dos Kapital, annexed and applied by Lenin, had no quarrel with his grandfather's writings. But he had passionate objections to the Russian application of them, which had been to substitute one tyranny for another. So he was fighting with all his might against the "Red" evangel which the Slav dictators were seeking to foist upon the world. Longuet's attitude is worth noting. The other section of Socialists was the Independents. It was the smallest section, and its members were the most moderate of all the Socialists and probably the most intellectual. Each faction has representatives in Parliament and its daily newspaper.

Under the leadership of Leon Blum and Paul Faure, the SFIO became within a few years the first force of the left. Its alliance with the radicals allowed the election of one left majority the assembly: the union of the left (1924-1926). The SFIO then practised for the first time the "support without participation" in the government. Until the Popular front, the SFIO was a party neither purely reformist nor really revolutionist.

In 1933, an internal crisis within the SFIO opened which led to a split in November 1933. The néo-Socialists (Déat, Marquet) left the party, but they were discredited because of their kindness towards the fascistic model. In by-effect, one witnessed a warping of the party and the assertion of two tendencies of left, one around Zyromski, and the other with Marceau Pivert. The offensive of the right-hand side and the fascistic threat, from February 6, 1934, open the ways with a popular movement of breadth, and soon, with the change of orientation decided by the Communist International, with unity of action with PCF.