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The Agrarian Roots of Working-Class Radicalism: An Assessment of the Mann–Giddens Thesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Duncan Gallie
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Extract

Of the studies by British sociologists in the last decade focusing on the determinants of working-class attitudes to the class structure, those of Michael Mann and Anthony Giddens must, I think, be seen in retrospect as the most imaginative. While much effort at the time focused on what in the event turned out to be the rather minimal implications of the impact of certain variations in work and community milieux within Britain on workers' conceptions of class, Mann and Giddens took as their point of departure the well documented differences in the radicalism of the labour movements of different Western capitalist societies and sought to develop a theory that could account for them. Why should it be, they asked, that in countries such as France and Italy workers were sufficiently disenchanted with capitalist institutions to give relatively enduring support to parties that were at least formally committed to revolutionary objectives, while in countries such as Britain and the United States they gave their allegiances to parties that seemed largely to accept the existing structure of society?

Type
Research Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , April 1982 , pp. 149 - 172
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

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References

1 Mann, Michael, Consciousness and Action among the Western Working Class (London: Macmillan, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Giddens, Anthony, The Class Structure of Advanced Societies (London: Hutchinson, 1973)Google Scholar. Both studies contributed to developing the thesis, but, as I understand it, the original formulation was Mann's. For the empirical difference in radicalism in the two societies, see Gallic, D., ‘Social Radicalism in the French and British Working Classes’, British Journal of Sociology, XXX (1979), 500–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar and ‘Trade Union Ideology and Workers' Conceptions of Class Inequality in France’, West European Politics, III (1980), 10–32Google Scholar; and In Search of the New Working Class (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).Google Scholar

2 The studies focusing on variations in work and community milieux as determinants of consciousness were stimulated by Lockwood, David's influential article ‘Sources of Variation in Working Class Images of Society’, Sociological Review, XIV (1966), 249–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The more important published reports include: Goldthorpe, J. and Lockwood, David, The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969)Google Scholar; Bulmer, M., ed., Working-Class Images of Society (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975)Google Scholar; Hill, S., The Dockers (London: Heinemann, 1976)Google Scholar; Newby, H., The Deferential Worker (London: Allen Lane, 1977)Google Scholar; Davis, H. H., Beyond the Class Images (London: Groom Helm, 1979).Google Scholar

3 In 1921, 42 per cent of the active population was still employed in agriculture. This compares with 31 per cent in Germany (1925), 27 per cent in the United States (1920), and 7 per cent in Great Britain. Conversely, 27 per cent of the French labour force was in industry, compared to 36 per cent of the German, 34 per cent of the American and 43 per cent of the British. For figures for Europe, see: Cipolla, Carlo M., ed., Contemporary Economies, Vol. 2 (London: Fontana/Collins, 1976), pp. 657–66Google Scholar; for the United States, Bell, Daniel, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (London: Heinemann, 1974), p. 130Google Scholar. Nor was French industry remarkable for the prevalence of large-scale industrial establishments. In the mid-1930s, 37 per cent of the French industrial work force was employed in relatively small establishments of less than a hundred employees compared to approximately 26 per cent of the British workforce. At the other end of the scale, some 33 per cent of the French workforce was in firms with more than five hundred employees, compared to 35 per cent of the British. See for France, Marceau, J., Class and Status in France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 29Google Scholar; for Britain, Allen, G. C., The Structure of Industry in Britain, 2nd edn (London: Longmans, 1966), p. 208.Google Scholar

4 If we take the first period during which a radical labour movement emerged in France (1875–1914), the index of industrial production increased in France by 71 per cent from the period 1875–84 to 1905–13, whereas the comparable figures for Germany was 203 per cent, and for the United Kingdom 65·0 per cent (see Cipolla, C. M., ed., The Emergence of Industrial Societies: Part Two (London: Fontana/Collins, 1973, p. 768)Google Scholar. Overall the annual growth in France between 1870 and 1913 was 1·8 per cent compared to 1·5 per cent in Britain, 2·1 per cent in Germany and 2·4 per cent in the United States (Landes, David S., The Unbound Prometheus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. 420)Google Scholar. In the post-war period during which the Communist Party emerged in France, by 1928–29 the level of manufacturing output had increased in France by 39 per cent from that of 1913, in comparison with 6 per cent for Britain, 43 per cent for Sweden and 72 per cent for the United States (Landes, , The Unbound Prometheus, p. 368).Google Scholar

5 Mann, , Consciousness and Action, pp. 41, 43Google Scholar; Giddens, , The Class Strutture, pp. 213, 287.Google Scholar

6 Giddens, , The Class Structure, p. 214Google Scholar; see also Mann, , Consciousness and Action, p. 41.Google Scholar

7 Mann, , Consciousness and Action, p. 15Google Scholar. Trotsky's version of the thesis was, however, somewhat different in terms of the detailed causal argument; see Trotsky, L., History of the Russian Revolution (London: Gollancz, 1932), Vol. 1, pp. 23–35.Google Scholar

8 Giddens, , The Class Structure, p. 213Google Scholar. Mann's endorsement of the importance of post–feudal social relations is vaguer. He sets the scene for his discussion of the impact of rural radicalism in France in Chap. 5 by a theoretical prelude focusing on the ‘moral’ character of protest within feudal systems of social relations – connecting this to the opposition to the dominance of market mechanisms in societies characterized by uneven development. If he were not committed to a view similar to Giddens, this introduction to the argument would be wholly irrelevant. See Mann, Consciousness and Action, pp. 39–40.

9 Anderson, P., ‘Origins of the Present Crisis’, New Left Review, XXIII (1964), 26–53.Google Scholar

10 Soboul, A., Problèmes paysans de la révolution 1789–1848 (Paris: Maspero, 1976), Chap. 7.Google Scholar

11 Soboul writes: ‘If, despite some elements of economic survival, feudalism was no longer, in the nineteenth century, more than a myth in peasant consciousness… the peristence of the myth bears witness to the reality of the past and to its social weight. Although feudalism had essentially disappeared since the law of 17 July 1793, more than a century was to pass before the recollection of this detested period was to be effaced from the collective memory.’ Soboul, , Problèmes paysans, p. 166Google Scholar. The departments which experienced major panics were the Landes, Charentes-Inférieure and the Dordogne.

12 Siegfried, A., Tableau politique de la France de l'ouest sous la troisième république (Paris: Armand Colin, 1964), p. 9.Google Scholar

13 Siegfried, , Tableau politique, pp. 52–6, 375.Google Scholar

14 Siegfried, , Tableau politique, pp. 55, 374–80Google Scholar. See also, Barral, P., Les Agrariens français de Méline à Pisani (Paris: Armand Colin, 1968), especially pp. 41–66Google Scholar; and Agulhon, M., Désert, G. and Specklin, R., Apogée et crise de la civilisation paysanne 1789–1914 (vol. 3 of the Histoire de la France rurale, sous la direction de G. Duby et A. Wallon, Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1976), p. 514Google Scholar. See too, the examples cited by Weber, Eugen, Peasants into Frenchmen (London: Chatto and Windus, 1977), pp. 262, 264–5Google Scholar. Peasants still followed the custom of kneeling before their masters in Brittany, while ‘As late as the turn of the century the squire at Chanzeaux in Vendée still required his tenants to gather at his chateau before Sunday mass, march to church behind his carriage, and then return to the chateau for a quiz on the day's sermon’.

15 See Margadant, Ted W., French Peasants in Revolt: The Insurrection of 1851 (Princeton, N.J.; Princeton University Press, 1979), p. 43.Google Scholar

16 Margadant, , French Peasants, pp. 43–5.Google Scholar

17 Margadant, , French Peasants, p. 46Google Scholar: ‘Yet precisely because the source of repression in 1848 was the newly founded Republic, these disturbances generally had anti-Republican implications, and in no case did they lead to rebellion in 1851’.

18 Margadant, , French Peasants, pp. 42–3.Google Scholar

19 Margadant, , French Peasants, pp. 58 ff. and Chap. 3.Google Scholar

20 Margadant, , French Peasants, pp. 55–7.Google Scholar

21 Hamilton, Richard, Affluence and the French Worker in the Fourth Republic (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Uniersity Press, 1967), pp. 128 ff., 261, 276CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mann, , Consciousness and Action, p. 40Google Scholar. Sokoloff, S., ‘Land Tenure and Political Tendency in Rural France’, European Studies Review, X (1980), 357–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar, argues the case that the disappearance of sharecropping in France in the twentieth century cannot be explained in terms of its incompatability with capitalist production. Neither Linz nor Hamilton appear to have regarded sharecropping as a ‘feudal’ form of land tenure.

22 Guillaumin, E., La Vie d'un simple: mémoires d'un métayer (Paris: P.V. Stock, 1904)Google Scholar. See also Halévy, D., Visites aux paysans du Centre (Paris: Halévy, 1935)Google Scholar. It must be remembered though that Guillaumin was scarcely a typical sharecropper given his literary skills, and his role as a trade-union leader. For a useful discussion of sharecropping see Zeldin, Theodore, France 1848–1945, Vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. 160–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a sceptical view of the Left's portrayal of the misery of sharecroppers see Sokoloff, , ‘Land Tenure’, pp. 363–8.Google Scholar

23 Linz, Juan, ‘Patterns of Land Tenure, Division of Labor and Voting Behavior in Europe’, Comparative Politics, VIII (1976), 365–429CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hamilton, , Affluence and the French Worker, p. 128Google Scholar; and Mann, , Consciousness and Action, p. 40Google Scholar. Assuming that Linz's argument as published is similar in form to that which Hamilton was able to consult, it is notable that as the argument passed from hand to hand so too it become more dogmatically stated. Linz states the case very tentatively, Hamilton presents it a little more confidently (but with scholarly methodological qualification), while Mann treats it as established fact.

24 It should be noted that the term ‘Left’ in the context of a left-wing tradition is used somewhat loosely by Linz (following Goguel) to refer to the more radical parties at any specific historical period. Thus in the nineteenth century it included Republicans, Radicals and Radical Socialists; in 1914 it was restricted to the French Socialists and the French Communists. In other parts of this article, I shall use the term only to refer to the French Socialist and Communist parties.

25 For Linz's listing of departments with significant métayage see p. 404Google Scholar. Comparative figures to Linz's for owner-farmer departments can be obtained quite simply by selecting out the departments south of the Loire in which owner-farmers constitute 55 per cent or more in the map of modes of land holding in Fauvet, J., ed., Les Paysans et la politique dans la France contemporaine (Paris: Armand Colin, 1958), p. 34Google Scholar. These can be related to Goguel's maps of the longevity of left-wing traditions and the strength of the Communist vote in 1951 that were used by Linz; see Goguel, F., Géographie des élections françaises sous la troisième et la quatrième république (Paris: Armand Colin, 1970), pp. 117, 131Google Scholar. Linz's list for métayage needs revising since he has misclassified the Ardèche as a department traditionally to the Left, when according to his data source it has been traditionally to the Right since 1885 (Goguel, , Géographie des élections, pp. 115, 117)Google Scholar. The national share of the electorate of the PCF in 1951 was 20·6 per cent and I have taken departments on Goguel's maps in which the PCF secured ‘20 to 25 per cent’ of the vote or more as those in which it did as well as or better than average.

26 Klatzmann, Joseph, ‘Géographie électorale de l'agriculture française’Google Scholar in Fauvet, , ed., Les Paysans et la politique dans la France contemporaineGoogle Scholar. Klatzmann concluded that ‘If the electoral behaviour of the agricultural populations is very variable between regions, this variety cannot, it seems, be explained by the diversity of agricultural conditions… It is not these factors internal to agriculture that explain the regional variations we have noted’ (p. 66). See also the comments in the same volume by Ezratty, Claude, ‘Les Communistes’, p. 80Google Scholar. Klatzmann makes it clear that his findings do not pre-empt the possibility of different conclusions emerging from studies working at a more detailed level, but this of course was not Linz's methodological strategy. Daniel Derivry has since criticized Klatzmann for underestimating the distinctiveness of the agricultural vote in relation to general departmental patterns, but that distinctiveness lies primarily in its greater conservatism. The main explanatory factor that differentiated the rural vote in Derivry's analysis was religion, but its status as an independent variable can only be brought into question by its very unequal effect from one region to another, and from one department to another. See Derivry, D. ‘Analyse du vote écologique du vote paysan’ in Tavernier, Yves et al. , eds, L'Univers politique des paysans dans la France contemporaine (Paris: Armand Colin, 1972)Google Scholar. I gather Linz initially wrote his paper in 1955, at a time when this literature would not have been available; however presumably it could have been amended prior to publication in 1976.

27 See map in Goguel, , Géographie des électionsGoogle Scholar, giving the proportion of the active population in agriculture for each department, p. 171.

28 Siegfried, , Tableau politique, p. 376.Google Scholar

29 Gratton, Philippe, La Lutte des classes dans les campagnes (Paris; Anthropos, 1971), pp. 115–32, 222–4Google Scholar; and ‘Le Communisme rural en Corrèze’, Mouvement Social, LXVI (1969), p. 137Google Scholar; Pennetier, Anne-Marie et Claude, ‘Les militants communistes du Cher’ in Girault, Jacques, ed., Sur l'implantation du parti communiste français dans l'entre deux guerres (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1977), pp. 264, 268–9.Google Scholar

30 Judt, Tony, Socialism in Provence, 1871–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979)Google Scholar. Judt found that in the Var, Rouge, ‘Whereas smallholding property predominated in the areas of socialist support, the otherwise small number of sharecroppers and tenant farmers were over-represented among the sixteen communes on the conservative list’ (p. 125) and he draws the more general conclusion about the situation of the métayer that ‘his insecure and impoverished economic status… ought to have identified him with the political radicals in the countryside, but his fear of the proprietor, that is to say his social standing or lack of it, induced in the métayer a well documented passivity’ (p. 261). For the Var in the inter-war period see Girault, Jacques, ‘Parti communiste français et électoral: l'exemple du Var en 1936’Google Scholar, in Girault, , Sur l'implantation du parti communiste, pp. 273–96.Google Scholar

31 Willard, Claude, Les Guesdistes: le mouvement socialiste en France (1893–1905) (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1965), p. 322.Google Scholar

32 On the development of political allegiances in the Allier and their geographical location, see Viple, Jean-François, Sociologie politique de l'Allier (Paris: Librairie Générale de Droit et de Jurisprudence, 1967)Google Scholar, especially Pt. 4; and Derruau-Boniol, Simone, ‘Le Socialisme dans l'Allier, de 1848 à 1914’, in the Cahiers d'Histoire No. 2 (Grenoble, 1957), 115–60Google Scholar. According to some estimates roughly half of the fermiers généraux to be found in France in 1910 were concentrated in the Allier, (Sociologie politique de l'AllierGoogle Scholar, see Viple, , p. 27).Google Scholar

33 Willard, Claude, Les Guesdistes. p. 265, n. 4Google Scholar; Sokoloff, , ‘Land Tenure and Political Tendency in Rural France’, p. 372Google Scholar, Weber, , Peasants into Frenchmen, p. 246.Google Scholar

34 See the map in Willard, , Les Guesdistes, p. 331Google Scholar, based on L'Album graphique de la Statistique générale de la France (recensement de 1901), (Paris, 1907), p. 82.Google Scholar

35 For instance, see Pennetier, , ‘Les Militants’Google Scholar; Gallo, Max, ‘Quelques aspects de la mentalité et du comportement ouvrier dans les usines de guerre (1914–1918)’ in Mouvement Social, juillet-septembre (1966), pp. 18, 20, 25Google Scholar; Gratton, , ‘Le Communisme rural’, p. 128Google Scholar; Willard, Claude, ‘Les Origines du parti communiste français’Google Scholar in Institut Maurice Thorez, La Fondation du parti communiste français et la pénétration des idées léninistes en France (Paris; Editions Sociales, 1971), p. 29.Google Scholar

36 Willard, , ‘Les Guesdistes’, p. 322Google Scholar. For the Cher and Nièvre see especially Gratton, ‘Le Communisme rural’, ‘La Lutte des classes’, pp. 59–106Google Scholar; for the Var, , Judt, , Socialism in Provence, pp. 114, 125Google Scholar; and for Hérault, , Sagnes, Jean, Le Mouvement ouvrier du Languedoc (Toulouse; Privat, 1980), pp. 140–5Google Scholar. Margadant, as we have seen, emphasizes the importance of integration into a system of relatively wide market relations for the growth of rural political radicalism between 1848 and 1851 but he sees this as consistent with a variety of different forms of economic activity (Margadant, , Peasants in Revolt, p. 61)Google Scholar. Equally, the economic basis is a precondition rather than a decisive determinant. Thus: ‘Whether specific communities and social groups rebelled in 1851 depended upon their political experiences during the Second Republic, not their economic destinies’ (p. 81).

37 A useful account of the crisis can be found in Price, Roger, The French Second Republic: A Social History (London: Batsford, 1972)Google Scholar. See also Zeldin, , France 1848–1945, Vol. 1, pp. 467–503, 725–7.Google Scholar

38 Gratton, , ‘Le Communisme rural’, pp. 60–3, 106Google Scholar; Judt, , Socialism in Provence, pp. 148–9Google Scholar; for an account of the political impact of the growth of the wine industry in Southern France and its successive crises, see Loubère, Leo A., Radicalism in Mediterranean France: Its Rise and Decline 1848–1914 (Albany, State University of New York Press, 1974), especially Chaps 9 and 10.Google Scholar

39 Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, Le Mouvement ouvrier français: II, Pour le parti de classe (Paris: Francois Maspero, 1974), p. 119.Google Scholar

40 Willard, , Les Guesdistes, p. 597.Google Scholar

41 Willard, , Les Guesdistes, p. 480Google Scholar, gives figures for PCF in Northern France in 1902; on the difficulty of penetrating the countryside see p. 224. For a detailed discussion of the geographical distribution of the strength of the PCF in the 1890s, pp. 219–325. The lack of radicalism of the rural sector in the North is equally evident if we look at commitment to trade unionism. In 1908, the agricultural trade unions were among the weakest in France. (See Prugnaud, Louis, Les Étapes du syndicalisme agricole en France (Paris: Editions de l'Épi, 1963), p. 30)Google Scholar. Even in the stormy years of 1920 and 1921, CGT rural membership in the department of the Nord was altogether minimal at a time when the department was its second most powerful source of manual worker support: for figures, see Robert, Jean-Louis, La Scission syndicale de 1921 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1980), pp. 206–7Google Scholar. Strike data available for the inter-war period, suggest that the average yearly strike rate in agriculture was very low indeed in the Northern region of France – although this was true for most of rural France. However, it is notable that whereas there were only twenty-one strikes in agriculture in the North between 4915 and 1935, there were 303 in the Languedoc, see Shorter, Edward and Tilly, Charles, Strikes in France 1830–1968 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), pp. 374–5Google Scholar. An investigation in the winter of 1934/5 by the left-wing Vigilance Committee of Anti-Fascist Intellectuals apparently found the peasantry of the Nord mistrustful of the industrial working class. See Marwick, A., Class: Image and Reality in Britain, France and the USA since 1930 (Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1981), pp. 129–30Google Scholar. The roots of the conservatism of the northern peasantry are clearly very old indeed – they were hostile to the Second Republic in the period 1848–51, and apparently already by that time antagonistic to the urban working class. For an attempt to explain this in terms of the character of economic development in the north, see Margadant, , French Peasants in Revolt, p. 86, and pp. 339–40.Google Scholar

42 On the ideology and history of the early CGT see Ridley, F. F., Revolutionary Syndicalism in France: The Direct Action of its Time (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970)Google Scholar; Dolléans, E., Histoire du mouvement ouvrier, 5th edn (Paris: Armand Colin, 1947–1948), Vol. 2Google Scholar; Moss, B. H., The Origins of the French Labor Movement, 1830–1914 (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976)Google Scholar; Julliard, J., Fernand Pelloutier (Paris: Seuil, 1971)Google Scholar; Lefranc, Georges, Le Mouvement syndical sous la troisième république (Paris: Payot, 1967).Google Scholar

43 The problem of calculating the real as apart from the nominal membership of the CGT for this, as for later, periods is a tortuous matter. For a thorough discussion see Robert, , La Scission syndicale de 1921Google Scholar, Chap. 2. I have used Robert's eventual membership figures presented on p. 159.

44 See particularly, Stearns, Peter, Revolutionary Syndicalism and French Labor (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1971)Google Scholar. The most authoritative official statement of the CGT's doctrines was the Charter of Amiens, which among other places can be consulted in Reynaud, J. D., Les Syndicats en France, Tome 2: Textes et documents (Paris: Seuil, 1975), pp. 26–7.Google Scholar

45 Stearns, , Revolutionary Syndicalism and French Labor, pp. 64, 93.Google Scholar

46 The data are available in Robert, , La Scission syndicale, pp. 206–7.Google Scholar

47 Robert, Compare, La Scission syndicale, pp. 206–7 with pp. 203–4.Google Scholar

48 Perrot, Michelle, Les Ouvriers en grève: France 1871–1890 (Paris: Mouton, 1974), Vol. 2, pp. 727–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Perrot also expresses scepticism about the importance of newly arrived migrants from the rural sector as a source of industrial militancy: ‘La phase de constitution du prolétariat, temps de déracinement, de la dépossession, de la “rébellion primitive” pour reprendre l'expression d'Eric Hobsbawm, précède la formation du mouvement ouvrier. Celle-ci requiert une certaine stabilisation, une continuité: elle est le fait des héritiers.’ (Vol. I, p. 57.)

49 Shorter, and Tilly, , Strikes in France, p. 258.Google Scholar

50 Shorter, and Tilly, , Strikes in France, pp. 277–9.Google Scholar

51 Particularly useful for information about the areas of strength of the inter-war French Communist Party and its relationship to the areas of pre-war Socialist strength is Girault, Jacques, ed., Sur l'implantation du parti communisteGoogle Scholar. Girault writes: ‘Les populations ouvrières du textile, de vieille pénétration guesdiste, ne sont pas, sauf exception, des milieux de forte implantation communiste à la différence des populations malaxées de la région parisienne’ (p. 53). For a discussion of the resistance of pre-war socialist traditions in Paris itself, see Girault's contribution, ‘L'implantation du parti communiste français dans la région parisienne’ (pp. 116–17).

52 Chambaz, Bernard, ‘L'implantation du parti communiste francais à Ivry’Google Scholar in Girault, , ed., Sur l'implantation du parti communiste, pp. 147–77.Google Scholar

53 Brunet, Jean-Paul, Saint-Denis: la ville rouge (Paris: Hachette, 1980), pp. 24–7.Google Scholar

54 In the legislative election of 1914 Ivry gave the Socialists 26·7 per cent of the electorate whereas at Saint-Denis the Socialists won 43·3 per cent and won the seat at the first ballot. In the immediate post-war period, the municipality of Ivry was lost by the Socialists in 1919 with only 19·4 per cent of the electorate supporting the SFIO in the first ballot, and it was not captured by the Communists until the elections of 1925. Saint-Denis, on the other hand, had seen a socialist victory in the muncipal elections of 1919 (44·7 per cent of the electorate), initially passed into Communist control in December 1920, and was secured by the PCF in May 1922. (See Chambaz, in Girault, , ed., Sur l'implantation du parti communiste, pp. 156, 157Google Scholar, and Brunet, , Saint-Denis, pp. 174, 235, 241–9.)Google Scholar

55 Price, , The French Second Republic, p. 232.Google Scholar

56 Willard, , Les Guesdistes, pp. 214, 284 ff., 511–13, 532.Google Scholar

57 Willard, , Les Guedistes, pp. 588–690Google Scholar; Noland, A., The Founding of the French Socialist Party (New York: Fertig, 1970), pp. 199–207Google Scholar; Zeldin, , France, pp. 757–69 and pp. 782–6Google Scholar. Zeldin comments that ‘The party adopted in 1910, a programme which differed very little from that of the radicals and which remained on the socialist platform till 1919. The conversion of the peasantry to socialism was thus in practice abandoned’ (p. 769). Judt challenges the view that in its appeal to the peasantry the party abandoned a distinctively socialist position on the basis of his study of the Var, see Judt, , Socialism in Provence, pp. 86–90Google Scholar, but there may have been much regional variation. Sagnes for instance concludes for the Hérault that ‘From 1905 to 1920, the originality of socialism in the Hérault lay in its very accentuated reformist character’ (Sagnes, , Le Mouvement ouvrier du Languedoc, p. 293).Google Scholar

58 For the development of Communist influence in the countryside see Wright, Gordon, ‘Communists and Peasantry in France’, in Earle, E. M., ed., Modem France (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1951), pp. 219–31Google Scholar, and Wright, G., Rural Revolution in France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964), p. 55Google Scholar; Erhmann, Henry, ‘The French Peasant and Communism’, American Political Science Review, XLVI (1952), 19–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gratton, , ‘Le Communisme rural en Corrèze’Google Scholar; Girault, J., ‘Parti Communiste français et électoral: L'exemple du Var en 1936’Google Scholar, in Girault, , ed., Sur l'implantation du parti communiste, pp. 273–96Google Scholar; Gaborit, Pierre, ‘Le Parti communiste français et les paysans’Google Scholar, in Tavernier, et al. , ‘L'Univers politique,’ pp. 197–222Google Scholar. Gaborit writes: ‘C'est de 1945, beaucoup plus que de 1936, que date la pénétration communiste à la campagne. Les facteurs ne manquent pas qui expliquent ce succès d'un parti ouvrier au sein de l'électoral rural, la crise de l'agriculture, et plus encore le phénomène de la Résistance en sont sans doute les principaux’ (p. 209). Moreover, the impact changed in an enduring way the distribution of Communist rural support ‘Le recul communiste aux élections législatives de 1958 ramène le vote communiste à ses dimensions de 1936, mais non à son implantation d'alors… L'électoral communiste de 1958 est une réduction de celui de 1945 plus qu'un repli sur celui de 1936’ (p. 216).