Jean Jaurès

Biography

Origin

Jean Jaurès is resulting from a family of modest French middle-class of province, with some brilliant careers (two cousins admirals of which one will become Minister for the marine in 1888). He is the nephew of the admiral and senator Benjamin Jaurès.

The father of Jean, Jules Jaurès, is a small farmer; his wife Adelaide Barbaza, raises with much conscience their two children: Jean, the elder one, and Louis which will become admiral and deputy republican-Socialist.

School course

Brilliance raises, Jaurès profits from the chances of social advancement which the Republic offers, it makes its studies with the Louis-the-Large Lycée. In 1878, it is received first with the National university of the street of Ulm, then third with the aggregation of philosophy in 1881.

Teaching

Jaurès teaches first of all with the Lycée Lapérouse of Albi, then joined Toulouse in 1882 to exert as university lecturer with the Faculty of Arts. It also gives a course of psychology to the college of young girls of this same city.

The entry in policy

It then does not design an other gathering only that of the republicans. Tried by the political career, he is elected appointed republican with Castres, the October 4th 1885, obtaining, among 6 continuing candidates, 48.067 votes out of 93.932 voters (51%). Not registered, it sits at the center left and generally supports Jules Ferry, even if its great man remains Gambetta. Its social reform proposals are noticed and the congratulations of the socialist review are worth to him.

It is its defeat with these same elections four years later which leads it to arise to Toulouse, this time under the banner Socialiste, and on the municipal list.

“Republicans moderated” with the Socialist party

Jaurès was not always Socialiste and Marxiste. When the Republic settles for good, after one decade of tergiversations about the mode (in 1870 the Second Empire crumbles, the Republic is proclaimed but the monarchists, divided, dominate with the House of Commons), Jaurès is only twenty years old.

It engages in policy in 1885, becoming appointed Tarn at 25 years. He is then the spiritual son of Jules Ferry and sits among the “Opportunistes”, republicans socially moderate. He then finds the radicals of Clemenceau too agitated and the Socialists violent one and dangerous for the republican order in construction. It less is not interested in the fate of the Working class and puts its eloquence become of it mythical at the service of the first social laws of the mode (Trade-union freedom, protection of the delegates, creation of the pension funds working…).

Wire of 1789, it believes however in the Réformisme institutional and republican, with the alliance of the workmen and the hard middle-class for the triumph of the Liberté, the equality and the Fraternité.

In 1889 the Republicans gain the legislative ones but him, this republican who preaches the control of the State on the companies, is beaten in the district of Carmaux (Tarn), by the marquis of Solages, president of the mines. Beaten, Jaurès takes again its teaching with the faculty of Toulouse. It is received doctor of philosophy in 1892 with its principal thesis Of the reality of the sensitive world secondary Latin and its thesis, Of the origins of German socialism at Luther, Kant, Fichte, and Hegel .

It also continues its political activity. It is presented to the local elections (1890). Since 1887, it collaborates in radical the Dépêche , and he becomes city council man, then mayor associated with the state education of Toulouse (1890 - 1893). Its experiment, its knowledge of the working mediums and the socialist militants, its work and its research direct it towards the Socialisme. This evolution is completed with the strike of the minors of Carmaux.

The great strike of Carmaux

Jaurès is with the variation of the national political life when, in 1892, bursts the Grande strike of the mines of Carmaux.

The company of the mines, directed by the baron Reille, the strong man of the right-hand side tarnaise, and his/her son-in-law the marquis Ludovic de Solages, appointed district, had just laid off one of his workmen, Jean Baptiste Calvignac, trade union leader and Socialist, miner, new mayor of Carmaux since the May 15th 1892, to be itself gone away on several occasions in order to fulfill his obligations of elected local official. It was to call into question the vote for all and the rights in rem of the working class to be expressed in policy.

The workmen put themselves in strike to defend this mayor of which they are proud. The Republic sends the army, 1500 soldiers, in the name of the “freedom to the work”. The Republic seems to take the party of employers monarchist against the strikers. In France, one is into full Scandale with Panamá.

Deputy of Carmaux

In its articles with the Dispatch , Jaurès supports this strike. Jaurès does not support any more this Republic that he regards as being with the hands of deputies and capitalist ministers for whom finance and industry take precedence over the respect of the people: Carmaux and the mine is the political springboard which he sought. It makes the training of the Class struggle and the Socialisme. Arrived intellectual middle-class man, social republican, it leaves the strike of acquired Carmaux to socialism.

Under the pressure of the strike and Jaurès, the government referee the Solages-Calvignac disagreement with the profit of Calvignac. Solages resigns of its seat of deputy. Jaurès is quite naturally indicated by the workmen of the basin to represent them with the Room: from now on, it is a White collar, and either the Calvignac minor, who is their leader.

The workmen of Carmaux then ask Jaurès to be their candidate with the by-election. Jaurès is elected the January 8th 1893 as socialist independent in spite of the rural votes of the district which do not want “ partageux ”. Near to the guesdist S, Jaurès militates with heat against the laws scélérates or in favor of the glassmakers of Carmaux, returned by their owner Rességuier.

Jaurès launches out then in ceaseless and solved the defense of the workmen in fight. It is for example at the origin of famous the working Verrerie of Albi. In wine Languedoc, he visits the “free vine growers of Maraussan” who create the first Cooperative wine cave.

The Dreyfus business

At the beginning of the Business Dreyfus, Jaurès does not make a clear decision. It goes even until initially condemning the sentence of deportation, considered to be too lenient (a simple warrant officer would have been purely and simply condemned to dead). However, following the popular and political pressure, and also thanks to the passion of the young promotion normalienne and in particular Lucien Herr, convinced by the militants allemanists, by the I show Zola, it engages with passion.

Jaurès and the Socialists start to defend Alfred Dreyfus to the point. It is with the Dreyfus business that Jaurès returns fully in the history. The business brings into play not only one individual injustice, but the respect of humanity it even. It poses the problem of the lie and arbitrary of the great institutions, in particular of the army which intends to have a " justice" separated. Moreover, the lines catholic and nationalist instrumentalisent the business in order to reverse the Republic.

He is then opposed to the “Marxist orthodoxe”, whose Jules Guesde for which Dreyfus is a middle-class officer and thus its defense would not have priority (the memory of the bloody repression of the Commune of Paris, and other working revolts, is for much in the distrust of the working militants towards the cause of an officer). But for Jaurès, the overwhelming pressure of misfortunes and injustices whose Dreyfus is victim gums the differences of class. Dreyfus is not any more one privileged or a exploitor: he is a man who suffers wrongfully.

The Republic

Beaten with the elections of 1898 (the installation of the Working Glassmaking to Albi and its burning defense of Dreyfus caused its defeat), Jaurès becomes director of the small republic . It is in the columns of this newspaper that it publishes the evidence relating to the business Dreyfus . It directs a socialist Histoire of contemporary France (Éditions Deck house) for which it writes the volumes devoted to the French revolution (1901 - 1903).

Jaurès became aware of resistances of the capitalist company and the dangers revealed by the rise of nationalism and the Antisémitisme. The defense of the republic becomes its vital objective: it thus supports the government Waldeck Rousseau, which associates with its action, for the first time, in the history of the Republic, the Socialist Alexandre Millerand, named with the trade and industry.

Jaurès and its French Socialist party engage clearly in favor of the block of the lefts and the government Combes (1902 - 1905) which prepares the vote of the separation of the Church and the State (December 1905). However, the awaited social reforms mark time. The dynamism of the block becomes exhausted. Jaurès, vice-president of the room in 1902, is not re-elected with this function in 1904.

Humanity

Jaurès, re-elected appointed of the Tarn in 1902, 1906, 1909 and 1914, founds the daily newspaper Humanity in 1904. It inflects its strategic choices and gives the priority to the socialist unit. This one, under pressure of the International , is carried out with the Congrès of the Earth (April 1905) with the creation of SFIO, unifying the various sensitivities Socialiste S of France.

Fragile unit: Jaurès is criticized, but he often manages to convince his comrades. Important political director, it engages the dialog with the revolutionary trade unionists of the CGT and fights against colonial forwarding with the Morocco.

Even if he recognizes the Class struggle, for Jaurès, humanity does only one and the man of the left must imply himself in the Republic for a democratic and nonviolent revolution. In 1904, the congress of the Second International prefers to him the ideas of Jules Guesde but the elections indicate a contrary favor: 31 deputies with Jaurès and 12 in Guesde.

Regional languages

It is during a voyage to Lisbon into 1911 that Jaurès acquires the conviction that the regional languages must be taught in the schools. If he spoke always Occitan and followed the literary movement in language of oc, in particular by writing criticisms in the Dispatch under the pseudonym of the Liseur , he had never given an opinion in favor of his teaching.

He does it in two articles where he proposes to be based on the knowledge of languages of the children occitans, Basque and Breton to compare the regional languages with French and thus to develop their judgment, their reasoning. He also insists on the facility to apprehend the others Romance Langues when one controls the French and the Occitan.

Pacifism

Jaurès which has an international dimension for a long time goes, the ten last years of its life, to fight against the war. It is obsessed by the threats against peace, especially during the Balkan Guerres in 1912 - 1913. It wrote in 1910 an important private bill devoted to the new army in which it recommends an organization of the National defense founded on the military preparation of the whole of the Nation. It conducts a vigorous campaign against the Three Years law of military service, defended ardently by the deputy Emile Driant, and voted in 1913: it is the gathering of Pre-Saint-Gervais the May 25th 1913, which joins together 150 000 people.

1914 seems to bring new reasons to hope: the war in Balkans is finished, the elections in France are a success for the Socialists. But the events precipitate. The assassination of the archduke François Ferdinand to Sarajevo the June 28th 1914 is felt like a dramatic event only with the Austrian ultimatum with the Serbia of the July 23rd 1914. Jaurès tries to inflect in a direction favorable to peace, the government policy.

Pacifist but not antimilitarist, Jean Jaurès calls with a General strike, little before the release of the First World War, which, if it is not followed, will have to leave the place to national defense.

Its standpoint in favor of the Pacifisme makes it very unpopular among the nationalists and he is assassinated with the coffee of the Crescent , 146 rue Montmartre in Paris (2nd), the July 31st 1914, three days before the release of the hostilities, by Raoul Villain, member of the Ligue of the young friends of Alsace-Lorraine , movement of nationalist students. This assassination achieves its goal besides, because it facilitates the rallying of the left , including much of Socialists who hesitated, to the “Sacred union”.

See also : Sacred union and the Socialists

At the conclusion of the “Great War” and in reaction to the massacre which it caused, a great number of common Frenchwomen name streets and places in its honor, by recalling that he was the most enthusiastic opponent with such a conflict. A station of the Parisian Métro bears also its name.

After 56 months of preventive detention, its murderer Raoul Villain is discharged the March 29th 1919. Its widow Mrs. Jaurès is condemned at the expense of the lawsuit, like civil part.

to also Voir: Jules Guesde, Paul Lafargue, Leon Blum, Leon Gambetta, Jules Ferry, Valiant Edouard and Jean Allemane

Works

the Evidence (1898, on the Dreyfus Business)
socialist Studies
Towards the socialist social republic
History of the French revolution
Foreword with “the Application of the system collectivist” of L. Deslinières (1898)
the Two Methods (1900)
Our goal (1904)
the Russian Revolution (1905)
Alliance of the people
Conflict widened (1912)
the New Army 1910
Speech of Vaise 1914

Homages

The station Jaurès was called before street of Germany. Because of the First World War imminent, one decided débaptiser on August 1st, 1914. To pay homage to Jean Jaurès, the selected name was it his. In 1980, a second subway station is baptized of its name, Boulogne Jean Jaurès. In 1924, the decision of the transfer of the skin of Jean Jaurès to the the Pantheon is the occasion for the government of the Cartel of the lefts which has just been elected to give an anchoring symbolic system while paying homage to that which tried to prevent the war. On Sunday, November 23, 1924, its skin is led to the Pantheon at the time of an imposing ceremony in which takes part the political movements of left.

Many schools and many colleges and colleges bear its name, just like of many avenues and places such as that of its birthplace, Castres.

The Socialist party chose to pay to him homage through its political foundation, the Fondation Jean-Jaurès.

The song of Jacques Brel entitled Jaurès (1977), taken again thereafter by Manu Dibango then by Zebda, recalls to which point the politician had become a mythical figure of the popular classes. In 2005, a telefilm is devoted to him: Jaurès, birth of a giant , Jean-Daniel Verhaeghe with notammnet Philippe Torreton and Valerie Kaprisky.

Critical

In spite of its many admirors, Jaurès was sometimes perceived like opportunist by some of its detractors following the example Charles Rappoport.

Assassination of July 31st, 1914

With 21:30, Jean Jaurès is with the Café of the Crescent , with the angle of the Rue of the Crescent and the Rue Montmartre. There are three detonations: two balls perforate cranium to him and a ball reaches it with the chest. The assassin is Raoul Villain, rémois a 29 years, studying in archeology with the École of Louvre, and especially member of the Ligue of the young friends of Alsace-Lorraine , grouping of nationalist students.

References

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