FRANCE: One hundred years ago yesterday, a three-day meeting in a smoke-filled room in the Boulevard Strasbourg in Paris culminated in the foundation of the French Section of the Workers' International. From the beginning, the Socialist Party was torn between would-be revolutionaries who wanted to dismantle the "bourgeois State" and possibilistes who believed socialism could be achieved by standing in elections and participating in government.
The tension between realists and idealists has dominated the first century of French socialism, several times splitting the party. As Francois Hollande, its first secretary, said recently, "the temptation of creating a pole of radicalism at the left of the PS [Socialist Party] is an old story."
Though both sides still appeal for unity, the PS has virtually split again, over the referendum on the European constitutional treaty. Despite an internal referendum last December, in which nearly 59 per cent of party members voted to support the treaty, proponents of a No vote defied party rules and continued to campaign. Today, a majority of Socialist voters oppose the treaty.
The pro and anti-treaty camps have traded insults. Henri Emmanuelli, a deputy in the National Assembly and a prominent No campaigner, enraged pro-treaty Socialists by comparing them to second World War collaborators and warmongers in Algeria.
Hollande infuriated Emmanuelli when he pointed out that the No camp was "voting with [ the extreme right wing leader Jean-Marie] Le Pen".
So the Socialists' anniversary party last weekend was gloomy. In a poster showing the party founder Jean Jaurès leaning against a flagstaff in 1913, the party leadership replaced the red socialist flag with the European Union's gold stars on a field of blue. Several Socialists, including the deputy who today holds Jaurès's seat, complained and the poster was not used.
Nor were the centenary medals ordered specially for the occasion by Hollande awarded to former party first secretaries. The PS also abandoned plans for a group photograph that would have immortalised prominent party members alongside Danielle Mitterrand, the widow of the only Socialist president of the Fifth Republic.
The main culprit in France's referendum "psychodrama", the number two in the PS, Laurent Fabius, did not attend the symposium at the Bibliothèque Francois Mitterrand because he is delivering a series of lectures - on European integration - in the United States. Had Fabius not spoken out against the constitutional treaty last summer, the PS would not have been torn apart and France probably would not be bracing itself for a No vote five weeks from now.
Proponents of the treaty say that Fabius is their most dangerous enemy. With a reputation for brilliance, he became France's youngest prime minister at age 37, and later served as finance minister. Many French people reason, like a retired gendarmerie officer I spoke to, that "Fabius is intelligent; if he's against the constitution, he must have good reasons." Fabius is gambling that if the No vote wins, he will secure the left's presidential nomination in 2007. The son of a wealthy Parisian antique dealer, he long suffered from an image as a privileged elitist. By opposing the constitution, he hopes to prove he's a "man of the people".
Like other opponents on the left, Fabius claims to love an ideal "social" Europe, but rejects the treaty as too "liberal".
The Socialist MEP Bernard Poignant noted that Fabius did not attend the party's 100th birthday because he was "in the United States, the fatherland of capitalism". Fabius's contribution to the celebrations was an opinion piece in Le Monde newspaper, in which he said the party needed "diversity". The key to rallying the left "and all French people" was to be "reformist in action, revolutionary in ambition", he added. Fabius implicitly compared himself to the historic figures of the PS: Jaurès in 1905, the prime minister Léon Blum in 1936 and Francois Mitterrand in 1981. Each had achieved unity "through audacity and clear choices", he wrote.
Throughout the long Mitterrand years, Fabius's chief rival was Lionel Jospin, who served as prime minister from 1997 until 2002, and withdrew from public life after Le Pen beat him in the first round of the presidential election three years ago.
Animosity between Fabius and Jospin nearly split the party in 1990. Jospin's defeat three years ago instilled a sense of guilt on the French left. Through division, they allowed Le Pen to reach the run-off, and ensured the re-election of the right-wing president, Jacques Chirac. That guilt, and Jospin's relative silence, have invested him with a degree of moral authority. Hollande was accused of complicity with the ruling UMP after he appeared smiling on the cover of Paris-Match with the right-wing party's president, Nicolas Sarkozy.
No one can accuse Jospin of being soft on his former arch-enemy Chirac, so his arguments in favour of the treaty carry more weight. Save your vote on domestic politics for the 2007 presidential election, Jospin has repeated in recent days; it has no place in the May 29th European poll.
Jospin is to appear on French television on April 28th and will participate in a pro-treaty rally in Nantes on May 19th. The future of the treaty may depend on whether he can reverse broad support for a No vote on the French left.
Whatever the result, the PS will hold a party congress later this year. An opinion poll last week showed that 59 per cent of Socialists believe their party will not split, and three quarters said Hollande could stay on as first secretary even if the treaty is defeated. Nonetheless, the balance of power between would-be revolutionaries and reformists in the PS will depend on the result of the referendum.