ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the philosophic heritage of the Section francaise de l'Internationale ouvriere in five parts: party doctrine, economic theory, social doctrine, political philosophy, and world perspective. The French Communist party, true to its obligations to the Comintern, accepted Lenin and Stalin as the proper interpreters of Karl Marx; consequently there are few, if any, outstanding independent thinkers in French Communism. The tradition of the Socialist party stems directly from the Compromise Declaration of 1905, which resulted in party unity for the first time. Prior to the 1905 unification, all factions within the socialist movement were essentially in agreement regarding the goal of socialism: a society in which the instruments of production and exchange would no longer be at the service of a capitalist minority, but at the service of all men for the fulfillment of their needs. The doctrinal solution finally arrived at was to focus attention on Marx's surplus value theory of labor.
