ABSTRACT
Municipal councillors and mayors then used the authority of public office to prevent or challenge invasions of workers' rights by agents of the state. Mayors were fined and arrested for 'outrages against public authority'. Voters often defied higher authorities and re-elected their socialist mayors, only to have them arrested again for another infraction of the law. Socialist attempts to influence municipalities to act on these issues were made possible by the law on municipal organization of 5 April 1884. Indeed the 'socialist conception' the municipalities tried to realize was that of the rights and duties of family members. The socialist revolution would be enacted by a parliament whose elected majority adhered to socialist doctrine. The speeches and political actions of socialists reiterate the theme of opposition to the police and so demonstrate its importance. Jules Guesde's own evolution was typical of a more general development in French socialism, indeed among Western European socialists in this period.
