ABSTRACT
The great success of Marxism in France, considered as a political-social system, arose from its completely revolutionary constitution; its catastrophic idea was perfectly suited to men nourished by memories of the Paris Commune. The function of the Commune would have been much less important if the Thiers government had not practiced a barbarous, atrocious, and stupid repression. The Dreyfus affair brought about a return to the old concepts of 1848, and led socialism in directions more democratic than Marxist. The inquiry on the effect of the Dreyfus affair opened long ago by the Petite Republique among the most important foreign socialists showed results of a deplorable weakness: everyone approved of Jean Jaures's position except Liebknecht, who was a limited man who never understood much of Marxism. The evolution seemed complete in 1896 when Millerand gave his Saint-Mande speech. He confined himself to demanding the development, through state operation, of a few large industries, beginning with sugar refining.
