The French Revolution and Social Democracy

Beyond France's own national historiography, the French Revolution was a fundamental point of reference for the nineteenth-century socialist movement. While Karl Marx never wrote his planned history of the Revolution, beginning in the 1880s the German and Austrian social-democrats did embark on such a project. This was an important moment for both Marxism and the historiography of the French Revolution. Yet it has not previously been the object of any overall study. The French Revolution and Social Democracy studies both the social-democratic readings of the foundational revolutionary event and the place of this history in militant culture, as seen in sources from party educationals to leaflets and workers' calendars.

First published in 2012 as La Révolution française et la social-démocratie. Transmissions et usages politiques de l'histoire en Allemagne et Autriche, 1889-1934 by Presses Universitaires de Rennes in 2012.

Publication date: December 24, 2019

Table of Contents

Preface to the English Edition Abbreviations

Introduction

Preamble: Social Democracy and the French Revolution before 1889

Part 1 The Development, Crisis and Renewal of the Reference to the French Revolution and Its History (1889-1905)

1 1889: the Social-Democrats' Centenary

2 The &'Long Centenary', 1890-5

3 Revising Orthodoxy, Re-exploring History

4 The Russian Revolution of 1905 and the Analogies with 1789

Part 2 The Entrenchment of a Reference (1906-17)

The New Conditions of Social-Democratic Production

5 New Works on the French Revolution

6 The Social-Democratic Educational Apparatus from 1906 to 1914

7 A Powerful Machine

8 The Reference to 1789: Powerful yet Ambiguous

Part 3 Reinterpretations and New Approaches, 1917-34

The Social Democracies' New Course

9 The Power of Analogies, in the Face of New Revolutions: 1917-23

10 Continuities and New Approaches in the Mid-1920s

11 New Readings of the French Revolution

12 Analogies and Controversies: the French Revolution, 1927-34

Conclusion

References Index