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Paedagogica Historica V olume 35, No. 1, 1999

Schools of Revolt:Syndicalist Education and Workers' Culturein Pre-World War I France

Stephen LebersteinThe Centerfor Worker Education ofThe City College of New York

The two decades before the first world w ar were the 'heroic'period for Frenchsyndicalism, one that saw it emerge as a m ajor workers' m ovement pledged torevolution. Syndicalists were highly conscious of their classidentity, seeing in classconsciousness an essential element of a revolutionary movemen t. And sothey rejectedparliamentary politicsas a mean s to the new socialist society that would be organizedby a working class they reg arded as sufficient in its own right for this task.Forsynd icalists, then, the spheres of daily life and of political activism tended to coincide,leading the movem ent to politicize every aspect of French culture.

Few aspects of this contested cultural terrain were as im portant tosyndicalists as education. This article explores the wide range of the syndicalistmovement's educationalproject, which encompassed the Bourses du Travail, its mostenduring institutional emb odiment, as well as student-worker groups, teachers'syndicates, apprenticeship training and mod el schools. F inally, the article analyzes thequestion whether this project was an effective means to syndicalistpolitical goals whilealso considering whether efforts in popular education, teacher unionization an d schoolreform were valuable in their own right.

Discussing the flawed public schools of 1908, the anarchist militantGrandjouan argued that it was better t o tur n them into "schools of revolt" thantry to reform them.1 Like many of his comrades he saw existing society itself asa "school of rev olt", and syndicalism as the generator of a self-conscious work ingclass cultu re that could form the basis of the future socialist society.

1Grandjouan, "L'Ecole rnove de demain, l'cole rvolte d'aujourd'hui",L'Ecole rnove, I, 5 (Aug. 15, 1908), pp . 235-238.

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24 Stephen LebersteinAt the turn of the century the labor movement in France, like thoseelsewhere in Europe and even in the US, was marked by the emergence ofsyndicalism, a self-consciously revolutionary movement. Syndicalists werestrongly influenced by anarchists in the sense that they rejected parliamentary

democracy, in their view "politics", in favor of the direct action of the workersthemselves. It was a m atter of faith am ong syndicalists that th e w ork ing class andthe owning class had nothing in common, and both the French ConfdrationGnrale du Travail and its Am erican counterp art, the Industrial W orke rs of theW orld w ere convinced that th e wo rking class was perfectly capable of organizinga modern society.Th eir emph asis on w ork ing class au ton om y and self-sufficiency made

syndicalists particularly interested in culture, that is in the totality of workers'experience. Like the American "Wobblies", whose ballads and song defined aworld apart from bourgeois society, French syndicalists tried to fashion aworkers' world in their own image. For them, culture, and education inparticu lar, assumed apolitical bu rden, often serving as the anti-political m eans forpolitical responses to t he d om inant cultu re. While syndicalists generally claimedthe y w ere anti-political, the y ten ded to politicize every aspect of their lives in theeffort to define a specifically w or king class agenda. The educationa l activities ofFrench syndicates w ere, in this sense, always elements of political struggle.

For the left-wing of the French labor movement in the two decadesleading up to th e first w orld w ar, then, every kind of labor organization wo uldbecome a "school of revolt", a way to educate w orkers. In the political fermentof the p eriod , anarch ists, syndicalists and revo lution ary socialists all agreed on theneed to educate w orke rs, on the imp ortance of training them in "la science de sonmalheur", as the secretary of the Bourses du Travail, or labor exchange,federation, Fernand Pelloutier, put it.

Projects to promote that consciousness of their poverty were seen asvitally important by many militants and often served as a means for organizingworkers. Young workers, lamented the socialist writer Daniel Halvy in 1901,lived in cultural po ve rty and intellectual solitude.2 Th e syndicalist firebrand C.A .Laisant thought that workers, ignorant of their own interests due to thisintellectual underdevelopment, were too easily distracted and so kept fromchallenging power.3 And so the educational work of labor organizations oftenwent beyond the expected short courses and study circles to take on a greaterpurpose th an teaching new skills needed on the job or for unio n w ork . W ritingin La Vie Ouvrire just before the war, Albert Thierry, the syndicalist educator,looked to the syndicates, or labor unions, to give workers something far more

2Daniel Halvy , Essais su r lemouvement ouvrier en France (Paris, Socit n ouvelled'dition et de librarie, 1901), p. 154.3C.A. Laisant, L'Education de demain (Aiglemont, Colonie Libertaire d'Aigle-mont, s.d.), p. 30.

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Syndicalist Education and Workers ' Culture in Pre- World War I France 25precious than what Lamartine had called "the intellectual alms" of the bourgeoi-sie.4

For Thierry as for many syndicalists who followed his columns in LaVie O uvrire, syndicates wo uld cultivate "the treasure" of th e wo rking class, thatis "the young syndicalist faith: - this profound understanding workers get bymeans of the ir labor... [tha t of a] society capable of justice."5 Thierry's generationof militants, those who came of age in the decades before the war, saw thesyndicates as schools for teaching w ork ing class consciousness, for sho ring up theculture of the working class. As they sought to create a cadre of dedicatedmilitants who wo uld lead the wo rkin g class to o verth row capitalist society, theysaw the educational task of labo r organizations as an imp orta nt organizing device,both in the present and for the long run.

In considering the syndicalist educational project in its many forms, itwill become clear that it was both much more and much less than what itappeared to be. From the youth groups, the model schools, the work of theBourses du Travail, and the struggles of the organized pu blic school teachers, wecan see that syndicalists were doing far more than demonstrating ideas on adulteducation or school reform. In their minds, these efforts were important insustaining a wo rking class culture and also constituted rev olutionary w or k. An din this sense, we need to take t he syndicalists at the ir ow n w ord and loo k at issuesof agency and class consciousness in the ir projects of this p eriod .

If class consciousness is w hat syndicalists tho ug ht the y were pr om otin g,then we also want to see how their educational projects influenced and shapedtheir organizing in such ways as to encourage w ork er solidarity and militancy.Did their emphasis on the separate-ness, or autonomy, of working class cultureserve to give syndicalist organizing a dem ocratic, "h oriz onta l" qua lity as opposedto th e "vertical", centralized form of, say, the G erm an lab or confederation of thesame period? D id their projects pro m ote a greater iden tity of com m on interestsam ong ran k and file w ork ers , imp art a sense of the ir ow n interests as a class thatcould sustain them in times of struggle, as Laisant and others hoped?

The syndicalist educational project was shaped by the changingcircumstances of w orkin g class life in the pe riod before th e war. Th e tw o decadesleading up to the first world war mark a period of great economic change inFrance. According to Georges Lefranc, this period represents a turn ing po int forFrenc h cap italism, as small, self-sufficient enterprises gave way to m uch largerones and as the working class became increasingly proletarianized. 6 Workersresponded t o these changes w ith grow ing militancy expressed in labo r organiza-tion, revolutionary rhetoric and strike movements. Of the approximately 15

4Thierry, Rflexions sur l'ducation (Paris, Librairie du Travail, s.d.), pp . 51-52.5Ibid.'Georges Lefranc, Le M ouvement syndical sous la Troisime Rpublique (Paris,Payo t, 1967), p . 156.

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26 Stephen Lebersteinmillion wage workers in the first decade of the 20th century, about half workedin industry.

In the same period (1902 to 1910), the number of syndicates doubled,from 1,403 to 3,012, and the n um be r of work ers wh o belonged to syndicates inth e Confdration Gnraledu Travail (CG T) grew from 100,000 in 1902 to abou t400,000 in 1908 / A no the r index of wo rk er m ilitancy is the nu m be r of strikes andstrikers. As compared with the last decade of the 19th century, the period 1900to 1910 saw the number of strikes and strikers more than double (from 4,210 to9,042, and from 924,000 to 2,021,200 respectively). Similarly, the number ofstrike days also shot up from 15,021,840 in the last decade of the 19th cen tury to37,702,650 in the first decade of the 20th. 8 While syndicates did not include amajority of French workers, the CGT still exerted a great influence, especiallyat times of strikes, according to Lefranc and others; syndicalists were the"minorits agissantes" able to galvanize masses of workers despite their smallnum bers and the lack of a trade un ion apparatus.9 The "heroic age" of revo lution-ary syndicalism in France was more than rhetorical; it was one of growingmilitancy.

It was against this backgro und of mo un ting class conflict and industrialstrife that the syndicalist movement in France took on its revolutionarycharacter. As Gerald Friedman reminds us in a recent article, by 1900 Frenchunions were viewed around the world as radical and "the very name of ... theC G T became synon ym ous w ith extremism , militancy, and violent revolution."10It is in this tim e that the syndicates also became schools of revo lt, so to speak.

T h e Bourses du TravailIf any labor organization of the time embodied the syndicalist

educational project, it was the Bourses du Travail, or labor exchanges. The firstBourse was authorized by the Paris Municipal Council in 1886, and wasestablished there in 1888 and in other cities thereafter.11 Bourses were sponsoredby unions, or associations, of local syndicates as a means of providing jobplacem ent services and m utua l aid. For th e local gove rnm ents, the Bourses wereintended to help promote social peace by aiding struggling syndicates and by

7Ibid., pp . 105-106.'Pierre Semard, "Origines et formation du mouvement syndical franais," Cahiersdu Bokhvisme (Feb. 15, 1936), p. 181.'Lefranc, Le mouvement syndical, p. 89.10Gerald Friedman, "Revolutionary unions and French labor: the rebels behindthe cause; or why did revolutionary syndicalism fail?" French Historical Studies, XX, 2(Spring 1997), p . 157.uRen Gibre, "Les Bourses du Travail," Force Ouvrire, (Aug . 4, 1955).

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Syndicalist Education and Workers'Culture in Pre-World WarlFrance 27giving wo rkers a chance to imp rove themselves.12 By the end of the 1890s, 57Bourses were functioning throughout France, representing the association of1,065 syndicates, nearly half the total number in the country.13

In this regard, the Bourses had accomplished w hat in the present-day USis seen as the Herculean task of join ing local un ion s together in com m on effortsacross trade or jurisdictional lines. Another aspect of the Bourses was that theywere by definition local; by providing a common center of activities and aphysical facility, the y represented the w ork ing class com m unity in the cities andtow ns w here they existed. These were qualities that made them responsive to theneeds and concerns of workers that may have been beyond the ken of unionaction over wages and the like. These included tem po rary lodging and assistancefor those in search of w or k, cultural activities for w ork ers, and guided activitiesand even schooling for children and youth.Bo th co ntem po rary activists and historians regard the Boursesdu Travail,or labor exchanges, as syndicalism's most creative invention. While localauthorities saw the Bourses as mean s for m utin g class conflict, militan t activists,like Fernand Pelloutier, the consumptive who martyred himself for the cause,soon understood their other uses for the labor movement.

W hat, how ever, was th e practical, daily role of the Bourses in the life oflocal working class communities? One of their primary services was free jobplacement. Apparently some of the Bourses also raised funds so that they couldoffer some assistance to the unemployed, which Pelloutier described "as thepayment of a debt of solidarity contracted between syndicalist workers, andespecially as a means of holdin g the unem ploy ed back from offers of und erpaidwork."14 Other mutual aid services included the viaticum, or aid to itinerantwo rkers, a means that th e Bourses could use to t ry to regulate fluctuations in thelabor market that would otherwise tend to suppress wages. In each case, theseforms of mutual aid were also expressions of class solidarity and allowed theBourses to propagandize the most exploited workers, those temporarilyunemployed and in search of work.

Fo r Daniel H alvy, the activities tha t the Bourses organized gave thema unique sense of place in their working class communities. In his Essais sur lemouvement ouvrier en France (1901), Halvy wrote that it was in their meetingrooms "where that great thing, working class consciousness, is born. It is therethat m en of the people meet oth er m en of the people, in a roo m th at belongs tothem , in an institution that th ey themselves wanted and ran. Com e to talk aboutwages and work, they speak of everything when united in their meetings: ofjustice, hum anity , and science, and th e Bourse becomes more th an an 'exchange',but a Home, the fresh nucleus of a class until now reduced to the most

12Fernand Pelloutier, Histoire des Bourses du Travail (Paris, Schleicher Frres,1902), p. 74 ff."Ibid., p . 79.14Pelloutier, Histoire des Bourses du Travail, p. 90 ff.

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28 Stephen L ebersteinfragmented and miserable of lives."15 Such other contemporary writers as Londe Seilhac agreed that the Bourses were im porta nt labor org anizations, th e realcenters of syndicalist action.16

By 1892 the Paris municipal government had spent one million francson a building for the Bourse on the rue du Chteau d'eau, which it turned overto the local Cham bres syndicales}7 The Paris Bourse still operates at the sameaddress. In that same year, th e Bourses du Travail held their first nationa l m eetingsimultaneously with the Congress of the socialist-dominated Fdration desSyndicats led by Jules G uesde at Saint Etienne . Just th ree years later, in 1895, theBourses had formed a nation al federation un der the direction of a Com it fdral,and Pelloutier becam e its sole secretary. U nd er his direction , the Bourses becameindependent of political parties, breaking with the Guesdist socialist trade unionfederation, and struggled to m aintain the ir independence of local authorities evenwhile accepting their support, a stance for which he was sometimes criticized.18W herever t he syndicates in a to w n h ad affiliated in a local unio n, the re a Boursedu Travail was likely to be established. By Jun e 1895, wh en the Bourses du Travailheld a national congress at Nmes, Pelloutier reported that 36 of them wererepresented on th e Com it fdral, and that after four years steady growth, theynow counted one million mem bers.19 If there w ere not m ore Bourses, Pelloutierargued, it was because the local syndicates had n ot affiliated in over a qua rter ofthe towns where they had organized.

20

The Bourses du Travail also offered an instructional service, whichusually included a libra ry, an inform ation office, vocational tr ainin g and generaleducation courses.21 By 1902 every Bourse had managed to pu t tog ether a library,the collections rang ing from 400 to 1,200 volumes except in the case of the ParisBourse which had a library of 2,700 volumes. Pelloutier spoke, with nearlyVictorian reverence, of the libraries holding "those works most likely to refinetaste, elevate feelings, and extend the k now ledge of the w orkin g class..."22 In hism ind this mean t a wid e range of all tha t Frenc h cultu re had to offer, from

15Daniel Halvy, Essais sur le m ouvement ouvrier en France (Paris, Socitnouve lle de librairie et d'd itio n, 1901), pp . 85-86.16Lon de Seilhac, Syndicats ouvriers,fdrations, boursesdu travail (Paris, Arm andCo lin, 1902), p . 264.17Jean Maitron, Histoire du m ouvement anarchiste en France (Paris, SUDEL,1951), p. 278.18JacquesJulliard, Fernand Pelloutier et les origines du syndicalisme d'action directe(Paris, Seuil, 1971), pp . 7-8.19Fernand Pelloutier, "Ra ppo rt sur les travaux du Com it Fdral pend ant 1894-95, prsent au FVe Congrs nation al te nu N m es le 9 juin 1895," in: Institut franaisd'histoire sociale, Fonds M on atte , 14 AS 223, no . 4, p. 1.

20Pelloutier, Histoire des Bourses du Travail, p. 79.21 Gibre, "Les Bourses du Travail".22Pelloutier, Histoire des Bourses du Travail, p. 112.



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Syndicalist Education and Workers ' Culture in Pre- World War I France 29Chateaubriand to Balzac and Zola, as well as volumes on politics and theeconomy.

In th e m ain the Bourses devoted their energies to offering trade coursesto workers. During a nine month period, from October 1899 to June 1900,Pelloutier reported that the federated Bourses held a total of 597 educationalmeetings lasting an average of two hours each, with an average attendance of426.23 If everything were equal, then each Bourse would have had just over oneeducational m eeting a m on th in this period , not an impressive num ber. Of thosethat did offer an educational prog ram , some show ed a broa d range of subjects. AtSaint Etienne, for example, the Bourse offered courses in eleven fields, rangingfrom geom etry and design for building trades workers to painting and drawing,surveying and leveling. T he T ou lous e Bourse received a mu nicipal subsidy to setup a model typographical w ork sho p. A t th e Paris Bourse in the year 1901, forexample, syndicalist workers as well as teachers from the PolytechnicalAssociation, a popular education society, offered courses in everything fromindustrial electricity and commercial accounting to German and Englishlanguages.24

Pelloutier worried that workers were not serious enough in theirattitude toward education, often dropping in and out of the courses. Othersfeared that the courses would turn out foremen and subcontractors instead ofmilitants. And in fact the model print shop at Toulouse produced such well-trained apprentices that th ey began to displace the to w n's older prin ters becausethey were paid less for similar work. When the issue of trade education wasdiscussed at the 1900 congress of th e Bourses in Paris, despite the criticism raised,mo st delegates supported the efforts as good ways of recruiting new w orkers tothe syndicates and of spreading th eir political ideas. A delegate from Blois, forexample, argued that w itho ut the syndicalist schools, vocational training wo uldbe left t o the state and indus try, b oth hostile to syndicalism. It was no t just tradeskills that the Bourses taught, as another delegate put it, but "another way ofcultivating the mind."25 For another delegate from Nmes, vocational trainingwas imp orta nt because it "inculcate[d] labor dignity and solidarity" wh ile turn ingout "w orkers w ho u nderstand everything about their profession" thereby "raisingup the concept of the individual and of the young proletarian army..." 26Pelloutier did not live to lead the army; he died of tuberculosis, a young man in1901.

"Ibid ., p. 12124Loc. cit.25"L'Enseignement professional", in : Mlle Congrs national des Bourses du Travail

de France, Paris, 5-8Sept.1900 (Paris, Im prim erie typ ograp hique Jean A llemane, 1900), pp .95-112. Fo r m ore in form ation , see dossier F(7) 12493 in the A rchives Natio nales .26Loc. cit.



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30 Stephen LebersteinStudent Groups

Pelloutier's political (or anti-political) formation may have beenunusual, emerging from the Chevaliersdu TravailFranais and from contacts witha libertarian literary elite.27 But as a young intellectual strongly influenced byanarchist thinking he was typical of a generation of youth, including PaulDelesalle, Amde Dunois, Pierre Monatte, Marc Pierrot and Alfred Rosmeramong others, w ho became revolu tionary syndicalists. Man y of the m began theirpolitical developmen t as univ ersity stud ents for w ho m life in the m ainstream ofFren ch society seemed either unsatisfying or beyond reach. It was from the yo uthculture of the period that this group emerged, and those militants who wereshaped by their yo uthful experience later insisted on the im portance of work ingwith youth and children for the future of the labor movement.An incubator of this "intellectual proletariat" was the Groupe desEtudiants SocialistesRvolutionnaires Internationalistes(ESRI), active in Paris from1892 un til 1903. In its first manifesto for a national student congress in 1893, thegroup addressed itself to tho se stu den ts "w hose feeling of justice rebels against allorders of exploiters..., students wh om life will to m or ro w enroll in th e intellectualproletariat." 28 In language that resonates across the century , the g roup addresseditself to "all the proletarians - industrial, agricultural and intellectual - of all thecivilized coun tries."29 Th e gro up's stress on internationalism was consistent w iththat of a French left battling the nationalist revanchisme of the state and army,and also reflected a mem bersh ip that was about half foreign bo rn, pred om inan tlyexiles from Russia, Ro m ania and Poland.30 By the tu rn of the centu ry, accordingto Pierre Monatte, its last secretary, the ESRI group became a worker-studentalliance in which the tw o parts were brough t together by their com m on anarchistinspiration.31

N o r was this the only such group. The Ligue Dmocratique des coles, forexample, announced its Cercle d'tudes politiques et sociales in December 1896.32Like the ESRI grou p, the Ligue self-consciously sought to draw together w orkersand students, in part in reaction against what they regarded as the corruptinginfluence of socialist party politicians. Earlier in 1896 at the Second Interna-

27Augustin Hamon to Pierre Monatte, Oct. 5,1944, in: Institut franais d'histoiresociale, Fonds Monatte, 14 AS 223.28"Congrs national des Etudiants Socialistes de France", in: Archives Pierrot, 14AS 203, at the Institut franais d'histoire sociale.29"Aux Etudiants de Paris", (Paris, Imprimerie Jean Allemane, s.d.), in loc. cit.30"Cahiers des ESRI", in loc. cit. (The notebooks contain membership lists of thegroup in its early period as well as minutes of its meetings.)31Jean Maitron, "Le Groupe des Etudiants Socialistes RvolutionnairesInternationalistes", LMouvement Social, 46 (Jan.-Mar. 1964), p. 24.32Archives Pierrot, 14 AS 203; see also the Ligue's dossier in the Archives de laPrfecture de la Police, Ba/1527.



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Syndicalist Education and W orkers' Culture in Pre- World WarlFrance 31tiona l's Congress at Lond on , the syndicalists along with yo ut h gro ups, anarchistsand others split apart from the socialist party.

We know that the groups did in fact engage in study circles, that theywere active engines of propaganda writing and distributing brochures andhandbills, and that they m aintained libraries. They kept and read work s by LouisBlanc, Jules Guesde, Paul Lafargue and Karl Marx, as well as co ntem po rary left-wing journals such as Le D rapeau Rouge, L'Art Social, La Question Sociale, andL'Almanach du Parti O uvrier,,33

Links between students and work ers, especially those with a comm oninterest in anarchism, were no t un usual in this period. In pa rt w e can understandthis connec tion as an expression of the instinctual feeling of the yo un g for justiceand irreverence toward au tho rity . But examples of such worke r-student alliancesma rked this period and significantly influenced th e developm ent of syndicalism,which und erstood how im porta nt this connection could be. The police certainlybelieved that such groups were significant. Police surveillance of the "socialmovement" of that era often targeted such groups, and reports from policeinforman ts described study groups and edu cational m eetings as notab le forms ofworking class political activity.34

Model Schools and CampsA tten tion to the needs of work ing class children and yo ut h remained animportant concern of the syndicalist movement. It is not so hard to understandwhy working parents of that time worried about their children in the publicschools, much as contemporary working parents do. Throughout the entireperiod under discussion, the syndicalist press was full of articles and letters oneducational issues. While much of this interest can be attributed to the nearlyuniversal wo rry of w orkin g parents about their kids, part of it stemmed from the

con tinuin g conflict betw een ch urch and state in France and elsewhere. N o t until1905 did France "laicize" primary education, abolishing public subsidies forchurch schools. In the afterm ath of the laws on the lay school, the pu blic schoolteachers, especially in rural areas, worrie d about t he strident clerical reaction thatthe village cur often directed against them .

"Pierrot's memoirs, which appeared originally in Plus Loin, 95 (Mar. 1933), asquoted in Maitron, "Le Groupe des Etudiants Socialistes Rvolutionnaires Inter-nationalistes", Le Mouvement Social, 46 (Jan.-Mar. 1964), p . 24, and Catalogue in ArchivesPierrot, 14 AS 203.34See the dossier F (7) 12504 in the Archives Nationales for descriptions of the"social movement" in the early 1890s. In the Archives de la Prfecture de la Police for Parisare num erous reports on study circles and the like, especially in dossier Ba/1498, "ActivitsAnarchistes, 1899-1901."

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32 Stephen LebersteinO ne resp onse to t h e perceived failure of state schools for w orkin g classchildren was the creation of model schools, often anarchist-inspired. Theanarchist weekly Les Temps Nouveaux set out a project for a model schoo l in 1897as a needed alternative to public schools, described with poorly concealed

hyperbole as "the perfect training for servitude."35 Critics were especiallyincensed that coeducation was actually prohibited by school law. Impatient toshow what could be done, some of the critics organized a summer camp forAugust 1898 near Paris, with 19 kids. The unfortunate experiment founderedw hen one of the organizers lost his patience and slapped a camper.36

By 1901, Francsico Ferre r organized La Escuela Moderna in Barcelona,a model school that attracted widespread attention and support and whichinspired similar projects all over Europe, and even in New York. The mostim porta nt Fren ch m odel school was La Ruche which Sbastien Faur e directed atRam bouillet near Paris from 1904 until 1917. Ove r a ten year per iod from 1904to 1914, abou t 4,000 children applied to La Ruche , mostly th e children of singleparents, abused wom en and those determined to keep their kids out of charitablereligious institutions when they were hard up.37 Faure's co lony, like M adeleineVernet's Avenir Social at Neuilly-Plaisance near Paris and others answered thedesperate needs of working or unemployed parents.38 However informally,Vernet, Faure and the others were personally linked, and their coloniesconnected institutionally, to the broader syndicalist movement, often throughworkers' cooperatives and local syndicates. But their colonies remained Utopiannonetheless.

What is more significant for our discussion are the projects that thesyndicates themselves organized. There had been talk in syndicalist circles ofsponsoring schools as at the 1900 congress of the federated Bourses du Travail,resurfacing at the 1907 Inte rna tiona l Anarchist Congress at Am sterdam ."Workers being more apt than anyone to determine the character of theeducation to give their children, [the report to the congress proposed that] thecare of education revert essentially to the syndicates and labor unions [orfederations]."39 But it was soon apparent how impractical these proposals were.Writing in La Guerre Sociale in 1908, Gustave Herv said that "one or twoschools like Faure 's La Ru che or Madeleine Vernet's Av enir Social are interestingas models; but to imagine now, within the capitalist order of society, that the

35"L'Ukime dressage pour l'asservissement", Degalvs & Janvion, "L'Ecolelibertaire", Les Temps Nouveaux, III, 5 (May 15-21,1897), pp. 1-2.36SeeLes Temps nouveaux, IV, 12 (July 16-22,1898) and 26 (October 22-28,1898)."Eugnie Casteu, "L'Enfance malheureuse", Bulletin de la Ruche, 8 (June 25,1914), pp. 12-15."Madeleine Verne t, Cinq annesd'exprience ducative, l'Avenir Social, 1906-1911(Epne, Editions de l'Avenir social, 1911).39Lon Clment, "L'Education intgrale de l'enfance", in: Congrs Anarchiste,Com pte-rendu analytique (Paris, La Pu blica tion sociale, 1908), p . 105.



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Syndicalist Education and Workers'Culture in Pre-World WarlFrance 33cooperatives and syndicates w ould ever have enough funds to set up 'free sch ools'in the face of the lay school, yo u w ould really have to delude yourself abo ut the'financial capacity' of the w orkin g class of ou r day."40

Although Herv deflated the grand idea of independent labor schools,Georges Yvetot, secretary-general of the Fdration des Bourses du Travail,remained sympathetic, in part in the hope that syndicalist schools could hiremilitant school teachers who had lost their jobs and so demonstrate classsolidarity. So at its own congress in 1908, the Fdration des Bourses appointed acom mission to study th e possibilities. Re por ting back at the next congress of theFdration des Bourses in 1910, the commission recognized that creatingindepen dent syndicalist schools was not possible. But it did recom m end th at th eBourses "set up in their quarters children's nurseries, [to operate] after primaryschools close and on vacation days, and to turn them into Pu pils' G roup s w hichwill permit the education of proletarian youth toward an anti-militarist andsyndicalist goal..."41 Yvetot promoted the project, supporting the use of theBourses during day-time hours for children's activities. His greatest enthusiasmwas for w hat could be done with kids wh en their parents w ere on strike, "when[the kids] would live a few days of this fever of labor's battle."42 Yvetot saw thisas a way to organize w orkers by actively involving wo rking p arents in organizingthe after-school projects.

W hile not m uch evidence exists on ho w Y veto t's ideas were carried out,it is clear that P upils' G rou ps had begun to function in workin g class comm uni-ties. In 1913 the idea emerged of federating all the children's groups that hadbecome a part of the labor m ovem ent. Lon Clment and Maurice Bouchorargued in La Vie Ouvrire that workers' cooperatives, syndicates and socialiststogether should coordinate and support the Pupils' Groups.43 Such an arrange-ment had apparently already been wo rked out in Bo ucho r's ow n neighb orhoo d,the fourteenth arrondissement of Paris, and the proposal garnered wa rm responsefrom readers of La Vie Ouvrire.** Within a year we read about a CoordinatingCommittee for the Pupils of Cooperatives of the Parisian Region, affiliating the

40Herv, La Guerre Sociale (June 24-30 June 1908), quoted in Max Ferr, Histoiredu mouvement syndicaliste rvolutionnaire chez les instituteurs (Paris, SU DE L, 1955), p . 150.""Rapport prsent par Togny et Raud la Ve Confrence des Bourses (1910,Rennes), Sur les Ecoles Syndicales", reprinted as Annexe 3, in: Ludo vic Z ore tti, Educationnationale et mouvem ent ouvrier en France (Paris, Librairie Pop ulaire , 1923), p p. 70-72."Georges Yvetot, "L'Ecole syndicale", Part H, L'Ecolemancipe, 1,18 (Jan. 28,1911), pp . 2-3.43Reprinted in pamphlet form as Les groupes de Pup illes, l'duca tion de l'enfance

dans les milieux ouvriers (Paris, Ed itions de la Vie Ou vri re , 1913), p . 9.44E. Rey nier, "Les Gro upes de Pupilles - travers les livres", La Vie ouvrire,V,92 (July 20, 1913), pp . 112-113.

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34 Stephen L ebersteinactivities of 26 separate groups under the control of labor organizations.45 Thegroups were not m eant o nly to extend the school day, explained a m em ber of theCoordinating Committee, but rather "to give our children a social educationwhich is given them no w he re else." Aside from any thing else the children - these"pioneers of tom or row " in the en thusiast's wo rds - wo uld learn, they wo uld alsosee demonstrated the collective role of people in creating a working classinstitution.

Youth GroupsTh e mo st interesting aspect of the syndicalist project, tho ug h, w ere the

Jeunesses Syndicalistes that emerged alongside the children's groups. Embracingadolescent apprentices and workers, the first such youth groups appeared for avery brief time around 1904-05, just as the s tuden t-worker stud y circles began t ofade away. But it seemed tha t they to o faded away, mainly due to the indifferenceor active hostility of older militants.46 By 1911 La Vie Ouvrire regarded theascendant syndicalist youth groups as crucial to the future of syndicalism for"Each has suffered from the gross loss of young strength the syndicalistmovement has undergone." To understand better how the syndicates couldattract and hold on to y ou th, the journal developed a questionnaire to survey allthe you th groups it could identify.The survey asked the following questions:

1. H ow long have you been in operation? how m any members? are yo u m akingprogress; statutes, etc. are yo u installed at the local labor exchange?2. W hat tasks have you assumed? education among the y oun g and old? extendedpropa ganda, results desired and obtained ; role of sports and o the r d istractionsin the group?3. Do the syndicates help you? in what form; or is there mistrust; whatcomp laints are made against yo u; is there antagonism between you nge r andolder; if so, to what do you attribute it; how might it be eliminated? 47

The results were encouraging. Within a few months, the journal'sinquiry found the Jeunesses Syndicalistes to be generally flourishing. To PierreMonatte the resurgent youth groups held out the promise of a vital labormove ment because they w ere free of what he saw as "the detestable m ethod" ofthe G erman Social De m ocra ts, a practice w hich "dug a pit of distrust and hate

45Alice Jouenne, "L'Education dans les Coopratives; nos Groupes de Pupilles",L'Ecole mancipe, IV, 30 (April 18, 1914), p. 351.'"'"Les Jeunesses Syndicalistes", La Vie ouvrire,!!, Ab (August 5, 1911), pp . 146-147. 47 Ibid.



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Syndicalist Education and Workers ' Culture in Pre- World War I France 3 5between the organizational leaders and the masses" by creating a professionalcaste of labor officials.48

In the first summary of reports to the Vie Ouvrire questionna ire, 22different groups sent in answers to th e survey. Mos t of those tha t respo nde d werewell established or grow ing, although it is hard to estimate the exact num ber s ofyoung workers involved due to their loose organization. Although the JeunessesSyndicalistes pro bab ly included fewer than 1,000 steady mem bers throu gh ou t thecou ntry at the end of 1911, these groups, like the syndicalist mo vem ent itself,certainly exerted an influence on their comrades out of all proportion to theirnum ber s, especially du ring anti-m ilitarist campaigns and in times of crisis. Sometrends are apparent from the responses. In Paris, the yo ut h groups formed with incertain trades, whereas in the subu rbs and provincial town s the small nu m ber ofworkers in any given trade meant that groups formed instead within the locallabor exchange or cooperative, drawing their members from among all thesyndicalist workers in the area. A majority of the groups admitted and encour-aged non-organized workers to join their activities as a way to recruit newmembers to the labor m ovem ent. Fo r this organizing tactic to wo rk, the groupshad to do more than study together; they had to embrace the kind of thingsyouth in general would be interested in, like physical education and sports. 49

Many of the Jeunesses Syndicalistes groups thought of themselves asrepresenting "advanced" ideas, an attitude that often brought them into conflictwith their elders. Were these generational conflicts, or a clash between politicaltendencies? Closer consid eration of a few examples ma y help us to understa nd therole of the yo uth groups in the larger context of the syndicalist mo vem ent. Th efirst y ou th group to form tha t was identified in the survey, in Ju ly 1909, was theJeunesse de la Voiture in the automobile industry.50 These youths tried to strikea balance by sp onsorin g cultural activities in addition to family ou tings and wh atthey called "rational" or non-competitive sports. They also participated as agroup in street demonstrations, and although they wanted to include "revolu-tionary" in the group name, they held back in order to attract more recruits.

Even though their number remained small, the auto-workers practicedsolidarity by going out of their way to h elp organize other yo ut h g roups. So theJeunesse Syndicaliste des Ferblantiers, the tin-workers, reported that they got theidea to organize from their comrades am ong the auto-wo rkers.51 So too did theJeunesse Syndicaliste d'Asnires help their comrades at Saint Ouen in setting upa group, and together they organized the Coordinating Committee of Revolu-

48"Les Jeunesses Syndicalistes", La Vie Ouvrire, H, 48 (Sept. 20, 1911), pp. 331-334. 49See results of the inquiry, La Vie Ouvrire, II, 45, 48, 49, 50 and 53 (Aug.-Dec.1911). 50L. Calinaud, "Jeunesse de la Voiture", La Vie Ouvrire, U , 48 (Sept. 20,1911),pp. 331-334.''"Jeunesse syndicale des Ferblantiers", La Vie Ouvrire, H, 48, p. 336.

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36 Stephen Lebersteintionary Syndicalist Youth Groups of the Suburbs. The youth saw the need tocom bine their efforts the better to oppose the gov ernm ent's m ilitarism, as theysaw it, since young workers would be "the principal victims of such ignoblecarryings-on."52

Sometimes youthfu l enthusiasm (some saw it as violence, sectarianismor impatience) put the youth in conflict with their elders as when the activitiesof the you th of the Le Mans group threatened the local Bourse du Travail withthe loss of its municipal funding. In such cases the youth might have foundthemselves on the street instead of inside the labor exchange.53 Still, theFdration des Bourses du Travail had endorsed the creation of yout h groups at its1910 congress in To ulo use and so was consistent in calling on all local syndicatesto join the effort.Th e organization of yo uth groups was not limited to th e Parisian region.A congress of allied yo ut h groups in the West m et in Febru ary 1912 and agreedto coordinate its activities to make its members more effective in their anti-militarist campaigns. Now agreed on their tasks, reported a spokesman, theyouth groups of the West "will be able to give this region, undergoing rapidindustrialization, and to all its bodies a generation of militants." 54

Teacher UnionismAmong the most militant syndicalist workers were public school

teachers, who began to organize trade associations, or Amicales, around 1900.W ith wages hov ering near th e subsistence level and jobs scarce, the teachers' mainconcern was survival. They were among the first ranks of "intellectualproletarians", as one study put it: "Primary school teaching is only an immenseproleta riat. O f th e 150,000 men and w om en w ho comprise it, at least 100,000 arein a pen ury very close to poverty".55 The first teachers' syndicates began toorganize around 1904 in the department of the Var, as it became apparent thatthe Am icales were no t effective in addressing the teachers' problem s. Allied w iththe CGT, the teachers' syndicates saw themselves as a vanguard in their firstmanifesto.56 But it was not only to better their material circumstances that the

52"Le Comit d'Entente des J.S. du dpartement de la Seine", La V ie Ouvrire,II, 53 (Dec. 5,1911), pp . 700-703.""Jeunesse syndicalisteduMans",Z.a Vie Ouvrire, II, 50 (Oct. 20,1911), pp. 489-491. 54Laurent Hansmoenel, "Le Congrs des Jeunesses Syndicalistes de l'Ouest", LaVie Ouvrire, IV, 59-60 (Mar. 5-20, 1912), pp. 381-387.55Henry Brenger, e.a., Les Proltaires intellectuels en France (Paris, Editions dela revue, 1897),5


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Syndicalist Education and Workers' Culture in Pre-W orld War I France 37teachers' syndicates wanted to join the C G T . By joining in the labor m ovem ent,the syndicalist teachers believed that they would "gain an understanding of theintellectual and mo ral needs of the people. Th rou gh their contact and collabora-tion [w ith othe r syndicates], we w ill establish o ur program s and our methods."57These teachers identified their interests with those of the communities theyserved. Such attitudes br ou gh t th e syndicalist school teachers into conflict w iththe governm ent. Un de r Clemenceau, the governm ent in 1907 banned th eteachers' syndicates from joining in the Bourses du Travail on the grounds thatsuch membership would conflict with their official public role. In response thenationa l federation of teachers' syndicates formed a defense com m ittee, w hichissued an "Open Letter to M. Clemenceau."

Th e letter accused the g overn m ent of being the "Defender of Capital andof privileges", and also accused it of blocking the teachers' membership in theBourses du Travail "because in them workers discuss the conditions of socialorganization. But it is their right, and ours too!" 58

Th is declaration of defiance came just after th e C G T adopted its famousCh arte r of Am iens in 1906, and sh ortly after a wave of strikes in 1907. It is mo stinteresting for what it says of the teachers' determination to substitute for theofficial curriculum "...a practical, concrete teaching that corresponds to the realneeds of the different populations, to the real needs of the producers... It is forall these reasons that we reject yo ur contract [forbidding them a place in the labo rexchanges]. For this is our labor, the thing which, 'after love, least suffersauthority'." 59 With that the syndicalist teachers vowed to fight "the insatiablemoloch." In response, the government fired some of the signers.

Not all syndicalists welcomed the school teachers, some, like M.T.Laurin, believing that they would dilute the militant fervor of the labormovement.60 An atole France, on th e oth er hand, saw their actions as an exampleof labor solidarity in which "fun ctionaries and state employees, along w ith th osew ho hold the pen and thos e wh o w ield the pick, rush ... into freedom road ... intheir mutual association ... with proletarians..."61 Eventually Victor Griffuelheswrote in L'Humanit welcoming the teachers as comrades in the battle against"the forces of oppression and exploitation."62 In the years that followed,syndicalist teachers came to talk mo re and m ore abo ut th e need for "Ada ptation

57Ibid.58"Lettre ouverte M. Clemenceau, Prsident du Conseil des Ministres", signedby the Comit central pour la dfense du droit syndical des salaris de l'Etat, etc.,reproduced in L'Enseignement public 0une-July 1956), in Fonds Vidalenc in the Institutfranais d'histoire sociale, 14 AS 225(1), no. 3(1).69Ibid.60M.T. Laurin, m Le Mouvement socialiste (April 1905).61Anatole France, introduction to Les Instituteurs syndiqus et la classe ouvrire,documents et opinions (Poligny (Jura), F.N .S.I., 1907), p . 1.aL'Humanit (April 7,1907), quoted in Instituteurs et classe ouvrire, pp . 74-76.



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38 Stephen Lebersteinof teaching to the needs of th e w ork ing class."63 An d over the years, they worke dactively to define how they might adapt public schools to those needs.

In an example of labor solidarity in August 1912, the congress of theFederation nationale des synd icats d'instituteurs at Chambery voted to support aCGT anti-militarist project, the Sou du Soldat, designed to strengthen the bondbetween young conscripts and their syndicate. That resolution gave thegovernm ent the excuse it needed to dissolve the teach ers' syndicates.64

At the beginning of the 1913-14 school year, the editors of the Ecolemancipe, the journa l of the teachers' syndicate, expressed the o pin ion that crisesin the labor movement, the attempted dissolution of their syndicates, and thecountless reprisals against militant teachers, had only served to strengthenteachers' syndicalism. They took courage from the fact that, "in moments ofcrisis for synd icalism, it w as the Ecole mancipe that helped to raise courage, andmilitants turned to w ard it; it was and still is the principal source of all action, thecenter of resistance and th e soul of ilie syndicalist m ovement in education."65 Butwhen war began many of teachers marched off with their working classcomrades, and th e princ ipled few called out as voices in the dark.

Should we view the rank and file organizing and solidarity of the pre-war syndicalist m ovem ent as a failure? O r should w e consider it as the necessarybut insufficient condition for mobilizing a force capable of changing the courseof French society? As a recent dissertation has suggested, the anti-militarism tha twas such an important part of the syndicalist movement "served the left as auniversal language through which to express class conflict ... and it appealedgenerally to a certain moral order that the working-class leaders felt had beenviolated by the army. ...it [also] established a means for ordinary people tochallenge the state on such issues as military injustice in the barracks...and thethree-year conscription law of 1913-14."66The tragic fact, however, is that the syndicalist project, for all itsrevolution ary p rom ise, was unable even to delay, much less avert the war thatbrok e ou t in Aug ust 1914. As measured against the rheto ric of its militants, theproject was also much less than it seemed. While the continual agitation andorganizing of syndicalist workers may have been a necessary condition fortransforming ari unjust society, it was an insufficient one. Did t he emphasis onwo rking class autono m y, on culture as opposed to econom ic action and politics,represent a retreat from a m ore direct challenge to established pow er?

"Louis Bout, e.a., Le Syndicalisme dans l'enseignement: Histoire de la Fdrationde l'enseignement et du syndicalisme universitaire (Avignon, Editions de l'Ecole m ancipe,1924), pp . 3-4.MSee L'Ecole mancipe, II, 47 (Aug. 31, 1912), for an account of the affair.65L. Leger, "A ux ins tituteurs, aux institutrices," L'Ecole mancipe, IV, 1, (Sept.

27, 1913), pp. 1-2.wPau l Brian Miller, From Revolutionaries to Citizens: Anti-Militarism in France,1870-1914 (Yale University Ph.D. dissertation, 1995).

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Syndicalist Education and Workers' Culture in Pre-World War I France 39Th e syndicalist education project could not succeed in holding the forces

of war at bay in 1914, and so it failed almost at the peak of its po wer to create thenew world it had promised. But it demonstrated strategies that could, and did,work to build class conscious, community-oriented, rank and file organizationsthat could effectively mo bilize wo rke rs to fight bo th for their ow n interests andfor a larger agenda. In both its failures and it prom ise, the syndicalist project canteach today's labor movement something valuable. Its most enduring lesson isthat workers' daily lives can be "schools of revolt", that a visionary classconsciousness brings with it the will to build a more just society. It should alsocaution us that the retreat into an insular culture will not lead to any victories.

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