Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/140

 124 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

The Reformatory Socialists propose to transform society through slow and successive steps, gaining incessantly on the capitalistic state. They are inclined toward an alliance with the Radical and Socialist Radical parties, so as to secure a govern- mental majority, and lead the government on a more and more democratic and socialistic road. They therefore accept com- promises and somewhat modify their ideal. The Revolutionary Socialists, on the other hand, are opposed to any form of alliance or union. They want a party independent of all others, preach incessantly the socialistic ideal, and concern themselves about reform only to the extent of accepting them when they emanate from the bourgeois groups, using them as a means for exacting more. They depend on the revolution to transform society, and that transformation must be complete as well as sudden.

The truth is that this difference in tactics is more apparent than real, as all the Socialist members of Parliament support the present government. Ever since the International Congress at Amsterdam, each faction is doing its utmost to effect a union with the other. If they succeed which we rather doubt there will be but one Socialist party in France.

The leaders of the P. S. D. F. are Jules Guesdes, Paul Lafargue, and Dubreuilh, without mentioning those who sit in Parliament. The leaders of the P. S. F. are nearly all deputies, except Fourniere and Paul Brousse, who is a member of the Municipal Council of Paris.

The Socialists draw their recruits chiefly from the ranks of the workingmen of the cities, and from the young professors and school-teachers. There are also a few Socialist groups among the peasants and the vine-dressers of the Southwest, and in Bretagne- Vendee.

There are in Paris three Socialistic dailies : U Action, edited by Henry Berenger, which has a circulation of 60,000, is inti- mately associated with Freemasonry, and consequently has Radical tendencies; La Petite Republique, edited by Gerault Richard, a deputy, which has a sale of 72,000 copies; and L'Humanite, the organ of Jean Jaures, which has a circulation of 15,000. There are no dailies belonging to the Revolutionary