Marxism and Anticlericalism: The Parti Ouvrier Français and the War against Religion, 1882–1905

This article analyses the relationship between French anticlericalism — one of the strongest forces within that nation's political culture — and the Parti Ouvrier Français — the embodiment of nascent Marxism in France. It reveals the ambiguities of the POF's engagement with religion, which ranged from a violent hostility towards the anticlericals, seen as diverting workers from their struggle against capital, to the development of a ferocious socialist critique of the church, seen as an instrument of capitalist oppression. The Marxists' critique of anticlericalism is awarded particular attention, given the usual association between the French Left and hostility towards a supposedly reactionary church, and it is suggested that the POF developed an "agnostic" strategy that might well have guided its politics safely through the storms of French religious politics. Instead, the Parti Ouvrier all too frequently echoed the standard leftist rhetoric of priest-baiting, and even developed its own socialist variant of anticlericalism. The analysis concludes that the resultant aporias in the Parti Ouvrier's political discourse determined the relative failure of French Marxism's intervention in the long war between clericals and anti-clericals.