SOCIALIST PARTY

also called (190569) French Section of the Workers' International, French Parti Socialiste, or Section Franaise de l'Internationale Ouvrire (SFIO) French political party founded in 1905 that supported far-reaching nationalization of the economy. Socialism in France dates back to such Revolutionary figures as Jacques-Ren Hbert and Franois-Nol Babeuf and had an illustrious history in the 19th century with such writers and theorists as the Count de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, Auguste Blanqui, and Louis Blanc. The first Marxist party, the French Workers' Party (Parti Ouvrier Franais), was founded in 1880 by Karl Marx's son-in-law Paul Lafargue; but in the course of the 1880s it split and resplit, so that by the 1890s there were at least five major parties or organizations in France. Despite this conflict, a first general congress of the various groups was held in Paris in 1899 and a second congress in 1900, out of which two parties developed: the ideologically uncompromising Socialist Party of France (led by Jules Guesde and Edouard Vaillant) and the French Socialist Party (led by Jean Jaurs), the latter supporting the participation of socialists in a progressive capitalist government. The split lasted until 1905, when the rival parties merged to form the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO)i.e., of the Second International. The party was always informally called the Socialist Party. The party grew quickly in the early years of the 20th century. The Russian Revolution of 1917, however, produced a crisis for the party, and in 1920 its left wing separated to form the French Communist Party. In 1936 the SFIO, then France's strongest party, played the central role in Lon Blum's Popular Front government. During the German occupation of France in World War II, the SFIO participated in the Resistance and cooperated with General Charles de Gaulle. The SFIO emerged from the war as the second largest party in France and won more than 20 percent of the vote in national elections that year. The SFIO subsequently took part in several coalition governments in the Fourth Republic, and in these years the government undertook several major nationalizations under Socialist auspices. The growth of other parties gradually cost the Socialists some support, however, and after 1946 the party usually won only about 15 percent of the vote. The SFIO led a confused existence under de Gaulle's Fifth Republic, and dissent over whether to ally with parties to the left or to the right of the Socialists caused splits within the party. The party gradually declined, and in the presidential election of 1969 it won only 5 percent of the vote. That same year the SFIO was formally renamed the Socialist Party, and in 1971 it gained a vigorous new leader in Franois Mitterrand. The party adopted a strategy of a grand alliance of the left and signed a common program with the Communists and the Left Radicals in 1972. Though often strained, the alliance led to the electoral victory of the left in 1981. That year the Socialists' candidate, Mitterrand, won the presidency. His new government nationalized most of France's largest banks and several giant industrial corporations, and it undertook a program of wage increases and other measures that were intended to redistribute wealth, stimulate growth, and lower unemployment. This program quickly had negative consequences for the French economy, however, and by the mid-1980s the Socialists had retreated from their original economic policies in favour of an austerity program. Further developments confirmed this trend, until by the early 1990s the Socialist Party seemed to have all but abandoned its emphasis on nationalization as a way of ensuring growth and redistributing income.