Marxism at Work

Despite a century of debate and criticism, Marxism as a mass ideological practice has remained an elusive topic. This book examines Marxist socialism as a mode of understanding and self-understanding treasured and transmitted by thousands of anonymous militants. It focuses upon the Parti Ouvrier Français, the 'Guesdists', an archetypal movement of Marxism's 'Golden Age' before the First World War, the period when Marxist socialism evolved from sect to mass movement. Thousands of French socialists adopted Marxism due to the effectiveness of vulgar Guesdist polemic rather than Marx's profound theoretical works, and entire communities were converted to an austere but messianic socialism which still affects French politics today. This book traces the doctrine's birth through conflict with liberals, proto-fascists, and anarchists; its 'making' of a working class, and its attempted seduction of the middle class; and its confusion before the alternative social visions of the Catholic devout, racist nationalists, and feminists.

Study of the leading French Marxist movement of the decades before the First World War, arguing that Marxism became popular due to vulgar polemic rather than profound theory
An original study - focuses on the thousands of active militants rather than intellectuals
Will be of interest to historians, political scientists and theoreticians, and to scholars of Marxism

Reviews & endorsements

'This book is an outstanding piece of scholarship devoted to the ideological rather than the organizational history of the Parti Ouvrier, the French representative of the 'orthodox' Marxism of the Second International … This is a fascinating and sustained argument, lucidly presented in a nicely produced book.' Political Studies

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