Socialism and Socialist Intellectuals in French History

Abstract

This chapter sets out the specific historiographical basis for a new study of the French socialist movement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It argues that one particular framework—that of the reluctant relationship of socialism with power in the capitalist state—has dominated our approaches to writing the history of French socialism, and suggests that a new focus on temporalities, particularly exploring the clash between revolutionary, future-focused socialism, and present-minded socialism, opens up a new range of cultural, intellectual, and biographical sources for understanding the French socialist movement. It provides the specific intellectual context for understanding how historians in France today are seeking to rethink their intellectual inheritance from left-wing writers of earlier generations.