The Revolutionary Moment

The immediate post-war period witnessed unprecedented labor militancy. Membership in the CGT exploded from 600,000 in 1918 to over 2 million by 1920. Strikes swept across industries, with workers demanding not just economic improvements but fundamental social change. The railway strike of 1920, which paralyzed the country for weeks, saw workers create embryonic forms of self-management, running trains according to social need rather than profit.

The influence of the Russian Revolution cannot be overstated. For many French workers, the Bolsheviks had proved that workers could seize power and begin constructing socialism. Soviet delegates received heroes' welcomes at union congresses. The communist newspaper L'Humanité reached circulation levels that dwarfed the traditional press. Young workers studied Lenin and dreamed of becoming French Bolsheviks.

Yet the revolutionary moment failed to materialize. The 1920 general strike collapsed when railway workers, the movement's backbone, returned to work after the government threatened mass dismissals and military mobilization. The failure led to bitter recriminations and the historic split at the Tours Congress of 1920, where the majority of socialists voted to join the Communist International, creating the French Communist Party (PCF).

This division between communists and socialists, replicated in the union movement with the CGT splitting into communist and reformist wings, would define French labor politics for the rest of the century. What had been tactical disagreements became fundamental ideological chasms, weakening the movement's capacity for unified action while enriching its intellectual diversity.