Leon Blum's political journey: from Dreyfus sympathy to a unity prime minister in France
After the defeat of the Hungarian and Bavarian revolutions in 1919, European socialists diverged from Soviet ones. Before the establishment of the "socialist camp" in Eastern Europe, the percentage of socialists among European Jews was small, but the percentage of Jews among socialists far exceeded their percentage in the population of their countries. The hero of the article, Léon Blum, three times Prime Minister of France, was a Western-style socialist. In 1901, Blum wrote: “The collective impulse of the Jews leads to revolution; their criticality (I use the word in its highest sense) tends to deny every idea, every traditional form that does not correspond to the facts or cannot be justified by reason. The Jews during their long and happy history have been strengthened by the hope of “imminent justice,” they have been convinced that one day the world will be governed by reason; one law will be established for all, so that each will receive what he deserves. Is this not the spirit of socialism? It is the original spirit of this race.” Blum considered the Jews “natural socialists” and believed that their destiny was to lead humanity to the triumph of socialism. In 1902, he joined the Socialist Party of France and became a friend of the party leader, Jean Jaurès.
Famous socialists are often born into capitalist families.
Famous socialists are often born into capitalist families. Leon Blum was born in Paris on April 9, 1872, to a wealthy Alsatian Jewish silk manufacturer. At the age of four, he was placed in a private school, and in 1882 Blum began studying at the magnificent Lycée de Charlemagne for the wealthy. He was a representative of the "Golden Youth", belonging to the elite who were embarrassed by their wealth and concerned about the plight of the common people. After receiving an education at the École Normale Supérieure, he began studying law at the Sorbonne and graduated with honors in 1894. Until 1919, Blum worked as a lawyer, while at the same time engaging in literary activity. Among his writings are The new conversations between Goethe and Ackermann (1901); About marriage (1907) Stendhal and Beilism (1914). He became an expert on the work of Stendhal (Henri Bayle). Leon Blum, a young lawyer and public servant, believed that the state should apply the principles of the Great French Revolution of "liberty, equality, and fraternity" to the case of Captain Dreyfus, his compatriot and fellow-citizen, born in Alsace. Recalling his state of mind during the Dreyfus affair, Blum wrote: "I do not think I have ever experienced a greater shock in my entire life."
After the Dreyfus Affair, one Jew remained an uncompromising patriot of France and a loyal servant of its army. He was the Alsatian Jew, the demoted captain in the French army, Alfred Dreyfus, who was unjustly convicted, guilty of nothing but his love for the French homeland. Dreyfus was imprisoned for many years. He was the most famous Jewish defendant in history after Jesus. Dreyfus was vilified like no other of his countrymen. After his exoneration, Dreyfus was promoted to the rank of major of artillery. Fighting bravely on the fronts of World War I, Lieutenant Colonel Dreyfus was the greatest patriot of France and its army, who humiliated, defamed and destroyed his military career, family life and health. It was the army that launched the false campaign against Dreyfus that became the most significant anti-Semitic action in Europe between the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, the rebellions of the traitor Bogdan Khmelnytsky and the world wars.
After the arrest of Alfred Dreyfus on October 15, 1894, Blum's life changed. He was not yet a socialist, had not yet come to the conclusion that Jews were "natural socialists." At the time, the prevailing opinion in France was: Jews were "natural traitors to the fatherland."
After the rehabilitation of Dreyfus, Jewish disappointment with the case was immense. The emancipation brought about by the Great French Revolution proved unreliable. France was divided into two camps, Dreyfusarians and anti-Dreyfusarians, supporters and opponents of Dreyfus. Reflecting on the Dreyfus affair, on the aggression of the anti-Dreyfusarians, Blum asked in bewilderment: "What made them do this? What motivated them? Even today, 35 years later, when I reflect on the past with mature and cold rationality, it seems to me that I still do not have some of the ingredients for the answer to this question." Strangely, Blum does not find an answer to his question. The anti-Dreyfusarians were motivated by anti-Semitism. He writes: "For two years, from the summer of 1897 to the summer of 1899, in those 'two painful years of the struggle for the freedom of one man convicted of false charges, all other life in the country seemed to stand still. It seemed that in those two years of moral confusion, of a real moral civil war […], everyone was occupied with only one problem: personal feelings and interpersonal relationships. Everything was tense, upside down, and scattered. […] The Dreyfus affair became an interpersonal conflict, smaller, but longer-lasting and no less miserable than the Great French Revolution."
In 1935, Bloom wrote Memories of the Dreyfus Affair. He left evidence of the attitude of French Jews towards the accusation of Dreyfus's treason: "The Jews accepted the accusation of Dreyfus as final and just. They did not discuss the case among themselves: they did not raise the question, but fled from it. A great disaster had befallen the Jews. They accepted it without saying a word and expected that time and silence would moderate the impact of events. […] The general feeling can be expressed in the formula: "This is something in which the Jews should not interfere." […] They showed patriotism, touching patriotism, respect for the army, confidence in its leadership. […] It was a selfish and insecure caution, which could be described in even harsher words. The Jews did not want to believe that they had to defend Dreyfus because he was a Jew. They did not want to be attributed positions based on race or solidarity. Above all, they did not want to defend another Jew, so as not to provide fuel for the anti-Semitic passions that were raging."
Herzl and Bloom's Different Conclusions from the Dreyfus Affair
Herzl learned a national lesson from the Dreyfus affair: accusing an entire people on the basis of the actions of one Jew necessitates the establishment of a Jewish state. Blum's conclusion in 1935 was that, despite his understanding of the anti-Jewish nature of the plot, the central point of the Dreyfus case, in his view, was that an innocent man had been unjustly convicted: "The poor man must be set free, the truth must prevail." Blum supported Jaurès's statement: "Socialism is the supreme declaration of individual human rights." Jaurès's support for Dreyfus, which distinguished him from his left-wing associates, made the Socialist Party attractive to Léon. Blum's focus was the injustice done to the unjustly convicted individual; Herzl's focus was that the injustice was done to the unjustly convicted nation. Blum was the lawyer defending the innocent convicted, the socialist defender of the oppressed in France, Herzl was the liberator of the Jews from cases like the Dreyfus affair.
Blum was a socialist-patriot of the highest order. In 1900 he wrote: "There is no one among serious socialists who doubts that Marx's metaphysics is mediocre and that his economic doctrine is being proven wrong every day." Blum rejected Marx's dismissive attitude towards nations and homeland. Three years after the October Revolution was completed in Russia, Blum sharply attacked the "Muscovite system of terror," […] "They use mass terror not as a last resort, not as a means of protecting public safety, but as the main instrument of power."
A doctor of law from the Sorbonne and an ardent supporter of the ideals of the Great French Revolution, Blum decided to leave literary writing and law and embark on a journey to transform France for the triumph of "liberty, equality, and fraternity." The death of Jaurès in 1914 and disappointment with the policies of the then Prime Minister of France, Clemenceau, prompted Blum to embark on the path of political struggle. In 1919, he became head of the executive committee of the French Socialist Party and a member of the Chamber of Deputies. He opposed the Socialist Party's accession to the Communist International, was elected party leader, and led the socialist faction in parliament.
In 1936, Blum formed a coalition of socialists, communists, and radicals, The Popular Front. It won a landslide victory in the 1936 elections, and Blom became prime minister. The historian and journalist, member of the French resistance against the Nazis Genevieve Thavois, describes the elected prime minister as follows: "Léon Blom created a sensation. None of the ministers and representatives present imagined that the current leader of the largest political party of the French workers would be so different from Jean Jaurès! Instead of being the speaker who excites the masses, the prime minister The Popular Front "He appeared as an elegant man with an intelligent face, a soft voice, and restrained passions, who commands special respect for his flexible and curious mind and brilliant culture." Blum was Prime Minister of France from 1936 to 1938. A few weeks before he took office as Prime Minister of France in 1936, Blum was attacked by right-wingers. The attackers dragged him from his car and beat him until he bled. He later wrote, "Now I understand what lynching is." Blum's rise in the 30s was a remarkable phenomenon, an anomaly rather than the norm, ̶ France had a strong tradition of anti-Dreyfusarians.
In 1936, the nationalist Charles Moras, a member of the French National Academy, who had been stripped of his title for supporting Marshal Pétain, called Blum's rise to power a victory for the "Jewish gang." The Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev, who lived in France, wrote: "Anti-Semitism is growing even in France, the country most full of humanitarian ideas, where anti-Semitism was defeated after the Dreyfus affair. There is a growing number of French people who cannot accept the fact that Leon Blum is a Jew, although he is one of the most sincere, ideological and cultured political figures." Blum opposed the 1938 Munich Agreement on the partition of Czechoslovakia. Blum's government fell in 1938 partly because of strong opposition from industrialists and capitalists and because of lukewarm support from communists who condemned Blum's policy of non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War. Blum feared that involvement in the Spanish Civil War could lead to a civil war in France itself. In December 1938, at a Socialist Party conference, he called for strengthening his country's defense capabilities. Almost no one supported him - most politicians opposed increasing the defense budget, seeing it as an aggressive foreign policy. The broad-minded politics of former Prime Minister Leon Blum proved to be correct when it was too late - the Nazis invaded France.
On October 3, 1940, the Vichy government issued the infamous anti-Jewish edict. This monstrous edict did not arouse much opposition in the country. There was little reaction to segregation, apartheid in France. Nobel Prize winner for literature, André Gide, the "defender of justice" and "ruler of thought," remained silent. He did not follow the example of his famous colleague and colleague Émile Zola. The anti-Dreyfussarians defeated the Dreyfussarians 35 years after their defeat in the Trial of the Century.
On March 29, 1941, the Vichy government established a General Secretariat for Jewish Affairs. On June 2, 1941, the French authorities decided to deport Jews who did not have French citizenship to transit camps, from where they were transferred to Nazi death camps. The slogans "Death to the Jews!" heard during the dismissal of Captain Dreyfus 45 years ago became a guide to action for French collaborators with the Nazis. There were no more Dreyfusarians in France.
When the Nazis occupied France in 1940, Blum, a Jew and a socialist, refused to leave the Republic. When the National Assembly met in Vichy, he was one of the 80 delegates who voted against granting dictatorial powers to Peten. Blum had been held in custody since September 1940. The Vichy government branded him a war criminal and put him on trial. During his testimony before the tribunal, Blum said: "I do not think that the Jews can be erased from the history and public life of France. We have been partners in and have resolutely defended the democratic and republican ideals of our country since the Revolution of 1789. We French Jews will not give up our heritage." In April 1943, the former prime minister was sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp, where he was held for two years. In May 1945, he was liberated by American forces. His brother René died in Auschwitz. Blum was Prime Minister of the Provisional Republic from December 1946 to January 1947.
Blum's view that Jews were "natural socialists" contradicted the prevailing, "natural" and popular view that they were "natural capitalists". Right-wing anti-Semites saw Blum as a symbol of Jewish radicalism, while many on the left criticized him as a secret agent of the Jewish bourgeoisie. A third of the Parisian bourgeoisie were Jewish, and it was a popular belief on the left at the time that Jews controlled government finances. Blum was also unpopular with the French aristocracy. He saw himself as a natural democrat, but was perceived as a natural dictator.
After World War II, Blum became a target of criticism from left-wing and right-wing anti-Semites in a country that had recently surrendered its Jews and Jewish immigrants to the Nazis. The right accused him of "abandoning the lofty ideals that demanded self-sacrifice" and of seeming to aspire to turn the country into a "society of insurance companies." The left (mainly the communists) accused him of his inconsistent commitment to socialist ideals. His political opponents on the left, especially the communists, considered him a deserter. Maurice Thorez, the general secretary of the French Communist Party, called him a "cunning politician," a "slander artist," and a "traitor" who had buried the great cause of The Popular Front To please his “capitalist friends.” For the right, Blum was a hated figure as a Jew and a socialist.
Bloom occasionally engaged in literary writing. André Gide, the Nobel Prize laureate in Literature, had been a friend of Bloom since his youth, visited him at his home, and helped him in his literary endeavors by editing his works. In early 1940, André Gide published a diary, which he kept for 40 years. It turned out that the high priest of French literature was not only a personal enemy of Bloom, but also an ardent anti-Semite. The famous writer, the "master of thoughts" of the French "progressive" left, wrote that "foreigners" in France (meaning Jewish writers) were not allowed to be called French writers. He included Bloom in the list of "foreigners", although all of Leon's works were written only in French. …
The “natural socialist” Leon Blum “naturally” stirred up anti-Semitism on both the right and the left. He and other French Jewish leaders downplayed French anti-Semitism on both the right and the left, but in 1947, thanks to Blum’s efforts, France voted at the United Nations to partition Palestine and establish the State of Israel.
Leon Blum died on March 30, 1950. His biographer Pierre Birnbaum described Blum as a "state Jew" who benefited from the universal and egalitarian values of the post-revolutionary French state [...] to achieve emancipation through his public service.
Birnbaum described Blum's political worldview as "universal," as the latter saw no difference between "Jewish" problems and universal problems. Blum was the head of the French Zionist Organization. He saw no contradiction in this, and in a speech he gave in 1929 he told his audience: "I am a Zionist because I am French, Jewish, and a supporter of socialism, because the present Jewish Palestine is an unprecedented and unique combination of the oldest human traditions with the most daring and up-to-date search for freedom and social justice." Unlike Dreyfus, Blum was aware that he was Jewish, did not hide his nationality, did not renounce his people. Blum was aware of the famous prisoner's alienation from the Jewish people, and commented with ironic criticism: "If Dreyfus had not been Dreyfus, he might not have been a Dreyfusser."
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The same thing can be done in capitalism.
Leftists will never live in the countries they destroyed with their corrupt socialism and will always live in rich capitalist countries. Socialism is a system of a few rich people who steal from the poor masses through taxes. Like the judges who earn pensions of hundreds of thousands and own hundreds of apartments and promote only their children and their well-being to continue stealing from the ignorant masses. Most capitalists at least earned their money from hard work compared to the corrupt leftists who stole it from the state's public funds.