Réformisme et historiographie révolutionnaire. Georges Renard et Eugène Fournière, historiens du XIXe siècle

Abstract

Georges Renard and Eugène Fournière, disciples of Benoit Malon, were concerned to find a way of bringing greater intellectual cohesion to the story of French socialism. As opponents of the Marxist current in France, they reflected on the way in which Saint-Simon, Proudhon, Fourier and other nineteenth-century precursors could be recuperated and made relevant once more in the very different context of the early twentieth century. Georges Renard in particular reflected deeply on the cause of social reform in 1848. From their historical writings, a deeper philosophical point emerged that gives real definition to the variety of associationist reformism that they espoused. Renard and Fournière believed that, without losing the optimism of the “socialist idealists” of the nineteenth century, contemporary socialism had to think afresh about time and the flow of social reform. The lesson of the nineteenth century was that socialism had to pay greater attention to the daily, pragmatic development of socialism, rather than being blinded by future promises of revolution.