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A Socialist History of the French Revolution

A Socialist History of the French Revolution

Current price: $26.95
Publication Date: July 20th, 2022
Publisher:
Pluto Press
ISBN:
9780745342191
Pages:
288

Description

One of the most influential accounts of the French Revolution ever published, now available for the first time in paperback.

Jean Jaurès was the celebrated French Socialist Party leader, assassinated in 1914 for trying to use diplomacy and industrial action to prevent the outbreak of war. Published just a few years before his death, his magisterial A Socialist History of the French Revolution has endured for over a century.

Written in the midst of his activities as leader of the Socialist Party and editor of its newspaper, L'Humanite, Jaurès intended the book to serve as both a guide and an inspiration to political activity; even now it can serve to do just that.

Jaurès's verve, originality, and willingness to criticize all players in this epic drama make this a truly moving addition to the shelf of great books on the French Revolution. Mitchell Abidor's abridged translation of Jaurès's original six volumes makes this exceptional work truly accessible to an Anglophone audience.

About the Author

Jean Jaurès (1859–1914) was the leader of the French Socialist Party, which opposed Jules Guesde’s revolutionary Socialist Party of France. An antimilitarist, Jaurès was assassinated at the outbreak of WWI.

Mitchell Abidor’s books include anthologies of the anarchist writings of Victor Serge, on the propagandists of the deed, the Paris Commune, the left of the French Revolution, and French anarchist individualists.

Mitchell Abidor’s books include anthologies of the anarchist writings of Victor Serge, on the propagandists of the deed, the Paris Commune, the left of the French Revolution, and French anarchist individualists.

Praise for A Socialist History of the French Revolution

'Tantalizing prose... The lively sense of being 'inside' the Assembly or the meetings of the Paris City Council leaps from the page'
'Times Literary Supplement'

'The death of a single human being can mean a great battle lost for all humanity: the murder of Jaurès was one such disaster'
Romain Rolland

'We can say today that every revolutionary party, every oppressed people, every oppressed working class can claim Jaures, his memory, his example, and his person, for our own'
Leon Trotsky

'Jaurès' brilliant analysis is as refreshing and controversial today as it was over a century ago. It resonates with the passion and eloquence of this great political leader while at the same time sustaining a rigourous Marxist analysis of the social and economic forces behind the Revolution. Its appearance in this edition is to be warmly welcomed'
Peter McPhee, Emeritus Professor, University of Melbourne

“Every revolutionary party, every oppressed people, every oppressed working class can claim Jaurès, his memory, his example, and his person, for our own.”
— Leon Trotsky

“Jaurès' brilliant analysis is as refreshing and controversial today as it was over a century ago. It resonates with the passion and eloquence of this great political leader while at the same time sustaining a rigorous Marxist analysis of the social and economic forces behind the Revolution. Its appearance in this edition is to be warmly welcomed.”

— Peter McPhee, University of Melbourne

“Jaurès’ Socialist History is a classic of historical writing which laid the foundations for so many later accounts of the French Revolution. Jaurès vividly depicts the drama of the Revolution, the triumphs and the setbacks, the bloodshed and the hope, but always with an eye to the future, to how the Revolution opened the way to human emancipation.”

— Ian Birchall, historian and author of The Spectre of Babeuf

“Jaurès was also a historian keenly interested in the French Revolution; his several volumes devoted to it offer a powerful, class-based history, here abridged skillfully in an eminently readable translation. This work, like Jaurès's life, is powerful and important.  It remains a major contribution to what became a compelling, essentially Marxist, interpretation of the Revolution that continues to be persuasive to many historians....Highly recommended.”

— CHOICE