GUESDE, ged, Jules Basile, French social ist: b. Paris, 11 Nov. 1845. For some time he was employed as translator, but he soon aban doned this field and threw himself into the fight of the Republicans against the empire. He collaborated with Herault in the latter's La Liberti, and subsequently established the Droits' de l'Homme at Montpellier. In July 1870 he was sentenced to six months in pnson because of his radical writings. In June 1871 he was again convicted because of his articles in favor of the Commune and sentenced to five years' imprisonment. He fled to Switzerland where he published his
With splendid oratorical powers M. Guesde has been an effective propagandist of collectiv ism throughout France, holding numerous re unions of Socialists and wage-earners in Rou baix, Rheims, Saint-Quentin, Montlucon, Nantes, Lyon, Bordeaux, Montpellier and other cities. In 1880, in collaboration with Karl Marx, Engels and Paul Lafargue he submit ted to the several labor unions and congresses an economic and political programme which was adopted by the Labor Party at the National Labor Congress at Havre. The Socialist group
was soon broken up into two parties, one strictly Marxian and refusing all compromise with a bourgeois government, led by Guesde, the other, which was willing to compromise on social legislation and other matters, known as the Possibilists. There was constant bickering between the two factions and when Millerand accepted a Cabinet post Guesde determined to have him expelled from the Socialist party. He succeeded in doing so at the Amsterdam So cialist Congress of 1904, the Congress affirming Guesde's stand that a Socialist may not partici in a bourgeois government. The Unified Socialist party was formed soon after and in 1914 elected 100 members to the Chambre. In 1893 Guesde was elected Deputy from Lille and was re-elected regularly thereafter. After the outbreak of the war in 1914 Guesde for the first time in his career dropped somewhat his uncompromising attitude toward the govern ment and denounced Germany as the arch-en emy of Europe, and scoring the Socialists of Germany as traitors to the cause of labor, So cialism and liberty. In Viviani's Cabinet M. Guesde served as minister without portfolio. Consult Hunter, Robert, 'Socialists at Work' (New York 1908) and Schapiro, J. S., 'The Drift in French Politics' (in American Polit ical Science Review, Baltimore, August 1913).