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The Fasces Le Faisceau | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Leader | Georges Valois |
| Founder | Georges Valois |
| Founded | 11 November 1925 (1925-11-11) |
| Dissolved | 1928 |
| Preceded by | Cercle Proudhon |
| Succeeded by | Republican Syndicalist Party |
| Newspaper | Le Nouveau Siècle |
| Paramilitary Wing | Légions |
| Ideology | Fascism (French)[1] |
| Political position | Far-right |
Le Faisceau (French pronunciation:[ləfɛso], "The Fasces") was a short-livedFrenchfascistpolitical party. It was founded on 11 November 1925 as afar right league byGeorges Valois. It was preceded by its newspaper,Le Nouveau Siècle, which had been founded as a weekly on February 26 but became a daily after the party's creation.
Contributors toLe Nouveau Siècle originally included Valois,Jacques Arthuys,Philippe Barrès,Hubert Bourgin, Eugène Mathon,Henri Massis andXavier Vallat. After the foundation of the party it was the object of bitter attacks from theAction Française, who considered it a potential rival, and most well-known names were intimidated. Arthuys, Barrès and Mathon were among those who remained.
TheFaisceau had borrowed its name from theItalianFasci and theNational Fascist Party (PNF), and also adopted theirparamilitary style - withuniforms, staged ceremonies andparades; it also expressed admiration forBenito Mussolini. Even extensive investigations by the French police failed to reveal any links, official or unofficial with the PNF and Italy. Many of its ideas were ones already established in the Frenchfar right milieu, deriving mostly from the work ofMaurice Barrès. Valois claimed that Barrès'Le Cocarde had been the first Fascist newspaper.
They included a"national" state (i.e. for the benefit of allsocial classes, rather than the existing "bourgeois" state or theMarxistproletarian state) with a strong,authoritarian leader. Thus, its stated aims included acoup d'état and adictatorship, although it never took any concrete steps towards achieving these ends. Nor was it clear who the dictator was to be — Valois himself did not indicate a willingness to occupy the position, andMaxime Weygand may have been the preferred candidate of some members of theFaisceau.
TheFaisceau ran into serious problems almost as soon as it was founded. Valois — a formeranarcho-syndicalist who had converted toOrléanism and joined the Action Française (leaving the group after theWorld War I) — and theindustrialists who financed the party, such asEugène Mathon (the owner of a large textile firm) and the perfume manufacturerFrançois Coty all claimed to favourcorporatism as the basis for economic organisation. Nonetheless, it soon became clear that they had rather different ideas about what the term meant. For Valois, it arguably meant a form ofproducerism, with an economy to be run by the producers (everyone involved inmanufacturing goods), whereas Mathon interpreted it as an amendedlaissez-fairecapitalism, where businessmen like himself should be in charge, with no interference by the state.
These differences led to Mathon and Coty leaving shortly after the foundation of the party, placing it in a precarious financial situation, made worse by the commercial failure ofLe Nouveau Siècle following the Action Française's attacks.
Valois considered Fascism to be a revolt against "bourgeois rule", and as such it had much in common with Marxism — he described them as "brother enemies". TheFaisceau never questioned the existence ofprivate property, but Valois nonetheless felt thatsocialism was not his main enemy; he stated that fascism had "exactly the same object as socialism", even if he viewed the latter as flawed in its means of achieving that end.
The party tried to place itself above theleft-right division, but this particular outlook turned out to be a source of further problems. Most of its militants came from the right, particularly the far-right (this serves to explain the Action Française's hostility: many Action Française militants joinedFaisceau, being disillusioned with the lack of dynamism maintained byCharles Maurras, the group's acuteRoman Catholic andOrléanistconservatism, and its primary functioning as aliterary society). It worked hard to recruit people from the left, with some success: notably,Marcel Delagrange, formerFrench Communist Party (PCF) mayor ofPérigueux, and the anarcho-syndicalist (and futureVichy Régime minister)Hubert Lagardelle. One notable member wasMarcel Bucard, who would later found theMouvement Franciste and collaborate extensively with theNazi authorities during theGerman occupation of France.
These minor victories were never proportionate to the effort invested by theFaisceau, and the group failed to expand at the left's expense, while becoming the enemy of the right - unlike in Italy, the latter was strong and confident enough not to rely on Fascists against the left.
The Faisceau's aims were indeed radical, but its actions did not live up to them. The party did formparamilitary "Légions" — but they usually functioned as self-defence against attacks by the Action Française'sCamelots du Roi. They rarely clashed with police forces, and their only major engagement with the PCF was at the party's meeting inRheims on 27 June 1926. Those who had joined hoping forrevolutionary action began to leave, and, by the end of 1926, the party was losing militants fast - a decline was hastened by the formation of a right-wing government underRaymond Poincaré, and thestabilisation of the franc.
TheFaisceau ceased to exist in 1928. Valois himself, whose politics were becoming more left-wing, was excluded from the party, the remains of which founded theParti Fasciste Révolutionnaire.
