French Workers' Party

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The Parti Ouvrier Français (POF, or French Workers' Party) was the first Marxist party in France, created in 1880 by Jules Guesde and Paul Lafargue, Marx's son-in-law (famous for having written The Right to Be Lazy, which criticized labour's alienation). A revolutionary party, it had as aim to abolish capitalism and replace it with a socialist society.

The Parti Ouvrier was created in 1882, after the split with Paul Brousse's possibilists, and became the POF in 1893. In 1902, it merged with others socialist parties to form the Parti socialiste de France, and finally merged in 1905 with Jean Jaurès' Parti socialiste français to form the SFIO (French Section of the Second International). Marcel Cachin, who would lead the split in 1920 which led to the creation of the French Communist Party and edited L'Humanité newspaper, became a member of the POF in 1891.

[edit] See also

• SFIO in which the party merged in 1905
• French Third Republic
• France in the nineteenth century
• Socialism and Marxism