Tenth Congress of the French Workers’ Party

The Tenth Congress of the French Workers' Party (Parti Ouvrier Français), held September 24–28, 1892, in Marseille. It was attended by delegates from 718 organizations and trade unions in 107 cities.

Within the French Workers' Party, founded in 1879, there was a sharp ideological struggle from the outset, split between the Guesdists (also known as “the Marxists”) and the Possibilists.

In 1882, the two factions officially split, with the Guesdists, led by Jules Guesde and Paul Lafargue, retaining the name of the Workers' Party. The Guesdists relied on the working class in the industrial centers of France, a part of the proletariat in Paris (mainly in the big factories). The party achieved some success in propagating Marxist ideas to the French working class, in taking an active part in the trade union movement and in leading the workers' struggle for strikes, and did much to strengthen the international alliance of socialists and to expose the aggressive nature of the foreign policy of the French bourgeois republic, but the party leaders did not always carry out thoroughly Marxist policies.

This congress of the French Workers' Party discussed questions concerning work in the countryside, the state of the party and its activities, the celebration of May Day, participation in the International Workers’ Congress in Zurich (1893), and participation in parliamentary elections. The congress adopted an agrarian program for the French Workers' Party, not lacking in concrete demands in favor of the rural proletariat and small peasants, but also containing many contents that deviated from the socialist principles, such as the protection of peasant private property and the protection of exploitation by the rich peasants. The Congress also adopted a resolution not to attend the international conference of delegates on the eight-hour working day convened by the British trade unions, but to invite the British trade unions to the International Workers’ Congress in Zurich, demonstrating its leftist stance within the Second International.