Party Factional Identity and Personalities

Abstract

Factionalism, in French Socialist politics, is endemic. There are many reasons for this, including the history of amalgamation of different parties into the Socialist Party (SFIO) itself and external pressures. In the post-war decades of the Cold War, the presence of the Communist Party and the Marxist heritage meant that the factions had an ideological outlook that distinguished them from each other. Often abstruse, but rarely underplayed, the ideological orientation gave the outsider a purchase on the positioning of the factions if they could find their way through the ideological thickets. Most of this discussion took place either in a Marxist framework or in relation to that ideology. Thus the Marxist vulgate became the essential reference point in these battles between internal groups, although power was at stake in addition to the simple ideological position.