The turn of the 20th century was a pivotal moment for workers' education in France. The People's Universities, the first of which was established in 1899, founded a genuine movement across the entire country. Anarchists found a new platform for their activism, and some became deeply involved. Though short-lived, this adventure remains rich in lessons for activists today. ---- On October 9, 1899, La Coopération des Idées (The Cooperation of Ideas), the first of the People's Universities (UP), was inaugurated in Paris. It promised to be a place of moral elevation and emancipation through knowledge. In practical terms, lectures, or rather talks, were given there; but the building also included a performance hall, an exhibition space, a library, and a games room. In short, it is a place to live, a true "center of social action"[1]aimed at largely meeting the moral needs of the worker.
A major movement
The Cooperation of Ideas is just one pioneer, and others soon follow. Throughout France, UPs (Union Populaires - Popular Universities) are founded, so that by 1901, 124 universities dot the landscape (230 were created in total between 1899 and 1914), with an estimated 50,000 members: only half the number of the CGT (Confédération Générale du Travail - General Confederation of Labour) at the time! Important political, literary, and scholarly figures participate. The growth is therefore meteoric. How can this be explained?
It is the result of a particular era. Decades of socialism have shown the working class that its emancipation could only be achieved through essential educational work. But while the Third Republic established public education, it also fulfilled a broken promise: limited to primary school, it was deemed insufficient, even oppressive, given the crudely inculcated governmental dogmas instilled in children. Efforts were then made to fill this gap through the education of working men and women: labor exchanges, vocational courses, and study groups. The intellectual bourgeoisie also founded various "post-school" initiatives: evening classes, youth clubs, and educational societies; but these initiatives, still too closely resembling charity, met with understandable resistance.
"Song for All, at the People's University." A popular singing course created in 1912: one of the many initiatives taking place at the People's University.
Historical Library of Paris
The aim, therefore, was to educate or to be educated, but the means were still lacking. An event would act as a catalyst: the Dreyfus Affair. This unjust condemnation of a Jewish officer, which led to the establishment of a veritable state conspiracy, was exposed by the press to the entire nation. With this demonstration of the failure of the elites in power, it became clear that an urgent undertaking of social renewal was necessary. Endorsed by a large number of intellectuals, the Popular Unity (UP) arrived at the right moment; it was the idea that "responded to the needs of an era and a society"[2].
Deherme and Montreuil
A major movement thus took root in France. Behind it was a man entirely dedicated to its development: Georges Deherme. A former anarchist, he founded La Coopération des idées (The Cooperation of Ideas). Full of ambition, he envisioned it as a blueprint for the future society, the incubator of a "powerful proletarian elite" focused on social action and capable of reforming society. He also wanted to see social barriers dismantled there, fostering closer ties between classes[3].
These ideas were not entirely foreign to the activist's background. A pioneer of French anarchist individualism, Deherme was, in fact, one of the very first to defend, as early as 1886, the primacy of the individual over the collective, and above all to theorize his rejection of everything he considered "communist and revolutionary daydreams." This helps us better understand his abandonment of the class struggle and the emphasis he placed on individual effort within the Popular Unity (UP), deemed "superior to everything else"[4].
Free Love, a one-act social play by Véra Starkoff. The play, written by a libertarian sympathizer and dedicated to the Workers' Evenings of Montreuil, takes place in a Popular Unity gathering. Céline Renooz Collection, Marie-Louise Bouglé Library
However, it was with a mutual learning group founded by an anarchist communist that Deherme first put his ideas on education to the test. Émile Méreaux[5], an activist he had known for 15 years, had launched Study Evenings after work in Montreuil in November 1895: a few companions bought books together and met at a wine merchant's to discuss what they had understood from them. In February 1898, Deherme brought them intellectual speakers, and the venture took off: the concept of the UP (Unité Populaire - Popular Unity) was born. The Montreuil group would become the Soirées Ouvrières (Workers' Evenings), a UP of libertarian origin with a predominantly working-class focus, and one of the most enduring in the movement.
The Anarchists' Commitment
From 1899 onward, the main anarchist newspapers devoted space in their columns to announcing the UP conferences. Many activists became involved. Of a collection of approximately 33,000 recorded conferences[6], at least 2,300 were given by militant libertarians or sympathizers. Well-known names in anarchism were very active in the UP: Paraf-Javal, Emile Armand, Dubois-Desaulle, and many others gave hundreds of lectures there; Madeleine Pelletier, Louise Réville, Véra Starkoff, and Nelly Roussel engaged in extensive feminist propaganda there; Francis Delaisi participated in the founding of the Popular Universities (UP) in Rennes; Louis Grandidier was secretary of the Maison du Peuple (People's House) in Saint-Denis; Ernest Girault published the "Petite Bibliothèque des Universités Populaires" (Little Library of Popular Universities), a series of pamphlets...
Location of the Popular Talks in Paris.
Lesobscurs.com
Others, less well-known, were very active speakers and deserve to be studied: Leprince, Albert Bloch, Albert Laisant, Aristide Pratelle, etc. This anarchist presence within the movement is no secret and exerts an influence on certain intellectuals: such is the case, for example, of the writer Daniel Halévy, a keen observer of the workers' movement, in whose writings Popular Universities and libertarianism regularly resurface.
Anarchists were also behind certain Popular Universities (UPs): Calais, Grenoble, Roanne, Montreuil, Saint-Denis, Idée libre du XXe siècle (Free Idea of the 20th Century); they appeared as the most frequent speakers in others: Asnières, Nanterre, Puteaux, Argenteuil, Voltaire du XIe (Voltaire of the 11th Century), Aube sociale du XVIIe siècle (Social Dawn of the 17th Century). But they did not only fuel the movement: they extended it and reshaped it in their own image. The teaching, deemed too formal, led the anarchists Libertad and Paraf-Javal to found, in October 1902, more informal "Popular Talks," where "the formalism of teaching would be replaced by frank camaraderie"[7]. "Libertarian Libraries" were also founded as early as 1896, and their development accelerated from 1899 onward; Their more political objective was "libertarian education preparing for the libertarian revolution"[8]. These two parallel currents within the Popular Unity (UP) emerged throughout France. The movement would experience a decline as rapid as its rise.
What was the militant outcome?
By 1904, there was already talk of a "crisis within the Popular Unity." In fact, it was a fad fading: the Dreyfus Affair was over, and the young ambitions had faded. Workers rarely had the energy to attend lectures after a hard day's work. Furthermore, the gamble of reaching an understanding between workers and the bourgeoisie rarely worked; and when the latter withdrew, financial support often disappeared as well, causing the bankruptcy of many Popular Unity groups. Nevertheless, the movement was not dead: it had simply been whittled down.
Graph showing the number of interventions by anarchists within the Popular Unity groups.
Elie Oriol
The viewpoint of certain activists allows us to draw some lessons. For some, "the influence of the Popular Unity (PU) on anarchists was disastrous"[9]: as places for the dissemination of bourgeois individualism, they diverted workers from the struggle and risked "neutralizing the revolutionary movement for a long time"[10]. This goal of social pacification, explicit in Deherme's work, was also clearly formulated in the inaugural speech of La Coopération des idées by the academic Gabriel Séailles: "We don't need an hour of impetuosity, we need centuries of energy"[11].
Yet, if it took a Fernand Pelloutier to make the labor exchanges a true organ of struggle, a Pouget and a Griffuelhes to equip the CGT with a revolutionary project, couldn't a sincere effort make the PU a powerful tool in the hands of the proletariat? Could it not be "the intellectual equivalent of the trade union in the economic sphere"[12]? Some anarchists believe so, provided that the leadership of the Popular Unity (PU) returns to the hands of the workers, who themselves freely establish a curriculum in line with their interests, "attacking the very causes of intellectual oppression"[13].
October and November 1900 program of the Libertarian Education Library, rue Titon, Paris.
International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam
This dynamic already existed in some universities, and the "crisis of the UP" may have accelerated it in others. However, were these places able to foster working-class emancipation, or did they merely contribute to forging an elite, separated from the masses by a "culture" that had become a "diabolically corrupting privilege"[14]? In the conclusion of a fine short story by Daniel Halévy, an old libertarian takes stock of a now-fading UP in which he had once believed: "We did too much literature at the Foyer...[...]We should have always been talking about work, about action..."[15].
If the anarchist idea was indeed propagated in the UP, perhaps a bit of the spirit of revolt was lost along the way, perhaps not enough effort was made to make it a space for preparing social transformation. Should we have therefore overlooked a movement where it seemed possible to instill the ideas of justice and freedom among the masses? On these still-relevant activist questions, the history of the Popular Universities offers us a new example to consider.
Elie Oriol, Museum of Living History, Montreuil
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[1]Georges Deherme, *The Cooperation of Ideas: An Attempt at Popular Education and Organization*, Union for Moral Action, 1901.
[2]Gabriel Séailles, quoted in Lucien Mercier, *Popular Universities: 1899-1914. Popular Education and the Labor Movement at the Beginning of the Century*, Les Éditions Ouvrières, 1986.
[3]Georges Deherme, ibid.
[4]Georges Deherme, ibid.
[5]Elie Oriol, "One Hundred and Thirty Years Ago: The Anarchist Commune of Montreuil," Alternative libertaire no. 348, April 2024.
[6]Lucien Mercier, "People's Universities in Everyday Life (1899-1939). Activities," Georgesdeherme.fr.
[7]Gaetano Manfredonia, "Libertad and the Popular Talks Movement," La Question sociale, no. 8, 1998.
[8]Le Libertaire, August 27, 1899.
[9]Karacol, "The Bear's Skin," L'Anarchie, July 8, 1909.
[10]Paul Delesalle, "Explanations," Le Libertaire, April 29, 1900.
[11]Gabriel Séailles, "Education and Revolution," La Coopération des idées, 1899.
[12]André Girard, "On the Social Role of Popular Universities II," Les Temps Nouveaux, June 17, 1905.
[13]André Girard, "On the Social Role of Popular Universities III," Les Temps Nouveaux, July 1 1905.
[14]Marcel Martinet, Proletarian Culture, Librairie du Travail, 1935.
[15]Daniel Halévy, "An Episode," Cahiers de la Quinzaine, July 1, 1907.
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Education-ouvriere-Le-mouvement-des-Universites-populaires-et-les-anarchistes
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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