In a report published last year by the progressive think tank Terra Nova, consultant Hakim El Karoui and economist Juba Ihaddaden offer an overview of the issue of immigration-linked to that of labor, which is only fitting-without, however, seeking to praise it or blame immigrants for all of the nation's woes[1]. While the authors attempt to distance themselves from the xenophobic obsessions of the far right, their approach-concerned with preserving productivity and addressing the declining birth rate-remains nonetheless supportive of the institutions that contribute to framing this issue as a problem, while also calling for a new immigration policy and the implementation of an integration policy. It must be noted that the primary stakeholders paradoxically remain relegated to the background of this reflection, which is compatible with the most ethereal reformism, which gives pride of place, particularly in its historical dimension, to the role of the State and employers.
However, no desirable and tangible prospect can be developed without taking into account the active force of immigrant workers in conjunction with the proletariat, rich in all its components, in the common struggle for emancipation. Indeed, the history of the French workers' and revolutionary movement, particularly that of the last century, is full of experiences that deserve revisiting, without claiming to be exhaustive here-since we will limit ourselves to the interwar period-nor seeking to rehabilitate, in retrospect, the failings of bureaucratic apparatuses or nationalist tendencies.
In this respect, 1923 is often presented by specialists as a pivotal year, insofar as the General Confederation of Unitary Labor (CGTU) - a split from the CGT, which followed the Tours Congress during which the French Section of the Communist International (SFIC) was founded - created a Bureau for Foreign Labor (MOE) whose prerogatives were thus specified in a circular faithful to a certain tradition:
"Its mission is to gather all the elements of documentation and information on the emigration of foreigners, the establishment of intelligence and statistics enabling, through international liaison, the consideration of ways to mitigate the exploitation of foreign labor whose employment is favored by the government and large employers' associations with the complicity of professional and reformist organizations with the aim of competing with national labor on the labor market and of thwarting workers' demands by the creation of a reserve army." [2]
Within the CGTU, the secretariat of the MOE (Military Organization of the Workers' Movement) noted an initial difficulty in propaganda due to linguistic reasons. To this end, union members prepared documentation in Italian, Polish, and Spanish. However, this proactive approach was met with indifference from most federations, which were reluctant, for example, to return a questionnaire designed to provide an account of the realities on the ground [3]. The historian Ralph Schor emphasizes, in this context, "the absence, at all levels, of any reflection on the phenomenon of immigration" [4], both within the Communist Party (PC) and within what was becoming its union appendage, the CGTU. Yet, the following year, the PC congress advocated the political organization of immigrant proletarians "into foreign-language groups" [5]. But these "working groups," deprived of any autonomy, had to follow the direction set by the leadership of the French party [6]. Within the framework of "Bolshevization," this translated, for the largest language group-comprising Italian workers, by far the largest immigrant group-into the persecution of "deviant" elements, particularly Bordigists, leading to a sharp decline in its membership, from 6,000 in 1925 to 2,000 three years later [7]. The French Communist Party then faced several obstacles, such as the influence of organizations in their countries of origin, like the Italian proletarians established in France who remained loyal to the Partito Comunista d'Italia and refused to join the MOE [8].
In 1926, in a thesis adopted by its Central Committee, the Communist Party acknowledged other obstacles, beginning with "the opposing associations and figures operating within immigrant communities to hinder the influence of class organizations," but also the xenophobia prevalent within the French proletariat, "skillfully fueled by the bourgeois press" [9]. The slogans adopted formulated basic principles: "For the union of French and immigrant workers! For the absolute equality of immigrant and French workers!"
Drawing of the future Ho Chi Minh in The Pariah (1922)
Another group of workers saw its numbers grow in metropolitan France following the First World War: colonial workers, who were not considered strictly speaking "foreigners" but rather subjects to whom specific legal rules applied. Founded in 1921 with the support of the Communist Party, the Inter-Colonial Union (UIC) was the first significant group led by non-European immigrants, among whom was Nguyên Ái Quôc - the future Ho Chí Minh. This organization, whose influence was disproportionate to its militant base - according to historian Charles-Robert Ageron, it went from 200 members in its founding year to 150 in 1925 [10]- began publishing a newspaper in 1922, Le Paria , which presented itself as the "voice of the colonial proletariat." Its last issue, dated April 1926, published an article responding to racist campaigns seeking to delegitimize the presence of this workforce:
"Faced with the stick of colonialism, and the ferocious exploitation of the colonists, who made your stay in your country impossible, and forced you, indeed, to emigrate to other, more clement climes; you came to France to work in the very factories of those who ruined you, small artisans, stripped you of your means of production. Is your presence in France not, therefore, legitimized?" [11]
Despite the horrors of Bolshevization, it was from this very matrix that the North African Star (ENA) emerged in 1926, following the first congress of North African workers organized on December 7, 1924, in Paris by the Communist Party - and whose historical significance is emphasized by Abdelaziz Menouer, alias El Djazaïri [12]. However, the first leaders of the ENA, beginning with its president Chedly Khairallah, were keen to distinguish themselves from the communists in order to better position themselves within the framework of "revolutionary nationalism" [13]. The French Section of the Communist International (SFIC), for its part, maintained a form of "critical support" for an ENA on the path to autonomy, upholding the principle of "the right of peoples to self-determination," without, however, endorsing certain illusions [14].
Finally, among the countless initiatives undertaken at that time by workers from elsewhere-initiatives that undeniably contributed to changing the face of the French proletariat-we should mention the creation, in 1922 in Paris, of the Kulturlige [15], an offshoot of an eponymous organization founded four years earlier in Kyiv. Its purpose was to disseminate Yiddish culture from a working-class and secular perspective through language courses, artistic events, a people's university, and so on. The Paris branch was run by Jewish activists from Eastern Europe close to the Bund, as well as by Zionist-socialists from Poale Zion and by communists. The latter eventually took control of this institution in 1925, which led to the creation, four years later, of a new institution: the Arbeter-klub oyfn nomen Vladimir Medem, in homage to the Bund's principal theorist [16].
Nedjib SIDI MOUSSA
Notes
[1] "Immigrant workers: with or without them?", tnova.fr, May 12, 2025.
[2] Édouard Dudilieux, "Circular No. 69", La Vie syndicale , No. 6, May-June 1923.
[3] The Secretariat of the MOE, "Report of the Bureau of Foreign Labor", La Vie syndicale , no. 7, July 1923.
[4] Ralph Schor, French opinion and foreigners. 1919-1939 , Paris, Publications de la Sorbonne, 1985.
[5] "Communist work among foreign language workers", in Communist Party, 3rd National Congress held in Lyon on January 20, 21, 22, 23, 1924. Addresses & resolutions , Paris, Librairie de l'Humanité, 1924.
[6] "General statute determining the relations between foreign-language Communists residing in France and the French Communist Party", Bulletin Communiste , no. 33, August 15, 1924.
[7] Bruno Groppo "Italian Communists and the French Labour Movement in the Interwar Period", in Jacques Girault (ed.), Communists in France (1920s-1960s) , Paris, Publications de la Sorbonne, 2002.
[8] Dimitri Manessis and Jean Vigreux, With all your foreign brothers . From the MOE to the FTP-MOI, Montreuil, Libertalia, 2024.
[9] "Thesis on immigration", Cahiers du bolchévisme, special issue, May 22, 1926.
[10] Charles-Robert Ageron, Genesis of Algerian Algeria , Paris, Bouchène editions, 2005
[11] Yahia Saidoun, "Not a minute to lose. Let us unite", Le Paria , no. 38, April 1926.
[12] Abdelaziz Menouer, "A historic congress: The congress of North African workers", Le Paria , no. 31, November-December 1924.
[13] Chedly Khairallah, "Our sole objective: national independence. Supreme hope and supreme salvation", L'Ikdam nord-africain , no. 3, August-September 1927.
[14] "The Algerians want their independence", Al-Raïat Al-Hamra , no. 2, March 1927.
[15] Nick Underwood, Yiddish Paris. Staging Nation and Community in Interwar France , Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2022.
[16] Gilles Rozier, "Eighty Years Serving Yiddish Culture," Judaica Librarianship , Vol. 15, 2009.
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