French Section of The Workers' International

The French Section of the Workers' International (French: Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière, SFIO), founded in 1905, was a French socialist political party, designed as the local section of the Second International (i.e. the Workers' International). As a result of conflicting views towards the October 1917 Russian Revolution and the Bolshevik-led Third International, the SFIO split (during the 1920 Tours Congress) into two groups, the majority creating the Section française de l'Internationale communiste (SFIC), which became the French Communist Party (PCF) and joined the Third International while the minority continued as the SFIO.

Following the first unification of the French socialist movements in 1901, the French Socialist Party and the Socialist Party of France united during the 1905 Globe Congress in Paris, which followed the 1904 Amsterdam Congress of the Second International. The 1905 Globe Congress thus united the Marxist tendency represented by Jules Guesde with the social-democratic tendency represented by Jean Jaurès. The "party of the workers' movement" was born, and continued existing until 1969, when it was replaced by the current Socialist Party (PS). The SFIO was led by Jules Guesde, Jean Jaurès - who quickly became its most influential figure, Édouard Vaillant and Paul Lafargue. It opposed itself to colonialism and to militarism, although following Jean Jaurès' assassination on 31 July 1914, four days before Germany's declaration of war on France, it abandoned its anti-militarist views and, like the whole the Second International, replaced its internationalist conceptions about class struggle with patriotism, by supporting the National Union government (Union nationale). After the war, this was regarded as a major failure of the socialist movement and explains, in part, the split of the Tours Congress. Jaurès' ashes would be transferred to the Panthéon in 1924, while his assassin, Raoul Villain, who was judged but acquitted in 1919, would later be executed by the Spanish Republicans in 1936.