Schism and Solidarity in Social Movements: The Politics of Labor in the French Third Republic (Structural Analysis in the Social Sciences)

From the fall of the Paris Commune to the creation of the powerful French Communist Party, the French labor movement lurched between a pattern of ideological polarization and organizational fragmentation and one of broad-based solidarity. Ansell analyzes the dynamic interplay among political mobilization, organization-building, and ideological articulation that produced these shifts between schism and solidarity. The aim is to shed new light on the historical development of the French labor movement and to develop a more generic understanding of schism and solidarity in organizations and social movements.