The case of Péguy, whose adherence to Germany Phone Number List socialism was short-lived, is far from being an isolated event. The movement of the Popular Universities (although two-thirds of these institutions were founded at the request Germany Phone Number List of the Labor Exchanges) attracted thousands of intellectuals. What were you doing there? "By spreading their knowledge," notes Rebérioux, they hoped to push back the impulses of racist Germany Phone Number List barbarism and gross nationalism whose presence they recognized among those who wanted to "hang Zola" and kill "all Jews."40.
However, this first great commitment of the Germany Phone Number List intellectuals did not benefit the socialist movement, as is sometimes too quickly claimed. The great intellectual figures of French socialism, from Lucien Herr to Charles Andler41, including Germany Phone Number List Georges Sorel or Bracke-Desrousseaux42and a few others, had sworn allegiance to him before the Dreyfus Affair broke. After the affair, intellectuals barely followed Jaurès into the Germany Phone Number List Unified Socialist Party. The latter, who could have passed for his mentor, sometimes even becomes an undesirable (see Péguy!), a traitor, alienating his freedom of thought and the independence of his judgment from partisan discipline.
Undoubtedly, there was excessive Germany Phone Number List indolence in this behavior, since the nascent so , as we have seen, is nothing like the Communist Party, which led its intellectuals under its baton. But regulation, by Offenbachian43Whatever it was, it was seen as a threat by intellectuals jealous of freedom that had just demonstrated its Germany Phone Number List strength during the Dreyfusian events. How to understand then what is in these years (and even later) a socialist intellectual? Is it a really adequate formula? How to classify Jaurès in this Germany Phone Number List sociocultural configuration typical of French socialism? In European socialism as a whole, under the growing weight of the intellectual professions.