Jaurès’s The New Army (1911): the organisation of democratic institutions as war prevention

Marcel Parent, Antoine Parent, Pierre-Charles Pradier and Laurent Gauthier

Journal of Institutional Economics, 2025, vol. 21, -

Abstract: The canonical reading of Jaurès’s L’Armée nouvelle presents this work as an outdated reflection on the establishment of a socialist society supervised by intermediary bodies whose military training would be a major asset. Our reading goes beyond this historically situated approach to Jaurès’s book. We show that The New Army is not just a response to the General Staff, even less a ‘theorisation’ of the transition to socialism, but that its aim is to rehabilitate the founding principles of democratic institutions (ancient and modern), which rest on the constitution of an army of citizens: The ‘proletarian-soldier’ of Jaurès is none other than the ‘farmer-soldier’ of the ancient city and of Year 2 of the French Revolutionary calendar, transposed to the Industrial Age. Relying on a game-theoretical model, we highlight that this defence of democratic institutions is backed by a discourse of the economics of war prevention in terms of self-protection.

Date: 2025
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