31 Facts About Gabriel Deville

Gabriel Pierre Deville was a French socialist theoretician, politician and diplomat.

Gabriel Deville was a follower of the Guesdist movement in the 1880s, and did much to raise awareness of Karl Marx's theories of the weaknesses of capitalism through his books and articles.

Gabriel Deville was born on 8 March 1854 in Tarbes, Hautes-Pyrenees.

Gabriel Deville's grandfather was Jean-Marie-Joseph Deville, Representative of the People from 1848 to 1851 during the French Second Republic.

Gabriel Deville's uncle was Amedee Deville, vice-president of the Anatomical Society of Paris, who was proscribed after the coup d'etat of 2 December 1851.

Gabriel Deville attended secondary school in Tarbes, then studied in the faculties of law in Toulouse and Paris, where he obtained his license as a lawyer.

Gabriel Deville studied the works of Karl Marx, including the translation of Le Capital by Joseph Roy.

Gabriel Deville moved to Paris to complete his law degree in 1872, and joined the Latin Quarter radicals.

Gabriel Deville became one of the leaders of the discussions.

Gabriel Deville was the key figure in this Guesdist effort, which was seen as a form of national plebiscite on amnesty for the leaders of the Paris Commune.

Gabriel Deville began to gain a reputation as a socialist theoretician.

Gabriel Deville was naturally opposed to anti-Guesdist socialists, many of whom were Freemasons, and wrote scathingly of Benoit Malon's "masonic socialism".

When both Guesde and Gabriel Deville said they would challenge anyone who called them a coward to a duel, Marx told them the idiocy and immaturity of their comments was offensive.

Gabriel Deville donated funds from an inheritance, which kept the paper alive until early February 1888, when it ceased publication until September 1890.

Gabriel Deville published L'Etat et le Socialisme, Socialisme, revolution, internationalisme and Principes socialistes.

Gabriel Deville's Introduction to the abridged Le Capital, de Karl Marx, resume et accompagne d'un apercu sur le socialisme scientifique is a masterly summary of Marx's analysis of the process of accumulation.

On 21 June 1896 Gabriel Deville was elected deputy for the first district of the 4th arrondissement of Paris in a by-election after Desire Barodet had resigned.

Gabriel Deville ran on an anti-Guesdist platform, and was among those vilified by the POF for their "dire spirit of personal vanity and the hunger for advantages".

Gabriel Deville ran for reelection for the second district in 1898, but was defeated and left office on 31 May 1898.

Around this time Jean Jaures asked Gabriel Deville to help him locate primary material on the French Revolution in the parliamentary archives.

Gabriel Deville wrote Thermidor et Directoire, a volume of Jaures's Histoire socialiste.

Gabriel Deville's volume was dominated by the character of Francois-Noel Babeuf, the leader of the 1796 "Conspiracy of the Equals".

In 1899 Gabriel Deville supported Alexandre Millerand's entry into the cabinet of Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau.

On 22 March 1903 Gabriel Deville was elected to the fourth district in a by-election to replace Daniel Cloutier, who had died.

Gabriel Deville defeated Maurice Barres in the second round of voting.

Gabriel Deville was secretary of the Committee for Separation of the Church and the State.

Gabriel Deville was active in debates and proposed various laws.

Gabriel Deville became a member of the Central Committee for Research and Publication of Documents on the Economic History of the French Revolution in December 1903.

Gabriel Deville did not run for reelection in the 1906 general elections.

On 29 April 1907 Gabriel Deville was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary 2nd class, extraordinary envoy to Ethiopia, but was not installed.

Gabriel Deville died at the age of 85 on 28 February 1940 in Viroflay, Yvelines.