French Socialists Before Marx
Pamela Pilbeam
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
French Socialists Before Marx
Workers, Women and the Social Question in France
Pamela Pilbeam
© Pamela Pilbeam, 2000
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.
First published in 2000 by Acumen
Acumen Publishing Limited
17 Fairfax Road
Teddington
TW11 9DJ
www.acumenpublishing.co.uk
ISBN: 1-902683-16-1 (hardcover)
ISBN: 1-902683-17-X (paperback)
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Designed and typeset by Kate Williams, Abergavenny.
Printed and bound by Biddles Ltd., Guildford and King’s Lynn.
This book is dedicated to my husband, Stephen.
Contents
Preface
ix
1 Plural socialism
1
2 The social question
12
3 Revolutionary inspirations
26
4 Religion and the early socialists
39
5 Socialists and education: to repulse the barbarians
54
6 The “new woman”
75
7 Association: dream worlds
107
8 Worker associations before 1848
135
9 Association: socialist hopes in the Second Republic
152
10 Association: the conservative reaction in the Second Republic
173
11 Conclusion
198
Notes
Bibliography
Index
207
229
255
vii
Preface
Who could imagine a socialist seamstress or doctor today giving their time to
running evening literacy classes and free clinics for the poor? I was drawn to
the early socialists in France because I was initially intrigued by their dream
worlds, but stayed the course through admiration for their selfless inspiration and initiative, particularly that of the substantial number of ordinary
working women.
The manuscript evidence is taken in Paris mainly from the Archives
Nationales, the Bibliothèque de l’Arsénal and the Bibliothèque Historique de
la Ville de Paris; I also worked in a selection of departments, chiefly in the
south-west and west, especially in Nantes. The Goldsmiths’ Collection,
University of London provided a mine of rare books and periodicals on early
socialism, particularly the Saint-Simonians and Fourierists. I am indebted to
the archivists and librarians of these collections.
I am very grateful to the Research Strategy Fund, Royal Holloway, University of London, which facilitated my work in Paris and to my Head of
Department, Francis Robinson, who allowed me sabbatical leave to research
and write; to Patrick O’Brien and the Scouloudi Foundation, Institute of Historical Research, University of London for an award that allowed me to undertake my own mini “tour de France”; to the British Academy, which
financed extensive work on the valuable and virtually unused papers of the
femininst socialist Ange Guépin in Nantes and the Fourier and Considérant
papers in the Archives Nationales; and to the Central Research Fund,
University of London which contributed to my work on the Saint-Simonian
archive in the Bibliothèque de l’Arsénal. The Isobel Thornley Bequest,
University of London gave generous support towards the publication of this
book.
Many people, undergraduate and postgraduate students and colleagues
have shared my enthusiasm, refined my thinking and contributed ideas. I
ix
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
hope I have made proper use of the comments at research seminars in the
Universities of Cambridge, Oxford and London and especially those of
anonymous readers. My husband, Stephen, and my youngest son, Llewellyn
selflessly drove me around southern French departmental archives and did
not stop too often looking for rugby games and beaches! My debt to Stephen
is beyond reckoning; he read, revised and re-read every word at least twice,
despite my mother-in-law’s assurances that this was unnecessary, as no one
would actually read another book on French history! If I do not repeat or
contradict myself, it is entirely due to his sense of the whole and eye for
detail.
Pam Pilbeam
Hampstead
April 2000
x
CHAPTER ONE
Plural socialism
The Jospin government in the late 1990s claimed to represent the “plural
left”. In the United Kingdom the Labour Party reinvented itself as “New
Labour”. The strategic problems are seen as education, social welfare and
health and the position of women. Similarly, early socialism was a will-o’the-wisp. Then, as now, the key issues were women, education and social
welfare, but health, although a concern, was not as clearly defined as today.
This book asserts the vitality and relevance of plural socialism in the first half
of the nineteenth century, to show that the social question was addressed by
a range of methods and led to a variety of milestones, but the underlying
goal1 was to make society fairer. Charles Fourier set those who called
themselves socialists the task of achieving a harmonious society and solving
the social question by liberating workers and women. Women were a
considerable force in early socialism.
What follows is a reinterpretation of the French early socialists, which
stresses that their theories were matched by their practical efforts, particularly those of women. Karl Marx showered the early socialists with faint
praise or disdain: recent historians have gone further and have begun to deny
that early socialism existed. Histories of socialism often start in 1871.2 It is
habitually claimed that early socialism was too diffuse and diverse to be
considered to have a collective identity, and that it contributed little to the
parliamentary socialist organizations that emerged during the Third Republic; there is even some suggestion that it is misleading and imprecise to use
the term socialism to describe any of the reformers of the first half of the
nineteenth century.3 A leading historian of mid-nineteenth-century radicalism has recently written a thought-provoking account of political mobilization in the French countryside without a single index reference to socialist or
socialism.4 Another uses the term “social radicalism”, not “socialism”, to
analyse left-wing politics.5
1
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
It is self-evident that there was no cohesive, coherent socialist, or indeed
radical, movement in these years; political parties did not begin to take
shape in France until the final decades of the century. No one can deny that
there is considerable imprecision and ambiguity in determining who was a
socialist, and who a radical, as we shall see later in this chapter. However, a
cursory glance at the newspapers, books and parliamentary debates of the
first half of the nineteenth century, leaves no doubt that there were women
and men who called themselves socialists and no doubt whatsoever that
there were others who deplored their doctrines. The dominant elites of the
July Monarchy, who quickly resumed control after the February Revolution,
1848, were convinced that they were involved in a crusade against socialists
who, they asserted, threatened to turn economic and social systems upside
down.
The traditional approach of historians to the analysis of early socialists
focused on them either as individual biographical studies or as theorists,6
grouping them as utopians, reformers, and so on. Such a methodology
served to enhance their differences. This volume has a thematic, rather than
a biographical, structure. Through a thematic investigation of theories and
actions, strategies and solutions, it is apparent that socialists (and radicals)
shared many basic ideas, including: the same initial starting point, the 1789
Revolution; a belief in the value of education; and the need to improve the
legal and educational status of women, address contemporary employment
problems through cooperative, not capitalist, enterprises, and, above all,
take concrete action to attack the social question. Many also had profound
religious convictions.
The thematic approach displays the similarities, as well as the differences,
within socialism. It focuses, in particular, on the relationship between the
ideas and strategies of Fourier, Saint-Simon, the Saint-Simonians and the
Fourierists. Based on local archives and the private papers of the leading
figures, it examines why the Saint-Simonians were very different from SaintSimon, and why Fourier while alive was often at odds with the Fourierists.
There was a considerable common philosophy and an overlap of personnel
between Saint-Simonians and Fourierists. The existence of apparently
conflicting views was often a case of the same group of individuals adapting
their ideas to changed circumstances over a period of time. The Fourierists
emerge as the Cinderellas of socialism, neglected by historians, even though
they were the most influential socialist group in 1848. The activities of
women socialists such as Jeanne Deroin, Eugénie Niboyet and Pauline
Roland, and the contribution of significant, but overlooked male feminist socialists, notably Ange Guépin, whose extensive and virtually unused letters
and private papers are a rich source of information on Saint-Simonian and
Fourierist motivations and activities, are outlined and analysed.7
There are two factors that facilitate this innovative, thematic approach.
The first is the opportunity to explore the topic free from the constraints of
2
P LU RA L S O C I A L I S M
the long-assumed superiority of the Marxist model, a liberation afforded by
the radical probing and gradual rejection of the monolithic Soviet Communist state since the 1950s. Secondly there have been a multitude of biographical studies of the manifold manifestations of early socialism, particularly by
American scholars since the 1960s. They include reappraisals of Etienne
Cabet,8 Louis Blanc,9 Proudhon,10 Fourier11 and Blanqui.12 Others, such as
Leroux13 and Buchez,14 remain relatively neglected, although Victor Considérant, the Fourierist leader, who long languished under-estimated,15 has
recently earned his biographical spurs.
Feminist socialists were well served by women historians in the 1920s,16
but subsequently were neglected, with the exception of the efforts of Edith
Thomas.17 In recent years a new generation of feminists has rediscovered the
female early socialists,18 although they are sometimes more interested in
their feminism than their socialism. This has added a new dimension to early
socialism because, with the exception of George Sand, who has always been
honoured for her prolific literary achievements,19 most of the others never
even reached the index of older, traditional, and even more recent, histories
of socialism. Flora Tristan is the favourite;20 others have received more
measured appreciation. Jeanne Deroin, although she has been discussed by
leading feminists in France,21 the USA22 and the UK,23 still awaits an
individual biography. A brief popular biography of Pauline Roland has
appeared recently,24 but Edith Thomas remains the standard work.25
Eugénie Niboyet, indefatigable president of the main women’s club in 1848,
has been noticed,26 which would have pleased her, but Désirée Gay, energetic
organizer of workers cooperatives in 1848, gets no more than the odd
footnote. Gatti de Gamond, author and Fourierist activist in France,27 has
been studied in her native Belgium. These biographies have contributed valuable insights to the present work.
New editions, and in some cases first editions, of the works of early
socialists, particularly Proudhon,28 Fourier,29 Blanqui30 and Tristan,31 have
made their writings more accessible. Cabet still awaits a modern edition and
an English translation, while the only translation of Louis Blanc is that of
1848. In addition the historian has access to an extensive, although haphazardly compiled, series of reprints of pamphlets, newspapers and accounts of
trials of socialists and radicals covering the period 1830–1874.32
Until the 1960s socialism was interpreted as a proletarian movement,
fighting in a variety of ways through class struggle against a dominant bourgeois elite. Since then historians have penetrated beyond generalities into the
world of worker culture and politics, not to mention the state of economic
development of nineteenth-century France. This made it more difficult to
categorize early socialists. As social history began to probe social groups in
more detail, it became apparent that, although early socialists wrote in terms
of the “proletariat” and class conflict, most French workers, even at the end
of the century, were artisans. Indeed, even in 1880 half of the workforce was
3
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
still employed in agriculture. In 1848, 4.4 million people worked in industry,
only 1 million of whom were in large firms, that is of ten or more employees.33 Were the categories “worker” and “employer” really distinct? When
local officials were asked to separate employés and patrons they sometimes
balked at the task. Writing of Marseille, William Sewell noted that in times of
prosperity an employee would blossom into an employer.34 Even the term
“artisan” was barely adequate because many people worked in agriculture or
industry according to the season. Hanagan describes how ribbon-weaving
and agriculture were combined; likewise mining and agriculture – mines
were seasonally flooded and unusable.35 Industry grew most rapidly in country areas in these decades, offering ample opportunity to combine both
activities. Another problem in defining worker identity was gender and
nationality. On average one-third of workers were women, rising to 40 per
cent in textiles, the dominant industrial sector. A substantial proportion
were children. In 1851, 380,000 were foreigners, and many of them were
women. Male artisans were often in conflict with both women and
foreigners and women cotton operatives in Rouen sometimes did pitched
battle with female Scottish rivals. In terms of work experience, what constituted an artisan identity? For some it was defined by pride in traditional
skills, perhaps buttressed by membership of compagnonnages or other longestablished corporations. For others, for instance tailors, their skills had
been downgraded by modest technical and organizational changes. Yet
others practised new trades. There have even been dark suspicions that the
nineteenth-century worker was a figment of bourgeois imaginings, both then
and in the post-Foucaultian and post-deconstructionist present.36
In recent decades historians have come to terms with the fact that early
socialists were correct in addressing the problems of artisans. The role of
artisans within socialism, previously rarely noticed, has been explored.
William Sewell claimed that early socialism was dominated by the norms
and concepts of traditional artisan associations rather than the pressures
of modern economic innovation.37 The case for continuity with traditional
corporations has been challenged,38 and artisan fraternities have been
revealed as conflictual rather than cooperative, offering little in the way of
mentoring for socialist notions of association.39 Assessments of the role of
newer mutual-aid societies provide another dimension to artisan concerns,40
while Prothero’s courageous presentation of artisans in Britain and France in
parallel reveals yet more varieties of worker experience.41
The underlying traditional assumption that socialism was mainly to do
with simplistic, overarching class struggle was based on the belief that
worker attitudes were formed by workplace conflicts and experiences. In the
nineteenth century numerous social surveys, newspaper reports, novels and
illustrations documented that the poverty and poor working and home
conditions of the time were products of economic change. More recently,
escaping a Marxist dialectic of class struggle and economic causation,
4
P LU RA L S O C I A L I S M
historians have penetrated the world of worker culture. E. P. Thompson is
credited with alerting French historians to the dominance of artisans and
cultural matters in his magisterial study of radical movements in Britain,
published in 1963. Rancière, a renegade student of Althusser and participant
in the events of 1968, claimed that worker “nights” rather than worker
“rites” shaped artisan attitudes. What mattered were informal social gatherings in cafés: the songs sung, poems read, plays booed, and – to judge by the
last chapter of the book – what went on afterwards!42 Culture has effectively
replaced class as the touchstone of worker identity for recent historians.43
Traugott demolished Marx’s dismissal of the young workers who were
recruited to the Mobile Guard in March 1848 and fought against the worker
rebellion in June as lumpenproletariat class traitors. He painstakingly
displayed that the fighters on both sides were drawn from unemployed
artisans who had fought on the barricades in February; the attitudes of the
guardsmen had subsequently been culturally moulded by regular pay,
uniform and institutional pride.44
The quest for cultural identity has been focused by sharpened perceptions, and new editions of the writing of contemporary artisans. That male
artisan socialists wrote and read newspapers was never forgotten,45 but we
have been reminded that Saint-Simonian working women ran their own
newspaper in the early 1830s.46 New editions of worker autobiographies,
poems, songs and other writings, even though the originals were clearly
shaped to suit a bourgeois consumer, add new depth.47 The contemporary
idealization48 of the “worker” has been recalled in recent studies of painters
and lithographers, including Charlet and Traviès.49 One problem with the
exploration of nineteenth-century artisan culture is that much of it was constructed by bourgeois Saint-Simonian and Fourierist patrons; yet another
example of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle!
The French absorption with regional history in recent decades has led to a
greater understanding of artisan radicalism. Philippe Vigier was a pioneer in
his investigation of the Second Republic in the Alpine departments.50 The
seminal research of Maurice Agulhon on the Var demonstrated that radical
tendencies and traditions were not all disseminated from Paris,51 but were
stimulated by local conditions and problems. Gossez’s wise and massively
detailed account of the huge variety of trades practised by Paris workers52
was followed, among others, by Alain Corbin’s evocation of the birth of a
left-wing tradition in the Limousin.53 English-speaking historians have made
notable contributions. Among them, Stewart-McDougall’s investigation of
the role of artisans in the Second Republic in Lyon is an invaluable guide to
attitudes and opinions,54 to be read alongside Bezucha’s account of the
earlier history of the silk workers.55 Aminzade has provided us with a
compelling picture of Toulouse workers, still etched with shades of Marxism,56 which he followed with a challenging comparative presentation of artisan politics in three regions.57
5
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
No one would now dare to say that history was solely a matter of class
struggle, or indeed, after Peter Jones’s study of the Massif Central58 and
Peter McPhee’s indispensable synthesis of research on rural political
mobilization,59 entirely urban. A massive amount of popular protest in
these decades was rural in essence, especially complaints about the forest
codes and indirect taxes. This does not mean that rural socialism was a
common phenomenon. Socialist ideas were carried to remote rural areas
like the Limousin by migrant workers and middle-class lawyers and
intellectuals, and flourished only in the towns. The inspirational socialist
leader in Limoges, Theodore Bac, owed his election to the assemblies of the
Second Republic to voters, especially pottery workers, in Limoges itself.
Early socialists paid scant attention to the rural community, until they
realized that Louis Napoleon monopolized the peasant vote in 1848. The
programme of the radical–socialist alliance in 1849 was careful to pay
attention to rural issues.60 A detailed analysis of voluntary associations
in the Loire Valley revealed that mutual-aid societies did not materialize
until 1847,61 while the index of a fascinating investigation into cultural
contact in rural France during the nineteenth century has no mention of
socialism.62
If the goal-posts of this subject have changed out of all recognition in
recent years, who were the players? Early socialists, men and women, were
often bourgeois journalists and intellectuals, but not all from comfortablyoff families. Some were artisans. Socialist ideas appealed to all social groups:
artisans, peasants, middle classes and some nobles. Socialism largely grew
out of the re-emergence of radical republicanism after the 1830 Revolution
and the perceived neglect of social problems by Orleanist governments. In
the 1820s a number of students, who thought themselves part of a revolutionary, or at least radical, tradition through their family as well as philosophical connections, had been attracted to the charbonnerie. Some moved
on to the secret republican clubs of the early 1830s, from where a number
graduated to socialism. As socialists they were likely to dabble in SaintSimonianism, join the Fourierists or the Icarians and read Louis Blanc, along
with a range of papers, including La Réforme, as well as Le Populaire and
l’Atelier. Early socialism attracted those who sought to modify social conditions and economic circumstances to solve contemporary problems of work
insecurity and poverty. Those who called themselves, and were called, socialists embraced a number of innovative radical solutions to contemporary
problems in an experimental and fluid manner. There was no monolithic
organization, no single ideology, but instead individuals and groups who
defined themselves, and others, as socialists.
Where do the origins of French socialism lie? They were rooted in the
inspiration and structures of artisan organizations old and new, in the longestablished tradition of state involvement in the economy, in the optimism of
eighteenth-century Enlightened writers and in the contemplation of the
6
P LU RA L S O C I A L I S M
prospect and reality of economic change. Uniquely in France, socialism was
embedded in the ideas and strategies for social welfare attempted during the
1790s and the revolutionary ideas of Babeuf. Early socialist plans constantly
returned to the Jacobin constitution of 1793 and the socioeconomic reforms
projected therein. Traditionally French historians of socialism, with their
sights set on the ultimate achievement of parliamentary socialism in republican France, elevated the contribution of Robespierre and the Jacobins, and
neglected other formative aspects.
The inheritance that the socialists drew from the Great Revolution was
multi-faceted. The 1789 Revolution led to a conflicting array of political and
social experiments and the various strands of early nineteenth-century
socialism can be related to different episodes in the revolution. The attack on
privilege manifest in the abolition of feudalism, of nobility itself, of manifold
“rights”, including the ownership of land by the Catholic Church and the
elimination of the monarchy, was seen by the next generation as a crucial
egalitarian groundwork for a “social” or “socialist” state. The way in which
the abbé Sieyès urged the Third Estate in 1788 to assault the privileges of a
parasitic society may have been music to the ears of later socialists.63 The
Declaration of the Rights of Man of August 1789 and the proclamation of
liberty, equality and fraternity were precious to some socialists, while
“Liberty and Order”, the motto of the July Monarchy, made some reflect
that such “liberty” was in reality merely a privilege of the rich. In the 1830s
and 40s, and particularly after the February Revolution, 1848, “fraternity”
was elevated as an overarching ideal. Political rights, even the plan to introduce a measure of democracy in the Jacobin constitution of 1793, were
regarded as irrelevant by some socialists until radicals declared a democratic
republic in 1848. Proudhon argued that 1789 should have focused on social
issues and ought to have created an industrial order to replace the feudal
one. The failure to do so meant greater misery for the poor and a rise in
crime. He had nothing good to say about the First Republic, especially the
Jacobins and Robespierre. The history of all government, he argued, was the
martyrdom of the proletariat.64 Fourier condemned the Convention for the
Terror and the attempt to mould, not liberate, people.65
For others the heart of socialism was an attempt to recreate Jacobinism
and its social programme. Robespierre was a hero for Blanc and Buchez.
Blanc argued that the centralized state should have an important role in the
creation of a socialist society and revered the Jacobin Constitution of 1793,
which stated, “The state has a sacred duty to help the poor. Society must
provide by finding work for the unemployed and basic subsistence for those
who are unable to work”.66 Cabet and Blanc had no time for violence, yet
both honoured the revolution. Buonarroti, the ageing but unquenchable
insurrectionary, added Babeuf67 into the equation for some socialists.68
Disappointment with the failure to address the problems of unemployment
and poverty after the 1830 Revolution, stimulated republican and, a few
7
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
years later, specifically socialist groups, which sometimes overlapped and
attracted both middle-class and artisan participation.69
Broad parameters can be discerned. Socialists can be grouped in a number
of overlapping categories. A tiny number believed that the route to radical
social reform lay in conspiratorial revolution, engineered by a vanguard
group of convinced insurgents, supported by the proletariat. Inspired by
Babeuf and Buonarroti, they were dominated by Blanqui, whose ideas were
later taken up by Marx. Next there were those who tried to develop existing
artisan self-help institutions into a range of mutual-aid formations, producer,
and later, retail, cooperatives and embryonic trades unions. They included
intellectuals and journalists, but also artists and artisans. Some obvious
names are Buchez, Proudhon, Tristan and Sand, but neither the SaintSimonian Guépin nor the artisans Perdiguier, Nadaud, Véret, Deroin,
Roland and Voilquin must be forgotten,. Some socialists came to believe that
radical social reform could best be instituted through the state. Saint-Simon
was their starting point, followed by a group of disciples, many of whom
later created a Fourierist école sociétaire. Louis Blanc told a compelling tale
that he was the dominant voice among socialists who wanted to galvanize the
state. Finally there were those whom Marx scorned as utopians, including
Fourier, Cabet and Leroux.70 They rejected piecemeal reform in favour of
creating new autonomous communities.
In the first history of French socialism, published in 1841, the sceptical
author breezed “They don’t aspire to be a single science, but to represent all,
the present and the future, God and man, earth and sky, all is their demesne”.71
The writer, the journalist Reybaud, shifted from guarded approval of utopian
ideals in his first edition, when extracts from Fourier’s writings were
highlighted, to condemnation in the second edition, only months later, when
extracts from Babeuf appalled his respect for bourgeois property. What actually
distinguished an early socialist? It is not my intention and indeed it would be
invidious to attempt a straitjacket definition of socialism that implied uniformity and to plane away the edges of philosophical debate. The diversity of ideas
and solutions must be explored and the temptation to order them artificially
must be resisted. The term was first used in France by Leroux in 1832 in La
grève de Samarez as the opposite of “individualism” (a term associated with
capitalist competition), but it had no precise meaning, other than an interest
in social reform. Leroux brought the term socialism into common usage in the
next few years,72 influenced by Owen and radicals in England. In the 1840s
it entered standard parlance and was used by Considérant and others
descriptively to mean those who favoured radical social reform, and was often
used to indicate the converse of the ideas of liberal economists, who defended
what they called “laissez-faire” and criticized socialist solutions. However,
socialism could not be defined simply as support for social reform. Before 1848
active concern about the social question was shared by monarchists,
republicans and social catholics like Villeneuve-Bargemont.
8
P LU RA L S O C I A L I S M
Those who were later called socialists by historians often gave themselves
other titles: Cabet called himself a communist; Proudhon thought of himself
as an anarchist and was in the habit of insulting socialists; Buchez’s early
socialism faded; and Ledru-Rollin only began to call himself a socialist in
June 1849. Ange Guépin, an influential socialist in western France, started to
call himself simply a republican in 1869. Until after the February Revolution
many of those we think of as socialist called themselves, or were labelled by
others, Jacobins, Saint-Simonians, Fourierists, communists, Icarian communists, Babouvists and even neo-Babouvists. Buonarroti, who invented the
Babouvism of the 1830s, described those committed to radical socioeconomic change as “the Mountain”, recalling a term used by the Jacobins.
The range of attributions employed to describe those called socialist by
later historians is sufficient indication that in the 1830s and 40s there was no
perceived need for uniformity or doctrinal unity. Socialists believed that
their ideas for the reform of society were based on scientific observation and
analysis and that their evanescent wisdom would eventually educate sceptical critics. Nearly all were moralists first and based their critique of their
favourite enemy, concurrence, capitalist competition, on moral grounds.
Most socialists did not think that the state or elected assemblies were the best
agents to secure social change and therefore they did not try to form cohesive
political groupings.
After the February Revolution sympathizers referred to “la sociale” or “la
république sociale et démocratique” to indicate the need or desire for
extensive social reform, but the term socialist was soon adopted, particularly
by conservatives, to describe all reformers. The election of Louis Napoleon
as president injected the first awareness among radicals of all kinds of the
need to unite in a common programme. In the Second Republic conservatives called them all socialists or, indiscriminately, reds, anarchists,
insurrectionnaries and cabetists. “Socialist” became virtually the code word
of the conservatives for “republican” at a time when conservatives could not
openly condemn the republic itself.
All socialists were agreed that association was the answer to class conflict
and unemployment. Association was the key to achieve fraternity, the
brotherhood of all men, proclaimed in 1789, but subsequently forgotten.73
Saint-Simon argued that the principle of association was the moral and
political foundation of society.74 But what sort of association? For some
socialists, including Cabet, association would build harmony between the
classes; others, like Blanqui, try to construct vanguard revolutionary
associations, which would seize power in the name of the proletariat and
establish a classless society, a precursor of Marxist notions. Association was
portrayed as liberation for the oppressed, but the regimentation described by
Fourier and Cabet is reminiscent of twentieth-century totalitarian
constructs. It all depended on who associated with whom and for what
purpose.
9
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
Association, mutualism, harmony and solidarity were different terms,
apparently meaning the same thing, but did they? How did socialists plan to
use association to organize work and eliminate the inequities they perceived
in nascent capitalism? Fourier and Cabet preferred to create new autonomous communities, phalanges/Icarie, in which the whole society constituted
an association. Producer or retail cooperatives attracted Buchez and Guépin,
and Blanc favoured state initiatives to provide capital for “social workshops”. The Fourierists, increasingly sceptical that anyone would fund a
phalange, promoted the idea that an expanded, government-financed,
public-works programme could be carried through within the traditional
existing communal structure, a concept that would build on ideas
consciously looking back to Turgot’s policies a century earlier, and, in their
broad outline, reminiscent of Keynes and the New Deal in the 1930s.75
Tristan argued for a Workers’ Union, which was a cross between a phalange
and Owen’s plans for a Grand National Consolidated Union in Britain.76
Deroin argued that associations of workers should act as pressure groups on
employers to defend jobs and wages.77 The purpose of workers’ associations
was not entirely clear. Were producer cooperatives designed to deal with
crises, or was the ultimate goal to eliminate capitalism either by introducing
state socialism or eliminating private property?
Few socialists envisaged the end of private ownership, or the equalization
of holdings, in the way that Babeuf had suggested and that Babouvists and
Blanqui favoured. Blanc hoped that his social workshops would develop in
benevolent competition with capitalism, although opponents claimed that
they would be as threatening to the livelihood of individual workers as Blanc
claimed existing capitalism was. Fourier hoped to find a benevolent
philanthropist to provide the land for his phalange, which would then be a
profit-sharing structure. Fourier did not question the validity of private
ownership but, like Proudhon, wanted profits to be shared on the basis of
work. Cabet, on the other hand, hoped for a society so enlightened that
people would agree to hold all property in common.
All French constitutions since 1791 had stressed the sanctity of private
property, and the obligation of the state to provide security and protection
for property owners. However many people owned no property and worked
for others. What security could the state offer them? Building on the Jacobin
constitution of 1793, early socialists claimed that work was the only
property of a large number of citizens. As property, work should also be
protected, but how? The ideas of Blanc and the Fourierists were based on the
idea that the state had as much an obligation to find work for the jobless as it
had a duty to defend the land of conventional property owners.
All socialists agreed that solutions lay chiefly in improving socioeconomic
and cultural conditions. For most of them the social question was a moral
one: man needed to progress from competition and rivalry to a Nirvana of
harmony and cooperation. Almost none thought the answer was political
10
P LU RA L S O C I A L I S M
and, until the February Revolution, socialist experiments ignored the state,
hence perhaps the lure of utopias, which were worlds apart by design. This
was partly because before 1848 the political community consisted of less
than a quarter of a million wealthy men and because the July Monarchy and
its “liberal” parliament proved blind to social problems and resistant to political change. Some, like Blanc, thought a more benevolent government
would help and Cabet described a form of democratic dictatorship. The February Revolution encouraged others, including the Fourierists, to hope that
universal suffrage might reorient government to favour the interests of the
majority, that is, the poor.
Most of this book is concerned with socialist solutions to the social crisis
of the nineteenth century but, to begin with, we must look at the problems
they addressed. In Chapter 2 I will investigate how socialists defined the
origins of the “social question” and then I will turn to the strategies they
favoured. A minority of early socialists believed that they would achieve
their ends through revolution. In Chapter 3 I will consider the significance of
this revolutionary legacy. Socialists were unanimous that they were trying to
solve a moral dilemma, and therefore religion and education were perceived
as fundamental means to reform society. In Chapters 4 and 5 I will focus on
these issues.
Some socialists, especially Fourier, argued that radical changes in the
social and legal status of women were vital preconditions to all social reform.
In Chapter 6 I will consider socialist views on the role of women in the family
and in public life, culminating in their efforts to improve the status of women
during the Second Republic. In Chapter 7 I investigate those who wanted to
make the world anew by inventing communities and those who tried to
repair existing society, while in Chapter 8 I consider the different types of
more limited worker associations that developed before the February Revolution. In Chapters 9 and 10 I explore the ways in which socialists were
involved in the Second Republic, reflecting in Chapter 9 on the impact of the
declaration of a democratic republic in February 1848. I evaluate attempts to
solve the problems of work and unemployment in the early months of 1848,
including the Luxembourg Commission, which historians have tended to
disregard, and the national workshops, which are still lamentably often
described as a socialist experiment. In Chapter 10 I focus on the policies of
the National Assembly, the debate on the right to work, the first national
survey of the economy and the decision to allocate 3 million francs to worker
organizations. I contrast the application of this fund with the parallel determination to force all associations to close, concluding with an attempt to
understand why the principle of association, the fundamental ideal of socialists and radicals in the first half of the nineteenth century, was anathema to
the established elites.
11
CHAPTER TWO
The social question
In the first half of the nineteenth century most social commentators in France
thought that they lived in a sick society. Socialists can be distinguished from the
rest in that they warned that the problems would become more acute unless
radical solutions were adopted. Most of this book will focus on their strategies
and solutions. This chapter is devoted to their definition of the problem,
ubiquitously labelled the “social question”, tracing its origins and nature.
Explanations for the origins of the social question varied from the
psychological and moral to the economic. All socialists were agreed that,
fundamentally, humankind (some socialists were not entirely sure about
women) had been created with equal natural rights, but that these had been
subverted over time and that their own society lacked a sense of identity and
common purpose. Liberals applauded the triumph of individualism, but
socialists deplored the dominance of selfish, personal interests. Socialists
identified five main factors to account for the social crisis of their times.
These were economic inequality, psychological conflicts, problems in the
running of the state, spiritual and moral bankruptcy and the impact of
economic change. Some socialists stressed one, others a combination, and of
course many of their ideas were not unique to people of socialist opinions,
but were shared by radicals, both monarchists and republicans. We will begin
by considering each factor, in the order given above, but as we trace the
interconnecting links for different socialist groups, we will have to move out
of strict chronological sequence.
Economic inequality
Gracchus Babeuf, a journalist and conspirator during the First Republic,
inspired radical republicans and some socialists in the 1830s.1 Babeuf blamed
12
THE SOCIAL QUESTION
the anarchic state of France in the mid-1790s on the pursuit of radical political change and the neglect of fundamental economic reform. Political and social upheaval would not come to an end until economic equality had been
instituted by the state. Babeuf was convinced that this could only be achieved
by violent revolution. Both Babeuf ’s starting point and his prognosis were
unusually pessimistic for an age typically convinced that humankind was
destined to progress. In a Malthusian prediction of constant imbalance between
a finite food supply and growing population, he could only prophesy equally
shared misery, even if his plans were achieved. He did not, however, live to see
it. Babeuf was guillotined when his plans for a Conspiracy of the Equals were
uncovered in 1796. Babeuf has been hailed as the father of modern communism, although some historians have noted the difference between the basically
subsistence economy of his day and the developing market of the nineteenth
century.2
Babeuf ’s conviction that economic inequality was largely to blame for
social problems was developed by his surviving associate, Buonarroti, in his
influential account of their conspiracy, first published in Belgium in 1828.3
After the 1830 Revolution he moved to Paris, and became the grand old man
of radicalism, inspiring the republican clubs of the 1830s and some early
socialists with phrases like, “Private property is the source of all the calamities on earth”.4 The lifelong insurgent, Auguste Blanqui, organizer of the
abortive conspiracy of the Seasons in May 1839, held to a similar view that
economic inequality and resulting class conflict were the genesis of the
problem. He also believed that revolution was the road to redemption.5
Etienne Cabet was an early socialist who also described himself as a
communist, because he too had no time for private property, although, as we
shall see, his route to a perfect society was very different from that of Babeuf,
Buonarroti and Blanqui.6 Cabet was convinced that economic inequality was
the main issue. His extremely detailed and, to his mind, very down-to-earth,
utopian solution, was the most radical suggested by any early socialist.
However, he detested revolution. His approach to the problems of his times
was historical. Beginning as a member of the charbonnerie, Cabet was one of
the first to argue that the 1830 Revolution failed to solve the problems of the
artisans, coining the phrase that it was a “révolution escamotée”, smuggled
away from the real revolutionary fighters.7 Moving on to become a republican, Cabet was forced into exile after the Lyon rebellion of 1834. He lived in
London from 1834 to 1839 and contact with Chartists was a formative influence in his transformation to socialism. The development of Cabet’s ideas
can be tracked in the sequence of books he completed in exile. He was keen
to write for a mass market. History was his preferred medium; first he wrote
about universal history, a history of the English people, a parallel survey of
the French nation and a history of the French Revolution. He continued to
detest revolutionary upheaval, which he blamed on social inequalities and
which he would solve by making everyone equal. His time in London made
13
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
him more aware of the social question. He began to call his proposals
communist and to describe the social policies of the Jacobins as embryonic
communism.8 Back in France in 1840 came Voyage en Icarie,9 which was
unequivocally communist and profoundly anti-revolutionary in its approach
to the problems it addressed.
Another leading figure among the early socialists who interpreted the
origins of the social crisis in the same terms as Babeuf and Buonarroti was
Proudhon. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) had direct knowledge of
the social question, coming as he did from a relatively poor family; peasants
on his mother’s side and artisans on his father’s. Trained as a printer,
although his father was a cooper, he was responsible for setting the type for
Fourier’s Le Nouveau Monde Industriel et Sociétaire,10 and was impressed by
the arguments. He began to write and in 1839 won the Besançon Academy’s
prize essay competition. With the three-year award he moved to Paris,
writing first on grammar, then on the economy and politics. In 1840, to the
displeasure of the Academicians, he brought out Qu’est-ce que la propriété?.
In almost the same words as Buonarroti quoting Babeuf, he identified the
cause of misery in society: “the right of property was the origin of evil on
earth”.11 Although his starting point was similar to that of Babeuf,
Proudhon’s solutions were far less radical.
Psychological conflicts
The leading exponent of the view that the origins of social crisis lay in the
mind was Charles Fourier. Fourier published his first account of how to
change the world in 1808. He argued that social conflicts had nothing to do
with economic inequality, but occurred because people did not understand
the pressures and constraints on natural human personal characteristics
within society. He thus offered a psychological explanation for the social
crisis, although his solution, he claimed, was very practical. He was a total
optimist, in complete contrast to Babeuf. Fourier started from the premise,
not uncommon at the time, that there were laws governing social relationships parallel to those in the physical world described by Newton. His
theories were rooted in the view that the knowledge of these God-given
dictums would save man from contemporary social problems and enable society to move from “Civilization”, the term he used to describe his own
times, which he deplored, to the peak of its perfectibility, which he called
“Harmony”. He blamed the social problems of his day on capitalism and
marriage, institutions, he argued, that were contrary to nature. No reform of
society would work until the worst evil, the lowly status of women, was
addressed.
Like many contemporaries, Fourier placed his philosophical analyses
within a simple historical progression, but one very different to that of
14
THE SOCIAL QUESTION
Cabet. Cabet’s account of the historical origins of contemporary problems
covered revolutions, from England in the seventeenth century to France in
1789. Fourier started with the creation by God of the first “Confused
Series”. He sketched the “series” of social existence briefly and fairly
conventionally, but he made them sound mysterious with an invented
vocabulary and semi-mathematical formulae. He tabulated man’s history,
from “Savagery” back to “Savagery”, in a “Table of the Progress of Social
Movement, Succession and Relation of its 4 Phases and 32 Periods”.12
Fourier liked to sound precise; he claimed that life on earth had an 80,000
year span, during which the planet passed from infancy to maturity and
would end in decay. “Civilization”, a term he used in a pejorative sense, had
started with the Ancient Greeks. If people would listen to him he claimed,
nineteenth-century man had the opportunity to progress to “Harmony”.
The route lay in self-knowledge and understanding.
The rationale behind Fourier’s analysis was entirely psychological. He
was searching for social harmony.13 This could only be realized, he argued, if
people understood the psychological and emotional construction of their
personalities and respected each other’s different qualities. This would not
be achieved by moral restraint, but simply through knowledge of the range
and scope of human passions and the calculation of the best balance between
them. People were born to be happy and only inappropriate social organization inhibited them from living a contented life. Humans were composed of
twelve passions and within a properly run community, or commune, these
would be liberated and combined to the best advantage of the individual and
the whole. Each work team within the commune would be arranged to
produce a harmonious mixture of passional types. Fourier’s stress on group
psychology was unusual for his time. Parts of his books have a tone akin to
present-day business theorists like Tom Peters and other disciples of group
dynamics, such as Belbin.14
Unlike most other utopians, Fourier was not a conventional moralizer. His
commune was based on passion, not on reason. He did want to suppress
man’s instincts, but to release them. He believed that man in tune with nature
would not be aggressive and selfish. This blissful state would be achieved the
instant people recognized and obeyed the rules of the universe. By a stroke of
luck he, Fourier, was party to this knowledge and prepared to share it. The
first rule for humanity was the law of universal attraction, which controlled
the passions. This was parallel with the gravitational attraction that governed
the planets. The second law was of serial organization. The third law that
ruled the universe was one of universal analogy. Nothing was arbitrary; the
human passions mirrored nature. There was nothing particularly exceptional
about the fundamentals of Fourier’s notions. Many writers, and so-called
primitive peoples, argue that the universe has a spirit and a nature that man
can learn to tune in to. However few have argued, as did Fourier, that planets
have aromas to be used for long-distance copulation. Some might agree with
15
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
Fourier that diseases and even dangerous animals are a result of mankind’s
evil, but he alone believed that in the phalange there would be good-natured
anti-lions, which would not eat people. Fourier’s idea that the earth was sick,
that its climate was deteriorating and the ice-caps melting, might seem familiar to ecologists today, but would they also assert that there is a rescue column of 102 planets moving towards the earth? Perhaps not, but at least it is
an optimistic dream in comparison to the nightmare offered to us today by
ecologists threatening random asteroid destruction.
Problems in managing the state
Saint-Simon (1760–1825), regarded by most early socialists as a precursor of
socialism, not unnaturally, since many who became socialists were SaintSimonians in the early 1830s,15 became convinced that the central explanation for contemporary problems lay in the management of the state. Henri
de Saint-Simon was an unusual affiliate of radical social change, being
blessed with an impeccable noble pedigree. He supported the 1789 Revolution and initially did well from speculating in biens nationaux (ntional property) and assignats (paper money). After a life of wild debauchery and
extravagance during the Directory, he lost the lot. Subsequently he asserted
his claim to be heard as a prophet of social regeneration, although it took a
time to overcome his reputation as a libertine.
Like Fourier, Saint-Simon thought that the problems of contemporary
society lay in a failure to recognize simple solutions that were relatively easy
to apply. Like Babeuf, he sought a new balance in social relations. In other
respects he was very different from both of them in his perception of the problems. For Babeuf the key issue was the unequal distribution of wealth; for
Fourier it was the repression of human nature; for Saint-Simon the problem
lay in the management of the state. In his view what was wrong with society
was that the state was controlled by an inappropriate elite, ignorant of the real
needs of the nation. Saint-Simon’s first draft for the society of the future, in
which its productive and competent elements would govern rationally, was
published in 1802. Traditional religion having been cast aside by recent developments, he set out the theoretical base for a positivist science of man.16
Saint-Simon warmed to this theme that the root of society’s ills was
inappropriate social control. His solution was the reworking of the balance
of power among the social classes. In 1816 he published four issues of a
journal, L’Industrie, to be financed by industrialists and scientists. He
attacked the thieves and parasites who made no productive contribution to
society, contrasting them with the industrious Americans. In 1819 in his new
periodical, Le Politique, he pursued his claim that contemporary ills were the
result of the dominance of the “idlers”; those who lived on investments and
made no positive contribution to society.
16
THE SOCIAL QUESTION
What do they want?
What do we want?
They want 1788, we want 1789.
They want privileges.
We want civil, judicial and political equality.17
When this journal folded Saint-Simon himself financed L’Organisateur.
He began with a parable in which he asked his readers to consider the
contrasting consequences of the loss to France of all its royals and senior clerics, whom he thought would be eminently and immediately replaceable,
compared with the loss of its major businessmen and industrialists, which
would be very damaging. He was charged with insulting the royals and his
jury trial coincided with the actual, rather than the literary, assassination of
the heir to the throne, the duc de Berri, in February 1820. Saint-Simon was
acquitted but the juxtaposition of the imagined and real murder gave him a
degree of publicity he had been seeking for many years.
In 1822 he issued a two-volume collection of his pamphlets, entitled
Système Industriel, followed a year later by a further collection of pamphlets,
Catéchisme des Industriels. Like many contemporary theorists, Saint-Simon
addressed the combined problems of the repercussions of the French Revolution and the impact of economic change in the context of social evolution
over a long time-span. Like other contemporaries he saw class conflict as
integral, particularly since 1789. He argued for a complete rethinking of the
basis of government and society to take into account that the sources of
wealth were varied, including industry and commerce as well as land. He
demanded a radical reworking of the social framework to address the urgent
problems of poverty and social inequality.18
Saint-Simon’s analysis and the language he used were to be vital building
bricks for the early socialists, contributing to the elaboration of theories of
class conflict. For him “oisifs” were those who did not work for their crust;
primarily landowners and investors at the top of the ladder. The “industriels”
were the productive sector, including everyone who had to do some work to
survive, as farmer, artisan, doctor, journalist and so on. In some ways his
“industriels” corresponded to the pays légal of 1814, although he may have
planned to include a wider cross-section of income in his politically active
group.19 His analysis of what was wrong with society appealed to the opposition liberals during the Restoration and also to the elite students training for
a career in public service at institutions like the Ecole Polytechnique. SaintSimon wrote fast and frequently changed his mind; it is easy to distinguish
contradictions in his thought. Although his account of social problems was
simple enough, his solutions were more hazy. He did not develop a single,
coherent blueprint for the future. In his last months he came to the view that
the fundamental issue was less the nature of the ruling elite, than the loss of
religious faith and his last book was entitled New Christianity.
17
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
Spiritual and moral bankruptcy
Many socialists observed the loss of spiritual and moral values in their own
society. Saint-Simon’s followers invented a new religion. Towards the end of
his life Saint-Simon acquired a band of reverential followers, the majority of
whom were graduates of the Ecole Polytechnique, which had been founded by
one of Saint-Simon’s friends. Several of them, including Halévy and Rodrigues,
were young Jews, dispossessed from university and other careers by the intolerance of the Restoration. After Saint-Simon’s death in 1825 they agreed to
turn his theories into a coherent creed for social reform. The founding group
were mainly engineers, polytechniciens and young men who had been active
in the charbonnerie, including Bazard, Carnot, Chevalier, Adolphe Blanqui,
Leroux and Buchez; men whose political destinies were very varied. In 1830
Leroux dedicated his paper, the Globe to Saint-Simonian ideas.
Although this group called themselves Saint-Simonians, their ideas on the
origin and nature of the social question seemed much nearer, initially, to
those of Fourier. Like Fourier they argued that the worst faults of their own
society were the repression of women and workers. Like Fourier they were
confident that, once a practical programme of reform was initiated, the
inequalities could be reduced, although, unlike Fourier, they do not seem to
have thought that this process would be instantaneous. Like Fourier they
emphasized the very practical nature of their solutions, but unlike Fourier
they embarked on very small-scale individual reform projects to kick-start
self-help among workers. Saint-Simon, on the other hand, had looked to a
more cosmic statement of the problem, to be addressed by changing the
state. The affinity of Saint-Simonians to Saint-Simon was closest in the
increasing importance they all placed in a revivalist “new” Christianity.
Saint-Simonians addressed the social question from a spiritual base, turning
their organization into a sect.
In November 1831 the most dynamic of the Saint-Simonians broke with
their “church” and formed a Fourierist école sociétaire. Its aims were didactic
and evangelical: to develop and teach Fourierism and find converts. The
original members were primarily fairly young Parisian intellectuals, a
substantial number born around 1808, thus with no personal knowledge of
the Revolution or the Empire. They were educated during the Restoration, a
sizeable number at the Ecole Polytechnique or the Parisian medical faculties.
Typically they had been members of the charbonnerie in their student days in
the early 1820s. They occasionally used the motto of the electoral reform
society of the late 1820s: Aide-toi, le ciel t’aidera.20 The converts were important because they popularized Fourier, ignoring his more extreme proposals, which was easy enough because once simple summaries existed, few
tried to read the original.
A leading figure in this new Fourierist movement was Victor Considérant
(1808–1893), a government engineer whose job was to survey potential
18
THE SOCIAL QUESTION
routes for the new railways and whose technical reports can still be read.21
On graduation from the Ecole Polytechnique, Considérant progressed to the
engineering corps in Metz; both were left-wing strongholds. An interest in
Saint-Simonian ideas was quickly replaced by Fourier, whose ideas he had
first encountered from family friends, especially Clarisse Vigoureux, when he
was at secondary school in Besançon. Considérant always liked to think of
himself as a man of action so, although he was won over to Fourier’s ideas, he
remained in the army. He eventually resigned his commission to organize the
ecole sociétaire and to write, but he remained a state engineer.
Under Considérant’s leadership the new Fourierist movement became an
amalgam of aspects of the ideas of both Fourier and Saint-Simon. From
Fourier the new school learned a more wide-ranging emphasis to the
practical reforms they had attempted as Saint-Simonians. However the
Fourierists developed a strategy very different from that of Fourier, and
more reminiscent of Saint-Simon. This was particularly visible in their analysis of the origins of the social question and approaches to it. Unlike Fourier,
the Fourierists did not expect instant solutions, produced simply when the
key to the complete liberation of the human personality was recognized. The
Fourierists came, increasingly, to find the answer in a personal god. This
dramatic transformation seems to be related to the major role of women as
financiers as well as exponents of Fourierism. Whereas the imposition of
moral codes were part of the cause of the social problem to Fourier, they
were part of the solution of an essentially moral dilemma for his followers.
For Fourierists the sickness of society came from the neglect of God. They
wanted not to “liberate” people, but to teach them appropriate rules of
conduct, rooted in a spiritual approach. In the 1840s the Fourierists, drawing on their own work experience as state-employed engineers, and on the
earlier inspiration of Saint-Simon, began to look to the state, as an employer,
to solve the social crisis.
The idea that the social problem could be traced back to neglect of spiritual
matters was integral to early socialism. Traditional artisan craft corporations,
the confraternités and compagnonnages, were based on simple Christian
moral codes, which spilled over into the newer mutual-aid societies of the
nineteenth century. Some of their members, and some early socialists, were
freemasons, and their religious base was similar to that of the artisan
corporations. Thus for many early socialists the first step to addressing the
social crisis was to re-establish proper relations with the almighty. We have
seen that this was a peripheral issue to Fourier. Cabet seems to have learned
respect for a personal deity from his artisan followers. For other socialists, the
religious base was paramount, and some, in particular Buchez and his artisan
followers who ran the newspaper, l’Atelier, drew close to social catholicism in
both defining the problem and presenting solutions.
Pierre Leroux (1797–1871) was attracted to Saint-Simon’s idea that Christianity should form the spiritual base for social reform and regeneration. At a
19
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
practical level, as we shall see, he did more to further his conviction that an
amorphous spiritual inspiration could overcome conflict and achieve the
social harmony described by Fourier than most ex-Saint-Simonians and
Fourierists.22 Like Fourier he believed that man was reincarnated; each person
405 times, spending a total of 27,500 years on earth. Also like Fourier he was
convinced of the interdependence of different forms of life, an idea more recently reprocessed by ecologists at the end of the twentieth century. From this
Leroux went on to deplore great disparities of wealth in human society and
the exploitation of the poor. His socialism was essentially mystical and predicated on an effort of will.
A number of socialists were convinced that the origins of the social
question, in so far as it related to work and job insecurity, lay in the decline of
traditional artisan corporations. Some, like Buchez, believed that the origins
lay in the legislation of the revolutionaries in the early 1790s, which put
artisan organizations outside the law in the name of “freedom of trade”. The
Allarde and Le Chapelier laws of 1791–92 banned artisan organizations and
ordered all workers to carry a work book or livret. A few years later, the Civil
Code specifically gave prefects total powers to police associations larger than
20 members. Artisan corporations tended to be tolerated, as long as they
kept quiet, but they had no legal status. Early socialists were convinced that
this denial of the right of association was fundamental to the problem of
unemployment.
Artisans themselves contributed to the debate in artisan-owned and run
newspapers such as L’Atelier, launched by Philippe Buchez, and Le Populaire,
a paper set up by Etienne Cabet. They also wrote books, and some were poets and songwriters. The Saint-Simonians and the Fourierists encouraged
them by publishing their work. George Sand was a particularly appreciative
patron. In recent years deconstructionist and postmodernist historians have
pondered whether these worker writers and poets spoke for themselves, or
as puppets of the bourgeoisie. It has been suggested that artisan writers were
most revealing when they did not follow the advice of middle-class enthusiasts.23 Artisans tended to relate their problems to the fact that artisan corporations, particularly compagnonnages, were more preoccupied with fighting
rival organizations than offering mutual cooperation, a view that has been
echoed by recent historians.24 In this vein a number wrote critical studies of
traditional artisan corporations in the early 1840s: Boyer in 1841; Gosset, a
blacksmith a year later; Moreau, a locksmith; and François, a leather
tanner.25 The most influential of these accounts was that of Agricol
Perdiguier.26 In these interpretations organizational conflicts were largely
attributed to the loss of religious faith.
Perdiguier (1805–1875) trained as a joiner like his father, and was received
as a compagnon in 1828.27 He moved to Paris to teach architecture and linedrawing in the faubourg Saint-Antoine, where he opened his own school. He
also wrote for the Saint-Simonian paper, La Ruche Populaire and for L’Atelier.
20
THE SOCIAL QUESTION
He was convinced that the often bloody rivalry between different compagnonnages, heroically commemorated in their songs, was destructive.
Chaque société vénérait ses héroes, ses martyrs et maudissait tout ce
qui lui était opposé. Nos chansons chantaient la guerre, exaltait
notre orgueil, notre supériorité, nos préventions … Nous étions des
dieux et nos adversaires étaient des brigants, des sots, des bêtes
stupides et méchantes, indignes de vivre.28
Let the happier compagnons
Forgetting their disastrous wars,
Be able to see and love one another,
As friends and brothers.29
The standard message of artisan writers was that their problems were created
by rivalry and that God was the key to cooperation. Gosset urged the rival
rites of the compagnonnage to unite: “Are we not all brothers according to
the teaching of Our Lord?”30
Another powerful voice was that of Jules Vinçard (1796–1879?). His
father had a small ruler-making workshop on the Ile de la Cité and Vinçard
followed his trade. He sang in the goguettes, the raunchy workers’ social
gatherings of the Restoration, and in 1831 became one of the main songwriters and singers in the Saint-Simonian movement. His songs were later
published.31 From 1839 he ran, successively, two worker papers, La Ruche
Populaire and L’Union. He preached that social reform had to come from
within and that God was the best teacher.
Impact of economic change
For a number of socialists the origin of the social question lay in structural
change in the economy and consequent social collapse. The main economic
aspect defined by socialists was the impact on industry, which, at the time, was
almost exclusively artisan in structure. Socialists were alarmed that economic
change robbed independent artisans of their autonomy. Louis Blanc (1811–
1882) was the most-read publicist of this viewpoint. As a young journalist in
Paris, Blanc worked on a succession of small newspapers that favoured radical
social and political reform, culminating with La Revue du Progrès Politique,
Social et Littéraire32 in which the articles that he put together as a single
volume, L’Organisation du Travail, were first published. Within a month two
editions of 3,000 copies sold out, partly due to the crisp, economical prose,
and partly due to curiosity, as the government had ordered the confiscation of
a chunk of the first edition. By 1847 five editions had appeared, each fatter
than the last as Blanc sorted out the “errors” of his critics.
21
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
Capitalist tendencies, the development of a market economy, competition
among producers, what Blanc termed “concurrence”, were to blame for
unemployment, poverty and increased crime.33 Artisans, who could work
substantially as autonomous producers in a subsistence, or semi-subsistence
economy, did not have the financial reserves to cope with the repeated, periodic economic crises of the nineteenth century, in part the product of market
fluctuations. Blanc stressed the relentless competition among employers to
produce goods at the lowest possible price. In the process they obliged workers to accept lower and lower wages. Blanc quoted at length from the social
survey done by Ange Guépin in Nantes.34 Guépin revealed the low level of
wages, particularly for women. He described appalling living conditions and
poor health. He gave details of a typical worker family’s budget for a week,
showing that, even in times of full employment, they could barely pay their
way. Blanc also quoted the detailed statistics amassed by Dr.Villermé in his
account of different branches of the textile industries. Blanc’s conclusion
was that concurrence was making life impossible for working people and indeed for most entrepreneurs, as increasing numbers were squeezed out of
business by the impact of competition.
Although his solutions were different from those of Blanc, Proudhon also
stressed the damaging impact of competition. The rare workers’ accounts of
the developing market economy reveal the effect of periodic crises. The
Saint-Simonian, Suzanne Voilquin explained how the crisis of the late 1820s
affected her:
Everywhere the luxury trades had ground to a halt, for the decorum
of the court demanded dreariness. Balls and celebrations were
proscribed. No more of those gold and silver-spangled dresses, nor
those delicious whims of fancy which, even as they adorned the
privileged beauties, at least provided a livelihood for the working
woman. Mrs. Martin’s workshop was reduced by three-fourths.
Since we were the last to be hired, we were the first to be let go … All
we were able to find were job lots of embroidery that were very
badly paid, but we had to accept them or die of starvation.35
The constantly recurring economic crises of the nineteenth century gave
immediate credence to the alarm of social commentators like Blanc and
Guépin. The depression after the Napoleonic Wars (1816–18) was followed
by financial, commercial and industrial recession, not to mention sustained
harvest failures between 1827 and 1832. There was a minor setback in 1839
and another major crisis between 1845 and 1848, even more far-reaching in
scope than that of the late 1820s. Similar cyclical depressions continued
throughout the nineteenth century. From the 1860s the threat of food shortage when harvests failed was reduced because first Prairie, and then Russian
wheat, were available. Liberal economists argued that these were temporary
22
THE SOCIAL QUESTION
disruptions, which would disappear as economies modernized. Socialists
and other radicals were far from sure that they were looking at symptoms of
progress and were more inclined to see them as indicators of accelerating
disaster.
Artisans were often unable to finance the increasingly complex and
expensive machinery dictated by market demand. Many were appalled by
the trend to confection, producing off the peg goods, increasingly common
in tailoring, shoemaking and hat-making. The tendency to embryonic mass
production, thus stimulated, helped to deskill crafts, allowing cheaper
female and foreign workers to be used as out-workers in some of the
processes.36 These problems were at the heart of the social crisis. As we shall
find, socialists advanced a wide variety of approaches, but all assumed that
radical alterations to capitalism were required. The structural aspects of the
origins of the social question were also attributed by artisans and some of
their radical supporters to government policy. These included opposition to
indirect taxes on wine, salt and tobacco, which undermined the economy of
the poor disproportionately.
Socialists were far more aware of urban issues than rural. This is curious
since during the first half of the nineteenth century, industrial growth was
concentrated in the countryside, with a few exceptions like Paris itself. The
abolition of feudal institutions by the 1789 Revolution, which seemed to
liberate peasants, led to the sale of communal land, particularly forests,
timber being much in demand for the expanding iron industry. The decline
of communal rights did more than industrial development to deconstruct the
domestic economy of the poor. Only in the Second Republic did socialists
become conscious that the social question had an unquantified rural
perspective when peasants, particularly in the south, rose up to defend the
republic in the hope that socialists would stop the collapse of communal
institutions.37
The most alarming aspect of the social question for nineteenth-century
observers was perceived impending social chaos. One of the first socialists to
explore the inadequacies of existing cities was Ange Guépin. In 1835 Guépin
co-authored a study of contemporary Nantes, whose shocking statistics on
poverty, diet, income and the health of poor people were much copied and
quoted in the later surveys of Villermé,38 Blanc and others. Two years later he
brought out his own history of the city from the earliest times, an abridged
version of which appeared in an 1843 historical dictionary of Brittany.39
Typically Guépin wove his views on how to solve the social problems of the
contemporary city with an account of its architecture and history.
Guépin set the format for later surveys of urban poor. He described how,
in Nantes, a port with substantial artisan industries, working people lived in
damp, dark cellars, running with water, surrounded only by a makeshift bed
and their spinning-wheel. They worked for up to 14 hours a day for 15–20
sous. On his day off, Sunday, the worker had no money to go anywhere, no
23
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
clubs, no entertainment. In the summer he might go out to the country. His
children lived in the gutter and three-quarters of them died: “At 20, people
thrived, or they were dead”.40 Guépin printed a detailed family budget to
prove that workers lived at the margins. Such budgets became standard fare
in social surveys. Guépin proceeded to recite the illnesses to which their
poverty made worker families prey. Their children were killed by chest
infections in the winter and diarrhoea in the summer.41 One illness that did
not respect income or living conditions and was a particular problem in a
port like Nantes, was syphilis.42 Guépin’s view of city life was so bleak that
he claimed that the urban babies stood a better chance of surviving if they
were wet-nursed in the countryside, a surprising attitude, given growing
criticism of wet-nursing.43
Socialists were not alone in condemning urban society. The Christian
socialist, Villeneuve-Bargemont, who had been a Restoration prefect in the
industrial Nord department, added his voice, blaming the anomie and social
cleavages of city life on the decline of spiritual values and charitable
impulses.44 Soon a rash of surveys of the urban working classes appeared,
two the work of doctors, Villermé45 and Buret,46 who had no sympathy with
socialism. They were commissioned by the Académie des Sciences Morales et
Politiques, a think-tank of the great and the good, organized by Guizot when
he was Minister of the Interior in 1832. Although quintessentially representative of the Orleanist elite, the reports submitted by Villermé and Buret
provided radicals and socialists with ammunition to criticize urban industrial
life. Social surveys, replete with the fruit of the new science of statistics, were
enriched by the work of popular novelists, whose books, serialized to great
acclaim in newspapers, left no doubt that cities were pits of evil and depravation. Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris appeared in 1831 and Eugène Sue’s
Les Mystères de Paris was serialized in 1842.
The Fourierist leader, Victor Considérant, was scathing in his condemnation of the urban environment. He described Paris as “un immense atelier de
putréfaction, où la misère, la peste et les maladies travaillent de concert”.47
The size of Paris led to the rich having no notion of the dreadful conditions
in which the poor lived. Nor did he idealize the countryside. People and animals lived crammed together: “One bedroom for all, bereft of window or
floor, also served as kitchen, dining room, cellar, grain store, stable and
farmyard”.48 When Considérant asked why the vast majority lived thus, clustered around a few grand cathedrals, palaces and other large houses, the answer he found lay in the lack of work and the absence of organization.
Commercial competition forced people to work in dreadful conditions and
live in hovels thrown up by speculators.
The incidence of the new plague of cholera epidemics in 1832 and 1848
added to fears that society was collapsing. Poverty, women and children
working for wages, the increased incidence of prostitution and illegitimacy
and rising levels of crime, were often depicted as features of moral decline
24
THE SOCIAL QUESTION
and the collapse of the family, especially by popular novelists like Eugène Sue
and Victor Hugo. Socialists were inclined to see all of the above list as consequences of poverty, while novelists often attributed poverty not to an accident of fate but to a lack of moral fibre; a cause not a consequence of the
social question.
We are beginning to move away from an analysis of the catalysts and
factors that produced a social crisis and an assessment of its nature, into the
realm of remedies. The rest of this volume looks at strategies and solutions
for its resolution, starting with the most controversial approach to the social
question: revolution.
25
CHAPTER THREE
Revolutionary inspirations
Que chacun tout bas,
pour le bonheur commun
En bon frère conspire.1
“The French Revolution contains the whole of socialism” declared Jean
Jaurès, the leader of the first united socialist party and one of its most
eloquent and influential historians during the Third Republic. Karl Marx
looked to 1789 as the genesis for his own revolutionary creed.2 Everyone
knows that Marx and Engels urged workers of all countries to unite in their
Manifesto of the Communist Party, published as numerous European revolutions were underway in the spring of 1848. Neither Marx nor Engels had
any substantial impact on the revolutions of 1848, but subsequently Marx
wrote, misleadingly, that the rebellions of the Paris workers in the June Days,
1848 and in March 1871 constituted the first proletarian revolutions.3 Contemporary conservatives were convinced that socialism was a revolutionary
threat to the established order. Alexis de Tocqueville, a conservative liberal,
was in accord with Marx that the June Days were a “servile war”.4 The legend of June 1848 as a proletarian socialist revolution was born, which Tilly
and Lees5 and Traugott6 have challenged in recent years.
In reality the legacy of the 1789 Revolution was interpreted in contrasting
ways by early socialists. The period of the constitutional monarchy was
personified in the ideas of Sieyès and the abolition of feudal rights and the
Declaration of the Rights of Man, over which he had a considerable
influence. Sieyès gave the early socialists the language of class difference and
the notion that 1789 was a bourgeois revolution.7 The subsequent Jacobin
Republic was the lynchpin of the Revolution for future republicans and
socialists, despite its contradictory legacy. An egalitarian constitution was
proposed but Robespierre’s pursuit of the “virtuous” citizen led to unprec26
R E VO LU T I O N A RY I N S P I RAT I O N S
edented persecution and terror. In response to the Rousseauist ideal of the
“general will” and the needs of war, the machinery of the state was increasingly centralized and bureaucratized. Efforts were made to protect and
provide for the needy and these were enshrined in the Jcobin constitution,
although the cost of civil and foreign war meant that little was done. Finally
Babeuf ’s Conspiracy of the Equals of 1796 embodied for some the efforts of
a vanguard party to use revolution to create a communist state of equal property owners. This triple and conflicting legacy of liberty, egalitarian and
repressive bureaucracy and dictatorial communism has been variously contested and applauded by socialists and communists ever since and remodelled in response to changes in communist regimes during the twentieth
century, particularly that of the USSR.
Most early socialists were diametrically opposed to revolution as a philosophical construct. They claimed to be in pursuit of harmony, association
and mutualism, all to be gained through cooperation, not conflict. Three of
the most influential socialists, Charles Fourier, Louis Blanc and Etienne
Cabet, commented on the negative practical impact of revolution in facilitating social reform. Fourier derided the achievements of 1789, and Cabet and
Blanc noted the limitations of the Great Revolution, while Buchez pointed
out that the much of the social legislation of the early 1790s, the Allarde and
le Chapelier laws in particular, robbed working people of their right to associate. In 1831 Cabet described 1830 as a révolution escamotée, which denied
benefits to the artisans who had done the actual fighting. A mere handful,
clustered around Auguste Blanqui, and inspired by Buonarroti’s stirring
account of the Jacobin phase of the First Republic and his recollections of
Babeuf ’s 1796 conspiracy, believed that planning and carrying through a
revolution against the established order would lead to nirvana.
For all the verbal disdain of revolutionary violence, the right of rebellion,
enshrined in the Jacobin Declaration of Rights of 1793, was always uppermost
in the thoughts of radicals, both republican and socialist: “Quand le
gouvernement viole les droits du peuple, l’insurrection est pour le peuple et
pour chaque portion du peuple, le plus sacré des droits et le plus indispensable des devoirs”.8 The Jacobin Declaration of Rights was constantly reprinted
by radicals and socialists during the July Monarchy, from Buonarroti9 to Louis
Blanc, who professed a hatred of revolution, but reproduced the declaration
in his critical history of the first ten years of the July monarchy.10 The radical
politician, Ledru-Rollin, quoted it to the Chamber of Deputies during an
acrimonious debate on the legality of the Banquet Campaign in 1847.
Add to this evocative legitimization of resistance, which still resonates in
late twentieth-century strikes, the typically nineteenth-century assumption
that the popular classes were always the dangerous classes. The experiences of
the 1790s convinced conservatives, radicals and socialists that artisans were
perpetually potential revolutionaries. That no conspiratorial activist, from
Babeuf in 1796 to Blanqui, on numerous occasions between 1839 and 1871,
27
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
succeeded in constructing a successful take-over of power in the name of the
“people”, failed to dim either Blanqui’s faith or conservative fears. The
constant reinforcement of repressive legislation against associations, against
the press, is evidence enough of the perceived danger from “the proletariat”.
Blanqui’s invented revolutions may have failed, but in these years there
were two full-scale revolutions that changed regimes, numerous other
episodes of unrest, ranging from bread riots to the rebellions of the Lyon
silk-weavers in 1831 and 1834 and major upheavals during the Second
Republic. The barricades were manned by “the popular classes”: artisans,
tailors, shoemakers, weavers, hatters, cabinet-makers, building workers, and
so on. Socialists and radicals drew their support from precisely these groups,
hence the fears of the established elites were perhaps not paranoia. The
conservative Party of Order, which took over the Second Republic in mid1848, and the Bonapartist regime that developed, were convinced that their
enemies were the socialists.
There is no doubt that socialists, for all their hopes of peaceful reform,
were not averse to threatening established regimes. In the early months of
1848 leading socialists such as Blanc, Considérant, Cabet and Proudhon,
took a not inconsiderable role in planning reform. However there was a distinction between those who believed that revolution was the prime means to
achieve radical changes and most socialists, who were more opportunistic
profiteers from insurgency.
In the second half of the nineteenth century Karl Marx delineated what he
considered to be a scientific analysis of social change, which was predicated
on the assumption that revolution would be its motor. However the genesis
of such ideas predated Marx’s prognoses by half a century. Gracchus Babeuf
(1760–1797) was an egalitarian communist who believed that revolution,
organized by a small vanguard elite and supported by the masses, was a vital
first step. His planned conspiracy of the “Equals” was uncovered and he was
guillotined in 1797. The account of the conspiracy, published by his fellowactivist, Buonarroti, in 1828, ensured that Babeuf became an icon of future
socialist revolutions. Marx himself described the Equals as “le premier parti
communiste réellement agissant”,11 but generations of socialist historians
were reluctant to share his enthusiasm. After 1956 Babeuf and Blanqui
became icons for Soviet12 and some French Communist historians.13 Buonarroti taught radicals, republican and socialists to revere Babeuf. Buonarroti
was equally important for his interpretation of the objectives of Robespierre
and the Jacobins, which, until then the numerous commentators on the
Revolution had regarded as too controversial to discuss.
Babeuf was a sheep turned wolf, a land surveyor for the cadastre and
feudal tax lawyer before 1789, who came to the view that all private
property should be abolished. A chequered career as a not particularly
successful journalist and a minor official in the revolutionary administration
had, by the end of 1795, led him to argue that only root and branch solutions
28
R E VO LU T I O N A RY I N S P I RAT I O N S
could eliminate exploitation. Private ownership should cease and production and distribution should be collectivized to stop hoarding, which was a
serious problem at the time. Money, individual trade and competition would
be abolished. A central store for food and other necessities would be set up
and goods would be given to each, in return for the work he or she had done.
As editor of the Tribun du Peuple, Babeuf claimed he was the head of a
“plebeian army”. He was one of the first to assert that modern society was
driven by warfare between the classes: “une guerre déclarée entre les
patriciens et les plebeiens, entre les riches et les pauvres”. He hoped to
exploit this class war to bring about revolution. Instead, in the spring of
1796, one of the police spies in his Society of Equals denounced them.
Communism had no precise meaning in the 1790s, but it clearly undermined concepts of private ownership, which had been guaranteed in each
revolutionary constitution. It could imply communal ownership and use by
the individual, or the equalization of holdings, as the Levellers ephemerally
attempted in England. Babeuf seems to have progressed from equalization to
common ownership. Socioeconomic objectives were more important to
Babeuf than political ones; he believed that the abolition of private property,
the central distribution of goods and personal equality had to precede democracy, simply because political democracy would not work until they had
been consolidated: “Private property is the source of all the calamities on
earth”.14 He calculated that if France was split up equally among all its citizens, each would receive 11 arpents, 14 acres.15 He seems to have believed in
the return to a primitive equality, but undoubtedly he also espoused communism as an alternative to capitalism. Communism was his solution to the iniquities and exploitation of capitalism as it was developing during the war
years. Babeuf thought that he had devised not a panacea that would bring
universal prosperity, but equalization, which would help the poor.
There can be little doubt that Babeuf was an inspiration to revolutionary
socialists. His desire to see an end to private property and a money economy
can be compared to the ideas of Fourier and Owen.16 There are shades of
Babeuf in Cabet’s central warehouses and communal ownership. Babeuf did
not invent the concept of class, but was one of the first to argue that class
conflict could be a powerful and justifiable motor for change. He was one of
the first to write about “proletarian” in the modern sense, but he employed it
indiscriminately with “poor” and “plebeian”.
Socialists who looked back to Babeuf as a communist were convinced that
their own solutions would not only bring an equalization of misery, but also
a measure of wealth to all, and even happiness. It has been suggested that
Babeuf was a backward looking pessimist who did not realize that capitalism
would bring an expanding economy and who, at best, hoped that his plans
would lead to equalization of misery.17 A message couched in these terms
would have found few takers, even in a bad year like 1796. The Equals actually promised their supporters, “le bonheur commun”, which sounds fairly
29
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
encouraging.18 It has to be remembered that Babeuf did not live in cheering
times. He was planning for the future in the depths of war-time gloom, when
large sections of the economy, particularly the capital’s luxury trades, were
depressed. There were few glimmerings of the expanding (real or imagined)
capitalist economy of the future.
Neither the Directory (1795–99) nor Napoleon (1799–1814) had cause
to revere Babeuf or to deal gently with revolutionary sympathizers. The
Great Revolution itself was the subject of numerous histories during the
Restoration, but it was left to one of Babeuf ’s Equals, Buonarroti, to revive
interest in him and to popularize the idea that revolution could change the
world. Buonarroti was described by one biographer as “the first professional
revolutionist”,19 but it was as a popularizer of insurgent methods rather than
as an active revolutionary that he was most influential and is remembered.
Philippe Buonarroti (1761–1837), son of a famous noble Italian family,
worked for the Jacobins and joined Babeuf ’s Equals, his first experience of a
life-time devotion to conspiracy. Imprisoned after Babeuf ’s trial, he became
involved in freemasonry and the carbonari. In 1823 he moved to Brussels,
where he mixed with a number of former members of the Convention. From
here, in conformity with a promise he had apparently made Babeuf,20 he
published his version of the 1796 conspiracy,21 introducing his contemporaries to a man who had been almost completely forgotten and shaping all
subsequent commentaries.
On 10 August 1830 Buonarroti arrived in Paris, taking the name Jean
Jacques Raimond. He sometimes used Maximilien as a first name, a case of
“living history”. In the first days of the new regime, he could have settled in
Paris using his own name, but old habits die hard: a “cloak and dagger”
conspiratorial lifestyle never ceased to delight him. A French edition of his
book, to which his own memoirs were added, according to the advance
publicity, was to be published in four volumes.22 To judge by contemporary
references the Conspiration became the most-read revolutionary breviary. It
circulated in the jails among the Parisian political prisoners. Buonarroti was
buried with a copy.23
Buonarroti presented a blueprint for the neo-Jacobin republican groups
of the 1830s, who took their ideas on social reform from the First Republic.
Although there had been several interpretative histories of the Revolution
published during the Restoration, Thiers, Mignet and others avoided detailed examination of the Jacobin Terror. The term Jacobin was a chameleon
wraith in 1828 when Buonarroti’s book first appeared. The lucky juxtaposition of its publication and the 1830 Revolutions turned Buonarroti’s
Conspiration into the 1830s equivalent of Mao’s “Little Red Book”, which
1960s radicals were all reputed to carry in the back pocket of their jeans.
Buonarroti described the revolutionary accession to power that the
Equals had desired, and went on to describe how they would have distributed wealth more fairly, a message that would have had as much relevance in
30
R E VO LU T I O N A RY I N S P I RAT I O N S
the economic crisis of 1827–32 as in the 1790s. Buonarroti concluded his
book with a documents section that reprinted the 1793 Jacobin constitution,
and numerous publicity tracts and the rallying songs of the Equals. The degree to which this book was read and the document section taken seriously,
not just as history, but as a statement of future intent, may be gauged by the
fact that the first historian of socialism, the journalist Reybaud, concluded
the second edition of his book with a documents section lifted entirely from
Buonarroti, picking out the juicy bits that showed socialists in what he presumably considered to be a reprehensibly revolutionary light.24
Buonarroti shaped attitudes to Robespierre, the Jacobins and Babeuf and
in doing so gave a distinct “Jacobin” slant to early socialism. Jacobin and
Robespierrist were virtually interchangeable terms to describe a radical at
that time.25 It was Buonarroti who defined their neo-Robespierrism,
presenting an image of the Jacobins that was far more democratic and more
preoccupied with radical social change than the actual Jacobins had been.
Babeuf himself had been more critical of Robespierre than was Buonarroti.
Buonarroti became a patron saint for a young generation of radical
republicans and revolutionary socialists. The latter became known as neoBabouvists. Laponneraye, who called himself a communist, and helped to
bring artisans into the secret societies of Paris in the 1830s, acknowledged
Buonarroti’s legacy.26 In his course of literacy and history which overflowed
the 300-seat lecture room, Laponneraye’s texts included the Jacobin Declaration of Rights. He added his own Babouvist commentary to the declaration. Article 10 had guaranteed subsistence to all; Laponneraye added:
“procurons du travail à ceux qui en manquent; assurons les moyens d’exister
à ceux qui sont hors d’état de travailler”.27
The older generation also honoured Buonarroti. He became a close friend
of Charles Teste and Voyer d’Argenson, whom he met in 1830. He live in
d’Argenson’s house in his last years. He taught them how to organize their
secret societies and plan their revolutions. The secret societies that were
formed immediately after the 1830 Revolution were self-consciously Robespierrist,28 seen through the prism of Buonarroti and his Conspiration.
Buonarroti did not take an active part in the clubs, but he had a profound
influence on their leaders, especially his close associates, Teste and Voyer
d’Argenson. Teste held communist views, based on Christian convictions.29
He was dominant in both the Amis du peuple, a clandestine republican club
formed during the 1830 Revolution, and the Association libre pour l’instruction du peuple, which ran literacy classes for working people. D’Argenson
took the lead in the Société des droits de l’homme, which emerged when the
Amis were forced to close by government censorship. French radical republicans had concentrated on rather elitist politics before Buonarroti. He helped
them to include social issues, the “classes populaires” and “Robespierrist”
terminology in their agenda and made sure they did not forget France’s traditional role as inspiration for radical revolution in the rest of Europe.30
31
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
Teste and D’Argenson accepted Buonarroti’s amendments to their published
writings, but one cannot say that he formed their thinking. Perhaps most
conclusively, d’Argenson, a wealthy aristocrat from a family distinguished
in government service, not only gave the oration at Buonarroti’s funeral,
which was attended by a crowd of 1,500, but was later buried in the same
tomb.31
Teste and d’Argenson would probably have thought of themselves as
radical republicans, rather than socialists, but they were preoccupied with
the same issues: poverty and the need to redistribute wealth.32 Both wanted
to do something for the poor, rather than with them, but this paternalist
approach was shared by a number of early socialists. Both, like Buonarroti,
were prepared to countenance revolutionary means to achieve social change.
D’Argenson was one of the leaders in the charbonnerie, and an organizer of
the abortive 1821 conspiracy in Belfort. In 1839 he was named as a member
of the provisional government by Blanqui during his Seasons’ conspiracy.
The secret societies that emerged at the time of the 1830 Revolution and
shortly afterwards33 were a direct link between Buonarroti and the early
socialist revolutionaries. They were formed by those who had been in the
charbonnerie and imitated the style of popular clubs in the 1790s, calling
themselves Amis du Peuple, later Société des droits de l’homme. Their initial
impetus was as pressure groups to ensure that the 1830 Revolution increased
political participation and instituted social reforms such as the abolition of
indirect taxes, especially on wine. By the autumn of 1830 the scale of popular unrest and government alarm forced them into secrecy, respecting Article
291 of the Penal Code, which banned organizations with more than 20
members unless they submitted their statutes and membership lists for
prefectoral approval. The clubs of the 1830s circumvented the law by subdividing themselves into cells of 20 and under, adopting, like the earlier
charbonnerie, the signs, symbols and rituals of freemasonry. They were soon
disenchanted with the Orleanist monarchy and through their newspapers,
the Tribun des Départements in Paris and numerous local Patriote or
Sentinelle papers, began to praise a republican alternative. The Orleanist regime persecuted them and their newspapers in the courts. In the spring of
1834 even groups smaller than 20 were banned.
The societies were not exclusively, or even primarily revolutionary, but
were considered subversive by the regime. They were intensely patriotic,
republican, increasingly preoccupied with social issues and, by 1833, attracted growing numbers of artisan members, who were, of course, excluded
from the political system by the very high tax qualification for voting.34 The
clubs expected to achieve their ends by propaganda and the self-evident virtue
of their ideas. Their members ran literacy classes for workers and free clinics
for the sick and poor, and organized mutual-aid groups and producer cooperatives. But the option of insurgency was always there. Their rule books
usually demanded that each member provide himself with a weapon and
32
R E VO LU T I O N A RY I N S P I RAT I O N S
ammunition, and be available for regular training.35 As associates were also
normally the active members of the National Guard, this last requirement
could be realized without fuss. Popular unrest in the early years of the July
Monarchy frequently found National Guardsmen on the “wrong” side of the
barricade. Society members were involved in a number of insurrections in
1831 (Lyon), 1832 (Paris), 1834 (Lyon)36 and 1839 (Paris),37 which need no
detailed retelling here.38 In the spring of 1834 legislation banned all associations, however tiny, and in September 1835 even the use of the word republic was out of bounds in the press. Escalating prosecutions, fines and jail
sentences pushed nearly all affiliates either into exile or to pursue alternatives,
such as parliamentary reform or a variety of specifically socialist ventures.
A tiny number, led by Auguste Blanqui, held out for revolution. Buonarroti’s influence is most emphatically reflected in Blanqui’s long career as a
conspiratorial revolutionary socialist. The two probably first met in 1832,
after the Procès des Quinze, when Blanqui was president of the Amis du Peuple.
Blanqui had a comfortable middle-class moderate republican background.
His father, a teacher in Tuscany, was a Girondin member of the Convention,
imprisoned by the Jacobins. He later served as an Imperial prefect. Auguste
was a pupil along with his elder brother, Adolphe, at the expensive and
selective Lycée Charlemagne. Both graduated, as was the norm for bright
young bourgeois in the 1820s, to the charbonnerie. Auguste studied law, contributed to the Globe and turned himself into a professional revolutionary; his
brother became a highly successful civil servant and an opponent of the socialists. From taking part in desultory unrest in the 1820s, Auguste was active in
the July Days and decorated with the Croix de Juillet. He expressed his
gratitude to the Orleanists by becoming their most devoted insurgent opponent. He quickly progressed within the Amis du Peuple from student leader to
president, earning several prosecutions and short jail sentences en route.
Blanqui was to spend over half of his adult life in jail, earning the
nickname, “l’enfermé”. He became totally absorbed in his clandestine
existence, and was constantly fearful of spies and government agents. He
always asked friends to destroy letters he sent them and tried to eat incriminating documents on his arrest in 1836.39 It has often been said that Blanqui
was a loner, but his letters suggest otherwise. He may have been intransigent
and abrasive, direct in his violent invective against the established order and
committed to revolution, but he does not seem to have been more isolated
than his frequent prison sentences dictated. The ideological gap between
him and other socialists did not lead him into hostile debate and his letters
show him able to cooperate with Fourierists like Charles Dain and also with
Cabet. He had very friendly relations with Fredéric Desgeorges, the editor of
the Progrès du Pas-de-Calais and patron of Louis Blanc.40
Blanqui’s republicanism must have been learned from his father,41 but his
revolutionary socialism came from elsewhere. Although there is no direct
evidence that he read Conspiration, his belief in the revolutionary option
33
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
was similar to that of Buonarroti and Babeuf. Like Buonarroti, Blanqui
categorized socioeconomic relations as a class war, in which the rich constantly oppressed the poor, with, among other inequities, prohibitive indirect taxes, in whose definition and collection the poor had no voice. He was
less concerned with questions of unemployment and low wages than other
early socialists. The defence speech he made in his trial in January 1832 was
a classic statement of his socialist convictions. It could have been written by
Buonarroti.42 Blanqui insisted to the president of the court that his profession was “prolétaire” and that this was indeed a profession, since it described
nearly 30 million French people. He questioned the competence of the
court, “I appear here before enemies, not judges”. He was charged with inciting the poor to rebel. Blanqui proceeded to tell the court what he wanted;
universal suffrage and social equality, which required more changes than
merely rehashing the “scarecrow spectre” of the Jacobin constitution.43 In
this speech Blanqui laid the parameters for his revolutionary socialism,
which was inspired by Buonarroti. However Blanqui wanted more radical
social change than the Jacobins had envisaged and was more violent and
bitter in his language than was Buonarroti.
The jury was so terrified by this speech that, although they acquitted all of
the rest of the accused after 15 minutes of consultation, they decided that
Blanqui had provoked class antagonism in his defence speech and should
serve a term of one year and pay a fine of 200 francs. In the fine tradition of
political incarceration in the July Monarchy, harassment and conviction
were usually followed by a very short and fairly liberal period in jail.44
On his release Blanqui remained a conspirator and a journalist, notably
failing to raise the Parisian “masses” in May 1839 and spending the rest of
the July Monarchy in jail. He has been called the “most Jacobin of the
Jacobins”.45 Throughout his life he was convinced that violent revolution in
Paris orchestrated by a small group of devoted insurgents was the only route
to a socialist republic. The vast majority of the educated elite shared his belief
that the masses were innately revolutionary and successive regimes feared his
influence. A year after the abortive Seasons’ rising, a sympathizer claimed
that poverty turned the vast majority of artisans, their wives and families (he
calculated seven out of eight million) into potential revolutionaries,46 yet a
New Seasons’ club struggled to assemble 60 mourners to accompany the funeral procession of the radical politician Garnier-Pagès. Revolution was not
just a matter of ideology and timetables, but of economics. What impact did
the professional insurgents have? The paranoid correspondence of some
prefects and government prosecutors might attest to their success at a psychological level. But no planned revolt ever succeeded; the “triumphant”
revolutions were accidents, combining political and economic crisis with individual factors.
On the other hand, popular unrest was endemic in early nineteenthcentury Europe, not least in France. The artisans who formed mutual-aid
34
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groups became Fourierists and Icarians, and were equally likely to organize
strikes and demonstrations; for instance, the mutualist silk-weavers of Lyon47
and the cotton workers of Rouen.48 Small-scale wine producers were as
willing to set fire to the office of the government collectors of the detested
indirect taxes as sign petitions.49 When bad weather led to harvest shortfalls,
people adopted traditional strategies of grain riots and enforced the sale of
grain in transit. Above all, rural inhabitants constantly protested at the
withdrawal of common rights, particularly the right to use timber from
communal forests. In times of major economic crisis, as in 1827–33 and
1845–52, a cacophony of such complaints, usually associated with anticlerical demonstrations, the singing of the Marseillaise or Ca Ira and the
waving of red flags, would alarm governments, always very aware of the revolutionary origins of their own power. Popular protest came from the very
poor, for whom the Forest Codes of 1827 were a disaster and who looked
back to an idealized past. Equally, and more emphatically, it came from
“modernizers”: relatively prosperous small farmers, particularly wine
producers, who were incensed by indirect taxes, the protectionist commercial policies pursued by successive governments and the high interest they
were forced to pay on loans. Their motivations were both political and
economic.
Historians have debated whether popular insurrection was “archaic” or
“modernizing” in inspiration. Philippe Vigier50 and Maurice Agulhon51 have
shown the importance and variety of popular unrest in stimulating radical
political attitudes among peasants and artisans in southern France. Agulhon
emphasized that radicalism was at least as much the protest of farmers frustrated in their efforts to develop protocapitalist agriculture as those on the
margins of survival. He also stressed the importance of the traditional local
sociability and communal links in maintaining independent attitudes. Alain
Corbin probed conflicting “archaic” and “modernizing” tendencies in the
Limousin in his investigation of the origins of popular left-wing politics in
the region and found that the focus lay in urban artisans, especially pottery
workers and masons who spent the working months each year in Paris.52 Peter McPhee has traced the close relationship of a wide range of forms of
popular unrest to the social crisis of the 1840s.53 John Merriman54 and Ted
Margadant55 have linked popular radicalism in 1848–49 both to resistance
to the Forest Codes and the imposition of an additional 45 per cent on the
land tax in 1848. Whether those who took to the streets were modernizers
or looking back to an idealized past was inclined to be dictated by the development and prosperity of the economy of the region under discussion.
The largest popular rising in nineteenth-century France was the resistance
to Louis-Napoleon’s military coup in December 1851. Tens of thousands of
men and women marched in protest to their local commune, or to the departmental capital in 32 departments, and revolutionary communes were declared in 100 centres. These uncoordinated civic demonstrations were
35
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
brutally repressed by mobile columns of troops. The state of siege, still in
force in some departments as a consequence of radical and socialist resistance to earlier dismemberment of the democratic framework, was extended
to all 32 departments. The demonstrations were spontaneous and the uncoordinated marches were often completely unarmed. The protesters did not
speak for socialism, but always asserted that they acted in defence of the
republican constitution, a not unreasonable claim in view of the flagrant
illegality of the Bonapartist coup. Louis-Napoleon’s regime responded with
mobile columns of troops, moved swiftly by train to trouble spots, guided by
telegraphic information.56
Special “mixed commissions” composed of the local prefect, prosecutor
and military commander were set up to try those arrested. Jury trials were
avoided because of the risk of acquittal.57 Anyone who had ever thought of
joining a radical association was rounded up and closely questioned,
whether they had participated in the rebellion or not. In the Aveyron, plans
for a concerted march on Rodez petered out when the demonstrators ran out
of funds; a curious cash-flow problem given that one of their main leaders,
Bonhomme, was a banker! They issued a proclamation: “The Legislative
Assembly has been broken up by arbitrary action. The constitution has been
violated. The president must be declared a traitor and all citizens must take
up arms to defend the republic”.58 Bonhomme’s son was described by the
prosecutor as a Fourierist who had started out as a “Party of Order” man and
turned to the reds when the conservatives refused to run him as a candidate
in April 1848.
Those who found themselves charged simply because they had belonged
to an association included craftsmen, tailors, potters, weavers, clock-makers,
and so on. The original radical republican leaders of 1848 were an obvious
target. In Mayenne, Ledru-Rollin’s commissioner, subsequently a local subprefect, Godard-Beauchène, a 60-year-old retired pharmacist who had been
mayor before the 1848 Revolution and earned the prosecutor’s praise for his
wise administration, was arrested. The charge against him was that he organized a democratic society with worker members in which “detestable” socialist newspapers like the Bienêtre Universel were read. Their aim had been to
plan the socialist campaign for the 1852 elections. They were consumed, attested the prosecutor with “a brutal socialism – war against property, the
family, religion – above all against private property”.59 The accused and witnesses were subjected to detailed questioning and verdicts were delivered at
speed. The Mayenne commission was completed by February 1852. Given
the trumped-up nature of most of the charges, the sentences were uniquely
harsh, ranging from transportation to Algeria, to long prison sentences, banishment and prolonged police surveillance. Godard-Beauchène was banished for two years. Estimates of the numbers of arrests and convictions vary,
from the official tally of 27,000 and 9,000 deported to Algeria, to Jules
Simon’s figure of 100,000 convictions.60
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R E VO LU T I O N A RY I N S P I RAT I O N S
What were the motivations of those who marched, and those who
imprisoned them? The massive number of interrogations of suspects draws
attention to the socialism of middle-class leaders, but the questions asked of
followers tended to encourage them to mention poverty, or that they had
simply gone along with their mates.61 Contemporary officials were convinced that this was at heart a radical and socialist rebellion. Eugène Weber, a
historian well known for his scepticism of peasant politicization, was convinced that the risings were far more to do with economic deprivation than
politics.62 There has been more support for the contrary view that the risings
were, as most witnesses said, in defence of the republic. John Merriman63
and Ted Margadant in particular pointed to the lack of convincing correlation between departments that had protested about the 45 centîmes tax and
the Forest Codes and those that rose in December 1851.64
Middle-class socialist and radical leaders were sometimes inclined to stress
local issues, perhaps to protect their followers. On the occasion of an earlier
popular rebellion in Limoges after the April election, 1848, the local socialist
deputy and lawyer, Thédore Bac, claimed that the artisan protestors had been
moved by specific issues, not Babouvism. In a small town like Limoges it was not
“the masses” who fought, but individuals, and the memory does not fade: “Le
sang germe dans les pavés, et y fait pousser des ressentiments vivaces”.65
However, one only has to have experienced popular demonstrations on a minor
scale, such as during 1968 in Paris and Lyon, to realize that for blood to be shed
on the town’s pavements, a revolutionary tradition existed. Knowledge of the
ideas of Babeuf, Buonarroti and Blanqui as well as the locally popular Leroux ,
contributed to the belief that violence was justified to defend one’s interests.
Although provincial unrest alarmed governments, and may have contributed to revolution, it was not of itself revolution. The events of December
1851 were the most notable protest and they were not coordinated and
offered little resistance to government troops. The sort of revolution that
changed regimes was urban, and essentially Parisian. Above all, revolution was
an accident of geography and the absence of town planning. Cities tended to
be vulnerable. In Paris the centres of government, newspapers and artisan
industry were adjacent to each other. Artisan demonstrations, the demands of
journalists, and the narrow streets in which both operated made it easy to
topple the highly centralized regimes of the first half of the nineteenth century.
The success of the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 had far more to do with
urban geography than radicalism, and even less to do with socialism.
Building on the experience of his great uncle and recent revolutions,
Louis-Napoleon learned how to marshal troops effectively to control Paris
and the rest of France. His was a new sort of revolution from above. The
president turned emperor not only created an 18-year autocratic dictatorship, but he was able to utilize a revived democratic and also a plebiscitary
voting system, to give statistical credence to his claim to have popular
support. He also engaged the active support of former Saint-Simonians such
37
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
as the Péreire brothers, Michel Chevalier, Enfantin and Duveyrier, who
hoped that their version of social reform would secure dictatorial sanction. A
revolutionary – even socialist – Emperor? Maybe not, but the illusion was
sufficient to maintain him in power until 1870.
38
CHAPTER FOUR
Religion and the early socialists1
In this chapter I analyse early socialist passions for religion to show how it was
the cornerstone in their hopes that a socialist “new world” would not remain
merely a “dream world”. I ask why socialists argued with increasing fervour
between the early 1830s and 1848 that social reform had to be rooted in
spiritual as well as moral values. Two of the largest groups, the Icarians and the
Fourierists, moved from a rational deism to Christianity. Both were driven by
the need to defend themselves from accusations of immorality levelled against
Fourier and the Saint-Simonians because of their rejection of monogamous
marriage. The Fourierists, strongly influenced by their dominant female
members, transformed Fourier’s deity into a Christian God. Cabet, under
pressure of “moral outrage” from his critics, did likewise and found that this
corresponded to the experiences of the Icarians in their artisan organizations.
In rejecting conventional Catholicism when she joined the Saint-Simonians
aged 26 in 1831, Jeanne Deroin acknowledged merely that the regular
systems of the universe indicated the presence of an intelligent spiritual force:
“Proclaiming the law of progress, is acknowledging that the world has a
purpose”.2 A generation later in the Second Republic she described herself as a
Christian socialist.3 She had begun to refer to a God with a capital “D”, usually
when she was claiming that woman should be recognized as man’s equal
because she was more in touch with God’s laws than man.4
The religion of the early socialists was a democratic and a pragmatic
morality, derived, in part, from artisan corporations, and seen as a vital base
for fraternal association, which was their solution to the ills of society. In
contrast to socialist parties later in the nineteenth century, most early socialists placed considerable emphasis on a Christian god and especially on Jesus.
They were inclined to describe their own organizations as sects, their ideas as
a faith, elevate their leaders almost to divine status and to enrol Jesus as an
acolyte. In 1843 Cabet declared that Christ was part of his Icarian
39
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
community.5 In 1845, under attack by Cormenin, a former ally, he defined
the true Church of Christ and his apostles as “Equality in all things – education, work, life: liberty and democracy, the end of all domination, unity and
association”.6 In 1846 he claimed that “Le christianisme c’est la fraternité,
c’est le communisme”. Christ was “le prince des communistes”.7 Icarian
communism was not a “new” Christianity (a reference to Saint-Simon’s book
of 1825, which described his view of the role of religion in the modern state),
but the true Christianity. Christianity was God’s rule on earth. God was the
father, thus all men were brothers and equal members of the same family.
Icarian communism best represented this spiritual, fraternal equality.8
Jesus was a recent Icarian convert. The imaginary utopian community
described by Cabet’s Voyage en Icarie, written during his exile in London and
first published in 1840, was not Christian. Nor did He figure in the flier
Cabet published to advertise the book, which included a short catechism
explaining his system: “Quelle est sa religion? – La plus sublime, puisque
l’homme, heureux par l’usage de sa raison, n’a plus que des actions de grâces
à rendre à la Nature pour les innombrables bienfaits qu’elle a répandus sur
lui”.9 Religion is almost an afterthought in Voyage en Icarie, a popular work,
which went through five editions before the 1848 revolution. However
Christian imagery constantly recurs. Cabet compared the way in which the
idea of community would be preached to the aristocracy in Icarie to Jesus’s
approach to converting people.10 Written in a simple and agreeable style and
full of “good” news, it was, apparently, well received by the 100,000 or so
members of his Icarian movement. In two substantial volumes Cabet
described in infinite detail how a system of common ownership, communal
organization, political democracy and absolute equality would produce a
perfect society in which police and prisons would not be needed. The
Almighty was almost abolished too. Whereas a rigid egalitarian uniformity
dominated almost all aspects of life, religion was left to the individual.
As Cabet was punctiliously pedantic about how many pairs of knickers
colonists were to take to Nauvoo a few years later,11 his lack of absorption
with religion in 1840 smacks of indifference. At 18 the young Icarians were
to be instructed in the world religions and left to make up their own mind
which, if any, they preferred. The state took no role; religion was entirely a
matter for the individual conscience: “Notre religion, universelle et populaire, n’est, à vrai dire, qu’un système de morale et de philosophie”. His god
was a vague impersonal concept determined by social rather than spiritual
principles. Icarians should love others as they loved themselves and harm no
one as they did not want to be hurt; bland generalities reminiscent of Charles
Kingsley’s Water Babies! Religion involved no ceremonies or priests, and no
spiritual authority of any kind.12 Did Cabet change his mind about the
Divine, and if so, in response to what stimuli?
A similar contrast can be noted in the parallel socialist movement, Fourierism. The founder, Charles Fourier, acknowledged the deity as omniscient,
40
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though not omnipotent; the Almighty was as bound by the rules of universal
order as were humans. Fourier’s deity had a back seat in his perfect
community; architectural plans of phalanges contained lavish illustrations of
communal buildings, but no church. Fourier’s deity was also an impersonal
concept and had little function other than to reveal to Fourier how society
should be organized. Yet the Fourierists who grouped themselves around their
new master from the end of 1831 had no doubt that a personal god was a
fundamental and guiding force in their phalanges.
What had changed? There is abundant evidence that the early socialists
considered religious faith, in tandem with mass education, a vital motivating
force in their battle against poverty. Buchez is the outstanding example of a
socialist for whom Christianity and a full-blown divine Trinity was paramount. He deserted Saint-Simonianism in 1829 and gradually drew close to
Catholicism, although he never became a practising member. Leroux stressed
religion in his experimental community in Boussac.13 Blanc included Jesus as
a vital ingredient in his social workshops. The development of socialism in the
1860s distorted remembrance of the earlier years. Marxist socialism always
dismissed religion. However the French early socialists were devout and
French socialism long continued to hold to spiritual values, although the
death of Mitterrand may have gone over the top with two masses. The influence of Marxist ideas on socialist historiography has tended to play down the
spirituality, as well as the significance of the French early socialists.
In recent years the emphasis has shifted. Historians have begun to notice,
without needing to dismiss it as an embarrassingly sentimental anachronistic
quirk, that religion was a vital issue for early socialists. For them Christ was a
proletarian ally in the class struggle; the Christ of the barricades as depicted
by Bowman in 1987;14 Christ the inspiration for Revolutionary fraternity, in
the eyes of David in 1992.15 Historians are rediscovering the Christ of the
sans-culottes described by the early socialists. Berenson has been careful to
emphasize that the faith of the socialists was truly spiritual, not merely a
secular appendage.16 Prothero stresses the importance of millenarian views
and the presentation of Napoleon as a messiah.17 This last image was copied
in numerous contemporary illustrations, including Hippolyte Bellangé’s
“Look here monsieur le curé, for me that [Napoleon] is the Heavenly
Father”.18 Prothero also observes the role of break-away Catholic sects,
particularly that of the abbé Chatel, in the faith of radical artisans.19 Recent
commentators have stressed the religion of the socialists as a product of
Revolutionary ideas on fraternité, proclaimed in the 1790s, but hugely
elaborated in 1848. Berenson was keen to demonstrate that their religion
came out of disappointment with the failure of revolution to transform
society and their own determination to change it by example and persuasion.
He also notes that the emphasis on Jesus may have sprung from eighteenthcentury Catholic modifications to the catechism to make it more personal,
individual and Christ-centred.
41
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
This reaffirmation of the faith of the early socialists leaves questions unanswered. The politicians of the early 1790s, often citing Enlightened writers,
attacked Catholicism with vigour. The religion of the Supreme Being, which
Robespierre invented, was not a Christ-centred faith, nor even Christianity,
but owed much to late eighteenth-century images of the religions of the
ancient classical civilizations. Why was Christian belief incorporated into
socialist plans for social regeneration? Is it sufficient to say “because revolution failed”? If socialists rejected revolution, why turn to religion? Christianity could be regarded with justification as counter-revolutionary; witness the
evangelical priests of the Restoration burning Voltaire’s works. Why was it
that socialist groups often constituted themselves into substitute religions?
Why do some of the leading early socialists move from a remote deity to a
personal god? The case of the Fourierists is particularly striking.
Fourier always stressed that his ideas were based on scientific observation,
the social equivalent of Newton’s laws of motion. Fourier’s deity was his
secret agent in his search for the scientific rules of social order. The regimentation of orders of different varieties form the skeleton of all of his books. He
constantly repeated how history, the passions and the phalansterian economy
were composed of elaborate structures. His absorption with order was fairly
standard in his day; his solutions were not. Fourier’s deity was the great
architect; the source of knowledge and understanding of spiritual, and therefore social order; the key to tracing what Romantic writers and painters of his
time might have called the Holy Grail. Fourier had no interest in Christ, or a
personal god and despised the tedium of the Christian heaven.20 The spiritual
impulse was simply the need to know the rules of social organization. There
was no hint that the deity could bend the rules, or remake them.
Once Fourier had transmitted the knowledge of the preordained social
order to others, society could go into auto-pilot. If Fourier’s theories were
accepted, society would be immediately transformed from “civilization”,
into “harmony”. There was no intermediate stage of gradual improvement
or reform. The learning curve was vertical. In his perfect community there
were no priests or churches.
Fourier’s phalanges would be based on the scientific freeing of the passions
or attractions from traditional restraints, which perverted nature rather than
refining it. For him the liberation of women was fundamental; they should be
free to be educated and secure decently paid work. Economically independent and without the responsibilities of rearing their children and running a
home, their bonds of marriage would melt away. Fourier was lyrically
convincing on the evils of marriage. Sexual liberation for all would be a return
to nature where gender could be infinitely varied. Children would be reared
in common nurseries; meals taken in refectories; the family would disappear.
Fourier had the view, not uncommon in this Romantic age, that a return to
a state of nature would bring instant perfection and universal love. Codes
of law and judicial apparatus would be irrelevant. Moral codes would be
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superfluous and hence, for Fourier, there would be no need to bring a god of
wrath to bear on transgressors. If only time-travel were possible, how happy
some twenty-first-century politicians would be in the phalange!
Did Fourier really believe it would work? One is never entirely sure how
serious he was, with seas of pink lemonade, anti-lions who don’t eat people,
copulating planets, never mind five meals a day and sex on a hypermarket
scale. His handful of major books, the first of which was published in 1808
and the last in 1829,21 repeated the same basic utopian dream. They were
virtually unread and are still hard to read, thanks to his determination to
shock his reader and present his ideas in a novel way, inventing a whole new
vocabulary, and rejecting traditional pagination. This unsuspecting foreigner
used to haul larger and larger dictionaries into the University of London,
Senate House Special Collections and sign up for language courses, until she
realized that the words she hunted existed only on Fourier’s pages. Only a
snippet summarizing his economic theory was translated into English in
his day22 and subsequently nothing was translated into English, until the
publication of a collection of extracts in the USA in the 1970s23 and a recent
very welcome translation of the Four Movements, prefaced by a lucid
introduction.24
Meanwhile others, who like Fourier were keen to remake society, had
found a personal god. The secret radical society, the charbonnerie, that
attracted all the future socialists who were young in the early 1820s, was
based on the ceremonies and symbols of Freemasonry and put Jesus the Carpenter at centre-stage.25 Saint-Simon, who was also concerned about social
reform, having lived a wholly selfish libertarian existence, wrote Nouveau
Christianisme, which was published shortly before his death in 1825 and
which quickly sold 2,000 copies when reissued by his disciples a few years
later. Religion was a fairly semi-detached aspect of his new social order
directed by “industriels”; those in the community who worked and contributed to the general good.
A number of members of the charbonnerie were attracted to the practical
potential of Saint-Simon’s theories and after his death formed themselves
into a “school” and then into a “church”. Their mission was the liberation of
women and workers. The female members were particularly active in efforts
to set up hostels, crèches and evening classes. The disciples evangelically
campaigned for artisan as well as elite membership. In 1830 and 1831 they
held large public meetings in Paris, where recent converts read out their
“professions de foi”; the meetings were not dissimilar to American revivalist
campaigns of the second half of the twentieth century. Many female converts
expressed their relief that the “church” provided them with an alternative to
Catholicism, which they had rejected for its lack of concern for social
problems. Désirée Véret claimed that Saint-Simonianism made religion
meaningful to her for the first time in her life.26 In her “profession”, the longest on record, Jeanne Deroin, explained, more pragmatically, that it was the
43
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
spiritual aspect of Saint-Simonianism that attracted her: “le Saint-Simonisme
… vient … reconstruire à neuf le Temple du Vrai Dieu; il apporte la vraie
lumière; il promet de réorganiser, de régénérer la société”. However, despite
the claims, Deroin was not convinced of the spirituality of the sect and left.27
The sect adopted a uniform and behaved like a cross between a regiment
and a religious order. A dominant member of their group, Enfantin,
began to call himself their “pope”, perhaps at first partially mocking the
Catholic revival, but soon with evident seriousness. He called for the
discovery of “the woman” who would be the female pope, enthroned alongside him. He urged his supporters to reverse Catholic “hair-shirt” abnegation
of the flesh. Enfantin’s attribution of patriarchal spiritual qualities alienated
his colleagues. The most enterprising deserted him for Fourier. The leading
influence was Victor Considérant, a native, like Fourier, of Besançon, who
decided that the phalange was a practical solution to social problems.
The new recruits rapidly created a Fourierist movement, or Ecole
sociétaire which soon had groups in Britain, America and elsewhere as well
as numerous ones in France. Their simplified, bowdlerised Fourierism bore
little resemblance to their master’s original precepts, although they always
honoured him and claimed to be merely distilling his philosophy. Fourierists
still insisted that their ideas on human destiny constituted a social science,28
but God now had pride of place. Fourier was keener than any Hollywood
blockbuster to emphasize that love made the world go round, but his followers focused on God, the ultimate source of love.29 Considérant noted that
man’s “attractions” were God-given, were the revelations of universal
harmony and the raison d’être of creation.30 On the title page of his Destinée
Sociale, published in 1837, Considérant recorded: “Les destinées sont les
résultats présens, passées et futurs des plans établis par Dieu, conformément
aux lois mathématiques”.31 Considérant divided the “law of universal unity
for man” into three parts: the unity of man with himself, the unity of man
with God and the unity of man with the Universe.32 Fourierists mainly
retained the anti-clericalism common to most radicals. However some
Fourierists drew close to social Catholicism, urging the clergy to take a lead
in addressing social problems. In 1843 Victor Hennequin wrote, in the
Fourierist newspaper, Démocratie Pacifique, “Deux puissances existent:
l’esprit moderne et la foi catholique; on ne peut pas les detruire: il faut donc
les unir”.33
These notions did not mean that the Fourierists relied on prayer. Like
Fourier they stressed the need for immediate and practical proposals to
tackle poverty. Their own professional orientations underlined their
preferences. These break-away Saint-Simonians were mainly young doctors
or engineers, trained in the 1820s in the Paris medical faculty or the Ecole
Polytechnique, who had recently embarked on careers as doctors in the community or as government employees. Considérant, whose “day job” was
planning the routes for railways, was a leading force in bringing Fourier to a
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wider market. The phalange remained the cornerstone, although the more
familiar and reassuring term “commune” was used interchangeably:
La commune est ... l’atelier social, l’élement alvéolique de la
province, de la nation, de la société générale … L’organisation de la
commune est la pierre angulaire de l’edifice sociale, quelque vaste et
quelque parfait qu’il soit.34
In reality schemes for experimental phalanges became more modest,
Fourierists came to settle for “model” firms and reform schools, and single
issue causes such as prison reform, the development of schools and, in the
1840s, the organization of work. This last project dramatically changed the
direction of Fourierists away from utopianism towards a state initiative via
ambitious public works programmes, drawing them closer to the ideas of
Louis Blanc.
The energetic and influential women affiliates, who were often the
financiers of the numerous Fourierist publications and the main organizers
of local groups, had a profound influence on Fourierist ideas on religion.
Gatti de Gamond argued that Fourierism had little significance without a return to God, “The societary system may easily be reduced to the simple limits
of an industrial agricultural farm”,35 whereas a true phalange would strive to
improve itself and its members and would involve God and morality, “A
societary state can … be introduced only by the growth of a higher nature in
man”.36 Clarisse Vigoureux,37 a close friend of Fourier’s, in whose house he
lodged in Paris, was particularly insistent in defining God as their active,
directing moral force. Is this another indication of the feminization of religion? Eugénie Niboyet, a former Saint-Simonian, married to an engineer,
whose whole family had been involved in the movement, was notably active
in social reform. She became secretary to the Société pour la morale
chretienne, whose members demanded prison reform and visited inmates. It
included other former Saint-Simonians, such as Carnot, and traditional
philanthropists like Lamartine and the duc de Rochefoucauld-Liancourt.38
Fourierists everywhere stressed Christ and a personal God as the central
element in the phalange. Harmony would no longer be the automatic consequence of the free exercise of man’s passions, but a quintessentially Christian
quality in which freedom was not the first consideration. Fourierists thought
of their ideas as a faith; Fourier, to his dismay, was regarded as almost divine.
This still did not mean that churches appeared in the numerous illustrations
of projected phalanges, or that an institutional church was created. Initially
in 1848 there were close links between reformers and the Catholic Church,
but the elections revealed that the Church had a different agenda and was far
more powerful than socialist groups.
Fourier’s conceptualization of the phalange as the basic social unit was
abandoned in favour of the family under the aegis of Vigoureux and Gatti de
45
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
Gamond who did much to install the primacy of monogamy into the doctrine. Fourierists admitted that their master might be correct in asserting that
natural man was polygamous, although Fourierist ladies would not concede
on polyandry. True to the bourgeois background of most Fourierists, the
ladies were convinced that nature needed correction and phalansterian man
had to accept discipline and restraint. A personal God was required to justify
the moral codes of the phalange. The Fourierist women were strongly
convinced by the popular contemporary feminist notion that women had a
special role in disseminating spiritual morality.39 Fourier had believed that
the phalange would allow the passions of it’s members to harmonize effortlessly and without harm to each other. Communal working, recreation and
education would melt away individual conflicts and the pressures of rivalry,
envy and greed would become irrelevant. Thus Fourier, like Cabet in Icarie,
thought that the phalanges would not even need written codes of law. He was
convinced that unrestrained nature was automatically harmonious. Only a
bachelor with a minimal sex life could have held such an opinion.
Fourierists were not convinced that the liberation of the passions would
mean unalloyed bliss, and perhaps their own quarrelsome relationships with
their master might have influenced their scepticism. The women were
particularly scornful of his enthusiasm for the universal release of sexual
passions, perhaps remembering the tragedies of “free love” among the SaintSimonians. They were convinced that women were more effectively
protected, if not fully liberated, by moral codes governing love and the
overarching example of the spiritual love of God. Gatti de Gamond wrote:
“Love is the most powerful of the attractions … and yet what does love, the
gift divine, become in the society where all the passions, turned from their
natural courses, are dark and cruel?”40
Because the cash to set up phalanges was not forthcoming, the Fourierists
had to modify their communal ideal and accept modified experiments in
which explicit moral codes were vital. Projects like that of Talabot, who set
up a model iron foundry, allotments and shops, although welcomed by the
Fourierists, left the individual owner in control of production and profits,
and thus private greed and rivalries would need to be checked.41 Alterations
to Fourier’s doctrine made God essential as a policeman of private morality
and a shop-steward of economic morals.
Why did not just the Fourierists but also Saint-Simonians, Buchez, Cabet,
Leroux, Blanc, Ange Guépin and other socialists want an interventionist
personal deity? They believed that they lived in a sick society, in need of a
firm moral framework. In 1832 Enfantin, Chevalier and the other SaintSimonian leaders were successfully arraigned and imprisoned on a charge of
subverting morality by practising sexual freedom and experimental marriage. Their claim that religion was the inspiration of their movement was to
no avail.42 They were criticized, by acolytes as well as by enemies, for their
libertarian existence. That Fourier recommended total fluidity in sexual
46
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partnerships also became known. Hence in the early 1840s socialists were
roundly attacked as immoral, promiscuous enemies of the family and a
threat to society, even by former allies like Cormenin. The total communism
of Cabet’s Voyage, meals eaten in common, women receiving equal educational opportunities, left the author exposed to suspicion. His Vrai
Christianisme was a necessary corrective and a consciously defensive polemic. Socialists counter-attacked the ubiquitous charge of immorality by
emphasizing their strict moral codes and God as their enforcer.
The early nineteenth century put a great deal of stress on sexual morality,
perhaps because of the prolonged disruption to family relations caused by 22
years of war, mostly fought in distant places. Illegitimacy and child abandonment had increased. A law permitting divorce was in force from 1792 for
about ten years and 75 per cent of petitioners were women, many of whose
husbands had abandoned them.43 The visible expansion of prostitution in
urban areas provoked several studies, Parent-Duchatelet being a pioneer in
the mid 1830s,44 and attempts were made to extend institutional controls,
particularly to combat syphilis. Socialist doctors took a lead in such
campaigns.45 The tendency of the poor to avoid formal marriage was criticized and even rural departmental councils had to make more provision for
“enfants trouvés”. Studies of the impact of industrial change and urbanization in the 1820s and 1830s added to fears of moral decline and social collapse.46 Socialists took the initiative in compiling and popularizing statistical
surveys of poverty, as well as actively seeking solutions. The atmosphere of
social crisis accelerated recourse to moral values and with them the Almighty.
The private letters as well as the published books of Guépin, a doctor working among the poor of Nantes, leave no doubt of the genuineness of the religious convictions of such reformers.47
Was the adoption of a personal god a sign that revolution had been
dismissed as failure and rejected as a means to remake society, as Berenson
has suggested? The Manifesto of the Communist Party casts a long retrospective shadow on how the early socialists have been understood, notably via
such aphorisms as “The first step in the revolution by the working class is to
raise the proletariat to the position of the ruling class”.48 With the rare exceptions of Babeuf, Buonarroti, Blanqui, and, for a time, Barbès, all of the early
socialists feared revolution and believed it to be counter-productive to their
goals. The list of failed insurrections was daunting: the 1790s, 1830, 1831,
1832, 1834, 1839, 1848, 1849, 1851–52; failures in which working people
did not achieve their objectives, sometimes died on the barricades or found
themselves incarcerated for long periods. The evidence was that those who
grabbed power after a popular rising were soon even more conservative than
their predecessors and that those who fought lacked the common objectives,
weapons and financial clout to sustain even a brief strike, let alone put
serious pressure on a centralized state committed to laissez-faire economics.
Whether it succeeded or failed, insurrection was the common currency of
47
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
politics in early nineteenth-century France. The idea that rebellion could be
justified, written into the Jacobin constitution of 1793, was remembered by
radicals and popularized by Buonarroti.49 Radicals who rejected this
Babouvism were obliged constantly to reiterate their opposition to revolution, often linking their reformist pacifism to their religion. On 7 June 1832
the Saint-Simonians distanced themselves from the Parisian unrest of the
previous two days, which accompanied the funeral procession of general
Lamarque: “Nous sommes religeux, c’est-à-dire pacifique et aimons tous les
hommes, toutes les classes, tous les partis”.50 Most socialists invented their
own evolutionary programmes of reform because revolution had not
worked and because they were convinced that it could never work: man had
to have his mind persuaded, not his body coerced. God was a useful ally.
Early nineteenth-century popular insurrection was more than an historic
rerun of 1789. At its root was immediate economic uncertainty. The period
witnessed repeated cyclical depression, bankruptcies and harvest failures,
which made contemporaries aware of the precariousness of survival. In the
attack on feudal privilege and in the name of liberty, the revolutionaries of
the 1790s began to dismantle the protective umbrella of communal institutions and traditions. Common land for pasture, communal forests for
construction, tools and fuel were sold off. Fairly modest technical changes in
artisan crafts and their organization left artisans, who had thought themselves autonomous, dependent and vulnerable. The dismantling of the social
security systems of the Catholic Church, however inadequate they had been,
left the poor with the empty promises for a distant future in the laissez-faire
economics of Say, Adolphe Blanqui, brother of Auguste,51 and Sismondi.
They prophesied that the embryonic capitalist system would eventually right
itself and poverty and unemployment disappear, but when? Even Blanqui, a
convinced liberal economist, thought some intermediate intervention was
required to alleviate deprivation.52 That radicals should search for solutions
to the misery they and their liberal opponents documented is not surprising,
but why did they turn to spiritual as well as practical weapons? Religion has
been seen as an antidote to the more depressing aspects of chaos theory by
some physicists in the late 1990s, although no one proposed that the Almighty might replace Jospin as the organizer of the 35-hour week. Was God
a last resort for those who witnessed the unpredictability of new plagues like
cholera, in addition to the relentless predictability of recurring economic
crises? Man was obviously not in control; perhaps God was the ultimate
wicket-keeper.
Was the faith of the early socialists a reversal of irreligion or atheism? The
Enlightened writers had been hostile not to belief, but merely to hierarchies,
privilege, riches spent on the wealthy and a decent existence denied to the
poor. The inequities of the clergy, especially its seniors, were blamed, and
not religion. Worker socialists like Perdiguier and Nadaud boasted that they
read Voltaire53 and saw no contradiction between this and piety. The Revolu48
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tion unpicked the economic and, to some extent, social dominance of the
Church, but actual religious belief may have been reinforced by the disruption of war and revolution. The popular and non-institutional faith into
which Catholics were forced during the semi-anarchy of the mid-1790s,
when many priests went into hiding or exile rather than take the oath of loyalty to the Revolutionary state, may have been sustained after the Concordat,
certainly among the former constitutional clergy who remained in office.54
In the 1830s some renegade members of the church, most spectacularly
the abbé Lamennais, were an inspiration to Christian socialists. A small, but
influential group, Lamennais, Lacordaire and the comte de Montalembert
ran a radical Catholic paper, L’Avenir, for a year from the end of 1830. They
demanded “liberty of conscience and teaching, liberty of the press and of
association, civil and political liberties, liberty of work and of industry”.55
The conservative Pope Gregory XVI condemned their attempt to take
religion to the masses in imitation of the Belgian and Polish Catholic clergy in
the 1831 revolts. Lamennais rejected papal authority in Les Paroles d’un
Croyant (1834). The Catholic radical peer, Lamartine, described him as “the
Evangelist of insurrection, Babeuf made divine”.56 Small, alternative, populist Catholic renegade sects achieved a brief fame in the 1830s and 1840s.57
The attempt to make the Church responsive to social problems was
stifled, particularly during the long reign of Pius IX, but some sort of lead
had been proffered.58 The Romantic movement looked to history for
comfort and order and a fondness for “primitive” Christianity was one component. William Blake’s “Ancient of Days”, a mystical patriarchal Almighty,
could have served as an illustration for Fourierist literature. One might even
note similarities between the religion of the socialists and Protestantism, in
the stress on individual salvation, Jesus, bible study and good works. A variety of strands indicate a continuing, rather than a new interest in religion.
Recent historians have emphasized that the revolutionary idea of fraternity
was a vital component in socialists’ reverence for Jesus. Fraternity appeared in
the catechism of the 1789 Revolution, but was little developed. It was to be
crucial to the socialists and radicals of 1848. Fraternity was a concept central
in freemasonry, artisan corporations and secret societies such as the
charbonnerie. The oaths, symbols and promises of freemasonry reflect a God
similar to that worshipped by the early socialists: artisanal, practical and free
of traditional privilege and hierarchy.59 The triangle and other symbolism
used in socialist literature originated here. The charbonnerie, active between
1820 and 1823, used the same symbols and rituals. The links with artisan
corporations are explicit in the ceremonies and language: a recruit to the
charbonnerie became an apprentice; meetings were often held in the workshop; acolytes had to swear to uphold faith, hope and charity; and their
ceremonies were held in secret. When the apprentice was tested for his second
grade of membership in the Italian carbonari, whose rites were imitated by the
French charbonnerie,60 the ceremony was a rerun of Jesus’s trial and Jesus was
49
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presented as the Grand Master of the universe. Achieving master status
himself, the affiliate had to swear to observe honour, virtue and probity. A
new master was told that Christ was the first carbonaro. The aspirant would
be tied to a cross in a cave with two “thieves” on either side and branded on his
left breast.61 The secret societies of the early 1830s also imitated aspects of
these oaths and language. Freemasonry created images and a discourse that
was familiar to, and shared by members who came from the political elite,
writers from educated, middle-class families and worker members. Much of
the religion of the socialists hailed from this source.
The God of the early socialists was essentially a traditional artisanal
Almighty, predictable in a creed that depended on artisans for both its
inspiration and its mass support. Socialist concepts of divinity lay in the
structure and rules of traditional artisan corporations, such as the compagnonnages and confraternités and the mutual-aid societies that emerged at
the turn of the century.62 The rules of artisan societies hinged on an
interventionist moral spiritual force, more likely to be expressed as Jesus
than God. Jesus is inescapably the line manager for each craft: supervising
rules for quality control and assurance; maintaining the standard of the
finished product; visible in the mechanism for training and educating
apprentices; providing specific mutual-aid such as sick pay, old-age and
death benefits, and, in some cases, strike funds. Jesus dictates the standards
of personal conduct, the sense of fraternal brotherhood and responsibility,
with condemnation of drunkenness, wife-beating, and so on. Without Jesus,
brotherhood had no justification or quality control mechanism.
The newspaper L’Atelier, founded by Buchez, and run throughout the
1840s by artisans, for artisans, underlined this view of a democratic
spirituality. Several of the writers were Catholics and all were Christian, but
they had no time for the clergy, and considered that the charitable work of
the Catholic societies such as Saint-Vincent-de-Paul was offensive to the dignity of fellow-workers.63 In 1841 one of their frequent contributors,
Charles-François Chevé, who toyed with the idea of becoming a Dominican,
wrote: “Fils de l’Eglise et fils du peuple reconnaissez-vous enfin et tendezvous la main car vous êtes frères”.64
The socialist deity seems to have been exclusively masculine. The sansculottes of the early 1790s had honoured “the good little woman” in their
religious faith.65 In the nineteenth century the Catholic Church, whether
deliberately or not, played to its largely female congregation by feminizing
their religion, elevating the status of Mary and canonizing young girls who
had “visions”.66 One might have expected references to Mary from the SaintSimonians during their unproductive hunt for a female “pope”, but a lone,
anonymous voice held up Mary as an example for female aspirants to the
sect: “Sortis de l’esclavage, femmes où courrez-vous? Marie vous appelle,
entendez sa voix”.67 Socialists, even the devout Fourierist ladies, focused on
Jesus. For Fourierist feminists the example of Mary was of doubtful value in
50
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encouraging women to strive for equality and independence.68 This Marian
silence, particularly striking in contrast to the opposite trend in Catholicism,
helps to confirm the input of freemasonry and traditional artisan ideas on
their faith.
This deity was utilitarian, cited in the rules of artisan societies to justify,
support and confirm human social relations and behaviour. Spiritually
inspired fraternity was rooted in pragmatic self-interest. Its links with the
1790s were slight. The Great Revolution was not particularly kind to workers; the Allarde law was quickly followed by the Le Chapelier law, which shut
down traditional artisan corporations in the name of the freedom of industry
and obliged the worker to carry a livret. The Napoleonic Code further challenged the workers’ right of association. Far from being a principle of the
revolution, its legislation put artisan fraternity in a precarious state of siege.
The need for spiritual succour and bolstering was intensified as fraternity
was increasingly assaulted by changes within the various crafts. Confection
(ready-mades), the presence of foreign, female and child workers, the cost of
new machines such as the Jacquard loom and consequent proto-capitalism,
which moved the balance of control from craftsmen to merchants, obliged
workers to form defensive associations such as the Society of Mutual Duty
and the Ferrandiniers in Lyon.
Association was fundamental to early socialism and religious faith was its
motive power. Association was the socialists’ solution to what they described
as “concurrence”; “capitalist” competition, which seemed to be the cause of
regular recurring economic crises. Its genesis lay in traditional artisan formations. Accepting that competition was a basic human instinct, socialists relied
on the example of the altruism of Christ’s sacrifice to inspire a consciously
cultivated alternative of cooperation, sometimes called mutualism, solidarity, Icarianism, or phalansterianism. The success of cooperation depended
on faith and education to make individuals aware of the benefits of sharing.
Without religious faith, association lacked a protocol of justification. Associations were created for practical reasons, but were also a substitute
church.69
How important was religion for the early socialists? The rapid Pauline
conversion of Cabet in the early 1840s suggests calculation, not a personal
faith, but there is no doubt that his followers welcomed the addition of
religion; Vrai Christianisme sold 2,000 copies in less than three weeks. The
sea change undergone by Fourier’s ideas at the hands of his followers was not
cynical, but reflected the genuine beliefs, and perhaps gender of his new
converts. Where indications survive of artisan attitudes, acceptance of a nonhierarchical basic Christianity seems to have been the norm, varying from
region to region according to local practice and the presence or absence of
Catholic–Protestant rivalries. One gets hints that there may have been a gender difference here too. Suzanne Voilquin, seamstress and Saint-Simonian,
noted in her memoirs: “My mother … never disputed anything the Church
51
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laid down. She believed it all, and I followed her example. In my eyes, nothing was as beautiful as the ceremonies of the Catholic Church”.70 Religion
for the early socialists was not part of a dream world, but expressed the need
for practical overarching supervision in a world under attack, the maintenance of what was defined as traditional order, akin to peasants demanding
that the priest or pastor bless the planting and harvesting of their crops. The
spiritual urge was pragmatic and, for some middle-class writers, opportunistic. The simplicity of artisan faith was expressed in numerous songs and
poems written by workers, such as this Saint-Simonian song, Alerte, written
in 1836 by Vinçard, ruler-maker and Fourierist editor of La Ruche Populaire
[The People’s Beehive] (interestingly, when he reissued it in 1848, it SaintSimonian origins were obliterated):
Soldiers of industry, on guard! Line up!
No more strife!
Proletarians of all lands
No more aggressors
Nor oppressors,
Let us join both our voices and our hearts together;
It is God who is revealing to us
His decrees for the future,
It is He who is coming to unite us in a new faith.71
Blanqui had tried to persuade working men like Vinçard that their
economic and social deprivation inevitably gave them a revolutionary, rather
than a religious impetus for change. Under the direction of Marx, and later
Lenin, socialism became part of a supposedly scientific rational analysis of
socioeconomic relations. In their view the relentless logic of competition and
recurring economic crises would depress wages and eventually prune the
entrepreneurial class so lean that class conflict would lead to dominance of
the numerous and uniformly poor proletariat. This change would be determined by laws of economic development. God had no role; religion was
merely part of traditional superstition. It is ironic that late nineteenthcentury socialism adopted much of the conflict-ridden language of Blanqui
and Marx, but that unions were heirs to the idea of association, while their
parliamentary formations adhered to the hopes for democratic change
expressed by men like Blanc, Cabet and Fourier. That Christ was increasingly
sidelined was due to the decline of the artisan corporate tradition as well as
to the ubiquitously rationalizing impact of the claims of early twentiethcentury science.
Early socialists had little time for the traditionally organized Church and
its doctrines, although in the 1840s Fourierists drew near to Christian socialists within the Catholic Church. The leaders of the established Catholic
Church, entrenched as a force for conservatism, had hijacked God in their
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desire to retain the privileges of the hierarchical structure in which they sated
their economic passions and social desires. Socialists would have preferred
the non-conformist churches that had sprung up elsewhere in the late eighteenth century. Louis Blanc would have made a fine Methodist and SaintSimonian songs could have rivalled those of Charles and John Wesley. There
were notable exceptions to this devotion, in particular Blanqui and
Proudhon. However in these years most socialists believed that God was part
of an orderly universe, that the laws of progress that were part of their faith
were the laws of God and that socioeconomic–political relationships were
ultimately determined by God. The norms and ideals of French culture were
too deeply ingrained in their psyche for most French socialists to do anything
other than incorporate God into their thinking, writing and practical experiments.
Is it not interesting that the Labour party under the leadership of Tony
Blair and modern French socialists like Mitterrand have visibly incorporated
Roman Catholic faith and ceremonial into their inspiration?
53
CHAPTER FIVE
Socialists and education:
to repulse the barbarians1
Education was the panacea to all social reformers in these years, not least to
socialists, but there was considerable disagreement about who was to be
educated and what sort of education should be delivered. Those who wrote
about an ideal community, particularly Fourier and Cabet, devoted detailed
chapters on what the young should be taught. Many early socialists, including the Saint-Simonians, the Fourierists, Cabet, Guépin, Jeanne Deroin,
Pauline Roland and Eugène Niboyet devoted their time to the actual education of others. Socialists were interested in education in a broad cultural
sense but, specifically, they addressed those aspects that were relevant to
sorting out social problems. Even the utopians, Fourier and Cabet, favoured
vocational education. Socialists focused on basic learning, and paid particular attention to practical, and especially vocational training. They wanted to
educate working people so that they could command an adequate wage to
sustain life and keep them from immoral or criminal alternatives. Leisure
was seen as almost as much a danger for the “popular classes” as was poverty.
Socialists were keen on part-time education, particularly evening classes for
workers. They founded vocational schools, where girls and boys learned a
trade along with the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic. They favoured
reformatories for young offenders, in which the boys learned aspects of
agricultural or industrial occupations alongside literacy. Socialist enthusiasts
for education wanted to bring learning to those excluded from the current
systems. They concentrated on the needs of workers, and especially girls,
including the training of female teachers for girls’ schools.
In addition to their own plans for education, socialists contributed to the
debate on the role of the state. In 1833 a group of Saint-Simonian women
used their newspaper to criticize the new Guizot law. Although most of the
educational schemes favoured by early socialists in these years did not involve the state, by 1848 Fourierists and some Saint-Simonians were trying to
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promote a range of social reforms in partnership with the state. The February Revolution of 1848 created the opportunity for major innovation.
Hippolyte Carnot headed a Saint-Simonian team as Minister of Public
Instruction and Religion from February to July 1848, which prepared comprehensive plans for universal free primary schooling and other measures to
democratize French education. Although these plans were abandoned when
conservatives engineered a motion of no confidence in Carnot, they were the
most coherent radical programme of reform embarked on in 1848. They
formed the basis of the Third Republic’s legislation on education in 1881–
82. However, in the intervening period the role of the Church in secondary
and primary education increased. This was stimulated by the Falloux Law,
1850, which allowed the Church to develop both secondary and primary
schools, unchecked by earlier requirements that all teachers be trained in
colleges licensed by the state. The new law on education was hustled through
by conservatives in the face of opposition by socialists and other radicals in
an atmosphere of social panic to ensure that any surviving hopes of reviving
Carnot’s plans were exterminated.
Socialists and radicals were not unusual in believing that education was
the way to improve the individual and bring about progress in society.
Enlightened writers, notably Rousseau, and, in the early 1790s, Condorcet,
promoted the case for rational, lay-directed education. Liberal reformers
like Guizot favoured an elitist hierarchy of educational opportunity. People
should be educated up to, but not beyond, their station in life. In 1816 he
wrote “Ignorance renders the masses turbulent and ferocious” and this was a
view long (still?) held by ruling elites. Socialists shared an enthusiasm for a
more democratic approach to education with other radicals and republicans
during the July Monarchy. However some socialists also had a rather patronizing and charitable approach to educating the poor. Radicals cooperated
with liberal Orleanists in the numerous small societies set up to promote
education at this time. Many of the concepts of education held by socialists
were not unique to them. Socialists tended to share two distinctive objectives. First was the conviction that literacy, and indeed education to whatever
level appropriate to an individual, was a basic, natural human right. Socialists who interpreted this concept in full did not distinguish between the
educational needs of girls and boys. Secondly, with the exception of Fourier,
all socialists were convinced that their altruistic alternatives to competition
as a foundation for social organization would only work when all citizens
were educated to understand the value of their proposals.
I shall begin with educational dreams. In Emile, the most quoted lexicon
on education in these years, the Enlightenment thinker Rousseau stressed the
role of the child’s own mother as nurturer and early educator. He urged all
mothers to breast-feed their own children. He condemned the contemporary
practice of the rich, who engaged nursemaids, and of all but the poorest
mothers, who paid a wet-nurse to feed and rear their children until they
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either died, which most wet-nursed infants did, or reached an employable
age at around five.2 Mothers should themselves receive a sufficient education
to allow them to provide training and education for their children up to the
age of about 10, when a tutor would be employed. Boys and girls would be
educated differently. Emile would learn reason and citizenship; his sister
Sophie would be taught to be a good mother. Rousseau’s theories were well
received by radicals in the first half of the nineteenth century. The description of the Rousseau-inspired education of an imaginary girl during the
Revolutionary years, written by Ange Guépin, a socialist doctor in Nantes,
will be discussed later.
Fourier was the first of the socialists to write on education. His phalange
provided a very different education to that of Rousseau. Fourier made two
absolutely revolutionary proposals: communal rearing and equal education
for all, regardless of class and gender. In Fourier’s perfect society, children
would not be reared by their own parents, but by the community. He argued
that perhaps only one in eight natural mothers were competent and keen to
bring up their own offspring. Raised by the community, children would be
tended by those individuals, probably mainly women, who were best suited
to and most enjoyed the task. They would also benefit from advice and the
particular expertise of all adult males and females, who, in a communal
atmosphere, would find that their maternal and paternal feelings would not
be limited to their own children. Fourier hoped that by giving all children an
identical upbringing, regardless of gender and class, these two aspects would
be less divisive.
Children would be grouped in sections according to age. Fourier, of
course, dreamt up his own names for each section, credible only to a
bachelor. Babes-in-arms (0–1 years) or nourrissons would be reared by professional carers, and not by their natural mothers, although they could spend
time with them. Fourier claimed that a system of communal nursemaids
would be economical because mothers would be free to work. He called
children aged 1–2 years old “poupons”, then “lutins”, and “bambins”, while
at 4 years old, when they were likely to be nothing of the sort, he named them
“chérubins”, and, at 6½ years old, the even less probable “séraphins”. The
phalange was responsible for children until they became lutins, at which
point Fourier assumed they would be economically self-supporting!
Children began to work at 3 years old, undertaking very simple tasks such as
grading peas by size and gradually increasing their range of activities. They
would have their own workshops where they would learn to enjoy being part
of the community by doing carefully selected small jobs. From the middle of
their second year they would learn to use tiny hammers. Even a bachelor
philosopher recognized that although children of this age liked getting involved,
they were masters of furetage, messing about, and delighted in breaking things.
They were also possessed of singerie, the ability to imitate, which made them able
to learn simple practical jobs at a very young age. Their best teachers at first
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would be slightly older children, a monitorial concept similar to that used in the
Lancaster system in England perhaps. These seniors would be grouped in petites
hordes, those who enjoyed rough and tumble and loved to be dirty, and petites
bandes, who liked to stay neat and clean. The former would undertake some of
the cleaning and dirty jobs. Fourier admitted that there was often likely to be a
gender difference between the two. When they were old enough children would
work alongside adults. Fourier expected considerable benefits from fathers and
sons working together. Schoolwork would not be introduced until a child had
acquired a range of practical skills (Piaget must have read Fourier), otherwise,
he warned, children would regard a book as a prison.3
Education would have been comparatively easy in the phalange. There
would be no call for moral education, because Fourier believed that the
complete liberation of the passions would guarantee that everyone would be
satisfied and happy. Stripped of their odd language and daft ideas (such as
that children of 3 years old could support themselves by work), Fourier’s
ideas on education were radical, but sensible, and aspects certainly recur in
later educational theory. However, because most of what Fourier wrote was
so obscure, his theories on education did not have much publicity until after
1831 and then the Fourierists “developed” them out of all recognition, promoting, sadly and ironically, given Fourier’s confidence that punishment and
moral condemnation would be irrelevant in his phalange, reform schools for
young offenders.
The other socialist to propose a complete new world, including education, was Cabet. Like Fourier, although for very different reasons, Cabet put
little emphasis on moral education or education for citizenship. He believed
that in his egalitarian society people would be naturally good. There would
be no need to teach children to be unselfish. Unlike the phalange, children in
Icarie were reared by their own parents. Women attended mothercraft
classes and advice on matters such as breast-feeding appeared in the press.
Children attended school from 5 to 18 years old. All children got up at 5a.m.
and went to school at 8.30a.m. The traditional French emphasis on the classics was overturned in favour of science. Icarian boys and girls were taught
the same syllabus and at 18 years old boys and girls both went on to professional training. Girls had an equal chance with boys to study medicine or astronomy, literature or the arts at university.4 Cabet’s Icarian education was a
pretty fairy story. There is some room to question, in particular, Cabet’s
commitment to equal education for girls and boys, given his affirmation that
men and women were not naturally equal and his confidence that women
would do all the housework before they went off to their day job at 8.30a.m.
What was the state of worker and female education in the real world in the
1830s? There was no national system of education, but two parallel systems,
primary and secondary, with no chance of movement between them, for
pupils or teachers. The state took most interest in secondary education. The
secondary schools prepared boys for a rigorous school-leaving certificate, the
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FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
baccalaureat, introduced during the Revolutionary years. Access to tertiary
education was dependent on passing this certificate. Secondary education was
for those who could afford the hefty fees, high both in the state system and in
the exclusive boarding schools set up by the religious orders in these years.
Primary schooling was a completely separate system, with no access to secondary or tertiary institutions.
The Revolution had not attempted to wrest primary education from the
church. In 1815 it was decided that each commune should run a school and
offer free teaching to poor children. The Frères des Ecoles Chrétiennes
provided free primary schooling in rural as well as urban areas. However in
1828 four out of five and a half million 8–15 year olds had never attended
school. The Guizot Law of 1833 obliged all communes to set up primary
schools and to make education free for the poor. In 1843 in the Nord, almost
half of the children in these schools did not pay the 1 franc a month fee.
Departments had to create écoles normales, to train teachers. By 1837, 90
per cent of their students were on government scholarships,5 although
members of religious teaching orders did not need the state brevet to be able
to teach. In 1843 Villemain, the minister with responsibility for education,
calculated that the number of boys in secondary schools totalled 18,697 in
the 46 state-run lycées, 26,584 in 312 collèges and 43,195 in private establishments, mostly run by the church. There was no official obligation on
anyone to teach girls anything.
The degree of illiteracy in France was reduced in these years. In 1829, 45
per cent of army conscripts could read. By 1848 the figure was 64 per cent.6
Skilled artisans traditionally valued learning and their communities tended
to be literate, so why did socialists and radicals put so much emphasis on
educating artisans? Perhaps the main education intended was political.
Villermé noted the high level of literacy, and the stress placed on education
by Lyon silk weavers.7 We know a little about the high level of literacy among
artisans from the existence of newspapers owned, run and read by artisans,
like L’Atelier, Le Populaire, La Ruche Populaire, and so on. The efforts of artisan poets, and how they were received by their Saint-Simonian and
Fourierist patrons, are also revealing. A few artisan autobiographies give
some details about the education actually received by the poor in the early
nineteenth century. Nadaud, Perdiguier, Voilquin and Vinçard were obviously exceptional individuals, who gained national prominence and wrote
memoirs, but their evidence is all we have. Nadaud described how his father,
who worked during the year as a mason in Paris, insisted that his son be educated, despite the objection of his mother and grandfather that the 12 francs
a year school fee would be better spent on fodder for the animals.8 Perdiguier
related how his father, a prosperous joiner, but with a large family to raise,
was also willing to provide the boys with a smattering of literacy. It was his
mother who paid the fees for her daughters by making and selling children’s
bonnets.9 According to Suzanne Voilquin her mother took her for a time to a
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tiny school run by nuns where she learned to read and write a little.10 In his
memoirs, written in old age, Vinçard recalled being taught to read by his
mother, who supplemented the family finances by washing and darning silk
stockings. As she was illiterate, it seems more likely that his father, a rulemaker with his own small business, taught him to read and write.11 He
became a prolific songwriter, as well as a Saint-Simonian journalist.12 In their
memoirs they talked about buying and treasuring a number of the classics.
Jeanne Deroin, who started life as a seamstress, claimed that she was reading
philosophical as well as religious works at 12 years old,13 and was particularly fond of Morelly, Mably and Rousseau.
The acquisition of basic education and a passion for learning by artisans
was sometimes just luck. Hégésippe Moreau (1811–1838),14 an artisan poet,
was the son of a servant and the illegitimate child of a teacher who died
shortly after his birth. He received a secondary education only thanks to his
mother’s employers. His life story was sometimes quoted to prove that
advanced education was bad for workers. Moreau never settled into his
trade as a typographer. Behind the barricades in 1830 and 1832, he fell into
goguette society and began to write verses for vaudevilles as well as poetry.
His first collection of poems, Myosotis, came out in 1838, just before his
death from tuberculosis. He was the darling of the socialists and other
radicals, and 3,000 attended his funeral, including Louis Blanc and Pierre
Leroux. His pall-bearers were Félix Pyat, Armand Marrast, Béranger and
L.-A. Berthaud.15
Socialists were enthusiastic patrons and tutors to willing artisans. The
Saint-Simonians, particularly the women members, took a lead in setting up
evening classes. Under the leadership of Enfantin the Saint-Simonians came
to stress the complementarity of male and female, with the female representing emotional and artistic aspects of the human personality, and the male
typifying the rational and warlike strands. This was a notion favoured by
Rousseau, but the more dynamic of the Saint-Simonians, especially the
women, soon rejected it as a new recipe for inferior education for girls. In
November 1831 the Saint-Simonian movement split, the rebels walking out
because they found Enfantin’s feminist beliefs tepid and of dubious morality.
Those who remained in the movement had to reorganize their educational
programmes. The division was reflected both in changes in personnel and in
what was taught and to whom. In December 1831 the remaining members
formed an Association pour l’instruction gratuite du peuple. There was a
section in each of the twelve arrondissements of the capital. Each was further
subdivided, so that the basic unit of membership was ten, which was well
within the dictates of the Civil Code. Membership cost 25 centîmes a week,
13 francs a year. The association was headed by Alexandre Delaborde and its
committee included the deputy Dupont de l’Eure. The secretary of this allmale group was Victor Lechevalier. Unlike the earlier projects where women
held senior managerial positions, female Saint-Simonians were now merely
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allowed to teach. There was a noticeable difference in the subjects taught.
Men were offered a wider ranging, more rigorous scope of subjects than
were women. There were classes for men in reading, writing, the French language, arithmetic, design, geometry, physics, chemistry, mechanics and history. Women were offered language and literacy courses, book-keeping and
history, but only basic arithmetic and no science.
Saint-Simonian women constituted themselves into a separate section in
the movement in 1829,16 and took the initiative in running evening classes
for artisans. Their leader was Claire Bazard, wife of one of the main
theoreticians. Cécile Fournel, whose engineer husband devoted his fortune
to the cause, and Eugénie Niboyet also took a leading role. Several dynamic
young seamstresses attended their classes and became important in the
movement, notably Marie-Reine Guindorf, Désirée Véret and Jeanne
Deroin. The last of these, although only briefly a Saint-Simonian, was a lifelong educator. Encouraged by her local priest, she secured the brevet to
teach, and in the 1830s, while rearing her own children, she opened a school
for artisans’ children.
Véret and Guindorf started a tiny newspaper for women, La Femme Libre,
in August 1832. Education was in the news. The Guizot Education Act went
through parliament in 1833. This legislation required communes to establish
primary schools and provide teaching free to children from poor families. It
was the first attempt by the state to intervene in the virtual monopoly that
the Church exercised in primary education. Véret and her associates were
critical of the scheme because it made no specific provision for girls’ education. The editors of La Femme Libre campaigned for a higher priority for
girls’ education in the new law. Having fought to educate themselves, they
were shocked that the Guizot Law treated schooling for girls from poor
families as an afterthought.17 Guindorf responded with more than words;
she ran evening classes for working women, the Société d’instruction
populaire.
Socialists deplored the current neglect of girls’ education. In her SaintSimonian profession de foi Jeanne Deroin exploded:
L’éducation de la femme est dirigée de manière à comprimer toutes
ses facultés morales, intellectuelles. On veut la persuader qu’elle est
inférieure à l’homme, et l’on s’efforce de réaliser autant que possible
cette odieuse supposition.
Feminist socialist women often held the view, expounded by the SaintSimonians and echoed in the influential lectures and books of the Sorbonne
professor, Ernest Legouvé, that women, far from being man’s inferior, had a
unique role in the spiritual education of society.18 Pauline Roland became a
Saint-Simonian in 1832, attracted by the idea that women had a divine role
in the regeneration of society.19 Jeanne Deroin shared the same view of the
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special contribution of women to the moral education, not only of their own
family, but of society.
Societies to promote and provide education for the poor, for artisans,
including women, proliferated during the July Monarchy. Some were run
exclusively by radicals and/or socialists, but the subscribers who put up the
cash frequently volunteered themselves as free lecturers, and were often
from a wide range of political persuasions. A number of Saint-Simonian
enthusiasts committed themselves to educational projects in provincial centres like Lyon and Nantes. In November 1830 the Saint-Simonian Dr Ange
Guépin founded the Société industrielle de Nantes. It was based on a combination of mutual-aid and producer cooperative and included a strong educational element. It ran evening classes and in 1832 secured a grant of 6,000
francs from the government for an apprenticeship scheme. Guépin persuaded the duc d’Orléans to give 2,000 francs. Generous donations allowed
the society to acquire its own building, with a library. At the height of
another disastrous economic crisis in 1846, Guépin, then mayor of Nantes,
tried to persuade the prefect, Achille Chaper, who was not unintelligent
when it came to avoiding confrontation, to organize the local notables to
provide practical training for rural workers and education for artisans.20
All educational experiments were not successful. In 1833 Guépin invited
Chevalier and Barrault, another leading Saint-Simonian, to send “scientific
missionaries” to Nantes to give lectures to the local population, including the
dock-workers, on “geology, geography, the industrial future of the planet …
theology … and human progress”, arguing that the Saint-Simonians would
be “very useful and would thus earn some money”.21 (The sect was in serious
financial difficulties.) A group of eight duly arrived from Lyon, but they were
working men rather than teachers. The dockers, whom they had hoped to
convert more than educate, were unsympathetic and ridiculed the SaintSimonian uniform. The educators left to a hail of stones as well as insults
flung by both parties.
Guépin was an a passionate educator who thrived on criticism. In addition
to his classes for artisans, he lectured on aspects of science to local learned
societies. Unforgettable were a series of controversial weekly lectures
comprehensively debunking ideas on creationism, which the Academy of
Nantes, of which he was secretary, invited him to give in 1835. There were
vociferous complaints. Guépin noted that he was accused of being “an
atheist, a materialist, even a madman, that I explained the harmonies of
Nature through periodic fractions”.22 Was he a forerunner of the late twentieth-century mathematician, Ian Stewart?23
In January 1833 Guépin started a Saint-Simonian society devoted to
education, the Réunion de l’Ouest, with 50 friends and associates, male and
female. He aimed to create an intellectual and educational focus for the halfdozen surrounding departments and make Nantes the “Edinburgh of the
west”.24 In his opening speech he proposed that they write a new declaration
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of the rights of man, or rather, of destinies and rights (Guépin thought the
original phrase might scare some listeners). It began: “[Man] is born sociable
and free. Equality is a consequence of liberty. Liberty is the right to do what
the law does not forbid”. Guépin emphasized that their ideas were drawn
from Gall (his old teacher), Owen and Saint-Simon, in particular their stress
on the role of education in moulding human nature. The Réunion was divided
into three sections: science, industry and the arts. The scientific group was to
consist of experts, who would also be popularizers. Elected president, Guépin
summarized their objectives: to provide free evening classes in a wide range of
subjects; to work for the extension of voting to a wider range of capacités
(local worthies who paid less than the 200 francs tax needed to qualify for a
vote after 1830 – Guépin at that time barely qualified as an elector); and to
develop more opportunities for women. In September 1834 Guépin organized a scientific conference in Poitiers at which he spoke on social reform but,
on the advice of friends, not on women’s rights. His invited guests included
fellow Saint-Simonians Hippolyte Carnot and Arlès-Dufour from Lyon.
Popular libraries were seen, as in Britain, as a way of civilizing as well as
educating the poor. In the early 1790s the Convention had planned for a
library in every district. By 1848 more than 200 towns had public libraries,
some open only for a few hours a day and some that did not admit the
“classes populaires”. In 1828 the Société Catholique des bons livres was
formed to provide lending libraries in every parish, filled with morally
uplifting tales, to be virtuous alternatives to the radical and salacious
literature sold by traditional colporteurs or pedlars.25
Such libraries made only limited progress, even by the 1870s. A much
more modest, but apparently successful aspect of popular education during
the July Monarchy was the publication of small, cheap editions, within the
financial reach of artisans, and of a size to be carried by the colporteur. The
development of these popular editions appealed to conservatives as much as
to radicals. Guépin contributed a volume on social economy in a series called
“The Popular Library”, which was launched in Paris in 1832 “to make
knowledge accessible to people of all classes and intellectual levels”. The
series included a dictionary and books on geography, history, science and
literature. The committee included the great and good of all political persuasions, such as Chateaubriand, Cauchois-Lemaire, Charles Dupin, Victor
Hugo, Arago, Villermé, Saint-Beuve, and Mme. Waldor.
Guépin’s contribution was clearly intended to inculcate moral values in its
artisan reader. He started with an ancient Chinese proverb: “Whoever wishes
to enjoy the pleasure of wealth, must accept the burden of work”.26 He went
on to describe a systematic approach to economic planning, summarizing the
radical schemes with which he and others had been experimenting.27 Much of
the book was an advertisement for mutual-aid societies.28
The Fourierist movement was also committed to education, particularly
of women. Eugène Niboyet, when she rejected Enfantin’s ideas, joined
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Considérant and the Fourierists and took a characteristically active part in
promoting female education. Her husband’s job took them to Lyon, where
she started two newspapers devoted to promoting women’s education: Le
Conseiller des Femmes and the Mosaique Lyonnaise. In her prospectus for the
Conseiller des Femmes, she stressed the opportunities women had to educate
their own families:
it is time for women to pay attention to the next generation and use
their gentle tones to sow peace and harmony into the hearts of their
children. Although they are left powerless in public life, they can do
a great deal in their own families … the future of the next generation
belongs entirely to them.
The moral education of society depended on women, consequently it was
vital that they receive a good education.
In the early months of 1834, until Niboyet’s spirited defence of the silk
workers’ revolt brought the experiment to an abrupt end, she ran an
“Athénée de femmes”; literacy classes for women. She argued that all women
did not require the same education and she graded her groups according to
social class. The most educationally deprived women were taught grammar,
reading and how to express themselves aloud. The more educated women
could attend classes in social science, political economy, history, literature
and moral education. Niboyet taught this latter group.
Fourierists argued strongly for schooling for girls, asserting that education
was the key to making women independent and improving their self-esteem.
Gatti de Gamond, who later became an inspector of girls’ schools in her
native Belgium, refuted the suggestion of conservatives that an educated
woman would be immoral:
The subjection of woman, her state of miserable and precarious
dependence, is the first cause of her moral degradation. Society
encourages women to corruption … let the social state be changed,
so that women can think and act freely, then will she revive all that is
good and true in morals and manners.30
The Fourierists became enthusiastic supporters of a specialized aspect of
education, popular in the first half of the century; reform schools, or colonies
as they were then called. In conjunction with the Orleanist establishment,
they backed two colonies agricoles, one in Mettray, near Tours, and the other
at Oswald, near Strasbourg, designed as training centres for young offenders.
That Fourierists went out of their way to show their approval indicated their
decision to pin their hopes on winning over the ruling elite. Unlike Fourier
himself, the Fourierists did not see themselves as rebels or outsiders. For
instance, the reformatories were launched under the patronage of the royal
family and members of the government and were run by private subscriptions
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from philanthropic notables. Their management committee was headed,
unsuprisingly by the duc de Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, and including deputies Gustave de Beaumont, Lamartine, Tocqueville and Vivien and doctor
Villermé. The former Minister of the Interior, Gasparin,31 was the first president of the Mettray reformatory. The aim was to turn offenders into useful
citizens: “Il fallait, en un mot, rendre bons, laborieux et utiles, des enfants
vagabonds”.32
The Fourierists catalogued the progress of these schools with close
attention. Cantagrel reported eulogistically about both reformatories when
he succeeded Considérant as editor of the Démocratie Pacifique. Considérant
kept the annual reports from each community in his library. Mettray offered
training in agricultural and industrial trades to young convicts together with
moral, religious and basic primary education. The land for Mettray was
provided by Bretignières de Courteilles; that for Oswald by Schutzenberger,
mayor of Strasbourg. In July 1839 Mettray opened with 23 young men and
there were plans for buildings to accommodate nearly four times that
number. The boys themselves helped erect the buildings. Agriculture was
emphasized. They grew grain and fruit trees and cultivated silkworms. Two
and a half hours schooling per day was provided, enough to equip them for a
life of manual work. Boys usually remained in the home for three years.
Many boys arrived sick and worn down from the rigours of prison. All
came from poor backgrounds and had survived precariously before their
incarceration, often as beggars. A high proportion were illegitimate or came
from broken homes. In 1848 the annual report noted that out of the 509
boys who had attended Mettray, 215 were “enfants naturels” and 138 were
from broken homes. The colony claimed a high success rate, for both the
health and the attitude of inmates. It was run frugally and strictly. The boys
were watched over by older residents and the drop-out rate was fairly low; in
1842 four of the 69 residents were expelled for anti-social behaviour.
Oswald was even more successful in Fourierist terms because it paid for itself
from the start. All the set-up costs were covered by the sale of timber felled to
clear the land for the colony.33 The organizers of both colonies committed
themselves to helping their charges find work when they left and monitoring
their progress for three more years.
Local people were sceptical of the value of the reform schools. They complained that the reformatory goods undercut them, even though organizers
took care to sell good quality produce at normal prices. In 1848 the Provisional Government banned all prison work and the two colonies struggled to
survive. In January 1849 they were allowed to resume, although the locals
were still hostile.34 Mettray became a high spot on the typical grand tour undertaken by British and other philanthropists in search of models. It survived
until 1939, when persistent complaints that the colony was run in a barbaric
manner were finally believed and it was closed.35 In 1848 the Almanach
Phalanstérien reported enthusiastically the existence of another colonie
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agricole, a school, five miles from London in Ealing, although there is no indication that this was for young offenders.36
During the 1840s Saint-Simonians, like Fourierists, began to focus on the
state as a the agent for radical social reform, including education. During the
early months of the Second Republic their dream was realized. Three SaintSimonians gained influential posts in the Ministry of Public Instruction and
Religion after the February Revolution. Hippolyte Carnot (1801–1888), son
of the key Jacobin diplomat of 1793–94, republican deputy and SaintSimonian enthusiast for democratic education during the July Monarchy,
became Minister of Education. Jean Reynaud was made his under-secretary.
Reynaud was commissioned to make a comprehensive report on education
in France, which was complete by 21 April. The Saint-Simonian activist and
historian Edouard Charton was also recruited. With dynamism, vision and
practical energy, the team seized the opportunity to promote a full
programme of educational reform and also to run a competition for the best
“national” song.
Carnot wrote to rectors of the faculties on 6 March:
Le pouvoir qui saura se montrer novateur, réparateur des injustices,
fera l’éducation du peuple et fondera la République … La
République compte nécessairement au nombre de ses principes les
plus essentiels l’extension et la propagation active des bienfaits de
l’instruction dans toutes les classes de la société.37
Convinced that education would emancipate the worker, Carnot started to
open evening classes in towns and tiny libraries in villages. He had the
immediate support of some of the newly appointed commissioners (the term
the Republic used instead of prefect). Ange Guépin, commissioner in Nantes,
toured the popular clubs that sprang up in the town in March, asking for
their support for workers’ education.38
Reynaud’s report resulted in a comprehensive project to make primary
education free and compulsory. The Guizot Law had merely made it available and means tested. He ordered the rectors to provide scholarships to the
elite lycées, France’s prestigious secondary system of education, for clever
poorer boys from the écoles primaires. This challenged the basis of the elitist
Guizot system in which France had two parallel types of schooling: primary
for the less well-off, secondary for the rich. Carnot also wanted to reduce the
opportunity of the clergy to intervene in education by replacing the catechism with civic instruction in schools and denying the clergy the right to
inspect the local schools of Paris. Socialists may have been religious, but they
had no time for Catholic hierarchies. Carnot encouraged the rectors to make
the curriculum of the state-run teachers’ training colleges, the écoles
normales, more vocational and relevant, by adding courses in agricultural
science.
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Although Carnot’s main trajectory was to democratize education, he also
embarked on radical reform of higher education. He purged the Collège de
France of three chairs that he considered hostile to the republic. One of these
was held by Michel Chevalier, the champion of laissez-faire. He created
eleven new chairs in international law, public law, finance, agriculture and
the history of administrative institutions. The plan never matured, partly
because they were honorary appointments and partly because several of the
appointees were government ministers and too busy to lecture. After
Carnot’s fall the conservative majority reversed these decisions.39 Carnot
launched an école d’administration, to train senior administrators, parallel
with the école polytechnique. This was a popular project and a national
competition for the first students attracted 900 applicants for 152 places.
The school was opened by Reynaud and Carnot’s successor as minister,
Vaulabelle, on 8 July. Vaulabelle asserted his predecessor’s democratic
principles, that the school “was intended to facilitate the access to public
employment of capable young men, whatever their social origins”.40 In
December 1848 the conservative majority in the Assembly refused to vote
resources for the new school, fearful of its republican inception.
Rectors were asked to raise the status of the state’s 26,000 primary school
teachers, the instituteurs, and to improve their pay. Carnot encouraged the
teachers to see themselves as key figures in the new republican world. Pamphlets and short-lived newspapers encouraged the same vision: “Instituteurs,
vos fonctions sont un sacerdoce. Vous êtes appelés à former cette génération
future qui tiendra dans ses mains les destinées de la France, et peut-être,
celles de l’Europe”.41 Carnot’s most controversial campaign was to encourage the instituteurs to canvas for republican candidates in the first elections
of April 1848: “Rallier autour du drapeau républicain la nombreuse armée
des instituteurs primaires était un devoir facile à accomplir”.42 He ordered
rectors of the universities to marshal the teachers and prepare manuals and
run lectures on civic responsibilities. He distributed 20,000 copies of one,
written by the philosopher Renouvier, and recommended by the songwriter
Béranger, which stated:
L’instruction, qu’une République fraternelle doit garantir à tous les
citoyens, se compose de deux parties, qui sont: d’abord un ensemble
de connaissances élémentaires nécessaires au développement de
l’homme et du citoyen, puis un enseignement professionel, ou si vous
aimez mieux, un apprentissage … Elle sera tenue d’offrir l’instruction
gratuite … aux enfants qui ne la reçoivent point d’ailleurs.
Free compulsory primary and vocational training would be paid for by a
progressive income tax, which would take from those able to pay: “Existe-il
au moins des moyens d’empêcher les riches d’être oisifs et les pauvres d’être
mangés par les riches?”43
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The Echo des Instituteurs collaborated with the new commissioners to
encourage support for republican candidates. However, Carnot found that
some instituteurs were themselves controlled by the local priest and that the
Catholic clergy had far more experience of electioneering, and far more
impressive weapons than the instituteurs.
The case for girls’ education was pressed by feminist socialists in 1848. It
was a key issue in the newspaper and society of the same name, La Voix des
Femmes, run by Niboyet, Deroin and Roland. Carnot, on the advice of
Reynaud, signed a decree on 28 April to convert existing private salles
d’asiles into state-financed écoles maternelles. His intention was that the
small children of working mothers should be able to attend well run nursery
schools. Carnot also promoted the feminist, Ernest Legouvé (1807–1903) to
a Chair at the Collège de France dedicated to finding ways to improve conditions of life for women. Legouvé, who later wrote on the education of children44 argued, in Saint-Simonian style, that the neglect of girls’ education
condemned women to ignorance and deprived them of their natural role as a
moral force in society.45 He condemned the “free love” experiments of the
Saint-Simonians but pushed the case for crèches, schooling and decent jobs
for women. No actual legislation was passed to encourage girls’ education.
The National Assembly elected in April 1848 had a conservative majority
of so called “moderate” republicans, most of whom were converted monarchists who had served in earlier parliaments. They were hostile to Carnot
because he had tried to mobilize the teachers against the Church in the election, and had failed. Conservatives claimed that the teachers represented a
malign socialist influence in the villages. Adolphe Thiers, a former minister
of Louis-Philippe, who had in the past been no enthusiast for the Church,
and who became a leading conservative force in the new assembly, expressed
the common view:
Aujourd’hui que toutes les idées sociales sont perverties, et qu’on va
nous donner dans chaque village un instituteur qui sera phalastérien,
je regarde le curé comme un indispensable rectification des idées du
peuple; il lui enseignera au moins, au nom du Christ, que la douleur
est nécessaire dans tous les états, qu’elle est la condition de la vie, et
que, quand les pauvres ont la fièvre, ce ne sont pas les riches qui la
leur envoient.46
Carnot was about to present his scheme for educational reform to the
Assembly when the June Days occurred. His speech was delayed until order
had been restored by the moderate republic general, Cavaignac, brother of
the more radical organizer of secret societies during the July Monarchy.
Conservatives were convinced that the June Days vindicated their detestation of Carnot’s plans for universal free lay primary education. Cavaignac,
left in charge of government after his defeat of the worker rebels in June,
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decided to retain Carnot in office, like him the son of a member of the
Convention and a lifelong republican. Carnot introduced his major plans to
the Assembly on 30 June. He proposed free, obligatory, universal state
primary education for all boys and girls up to 14 years old. Carnot’s plan
provided for a primary school for every commune of 300 people, to be
financed jointly by state and commune. Pupils were to be taught a broad curriculum, including history and geography, but excluding religion. Teachers’
salaries were to be raised forthwith to 600 francs a year for men, and 500 for
women. This would cost an additional 1 million francs. Private schools,
many of which were run by clerics, were to be supervised jointly by the state
and the municipality. In other respects however, Carnot’s project was free of
the anti-clericalism of the legislation passed during the Third Republic and
modelled on his proposals.
The conservatives united to condemn Carnot’s schemes. Falloux claimed
that they would cost 35 million francs and be ruinously expensive. Carnot
had projected a slightly higher figure, and had made calculations of how the
finance would be raised. A witch-hunt was raised claiming that Renouvier’s
manual, which Carnot had commissioned and disseminated, smacked of
Proudhon’s ideas on property and Louis Blanc’s on the right to work and was
thus subversive. Carnot agreed that in the light of more recent experience
some of the sentiments in the manual were perhaps too radical. Although he
was a Saint-Simonian, no one could seriously suggest that Carnot was other
than a moderate republican, with opinions not unlike Cavaignac himself.
None the less on 5 July 1848 the conservatives won a motion of no confidence in Carnot by 314 votes to 303 and Carnot was forced from office.47
His successor, Vaulabelle, shared many of his views and Reynaud remained
in office. The Assembly agreed to raise teachers’ salaries. Carnot’s plan for
primary education was not immediately abandoned, but discussed and emasculated in the committees of the Assembly until conservatives were strong
enough to ignore it. Socialist and radical influence on educational planning
was eliminated.
Indeed the conservatives, organized by Thiers into a “Party of Order” in
September 1848, were intent on reversing what they saw as the subversive
plans of the socialists and radicals. The only permanent educational
“achievement” of the Second Republic was the intensely conservative
Falloux law, steered through the Assembly by the moderate legitimist, the
comte de Falloux. Since the debate on the constitution in the autumn of
1848, Adolphe Thiers had made himself the defender of property and
conservative values. Thiers was the leading figure in the commission set up
by the Legislative Assembly after the elections of May 1849 to plan the
conservative alternative to Carnot’s abandoned legislation. The conservatives debated the new law with the same anti-socialist panic that they applied
to their dismantling of freedom of education. They convinced themselves
that the lay instituteurs were subversive and that the only solution was to put
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education firmly under the control of the Church. Thiers made his intentions
plain when he opened the debate: “Today, when violent communism threatens our society, it is essential that education calls the religious sentiment to its
aid in a common war, to repulse the Barbarians”. Both Thiers and Victor
Cousin, who in the past had had little enthusiasm for the influence of the
church in society, had been persuaded, by events like the June Days, that the
survival of the social fabric depended on respect for the authority of the
Church, and that schools were the places to inculcate respect for the moral
and judgemental role of the clergy.
The new law, operational from 15 March 1850, insisted at the outset that
the principal role of the teacher was to teach religious faith and duty.48
Teachers were to be closely supervised by their local priest. Teachers’ salaries
were improved, but their training at the école normales was made less intellectually stimulating, to keep them obedient. The participation of the religious orders in teaching was positively encouraged. Members of both the
male and female orders were permitted to teach without the normal teaching
certificate or brevet. The men needed only minimal qualifications, while
women had merely to supply a letter from their superior guaranteeing their
obedience. This facilitated the growth of church-run schools for girls and
boys during the rest of the Second Republic and during the Empire. In 1850,
45 per cent of girls and 15 per cent of boys in primary schools of all kinds
were taught by clerics. By 1863 the high point of clerical penetration, the
parallel figures were 54 per cent and 22 per cent.49
Socialist and radical ideas made no impact on educational policy at a
national and state level after the summer of 1848, but reformers did not give
up easily. At a socialist banquet in December 1848 Pauline Roland offered
the toast: “Let us drink to equal public education for girls and boys which
should bring to our families the realization that the sacred motto, Liberty,
Equality and Fraternity”.50 Roland, in partnership with Jeanne Deroin,
Leroux, Guépin and Perot, a primary school teacher, founded the Association of Socialist Schoolmasters and Mistresses in September 1849 to promote
this philosophy. Within less than a year the parent association to which it
belonged had been forcibly closed and Deroin and Roland imprisoned.
Along with the purge on teachers’ associations came a purge of educators.
Between 1848 and 1859, 4,000 teachers, one-ninth of the total, were
purged. It was not only instituteurs who were fired. Carnot’s appointees at
the Collège de France were replaced, but they had been political appointments. Socialists and radicals were removed from teaching posts they had
held for a generation. In 1850 Ange Guépin was removed from the Chair in
the Medical School in Nantes, which he had held since 1830, even though he
was staunchly supported by the rector.51 Guépin was an excellent teacher,
dismissed for his study of socialism, which came out in 1850.52
Despite all the setbacks of the Second Republic, socialists continued to
take the education of girls seriously, and none more so than Ange Guépin.
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Preserved among his papers were several hundred pages of the manuscript of
an unpublished “philosophical novel”, describing how a girl should be
educated. He took a “whole-life” view of education, in more than a chronological sense. Marie de Beauval was a Breton girl born in 1785. Guépin was
obviously inspired by Rousseau’s Emile, both in the structure of the novel
and the approach of Marialla, Marie’s tutor. Preparation began with Marie’s
mother; Guépin argued that what a pregnant woman saw and read, as well as
what she ate, influenced the baby. Marie’s mother observed a routine of a
healthy and substantial diet, exercise and uplifting reading. She surrounded
herself with beautiful paintings. Guépin whimsically observed that in one
commune he knew well almost everyone resembled a particularly repulsive
figure of Christ in the local church.
Bringing up Marie was a balance of heredity and environment. Guépin
did not deny the importance of heredity, seen in the breeding of Arab horses.
However he noted that over emphasis on it would lead to fatalism, too much
stress on tradition and on the inheritance of characteristics from the male
(who could never actually guarantee he was the father). Education was the
counterweight to heredity. Education was the responsibility of the whole
family, not just the formal educators. Environment, food, friends and animals were all important elements.
Marie received a rational, scientific education, rooted in the empirical and
experimental study of the natural world and an investigative approach to
history. Marialla, a disenchanted former soldier of the Revolutionary wars,
adopted a Socratean method of questioning. He was very conscious that his
mission was to educate a soul. Observation and questioning needed the
support of books. Marie read Descartes, Rabelais and Voltaire. Her tutor was
careful to select books that explained the role of women, past and present.
Guépin noted that most current female education focused on familiarizing a girl with materialism, which he summed up dismissively as “furniture,
servants, strutting around in fancy clothes”. He was particularly scornful of
preoccupation with questions sartorial because his son (not his daughter) ran
up such huge bills with the tailor. Guépin argued that the contemporary
image of femininity taught to girls was an unhelpful image of Mary, mother
of Jesus. Guépin was no Catholic. He suggested that a more positive model
might be the relationship between Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday. (Was
he joking? Probably not, he tended to take himself very seriously.) Religion
was important. Mariella taught his pupil two religions: the perfect religion,
made by god, the music of the spheres, an awareness of the stars and planets;
and imperfect religion, the work of man, that is, education.
As a nineteenth-century feminist surrounded by assertive women, Guépin’s
analysis of how a girl should be educated was formulated on the basis that the
life experiences of men and women were different. Women were bound to be
wives and mothers, and as mothers educate their children. Yet girls received
no education themselves. Girls were equally unprepared for marriage, which
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was a moral and intellectual, as well as a physical experience. A husband
needed an educated wife. Guépin also argued that the freedom of girls and
boys to learn and socialize together was important and he admired the freedom of girls in Great Britain and America to mix with boys. Hard work, he
commented, would protect their virtue.53
Guépin made several attempts to complete Marie, apparently without success. In 1853 he also drafted a pamphlet, giving advice to girls who wanted
to train as teachers, that does not seem to have been published.54 He emphasized that the best teacher was the mother. In breast-feeding her child and
keeping it clean she taught the infant regular habits, and in answering its
simple questions the child would learn about the world. Ideally, he thought a
child should be educated by its own mother until it was 10 years old, but he
recognized that this was rarely possible. He thus advocated free, nondenominational state education from nursery age.
Nursery education was expanding rapidly in these years, encouraged by
Guizot in 1833. A royal ordinance of 1837 set standards for salles d’asiles.
They were often started by legitimist local notables, the Saint Vincent-dePaul Society or local industrialists. Wives of leading notables frequently took
a prominent role in initiating them, serving as voluntary dames inspectrices
and raising funds to sustain them. It cannot have been much fun to be a pupil.
The main purpose was not enlightenment, and certainly not entertainment,
but the inculcation of moral standards and basic hygiene.55
Guépin was obviously not very impressed with the nursery schools in
Nantes. He urged their teachers to distance themselves from the idea that
they were running a charity workhouse. He dreamt of imaginative equipment, classrooms with huge globes and magic lanterns to teach children
about the world. He considered the role of their women teachers “a saintly
mission”.56 At this time about 400 ravenous infants crowded into the nursery
schools in Nantes, which were not equipped to feed their pupils. Guépin
promoted a fund to provide free lunches for the children.57
Vocational training for girls was Guépin’s pet project, and here he did
more than write. He recognized, however, that although men might provide
the cash, it was important that the scheme was visibly run by women, because
they provided the pupils with role models. Guépin’s third wife, Floreska
Leconte, a militant, highly educated feminist and a Protestant, took a leading
role in bringing his ideas to fruition. Inspired by Jean Macé’s prototype
educational society for girls, in 1864 Floreska started a vocational school for
girls in association with four local women, including a retired teacher.
Guépin drew up their “mission statement”. They had two objectives. The
first, and less urgent, was to create a sort of higher primary school for girls
from bourgeois families, with scholarships for able poor girls, where they
would learn appropriate applied science, book-keeping, how to write
business as well as personal letters and industrial design for the clothing and
furniture trades. Secondly, and more importantly, the school would offer
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apprenticeship and more vocationally orientated classes in useful trades,
book-keeping and arithmetic for young girls of respectable families, both
bourgeois and workers.
The founding members’ aims were to inspire love and respect for work
and teach moral behaviour in an atmosphere of total religious tolerence. The
society would be run by women with money behind them, husbands prepared to put in funds but not interfere, and particularly women whose husbands ran the sort of industrial and commercial enterprises in which pupils
might find jobs afterwards.58
The school, which could take up to 80 girls aged 12 and above, consisted
of school and workshop, separated by a garden. Girls learned useful trades,
not lace-making and embroidery, which were judged “good for nothing”, but
dressmaking, tailoring, corsetry and underwear-making. Each day was divided between school and work. School pupils were encouraged to join the
workshop, but were not obliged to do so. Designed to help girls from poor,
or unemployed families, the school was so successful that plans for a second
were soon drafted.
Guépin never gave up on education. In 1869 local republicans persuaded
him to stand for parliament. As his main programme he stated free schooling
for girls as well as boys59 and vocational training for children of both sexes.60
When he was prefect of the Loire-Atlantique for a short time in 1870,
Guépin actively promoted the opening of a second vocational school for
girls. He also repeatedly campaigned for a decent salary for women teachers.
In the 1850s and 1860s, the initiative for organizing schools, evening
classes, libraries and so on was shared by socialists and radicals of the stamp
of the indefatigable Guépin, other anti-clerical lay groups and the churches.
The Société Franklin was formed in 1862 to promote the creation of popular
libraries. By the early 1870s they claimed to have 800 associate libraries, but
many had only tiny collections, and refused to lend books to workers, because
they feared they would be stolen. The Ligue de l’Enseignement was founded
in 1866 in Alsace by the freemason Jean Macé to encourage working people
towards literacy, independence and anti-clericalism, but not political radicalism. Local notables, particularly Protestant and Jewish industrialists and
businessmen, were enthusiastic founders of libraries.61 Popular libraries were
typically established by wealthy patrons, such as Ali Margarot, a Protestant
banker in Nîmes, who later became its mayor. Members paid an annual
subscription of 2 francs, which gave them access to a wide range of books,
from history to science. Sometimes the initiative came from workers
themselves. The Société d’instruction populaire, operating in Lille from 1865,
was founded by a mechanic and metalworkers formed the nucleus of the
membership.62 In the 1860s, as the charm of the Falloux Law began to wear
thin, there were also state initiatives promoted by the Minister, Victor Duruy.
He encouraged evening classes and tried to persuade écoles communales to
create libraries accessible to members of the local community.
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Most of the socialists and radicals of the July Monarchy and Second
Republic modified their ideas on how to educate the masses. The preference
for autonomous, self-start, charitably based schemes was abandoned after
1848 by many in favour of state initiatives. Partly this was a matter of going
with the trend. Charitable educational societies, like middle-class backed
mutual-aid societies, were tainted with “patronizing” the poor in the 1850s.
Partly it was a shrinking market. The expansion of Church and state-run
primary education in the 1850s meant that long before the Ferry laws of
1881–82, which formally established a state managed system of free,
compulsory primary education, virtually all boys and girls were receiving
basic primary education. The introduction of universal male suffrage in
February 1848 meant that the battle for literacy could not be left to private
initiative. Other considerations also emerge from the correspondence of
socialists. They had held a ubiquitous faith both in the power of education
and the wisdom of the masses when in possession of a democratic political
system. The Second Republic was a very disillusioning experience. In April
1848 the first election under democratic male suffrage elected a conservative
majority of traditional politicians committed to emasculating the new republic. The June Days were a disturbing and confusing episode. For a number of
socialists, including Blanc and Guépin, the workers were manoeuvred into
rebelling against the republic itself in their protest against the closure of the
national workshops. The presidential election in December 1848 challenged
their faith in democracy by the election of Louis-Napoleon.
In 1871, when defeat by Prussia gave the old socialists and radicals their
chance to restore a republic, they were far more cautious and sceptical in
their faith in the masses. The old “insurgent of 1830”, Guépin, who had been
revered in 1848 by local artisan leaders as, “l’avocat et le protecteur des
désinherités”,63 wrote despondently about the elections of 1871 to an Italian
friend:
Il ne faut plus de monsieurs et des ouvriers, il faut que tout homme
soit Ms. hors du travail et ouvrier dans le travail. Ici on a donné le
droit de vote aux mineurs politiques, à ces paysans qui ne veulent
que l’argent et qui ne savent pas lire. Ne faites pas comme nous.
Italy was still blessed with an elitist voting system similar to that of the July
Monarchy. Guépin, unusually for him, mused on a utopian dream, wishing
himself 15 years younger and able to set off for Algeria to try to create an
American-style republic there.64
While Guépin had doggedly persisted in his plans for vocational schools,
after 1848 other socialists reverted to dreams of utopia. Cabet and
Considérant tried to establish (separately) “ideal” communities in America.
Other Fourierists pursued a more practical direction. Gatti de Gamond, one
of the most enthusiastic of their publicists, returned home to Belgium, where
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she became an inspector of schools. Some were excluded, like Guépin, from
an official presence in the Second Empire, either because of their persistent
radicalism between 1848 and 1851, or specifically because of their opposition to Louis-Napoleon’s coup d’état in December 1851. Jeanne Deroin left
for permanent exile in Shepherds Bush in 1852, because she was apprehensive that she was about to be imprisoned for the second time for her defence
of the right of teachers and others to form associations. She lived in relative
poverty, teaching in a local girls’ school, caring for her mentally retarded
son. Deroin struggled to subscribe to radical newspapers and keep in touch
with new associations promoting education in the Second Empire and Third
Republic.
The hopes of early socialists that education could be developed through
small-scale, independent and self-help schemes, although very practical,
were limited. Saint-Simonian and Fourierist ideas on the need for a state directed national system for all branches of education were presented to the
Assembly by Hippolyte Carnot in 1848. Carnot came closest to realizing the
biggest radical educational dream in 1848. At a personal level, 1848 was the
peak of his achievement. The Second Empire was an hiatus for him and for
lay education. Carnot opposed the coup of 1851. He was twice elected to the
Legislative Body of the Empire, but excluded from parliament when he refused to take the oath to Louis-Napoleon. He finally took a seat in 1864. A
member of parliament in the Third Republic, he was one of the first people
elected as senator in 1875. His son, Sadi, became president of the republic in
1887. Although Carnot never had the opportunity to revive his SaintSimonian project of 1848, it did re-emerge. The Ferry Laws of 1881–82,
which introduced universal free primary education for both sexes, transfer
between primary and secondary schools, state ecoles maternelles, together
with rational and effective ways to finance them, were modelled on Carnot’s
blueprint of 1848. However there was an additional anti-clerical thrust,
which was probably inevitable given the growth of Church-run schools during the Second Empire, as a consequence of the Falloux Law. Ironically the
legislation was beginning to be put into effect when Carnot died, the oldest
member of the Senate, in 1884.
Historians have often overlooked the impact of Carnot’s pioneering plans
and therefore the impact of early socialists on the national system of
education. An equally important, if less easily quantified socialist and radical
legacy, were the efforts of individuals like Deroin, Roland, Guépin and others to raise the profile of education and run schools for those who did not
want church-run education and could not afford existing alternatives. The
correspondence of Deroin herself and her network of contacts, which she
maintained until her death in 1894, gives some insight into their influence on
educational reformers in the Third Republic.
74
CHAPTER SIX
The “new woman”1
Q. What is woman?
A. No one knows. Some say it is a being which comes from God and
returns to him; others deny this.
Q. How does she spend her time?
A. Doing everything and nothing.
Q. What is her status?
A. She has none.
Q. Where does she fit in the natural order of things?
A. Problematical.
Q. Where does she fit in the social order?
A. Even more problematical.
Q. Is she part of humanity?
A. The laws of the land do not include her as a separate entity, nor as
a reasonable being. The proposed new Constitution ... denies her the
right to vote.
Not wishing to emancipate woman as a human being, nor like a
cat, dog, tiger, lion, snake ... it has turned her into a thing which
resembles a human being for those who love her, into an animal for
those who want to make her servile, into a vegetable for those who
believe she has no soul, into mineral for those who break her.2
Saint-Simonians like Jeanne Deroin believed that they were “new women”.
Women’s issues were prominent in socialist writings and projects, although
not all socialists were feminists. Lack of educational provision has already
been discussed, as has the role of women in defining the spirituality of early
socialism. In this chapter I focus on how early socialists defined the “new
woman”, in her personal, sexual and family relationships.
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“The extension of the privileges of women is the basic principle of all
social progress”, asserted Fourier in his Theory of the Four Movements, first
published in 1808. Very few people read Fourier until the late 1820s, by
which time interest in women’s issues had become part of the all absorbing
“social question”. Fourier was the most radical feminist of all. He was
convinced that society would not improve until women were emancipated,
both in their working and private lives.3 His motives were as practical as
those of any female feminist of the 1830s and 1840s. He argued that women
should take a full part in the life of the phalange. He completely rejected the
almost universal view of feminists and non-feminists that child-rearing and
family matters were necessarily the centre of a woman’s universe, which he
regarded as the enslavement of women. He asserted that confining women
to perpetual mothering was uneconomic, making them lifelong domestic
servants, preventing them making their rightful contribution and thus holding back the rest of society. Curiously he cited Japanese and Tahitian societies
as two that respected women and were thus economically more advanced
than Europe. Fourier had no doubt that nature intended gender equality.
Women were confined to the home although only one in eight were natural
homemakers. There was no reason in nature why women should not be
doctors, teachers, writers, dressmakers or athletes.4 They were forced into
prostitution only because they were denied the chance to undertake
adequately paid work.5
If anyone claimed that women were not capable of doing the same work
as men, Fourier rebutted them by pointing to the superior abilities of women
when they were rulers and not burdened with domestic responsibilities;
examples he cited were Elizabeth I, Catherine II and Maria-Thérèsa.6 The
subjection in which women lived in contemporary society trapped them into
appearing empty-headed and frivolous, but, he wrote, this was because their
natural, non-monogamous instincts were repressed. Men also suffered from
their determination to keep women in the home; men had to do all the earning.7 In Fourier’s “Harmony” women would be able to work according to
their capacity and strength. Communal meals and childcare would liberate
women and everyone would benefit. Throughout his life Fourier demanded
women’s liberation on utilitarian and psychological grounds and won the
respect of a number of women for his basic thesis.
Fourier believed that the second most corrupting force after capitalism in
civilized society was monogamous marriage. He decried marriage as slavery
for women and a sexual prison for husband and wife, against which both
partners constantly rebelled, with consequent lies and deceptions. He was
convinced that all husbands were cuckolds and classified them into 72 types,
short-horned, long-horned and so on, depending on whether or not they
connived at the infidelity in order to be free to nibble new pastures themselves. Fourier argued that all adults should be free to change sexual partners
in response to their desires: “Il y a fausseté partout où il y a un régime
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THE “NEW WOMAN”
coercitif; la prohibition et le contrebande sont inséparable, en amour comme
en marchandise”.8 Unlike some contemporaries he believed that both
women and men possessed sexually passionate natures, which were frustrated in traditional marriages.
Fourier wrote a Nouveau Monde Amoureux , parallel with his study of
industry, but it was not published until 1967.9 His followers were embarrassed by his championing of sexual licence. At times the volume reads more
like de Sade than a solemn socialist! Fourier was the first person to describe
his utopia as a sexy paradise. He praised sexual diversity and variety, even
recommending philanthropic sex for those insufficiently appealing to attract
partners.10 He recognized three sexes: male, female and immature.11 For the
adults, no holds were barred. Fourier argued that a multiplicity of partners
would add to the sense of harmony and well-being in the phalange. People
would retain fond feelings for each partner, and the uncertainty of paternity
would make all possible male parents feel a sense of attachment to the offspring. Odd as this may sound, we are told that such sentiments are relevant
in late twentieth-century “primitive” societies in South America, where each
potential father feels an obligation to provide for the child. In “Harmony”
the immature of both sexes were to be chaste. Fourier was convinced that sex
would distract the young from study, even from work, and tempt them into
frivolity, idleness and expense. However for those from about 16 years old,
Fourier encouraged a sex life as active, and as public, as that of a promiscuous pigeon. Harmonious sex was not for night-time and intimate pairing, but
for daytime sociable groupie groping, as orgiastic as his parallel fondness for
constant, massive, convivial meals.
Did Fourier fill his unpublished notebooks with tales of marathon orgies
and courts of love with a female pontiff and priests offering indulgences to
serve as humorous parodies of the Catholic Church, or were they the secret
fantasies of a rather lonely man who didn’t have much of a sex life outside his
writing? There were signs later in his life that the criticism of rather puritanical female friends, some of whom helped to pay his bills, modified his hostility to monogamous marriage. In 1829 he conceded that marriage could be
acceptable if it developed by degrees, becoming permanent only after the
birth of children, because love and paternity were the last of the passions to
be fitted into the phalange.12 He was obliged to deny that he had recommended “libertés en amour”, and recognized that promiscuity carried the
risk of syphilis.13
Fourier’s feminism may not have attracted widespread attention until the
1830s, but the Saint-Simonians undoubtedly adopted aspects of his
liberationist creed. They became enthusiastic believers in the “new woman”
(their own phrase). Their objectives, from their formation in 1825, were the
liberation of working people and of women. Saint-Simon himself had little
input into this feminism.14 His most substantial links with women’s rights
were his fleeting aspiration to marry Madame de Staël and his suggestion in
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1802 that women should be represented in his proposed conseil de Newton,
a sort of European brains-trust.15 In his last book, Le nouveau Christianisme,16 Saint-Simon observed the need to work for improvement in man’s
moral and physical condition. According to Enfantin, on his deathbed SaintSimon had declared, “Man and woman together constitute the social
individual”. Enfantin argued that the Catholic church only concerned itself
with the spiritual side, whereas God was both a physical and a spiritual presence, thus was both male and female. Male and female together were the first
building block in society, but existing social and religious structures failed to
acknowledge that they had both physical and spiritual concerns. SaintSimonianism was dedicated to liberating both, particularly for women.
Enfantin’s notions owed much to Fourier’s Quatre Mouvements, although
Enfantin was not inclined to recognize the debt.17
Under Enfantin’s domination, the Saint-Simonians focused increasingly on
the joint objectives of the liberation of women and workers. The sect
particularly appealed to a number of energetic, intelligent women, at first
middle-class, and later young working women, who saw the new “church” as
an opportunity to exercise their not inconsiderable managerial skills in ways
that had not been open to them before. Dominant figures in the dynamic
women’s section of the movement from 182918 were wives of male leaders:
Claire Bazard, Cécile Fournel and Eugénie Niboyet. The women took a
decisive role in both recruitment and practical projects of social reform.
Niboyet, typically, was brought to Saint-Simonianism by her husband and two
brothers. Her family were wealthy, Protestant intellectual notables and
Eugénie was well educated. Her husband was an avocat. When Claire Bazard
first met her in 1831, she commented that Niboyet was bursting to be involved
in some project. She was so “overwhelming in her obedience, ardour and love,
and, she feared, sadness too, that Bazard agreed to everything she asked,
alarmed that she would end up as her ‘daughter’ as well as her ‘mother’”.19
Saint-Simonians thought themselves “beautiful people”. Theirs was a
doctrine of youth. Older women would write to the Globe, regretting that
their advancing years and decayed looks ruled out their membership.20
Senior members were inclined to describe the attractive appearance of
acolytes. For a few years it became vaguely trendy to be Saint-Simonian.
Reybaud, a popular journalist, wrote a humorous novel tracing the fortunes
of an ambitious, if naive, young man and his wife through fashionable
society, which, at a certain point in the early 1830s, found SaintSimonianism irresistible. Unfortunately Reybaud’s hero found himself
relegated to be a shoe-shiner in the fourth grade, his wife-to-be elevated to
grade two when she performed a reversal of The Taming of the Shrew at a
party meeting and attracted numerous young girls to join the movement.21
The most ambitious Saint-Simonian project was to set up hostels for
worker members, whose structure was reminiscent, in some aspects, of
Fourier’s phalange, and, theoretically, would have offered women freedom
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THE “NEW WOMAN”
from domestic and family responsibilities. Working in the poorest and most
deprived parts of Paris, two directors in each section, one male, one female,
tried to acquire a building where the members could live and eat and hold
meetings together. These “maisons communes” were supposed to be selfsupporting, run on the wages contributed by their worker residents. The
directors actively sought worker, particularly family membership. Unsurprisingly they were often regarded as a soft touch, a charitable foundation, and
the artisans who joined were frequently in financial difficulties. The directors then helped to pay off members’ existing debts and redeem their property if it was in pawn in the state-run monts de piétés. Funds did not always
stretch so far. Only two maisons communes were actually created, housing
25 families and 1,200 non-resident worker members; one run by Prévost in
rue Popincourt in the 6th arrondissement and one run by Botiau and Niboyet
in rue Tour d’Auvergne serving the 4th and 5th arrondissements.
In May 1831 Henry Fournel and Claire Bazard took a lead in actively
canvassing artisans, their wives and families and explaining Saint-Simonian
doctrine to them. Very quickly nearly equal numbers of female and male
worker members were recruited, often whole families with small children.
Mostly they were artisans: tailors, locksmiths, saddlers and so on. The
women (often wives of the artisans) were usually employed in some aspect of
clothing production. The men were likely to be victims of the current economic crisis: out-of-work, or struggling with debt.
The sect was hierarchically structured with various degrees of membership,
reminiscent of freemasonry. Fournel and Bazard set up propaganda groups in
each Parisian arrondissement, jointly run by a male and female member. Their
meetings were held on Sunday afternoons from 4p.m. to 6p.m. in the SaintSimonian headquarters at rue Taitbout. They always followed the same
format. The director would explain some point of doctrine that was relevant
to a topical issue. New acolytes would then read out their professions de foi,
an account of their conversion to Saint-Simonianism. Only in the closing
stages were questions from the floor permitted.
During the week the directors would visit their “fils” and “filles” in their
homes to reinforce what they had learned. There were eight pairs of male
and female directors of worker education (propaganda) groups in Paris,
including, among the women, Dumont, Birard, Véturie Espagne, Herbault,
Céline Mayeux-Laville, Sophie Bonheur and Eugénie Niboyet. The first six
are known only by their names.22 Niboyet was, as Bazard predicted, the most
active. The first task of the directors was to educate new members
in Saint-Simonian doctrine. In reality they spent most of their time on practical and charitable matters. As director of worker propaganda for the 4th and
5th arrondissements, including some of the poorest worker districts at SaintDenis and Saint-Martin, Niboyet would make up to 50 home visits to her
worker “children” each week; they would visit her; and she would run two
or three meetings a week. She battled to organize workers into associations.
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FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
Worker members were inclined to treat women like Niboyet as dames
patronesses; sources of charitable help. Members sought a Saint-Simonian
blessing when they married. The sect provided women members with a
layette for a new baby and a doctor and essential medical supplies at the birth
and after.23 Doctor members like Bonamy were also asked to volunteer to
vaccinate members’ children. In her weekly report Niboyet wrote that she
had given a cradle, bed-linen and shirts and lent a mattress to one of her
filles. Workers were often drawn to the sect by its charitable potential.
Henry, a dancing teacher and married man with three children, all of impeccable morality, was a typical lame-dog Saint-Simonian recruit. He was
behind with his rent and needed help to buy instruments and some decent
clothing. Niboyet designated her brother as a likely donor of a suit of
clothes!24 Recruits who were in temporary difficulties, but could look forward to offering employment to others, could expect help. At one point so
many shoemakers joined that there were thoughts of setting up a communal
workshop. However even Niboyet realized that they could not take on hopelessly dependent cases, and particularly elderly people. The most favoured
new members were those who combined temporary financial problems with
philosophic conviction, usually women, such as Rose Guindorf, a dressmaker, who became one of the editors of the Femme Libre.
Under the direction of active women like Niboyet, the sect began to take
on the aura of a charitable foundation rather than a radical creed. A few
wealthy men and women who were sympathetic to their aims, but not willing
to join, made substantial donations. Such was Holstein, who donated 1650
francs to Niboyet’s groups in the autumn of 1831, but it was soon swallowed
up in paying off the debts of recruits to the local butcher, baker, fruit shop,
grocer and so on. As word got round of Saint-Simonian charity, the number
of impecunious acolytes mounted to impossible levels.
In an attempt to control all aspects of the movement the male and female
directors were asked to provide the central organization (the mères and
pères), information on the finances of each group and each house, and on the
philosophical, as well as the material, state of each new member. In the hope
that other houses would be founded a waiting list was drawn up, which soon
contained the names of 600 worker families. However the wages earned by
members was never enough to cover the running costs of the two existing
houses; rue Popincourt quickly ran up a deficit of 9,907 francs, the Tour
d’Auvergne 4,087 francs.25
The Saint-Simonian movement was unique in its determination to attract
worker and women members. In 1829 the women’s section in Paris had 200
regular members and groups developed in provincial cities, notably Lyon
and Nantes. During 1831 Enfantin began to put particular stress on the “liberation” of women, but in ways that alarmed existing members, both male
and female. He abandoned the initial rather democratic organization of the
sect in which decisions were made by majority vote and made it rigidly hier80
THE “NEW WOMAN”
archical. Grades of membership were created, in which the original leaders,
pères and mères, were given authority over their fils and filles, and special
seats on a raised podium in the meeting hall. Claire Bazard, the leading
woman, objected to these “illusory distinctions”: “It would be vain to put me
on a throne, elevating me above other women” and counterproductive to
their stated aim of equality and liberation.26 In fact Enfantin soon revealed
that his true intent was the reverse. At a time when the Saint-Simonians were
actively recruiting women members, and particularly working women, he
removed existing middle-class women leaders from positions of authority
within the movement. The sect was reorganized into four centres in Paris, all
run by men, including the journalist, Vinçard. Their posters announced
regular “drop-in” surgeries at their homes.27 Claire Bazard and others were
at first incredulous that a sect committed to women’s liberation should behave in this way, and then openly hostile.
The crisis deepened in the autumn of 1831, when Enfantin began to spell
out his ideas on the moral basis of their organization. He demanded that they
should recognize that physical needs and pleasures were as important as
spiritual. He rejected the Christian abnegation of the flesh. This was the basis
for his extremely controversial view of marriage: “Toute oeuvre sociale dans
l’avenir est l’oeuvre d’un couple, homme et femme”.28 Marriage was a
sacrament: “l’association la plus complète d’un homme et d’une femme,
ayant pour objet l’accomplissement d’une oeuvre sacerdotale, scientifique ou
industrielle”. So far, so good. It should be permanent, but if it was not successful, it was in the interests of the couple and of society as a whole, to permit divorce. Each Saint-Simonian marriage, likewise each divorce, would be
overseen by a “priest” and “priestess”: “L’amour doit unir le vrai et l’utile,
l’idéal et le réel; il n’ya plus il ne doit plus avoir de fictions constitutionnelles
ni dans l’état, ni dans la famille”. A wife, or husband, was the person the
other loved most intimately, “but life is both individual and social and a man
may fall in love with other women besides his wife”. If a marriage did not
work, both parents would have equal authority over their offspring.
Enfantin’s radical rejection of existing law and custom caused uproar in
the sect. In November 1831 came the definitive break after months of disagreements. In an acrimonious meeting on 19 November Enfantin addressed
his “chers enfants”. Emphasizing that they should unite in “un loi d’amour
qui donnera satisfaction”, he narrowed their main purpose to finding the one
special woman, “la femme”, who would unlock the secret of how their
“church” should develop. She was to occupy the vacant throne for the new
female “pope”, next to him, the self-declared male pope. Their aim was peace
and the female influence was a vital aspect of their emphasis on fraternity,
unity, family and morality: “notre vie ne doivent point être de dureté, de
sévérité, de guerre, mais bien toute d’amour, de douceur et de paix”.29
Their ‘apostolat’ should be devoted to the liberation of women. In the
words of the chorus of one of their songs:
81
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
Parmi nous femme douce et chère
Viens pacifier l’univers
Aux enfants viens donner une mère
Viens, nos bras et nos coeurs se sont toujours ouverts.30
Their role was to listen to the woman’s voice and acknowledge her freedom.
Divorce was necessary, to cope with moral weakness, or when a marriage did
not live up to the ideals of the partners or when it was vital for the development of the individual. It was up to women themselves to say what they
wanted. Enfantin claimed that his dictatorial format for the sect was temporary. Until “the woman” was found, the movement would be in a state of
temporary limbo, unable to define precisely what the “liberation” of women
should entail. His appeals for “the woman” to reveal herself began to sound
more mystical than practical the longer the throne for the female “messiah”
was left empty.
Enfantin introduced the notion of “progressive” or experimental marriage,
similar to Fourier’s recommendations for random coupling. This shocked
some of the original membership, which had consisted of middle-class
couples. Enfantin argued that women’s passions or flesh were most in need of
liberation. Contemporary society was atomized and fragmented because the
power of love had not been realized. Women were the emotional heart of the
male–female couple. In the existing society their loving natures were stultified
and frustrated. Christianity was at fault in demanding that people deny their
sensual selves. For women to assume their true role in liberating themselves
and society, they had to release their emotional potential. Love should not be
constrained by rules of conventional marriage. Temporary unions should
replace monogamous marriage.
Leroux, an influential member and leading publicist, was appalled by this
first full exposition of Enfantin’s ideas. Hippolyte Carnot refused to accept
Enfantin as the supreme authority and rejected the mystical aura with which
he was trying to surround himself. He had no time for temporary unions:
“L’appel du Père Enfantin est immoral; il tend à la promiscuité: ce n’est pas
une loi nouvelle, c’est la négation de la loi chrétienne”.31 Jules Lechevalier,
another central figure, claimed that although he still honoured Saint-Simon’s
philosophy, the sect was in ruins, and his close friend Abel Transon rejected
Enfantin’s claims of religious inspiration.32 Reynaud said he would stick it
out for the time being because he was sure that when “the woman” was
discovered she would fling aside Enfantin’s assumed autocracy. He also
warned that if she did not arrive quickly their association would collapse into
immorality.33 Thus a majority of the most confident, active and independently minded Saint-Simonians rebelled against Enfantin’s authoritarianism
and his interpretation of the liberation of women and deserted him.
One of the leading female members, Cécile Fournel, was applauded by
women members when she declared to the key meeting that Enfantin’s ideas
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THE “NEW WOMAN”
on sexual freedom were, “profoundly immoral. I am convinced that the
woman of the future, the woman who must be at the head of our movement,
will agree with me”.34 Eugénie Niboyet complained bitterly when she was
ousted from her role as chief dispenser of charity, convinced that women
were the best propagandists among working people:
Nous oter cette faculté, c’est nous oter la vie … J’aime agir sur les
masses parce-que c’est là que je sens toute ma puissance. Je suis
apôtre, j’ai beaucoup reçu; j’ai beaucoup à donner et je vous supplie,
laissez-moi dans mon element.35
Other women, sympathetic to the original ideals of the sect, never came to
terms with Enfantin’s “feminism”. In February 1832, Elisabeth Celnart, wife
of Bayle Mouillard, a leading member of the judiciary in Clermont, wrote a
long letter to Enfantin, for publication in their newspaper, the Globe, criticizing his decision. In her view the abject status of woman was both a hangover from a more barbarous age, when force prevailed, and a consequence of
the pursuit of passion, which Enfantin had now elevated to a moral goal. In
reality lifelong marriage was a woman’s only protection from the barbarism
of primitive society. Enfantin claimed to have discovered a new law for the
human spirit, allowing free expression to the passions (known formerly
simply as vice and virtue). His theories displayed a cynical disregard for the
evils of immorality. Encouraging sensuality among women could have only
disastrous and shameful results. It led women to despise work and old age,
placing an exaggerated emphasis on good looks. It encouraged women to be
adulterous. Motherhood was stripped of all spiritual significance: “La
femme vit en courtisane; elle est redevenue esclave; elle a perdu presque tous
les dons du dogme chretien, parce-qu’elle ne vit plus que de l’existence
sensuelle”. If Enfantin really wanted to liberate women, he should stress the
purity of love, the permanence of marriage and the development of women’s
intellectual faculties to make them independent of men: “Donnez pour lui
devise Travail, liberté, pudeur”. She urged Enfantin to return the sect to the
primitive Christianity Saint-Simon had sought and to give it a more rational
approach. Curiously, at the end of this tirade Celnart asked Enfantin for free
copies of his books for her husband!36
Pauline Roland lived her life as a “new woman”, fortunately scraping
together enough spare time to be a prolific letter-writer, in which she documented her psychological state in detail. A new recruit in 1832, the daughter
of a postmaster, Roland was introduced to the sect by her schoolteacher. She
was in search of a faith, full of romantic illusions, won over by their doctrine
that women had a divine mission in the regeneration of society. A virgin of
27 when she enrolled, she compared “swopping endlessly to new affairs,
with no religious or civil sanction to the union”, as only a little better than
prostitution, renaming what was formerly judged immoral as a moral act.
83
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
Scathingly, she averred that the sect made provision for only two types of
men, Othello and Don Juan. She thought lifelong constancy the norm and
that divorce would not be needed if marriage choices were not dictated by
finance and the respective families.37
Within a few months she had been won over to Enfantin’s notion of the
couple-prêtre, although she remained somewhat anxiously celibate for two
more years before embarking on single motherhood, apparently totally by
design. She wrote endless letters to Aglaé St. Hilaire, a childhood friend of
Enfantin, and one of the female leaders who herself married at this time.
Roland explained that she would never become any man’s wife or mistress.
She would ask no man to protect her, and none would be able to claim her, or
her children, as his own. Any partner “would have to recognise … the superiority of women”. Her children would be of “mysterious paternity”, even
though she admitted that neither the Almighty, nor conventional opinion,
would welcome such infants. Roland wanted to make a name by her writing
so that she would be the role model for her offspring. In the end Roland did
not breast-feed or rear her children in infancy. Her first child was fathered by
fellow Saint-Simonian and journalist Adolphe Guéroult, but by the time Jean
was born in January 1835 Roland had left him for another Saint-Simonian,
Jean Aicard, who was to be the father of three more of her children.
Roland refused to allow the fathers any rights over the children and did not
ask either of them to make any financial contribution, which was a
courageous decision for a single mother at the time, particularly because the
Saint-Simonian hierarchy criticized her very public espousal of the doctrine of
the “new woman” and “free unions” and refused its succour.38 She just about
made enough from her journalism and teaching39 to employ a housekeeper
and to send the first “petite ange” to a nourrice, near enough to allow her to
visit every day.40 She also took in Flora Tristan’s daughter after her death.41
She wrote for La Femme Libre (1832), contributed to L’Encyclopédie
nouvelle, edited by former Saint-Simonians, Leroux and Reynaud,42 and
published several works of history.43 Between 1842 and 1847 she contributed
to Leroux’s Revue Indépendante and L’Eclaireur de l’Indre while teaching at
Leroux’s socialist community in Boussac. In his Grèves de Samaraz Leroux
described how Roland clung to her belief in the spiritual conversion of society.
She always thought of Leroux as “maître et ami”.44
Others agreed in principle, although not in the way they lived their own
lives, with aspects of Enfantin’s ideas on marriage. Jeanne Deroin accepted
the need for divorce.45 Marriage was, she said, a continual conflict between
one partner who tried to dominate by his physical strength and the other by
her craftiness:
Most marriages are based on the chance whim of love. Genuine sympathy, respect and equality are absent. It is vain for the law to assert
that marriage is indissoluble, a marriage has failed almost as soon as
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THE “NEW WOMAN”
it is made … Indissoluble unions bind the couple in an oppressive
chain, humiliating for the wife. A slave can at least hope for freedom. A wife finds deliverance only in death.
For Deroin the problem lay in the law, which left the wife utterly dependent
on her husband, and the lack of education and job opportunities that exacerbated her slavery. This was made even worse by contemporary norms that
encouraged the husband to feel he could exercise a roaming eye, and taught a
girl only “frivolous tastes and the exploitation of her charms and pleasing
ways”. Thus Deroin, like Fourier and Enfantin, was convinced that a new
divorce law was a prime necessity of social reform.
Deroin’s personal contribution to the debate was typically idiosyncratic.
In 1832, in a civil ceremony, she married Desroches, the bursar of a retirement home, who had introduced her to Saint-Simonianism. Determined to
escape from the subjugation that most wives endured, she drew up a
marriage contract with her husband. He did not respect all the unwritten
clauses she imagined they had agreed; instead of the life of chastity like that
of the early Christians that she had anticipated, Deroin settled down to cherish her three children!
Enfantin’s doctrine of short marriages looked suspiciously like a rationalization of his own sex life. The mother of his son, Adèle Morlane, remained
devoted to him, writing him over 600 letters, in which she never gave up
hope that he would marry her,46 despite his admission, early in their relationship that, although, “je veux être adoré”, the more someone loved him, the
more distant he became.47 Enfantin exerted an almost hypnotic influence
over some women, reminiscent of the techniques of the once fashionable
Mesmer, who had floated through his salon in a violet robe, charming (hence
mesmerizing) numerous wealthy Parisian ladies before the French Revolution. It was perhaps no coincidence that Enfantin yearned for a violetcoloured Saint-Simonian uniform for himself! His personal magnetism
appears to have made a number of his female followers his emotional slaves,
but the sentiments seem to have been one-way. In the summer of 1832
Désirée Véret begged him to make her a “new woman” by accepting a
“daughter of the people” into his heart in a series of passionate letters.48
Saint-Simonian women sometimes found that liberation left them with
empty hearts and full cradles, long before the age when single parenthood
was politically and economically correct. A sense of emotional and sexual
rejection plus a growing awareness that their leader had a very limited and
selfish concept of female liberation ultimately alienated them. This is
particularly true of the working women including Démar, Guindorf, Véret
and Deroin. In addition not many women members welcomed his authoritarianism. Within months of her withdrawal from the “family”, which she
criticized for its lack of direction, Claire Démar committed suicide along
with Perret des Issarts, her Saint-Simonian lover, who was ten years her
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FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
junior. Marie-Reine Guindorf also killed herself and Véret left the country.
The dominant ladies who remained in the movement, including Claire
Bazard, chafed at their powerlessness. Suzanne Voilquin criticized the masculine bias of the movement.49 The leaders were, she averred, men first and
Saint-Simonians second.50
Trying to be a “new woman” sometimes ended tragically. Claire Démar
tried to follow Enfantin’s precepts. She left an account of her philosophy,
which was published by her friend, Suzanne Voilquin, after her suicide. In
her introduction Voilquin reiterated Enfantin’s familiar creed. Although she
was won over by the idea that sexual liberation had a religious motive,
Voilquin had enough sense to be aware that the “mysteriously divine power”
of female love could only be exercised in a society where women were economically independent. She, like Démar, argued that it was the moral and
saintly duty of women to love many men, as long as this love had a spiritual
base. She looked forward to a time when society honoured mothers, rather
than a “virginal madonna”. Voilquin summarized:
A vous hommes la production, les grands travaux d’assénissement, la
conquête des terres. A nous la population, à nous de renouveler
l’humanité, à nos appartient de former le coeur, les sentiments de
l’homme, à nos enfin l’education moral du monde … Enfin à la
femme sous son aspect multiple, d’apporter à l’humanité amour et
bonheur.51
Démar talked of the sect’s search for the femme redempteur, the woman
who would crush the [Old Testament] serpent. In her world of the future,
woman would be liberated from marriage and motherhood. Babies would be
breast-fed by a nourrice fonctionnaire. She condemned marriage and the
Civil Code, which confined women to the home like “horses, dolled up for a
special occasion, and kept in the stable the rest of the time”.52 People would
not be truly free until women were no longer exploited.
The publicity given to the pathetic double suicide of Démar and her lover
and the awareness that some Saint-Simonians not only preached sexual
liberation, but practised it, led to public condemnation by the Orleanist
regime. Their meetings were banned. The leaders, Enfantin and Michel
Chevalier, were accused of corrupting public morality and embezzlement.
The trial caused a stir as the accused and their acolytes marched to the Palais de
la Justice in central Paris in their uniforms, singing Salut, composed by
Rousseau: “Hail Father, Jesus told his disciples to watch and they slept, You
told us to work and we will”. They shocked the court by demanding, unsuccessfully, to be defended by two female members and by refusing to take the
oath in the prescribed form. The Saint-Simonians were accused of opposing
private property ownership and inheritance; practising sexual equality;
inventing a religion; encouraging people to rebel; and, perhaps worst of all,
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THE “NEW WOMAN”
sleeping together regardless of marriage vows. They were sentenced to a
year’s imprisonment in Sainte-Pélagie. The harshness of the sentences revived
public sympathy, which Enfantin’s extravagant statements had lost. Enfantin’s imprisonment severed his hold over the movement, which fragmented.
On his release a year later Enfantin did another about-face. He began to
stress the masculinity of the sect, leading 38 of the men to an all male celibate
retreat at Ménilmontant, supposedly to await the female “messiah”, a “superior woman, beautiful, graceful and gentle”. They lived a very domestic existence with no servants. The men shared out the jobs, Chevalier polishing
floors, Transon peeling vegetables, Eichtal washing up, Petit putting out the
rubbish and Enfantin gardening. Pitifully, their roughened hands and beards
attested to their masculinity.53 Apparently, the idea was that this assumption
of traditional female activities would give the men more understanding of
women, or perhaps it simply reflected the fact that they had run out of
money. With a budget of no more than a franc a day for food, they ate
frugally in their monastic retreat, passing their time singing. Cartoonists had
a field day, more shocked by men as domestics than by the earlier image of
Saint-Simonians as sexual reprobates.54 Within a few months, when Mrs
Right had not knocked at the door, many abandoned their new uniform, left
the retreat and went back to their former lives.
The sect gave some women an unprecedented freedom to cement a number
of lifelong friendships and working relationships with other women. A group
of young female worker members ran a completely innovative project, a
newspaper for women workers like themselves. Unlike a number of ostensibly
male “artisan” newspapers, this one really was written by workers for workers. Two young seamstress recruits, Marie-Reine Guindorf and Désirée Véret
(who later married the Owenite Gay), founded the Femme Libre. Published
from Véret’s home, the tiny paper appeared irregularly when the editors had
enough copy and money to complete a print-run, and sold for 15 centîmes a
copy.55 They were joined by Pauline Roland, Jeanne Deroin and Suzanne
Voilquin. Influenced by Fourier, Guindorf used the paper to condemn the
servitude of women and campaign for a woman’s right to a living wage.
Voilquin argued for equality within marriage, including property rights and
authority over children. While the editors privately favoured Enfantin’s ideas
on “progressive” marriage, in their paper they defended monogamy. They
demanded freedom through the right of association and spoke up for
solidarité among all women, regardless of class. After a month, in September
1832, they changed the name of their paper, first to the less provocative La
Femme de l’Avenir,56 then to Femme-Nouvelle: Apostolat des Femmes, later
Tribune des Femmes. The paper survived until February 1834, appearing
irregularly, 32 times in all;57 1000 copies of the first issue were printed.
Roland was the only middle-class contributor. To assert their independence
from men, they signed their articles with only their first name, for instance
Jeanne Deroin signed Jeanne-Victoire.
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FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
When the newspaper folded the women editors retained links with each
other and remained radical feminists. Voilquin joined the group that went to
Egypt, supposedly to look for their ideal woman.58 She had family
responsibilities of her own, but in 1838 she founded a société mutuelle to
help unwed mothers. However she was apparently forced abroad again by
economic circumstances, first to Russia between 1839 and 1846 when her
société fell apart. In September 1848 she left for America. Désirée Véret (or
Jeanne Désirée, as she entitled her Saint-Simonian self), who had initially
gone along to a Saint-Simonian meeting for amusement, began to demand a
political role for women, in addition to sexual liberation. In the summer of
1832, when the Saint-Simonians had to defend themselves against suggestions that they had been involved in the unrest that accompanied the funeral
of general Lamarque, they published an open letter to the king, written by
Véret:
Les secours philanthropiques sont impuissants; l’aumône avilit le
peuple et ne prolonge sa vie que pour la lui rendre plus horrible. Ce
qu’il lui faut, ce qu’il veut: c’est du travail, de la joie, des lumières, un
avenir assuré pour ses enfants, du repos pour ses vieillards.59
Véret was not content with good works. She aspired to a political role, and
was not the only Saint-Simonian to fall for their self-appointed leader,
Enfantin. Pushed aside by the père, at both a personal and an intellectual
level, Véret left the movement in 1833 to work in England for about a year.
Like other renegades, she turned to Fourier, corresponding with him
throughout her unhappy time abroad: “We live like slaves, the work is so
lacking in appeal [attrayant – Fourier’s favourite term] that the galleys
would be preferable; we work from 7a.m. and finish at the earliest at
midnight”.60 In London she got to know Anna Wheeler, an admirer of
Fourier, but when she returned to France in 1834 she did not join any
specific group.
The Saint-Simonians had increasingly focused on recruiting lovely young
working girls, but the Fourierist ladies tended to be closer to the dames
patronesses tradition of wealthy families. Sometimes the same ladies had
been among the founder members of the Saint-Simonian movement and the
most dynamic who left Enfantin and turned to Fourier. After November
1831 a Fourierist movement developed rapidly as Saint-Simonianism
fragemented. Women were the chief force in the transformation of Fourier’s
theories, particularly those on female liberation. Fourier’s rejection of
monogamy was reversed and traditional concepts of the family were reasserted. Clarisse Vigoureux, a wealthy widow from Fourier’s home city of
Besançon, was introduced to Fourier’s ideas by Just Muiron, an official at the
prefecture. She composed an adulatory account of Fourierism, which bore
little relation to Fourier’s actual ideas.61 She squared her own puritanical
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THE “NEW WOMAN”
morality with Fourier’s views on sex by arguing that if nature did leave
women free to rove, their modesty would keep them monogamous. In a
review of Gatti de Gamond’s paean to women’s liberation, Fourierist-style,
which tried to retain aspects of Fourier’s own feminism, she remarked that
anyone who believed that liberation would increase immorality did not
understand women.62
Ironically it was Vigoureux’s bowdlerized version of Fourierism that won
over other highly moral feminist Saint-Simonian women including Lucie
Schmalzigang, Angélique Arnaud and Eugénie Niboyet.63 They joined the
Fourierists but they frequently retained a good relationship with other SaintSimonians, with the exception of Enfantin. For example Niboyet had no
further contact with him until 1857.64 Vigoureux influenced Fourierism, not
only because she paid Fourier’s bills in his final years, but also because she
was the mother-in-law of Victor Considérant, the male force behind
Fourierism.
Eugénie Niboyet typified the aspirations and activities of female
Fourierists, whose activities drew them increasingly close to the Orleanist
system. From 1836 she in some respects resembled a “new woman”,
returning to Paris to live apart from her husband and write for a living. She
wrote plays, translated Dickens and Miss Edgworth. On the other hand
Niboyet became very actively involved in the Société pour la morale
chrétienne together with Alphonse de Lamartine, the philanthropist the duc
de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, and Hippolyte Carnot, another former
Saint-Simonian, who had broken with Enfantin. As general secretary she
visited prisons and published notable studies on prison organization, in
which she recommended the abolition of the death penalty on the grounds
that prevention and education corresponded better to Christian teaching.65
She also wrote on the education of the blind66 and collaborated in the first
pacifist newspaper in France, La Paix des Deux-Mondes. Her plays always
took the moral high ground and she encouraged other playwrights of a similar bent. Her son became a diplomat. With dogged determination, she
managed to wheedle a pension for herself from the government.67
Fourierist women were enthusiastic propagandists. Under the guidance of
energetic publicists like the Belgian Gatti de Gamond, Fourierism stressed
lifelong marriage and the primacy of mothering. The moral role of women
was no longer associated with sleeping with multiple partners and instilling
some vague sociable spiritual cement in the community in the process.
Instead Fourierists asserted that woman’s moral role came from being more
in touch with God than men. Gatti de Gamond, the feminist author of a
study of the “condition” of women, pruned Fourier down to the phalanges
and women’s liberation. She wanted education and “the right to work” for
women, so that they could be considered for well-paid jobs and professions.
Fourier’s preference for sexual liberation was gone; the right to unlicensed
fornication was expunged. Gatti de Gamond’s version of Fourier was
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FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
popular. In less than two years an abridged and even more simplified English
translation appeared.68
In 1846 a Fourierist survey of maternal issues noted that half of the babies
born in Paris were illegitimate and many were abandoned.69 A later survey
claimed that there were twice as many poor women as poor men in the capital, but charities were spending less and less to help more and more. In 1847,
27,508 of the 33,387 babies born in Paris were abandoned by their mothers,
of whom 75 per cent were bound to die in their first year through lack of
care.70 Hospitals allocated 2 centîmes a day to pay a wet nurse to care for a
baby, which forced her to take on up to six babies at a time, giving her the
certain chance of applying for funds to bury most of them.
Female Fourierists were crucial in actively networking to promote
support and raise funds. Fourierist groups were often kept alive by women
members and they relied on a high level of female support from all social
groups, though a large number of their women were middle class.71 Arnaud,
like Vigoureux, contributed substantially to Fourierist funds, and persuaded
wealthy friends to join her. Désirée Véret was one such convert. George Sand
was impressed by Fourier himself when they met in 1836,72 but did not join.
Flora Tristan got closer, signing one of her letters to Fourier “une partisane
de l’harmonie”, and using his famous epigram, “l’extension des privilèges de
la femme est le principe général de tous les progrès sociales” as the motto for
her own Union Ouvrière.73 She borrowed extensively from Fourier in her
description of the workers’ union,74 praising the idea of institutional nurseries for children, but was never a Fourierist. Indeed she was ungraciously
scornful of the strength of their middle-class base when she hopped from one
hospitable Fourierist group to another as she toured France shortly before
her death. Tristan also borrowed from the Saint-Simonians, arguing that
woman was the potential messiah of society and that the Almighty was both
female and male.
The life experiences as well as the writings of George Sand and Flora
Tristan, the two most famous feminist socialists of the time, helped to shape
the debate on the woman question. Indeed Sand (Aurore Dudevant 1804–
1876) was the model for Daumier’s famous “blue-stocking” cartoons. Sand
was the granddaughter of a Parisian bird-seller and the daughter of an army
camp-follower. Her father was an army aide-de-camp and Sand was raised
by her scandalized grandmother. Although this was an unsettled background, it was not poor. At 17, when her grandmother died, Sand ran the
family estate. She married the illegitimate son of Baron Dudevant in 1822,
but soon drifted into a series of affairs and socialism, helping to confirm
contemporary conservative opinion that socialists were immoral. In the early
1830s, when a number of petitions to parliament raised transient hopes that
divorce might be reinstated, George Sand’s early writing described the miseries of unhappy marriage. The novels she wrote between 1832 and 1834,
including Indiana,75 reflected, in their semi-autobiographical recapturing of
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THE “NEW WOMAN”
her own love-affairs, her individualist romantic view of women’s rights. Her
heroines were wronged tragic figures, tied to tyrannical husbands. Her goal
was to assert their (her) freedom of sexual choice. Her earlier heroines also
had a whiff of the Saint-Simonian “female as saviour of mankind”.76 The author of 85 novels and plays, Sand, although she did not accept any specific
feminist or socialist position, was a generous benefactor to other, more
needy, radicals. She helped to support Flora Tristan’s daughter when her
mother died and also financed a number of fellow socialist worker-writers.
Flora Tristan (1803–1844), defined woman as a social “pariah” and lived
her own life in this vein.77 She was a colourful, flamboyant, emotional
character, the child of a Peruvian nobleman and a French émigrée. Because
her father died when she was 4, she was brought up in poverty and tried to
escape by marrying Chazal, the owner of the engraving factory where she
worked. She left him in 1825 when she was expecting their third child and
she spent the next 13 years fighting for custody of their children, which the
law denied her. The struggle ended when he shot her and was imprisoned.
Tristan and Sand undoubtedly raised the profile of socialist feminism, but
their private lives did little to support the Fourierist attempt to assert the
morality and family values of socialism.
Some socialists who were thought to be, and believed themselves to be
feminists, were so concerned to demonstrate their distance from Fourier’s
ideas on the family and morality, that what they actually revealed were the
profound limitations in their own feminism. Etienne Cabet is an excellent
example. He was convinced that Voyage en Icarie confirmed his credentials
as a feminist. In the mid-1840s his Icarian society attracted up to 100,000 artisans; male, female, and often married couples. In 1846 he elaborated his
ideas on the position of women in La Femme.78 Women’s rights were never
the central issue for him as they were for Fourier, but Cabet always insisted
that women would gain considerably in Icarie. He was no gender egalitarian
like Fourier. He started with the basic assumption that women were innately
and irretrievably the weaker sex, to be protected, not liberated. Like many of
his contemporaries Cabet was appalled by the dreadful working conditions
and low pay that often forced women into prostitution. He also noted the
servile status of middle-class women, which might drive them to do away
with a tyrannical spouse, as in the case of Mme Lafarge, who was the subject
of a much-publicized trial in 1841. Cabet argued that the root cause was
economic; the existence of extremes of wealth and poverty. Luxurious living
enticed men to buy sex and women to indulge in affairs, imitating the novels
they spent their idle lives reading. For Cabet the remedy was egalitarian communism, which would eliminate economic distinctions, although women
would have the monopoly of the housework!
Icarian women would be excluded from public life to concentrate their
energies on their families. Cabet put great emphasis on marriage and family
values. Women were the lynchpin, caring for their families and providing the
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FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
moral education of their children, which was hardly emancipation! Cabet
claimed that in Icarie men and women were equal, but husbands were more
equal than wives. He assumed that in Icarian society marriages would be
eternally blissful, arguing that adultery and marriage breakdown were the
products of the financial pressures of traditional society, although he did not
rule out divorce in Icarie. His socialist colleagues found such a naive
approach amusing. Some communists rejected Cabet’s support for monogamous marriage, arguing that this was a hangover from individualism.
Cabet always stressed the pivotal role of the mother in a family, but was
clearly of the view that mothering skills were not innate. His annual
Almanach Icarien included a “Guide des mères”, which offered practical
advice to socialist mums. Babies should be breast-fed by their own mothers
since they were most subject to disease between birth and 2 years of age.79
Mothers should shun the English practice of putting the newborn in cold water. The socialist doctor Raspail added a note that babies should be given
nothing but milk, with occasional sugared or camphored water. They should
not be bound in swaddling wraps, but should be put in loose clothing.80
In 1848 women were allowed into Cabet’s Société fraternelle centrale,
women’s issues were on the agenda, especially working conditions, and
Cabet was careful to address both sexes. However he must have had to shout
to the women, who were corralled in the gallery, and were not permitted to
join the debates. Cabet did not support Deroin’s attempts to secure votes for
women. His rules for the Icarian community in Nauvoo revealed his limited
commitment to women’s emancipation. He was concerned that both sexes
were equally treated as workers, and, incidentally, as sexual miscreants, but
politics was another matter. All adult men over 20 were automatically members of Nauvoo’s general assembly. Women met in a separate body. They
were allowed to offer advice on matters that directly concerned them, but
had no direct say in legislation or in government. Cabet had no time for “la
femme libre”; he wanted to improve the status of women, not emancipate
them and did not accept that they had inalienable rights.81
Female socialists were divided in their reaction to Cabet. Jeanne Deroin
thought well of him and constantly referred to him as a friend, but Flora
Tristan thought Icarie lulled workers into submission. Opponents of socialism always assumed that Cabet was a feminist. In September 1848 the
Charivari printed a mocking Homélie du Père Cabet, who wanted the same
rights for women as those granted to men.82 In November they jokingly announced a St. Barthelemy massacre of men by feminists in which only Cabet
and Legouvé were spared.83
Thus, although Cabet wanted only limited female liberation, his contribution as a socialist spokesman for women was substantial in two important
respects. The first was in restoring an almost puritanical tone to socialism.
The sexual morality described by Fourier and practised by Enfantin had
given socialists a bad name as licentious destroyers of morality and the
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THE “NEW WOMAN”
family. Cabet was unwaveringly moral. Middle-class readers were somewhat
mollified to find that marriage and the family were the central pillars of
Icarie. Secondly, Cabet’s feminist stance began to break new ground among
working people, including peasants, for whom women, in principle at least,
were subservient dogsbodies. The absence of a commitment to voting rights
was no handicap. Before 1848 working men themselves had no vote. Cabet’s
brand of communism attracted not the middle-class philanthropic ladies
who became Fourierists, but the wives of artisan members. Whole families
joined the Icarians, as is revealed by signatures on addresses of loyalty from
local groups and those who participated in the colonization of Nauvoo.
Voyez-vous ô mes soeurs, cette aurore nouvelle
Du jour où tomberont nos fers?
Debout, filles de Dieu, partons pleines de zèle,
Pour regénérer l’Univers.
Non, d’une tyrannie fatale,
Ne redoutons pas le retour.
La femme de l’homme est l’égale
Sous la divine loi d’amour.
Oui, fondez dans notre Patrie
Le temple de l’Egalité!
Nous vous suivrons en Icarie
Soldats de la Fraternité.84
These lady colonists sound as if they might have been rather a handful for the
master.
The initial optimism of the Second Republic encouraged feminist objectives. Indeed, Sand was close to the journalists and politicians who led the
Provisional government and drafted Ledru-Rollin’s letters to his commissaires (prefects) in the weeks leading to the election in April.85 A number of
women’s clubs emerged. La Voix des Femmes, the club and newspaper,
presided over by Niboyet, in association with other former Saint-Simonians
now transformed into Fourierists, including Jeanne Deroin, Désirée Gay
(née Véret), Suzanne Voilquin, Pauline Roland and others, hoped that their
long held goals might finally be realized. Here we shall concentrate on the
proposal to revive divorce legislation and to enfranchise women. Some
female and a few male socialists pursued these apparently striking feminist
objectives, but there was no unity of purpose and they were never as forcefully expressed as the issues of work, education and association. The women
expected support from male socialists and were disappointed at the tepid
response, particularly from Considérant and the other Fourierist men. Gay
bombarded all possible radical males with her plans, finding Enfantin, again,
disappointing; he was no longer a “père”, but a passionate railway engineer.
Blanc was prepared to listen on the subject of work. Cabet gave his guarded
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support for votes for women,86 but Victor Considérant, the Fourierist leader,
waited until he had been elected to the new National Assembly before he
began to sound feminist.
The Voix des Femmes spoke the familiar language of Saint-Simonian and
Fourierist feminism. In its first number Niboyet claimed that France was in
the midst of a cataclysmic moral transformation in which the demands
of women for citizenship and education surely could not be ignored:
“L’homme et la femme, sous un sage loi d’union, forment ensemble
l’individu social et tendent au même but par les moyens divers comme est
divers leur nature”.87 Claims that women had a special role as guardians of
family morals echoed the familiar catechism.88 The case for rights for women
was made on exactly the same grounds as in the 1830s: “Men provide the
brain and brawn for humanity, women the heart”. Women best exercise their
saintly, pacifying influence in the family, and so on.89
The debate on the legal status of women focused on the revival of a law
permitting divorce, which had applied from 1792 to May 1816.90 Curiously,
there had been more calls for its revival during the July Monarchy than after
the February Revolution. Support for divorce may have been republican and
secular in the 1790s, but by the early 1830s Orleanists as well as the more
extreme Saint-Simonians wanted to revive the divorce law, perhaps because
its abolition had been the work of legitimist ultras, particularly their most
active theorist, de Bonald. The Orleanist Chamber of Deputies twice
accepted such proposals, in December 1831 and a year later. Odilon Barrot,
leader of the moderate dynastic opposition proposed the reinstatement of
the law of 1803, which allowed divorce by mutual consent. Reformers were
anxious to prove that divorce would not undermine morality – the adulterer
would not be allowed to marry his lover. However the campaign was not
successful. Both bills were blocked by the Chamber of Peers.
Although Saint-Simonian sanction of divorce made it a radical issue for a
time, between 1836 and 1838 the moderate Gazette des Femmes, run by
Madame Poutret de Mauchamps and her lover Charles Herbinot, took up
the cause, supported by Eugénie Niboyet. Flora Tristan also gave some
encouragement. Their petition to parliament proposed the revival of the full
1792 legislation. This was clearly too extreme a suggestion for the Orleanist
elite and both de Mauchamps and Herbinot were prosecuted on spurious
charges of corrupting morals and were imprisoned; Herbinot for ten years,
accused of seducing three servant girls. In her petition to parliament for a
new divorce law in 1837, Tristan was careful to stress her own unhappy experiences and that divorce would encourage better standards of morality.91
In 1848 divorce was not a prime concern for feminists; more immediate
issues were work, wages, nurseries and education, and these are discussed in
other chapters. The new republicans, prominently the socialists, were keen
to contrast their morality with the laxity of the July Monarchy and were
hesitant to emphasize divorce proposals because they had roused the
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THE “NEW WOMAN”
“moral” lobby so emphatically in the 1830s. On 6 March a new newspaper,
La Liberté, raised the question of the restoration of a divorce law. The Voix
des Femmes, keen to assert that women occupied the moral high ground, did
not launch the subject until 31 March, when it was one element in a petition
to the provisional government, demanding crèches, workshops and better
wages for working women.92 The issue was never prominent in the paper. In
early April the Voix des Femmes mentioned that, in Rouen, there were posters demanding divorce, but the work needs of laundresses, seamstresses and
others were always given far more space.
The question of divorce was aired by Ernest Legouvé. He was well known
as a prolific and popular dramatist. All his plays focused on women; Medea
secured him membership of the Academy in 1855. In the early 1840s he
wrote an article on the status of women for the Encyclopédie nouvelle, edited
by the Saint-Simonian Reynaud.93 As a consequence Carnot appointed him
to a Chair at the Collège de France in March 1848, with the task of lecturing
on the moral history of women. He spoke to packed audiences on Wednesdays in March and April 1848 and his book appeared soon afterwards.94
Legouvé began with the theme that Fourier had first raised; that the
debate on the destiny of women affected the whole of humanity:
This book does not seek to cause antagonism, nor is it a simple cry of
outrage; above all it is an appeal to unite the two great forces of creation. It is not a question of turning woman into man, but of completing man through woman.95
“What is woman?” he asked and began with an historical survey of the
condition of women: “Woman is man’s crime. She has been his victim since
they left the Garden of Eden. She bears on her body the scars of six thousand
years of injustice”. Legouvé cited the anti-feminism of ancient India, Athens,
Rome and Egypt, remarking that if an ancient Roman reappeared today he
would marry the “Spinning Jenny”. He was very dismissive of Enlightened
thinkers as “hostile, indifferent and blind … according to Diderot woman is
a courtesan, according to Montesquieu a pleasant child and in the view
Rousseau designed to please man and according to Voltaire, nothing”.96 In
his own day society condemned women to ignorance and deprived them of
their natural role as a moral force in society:
Girls receive no schooling, no professional training; no life before
marriage; no marriage without a dowry; as wives they have no legal
control over their own property, their children, their marriage.
Some men claim that education destroys a woman’s charms, but for
two-thirds of her life she has no charm. Her life is spent waiting for
something to happen, and then regretting it.97
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FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
For Legouvé woman was equal to man and different. He gendered the
Revolution; liberty and equality represented male virtues, while women
stood for fraternity, or love. Legouvé condemned the “free love” experiments of the Saint-Simonians but pushed the case for crèches, schooling and
decent jobs for women. His support for a divorce law was measured and
moderate. He argued that it would strengthen, not threaten, family life.
However in 1848, despite Legouvé’s advocacy, divorce still did not
assume first place, even in the feminist press. On 23 May 1848 Crémieux,
Minister of Justice, introduced a bill to restore the right to divorce. He proposed to allow divorce after a three-year separation, providing neither disputant was guilty of adultery,98 effectively a revival of the 1803 law. In
contrast to the elected assemblies of the July Monarchy, the new National
Assembly was hostile to Crémieux’s bill. The moderate proposals of 1848
met a heated response from the right-wing press, which was often antisemitic in tone; Crémieux was one of the first Jews to hold ministerial office.
Their accusations ranged from suggestions that other issues were more important to wild assertions that divorce was a diabolical plan to break up families and subvert society in sexual promiscuity and communism.
The Charivari published first a number of articles, and then a series of
Daumier cartoons, Les Divorceuses, claiming that only unmarriageable spinsters and widows could want such legislation. Female supporters of the bill
were portrayed as ugly, assertive hags by Daumier. While divorce was being
debated in parliament, supporters in the Société de la voix des femmes were
heckled by men, their meetings disrupted and large crowds of men waited
outside to insult them, to the extent that they had to move to another location. The Fourierist newspaper La Démocratie Pacifique was isolated in its
support for divorce in cases when a marriage had broken down. La Voix des
Femmes, club and newspaper, were seriously disrupted by the angry reaction
to the divorce proposal. The newspaper was not able to bring out an edition
from 29 April until 29 May and when it was revived, divisions among the
women editors over their feminist priorities meant that Gay and Deroin
were no longer among the contributors. “Devotion to our country, respect
for our families … this is what we want … Let us speak up for peace and order, stay as women, and the future will be ours”,99 temporized Niboyet. The
paper still backed the divorce bill and the campaign against them continued
in the press and in the theatre.100 They were accused of being hostile to the
family and attention was drawn to the fact that Niboyet lived apart from her
husband, and to Gay’s and Deroin’s independent life-styles, although Deroin
was living with her husband. Media pressure forced the club to close in June
1848. The divorce bill was dismissed in committee by 13 votes to 4,
Crémieux resigned on 7 June and the issue disappeared from sight until
1884.101 The anxiety of socialists to prove that they were committed to the
family and moral values had meant that in 1848 the divorce campaign was
very muted.
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THE “NEW WOMAN”
In 1848 women socialists demanded the vote. This was an extraordinary
proposal because, at the time, no country allowed women to vote. In France
women were not actually enfranchised until 1945. The republicans of 1848
decreed direct universal male suffrage, the first country thus to experiment,
expanding the electorate overnight from 250,000 to 9 million adult males.
Why not women? The Voix des Femmes took up the case for enfranchising
women. The editors reminded their readers that England and Spain had
women rulers, so why should not French women vote?
When Marrast, mayor of Paris, was pressed by a delegation from
the Comité des droits de la femme that women be given the vote, he
“sympathetically” passed the buck to the new all-male Assembly. One of the
most dynamic campaigners for female suffrage was Jeanne Deroin. She
organised four petitions for female suffrage directed at the provisional
government and one to all “citizens”, published in the Voix des Femmes:
Liberty, Equality and Fraternity have been proclaimed for everyone,
why have women been deprived of the rights of citizens and left with
only duties?102
She had an uncompromising belief in liberty and equality for all, including
women and the poor: “Tous les hommes sont égaux en droit, tous doivent
être libres, la souveraineté appartient à tous, jamais à un seul, jamais à un
fraction de la société”. She appealed to the most prominent female socialist
of the time, George Sand, to stand as a candidate. “Nous avons hommé
Sand!” claimed the Voix des Femmes. The trouser-wearing Sand had always
made herself into a man; the editors asked that she didn’t give up the
cause.103 Sand refused and repudiated the suggestion that women should be
given the vote on the grounds that it was “too soon” to think of votes for
women and that more pressing reforms were needed. Pauline Roland also
refused. Deroin tried to vote in April 1848. Legouvé was invited to stand as a
candidate for the National Assembly by the Société de la voix des femmes,
although he made it clear that he did not favour votes for women. Many
years later Deroin justified her defence of “la sainte cause”: “il faut frapper à
toutes les portes fermées”.104
Jeanne Deroin’s demand for votes for women put her at odds with some
male socialists, who believed that their first task was to emancipate the underprivileged male. Proudhon launched a newspaper campaign against her,
claiming that women had no place outside the home, except as whores. In the
newspaper she launched when Voix des Femmes folded, Deroin retaliated:
As a christian socialist, I would say, like you, “rather a housewife
than a whore” if I was convinced that many women become whores
to avoid being housewives. Prostitution is the consequence of slavery, ignorance and poverty … You want to strengthen the family, and
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FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
you weaken it: the man to the debating chamber or the workshop,
the women in the home … You ask what women can achieve outside
the home? She can help to restore order in the great, but badly-run
household we call the state … no serious and lasting reform can be
hoped for until the rights of women to civil and political equality are
acknowledged to be fundamental to our social redemption.105
Proudhon took up the anti-feminist cudgels in his newspaper Le Peuple.
Daumier used the pages of Le Charivari to ridicule Deroin between April and
June 1849. Deroin announced her candidacy in the legislative elections in
1849. Her attempt to attend the hustings was received sympathetically by
worker voters in her proposed Saint-Antoine constituency, but elsewhere she
was told that the constitution did not allow women candidates. The Comité
démocrate sociale added her to their list of candidates. George Sand’s name
appeared on about 40 lists, despite her own opposition. By 1849 Pauline
Roland had changed her mind and tried to get on the electoral list.
Deroin’s campaign for the vote was not taken seriously, but was pushed
aside as too ridiculous to debate at any length. When some measure of refutation was deemed necessary it was argued that women did not need to vote,
that they were represented by their husbands. The Voix des Femmes replied
that, on such grounds, adult sons should not have a vote.106 They organized a
petition to enfranchise widows and single women, neither group being represented by husbands.107 The historian Michelet claimed that few women actually wanted the vote and that a vote for women would mean extra votes for
clerical and conservative candidates. Others worried about whether the
whores of Saint-Denis ought to vote, or whether the vote should be limited
to bourgeois ladies. Deroin argued that all would be, like men, simply voters
in the republican system and that to say women were equal and then deny
them a vote undermined the republic itself.108 To insist that women confine
themselves to their roles as wives and mothers, reduced those functions to
“un stigmate d’indignité civile et politique”. No wonder, she exclaimed, that
women escape from their slavery into a world of “christian and angelic
piety”.109
Proudhon outspokenly declared that women were inferior; morally and
intellectually as well as physically. He was always virulently opposed to
women’s emancipation and reserved some of his sharpest invective for Flora
Tristan. Outside the home, he trumpeted, women could only be whores;
“ménagères ou courtisanes”.110 Despite this uncompromising misogyny, the
conservative press was so convinced that all socialists were for women’s liberation that Proudhon was still ridiculed as a feminist and family wrecker.111
According to Proudhon, it was the “non-masculinity” of women that
made them passive and weak in all respects, physical and cerebral. No
woman could ever be a genius, but all men were touched with genius, since
genius equalled the virile aspects of intelligence. Woman’s perceptions could
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THE “NEW WOMAN”
be fertilized only by man, just as she needed him to procreate. Sounding not
unlike the Saint-Simonians, Proudhon argued that woman was made for
love, and lacked the ability to reason. Women were a decadent and negative
influence in society and had to be controlled by men. He maintained a forceful, if somewhat contradictory, stance as a moralist.112 He claimed that the
qualitative relationship of female to male in mathematical aptitude was 8:27.
Proudhon roundly condemned all feminist women, but he reserved a special
invective for those men, such as Rousseau, Lamartine and Enfantin, who
supported female liberation. He labelled them femmelins, men who were
moved by l’esprit féminin. Although Proudhon was convinced that women
had no place in public life, he acknowledged that they had a fairly equal role
within the family. If man represented power, woman stood for physical,
intellectual and moral beauty. She was created solely to be man’s helpmate
within the family circle.113 Her status was that of a servant, and the husband’s that of a master.114 Was Proudhon a misogynist, or simply an extreme
example of where Saint-Simonian ideas on complementarity could lead?
Whatever happened to the “new woman”? To return to Deroin’s
question, what was a woman? The writers of the Enlightenment had no time
for women defined as creatures lacking physical autonomy, in the style of the
Old Testament woman, fashioned from Adam’s rib and therefore naturally
inferior and dependent.115 Nor did they dally with the old Eve, serpent and
apple trilogy, in which woman’s sexual appetites made her the source of evil.
Instead they asserted the dominance of reason and biology. This led to a doctrine of woman’s separate and distinct nature. Rousseau’s thesis that woman
was driven by emotion and man by reason underlay much of the socialist
feminist thinking of the early nineteenth century. Rousseau’s argument
ascribed woman a discrete identity, but in doing so imprisoned her within
this biologically dictated persona and limited her intellectual and social
roles. She was ideally suited to bear, nurture and initiate the education of her
children, but in Rousseau’s world she had no place orchestrating salons and
manipulating politics. Her distinct identity had meaning only when she was
an active part of a family.
If enlightened writers argued that nature ascribed different functions to
women, “natural law” was a popular starting point for egalitarian claims in
the early nineteenth century. It was claimed to be the basis of the Declaration
of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of August 1789. Some feminists
assumed that, initially, men and women had equal rights in natural law.
Olympe de Gouges, a playwright, wrote a parallel Declaration of the Rights
of Woman and Jeanne Deroin later, in her own campaigns for legal and
political equality in her paper L’Opinion des Femmes, recalled her as an
example. The manifestly unequal status of women in nineteenth-century
society was presented as the perverse triumph of the physically stronger male
and the product of male manipulation of natural law. Radical changes were
necessary to restore natural equality. Given that natural man was on average
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physically stronger than woman, a natural law that treated them as equals, as
invoked by de Gouges and others, was distinctly unnatural and required the
cultivation of special rules and norms to create and assert a different sort of
moral “natural” law in opposition to the will of the stronger (male). This was
a hard row to hoe, given that the conservative position, based also on the
dictates of biology and nature, was that physical and emotional weakness
made women, and children the responsibility, and the property, of the male.
Feminists were not in accord whether nature made women’s non-physical
attributes distinct from those of men, or whether these differences were
accentuated by human constructs, property and other laws, norms, upbringing and formal education. Some, including Jeanne Deroin, were convinced
that the differences, and particularly the inferiority, were made by society
and could be unmade.
Others stressed the inescapable interdependence of the sexes. The idea
that the couple and its family not the individual were the basic social unit,
became a common approach in the nineteenth century. Olympe de Gouges
proclaimed the importance of the male–female unit, biologically in
conceiving children and in their subsequent family relationship. The SaintSimonians liked to claim, presumably to justify their emphasis on a form of
feminism, that on his deathbed Saint-Simon had stated that the basic unit in
society was not the single individual, but man and woman together. Enfantin
developed this in the tradition of Rousseau to stress man as the rational
element in the partnership, and woman as the emotional.
Complementarity was close to inequality. Emphasizing sexual and
biological differences to claim equality (or more) for women, exposed feminism to traditional arguments that asserted the natural inferiority of woman.
Traditionalists had no doubt of the importance of the familial union, but
were convinced that woman, because of the dominance of her emotions, always had an inferior status. They stressed that women’s emotions were
dominated by their biological cycles of menstruation and reproduction plus
an unbridled (because woman lacked rationality and possessed an
unquenchable uterus) sexual drive. Hence women needed constant restraint,
both for their own mental health – later in the century this developed into
notions of feminine hysteria (derived from the Greek for uterus) – and also
because of the constant nagging doubt in the mind of their male partners of
the paternity of offspring. Even a lifelong feminist like Ange Guépin referred
to this doubt in his panegyric for female education.
What roles should women undertake? Few early nineteenth-century
French feminists would have disagreed that nature designed women not only
to give birth to, but also to nurture the next generation. Indeed, the primacy
of women as the biological producers of children, without whom the race
would not continue, is frequently cited as proof that women had a more
important role than men. Some even claimed that women were superior and
therefore their voices should be heard. Taken to a logical conclusion, ignor100
THE “NEW WOMAN”
ing economic pressures and the initial necessary coupling, the occasional
Saint-Simonian women, particularly Pauline Roland, declared that men were
superfluous, and brought up their children alone. On the other hand, it
should also be noted that their “partners” may have refused to accept paternal responsibility for their children.
What then, given two contradictory feminist theses, did feminists believe
was the role of woman in the family? Fourier deconstructed the nuclear
family on the grounds that the exclusive male–female family unit was the
source of all unhappiness and conflict in society. Women should be sexually
liberated. The Saint-Simonians, apparently asserting the sanctity of the
couple, also proceeded to challenge traditional family units with the claim
that unions should be temporary and the “flesh should be rehabilitated”.
They adopted “liberationist” views similar to those held by Fourier before
his female admirers persuaded him of the virtues of family life. Enfantin
urged fellow Saint-Simonians to form free and flexible sexual unions as the
route to full liberation for women. Enfantin’s espousal of free unions led him
into a charge of immorality and a short jail sentence. Socialists spent years
extracting themselves from the broader accusation that socialism was an
assault on the family that encouraged the rejection of traditional codes of
sexual practice.
Early nineteenth-century feminists sometimes based their claim that
women were superior to men, not on their maternal role, but in the conviction that women were endowed with a special spirituality and morality.
Saint-Simonians claimed that men were destructive and warlike, and that
women were peacemakers and creators. Social observers of all political
persuasions in these years feared that there was a decline in morality. Some
early feminists thought that society’s fundamental spiritual spring-clean
should be female led, that the moral high ground belonged to women.
Eugénie Niboyet wrote, in one of her “lady of the manor” borrowed phrases,
“Si les hommes font les lois, les femmes font les moeurs”.116 In the 1830s the
compilers of homilies on women and the family were fond of saying that
women were, by nature, more endowed with moral and spiritual qualities
than were men.117 The Saint-Simonians set off on a ludicrous semi-mystical
quest, some to Egypt, some to South America, to find their perfect female
spiritual leader, which did not endear them to their existing ambitious
female associates, including Eugène Niboyet. The Fourierists, particularly
women such as Clarisse Vigoureux and Niboyet, continued to argue that
women were, potentially, on a higher moral plane than men.
The question of spiritual inspiration, which was often interpreted as a
moral initiative, was vexed. Contemporary novelists and playwrights
delighted in exposing the sexual foibles of wealthy women who filled their
idle hours with secret boyfriends. They claimed that poorer women were
obliged by their poverty to sell their sexual favours. Fourier argued that
social inequality and lack of education deprived women of their natural
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moral judgement. He also postulated that emancipation should include freedom and equality for both sexes, or any shades in between, to allow the individual to rise unfettered above conventional sexual morality to express
natural, that is non-monogamous appetites. His more puritanical followers,
particularly the ladies, rejected this demand for the sexual liberation of the
female as irrelevant, unnatural and immoral.
Ideas on what was a feminist, that is on the origins and justification for
feminism, were thus varied, spanning biological, functional and spiritual
differences. There were also obvious differences of class. The law’s negation
of woman as a responsible, mature being, within marriage, the family and
matters of property, might have little significance for less well-off women.
For many poor women who turned to feminism, their inspiration came from
necessity, and the reality of impossibly low wages. Their arguments were
supported by the social surveys on wages and working conditions taken by
Guépin, Villermé, Buret and others, to which reference has already been
made. Female seamstresses and others who joined the Saint-Simonians and
the Icarians were supported by better-off feminists, but there were bound to
be tensions and suggestions that charity and philanthropy rather than equality inspired the richer sisters.
These various strands that contribute to the origins of feminism, when
collated as here, were undoubtedly contradictory. Feminists asked for equality based on natural law, in the reform of the written, man-made codes of law,
and they often based their claims to rights for women on woman’s natural
procreative role. Some feminists claimed superiority rather than equality,
based on the maternal function or on a special spiritual role. In claiming equal
rights feminists tended to stress manifold differences between men and
women. As Jeanne Deroin observed, we need to consider spiritual, functional, social, legal and political issues. She ended her catechism by comparing woman with other types of animals. Still under the spell of Linneas,
nineteenth century observers were committed to put everything into categories, from dinosaurs to butterflies. Was woman animal, vegetable or mineral?
There can be no doubt that for feminists woman’s differences from man were
substantive. Their critics, including some male socialists, were inclined not
only to expound the differences, but to use the differences to define woman
as inferior. They placed her, as Deroin suggested, in a separate, and inferior,
species, but then, by emphasizing a special spiritual role for women, did not
feminists risk doing the same?
We have already seen that feminists approached the problem of the status
of women with different assumptions and aspirations. Although the most
radical, like Jeanne Deroin, refused to use their husbands’ name – Deroin
equated the practice with branding the forehead of a slave with the owner’s
name – none doubted the value of men, or were anti-men, in the way that
their opponents denigrated womankind.118 In tracing the inspirations for
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tional and forcefully expressed counter-arguments. These were voiced by the
Church, conservative politicians and some socialist women, notably George
Sand, and some socialist men, notably the editors of L’Atelier and Proudhon.
In the 1840s cartoonists joined the fray. Daumier attacked women writers
(always ugly hags, supposedly modelled on George Sand) for neglecting their
families and emasculating their men. On the other hand, he delighted in
exposing the hypocrisy of marriage, stressing the imperfections of the male.
In 1848 he took as his anti-feminist targets women’s clubs and the campaign
for divorce, and contributed extensive series of cartoons to the Charivari, in
which the lady club members and supporters of divorce were no more lovely
than the earlier “blue-stockings” and the males who suffered from female
assertiveness were as limp as their predecessors.
De Beaumont addressed the issue of female militancy in 1848 in a long series of cartoons in the Charivari, “Les Vésuviennes”, depicting a mythical
band of armed female warriors. De Beaumont’s Vésuviennes were very
different from Daumier’s harridans. Typical of his drawings, they were “page
three” prototypes: cute, shapely and perpetually a pert eighteen. His
“Mother is in the throes of composition, baby has thrown itself into the bathtub”,
Daumier, Le Charivari, 26 February 1844.
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“My wife’s been 24 hours at the
banquet”, Daumier, “Socialist
Women”, Le Charivari, 9 June 1849.
One of a series of illustrations.
“I forbid you to go off on duty
… there’s no sense in leaving
me alone with three babies –
and no way of feeding them”,
E. de Beaumont, “Les
Vésuviennes”, Le Charivari,
1 May 1848.
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THE “NEW WOMAN”
Vésuviennes were armed young ladies in National Guard uniforms, seen at
drill, on patrol, relaxing at the barracks drinking and smoking. The captions
were invariably double-entendres, dwelling on the sexual potential of guns,
pipes and so on. The basis of these cartoons was the rumour that a battalion
of Amazons or Vésuviennes had been formed in the artisan district near the
hôtel-de-ville, in the spring of 1848, committed to the defence of the republic. This echoed similar stories in the early 1790s and of course there were
always a few women who managed to enlist in the army, to be with their
man.119 Beaumont’s reactions to the tall tale were mostly titillating and
humorous, with just a hint of a threat to social order.
At a practical level the early socialists provided no solutions to the
“woman question”, but only more questions to add to the debate on what is
a woman, what her legal status should be, how marriage should be organized
and the role and function of the family. A recent historian of feminism
adopted Olympe de Gouges’ aphorism that feminists had only “paradoxes”
to offer.120 The emphasis on complementarity, mothering and woman’s special spiritual and moral role meant that equality was not on the agenda and
writers like Fourier who proposed alternatives to the nuclear family would
always be shot to ribbons on the charge of fostering immorality.
The Saint-Simonians wrote about the “new woman” and some of them
thought for a time that they were born again, but Saint-Simonianism fell
apart precisely over this issue. The Saint-Simonians left a triple enduring and
unenviable legacy to other socialists. They forced other socialists onto the
defensive, obliging them constantly to assert their belief in the nuclear family, monogamy and lifelong marriage. Secondly their claim that woman represented spiritual values and love reinforced an age-old doctrine of
difference, which made claims for equality almost impossible to sustain.
Thirdly, and ironically however, the most durable legacy and influence in the
direction of the “new woman” was probably that of the dissident SaintSimonians, and particularly Legouvé, who was their appointee to a Chair at
the Collège de France in 1848. He was to remain a major influence on reformers well into the Third Republic as director of studies at the Ecole
Normale Supérieure de Sèvres, where he trained women teachers for the new
secondary schools for girls, which represented his ideals.121 He also promoted changes in the legal status of women, such as the divorce law, finally
achieved in 1884. His account of the moral history of women had appeared
in ten editions by 1896 and was translated into five European languages.122
All early socialists were not feminists, and those who were absorbed by the
“woman question” did not necessarily agree on how to define the question,
let alone how to answer it. In the early decades of the nineteenth century
there were feminists, female and male, who deplored various aspects of the
contemporary condition of womankind, but there was nothing approaching
a feminist movement. Feminists reached the problem of the status of women
from different directions, had conflicting assumptions about the issues to be
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addressed and worked towards different goals. Socialist feminists disagreed
with each other, almost as much as with socialists unsympathetic to feminism. Worker and middle-class feminists tried to cooperate but inevitably
had different priorities, and the latter tended to be regarded as femmes
patronesses by the former, and were looked on with some suspicion. Likewise, female and male socialists often disagreed acrimoniously. With hindsight it appeared that confusion reigned, but we are looking at the various
strands that led to the coherent definition of women’s role and status as
“equal but different”, responsible and educated members of a family within
society – an ideal sustained by French feminists into the twentieth century.
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CHAPTER SEVEN
Association: dream worlds
Association is an overarching theme in early socialism, linking all of the
aspects discussed in this book, religion, education and work. Early socialists
were convinced that association was the answer to the social question. This
confidence was rooted in the conviction that the problems of contemporary
society were caused by a whole range of conflict situations that threatened to
fragment social groups and whole countries, as seen in both endemic public
disorder and repeated revolutionary upheaval. Divisive issues that the early
socialists recognized included harmful economic competition or concurrence, class conflicts, urbanization, technical innovation leading to industrialization and factories, and disruption to family and marriage structures. The
answer, according the socialists, lay in the creation of associations, which
they variously called harmony, mutualism, Icarianism, solidarity, social
workshops, the bank of the people and so on. Their associations varied from
new experimental communities designed to remake society as a whole, to
smaller schemes to deal with the problem of work insecurity. These included
producer and retail cooperatives, based on mutual-aid principles, and
worker unions. Some hoped that producer cooperatives would be selffinanced; others looked to the state to provide start-up capital. Some hoped
that private ownership would wither away; others planned for profit sharing.
In the next four chapters I will reflect on why socialists put such faith in
the idea of association and why their solutions were so varied. I shall begin
with overarching schemes for a new world, considering the various specific
plans to organize work for the betterment of society, first focusing on
Fourier, to contrast his ideas for a phalange with those of his followers, the
Fourierists. The Saint-Simonians called their organization a religion, and
reference has already been made to them as a sect, but their ideas on association also merit attention. The bizarre egalitarianism of Cabet’s Icarie still
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exerts a fascination. Finally this investigation of visionaries who imagined
whole new societies will conclude with more practical new experiments, the
attempts of a generation of socialist doctors to improve the existing world.
Fourier’s perfect community was a profit-sharing commune. Charles
Fourier was a member of a successful merchant family in Besançon, some of
whom enriched themselves in the 1790s none too honestly. Ironically,
Fourier himself worked for a commercial firm in Lyon. We do not know
whether disgust for his family, his own job, or awareness that the renowned
cheese-making industry in the nearby Jura region was run on communal
lines, made him promote the idea of the phalange, a term previously used
with classical and military connotations.1
Fourier’s phalange was an autonomous amalgam of 1,620 people, chosen
because they constituted a harmonious blend of the 300 or so passions of
which humankind was composed. It was a communal structure for “attractive” work, profit-sharing and all social life. Members would share everything: work, meals, leisure, wives and children. Only sleep would be a
private activity. The phalange would be an autonomous democracy and the
centralized state would wither away as more were created. Private ownership could persist and inequalities would subsist, but man, and especially
woman, would be free to fulfil their natures.
Fourier was a “good-fairy” socialist. Harmony would be achieved as soon
as people recognized and obeyed the rules of the universe, and the main
purpose of the phalange was to secure human happiness. Fourier was
convinced this would be achieved instantaneously, when people were free
from the artificial pressures of so-called civilization and everyone had a guaranteed minimum income. The correct blend of passions was essential;
Fourier used much ink identifying and delineating psychological differences
and how different personalities complemented each other, or conflicted.
The rationale behind Fourier’s theory was not economic, but psychological.
As we have seen in Chapter 2, unlike most utopians Fourier was not a
conventional moralizer. His commune was based on passion, not on reason.
The community would be committed to social improvement and welfare,
but not to social or financial equality. Unlike many other socialists Fourier
did not believe that the ownership of property was a major issue in uniting or
dividing the community. The commune would not be communist; land and
property would continue to be owned by individuals.2 Some members might
donate property, which would then be communally owned; others would
retain both their private property and the right to pass it to their heirs. Those
who initially only contributed their labour could later buy shares. The
phalange was thus a profit-sharing combine and Fourier intended that it
should make money. Fourier’s ideas on property have been compared with
those of Babeuf,3 but unlike Babeuf, Fourier accepted private ownership; he
merely sought a collectivist agreement on its use. He also differed radically
from Babeuf because he believed that there would be plentiful shares for all
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in the phalanstérien economy, whereas Babeuf assumed that sharing would at
best equalize poverty. In the phalange the owners of the land would agree to
organize production cooperatively and to provide a pleasant environment
and attractive and rewarding occupations.
Fourier stressed profitability. This was important in a period when
repeated cyclical depressions brought an increased number of bankruptcies.
The commune would make money because everything would be produced
efficiently and sold communally. Parasitical middlemen would be eliminated.
Central trading would replace “la concurrence individuelle insolidaire,
mensongère, complicative et arbitraire”.4 Autonomous communes, he
asserted, would be four times as profitable as existing enterprises because
their communal systems would automatically lead to economies of scale.
Although everyone would undertake a range of jobs, work gangs would have
specialized skills appropriate to the task. Waste would be eliminated.
Communal kitchens would ensure high quality, economically produced food
using far less fuel than individual family kitchens. Non-productive social
groups would be eliminated, including servants, tax officials and soldiers
(war would disappear). The resulting profits would be shared. Everyone
would be a shareholder; no one would be a wage-earner. The annual profit
would be divided on the basis of five-twelfths to labour performed; a third
(four-twelfths) to capital invested and a quarter (three-twelfths) according to
talent displayed. Such a split, Fourier believed, would accommodate man’s
competitive urges in a positive, manageable form.
The phalange would be a direct democracy, although Fourier was not
particularly interested in working out the details. The community would
meet in full assembly to distribute income and to elect its officers and
directors. He believed that the driving force of the commune would be love
not discipline (hence his appeal to the 1960s flower-power generation). He
assumed that there would be no need for police or a legal system and only a
minimal government. The over-60s would serve as confessors, to give advice
on all matters, including love (practical as well as theoretical).
Unlike other socialists, Fourier was hostile neither to profit nor to class
difference. He did not expect class to disappear in the phalange. There
would be three classes: upper, middle and workers. However, such stratification would not cause conflict or pressure for equality because the economic,
emotional and psychological, not to mention gastronomic wants of all
members would be satisfied. To avoid problems applicants for projected
experimental communes would be carefully vetted to ensure that the workers who joined were polite and cooperative.
The fine-tuning of life in the phalange was not left to chance. Like Cabet,
Fourier had turned his mind to every detail. Members would get up at
3.30a.m. and go to bed at 10.30p.m. A five-hour night would be adequate.
People would be far less tired because they would enjoy all their waking
hours. Night seems to have been the only private time. All other activities,
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including sex, would be public. Members would eat up to five meals a day.
All meals would be communal gastronomic feasts and enjoyable social occasions. Cookery competitions would be high points on the calendar. Food was
the most important element in the commune after love and work.
Fourier’s first account of how the transition from “Civilization” to
“Harmony” could be made was published in 1808.5 Despite constant selfpublicity, and the distribution of many free copies to influential individuals
in eight major European cities, he received almost no reviews or attention.
The obscurity of his language, the complexities of his semi-mathematical
symbols and arguments, and even the idiosyncrasies of his irrational
pagination and invented vocabulary puzzled his handful of readers. His
books read like the minutes of a secret society. For decades Fourier was
dismissed as a harmless crank who raved with paranoia about plagiarists and
complained that Parisian philosophers were preventing his theories reaching
people.
In 1822 he published a second major work, revisiting much of the same
ground,6 once more fruitlessly sending out numerous free copies. He
acquired a few devoted disciples, including Just Muiron, an official at the
Doubs prefecture.7 His friends urged him to simplify his theories. His ideas
on association attracted a few imitators.8 Fourier was always resistant to
toning down his ideas. Each of his books elaborated his original notions with
an increasingly familiar absence of continuity or structure. They resemble a
“stream of consciousness” approach and seek to retain the reader by variety
of themes, resorting to an increasing range of typefaces to hold the eye.
Fourier not only shocked and confused his readers; he presumably
amused some. He solemnly related that in “Harmony” all the seas would
turn into pink lemonade and everyone would grow long tails that would
serve as a third arm. Despite Fourier’s extravagant fantasies, which make
modern writers like Terry Pratchett seem palid, he and his disciples always
claimed that their doctrine was essentially practical. Fourier never stopped
repeating that experimental phalanges would be instantly profitable. He was
always on the look out for wealthy philanthropists with a few spare hectares.
He regretted the passing of Madame de Staël, whom he thought would have
set up a commune. He strove to persuade rich radicals to buy shares in a
company to float a phalange. Tractable workers would then be carefully
screened. As with most socialists, there was no space in his arrangements for
the unwashed, unmotivated poor.
The next formative individual in early socialism who envisaged major
change in existing society was Saint-Simon. He did not muse on an entirely
new world, but affirmed that existing society would only begin to function
effectively when the actifs, those who worked and contributed, actually
governed, and the oisifs, those who lived on rents and had no active role,
were excluded. Saint-Simon’s followers developed a Saint-Simonian movement. It is clear that many in the movement had read Fourier and they
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adopted some of his ideas. The main Saint-Simonian movement did not try
to set up experimental communes, but Prosper Enfantin, one of their leaders
who had obviously read Fourier, used his home on the outskirts of Paris to
create a short-lived, all-male commune. The Saint-Simonians did not dream
of imagined communities in the future. They were convinced that their own
organization was the springboard for social reform. Like Fourier they
stressed their practical approach and given the professional status, in engineering or medicine, of the founding members, their claims sounded
convincing. Their workers’ hostels and evening classes, which I have already
discussed, fitted the pattern. The weekly reports of Saint-Simonian “middle
managers”, detailing the progress of their projects, indicated a realistic and
close appreciation of the problems involved in financing social reform.9
In other respects, however, the Saint-Simonians resembled a bizarre community rather than a group of hands-on reformers. They began pragmatically enough, with an informal and quite democratic structure, grouped
around newspapers; first Le Producteur, then Le Globe, with a clientèle of
radical students and teachers from the École polytechnique and the École de
Medécine, including the popular professor of medicine, and Saint-Simon’s
own doctor, Gall.10 Within a short time their movement took on the characteristics of a secret society, which may have been because many of their
members were either freemasons or in the charbonnerie, or both.
Gender equality and democratic forms were replaced by a rigid bureaucratic hierarchy, which was all the more ludicrous because they were a small
group, and women, up until 1830, had made a vigorous contribution. Prosper Enfantin asserted his right to assume the title “pope”, and the sect began
to describe itself as a church, rather than a “school”. They organized themselves into complex structures with degrees of membership, each
represented by a different colour. Aspiring members had to undergo training
in Saint-Simonian doctrine at weekly Sunday afternoon meetings. They were
instructed in the mysteries of how to prepare, write and deliver their profession de foi, which gave them full membership.
Enfantin and other leaders designed a uniform and the name and status of
each member was embroidered on to their white waistcoat. Enfantin
demanded that “Père”, worked in red thread, should be added to his. He was
insistent that colours should be chosen that would indicate the sect’s hierarchy, and was disappointed that he was not able to acquire violet cloth for his
trousers. Members were required to buy both a ceremonial and an everyday
outfit, including frock-coat, waistcoat, trousers and an overcoat, with a red
beret. This turned out, apparently somewhat accidentally, to be a rather
patriotic ensemble: blue, red and white. The waistcoat buttoned at the back
as a daily practical exercise in fraternal interdependence. A tailors’ workshop
was set up to make the uniforms. Even the price-lists were hierarchical. The
leaders, pères supremes, had to contribute 110fr.50 for their ceremonial
uniforms, while mere third degree members paid 55 francs. To encourage
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“The new army of Saint-Simonian women”, Garson aîné, October 1832.
them, they were offered a 33 per cent discount!11 There was no mention of
women in all this sartorial detail. Nor could a working man, who would do
well if he were earning 3 francs a day, hope to join.
The oddities of their dress, social organization and advocacy of sexual
“liberation” provided material for the cartoonists and critics. Louis
Reybaud, one of the most successful of the journalists who gave a not altogether hostile picture of the socialists in his early work, chronicled the
society of his time through the career of an imaginary young man with social
pretensions. When, briefly, in the early 1830s it was fashionable to be a
Saint-Simonian, Jérome Paturot quickly acquired the uniform: “Quand je me
décidai à entrer dans le saint-simonisme, la religion avait déjà revêtu l’habit
bleu-barbeau, inventé par Auguste Chindé, tailleur spécial du nouveau pape.
Je me fis culotter par cet artiste”,12
Radicals liked to sing their beliefs and Saint-Simonian songbooks were
written, published and sung, in public as well as in their meetings. Enfantin
began to build a Saint-Simonian temple in the grounds of his home at
Ménilmontant. There was to be a meeting hall to hold 2,000 and a temple for
up to 500. The workforce consisted of volunteers, and Enfantin boasted that
so many turned up on their day off, Sunday, that he could not find work for
them all. Eighty worked, while 1,000 watched and the proceedings ended
with a picnic and songs.13 Saint-Simonianism had become one of many small
religious sects. With faith, careful book-keeping was abandoned and large
debts were incurred to the wealthy radicals who had financed the movement.
The Saint-Simonians set themselves apart from the society they had
planned to reform by their uniform, music and language, but most
prominently by their ideas, particularly their very high-profile rejection of
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conventional sexual morality and espousal of trial marriage. When the SaintSimonian movement broke apart in November 1831, the most dynamic
members clustered around Victor Considérant, who created a Fourierist
movement.
Under Considérant, the Fourierists immediately began to try to create an
experimental phalange. To promote the idea, they started their own newspaper, edited by Considérant. Le Phalanstère Journal pour la fondation d’une
phalange agricole et manufacturière associée en travaux et en ménage was financed by Clarisse Vigoureux and Baudet-Dulary.14 In the initial prospectus
Considérant and Lechevalier stressed that the new École was based on practical, achievable objectives. Fourierism was reduced to the cultivation of
“une demi-lieue carriée de terrain”. Appealing to the disaffected SaintSimonians the editors concluded, “Assez de ces parlages d’amour et de
sympathie qui ne décèlent qu’ignorance et qu’impuissance. Quand nous
parlerons, nous ferons de la science positive et rigoreuse”.15
The first issue was filled with lengthy financial and practical instructions
on how to set up such a community. About 1.5 million francs would be
needed to buy land, but at first a tenancy would be adequate. A further million francs would be needed for buildings, although it was assumed that at
the outset people would work and live in large, moveable tents. The total
initial outlay would be 4 million francs. The editors explained how the
money would be raised by founding a company and selling the shares.16
Fourier’s actual contribution was minimal. He favoured a location near Paris
because he assumed that it would attract a lot of visitors, who might then be
encouraged to invest in the commune. A devoted supporter, the member of
parliament Baudet-Dulary (1792–1878), who spent his entire fortune trying
to set up phalanges, persuaded his friend Devay to offer his rather decayed
estate of 455 hectares at Condé-sur-Vesgré, near Rambouillet, south-west of
Paris, in return not for cash, but for shares in the founding society. BaudetDulary bought some adjoining land to make the commune 750 hectares in
total. The plan was announced in Le Phalanstère in November 1832.
There was considerable initial enthusiasm, particularly among former
Saint-Simonians. At first they hoped to create a joint-stock company, but
found few takers. Thus they created a société anonyme, a more precarious
arrangement, to which the two men had contributed all the land, to a total
value of 280,000 francs. Nearly a million francs were to be raised by selling
shares and the opening was planned for March 1833. For reasons of economy
the two men ignored Fourier’s magic size and planned for 600 members,
calling their venture a “societary colony”. By February they had recruited 200
members and only a few shares had been sold. Devay himself paid the workers for clearing the land and the opening was delayed. The colony was beginning to take shape in June 1833,17 but the land was poor, sandy and neglected
and the existing buildings were in a bad state. In addition the organizers were
criticized for a lack of realism. The architect Gingembre built pigstys out of
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high-quality 18” thick stone, and forgot to include a doorway. In December a
total of 485,453 francs of shares had been floated, which was only just over a
third of the required minimum for the colony.18 A scheme to specialize in
chicken production the following year came to nothing. Baudet-Dulary was
forced to pay off the shareholders; his total loss amounted to just under
500,000 francs. Fourier was predictably scornful of the failure. The estate was
turned into, and remains, a Fourierist retreat.19
After the failure of the Condé-sur-Vesgre experiment, the concept of the
phalange was totally transformed. Considérant, an enthusiatic acolyte of
Fourier, was an inexhaustible organizer and publicist for Fourierism, which
he invented in his phoenix-like transformation of Fourier’s virtually
unknown theories. Under his direction Fourierism was presented as a practical, experimental social science. Aware that his original supporters were
fugitives from Enfantin’s version of Saint-Simonianism, he stressed that his
new Ecole sociétaire (another name for Fourierism), unlike the Ecole saintsimonienne, did not hinge solely on one man.20
The written word was fundamental to the gospel of Fourierism.
Considérant was a leading force in the phalansterien journal, in which his
mother-in-law, Clarisse Vigoureux, was a major investor. The journal did not
sustain its claims to provide a template for practical social reform. Fourier’s
theoretical writing began to dominate each issue. The self-regarding tediousness of his prose, and his insistence on enormous and costly changes to the
copy at proof stage, bankrupted the journal and antagonized his devoted
disciples, who deserted him. The journal closed through lack of subscribers
in 1834. A small insight perhaps into the frustration of Fourier’s associates
were the detailed hand-written calculations made by Considérant in his own
bound copy of the first years of the journal of how many pages each of them
contributed. Fourier provided a total of 1,172 pages; Jules Lechevalier, 595;
Abel Transon, 536; Baudet-Dulary, 443; Pellarin, 370; and Considérant,
474. The remainder of the copy was written by a handful of other
Fourierists, including 60 pages by Clarissa Vigoureux.21
When Fourier died in 1837 Considérant took total control of the journal,
La Phalange. In August 1843 in the quest for popular support, he founded a
daily, La Démocratie Pacifique , which became a central part of his socialist
publicity. In addition the Fourierists secured a sympathetic hearing in opposition newspapers in Lyon, Dijon and elsewhere. Considérant also organized
regular series of public lectures and conferences, founded a library and wrote
a torrent of books and pamphlets simplifying Fourier. He encouraged the
formation of Fourierist groups in many towns and he and his Parisian
colleagues toured the provincial outposts regularly. In 1845 the Société
philharmonique in Dijon, better known for its radicalism than its music,
hosted a conference, which he addressed. It was attended by 600 members of
the local elite and supported by the long-established Journal du Côte-d’Or.
His speech dwelt on the urgent need to set up phalanges to eliminate class
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conflict. He assured his audience that his solution was both radical and
conservative: “l’avenement sur la terre du royaume de Dieu”.22
Considérant popularized Fourier’s plans for experimental phalanges
faithfully, but in the 1840s began to put more emphasis on the problem of
unemployment and the organization of work. He demanded that the
organization of and the right to work should be a cornerstone of society (the
phrases were always printed in capitals in his writing). While retaining some
of Fourier’s analysis of human psychology, Considérant simplified and
smoothed away the less comprehensible fantasies.
Considérant, a serious school-masterly type, always stressed that
Fourierist theories were practical, experimental and scientific and therefore
constituted a branch of the new discipline, social science. In the year of
Fourier’s death Considérant published his Destinée sociale, which he,
significantly, dedicated to Louis-Philippe. Fourierism was not a utopian or a
revolutionary creed, even in its long-term social goals; it was entirely
committed to peaceful change by enlisting the support of the ruling elite.
The plan was gradually to make France anew, commune by commune.
Considérant, like Fourier, argued that the basic element in society was a
commune, consisting of a group of families, but unlike Fourier, he was not
hostile to the family as such. There was no need to construct a new type of
commune, as Fourier had implied, existing ones could be reformed to
become the cornerstone of the society: “l’utopie d’un monde harmoniquement ordonné serait complétement esquissée”.23 The most important
aspect to get right was social; political and administrative features would
then fall into place. Within the commune work would be organized agreeably. The individual would be free, his faculties would be expanded and
all would work in harmony, all classes cooperating. Members of the commune would be moved by love and the desire to care for their families and
family groups would be sustained. Considérant argued that this would be
achieved gradually by the “progressive enlightenment” or education of the
individual, rather than being an automatic consequence of the release of
natural passions as Fourier had argued. Unlike his master, Considérant was
a moralist and believed that moral codes and social discipline would be
required in the commune.
Considérant enlarged on the unalloyed joys of communal enterprise in
even more detail than Fourier had done. The organization of work meant
planning production to use labour harmoniously and therefore efficiently.
Work was divided into types and people would opt for a range of jobs each
day. Meetings to plan the next day’s production would be held in the
evening. There were eight main classifications: food production; housework; manufacture (fabrique); trade; education; science; arts; and religion.
These were subdivided into different orders, for instance food production
was split into its components, such as working in fields, pastures, forests,
vines and so on. The orders were finally divided into sorts (genres), for
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instance work on all sorts of trees, apple, pear, cherry and so on. The individual would switch his job hourly.
In an age of constantly recurring economic crises and repeated bankruptcies, when entrepreneurs gambled with imperfect knowledge of the market,
Considérant’s message that Fourierist communities would be rational and
consistently profitable must have had an appeal. A communal economy
would be organized logically. Production plans would be discussed by members and an agreed policy would be followed. If onions were to be grown,
they would not be planted at random where it suited each individual, but on
a single site, making cultivation far more economical. Considérant quoted
comte Bigot de Morogues who farmed in the Loiret according to these principles.24 Individual competition and hostility meant that effort was wasted in
existing societies; on military expenditure and defence, on trying to control
gambling, whores, beggars and prisoners; on the legal system, police and
prisons; on idlers, “oisifs”; on the fiscal system; on metaphysicians and
philosophers; and, finally, on commerce – trade was parasitical. All would
disappear in the phalange. Indeed the phalange itself almost disappeared in
Considérant’s public relations campaigns. He preferred the more familiar
term, “commune”.
Like his master, Considérant had no time for other utopian schemes of his
day. He ridiculed the efforts of Owen and his followers, who promised
equality and created communities based on rigid discipline and despotism.25
Then there were agricultural communes, such as the cheese-making ones in
the Alps, which were communal only in name, because their members
worked independently and in competition with each other. The cooperation
of the phalange was based not on equality, where the individual got out what
he put in, whether land or labour, but on solidarity. Solidarity became a key
term for Fourierists, replacing harmony. Was Considérant’s theory of community liberating? Fraternité humaine or solidarity would be fostered
through the recognition of human dignity and justice, but Considérant was
convinced that a decent working environment and a guaranteed right to
work was more important to the individual than the rights of man and written constitutions.26
Considérant’s demand that the right to work be guaranteed by the state
distanced the Fourierists from Fourier in two important respects, although
the differences were not acknowledged. Fourier never challenged private
ownership. Considérant asserted that current notions of property were
based on the right of conquest and were illegal. They should be redrafted
recognizing the right to work; hereditary right would then continue to be acknowledged. He thought equal subdivision was impractical and was entirely
opposed to a revolutionary redistribution as Babeuf had suggested. Secondly
Fourier’s phalange was autonomous; the centralized state would become
superfluous in a land of phalange. For Considérant neither Fourier’s
anarchism nor the laissez-faire statements of the liberal economists were
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acceptable. As befitted a government engineer, he believed that the state had
a pivotal role in the planning and financing of economic and social change.
The government should make a scientific assessment of the economy from
which it would create an industrial framework within which it would guarantee that there would be enough work for all. He claimed that such an
endeavour could be achieved without political reform or legal changes
beyond the creation of a ministry of industrial progress and social reform.27
Considérant’s demand that the state accept responsibility for organizing and
providing work was made repeatedly in his writings, long before Louis Blanc
used the same term, with a somewhat different meaning.
Like Fourier, Considérant was convinced that phalanges could be created
peacefully as sound entrepreneurial investments by land owners and businessmen and by members agreeing a programme of cooperative life. All decisions about how the phalange ran would be made by direct democracy, which
was not an impossible concept for a group of fewer than 2,000. Nor did
Considérant adopt a proscriptive attitude to democratic decision-making.
He totally rejected revolutionary or illegal means.28 He talked as much about
order, freedom, stability and progress as did Guizot. All change had to be
approved by the whole community. Even communist principles could be
adopted if that was the consensus.
Considérant was far more interested than his mentor in stressing the positively Christian basis of the phalange. For Fourier the deity was a necessary
but distant presence; once the Moses of the phalange had understood the
message of the tablets, he could stand on the sidelines or take a prolonged
holiday. The harmonious liberation and combination of the passions made
moral restraints and codes irrelevant; man in harmony with nature could not
misbehave. Considérant was not so confident of man’s natural virtue and
God remained a referee, ever present as a moral judge and arbiter.
Like Fourier, Considérant stressed human psychology, but in simpler, more
accessible, as well as more moralizing, language. The individual was in contact
with universal harmony through the intellectual and emotional aspects of his
nature. A person possessed qualities of attraction and repulsion that enabled
him to determine between false and true, good and evil. Attractions were
God-given, glimpses of universal harmony, insights into the meaning of creation. Thus the individual, from childhood, possessed a natural morality more
precious than the false moral science of many books. The individual was influenced by the law of universal unity. As we have seen in Chapter 4 this was a
trinity, which could be split into the unity of the individual with himself, the
unity of the individual with God and the unity of the individual with the
universe. The first of these harmonies, the individual at peace with himself,
was only reached if the three spheres of his nature – intellectual, emotional
(sensitive) and his affinity with his surroundings (animique) – were in balance.
Only by harmonizing intelligence and passion could the individual achieve its
destiny; the alternative was chaos for the world. The devastation that man had
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wrought in past times was the consequence of his failure to study his passions
scientifically. Considérant argued that the solution to current social problems
did not lie “in constitutions, monarchical or republican, nor in all the political, moral and philosophical nonsense which has sadly taken up so much
time”. The answer lay in discovering industry’s natural mechanism in which
the individual would work for pleasure and with a passion that would lead
him into good actions, instead of labouring for sheer necessity and turning his
frustrated passions against others.
Considérant edited the weekly journal, set up in 1832. In September it
changed its name to the snappier, La Réforme Industrielle ou le Phalanstère.
It survived, with gaps and several name changes, until 1849. For instance, in
1836 the journal was re-born (in good Fourierist fashion) as La Phalange:
Revue de Science Sociale. It appeared weekly at first and then the English
philanthropist Arthur Young subsidized a thrice-weekly publication, which
survived until 1843. Under Considérant’s guidance, experimental phalanges
received less attention than the right to work. The journal spread Fourierist
thought to Britain, Germany and America and helped to establish links
between them by printing letters sent between the various phalanstèrien
groups. In April 1844 the New York society, one-third of whose members
were women, wrote to the parent body for advice on how to interpret
Fourier’s thought.29 The growing public awareness of social problems in the
mid-1830s encouraged the Ecole sociétaire to turn itself into a political party
and to add solidarité , or social unity, to its platform. In addition to this journal, there was the daily paper, La Démocratie Pacifique, which survived with
gaps until the coup d’état. There was also a dissident Fourierist paper, Le
Nouveau Monde run by a Polish exile, Cyznski, from 1839 to 1844, which
actively promoted women’s issues and the scheme to colonize Algeria along
Fourierist lines.30 In addition Considérant and others published substantial
numbers of cheap, simple pamphlets.
The Fourierists valued the publicity their press provided, but the clientèle
was far from the populist and proletarian audience that read Cabet’s
Populaire. At its peak in 1847 the Démocrate Pacifique, their best-seller, had
2,000 subscribers, half the number of subscribers to the Populaire. Although
aware of the need to gain popular support, the editors seemed unable to
adapt their didactic, pedagogical style. The Phalange continued to be stuffed
with huge, indigestible, sleep-inducing chunks of Fourier’s previously, and
with good reason, unpublished writing, and its contributors concentrated on
theoretical, rather than practical achievements. Articles praising advances in
science and machinery31 were sandwiched between reviews of foreign-language books sympathetic to Fourierism. By 1845 Considérant was coming to
believe that experimental Fourierism could only work in a new, expanding
society, such as that of America.32 Only in its last year (1848–49) did the
Phalange start to notice contemporary social problems, and included long
extracts from a recent statistical survey on poverty.33
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The provincial Fourierist groups, like the Parisian, were mainly polite
bourgeois talking shops, which Flora Tristan criticized for their social
narrowness, although she found it useful to make each her base as she did her
own tour de France. Fourierists organized conferences and lecture tours to
spread their doctrine and to attempt to engage the support of local
philanthropists. When the first colony at Condé was short of cash in 1833,
the leaders stomped the country in search of donations. Jules Lechevalier
toured Caen, Rouen, Bordeaux and Nantes, running short Fourierist induction classes in each. Nantes was the most receptive. Berbrugger was
despatched to Dijon, Lyon and Algeria. Considérant set off for Houdon,
Montargis, Orleans and Besançon, followed by a second tour involving
Grenoble, Colmar, Strasbourg, Metz and Nancy. Meanwhile Abel Transon
was continuing to run his induction sessions in a couple of higher education
establishments in Paris.34 This was a quest for punters, not the proletariat.
They secured some artisan backing among the most politically aware
groups; shoemakers in Paris35 and silk weavers in Lyon36 . Considérant
claimed that they had support in major cities and artisan centres, including
Nantes, Bordeaux and Lyon. In Lyon, Rivière, a cloth printer, published
stories of phalanstèrien settlements in the silk workers’ paper, the Echo de la
Fabrique, despite the scorn of the newspaper’s editor. Talks on “the system of
agricultural colonization” were also advertised.37 A phalanstèrien workers’
association was formed.38 The Bordeaux group tried to attract support in a
brief pamphlet, which stressed that their projected social changes would
double the income of the rich and multiply by six that of the poor. Their
explanation of Fourierism was very basic, but their bibliography would only
have appealed to a highly literate, well-heeled audience.39
The Fourierists did not give up on experimental communes, but tended to
try smaller, more limited schemes than that envisaged at Condé-sur-Vesgre.
The most notable was that of Pierre Leroux. Leroux (1797–1871) was a
renegade Saint-Simonian who set up an experimental community at Boussac
in the Creuse. It had 80 members, each of whom received the same pay; all
profits were to be reinvested. The printing workshop of his community
produced his Revue Indépendante. George Sand put money into the scheme
and Pauline Roland taught at the school. In 1841 Arthur Young bought the
cloisters at Citeaux and set up a phalange, organized by Gatti de Gamond. It
attracted 117 members, mostly radical intellectuals and artisans, only a
handful of whom knew how to farm. The industrial side was apparently
somewhat more successful than the agricultural. Government officials were
alarmed and tried to find ways to close it down. Young ran out of money and
the scheme fell apart.40 Its collapse caused a rift between Gatti de Gamond
and the other Fourierists who thought she and Young had rushed into the
project with inadequate planning and had let them down.41
A number of philanthropic industrialists experimented with communes,
although their ideas tended to be nearer to those of Owen42 than Fourier. In
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1848 Léon Talabot was running “un établissement philanthropique”, which
was much-praised in the Almanach Phalanstérien. He took over forges in the
Tarn employing 200 workers in 1832 and gradually transformed them on
Fourierist lines. Wages were equalized, which Talabot believed made the
workers more content. Apparently this was done by getting rid of the expensive foreign workers, some Germans, but mainly English. He docked 2 per
cent from wages to create a caisse de secours to provide doctors and medicine
for the sick. He also set aside allotments for his workers, as other industrialists, including the Wedgwoods in Etruria in the Potteries, had done. He
reasoned that, since the forges were functioning round the clock and men
worked a shift system, they needed healthy activity when they were not sleeping so that they would learn time-management. He charged the workers up to
1 franc a month for their plots, which seems a stiff fee compared with presentday allotment rents. He argued that the families would appreciate them more
if they had to pay, as was done in America and in English colonies. The allotments were cultivated mainly by wives and children of workers, and Talabot
claimed their diet noticeably improved. He sought other ways to improve
their nutrition. Transport costs to this remote region made meat prohibitively
expensive. Talabot brought it in on the hoof, setting up slaughterhouses. He
noticed that his workers paid high prices for poor quality food and so he
opened a shop selling bread and other foods. The net result was that productivity doubled.43 André Godin built a model industrial village, the Familistery
of Guise. Godin (1817–1888) was attracted to Fourier’s ideas, but the workers’ community he founded was specificially philanthropic and paternalistic.
It lasted longer than most of the phalanges.44
Fourier had hoped that full-scale phalanges would be founded, although
he was later prepared to settle for a mini-model and there was talk of a children’s phalange. His supporters proposed watered-down versions, similar to
those recommended by Proudhon and created by a number of socialists. In
1848 the Phalange urged readers to set up boulangeries sociétaires, to provide good, cheap bread by cutting out the middle man, and butchers’ cooperatives.45 In the same year, Briancourt, by profession a dyer, who had
written a pamphlet describing Fourierist principles for the organization of
work,46 pointed out that parts of Fourierism could be adopted by employers
within existing society. Ideally the principle of association should be accompanied by the organization of work to make it attractive, along with interchangeable jobs. An employer could offer these advantages to his workers
without offering full-scale profit sharing. He might provide communal
buildings and shops selling good quality basic foods at reasonable prices.47
None of the attempts to create experimental communes in France were
long lived, but in contrast to other French socialists, the Fourierists acquired
rapid international renown. Their books were translated, Fourierist texts
were composed, groups were formed and experimental phalanges were set up.
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nities in Iowa and north-eastern America, although by 1855 all had folded.48
They were the work of small businessmen and were perpetually undercapitalized. None lasted more than a few years. There were loyal disciples and
groups led by Bucellati in Italy, Diamont in Romania and Ludwig Gall in Germany. Diamont had hopes of setting up a commune in Romania and in 1835
his fellow Romanian Balacena created an agricultural and industrial association of 50 members, which was supposed to be Fourierist. It collapsed after a
year. In the 1830s Fourierist ideas were known throughout Europe: in
Germany at Heidelberg, Augsburg and Gotha; in Spain the republican naval
officer Abreu published enthusiastic articles; in Italy his admirers included
Mazzini;49 in Russia Herzen and Ogarev were drawn to the ideas of both
Fourier and Saint-Simon. Herzen, Dostoevsky and Butashevich-Petrashevsky
ran Fourierist groups, but they were shut down by the police in 1849.
In France itself the Fourierists drifted away from experimental communes
towards the idea that the social question could best be solved by state-run
developments. Curiously, their leader, Considérant, later became involved in
experimental communities in America, perhaps because of his disillusionment during the Second Republic. In 1848 he failed to persuade the National
Assembly to include a guarantee of the right to work in the new constitution.
He became increasingly critical of the growing conservatism of the republic,
culminating in his arrest and condemnation, in his absence, after the Parisian
demonstrations of June 1849. Considérant escaped to Belgium and for the
next 20 years he and his family, financed by the ever-patient Clarisse
Vigoureux, were involved in attempts to set up socialist communities in
America. One site was Trinity River, Texas, now a suburb of Dallas, in a very
arid and unpromising farming area. Another group at La Réunion, Red River
Texas, collapsed on the outbreak of the Civil War. Considérant returned to
France in 1869, lived in poverty and never re-entered politics.50
Fourierists’ involvement in a variety of experimental communities, and
even more their subsequent plans to expand the role of the state in the
economy, made Fourierism arguably the most important trend in socialism in
1848 and the links, personal and philosophical, between them and
the Saint-Simonians were self-evident. The Fourierist leader, Victor
Considérant, was obviously convinced that both Fourier and Saint-Simon
were antecedents of the Fourierists. He compiled a small library of closely
annotated copies of both Fourier’s and Saint-Simon’s works.
In reality Fourierism diverged radically from Fourier’s original ideas. In
the 1830s, and resoundingly after his death, Fourierism became a doctrine,
large tracts of which Fourier would have detested. He would not have
considered himself a Fourierist. He would have ridiculed the way in which
he was venerated to near sainthood after his death. Fourierism became a
creed of philanthropists, keen to “do something” for the poor in a
concerned, rather patronizing spirit. Fourier’s more extravagant views on
cosmology and sex were abandoned.
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Fourierism was quintessentially a doctrine conveyed by the written word
for the well-meaning, benevolent, educated elite. Although Fourierists
gained some artisan support in towns such as Lyon, they failed to capture the
worker base that the Saint-Simonians had exploited. Fourierists were writers
and and faithful publicists of their own and their friends’ efforts. Even tiny
pamphlets were buttressed with detailed bibliographies. The disciples turned
Fourierism into an encouraging moral tale with a clean and comfortable future for the downtrodden. Fourier’s complex theories were reduced to simplistic predictions. Little before and after charts, of the intellectual calibre of
the most naive women’s magazine were reprinted from the Phalange on numerous occasions, comparing industrie sociétaire and industrie morcelée
(capitalism). The former was attractive and large-scale, offering short sessions of varied, specialized work. The latter was organized in tiny units,
where people worked a long, boring day, with no division of labour offering
specialized work, under duress and out of necessity. A second, longer, table,
revealed the consequences. Industrie sociétaire yielded wealth, practical
truth, freedom, peace, confidence, unity and progress, all in hygienic surroundings and even temperatures. Industrie morcelée led to poverty, deceit,
oppression, war, illness and a vicious circle of duplicity and distrust (and bad
weather).51 Fourierists were rather ambivalent about whether the traditional
family would give way to the larger social unit of the commune. Most gave
brief summaries of the balance of passions, education and childhood in the
phalange.52
The contrasts between master and disciples were manifold. Fourier
believed society would only be harmonious if the individual was liberated
back to a “natural” state. His disciples, on the other hand, adopted a high
moral tone and urged the sacrifice of the self in the interests of altruism.
Fourier spoke of the passions, and his followers of democratic humanitarianism. Fourier occasionally referred to divine providence in a distant cosmic
tone. His followers were apparently on intimate terms with the almighty.53
Fourier was keen on sexual as well as economic liberation for women; his
followers cut out the sex, especially the English and Americans, turning a
creed of physical love into a spiritual and puritanical discipline.54 Fourierists
observed that women were slaves within the family. In the phalange they
would escape oppression by drunken husbands and be free to work.55 However Fourierists, unlike their master, did not enlarge on the charms of multiple sexual partners. Indeed some Fourierists staunchly defended the family
as the cornerstone of the phalange.56
Fourier detested politics and had about as much enthusiasm for the state
as Proudhon. His followers welcomed engagement with the Leviathan. They
argued that the idea of phalange could be instituted to end slavery in America
and Russia, would be ideal for Belgium and an excellent way to organize
French colonization of Algeria.57 Fourierists promoted the idea that France
would benefit by developing new colonies, and tried to enlist the Prince de
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Joinville in a Fourierist take-over of Madagascar. Colonies would contribute
to the development of trade and the growth of the economy, and offer a safe
location for surplus and turbulent people,58 a statist concept a million miles
from Fourier.
At home Fourierism was narrowed to a crusade against poverty, in which
the state, not a group of individuals, would guarantee work and provide jobs.
In 1848 Fourierists focused their attention on the inclusion in the republican
constitution of a right to work. In doing so they abandoned the utopianism
of their master in favour of limited reformist creed. They also became involved in violent direct action in June 1849, in complete contradiction to
Fourier’s hostility to revolution. That Fourierism became a state-orientated
reformist creed is not all that surprising. The change was implicit when rebel
Saint-Simonians highjacked Fourier from oblivion at the end of 1831. Many
of these new converts were practical men, looking for achievable social reform, which was why they had dumped Enfantin. They were used to action
and forgot the dreams.
If they turned Fourier’s dream world into democratic centralism, the
Fourierists introduced the image of Fourier to a range of artists who brought it
to life again. The poet Béranger wrote “Les Fous” in honour of Fourierist
principles. Zola, who had read Renaud, described a phalanstère in Le Travail,
while Sue documented an actual experiment in Les Misères des enfants
trouvés. Fourier’s tails were ridiculed by Reybaud, once a fan, in his humorous
and dismissive tale,”The tails promised to Humanity”.59 The influential
editor of La Presse, Emile de Girardin, praised Fourierism and Fourier was
welcomed as a “modern socialist” by the Revue des Deux Mondes.60 Although
Fourier had struggled vainly to persuade editors to review his books, after his
death the major national newspapers honourably published obituaries,61 and
he became well enough known to become a recognizable subject for painters
and caricaturists. In 1850 Courbet depicted a Fourierist prophet, “setting out
for the conquest of Universal Harmony”. In 1848 Cham (Amédée Noé), the
rightwing cartoonist, devoted a complete volume of his humorous pocketsized paperback creations to the socialists. Proudhon, Cabet and Leroux were
held to gentle ridicule.62 Fourier’s famous long tails (archibras) caught his eye.
He portrayed Considérant with a tail, “endowed with a phalanstérien organ
somewhat sooner than he expected”, and unable to put his trousers on. Cham
drew Fourierist pioneers using their tails to haul huge rocks in California
while prospecting for gold.63 Ironically, given the solemnity of the disciples,
this image of Fourierism was perhaps the one best known at the time.
Probably the most influential dreamer of whole new socialist worlds was
Etienne Cabet (1788–1856). In the 1840s Cabet ran the artisan newspaper
with the biggest circulation and headed the largest worker organization, the
Icarians, with the most extensive regional network. Cabet was intent on
specific and immediate reform of the industrial system, yet he wrote the most
utopian of socialist texts, Voyage en Icarie.
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“Victor Considérant finds his Fourierist tail useful mining for gold in California”,
Cham (Victor Amédée Noé), Le Charivari, 1849.
Cabet’s transition to utopian communism was gradual. His father was a
prosperous master cooper and a fervent republican in the 1790s. Cabet
trained as an avocat, and, as was fitting for a young man from a radical family
in the 1820s, joined the charbonnerie. After the 1830 Revolution he was
elected to parliament and soon passed from Orleanism to republicanism. In
1833 he launched his own newspaper Le Populaire. In a flyer to publicize it he
gave an account of his republicanism and his commitment to social reform.64
He was already well on the way to developing his ideas on state-run socialism,
arguing that the state should provide free education and medical care for the
poor and intervene to ensure there was a decently paid job for everyone.65
The Populaire was run by and for artisans and sold at a fraction of the price of
other newspapers. In 1834 the newspaper took a lead in defending the right
of workers to form associations. When repressive legislation against associations was passed in 1834, Cabet was forced into exile in London. Even more
repressive press laws came into force in 1835. Cabet stayed in London until
1839 and met Chartists who made him more aware of the social question. He
began to call his proposals communist and to describe the social policies of the
Jacobins as embryonic communism.66 After returning to France, he published
Voyage en Icarie in 1840, which he considered to be a description of an
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unequivocally communist association. It went through five editions by 1848,
but was never translated into English, despite the close links between English
and French radicals and Cabet’s own exile. It contrast, Louis Blanc’s books
were nearly all translated into English as well as other languages.
Cabet explained what he meant by communist in a pamphlet written to
sell the book. In 1840 people associated communist, if at all, with Babeuf
and more recently, with Blanqui and organized violent revolution. Cabet rejected this insurrectionary Babouvism. He had no links with those who
formed the Communist League in the mid-1840s, and who were also
inspired by subversive intent. Icarian communism was reformist and peaceful. It was a moral and philosophical system, and not an attack on morality.
He assured his readers that Icarian communism merely meant “community”
and was rooted in democracy, equality and agreement. On the other hand,
Cabet was not averse to issuing warnings of the dire and disruptive consequences if society continued to disregard the problem of poverty.67
Voyage en Icarie was a substantial two-volume work, written in very simple language as the traveller’s tale of an upper-class adventurer. It supposed
that the author was a young English nobleman, Carisdall, on his luxurious
Grand Tour, which in the fashion of the day now included visits to worthy
experimental projects. Cabet’s objective was to describe a community that
had achieved all he thought ought to have come out of 1789. Over time, and
thanks to an enlightened education system, Icarians had gradually seen the
benefit of communality and had agreed to pool their resources, including
land and all property. Icarie was self-sufficient, had no market economy and
provided everyone with a comfortable lifestyle. Work was done in communal workshops, using the most modern technology and a money economy
had been superseded by central distribution warehouses. In return for fair
contributions to the economy, everyone drew exactly equal rewards, with
uniform housing, clothing, food and so on. Extremes of poverty and wealth
had disappeared and with them greed, envy and crime. Cabet assumed that
absolute equality and uniformity would be pure bliss.
Icarie was run partly as a representative, partly direct democracy.68 The
representative assembly of 2,000 had real control. It was in permanent
session and half its members were replaced every year. All Icarians had full
civil and electoral rights. They voted in primary assemblies which also had
plebiscitary powers to make decisions on major issues referred to them by
the representative chamber. This element of direct democracy was
reminiscent of the Girondin and Jacobin constitutional plans of 1793. All official posts were elective. The executive, which had no power to make policy,
consisted of an elected president and a committee of 15. Icarie was egalitarian, but not liberal.69 The status of women was not mentioned and is therefore ambiguous. The needs of the community took precedence over those of
the individual and, a curious dream for a much-prosecuted journalist, there
was no freedom of the press.
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Icarie caught the imagination of traditional artisans, who were disillusioned with the Orleanist regime. Equally appealing was Cabet’s newspaper,
Le Populaire, which resumed publication in March 1841. By 1846, with a
circulation of 4,500, it was outselling other radical newspapers. Each copy
probably had about 25 readers. What was most significant was that the bulk
of subscribers and readers were working people. L’Atelier, a wholely artisanproduced paper, sold a mere 1,000 copies, only a minority of which were
read by workers. Le Populaire was written in very basic language, as was
Cabet’s widely circulated annual Almanach. Three-quarters of Le Populaire’s
shareholders were artisans. That newspaper focused, not on communist
theory, but on specific problems. It completed surveys of working practices
between 1842 and 1845, based on detailed questionnaires. Four enquiries
were conducted; on shoemakers and repairers, locksmiths, coach-builders
and printers and compositors, but demands that the government should effect reforms were fruitless.70
As a result of Le Populaire’s enquiries into social and economic problems,
Cabet became the leader of the first workers’ socialist association, Le Société
pour fonder l’Icarie (the Icarians). That he should be the only socialist to
attract a mass worker following was rather ironical because at the outset he
sought class harmony and ridiculed theories of class war. Gradually his faith
in social cooperation seeped away and he began to picture the middle classes
as an enemy.71 Paris and Lyon were the two main Icarian centres, but there
were groups in 78 departments. Most affiliates were workers, particularly
traditional artisans; only about 4 per cent were middle-class or professional.
Icarianism had a particular appeal to cabinetmakers, textile workers, shoemakers; trades in which the craftsmen felt that their skills were being undermined by the development of machines or embryonic methods of mass
production that encouraged the use of cheaper, less skilled labour. They
were also the workers who took part in popular upheaval and revolution. Of
the 22 cities where there were subscribers to Le Populaire, only three were
modern industrial centres. Icarianism spread by word-of-mouth and a vast
stream of publications. Government censorship prevented mass meetings
and sophisticated bureaucracy.
Were artisans drawn to the Icarians by the appeal of the dream island of
Icarie? It may be that the total orderliness of Icarie was fascinating escapism
for families whose traditional economic structures were coming under attack
from a variety of directions. On the other hand, it may be that Cabet’s real
attraction lay more in the investigations into current industrial problems by
the Populaire, in contrast to the indifference of the existing government.
What is clear is that when, in 1846, Cabet decided to join Robert Owen in
founding an actual model community in North America, his audience shrank
dramatically. Within a year the Populaire had lost 30 per cent of its subscribers and the Icarian association folded. Some Fourierists joined him at this
point, but many Icarians left. Cabet claimed later that he had been talked
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into the idea of founding a colony by Icarians themselves; 200 supporters in
Nantes had written encouraging him, and 45 had offered to emigrate.72 By
the time of the 1848 Revolution Cabet had only 69 prospective colonists.
Each had to hand over 600 francs towards a homestead. There were many
setbacks and Cabet was faced with a court case, accused of deceiving the prospective colonists over the purchase of land in the Red River area of Texas.
The land agent from whom Cabet tried to buy the land attempted to sell land
owned by the state of Texas.
The 1848 Revolution diverted Cabet back to practical politics, and he became the head of one of the largest popular clubs. However when he was not
elected to the new National Assembly in April 1848, he became absorbed in
plans to return to North America. The Texas project having collapsed, Cabet
put his hopes, and other peoples’ money, in the abandoned Mormon village
of Nauvoo, Illinois. He took no part in the demonstrations of 15 May, or the
June Days, 1848. The day after Louis-Napoleon’s election as president he set
sail for America. Icarianism had collapsed in France and he hoped to rescue
the American venture. In April 1849, when he finally arrived in Nauvoo, the
colonists were at each other throats. He urged them to remember that the
colony had been founded “sous la sainte bannière de la Fraternité, phare du
salut”, but his presence was counterproductive and in May 1851 he travelled
to London to answer charges of mismanagement.73
Cabet still put his faith in the idea of a utopian association in the New
World. He had no time for Icarian-style producer cooperatives in Lyon and
elsewhere in France,74 but went back to Nauvoo in July 1852. The colony
had been ravaged by a cholera epidemic and disputes. They had decided to
abandon the site at Nauvoo and try to cultivate nearby land. Arguing that the
original colonists had been lax in their organization, Cabet set out even
stricter rules for the new experiment.75 Only Icarians could join, and then
only for a trial period of four months. All colonists must be literate and
accept all of Cabet’s ideas, particularly on the position of women and
children in the community: “L’un des buts principaux du système Icarien
c’est de rendre à la femme et à l’enfant tous leurs droits”. They must accept
the principles of community (no private property), of equality, fraternity,
true liberty and unity. Each had to provide 400 francs and agree to work. A
detailed list of essential equipment followed, down to underpants, handkerchiefs and corsets, if worn, and their colour! Were the woollen vests to be
shared? Not surprisingly, given this didactic document, Cabet quarrelled
with the colony at Nauvoo, as he failed to impose his authoritarian attitudes.76 Cabet suffered in his isolation and published a rather pathetic set of
documents to prove how popular and well-intentioned he had always been,
ranging from praise from his colleagues in Corsica in 1830–31 to eulogies
from colonists in Nauvoo.77 During 1855 he moved to another experiment
in St. Louis and died shortly afterwards. Nauvoo survived until the end of
the century, but Icarie was never on the agenda for Third Republic socialists.
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Utopian socialism appears as a predominantly middle-class phenomenon,
constructing new worlds for the underprivileged. Utopian socialists tended
to come from prosperous backgrounds, and while they might have artisan
followers, the “Harmony” or Icarie they sought, had class cooperation, and
even classlessness (Icarie), as one of the principal aims. Such macro associations, or experimental communes, were damned as “utopian” by Karl Marx,
but their planners considered them practical. Fourier’s disciples initially
were convinced by their master’s hopes for phalanges. The lack of financial
support for experimental communes led to a change of tack. By the late
1830s Fourierists had trimmed Fourier’s theories to more immediately
achievable goals and became determined supporters of state-organized associative initiatives to solve the social question.
Why was the early nineteenth century a time of imagined communities?
Were the detailed plans of Fourier, the Saint-Simonians, Considérant and
Cabet dreams, or an attempt to set out plans for reform at times when piecemeal change was perceived necessary, but impossible?78 The main motive
behind these total schemes seems to have been the pursuit of “order”, and
not the escapist utopianism so decried by critics. The quest for “order” distinguished those who planned whole new societies from those with more
limited reformist ideas. The former were never revolutionaries, although it
would have taken a great deal to convince right-wing opponents of their
pacific bent. In other respects utopians shared much with reformists in their
ideas on association. They both argued for cooperative association as an
alternative to capitalism and social conflict. Utopians were more comprehensive in their conceptualization of association.
Utopians were not alone in emphasizing order. The Orleanist Monarchy
decorated its public buildings with statues emblazoned with the carved
motto “Liberty and Order”. Orleanist liberty was for the rich and “order”
was exemplified by gendarmerie reports on public opinion that read “Néant
– nothing to report”. The Second Empire borrowed the Orleanist motto, and
enforced it by rigorous repression. Utopian order was far more positive. In
utopian mode socialist writings were filled with elaborate descriptions of the
new ordering of the world. Cabet’s involved the cataloguing of tiny details of
life in Icarie, including the perfect sameness of food, houses, clothing.79
When he tried to set up a community at Nauvoo he made lists of exactly
what each emigrant would need, which read rather like Scout Association
camping lists! Considérant’s passion for order extended to his library. His
collection of pamphlets and books were regimented into volumes of similar
format and size, in each of which he wrote a meticulous list of contents.80
What did order mean to the utopians and why was it so important to
them? The more philosophical of them, such as Fourier, believed that there
was an absolute divine order, the ignorance of which was responsible for
contemporary social problems. The main priority for Fourier, the first of the
utopians, was to reveal the social implications of divine order. Mirroring
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divine order was psychological order. The key lay in understanding the
human mind, acknowledging that an individual was composed of a number
of passions, the mixing of which produced a large range of human types. The
proper perception of the qualities of the individual would permit an efficacious ordering of society. Each community needed a combination of all 300odd types. At first glance inheritance was all, and man was not free to change
himself or his world. Fourier seems to have been an early advocate of the
importance of genes.
Belief in a divinely ordered hierarchy was not new. The idea that
everything on earth could be arranged into elaborate sequences, from
minerals to butterflies to humans, had absorbed scientists since the time of
Linnaeas. Certain forms of life were more advanced than others. The
utopian socialists subscribed to these hierarchical, linear concepts. However
their recognition of the ordering of humanity was predicated on the possibility of improvement, as indeed was that of liberals and other reformers.
There were negative factors in socialist order. Socialists and indeed
Orleanists, sought an escape from, and if possible a solution to contemporary social disorder. From around 1830, when observers rushed into print in
protest at the misery and poverty of their cities, Fourier, neglected since the
publication of his first book in 1808, began to attract attention. Socialists
consciously invented a perfect universe to reassure themselves and others
that social and moral collapse could be reversed. Books like Voyage en Icarie
offered artisan readers a dream world in which to escape, briefly, from the
messy and uncomfortable real world in which they lived. Was Cabet the
Barbara Cartland of the 1840s?
Utopians were appalled by the unrest that broke out in response to
deprivation. Cabet escaped the June Days by returning to Texas. Revolution
disturbed utopian plans for a new, tidy, clean world. Most socialist writers
were middle-class and feared revolution as wholly negative and disruptive.
The artisans who read Icarie wanted to preserve and restore the traditional
autonomy of their crafts. Utopian schemes seemed to offer a more positive
way forward than disorder, although under extreme pressure artisans were
prepared to take physical action.
As utopians tried to order perfection, freedom slipped through the net.
Both Fourier and Considérant talked of the individual being free to do
different jobs, but the economic structure they described would have needed
strong central direction to avoid anarchy: in July everyone would have
wanted to pick cherries; in April no one would have chosen to plant out leeks;
and no one would ever have wanted to clean the lavatories. An orderly society was predicated on someone giving orders. Both Considérant and Fourier
side-stepped the illiberal implications of their dream. When he described
Icarie, Cabet acknowledged the presence of a benevolent founding despot
after whom the community was named, but proceeded to catalogue an extensive system of assemblies and elections that appear to inherit Icar’s authority.
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Utopians, like all early socialists, believed that the solution to the social
question lay in finding an alternative to competitive capitalism and social
conflict. They believed that the answer lay in replacing rivalry with cooperation. They used a variety of terms to describe it. Fourier was fond of talking
about harmony, some Fourierists talked about solidarity; Cabet praised
communauté. Association had to displace cut-throat capitalism. Social
conflict would be averted by finding agreed alternatives to class rivalries. For
Cabet this would be achieved by total equality, even to uniformity in furnishings and food. For Fourier and Considérant equality was not a goal. A guaranteed minimum income and the restructuring of work to make it a pleasure
would smooth away the fractious, discontented and frustrated aberrations in
human nature.
The utopians proposed major alternative structures to replace capitalism;
some eliminating private property, others offering a fair distribution of profits. Although Cabet went into some detail on the political organization of
Icarie, the utopians were not particularly interested in politics. They thought
of themselves as social scientists. Their absorption with order and association was socioeconomic in impetus rather than political. Utopian socialism
was largely based on a revival of moral values rooted in a primitive Christianity and universal literacy. Socialists argued that selfishness and greed were
the products of ignorance, and not innate qualities. Reorder the system and
they would disappear. Thus in Cabet’s Icarie crime does not exist; in Fourier
and Considérant’s commune there is no need for law or police.
Fourier and Considérant believed that the foundation of their new order
would require a harmonious architectural environment. They argued that
the absence of adequate civic and communal buildings and meeting places in
existing cities isolated individuals. Society and social relations could be
shaped by the design of the city and its buildings. Elegant communal buildings would mould the community. Their books were adorned with sketches
of imposing symmetrical buildings. Absorption with architecture was, of
course, not unique to socialists. In the early nineteenth century it was widely
believed that architecture could solve the problems of urban society. This
was the era of grandiose “medieval” railway stations and impressive asylums.
Respect for the centralized state or the collectivist commune could be measured in quantities of red brick.
Fourier focused on the design of the core communal buildings, the
phalanstère. He argued that pleasant surroundings were vital, that architecture shaped people. There would be a central courtyard with heated galleries
where people could stroll and chat. Among the buildings was an obligatory
opera house. The design would encourage members to live as part of the
community, rather than as individuals or families. The best contemporary
example of such a complex of buildings in his own day, which Fourier knew
well, was the Palais Royal, redeveloped by the duc d’Orléans before the
French Revolution, to exploit the commercial advantages of his residence in
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central Paris. Within the palace, complex private and public architecture,
theatres, cafés and exhibition halls were closely integrated and were the basis
for lively social contact and political debate. There is a strong resemblance
between the numerous drawing of the phalanstère , the public buildings that
were the heart of the phalange , and the Palais-Royal and the nearby Louvre
galleried pavements. The integration of private, ceremonial, commercial and
social space into a palace is unusual at any time and undoubtedly inspired
Fourier. However the architectural style that his phalanstère and the Palais
Royal shared, which was repeated in the numerous drawings made by
Considérant, was typical of many public buildings at that time.
Considérant compared man’s need for favourable conditions in which to
flourish to the way that molecules could combine to form glorious crystals
only in the right conditions. He was even more absorbed by the architecture
of the phalange than Fourier and most of his books and pamphlets included
drawings of well-spaced buildings designed on classical lines. Like Fourier he
assumed that the individual was a product of environment. Social progress
was predicated on improving the living conditions of the poor. For
Considérant “history is determined by architecture”. A sense of community
was literally constructed by its communal buildings. Considérant planned
beyond the individual phalange. Once the commune was running effectively,
larger units, province and state would fall into place. Unlike Fourier,
Considérant was an enthusiastic nationalist and colonialist, and his architectural dreams reached out well beyond the individual phalange.
Considérant elaborated even more than Fourier on the details of the
structure and organization of the communal arrangements of the phalange,
perhaps to attract investors, or those living in unpleasant circumstances, or
simply to match the tempting descriptions of utopia created by others. The
dominant feature was the palace, a large and gracious central building with
workshops and social rooms. This communal building or phalanstère was
both an industrial and an agricultural apex. In the centre of the palace was a
tour d’ordre, with an observatory, a set of bells, a telegraph office, clock, carrier-pigeons and a watch-tower, on which the flag of the phalange could be
seen. On one side of the palace there was a temple, and on the other a theatre. The whole complex was served by a single heating and hot water system.
Considérant claimed that his account was not imaginary and that a number
of such communities already existed in England and France.
Some Saint-Simonians, for example Charles Duveyrier, visualized the
“new Saint-Simonian city” linking planned and ordered urban architecture
with a successful society. Their visions of the city of the future was based on
parts of contemporary Paris, but Duveyrier criticized existing cities,
including Paris, for their lack of planning and order. The Invalides was
surrounded on one side by the Chamber of Deputies, but on the other side
were the washer-women of Gros-Cailloux, plying their trade. A home for
abandoned babies was cheek by jowl with the Observatory. The design,
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architecture and monuments of a city, particularly a capital city, should
convey a sense of the integrated civilization of its inhabitants. Duveyrier also
gendered his ideal city: “Nous avons voulu donné la forme humaine à la
première ville, sous l’inspiration de notre foi”. Duveyrier gave SaintSimonian Paris a male shape, since, according to Enfantin, woman had not
yet emerged independent of man as a social being. All the main buildings represented masculinity – the bank, the parliament building – but a female
“white hands” influence would be welcomed. Their city of the future would
be in the shape of a walking man, the left side filled with the university and
lycées, the right with different industries. The manuscript, books and maps
of the main library were adjacent to the galleries of the Louvre. Here the famous elderly scientists and representatives of culture would be the eyes and
ears of the city. Duveyrier thus compared the Saint-Simonian view of Paris
with the male body, arms, legs, brains and stomach.81 Presumably the stomach for him, as for Emile Zola later,82 was the central market.
While some Saint-Simonian and Fourierist socialists dreamed of the planning and designing of their city of the future, it must be remembered that
some of these socialists actually participated in its construction, as design engineers for railways and other civil projects. Others were actively involved in
colonization and foreign engineering projects. Socialists did not just dream
of a new society; they made considerable efforts to produce it.
The utopians’ belief in order reflected their conviction that man was the
product both of inherited qualities and his environment. A substantial
number of doctors who were trained by men like Gall in Paris in the 1820s,
were convinced that environment was crucial in determining the health of an
individual. They moved, successively, from the charbonnerie, to republicanism and socialism. Trélat, Buchez, Guépin and Raspail were among the influential cohort of this generation of radical doctors. They challenged a
common view among many middle-class doctors that the poor were
unworthy of their services; that poverty and ill health were products of
immorality and biological inferiority. In his doctoral dissertation Guépin
examined the types and causes of cancer. He rejected the view that cancer
was inherited and stressed the significance of damp, dark living conditions
and a poor diet in proliferating the disease.83
The appearance of cholera in Paris in 1832, when 18,000 died, and the loss
of 20,000 lives in the outbreak of 1849,84 made the problems of urban life
more acute. Cholera was seen as a product of moral as well as hygiene problems. Urban problems, including cholera, emphasized man’s dependence on
his physical surroundings. Contemporary descriptions and statistics of cholera revealed that the poorer parts of Paris suffered the most casualties.85 A
well-ordered society would benefit man’s body as well as his disposition. The
Fourierist doctor Baudet-Dulary, deputy for the Seine-et-Oise, who attended
the 1832 cholera victims in Paris, was convinced that if France adopted
Fourier’s plans much misery, sickness and death would be avoided.86
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In the 1830s it was often both an expensive and a daunting affair for a
poor person to consult a doctor and popular healers were preferred. Hospitals were shunned as proliferators of disease, the last refuge when someone
was close to death and without resources.87 Socialist doctors responded by
creating out-patient clinics and free surgeries for the poor. Guépin, son of a
family of notable republicans in western France, coupled a successful medical career with the development of a range of medical services for the poor in
which his social reforming ideas found expression. He was responsible for
women’s medicine, and was a surgeon at the local hospital and medical
officer for the customs’ service when the previous incumbent succumbed to
cholera in 1832. In 1841 he also became chief surgeon at the hôtel-dieu. He
gave his services free to a local nursery school,88 and for many years was a
member of the public health committee.
Guépin was constantly harried by administrators to cut the cost of medical services. His solution was to develop out-patients clinics, which the sick
could afford in place of quacks and charlatans. He ran a clinic for syphilitics.
He pointed out that 50 out-patients were treated for a mere 200 francs in his
skin complaints clinic while his eye clinic offered attention for 20 cents each,
which was a tenth of the cost of in-hospital treatment. He urged the case for
clinics in rural areas and dispensaries, modelled on Italian prototypes. He
observed that if local services were not developed rapidly, treatment would
be centred in Paris when the new rail network was completed, depriving provincial towns of local access to skilled professionals.89 In 1830 he set up the
first specialized, and free, eye clinic in France, which became famous
throughout Europe and America. He became a leading expert in cataract
surgery and colour blindness. A large proportion of his patients were workers, especially in the building trades. In 1840 he opened a free dispensary for
the poor.
Raspail, radical leader of one of the most popular clubs in Paris in 1848,90
was another socialist who ran a clinic in Paris, where he had paying patients,
and the poor, whom he treated for nothing. François-Vincent Raspail (1794–
1878), orphaned in his infancy, was brought up in poverty. He managed to
train as a scientist and spent the Restoration researching cell theory. He
fought on the barricades in 1830 and quickly passed from democratic republican to socialist beliefs. He gave up research in favour of popularizing
science and gradually moved into medicine.91 He was prosecuted because he
did not have conventional medical training, and in his trial deplored the
judgmental attitude of most bourgeois doctors to the poor.92 He popularized
the use of camphor, which he believed was efficacious in treating contagion.
Raspail was soon well-known for his cheap, practical remedies, especially his
camphor cigarettes. His annual manual of health, first published in 1845,
was reissued for over a hundred years and translated into several languages.
It was a popular work of reference in central and south America, as well as
Europe.93
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As in so much of early socialism, our exploration of attitudes to the total
reorganization of society on the basis of association reveals a mixture of
fanciful and down-to-earth action. The motivation behind the two main
“dream” communities devised by early socialists, Fourier’s phalange and
Cabet’s Icarie, were totally different. Fourier argued that it was vital to set up
phalanges because individuals were not free to develop their true natures in
existing society, or “civilization”, as he dubbed it pejoratively. Thus the needs
of the human psyche were behind his plans. On the other hand, Cabet’s perfect association, Icarie, was driven by economic necessity, and was a template
for how to replace harmful, destructive, capitalist competition. It is easy to
pick holes in their dreams and to expose latent authoritarianism and organizational nightmares within these entertaining accounts of new worlds. Contemporary conservatives were not amused and were erroneously convinced,
apparently, that both the phalange and Icarie threatened the existing capitalist socioeconomic order. On the other hand, the concern of socialist professionals with the environment and public health were practical and brought
direct benefit, in particular the contribution of socialist doctors in tending
the poor and raising public awareness. Their efforts to work within mutualaid schemes and run their own clinics made a valuable contribution to the
emergence of a national system of health care. As for the Fourierists, they
were committed to engaging the state at all levels and solving the social question through massive public works programmes. Small wonder that the
Fourierists tend to be neglected in histories of socialism! To a present-day
socialist, Considérant might seem a convincing role model for New Labour;
at least he was a trained railway engineer, who might contribute realistically
to solving London’s transport problems. The focus on practical solutions to
public health problems are again being explored in the form of “drop in”
centres in pharmacies in the early twenty-first century.
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CHAPTER EIGHT
Worker associations before 1848
While it is straightforward to describe utopian socialist dream worlds, to
define the significance of worker associations to early socialism is somewhat
more complex. In this chicken-and-egg debate, the primacy of socialist
doctrine in asserting cooperation as an alternative to capitalist competition
has been reversed in the past 20 years as historians have begun to stress the
persistence of traditional artisan concepts. Sewell explored the continuity
between the traditional artisan corporations of the eighteenth century, the
compagnonnages and confraternités, and early nineteenth-century mutualaid and other workers’ organizations.1 Furthermore, he claimed that an
awareness of class identity was present in the nineteenth-century formations
and that workers, through their organizations, made major contributions to
revolutionary movements in this half-century.2 Fellow Americans took him
to task, claiming that Marseille, where Sewell had done his innovative
research, may have fitted his model, but that it was not relevant elsewhere.3
Buttressed by recent detailed research into worker groups,4 they asserted
the diversity of artisan associations, few of which were committed to
revolutionary goals.5 They denied that a cohesive and coherent worker
consciousness existed.6
Many socialists were artisans, and worker associations figured as some of
the most practical achievements of socialism. Most socialists described, and
tried to implement, piecemeal reform very different from utopian dream
worlds. Indeed even those who were called utopians spent much of their time
addressing limited, practical problems. The worker associations of the early
nineteenth century followed the template of how their organizers thought
the traditional economy had operated in harmonious cooperation. The
predominance of such concepts in the 1830s and 1840s convinced some
recent historians that the origins of socialism lay far more in attempts to
recapture a lost artisan world than explore economic and social innovation.7
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In reality traditional artisan corporations had been, and remained, competitive and combative, rather than cooperative.8
For artisans the natural solution to the problems of unemployment and
poverty were associations, rooted in long-established networks, traditional
compagnonnages or confraternités, leading in the early nineteenth century to
the growth of newer mutual-aid societies. Artisan writers, such as Agricol
Perdiguier, urged the revamping of traditional corporations. The mason
Martin Nadaud organized a producer cooperative.
This artisan initiative was taken over by philanthropic bourgeois radicals,
particularly the Saint-Simonians and the Fourierists. In the early nineteenth
century “worker culture” was idealized. Workers were held to be nearer to
the Almighty. Worker poets enjoyed the adulation of the fashionable middle
classes and lithographs and paintings of the proletariat were in demand.
Middle-class socialists, such as Buchez and Ange Guépin, became facilitators
of artisan initiative. They made association their first principle and contributed both organizationally and financially to a variety of practical schemes,
mutual insurance, producer and retail cooperatives and embryonic trade
unions, to help working people to improve their circumstances.
N. T. Charlet, “A Man of the People”, in Les Français peints par eux-mêmes, Paris 1841.
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W O R K E R A S S O C I AT I O N S B E F O R E 1 8 4 8
In pre-revolutionary France journeymen’s organizations, confraternités
and compagnonnnages, provided some basic insurance for members against
sickness, paid for funerals and also helped to protect wages and conditions of
work. Journeymens’ compagnonnages had contacts in workshops that facilitated the traditional tour de France performed by a craftsman to perfect his
skills. Both groups had religious roots and the initiation as a compagnon
involved secret passwords and symbols similar to those of freemasonry.9 The
three strands to the compagnonnages, the rites of Salomon, Devoir and
Liberté, were mutually antagonistic, often violently so, in the spirit of early
twenty-first-century football supporters. Compagnonnages were hierarchical
and investiture into each grade was accompanied by distinctive ceremonies
and costumes. As apprentices completed their training and advanced
through the various stages of journeymen to become masters, they progressed within their compagnonnages. Each compagnonnage would have
links with member groups through the country, customarily enabling a man
to move around improving his skills. As well as providing companionship
and sociability, compagnonnages had a disciplinary role, with the power to
punish incompetent, lazy or dishonest workers.
Such organizations were in a state of flux and transition in the early nineteenth century.10 They contravened revolutionary legislation like the Allarde
and le Chapelier laws of 1791, aimed, ostensibly at dismembering the relics
of guilds in the name of the “freedom of industry”. The Penal Code of 1804
banned all associations of more than 20 members, but artisan organizations
were tolerated if they posed no substantial public order nuisance. By the
1820s, the rigid hierarchies of guild control had collapsed.11 Artisan groups
were forced to devise new approaches to protect their members.12 The rapid
expansion of rural industry reduced the power of artisan organizations to
defend wages and prices and protect members in times of economic crisis.
Recurrent crises made the rivalry inherent in compagnonnages seem pointless and more constructive organizations were needed to help workers
survive. In 1824 the locksmiths’ organization broke away from the compagnonnage to set up a Union sur le tour de France, which was designed to bring
together workers from different trades. In the increasingly adverse economic
circumstances of the time, with cyclical economic depression roughly every
ten years, workers hoped to gain some security by banding together. The
crisis of 1827–32 made this search for solidarity all the keener. In the 1830s
Grignon, a tailor, Jules Leroux, a typesetter and Efrahem, a shoemaker,
published a pamphlet urging cooperation. During the next decade pressure
for the reform of compagnonnage from men in a variety of trades, became
even more intense.
In the 1830s artisans in a number of trades began to demand radical
reform. The most famous worker of the century, and the best self-publicist,
Agricol Perdiguier, published a critical study of traditional associations in
1840 which was to have a major impact.13 Having completed a somewhat
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traumatic apprenticeship, which he described in his book, Perdiguier settled
in the faubourg Saint-Antoine to teach architecture and line-drawing in his
own school. He also wrote for the Saint-Simonian newspaper La Ruche
populaire, edited by Vinçard, and for Buchez’s L’Atelier. His work experience
taught him that the often bloody rivalry between different compagnonnages,
heroically commemorated in their songs, was destructive:
Chaque société vénérait ses héroes, ses martyrs et maudissait tout ce
qui lui était opposé. Nos chansons chantaient la guerre, exaltait
notre orgueil, notre supériorité, nos préventions … Nous étions des
dieux et nos adversaires étaient des brigants, des sots, des bêtes
stupides et méchantes, indignes de vivre.14
Perdiguier wanted to purge the organization of the combative element, while
retaining the benefits of cooperation. In the mid 1830s he began to write and
publish worker songs of Christian brotherhood.
Let the happier compagnons
Forgetting their disastrous wars,
Be able to see and love one another,
As friends and brothers.15
His study of compagnonnage brought him rapid fame. It was read by socialists like Flora Tristan and Ange Guépin.16 On a repeat tour de France in 1840
to publicize the book, he met George Sand. He was the hero of her Le
Compagnon du tour de France. Similarly inspired, Eugène Sue made him the
hero, Agricol Baudouin, in his novel Le Juif Errant, first published 1844–45.
Béranger and Lamartine also joined his fan club.
Perdiguier’s seminal volume on compagnonnage was quickly followed by
the contributions of other working men: Boyer in 1841; Gosset, a blacksmith, a year later; Moreau, a locksmith; and François, a leather tanner.17
Gosset urged the rival rites to unite: “Are we not all brothers according to
the teaching of Our Lord?”18 On the same tack a year later Moreau
reminded his readers that the rites of Toulon and Marseille had merged
their funds. Their books did not bring them Perdiguier’s fame but the
notion of worker association was to grow in popularity, reaching its peak
after the February Revolution.
Traditional artisan associations were never reformed, but gradually
replaced or transformed in mutual-aid societies. The new mutual-aid
societies also lived in the shadow of repressive legislation, although in practice they were often subject to the same ambiguous, tenuous tolerance as the
long-established journeymen’s foundations. Mutual-aid societies developed
from traditional structures. For a fixed weekly fee members gained whatever
insurance was agreed within the group, ranging from funeral costs to sick138
W O R K E R A S S O C I AT I O N S B E F O R E 1 8 4 8
ness, old age and unemployment pay. Unlike traditional artisan groups,
mutual-aid societies tended to be very small in scale and were usually confined to a single trade, often in a particular district of a town. In 1809 there
were 28 societies in the capital with 2,520 members; by 1818 there were 79;
and in 1821 there were 128 societies with 10,000 members. In Lyon there
were 35 mutual-aid groups in 1815.19 Mutual-aid provided some measure of
security for those least in need. It cost between 10 and 30 francs to join and
between 1 and 2 francs a month in fees. At the top end a member might look
forward to an old-age pension of up to 150 francs and sick pay of 2 francs,
reduced by half after 90 days, and free medical care.20
Craft associations came under some pressure in the early 1830s. In 1832,
after the unrest in June, the number of mutual-aid groups in Paris collapsed
from 201 to 131. The Orleanists were far more suspicious than the Restoration governments that mutual-aid societies were involved in politics.21
However, mutual-aid recovered rapidly from the setback. In 1833 there
were 205 groups. By 1846 there were about 262 (statistics vary) with 22,695
members.22
Most mutual-aid societies were small, but annual figures fail to indicate
that, outside the central core, a substantial number of people joined them for
a limited period. The largest society was the société laborieuse, a Fourierist
association of shoemakers. The vast majority of members were skilled
artisans, with some shopkeepers. Most societies indicated that their members were drawn from a single trade; in 1847 apparently 215 of the 264
societies in the capital were in this category. In reality a majority of members
were often from other trades. Nationwide there were very few societies for
unskilled or female workers. In 1848 only 6 per cent of members were
women, and they were mostly wives and other close relatives of associates.
They could not vote or speak. In the early 1850s there were over 40,000
women, either in mixed societies or women-only groups, but by 1855 when
there were over 3,000 mutual-aid groups for men, with nearly 350,000
members, the independent women’s groups had disappeared. Some societies
had honorary members, philanthropists, doctors, employers and officials,
who contributed money and experience, but drew no benefits. By the 1850s
their participation was often regarded as patronizing and confined to only
15 societies.23 The Lyon groups in 1860 resented the obligatory presence of
local worthies.24
In principle mutual-aid societies were democratically run. The whole
membership was supposed to meet up to four times a year to elect a small
committee that had the responsibility for collecting weekly dues. Some
became virtual oligarchies, some obliged all members to take a turn on the
committee. They could rarely afford special premises, but met in a café.
Societies spent up to one-third of their income providing sick pay. Members
received sick pay of 1–2 francs a day, reduced to half after 90 days. Free
medical care was common; 43 groups subscribed to a clinic run by the société
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philanthropique. Some groups gave retirement pensions only, and no sick
pay. These averaged 150 francs a year, paid from aged 65. They were usually
paid from income, not investments, and could cripple societies. Between 50
and 100 francs was paid out at death and funerals were big occasions for
surviving associates.25
Mutual-aid groups were more than self-help insurance schemes. They
actively encouraged a spirit of cooperation and fraternity among members,
and were not hostile to other societies, in the manner of compagnonnages.
Contemporaries, particularly among the middle class, applauded mutual-aid
societies for encouraging thrift and morality among workers. Unlike charity,
mutual-aid kept workers independent. Sometimes the line between independence and charity was blurred. In 1815 the Lyon Chamber of Commerce
contributed 3,000 francs to the local mutual-aid groups.26 In contrast to
compagnonnages the societies promoted sober sociability and constant
checks on members helped to prevent malingering. On the other hand,
relatively high membership fees meant that only well-established artisans,
presumably those least in need, could afford to join. In northern France the
groups, even when they adopted saints’ names were mostly secular, but in the
south they were likely to be supported by the local priest.27 However, in the
1830s the Toulouse groups dispensed with clerical patronage.28 There were
societies run by Protestants and Jews, where religion was important. In 1841
there were 18 Jewish mutual-aid groups in Paris with 715 members.
Traditional craft associations and the newer mutual-aid societies provided
working models of associations on which socialists could build, although
some contemporary socialists were sceptical of their significance. Buchez,
doctor to the members of the société protestante in the late 1820s, was convinced that they did promote more comprehensive notions of association,
but in the 1850s Vinçard thought they were merely insurance schemes with
no overarching sense of unity of purpose. More conservative contemporaries were also divided and some feared that mutual-aid groups were active in
strikes. Towards the end of the twentieth century American analysts continue
to dispute the significance of mutual-aid, Sibalis sympathizing with Vinçard,
and Sewell supporting Buchez.29 Insurance was legal, but strikes were not.
The statutes of mutual-aid societies had to eschew industrial action, but their
members were not prepared to tie their hands, for the same reason that they
paid their insurance fees to the society – security. Workers formed other
groups that were more overtly political, including sociétés philanthropiques.
These were partly based on mutual-aid principles, but prepared to take more
direct action including strikes. In Paris a cohort of masons some 2,000 strong
ran a mutual-aid society between 1840 and 1895, which, when appropriate,
set up a strike committee.30
Not all the members of mutual-aid societies would have considered
themselves radical, let alone socialist but, in reality, in these years mutual-aid
represented the most successful attempts of artisans to improve their condi140
W O R K E R A S S O C I AT I O N S B E F O R E 1 8 4 8
tion and the mutual-aid model permeated the thinking of socialists, both artisan and middle-class. The idea of cooperatives emerged from a combination
of mutual-aid and traditional artisan associations. It was translated into a variety of producer and retail cooperatives and craft unions. How to finance
worker associations was a big problem; few groups of workers could cope
with self-finance, since the inspiration for associations was economic necessity. Some depended on money from middle-class socialists. Proudhon
dreamed of a “bank of the people” and some theorists demanded state loans,
often citing the traditional and important role of state initiative in the
economy, manifest from Colbert to Turgot. Some, like Buchez, who favoured
self-finance, were not averse to short-term loans from the state. No early
socialists, despite the claims of their detractors, wanted the wholesale
replacement of private ownership by the state.
Buchez was one of the most persuasive catalysts of producer cooperatives
and unusual in that he started not just from a religious, but from a Catholic
base.31 Philippe Buchez (1796–1865) started his working life as a minor
bureaucrat in the octroi (indirect taxes) of Paris alongside his father, who had
worked there since the Directory, but Buchez left when his father was
dismissed at the Second Restoration.32 He turned to medicine and quickly
became a dynamic radical force in the student community. He helped found
the liberal masonic lodge, the Amis de la Verité, and was one of those who
brought the charbonnerie to France. A vigorous proselytizer in Eastern
France, he was arrested, but acquitted, after the abortive 1822 conspiracy.
He was in at the beginning of Saint-Simonism and met Saint-Simon. He
became the medical correspondent of their paper the Producteur in 1826 and
urged that they should work towards a new social order rooted in religion.
Some months later he and Trélat, a fellow medical student, set up the Journal
des Progrès des Sciences et Institutions Médicales.
In 1829 Buchez was one of the first to break with the sect, convinced that
they were deviating from Saint-Simon’s ideas. A participant in the 1830
fighting, Buchez could not accept the Orleanist Monarchy and was a founder
member of the republican society, the Amis du Peuple at the time of the revolution. He also created the école buchezienne, which he claimed was true to
Saint-Simon’s objectives. He founded the Européen to speak for them. It
survived until 1838. In 1847 he and Jules Bastide started the Revue
Nationale, which blended social concern and nationalism and recommended
that France should take a lead in European cooperation.
Meanwhile he had become involved in historical writing. He believed that
his history was scientific, and like many contemporaries was convinced of
the value of history as proof and predictor of human progress. He and RouxLavergne wrote a 40 volume history of the Revolutionary assemblies. He ran
evening classes for his “worker aristocracy” in Paris, teaching them his
version of the 1789 Revolution. He defended the Jacobins as the spokesmen
for worker issues because they retained some religious belief, but had no time
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FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
for the “godless” Babeuf. He put his faith for the future in the scientific study
of the past and in Catholicism. His own practical remedy for the evils of
competitive capitalism were producer cooperatives. He had the distinction
of helping to found a jewellers’ cooperative in Paris in 1834, which survived
until 1873. It was a small enterprise, with never more than 17 associates. In
the long term he wanted all workers to own their own businesses and the
state to lend them funds. He was always a staunch defender of workers’ associations of all kinds.
The example Buchez had given of producer cooperatives with a strong
basis in religion was echoed by the efforts of Perdiguier and Lamennais, the
democratic Catholic. In 1847 Lamennais was promised 100,000 francs to
create an association of producer cooperatives. Perdiguier agreed to organize the venture, until their banker, Michel Goudchaux, future finance
minister in the Second Republic, made it clear that the member associations
would be expected to compete with each other. This conflicted with
Perdiguier’s profound belief that cooperatives should be rooted in Christian
brotherhood, and not be disguised capitalism.33
Buchez helped to found a second successful cooperative venture, the
newspaper L’Atelier, which was run, owned and read by artisans. Like its
more successful rival, the Populaire, it took a practical interest in workers’
problems and ran a series of enquiries covering hatters, engineering workers
of all kinds and silk weavers. They looked into wages, hours, conditions of
work and unemployment, including that of women and children.34 While
deploring the poor conditions and low wages endured by women, the editors
were equally critical, as one might expect from a newspaper with a Catholic
slant, that women were forced by economic circumstances to leave their
homes to work. They recommended that men’s wages be increased, so that
women could tend their families, forgetting that many women went out to
work because there was no male breadwinner. In 1844 the Atelier violently
attacked Flora Tristan’s plan for a union ouvrière, dismissing her as an
“O’Connell in skirts” and even denying her the opportunity to defend
herself in the newspaper.35 L’Atelier reached a circulation of 2,000 in 1847,
and had some middle-class readers.
The Second Republic offered Buchez, along with other socialists, the
opportunity to try out their ideas. A member of the National Guard, which
marched on the Tuileries Palace, Buchez was made assistant mayor of Paris
by Garnier-Pagès, his old collaborator on the Revue Nationale, who also
elevated Corbon, editor of L’Atelier, to be the mayor’s secretary.36 Although
he had urged state help for worker cooperatives during the 1840s, he disagreed with Blanc and opposed both the Luxembourg Commission and the
decree promising a “right to work”. He was elected to the Constituent
Assembly by the Seine and became its first president in May 1848,37 a choice
described by the legitimist Falloux as “conservative”.38 It was unfortunate
for Buchez’s future reputation that a significant invasion of the Assembly, os142
W O R K E R A S S O C I AT I O N S B E F O R E 1 8 4 8
tensibly in favour of the Polish revolution, took place on May 15. Buchez
was blamed for the considerable delay in calling the National Guard to bring
the invasion to an end. He was not re-elected in June and subsequently his
influence dwindled, but in July 1848 the Constituent Assembly, under the influence of Buchezians, provided 3 million francs to encourage workers’ cooperatives, which Buchez was keen to point out would be very different from
the model recommended by Louis Blanc. L’Atelier ceased publication in July
1850. Buchez was arrested briefly after the coup of December 1851. He remained convinced that workers’ cooperatives made sense and his contribution was not forgotten. However his writing on the subject was not
remembered, being less pithy than that of Blanc.
Like Buchez, the socialist Ange Guépin (1805–1873), trained as a doctor
in the 1820s and, like him, was involved with the charbonnerie and the SaintSimonians and had his first “official” opportunity to try out his socialism in
1848. Unlike Buchez, Guépin developed his medical career and lived his
whole life in provincial France, in Nantes.39 He came from a local, notable,
republican family of Girondin preferences and sustained a lifelong radical
loyalty, often describing himself, particularly after a few jars, as “the soldier
of 1830”, having been a leading participant in lively exchanges in Nantes
during the 1830 Revolution.
After the revolution, Guépin settled into the life of the community, but he
retained his links with Parisian Saint-Simonians, particularly Michel Chevalier, and became the lynch-pin of radical and socialist reform in Nantes.
Disappointed with the failure of the Orleanists to address the problem of
poverty, in November 1830 Guépin founded the Société industrielle de
Nantes to provide help for unemployed workers, mainly in road construction.40 It was a far more all-embracing association than that devised by
Buchez. Based on a mutual-aid model, Guépin secured generous donations
from the government and from the duc d’Orléans. These allowed the society
to acquire its own building, with a library, space to run a clinic and funds to
develop its mutual-aid function. Plans to provide retirement pensions for
workers were included. Guépin ran the clinic. In 1832 he helped to set up a
short-lived tailors’ cooperative and was involved with patriotic and press associations. Later, when the original industrial society was still running very
successfully, Guépin explained the basis of his ideas on the function of associations: “C’est à bien dire un protectorat des classes riches sur les classes
pauvres”, kickstarted by philanthropy, but far better than charity, which he
argued was medieval and only led to idleness.41
Guépin retained his belief in wide-ranging associations, but lost faith in
Saint-Simonism as the influence of Enfantin grew. His radical social views
remained undaunted and he had difficulty accepting that some SaintSimonians, such as his close friend, Michel Chevalier, began to support
Orleanism.42 He took to Fouerierism. The experimental community at
Condé-sur-Vesgre was founded on land owned by a friend of his. He was also
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drawn to Leroux and Cabet and, above all, Lamennais. A convinced republican by the early 1830s, Guépin had Bonapartist sympathies and commissioned a wax model of Napoleon for the annual procession to celebrate the
July Days, which he was asked to organize in 1833.
Despite his involvement in the July Days, Guépin totally rejected the
Babouvist stance of Blanqui that planned revolution was the answer to the
problems of society. Guépin continued to believe that economic competition
should be replaced by association, based on discussion, agreement and
consent: “Il faut socialiser les moyens de communication, les moyens de distribution des produits, les titres de crédit et les banques”.43 He demanded a
systematic approach to economic planning, to resolve what he thought was
the biggest problem; conflict between master and man. He hoped that industrial associations, like those he initiated in Nantes, would proliferate. They
were not charity. All employees would pay weekly subscriptions of about 10
per cent of their earnings into a central fund, which would pay out for
accidents, unemployment and retirement. Wage levels would be negotiated
by mutual agreements. Sons would be guaranteed employment and the
society would loan cash to workers to buy their business when it became
available.44 Social conflict would become a thing of the past and everyone
would be provided for; no one luxuriously, but Guépin disapproved of
excessive wealth.
Proudhon, another native of the Franche-Comté, was the most famous
and influential advocate of autonomous producer cooperatives. Proudhon
was one of few politicians who had direct knowledge of the social question,
coming from a relatively poor family, too impecunious to buy him books for
his school studies. The first and best-known of his books, his scholarship
essay for the Academy of Besançon, Qu’est-ce que la propriété?, was the only
one to be translated into English in full.45 A charge that his book undermined
private property was rejected by the jury of the royal court in Besançon. In
Paris he met Marx, Bakunin and Herzen in the 1840s, and this was the start
of permanent friendships with the last two. Marx was keen on Proudhon’s
first book, but subsequently they could not agree; Proudhon thought Marx
too doctrinaire. Proudhon did not become a full-time writer. When his
scholarship ran out he went to work for a shipping company in Lyon; his
employers were friends and left him time to write.
The centralized state was anathema to Proudhon.46 Although we may
think of him as a socialist, he often weighed into socialists as unrealistic
utopians.47 He opposed Louis Blanc’s socialism from above; socialism had to
come from the people. Whereas other socialists proposed an economic system that they believed was diametrically opposed to capitalism, Proudon
thought that his theory, which he called mutualism, offered a harmonizing
equilibrium. The term must have been suggested to him by the name of the
Lyon silk workers’ association, the Mutualists. His mutualism was a sophisticated form of barter. It involved the free association of producers engaged in
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the equal exchange of goods. Capitalism would be replaced by contracts negotiated between free individuals and expressed in letters of credit deposited
in a peoples’ bank.
Proudhon would have made a successful advertising copy-writer. He was
the master of the pithy, often shocking phrase, and ignored inconsistencies
and contradictions. Although Proudhon stated that the right to property was
the right to rob, it is clear that he was not opposed to private ownership, but
to “surplus” holdings; excessive concentrations in the hands of individuals
that led to others being exploited. Social harmony and equality would never
be achieved while gross inequalities of property holding persisted. On the
other hand, Proudhon fervently believed that private ownership should
continue and criticized communists who sought its abolition. He was convinced that the communism recommended by Cabet would be “oppression
and slavery”.48 His ideal was a community in which as many people as possible owned modest quantities of land, enough to sustain a family. When he
wrote of industry, it also was small-scale and artisanal.
Proudhon claimed he was a champion of liberty, but no democrat. He
sought a just society, where all were equal in rights, where the law prevailed
and where privilege and slavery were outlawed.49 Unlike many writers, he
did not think the revolutions of 1789 and 1830 had advanced the cause of
justice. Both revolutions stressed individual sovereignty, which Proudhon
opined was likely to end in despotism; both were rooted in inequalities of
wealth and rank and both constitutionally guaranteed rights of private
ownership of property. He questioned whether these “principles” were in
harmony with justice. He claimed that the first self-evidently was not. Nor
was the second; but it could easily be changed by eliminating the third –
surplus property. The Declaration of Rights stipulated that the right to property was inalienable, but, Proudhon suggests, “property and society are
utterly irreconcilable institutions”. Property was incompatible with civil and
political equality. He unequivocally stated “the right of property was the
origin of evil on the earth”. If, he argued, the right of property was based on
labour, then permanent ownership could not follow. “Without the abolition
of property, the organisation of labour is neither more nor less than a
delusion”.50
Proudhon wanted equality and liberty. Fourier, he asserted, was wrong in
basing reward on “capital, labour and skill”; if one man was less talented
than another it was no good reason for paying him less. He would have had
no time for Fourier’s obligatory opera houses. Society could survive without
its great artists, but not without its food producers. Equality, independence,
the rule of law and proportionality; this would be liberty. Proportionality
was a way of equalizing without the egalitarianism of communism. To
explain, Proudhon distinguished between property and possession; the
former brought unreasonable profit, the latter merely the opportunity to
earn a decent living. “Suppress property, while maintaining possession, you
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will revolutionize law, government, the economy and institutions”, “Profit is
impossible and unjust”.51
Proudhon seemed to be condemning private ownership, but his final
conclusion was tame:
I ask, on the one hand, that property be left as it is, but that interest
on all kinds of capital be gradually lowered and finally abolished; on
the other hand, that the charter be maintained in its present shape,
but that method be introduced into administration and politics.52
His strident, ringing, memorable slogans ended in a demand for a profit
tax and the reduction in interest rates. “Property is like the dragon which
Hercules killed: to destroy it, it must be taken, not by the head, but by the
tail, – that is, by profit and interest”.53 For all his avowed anarchism, he did
not even challenge the Orleanist monarchy, concluding that those who
sought a republic were themselves power hungry.
Proudhon had set the tone of his philosophy; eye-catching and inflammatory, but basically reformist. Like Fourier he remained a part-time writer and
continued to work for the Gautier’s in Lyon. His ideas were quickly known
to fellow socialists, with whom lengthy and bitter arguments were launched.
One such was Marx. Their sparring match began in 1846.54 Proudhon was
convinced that his background and views made him more in touch with “the
people”, in whose wisdom he was inclined to place confidence. In reality he
had virtually no contact with an artisan audience before the 1848 Revolution. Just before the revolution he was attempting to remedy this defect by
launching a newspaper, Le Peuple.
Marx dismissed Proudhon as a “petit bourgeois” thinker. Proudhon
wanted an economic, not a political revolution, which he explained in one of
his typically cryptic aphorisms: “I wage war against old ideas, not old
men”.55 His was no class war to bring the proletariat to political power, but a
new equilibrium, a just society, in which no one would suffer from extremes
of deprivation and no one indulge in excess wealth. He assumed that the basis of this change would be moral and that man, a fairly rational being, would
see its benefits. The state had no role to play. When prince Napoleon, son of
Jérôme Bonaparte, asked Proudhon what would be his ideal society, he
answered, “I dream of a society in which I would be guillotined as a
conservative”.56 For all the contradictions in his thought, Proudhon was
recognized as the inspiration for the experimental producer cooperatives of
the Second Republic.
The problem with worker cooperatives, then as now, was how to finance
them. In France there was a long-established tradition of state involvement in
major public works projects, managed by state trained, high-level engineers.
This dated back to Colbert in the seventeenth century, and in the eighteenth
century the reforming minister Turgot envisaged a radical expansion of the
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programme. Some socialists, especially Proudhon, were entirely hostile to the
participation of the state in any form of association. Indeed, the state did not
lift the ban on all associations until 1864, when trade unions were legalized.
However other socialists, most forcefully Louis Blanc, argued that the state
should be the “banker to the poor”, lending money to artisans to help create
social workshops.
Louis Blanc was the only French socialist to enter government during the
nineteenth century, although he is mainly remembered as a theorist and publicist. He was an admirer of Robespierre and is usually labelled a “Jacobin”
socialist,57 but this should not convey the image of a revolutionary firebrand.
He had praise for the Saint-Simonians, but found their ambiguous attitude to
democracy repugnant. Blanc believed that socialism should be the product of
gradual change, spearheaded by a benevolent democratic republic. He was
the hero of the radical socialists in the Third Republic, not the Marxists.
The republican and socialist radicals of the 1830s and 40s often had
revolutionary forebears. Not so Louis Blanc. His father and grandfather,
both middle-class merchants, fought against the montagnards in Lyon at the
time of the Convention and were arrested; his grandfather was guillotined.58
His father was employed by Napoleon, thanks to the intervention of his
wife’s family. Recognized as a loyal royalist, he received a pension from the
Bourbons, which terminated at the 1830 Revolution. Thus Louis Blanc’s
childhood was spent in an impoverished, but bourgeois household, a not
uncommon background for an early socialist. He was a scholarship boy at
the college in Rodez. He was taken on as a journalist by the Propagateur du
Pas-de-Calais and its owner, Frédéric Desgeorges, a rich local liberal industrialist, employed him as tutor to his children. In 1834, when he moved to
Paris, Desgeorges helped him find work and continued to publish his articles.
He worked for Rodde and Cauchois-Lemaire, owners of the weekly Bon
Sens; after Rodde’s death he was left to his own devices. The Bon Sens
(1832–39) suited Blanc. It was a spokesman for democratic institutions and
the expansion of education and an opponent of strikes, secret societies and
violent revolution. In 1837 he used its columns to publicize an electoral
committee, headed by Dupont de l’Eure, Laffitte and Arago, which tried,
ineffectually, to unite the left in the parliamentary election. Blanc tried to
widen the readership; in addition to the annual subcription of 20 francs, he
commissioned hawkers to sell single copies at 5 centîmes an issue. The paper
printed a regular supplement, the Tribune des Prolétaires, designed to
educate workers and filled with readers’ letters. By 1836 it had a circulation
of 1,650 but two years later this slumped to 700, mainly through the desertion of provincial subscribers, and the paper closed.
At the beginning of 1839 Blanc, now firmly republican, joined La Revue
du Progrès Politique, Social et Littéraire. Their platform was universal
suffrage, the abolition of the Chamber of Peers and a reduction in the power
of the king. They demanded that the state take a lead in the organization of
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work to improve pay and conditions and the setting up of producer cooperatives.59 Blanc’s contribution to a theme that was becoming fashionable at this
time was published a year later as L’Organisation du travail, which provides
his blueprint for solving the social question. Little of what he said was
original: Fourier praised producer cooperatives; Buchez and others set them
up; while Blanc explained how they could be financed. His book was a
combination of evidence that poverty was increasing, which he drew from
the growing number of contemporary surveys and a brief summary of what
could be done. He condemned capitalism, hailed by liberals as freedom of
competition and vital for economic growth, as the greatest evil of his day. Far
from liberating people, capitalism enslaved them and forced them into
crime. Capitalism had been stimulated by the revolutions of 1789 and 1830,
which accentuated class divisions between an exploitative bourgeoisie and a
proletariat entirely dependent on each day’s wages for their survival. The
dictates of “free” competition obliged employers to pay the lowest possible
wages in order to sell their products at the cheapest price. Both worker and
bourgeois were damaged; wages fell below subsistence and employers were
forced into bankruptcy, thereby constantly swelling the ranks of the proletariat and eliminating the less competitive producers. This situation was not
a temporary blip, as liberal economists argued; radical strategies were
needed, but not revolution.
For Blanc the obvious answer lay in state intervention, but he did not
propose a sudden, or total take-over. The state should offer constructive
help to groups of artisans who could not find work in the existing system:
“What the proletariat lacks to liberate itself, are the means of production; it
is the government’s job to provide them”.60 He did not anticipate that the
existing Orleanist regime would stretch to such benevolence, but in a vague
way hinted that democratic republicans would see sense in his proposal.
Groups of artisans would apply to the government for a loan to set up social
workshops; producer cooperatives. In the first year the government would
supervise the project closely. The partners would then choose their own
leaders, pay back their loan and share the profits. The subsequent role of the
state would be more distantly supervisory, ensuring that workshops competed reasonably with each other and creating central workshops for each
trade to oversee the activities of associated groups.
Blanc took a mere 15 pages of simple prose to outline his solution; he
spent the rest of the book justifying it. Capitalism benefited neither employer
nor worker. Women, especially, were paid appallingly low wages; Blanc
quotes the evidence compiled, sometimes by fellow radicals, like Guépin,
sometimes by members of the establishment, such as Villermé. When people
earned insufficient to make ends meet, they were forced into crime. Between
1832 and 1842 there had been a 28 per cent increase in crime in the capital.61 Capitalism also undermined the family, he asserted, because economic
deprivation obliged mothers to take a job and leave their children to wet
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nurses. Blanc sketched how his social workshops would operate. They would
include several trades, workers would receive a wage, the state would be reimbursed and the profit that remained would be used for tools for new members and to provide sick pay and pensions for those who could no longer
work. Private capital could be invested in a workshop and a successful group
might invest in other ones.
Like most socialists, Blanc believed that everyone could learn to jettison
their selfish desires and, through a process of formal education, acquire a
sense of common purpose, which he variously described as “solidarity”,
“association” or “fraternity”, although he went into far less detail on this
theme than many of his contemporaries. He assumed that “the Industrial
Revolution would be a profoundly moral revolution too” and that similar
cooperative principles would be applied to agriculture, although he had very
little to say about rural matters. His “social revolution” would destroy the
evils, misery and laziness of the existing order to the benefit of all and without bloodshed and upheaval.62
Another type of association that attracted attention in the 1840s was an
embryonic form of trade unionism. The two main exponents were women,
Flora Tristan and Jeanne Deroin. Flora Tristan (1803–1844) was influenced by
Fourier and by Robert Owen’s attempt to create the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union, although she was somewhat reluctant to acknowledge her
debt to either. She is best known for her scheme to create a mass association
of all workers in all trades. Tristan launched her campaign through her writing. She gained instant fame with a first and only novel,63 concerned with the
joint liberation of women and workers, published immediately after her
husband tried to kill her.64 Shortly afterwards she visited the poorest worker
districts in England, which she described in Promenades dans Londres, large
extracts of which were published in the Fourierist press. From the experience
of two visits to England, involving meetings with Chartist leaders, and also
quoting Buret’s comparative study of the workers of France and England,
Tristan dwelt on the appalling living and working conditions and hours, especially for women and, worst of all, the demoralizing consequences of such
poverty. From this experience she developed a mission to persuade all workers, men and women, to form a huge association to represent their interests.
Tristan’s contact with workers and sympathy with them as people rather
than as components of a theory was very limited. She had read Perdiguier,
whom she criticized for hoping to stimulate worker association by building
on traditional compagnonnages,65 on the grounds that only a small group
would benefit, leaving unchanged the material and moral dilemmas of most
workers. She also knew Moreau’s and Boyer’s books. From the last named
she borrowed the motto of her Union ouvrière: “Aujourd’hui le travailleur
crée tout, et cependant, il n’a aucun droit, ne possède rien, absolument rien”.
Her lack of direct knowledge made her the butt of criticism by the artisan
paper, L’Atelier.
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As a prelude to her own tour de France, Tristan circulated all compagnonnages with copies of her Union ouvrière. She received replies from a
number of artisans. A hat-maker from Geneva requested a further 25 copies
of the book and she received additional orders from Nantes, Toulon, Lyon
and Bordeaux. Charles Poncy, a mason from Toulon, composed a song,
which she included in the book. Toulon must have been a musical town;
Langomazino, a local blacksmith, also sent her a song.66
In common with most socialists, Tristan defined the social question as a
moral one. Workers had to develop a sense of class solidarity in order to be
able to help themselves. Only a massive national and, in time, international,
association of working people67 on the lines of Owen’s Grand Consolidated
scheme would do this. She argued that if all working people, men and
women, enrolled (she estimated a figure of 5 million), paying an annual fee
of 2 francs, the association would have enough money to pay someone to
represent its members’ interests in the Chamber of Deputies.
To promote the idea Tristan undertook her own tour de France. She
started from Paris in February 1843, where Saint-Simonians like the editor,
Vincard, were unsympathetic, although Perdiguier gave her some publicity.
She travelled the country, where possible from one hospitable Fourierist
group to another. She could not see that male workers were at best indifferent to her message of female equality within her new union. She could never
grasp that one of the main grievances of artisans, such as tailors, was that
they were being undercut by cheaper female labour. She constantly complained that working people had no interest in her own message: “C’est
reéllement la stupidité des ouvriers qui est capable de rebuter, de refroidir, de
degoûter l’âme la plus ardente … les uns sont bêtes, les autres grossiers,
insolents, les autres sots”. Dijon was a great disappointment to her. Only
where compagnonnages still existed did she find recruits. In Lyon she met
with 120 or so women in the Croix Rousse, who presumably were silk workers. They asked for pictures of Tristan to sell at 25 centîmes, which was not
exactly what she sought. She died before she had completed her rather futile
tour, the notes of which indicated that she had little understanding of working people, and was intolerant of those uglier and less educated than herself,
which seemed to mean most people.
During the July Monarchy worker associations, rooted in mutual-aid
principles, made modest progress among urban, better-off artisans. Poorer
workers, including women and those employed in rural areas, had no access
to organizations, membership of which cost roughly 20 per cent of a week’s
wages. Producer cooperatives were even rarer. As was the case with mutualaid, workers who had real need of help lacked the resources. Buchez’s
jewellers’ cooperative presumably attracted reasonably prosperous members. Guépin’s various groups clearly depended on a substantial philanthropic base. The idea of a mass association of workers was stillborn, not
only because Tristan died before it could develop, but because industrial
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structures were overwhelmingly small in scale and working people could
find common cause only with those who worked locally in the same trade.
Workers habitually ferociously opposed change, the introduction of cheap,
female labour, foreign operatives and new machines.
Despite the hopes of revolutionaries like Blanqui, there was only a limited
and localized sense of class identity or solidarity in early nineteenth century
France:
What difference does the banner, the party, or the colour make,
Are we not brothers in shame, in poverty, in sadness?’
asked Vinçard in his artisan newspaper, Le Ruche Populaire in 1842. Some
historians claim that the fact that the term “working class” came into general
use after the 1830s indicates that a sense of class identity was developing.
The truth was that brotherhood was extremely localized. The norms of traditional artisan corporations were mutual hostility not love. Structural and
technical changes exacerbated the conflict. Middle-class socialists may have
taken up the idea of producer cooperatives, but were artisans necessarily
grateful? When they were advocated or established by middle-class outsiders, worker associations were based on a fallacious understanding of traditional corporations. Even more misleading was the assumption that the
perceived evils of “individualism”, concurrence, or, as we should say, capitalism, would necessarily be corrected by worker associations. Some historians
have tended to look for a well-defined movement, but the associations of the
early nineteenth century were embryonic and fluid. We can see the reshaping
of craft guilds, tentative moves towards unionization and the beginnings of
mutual-aid, which was later translated into a state social security system.
The February Revolution of 1848 was heralded as the revival of the
neglected revolutionary principle of fraternity. Socialists hoped that the
declaration of a democratic and social republic in February 1848 would
provide the setting in which their plans for associations would mature. In
Chapter 9 I will consider how they fared.
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CHAPTER NINE
Association: socialist hopes
in the Second Republic
In the aftermath of the unexpected revolution of February 1848 and the
declaration by a tiny group of republicans of a democratic republic, the
opportunity seemed to have arrived for socialist dreams to become reality.
All the major socialists were very visible in the early months of the republic.
Louis Blanc was made secretary of the government and president of the
Commission of Workers. Three Saint-Simonians/Fourierists, Duveyrier,
Vidal and Pecqueur, joined him together with Considérant. The artisan
editor of L’Atelier, Corbon, became Buchez’s assistant as deputy mayor of
Paris. They were both elected to the National Assembly, with other artisans,
notably Nadaud, Perdiguier and Pelletier. Buchez became president of the
Asssembly. Cabet, Blanqui, Barbès and Raspail were active in the explosion
of political associations after the revolution. Considérant, Leroux, and
Proudhon conducted vigorous press campaigns to encourage worker associations and were elected to the new National Assembly. Considérant was
made a member of the committee set up to write a new constitution, as well
as the workers and national workshops committees. Few leading socialists of
the July Monarchy excluded themselves, two outstanding absentees being
Enfantin, whose work as a railway engineer left him no time for politics, and
Michel Chevalier, who had become a passionate anti-socialist. With such a
roll-call, action over emblematic issues like the right to work and the right of
association was on the cards.
Feminist socialists were also prominent. Clubs run by and for women
emerged. The first women’s club was the Société pour l’émancipation des
femmes. It was organized by Jenny d’Héricourt to promote intellectual and
moral emancipation through women’s education. It attracted an educated,
middle-class membership, supportive of a vaguely Saint-Simonian fraternity.
Men could not join. The Fourierists set up a Société de l’émancipation des
femmes, headed by Dr Malatier, which did not have gender boundaries.
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Jeanne Deroin, Pauline Roland, Désirée Gay and Eugènie Niboyet collaborated in a club and newspaper devoted to the rights of women.
The policies pursued by the provisional government seemed to augur
socialist reform. Fraternity was the watchword of the new republic. The
right to work and the right of association seemed secure. On 28 February the
government issued a decree that appeared to guarantee work for all. A
Commission of the Workers was created to report on workers’ problems.
National workshops were set up, which, initially, Fourierists hailed as the
first stage in the development of socialist workshops. A mass of radical clubs
sprang up. The National Assembly ordered a full national report on the
economy and voted 3 million francs for producer cooperatives. How socialist was all this?
The moderate republicans, many of them converted monarchists, who
dominated the new Assembly elected in April, were appalled by these measures, which they saw as a socialist menace, but although socialists were
prominent in the early months of 1848, it was moderate and social-reforming radical republicans who ran the provisional government. The radical
leader Ledru-Rollin became Minister of the Interior. The nearest a socialist
came to government was the postscript addition of Louis Blanc as secretary
to the provisional government. The presence of socialists on the periphery of
power depended on them retaining a following among artisans and sharing
the objectives of radicals in the government. In the following two chapters,
divided roughly between the months when the provisional government was
in power and the period after the elections of April 1848, I track their hopes
for work and association and explain why both socialists and radicals were
ultimately removed out of power by increasingly repressive state machinery.
Indeed, they did remarkably well to survive as long as they did.
The creation of a democratic republic brought socialists and radicals
closer together. The declaration of the republic convinced socialists that the
new regime might be sympathetic to their objectives, while radical republicans drew nearer to socialists in their hopes that social reform could be realized. What did socialists and radicals hope to achieve? There were two
parallel early objectives: first, to construct a democratic republic that would
serve the interests of the whole of society; second to address the problem of
unemployment. Socialists hoped that the latter could be resolved by diluting
capitalist competition and by the state accepting a constitutional obligation
to provide work.
Until 1848 most socialists had little hope that the state would be a catalyst
for social reform, although the Fourierists were developing plans to encourage an expanded programme of public works and social reform. In 1848 the
declaration of a republic in which all adult males were enfranchised changed
the former elitist monarchist goalposts. The state was no longer an enemy;
the male half of the vast majority that had been excluded from the pays légal
now had a voice. However, radicals and socialists were aware that the leap
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from an electorate of a quarter of a million to nine million had to be accompanied by the political education of new voters. Political clubs, modelled on
those of the 1790s, seemed the solution, both to educate voters and to act
directly as pressure-groups on the provisional government.
After the February Revolution political clubs, illegal since the Civil Code
of 1804, sprang up throughout France, self-consciously imitating those of
the early 1790s. Within a month there were 250 in Paris, rising swiftly to
450.1 It was here that socialists were most visible. The largest and most successful clubs were led by well-known socialists. The societies set up by Cabet,
Raspail and Blanqui each attracted over 5,000 members in Paris. Cabet’s
Société fraternelle centrale regularly drew up to 5,000 men and women. On
25 February he urged Icarians to support the new Republic: “tous les
travailleurs sont frères et doivent se considérer comme solidaires”.2 Cabet
used his club to teach the members about republicanism. He was preoccupied by the fact that France had been precipitated into a republic, a concept
alien, or at least unknown, to many of his countrymen. He urged respect for
the rights of the people; the freedom of the press, the right of association, a
new constitution, to be written by a National Assembly composed of salaried
deputies. Cabet was conscious of the fact that the expanding club movement
had considerable political potential. His more conservative fellow citizens
must have been alarmed when he also demanded the right of citizens to carry
weapons to defend their own interests.3 On 17 March upwards of 100,000,4
including many club members, supported the demands of Cabet, Blanqui
and other socialists and radicals that elections for a Constituent Assembly be
deferred so that people who had never been enfranchised could learn to understand the benefits of a republic. The elections were rescheduled to Easter
Sunday, which was a delay of only a few days.
Socialists had always proclaimed themselves radical nationalists, as keen
as the republicans of the July Monarchy to align themselves with European
revolutionaries. Cabet’s club insisted that France had a traditional role to
play as the leader of radical Europe. To underline their perceived mission as
champions of an altruistic radical nationalism they welcomed foreign delegations. Robert Owen attended several meetings in early April and his speech
was translated and read out.5 Radicals and socialists believed that they inherited their concept of fraternal nationalism from the republicans of the 1790s
and that it was an ideal that could be exported to succour foreign radicals.6
Moderate republicans, such as the foreign minister, Lamartine, were far
more circumspect. Initially it seemed that Cabet might be an influential figure in the new republic, but his ideas and strategies soon isolated him. Radical republicans such as Ledru-Rollin put their faith in democratic elections
and resented the way Cabet and others used the clubs to put pressure on the
government, particularly when their attempt to organize a rival Club des
clubs was an ignominious failure. Cabet was struck off Ledru-Rollin’s list of
candidates, the minister issued a public warning of the dangers of voting for
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a communist and Icarians were hounded. Cabet hoped that the new Assembly would spearhead social reform, particularly by promoting the idea of
association, but his past, and the use he made of his club, proved counterproductive. In addition Cabet was tainted by a pending court case involving
an apparently fraudulent attempt of the Icarians to buy land for their experimental commune in Texas (see Ch. 7 passim and pp. 150–51). He was not
elected to the Assembly in April and returned to America. Cabet and Icarian
socialism were finished.
The two main revolutionary socialist activists who had spent all of the July
Monarchy after their rising of 1839 in jail, Blanqui and Barbès, also set up
large popular clubs in Paris. Blanqui’s Société républicaine centrale opened
on 26 February and attracted many of those who had been in the secret societies during the July Monarchy. There was some suggestion after the June
Days that it had been associated with the Luxembourg Commission.7
Blanqui’s former insurgent associate, Barbès, who was much calmer after his
prolonged jail sentence, ran the more moderate Club de la révolution, which
attracted an audience of pretty girls. Blanqui saw the opportunity to use his
club as a direct political pressure group and his members were very visible in
demonstrations, particularly those of 17 March and 15 May. The May
demonstration took up the nationalist theme. It began as an attempt to put
pressure on the government to support the Polish revolt. After its failure
most of those who hoped that social change could be brought about by
further revolution were jailed, including Blanqui and Raspail. Blanqui never
lost faith in the revolutionary route to socialism, but for others the democratic process seemed to offer an alternative.
The Club des républicains socialistes had a Fourierist president and
Considérant played a leading role. Like other clubs, including Cabet’s, it had
a substantial female audience, but women were not allowed as members, to
the chagrin of Jeanne Deroin. The Fourierists, men and women, were probably the most influential socialists in 1848. There were clubs just for women,
notably the Club de l’émancipation des femmes, which was transformed into
the Société de l’éducation mutuelle des femmes in August to comply with new
legislation. Désirée Gay, Eugénie Niboyet, Anais Segalas and Esquiros were
leading figures. Niboyet was the founder of the Club des femmes, where, in
association with Deroin, she pushed the case of votes for women and the
restoration of the divorce law. The ladies were subject to incessant ridicule by
cartoonists like de Beaumont and Daumier. A contemporary hostile chronicler of the clubs, dismissing her crusade for women’s education, described
Niboyet as “Jeanne d’Arc aux bas bleus”.8
The clubs proved to be ineffective as electoral pressure groups. No more
than 150 out of nearly 900 deputies elected in April were radicals, and only a
handful were socialists. Protests ensued in several towns including Rouen,
Limoges and Lyon, as well as Paris, culminating in the June Days in Paris
when about 20,000 artisans rebelled against the conservative Assembly’s
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“The cloakroom at the Women’s Club: a husband and an umbrella –
that will be 4 sous”, H. Daumier, Le Charivari, 17 June 1848.
decision to close the national workshops, the traditional and temporary
solution to unemployment attempted by the provisional government. The
future of the clubs lay in the hands of the Assembly, and will be discussed
later.
The new republic’s strategies to deal with the growing problem of
unemployment appeared to reflect socialist ideals. On 25 February, the day
after the formation of the provisional government, a crowd of about 6,000
workers gathered outside the hôtel-de-ville, where the government was
meeting. Their spokesman, Marche, presented a petition: “Citizens, we demand that the government promises the organisation of work and the right
to work within the hour! That is the will of the People”.9 On 28 February a
proclamation, signed by all of the provisional government, promised that as
the revolution was made by the people, the prolonged and iniquitous suffering of working people must be terminated; the most important question for
the new republic was that of work; it was France that must solve the problem
besetting all industrialized nations in Europe – how to guarantee people the
legitimate product of their labour and the right for all to work.10 What did
this decree signify?
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The government appeared to be guaranteeing jobs, and recognizing the
right to work, which were both demanded by the Fourierists and Louis Blanc
before the revolution. Was the decree an indication of social or socialist
intent? Was it as innovative as it appeared or was it merely an attempt to buy
time in a dangerous situation? Was it a statement of a problem, or a proposal
for a solution? Contemporaries could never agree on what was intended by
this first decree and liberal economists, notably Garnier, who published a
compilation of the parliamentary debate on the right to work, only included
it as an afterthought in his final appendix. It was Louis Blanc who took the
opportunity of worker demonstrations at the hôtel-de-ville to secure the
decree. He wanted a ministerial appointment to coordinate policies for
work, but the rest of the government avoided this by creating a “government
commission for the workers” to make a full survey of unemployment, run by
Blanc and Albert, a worker veteran of the republican clubs of the July Monarchy. The commission was, arguably, the most socialist experience of the
Second Republic, but it has received far less attention from historians than
the June Days, which were not socialist at all. The vacant Luxembourg
Palace, seat of the Chamber of Peers before the February Revolution, was
assigned to them. This location had the additional attraction for the government of being a stiff walk from their own headquarters, for most were not
fans of the rather bumptious Blanc, and were nervous of his much-vaunted
following among Parisian workers.
It was soon apparent that Blanc wanted to make the commission a showcase for his theories, while the worker delegates expected it to deal with
immediate, practical problems, on the lines of existing traditional arbitration
panels, the conseils des prudhommes, whose composition it resembled. Some
groups of workers were highly organized. On 29 February 2,500 stonemasons met in the gardens of the Luxembourg Palace to elect their delegates and
present their demands to Blanc. The first full meeting of workers and
employers was held at 9a.m. on 1 March. They were joined by a substantial
contingent representing a cross-section of middle-class opinion from moderate to socialist, notably Fourierist, including Vidal (who was made secretary),
Reynaud, Considérant, Dupont-White, Duveyrier, Dupoty, Pecqueur and
Malarmet, a worker who was editor of Fraternité. Leroux, Olinde Rodrigues
and Emile de Girardin were named but not present. The list embraced a roll
call of leading Parisian socialists, leaving out only Cabet, Proudon and all the
female socialists. Blanc opened the proceedings with an uplifting welcome
noting the uniqueness of their gathering. He promised that something would
be done about the plight of the workers and that they could rely on the
benevolence of the soon-to-be elected National Assembly. Such anodyne
platitudes annoyed the workers’ delegates. Divisions between the middleclass intellectuals, especially Blanc, and the workers erupted immediately,
although Blanc was inclined to edit their disputes out of his published
reports of their meetings.
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To Blanc’s surprise workers demanded the immediate abolition of
marchandage, which was a detested, but surviving practice that allowed
more ambitious workers to act as subcontractors for a whole job and to dictate wage rates to their former mates.11 They also insisted on a reduction of
one hour in the working day, to make it ten hours in the departments and
eleven in Paris. Blanc rather patronizingly tried to divert them, observing
that they should concentrate on managing their own families, and leave the
provisional government to run the nation. Finally, he was forced to agree to
put the workers’ demands to the government. That same day a government
proclamation promised to look into the two problems.
The employers met the next day. They agreed unanimously that subcontracting should be banned. However they pointed out that two other types of
work organization, which might be described as forms of marchandage, were
wholly admirable. One was piece work and the other was when a group of
workers shared a job, which they insisted was an embryonic form of association. They approved the reduction in the working day. The provisional
government immediately issued a decree banning marchandage and cutting
the working day by one hour.12 It proved easier to ban subcontracting than
enforce it13 because there was no mechanism for checking working hours,
and self-policing, for instance by militant railway workers on the Paris–
Bordeaux line, proved abortive.14 In addition to their main sessions,
delegates for each arrondissement held regular gatherings and kept a record
of their debates. In the absence of government funding, these smaller groups
agreed to put in 25 centîmes a head to cover their running costs.15 Other
large towns like Lyon, Lille and Marseille created their own commissions.
Blanc tried to use the Luxembourg Commission as a forum to air his ideas
on social reform. Ever eclectic, he spoke with enthusiasm for a scheme that
resembled what Saint-Simonians had tried to do in the early 1830s. In the
four most populous areas of the capital four settlements should to be created
to house 400 workers’ families. The tenants would all be married couples and
preference would be given to the largest, youngest, families.16 Each building
would include a lecture hall, a crèche, a school, gardens and bathrooms. They
would be run so economically that workers would have more money in their
pockets, but at no cost to the employer. Each would cost 1 million francs. A
government loan would be floated, to be repaid from the rent contributed by
each family, with the state covering any deficit. Blanc emphasized that the
state would have to control the project.17 The Luxembourg delegates were
not impressed by these proposals. They wanted immediate specific reforms.18
On 8 March the commission recommended that each district town hall in
Paris open a labour exchange with a register of vacant jobs. They should
compile accurate statistics on the supply of and demand for labour.
The commission’s first general assembly of 250 delegates, including seven
women,19 which was a tiny number but still seven more than were elected to
any national parliament before 1945, met on 10 March to hear Blanc:
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Electors of labour, representatives of those who produce and suffer,
my fellow-citizens, my brothers. In this same place where in the past
glittered embroidered waistcoats, behold garments which labour has
nobly worn, which perhaps recent combats have torn.
His listeners wanted action not flattery. They were disgusted when he praised
the proliferation of machines.20 The job of the commission, according to
Blanc was “To study with care, with love, the questions relative to the amelioration, whether moral or material, of your lot; to arrange these solutions in
the form of laws”. He concluded, “I speak to you as men, not as workers and
employers. I address your patriotism”.21 Blanc then withdrew (to the sound,
he assures us, of applause). The workers chose their ten-man section of the
executive committee by lot, because it was decided that they were too many
of them to know all the delegates and thus hold an election. In effect, the
existence of mutually hostile corporations itself ensured that workers would
only know delegates from their own corporations. The workers’ section
consisted of traditional artisans, including a button-maker, an armourer, a
spur-maker, a carriage painter, a carpenter, a blacksmith, a shawl-maker, a
cooper, an iron-founder and a decorator. A week later the employers chose
their ten delegates, also by lot to be in line with the workers, although the
employers knew one another well enough to have held a vote. The ten
employers, representing the major newer industries as well as the predominant artisan trades of the capital, were: Ottman-Duplaney, a binder of luxury
books; Renard, a cartwright contractor; Louis François Frégier, a woodengraving contractor; Eck, a bronze caster; Pechiney, a cutlery-maker;
Rieussec, a public conveyance contractor; Chapelle, a mechanic; Vilatte, a
vet and a blacksmith; Lechatelier, a mining engineer and a delegate of the
railway companies; and Charpentier, an engraver in bronze.22 None of the
women were included.
On 13 March the commission discussed work for the unemployed and on
20 March they produced a report for the new National Assembly on the
organization of work. Workers and employers expected action, not theory,
and every day petitioned the state to take over their struggling firms.23 Blanc
continued to orchestrate lengthy and inconclusive debates, in which only he
and his chosen “expert” economists and politicians participated. Blanc and
Wolowski, a leading liberal economist, took opposite sides, Blanc asserting
that individualism meant ruin, and Wolowski that it was the vital prerequisite for economic growth.24
Blanc proposed that the state should agree to take over ailing firms and
pay compensation to former owners when the business had recovered.
Workshops would be run by the workers, under the control of the state. All
members would receive equal pay from 25 per cent of the profits. The rest
would be divided: 25 per cent to pay an indemnity to former owners, 25 per
cent for mutual-aid and 25 per cent for a reserve fund. He insisted that his
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“associations” would merely supplement, and not replace, the existing
economic system. Wolowski condemned Blanc’s plan as “national workshops”. Others referred airily to agricultural associations in Switzerland and
the Rhineland. Le Play quoted Hungary and Russia, where, he asserted, all
workers doing the same type of job were paid equally. He claimed that even
serfs were better off than French workers. The frustrating lengthy debate
meandered on, without anyone really listening to anyone else.
The middle-class theoreticians were finally interrupted by a worker
complaining that the ban on marchandage was not in force, despite decrees
instituting fines and threats of imprisonment, and that the decree on a maximum working day was being ignored. Workers also raised a long-held grievance that some institutions undercut normal pay rates. In response, the
provisional government issued instructions that prisons, charities and
convents should not undercut ordinary workers. This caused some problems
for schemes favoured by the Fourierists, such as the reformatory at Mettray.
The commission was swamped by huge numbers of petitions from male
and female workers. All demanded instant, practical action and most
expected that the government would solve their problems. Requests that
the government take the organization of work in hand came from 339
petitions. A fifth of the petitions asked for the creation of worker cooperatives. The biggest issues (187 petitions in 95 industries) were fluctuating
rates of pay, followed by the demand, which was met, for limitations on
the working day.25 The commission also arbitrated between workers and
employers in Paris, in the style of the old conseils de prudhommes. On 26
March the commission settled a strike of 1,500 rail mechanics. Their
employers agreed that they share available work amongst themselves so
that no one was laid off. Blanc did not miss the chance to read them a
speech on the virtues of fraternal association. The Fourierist negotiator
Valerio, tried, abortively to organize a permanent association among the
mechanics; rail workers in the Nord were more successful.26 On 29 March
they settled a dispute between bakers and their employees and also mollified pavers and tilers working on new National Assembly building. Groups
of tailors asked them for orders for National Guard tunics, which they
obtained in return for agreeing to form an association under the instructions of the commission. The commission turned the debtors’ prison at
Clichy into a tailors’ workshop.27 Any tailor could join and 1,200 did.
Work was to be equally divided among the members, who all were to
receive equal wages of 2 francs a day and shares of the profits. Frossard, a
member of the commission, sat on their board of management.28 Also well
supplied with orders was a saddlers group working for the cavalry, a group
of spinners preparing thread for National Guard uniforms and embroiderers producing insignia.29 Blanc was proud of these social workshops,
although he did not succeed in obtaining government money to help run
them and they seem to have been short lived.
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The commission was keen to gain maximum publicity for its debates, the
minutes of which were transmitted to the new Assembly. They were
published and quickly translated in English.30 The commission established
contact with groups in England. An English MP, Duncombe, member for
Finsbury and president of an association for the protection of industry
addressed them.31 He suggested that as there were associations of capitalists
in Europe, workers ought similarly to combine. In reality the economic crisis
had intensified the hostility of local workers to foreigners, who were sometimes brought in temporarily to teach the locals how to operate new
machines, and were sometimes there as permanent workers or railway
navvies. The commission encouraged tolerance of foreign operatives on the
grounds that rough treatment might otherwise be meted out to the many
French workers abroad. Blanc lost no opportunity to stress that a French
patriot should be sympathetic to nationalists abroad.
Although the commission’s brief was to report on the problems of
working people, the elections to the new Constituent Assembly soon took
precedence, for it was apparent that the worthiest recommendations would
founder if the new assembly were unsympathetic. Thus a considerable
amount of the commission’s energy was consumed in the election campaign.
They set up their election headquarters in the nearby Sorbonne and compiled their own list of candidates. They wanted to include only workers, but
Blanc persuaded them that this was impractical, perhaps fearing he might be
left off. There were no more than a dozen worker candidates in the whole
country. The Commission’s final list, on which they settled only days before
the poll, was almost entirely socialist, including Blanc, Ledru-Rollin, Albert
and the printer Flocon from the government’s list, to whom they added
Barbès, Sobrier, Deplanque, Vidal, Etienne Arago, Thoré, Caussidière,
Leroux, Raspail and Lebon. Five of their men, who appeared on other lists
too, were among the 34 deputies elected by the Seine. Blanc scraped in,
while Thomas, named on the national workshop list of candidates, was
hopelessly defeated.32 Socialists and radicals affirmed their trust in male universal suffrage as an expression of the general will and the democratic base of
the new republic. They were often very disappointed with the National Assembly. Louis Blanc had hoped that as many as 20 workers might have been
elected. He complained to the commission that, granted in isolation, universal suffrage had proved “un mensonge”.33
Blanc dominated the two final meetings of the commission. On 26 April
they compiled their main report for the Assembly in a marathon session.34
Blanc reviewed their practical achievements and their (Blanc’s) recommendations to the government. They proposed the nationalization of banks, of
credit, with a maximum rate of interest set at 3 per cent.35 The new state
bank should offer loans to groups of workers to buy tools: “We propose, as
a measure in principle already adopted, the redemption of the railroads,
canals & mines, in order that they may be immediately formed into social
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workshops”. In addition the government should establish bazaars, for the
exchange of material and goods “with the object of regulating exchanges, of
introducing truth and sincerity into business transactions”. This scheme
resembled Proudhon’s Peoples’ Bank, although Blanc, true to form, did not
mention Proudhon.
Blanc had taken to heart criticism that he had forgotten agricultural work.
He now praised the healthy outdoor life and proposed that each department
should found a state-owned agricultural colony, an idea that sounds like a
merger of Icarie and a phalange. The state would acquire vacant land and
move to it large and needy families with impeccable morals to farm it. They
would be housed in a single big building, but with separate quarters for each
family. There would be an economical kitchen to provide cheap food … and
common lavatories and wash-houses.36 Within the agricultural colony or
workshop there would be no speculation, shops or merchants. Colonists
would combine agricultural and industrial pursuits. The state would make the
initial investment in equipment but the colony would pay 3 per cent interest
to the state and would run its own old age and sickness fund. There is no
record of what the other members thought of this scheme; perhaps they were
asleep. On 29 April Blanc made his final mammoth and thoroughly predictable speech to the long-suffering members. He urged them to continue to be
both a pressure group and a source of information for the new assembly.37
The conservative majority in the new assembly had little time for the
commission, which was increasingly a one-man band and obviously lacked
political clout. They castigated it as ineffectual and accused it of failing to
complete the survey on unemployment that it had been asked to prepare. The
commission retaliated by refusing to attend the fête de la Concorde organized
by the assembly. Many of the new provincial deputies saw the commission as
a socialist pressure group, committed to the right to work and little else. Blanc
and Albert were obliged to resign and the group effectively met for the last
time on 13 May, although the Comité central des ouvriers, its electoral arm,
retitled the Comité des délégués du Luxembourg, remained active.
Once the assembly met the commission was redundant. It had been a
novel experience, offering artisans a forum in which to discuss and explain
the way they interpreted their problems. That the task was incomplete when
the assembly met may be attributed to the ambiguity of its brief. The commission tried to gather evidence about the Parisian economy, while attempting
to solve current and pressing economic problems, all without any finance
from the Provisional government. Artisans exercised a direct influence on
government. However, Blanc treated the commission as his own talking
shop. Considérant appears to have made no contribution.38
The assembly also despatched the other innovation of the provisional
government, the national workshops, but with more hesitation. The claims
of the legitimist Falloux and the liberal economist Adolphe Blanqui that
these workshops were derived in part from socialist inspiration39 still lingers
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in modern accounts,40 but in reality they were set up by moderate republicans who detested socialism and who wanted no truck with social reform.
Unemployment could not be ignored after the February Revolution. At
first socialist precepts seemed likely to prevail. The decree guaranteeing work
and the creation of the Luxembourg Commission ensured that many assumed
that the projected “national” workshops were to be Blanc-style “social workshops”, spearheading a radical new approach to the problem of unemployment. In early March the plan to set up national workshops was welcomed as
a beginning by Fourierist socialists, awaiting “la création d’un ordre
nouveau”, with vague threats of “la guerre terrible des classes” if workshops
based on communes were not instituted.41 The main Fourierist newspaper,
Démocratie Pacifique, made the organization of work by association the centre of its campaign.42 The Fourierists argued that phalange-style workshops
should be set up in each commune, coordinated by a ministry of progress. Agricultural workshops were the fundamental first step. A massive programme
of public works should be handed to the various workshops. Their suggestions included bridge repairs, the creation of dykes along rivers, irrigation,
bringing moorland into cultivation, the draining of marshes and reforestation of upland. The government should be responsible (as indeed it traditionally was) for organizing the work, with its engineers at the head of each
group. Such workshops would be financed by cutting the salaries of the
highly paid, a progressive wealth tax and by voluntary donations. Other,
smaller, radical newspapers also assumed that national workshops would be
the means by which the organization of work would be realized.
Sur les débris du despot
Au niveau de l’égalité
Animés d’un brûlant civisme
Cimentons la Fraternité.43
Ledru-Rollin, leading radical social reformer and former editor of the
newspaper La Réforme, became Minister of the Interior, which seemed to
presage government sympathy for radical social policies. Most of the
provisional government had very different intentions. They refused to set up
the ministry of labour suggested by Blanc and the Fourierists. The conservative republican Marie became Minister of Public Works with responsibility
for running the national workshops. Marie made Emile Thomas, an engineer
who like Marie was hostile to Blanc’s views, head of the workshops. Both
senior figures in the workshops were determined to replicate past practice in
economic crisis. Socialists had no part in setting up the Paris national workshops. They were a deliberate denial of socialist hopes. Blanc later complained that Marie had never been clear about what sort of workshops he set
up, in order to discredit Blanc’s ideas for social workshops.44 Marie’s scheme
was to patch together temporary traditional workshops as an emergency
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expedient to control unemployment. In both 1789 and 1830 governments
had provided similar temporary labouring jobs or a small daily dole in
“charity workshops” until the crisis abated.45 This solution had the merit of
relative cheapness and conformed to liberal economic concepts. In 1848
some members of the government were so anxious to stress the continuity of
their temporary expedient that the decree establishing workshops cited precedents for economic intervention by the government in the reign of Henri
IV.46
The name “national workshops” was doubly misleading. First, they were
not an innovative attempt by the state to accept responsibility for the permanent “organization of work”. The decision to stay within traditional practice
was fudged; the organizers never openly stated their intentions, leaving
room for misunderstanding. When the National Assembly investigated
Emile Thomas’s role in the workshops, Thomas was adamant that he had no
links with Blanc. The latter repeatedly declared that the workshops were set
up in opposition to his ideas. They were “an ignoble parody” of the workshops founded by the Luxembourg Commission.47 The Fourierists were
soon disappointed and disdained the efforts of the former students of the
privately run Ecole Centrale, who managed the workshops. Under Marie
and Thomas the workshops fulfilled a traditional role of stop-gap, temporary charity for the unemployed. Second, the workshops were not “national”. Thomas was in charge of the Paris workshops, while civil engineers,
departmental commissioners and mayors ran autonomous schemes in a
number of towns, which, occasionally, under a radical commissioner, attempted some semblance of socialist reform.48
It was apparent from the outset that the problem was far more severe than
in 1830, even discounting socialist rhetoric. Estimates of the total number of
jobless in Paris at the end of February ranged from about 10,000 to 49,000.49
Thomas and Marie stressed the traditional character of their workshops, but
the circumstances of their creation, the form they took and the numbers who
tried to join them gave an ambiguously innovative impression. Past ateliers
de charité had no centralized formal structure, the organization being left to
mayors. In 1848 the initial surge of unemployed who reported to their local
town hall as instructed in the workshop decree was overwhelming. Mayors
were terrified by the large numbers, lacked the manpower to check individual documents and had no means of finding enough jobs.
The decision to adopt a centralized structure was thus a response not to
socialist demands, but to the sheer pressure and obvious threat of numbers. A
disused chateau at Monceau in the conveniently remote north-west suburbs
of Paris was assigned to the workshops, which were run with semi-military
discipline. Most of the officers were, like Thomas, current or former
students at the Ecole centrale, an elite private grande école, which, like its
even more prestigious rival, the Ecole polytechnique, trained the sons of the
rich to be civil engineers and scientists. The centraliens were renowned for
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their mild Saint-Simonianism, whereas the Fourierists were professionally
and philosophically convinced of the efficacy of state-run industry.
Although Thomas accepted that his workshops were a temporary
expedient, he was convinced, in the plan he submitted at the beginning of
March, that work, not a dole, was vital to social peace. He had no experience
of job creation and did not get on well with the government civil engineers,
mostly polytechniciens, who might have had vacancies. His political bosses
were far more concerned to prevent unrest than to find jobs. Marie constantly urged Thomas to take in larger and larger numbers, the total reaching
over 100,000 by May, even though Marie could never find work for more
than a tenth. Marie drew up plans for an ambitious Parisian rail link-up,
bringing trains to the centre of the city, hoping to use the unemployed to do
the rough work. But the necessary finance never materialized and the scheme
was stillborn. Marie was left to hope that the remoteness of Monceau was
sufficient to contain the massive army of idle unemployed.
Thomas, frustrated at the dearth of jobs for his men, was forced to put his
faith in the inculcation of discipline and loyalty among participants. He
devised a strict hierarchy of command, a solution that certainly worked for
the newly-formed garde mobile, which was an auxiliary military force also
drawn from the large pool of jobless workers.50 This structure and the
combination of elected and appointed officers was innovative, but in other
ways the workshops were hopelessly traditional.
The workshops were not open to all. Applicants needed to furnish the
commissioner of police in Paris with evidence from their landlord that they
were residents of the capital. He would then issue a certificate that would
entitle a man to apply to the workshop. The successful applicant was given
between 1.50 and 2 francs a day,51 whether he worked or not, reduced to 1
franc after 17 March. A brigade chief got 3 francs. The lucky ones did a
9½-hour day, mostly rough navvying labour, which was hardly suitable for
artisans in the capital’s luxury trades who formed the bulk of the unemployed. The workshops also provided basic food, bread, meat and soup and
free medical care.
The workshops were meant to solve political rather than economic
problems. Thomas hoped they would neutralize the influence of the radical
Luxembourg Commission. At his behest 40,000 of his members joined the
National Guard and 400 were elected by their brigades to a Rénion centrale
des ateliers nationaux. A measure of his success was the absence of national
workshop men in the radical demonstrations of 17 March.
Workshops were established in a number of other large, mainly industrial
cities and also in small towns, where the need for a temporary increase in
public assistance reflected both joblessness and the threat of popular unrest.
On 28 February the mayor of Tulle had the tiny city placarded with copies of
the government’s guarantee of work. He promised to provide workshops
and to distribute useful tools to the unemployed. Almost instantly 200 men
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were issued with shovels, pickaxes and sledgehammers and set to repair the
town hall and build a new bridge.52 Traditional-style ateliers de charité appeared in larger towns, including Lille, Limoges, Lyon, Marseille, Roubaix,
Rouen, St. Etienne and Tourcoing, thanks to an initial total of 2 million
francs of central government finance. The most generous provision went to
the most disruptive towns; the traditionally radical naval arsenal workers of
Toulon were guaranteed work for the year. The skilled jobless artisans, silk
weavers in Lyon, tailors in Marseille, men who had been Icarians, knew
Fourier’s schemes and were aware of Blanc’s ideas, encouraged by some idealistic middle-class republicans, took the lead in demanding action. They petitioned the government variously to set up state-subsidized or cooperative
workshops, to recognize the “right to work” and to pay the provincial unemployed Paris rates. They were mostly fobbed off with a small dole, although
some departmental commissioners put a great deal of effort into work creation schemes. There were 20,000 unemployed in Lyon and the silk weavers
persuaded the government to contribute 6.8 million francs and place orders
for flags and other ceremonial items. This only reduced the jobless by 100.
The Rhône commissioner was unusual in recognizing that the crisis had
caused rural as well as urban unemployment and set aside 300,000 francs to
pay the 3,000 men working on the Paris–Lyon railway.
In Limoges, the “Rome of socialism”,53 the socialist lawyer Bac, together
with the Fourierist Talabot and a pottery worker, Ancel, quickly put together a
provisional administration and a committee to organize work. Workers in the
pottery industry began to push for producer cooperatives. One group of 200
asked, to no avail, for a state subsidy to build up producer and retail cooperatives and open a school. The municipal council in Limoges voted 35,000
francs for workshops on 1 March. They secured the support of local “capitalists” for a departmental bank similar to that of Rouen.54 The dominant pottery
industry and the firm employing men working on the new railway were
already in crisis and their cooperative plans perhaps owed as much to
desperation as to the socialism of Leroux, a local hero, or the Fourierists.55
The need for rapid action in the towns was underlined by the report of the
mayor of Ambazac, a small commune in the same department, where unemployment was a serious problem. Up to 250 men and women from two tiny
hamlets nearby invaded the chateau, armed with rifles and axes:
They broke up the furniture, drank all the wine, ate all the bread and
took away sugar, bacon and any food they could lay their hands on;
they broke the roof tiles and tore off the weather-vane, forcing the
steward to chase them away. They went on to Mazeau where M. de
la Salvini’s steward gave them a barrel of wine and 30 bottles of
liqueur. They drank the lot, and left, abandoning one of their
number drunk in the courtyard and securing a written promise from
the steward to take down the weather-vanes within 2 or 3 days.56
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Why the weather-vanes? The mayor would have liked to blame the men
working on the railway line at Ambazac who had been kept from working
because of the rain, but they were not involved.
Sometimes provincial organizers were more prepared to attempt socialist
measures than their more closely supervised Parisian colleagues. In Marseille
the young and still idealistic commissioner Emile Ollivier, future Imperial
chief minister, inherited extensive public works projects from the July
Monarchy. His humanitarian efforts were impeded by local notables, who
were keenly aware that the city already had a debt of 17 million francs. He
was encouraged by de Montricher, the chief government civil engineer, who
hoped to use the crisis to expand the public works programme. Millions had
been invested in the 1840s to put the River Durance into a canal to supply
fresh water to the city. Following the February Revolution, local tailors,
bakers and shoemakers formed a committee to demand that the government
find work for the jobless. The municipal council agreed to replace foreigners
working on the canalization of the River Durance with local labour. They
also agreed on 6 March to combine with Paris and the local chamber of
commerce to fund de Montricher’s 3 million franc programme to expand
canal and port facilities. Within a week 2,600 men had been taken on, but
3,500 were still without work. Ollivier tried to float a 1 million franc
government loan, but found few subscribers among the local notables.
Confrontation between foreign and local canal workers escalated and one
man was killed. Ollivier responded by sacking more foreign workers and
agreeing to raise the daily rate on the scheme from 1.75 to 2 francs a day.
Subsequent attempts to cut rates failed when workers marched on the town
hall. Two new workshops were started, providing work for an additional
200 men. Meanwhile attempts were made to imitate the semi-military form
of the Parisian workshops. A government agent was put in charge with the
power to exclude disruptive or idle members or those who had not lived in
Marseille since the beginning of February.
In contrast to Marseille, the Nancy workshop was privately funded and
found work for the unemployed canal bargees. They were paid 1.50 francs a
day levelling the site of an old crucifix monument. Women were employed to
make underwear. Things went well until funds ran low and wages were cut
by .25 centîmes, at which point the workers rioted.57 Deschamps, commissioner in Rouen, a manager on the Paris–Rouen railway, secured 1,500,000
francs to float L’Union des intérêts municipaux et industriels, which regenerated 20 ailing cotton firms and found work for 2,500 men. He also
employed 16,000 in temporary navvying on public works schemes. The
poor relief expenditure in Seine-Inférieure exploded to 2 million francs.
In the early months of 1848 there were socialist and radical commissioners, government civil engineers and some groups of skilled artisans who
favoured the ideas of the Fourierists and Blanc that the government should
fund work-creating initiatives. They were a minority in France as a whole,
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but vociferous in the main industrial cities. In Paris the majority in the
provisional government rejected Blanc’s plan, were anxious to avoid further
upheaval and saw the worsening economic crisis as dangerous. In a sense
they played both ends against the middle, by risking the growth of the workshops to 120,000 to appease the jobless, and very publicly in March replacing the normal direct tax of about 16 per cent on property with a temporary
emergency 45 per cent tax, which most taxpayers would attribute to the cost
of the workshops.
What seems to have surprised commissioners, but this may have been
their own administrative inexperience, was the unwillingness of the wealthy
to contribute to poor relief, as investors in job-creation schemes, charitable
donors or holders of the local public purse. Those responsible for organizing
workshops may not have wanted to stimulate structural change in the
economy, but they were aware that, for the moment, the workshop stood
between them and the violent protest of the jobless.
More significant in determining the character of ateliers de charité was the
long-established and expanding role of the state as an employer, not just as a
crisis measure, but to carry out the growing public works programme. The
building of canals, the needs of naval arsenals and the construction of railways were all major economic projects in which the state was traditionally
and increasingly both the financier and employer. The major projects
involved the state in a traditional role, in which the polytechnicien government civil engineer was at the leading edge. The ethos of the Polytechnique,
founded by a friend of Saint-Simon, and its graduates, depended on the belief that government control was as vital for the defence and security of the
French state as it was for their own prestigious and powerful careers.58 In the
nineteenth century its graduates included engineers and Saint-Simonians like
Enfantin and Fourierists like Considérant, who favoured social reform under
government initiative. In a number of the 1848 workshop projects, government engineers were prominent in devising plans to use the unemployed,
often on railway building. The engineers on the Paris–Strasbourg line offered
work for 6,000 men, but they were denied the cash to pay them.59
Women socialists vigorously promoted the idea of association through
their newspaper and club, La Voix des Femmes,60 as a way of helping poorerpaid women workers. Désirée Gay petitioned the Luxembourg Commission
to include women delegates to speak for women’s issues and to authorize
women’s associations to organize communal restaurants and wash-houses.61
Successive marches of working women pressed their case; the laundresses
were followed by lady spinners, trouser-makers, teachers, dressmakers and
ladies who sewed the trimmings on upholstered furniture. Désirée Gay ran a
group that persuaded Marie to employ women in the national workshops.
The Fourierist Démocratie Pacifique and other radical newspapers printed
their petitions and gave publicity to their demonstrations. On 10 April the
first workshop opened under Gay’s direction. A total of 25,000 women were
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“Down with male milliners!”, E. de Beaumont, Le Charivari, 12 May 1848.
found work, at a cost massively in excess of what the women were paid.62
Gay and Deroin set up a Fraternal Association of Women Underwear Makers. Gay further proposed the building of communal housing reminiscent of
Fourier’s ideas, incorporating a crèche, nursery school, reading room, laundry, baths, communal ovens, central heating and evening classes for young
girls.63 The female socialists petitioned the provisional government to
improve women workers’ pay.64 They also liaised with women activists
abroad. The Voix des Femmes published a series of articles on worker poverty in the German states written by Bettina von Arnim.65
Meanwhile traditional compagnonnages hoped that the new regime
would help them reform their own organizations. On 20 March up to
10,000 members from 20 corporations took part in a fraternal march and on
21 May, 300,000 joined in the Fête de la Fédération. However their first reform meeting was attended by delegates from only twelve corporations.
Each organization remained trapped in its mission to represent the dignity of
its particular trade.66
The issue of the workshops reached its climax after the April elections,
when the victory went to former monarchists, now converted to moderate
republicanism, who defeated radical republican candidates, who were often
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commissioners and workshop organizers. The most dramatic protest was in
Paris, but there were riots and loss of life elsewhere. In Reims the workshops
were twice temporarily closed in March and April following riots when daily
rates were cut. Unrest broke out in Rouen and Limoges, where, respectively,
the cotton and pottery trades were depressed. In Lyon five out of the 14 new
deputies were workers and four were radicals. Although the Rhone secured
the most left-wing results outside Paris, workers were disappointed.
Bernard, one of the insurrectionaries of 1839, succeeded the more moderate
Emmanuel Arago (who had defended him in his trial in 1839) as commissioner. Although his past career might have endeared Bernard to the workers
of Lyon, it presumably also aroused expectations. He had a difficult time
containing the protests of the members of the Lyon workshops, disappointed
socialist voters and workers in arms against new weaving machines (often the
same people).67 A judicious government order for silk goods and the fading
of the commercial depression in Lyon saved the city from further unrest.
Paris had the largest cohort of jobless. When the new assembly met
120,000 were enrolled in the workshops and a further 50,000 had been
turned away. Although attempts had been made to exclude non-Parisians,
30,000 had secured a place in the workshops.68 If the adult male worker
population was around 200,000, a high proportion of the capital’s workers
were enrolled, idle and suspicious of the intentions of the new conservative
Constituent Assembly. On 12 May Marie was replaced as Minister of Public
Works by Trélat. Such a choice, in calmer circumstances, might have reassured the unemployed. Trélat, a radical doctor, had a long history in opposition, starting with the charbonnerie, via the Amis du Peuple, and cherished an
undiminished devotion to the cause of the underprivileged. Like Marie he
visualized the workshops as a vital, but temporary measure.69 The assembly
referred the issue to its new Labour Committee, whose most vociferous
members were workshop opponents like Falloux and Tocqueville, but which
also included Considérant. On 13 May the committee recommended that
the workshop lists be closed, and that applicants between 18 and 25 be
offered the choice of enlisting in the army or being removed from the workshop lists and returning to their own commune. Although these restrictions
were accepted by the assembly, the ruling was not made public.
On May 15 the new assembly was threatened by a radical demonstration
led by Blanqui and Barbès. The ostensible motive of the march was to urge
the government to support the Poles in rebellion against Russia, but the timing seemed to confirm every moderate republicans’ fear at the presence in
the capital of an army of discontented unemployed. Blanc was not involved
in the organization of the protest, but he and Raspail spoke at length to the
crowd that had occupied the assembly. Barbès and Albert led a column to the
hôtel-de-ville, where they proclaimed a new provisional government, including themselves as well as Raspail, Ledru-Rollin and Louis Blanc. The situation was diffused when the National Guard rallied to the assembly and
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arrrested Barbès and Albert on their return. Louis Blanc managed to persuade the assembly that he had been trying to calm the marchers and thus
avoided arrest. Over 75 per cent of the 20,000 marchers were members of
the national workshops, carrying their workshop banners, encouraged, it
was said, by Thomas, nervous that the workshops were about to be closed.
However, the majority of national workshop members did not join the
march, and those who did soon deserted and joined up with their National
Guard battalions.
None the less, the government used the demonstrations as a reason to
implement the “downsizing” of the workshops that had been voted for two
days’ earlier. Fearful that Thomas might try to use the members of the workshops openly against the assembly, Trélat removed him and sent him overnight on a prolonged inspection of Bordeaux, the principal objective of
which seemed to be to keep him out of the way. On 20 May Trélat’s special
committee of experts, who were all from the Ecole polytechnqiue and called
to advise on the workshops, supported the concept of “the right to work”
and urged the government to invest in economic recovery by providing loans
to private firms, including railroad companies, to take on labour. Trélat kept
this Fourierist report a secret. On 23 May the Executive Committee decided
that all workers in Paris who had arrived there within the past six months
should be ordered home. Labour exchanges were to be set up where
employers could go to find workers. Any national workshop member who
refused a job would be expelled. These decrees were not made public until 4
June. Finally a decree of 16 June, published on 22 June, obliged all workshop members between 18 and 25 to agree to serve in the army for two years
or leave.70
The failure to publicize the decision to close the workshops left the working population of Paris consumed by anxiety. Meanwhile workshop members united with members of the former Luxembourg Commission to secure
the election of Leroux and Proudhon to the assembly in the by-elections of 4
June. The government, apprehensive of armed resistance, reinforced the
garrisons near the capital. It was not until 22 June that Le Moniteur
announced the closure of the workshops. The workers’ protest demonstration began with marches early that morning.
The main workshop organizers had intended them to be a temporary
remedy that would not infringe the liberal economy. Ambiguity arose
because some socialists, especially Fourierists, welcomed them as a first step
and because a few organizers and some engineers hoped that they could be
transformed into permanent institutions. It is significant that the committee
of experts consulted by Trélat advised a permanent arrangement, and even
more significant that Trélat kept their advice under wraps. If government
officials never intended to introduce socialist policies via national workshops, there is even less substance in the claim that the June rebellion was
socialist inspired. The rebellion, like those in provincial cities, was a product
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of the ambiguity of government policy. The workers who rebelled wanted to
retain the workshops until the crisis abated. They protested, not to make the
project permanent, but to keep it running until the economy recovered.71
The June Days was a rebellion by about 20,000, mainly skilled Parisian
artisans,72 who erected barricades in protest against the decision to disband
the workshops. It was a workers’ rebellion, but not a socialist revolt. The
rebels did not demand Blanc-style workshops. Most would have been
content with traditional stop-gap measures. However, the majority in the
National Assembly convinced itself that this was a socialist revolt, “a class
struggle, a sort of ‘Servile War’”.73 The June Days thus stiffened the determination of the majority to halt reform. Conservatives lumped all radical ideas
and projects together, dubbing them “socialist”. For the moment socialists
remained as disparate and divided as before. It could be said that the opportunity for reform was lost because of discord among them. However the
provisional government probably never intended that the organization in
which most socialist momentum for reform was demonstrated, the Luxembourg Commission, should exercise any power. The new assembly had no
doubts and dispensed with the commission. The moderate republicans, like
Marie, who were in charge of areas where social reform could have been
attempted, merely wanted temporary expedients. It was an example of the
age-old fudging in times of economic crisis that socialist governments still
experience. The socialists failed to focus on the fact that the national workshops would never become permanent social workshops, perhaps because
they lacked practical experience in governing and dealing with bureaucratic
inertia. After June further temporary expedients would be attempted by the
Cavaignac government, but the optimism of the first few months was over.
On the other hand socialists and radical succeeded in forming an alliance, an
agreed programme of reform, and in May 1849 substantially increased their
vote in the legislative elections, despite government coercion.
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CHAPTER TEN
Association: the conservative reaction
in the Second Republic
It is generally assumed that after the repression of the workers’ rebellion in
June 1848, moderate republicans, and the increasingly assertive “Party of
Order”, composed of former monarchists, resolutely stripped away all traces
of radical and socialist hopes, which had been evinced in the euphoria of
February 1848. This chapter will show that the image of unrelenting reaction, epitomized on canvas in Meissonier’s evocative La Barricade, is, to
some degree, misleading. It is true that the right to work, promised in February, was diluted in the new constitution, and associations of all kinds were
hounded, but neither were entirely expunged until after Louis-Napoleon’s
coup in December 1851. The projected first national survey of the economy
was completed after the June Days, although its recommendations were
ignored. The most outstanding radical/socialist initiative of June 1848 is one
often forgotten by historians, perhaps because it conveyed such contradictory signals. Precisely when the assembly unleashed Cavaignac to butcher the
worker rebels in June 1848, they accepted a proposal for a 3 million franc
loan to allow members of the national workshops to regroup as producer
cooperatives. The money was distributed and socialist activists like Deroin
were able to create networks of cooperatives. These three initiatives, namely
the proposal to include a right to work in the constitution, to make a national
survey of economic and social problems and the policy of giving government
loans to cooperatives, will be examined in this chapter in the framework
of increasing conservative suspicion and hostility to radical and socialist
objectives.
The vast majority elected to the new assembly was determined to avoid
radical, let alone socialist innovation, a resolve that predated the June Days,
but was strengthened by them. On the other hand they inherited radical
obligations from the provisional government and, until the presidential
election in December, government remained in the hands of committed
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moderate republicans. The debate on the right to work revealed both the
depth of conservative fears of socialism and the absence of consensus among
socialists.
The right to work was a dominant issue in the press and the National
Assembly between May and October 1848. Leading defenders of the traditional economy, including Michel Chevalier and the Orleanist politician
Thiers, spearheaded the argument that a constitutional right to work would be
irredeemably disastrous for society and the economy.1 Two rival compilations
of the lengthy parliamentary debates, both entitled Le Droit au travail,2 were
quickly published, reflecting the polemic of the opposing camps by their
choice of material. The first, edited by the liberal economist Joseph Garnier,
editor of Journal des Economistes,3 veteran of the anti-socialist campaign of
the early 1840s, appeared on 20 November 1848. Garnier stressed that
guaranteeing a right to work would threaten the capitalist economy. The
second was published by Emile de Girardin, member of the Luxembourg
Commission, a well-known populist journalist who was imprisoned on the eve
of the June Days for his opposition to Cavaignac. His newspaper, La Presse,
was closed for nearly two months. De Girardin was no socialist, although in
1832 his newspaper, the Journal des Connaissances Utiles, had demanded an
eight-hour working day. He adapted to sales’ opportunities, which briefly in
1848 seemed to lie with radicals and socialists. He was apparently won over
to the familiar radical idea that work was the only property of the propertyless and that therefore the right to work should be acknowledged in the new
constitution, along with the protection of tangible property.
Shortly before the June Days the constitutional committee produced a
draft constitution, which included, surprisingly given the assembly’s
determination to dispense with the workshops, a right to work. The committee consisted of mainly of the moderate notables who were a majority in the
assembly. They included Cormenin (chosen as president), Marrast,
Lamennais, Vivien, Tocqueville, Dufaure, Martin (Strasbourg), Cocquerel,
Corbon, Tourret, Voirhaye, Dupin aîné, Gustave de Beaumont, Vaulabelle,
Odilon Barrot, Pagès (Ariège), Dornès and Considérant. Barrot had been an
opposition leader in the parliaments of Louis-Philippe; Beaumont had studied the prison systems of America and Ireland; Coquerel was a Protestant pastor; Cormenin, Dufaure, Dupin, Vivien and Tocqueville were seasoned
parliamentarians; Corbon was a worker and a journalist associate of Buchez;
Dornès was one of Le National’s editors; Martin and Pagès were established
deputies of radical persuasion; Tourret, a specialist in agricultural questions,
was also an experienced deputy; Vaulabelle had written a history of the Restoration; Woirhaye was an avocat from Metz who had been one of the local
radical opposition leaders during the July Monarchy; and Considérant was
the leading Fourierist spokesman in the assembly.
This group chose a three-man subcommittee of Cormenin, Dornès and
Woirhaye to prepare a preliminary proposal. They met irregularly and it was
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left to Cormenin to produce the draft; that a right to work appeared was due
to him and Considérant. In their approach to constitution-writing, radicals
and socialists were powerfully influenced by the example of the First Republic, initially proposing that chunks of the Jacobin Constitution of March
1793, which was never fully implemented, be imported into their own. Both
the Girondin and Jacobin constitutions compiled in 1793 affirmed, following the recommendations of the committee set up by the previous Legislative
Assembly,4 that the state had a legal and constitutional obligation to the
poor. Article 21 of the Jacobin Constitution stated: “Les secours publics sont
une dette sacrée … La société doit la subsistence aux citoyens malheureux,
soit en leur procurant du travail, soit en assurant les moyens d’exister à ceux
qui sont hors d’état de travailler”.5
On 20 June Marrast, secretary of the assembly’s constitutional committee, introduced the draft constitution, which contained a preamble listing the
citizen’s duties and rights. Article 2 stated: “La constitution garantit à tous
les citoyens la liberté, l’égalité, la sûreté, l’instruction, le travail, la propriété,
l’assistance”. This guarantee of work as well as property was in line with the
February declaration. Article 7 explained that since the individual had the
right to expect to find work to provide for his needs, if this were lacking the
state had to find him a job:
Le droit au travail est celui qu’à tout homme de vivre en travaillant
[as the Lyon silk workers had proclaimed on their banners in the
1830s]. La société doit, par les moyens productifs et généraux dont
elle dispose, et qui seront organisés ultérieurement, fournir du travail aux hommes valides qui ne peuvent s’en procurer autrement.
Article 9 promised a “right to assistance” to the sick and those unable to
work.6
Between June and August the draft was discussed in the assembly’s
committees. The June Days confirmed moderate and conservative opposition to a right to work. When Marrast introduced the constitutional committee’s revised proposals at the end of August the blanket guarantee of a right
to work had gone, replaced by freedom to work (article 2) and the obligation
of the state to help the unemployed (article 13). The ideals of liberty, equality
and, particularly, fraternity, they claimed, were foremost in their thoughts.
The constitution had to include “le droit de vivre par le travail, le droit au
travail” because society, not the individual, was at fault if large numbers were
searching in vain for work to support their families.7 So that no one should
read this as a “droit d’insurrection”, or an excuse for idleness or debauchery,
the committee stressed society’s obligation more than the individual’s right.
Nor did they intend to imply that the state would take over industry, but it
should provide free primary education, professional training, credit institutions, a decent framework for worker–employer relations, and encourage
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voluntary associations and “la création enfin de ces grands travaux où les
bras inoccupés peuvent trouver un emploi”. The role of the state, they
emphasized, was not just to protect property and prevent wrongdoing.
Sa foi lui assigne une mission plus large et plus élevée. Elle est la
tutrice active et bienfaisante de tous ses enfants; elle ne les laisse pas
croupir dans l’ignorance, se pervertir dans la misère; elle ne
demeure pas indifférante dans ses crises de l’industrie qui jettent des
armées de salariés sur les places publiques avec l’envie au coeur, le
ressentiment et le blasphème à la bouche … ellle recommande, elle
honore le travail, elle l’aide par ses lois … lorsqu’un chomage forcé
vient paralyser ce travail, elle ne ferme pas son coeur, elle ne
contente pas de gémir en répétent: Fatalité! elle fait appel au
contraire, à toutes ses ressources en s’écriant: Fraternité.
These were fine words, but a constitutional right to work had slipped out
between these lines.
The case for a statutory right to work was not relinquished easily. These
clauses were discussed twice daily, under the presidency of Marrast or Buchez,
from 4 September to 4 October, for four days a week. What was at stake? The
June insurrection, interpreted by many deputies as an attack on property and
the republic, was a major influence on the revised clauses on work, but other
factors were mentioned. The debate between radicals and socialists and their
conservative opponents turned as much on past solutions and their effectiveness as on the more recent socialist proposals. None cited Louis Blanc or any
other socialist. In pressing the case for a right to work Christian inspiration
was invoked by Pelletier and several members. Deputies of all political persuasions, including Crémieux,8 former republican Minister of Justice, quoted
Turgot rather than Louis Blanc as an example of someone who set up workshops for the unemployed. The idea of fraternity in 1789 was recalled by
Pelletier and Ledru-Rollin who suggested that the inclusion of such a right
would complete policies launched in the First Republic. Ledru-Rollin recalled
the attempts of the Convention to solve an earlier employment crisis, but
noted that the Jacobin constitution referred to “devoir” not “right”.
Why should work be guaranteed? It was claimed that work was as much a
property right as tangible property and deserved equal protection by the
state. Both the Jacobin and the subsequent Directorial constitution of 1795
contained a clause guaranteeing property, which indicated that whatever a
person earned by work and effort merited protection, even if it had not
resulted in actual property: “Le droit de propriété est celui qui appartient à
tout citoyen de jouir et de disposer à son gré de ses biens, de ses revenus, du
fruit de son travail et de son industrie”.9
In the autumn of 1848 a minority argued that property owners owed a
right to work to the landless. Pelletier, elected by a worker constituency in
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Lyon argued, “Quelle est donc la propriété du pauvre? C’est le travail”10 To
deny this, Pelletier observed, would be Malthusian. Mathieu, veteran of the
secret societies of the early 1830s, argued that the security that this right
provided might enable the poor to buy a little land. Crémieux spoke of
equity; if the state protected private property it should succour those who
had none. He, and Rollinat, another lawyer, also argued that the Provisional
government had committed itself to include this right in the constitution.
Finally, and most movingly, although less often invoked than one might
expect, supporters demanded the right as a barrier against extreme poverty.
Pellerin calculated that of six million workers in France two million were tolerably comfortable, two million survived from day to day and two million
were indigent. In addition there were two million beggars. He argued that it
would take a tax of 5 centîmes in each franc to allow each commune to set up
workshops offering real jobs for their unemployed. He concluded that the
February Revolution had intended to make men free, equal and brothers.
The fear of further upheaval could only be quelled by removing “the fear of
tomorrow”. A right to work would benefit everyone because all would be
tolerably prosperous; he suggested that few members knew what deprivation
was. Ledru-Rollin recalled a man on 24 June who told him he didn’t want to
fight but his wife was forcing him because in the last few days three of their
seven children had died of hunger. Several members warned their colleagues
that poverty led to revolution.
Those who spoke up for a right to work did so with considerable
moderation and caution. Considérant observed that prosperity depended on
the unfettered development of capitalism and that the jobless should be
helped only in crisis times. Ledru-Rollin also supported a very limited role
for the state, “an intelligent protection”. No one even whispered about phalanges, Icarie, permanent social workshops, peoples’ banks or common ownership. Those who supported even such a minimal programme, such as Pyat,
Mathieu and especially Pelletier, were shouted down in the assembly, to such
a degree that even Garnier commented that Pelletier had made good sense
and deserved to be heard.
Opposing a constitutional right to work were some of the most experienced opposition parliamentarians of the former monarchy, Thiers,
Tocqueville, Lamartine, Duvergier de Hauranne and Goudchaux, Minister
of Finance. They rejected the proposal on the grounds of cost and the
attendant increase in the power of the state, because it constituted an attack
on property, because it would dissipate a worker’s initiative to fend for himself and because it would destroy capitalism. Lamartine claimed that the state
would be bankrupted and Gaslonde that property owners would be ruined,
and Goudchaux observed that a blanket guarantee of work would be massively expensive and would mean crippling levels of taxation. All predicted
that it would increase the power of the state. Thiers talked of a state
monopoly replacing competition and destroying prosperity. He reminded
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the assembly that the June Days had illustrated the danger in giving the state
ambiguous and unchecked authority, recalling also that the 1830 Revolution
had been the product of the unchecked royal power given in Article 14 of the
Restoration constitution. Dufaure, Minister of Public Works, was convinced
that workers would become entirely dependent on the state, and cited Britain as an example of a country that recognized this right and consequently
had a big poverty problem. Finally opponents claimed that a constitutional
right to work would be an attack on private property owners who would be
held to ransom by rapacious workers. It was suggested that the right to work
was a socialist Trojan horse, rolled forward with apparent concern for the
poor, but covertly designed to subvert the established order.
To what extent was the right to work an exclusively socialist proposal?
Socialists made no attempt to speak with a single voice. By September
Considérant was recommending only a very limited right to work. Félix Pyat,
a socialist poet and playwright wanted to link the right to property with the
right to work, while Proudhon criticized Pyat’s proposal as “socialist”. Two
of those who spoke against, Thiers and Tocqueville, used the opportunity to
launch a passionate attack on socialism. Tocqueville, who was still convinced
that the narrow elite should pay attention to social problems, claimed that the
committee’s original intention had been to provide public charity, whereas
this proposal would make the state the biggest employer and main property
owner, and was communism (he later changed this to “socialism”).
Ledru-Rollin spoke eloquently in favour of retaining a right to work in the
constitution and not diluting it with a mere “droit d’assistance”.11 He
pointed out that the right to work was not exclusively socialist, but in keeping with the spirit of 1789. Crémieux claimed that socialism was not at issue,
and the February Revolution was social rather than socialist.12 When the first
constitutional committee had included a right to work no one thought members were pushing for communism or socialism. It was the June Days that
changed peoples’ minds.
Thiers agreed that the most important issue in the constitution was “une
question sociale”. For him society was founded on propriété, liberté et
concurrence. Unless the state defended private property, there would be no
freedom and no work. By freedom he meant social, not political liberty, and
above all the right to choose a job. Concurrence, free competition, was vital for
progress. His solution was a temporary dole for the unemployed, which emergency concession, he claimed, was truly socialist. Considérant wanted to add
“association” to Thiers’s three principles, and offered to run special evening
sessions of the assembly to explain his ideas. His offer was rejected.13
Goudchaux,14 a banker from Nancy and Cavaignac’s Finance minister,
responded empirically to the problems of 1848. In his articles in Le National
during the July Monarchy he had praised railway nationalization and workers’ cooperatives similar to that organized by Buchez. A radical reputation
thus gained, Goudchaux was made Finance Minister in the Provisional
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government, but he could only propose very conventional measures to restore financial stability and, sensing opposition within the government, resigned on 8 March. As a member of the National Assembly he castigated the
Provisional government, demanded the closure of the national workshops
and fought against the rebels in the June Days. He defended the right to
work as one of the achievements of 1789, but limited government revenue
meant that it could not be an unrestricted right.
The new constitution was completed and published on 4 November
1848.15 The importance of work, but not the right to work, was constantly
reiterated. The preamble listed the rights and duties of citizens, which was
something not attempted in the charters of 1814 and 1830. Articles IV, VII,
and more specifically article VIII of the preamble and article XIII in the section
“Droits des citoyens garantis par la Constitution” had a direct bearing on
work. After proclaiming that the principles of the republic were liberty, equality and fraternity, article IV stated that the basis of the republic was family,
work, property and public order. Article VII laid out a universal duty to work,
save for the future and help others, while article VIII summarized what was
left of the state’s obligation and what the individual could expect as a right in
much the same terms as the original draft, except that only the freedom to
work and not the right to work was guaranteed. The state promised fraternal
help to the needy, either by finding work for them, within the constraints of
the budget, or succour to those who could not work:
Society will encourage work through free primary education and
professional training, good relationships between workers and employers, savings and credit institutions, voluntary association and
public works programmes to help the unemployed.
Freedom to work, not the right to work or be found work, was guaranteed. That the state would favour and encourage work appeared to hold out
promises and article VIII summarized many of the hopes of reformers. If
major public works programmes to help the jobless had been created and
specific legislation to stiffen the general phrases of article VIII had been
passed, the hopes of those who sought a “social republic” might still have
been realized. The terms of the constitution themselves did not confirm the
triumph of the liberal economists. On the face of it article VIII went some
way towards realizing the objectives of the declaration of 25 February and
the decrees of 26, 27 and 29 February, of 2 and 21 March and of 9 September on the organization of work. Later legislation reinforced article VIII,
notably that of 10 January 1849 and the law on assistance publique of 8 June
1850.16 However, after Louis-Napoleon’s coup of 2 December 1851 the
pious, socially responsible moralizing of the 1848 preamble was dumped,
together with the rest of the constitution and the president merely acknowledged the “inalienable rights” recognized in 1789.
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Although the National Assembly comprehensively agreed to drop the
socialist proposal for a constitutional right to work, other radical and
apparently socialist innovations survived the June Days. The first of these
was the decision to make a full survey of employment and attendant
problems, which, it was subsequently asserted, had been in the brief of the
Luxembourg Commission, although the commission had never been
empowered and financed to undertake such a huge task. The July Monarchy
had made three partial surveys, in 1831, 1839 and 1846, but none were as
comprehensive as that envisaged in 1848.
In its first sessions in early May the new National Assembly addressed the
problems of unemployment with some urgency. On 6 May a group of 18
deputies, headed by Blanc’s protagonist at the Luxembourg, the liberal
economist, Wolowski, launched the attack by demanding that the assembly
replace the Luxembourg Commission with their own committee of enquiry
into workers’ conditions. The group included three of the worker members,
Greppo, from Lyon, Perdiguier and Jullien (Indre-et-Loire). Others, opposed to Blanc, but known to have sympathy with worker problems, such as
Considérant, Bastide, Corbon and Buchez, were named. The rest were Léon
Faucher, Pepin, Gustave de Beaumont, Jobez, Tamisier, Toppot, Desvignes,
Bertin, Perrée and an outspoken opponent of the right to work, the comte de
Falloux. They were curious bedfellows, comprising socialists, journalists,
working men, former Orleanists and a leading legitimist. That they were able
to agree on any strategy indicated the degree to which Blanc had become
isolated and sidelined.17
Within a fortnight, which included the invasion of the assembly on 15
May, the new enquiry had been launched. Unlike Luxembourg, which was
dominated by socialist polemic, the new body was designed to be conciliatory. This was clearly signalled by the choice of justices of the peace to
prepare fairly precise answers to a long list of agreed questions covering the
whole range of the problem in as neutral tone as possible.18 The JPs were to
call together two workers and two patrons from each canton to give evidence
for each trade.19 The coordinating group was to consist of 18 members, two
from each of the assembly’s existing committees. The assembly’s own workers’ committee was to be responsible for the enquiry in Paris. It is a reflection
of the conservative nature of the new National Assembly that the agenda did
not assume radical solutions, even before the crisis over the workshops and
the June Days had erupted. It is a clear indication that the June Days were no
more than an accelerator in the rapid reassertion of conservatism in the new
republic.
In contrast to the Luxembourg Commission, which had been left to define
its own brief, the new body was set specific, albeit wide-ranging and ambitious
targets. Enormous printed questionnaires were sent to each department. The
justices of the peace were to find out the totals employed in different industries, dividing them by gender, nationality, age and distinguishing children
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and apprentices; details on what all workers were paid, the length of the
working day and how many days were worked annually; worker–employer
relations and the existence of worker and employer associations; why some
industries were prospering and others in crisis and suggest how production
and consumption could be expanded; the number and types of provident and
mutual-aid societies run by workers or employers, what education and professional training was on offer; working and living conditions, including
housing, food and clothing and how workers’ conditions could be improved.
The final question related to agricultural unemployment.20
Speed was of the essence. It was hoped that the various groups could
report to the departmental prefect within a month, and thence to the
Assembly’s special committee. Some departments finished the job rapidly.
For instance, in early August the mayor and justices of the peace in the
Aveyron were told to meet in each canton on 20 August at 9a.m. Workers
were to assemble at 12 noon to select one worker and one “patron” for each
type of activity and prepare their answers. They were allowed to consult
experts, and doctors in particular. The prefecture expected the answers by
early September.21 A month, particularly as much energy was taken up dealing with the problems created by the June Days, was unrealistic. Many of the
questionnaires were finished by September, but some justices complained
that mayors forgot to summon meetings and it was not until the end of 1849,
when the actual economic crisis had abated, that the final report was
completed. It was the most thorough investigation undertaken up to that
date. However, it did not suit the government of the day. Like all previous
efforts, it was neatly filed away, perhaps because the juges de paix did not pull
their punches in their defence of the poor and of the communal system and
their criticism of the developing market economy. It has even attracted little
attention among historians.22 Of course the report was not socialist, but
many juges de paix clearly indicated that there were grave social issues that
needed attention.
In the poorer departments of the south-west, the juges de paix were critical of major aspects of government policy. They deplored the sale of communal forests, which denied the poor a traditional resource, vital for their
survival, even in prosperous times.23 The juge de paix in Foix, department of
Ariège, demanded the abolition of the 1827 Forest Law. In the strongest
terms he urged the elimination of the government department that administered former communal forests, and that imposed massive fines on peasants
who foraged for timber in them and thus denied the desperately poor local
people adequate timber to heat their homes through the winter. His
colleague in Ax said the law prevented poorer farmers pasturing their animals in the mountains and forced families to emigrate.24 Other juges de paix
noted that indirect taxes on wine and salt added to the miseries of the poor.25
The daily work of the juges de paix involved dealing with prosecutions when
local people rose in rebellion, particularly against the Forest Law.
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Perhaps with some apprehension that the juges de paix might criticize government policies, Cavaignac assigned the Académie des sciences morales et
politiques to prepare its own report on socioeconomic problems. Adolphe
Blanqui took as his brief to help to “rebuild moral order” in a country that
had recently been “le foyer de tant de théories subversives qui menacent de
nous replonger dans les ténèbres de la barbarie”;26 that is, socialism. Blanqui
toured France, seeking, he claimed, a full and accurate picture to counter the
polemical assertions and demands of those blinded by “l’esprit de secte ou
par l’esprit de parti”, who gave a false impression of the working classes. He
attacked those who spread the false notion, that, because a handful of men
could effect a revolution and change the government in a few hours, it was
equally possible to “change the eternal laws which govern the social order”.
His report was designed to dismantle the socialist case, as he defined it, and
to disprove everything his brother had claimed about the proletariat as a
concerted and potentially subversive class. There was no working class in
France, he asserted. Workers in different regions and different trades had no
common identity. This theme has been repeated by “post-Marxist” historians, as well as by the Labour party in new millenium Britain.
While all this talk about constitutions and economic surveys was progressing, the state of siege declared by Cavaignac held fast and the economy
remained dangerously depressed. Cavaignac’s most urgent problem was how
to find jobs for the massive numbers of people who had been dependent on
the national workshops in Paris and elsewhere and who might cause further
trouble if neglected. Loans to worker associations were only a modest part of
the strategy pursued by a government fearful of renewed worker unrest. In
Paris about 274,000 people were paid a tiny dole of 35 centîmes a day,
reduced to 12 centîmes in October. By December a further 13 million francs
had been spent simply on poor relief in the capital. Up to 3 million francs was
allotted to other cities, many of which had to float special loans to cope.
Goudchaux, back in office, did not consider another emergency levy on the
land tax, but negotiated a loan of 150 million francs from the Bank of France
to cover the budget deficit created by poor relief and other costs. He tried
unsuccessfully to cut government expenditure to avoid future crises. In a
more radical vein, and in the face of the opposition of the majority in the
assembly, he tried to abolish the taxes most detested by the poor, those on
salt and wine, and proposed an inheritance tax and an increased level of tax
on commercial and industrial property.
Although the government rejected the Fourierist solution of massive public works, nearly 3.5 million francs was committed in a franc-for-franc agreement with local authorities in a first-time ever expenditure by the central
government on local roads. An enormous sum of 20 million francs, far more
than initially planned, was spent taking over the ailing Paris–Lyon railway,
guaranteeing work for 40,000 men, although wholesale nationalization
schemes, favoured by moderate republicans, were rejected.27 There was 64 per
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cent unemployment in the building trades; 2 million francs was spent renovating the Louvre and a further 5 million francs was loaned to building firms, who
also benefited from tax concessions. Cabinet-makers and bronze-smiths of the
ever-rebellious St. Antoine district, where unemployment stood at 72 per cent,
also received loans. Clothing and other manufacturers gained orders for army
uniforms and equipment, while Parisian theatres were given subsidies to
enable them to reopen and take on staff.28 Although unprecedented sums were
expended by the Cavaignac government on the economy, none of the above
could be described as innovative or socialist; not even the loans to small firms.
Such a strategy had been implemented in the autumn of 1830 in St Antoine.
Other measures broke new ground. During the July Monarchy socialists,
along with Orleanists, saw colonization as a way out of the social question. By
the time of the 1848 revolution there were more than 100,000 white settlers,
German and Spanish as well as French, in Algeria. Prosper Enfantin praised
the multiple benefits of emigration29 and after the Condé-sur-Vesgre phalange
failed, Fourierists became enthusiastic paper colonizers, particularly of Africa.
They urged the government to encourage colonial development as a route to
greater prosperity and glory at home and to promote emigration of the
“surplus and turbulent population”.30 In 1848 the new republic tried to adopt
a racially less superior approach to colonial populations. Slavery was abolished, at least in name. General Eugène Cavaignac, scion of a republican family of the 1790s, who had dallied with Saint-Simonianism as a student, was
made governor-general in Algeria. Colonies still seemed a suitable repository
for surplus peoples, or so Lamartine proposed in June. Just before Cavaignac
was hastily brought back to deal with turbulent populations nearer home,
31,605,000 francs were promised for ateliers et colonies agricoles in Algeria in
which 100,000 Parisians would be “re-settled” over a three-year period.
_Moderate republicans and socialists such as Leroux were enthusiastic,
although socialist fervour waned when the army was given the job, not only of
constructing necessary buildings, but also running the very military-style
establishments for at least a year. A colonists would be given land (his to sell
after three years) food likewise for three years, a house, cattle and seed corn.
Trélat, the radical doctor, was appointed to find recruits. His reputation,
plus the desperate economic condition of the capital, successively attracted
thousands of volunteers, mostly from the artisan quarters of the capital,
despite reports of rough treatment from the army, established European
settlers and local Arab populations, plus the unsuitability of much of the land
for agriculture and huge mortality from disease, especially cholera in 1849.
The project did not succeed either as socialist model communities, nor as a
way of disposing of the surplus poor.31
The plan to give loans to producer cooperatives was also backed by both
socialists and moderate republicans. In the early months of the Second
Republic worker associations had seemed an attractive way to solve the
employment crisis. On 9 June Alcan, deputy for the Eure, proposed that the
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assembly should allocate 3 million francs annually to assist mutual-aid and
other worker associations; one-third to be available to producer cooperatives, two-thirds to mutual-aid groups. On 21 June came the publication of
the assembly’s decree ordering the dispersal or mobilization into the army of
the members of the national workshops. The next day, when the insurrection
was exploding, the assembly proposed that members of the former workshops should regroup in worker associations, which would be awarded public works’ contracts.32
The managing committee began work on 12 July. Its membership was
reassuringly socialist and artisan. One-third wrote for L’Atelier. Also
included were the presidents of the four conseils de prudhommes in Paris and
worker and employer delegates. They set out “to enable workers to become
voluntary members of associations” and to “free the worker from man to
man exploitation”. To avoid the confusion and misunderstandings that had
contributed to June, 5,000 large posters were distributed reproducing this
proclamation and the discussions from which it evolved. They moved fast to
sort out appropriate public works contracts for which producer cooperatives
could compete with individual entrepreneurs. These ranged from quarrying,
hewing paving stones, carpentry and other skilled and less skilled activities
for men.
Within two months they had held 65 meetings at which 528 requests for
loans totalling 30 million francs had been considered. Of these 72 had been
awarded money, including 9 that were already receiving government funding. During the first year the council provided nearly 2.75 million francs for
55 associations, with a further quarter of a million promised to others.33 The
right of association and the right to work were thus translated into small,
controllable loans, similar, ironically, to what Blanc had envisaged.
The government agreed to enter into direct negotiations with cooperatives for projects priced at 20,000 francs or less. Associations had to promise
to match the amount put up by the government, fund an insurance scheme
for sick or injured workers, create a three-man group to sort out any disputes
and supply the government with a list of their members. The government
promised to pay them fortnightly. All loans would be subject to 3 per cent
interest. Associations would have no advantages over individuals in buying
tools and equipment. In November half a million francs was allocated to an
association providing stud horses for national stud farms (a worker cooperative?). Three types of associations were eligible for loans: all workers, workers and patrons and patrons and workers (as long as the patrons were not
actually still the bosses).
On the face of it this government scheme underwrote producer cooperatives and mutual-aid societies, in much the way Fourierists, Buchez, Blanc
and others sought. Some socialist worker associations, such as those set up by
Jeanne Deroin, were successful in obtaining money. However, the 5,000strong Fourierist Mutualité des tailleurs was refused a loan of 100,000
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francs.34 With the election of Louis-Napoleon and the growing confidence of
conservatives in the assembly, the scheme withered. Corbon and four other
committee members resigned in disgust, even before the December election.
During 1849 only ten loans were made. In August 1849 a group of 14 deputies, including three of the few worker members, Pelletier, Greppo and
Nadaud, suspicious of the limited use being made of the scheme, asked that a
new 3 million franc loan be offered to associations and that 1½ million
francs be set aside for an agricultural association to farm formerly uncultivated land. Their proposal was rejected, to the joy of the Journal des
Economistes,35 on the grounds that it was a pretext for keeping the “right to
work” alive and to make the state “the only producer in the state – a disastrous route, the negation of all progress and freedom”.36
The government undoubtedly manipulated the loan scheme to muzzle
hopes for its extension and deride worker associations in general. In his
report on the operation of the scheme to the end of 184937 the Minister of
Commerce assured his audience that although no one doubted the value of
association as such, the committee had had to spend large sums publicizing
the scheme, which indicated that the right of association was dreamt up
either by philanthropic members of the middle class or “revolutionary
agitators”. Several of the associations, he claimed, had links with the members of the former Luxembourg Committee.
He asserted that some of the most successful associations predated the
February Revolution and few new ones had applied. Only a tiny minority of
applicants fulfilled the stated conditions and a mere three of the 461 rejected
were true worker combines. The large, and very sad majority were firms that
had been ruined just before the revolution, or as a consequence of subsequent
disruption. The rest were ineligible for a variety of reasons; some because
their plans were too risky, too frivolous, even ridiculous. Among the latter the
minister cited applications for 100 million francs for “farm schools” (which
does not sound particularly daft), 2,000 francs for an administrative atlas,
200,000 francs to run a silver mine (if there was silver in situ surely the owners would not need a loan), 600 francs to exploit an idea for chemical matches
and 6,000 francs to help run an association of pharmacists. Most applicants
were not worker groups but patrons. The only workers who applied were
those who saw it as a refuge from “a shipwreck”.
It was claimed that no more than ten of the 50 that obtained loans were
worker associations. One dated from 1845. The rest were firms that had
gone bankrupt at the revolution and retained their old bosses. A total of
760,000 francs, he said, had gone to 30 associations in Paris, and 1,029,000
francs to 20 in the provinces. The Paris societies had a total of 434 members.
Six had 194 members, so most were tiny. The average amount loaned to each
was 1,751 francs. The societies involved proved less stable than hoped. Sixteen finished the year at a loss, having been lent 356,000 francs. Three were
in a parlous situation and only 10,000 francs of the 23,000 francs lent to
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them was likely to be returned. Of the eleven firms in profit at the year’s end
only four were actually workers’ combines. Members all earned between
one-seventh and two-sevenths less than those in comparable jobs outside the
scheme and where a firm ended the year at a loss, they had to live on hope.
Associations could become “une véritable fléau” for workers. The minister’s
figures sound very precise, but they did not tally with those presented by his
colleague the Minister of Agriculture and Commerce a few weeks earlier,
who had claimed that 1 million francs more, 2.75 million francs, had already
been distributed.38
The report, which was clearly intended to stress the negative and ensure
that the scheme was not extended, noted that the originators of the 3 million
franc loan expected that associates would be happier than working for a
boss. Only one of the existing associations (the one started before 1848) was
actually successful; it was a small firm with a secular but strong moral and religious directive. In four others there were constant arguments because all
the participants wanted to be in charge. The members of three other firms
worked very hard, but in a dictatorial atmosphere. All of the rest were indistinguishable in their ethical structure from traditional firms. Most were tiny,
with three or four members. Only five or six of them had more than eight to
ten associates. Thus the minister claimed, apparently ignorant that most
firms were tiny, the loan scheme was inappropriate and had made virtually
no impact on Parisian industry.39 The scheme was abandoned in 1850, with
400,000 francs of its funds unspent. In 1863, 14 of the cooperatives that had
benefited still survived.40
Cooperatives were far more viable than conservatives predicted.
Proudhon became the mentor and inspiration for many, although some of his
own pet schemes proved impracticable. In the spring of 1848 he founded a
bank, which was to be free of interference from the state and capitalists. It
offered cheap or even interest-free credit. His bank would also set up a warehouse in which finished goods could be stored preparatory to being traded
for goods of equal value or in exchange for notes issued by the bank. The
scheme attracted 27,000 subscribers.41
Proudhon used his new newspaper, Le Représentant du Peuple, to offer
other practical advice on economic recovery. Because the provisional government did not seem to be doing too well sorting out the economy,
Proudhon’s solutions quickly became well known and popular. Up to 40,000
copies of the newspaper were sold on days when Proudhon had written the
leading article. Many were reprinted as short, cheap pamphlets. He was convinced that the economy would recover if interest rates were substantially
reduced, if not actually eliminated. Investors were less than charmed.
Proudhon was so rude about the power-hungry politicians who grabbed
control that they left him off their list of candidates for the National
Assembly and he was only elected in the June by-elections. He had long since
dismissed Blanc’s plans for state intervention as a fraud on artisans and now
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he unfairly blamed Blanc for the creation of the national workshops. Blanc
returned the compliment and ignored Proudhon’s project for reorganizing
credit. Proudhon was also at odds with Considérant and Leroux. Subsequently Leroux commented that in 1848 Proudhon, Cabet and Louis Blanc
were a revolutionary triad: Proudhon liberty, Cabet fraternity and Blanc
equality.42 If so, they were a very divided trio.
Proudhon’s main mission was to promote financial reform, but his proposals were greeted by his fellow deputies as a one-man attack on private
property. On 8 July he proposed to the assembly’s Finance Committee, of
which he was a member, a 33 per cent reduction of all rents for three years to
alleviate the impact of the economic crisis on the poor. Most deputies were
property-owners and, scandalized, passed a motion of censure on him. Only
the Lyon silk worker, Greppo, voted for him, the remaining 691 voting
against. The assembly condemned his proposal as “an affront to the moral
order, an attack on private property”.
Disillusioned with parliament, Proudhon focused his attention on his
bank project and his newspaper. His bank was an amalgam of a producer cooperative, resembling Flora Tristan’s plan for a union of all workers and
Icarian ideas for large-scale barter. There were echoes in barter schemes, the
“troc” of the 1990s.43 Unlike Blanc’s social workshops, Proudhon’s cooperative would consist of individual, one-off agreements between autonomous
workers. Like Tristan he argued that strength of the poor lay in numbers.
Proudhon calculated that with 250,000 workers in the capital alone, earning
2 francs a day each for about 300 days a year, their total earning power was
150 million francs a year. This potential power could be released and workers emancipated from uncertainty and poverty by the creation of a system of
direct exchange of the goods they produced. In his bank workers would
combine to get orders and to make goods and cooperate in the exchange of
the items produced. Thus the bank would consist of two sections: one for
production and a syndicate to organize distribution. In September a committee for the bank in the Seine department was set up, consisting of 22 artisans,
including masons, metalworkers and a doctor.44 Proudhon frequently
referred to the unimpeachable merits of the bank in his newspaper, Le
Peuple,45 but it did not develop. Proudhon never lost faith. In 1851 in his
Idée générale de la Révolution, which sold 3,000 copies and was instantly
reprinted, he still hoped that a democratic, self-governing Bank of Exchange
could be created to replace the Bank of France: “In place of laws, we will put
contracts … In place of political powers, we will put economic forces … In
place of standing armies, we will put industrial associations”.46
Worker associations of a vaguely “socialist” imprint prospered at first
in the Second Republic, attracting large numbers of artisans, with some
middle-class support. In total about 50,000 members joined 300 socialist
associations from 120 trades during the life of the republic.47 Mutual-aid
schemes continued to expand; there were 262 in Paris in 1846, and during the
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Second Republic there were 348 in the capital with over 17,000 members and
114 in Lyon.48 The exact figure seems uncertain; a recent commentator notes
280 organizations with over 20,000 members in Paris alone.49 The contradictory figures probably reflect the fluidity between mutual-aid and politics. After
the February Revolution, it was far more likely that mutual-aid groups would
be active in radical politics and political clubs often had a mutual-aid aspect,
to the chagrin of conservative officials, particularly when, as was sometimes
the case, the local mayor headed the organization.
Consumer cooperatives appeared in Lyon, Nantes and Reims. In Lyon
one of the three cooperatives in existence in 1849 opened nine shops selling
household goods at modest prices. The society consisted of shareholders and
used notes redeemable for goods. In Reims the Association Rémoise tried to
create a nationwide network of consumer cooperatives linked with mutualaid insurance and planned to add a producer cooperative. It attracted widespread support in northern and north-eastern France. In Reims there were
5000 members who paid 50 centîmes to join and 15 centîmes each week. An
equal number joined from the surrounding area. It soon had 1,700 affiliates
and reduced the subscription to 5 centîmes a month. Its aim was “assistance
mutuelle et bienfaisance”. It was organized in 21 corporations, each of
which elected its own officials. As well as providing mutual-aid insurance,
including finding work for unemployed members, it bought coal, oil and
food for its consumer cooperative and set up a bakery. A weavers’ cooperative and a tailors’ cooperative were founded. The society ran a newspaper,
L’Association rémoise with 1,000 subscribers, which backed démoc-soc candidates in the election of May 1849. A sister society in Sedan also started a
cooperative restaurant.50
In Nantes, La Fraternelle Universelle, a Proudhonian mutual-aid society
was started in May 1848 by the irrepressible Guépin. A membership fee of
1fr.50 a month provided sickness, pensions and 2fr. a day unemployment
pay for its 700 members, until the prefect forced it to close in November
1850. Like many such plans it was rooted in compagnonnage structures and
only those holding a livret could join. Similar schemes operated in Lorient,
Rennes, Brest, Angers, Tours, Lyon and Paris. Guépin also organized a
cooperative bakery, which forced private bakeries to reduce their prices so
much that they banded together to get the prefect to close it down. A later
project survived until a fire in 1862.51 In April 1849 the municipal council of
Caen started an association, presided over by the mayor, to help the
unemployed and sick. Worker members, grouped by trade, paid 10 centîmes
weekly, and non-workers paid at least 50 centîmes. Medical services were
provided for members, who had to be local residents. The unemployed
might be found jobs, or given money or necessary goods.52 Pottery workers
in Limoges asked the government for capital to support their “Manufacture
expérimentale des ouvriers associés de Limoges”. This was a Fourierist-type
scheme including 200 workers operating in a structured collective, a retail
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cooperative and schools both for the children of members and classes for the
adults themselves. It survived until 1869.53
Mutual-aid societies might focus on insurance, production, politics or a
mixture of each. The government gave short shrift to a “fraternal club” set
up by an artillery guardsman, Euvrard, self-styled “father of workers”, in the
national armaments factory in Chatellerault, despite its mutual-aid elements
and support from local notables.54 In contrast the mutual-aid society of
Poitiers, founded in August 1833, concentrated on good works, and had
34,000 francs in the bank, with 928 members paying 15 francs a year. It
secured financial support from the government in 1850.55
Even while Louis-Napoleon’s governments reluctantly and mockingly
continued to run the loan scheme for cooperatives, the principle was under
fire. After June 1848 support for “association” as a global concept was cut
back by moderate republicans to muted sanction of individual, small
associations. On 11 July 1848 the new Minister of the Interior, Senard, who
had been a leading force in the suppression of the workers’ rising in Rouen in
April,56 introduced legislation to supervise and control both political clubs
and mutual-aid societies in the name of “public order”. Opening the debate
he assured fellow deputies that he did not deny the right of groups to meet to
discuss politics, but was targeting armed, secret organizations. Clubs that
wanted public recognition would be obliged to furnish the prefect of police
in Paris, or mayor elsewhere, with a list of members and details of where and
when they met. In other words he was retreating to the old Penal Code,
though there were no limits on the size of clubs. In addition he demanded
that 25 per cent of seats be reserved for non-members, that minutes be available for inspection, that clubs no longer send delegates to other groups, that
no weapons were to be carried and that women be excluded, even as spectators. Meetings would normally be public, although a club could apply to the
prefect for permission to meet, exceptionally, behind closed doors.57 A
decree of 26 July 1848 banned women and young people from clubs and
denied them a public presence.58
Traditional mutual-aid societies also came under closer state surveillance
through both the law of July 1848 and that of July 1850. No more than a
dozen sought official sanction, but all were closely scrutinized. In June 1851
official intervention went further. Mutual-aid societies were required to
offer their registers and minutes for inspection. All societies had to give
notice at the beginning of the year of all their projected meetings.
Article VIII of the constitution, finalized within weeks of the 1848 law on
associations, proclaimed that “citizens have the right to associate”. However, faced with renewed persecution, and the imprisonment or absence of
leaders such as Cabet, Raspail, Blanc and Blanqui, the actual number of associations had already shrivelled. In Paris the 1848 law led to 34 court cases,
involving up to 42 offenders, who were fined sums ranging from 25 to 500
francs. Two clubs were closed; one because it refused to “go public”, and one
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because it would not exclude its female and under-age members. All of the
prosecutions passed off peacefully.
In December 1848 Louis-Napoleon won a landslide victory in the first
democratic vote for a president of the republic. He secured 5½ million votes
out of an electorate of nine million, of whom 74 per cent voted. He had four
republican opponents: Cavaignac (1½ million), Ledru-Rollin (37,000),
Raspail (36,920, and he was still in jail) and Lamartine (17,910). His name,
and perhaps his own espousal of social reform in L’Extinction du pauperisme
(1844) gained him not only peasant support, but also large sections of the
urban working class, and the conservatives, led by Thiers, who thought he
would be a malleable pawn. Radicals and socialists had a new enemy, chosen
by “the people” on whom they had relied.
Radicals and socialists managed to put together an alliance out of LedruRollin’s electoral committee, Solidarité Républicaine. Its general council
in Paris included high-profile artisans such as Greppo, Nadaud and Perdiguier.59 In January 1849 there were 353 associated clubs in 62 departments, with 30,000 members. Faucher, recently made Minister of the
Interior by Louis-Napoleon in gratitude for the role played by this former
Orleanist in the presidential election campaign, tried to ban Solidarité, on
the grounds that it was a state within a state. The organization responded by
transforming itself into electoral committees to fight the imminent legislative
elections.
Faucher demanded a total ban on all clubs because they “openly preached
doctrines and aroused passions destructive to society”. The existing law was
powerless to stop new clubs emerging phoenix-like from the ones that had
been forced to close, although offenders risked jail and fines of up to 500
francs.60 This sparked off six months of protracted debate in which speakers
frequently seemed more preoccupied with debating whether the clubs of the
1790s symbolized liberty or tyranny than with the future of the right of association. Faucher’s demand for a total ban was rejected by the assembly’s
committee, headed by Crémieux, Minister of Justice in 1848. He declared
that the existing law provided enough of a muzzle and that Faucher’s
proposal would contravene the constitution and overturn a fundamental
principle of the republic.
The left had learned the consequences of disunity. Their Almanach
Démocratique et Sociale for 1849 (50 centîmes; 100,000 printed) included
articles by socialists and radicals who would not have agreed to share soft
covers months earlier. Dedicated to Fourier, it contained pieces by Lamennais,
Leroux, Raspail and Proudhon. A series of short pamphlets, mostly written by
the socialist playwright Felix Pyat, proclaimed their common programme:
further industrial nationalization; state support for producer cooperatives;
income tax; and free state education. Although the leaders were mostly the
usual middle-class gang of lawyers, doctors and intellectuals and the supporters artisans, the presidential election made them more aware of the peasant
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vote. They demanded not only the end of indirect taxes and the Forest Codes,
standard stuff by then, but also cheap state loans for small farmers. At one of
the banquets to celebrate the February Revolution (80 centîmes including
food, wine and speeches) Pyat spoke on the theme of “Peasants of France”:
“Que le blouse grise des champs entend avec la blouse bleue des villes”.61
The obvious success of Solidarité in uniting disparate socialist and radical
democratic trends made conservatives all the more convinced that their own
security hinged on eliminating the right of association. The démoc-socs (the
name they took from their almanac) did well in the legislative elections in May
1849, gaining 2.36 million votes; the conservative coalition gained 3.5 millions. Of the 715 new deputies, 200 were démoc-socs,62 which was a higher
proportion than in the elections a year earlier, but fewer than their total vote
deserved because constituencies were weighted in favour of conservative
areas. Given the government pressure documented above, the vote was a clear
indication that voters had become more sophisticated. A much higher proportion voted for radical and socialist candidates than a year earlier. Until quite
recently, historians were inclined to note the tenuous nature of the alliance63
and did not give the démoc-socs sufficient credit for their electoral achievement, which was quite remarkable when compared with the voting in the
presidential election. If France had not been well on the way to becoming a
police state, their substantial presence in the assembly would have been more
fairly reflected in the subsequent history of the republic.
With some reluctance, apparently influenced by the force of the popular
vote behind them, if Ledru-Rollin’s politically suicidal comments about
leaders following supporters are to be believed, on 13 June 1849 the démocsoc leaders, Ledru-Rollin, Pyat and Considérant, led a demonstration in Paris
to try to force the government to reverse its decision to use French troops to
restore the pope and destroy the Rome republic. The next day Dufaure,
Minister of the Interior, demanded emergency legislation to muzzle societies
in the name of “public safety”: “Who could doubt that the insurrection was a
consequence of the violence of the clubs, the extreme speeches heard at
public banquets and the anarchism of some newspapers?” Any public gatherings, including electoral committees, which had never before been subject to
restrictions, even during the constitutional monarchy, were banned for
another year, during which permanent legislation would be prepared. LedruRollin, Considérant and other remaining démoc-soc leaders fled into longterm exile and were condemned by the courts in their absence.
Many associations survived and were closely scrutinized by anxious, often
paranoid, sometimes puzzled officials. The club in the small commune of
Saint-Affrique was described as flying a red flag. “Shouts of ‘long live Barbès,
Raspail, Robespierre, the red republic, the guillotine’ came from the crowd,
swelled by many socialists from neighbouring communes who had designs to
pillage the town”.64 In the summer of 1849 the Mutualist society in Lyon was
typical of the more politicized association of the Second Republic. It had
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about 1,200 members, including masons and carpenters. Although its overt
purpose was socioeconomic, the prosecutor was convinced that it was a
socialist group, following the ideas of the “Luxembourg”. It was dwarfed by
the Société des travailleurs unis, which charged its 100,000 members a 1
franc subscription. The prosecutor assured his chief that it was socialist, devoted to “les utopies économiques de L. Blanc et de Proudhon”.65 The society ran shops for its members. The rule book of the Association fraternelle
des ouvriers menuisiers de la ville de Lyon made its politics utterly transparent. The 54 rules began “Une ère nouvelle s’ouvre devant nous; la victoire de
février va enfin couronner de succès les efforts du socialisme”. It ran an industrial school to teach apprentices design and sculpture. Members were to
work a twelve-hour day from 6a.m. to 6p.m. Their wages were pooled and
80 per cent returned to the men. With the rest, the society organized a caisse
de secours, out of which men were to receive 2 francs a day sick pay and be
visited by a doctor. A banque mutuelle was set up to help in times of
unemployment and some was earmarked to give rewards to particularly
good workers. There would be money for funerals and to help widows for a
month.
The association fraternelle de l’industrie française ran a model workshop
and its rules (due to be in force for 100 years) insisted that only men of
impeccable character could join: “l’ivrognerie, la paresse, le vol et l’immoralité seront autant de motifs suffisans à l’exclusion”. Poverty was another
reason; members had to provide their own tools and pay 100 francs a year,
or 20 per cent of their salary until the total was paid, plus 2 francs a month.
Members were required to be literate. A design school was provided free and
all members had to promise to attend.66 They rallied their members:
A vous donc frères! plus d’egoisme! plus de cupidité … vous maîtres
ou chefs d’atelier! que la guerre désastreuse que vous vous faites sous
le nom de libre concurrence vous fasse enfin ouvrir les yeux … si
vous êtes chretiens, rentrez en vous mêmes, pensez sur Christ et
méditez sur les principes de solidarité exprimé dans la morale
sublime qu’il a léguée au genre humain.
The Lyon prosecutor helplessly swamped Paris with repeated 30-page
reports, explaining that there was no point trying to prosecute such
mammoth associations because juries refused to convict men for their ideas
and the police failed to submit critical reports. The association remoise was
also considered ambiguous by the authorities. Funds were earmarked for
strikes as well as unemployment and the group was accused of stirring up
trouble between workers and fabricants. Its newspaper was shut down
because of its radicalism in June 1850.67 Although Reims and Lyon were
somewhat exceptional because of their large and vocal worker communities,
similar organizations existed in many departments.
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The determination of conservatives to eliminate the right of association
reached a peak in the summer of 1851, when the conservative attempts to
change the constitution to allow Louis-Napoleon to run for a second term as
president had failed. Radical republicans (always socialists to the conservatives) were forming associations to prepare for the 1852 elections. In June
1851 Faucher, once more at the Ministry of the Interior, tried again to introduce permanent, not just temporary emergency legislation to eliminate
clubs: “Clubs are incompatible with normal government; we demand the
right to shut down these schools of disorder and anarchy so that we do not
have to repress riots and armed insurrection”.68 By June 1851, 110 clubs had
been banned together with 74 banquets, 19 of them in Paris. Four departments, Ain, Cher, Isère and Rhône, were still in a state of siege, controlled by
the army, and all societies in them were banned. The Var, with 34 groups,
topped the list of proscribed associations. The minister noted a total of 900
chambrées, the basic unit of sociability in the region, observing that
“beaucoup sont tournées vers la politique et transformées en petits clubs”.69
Existing associations petitioned against repeated moves to eliminate their basic republican right to survive. Typical was a protest signed by 200 socialists
in the Mayenne; an assortment of innkeepers, shoemakers, cabinet-makers
and other craftsmen.70 Resistance to the coup of 1851 was the signal for a
new onslaught against all critics. Mutual-aid societies and a small number of
producer cooperatives survived the unprecedented witch-hunt after 2
December 1851.71 Political associations were systematically banned, without
exception.
How “socialist” was the criticism that Louis-Napoleon’s ministers so
feared? The main radical and socialist leaders were either in exile or in jail
and remained there until they died or the Empire ended. An undercurrent of
loyalty to the Republic and hostility to Louis-Napoleon remained.
Unemployment and poverty were constantly referred to as determinants of
socialist attitudes. On the eve of the declaration of the Empire in 1852 the
prefect in Corrèze, which he described as one of the poorest and most
abandoned areas in France, noted that the workers of the chef-lieu, Tulle,
were still “moved by the old democratic and socialist yeast”,72 particularly
the ideas of Blanqui, Raspail and Proudhon.73 The obligation to migrate in
search of work and the visible wealth of a Church whose ornate graveyard
still dominates Tulle from its highest hill added to their resentment.
The elections of May 1849 and subsequent by-elections showed that
radical and socialist candidates had considerable support. That they lost out
to Louis-Napoleon must be explained above all by the way in which he and
the conservatives exploited the repressive potential of the centralized state.
In effect, the conservative alliance was itself quite tenuous. The president
played his part as the man chosen by democracy skilfully, and conservatives
fell into his hands by curbing the democratic vote in 1850. Socialists and
radicals took too long to become aware of the need for unity. Socialists all
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called for the organization of work in 1848, but they meant different things.
The Fourierists favoured a more dominant, although more traditional role
for the state than Blanc. Cabet also began to push the issue of the organization of work in his club meetings, but his heart was in trying to run an experimental community in America. Proudhon persisted in his plan for
self-finance of producer cooperatives through a complex form of barter,
despite the ridicule he earned from friends as well as enemies. Many socialists followed his later espousal of producer cooperatives. In the spring of
1848 a Fourierist songwriter begged, in vain:
Ah! Combattez vos penchants égoistes
Par les élans de la fraternité
Au nom de l’ordre et de la liberté
Ne criez plus: à bas les communistes.74
Divisions persisted, not only amongst socialists, but also between socialists and radical republicans, even though they shared many objectives. On
the other hand the old ruling élites, who quickly began to re-establish their
control in the April 1848 elections, knew that they did not want any socialist
experimentation. It took these elections and the mass vote for LouisNapoleon as president in December 1848 before radicals and socialists began tentatively to try to unite their efforts.
Why was it that, throughout the first half of the nineteenth century and
beyond, those in power were so hostile to the right of association? Mutualaid groups were tolerated, until they became involved in labour disputes, as
in Lyon in 1831 and 1834. Socialist plans for worker cooperatives were seen
as a challenge to the capitalist system. The demands of the Fourierists and
Blanc for increased state involvement in the economy likewise were rejected
as an assault on “free” competition. A political association provided a forum
for debate, and potentially, for criticism of the regime. Throughout both
constitutional monarchies and the rule of Louis-Napoleon conservatives
insisted that organized political criticism could only be disloyal and a threat
to the stability and survival of established order. Why? Perhaps the memory
of the popular clubs, particularly the Jacobin clubs of the 1790s, recalled a
threat of unrest. Clubs were often the basis for revolutionary activity,
particularly Babeuf ’s Panthéon in 1796 and Blanqui’s Seasons in 1839, but
these examples should have been reassuring because they were both failures.
Conservatives suggested that the popular clubs were responsible for the June
Days, but this was quite unsubstantiated.
Perhaps a bigger threat of associations in these years was that they were
the only organizations (except the church) that cut across social boundaries.
The ruling elite of the Orleanist monarchy were perturbed when the Rights
of Man society reduced its membership fee in 1833 and encouraged more
artisan participation. As we have seen, Louis-Napoleon’s officials shared this
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worry about the clubs of the Second Republic, in which middle-class organizers made common cause with small-scale farmers and artisans. Association
was thus linked in the minds of the notables with the democratization of
politics and was assumed to be a threat to social and economic, as well as
political order. It is true that radicals and socialists secured 30 per cent of the
vote in parts of central and southern France in the elections to the Legislative
Assembly in 1849 and subsequent by-elections, but the hold of the traditional notables was not threatened. Indeed the old elites manipulated the
mass vote and secured their own and Louis-Napoleon’s position with dexterity. Even so, in the spring of 1850 they continued their demolition of the republic by limiting universal male suffrage. The introduction of a six-month
residence qualification for voters reduced the electorate by a third.
How can we explain the war against socialists and radicals, waged by
conservatives in these years? To the wealthy elite socialism represented an
attempt to turn their world upside-down. Cabet painted a society where
there was no private property. Blanc’s plan would ultimately have replaced
individual capitalist competition with social workshops supervised by the
state. Proudhon and Cabet imagined a society where a sophisticated form of
barter would replace the money economy. Most socialists considered profit
immoral; only Fourier defended profit, to be divided according to an agreed
formula among all members of his phalange. Thus socialists threatened the
existing economic system. Society itself would have crumbled. Those who
imagine a perfect world are always a threat to those who profit from existing
inequities. People like Martin Luther King more than a century later had
indeed “dreamed a dream” of a more equal society, and those set to lose were
alarmed.
In the eyes of conservatives, socialists were also a threat to the social
order. Fourier regarded marriage as the greatest evil and along with many
other socialists wanted both to educate and emancipate women. Girls and
boys would receive the same schooling. Socialists planned to make the poor
better-off and, by inference, the rich poorer. Worker and bourgeois socialists
were in cahoots, ignoring contemporary assumptions about the inevitability
and desirability of class divisions. Socialism challenged all the social and
economic certainties of property owners, denying them all material and
moral justification.
Tocqueville’s often-quoted memoirs indicate that the rich had very little
direct knowledge about the poor, apart from their own servants. The idea
that the poor constituted a “dangerous class” was peddled by novelist such as
Sue and Hugo in Les Misérables, and later by Zola in the “city of Naples” in
L’Argent. The poor inhabited a depraved underworld seething with chaos
and social anarchy. They were a different species, stripped of reason and
possessed of a mere animal cunning in place of intelligence. They were as
distant as the moon and the gap was unbridgeable. It was social Darwinism
before its time, and in weekly episodes. In the hierarchical order of species,
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biology and inheritance condemned the poor to the floor. The socialist
dream of educating and christianizing the masses was not just dangerous, but
impossible.
The perceived polarization of extremes between the ruling elite and the
poor took no account of the vast majority of the population, who inhabited a
position somewhat between these opposite ends of a continuum and were
mostly conservative in outlook, and who, when given the vote, used it to
support the old order and its entrenched leaders, including Napoleon’s
great-nephew. A sneaking fear that their comfortable world could be overturned remained to haunt the elites. The disruption of the 1790s was a vivid
memory. In their own lifetime more examples of insurrection crowded in;
1830 and 1848, and, on a smaller scale, the numerous small communes
taken over by protesters in 1830–31, and especially Lyon, in the hands of
rebels for ten days in 1831 and again in rebellion in 1834. Buonarroti had
publicized Babeuf ’s conspiracy and Blanqui and a few associates had tried to
repeat it in 1839, promising a socialist equal distribution of property and
democratic government. Socialism was thus equated, in the eyes of conservatives, with violent revolution and the forging of an equal society in which the
members of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques and the editors
of the Journal des Economistes (and their readers) were no longer in control.
In 1848 it seemed, briefly, that the nightmare might be realized. All the
leading socialists muscled into the new republic, which promised a right to
work, created a Commission for the Workers and, unprecedented in the
world, enfranchised all adult males. An almost universal assumption at this
time, particularly among conservatives, was that the “masses” were radical.
It was widely anticipated, at first, that the first election held under universal
suffrage would lead to substantial social change. Socialists had a little more
job knowledge of the “popular classes” and had always stressed the uphill
task of educating people into citizenship. Blanqui assumed a period of dictatorship would be needed. As it turned out, the traditional notables, in alliance with the Catholic clergy, had little difficulty in influencing the new
voters and dominating the National Assembly. All that remained was to unpick the effects of February to April when radical and socialist expectations
had been raised. Provincial riots in Limoges, Rouen and elsewhere, and the
June Days in Paris, created the opportunity to eliminate workshops and radical commissioners, close down clubs and newspapers and to ensure that a
safe nonentity with a famous name was elected as president, who (it was assumed) would be the tool of the notables.
Radicals and socialists tried to regroup and were able to make a promising
showing in the 1849 elections, but Louis-Napoleon had the authority of the
mass vote and the apparatus of the state under his control. The war against
socialism intensified, in reality a war against the republic. Evidence in departmental archives shows the extent of systematic repression of anyone with a
hint of a radical past, climaxing after the coup of 1851, when republicans
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marched to defend the constitution and were rewarded by arrest and deportation. Conservatives were convinced they were fighting a class war that they
had to win to survive. Why should any member of the elite, however paranoid,
have experienced a “fear of tomorrow”? There is little evidence that their
opponents shared their thoughts. In times of tension, reality does not matter,
what counts is perception.
Ironically in 1864 Louis-Napoleon introduced legislation to allow worker
associations to form and to organize controlled strikes. He also initiated
plans for the state to underwrite private mutual-aid schemes that were beginning to move away from tiny, craft-centred combinations.
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CHAPTER ELEVEN
Conclusion
Early socialists were more than daydreamers. Although some of them had
their dreams and their utopian worlds continue to exercise a fascination,
others were very down to earth. Many were not middle-class chatterers but
artisans, whose socialism consisted of forming and belonging to mutual-aid
groups, producer and retail cooperatives and radical clubs. They were
passionate readers, writers and educators. Women were prominent in running literacy and other evening classes. They were often seamstresses and
other working women, like Jeanne Deroin, who fought first to educate
themselves, then to qualify as teachers and then to run their own schools.
Working women set up and ran newspapers, small and ephemeral, but giving
them a voice for the first time. They were also active in setting up crèches and
hostels for workers. Socialist doctors ran free clinics for the poor or served as
doctors to mutual-aid groups for a very modest fee. On occasions the scale,
as well as the presence, of these self-help enterprises was impressive. Socialists were never more than a minority. What matters is that they believed that
they could control their destiny; they did not have to rely on charity or a
nanny state. Sometimes a strong bourgeois philanthropic streak was present,
although by the 1850s many mutual-aid formations had dispensed with their
middle-class props. The cooperation between people from different backgrounds and incomes to make mutual-aid work was notable and this cooperation was to be the basis for the later socialist parties.
There was a spirit of hope, often rooted in primitive Christianity and faith
in education, the power of reason, order and a sense of fraternity. This fraternity should not be cynically dismissed. The minds and hearts of individuals
such as Guépin, Roland and Deroin were driven by a spiritual and rational
concern for those less fortunate than themselves. Dependent on their own
efforts to survive, they believed that poverty, ignorance and disease could be
stamped out by small groups of determined people. Early socialists cared
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about people, materially, morally and psychologically. They were also
concerned about their environment; they wanted clean, orderly and beautiful surroundings. Fourier and his acolytes were interested in the balance of
nature, respect for ecology and awareness of the mutual relationship between all forms of life, on this planet and others. The concerns of the early
socialists are as relevant today as they were then.
In 1840–41 three seminal socialist works appeared in quick succession,
and sold as rapidly as they could be printed: Organisation du Travail, Qu’estque c’est la Proprieté and Voyage en Icarie. Le Populaire became the bestselling newspaper. Cabet’s Icarian society, with upwards of 100,000
adherents, attracted the largest following of any political formation.
Reybaud’s history of socialism had to be instantly reprinted.
But, although there were Icarians in 78 departments, before 1848 there
were no socialist deputies, and only a handful of republicans. (This is not
particularly surprising, given that the franchise was restricted by wealth to
less than a quarter of a million voters.) Socialists manifested no interest in
specifically political issues. The socialists’ solutions to the social question
were very varied and the individually constructed experiments continually
changed in emphasis, from Saint-Simonianism to Fourierism or Icarian
communism. By 1848, the most threatening movement, the Icarian, was
shrinking rapidly.
Universal suffrage, more than any other single factor, changed the
perspective of those who looked to reform the world. Early socialists had
assumed that the contemporary political system offered little potential for
social reform, hence their emphasis on self-help schemes and elaboration of
dream worlds through which existing society was indicted. Universal male
suffrage meant that everyone had to be considered, and, in theory at least,
had a voice. There was no longer any need to invent new worlds. Workers
were now enfranchised and could have a role in the existing one. In 1848
radicals and socialists were deeply disillusioned with the consequences. The
attempt to include women was simply ridiculed, while the majority of the
new adult male voters, lacking electoral experience, lined up behind the
traditional notables and Louis-Napoleon.
The Second Republic left a double legacy to later socialism: one peaceful
and practical, including the electoral success in May 1849, the expansion of
workers’ association of various kinds and the attempt to construct a national
system of education; and one violent, the June Days. The peaceful element
was subsequently almost forgotten. Ironically it was largely the memory of
the June Days, embroidered into a banner of socialist mythology and martyrdom, that came to represent the first page of French socialism. The Marxist
slant thus imposed on the history of the Second Republic has meant that
much of its history has been either forgotten or misunderstood. The work of
the Luxembourg Commission, which involved socialist aspects, needs to be
separated from the national workshops, which were never intended to be
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either radical or socialist. On the other hand, some of the organizers in the
provinces did attempt to construct genuine social workshops. The June Days
were not an embryonic socialist revolution. Indeed in June 1848 most radical socialists like Ange Guépin and Victor Considérant believed that it
was their duty to sustain the Republic, not the rebels. The conservative
backlash to the June Days caused them to regret their decision and to appear
to be either naïve or duplicitous, or both. The important decision of the
assembly to give loans to worker cooperatives as part of its demolition of the
national workshops, is rarely noticed by historians, because it contradicts the
neat myth of the June Days. The loan scheme was a radical and socialist
initiative that was scuppered by the conservatives. Thus the positive achievements of the early socialists were interred by the conservatives and were
misrepresented and smothered in the myth that the June Days was a class war,
the first proletarian revolution. Conservatives wallowed like hippos in the
muddy terror that this concept inspired. It fitted neatly into the history of
socialism compiled by later socialists. It has dominated historians’ perception
of the Second Republic until the late twentieth century as each generation
built on the foundation of the ideological misinterpretations of their
predecessors.
What happened to the optimism and enthusiasm of the early socialists? All
of the main leaders spent the whole of the Empire either in prison or in exile.
Some were like Nadaud, who returned to France to discover that the producer cooperative he had founded had become a capitalist enterprise, and
became disillusioned with the possibility of changing the system. The repressive policies of the Empire were obviously significant. Did economic change
make the ideas of the early socialists redundant? Did economic structures
become too large, anonymous and costly for self-help? In the 1870s and
much later the French economy was still primarily based on artisan labour,
most firms remaining tiny, family concerns. The vitality of radical socialism
in the early twentieth century underlines the importance of individual ownership of a multitude of tiny firms, shops and farms. However, fairly modest
changes in the economy eroded the belief in autonomy and individual initiative, challenging the confidence of those artisan groups which had led the
earlier movement. Were people convinced that the future lay with capitalism
and the larger unit? The construction of railways by big companies with state
intervention, and the staging of glamorous national exhibitions honouring
big firms, perhaps generated psychological resignation to the view that
groups of individuals could not control their future.
What of the power of the state? Napoleon III consciously took the state
into areas of life previously left to the individual. The influence of former
Saint-Simonians, such as Chevalier and the Péreire brothers in the Empire,
might seem to indicate that the expansion of the role of the state made selfhelp irrelevant. However, although the role of the state did increase in some
directions, notably education, and to a lesser extent, health care, the changes
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were modest. There was no French parallel to Bismarck’s state social
insurance legislation of the 1880s. In France the state did not take a decisive
role in providing social services until after the First World War.
Does the explanation for the decline of self-help lie in the nature of early
socialism itself, which was never more than a transient mosaic of possibilities
for reform? It was a kaleidoscope rather than a final answer to the social question; one shake and radicals moved forward, some to be state engineers and
bureaucrats, some international socialists and some radical socialist
parliamentarians. The radicals who supported Considérant, Cabet, Proudhon
or Blanc were not committed to a single view of the future.
What happened to the issues that had dominated early socialism? Superficially there was a total contrast between the patriotism of the early socialists
and the internationalism of the late nineteenth century. The fervent patriotism of all early socialists was translated for some into the optimism of the
International Working Men’s Association, which was founded in 1864. The
nationalism of the early socialists was not exclusive and competitive but,
rather like the International, fraternal and altruistic and keen to encourage
radical movements elsewhere. Of course the nationalism of the early socialists and other radicals was drawn from the French Revolution. Their perception of fraternal patriotic affinities transcended both national frontiers and
class, and was epitomized by Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”, while the International tried to marshal a sense of class solidarity in its far more exclusive
anthem. Despite the name of the first united socialist party, in France,
formed in 1905, the Section Française de l’Internationale Ouvrière (SFIO),
and indeed despite the burning internationalism of Jules Guesde, one of its
leaders, French socialists enthusiastically voted war credits in July 1914 and,
at first at least, engaged in a “patriotic and defensive” war against Germany.
Internationalism was only skin deep.
In other respects there were striking changes. Many early socialists had a
religious faith, often with beliefs and attitudes not unlike those of the nonconformist sects in Britain. It could even be said that early socialism was part
of the French alternative to Methodism. A number of renegade and influential Catholics, particularly Lamennais, pursued similar aspirations to
democratic spiritual fraternity. Breakaway Catholic sects like that of the abbé
Chatel often aligned themselves with socialists. Early socialists were also in
large part outspokenly anti-clerical. Later in the century socialists were not
just anti-clerical, many rejected all religion. A factor in this change was the
impact of urbanization and industrialization, leading to the reduced influence during the Third Republic of artisans and their traditional concepts of
association. In addition the input of Lamennais and others who tried to
democratize Catholicism waned as Pius IX systematically asserted a very
conservative dogma. The Catholic Church itself diversified from its
hierarchical traditional role in which it organized charities, to promoting
clerical, conservative trades unions as rival to socialist trades unions.
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Early socialists had been educators. Later, the individual lost control of
education, to the Church in the 1850s and 60s, and to the state in the 70s
and 80s. The education provided no longer stressed the philosophy of selfhelp that had driven artisan organizations, but rather obedience to the state
and respect for authority. Socialists themselves began to favour a state system
of education and it is fair to say that the Ferry Laws of 1881–82 were based
on the legislation proposed in 1848 by the Saint-Simonian Carnot. Socialists
made a contribution to promoting the idea that women and the poor should
be educated. In their utopian vein, socialists like Fourier and Cabet
demanded equal educational opportunities for all; male, female, rich and
poor. However French education never abandoned the elitist philosophy
that was so dominant in the nineteenth century.
The principle of association was taken over either by non-radical
organizations or by the state; the legislation of 1864 permitted the formation
of worker unions, within strict limits. Some producer and retail cooperatives
survived, but the momentum faded. Association took new directions. Work
was the big issue for socialists in the 1830s and 40s. During the Third Republic the problem remained, but some of the worst uncertainties were removed.
Changes in the structure of industry and the very gradual evolution from
small-scale to large-scale firms reduced the influence of artisan traditions
(old and invented). Fourierists and Louis Blanc proposed an increased role
for the state in the economy. In the life of the Third Republic, admittedly
much later than its neighbour Germany, the state haltingly accepted responsibility for relieving extreme poverty. The role of socialist parties within republican democracy after 1871 and the emergence of trades unions put the
concept of association in very different contexts from the prevailing ideas of
spiritual fraternity of the first half of the century. Voluntary associations of
all kinds, from the charitable foundation run by ladies of the prosperous
middle classes1 to insurance societies and agricultural syndicates2 diverted
the emphasis away from radical projects. Trades unions brought them back,
claiming to carry the flag of Proudhonism and regarding the parliamentary
socialist parties as class traitors and lackeys of the centralized state. Why did
revolution become a mere memory, an ideological construct, a rhetorical
tool? Perhaps because, most important for the post-1871 development of
socialism, capitalism has not yet followed the gloomy prognosis of Blanc,
Proudhon and other early socialists.
There was no space for socialists in public life during the Second Empire.
All the main figures were in exile until 1870. Local leaders who remained
were either jailed or deported after the coup of December 1851, or, like
Guépin, were dismissed from their jobs in public service. Guépin kept himself
busy by joining the freemasons in the 1860s and was soon in demand as their
spokesman. In 1869, when he was persuaded to try for the Legislative
Assembly, he emphasized his faith in democracy and social justice.3 In January
1870 a new Fourierist journal, Solidarité, was founded to promote scientific
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socialism, to which Guépin was quick to subscribe and contribute: “Le
Socialisme est à la solidarité sociale, ce que La Religion est à la solidarité
universelle”.4 Guépin’s socialism, like that of others, mellowed into a form of
moderate republicanism, which aspired to social justice. Guépin is remembered locally as a liberal. Solidarity or Solidarism became the slogan of Third
Republican moderate reformers. It has recently been revived in the United
Kingdom by the Labour party. In May 1999 at a campaign meeting of European socialist leaders to promote candidates for the elections to the European
parliament Tony Blair rallied his colleagues with the slogan “Liberty, Equality
and Solidarity”. Conservatives seemed to have been as appalled as were their
predecessors in the Second Republic!
When the exiles returned, they were more likely to support the moderate
republic, like Blanc, than revolutionary action, like the irrepressible Blanqui.
The Paris Commune of March–May 1871 forced the veteran socialists to
rethink their priorities. There can be no question that the Commune declared by the National Guard leaders in March was far more of a workers’
assembly than any earlier gathering, or that those who fought and died in the
defence of Paris against Thiers and the army were predominantly workers. It
is also incontestable that some of the declarations of the Communal assembly sounded the drum of class war and that some of those elected were socialists of various camps. Proudhonist decentralizers met with a few Marxist
sympathizers along with Blanquists and those who looked back to the
Jacobin state. The Commune tried to rebuild the economy of the capital,
which was devastated by war and a five-month siege. But private property
was not seized and the Bank of France underwrote their endeavours.5
The Commune was the rebellion of sections of the Parisian working class
(still primarily artisan, but including elements of a recognizably modern
working class from the suburbs) against central government. Their protest
was a patriotic cry of rage against a punitive peace settlement with the
Germans from people who did not accept defeat. It was a rebellion against a
republican government that tried to set at naught the cost of the siege for
Parisians. It was a protest of people who, during the Empire, had been
pushed from their homes in central Paris to make way for boulevards and
train stations, and had to face daily a long walk to their workshops in the
centre. The Commune thus spoke of many grievances to a government that
refused to listen. It was not a socialist revolution. It was the scale of the violence of the army’s recapture of Paris that ensured that socialist theorists
would subsequently weave the Commune into their banner; enough strands
fitted to sound convincing. The suppression was a massacre in which 25,000
Communards perished, many summarily shot on capture; 40,000 were
arrested, 270 condemned to death, 26 executed and 400 deported. The
Commune ensured that socialism in France would be a tale of martyrs.
Class war and the liberation of the proletariat may have been the battle
cries of socialists in the subsequent Third Republic, but the socialists were
203
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
more fractured in France than elsewhere. Unlike Germany, where a single,
united socialist party emerged as a parliamentary force in the years up to
1914, French socialists were split into a varying number of separate parliamentary formations. Even after 1905, when Jaurès forged the SFIO, an
Independent Socialist Party remained aloof and retained the allegiance of
leading socialists. The pluralist tradition of early socialism was a significant
element in these divisions. Some socialists adhered to Blanquist, some to
Proudhonist and a few to Marxist precepts. Blanc was the hero of the more
moderate Radical Socialists. Striking variations in economic development
between different regions underscored these divisions and even when a
united party emerged the local parties retained their autonomy. In France
socialists were at odds with the emerging trades union, the Confédération
Général du Travail, or CGT, which followed Proudhon in ridiculing the
centralized state and its politicians and Blanqui in putting its hopes in
revolution. French socialism reflected the still primarily artisan and rural
economic base, only in the Nord/Pas-de-Calais area and around Paris did
large, “proletarian” socialist groups develop. Elsewhere socialism appealed
to artisans, shopkeepers, primary-school teachers, clerks and other members
of the lower middle class; people whose parents or grandparents might have
been Icarians. That the parliamentary assembly was elected by male suffrage
(restored by Louis-Napoleon once he had destroyed the Republic by a coup
d’état in December 1851) ensured that the various socialist groups sought
representation, although the majority rejected participation in government.
The SFIO took 17 per cent of the vote and 100 seats in 1914 to become one
of the largest parties in the Assembly.6 The name of the new party asserted
that proletarian brotherhood, like capitalism, knew no borders. It was ironic
that the leading opponent of full participation in parliament, the Marxist
Guesde, became the leader in 1914, after the murder of Jaurès, and took the
SFIO into the wartime governing coalition.
The early socialists have tended to be dismissed as argumentative
utopians. This book has tried to show that many were intensely practical in
their efforts to publicize the social question in newspapers, pamphlets and
books and to improve society through self-help associations. They were convinced that association was the key to social and economic harmony. Everyone remembers the weirder details of Icarie and the phalanges and the
disastrous failures of Cabet’s final North American experiments. The practical work, especially of the Fourierists, receives far less attention. Numerous
associations, educational and mutual-aid organizations, producer cooperatives, political clubs and worker-run newspapers existed in these years. Like
the work of the Luxembourg Commission and the implementation of a 3
million franc government loan to worker associations, the efforts of these associations, including the work of Jeanne Deroin, Victor Considérant, and
important regional figures like Ange Guépin, have a place in history, helping
to mould attitudes and shaping legislation and institutions. In recent years
204
C O N C LU S I O N
the importance to socialists and radicals of the principle of association has
begun to be recognized, but the contribution of Fourierists, particularly of
Victor Considérant, has not received the attention it merits. Nor have historians always been aware of the close relationship between the ideas of
Fourier and the Saint-Simonians, and the major differences between Fourier
and the Fourierists.
Enfantin’s creed of the new woman forced women subsequently to be just
too nice, too imprisoned in the concept that women had a special spiritual
and moral role within the family, too obsessed with either a “Virgin Mary”
or “Martha the family slave” image. Women made notable contributions to
Saint-Simonianism and Fourierism. Roland died for her socialism and
Deroin spent nearly half her life in exile because she would not give up her
convictions. Out of their rather contradictory feminism, a coherent strategy
to improve the legal status and educational opportunities for women
emerged, which shaped the policies of the Third Republic. However, this
was a modest achievement, given the high profile of radical women in France
in the 1840s, in comparison with other countries in continental Europe. In
1848 a tiny, vociferous band of socialist women demanded that women
should join men at the ballot-box. Was it because universal male suffrage in
France arrived so unexpectedly and so relatively early and so untroubled that
the inclusion of females took so much longer than in other countries?
Universal male suffrage proved to be a conservative influence; the “I’m
alright, Jack” syndrome in operation. It was the conservative complexion of
the Third Republic, particularly the Senate, that repeatedly blocked universal suffrage until 1945.
205
Notes
Chapter 1: Plural socialism
1. E. S. Anderson, K. I. Grude, R. Hang and J. Turner, Goal Directed Project Management
(London, 1988), 58.
2. D. Ligou, Histoire du socialisme en France 1871–1961 (Paris, 1962). T. Judt, Socialism in
Provence 1871–1914: A Study in the Origins of the Modern French Left (Cambridge, 1979).
3. T. Judt, Marxism and the French Left: Studies in Labour and Politics in France 1830–1981
(Oxford, 1986).
4. P. McPhee, The Politics of Rural Life: Political Mobilisation in the French Countryside 1846–
1852 (Oxford, 1992).
5. E. Berenson, “A New Religion of the Left: Christianity and Social Radicalism in France 1815–
48”, in The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture, F. Furet & M.
Ozouf (eds), 543–60 (Oxford, 1989).
6. G. Weill, L’Ecole Saint-Simonienne, son histoire, son influence jusqu’à nos jours (Paris, 1896)
and S. Charléty, Histoire du saint-simonisme (1825–1864), 2nd edn (Paris, 1931) still give the
best general account of Saint-Simonism. J. Russ, La Pensée des précurseurs de Marx (Paris,
1973); P. Bénichou, Le Temps des prophètes (Paris, 1977); M. David, Le Printemps de la
fraternité: Genèse et vicissitudes 1830–1851 (Paris, 1992).
7. P. M. Pilbeam, “A forgotten socialist: Ange Guépin”, in Echoes and Insights: Problems in French
History – Essays in Honour of Douglas Johnson, C. Crossley & M. Cornick (eds), 64–80
(Basingstoke, 2000).
8. C. H. Johnson, Utopian Communism in France: Cabet and the Icarians 1839–51 (Ithaca, NY,
1974).
9. L. A. Loubère, Louis Blanc: His Life and His Contribution to the Rise of French Jacobin Socialism (Evanston, IL, 1961).
10. F. Dagognet, Trois philosophies revisitées: Saint-Simon, Proudhon, Fourier (Paris, 1997). R. L.
Hoffman, Revolutionary Justice: The Social and Political Theory of P. J. Proudhon (Chicago, IL,
1972).
11. S. Debout, L’Utopie de Charles Fourier: l’illusion réelle (Paris, 1979 and 1999). J. Beecher,
Fourier: The Visionary and His World (Berkeley, CA, 1986; trans. Paris, 1994). J. Beecher & R.
Bienvenu, Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier (London, 1972).
12. A. Decaux, Blanqui l’Insurgé (Paris, 1976). S. Bernstein, Auguste Blanqui and the Art of Insurrection (London, 1971).
13. A. Le Bras-Chopard, De l’egalité dans la différence, le socialisme de Pierre Leroux (Paris, 1986).
J. S. Bakunin, Pierre Leroux and the Rebirth of Democratic Socialism 1797–1848 (New York,
1976).
207
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
14. A. Cuvillier P.-J.-B.Buchez et les origines du socialisme Chrétienne (Paris, 1948). G. Richard,
Une grande figure médicale: le docteur Philippe Buchez, (Nancy, 1959).
15. M. Dommanget, Victor Considérant (Paris, 1929). M. Vernus, Victor Considérant 1808–1893
(Dole, 1993).
16. C. C. Orr, Wollstonecraft’s Daughters? Womanhood in England and France 1780–1920 (Manchester, 1996).
17. E. Thomas, Pauline Roland (Paris, 1956).
18. For instance: B. Taylor, Eve and the New Jerusalem: Socialism and Feminism in the Nineteenth
Century (London, 1983); Orr, Wollstonecraft’s Daughters?; and M. Perrot, Les Femmes: les
silences de l’histoire (Paris, 1998).
19. Most recently G. Sand, Politique et polémiques, M. Perrot (ed.) (Paris, 1997).
20. M. Cross & T. Gray, The Feminism of Flora Tristan (Oxford, 1992). F. Gordon & M. Cross,
Early French Feminisms 1830–1940 (Cheltenham, 1996). F. Grogan, Flora Tristan: Life Stories
(London, 1997). S. K. Grogan, French Socialism and Sexual Difference: Women and the New
Society, 1803–44 (Basingstoke and London, 1992).
21. M. Riot-Sarcey, La Démocratie à l’epreuve des femmes (Paris, 1994).
22. J. W. Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man (Cambridge, MA,
1997).
23. Gordon & Cross, Early French Feminisms.
24. B. Groult, Pauline Roland (Paris, 1991).
25. Thomas, Pauline Roland.
26. Riot-Sarcey, La Démocratie à l’epreuve des femmes.
27. J. Polasky, “Utopia and domesticity: Zoe Gatti de Gamond”, Western Society for French History
Proceedings (1983), 273–81.
28. P. J. Proudhon, Qu’est-ce que la propriété? Ou recherches sur le principe du droit et du
gouvernment (Paris, 1840); translated as What is Property?, D. R. Kelly & B.G. Smith (eds and
trans.) (Cambridge, 1994). P. J. Proudhon, Idée générale de la révolution (Paris, 1851); first English edition (London, 1923); R. Graham (ed. and trans.) (London, 1989).
29. C. Fourier, Théorie des quatre mouvements (Besançon, 1808); translated as The Theory of the
Four Movements, G. Stedman Jones & I. Patterson (trans.) (Cambridge, 1996).
30. L. A. Blanqui, Oeuvres I: des origines à la révolution de 1848, D. Le Nuz (ed.) (Nancy, 1993).
31. F. Tristan, L’Union ouvrière (Paris, 1843); translated as The Workers’ Union, B. Livingston
(trans.) (Urbana, IL, 1983). L. S. Strumingher, The Odyssey of Flora Tristan (New York, 1988).
32. Les Révolutions du XIX siècle, 43 vols (Paris, 1974–1988).
33. Excellent histories of workers, national and regional, have appeared in recent years; R. Magraw,
History of the French Working Class, 2 vols (Oxford, 1992). G. Noiriel, Les Ouvriers dans la
société française XIXe–XX siècle (Paris, 1986); translated as Workers in French Society in the
Nineteenth and Twentieth Century (Oxford, 1990). M. Perrot “On the formation of the French
working class”, in Working Class Formation I. Katznelson & A. Zolberg, 71–110 (Princeton,
NJ, 1986) and A. Dewerpe, Le Monde du travail en France 1800–1950, 9–42 (Paris, 1996), provide succinct summaries.
34. W. Sewell, “Uneven development: the autonomy of politics and the dockworkers of nineteeth
century Marseille”, American Historical Review, 93 (1988), 604–37.
35. M. P. Hanagan, Nascent Proletarians: Class Formation in Post-Revolutionary France, 32 (Oxford, 1989).
36. J. Rancière, “The myth of the artisan: critical reflections on a category of social history”, in
Work in France: Representations, Meaning, Organization and Practice, S. L. Kaplan & C. J.
Koepp (eds), 317–34 (Ithaca, NY, 1986). I. Prothero, Radical Artisans in England and France
1830–1870 (Cambridge, 1997).
37. W. Sewell, Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848
(Cambridge, 1980).
38. L. Hunt & G. Sheridan, “Corporatism, association and the language of labor in France 1750–
1850”, Journal of Modern History, 58 (1986), 813–44.
39. C. M. Truant, The Rites of Labor: Brotherhoods of Compagnonnage in Old Regime and New
Regime France (Ithaca, NY and London, 1994).
40. M. D. Sibalis, “The mutual-aid societies of Paris, 1789–1848”, French History, 3 (1989), 1–30.
208
NOTES
41. Prothero, Radical Artisans in England and France.
42. J. Rancière, La Nuit des prolétaires, archives du rêve ouvrier (Paris, 1981); translated as The
Rights of Labor: The Workers’ Dream in the Nineteenth Century (Philadelphia, 1989).
43. W. M. Reddy, Money and Liberty in Modern Europe: A Critique of Historical Understanding
(Cambridge, 1987), 202.
44. M. Traugott, Armies of the Poor: Determinants of Working-Class Participation in the Parisian
Insurrection of June 1848 (Princeton, NJ, 1985).
45. J. Godechot, La Presse ouvrière 1819–1850 (Bures-sur-Evette, Esson, 1966).
46. L. Adler, A l’aube du féminisme: les premières journalistes (1830–1850) (Paris, 1979).
47. A. Faure & J. Rancière (eds), La Parole ouvrière (1830–1851) (Paris, 1976). M. Traugott (ed. &
trans.) The French Worker: Autobiographies from the Early Industrial Era (Berkeley, CA, 1993).
A. Perdiguier, Le Chansonnier du Tour de France (ed. Nouvelle Librairie du Compagnonnage,
1972).
48. E. Thomas, Voix d’en bas: la poésie ouvrière du XIXe Siècle (Paris, 1979).
49. P. T.-D. Chu & G. P. Weisberg, The Popularization of Images: Visual Culture under the July
Monarchy (Princeton, NJ, 1994).
50. P. Vigier, La Seconde République dans la région alpine, 1845–1852, 2 vols (Paris, 1963).
51. M. Agulhon, La République au village: les populations du Var de la révolution à la II ème
République (Paris, 1979). Translated as The Republic in the Village: The People of the Var from
the French Revolution to the Second Republic (Cambridge, 1982). M. Agulhon, Une ville
ouvrière au temps du socialisme utopique: Toulon de 1815 à 1851 (Paris, 1970).
52. R. Gossez, Les Ouvriers de Paris, 3 vols (Paris, 1967).
53. A. Corbin, Archaisme et modernité en Limousin 1845–80, 2 vols (Paris, 1975).
54. M. L. Stewart-McDougall, The Artisan Republic: Revolution, Reaction and Resistance in Lyon
1848–1851 (Kingston and Montreal, 1984).
55. R. J. Bezucha, The Lyon Uprising of 1834: Social and Political Conflict in the Early July Monarchy (Cambridge, MA, 1974).
56. R. Aminzade, Class, Politics and Early Industrial Capitalism: A Study in Mid-Nineteenth Century Toulouse (Albany, NY, 1981).
57. R. Aminzade, Ballots and Barricades: Class Formation and Republican Politics in France 1830–
1870 (Princeton, 1993).
58. P. M. Jones, Politics and Rural Society: The Southern Massif Central c.1750–1880 (Cambridge,
1985).
59. McPhee, The Politics of Rural Life.
60. See Chapter 10. La Solidarité Républicaine Association pour le développement des droits et
intérêts de la démocratie. L’Union fait la force (Paris, November 1848).
61. A. R. H. Baker, Fraternity Among the French Peasantry. Sociability and Voluntary Associations
in the Loire Valley, 1815–1914 (Cambridge, 1999).
62. J. R. Lehning, Peasant and French: Cultural Contact in Rural France During the Nineteenth
Century (Cambridge, 1995).
63. W. Sewell, A Rhetoric of Bourgeois Revolution: The Abbé Sieyès and What is the Third Estate
(Durham and London, 1994).
64. C. Proudhon, Idée Générale de la Révolution, R. Graham (trans.) (London, 1989), 45.
65. Proudhon, Idée Générale, 153.
66. Jacobin Constitution of 1793, Article 21, “Les secours publics sont une dette sacrée. La société
doit la subsistance aux citoyens malheureux, soit en leur procurant du travail, soit en assurant
les moyens d’exister à ceux qui sont hors d’état de travailler.” L. Duguit & H. Monnier, Les
Constitutions et les principales Lois politiques de la France depuis 1789, 3rd edn (Paris, 1915),
68.
67. P. Buonarroti, Conspiration pour l’egalité dite de Babeuf, suivie du procès auquel elle donna lieu,
2 vols (Brussels, 1828). J. M. Schiappa, Gracchus Babeuf avec les egaux (Paris, 1991). C.
Mazauric, Babeuf (Paris, 1988).
68. A. Galante Garonne, Philippe Buonarroti et les Révolutionnaires du XIXe Siècle (Paris, 1975),
315–20.
69. B. H. Moss, The Origins of the French Labour Movement: The Socialism of Skilled Workers,
1830–1914 (Berkeley, CA, 1976). B. H. Moss, “Parisian workers and the origins of republican
209
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
socialism”, in 1830 in France, J. M. Merriman (ed.), 203–21 (London & New York, 1975).
70. Société de l’histoire de la Révolution de 1848 et des Révolutions du XIXe siècle. 1848. Les
Utopismes sociaux: utopie et action à la veille des journées de février (Paris, 1981). J.-C. Petitfils,
Les Socialismes utopiques (Paris, 1977). G. M. Bravo (ed.), Les Socialistes avant Marx (Paris,
1966).
71. L. Reybaud, Etudes sur les réformateurs contemporaines ou socialistes modernes: Saint-Simon,
Charles Fourier, Robert Owen, 2 vols (Paris, 1841), vol. 1, 137.
72. P. Leroux, “Discours sur la situation actuelle de l’esprit humain”, Revue Encyclopédique (1832);
P. Leroux, “De l’individualisme et du socialisme”, Revue Encyclopédique (1834).
73. David, Le Printemps de la fraternité, 23–32.
74. H. de Saint-Simon, “Du système industrielle”, in Oeuvres complètes, initial? Anthropos (ed.),
229–36 (Paris, 1966).
75. V. Considérant, Principes du socialisme (Paris, 1847).
76. Tristan, L’Union ouvrière.
77. J. Moon, “The Association Fraternelle et Solidaire de Toutes les Associations”, Western Society
for French History, Annual Conference, October 1993.
Chapter 2: The social question
1. Buonarroti, Conspiration.
2. W. Sewell, “Beyond 1793: Babeuf, Louis Blanc and the genealogy of ‘Social Revolution’”, in The
French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture, vol. 3, The Transformation of
Political Culture 1789–1848, F. Furet & M. Ozouf, 511–13 (Oxford, 1989).
3. Buonarroti, Conspiration.
4. Buonarroti, Conspiration, 270.
5. Blanqui, Oeuvres, Vol. 1, Des origines à la Révolution includes very useful short biographies of
leading and not so important socialists and radical republicans.
6. E. Cabet, Comment je suis communiste (Paris, 1840); pamphlet reprinted in Les Révolutions du
XIX siècle, série 2, vol. 5.
7. E. Cabet, La Révolution de 1830 et la situation présente Expliquée et éclairée par les Révolutions
de 1789, 92, 99 et 04 et par la Restauration, 2 vols (Paris, 1833).
8. E. Cabet, Histoire populaire de la Révolution française 1789–1830 (Paris, 1840).
9. E. Cabet, Voyage en Icarie [Voyage et aventures de Lord Villiam Carisdall en Icarie. Traduit de
l’anglais de Francis Adams par Th. Dufruit], 2 vols (Paris, 1840). A russian translation appeared
after the Second World War.
10. C. Fourier, Le Nouveau monde industriel et sociétaire (Paris, 1829).
11. Proudhon, Qu’est-ce que la propriété?
12. Fourier, Théorie des quatre mouvement, 48–9.
13. Fourier, Théorie des quatre mouvements.
14. R. M. Belbin, Management Teams: Why they Succeed or Fail (Oxford, 1981).
15. P. M. Pilbeam, “Un aristocrate précurseur des socialistes: Henri de Saint-Simon”, in Le Second
ordre: l’idéal nobiliare, C. Grell and A. Ramières (eds), 349–57 (Paris, 1999).
16. H. de Saint-Simon (published anonymously), Lettre d’un habitant de Genève à ses concitoyens
(1802).
17. F. E. Manuel, The New World of Henri Saint-Simon (Cambridge, MA, 1956), 209.
18. H. de Saint-Simon, Le Nouveau Christianisme (Paris, 1825); also H. Desroche (ed.) (Paris,
1969), and translated as New Christianity (London, 1834).
19. H. de Saint-Simon, Catéchisme des industriels (Paris, 1823–24).
20. Almanach Phalanstérien pour 1848 (Paris, 1848), “Preface”, 1.
21. V. Considérant, Rapport fait au conseil municipal de Paris sur la tracé de Paris à Strasbourg
(Paris, 1844).
22. Bras-Chopard, De l’egalité dans la différence.
23. Rancière, La Nuit des prolétaires, xxx.
24. Truant, The Rites of Labor.
25. A. Boyer, De l’état des ouvriers et de son amélioration par l’organisation du travail (Paris, 1841).
210
NOTES
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
Gosset, Projet de régéneration du compagnonage (Paris, 1842). P. Moreau, De la réforme des
abus du compagnonage et de l’amélioration du sort des travailleurs (Paris, 1843).
A. Perdiguier, Le Livre du compagnonage (Paris, 1840); Perdiguier and his imitators used a single “n”.
E. Dolléans, Féminisme et mouvement ouvrier: George Sand (Paris, 1951), 40.
Perdiguier, Le Livre du compagnonage.
Perdiguier, Le Chansonnier du tour de france.
Gosset, Project, quoted in Faure & Rancière, La Parole ouvrière, 168–87.
J. Vinçard, Les Chants des travailleurs (Paris, 1869).
15 January 1839.
L. Blanc, Organisation du travail (Paris, 1840); English edition Organisation of Work (London,
1848).
A. Guépin & C. E. Bonamy, Nantes au XIXe siècle (Nantes, 1835).
Voilquin S., Mémoires d’une fille du peuple (Paris, 1866); extracts in The French Worker, M.
Traugott (trans.) (California, 1993), 114.
W. M. Reddy, The Rise of Market Culture: The Textile Trade and French Society, 1750–1900
(New York, 1984). R. Aminzade, “Reinterpreting capitalist industrialization: a study in nineteenth-century France. Proletarianization, small-scale industry and capitalist industrialization”,
Social History, 9 (1984), 329–50.
McPhee, The Politics of Rural Life. T. W. Margadant, French Peasants in Revolt: The Insurrection of 1851 (Princeton, NJ, 1979). J. Merriman, The Agony of the Republic: The Repression of
the Left in Revolutionary France 1848–51 (New Haven, CT, 1978).
Guépin & Bonamy, Nantes au XIXe siècle.
J. Ogee, Dictionnaire historique de la Bretagne, vol. 1 (Nantes, 1843).
Ibid.
Ibid, 228.
A. Guépin, Suppression de la syphilis: petition à la chambre des députés (Paris, 1846), 61.
G. D. Sussman, Selling Mother’s Milk: The Wet-nursing Business in France 1715–1914 (Illinois,
1982).
J. P. A. Villeneuve-Bargemont, Economie politique chrétienne, 4 vols (Paris, 1834).
L. R. Villermé, Tableau de l’état physique et moral des ouvriers employés dans les manufactures,
2 vols (Paris, 1840).
E. Buret, De la misère des classes laborieures en Angleterre et en France, 2 vols (Paris 1840).
V. Considérant, Description du phalanstère (Paris, 1848), 42
Ibid., 45.
Chapter 3: Revolutionary inspirations
1. S. Maréchal, “Chanson nouvelle à l’usage des faubourgs”, in Buonarroti, Conspiration, vol. 2,
231.
2. B. H. Moss, “Marx and the Permanent Revolution in France: Background to the Communist
Manifesto”, Socialist Register (1998), 151.
3. K. Marx, “The Class Struggles in France 1848–1850”, in Karl Marx: Surveys from Exile. Political Writings. Volume 2: The First International and After and Volume 3, D. Fernbach (ed.) (London, 1992).
4. A. de Tocqueville, Recollections, J. P. Mayer & A. P. Kerr (eds) (New York, 1971).
5. C. Tilly & L. Lees, “Le peuple de Juin 1848”, Annales: economies, sociétés, civilisations (1974),
1061–91.
6. Traugott, Armies of the Poor.
7. Sewell, A Rhetoric of Bourgeois Revolution.
8. “Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen”, Article 35, Acte Constitutionnel du 24 Juin
1793 et Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen: “When the government violates the
rights of the people, insurrection is the most sacred right and most vital duty of the people”.
9. Buonarroti, Conspiration.
10. J. J. L. Blanc, Révolution française: histoire de dix ans, 5 vols (Paris, 1841–44).
211
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
11. Schiappa, Gracchus Babeuf avec les égaux, 166.
12. V. Daline, Gracchus Babeuf à la veille et pendant la Grande Révolution Française, 1785–1794,
(Paris, 1976; Moscow 1987).
13. C. Mazauric, Babeuf et la conspiration pour l’egalité (Paris, 1962). Mazauric, Babeuf.
C. Mazauric, “Insolite retour à Gracchus Babeuf et à la conjuration des Egaux”, Paper presented
to the Modern French History Seminar, Institut Français, London, January 1998.
14. Buonarroti’s History of Babeuf ’s Conspiracy for Equality with the author’s reflections on the
causes and character of the French Revolution, Bronterre O’Brien (trans.) (editor of The Poor
Man’s Guardian) (London, 1836), 270.
15. R. B. Rose, “The development of Babeuf ’s ideas”, paper presented to the French History
Research Seminar, Institute of Historical Research, 1978.
16. R. B. Rose, Gracchus Babeuf. The First Revolutionary Communist (Stanford, 1978).
17. Sewell, “Beyond 1793”.
18. Buonarroti, Conspiration, vol. 2, 244 and I. H. Birchall, The Spectre of Babeuf (Basingstoke,
1998).
19. E. Eisenstein, The First Professional Revolutionist: Filippo Michel Buonarroti (Cambridge, MA,
1959).
20. D. Thomson, The Babeuf Plot: The Making of a Republican Legend (London, 1947), 60–70.
21. Buonarroti, Conspiration.
22. P. Buonarroti, Mémoires de N. F. Gracchus Babeuf, Tribun du Peuple, précédés de l’ouvrage ayant
pour titre: Conspiration pour l’Egalité dite de Babeuf suivie du procès auquel elle a donné lieu, et
des pièces justicatives … orné d’un beau portrait d’après David, Prospectus (Paris, no date).
23. Eisenstein, The First Professional Revolutionist.
24. Reybaud, Etudes sur les réformateurs, vol. 2, “Acte d’insurrection”, 371; “Projet”, 375;
“Decrets économique”, 377–82.
25. M. Agulhon, “A propos du neo-robespierrisme; quelques visages du ‘Jacobins’ sous LouisPhilippe”, in The Transformation of Political Culture 1789–1848, vol. 3 of The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture, F. Furet & M. Ozouf (ed) (Oxford, 1989),
527.
26. A. Laponneraye, Cours public d’histoire de France de 1789 à 1830, 3 vols (Paris, 1832);
reprinted in Les Révolutions du XIX siècle (Paris, 1974), vol. 1.
27. Laponneraye, Cours public d’histoire de France.
28. P. M. Pilbeam, Republicanism in Nineteenth-Century France,1814–1871 (Basingstoke, 1995),
95–128.
29. V. Bouton, Profils révolutionnaires par un crayon rouge (Paris, 1848–49), 24–5.
30. A. Galante Garrone, Philippe Buonarroti et les révolutionnaires du XIXe. siècle (Turin, 1951 &
1972); translated into French, A. C. Manceron (1975), 134.
31. Galante Garrone, Philippe Buonarroti, 141.
32. M. R. Voyer d’Argenson (ed.), Discours et opinions de Voyer d’Argenson, 2 vols (Paris, 1845–
46). G. Weill, “Voyer d’Argenson et la question sociale”, International Review of Social History
4 (1939).
33. P. M. Pilbeam, The 1830 Revolution in France (Basingstoke, 1991 & 1994), 150–72.
34. Moss, The Origins of the French Labour Movement.
35. Chaper, prefect Dijon to Minister of the Interior, 24 November 1833. Archives
départementales, Côte-d’Or 2J3.
36. Bezucha, The Lyon Uprising of 1834.
37. C. Latta, “L’insurrection de 1839”, in Blanqui et les Blanquistes, M. Agulhon (Paris, 1986). P. M.
Pilbeam, “The insurrectionary tradition in France 1835–48”, Modern and Contemporary
France, 3 (1993), 253–64.
38. Pilbeam, Republicanism, Chs 5 & 6. Pilbeam, The 1830 Revolution in France, 150–86.
39. Blanqui, Oeuvres. I. Des origines à la révolution, 61.
40. Letters to Desgeorges, 1844, 1845, Blanqui, Oeuvres. I. Des origines à la révolution, 629–33.
41. Blanqui, Oeuvres. I. Des origines à la révolution, 27.
42. Défense du citoyen Louis Auguste Blanqui devant la cour d’assises (Paris, 1832).
43. Défense du citoyen Louis Auguste Blanqui, 5–15.
44. J.-C. Vimont, La Prison politique en France (Paris, 1993), 329–59.
212
NOTES
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
P. Vigier, “Preface”, in Blanqui, Oeuvres. Vol. 1. Des origines à la révolution, 17.
T. Thoré, La Verité sur le parti démocratique (Paris, 1840), 32–3.
Bezucha, The Lyon Uprising of 1834. Stewart-McDougall, The Artisan Republic.
Aminzade, Ballots and Barricades. Y. Marec, 1848 à Rouen. Les Mémoires du citoyen
Cord’homme Oncle de Maupassant (Rouen, 1988). M. Boivin, Le Mouvement ouvrier dans la
région de Rouen, 1851–1876, 2 vols (Rouen, 1989).
Pilbeam, The 1830 Revolution in France.
Vigier, La Seconde République.
Agulhon, Une ville ouvrière. Agulhon, La République au village.
Corbin, Archaisme et modernité.
McPhee, The Politics of Rural Life.
Merriman, The Agony of the Republic.
Margadant, French Peasants in Revolt.
Margadant, French Peasants in Revolt. Merriman, The Agony of the Republic. E. Weber, “The
Second Republic, Politics and the Peasant”, French Historical Studies 11(4) (1980), 522–50.
Subprefect to prefect Mayenne 15 January 1852. AD Mayenne 1M321.
Evidence of commissioner of police, Proubergues, 5 December 1851. AD Aveyron 1M [4M old
classification].
AD Mayenne 1M321.
Lists of those arrested, by department, can be found in R. D. Price, The French Second Republic:
A Social History (London, 1972), 291–5. J. Simon, Mémoires de 2 décembre (Paris, 1874), 90.
Particularly rich accounts of the popular response to the 1851 coup exist in the following departmental archives: AD Aveyron (Rodez) 4M 1-17.2 (provisional classification); AD HauteVienne (Limoges) 1M146 Rebellion of 1851; AD Mayenne (Laval) 1M321 Insurrection
Décembre 1851; AD Pyrénées-Orientales (Perpignan) 1Mp.519 Interrogations and decision
1851–2. I can only claim to have sampled the massive files of individual interrogations.
Weber, “The Second Republic”.
Merriman, The Agony of the Republic.
Margadant, French Peasants in Revolt, 236–317.
Archives Nationales (AN) BB30.361.
Chapter 4: Religion and the early socialists
1. An earlier version of part of this chapter appeared as “Dream Worlds? The religion of the
French early socialists”, The Historical Journal, 2 (2000), 499–515. I am grateful to the members of the seminar in Modern French History and Politics at the University of Oxford for their
comments.
2. Jeanne Deroin, “Profession de foi”, Bibliothèque de l’Arsénal, Fonds Enfantin (FE) 7608.
3. Jeanne Deroin, L’Opinion des Femmes, 29 January 1848.
4. J. Deroin, Almanach des Femmes (London, 1854), 10.
5. E. Cabet, Almanach Icarien: Astronomique, Scientifique, Pratique, Industrielle, Statistique,
Politique et Sociale (Paris, 1843); produced annually as a tiny, pocket-sized book, the 1843 edition sold 800 copies.
6. E. Cabet, Eau sur feu ou réponse à Timon [Cormenin] (Paris, 1845).
7. E. Cabet, Le Vrai Christianisme suivant Jésus-Christ (Paris, 1846), 631.
8. Cabet, Le Vrai Christianisme, 618.
9. Cabet, Comment je suis communiste, 4.
10. Cabet, Voyage en Icarie, vol 2, 503–4.
11. E. Cabet, Emigration Icarienne: conditions d’admission. Cabet aux Icariens (Paris, 1852), 23–9.
12. Cabet, Voyage en Icarie, vol. 1, 279–82.
13. E. Cabet, Etat de la question sociale en Angleterre, Ecosse, en Irlande et en France (Paris, 1843),
89.
14. F. P. Bowman, Le Christ des barricades 1789–1848 (Paris, 1987).
15. David, Le Printemps de la fraternité.
16. E. Berenson, Populist Religion and Leftwing Politics in France 1830–1852 (Princeton, 1984).
213
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
Berenson, “A new religion of the Left”, 543–60.
17. Prothero, Radical Artisans in England and France, 257–60.
18. M. Marrinan, “Historical vision and the writing of history at Louis-Philippe’s Versailles”, in The
Popularization of Images: Visual Culture under the July Monarchy, P. T.-D. Chu & G. P. Weisberg
(Princeton, 1994), 141.
19. Prothero, Radical Artisans in England and France, 270.
20. G. Stedman Jones & I. Patterson (eds), Charles Fourier: The Theory of the Four Movements
(Cambridge, 1996), xxii.
21. Fourier, Théorie des quatre mouvements. C. Fourier, Traité de l’association domestique-agricole,
2 vols (Paris & London, 1822). Fourier, Le Nouveau Monde.
22. C. Fourier, Political Economy made Easy. A Sketch Exhibiting the Various Errors of our Present
Political Arrangements. Presented to the London Cooperative Society by the translator [probably William Thompson], 14 pages (London, 1828).
23. C. Fourier, Harmonian Man: Selected Writings of Charles Fourier, M. Poster (ed.) (London,
1971).
24. Stedman Jones & Patterson, Theory of Four Movements.
25. R. J. Rath, “The carbonari: their origins, initiation rites and aims”, American Historical Review,
69 (1963), 353–70.
26. Désirée Veret, 11 Sept 1831, “Profession de foi”, FE 7608.
27. Deroin, “Profession de foi”.
28. V. Considérant, Etudes sur quelques problèmes fondementaux de la destinée sociale (Paris,
1837), 61.
29. Z. Gatti de Gamond, Fourier et sa système (Paris 1839).
30. Considérant, Description du phalanstère, 10.
31. V. Considérant, Destinée sociale (Paris, 1837), 9.
32. Considérant, Description du phalanstère, 10.
33. V. Hennequin, La Démocratie pacifique, 16 November 1843.
34. Considérant, Destinée sociale, 28–9.
35. Z. Gatti de Gamond, The Phalanstery or Attractive Industry and Moral Harmony (London,
1841), 144.
36. Gatti de Gamond, The Phalanstery, xiv.
37. C. Vigoureux, Paroles de providence (Paris, 1835).
38 . M. Thibert, Le Féminisme dans le socialisme français de 1830 à 1850 (Paris, 1926), 202–3.
39. E. Legouvé, Histoire morale des femmes (Paris, 1848); 4th edn (Paris, 1864).
40. Gatti de Gamond, The Phalanstery, 122.
41. “Un établissement philanthropique”, Almanach Phalanstérien (Paris, 1848), 50.
42. Religion Saint-Simonien: pièces justicatives, procès 27 & 28 août 1832 (Paris, 1832) in BPConsidérant, vol. 9.
43. R. Phillips, Family Breakdown in Late C18 France: Divorces in Rouen 1792–1803 (Oxford,
1980).
44. Parent-Duchatelet, De La Prostitution dans la ville de Paris, 2 vols (Paris, 1836). J. Harsin, Policing Prostitution in C19 Paris (Princeton, NJ, 1985).
45. Guépin, Suppression de la syphilis.
46. Buret, De la misère des classes laborieures. Guépin & Bonamy, Nantes au XIXe siècle. Villermé,
Tableau de l’état physique et moral.
47. A. Guépin, Famille Guépin, letters and papers, Archives Départmentales Loire-Maritime 19J126. A. Guépin, Philosophie du XIXe. siècle (Nantes, 1854).
48. K. Marx, The Manifesto of the Communist Party (Moscow, 1965), 73.
49. Buonarroti, Conspiration.
50. Ch. Lemonnier, Les Saint-simonistes (Paris, 1832), in BP-Considérant, vol. 6.
51. L. Adolphe Blanqui, Histoire de l’économie politique en Europe, depuis les anciens jusqu’à nos
jours, 2 vols. (Paris, 1837–38).
52. L. Adolphe Blanqui, Des classes ouvrières en France pendant l’année 1848 (Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques) (Paris, 1849).
53. A. Perdiguier, “Memoirs of a compagnon”, in The French Worker, M.Traugott (ed. and trans.)
(Berkeley, CA, 1993), 149.
214
NOTES
54. R. Dean, “The constitutional Church and the Papacy: the struggle for acceptance and reconciliation before and after the promulgation of the Concordat of 1801”, paper presented to the
Modern French History Research Seminar, Institute of Historical Research, University of London, 1 December 1997.
55. Lamennais in L’Avenir, 30 October 1830, quoted in H. A. C. Collingham, The July Monarchy: A
Political History of France 1830–1848 (Harlow, 1988), 50.
56. A. de Lamartine, Correspondance (Paris, 1882), vol. 1, 337, quoted in Collingham, The July
Monarchy, 53.
57. I. Prothero, “Religion and radicalism in July Monarchy France: the French Catholic Church of
the Abbé Chatel”, paper presented to the Manchester History Research Workshop no. 2, October 1997.
58. N. Ravitch, The Catholic Church and the French Nation, 1589–1989 (London, 1989).
59. J. A. Faucher & A. Ricker, Histoire de la Franc-Maçonnerie en France (Paris, 1967).
60. A. B. Spitzer, Old Hatreds and Young Hopes: The French Carbonari against the Bourbon Restoration (Cambridge, MA, 1971).
61. Rath, “The carbonari”, 357–64.
62. Sewell, Work and Revolution in France, 44–5.
63. J.-B. Duroselle, Les Débuts du catholicisme social en France (1822–1870) (Paris, 1951),
118–19.
64. C.-F. Chevé, Catholicisme et démocratie ou le règne du Christ (Paris, 1842), 14.
65. I am grateful to Olwen Hufton for drawing my attention to this.
66. R. Gibson, A Social History of French Catholicism 1789–1914 (London, 1989).
67. “Meditation sur la position sociale de la femme”, FE 7825 (no date).
68. Deroin,”Symbole de la religion sociale de Solidarité”, Almanach des Femmes, 19–25.
69. See infra Chapter 8.
70. Voilquin, “Recollections”, in Traugott, The French Worker, 93.
71. P. Brochon (ed.), La Chanson française: le pamphlet du pauvre 1834–51. Du socialisme
utopique à la révolution de 1848 (Paris, 1957), 37. The translation is from E. L. Newman (ed.),
Historical Dictionary of France from the 1815 Restoration to the Second Empire, 2 vols (New
York, 1987), vol. 2, 1094.
Chapter 5: Socialists and education: to repulse the barbarians
1. This phrase was used by Adolphe Thiers in his speech introducing the preparation of the Falloux
Education Law of 1850. G. Cogniot, La Question scolaire en 1848 et la loi falloux (Paris, 1848).
2. Sussman, Selling Mother’s Milk.
3. Fourier, Le Nouveau Monde, 251.
4. Cabet, Voyage en Icarie, vol. 1, 122–75.
5. R. Grew & P. J. Harrigan, School, State and Society: The Growth of Elementary Schooling in
Nineteenth-Century France. A Quantitative Analysis (Ann Arbor, MI, 1991), 151.
6. F. Furet & M. Ozouf, Reading and Writing: Literacy in France from Calvin to Jules Ferry
(Cambridge, 1982).
7. Villermé, Tableau de l’état physique et moral.
8. M. Nadaud, Mémoires de Léonard, ancien garçon maçon (Paris, 1895); extract in Traugott, The
French Worker, 185–8.
9. A. Perdiguier, Mémoires d’un compagnon (Geneva, 1854–55); extract in Traugott, The French
Worker, 118–19.
10. Voilquin, Mémoires d’une fille du peuple; extract in Traugott, The French Worker, 94.
11. J. Vinçard, Mémoire épisodiques d’un vieux chansonnier saint-simonien (Paris, 1876).
12. Vinçard, Les Chants.
13 . J. Deroin to Léon Richer, [no date, 1881]. BHVP Fonds Bouglé 4247.
14. A. Viollet, Les Poétes du peuple au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1846).
15. Thomas, Voix d’en bas. Newman, Historical Dictionary, vol. 2, 725–7.
16. J. S. Moon, “The Saint-Simonian association of working-class women, 1830–1850”, Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History, Las Cruces (Santa
215
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
Barbara, CA, 1977), 274–81. C. G. Moses, “Saint-Simonian men/Saint-Simonian women: the
transformation of feminist thought in 1830s France”, Journal of Modern History, 54 (1982),
240–67.
Marie-Reine Guindorf, La Tribune des Femmes (1833).
Legouvé, Histoire morale des femmes.
Thomas, Pauline Roland.
Archives départementales de la Loire-Atlantique (ADLA) 19J18.
Guépin, Faits divers, 13 January 1833, ADLA 19J4.
Guépin, notes in defence of his Chair, to Orfila, 1850, ADLA 19J1. Guépin used the term
ethropologie to describe the subject matter of his lectures. From what he says they seem to have
been a combination of ethnology (the comparative scientific study of humans) and ethology (the
science of character formation).
I. Stewart, “The magical maze: the natural world and the mathematical mind”, Royal Institution
of Great Britain 1997 Christmas Lectures.
Guépin, “Faits Divers”, ADLA 19J4.
M. Lyons, Le Triomphe du livre: une histoire sociologique de la lecture dans la France du XIX
siècle (Paris, 1987), 169–75.
A. Guépin, Traité d’économie sociale (Paris, 1835), 12.
Ibid., 53.
Ibid., 81–3.
Le Conseiller des femmes, 1 October 1833, in E. Lejeune-Resnick, Femmes et associations
(1830–1880) (Paris, 1991), 38–9.
Gatti de Gamond, The Phalanstery, 118.
Adrien cte de Gasparin (1783–1862) was Minister of the Interior (1836–37) and again in May
1839. He had been prefect in Lyon during the silk workers rising of 1834.
Colonie Agricole de Mettray. Association générale des fondateurs (Tours, 1840), in BPConsidérant, vols 16 and 33, vol. 1, 7 June 1840, 10. Considérant had two copies of the bound
reports of annual meetings of founding members.
F. Cantagrel, Mettray et Oswald. Etude sur deux colonies agricoles (Paris, 1842).
Colonie Agricole de Mettray, 1850, 17.
F. Driver, “Discipline without frontiers? Representations of the Mettray Reformatory Colony in
Britain, 1840–1880”, Journal of Historical Sociology, 3 (1990), 278.
Almanach Phalanstérien (Paris, 1848), 197.
Circular to rectors quoted in G. Bouniols, Histoire de la Révolution de 1848, 7th edn (Paris,
1918), 55.
A. Guépin, “Notes et souvenirs”, ADLA 19J6.
F. de Luna, The French Republic under Cavaignac (Princeton, NJ, 1975), 240.
A. Louvel, “L’Ecole d’administration de 1848”, Etudes d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine,
ii, (1948), 27.
L’Emancipation de l’Enseignement Primaire, no. 1, 6 May 1848, quoted in A. Cobban, “The
influence of the clergy and the instituteurs primaires in the election of the French Constituent
Assembly, April 1848”, English Historical Review LVII (1942), 340.
H. Carnot, Le Ministère de l’instruction publique et des cultes depuis le 6 février jusqu’au 5
juillet 1848 (Paris, 1848), 15.
C. Renouvier, Manuel républicain de l’homme et du citoyen (Paris, 1848).
E. Legouvé, Nos filles et Nos fils: scènes et études de famille, 2nd edn (Paris, no date).
“Gabriel-Jean-Baptiste-Ernest-Wilfrid Legouvé”, S. A. Outlaw, in Newman, Historical Dictionary, vol. 1, 618–19.
Reprinted in L’Ami de la religion, 18 June 1848.
V. Pierre, Histoire de la République de 1848 (Paris, 1873), 442–3.
Cogniot, La Question scolaire.
R. D. Anderson, Education in France 1848–1870 (Oxford, 1975), 112.
Gordon & Cross, Early French Feminisms, 61.
Guépin, notes in defence of his Chair, to Orfila, rector at Rennes (who had originally appointed
him to the Chair of medicine in 1830), 1850, ADLA 19J1.
Guépin to Orfila, 24 February 1850, ADLA 19J8.
216
NOTES
53. A. Guépin, “Marie de Beauval: la mission de la femme”, ADLA 19J14.
54. A. Guépin, “Réflexions dressées à une jeune femme qui se destine à l’enseignement des enfants
de son sexe”, 17 August 1853, ADLA 19J18.
55. R. Gildea, Education in Provincial France, 1800–1914 (Oxford, 1983), 241–2.
56. Guépin, “Réflexions dressées”.
57. A. Guépin, “Réforme municipal à faire dans la ville de Nantes” [1863], ADLA 19J5.
58. A. Guépin, “Education professionnelle”, (no date), ADLA 19J18.
59. May 1869, ADLA 19J8.
60. Guépin to Evariste Mangin, 8 April 1869, ADLA 19J8.
61. Lyons, Le Triomphe du livre, 177–9.
62. Gildea, Education in Provincial France, 249–50.
63. Vote of thanks to Guépin, commissaire in Nantes, on his departure to Vannes, from Le Club
national electoral de l’oratoire, ADLA 19J6.
64. October 1870, ADLA 19J9.
Chapter 6: The “new woman”
1. This chapter is based on research in Paris on the papers of Fourier, Considérant and Enfantin;
on the papers of Ange Guépin in Nantes; on the published work of feminist socialists, including
Jeanne Deroin, Pauline Roland, Eugénie Niboyet, Marie-Reine Guindorf, Désirée Gay (née
Véret), Flora Tristan, George Sand, Charles Fourier, Victor Considérant, Etienne Cabet, Ange
Guépin and the world-renowned mysogynist, Proudhon.
2. “De la femme”, L’Opinion des femmes, 10 March 1849.
3. Fourier, Théorie des quatre mouvements, 180.
4. Fourier, Traité de l’association domestique-agricole, vol. 2, 363–4.
5. Fourier, Théorie des quatre mouvements, 205.
6. Ibid., 202–3.
7. Fourier, Traité de l’association domestique-agricole, vol. 2, 334.
8. Ibid., vol. 2, 363.
9. A recent new edition by the Fourier enthusiast, S. Debout-Oleszkiewicz (ed.), Le Nouveau
Monde amoureux (Paris, 1999).
10. Ibid.
11. Fourier, Le Nouveau Monde industriel, 195.
12. Ibid., 182–3.
13. Ibid., 283.
14. C. Bouglé, Chez les prophètes socialistes: le féminisme saint-simonien (Paris, 1918).
15. Saint-Simon, Lettre d’un habitant de Genève (1802).
16. Saint-Simon, Le nouveau Christianisme.
17. Thibert, Le Féminisme; and C. Bouglé, “Le féminisme saint-simonien”, Revue de Paris, 5
(1918), 379.
18. Moon, “The Saint-Simonian association”; and Moses, “Saint-Simonian men/Saint-Simonian
women”.
19. 12 July 1831, Bibliothèque de l’Arsénal, FE 7644, letter 17.
20. St. Hilaire to Michel Chevalier, FE 7608, letter 61.
21. L. Reybaud, Jérome Paturot: A la recherche d’une position sociale (Paris, 1997), 55–9; first published anonymously as a serial in the Constitutionnel in 1842.
22. Lejeune-Resnick, Femmes et associations, 29–35.
23. Niboyet, directrice 4th and 5th arrondissement Paris, weekly report, 3 September 1831, FE
7815.
24. Report, 27 August 1831, FE 7815.
25. Reports from Niboyet and other directors in 1831 in FE 7815.
26. Claire Bazard to “pères” Enfantin et Bazard, 6 October 1830, FE 7644, 309.
27. Religion Saint-simonienne. Degré des industriels. Instructions pour la propagation, FE 7815.
28. “Note sur le mariage et le divorce lue au collège 17 octobre 1831”, FE 7861/52, 59.
29. Rodrigues, “Note sur le mariage et le divorce”, 19 November 1831, FE 7861/52, 4.
217
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
70.
71.
72.
73.
74.
75.
76.
Bouglé, “Le féminisme saint-simonienne”, 375.
Rodrigues, “Note”, 41.
Rodrigues, “Note”, 21–8.
Rodrigues, “Note”, 33–5.
19 November 1831, FE 7861/52.
Niboyet report, 2 December 1831, FE 7815.
Celnart to Enfantin, 5 February 1832, FE 7608, letter 32.
Roland to Aglaé St. Hilaire, 21 February 1832, FE 7777.
Roland to Charles Lambert, 27 May 1837, FE 7777.
M. Thibert, “Une apôtre socialiste de 1848: Pauline Roland”, La Révolution de 1848, XXII
(1925–26), 478–502, 524–40.
Roland to Aglaé Mathieu de St. Hilaire, January 1834, FE 7777.
Thomas, Pauline Roland.
Moses, “Saint-Simonian men/Saint-Simonian women”, 259.
P. Roland, Abrégé d’histoire de France (Paris, 1835); Histoire d’Angleterre depuis les temps les
plus reculés jusqu’à nos jours (Paris, 1838).
Le Peuple, 22 December 1848.
Profession de foi, Jeanne Deroin, FE 7608.
Typical sad little letter to “mon cher Prosper”, 8 August 1830, FE 7660.
Bouglé, “Le féminisme saint-simonienne”, 390.
Véret to Enfantin, 31 August 1832, FE 7608.
Voilquin, Mémoires.
Thibert, Le Féminisme, 209.
S. Voilquin, Introduction to C. Démar, Ma Loi d’Avenir (Paris, 1833), 18–20.
Démar C. Ma Loi d’Avenir, p.68.
Vie matérielle des Saint-Simoniens à Ménilmontant, FE 7814.
H.-R. de Allemagne, Les Saint-Simoniens, 1827–37 (Paris, 1930).
Adler, A l’aube du féminisme, 41.
La Femme Libre, no. 1.
Moon, “The Saint-Simonian association”.
Missions des compagnons de la Femme, Fonds Eichtal, 14697/1.
Véret D. Lettre au Roi, écrite sous l’impression des événements des 5 et 6 juin 1832. Remise au
roi par son auteur, le 10, et imprimée par la libre volonté d’un grand nombre des personnes, de
toute opinion qui ont souscrit pour son impression (Publication saint-simoniennes, 1830–1836),
FE 7790.
Fonds Considérant, quoted in Riot-Sarcey, La Démocratie, 112.
Vigoureux, Paroles de Providence.
Le Phalanstère, 1 October 1838.
Adler, A l’Aube du féminisme, 91–6.
Lejeune-Resnick, Femmes et Associations, 37–8.
E. Niboyet, De la nécessité d’abolir la peine de mort (Paris, 1836).
Thibert, Le Féminisme, 202–3.
Niboyet, letters, May 1839, 25 February 1843 to Marquis Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Fonds
Bouglé, Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris (BHVP) 4248.
Gatti de Gamond, The Phalanstery.
“Bilan de la France”, La Phalange, 9 (1846), 532.
La Phalange, 10 (1849), 302–8.
Thibert, Le féminisme, 133.
G. Sand, “Lettres d’un voyageur”, Revue des Deux Mondes, 4 série, VIII (15 November 1836),
429–32; reprinted in Lettres d’un Voyageur, S. Rabinovitch & P. Thomson (trans.)
(Harmondsworth, 1987), letter 11, 262.
Thibert, Le féminisme, 137.
T. Fletcher, “The life and work of Flora Tristan”, unpublished MA dissertation, Royal
Holloway, University of London, 1999.
G. Sand, Indiana (1832), Valentine (1833), Lélia (1834) and Jacques (1834).
Biographies are legion and include: D. Dickenson, George Sand: A Brave Man – the Most Wom-
218
NOTES
anly Woman (New York, 1988); J. Barry, George Sand: In her own words (London, 1979); and
N. Schor, George Sand and Idealism (Columbia, NY, 1993).
77. F. Tristan, L’Emancipation de la femme ou le testament de la paria (Paris, 1845). For a recent
lucid brief account of her life, with extracts of her writing see Gordon & Cross, Early French
Feminisms, 19–58.
78. E. Cabet, La Femme: son malheureux sort dans la société actuelle, son bonheur dans la
communauté (Paris, 1846).
79. Almanach Icarien (Paris, 1843), 22–4.
80. Ibid. (Paris, 1844), 26.
81. Thibert, Le féminisme, 158.
82. Le Charivari, 16 September 1848.
83. Ibid., 12 November 1848.
84. “Champ de départ Icarien”, to the tune of “Champ de départ”, in Cabet, La Femme, 27.
85. Bulletins 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16 and some of 19 and 20.
86. Voix des Femmes, 11, 31 March 1848.
87. Ibid., 1, 20 March 1848.
88. Ibid., 2, 22 March 1848.
89. Ibid., 23 March 1848.
90. Phillips, Family Breakdown. R. Phillips, Putting Asunder; the History of Divorce in Western Society (Cambridge, 1989). A. Copley, Sexual Moralities in France, 1780–1980 (London, 1989).
91. Ibid., 95–96.
92. Voix des Femmes, 11, 31 March 1848.
93. K. Offen. “Ernest Legouvé and the doctrine of ‘equality in difference’ for women: a case study
of male feminism in nineteenth century French thought”, Journal of Modern History, 58 (1986),
465. For the connections between Reynaud and Legouvé see D. A. Griffiths, Jean Reynaud,
encyclopédiste de l’époque romantique d’après sa correspondance inédite (Paris, 1965).
94. Legouvé, Histoire morale des femmes.
95. Ibid., 4th edn, 1.
96. Ibid., 4th edn, 4.
97. Ibid., 4th edn, 7–10. See also review by E. Pelletan in La Presse, reprinted in Deroin, Almanach
des Femmes (Paris, 1853), 23–32.
98. W. Fortescue, “Divorce debated and deferred: the French debate on divorce and the failure of
the Cremieux Divorce Bill in 1848”, French History, 7 (1993), 137–62.
99. Niboyet in La Voix des Femmes, 37, 29 May 1848.
100. M. Riot-Sarcey, “Le club des maris et le club des femmes”, La Démocratie, 216.
101. T. McBride, “Public authority and private lives: divorce after the French Revolution”, French
Historical Studies, 17 (1992), 747–68.
102. Voix des Femmes, 7, 27 March 1848.
103. Ibid., 16, 6 April 1848.
104, Deroin to Léon Richer (no date), BHVP 4247.
105. Deroin, L’Opinion des femmes, 28 January 1849.
106. Voix des Femmes, 2, 22 March 1848.
107. Ibid., 36, 28 April 1848.
108. Deroin, “Droit Politique des Femmes: A M. Michelet”, extract from Opinion des Femmes, 1
May 1850.
109. J. Deroin, Du Célibat (Paris, 1851), 13.
110. P. J. Proudhon, Système des contradictions économiques ou philosophie de la misère (Paris,
1846).
111. “Abolition de la famille par M. Proudhon”, Le Charivari, 13 July 1848.
112. Copley, Sexual Moralities, 96–8. A. Copley, “Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: a reassessment of his
role as a moralist”, French History, 3(2) (1989), 194–221.
113. P. J. Proudhon, “Le catéchisme du mariage”, in De la justice dans la révolution et dans l’Eglise
(Brussels 1869), vol. 4, 291; (also vol XII of Oeuvres complètes (Paris, 1860)).
114. P. J. Proudhon, La Pornocratie ou les femmes dans les temps modernes (Paris, 1875), 189.
115. Legouvé, Histoire morale des femmes, 3.
116. E. Niboyet, Conseiller des Femmes, 1833.
219
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
117. Legouvé, Histoire morale des femmes.
118. K. Offen, “Sur l’origine des mots ‘féminisme’ et ‘féministe’”, Revue d’Histoire Moderne, 34
(1987), 492–6. C. G. Moses, “Debating the present, writing the past: ‘feminism’ in French history and historiography”, Radical History, 52 (1992), 79–94.
119. L. S. Strumingher, “The Vésuviennes: images of women warriors in 1848 and the significance
for French history”, History of European Ideas (1987), 451–88.
120. Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer.
121. F. Mayeur, L’Enseignement secondaire des jeunes filles sous la Troisième République (Paris,
1977), 115–20.
122. Offen, “Ernest Legouvé”, 456.
Chapter 7: Association, dream worlds
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
“Prospectus”, Le Phalanstère, 1 June 1832.
C. Fourier, Théorie de unité universelle (Paris, 1822), vol. 1, 199.
E. Faguet, Politiques et moralistes du dix-neuvième siècle, 3 vols (Paris, 1890–99), vol. 2, 81.
Fourier, Le Nouveau monde, 20.
Fourier, Théorie des quatre mouvements.
Fourier, Traité de l’association domestique-agricole.
J. Muiron, Transactions sociales, religieuses et scientifiques de Virtoninius (Paris, 1832) and Vice
de nos procédés industriels (Besançon, 1824).
8. B. Mazel, Théorie du mouvement social (Paris, 1822).
9. Reports July–December 1831, FE 7815.
10. M. Leroy, La Vie du comte de Saint-Simon, 1760–1825 (Paris, 1925).
11. Herrenschneider to père Deichtal (sic.) 1831, FE 7814.
12. Reybaud, Jérome Paturot, 61.
13. FE 7814.
14. Reybaud, Etudes sur les réformateurs, 139.
15. “Prospectus”, Le Phalanstère, 1 June 1832, GL 37622
16. “Programme de la Fondation proposée”, Le Phalanstère, 1 June, 1832, 7–10.
17. La Réforme Industrielle ou Le Phalanstère. Journal proposant la fondation d’une phalange, 14
June 1833.
18. La Réforme Industrielle, 16 December 1833.
19. Beecher, Fourier: The Visionary and his World, 454.
20. Considérant to his wife, Julie Considérant, 1 May 1832, Archives sociétaire, AN Fonds
Considérant, quoted by Thibert, Le féminisme, 126.
21. Considérant’s annotated copy is in Goldsmiths’ Collection, Senate House Library, University of
London.
22. V. Considérant, Exposition abrégée du système phalanstérien de Fourier (Paris, 1845), 32.
23. Considérant, Destinée sociale, 28–9.
24. Considérant, Description du phalanstère, 94.
25. Considérant, Destinée sociale, 359.
26. Considérant, Etudes sur quelques problèmes, 93.
27. Considérant, Bases de la politique positive: Manifeste de l’école sociétaire (Paris, 1841), 110.
28. Considérant, Etudes sur quelques problèmes, 107.
29. “Documents phalastériens”, La Phalange, 1 (Paris, 1845), 143.
30. J. Czynski, Avenir des ouvriers (Paris, 1838); Avenir des femmes (Paris 1840).
31. For instance Victor Meunier, La Phalange, 3 (Paris, 1846), 116.
32. La Phalange, 1 (Paris, 1845), i–xxxii.
33. Perreymond, “Bilan de la France, ou la crise, la misère et le travail”, La Phalange, 8 (July 1848),
175–288, “Paris Monarchique et Paris Républicaine ou un page de l’histoire de la misère et du
travail en 1846 et 1848”, La Phalange, 9 (July 1849), 526–32; 10, 270–384.
34. La Réforme Industrielle, 16 December 1833.
35. M. D. Sibalis, “Shoe-makers and Fourierism in nineteenth-century Paris; the société laborieuses
des cordonniers-bottiers”, Histoire Sociale, 20 (1987), 29–48.
220
NOTES
36. Stewart-McDougall, Artisan Republic.
37. M. Buffenoir, “Le Fourierisme à Lyon (1832–48)”, Revue d’Histoire de Lyon, XII (1913), 444–
60. Bezucha, The Lyon Uprising of 1834, 116.
38. Ibid., 193.
39. L’Avenir. Apercu du système d’association domestique, agricole et industrielle d’après la théorie
de Charles Fourier. Extrait des ouvrages de l’Ecole Sociétaire par les membres de la société
phalanstérienne de Bordeaux (Bordeaux, 1837).
40. B. de Hemeldonck, “Zoe Gatti de Gamond en het romantisch socialisme”, (Master’s thesis, Vrij
Universiteit Brussel, 1974–75) in Polasky, “Utopia & domesticity”, 279.
41. Thibert, Le féminisme, 137.
42. R. Owen, Report to the Country of Lanark and A New View of Society, V. A. C. Gatrell (ed.)
(London, 1969), with a lucid introductory essay.
43. Almanach Phalanstérien (Paris 1848), pp.50–52.
44. J. B. A. Godin, Les socialistes et les droits du travail (Paris, 1874). R. A. Mandel, J. B. André
Godin and the Familistère of Guise, 1817–1888, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Toronto,
1978; I am grateful to David Higgs for drawing my attention to this study.
45. Perreymond, “Bilan de la France”, vol. 7. 190; “Paris Monarchique”, vol. 9, 526–41; vol. 10,
270–384.
46. M. Briancourt, Précis de l’organisation du travail et association (Paris, 1846), GL 36041.
47. M. Briancourt, Visite au phalanstère (Paris, 1848), 4–7.
48. A. Brisbane, A Concise Exposition of the Doctrine of Association (New York, 1847).
49. G. Mazzini, “De quelques doctrines sociales: Ecole fourieriste”, La Jeune Suisse (30 April, 18,
25 May and 8 June 1836).
50. Vernus,Victor Considérant 1808–1893. T. Beck, “Victor Considérant”, in Newman, Historical
Dictionary, vol. 1, 245–7.
51. L’Avenir, 14.
52. C. Pellarin, Charles Fourier sa vie et sa théorie, 2nd edn (Paris, 1843); this edition reproduces
Fourier’s correspondence with Just Muiron. The book was translated into English in 1848,
edited by G. Shaw (New York).
53. Gatti de Gamond, Fourier et sa système.
54. N. Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance (New York, 1978).
55. Gatti de Gamond, “On the position of women”, in The Phalanstery, 115–28.
56. Briancourt, Visite au phalanstère, 79.
57. Gatti de Gamond, Fourier et sa système.
58. D. Laverdant, Colonisation de Madagascar (Paris, 1844), 10, 13, 162.
59. L. Reybaud, “Les queues promises à l’humanité”, in Jérome Paturot à la recherche de la meilleure
des républiques (Paris, 1849), 167–85.
60. C. A. Sainte-Beuve, “Chronique littéraire”, Revue des Deux Mondes, 2 série I (15 February
1833), 432–3. L. Reybaud, “Fourier”, Revue des Deux Mondes, 4 série XII (15 November
1837).
61. Pellarin, Charles Fourier, 2, mentions obituaries in the Revue des Deux Mondes, Le Siècle, Le
Temps, Le Monde and Le National.
62. Cham, Proudhoniana: Les socialistes modernes dédié aux propriétaires (Paris, 1848).
63. Cham (Amédée Noé), Coups de Crayon (Paris, 1849); Folies du Jour: Caricatures politiques et
sociales (Paris, 1849).
64. E. Cabet, 93 n’est pas la République (Paris, no date); reprinted in Revolutions du XIXe. siècle, 1st
series, vol. 8 (no page numbering).
65. E. Cabet, Nécessité de populariser les journaux républicains (Paris, 1833?).
66. Cabet, Histoire populaire.
67. Cabet, Comment je suis communiste.
68. Cabet, Voyage en Icarie, 59–65.
69. Ibid., vol. 1. 8–45.
70. H. Rigaudias-Weiss, Les Enquêtes ouvrières en France entre 1830 et 1848 (Paris, 1936), 165.
71. Johnson, Utopian Communism in France, 78–145.
72. E. Cabet, Opinions et sentiments publiques exprimés concernant le Fondateur d’Icarie (Paris,
1856), 7.
221
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
73.
74.
75.
76.
77.
78.
Ibid., 19.
Johnson, Utopian Communism in France, 260–99.
Prospectus. Emigration Icarienne. Conditions d’Admission. Cabet aux Icariens (October 1852).
E. Cabet, Le Fondateur d’Icarie aux Icariens (Paris, 1856).
Cabet, Opinions et sentiments.
Dagognet, Trois philosophies revisitées. P. Ricoeur, L’Idéologie et l’Utopie (Chicago, 1986);
translated (Paris, 1997).
79. Cabet, Voyage en Icarie.
80. Considérant Collection. BP-Considérant, 33 volumes. Goldsmiths’ Library, University of London.
81. C. Duveyrier, La Ville nouvelle ou Paris des Saint-simoniens (Ménilmontant, 1832).
82. E. Zola, Le Ventre de Paris (Paris, 1898); translated as The Fat and the Thin, A. Vizetelly (trans.)
(Stroud, 1993).
83. A. Guépin, Quelques considération sur le cancer (Paris, 1828), 15–17.
84. C. J. Kudlick, Cholera in post-Revolutionary Paris: A Cultural History (Berkeley, CA, 1996), 2.
85. Ibid., 77.
86. Considérant, Description du Phalanstère, 43–5.
87 . E. B. Ackermann, Health Care in the Parisian Countryside 1800–1914 (New Brunswick, 1990).
88. Mayor of Nantes to Guépin, 4 April 1842, ADLA 1Mi8.
89. Guépin & Bonamy, Nantes au XIXe siècle, 225.
90. D. B. Weiner, Raspail, Scientist & Reformer (Irvington, NY, 1968) lucidly covers both aspects of
his life.
91. F. V. Raspail, Histoire naturelle de la santé et de la maladie chez les végétaux et chez les animaux
en général et en particulier chez l’homme, suivie du formulaire pour une nouvelle méthode de
traitement hygiénique et curative, 2 vols (Paris, 1843).
92. F. V. Raspail, Procès et défense de F.V.Raspail poursuivi le 19 mai 1846 en exercise illégal de la
médecine devant le 8ème chambre (police correctionnelle) à la requête du ministère public, et sur
la dénonciation formelle des sieurs Fouquier, médecin du roi, et Orfila, doyen de la faculté de
médecine de Paris, agissant comme vice-président et président d’une association anonyme de
médecins (Paris, 1846), 12.
93. F. V. Raspail, Manuel-annuaire de la santé (Paris, 1845).
Chapter 8: Worker associations before1848
1. Sewell, Work and Revolution in France.
2. For his more recent contributions see W. Sewell, “Artisans, factory workers and the formation of
the French working class 1789–1848”, in Working Class Formation, I. Katznelson & A. Zolberg
(eds), 509–26 (Princeton, NJ, 1986).
3. Hunt & Sheridan, “Corporatism, association”.
4. Gossez, Les ouvriers de Paris.
5. Sibalis, “The mutual-aid societies of Paris”. D. Snyder & C. Tilly, “Hardship and collective
violence in France, 1830–1960”, American Sociological Review, 37 (1972), 520–32.
6. G. J. Sheridan, “The political economy of artisan industry: government and the people in the
silk trade of Lyon, 1830–1870”, French Historical Studies, 11 (1979), 215–38.
7. Sewell, Work and Revolution in France. G. J. Sheridan, The Social and Economic Foundations of
Association among the Silk Weavers of Lyon 1852–1870, 2 vols (New York, 1981).
8. Truant, The Rites of Labour.
9. E. Coornaert, Les compagnonnages en France du moyen âge à nos jours (Paris, 1966). D.
Garrioch & M. Sonenscher, “Compagnonnages, confraternities and associations of journeymen
in eighteenth century Paris”, European History Quarterly, 16 (1986), 25–45.
10. Ibid. Coornaert, Les compagnonnages. Truant, “Independent and insolent”. C. M. Truant,
“Solidarity and symbolism among journeymen artisans: the case of compagnonnage”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 21 (1979), 217–20.
11. M. D. Sibalis, “The evolution of the Parisian labour movement 1789–1834”, Proceedings of the
10th Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History, 345–53 (Winnipeg, 1984).
222
NOTES
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
Sewell, “Artisans, factory workers”. See also Sewell, “Uneven development”.
Perdiguier, Le Livre du compagnonage.
Ibid.
Perdiguier, Le Chansonnier du Tour de France.
His correspondence with Guépin between 1841 and 1843 survives in Guépin’s papers, ADLA
19J12.
Boyer, De l’état des ouvriers. Gosset, Projet de régéneration. Moreau, De la réforme.
Gosset, Project de régéneration, quoted in Faure & Rancière, La Parole ouvrière, 168–87.
T. B. Smith, “Public assistance and labour supply in nineteenth-century Lyon”, Journal of Modern History, 68 (1996), 12.
Sibalis, “The mutual-aid societies of Paris”.
W. Sewell, “La confraternité des prolétaires: conscience de classe sous la Monarchie de Juillet”,
Annales: Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations (1981), 650–71.
Gossez, Les ouvriers de Paris, vol. 1, 41.
Sibalis, “The Mutual-Aid societies of Paris”, 13.
Sheridan, The Social and Economic Foundations.
Sibalis, “The mutual-aid societies of Paris”, 8–22.
Smith, “Public assistance”, 12.
Sibalis, “The mutual-aid societies of Paris”, 23. Sewell, “La confraternité des prolétaires”.
Aminzade, Class, Politics and early Industrial Capitalism.
Sibalis, “The mutual-aid societies of Paris”, 26–7. Sewell, Work and Revolution in France, 165.
“Union des Ouvriers du Batîment”, in Gossez, Les Ouvriers de Paris, vol. 1, 127.
Richard, Une grande figure, 866–98.
Philippe-Joseph-Benjamin Buchez (1796–1865). For a brief account of his contribution see
Cuvillier, P.-J.-B. Buchez. His papers are conserved in Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris,
including his correspondence with his father.
E. L. Newman, “The historian as apostle: romanticism, religion and the first socialist history of
the world”, Journal of the History of Ideas 56 (1995), 239–61.
Rigaudias-Weiss, Les Enquêtes ouvrières, 158.
Thibert, Le féminisme, 165.
Richard, Une grande figure, 20.
Cuvillier, P.-J.-B. Buchez, 65.
A. F. Falloux, Mémoires d’un royaliste, 2 vols (Paris, 1888), 320.
His personal papers in ADLA 19J1-26.
See Chapter 5, Education and the socialists, passim.
Guépin, “Nantes”, in Ogee, Dictionnaire historique, 224.
Chevalier to Guépin, “le Guépin des temps jadis, mauvaise tête et bon coeur”, 13 December
1843, ADLA 19J12.
Guépin, Traité d’economie sociale, 53.
Ibid., 81–3.
Hoffman, Revolutionary Justice, 20–27.
Proudhon, Qu-est-ce que la propriété?, 335.
Proudhon, Système des contradictions, vol. II, 391.
Ibid., vol. II, 261.
Proudhon, Qu’est-ce que la propriété?, 14.
Ibid., 196.
Proudhon, Qu’est-ce que la propriété?, 285–6.
Ibid., 448.
Ibid., 453.
Proudhon, Système des contradictions. K. Marx, Misère de la philosophie (Paris, 1847).
Proudhon, Confessions d’un révolutionnaire.
Quoted in E. Dolléans & J. L. Puech, Proudhon et la Révolution de 1848 (Paris, 1948), 77.
Loubère, Louis Blanc, 9.
J. Vidalenc, Louis Blanc (Paris, 1948), 7–8.
La Revue du Progrès politique, Social et Littéraire, 15 January 1839.
L. Blanc, “Organisation du travail”, in J. A. R. Marriot (introduction), The French Revolution of
223
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
1848 in its economic aspect. I (Oxford, 1913), 14.
Blanc, “Organisation du travail”, 53.
Blanc, “Organisation du travail”, 117.
F. Tristan, Méphis, 2 vols (Paris, 1838).
Grogan, French Socialism and Sexual Difference, 156.
Perdiguier, Le Livre du compagnonage.
Dolléans, Féminisme et mouvement ouvrier, 9–10.
Tristan, L’Union ouvrière.
Chapter 9: Association: socialist hopes in the Second Republic
1. P. Amann, Revolution and Mass Democracy: the Paris Club Movement in 1848 (Princeton, NJ,
1975).
2. A. Delvau, Murailles révolutionnaires: Collection complète des professions de foi, affiches,
décrets, bulletins de la République, fac-similés des signatures (Paris et les départements), 2 vols
(Paris, 1856), vol. 1, 113–14.
3. “Discours du Cabet, 6 mars 1848”, in E. Cabet, Société fraternelle centrale (Paris, 1848), 11–12.
4. Traugott, Armies of the Poor, 19.
5. Cabet, Société fraternelle centrale, 10 April 1848.
6. David, Le Printemps de la fraternité.
7. Some of the society’s records appear among the papers of the Commission seized by the government after the June Days, AN C942.
8. A. Lucas, Les Clubs et les clubistes de 1848, quoted in F. Ponteil, Les Institutions de la France de
1814 à 1870 (Paris, 1965), 345.
9. L. A. Garnier-Pagès, Histoire de la Révolution de 1848 (Paris, no date), i, 324, quoted by
Traugott, Armies of the Poor, 115.
10. J. Garnier, Le Droit au Travail à l’Assemblée Nationale: Recueil complet de tous les discours
prononcés dans cette mémorable discussion (Paris, 1848), 431.
11. C. Harison, “An organisation of labor: laissez-faire and marchandage in the Paris building trades
through 1848”, French Historical Studies, 20 (1997), 357–80.
12. Addresses of M. Louis Blanc to the Committee of workmen at the Luxembourg to which is
added the report of the Committee prepared for presentation to the National Assembly by F.
Vidal & M. C. Secqueur (London, 1848). The nagging, worried speeches, in which Blanc
seemed to be losing control, are not included in this selection.
13. Harison, “An organisation of labor”..
14. Lieutenant-général Chatellerault to commissioner for the Vienne, 4 May 1848, AD Vienne
M454.
15. Luxembourg Commission Papers, seized on the orders of the National Assembly, June 1848,
AN C942.
16. E. de Girardin, Le Droit au Travail au Luxembourg et à l’Assemblée Nationale, 2 vols (Paris,
1849), vol. 1, 19.
17. Ibid., vol. 1, 21.
18. Ibid., vol. 1, 22–3.
19. Gossez, Les Ouvriers de Paris, vol. 1, 270.
20. Addresses of Louis Blanc, 88.
21. Girardin, Le Droit au Travail, vol. 1., 51.
22. Ibid., vol. 1, 58.
23. Ibid., vol. 1. 65
24. Ibid., vol. 1, 76.
25. Gossez, Les Ouvriers de Paris, vol. 1., 66.
26. Ibid., vol. 1, 104
27. M. D. Sibalis, “The Parisian Tailors in 1848: the Association fraternelle des ouvriers tailleurs
(The Atelier de Clichy), in R. Aldrich & M. Lyons (eds), The Sphinx in the Tuileries and Other
Essays in Modern French History (Sydney, 1999), 154–68.
28. Commissioner Police, Loyeux. Enquête sur l’atelier de Clichy, 27 July 1848, AN CC933.
224
NOTES
29. Girardin, Le Droit au Travail, vol. 1, 89, 124.
30. Report of the Committee at the Luxembourg in Addresses of Louis Blanc, p.123.
31. “L’Association nationale des corporations unies de la Grande Bretagne pour la protection de
l’industrie et la repartition du travaux agricoles et manufacturière”, in Girardin, Le Droit au
Travail, vol. 1, 90. His address was signed by Fred Green, Will Robson, Will Peel, Will
Williamson, Thom Winters, Ed Humphries, Will Shackleton and Barratt.
32. Loubère, Louis Blanc, 115.
33. Speech to Luxembourg Commission, 29 April 1848 in Girardin, Le Droit au Travail, vol. 1,
184–225. (a real endurance feat for his patient listeners).
34. Girardin, Le Droit au Travail, vol. 1, 118–83.
35. Commission du gouvernement pour les travailleurs, Exposé général, 26 April 1848, 179.
36. “Report of the Committee of the Luxembourg”, in Addresses of Louis Blanc, 139.
37. Girardin, Le Droit au Travail, vol. 1, 184–225.
38. F. Armand, Les Fourieristes et les luttes révolutionnaires de 1848 à 1851 (Paris, 1948).
39. Blanqui, Des classes ouvrières, 25.
40. W. Fortescue, “The role of women and charity in the French Revolution of 1848”, French History, 11 (1997), 54–78.
41. “Petition au gouvernement provisoire ministère du Progrès et de l’organisation du travail pour
étudier la question sociale et réaliser dans l’intérêt de tous la liberté, l’égalité, la fraternité par
l’association libre et volontaire’. Les Révolution du XIXe siècle. Third series. 1848. La
Révolution Démocratique et Sociale, 9 volumes (Paris 1984), vol. 7.
42. Démocratie Pacifique, 10 March 1848.
43. Last verse of a patriotic hymn for the republic by Moline to the tune of the Marseillaise,
République: Organe des Intérêts du Peuple, 2 March 1848.
44. L. Blanc, 1848: Historical Revelations (London, 1858), 156.
45. D. H. Pinkney, “Les ateliers de secours à Paris (1830–31): précurseurs des Ateliers Nationaux de
1848”, Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, 12 (1965), 65–70.
46. D. C. McKay, The National Workshops: A Study in the French Revolution of 1848 (Cambridge,
MA, 1933), 12.
47. L. Blanc, Appel aux honnêtes gens: Quelques pages d’histoire contemporaine (Paris, 1849), 21–
30.
48. T. R. Christofferson, “The French national workshops of 1848: the view from the provinces”,
French Historical Studies, 11 (1980), 505–20.
49. Pilbeam, Republicanism, 199.
50. Traugott, Armies of the Poor.
51. E. Thomas, Histoire des Ateliers Nationaux (Paris, 1848), 30.
52. L. André, La Révolution de 1848 en Corrèze (Tulle, 1903).
53. This was how Pauline Roland, who had worked with Leroux at Boussac, described the city in
1850. Corbin, Archaisme et modernité, vol. 2, 771.
54. AD Haute-Vienne 1M143.
55. Corbin, Archaisme et modernité, vol. 1, 536.
56. Mayor of Ambazac to commissioner Limoges, 22 March 1848, AD Haute-Vienne 1M143.
57. C. Schmidt, Des ateliers nationaux aux barricades de juin (Paris, 1948), 66–7.
58. T. Shinn, “From ‘corps’ to ‘profession’: the emergence and definition of industrial engineering
in modern France”, in The Organisation of Science and Technology in France, 1800–1914, R.
Fox & G. Weisz, 183–210 (Cambridge, 1980).
59. Dufaure, speech in National Assembly, September 1848. Garnier, Le Droit au Travail, 276
60. L. S. Strumingher, “The struggle for unity among Parisian women: the Voix des Femmes March–
June 1848”, History of European Ideas (1989), 273–85.
61. Gay’s petition reprinted in Voix des Femmes, no. 2, 22 March 1848.
62. La Phalange, x (1849), 333.
63. La Voix des Femmes, 4 April 1848.
64. Quoted in Dolléans, Féminisme et mouvement ouvrier, 2.
65. Voix des Femmes, 2, 22 March 1848; 4, 26 March 1848.
66. Truant, The Rites of Labour, 318, 329–33.
67. Stewart-McDougall, Artisan Republic.
225
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
68. McKay, The National Workshops, xii.
69. Ulysse Trélat (1798–1879) was elected to the assembly by the Puy-de-Dôme in April 1848, as
colonel in the National Guard and mayor of the twelfth arrondissement in Paris. He was made
one of the overseeing commissioners in 1848 in the Puy-de-Dôme region and elected one of six
vice-presidents by the Assembly. T. Beck, “Trélat”, in Newman, Historical Dictionary, vol. 2,
1064–6.
70. R. Price (ed.), Documents on the French Revolution of 1848 (London, 1996), 49, 82–3.
71. Traugott, Armies of the Poor.
72. Tilly & Lees, “Le peuple de Juin”.
73. Tocqueville, Recollections, 169.
Chapter 10: Association: the conservative reaction in the Second Republic
1. M. Chevalier, The Labour Question (London, 1848); translated from an article in Revue des
Deux Mondes , 15 March 1848. A. Thiers, De la propriété (Brussels, 1848).
2. Garnier, Le Droit au travail. de Girardin, Le Droit au travail.
3. Garnier’s Elements de l’économie politique (Paris, 1846) was a standard work.
4. B. d’Airy, Rapport sur l’organisation générale des secours public, et sur la destruction de la
mendacité (13 June 1792); summarized by I. Woloch, Transformations of the French Civic Order, 1789–1820s: The New Régime (New York and London, 1994), 244–5.
5. Duguit & Monnier, Les Constitutions et les principales, 66–78.
6. Garnier, Le Droit au travail, 3.
7. Ibid., 5.
8. Isaac-Adolphe Crémieux (1796–1880) was a Jewish native of Nîmes and a well-known lawyer
during the Constitutional Monarchy, often defending liberal opponents. He was a gauche
dynastique deputy from 1842 and a supporter of the Banquet campaign. Minister of Justice of
the provisional government, he resigned on 7 June, opposed to the prosecution of Louis Blanc
for involvement in the demonstration of 15 May. He backed Louis-Napoleon for president, but
later withdrew his support. He was elected to the Legislative Assembly in May 1849 as a member of the left-wing Mountain. He was elected after the December 1851 coup. He returned
from private legal practice to defend republicans on trial in 1864 and was re-elected in 1869. He
became Justice minister in the Government of National Defence, September 1870. F. A. de
Luna, “Crémieux”, in Newman, Historical Dictionary, vol. 1, 281–2.
9. Article 16, “Declaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen”, Acte Constitutionnel du 24 juin
1793.
10. Garnier, Le Droit au travail, 85.
11. Ibid., 115.
12. Ibid., 135
13. Victor Considérant was elected to parliament for the Loiret in April 1848. He had previously
been a member of the municipal council of Paris. Garnier comments that before the February
Revolution his politics had not been obvious: “depuis, il a mis beaucoup de rouge sur son
drapeau”, ibid., 219.
14. Michel Goudchaux (1797–1862), unsuccessful in April, was elected in the June by-election for
the Seine. C. E. Guthriem, “Goudchaux”, in Newman, Historical Dictionary, vol. 1, 468–9.
Goudchaux briefly returned to politics in 1857 when he was elected to the Legislative Assembly
by Paris. His refusal to take the oath to the Emperor excluded him.
15. Bulletin des lois, 10e série, II, no. 895, 575.
16. Duguit & Monnier, Les Constitutions, 235.
17. de Girardin, Le Droit au travail, vol. 1, 235.
18. Chaudordy, prefectoral councillor Aveyron to all local officials, 1 August, 1848, Recueil des
actes administratives de la préfecture du départment de l’Aveyron, AD Aveyron 10M1.
19. de Girardin, Le Droit au travail, vol. 1, 264.
20. Ibid., vol. 1 255–63.
21. AD Aveyron 10M1.
22. J. Charon-Bordas, Ouvriers et paysans: L’enquête de 1848 sur le travail ((Paris, 1994).
23. Canton of Rodez, Aveyron, AD Aveyron 10M1
226
NOTES
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
70.
AD Ariège 15M2/1.
Juge de paix, St. Girons, Ariège, AD Ariège 15M2/1.
Blanqui, Des classes ouvrières, 9.
AN BB30.320A.
One of the few full accounts of the policies of the Cavaignac government is in de Luna, The
French Republic, chs. XI and XII, 270–318.
M. J. Heffernan, “The Parisian poor and the colonisation of Algeria during the Second Republic”, French History, 3(4) (1989), 377–403, 381–2.
Laverdant, Colonisation de Madagascar, 10–13. L’Union agricole d’Afrique (Paris, 1846) in BPConsidérant, vol.17. Czynski, Colonisation d’Alger.
Heffernan, “The Parisian poor”, 403.
AN BB30.320A.
Dumas, Minister of Agriculture and Commerce, Projet de loi sur les associations ouvrières, 3
December 1849, AN BB18.1474A.
La Phalange, x (1849), 340.
Journal des Economistes, 15 November 1849.
Report of A. Dubois, chairman of the committee set up to consider how to organize credit for
associations, 5 December 1849, AN BB18.1474A.
4 February 1850, 24, AN BB18.1474A.
Dumas, Minister of Agriculture and Commerce, Projet de loi sur les associations ouvrières,
3 December 1849, AN BB18.1474A. Report, 4 February 1850, 24, AN BB18.1474A.
AN BB18.1474A.
De Luna, The French Republic, 294–8.
P. J. Proudhon, Correspondance, vol. II, 285–9, quoted in Dolléans & Puech, Proudhon,
32–5.
Dolléans & Puech, Proudhon, 26.
Le Monde, 23 January 1998.
P. J. Proudhon, Banque du Peuple, 1e bulletin, 24 septembre 1848.
Specimen edition of Le Peuple, 2 September 1848.
Dolléans & Puech, Proudhon, 245–6.
Moss, The Origins of the French Labour Movement, 80–81.
Ponteil, Les Institutions, 325.
Sibalis, “The mutual-aid societies of Paris”, 8.
Merriman,. The Agony of the Republic, 68–72.
G. Frambourg, Le Docteur Guépin 1805–73 (Nantes, 1964), 236.
AD Calvados M2861.
A. Corbin, Archaisme et modernité en Limousin au XIXe siècle. 1845–1880, 2 vols (Paris, 1975),
vol. 1, 537.
February–June 1849, AD Vienne M456.
Société Philanthropique et de secours mutuels de la ville de Poitiers, AD Vienne M456.
As government prosecutor in Rouen Senard had successfully defeated the radical commissaire
Deschamps in the April elections.
Projet de décret sur les clubs, 11 July 1848, AN BB18.1474A.
See Chapter 6.
AD Vienne M456.
Faucher, “Projet du loi sur les clubs, 26 January 1849”, AN BB18.1474A.
AD Calvados M2855.
Berenson, Populist Religion, xiii.
Vigier, La Seconde République, vol. 2, 250–65.
20 June 1850, AD Averyron 1M18.
AN BB18.1474B1.
AN BB18.1474B1
Garde des sceaux, 3 September 1850, AN BB18.1474B1
Faucher, “Projet du loi sur les clubs, 5 June 1851”, AN BB18.1474A.
“Clubs ou réunions dangereuses interdits par les préfets, du 19 juin 1850 au 5 mai 1851, en
vertu de la loi de 19 juin 1849”, AN BB18.1474A1.
June 1851 to prefect, AD Mayenne 1M320.
227
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
71.
72.
73.
74.
See Chapter 3.
Prefect to Minister of the Interior, 10 Nov 1852, AD Corrèze 1M63.
André, La Révolution.
Lachambeaudie in R. Brécy, Florilège de la chanson révolutionnaire de 1789 au Front populaire
(Paris, 1978).
Chapter 11: Conclusion
1. Lejeune-Resnick, Femmes et associations. B. G. Smith, Ladies of the Leisure Class: The Bourgeoises of Northern France in the Nineteeth Century (Princeton, NJ, 1981).
2. Baker, Fraternity among the French Peasantry.
3. “Le docteur Guépin aux électeurs qui l’ont honoré de leurs suffrages”, ADLA 19J8.
4. La Solidarité: Journal des Principes et du Socialisme Scientifique. Tous pour Chacun, Chacun
pour Tous, 1 January 1870, ADLA 19J18.
5. R. Tombs, The Paris Commune 1871 (Harlow, 1999).
6. Ligou, Histoire du socialisme en France 1871–1961, 183–4, 321–2.
228
Bibliography
Manuscript sources
National archives
Fonds Fourier et Considérant, Archives Nationales
Fourier 10AS 1–25; Considérant 10AS 26–42. Manuscript notes and correspondence to and from Fourier and Considérant, including Deroin,
Niboyet, Véret, Vigoureux, and so on. Available on microfilm, 681mi 22–
75 consulted. Some of the microfilm copies of letters and, even more,
manuscript notes, are of poor quality.
BB18. 1460–82 Second Republic.
BB30. 316–95 Second Republic.
C 929–1026 Second Republic – enquiries into associations, etc.
F7. 4276–8 Affaire Babeuf.
F18.403 Newspapers Le Populaire.
Bibliothèque de l’Arsénal
Fonds Eichtal
Fonds Enfantin
This is the main Saint-Simonian archive. It consists of masses of their letters,
draft plans, etc. The drive to recruit women in 1830–32 is recorded in a
bulky collection of Lettres des Dames, written by women to the SaintSimonian newspaper, the Globe, the professions de foi they wrote for the
meeting at which they were received as members, and letters written by
“filles” to their Saint-Simonian “mères” and vice versa.
229
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
The classification of these Saint-Simonian archives is as convoluted and
byzantine as one would expect from such an organization. Letters were
grouped by subject, and often pasted into bound volumes. In contrast, far
less care was taken to organize pamphlets and newspapers. Studying the material is rather like eating an artichoke! Begin with H.-R. D’Allemagne (ed.),
Fonds Enfantin, Bibliothèque de l’Arsénal (original catalogue 1903, now on
computer 1998), 7601–. This covers manuscript material, much of it letters,
but some pamphlets and newspapers are included. There is also a handwritten catalogue, ironically of printed works. It is housed in the Salle de Travail:
Inventaire Numerique des Livres du Fonds Enfantin (1886), 1–2127. Amazingly it is not in alphabetical order and gives no dates or places of publication. Also worth consulting, with caution, is J. Walch, Bibliographie du
Saint-Simonisme (Paris, 1967), which also contains details of material in the
Bibliothèque Thiers and the Bibliothèque Nationale. It should be read in
conjunction with A. Gerits’s volume of additions and corrections to Walch
(Amsterdam, 1986). These are all available in Salle de Travail, Bibliothèque
de l’Arsénal.
Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris
Fonds Bouglé
This consists of the papers of Marie-Louise Bouglé, a pioneer historian of
Fourierist and Saint-Simonian feminist socialism. It includes useful, but modest quantities of letters written by Deroin, Niboyet and Roland.
Prefecture of Police Paris
Aa 427–9, 432, 433. Evénements divers 1848.
V.D.6.3 1849.
Departmental archives
Ariège – Foix
A. Mage, Répértoire Numérique de la Série M 1800–1940 (St. Girons, 1966).
There is more material on Second Republic than the catalogue indicates, but
it isn’t world shattering stuff.
5M2.1 Rapports sur la situation morale, politique et materielle du
département de l’Ariège 1838–9, 1848–9: informative.
5M3 Same – 1854–8: in fact it runs from 1850.
5M53.2 Esprit public dans les communes 1842–70.
5M55 Affaires criminelles 1831–64.
5M60 Subsistances, misère des classes laborieuses 1832, 1845–6.
5M71 Sociétés secretes 1815–50: mostly official circulars and for Restora230
B I B L I O G RA P H Y
tion and July Monarchy.
10M 15–18 Colonization of Algeria: interesting.
14M17 Statistique industrielle: reports 1824–48.
15M1 Instructions – reglementation du travail 1841–1939.
15M2.1. 1848 Report on the economy: whole report and well preserved.
Aude – Carcassonne
5M31 Prefectoral correspondence 1848–9: clubs, rebellion etc.
5M32 Feb. 1849–51: more of same.
5M33 Dec. 1851 Coup and rebellion interrogations, sentences: informative.
Aveyron – Rodez
4M 1–17.2 (in process of reclassification to 1M). Massive collection,
currently in about 20 fat packets of information on resistance to the 45
cents extra tax of 1848, rebellions, mixed commission and detailed interrogations after 1851 rebellion.
(New classification: provisional numbers only!)
1M18 Prefectoral correspondence 1848–51: informative.
1M19: ditto but formal.
Basses-Pyrénées (Maritimes) – Pau
1 M37, 1M52: very little survives.
Cantal – Aurillac
M. Blarez & L. Bouysson, Répértoire numerique de la série M. Personnel et
administration générale 1800–1939 (Aurillac, 1963).
33M Prefectoral correspondence: very little.
34M- Police politique.
36M July Monarchy.
37M Feb 48–Nov 51: little.
38M1 2 Dec 1851–Nov 1852: not much.
38M2 Dec 1851–1896: very little.
Corrèze – Tulle
1M63 1830–71: reports for July Monarchy and one prefectoral report for
1852.
Haute-Pyrénées – Tarbes
31J Bibliothèque B. Barère newspapers of Restoration and July monarchy.
2J119 Prefectoral letters 1801–87.
2J139, 2J142, 2J149.1: only scraps.
231
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
1M213 Esprit public. Second Republic: very little.
1M214 ditto.
3M235 Reorganization of local government 1848–51.
3M237–8 ditto.
Haute-Vienne – Limoges
A. Bois (ed.) Répértoire numerique de la série M: administration générale et
économique du département de la Haute-Vienne de 1800 à 1940
(Limoges, 1991).
1M143 Reports of prefect 1848: useful.
1M144 Offrandes à la patrie 1848.
1M145 Correspondence on opposition 1850–1: not much use.
1M146 Rebellion of 1851: very useful.
1M147 Third Republic.
3M133 Elections AP 1848–July 1851: fairly formal.
Loire-Inférieure (Atlantique) – Nantes
13J Papiers Ménard.
19 J 1–27 Fonds Guépin.
55 J 1–2 Correspondence Achille Chaper, prefect Loire-Inférieure.
1M516 Police générale. Situation politique 1848–52.
1Mi8 (R1) Guépin: family letters.
Maine-et-Loire – Angers
Typed catalogue of M series.
1M6.42 1848: not a lot.
1M6.43: a few prefectoral reports.
1M6.44 and 45 1851: coup.
Mayenne – Laval
New classification of M-.
1M308 Surveillance de l’opinion, chouannerie, troubles divers 1830–31.
1M309 1832 Insurrections.
1M310 1833–5 chouans.
1M311 1836–9.
1M312 1840–48.
1M313 1832–4 chouannerie.
1M314 Troubles frumentaires.
1M315 Propos et écrits seditieux 1830–6.
1M316 Affaires religieuses 1830–5. Croix de mission.
1M317 Statistics for annuaire départementale.
232
B I B L I O G RA P H Y
Second Republic
1M318 Prefectoral reports 1848–52: useful.
1M319 February Revolution 1848–50: very little here.
1M320 Surveillance des legitimistes et socialistes: some information.
1M321 Insurrection Dec 1851: very useful.
1M322 Dossiers individuels des condamnés 1851–2.
1M323 Police de presse, écrits et proposition séditieux 1848–52.
1M329 Affaires religieuses.
1M325 Second Empire.
Old classification of M series
M949 War of 1870–1 rixes entre la population et les volontaires nationaux.
M1125 Fête du roi 1831–47.
M1126 Anniversary of 24 Feb and 4 May 1848, 1831–52.
M1133 Centenary of 1789.
M878, M979, M3619 Secours aux victimes des changements politiques: help
to the injured in 1848 and 1851.
Pyrénées Orientales – Perpignan
Provisional catalogue only, but documents are ordered by computer!
1Mp.359 Rapports trimestriels 1853–55, 1860.
1Mp.83/2* Correspondence passive 1 Aug 1849–30 Dec 1851.
1Mp.222* Correspondence active June 1848–March 1850.
1Mp.372 Opinion publique – Correspondence 1814–58: very little of interest.
1Mp.304 Police – sureté génerale 1848–52.
1Mp.301 Correspondence of commissioner Feb–August 1848: useful reports.
1Mp.386 Surveillance 1848–51.
1Mp.519 Interrogations and decision 1851–2: enquiries after Dec. 1851
coup and rebellion, very interesting material.
6Mp.420 Enquete sur le travail 1848: interesting.
6Mp.449 Statistics on industrial production 1839–49: not much use.
Vienne – Poitiers
Typed catalogue.
M4.50/ 1845–7: mostly prefectoral circulars
M4.51 Livrets d’ouvriers 1845–89.
M4.55 Presidential election: fairly formal letters of support only.
M4.56 Prefectoral correspondence Jan.–June 1849: very useful material.
M4.57 Prefectoral correspondence and trial at Limoges 1849: not so useful.
M4.58 Prefectoral correspondence 1850: masses but no use.
M4.59 Prefectoral correspondence Jan.–Sept. 1851: not useful.
233
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
M4.60 Oct.–Dec. 1851: more of same.
M4.61 Jan.–Sept. 1852: yet more.
Newspapers
L’Atelier
Bonnet Rouge (1833)
Démocratie Pacifique (1843–51) (Considérant)
Femme Libre; subsequently Tribune des Femmes, La Femme Nouvelle
Le Globe
L’Opinion des Femmes
L’Organisateur. Journal de la Doctrine Saint-Simonienne (Aug. 1830–Aug.
1831) GL37603.
Le Phalanstère. Journal pour la Fondation d’une Phalange Agricole et
Manufacturière Associée en Travaux et en Ménage (1832–34; 1836–43;
1845–49); in Sept. 1832 it became La Réforme Industrielle ou le
Phalanstère; and subsequently La Phalange. Revue de Science Sociale.
Le Populaire (1848).
Le Peuple. Journal de la République Démocratique et Sociale (Sept. 1848–13
June 1849).
La Ruche Populaire
Le Representant du Peuple: Journal Quotidien des Travailleurs (1848)
La Réforme
La République. Organe des Intérêts du Peuple (1848)
Revue des Deux-Mondes
Revue Encyclopedique
Revue du Progrès Politique, Sociale et Littéraire (1839–42)
Revue Indépendante (1841–45)(Leroux)
Revue Républicaine
Voix des Femmes. Journal Socialiste et Politique. Organe des intérêts de
toutes. 20 March 1848–20 June 1848 (break from 29 April to 28 May)
University of London Library
Goldsmiths Collection of Economic Literature
Collection of books, pamphlets and newspapers covering France and Britain, focusing on the first half of the nineteenth century. There is a printed
catalogue and an index. It is an invaluable source.
234
B I B L I O G RA P H Y
Considérant Collection
Considérant Collection. BP-Considérant, 33 volumes. Goldsmiths Library.
Kress Collection
Located at Harvard University, and similar in scope to the Goldsmiths
Collection. The University of London has the complete microfilm of this
collection.
Les Révolutions du XIXe siècle, 43 vols (Editions d’histoire sociale Paris
1974–1998). Includes pamphlets, newspapers and accounts of trials of
socialists and radicals.
Printed sources (includes works by contemporaries as well as
secondary material)
Ackermann, E. B. Health Care in the Parisian Countryside 1800–1914 (New Brunswick, 1990).
Adler, L. A l’aube du féminisme: les premières journalistes (1830–1850) (Paris, 1979).
Adler, L. Les Femmes politiques (Paris, 1993).
Advielle, V. Histoire du Gracchus Babeuf, 2 vols (Paris, 1884). Reprinted (Geneva, 1978; Paris,
1990).
Aguet, J. P. Contribution à l’histoire du mouvement ouvrier français: les grèves sous la monarchie de
juillet, 1830–47 (Genève, 1954).
Agulhon, M. 1848 ou l’apprentissage de la République 1848–1852 (Paris, 1973); rather misleadingly
translated as The Republican Experiment, J. Lloyd (trans.) (Cambridge, 1983).
Agulhon, M. “A propos du neo-robespierrisme; quelques visages du ‘Jacobins’ sous Louis-Philippe”.
In The Transformation of Political Culture 1789–1848, vol. 3 of The French Revolution and the
Creation of Modern Political Culture, F. Furet & M. Ozouf (eds), 527–40 (Oxford, 1989).
Agulhon, M. Histoire vagabonde, 2 vols (Paris, 1988).
Agulhon, M. La République au village: les populations du Var de la Révolution à la II ème république
(Paris, 1979); translated as The Republic in the Village. The People of the Var from the French Revolution to the Second Republic, J. Lloyd (trans.) (Cambridge, 1982).
Agulhon, M. “L’enquête du comité de travail de l’Assemblée constituante (1848)”, Annales du Midi
70 (1958), 73–85.
Agulhon, M. Marianne: les visages de la République, new edn (Paris, 1992).
Agulhon, M. Une ville ouvrière au temps du socialisme utopique: Toulon de 1815 à 1851 (Paris,
1970).
Agulhon, M. (ed.) Blanqui et les blanquistes (Paris, 1986).
Aimé-Martin, L. De l’education des mères de famille ou de la civilisation du genre humain par les
femmes (Paris, 1834).
Alexander, R. S. Bonapartism and the Revolutionary Tradition in France: The Fédérés of 1815 (Cambridge, 1991).
Alexander, R. S. “The federations of 1814 and the continuity of anti-Bourbon personnel, 1789–
1830”, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History, 17 (1990),
286–95.
de Allemagne, H.-R. Les Saint-simoniens, 1827–37 (Paris, 1930).
Allen, M. B. “P. J. Proudhon in the revolution of 1848”, Journal of Modern History xxiv (1952), 1–
14.
Almanach Phalanstérien (Paris, 1845–49).
Altman, E. C. “The philosophical bases of feminism: the feminist doctrines of the Saint-Simonians
235
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
and Charles Fourier”, Philosophical Forum, VII (1974), 277–93.
Amann, P. “The Paris Club Movement in 1848”. In Revolution and Reaction: 1848 and the Second
French Republic, R. D. Price (ed.), 115–31 (London, 1975).
Amann, P. Revolution and Mass Democracy: the Paris Club Movement in 1848 (Princeton, 1975).
Aminzade, R. Ballots and Barricades: Class Formation and Republican Politics in France 1830–1870
(Princeton, 1993).
Aminzade, R. Class, Politics and Early Industrial Capitalism: A Study in Mid-Nineteenth Century
Toulouse (Albany, NY, 1981).
Aminzade, R. “Reinterpreting capitalist industrialization: a study in nineteenth-century France:
proletarianization, small-scale industry and capitalist industrialization”, Social History, 9 (1984),
329–50.
Anderson, E. S., Grude, K. I., Hang, R. and Turner, J. Goal Directed Project Management (London,
1988).
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Viollet, A. Les Poétes du peuple au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1846).
Voilquin, S. Mémoires d’une fille du peuple (Paris, 1866); excerpts translated as The French Worker:
Autobiographis from the Early Industrial Era, M. Traugott (trans.) (California, 1993).
253
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
Voilquin, S. “Introduction”. In Ma Loi d’avenir, C. Démar, 18–20 (Paris, 1833).
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(Stroud, 1993).
254
Index
Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques
24, 182
Agulhon, M. 5, 35
Aicard, J. 84
Aide-toi, le ciel t’aidera 18
Allarde law 20, 51
Ambazac 166–7
Aminzade, R. 5
Amis du peuple (society) 31–2
archibras (fourierist tail) 123
Arago, E. 170
d’Argenson, Voyer 31–2
Ariège 181
Arlès-Dufour, F. B. 62
Arnaud, Angélique 89
von Arnim, Bettina 169
Association fraternelle des instituteurs,
institutrices et professeurs socialistes
(Association of Socialist Schoolmasters
and Mistresses) 69
Association libre pour l’instruction du
peuple 31
Association pour l’instruction gratuite du
peuple 59–60
Atelier, l’ 6, 21, 50, 142, 184
Avenir, l’ 49
Aveyron 36, 181
Babeuf, Gracchus 7, 12–13, 27, 28–30
Babouvists 9, 10
Bac, Theodore 6, 36
Banquet campaign 27
Barbès, A. 47, 155, 170–1
Barrot, O. 94
Baudet-Dulary 113, 132
Bazard, Claire 60, 78, 81
de Beaumont, E. 169
de Beaumont, G. 64, 103, 105, 174, 180
Belfort conspiracy 32
Bellangé, H. 41
de Béranger, P. J. 59, 66, 123
Berenson, E. 47
Bernard, M. 170
Berthaud, L. A. 59
Bezucha, R. J. 5
Bienêtre Universel 36
Blanc, Louis 3, 7, 10, 21–2, 27, 59, 147–9,
157–62, 170–1
Blanqui, Louis-Adolphe 33, 48, 162, 182
Blanqui, Louis-Auguste 3, 13, 27, 28, 33–4,
155, 170–1
Bonheur, Sophie 79
Bon Sens 147
Bordeaux 119
Boussac 84, 119
Boyer, A. 20
Buchez, P. 7, 21, 27, 41, 140, 141–2, 180,
Buonarroti, P. 7, 14, 27, 28, 30–2,
Buret, E. 25
Cabet, Etienne 3, 7, 10, 13–14, 27, 39–40,
51, 57, 91–3, 123–7, 154, 155
Carnot, H. 45, 62, 65, 74, 82, 89
Catéchisme des Industriels 17
Cavaignac, Eugène 181–2
Celnart, Elisabeth 83
Cham (Amédée Noe) 123–4
Le Chapelier law 20, 51
255
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
Charbonnerie 6, 33, 43, 49–50
Charivari le 96, 98, 103–5
Charlet 5
chartism 14
Charton, E. 65
Chevalier, M. 46, 66, 86, 87, 143, 174
Chevé, C. V. 50
children 56–8, 92
cholera 24, 132
Citeaux 119
Civil Code 20
Clichy workers’ cooperative 160
Club de la révolution 155
Club de l’emancipation des femmes 155
Club des clubs 154
Club des républicains socialistes 155
Colbert 146
Collége de France 66
colonization 183
colonies agricoles (reform schools) 63
colporteurs (pedlars) 62
communal rights 24–5
commune 115–16
Commune Paris 1871 203
Compagnonnages 4, 19, 20, 137–8
Concordat (1801) 49
Concurrence (capitalist competition) 22
Confederation générale du travail (CGT)
204
Conseiller des femmes 63
Conseils des prudhommes (employer–
worker arbitration tribunals) 160, 184
Conspiracy of the Equals 27, 30
Condorcet, M. J. A. N. C., marquis de 55
confection (ready mades) 23,
confraternités 21, 137
Considérant, Victor 18–19, 24, 44–6, 93–
4, 114–18, 121, 130–31, 170, 174,
177, 180, 191
constitution
Jacobin 7, 175
1848 174–9
consumer cooperatives 188–9
Corbin, A. 5, 35
Corbon 142, 174, 180
de Cormenin, L. M. 47, 174
Coup d’état, December 1851 35–6
Courbet, G. 123
Cousin, V. 69
Crémieux, I. A. 96, 176, 178, 190
Dain, C. 33
Daumier, H. 96, 98, 103–4, 156
Declaration of the Rights of Man
1789 26
Jacobin 27
Declaration of the Rights of Women 99
Delaborde, A. 59
Démar 85–6
Démocrate Pacifique 44, 96, 114, 118, 168
démoc-socs (radical socialist alliance)
190–1
Deroin, Jeanne 2, 3, 10, 39, 43–4, 58, 60,
69, 84–5, 87, 96, 97, 98, 102, 173
Deschamps 167
Desgeorges, F. 33, 147
destinée sociale 44, 115
Devay 113
divorce 82, 84, 94–6
Dornès 174
Droits de l’homme (society) 31–3
Dupont de l’Eure, J. C. 59
Duruy, V. 72
Duvergier de Hauranne 177
Duveyrier, C. 131–2
Echo de la Fabrique 119
École centrale 164–5
École d’administration 1848 66
Écoles normales 58
École polytechnique 19, 20
École sociétaire see fourierists
economic problems 22–3, 48
education laws
Guizot 1833 58
Carnot 1848 65–8
Falloux 1850 68–9
Ferry 1881–82 74
d’Eichtal, G. 87
elections
1848 155, 161, 190
1849 193–4
Enfantin, Prosper 44, 46, 78, 80–3, 85, 86,
87
enfants trouvés (abandoned babies) 47, 90
Falloux, cte de 162, 170, 180
Faucher, L. 180
Femme Libre, la 60, 84, 87
Ferrandiers (society, Lyon) 51
Forest Code (Law) 1827 6, 36, 181
Fourier, Charles 1, 7, 10, 14–16, 40–1,
42–3, 46, 56–7, 76–7, 108–10, 122,
130–1
fourierists 2, 10, 18–19, 44–6, 62–5, 88–
90, 113–23
256
INDEX
Fournel, Cécile 60, 78, 82
Fournel, H. 79
François 20, 138
Fraternelle Universelle, la (Nantes) 188
freemasonry 43, 49–50
Frères des écoles chretiennes 58
Gall, Dr 111
Garnier, J. 174
Garnier-Pagès, E. 34
Gatti de Gamond, Zoe 3, 45–6, 63, 73,
89–90, 119
Gay, Désirée 3, 168–9
Gazette des Femmes 94
de Girardin, E. 123, 174
Globe, le 78, 83
Gosset 20, 21
Godard-Beauchène 36
Godin, A. 120
Gossez, P. 5
Goudchaux, M. 177, 178, 182
de Gouges, Olympe 99
Gregory XVI, pope 49
Greppo, J. L. 180, 185
Guépin, Ange 2, 22, 23–4, 61–2, 69–72,
73, 132, 133, 143–4, 188, 202, 203
Guérault, A. 84
Guindorf, Marie Reine 60, 87
Guizot, François 25
Hanagan, M. P. 4
harmony 116–8
Hennequin, V. 44
Herbinot, C. 94
d’Héricourt, Jenny 152
Herzen, A. 121
Holstein 80
Hôtel-de-ville (Paris)
Hugo, V. 24
Icarians 6, 126–7
“industriels” (everyone who works) 17
instituteurs (primary school teachers) 69
Jaurès, J. 26
Jones, P. 6
Journal des Connaissances Utiles 174
Journal des Économistes 174
June Days 171–2
de Lamartine, A. 49, 64, 89, 177
Lamennais, F., abbé de 49, 174
Laponneraye, A. 31
Lechevalier, J. or V. 59, 82, 119
Leconte, Floreska 71–2
Ledru-Rollin, A. A. 27, 154, 176–7, 178,
191
legislation against associations
and press, pre-1834 32
1848 189–90, 193
Legouvé, E. 60, 67, 95–6, 97, 105
Leroux, P. 8, 19–20, 58, 82, 84, 119, 171
liberal economists 48
Ligue de l’enseignement 72
Limoges 6, 36, 166, 170, 188
Limousin 6, 35
livret (work book) 20
Louis-Napoleon 6, 190, 200
Luxembourg Commission 157–63
Lyon 5, 119, 126, 139–40, 166, 170,
191–2
Macé, J. 71, 72
Madagascar 122–3
Manifesto of the Communist Party 26, 47
marchandage (sub-contracting) 158, 160
Margadant, T. 35, 36
Marie, A. T. 163–5
Marrast, A. 59, 174, 175
marriage 82, 84–5, 86, 89
Marseille 4, 167
Marx, Karl 1, 26, 28
Mathieu 177
de Mauchamps, Mme Poutret 94
Mayenne 36
Mazzini, G. 121
McPhee, P. 6, 35
Meissonier, L. J. 173
Ménilmontant 87
Merriman, J. 35, 36
Mettray 63–4
Michelet, J. 98
Mignet, F. A. 30
mixed commissions (1852) 36–7
Moreau, H. 58, 138
Moreau, P. 20
Morlane, Adèle 85
Morogues, Bigot, cte de 116
Mosaique Lyonnaise 63
Muiron, J. 88
mutual-aid societies 4, 138–41, 187–8
Mutual Duty (mutualists) society Lyon 51,
191–2
Nadaud, Martin 58, 136, 185
Nancy 168
257
FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX
Nantes 61, 119
National Assembly 1848 67, 180–81,
182–96
loans to worker cooperatives 1848–9
182–96
survey of the economy 1848 180–1
national guard 170–1
national workshops 162–6, 170–2
Nauvoo 40, 92, 127
Niboyet, Eugénie 2, 3, 45, 62–3, 78, 79–
80, 89, 94, 101, 155
Nouveau christianisme 17, 43
Nouveau monde industriel et sociétaire 14
nursery schools (salles d’asiles) 71
Revue des Deux Mondes 123
Revue du progrès politique, social et
littéraire 21, 147–8
Revue Indépendante 84
Reybaud, L. 8, 78, 123
Reynaud, J. 65–6, 68, 82, 95
Robespierre 7, 26
Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, duc de 45, 64,
89
Roland, Pauline 2, 3, 69, 83–4, 87, 96, 97
Rouen 168, 170
Rousseau, J. J. 55, 99
Ruche Populaire, la 21
rural problems 6, 24–5
Ogarev 121
“oisifs” (those who do not work) 17
Opinion des Femmes, l’ 99
Organisateur, l’ 17
Organisation du Travai 21, 148–9
Oswald 63
Owen, Robert 10, 154
de Saint-Simon, H. 10, 16–17, 77–8, 110
Saint-Simonians 2, 18, 37–8, 48, 59–60,
78–88, 111–113
Sand, George 21, 90–1, 93
Say, J. B. 48
Seasons, secret society 34
Section française de l’internationale ouvrière
(SFIO – Socialist party) 201
Sewell, William 4, 135, 140
sexuality 76–7, 83–4, 100–1
sexual morality 47, 82–5, 101–2
Sieyès, abbé 7, 26
Simon, J. 36
de Sismondi, J. C. L. S. 48
Société d’instruction populaire 60, 72
Société Franklin 72
Sociéte fraternelle centrale 92, 154
Société industrielle de Nantes 61
Société pour la morale chretienne 45, 89
Société pour l’émancipation des femmes
152
Solidarité républicaine (démoc-soc alliance
1848–9) 190–1
solidarity 116
de Staël, Mme 77, 110
Sue, E. 24, 123, 138
suffrage
male 73
female 97
Stewart-McDougall, L. 5
syphilis 24
Palais-Royal 130–1
Parent-Duchatelet, A. J. B. 47
Paris 36, 126, 131–2
Party of Order 68
Pellerin 177
Pelletier 176–7, 185
People’s Bank 186–7
Perdiguier, A. 20–1, 58, 136, 137–8, 150,
180
phalanges 10, 42–3, 45–6, 108–110, 113–
4, 115–7, 119–121
Phalanstère, le (journal) 113–114, 118,
120
Poncy, C. 150
Populaire, le 6, 21, 126, 142
popular unrest 34–5, 170–1
Prothero, I. 4, 41
Proudhon, Charles 3, 7, 9–10, 14, 97–9,
144–6, 171, 186Pyat, F. 58, 191
Qu’est-ce-que la propriété 14, 144
Radical-Socialists (démoc-socs) 6
Rancière, J. 5
Raspail, F. V. 133
Rebellion December 1851 35–7
Réforme, la 6
Renouvier, C. 66, 68
Réunion de l’Ouest 61–2
tailors 4
Talabot, L. 46, 120
taxes
indirect 6, 181
45 centîmes(1848) 35
Teste, C. 31–2
258
INDEX
Texas 121
textile workers 4
Thiers, A. 30, 67, 174, 177, 178
Thomas, E. 163–5
Thompson, E. 5
Tilly, C. 26
de Tocqueville, A. 26, 64, 170, 174, 177
Toulouse 5
Transon, A. 82, 87, 119
Traugott, M. 5, 26
Traviès 5
Trélat, Dr U. 170, 171, 183
Tribun des départements 32
Tribun du peuple 29
Tristan, Flora 3, 10, 84, 90–1, 94, 149–50
Turgot, F. R. J. 10, 146–7, 176
urban problems 24–5
de Vaulabelle, A. 66
Véret Désirée (Mme Gay) 43, 87–8, 93,
96
Vésuviennes 103–5
Vigier, P. 5
Vigoureux, Clarisse 20, 45–6, 88–9, 114,
121
Villeneuve-Bargemont, J. P. A. 25
Villermé, Dr L. R. 22, 24, 58, 64
Vinçard, J. 21, 52, 58, 150, 151
Voilquin, Suzanne 22, 51–2, 58, 86, 87–8
Voltaire 42, 48, 59
Voix des Femmes newspaper and society
93–4, 95, 96, 97, 98, 168–9
Voyage en Icarie 15, 40, 47, 125
Vrai Christianisme 51
wet-nursing 90
Wheeler, Anna 88
women workers 168–9
work
freedom of 179
organisation of 115–7
right to 116, 156–7, 174–9
worker associations Ch. 8, 182–95
workers’ hostels 78–9, 158
worker poets 136
Workers’ Union (Union Ouvrière) 10, 90,
150
Young, A. 119
Zola, E. 123
259