Accueil
https://fr.1lib.fr/book/5963980/df1a42
"Women were a considerable force in early socialism." (p.1)
"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, 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 Saint-Simon, 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." (p.2)
"Although early socialists wrote in terms of the “proletariat” and class conflict, most French workers, even at the end of the century, were artisans." (p.3)
"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." (p.5)
"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." (p.6)
"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 Saint-Simonianism, 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 long-established tradition of state involvement in the economy, in the optimism of eighteenth-century Enlightened writers and in the contemplation of the 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." (pp.6-7)
"For others [...] 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”. Cabet and Blanc had no time for violence, yet both honoured the revolution." (p.7)
"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 Saint-Simonian 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. They rejected piecemeal reform in favour of creating new autonomous communities." (p.8 )
"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, 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.
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. Saint-Simon argued that the principle of association was the moral and political foundation of society. 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." (pp.8-9)
"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. 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. Deroin argued that associations of workers should act as pressure groups on employers to defend jobs and wages. 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." (p.10)
"A minority of early socialists believed that they would achieve their ends through revolution." (p.11)
"Some socialists, especially Fourier, argued that radical changes in the social and legal status of women were vital preconditions to all social reform." (p.11)
"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." (p.11)
-Pamela Pilbeam, French socialists before Marx. Workers, women and the social question in France, Acumen, 2000, 259 pages.
"Women were a considerable force in early socialism." (p.1)
"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, 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 Saint-Simon, 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." (p.2)
"Although early socialists wrote in terms of the “proletariat” and class conflict, most French workers, even at the end of the century, were artisans." (p.3)
"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." (p.5)
"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." (p.6)
"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 Saint-Simonianism, 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 long-established tradition of state involvement in the economy, in the optimism of eighteenth-century Enlightened writers and in the contemplation of the 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." (pp.6-7)
"For others [...] 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”. Cabet and Blanc had no time for violence, yet both honoured the revolution." (p.7)
"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 Saint-Simonian 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. They rejected piecemeal reform in favour of creating new autonomous communities." (p.8 )
"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, 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.
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. Saint-Simon argued that the principle of association was the moral and political foundation of society. 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." (pp.8-9)
"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. 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. Deroin argued that associations of workers should act as pressure groups on employers to defend jobs and wages. 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." (p.10)
"A minority of early socialists believed that they would achieve their ends through revolution." (p.11)
"Some socialists, especially Fourier, argued that radical changes in the social and legal status of women were vital preconditions to all social reform." (p.11)
"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." (p.11)
-Pamela Pilbeam, French socialists before Marx. Workers, women and the social question in France, Acumen, 2000, 259 pages.
