French Socialists before Marx: Workers, Women and the Social Question in France 9780773583856

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FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX

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French Socialists Before Marx Workers, Women and the Social Question in France

Pamela Pilbeam

McGill-Queen's University Press Montreal &; Kingston • London • Ithaca

© Pamela Pilbeam, 2000 This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. No reproduction without permission. All rights reserved. First published in 2000 by Acumen Published simultaneously in North America by McGill-Queen's University Press. ISBN: 0-7735-2198-4 (cloth) ISBN: 0-7735-2199-2 (paper) McGill-Queen's University Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for its activities. It also acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for its publishing program. Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Pilbeam, Pamela M., 1941French socialists before Marx: workers, women and the social question in France Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7735-2198-4 (bound) - ISBN 0-7735-2199-2 (pbk.) 1. Socialism—France—History—19th century. I. Title. HX262.P54 2001

335'.2'094409034

COO-901216-8

Designed and typeset by Kate Williams, Abergavenny. Printed and bound by Biddies Ltd., Guildford and King's Lynn.

This book is dedicated to my husband, Stephen.

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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

198 207 229 255

Notes Bibliography Index

vii

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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 Bibliotheque de PArsenal and the Bibliotheque 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 Guepin in Nantes and the Fourier and Considerant 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 Bibliotheque de I'Arsenal. 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

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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, Eugenie Niboyet and Pauline Roland, and the contribution of significant, but overlooked male feminist socialists, notably Ange Guepin, 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

PLURAL SOCIALISM

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 Considerant, 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 Eugenie Niboyet, indefatigable president of the main women's club in 1848, has been noticed,26 which would have pleased her, but Desiree 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 employes 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

PLURAL SOCIALISM

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. Ranciere, 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 cafes: 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 Travies.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-McDougalPs 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 Reforme, as well as Le Populaire and VAtelier. 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

PLURAL SOCIALISM

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 abbe Sieyes 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 Guepin nor the artisans Perdiguier, Nadaud, Veret, 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 ecole societaire. 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 greve 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 Considerant 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

PLURAL SOCIALISM

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 Guepin, 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 republique sociale et democratique" 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/Icane, in which the whole society constituted an association. Producer or retail cooperatives attracted Buchez and Guepin, 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

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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 61 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 1848.1 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 101 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

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the anarchic state of France in the mid-179Os 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 "revolution escamotee", 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

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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? 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 Societaire^ and was impressed by the arguments. He began to write and in 1839 won the Besangon 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 Quest-ce que la propriete?. 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

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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

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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 due 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 Sy steme Industrie^ followed a year later by a further collection of pamphlets, Catechisme 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 legal 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 Poly technique. 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

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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 Poly technique, which had been founded by one of Saint-Simon's friends. Several of them, including Halevy 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 ecole societaire. 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 del 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 Considerant (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 Poly technique, Considerant 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 Besangon. Considerant 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 societaire and to write, but he remained a state engineer. Under Considerant'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 confraternites 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, I9Atelier, 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

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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 LAtelier, 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 Francois, 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 LAtelier. 20

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He was convinced that the often bloody rivalry between different compagnonnages, heroically commemorated in their songs, was destructive. Chaque societe venerait ses heroes, ses martyrs et maudissait tout ce qui lui etait oppose. Nos chansons chantaient la guerre, exaltait notre orgueil, notre superiorite, nos preventions ... Nous etions des dieux et nos adversaires etaient des brigants, des sots, des betes stupides et mechantes, 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 Vingard (1796-1879?). His father had a small ruler-making workshop on the He de la Cite and Vingard 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 LUnion. 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 (18111882) 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 Progres Politique, Social et Litteraire^2 in which the articles that he put together as a single volume, ^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

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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 Guepin in Nantes.34 Guepin 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.Villerme 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 Guepin. 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

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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 Guepin. In 1835 Guepin 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 Villerme,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 Guepin wove his views on how to solve the social problems of the contemporary city with an account of its architecture and history. Guepin 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

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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 Guepin printed a detailed family budget to prove that workers lived at the margins. Such budgets became standard fare in social surveys. Guepin 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 Guepin'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, Villerme45 and Buret,46 who had no sympathy with socialism. They were commissioned by the Academic 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 Villerme 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 Eugene Sue's Les Mysteres de Paris was serialized in 1842. The Fourierist leader, Victor Considerant, was scathing in his condemnation of the urban environment. He described Paris as "un immense atelier de putrefaction, ou la misere, 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 Considerant 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 Eugene 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 has, pour le bonheur commun En bon frere conspire.1 "The French Revolution contains the whole of socialism" declared Jean Jaures, 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 Sieyes and the abolition of feudal rights and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, over which he had a considerable influence. Sieyes 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

REVOLUTIONARY INSPIRATIONS

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 revolution escamotee, 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, 1'insurrection est pour le peuple et pour chaque portion du peuple, le plus sacre 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, Considerant, 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 reellement 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

REVOLUTIONARY INSPIRATIONS

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 declaree 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

REVOLUTIONARY INSPIRATIONS

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 a ceux qui en manquent; assurons les moyens d'exister a ceux qui sont hors d'etat 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 Vinstruction du peuple, which ran literacy classes for working people. D'Argenson took the lead in the Societe des droits de I'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 Societe des droits de I'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 Departements 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

REVOLUTIONARY INSPIRATIONS

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)36and 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 Proces des Quinze, when Blanqui was president of the Am is 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 Lycee 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, "1'enferme". 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 Frederic Desgeorges, the editor of the Progres 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 "proletaire" 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 Gamier-Pages. 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

REVOLUTIONARY INSPIRATIONS

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-Beauchene, 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 Bienetre 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-Beauchene 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 36

REVOLUTIONARY INSPIRATIONS

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. Eugene 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 centimes 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, Thedore 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 paves, 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 Pereire 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 fraternite, 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 Phomme, heureux par 1'usage de sa raison, n'a plus que des actions de graces a rendre a la Nature pour les innombrables bienfaits qu'elle a repandus 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, a vrai dire, qu'un systeme de morale et de philosophic". 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 Babiesl 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

RELIGION AND THE EARLY SOCIALISTS

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.17This last image was copied in numerous contemporary illustrations, including Hippolyte Bellange's "Look here monsieur le cure, for me that [Napoleon] is the Heavenly Father".18 Prothero also observes the role of break-away Catholic sects, particularly that of the abbe Chatel, in the faith of radical artisans.19 Recent commentators have stressed the religion of the socialists as a product of Revolutionary ideas on fraternite, 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 42

RELIGION AND THE EARLY SOCIALISTS

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 phalangel 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 "IndustrieIs"-, 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, creches 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 /b/"; 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. Desiree Veret 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 a neuf le Temple du Vrai Dieu; il apporte la vraie lumiere; il promet de reorganiser, de regenerer la societe". 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 Considerant, a native, like Fourier, of Besangon, who decided that the phalange was a practical solution to social problems. The new recruits rapidly created a Fourierist movement, or Ecole societaire 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 Considerant noted that man's "attractions" were God-given, were the revelations of universal harmony and the raison d'etre of creation.30 On the title page of his Destinee Sociale, published in 1837, Considerant recorded: "Les destinees sont les resultats presens, passees et futurs des plans etablis par Dieu, conformement aux lois mathematiques".31 Considerant 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, Democratic Pacifique, "Deux puissances existent: 1'esprit moderne et la foi catholique; on ne peut pas les detruire: il faut done 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 Poly technique, who had recently embarked on careers as doctors in the community or as government employees. Considerant, whose "day job" was planning the routes for railways, was a leading force in bringing Fourier to a 44

RELIGION AND THE EARLY SOCIALISTS

wider market. The phalange remained the cornerstone, although the more familiar and reassuring term "commune" was used interchangeably: La commune est ... 1'atelier social, 1'element alveolique de la province, de la nation, de la societe generale ... L'organisation de la commune est la pierre angulaire de 1'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? Eugenie 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 Societe 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 due 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 Guepin 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 trouves". 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 Guepin, 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, Barbes, 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

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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-a-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 3 5-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 abbe 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 cbarbonnerie. 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 cbarbonnerie, 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 cbarbonnerie 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 cbarbonnerie^ 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 confraternites 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 LAtelier, 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-Francois Cheve, who toyed with the idea of becoming a Dominican, wrote: "Fils de PEglise et fils du peuple reconnaissez-vous enfin et rendezvous la main car vous etes freres".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 Pesclavage, femmes ou 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

FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX

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 Vingard, 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 Vin^ard 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 52

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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, Guepin, Jeanne Deroin, Pauline Roland and Eugene 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 54

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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 188182. 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 55

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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 Guepin, 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 "cherubins", and, at 6Vi years old, the even less probable "seraphins". 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 offuretage, messing about, and delighted in breaking things. They were also possessed ofsingerie, the ability to imitate, which made them able to learn simple practical jobs at a very young age. Their best teachers at first 56

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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 57

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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 Freres des Ecoles Chretiennes 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 ecoles 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 lycees, 26,584 in 312 colleges 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. Villerme 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 Vingard 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 58

SOCIALISTS AND EDUCATION: TO REPULSE THE BARBARIANS

tiny school run by nuns where she learned to read and write a little.10 In his memoirs, written in old age, Vingard 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. Hegesippe Moreau (1811-183 8),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 Felix Pyat, Armand Marrast, Beranger 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 {'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 centimes a week, 13 francs a year. The association was headed by Alexandre Delaborde and its committee included the deputy Dupont de 1'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 59

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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 Hazard, wife of one of the main theoreticians. Cecile Fournel, whose engineer husband devoted his fortune to the cause, and Eugenie Niboyet also took a leading role. Several dynamic young seamstresses attended their classes and became important in the movement, notably Marie-Reine Guindorf, Desiree Veret 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. Veret 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. Veret 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 Societe ^instruction populaire. Socialists deplored the current neglect of girls' education. In her SaintSimonian profession de foi Jeanne Deroin exploded: L'education de la femme est dirigee de maniere a comprimer toutes ses facultes morales, intellectuelles. On veut la persuader qu'elle est inferieure a 1'homme, et Ton s'efforce de realiser 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 Legouve, 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 60

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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 Guepin founded the Societe 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. Guepin persuaded the due d'Orleans 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, Guepin, 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 Guepin 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. Guepin 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. Guepin 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 Guepin started a Saint-Simonian society devoted to education, the Reunion de VQuest, 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 61

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of the rights of man, or rather, of destinies and rights (Guepin 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". Guepin 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 Reunion 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, Guepin 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 capacites (local worthies who paid less than the 200 francs tax needed to qualify for a vote after 1830 - Guepin at that time barely qualified as an elector); and to develop more opportunities for women. In September 1834 Guepin 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 Arles-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 Societe Catholique des bom 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. Guepin 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, Villerme, Saint-Beuve, and Mme. Waldor. Guepin'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. Eugene Niboyet, when she rejected Enfantin's ideas, joined 62

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Considerant 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 "Athenee 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 63

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from philanthropic notables. Their management committee was headed, unsuprisingly by the due de Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, and including deputies Gustave de Beaumont, Lamartine, Tocqueville and Vivien and doctor Villerme. 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: "II 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 Considerant as editor of the Democratic Pacifique. Considerant 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 Bretignieres 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 Almanack Phalansterien reported enthusiastically the existence of another colonie 64

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agricole, a school, five miles from London in Baling, 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, reparateur des injustices, fera 1'education du peuple et fondera la Republique ... La Republique compte necessairement au nombre de ses principes les plus essentiels 1'extension et la propagation active des bienfaits de 1'instruction dans toutes les classes de la societe.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 Guepin, 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 lycees, France's prestigious secondary system of education, for clever poorer boys from the ecoles 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 ecoles normales, more vocational and relevant, by adding courses in agricultural science. 65

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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 College 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 ecole d'administration, to train senior administrators, parallel with the ecole poly technique. 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 etes appeles a former cette generation future qui tiendra dans ses mains les destinees de la France, et peut-etre, celles de PEurope".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 republicain la nombreuse armee des instituteurs primaires etait un devoir facile a 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 Beranger, which stated: L'instruction, qu'une Republique fraternelle doit garantir a tous les citoyens, se compose de deux parties, qui sont: d'abord un ensemble de connaissances elementaires necessaires au developpement de Phomme et du citoyen, puis un enseignement professionel, ou si vous aimez mieux, un apprentissage ... Elle sera tenue d'offrir 1'instruction gratuite ... aux enfants qui ne la regoivent 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'empecher les riches d'etre oisifs et les pauvres d'etre manges par les riches?"43 66

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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 ecoles 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 Legouve (1807-1903) to a Chair at the College de France dedicated to finding ways to improve conditions of life for women. Legouve, 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 creches, 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 idees sociales sont perverties, et qu'on va nous donner dans chaque village un instituteur qui sera phalasterien, je regarde le cure comme un indispensable rectification des idees du peuple; il lui enseignera au moins, au nom du Christ, que la douleur est necessaire dans tous les etats, qu'elle est la condition de la vie, et que, quand les pauvres ont la fievre, 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, 67

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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 68

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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 ecole 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, Guepin 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 College 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 Guepin 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 Guepin 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 Guepin. 69

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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. Guepin 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; Guepin 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. Guepin 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. Guepin 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. Guepin 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. Guepin argued that the contemporary image of femininity taught to girls was an unhelpful image of Mary, mother of Jesus. Guepin 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, Guepin'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 70

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was a moral and intellectual, as well as a physical experience. A husband needed an educated wife. Guepin 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 Guepin 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 Guepin 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. Guepin promoted a fund to provide free lunches for the children.57 Vocational training for girls was Guepin'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. Guepin'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 Mace'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. Guepin 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 71

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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. Guepin 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, Guepin 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 Guepin, other anti-clerical lay groups and the churches. The Societe 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 I'Enseignement was founded in 1866 in Alsace by the freemason Jean Mace 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 Nimes, 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 Societe dy instruction populaire, operating in Lille from 18 65, 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 ecoles communales to create libraries accessible to members of the local community. 72

SOCIALISTS AND EDUCATION: TO REPULSE THE BARBARIANS

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 Guepin, 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", Guepin, who had been revered in 1848 by local artisan leaders as, "1'avocat et le protecteur des desinherites",63 wrote despondently about the elections of 1871 to an Italian friend: II 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 donne le droit de vote aux mineurs politiques, a ces paysans qui ne veulent que Pargent 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. Guepin, 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 Guepin had doggedly persisted in his plans for vocational schools, after 1848 other socialists reverted to dreams of Utopia. Cabet and Considerant 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 73

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she became an inspector of schools. Some were excluded, like Guepin, 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'etat 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, Guepin 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-Theresa.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: "II y a faussete partout ou il y a un regime 76

THE "NEW WOMAN"

coercitif; la prohibition et le contrebande sont inseparable, 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 "libertes 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 Stael and his suggestion in 77

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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, Cecile Fournel and Eugenie 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 Eugenie was well educated. Her husband was an avocat. When Claire Bazard first met her in 18 31, 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 78

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 pietes. 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 Prevost 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 defoi, 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 "/i'/s" and "/i7/£s" 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, Veturie Espagne, Herbault, Celine Mayeux-Laville, Sophie Bonheur and Eugenie 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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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 meres and peres), 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, peres and meres, were given authority over their fits and filles, and special seats on a raised podium in the meeting hall. Claire Hazard, 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, Vingard. 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 1'avenir est 1'oeuvre d'un couple, homme et femme".28 Marriage was a sacrament: "1'association la plus complete d'un homme et d'une femme, ayant pour objet Paccomplissement 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": "Uamour doit unir le vrai et I'utile, 1'ideal et le reel; il n'ya plus il ne doit plus avoir de fictions constitutionnelles ni dans 1'etat, 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 etre de durete, de severite, 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

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Parmi nous femme douce et chere Viens pacifier 1'univers Aux enfants viens donner une mere 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 Pere Enfantin est immoral; il tend a la promiscuite: ce n'est pas une loi nouvelle, c'est la negation de la loi chretienne".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, Cecile Fournel, was applauded by women members when she declared to the key meeting that Enfantin's ideas 82

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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 Eugenie 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 faculte, c'est nous oter la vie ... J'aime agir sur les masses parce-que c'est la que je sens toute ma puissance. Je suis apotre, j'ai beaucoup regu; j'ai beaucoup a 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 rede venue esclave; elle a perdu presque tous les dons du dogme chretien, parce-qu'elle ne vit plus que de 1'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, liberte, 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

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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-pretre, although she remained somewhat anxiously celibate for two more years before embarking on single motherhood, apparently totally by design. She wrote endless letters to Aglae 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 Gueroult, 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 LEncydopedie 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 Independante and LEclaireur de ttndre while teaching at Leroux's socialist community in Boussac. In his Greves de Samaraz Leroux described how Roland clung to her belief in the spiritual conversion of society. She always thought of Leroux as "maitre 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 84

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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, Adele 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 etre adore", 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 Desiree Veret 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 Demar, Guindorf, Veret 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 Demar committed suicide along with Ferret des Issarts, her Saint-Simonian lover, who was ten years her 85

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junior. Marie-Reine Guindorf also killed herself and Veret 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 Demar 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 Demar, 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'assenissement, la conquete des terres. A nous la population, a nous de renouveler 1'humanite, a nos appartient de former le coeur, les sentiments de Phomme, a nos enfin 1'education moral du monde ... Enfin a la femme sous son aspect multiple, d'apporter a 1'humanite amour et bonheur.51 Demar 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 Demar 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, 86

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sleeping together regardless of marriage vows. They were sentenced to a year's imprisonment in Sainte-Pelagie. 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 Menilmontant, 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 Desiree Veret (who later married the Owenite Gay), founded the Femme Libre. Published from Veret's home, the tiny paper appeared irregularly when the editors had enough copy and money to complete a print-run, and sold for 15 centimes 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 solidarite 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 VAvenir,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. 87

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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 societe mutuelle to help unwed mothers. However she was apparently forced abroad again by economic circumstances, first to Russia between 1839 and 1846 when her societe fell apart. In September 1848 she left for America. Desiree Veret (or Jeanne Desiree, 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 Veret: Les secours philanthropiques sont impuissants; Paumone 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 lumieres, un avenir assure pour ses enfants, du repos pour ses vieillards.59 Veret 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 pere, at both a personal and an intellectual level, Veret 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 Besangon, 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

88

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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, Angelique Arnaud and Eugenie 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 Considerant, the male force behind Fourierism. Eugenie 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 Societe pour la morale chretienne together with Alphonse de Lamartine, the philanthropist the due 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 89

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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 centimes 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. Desiree Veret 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 Pharmonie", and using his famous epigram, "Pextension des privileges de la femme est le principe general de tous les progres sociales" as the motto for her own Union Ouvriere.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 18041876) 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 Indiana75 reflected, in their semi-autobiographical recapturing of 90

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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 emigree. 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.7* 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 91

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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 Almanack Icarien included a "Guide des meres", 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 Societe 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 Homelie du Pere 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 Legouve 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 92

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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 6 mes soeurs, cette aurore nouvelle Du jour ou tomberont nos fers? Debout, filles de Dieu, partons pleines de zele, Pour regenerer 1'Univers. Non, d'une tyrannic fatale, Ne redoutons pas le retour. La femme de Phomme est 1'egale Sous la divine loi d'amour. Oui, fondez dans notre Patrie Le temple de PEgalite! Nous vous suivrons en Icarie Soldats de la Fraternite.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, Desiree Gay (nee Veret), 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 Considerant and the other Fourierist men. Gay bombarded all possible radical males with her plans, finding Enfantin, again, disappointing; he was no longer a "pere'\ but a passionate railway engineer. Blanc was prepared to listen on the subject of work. Cabet gave his guarded 93

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support for votes for women,86 but Victor Considerant, 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 1'individu social et tendent au meme 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 Eugenie 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 94

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"moral" lobby so emphatically in the 1830s. On 6 March a new newspaper, La Liberte, 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 creches, 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 Legouve. 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 Encyclopedic nouvelle, edited by the Saint-Simonian Reynaud.93 As a consequence Carnot appointed him to a Chair at the College 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 Legouve 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". Legouve 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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For Legouve woman was equal to man and different. He gendered the Revolution; liberty and equality represented male virtues, while women stood for fraternity, or love. Legouve condemned the "free love" experiments of the Saint-Simonians but pushed the case for creches, 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 Legouve's advocacy, divorce still did not assume first place, even in the feminist press. On 23 May 1848 Cremieux, 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 Cremieux's bill. The moderate proposals of 1848 met a heated response from the right-wing press, which was often antisemitic in tone; Cremieux 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 unmanageable 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 Societe 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 Democratic 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, Cremieux 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. 96

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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 Comite 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 egaux en droit, tous doivent etre libres, la souverainete appartient a tous, jamais a un seul, jamais a un fraction de la societe". She appealed to the most prominent female socialist of the time, George Sand, to stand as a candidate. "Nous avons homme 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. Legouve was invited to stand as a candidate for the National Assembly by the Societe 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 a toutes les portes fermees".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 97

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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 Comite democrate 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'indignite 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; "menageres 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 98

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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 Vesprit feminin. 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 ^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 99

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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 Guepin 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

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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. Eugenie 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 Eugene 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 101

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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 Guepin, Villerme, 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 early nineteenth-century feminism, reference has already been made to tradi102

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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 otL'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 Vesuviennes", depicting a mythical band of armed female warriors. De Beaumont's Vesuviennes 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 Vesuviennes", Le Charivari, 1 May 1848.

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Vesuviennes 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 Vesuviennes had been formed in the artisan district near the hotel-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 Legouve, who was their appointee to a Chair at the College 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 Superieure de Sevres, 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 105

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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 107

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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 Besan^on, 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 108

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in the phalansterien 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, mensongere, 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, 109

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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 Stael, 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 110

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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 Product eur, then Le Globe, with a clientele of radical students and teachers from the Ecole polytechnique and the Ecole de Medecine, 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 "Pere", 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, peres supremes, had to contribute 110fr.50 for their ceremonial uniforms, while mere third degree members paid 55 francs. To encourage 111

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"The new army of Saint-Simonian women", Garson aine, 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, Jerome Paturot quickly acquired the uniform: "Quand je me decidai a entrer dans le saint-simonisme, la religion avait deja revetu 1'habit bleu-barbeau, invente par Auguste Chinde, tailleur special 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 Menilmontant. 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 112

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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 Considerant, who created a Fourierist movement. Under Considerant, the Fourierists immediately began to try to create an experimental phalange. To promote the idea, they started their own newspaper, edited by Considerant. Le Phalanstere Journal pour la fondation d'une phalange agricole et manufacturiere associee en travaux et en menage was financed by Clarisse Vigoureux and Baudet-Dulary.14 In the initial prospectus Considerant and Lechevalier stressed that the new Ecole was based on practical, achievable objectives. Fourierism was reduced to the cultivation of "une demi-lieue carriee de terrain". Appealing to the disaffected SaintSimonians the editors concluded, "Assez de ces parlages d'amour et de sympathie qui ne decelent 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 Conde-sur-Vesgre, 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 Phalanstere 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 societe 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 113

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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 Conde-sur-Vesgre experiment, the concept of the phalange was totally transformed. Considerant, 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 societaire (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. Considerant 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 Considerant 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 Considerant, 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 Considerant took total control of the journal, La Phalange. In August 1843 in the quest for popular support, he founded a daily, La Democratic Padfique , 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. Considerant 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 Societe 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 Cote-d'Or. His speech dwelt on the urgent need to set up phalanges to eliminate class 114

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conflict. He assured his audience that his solution was both radical and conservative: "1'avenement sur la terre du royaume de Dieu".22 Considerant 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, Considerant simplified and smoothed away the less comprehensible fantasies. Considerant, 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 Considerant published his Destinee 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. Considerant, 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: "Putopie d'un monde harmoniquement ordonne serait completement esquissee".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. Considerant 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, Considerant was a moralist and believed that moral codes and social discipline would be required in the commune. Considerant 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 115

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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, Considerant'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. Considerant 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, "ozs//s"; 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 Considerant's public relations campaigns. He preferred the more familiar term, "commune". Like his master, Considerant 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 Considerant's theory of community liberating? Fraternite humaine or solidarity would be fostered through the recognition of human dignity and justice, but Considerant 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 Considerant'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. Considerant 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 Considerant neither Fourier's anarchism nor the laissez-faire statements of the liberal economists were 116

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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 Considerant'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, Considerant 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 Considerant 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. Considerant 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. Considerant was not so confident of man's natural virtue and God remained a referee, ever present as a moral judge and arbiter. Like Fourier, Considerant 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 117

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wrought in past times was the consequence of his failure to study his passions scientifically. Considerant 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. Considerant edited the weekly journal, set up in 1832. In September it changed its name to the snappier, La Reforme Industrielle ou le Phalanstere. 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 Considerant'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 phalansterien 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-183Os encouraged the Ecole societaire to turn itself into a political party and to add solidarite , or social unity, to its platform. In addition to this journal, there was the daily paper, La Democratic Pacifique, which survived with gaps until the coup d'etat. 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 Considerant and others published substantial numbers of cheap, simple pamphlets. The Fourierists valued the publicity their press provided, but the clientele was far from the populist and proletarian audience that read Cabet's Populaire. At its peak in 1847 the Democrate 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 Considerant 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.33 118

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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 Conde 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. Considerant set off for Houdon, Montargis, Orleans and Besan^on, 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 Lyon 36 . Considerant claimed that they had support in major cities and artisan centres, including Nantes, Bordeaux and Lyon. In Lyon, Riviere, a cloth printer, published stories of phalansterien 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 phalansterien 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 Conde-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 Independante. 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 119

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1848 Leon Talabot was running "un etablissement philanthropique", which was much-praised in the Almanack Phalansterien. 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 Andre 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 societaires, 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. By 1840 Brisbane had started or inspired 16 experimental Fourierist commu120

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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, Considerant, 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. Considerant 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 Reunion, Red River Texas, collapsed on the outbreak of the Civil War. Considerant 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 Considerant, 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. 121

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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 societaire and Industrie morcelee (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 societaire yielded wealth, practical truth, freedom, peace, confidence, unity and progress, all in hygienic surroundings and even temperatures. Industrie morcelee 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 122

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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 Beranger wrote "Les Fous" in honour of Fourierist principles. Zola, who had read Renaud, described a phalanstere in Le Travail, while Sue documented an actual experiment in Les Miseres des enfants trouves. 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 DeuxMondes.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 (Amedee Noe), 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 Considerant with a tail, "endowed with a phalansterien 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. 123

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"Victor Considerant finds his Fourierist tail useful mining for gold in California", Cham (Victor AmedeeNoe), 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 124

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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. 125

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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. LAtelier, 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 Almanack. 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 Societe pour fonder I'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 126

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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 banniere de la Fraternite, 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 systeme Icarien c'est de rendre a la femme et a 1'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. 127

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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, Considerant 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 "Neant - 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! Considerant'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 128

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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 Considerant 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 Considerant 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. 129

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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 communaute. 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 Considerant 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 Considerant's commune there is no need for law or police. Fourier and Considerant 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 phalanstere. 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 due d'Orleans before the French Revolution, to exploit the commercial advantages of his residence in 130

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central Paris. Within the palace, complex private and public architecture, theatres, cafes 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 phalanstere , 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 phalanstere and the Palais Royal shared, which was repeated in the numerous drawings made by Considerant, was typical of many public buildings at that time. Considerant 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 Considerant "history is determined by architecture". A sense of community was literally constructed by its communal buildings. Considerant planned beyond the individual phalange. Once the commune was running effectively, larger units, province and state would fall into place. Unlike Fourier, Considerant was an enthusiastic nationalist and colonialist, and his architectural dreams reached out well beyond the individual phalange. Considerant 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 phalanstere 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. Considerant 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, 131

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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 donne la forme humaine a la premiere ville, sous 1'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 lycees, 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. Trelat, Buchez, Guepin 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 Guepin 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.86 132

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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. Guepin, 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 hotel-dieu. He gave his services free to a local nursery school,88 and for many years was a member of the public health committee. Guepin 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. Francois-Vincent Raspail (17941878), 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.93 133

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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, Considerant 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 confraternites, 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.7 135

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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 confrat emit es, 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 Guepin, 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 Frangais peints par eux-memes, Paris 1841.

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In pre-revolutionary France journeymen's organizations, confraternites 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 Liberte, 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 137

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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 Vingard, 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 societe venerait ses heroes, ses martyrs et maudissait tout ce qui lui etait oppose. Nos chansons chantaient la guerre, exaltait notre orgueil, notre superiorite, nos preventions ... Nous etions des dieux et nos adversaires etaient des brigants, des sots, des betes stupides et mechanics, 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 Guepin.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, Eugene Sue made him the hero, Agricol Baudouin, in his novel Lejuif Errant, first published 1844-45. Beranger 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 Francois, 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

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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 societe 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 cafe. 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 societe 139

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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 societe protestante in the late 1820s, was convinced that they did promote more comprehensive notions of association, but in the 1850s Vingard 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 Vin^ard, 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 societes 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

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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 Verite, 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 Trelat, a fellow medical student, set up the Journal des Progres des Sciences et Institutions Medicates. 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 ecole buchezienne, which he claimed was true to Saint-Simon's objectives. He founded the Europeen 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 141

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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 ouvriere, 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-Pages, his old collaborator on the Revue Nationale, who also elevated Corbon, editor of HAtelier, 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

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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 Guepin (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, Guepin 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, Guepin 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 Guepin founded the Societe 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, Guepin secured generous donations from the government and from the due d'Orleans. 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. Guepin 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, Guepin explained the basis of his ideas on the function of associations: "C'est a 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 Guepin 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 Conde-sur-Vesgre was founded on land owned by a friend of his. He was also 143

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drawn to Leroux and Cabet and, above all, Lamennais. A convinced republican by the early 1830s, Guepin 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, Guepin totally rejected the Babouvist stance of Blanqui that planned revolution was the answer to the problems of society. Guepin continued to believe that economic competition should be replaced by association, based on discussion, agreement and consent: "II faut socialiser les moyens de communication, les moyens de distribution des produits, les titres de credit 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 Guepin disapproved of excessive wealth. Proudhon, another native of the Franche-Comte, 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 Besan^on, Qu'est-ce que la propriete?, 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 Besangon. 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 144

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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 145

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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 Jerome 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 146

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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, Frederic 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 1'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 centimes an issue. The paper printed a regular supplement, the Tribune des Proletaries, 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 Progres Politique, Social et Litteraire. 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 147

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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 Guepin, sometimes by members of the establishment, such as Villerme. 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 148

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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 ouvriere: "Aujourd'hui le travailleur cree tout, et cependant, il n'a aucun droit, ne possede rien, absolument rien". Her lack of direct knowledge made her the butt of criticism by the artisan paper, HAtelier. 149

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As a prelude to her own tour de France, Tristan circulated all compagnonnages with copies of her Union ouvriere. 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 reellement la stupidite des ouvriers qui est capable de rebuter, de refroidir, de degouter 1'ame la plus ardente ... les uns sont betes, 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 centimes, 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. Guepin'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 150

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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 Vingard 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 Considerant. 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, Barbes and Raspail were active in the explosion of political associations after the revolution. Considerant, Leroux, and Proudhon conducted vigorous press campaigns to encourage worker associations and were elected to the new National Assembly. Considerant 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 Societe pour ^emancipation des femmes. It was organized by Jenny d'Hericourt 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 Societe de I'emancipation des femmes, headed by Dr Malatier, which did not have gender boundaries. 152

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Jeanne Deroin, Pauline Roland, Desiree Gay and Eugenie 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 1848,1 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 legal now had a voice. However, radicals and socialists were aware that the leap 153

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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 45O.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 Societe 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 freres et doivent se considerer 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 154

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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 Barbes, also set up large popular clubs in Paris. Blanqui's Societe republicaine 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, Barbes, who was much calmer after his prolonged jail sentence, ran the more moderate Club de la revolution, 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 republicains socialistes had a Fourierist president and Considerant 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 Vemancipation des femmes, which was transformed into the Societe de Veducation mutuelle des femmes in August to comply with new legislation. Desiree Gay, Eugenie 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 155

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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 hotel-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? 156

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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 Gamier, 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 hotel-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, Considerant, Dupont-White, Duveyrier, Dupoty, Pecqueur and Malarmet, a worker who was editor of Fraternite. 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. 157

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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 ParisBordeaux 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 centimes 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 creche, 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: 158

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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 Francois Fregier, 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 159

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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. 160

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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 Barbes, Sobrier, Deplanque, Vidal, Etienne Arago, Thore, Caussidiere, 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 161

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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 fete 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 Comite central des ouvriers, its electoral arm, retitled the Comite des delegues 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. Considerant 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 162

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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 creation 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, Democratic 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 debris du despot Au niveau de Pegalite Animes d'un brulant civisme Cimentons la Fraternite.43 Ledru-Rollin, leading radical social reformer and former editor of the newspaper La Reforme, 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 163

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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 IV46 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 charite 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 ecole, which, like its even more prestigious rival, the Ecole poly technique, trained the sons of the rich to be civil engineers and scientists. The centraliens were renowned for 164

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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 9V2-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 Renion 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 165

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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 charite 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 Rhone 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.56 166

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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 centimes, 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 interets 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-Inferieure 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, 167

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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 charite 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 Poly technique, 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 Considerant, 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. Desiree 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. Desiree Gay ran a group that persuaded Marie to employ women in the national workshops. The Fourierist Democratic 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 168

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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 creche, 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 Fete de la Federation. 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 169

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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 Trelat. Such a choice, in calmer circumstances, might have reassured the unemployed. Trelat, 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 Considerant. 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 Barbes. 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. Barbes and Albert led a column to the hotel-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 170

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arrrested Barbes 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, Trelat 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 Trelat'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. Trelat 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 Trelat advised a permanent arrangement, and even more significant that Trelat 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 171

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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 173

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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? were quickly published, reflecting the polemic of the opposing camps by their choice of material. The first, edited by the liberal economist Joseph Gamier, editor of Journal des Economistes* veteran of the anti-socialist campaign of the early 1840s, appeared on 20 November 1848. Gamier 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 aine, Gustave de Beaumont, Vaulabelle, Odilon Barrot, Pages (Ariege), Domes and Considerant. 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; Domes was one of Le National's editors; Martin and Pages 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 Considerant was the leading Fourierist spokesman in the assembly. This group chose a three-man subcommittee of Cormenin, Domes and Woirhaye to prepare a preliminary proposal. They met irregularly and it was 174

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left to Cormenin to produce the draft; that a right to work appeared was due to him and Considerant. 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 sacree ... La societe doit la subsistence aux citoyens malheureux, soit en leur procurant du travail, soit en assurant les moyens d'exister a ceux qui sont hors d'etat 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 a tous les citoyens la liberte, Pegalite, la surete, 1'instruction, le travail, la propriete, 1'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'a tout homme de vivre en travaillant [as the Lyon silk workers had proclaimed on their banners in the 1830s], La societe doit, par les moyens productifs et generaux dont elle dispose, et qui seront organises ulterieurement, 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 175

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voluntary associations and "la creation enfin de ces grands travaux ou les bras inoccupes 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 elevee. Elle est la tutrice active et bienfaisante de tous ses enfants; elle ne les laisse pas croupir dans 1'ignorance, se pervertir dans la misere; elle ne demeure pas indifferante dans ses crises de 1'industrie qui jettent des armees de salaries sur les places publiques avec 1'envie au coeur, le ressentiment et le blaspheme a la bouche ... ellle recommande, elle honore le travail, elle 1'aide par ses lois ... lorsqu'un chomage force vient paralyser ce travail, elle ne ferme pas son coeur, elle ne contente pas de gemir en repetent: Fatalite! elle fait appel au contraire, a toutes ses ressources en s'ecriant: Fraternite. 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 Cremieux,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 propriete est celui qui appartient a tout citoyen de jouir et de disposer a son gre 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 176

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Lyon argued, "Quelle est done la propriete 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. Cremieux 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 centimes 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. Considerant 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 Gamier 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 177

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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 Considerant was recommending only a very limited right to work. Felix 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. Cremieux 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 propriete, liberte 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. Considerant 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 178

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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. 179

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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 Considerant, Bastide, Corbon and Buchez, were named. The rest were Leon Faucher, Pepin, Gustave de Beaumont, Jobez, Tamisier, Toppot, Desvignes, Bertin, Perree 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 180

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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 Ariege, 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. 181

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Perhaps with some apprehension that the juges de paix might criticize government policies, Cavaignac assigned the Academic 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 theories subversives qui menacent de nous replonger dans les tenebres de la barbaric";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 "1'esprit de secte ou par 1'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 centimes a day, reduced to 12 centimes 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 182

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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 Conde-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 Eugene 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. Trelat, 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 183

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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 Mutualite des tailleurs was refused a loan of 100,000 184

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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 IVi 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^5 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 185

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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 veritable fleau" 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 Representant 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 186

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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 Considerant 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 "£roc" 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^5 but it did not develop. Proudhon never lost faith. In 1851 in his Idee generale de la Revolution, 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 187

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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 Remoise 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 centimes to join and 15 centimes each week. An equal number joined from the surrounding area. It soon had 1,700 affiliates and reduced the subscription to 5 centimes 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 remoise with 1,000 subscribers, which backed democ-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 Guepin. A membership fee of lfr.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. Guepin 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 centimes weekly, and non-workers paid at least 50 centimes. 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 experimentale des ouvriers associes de Limoges". This was a Fourierist-type scheme including 200 workers operating in a structured collective, a retail 188

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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 189

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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 5l/2 million votes out of an electorate of nine million, of whom 74 per cent voted. He had four republican opponents: Cavaignac (ll/2 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 ^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, Solidarite Republicaine. 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 Solidarite, 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 Cremieux, 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 Almanack Democratique et Sociale for 1849 (50 centimes; 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 190

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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 centimes 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 Solidarite 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 democ-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 democ-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 democ-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 democsoc leaders, Ledru-Rollin, Pyat and Considerant, 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, Considerant and other remaining democ-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 Barbes, 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 191

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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 Societe 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 economiques 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 ere nouvelle s'ouvre devant nous; la victoire de fevrier va enfin couronner de succes 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 Industrie franqaise ran a model workshop and its rules (due to be in force for 100 years) insisted that only men of impeccable character could join: "1'ivrognerie, la paresse, le vol et 1'immoralite seront autant de motifs suffisans a 1'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 done freres! plus d'egoisme! plus de cupidite ... vous maitres ou chefs d'atelier! que la guerre desastreuse que vous vous faites sous le nom de libre concurrence vous fasse enfin ouvrir les yeux ... si vous etes chretiens, rentrez en vous memes, pensez sur Christ et meditez sur les principes de solidarite exprime dans la morale sublime qu'il a leguee 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. 192

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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, Isere and Rhone, 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 cbambrees, the basic unit of sociability in the region, observing that "beaucoup sont tournees vers la politique et transformees 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 Correze, 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 193

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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 egoistes Par les elans de la fraternite Au nom de 1'ordre et de la liberte Ne criez plus: a 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 elites, 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 Pantheon 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 194

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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 Miserables, 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, 195

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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 Academic 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 196

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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 creches 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 Guepin, 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 198

CONCLUSION

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, Questque c'est la Propriete 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 199

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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 Guepin and Victor Considerant 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 naive 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 Pereire 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 200

CONCLUSION

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 Considerant, 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 Fran$aise de ^Internationale Ouvriere (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 abbe 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. 201

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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 Guepin, were dismissed from their jobs in public service. Guepin 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, Solidarite, was founded to promote scientific 202

CONCLUSION

socialism, to which Guepin was quick to subscribe and contribute: "Le Socialisme est a la solidarite sociale, ce que La Religion est a la solidarite universelle".4 Guepin's socialism, like that of others, mellowed into a form of moderate republicanism, which aspired to social justice. Guepin 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 Jaures 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 Confederation General 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'etat 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 Jaures, 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 Considerant, and important regional figures like Ange Guepin, have a place in history, helping to mould attitudes and shaping legislation and institutions. In recent years 204

CONCLUSION

the importance to socialists and radicals of the principle of association has begun to be recognized, but the contribution of Fourierists, particularly of Victor Considerant, 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.

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Notes

Chapter 1: Plural socialism 1. E. S. Anderson, K. I. Crude, 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 18461852 (Oxford, 1992). 5. E. Berenson, "A New Religion of the Left: Christianity and Social Radicalism in France 181548", 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'd nos jours (Paris, 1896) and S. Charlety, Histoire du saint-simonisme (1825-1864), 2nd edn (Paris, 1931) still give the best general account of Saint-Simonism. J. Russ, La Pensee des precurseurs de Marx (Paris, 1973); P. Benichou, Le Temps des prophetes (Paris, 1977); M. David, Le Printemps de la fraternite: Genese et vicissitudes 1830-1851 (Paris, 1992). 7. P. M. Pilbeam, "A forgotten socialist: Ange Guepin", 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. Loubere, Louis Blanc: His Life and His Contribution to the Rise of French Jacobin Socialism (Evanston, IL, 1961). 10. F. Dagognet, Trois philosophies revisitees: Saint-Simon, Proudhon, Fourier (Paris, 1997). R. L. Hoffman, Revolutionary justice: The Social and Political Theory of P.]. Proudhon (Chicago, IL, 1972). 11. S. Debout, L'Utopie de Charles Fourier: I'illusion reelle (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 ITnsurge (Paris, 1976). S. Bernstein, Auguste Blanqui and the Art of Insurrection (London, 1971). 13. A. Le Bras-Chopard, De I'egalite dans la difference, 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 B E F O R E MARX 14. A. Cuvillier R-J.-B.Buchez et les origines du socialisme Chretienne (Paris, 1948). G. Richard, Unegrande figure medicale: le docteur Philippe Buchez, (Nancy, 1959). 15. M. Dommanget, Victor Considerant (Paris, 1929). M. Vernus, Victor Considerant 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 I'histoire (Paris, 1998). 19. Most recently G. Sand, Politique et polemiques, 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 Democratie a I'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 Democratie a I'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 propriete? Ou recherches sur le principe du droit et du gouvernment (Paris, 1840); translated as What is Property?, D. R. Kelly & B.C. Smith (eds and trans.) (Cambridge, 1994). P. J. Proudhon, Ideegenerale de la revolution (Paris, 1851); first English edition (London, 1923); R. Graham (ed. and trans.) (London, 1989). 29. C. Fourier, Theorie des quatre mouvements (Besanc.on, 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 a la revolution de 1848, D. Le Nuz (ed.) (Nancy, 1993). 31. F. Tristan, LUnion ouvriere (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 Revolutions duXIXsiecle, 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 societe frangaise XlXe-XX siecle (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. Ranciere, "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 17501850", 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. Ranciere, La Nuit des proletaries, archives du reve 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: Determinant? of Working-Class Participation in the Parisian Insurrection of June 1848 (Princeton, NJ, 1985). 45. J. Godechot, La Presse ouvriere 1819-1850 (Bures-sur-Evette, Esson, 1966). 46. L. Adler, A I'aube du feminisme: les premieres journalistes (1830-1850) (Paris, 1979). 47. A. Faure & J. Ranciere (eds), La Parole ouvriere (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 has: la poesie ouvriere du XIXe Siecle (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 Republique dans la region alpine, 1845-1852, 2 vols (Paris, 1963). 51. M. Agulhon, La Republique au village: les populations du Var de la revolution a la II erne Republique (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 ouvriere au temps du socialisme utopique: Toulon de 1815 a 1851 (Paris, 1970). 52. R. Gossez, Les Ouvriers de Paris, 3 vols (Paris, 1967). 53. A. Corbin, Archaisme et modernite 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 18301870 (Princeton, 1993). 58. P. M. Jones, Politics and Rural Society: The Southern Massif Central c. 17 5 0-18 80 (Cambridge, 1985). 59. McPhee, The Politics of Rural Life. 60. See Chapter 10. La Solidarite Republicaine Association pour le developpement des droits et interets de la democratic. 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 Abbe Sieyes and What is the Third Estate (Durham and London, 1994). 64. C. Proudhon, Idee Generate de la Revolution, R. Graham (trans.) (London, 1989), 45. 65. Proudhon, Idee Generate, 153. 66. Jacobin Constitution of 1793, Article 21, "Les secours publics sont une dette sacree. La societe doit la subsistance aux citoyens malheureux, soit en leur procurant du travail, soit en assurant les moyens d'exister a ceux qui sont hors d'etat de travailler." L. Duguit 8c H. Monnier, Les Constitutions et les principals Lois politiques de la France depuis 1789, 3rd edn (Paris, 1915), 68. 67. P. Buonarroti, Conspiration pour I'egalite dite de Babeuf, suivie du proces auquel elle donna lieu, 2 vols (Brussels, 1828). J. M. Schiappa, Gracchus Babeuf avec les egaux (Paris, 1991). C. Mazzuric, Babeuf (Paris, 1988). 68. A. Galante Garonne, Philippe Buonarroti et les Revolutionnaires du XIXe Siecle (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

F R E N C H SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX socialism", in 1830 in France, J. M. Merriman (ed.), 203-21 (London & New York, 1975). 70. Societe de Phistoire de la Revolution de 1848 et des Revolutions du XIXe siecle. 1848. Les Utopismes sociaux: utopie et action a la veille desjournees de fevrier (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 reformateurs 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 1'esprit humain", Revue Encyclopedique (1832); P. Leroux, "De 1'individualisme et du socialisme", Revue Encyclopedique (1834). 73. David, Le Printemps de la fraternite, 23-32. 74. H. de Saint-Simon, "Du systeme industrielle", in Oeuvres completes, initial? Anthropos (ed.), 229-36 (Paris, 1966). 75. V Considerant, Principes du socialisme (Paris, 1847). 76. Tristan, L'Union ouvriere. 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 a la Revolution 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 Revolutions du XIX siecle, send, vol. 5. 7. E. Cabet, La Revolution de 1830 et la situation presente Expliquee et eclairee par les Revolutions de 1789, 92, 99 et 04 et par la Restauration, 2 vols (Paris, 1833). 8. E. Cabet, Histoire populaire de la Revolution frangaise 1789-1830 (Paris, 1840). 9. E. Cabet, Voyage en Icarie [Voyage et aventures de Lord Villiam Carisdall en Icarie. Traduit de I'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 societaire (Paris, 1829). 11. Proudhon, Qu'est-ce que la propriete? 12. Fourier, Theorie des quatre mouvement, 48-9. 13. Fourier, Theorie des quatre mouvements. 14. R. M. Belbin, Management Teams: Why they Succeed or Fail (Oxford, 1981). 15. P. M. Pilbeam, "Un aristocrate precurseur des socialistes: Henri de Saint-Simon", in Le Second ordre: I'ideal nobiliare, C. Grell and A. Ramieres (eds), 349-57 (Paris, 1999). 16. H. de Saint-Simon (published anonymously), Lettre d'un habitant de Geneve a 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, Catechisme des industriels (Paris, 1823-24). 20. Almanach Phalansterien pour 1848 (Paris, 1848), "Preface", 1. 21. V Considerant, Rapport fait au conseil municipal de Paris sur la trace de Paris a Strasbourg (Paris, 1844). 22. Bras-Chopard, De I'egalite dans la difference. 23. Ranciere, La Nuit des proletaires, xxx. 24. Truant, The Rites of Labor. 25. A. Boyer, De I'etat des ouvriers et de son amelioration par I'organisation du travail (Paris, 1841).

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NOTES

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

Cosset, Projet de regeneration du compagnonage (Paris, 1842). P. Moreau, De la reforme des abus du compagnonage et de I'amelioration du sort des travailleurs (Paris, 1843). A. Perdiguier, Le Livre du compagnonage (Paris, 1840); Perdiguier and his imitators used a single "n". E. Dolleans, Feminisme et mouvement ouvrier: George Sand (Paris, 1951), 40. Perdiguier, Le Livre du compagnonage. Perdiguier, Le Chansonnier du tour de franee. Cosset, Project, quoted in Faure & Ranciere, La Parole ouvriere, 168-87. J. Vinc,ard, Les Chants des travailleurs (Paris, 1869). 15 January 1839. L. Blanc, Organisation du travail (Paris, 1840); English edition Organisation of Work (London, 1848). A. Guepin & C. E. Bonamy, Nantes auXIXe siecle (Nantes, 1835). Voilquin S., Memoires 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). Guepin 6c Bonamy, Nantes au XIXe siecle. J. Ogee, Dictionnaire historique de la Bretagne, vol. 1 (Nantes, 1843). Ibid. Ibid, 228. A. Guepin, Suppression de la syphilis: petition a la chambre des deputes (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 chretienne, 4 vols (Paris, 1834). L. R. Villerme, Tableau de I'etat physique et moral des ouvriers employes dans les manufactures, 2 vols (Paris, 1840). E. Buret, De la misere des classes laborieures en Angleterre et en France, 2 vols (Paris 1840). V Considerant, Description du phalanstere (Paris, 1848), 42 Ibid., 45.

Chapter 3: Revolutionary inspirations 1. S. Marechal, "Chanson nouvelle a 1'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 &t A. P. Kerr (eds) (New York, 1971). 5. C. Tilly &c L. Lees, "Le peuple de Juin 1848",Annales: economies, societes, civilisations (1974), 1061-91. 6. Traugott, Armies of the Poor. 7. Sewell, A Rhetoric of Bourgeois Revolution. 8. "Declaration des droits de Phomme et du citoyen", Article 35, Acte Constitutionnel du 24 Juin 1793 et Declaration des Droits de I'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, Revolution frangaise: histoire de dixans, 5 vols (Paris, 1841-44).

211

FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX 11. Schiappa, Gracchus Babeufavec les egaux, 166. 12. V Daline, Gracchus Babeufa la veille et pendant la Grande Revolution Fran$aise, 1785-1794, (Paris, 1976; Moscow 1987). 13. C. Mazauric, Babeuf et la conspiration pour I'egalite (Paris, 1962). Mazauric, Babeuf. C. Mazauric, "Insolite retour a Gracchus Babeuf et a la conjuration des Egaux", Paper presented to the Modern French History Seminar, Institut Fran^ais, London, January 1998. 14. Buonarroti's History of Babeufs 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, Memoires de N. F. Gracchus Babeuf, Tribun du Peuple, precedes de I'ouvrage ay ant pour titre: Conspiration pour I'Egalite dite de Babeuf suivie du proces auquel elle a donne lieu, et des pieces justicatives ... orne d'un beau portrait d'apres David, Prospectus (Paris, no date). 23. Eisenstein, The First Professional Revolutionist. 24. Reybaud, Etudes sur les reformateurs, vol. 2, "Acte d'insurrection", 371; "Projet", 375; "Decrets economique", 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 &c M. Ozouf (ed) (Oxford, 1989), 527. 26. A. Laponneraye, Cours public d'histoire de France de 1789 a 1830, 3 vols (Paris, 1832); reprinted in Les Revolutions duXIXsiecle (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, Prof Us revolutionnaires par un crayon rouge (Paris, 1848-49), 24-5. 30. A. Galante Garrone, Philippe Buonarroti et les revolutionnaires duXIXe. siecle (Turin, 1951 8t 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, 184546). 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 departementales, Cote-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 a la revolution, 61. 40. Letters to Desgeorges, 1844, 1845, Blanqui, Oeuvres. I. Des origines a la revolution, 629-33. 41. Blanqui, Oeuvres. I. Des origines a la revolution, 27. 42. Defense du citoyen Louis Auguste Blanqui devant la cour d'assises (Paris, 1832). 43. Defense 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 a la revolution, 17. T. Thore, La Verite sur le parti democratique (Paris, 1840), 32-3. Bezucha, The Lyon Uprising of 1834. Stewart-McDougall, The Artisan Republic. Aminzade, Ballots and Barricades. Y. Marec, 1848 a Rouen. Les Memoires du citoyen Cord'homme Oncle de Maupassant (Rouen, 1988). M. Boivin, Le Mouvement ouvrier dans la region de Rouen, 1851-1876, 2 vols (Rouen, 1989). Pilbeam, The 1830 Revolution in France. Vigier, La Seconde Republique. Agulhon, Une ville ouvriere. Agulhon, La Republique au village. Corbin, Archaisme et modernite. 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, Memoires de 2 decembre (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 Decembre 1851; AD Pyrenees-Orientales (Perpignan) lMp.519 Interrogations and decision 1851-2.1 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), 499-515.1 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", Bibliotheque de 1'Arsenal, 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 reponse a Timon [Cormenin] (Paris, 1845). 7. E. Cabet, Le Vrai Christianisme suivant Jesus-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 fraternite. 16. E. Berenson, Populist Religion and Leftwing Politics in France 1830-1852 (Princeton, 1984).

213

F R E N C H SOCIALISTS B E F O R E 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 &c I. Patterson (eds), Charles Fourier: The Theory of the Four Movements (Cambridge, 1996), xxii. 21. Fourier, Theorie des quatre mouvements. C. Fourier, Traite de I'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. Desiree Veret, 11 Sept 1831, "Profession de foi", FE 7608. 27. Deroin, "Profession de foi". 28. V Considerant, Etudes sur quelques problemes fondementaux de la destinee sociale (Paris, 1837), 61. 29. Z. Gatti de Gamond, Fourier et sa systeme (Paris 1839). 30. Considerant, Description du phalanstere, 10. 31. V Considerant, Destinee sociale (Paris, 1837), 9. 32. Considerant, Description du phalanstere, 10. 33. V Hennequin, La Democratic pacifique, 16 November 1843. 34. Considerant, Destinee 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 Feminisme dans le socialisme frangais de 1830 a 1850 (Paris, 1926), 202-3. 39. E. Legouve, Histoire morale des femmes (Paris, 1848); 4th edn (Paris, 1864). 40. Gatti de Gamond, The Phalanstery, 122. 41. "Un etablissement philanthropique", Almanack Phalansterien (Paris, 1848), 50. 42. Religion Saint-Simonien: pieces justicatives, proces 27 & 28 aout 1832 (Paris, 1832) in BPConsiderant, vol. 9. 43. R. Phillips, Family Breakdown in Late CIS 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. Guepin, Suppression de la syphilis. 46. Buret, De la misere des classes laborieures. Guepin & Bonamy, Nantes au XIXe siecle. Villerme, Tableau de I'etat physique et moral. 47. A. Guepin, Famille Guepin, letters and papers, Archives Departmentales Loire-Maritime 19J126. A. Guepin, Philosophie duXIXe. siecle (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-Considerant, vol. 6. 51. L. Adolphe Blanqui, Histoire de I'economie politique en Europe, depuis les anciens jusqu'd nos jours, 2 vols. (Paris, 1837-38). 52. L. Adolphe Blanqui, Des classes ouvrieres en France pendant I'annee 1848 (Academic 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 LAvenir, 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 Abbe 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-Magonnerie 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 Debuts du catholicisme social en France (1822-1870) (Paris, 1951), 118-19. 64. C.-F. Cheve, Catholicisme et democratic ou le regne 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 Solidarite", 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 frangaise: le pamphlet du pauvre 1834-51. Du socialisme utopique a la revolution 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 loifalloux (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. Villerme, Tableau de I'etat physique et moral. 8. M. Nadaud, Memoires de Leonard, ancien gargon magon (Paris, 1895); extract in Traugott, The French Worker, 185-8. 9. A. Perdiguier, Memoires d'un compagnon (Geneva, 1854-55); extract in Traugott, The French Worker, 118-19. 10. Voilquin, Memoires d'une fille du peuple; extract in Traugott, The French Worker, 94. 11. J. Vingard, Memoire episodiques d'un vieux chansonnier saint-simonien (Paris, 1876). 12. Vin^ard, Les Chants. 13 . J. Deroin to Leon Richer, [no date, 1881]. BHVP Fonds Bougie 4247. 14. A. Viollet, Les Poetes du peuple au XIXe siecle (Paris, 1846). 15. Thomas, Voix d'en has. 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

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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). Legouve, Histoire morale des femmes. Thomas, Pauline Roland. Archives departementales de la Loire-Atlantique (ADLA) 19J18. Guepin, Faits divers, 13 January 1833, ADLA 19J4. Guepin, notes in defence of his Chair, to Orfila, 1850, ADLA 19J1. Guepin 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. Guepin, "Faits Divers", ADLA 19J4. M. Lyons, Le Triomphe du livre: une histoire sociologique de la lecture dans la France du XIX siecle (Paris, 1987), 169-75. A. Guepin, Traite d'economie sociale (Paris, 1835), 12. Ibid., 53. Ibid.,Sl-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 generale des fondateurs (Tours, 1840), in BPConsiderant, vols 16 and 33, vol. 1, 7 June 1840, 10. Conside'rant 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-IS8Q", Journal of Historical Sociology, 3 (1990), 278. Almanack Phalansterien (Paris, 1848), 197. Circular to rectors quoted in G. Bouniols, Histoire de la Revolution de 1848, 7th edn (Paris, 1918), 55. A. Guepin, "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. ^Emancipation de I'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 Ministere de Instruction publique et des cultes depuis le 6 fevrier jusqu'au 5 juillet 1848 (Paris, 1848), 15. C. Renouvier, Manuel republicain de Vhomme et du citoyen (Paris, 1848). E. Legouve, Nos filles et Nos fils: scenes et etudes de famille, 2nd edn (Paris, no date). "Gabriel-Jean-Baptiste-Ernest-Wilfrid Legouve", 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 Republique 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. Guepin, 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. Guepin to Orfila, 24 February 1850, ADLA 19J8.

216

NOTES 53. A. Guepin, "Marie de Beauval: la mission de la femme", ADLA 19] 14. 54. A. Guepin, "Reflexions dressees a une jeune femme qui se destine a 1'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. Guepin, "Reflexions dressees". 57. A. Guepin, "Reforme municipal a faire dans la ville de Nantes" [1863], ADLA 19J5. 58. A. Guepin, "Education professionnelle", (no date), ADLA 19J18. 59. May 1869, ADLA 19J8. 60. Guepin 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 Guepin, commissaire in Nantes, on his departure to Vannes, from Le Club national electoral de I'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, Considerant and Enfantin; on the papers of Ange Guepin in Nantes; on the published work of feminist socialists, including Jeanne Deroin, Pauline Roland, Eugenie Niboyet, Marie-Reine Guindorf, Desiree Gay (nee Veret), Flora Tristan, George Sand, Charles Fourier, Victor Considerant, Etienne Cabet, Ange Guepin and the world-renowned mysogynist, Proudhon. 2. "De la femme", LOpinion des femmes, 10 March 1849. 3. Fourier, Theorie des quatre mouvements, 180. 4. Fourier, Traite de I'association domestique-agricole, vol. 2, 363-4. 5. Fourier, Theorie des quatre mouvements, 205. 6. Ibid., 202-3. 7. Fourier, Traite de I'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.,2^. 14. C. Bougie, Chez les prophetes socialistes: le feminisme saint-simonien (Paris, 1918). 15. Saint-Simon, Lettre d'un habitant de Geneve (1802). 16. Saint-Simon, Le nouveau Christianisme. 17. Thibert, Le Feminisme; and C. Bougie, "Le feminisme 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, Bibliotheque de VArsenal, FE 7644, letter 17. 20. St. Hilaire to Michel Chevalier, FE 7608, letter 61. 21. L. Reybaud, Jerome 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 "peres" Enfantin et Bazard, 6 October 1830, FE 7644, 309. 27. Religion Saint-simonienne. Degre des industriels. Instructions pour la propagation, FE 7815. 28. "Note sur le mariage et le divorce lue au college 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.

Bougie, "Le feminisme 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 Aglae St. Hilaire, 21 February 1832, FE 7777. Roland to Charles Lambert, 27 May 1837, FE 7777. M. Thibert, "Une apotre socialiste de 1848: Pauline Roland", La Revolution de 1848, XXII (1925-26), 478-502,524-40. Roland to Aglae Mathieu de St. Hilaire, January 1834, FE 7777. Thomas, Pauline Roland. Moses, "Saint-Simonian men/Saint-Simonian women", 259. P. Roland, Abrege d'histoire de France (Paris, 1835); Histoire d'Angleterre depuis les temps les plus recules jusqu'd nos jours (Paris, 1838). LePeuple, 22 December 1848. Profession de foi, Jeanne Deroin, FE 7608. Typical sad little letter to "mon cher Prosper", 8 August 1830, FE 7660. Bougie, "Le feminisme saint-simonienne", 390. Veret to Enfantin, 31 August 1832, FE 7608. Voilquin, Memoires. Thibert, Le Feminisme, 209. S. Voilquin, Introduction to C. Demar, Ma Loi d'Avenir (Paris, 1833), 18-20. Demar C. Ma Loi d'Avenir, p.68. Vie materielle des Saint-Simoniens a Menilmontant, FE 7814. H.-R. de Allemagne, Les Saint-Simoniens, 1827-37 (Paris, 1930). Adler, A I'aube du feminisme, 41. La Femme Libre, no. 1. Moon, "The Saint-Simonian association". Missions des compagnons de la Femme, Fonds Eichtal, 14697/1. Veret D. Lettre au Roi, ecrite sous I'impression des evenements des 5 et 6 juin 1832. Remise au roi par son auteur, le 10, et imprimee par la libre volonte d'un grand nombre des personnes, de toute opinion qui ont souscrit pour son impression (Publication saint-simoniennes, 1830-1836), FE 7790. Fonds Considerant, quoted in Riot-Sarcey, La Democratie, 112. Vigoureux, Paroles de Providence. LePhalanstere, 1 October 1838. Adler, A I'Aube du feminisme, 91-6. Lejeune-Resnick, Femmes et Associations, 37-8. E. Niboyet, De la necessite d'abolir la peine de mort (Paris, 1836). Thibert, Le Feminisme, 202-3. Niboyet, letters, May 1839, 25 February 1843 to Marquis Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Fonds Bougie, Bibliotheque 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 ferninisme, 133. G. Sand, "Lettres d'un voyageur", Revue des DeuxMondes, 4 serie, VIII (15 November 1836), 429-32; reprinted in Lettres d'un Voyageur, S. Rabinovitch 6c P. Thomson (trans.) (Harmondsworth, 1987), letter 11, 262. Thibert, Le feminisme, 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), Lelia (1834) and Jacques (1834). Biographies are legion and include: D. Dickenson, George Sand: A Brave Man — the Most Worn-

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, ^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 &t Cross, Early French Feminisms, 19-58. 78. E. Cabet, La Femme: son malheureux sort dans la societe actuelle, son bonheur dans la communaute (Paris, 1846). 79. Almanach Icarien (Paris, 1843), 22-4. 80. Ibid. (Paris, 1844), 26. 81. Thibert, Lefeminisme, 158. 82. Le Charivari, 16 September 1848. 83. Ibid., 12 November 1848. 84. "Champ de depart Icarien", to the tune of "Champ de depart", 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. Of fen. "Ernest Legouve 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 Legouve see D. A. Griffiths, Jean Reynaud, encyclopediste de I'epoque romantique d'apres sa correspondance inedite (Paris, 1965). 94. Legouve, 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 Democratic, 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. W3.Ibid., 16, 6 April 1848. 104. Deroin to Leon Richer (no date), BHVP 4247. 105. Deroin, LOpinion 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 Celibat (Paris, 1851), 13. 110. P. J. Proudhon, Systeme des contradictions economiques ou philosophie de la misere (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 catechisme du mariage", in De la justice dans la revolution et dans I'Eglise (Brussels 1869), vol. 4, 291; (also vol XII of Oeuvres completes (Paris, I860)). 114. P. J. Proudhon, La Pornocratie ou les femmes dans les temps modernes (Paris, 1875), 189. 115. Legouve, Histoire morale des femmes, 3. 116. E. Niboyet, Conseiller des Femmes, 1833.

219

FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX 117. Legouve, Histoire morale des femmes. 118. K. Offen, "Sur 1'origine des mots 'feminisme' et 'feministe'", 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 Vesuviennes: 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, LEnseignement secondaire des jeunes filles sous la Troisieme Republique (Paris, 1977), 115-20. 122. Offen, "Ernest Legouve", 456.

Chapter 7: Association, dream worlds 1. "Prospectus", LePhalanstere, 1 June 1832. 2. C. Fourier, Theorie de unite universelle (Paris, 1822), vol. 1, 199. 3. E. Faguet, Politiques et moralistes du dix-neuvieme siecle, 3 vols (Paris, 1890-99), vol. 2, 81. 4. Fourier, Le Nouveau monde, 20. 5. Fourier, Theorie des quatre mouvements. 6. Fourier, Traite de I'association domestique-agricole. 7. J. Muiron, Transactions sociales, religieuses et scientifiques de Virtoninius (Paris, 1832) and Vice de nos procedes industriels (Besanc.on, 1824). 8. B. Mazel, Theorie 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 pere Deichtal (sic.) 1831, FE 7814. 12. Reybaud, Jerome Paturot, 61. 13. FE7814. 14. Reybaud, Etudes sur les reformateurs, 139. 15. "Prospectus", Le Phalanstere, 1 June 1832, GL 37622 16. "Programme de la Fondation proposee", Le Phalanstere, 1 June, 1832, 7-10. 17. La Reforme Industrielle ou Le Phalanstere. Journal proposant la fondation d'une phalange, 14 June 1833. 18. La Reforme Industrielle, 16 December 1833. 19. Beecher, Fourier: The Visionary and his World, 454. 20. Considerant to his wife, Julie Considerant, 1 May 1832, Archives societaire, AN Fonds Considerant, quoted by Thibert, Le feminisme, 126. 21. Considerant's annotated copy is in Goldsmiths' Collection, Senate House Library, University of London. 22. V Considerant, Exposition abregee du systeme phalansterien de Fourier (Paris, 1845), 32. 23. Considerant, Destinee sociale, 28-9, 24. Considerant, Description du phalanstere, 94. 25. Considerant, Destinee sociale, 359. 26. Considerant, Etudes sur quelques problemes, 93. 27. Considerant, Bases de la politique positive: Manifeste de I'ecole societaire (Paris, 1841), 110. 28. Considerant, Etudes sur quelques problemes, 107. 29. "Documents phalasteriens", 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 misere et le travail", La Phalange, 8 (July 1848), 175-288, "Paris Monarchique et Paris Republicaine ou un page de Phistoire de la misere et du travail en 1846 et 1848", La Phalange, 9 (July 1849), 526-32; 10, 270-384. 34. La Reforme Industrielle, 16 December 1833. 35. M. D. Sibalis, "Shoe-makers and Fourierism in nineteenth-century Paris; the societe laborieuses des cordonniers-bottiers", Histoire Sociale, 20 (1987), 29-48.

220

NOTES 36. Stewart-McDougall, Artisan Republic. 37. M. Buffenoir, "Le Fourierisme a Lyon (1832-48)", Revue d'Histoire de Lyon, XII (1913), 44460. Bezucha, The Lyon Uprising of 1834, 116. 38. Ibid., 193. 39. L'Avenir. Apercu du systeme d'association domestique, agricole et industrielle d'apres la theorie de Charles Fourier. Extrait des outrages de I'Ecole Societaire par les membres de la societe phalansterienne 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 feminisme, 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 Phalansterien (Paris 1848), pp.50-52. 44. J. B. A. Godin, Les socialistes et les droits du travail (Paris, 1874). R. A. Mandel,/. B. Andre Godin and the Familistere 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, Precis de I'organisation du travail et association (Paris, 1846), GL 36041. 47. M. Briancourt, Visile au phalanstere (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", Lajeune Suisse (30 April, 18, 25 May and 8 June 1836). 50. Vernus,V/ctor Considerant 1808-1893. T. Beck, "Victor Considerant", in Newman, Historical Dictionary, vol. 1,245-7. 51. L'Avenir, 14. 52. C. Pellarin, Charles Fourier sa vie et sa theorie, 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 systeme. 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 phalanstere, 79. 57. Gatti de Gamond, Fourier et sa systeme. 58. D. Laverdant, Colonisation de Madagascar (Paris, 1844), 10, 13, 162. 59. L. Reybaud, "Les queues promises a Phumanite", in Jerome Paturot a la recherche de la meilleure des republiques (Paris, 1849), 167-85. 60. C. A. Sainte-Beuve, "Chronique litteraire", Revue des Deux Mondes, 2 serie I (15 February 1833), 432-3. L. Reybaud, "Fourier", Revue des Deux Mondes, 4 serie XII (15 November 1837). 61. Pellarin, Charles Fourier, 2, mentions obituaries in the Revue des Deux Mondes, Le Siecle, Le Temps, Le Monde and Le National. 62. Cham, Proudhoniana: Les socialistes modernes dedie aux proprietaires (Paris, 1848). 63. Cham (Amedee Noe), Coups de Crayon (Paris, 1849); Folies dujour: Caricatures politiques et sociales (Paris, 1849). 64. E. Cabet, 93 n'est pas la Republique (Paris, no date); reprinted in Revolutions du XlXe. siecle, 1st series, vol. 8 (no page numbering). 65. E. Cabet, Necessite de populariser les journaux republicans (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 Enquetes ouvrieres en France entre 1830 et 1848 (Paris, 1936), 165. 71. Johnson, Utopian Communism in France, 78-145. 72. E. Cabet, Opinions et sentiments publiques exprimes 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 revisitees. P. Ricoeur, LTdeologie et I'Utopie (Chicago, 1986); translated (Paris, 1997). 79. Cabet, Voyage en Icarie. 80. Considerant Collection. BP-Considerant, 33 volumes. Goldsmiths' Library, University of London. 81. C. Duveyrier, La Ville nouvelle ou Paris des Saint-simoniens (Menilmontant, 1832). 82. E. Zola, Le Venire de Paris (Paris, 1898); translated as The Fat and the Thin, A. Vizetelly (trans.) (Stroud, 1993). 83. A. Guepin, Quelques consideration 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. Considerant, Description du Phalanstere, 43-5. 87 . E. B. Ackermann, Health Care in the Parisian Countryside 1800-1914 (New Brunswick, 1990). 88. Mayor of Nantes to Guepin, 4 April 1842, ADLA !Mi8. 89. Guepin & Bonamy, Nantes au XIXe siecle, 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 sante et de la maladie chez les vegetaux et chez les animaux en general et en particulier chez I'homme, suivie du formulaire pour une nouvelle methode de traitement hygienique et curative, 2 vols (Paris, 1843). 92. F. V Raspail, Proces et defense de F.V.Raspail poursuivi le 19 mai 1846 en exercise illegal de la medecine devant le Seme chambre (police correctionnelle) d la requete du ministere public, et sur la denonciation formelle des sieurs Fouquier, medecin du roi, et Orfila, doyen de la faculte de medecine de Paris, agissant comme vice-president et president d'une association anonyme de medecins (Paris, 1846), 12. 93. F. V. Raspail, Manuel-annuaire de la sante (Paris, 1845).

Chapter 8: Worker associations before 1848 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 6c A. Zolberg (eds), 509-26 (Princeton, NJ, 1986). 3. Hunt &c Sheridan, "Corporatism, association". 4. Gossez, Les ouvriers de Paris. 5. Sibalis, "The mutual-aid societies of Paris". D. Snyder &c 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 age d 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).

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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 Guepin between 1841 and 1843 survives in Guepin's papers, AD LA 19J12. Boyer, De I'etat des ouvriers. Gosset, Projet de regeneration. Moreau, De la reforme. Gosset, Project de regeneration, quoted in Faure &c Ranciere, La Parole ouvriere, 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 confraternite des proletaires: conscience de classe sous la Monarchic de Juillet", Annales: Economies, Societes, 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 confraternite des proletaires". 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 Batiment", in Gossez, Les Ouvriers de Paris, vol. 1, 127. Richard, Une grande figure, 866-9 8. Philippe-Joseph-Benjamin Buchez (1796-1865). For a brief account of his contribution see Cuvillier, P.-J.-B. Buchez. His papers are conserved in Bibliotheque 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 Enquetes ouvrieres, 158. Thibert,Lefeminisme,l65. Richard, Une grande figure, 20. Cuvillier, £-/.-£. Buchez, 65. A. F. Falloux, Memoires d'un royaliste, 2 vols (Paris, 1888), 320. His personal papers in ADLA 19J1-26. See Chapter 5, Education and the socialists, passim. Guepin, "Nantes", in Ogee, Dictionnaire historique, 224. Chevalier to Guepin, "le Guepin des temps jadis, mauvaise tete et bon coeur", 13 December 1843, ADLA 19J12. Guepin, Traite d'economic sociale, 53. Ibid., 81-3. Hoffman, Revolutionary Justice, 20-27. Proudhon, Qu-est-ce que la propriete?, 335. Proudhon, Systeme des contradictions, vol. II, 391. Ibid., vol. 11,261. Proudhon, Qu'est-ce que la propriete?, 14. Ibid., 196. Proudhon, Qu'est-ce que la propriete?, 285-6. Ibid., 448. Ibid., 453. Proudhon, Systeme des contradictions. K. Marx, Misere de la philosophic (Paris, 1847). Proudhon, Confessions d'un revolutionnaire. Quoted in E. Dolleans & J. L. Puech, Proudhon et la Revolution de 1848 (Paris, 1948), 77. Loubere, Louis Blanc, 9. J. Vidalenc, Louis Blanc (Paris, 1948), 7-8. La Revue du Progres politique, Social et Litteraire, 15 January 1839. L. Blanc, "Organisation du travail", in J. A. R. Marriot (introduction), The French Revolution of

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FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX 1848 in its economic aspect. I (Oxford, 1913), 14.

61. Blanc, "Organisation du travail", 53. 62. Blanc, "Organisation du travail", 117. 63. F. Tristan, Mephis, 2 vols (Paris, 1838). 64. 65. 66. 67.

Grogan, French Socialism and Sexual Difference, 156. Perdiguier, Le Livre du compagnonage. Dolleans, Feminisme et mouvement ouvrier, 9-10. Tristan, L'Union ouvriere.

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 revolutionnaires: Collection complete des professions de foit affiches, decrets, bulletins de la Republique, fac-similes des signatures (Paris et les d^partements), 2 vols (Paris, 1856), vol. 1,113-14.

3. "Discours du Cabet, 6 mars 1848", in E. Cabet, Societe* fraternellecentrale (Paris, 1848), 11-12.

4. Traugott, Armies of the Poor, 19. 5. Cabet, Socie'ti fraternelle centrale, 10 April 1848. 6. David, Le Printemps de la fraternite.

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 a 1870 (Paris, 1965), 345.

9. L. A. Garnier-Pages, Histoire de la Revolution de 1848 (Paris, no date), i, 324, quoted by Traugott, Armies of the Poor, 115.

10. J. Gamier, Le Droit au Travail a I'Assemble Nationale: Recueil complet de tous les discours prononces dans cette memorable 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 &c 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-general 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 a I'Assemblee 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 &c M. Lyons (eds), The Sphinx in the Tuileries and Other Essays in Modern French History (Sydney, 1999), 154-68. 28. Commissioner Police, Loyeux. Enquete sur 1'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 m Addresses of Louis Blanc, p. 123. 31. "UAssociation nationale des corporations unies de la Grande Bretagne pour la protection de 1'industrie et la repartition du travaux agricoles et manufacturiere", in Girardin, Le Droit au Travail, vol. 1, 90. His address was signed by Fred Green, Will Robson, Will Peel, Will Williamson, Thorn Winters, Ed Humphries, Will Shackleton and Barratt. 32. Loubere, 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, Expose general, 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 revolutionnaires de 1848 a 1851 (Paris, 1948). 39. Blanqui, Des classes ouvrieres, 25. 40. W. Fortescue, "The role of women and charity in the French Revolution of 1848", French History, 11 (1997), 54-7'8. 41. "Petition au gouvernement provisoire ministere du Progres et de 1'organisation du travail pour etudier la question sociale et realiser dans 1'interet de tous la liberte", I'e'galite, la fraternite" par 1'association libre et volontaire'. Les Revolution du XIXe siecle. Third series. 1848. La Revolution Democratique et Sociale, 9 volumes (Paris 1984), vol. 7. 42. DemocratiePacifique, 10 March 1848. 43. Last verse of a patriotic hymn for the republic by Moline to the tune of the Marseillaise, Republique: Organe des Interets du Peuple, 2 March 1848. 44. L. Blanc, 1848: Historical Revelations (London, 1858), 156. 45. D. H. Pinkney, "Les ateliers de secours a Paris (1830-31): precurseurs 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 honnetes gens: Quelques pages d'histoire contemporaine (Paris, 1849), 2130. 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. Andre, La Revolution de 1848 en Correze (Tulle, 1903). 53. This was how Pauline Roland, who had worked with Leroux at Boussac, described the city in 1850. Corbin, Archaisme et modernite, vol. 2, 771. 54. AD Haute-Vienne 1M143. 55. Corbin, Archaisme et modernite, 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. Gamier, Le Droit au Travail, 276 60. L. S. Strumingher, "The struggle for unity among Parisian women: the Voix des Femmes MarchJune 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 Dolleans, Feminisme 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 Trelat (1798-1879) was elected to the assembly by the Puy-de-D6me 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-D6me region and elected one of six vice-presidents by the Assembly. T. Beck, "Trelat", 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 DeuxMondes , 15 March 1848. A. Thiers, De la propriete (Brussels, 1848). 2. Gamier, Le Droit au travail, de Girardin, Le Droit au travail. 3. Garnier's Elements de I'economie politique (Paris, 1846) was a standard work. 4. B. d'Airy, Rapport sur I'organisation generate des secours public, et sur la destruction de la mendacite (13 June 1792); summarized by I. Woloch, Transformations of the French Civic Order, 1789-1820s: The New Regime (New York and London, 1994), 244-5. 5. Duguit & Monnier, Les Constitutions et les principals, 66-78. 6. Gamier, Le Droit au travail, 3. 7. Ibid., 5. 8. Isaac-Adolphe Cremieux (1796-1880) was a Jewish native of Nimes 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, "Cremieux", in Newman, Historical Dictionary, vol. 1, 281-2. 9. Article 16, "Declaration des droits de Phomme et du citoyen", Acte Constitutionnel du 24 juin 1793. 10. Gamier, Le Droit au travail, 85. 11. Ibid., 115. 12. Ibid., 135 13. Victor Considerant was elected to parliament for the Loiret in April 1848. He had previously been a member of the municipal council of Paris. Gamier 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 lots, lOe serie, 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 prefecture du department de I'Aveyron, AD Aveyron 10M1. 19. de Girardin, Le Droit au travail, vol. 1, 264. 20. Ibid.,vol 1255-63. 21. AD Aveyron 10M1. 22. J. Charon-Bordas, Ouvriers et paysans: L'enquete de 1848 sur le travail ((Paris, 1994). 23. Canton of Rodez, Aveyron, AD Aveyron 10M1

226

NOTES 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

AD Ariege 15M2/1. Juge de paix, St. Girons, Ariege, AD Ariege 15M2/1. Blanqui, Des classes ouvrieres, 9. ANBB30.320A. 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. 29. M. J. Heffernan, "The Parisian poor and the colonisation of Algeria during the Second Republic", French History, 3(4) (1989), 377-403, 381-2. 30. Laverdant, Colonisation de Madagascar; 10-13. L'Union agricole d'Afrique (Paris, 1846) in BPConsiderant, vol.17. Czynski, Colonisation d'Alger. 31. Heffernan, "The Parisian poor", 403. 32. ANBB30.320A. 33. Dumas, Minister of Agriculture and Commerce, Projet de hi sur les associations ouvrieres, 3 December 1849, ANBB18.1474A. 34. La Phalange, x (1849), 340. 35. Journal des Economistes, 15 November 1849. 36. Report of A. Dubois, chairman of the committee set up to consider how to organize credit for associations, 5 December 1849, AN BB18.1474A. 37. 4 February 1850, 24, AN BB18.1474A. 38. Dumas, Minister of Agriculture and Commerce, Projet de loi sur les associations ouvrieres, 3 December 1849, AN BB18.1474A. Report, 4 February 1850, 24, AN BB18.1474A. 39. ANBB18.1474A. 40. De Luna, The French Republic, 294-8. 41. P. J. Proudhon, Correspondance, vol. II, 285-9, quoted in Dolleans 8t Puech, Proudhon, 32-5. 42. Dolleans & Puech, Proudhon, 26. 43. Le Monde, 23 January 1998. 44. P. J. Proudhon, Banque du Peuple, le bulletin, 24 septembre 1848. 45. Specimen edition of Le Peuple, 2 September 1848. 46. Dolleans & Puech, Proudhon, 245-6. 47. Moss, The Origins of the French Labour Movement, 80-81. 48. Ponteil, Les Institutions, 325. 49. Sibalis, "The mutual-aid societies of Paris", 8. 50. Merriman,. The Agony of the Republic, 68-72. 51. G. Frambourg, Le Docteur Guepin 1805-73 (Nantes, 1964), 236. 52. AD Calvados M2861. 53. A. Corbin, Archaisme et modernite en Limousin au XIXe siecle. 1845-1880,2 vols (Paris, 1975), vol. 1, 537. 54. February-June 1849, AD Vienne M456. 55. Societe Philanthropique et de secours mutuels de la ville de Poitiers, AD Vienne M456. 56. As government prosecutor in Rouen Senard had successfully defeated the radical commissaire Deschamps in the April elections. 57. Projet de decret sur les clubs, 11 July 1848, AN BB18.1474A. 58. See Chapter 6. 59. AD Vienne M456. 60. Faucher, "Projet du loi sur les clubs, 26 January 1849", AN BB18.1474A. 61. AD Calvados M2855. 62. Berenson, Populist Religion, xiii. 63. Vigier, La Seconde Republique, vol. 2, 250-65. 64. 20Junel850,ADAveryronlM18. 65. ANBB18.1474B1. 66. ANBB18.1474B1 67. Garde des sceaux, 3 September 1850, AN BB18.1474B1 68. Faucher, "Projet du loi sur les clubs, 5 June 1851", AN BB18.1474A. 69. "Clubs ou reunions dangereuses interdits par les prefets, du 19 juin 1850 au 5 mai 1851, en vertu de la loi de 19 juin 1849", AN BB18.1474A1. 70. 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 Correze 1M63. Andre, La Revolution. Lachambeaudie in R. Brecy, Florilege de la chanson r&volutionnaire 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 Guepin aux electeurs qui Pont honore de leurs suffrages", ADLA 19J8. 4. La Solidarite: Journal des Principes et du Socialisme Scientifique. Tous pour Chacun, Chacun pourTous, 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 Considerant, Archives Nationales Fourier 10AS 1-25; Considerant IDAS 26-42. Manuscript notes and correspondence to and from Fourier and Considerant, including Deroin, Niboyet, Veret, Vigoureux, and so on. Available on microfilm, 681mi 2275 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. Bibliotheque de 1'Arsenal 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 "meres" 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, Bibliotheque de VArsenal (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, Bibliographic du Saint-Simonisme (Paris, 1967), which also contains details of material in the Bibliotheque Thiers and the Bibliotheque 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, Bibliotheque de rArsenal. Bibliotheque Historique de la Ville de Paris Fonds Bougie This consists of the papers of Marie-Louise Bougie, 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. Evenements divers 1848. VD.6.3 1849. Departmental archives Ariege - Foix A. Mage, Repertoire Numerique de la SerieM 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 departement de I'Ariege 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, misere des classes laborieuses 1832, 1845-6. 5M71 Societes secretes 1815-50: mostly official circulars and for Restora230

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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-Pyrenees (Maritimes) - Pau 1 M37, 1M52: very little survives. Cantal - Aurillac M. Blarez & L. Bouysson, Repertoire numerique de la serie M. Personnel et administration generate 1800-1939 (Aurillac, 1963). 33M Prefectoral correspondence: very little. 34M- Police politique. 3 6M July Monarchy. 37MFeb48-Nov 51: little. 38M1 2 Dec 1851-Nov 1852: not much. 38M2 Dec 1851-1896: very little. Correze - Tulle 1M63 1830-71: reports for July Monarchy and one prefectoral report for 1852. Haute-Pyrenees - Tarbes 31J Bibliotheque B. Barere 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.) Repertoire numerique de la serie M: administration generale et economique du departement de la Haute-Vienne de 1800 a 1940 (Limoges, 1991). 1M143 Reports of prefect 1848: useful. 1M144 Offrandes a 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-Inferieure (Atlantique) - Nantes 13 J Papiers Menard. 19 J 1-27 Fonds Guepin. 55 J 1-2 Correspondence Achille Chaper, prefect Loire-Inferieure. 1M516 Police generale. Situation politique 1848-52. !Mi8 (Rl) Guepin: family letters. Maine-et-Loire - Angers Typed catalogue of M series. lM6.421848:notalot. 1M6.43: a few prefectoral reports. 1M6.44 and 45 1851: coup. Mayenne - Laval New classification of M-. 1M308 Surveillance de Vopinion, 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 ecrits seditieux 1830-6. 1M316 Affaires religieuses 1830-5. Croix de mission. 1M317 Statistics for annuaire departementale.

232

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Second Republic 1M318 Prefectoral reports 1848-52: useful. IMS 19 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 condamnes 1851-2. 1M323 Police de presse, ecrits et proposition seditieux 1848-52. 1M329 Affaires religieuses. 1M325 Second Empire. Old classification ofM series M949 War of 1870-1 rixes entre la population et les volontaires nationaux. Ml 125 Fete du roi 1831-47. M1126 Anniversary of 24 Feb and 4 May 1848, 1831-52. Ml 133 Centenary of 1789. M878, M979, M3619 Secoursaux victimesdeschangementspolitiques: help to the injured in 1848 and 1851. Pyrenees Orientales - Perpignan Provisional catalogue only, but documents are ordered by computer! lMp.359 Rapports trimestriels 1853-55, 1860. lMp.83/2* Correspondence passive 1 Aug 1849-30 Dec 1851. lMp.222* Correspondence active June 1848-March 1850. lMp.372 Opinion publique - Correspondence 1814-58: very little of interest. lMp.304 Police - surete generate 1848-52. lMp.301 Correspondence of commissioner Feb-August 1848: useful reports. lMp.386 Surveillance 1848-51. lMp.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) Democratic Pacifique (1843-51) (Considerant) Femme Libre; subsequently Tribune des Femmes, La Femme Nouvelle Le Globe LOpinion des Femmes L'Organisateur. Journal de la Doctrine Saint-Simonienne (Aug. 1830-Aug. 1831)GL37603. Le Phalanstere. Journal pour la Fondation d'une Phalange Agricole et Manufacturiere Associee en Travaux et en Menage (1832-34; 1836-43; 1845-49); in Sept. 1832 it became La Reforme Industrielle ou le Phalanstere; and subsequently La Phalange. Revue de Science Sociale. LePopulaire(l848). Le Peuple. Journal de la Republique Democratique et Sociale (Sept. 1848-13 June 1849). La Ruche Populaire Le Representant du Peuple: Journal Quotidien des Travailleurs (1848) La Reforme La Republique. Organe des Interets du Peuple (1848) Revue des Deux-Mondes Revue Encyclopedique Revue du Progres Politique, Sociale et Litteraire (1839-42) Revue Independante (1841-45)(Leroux) Revue Republicaine Voix des Femmes. Journal Socialiste et Politique. Organe des interets 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

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Considerant Collection Considerant Collection. BP-Considerant, 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 Revolutions du XIXe siecle, 43 vols (Editions d'histoire sociale Paris 1974-1998). Includes pamphlets, newspapers and accounts of trials of socialists and radicals.

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FRENCH SOCIALISTS BEFORE MARX Soboul, A. Les Sans-culottes parisiens en Van II (La Roche-sur-Yonne, 1959). Soboul, A. (ed.) Babeufet les problemes de babouvisme. Colloque Internationale de Stockholm 1960 (Paris, 1963). Societe de Phistoire de la Revolution de 1848 et des Revolutions du XIXe Siecle. 1848. Les Utopismes sociaux: utopie et action a la veille des journees de fevrier (Paris, 1981). La Solidarite Republicaine. Association pour le developpement des droits et interets de la democratic. L'Union fait la force (Paris, November 1848). Sowerwine, C. "Socialism, feminism and the socialist women's movement from the French Revolution to World War II". In Becoming Visible: Women in European History, 3rd edn, R. Bridenthal, C. Koonz & S. Stuard (eds), 357-86 (Boston, 1998). Spitzer, A. B. Old Hatreds and Young Hopes: The French Carbonari against the Bourbon Restoration (Cambridge, MA, 1971). Spitzer, A. B. The Revolutionary Theories of Louis-Auguste Blanqui (New York, 1957). Spurlock, J. Essays in Reform on the Eve of Revolution: The Academy of Chdlons-sur-Marne 17761789. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of London (1993). Stedman-Jones, G. & Patterson, I. (eds) Charles Fourier: The Theory of the Four Movements (Cambridge, 1996). Stein, L. von, The History of the Social Movement in France 1789-1850 (Totowa, NJ, 1964). Stewart, I. "The magical maze: the natural world and the mathematical mind", Royal Institution of Great Britain 1997 Christmas Lectures. Stewart-McDougall, M. L. The Artisan Republic: Revolution, Reaction and Resistance in Lyon 1848-1851 (Kingston and Montreal, 1984). Strumingher L. Women and the Making of the Working Class, Lyon, 1830-1870 (St. Albans, VT, 1977). Strumingher L. S. "The artisan family: traditions and transition in nineteenth-century Lyon", Journal of Family History, 2 (1977), 211-22. Strumingher, L. S. "Les jolies femmes d'Edouard de Beaumont". Paper presented at the annual conference of the Western Society for French History, October, 1992. Strumingher, L. S. The Odyssey of Flora Tristan (New York, 1988). Strumingher, L. S. "The struggle for unity among Parisian women: the Voix des Femmes March-June 1848", History of European Ideas (1989), 273-85. Strumingher, L. S. "The Vesuviennes: Images of women warriors in 1848 and the significance for French history", History of European Ideas (1987), 451-88. Strumingher, L. S. "Women and politics in the age of the democratic revolution". In Looking Back: Women of 1848 and the Revolutionary Heritage of 1789, H. B. Applewhite & D. G. Levy (eds), 259-86 (Michigan, 1990). Sussman, G. D. Selling Mother's Milk: The Wet-nursing Business in France 1715—1914 (Illinois, 1982). Taylor, B. Eve and the New Jerusalem: Socialism and Feminism in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1983). Taylor, K. Henri Saint-Simon (1760-1825): Selected Writings (London, 1975). Taylor, K. The Political Ideas of the Utopian Socialists (London, 1978). Tenot, E. La Province en decembre 1851: etude historique sur le coup d'etat (Paris, 1868). Thibert, M. Le Feminisme dans le socialisme fran^ais de 1830 a 1850 (Paris, 1926). Thibert, M. "Une apotre socialiste de 1848: Pauline Roland", La Revolution de 1848, XXII (192526), 478-502; 524-40. Thibert, M. "Feminisme et Socialisme d'apres Flora Tristan", Revue d'Histoire Economique et Sociale, 9 (1921), 115-36. Thiers, A. Histoire de la Revolution Franqaise, 10 vols (Paris, 1823-27). Thiers, A. De la propriete (Brussels, 1848). Thomas, E. Les Femmes de 1848 (Paris, 1948). Thomas, E. Histoire des ateliers nationaux (Paris, 1848). Thomas, E. Pauline Roland (Paris, 1956). Thomas, E. Voix d'en has: la poesie ouvriere du XIXe siecle (Paris, 1979). Thomson, D. The BabeufPlot: The Making of a Republican Legend (London, 1947).

252

BIBLIOGRAPHY Thompson, N. The Real Rights of Man: Political Economies for the Working Classes 1775—1850 (London, 1998). Thore, T. La Verite sur le parti democratique (Paris, 1840). Tilly, C. & Lees, L. "Le peuple de Juin 1848", Annales: economies, societes, civilisations, (1974), 1061-91. Tindall, G. The Journey of Martin Nadaud: A Life and Turbulent Times (London, 1999). Tocqueville, A. de Recollections, J. P. Mayer & A. P. Kerr (eds) (New York, 1971). Tombs, R. The Paris Commune 1871 (Harlow, 1999). Transon, A. Theorie societaire de Charles Fourier (Paris, 1832). Traugott, M. Armies of the Poor: Determinants of Working-Class Participation in the Parisian Insurrection of June 1848 (Princeton, NJ, 1985). Traugott, M. "The Crowd in the French Revolution of February 1848", American Historical Review, 93 (1988), 638-52. Traugott, M. (ed. & trans.) The French Worker: Autobiographies from the Early Industrial Era (Berkeley, CA, 1993). Trelat, U. Buonarotti (Epinal, no date). Tristan, F. ^Emancipation de la femme ou le testament de la paria (Paris, 1845). Tristan, F. Mephis, 2 vols (Paris, 1838). Tristan, F. Les Peregations d'une paria (1833-1834), 2 vols (Paris, 1838). Also (Paris, 1979). Tristan, F. Promenades dans Londres ou I'aristocratie et les proletaires anglais (Paris, 1839); also F. Bedarida (ed.) (Paris, 1978); translated as Flora Tristan's London Journal: a Survey of London Life in the 1830s, D. Palmer &c G. Pincetl (trans.) (London, 1980); translated as The London Journal of Flora Tristan, J. Hawkes (trans.) (London, 1982). Tristan, F. Le Tour de France: etat actuel de la classe ouvriere sous I'aspect moral', J. L. Puech (ed.) (Paris, 1973). Tristan, F. L'Union ouvriere (Paris, 1843); translated as The Workers' Union, B. Livingston (trans.) (Urbana, IL, 1983). Truant, C. M. "Independent and insolent: journeymen and their 'rites' in the old regime workplace". In Work in France, S. Kaplan & C. Koepp (eds) (Cambridge, 1986). Truant, C. M. The Rites of Labor: Brotherhoods of Compagnonnage in Old Regime and New Regime France (Ithaca, NY and London, 1994). Truant, C. M. "Solidarity and symbolism among journeymen artisans: the case of compagnonnage", Comparative Studies in Society and History, 21 (1979), 217-20. L'Union agricole d'Afrique (Paris, 1846). Veret, D. Lettre au Roi, ecrite sous I'impression des evenements des 5 et 6 juin 1832. Remise au roi par son auteur, le 10, et imprimee par la libre volonte d'un grand nombre des personnes, de toute opinion qui ont souscrit pour son impression (Publication saint-simoniennes, 1830-36). Vernus, M. Victor Considerant 1808-1893 (Dole, 1993). Viard, J. Pierre Leroux et les socialistes europeens (Avignon, 1983). Vidalenc, J. Louis Blanc (Paris, 1948). Vidalenc, J. "La province et les journees de juin", Etudes d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, 2 (1948), 83-144. Vigier, P. La Seconde Republique dans la region Alpine, 1845-1852, 2 vols (Paris, 1963). Vigoureux, C. Paroles de providence (Paris, 1835). Villegardelle, F. Accord des interets dans I'association et besoms des communes (Paris, 1844,1848). Villeneuve-Bargemont, J. P. A. Economie politique chretienne, 4 vols (Paris, 1834). Villerme, L. R. Tableau de I'etat physique et moral des ouvriers employes dans les manufactures, 2 vols (Paris, 1840). Vimont, J.-C. La Prison politique en France (Paris, 1993). Vin^ard, J. Les Chants des travailleurs (Paris, 1869). Vingard, J. Memoire episodiques d'un vieux chansonnier saint-simonien (Paris, 1876). Vincent, K. S. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the Rise of French Republican Socialism (Oxford, 1984). Viollet, A. Les Poetes du peuple au XIXe siecle (Paris, 1846). Voilquin, S. Memoires 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 B E F O R E MARX Voilquin, S. "Introduction". In Ma Loi d'avenir, C. Demar, 18-20 (Paris, 1833). Voyer d'Argenson, M. R. (ed.) Discours et opinions de voyer d'Argenson, 2 vols (Paris, 1845-46). Walton, W "Political economists and specialized industrialization during the French Second Republic, 1848-1852", French History, 3 (1989), 293-311. Weber, E. "The Second Republic, politics and the peasant", French Historical Studies 11(4) (1980), 522-50. Weill, G. L'Ecole saint-simonienne, son histoire, son influence jusqu'a nos jours (Paris, 1896). Weill, G. "Philippe Buonarroti. Les papiers de Buonarroti", Revue Historique (1901, 1905). Weill, G. "Voyer d'Argenson et la question sociale", International Review of Social History 4 (1939). Weiner, D. B. Raspail, Scientist & Reformer (Irvington, NY, 1968). Wollstonecraft, M. A Vindication of the Rights of Women (Harmondsworth, 1992). Woloch, I. Transformations of the French Civic Order, 1789-1820$: The New Regime (New York and London, 1994) Woodcock, G. P.]. Proudhon: A Biography, 2nd edn (Montreal, 1987). Ymonet, M. "Les heritiers du 'Capital'. L'invention du marxisme en France au lendemain de la Commune", Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales, 55 (1984). Zeldin, T. Politics and Anger (Oxford, 1979). Zola, E. Le Ventre de Paris (Paris, 1898); translated as The Fat and the Thin, A. Vizetelly (trans.) (Stroud, 1993).

254

Index

Academic des Sciences Morales et Politiques 24, 182 Agulhon, M. 5, 35 Aicard,]. 84 Aide-toi, le del t'aider a 18 Allardelaw 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 Ariege 181 Arles-Dufour, F. B. 62 Arnaud, Angelique 89 von Arnim, Bettina 169 Association fraternelle des instituteurs, institutrices et professeurs socialistes (Association of Socialist Schoolmasters and Mistresses) 69 Association libre pour I'instruction du peuple 31 Association pour I'instruction gratuite du peuple 59-60 Atelier, I' 6,21,50,142,184 Avenir, I' 49 Aveyron 36,181 Babeuf, Gracchus 7, 12-13, 27, 28-30 Babouvists 9, 10 Bac, Theodore 6, 36 Banquet campaign 27 Barbes,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 Bellange,H. 41 de Beranger, P. J. 59,66,123 Berenson, E. 47 Bernard, M. 170 Berthaud, L. A. 59 Bezucha, R. J. 5 Bienetre 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 Catechisme des Industriels 17 Cavaignac, Eugene 181-2 Celnart, Elisabeth 83 Cham (Amedee 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 Cheve, C.V 50 children 56-8,92 cholera 24, 132 Citeaux 119 Civil Code 20 Clichy workers'cooperative 160 Club de la revolution 155 Club de I3emancipation des femmes 155 Club des dubs 154 Club des republicains socialistes 155 Colbert 146 College 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 (18 01) 49 Concurrence (capitalist competition) 22 Confederation generale du travail (CGT) 204 Conseiller des femmes 63 Conseils des prudbommes (employerworker arbitration tribunals) 160, 184 Conspiracy of the Equals 27, 30 Condorcet, M. J. A. N. C., marquis de 55 confection (ready mades) 23, confraternites 21, 137 Considerant, Victor 18-19, 24, 44-6, 934, 114-18, 121, 130-31, 170, 174, 177, 180,191 constitution Jacobin 7, 175 1848 174-9 consumer cooperatives 18 8-9 Corbin, A, 5, 35 Corbon 142,174,180 de Cormenin, L. M. 47, 174 Coup d'etat, December 1851 35-6 Courbet, G. 123 Cousin, V 69 Cremieux, 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 Demar 85-6 Democrate Pacifique 44, 96, 114, 118, 168 democ-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, R 33, 147 destinee sociale 44,115 Devay 113 divorce 82,84,94-6 Domes 174 Droits de I'homme (society) 31-3 Dupont de 1'Eure, J. C. 59 Duruy, V 72 Duvergier de Hauranne 177 Duveyrier, C. 131-2 Echo de la Fabrique 119 Ecole centrale 164-5 Ecole d'administration 1848 66 Ecoles normales 58 Ecole polytechnique 19, 20 Ecole societaire see fourierists economic problems 22-3, 48 education laws Guizotl833 58 Carnotl848 65-8 Fallouxl850 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 trouves (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, 8890,113-23

256

INDEX Fournel, Cecile 60, 78, 82 Fournel, H. 79 Francois 20, 138 Fraternelle Universelle, la (Nantes) 188 freemasonry 43,49-50 Freres des ecoles chretiennes 58 Gall,Dr 111 Gamier, J. 174 Gamier-Pages, E. 34 Gatti de Gamond, Zoe 3, 45-6, 63, 73, 89-90,119 Gay, Desiree 3, 168-9 Gazette des Femmes 94 de Girardin, E. 123, 174 Globe, le 78,83 Gosset 20,21 Godard-Beauchene 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 Guepin, Ange 2, 22, 23-4, 61-2, 69-72, 73,132, 133,143-4,188, 202, 203 Guerault,A. 84 Guindorf, Marie Reine 60, 87 Guizot, Francois 25 Hanagan, M. P. 4 harmony 116—8 Hennequin, V 44 Herbinot, C. 94 d'Hericourt, Jenny 152 Herzen,A. 121 Holstein 80 H6tel-de-ville (Paris) Hugo,V 24 Icarians 6, 126-7 "industriels" (everyone who works) 17 instituteurs (primary school teachers) 69 Jaures, J. 26 Jones, P. 6 Journal des Connaissances Utiles 174 Journal des Economistes 174 June Days 171-2 de Lamartine, A. 49, 64, 89,177 Lamennais, F., abbe 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 Legouve, E. 60, 67, 95-6, 97, 105 Leroux, P. 8, 19-20, 58, 82, 84, 119, 171 liberal economists 48 Ligue de I'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 Mace,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 Menilmontant 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, Adele 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, Eugenie 2, 3, 45, 62-3, 78, 7980,89,94,101,155 Nouveau christianisme 17, 43 Nouveau monde Industrie! et societaire 14 nursery schools (salles d'asiles) 71

Revue des Deux Mondes 123 Revue du progres politique, social et litteraire 21, 147-8 Revue Independante 84 Reybaud, L. 8, 78, 123 Reynaud, J. 65-6, 68, 82, 95 Robespierre 7, 26 Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, due 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, I' 99 Organisateur, I' 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 frangaise de I'Internationale ouvriere (SFIO - Socialist party) 201 Sewell, William 4, 135, 140 sexuality 76-7, 83-4, 100-1 sexual morality 47, 82-5, 101-2 Sieyes, abbe 7, 26 Simon, J. 36 de Sismondi, J. C. L. S. 48 Societe d'instruction populaire 60, 72 Societe Franklin 72 Societe fraternelle centrale 92, 154 Societe industrielle de Nantes 61 Societe pour la morale chretienne 45, 89 Societe pour I'emancipation des femmes 152 Solidarite republicaine (democ-soc alliance 1848-9) 190-1 solidarity 116 deStael,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, 1134,115-7,119-121 Phalanstere, 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 propriete 14, 144 Radical-Socialists (democ-socs) 6 Ranciere, J. 5 Raspail, F.V 133 Rebellion December 1851 35-7 Reforme, la 6 Renouvier, C. 66, 68 Reunion de I'Ouest 61-2

tailors 4 Talabot, L. 46, 120 taxes indirect 6, 181 45 centimes(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 Travies 5 Trelat,DrU. 170,171,183 Tribun des departements 32 Tribun du peuple 29 Tristan, Flora 3, 10, 84, 90-1, 94, 149-50 Turgot, E R.J. 10, 146-7, 176 urban problems 24-5 de Vaulabelle, A. 66 Veret Desiree (Mme Gay) 43, 87-8, 93, 96 Vesuviennes 103-5 Vigier, P. 5 Vigoureux, Clarisse 20,45-6, 88-9,114, 121

Villeneuve-Bargemont, J. P. A. 25 Villerme, Dr L. R. 22,24,58,64 Vin?ard,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 Ouvriere) 10, 90, 150 Young, A. 119 Zola,E. 123

259