The year 1848 is accordingly a memorable one in the history of social ideas. The idealistic socialism of Louis Blanc, of Fourier, and of Saint-Simon was definitely discredited. Bourgeois writers thought that it was utterly destroyed. Reybaud, who contributed the article on Socialism to the Dictionnaire d’Économie politique (edited by Coquelin and Guillaumin) in 1852, writes as follows: “To speak of socialism nowadays is to deliver a funeral oration. It has exhausted itself. The vein is worked out. Should the human mind in its vertigo ever take it up again it will be in a different form and under the influence of other illusions.”
It fared scarcely better at the hands of subsequent socialists. Marx referred to all his predecessors under the rather misleading title of Utopians, and against their fantastic dreams he set up the “scientific socialism” of Das Kapital. Between the two epochs lies a distinct cleavage, marked by the Revolution of 1848. We must briefly see how this was brought about, and rapidly review the more important experiments that were made.
First of all there is “the right to work.” Fourier’s formula, which was developed by Considérant and adopted by Louis Blanc and other democrats, became extremely popular during the reign of Louis Phillipe. Proudhon speaks of it as the only true formula of the February Revolution. “Give me the right to work,” he declares, “and I will give you the right of property.”[654]
Workmen thought that the first duty of the Provisional Government was to give effect to this formula. On February 25 a small group of Parisian workmen came to the Hôtel de Ville to urge their claims, and the Government hastened to recognise them. The decree drawn up by Louis Blanc was as follows: “The Provisional Government of the French Republic undertakes to guarantee the existence of every worker by means of his labour. It further undertakes to give work to all its citizens.” The following day another decree announced the immediate establishment of national workshops with a view to putting the new principle into practice. All that was necessary to gain admission was to have one’s name inscribed in one of the Parisian municipal offices.
Louis Blanc in his book of 1841 had demanded the establishment of “social” workshops. Public opinion, misled by the similarity of names, and encouraged to persist in its error by the enemies of socialism, thought that the national workshops were the creation of Louis Blanc. Nothing could be more incorrect. The “social” workshops, as we know, were to engage in co-operative production, whereas the national workshops were to provide employment for idlers. Similar institutions had been established during every crisis between 1790 and 1830, generally under the name of “charity works.” Moreover, it was Marie, the Minister of Public Works, and not Louis Blanc, who organised them. Far from providing work as the socialists had hoped, the Government soon realised that the workshops afforded an admirable opportunity for binding the workmen together into brigades which might act as a check upon the socialistic tendencies of the Luxembourg Commission, then presided over by Louis Blanc. The workshops were placed under the management of Émile Thomas, the engineer, who was an avowed opponent of the scheme. In his Histoire des Ateliers nationaux, written in 1849, he tells us how they were controlled by him in accordance with the wishes of the anti-socialist majority of the Provisional Government.[655]
But they were mistaken in their calculations. Those who thought that the national workshops could be used for their own political ends were soon undeceived. The Revolution greatly increased the number of idlers, already fairly considerable as the result of the economic crisis of 1847. Moreover, the opening of the workshops brought the workmen from the provinces into Paris. Instead of the estimated 10,000, 21,000 had been enrolled by the end of March, and by the end of April there were 99,400. They were paid two francs a day while at work, and a franc when there was no work for them. In a very short time it became impossible to find employment for so many. The majority of them, whatever their trade, were employed upon useless earthworks, and even these soon proved inadequate. Discontent soon became rife among this army of unfortunate workers, humiliated by the nature of the ridiculous labour upon which they were employed, and scarcely satisfied with the moderate salary which they received. The wages paid, however, were more than enough for the kind of work that was being done. The workshops became centres of political agitation, and the Government, thoroughly alarmed, and acting under pressure from the National Assembly, was constrained to abandon them.
Suddenly, on June 21, a summons was executed upon all men between seventeen and twenty-five enrolled in the shops, ordering them to join the army or to leave for the country, where more digging awaited them. The exasperated workmen rose in revolt. Rioting broke out on June 23, but it was crushed in three days. Hundreds of the workers died in the struggle, and the country was terrorised into reaction.
That simple logic which is always so characteristic of political parties held the principle of “the right to work” responsible for this disastrous experience, and it was definitely condemned. This is quite clear from the constitutional debates in the National Assembly. The constitutional plan laid down by Armand Marrast on June 19, a few days before the riots, recognised “the right to work.” “The Constitution,” says Article 2, “guarantees to every citizen liberty, equality, security, instruction, work, property, and public assistance.” But in the new plan of August 29—after the experience of June—the article disappeared. The right to relief only was recognised. In the discussion on the article an amendment re-establishing “the right to work” was proposed by Mathieu de la Drôme. A memorable debate followed, in which Thiers, Lamartine, and Tocqueville opposed the amendment, while the Radical Republicans Ledru-Rollin, Crémieux, and Mathieu de la Drôme defended it.[656] The socialists had become extinct. Louis Blanc was in exile, Considérant ill, while Proudhon was afraid of startling his opponents and of compromising his friends. Besides, the Assembly had already made up its mind. The amendment was defeated, and Article 8 of the preamble to the Constitution of 1848 runs as follows: “The Republic by means of friendly assistance should provide for its necessitous citizens, either by giving them work as far as it can, or by directly assisting those who are unable to work and have no one to help them.”
During the reign of the July Monarchy “the organisation of labour” was another phrase which divided the honours with “the right to work.” With the spread of the Revolution came a similar menacing demand for its realisation. By a strange coincidence the author of this formula was also a member of the Provisional Government. And so when on February 28, three days after the recognition of “the right to work,” the workers came in a body and claimed the creation of a Minister of Progress, the organisation of labour, and the abolition of all exploitation, Louis Blanc immediately seized the opportunity to urge his unwilling colleagues to accede to their demands. He himself had pressed the Government to take the initiative in social reform, and now that the Revolution had made him a member of the Government how could he escape his responsibility? After some difficulty his colleagues succeeded in persuading him to accept the alternative of a Government commission on labour, of which he was to be president. The commission was entrusted with the task of drawing up the proposed reforms, which were afterwards to be submitted to the National Assembly. To mark the contrast between the old and the new régime the commission carried on its deliberations in the Palais du Luxembourg, where the Chambre des Paris formerly sat.
The Luxembourg commission was composed of representatives elected by workmen and masters, three for each industry. The representatives met in a general assembly to discuss the reports prepared by a permanent committee of ten workers and an equal number of masters, to which Louis Blanc had added a few Liberal economists and socialists, such as Le Play, Dupont-White, Wolowski, Considérant, Pecqueur, and Vidal. Proudhon was also invited, but refused to join. As a matter of fact, only the workers took part in the sittings.