A History of Economic Doctrines / from the time of the physiocrats to the present day

by Charles Gide; Charles Rist

The commission, although it possessed no executive power, might have been of some service. But Louis Blanc, as he himself confessed, regarded it as “a golden opportunity where socialism had at its disposal a tribunal from which it could address the whole of Europe.”[657] He still kept up his rôle of orator and writer, and devoted most of the sittings to an eloquent appeal for the theories already outlined in his Organisation of Labour.[658] Vidal and Pecqueur undertook the task of elaborating the more definite proposals. In a lengthy report which appeared in the Moniteur[659] they outlined a plan of State Socialism, with workshops and agricultural colonies, with State depots and bazaars as places of sale. Money in the form of warrants was to be borrowed on the security of goods, and a State system of insurance—excepting life policies—was to be established. Finally, the Bank of France was to be transformed into a State bank. This was to extend the operation of credit, and to reduce the rate of discount simply to insurance against risk. Vidal and not Pecqueur is obviously the author of the report, for it contains some of the projects that had already appeared in his book De la Répartition des Richesses.

None of the projects was even discussed by the National Assembly. The only positive piece of work accomplished by Louis Blanc’s commission was done under pressure from the workmen. This was the famous decree of March 2, abolishing piece-work and reducing the working day to ten hours in Paris and eleven hours in the provinces. This decree, though it was never put into operation, marks the first rudiments of French labour legislation. Louis Blanc was forced to grant it because the working-class element on the commission refused to take part in its proceedings until they were satisfied on this point. The commission must also be credited with several successful attempts at conciliation.

Not only did the commission fail to do anything permanent, but its degeneracy into a mere political club thoroughly alarmed the public. It became involved in elections, and even intervened in street riots. It finally took a part in the demonstration of May 15, which, under pretext of demanding intervention in favour of Poland, resulted in an invasion of the National Assembly by the mob. Louis Blanc had already retired. Since the reunion of the National Assembly the Government had been replaced by an executive commission, and Blanc, no longer a supporter of the Government, sent in his resignation on May 13. After that the commission was at an end, and, like the national workshops, it all resulted in nothing save a general discredit of socialist opinion.

There still remained the “working men’s associations.” Every socialist writer of the early nineteenth century was agreed on this principle of association. Every reformer, with the exception of Proudhon,[660] who always pursued a path of his own, regarded it as the one method of emancipation. It was quite natural that it should be put to the test.

In its declaration of February 26 the Provisional Government stated that besides securing the right to work, the workers must combine together before they could secure the full benefit of their labour. The moment Louis Blanc attained to power he sought to guide the energies of the commission in this direction. The “Association” was to be of the nature of a co-operative productive society, supported by the State. Under the influence of Buchez, an old Saint-Simonian, a Republican Catholic and the founder of the newspaper called L’Atelier, there had been formed in 1834 an association of jewellers and goldsmiths.[661] But it was a solitary exception.

Louis Blanc was more fortunate. He successively founded associations of tailors, of saddlers, of spinners and lace-makers, and he secured Government orders for tunics, saddles, and epaulettes for them. Other associations followed, and by July 5 the National Assembly was sufficiently interested in these experiments to vote the sum of three millions to their credit. A good portion of this sum passed into the hands of mixed associations of masters and men formed with the sole purpose of benefiting by the Government’s liberality. The workmen’s associations pure and simple, however, received more than a million, and there was not a sou of it left by 1849.

The first co-operative movement inspired by the ideas of Louis Blanc was of short duration. The National Assembly took good care to place the new societies under Ministerial control by appointing a Conseil d’Encouragement, nominated by the Ministry to fix the conditions under which loans should be granted. The Conseil hastened to publish model regulations which left the associations little scope for internal organisation. So stringent were the rules that several of them were immediately jeopardised, and every society which failed to conform to one of the three models outlined in Article 19 of the Commercial Code was obliged to dissolve. This meant every society which was not nominally a collective society, a joint stock or a limited liability company. By 1855, according to the testimony of Reybaud, there remained only nine out of those subsidised in 1848. Consumers’ co-operative societies, that is, the societies which aimed at securing cheap commodities, established at Paris, Lille, Nantes, and Grenoble, were also dissolved.

And so all these experiments—the only ones that had not already brought reformers into discredit—were destined to fail in their turn. Their extinction was partly due to political causes, partly to their founders, who had not yet been trained in the difficult task of building up such associations.

The social experiments of 1848 one after another foundered, bringing a distrust of theories in their train. There still remained one other experiment connected with Proudhon’s name—that of free credit. But it also was destined to fail like the rest.