Origin of the General Confederation of Labor (1872-1895)
The vigorous suppression of the Commune and the political events which followed it threw the French workingmen for some time into a state of mental depression. Though trade-union meetings were not prohibited, the workingmen avoided the places which had been centers of syndical activity before the Commune. Full of suspicion and fear, they preferred to remain in isolation rather than to risk the persecution of the government.
Under these conditions, the initiative in reconstituting the syndicats was taken by a republican journalist, Barberet.[41] Barberet was prompted to undertake this “honorable task” by the desire to do away with strikes. He had observed the strike movement for some years, and had come to the conclusion that strikes were fatal to the workingmen and dangerous to the political institutions of the country. His observations had convinced him that the Second Empire had fallen largely in consequence of the strike movement during 1868-70, and he was anxious to preserve the Republic from similar troubles. As he expressed it, strikes were “a crime of lèse-democratie”[42] which it was necessary to prevent by all means.
Barberet outlined the following program for the syndicats. They were to watch over the loyal fulfilment of contracts of apprenticeship; to organize employment bureaus; to create boards of conciliation composed of an equal number of delegates from employers and from workingmen for the peaceful solution of trade disputes; to found libraries and courses in technical education; to utilize their funds not to “foment strikes”, but to buy raw materials and instruments of labor; and finally, “to crown these various preparatory steps” by the creation of co-operative workshops “which alone would give groups of workingmen the normal access to industry and to commerce” and which would in time equalize wealth.[43]
Under Barberet's influence and with his assistance syndicats were reconstituted in a few trades in Paris during 1872. These syndicats felt the necessity of uniting into a larger body, and in August of the same year they founded the Cercle de l'Union Ouvrière, which was to form a counter-balance to the employers' organization L'Union Nationale du Commerce et de l'Industrie. The Cercle insisted on its peaceful intentions; it declared that its aim was “to realize concord and justice through study” and to convince public opinion “of the moderation with which the workingmen claim their rights.”[44] The Cercle was nevertheless dissolved by the government.
The syndicats, however, were left alone. They slowly increased in numbers and spread to new trades. There were about 135 in Paris in 1875. Following the example of the syndicats of the Second Empire, they organized delegations of workingmen to the Exhibitions of Vienna in 1873 and of Philadelphia in 1876. But their supreme effort was the organization of the first French Labor Congress in Paris in 1876.
The Congress was attended by 255 delegates from Paris and 105 from the provincial towns. The delegates represented syndicats, co-operative societies and mutual aid societies. The program of the Congress included eight subjects: (1) The work of women; (2) syndical chambers; (3) councils of prud'hommes; (4) apprenticeship and technical education; (5) direct representation of the working class in Parliament; (6) co-operative associations of production, of consumption and of credit; (7) old-age pensions; (8) agricultural associations and the relations between agricultural and industrial workers.
The proceedings of the Congress were calm and moderate. The organizers of the Congress were anxious not to arouse the apprehension of the government and not to compromise the republicans with whose help the Congress was organized. The reports and the discussions of the Congress showed that the syndical program outlined by Barberet was accepted by almost all the delegates. They insisted upon the necessity of solving peaceably all industrial difficulties, expressed antipathy for the strike and above all affirmed their belief in the emancipating efficacy of co-operation. At the same time they repudiated socialism, which one of the delegates proclaimed “a bourgeois Utopia”.[45]
The syndicats held a second congress in 1876 in Lyons. The Congress of Lyons considered the same questions as did that of Paris, and gave them the same solutions. In general, the character of the second congress was like that of the first.
The third Labor Congress held in Marseilles in 1879, was a new departure in the history of the French labor movement. It marked the end of the influence of Barberet and of the “co-operators” and the beginning of socialist influence. The Congress of Marseilles accepted the title of “Socialist Labor Congress”, expressed itself in favor of the collective appropriation of the means of production and adopted a resolution to organize a workingmen's social political party.