After his return to Paris Louis Blanc published a work on questions of the time, entitled “Questions d’Aujourd’hui et de Demain.”[98] He continued to advocate quietly his doctrines in behalf of oppressed humanity, and had so gained in public estimation that upon his death, on the 6th of December, 1882, in Cannes, France, the Chamber of Deputies voted him the honor of a state funeral.[99]
Louis Blanc’s is a character which it is difficult to resist loving, so frank, generous, simple, and whole-souled was he. If he erred, it was largely because he attributed to others that warmth and devotion for common interests which he experienced, and that high point of honor which guided him. His tender solicitude and affection for his wife was beautiful, while his love for his brother Charles, the writer on art, has been celebrated far and wide. It is even said that his diminutive size was due to his sacrifices in behalf of the younger brother, to whom he gave the largest share of the lunch which they carried to school. A sympathetic chord seemed to connect them, for when Charles was ill in the summer of 1882, Louis, to whom the news had not been communicated, said to his friends, “Charles is ill: he is in danger.” So it proved, for Charles soon died. The affliction was a heavy blow to the surviving brother, and probably hastened his own death, which happened only a few months later. “Charles Blanc was a kind of complement to Louis. The delicacy of his (Charles’s) intellectual nature was a source of ever-new delight to the politician and man of the people, whose heart throbbed for all the woes and wants of humanity, and whose life was devoted to action rather than to the contemplation of art.”[100] This intimate affection had been noticed long before, and Alexander Dumas had them in mind when he wrote his “Les Frères Corses”—“The Corsican Brothers.”
Louis’s purity of character and his honesty of purpose were remarked by every acquaintance. Mr. Smalley[101] applies to him what Emerson said of Charles Sumner: “He was the whitest soul I ever knew:” and continues: “If ever a man lived free from stain, it was he who has just died. All his life long the fierce light of passionate political and still more passionate social controversies beat upon him. He made innumerable enemies; he was the object of innumerable calumnies. Not one of his enemies hated the man, not one of the calumnies touched his private worth.” Karl Blind, his friend, thus describes his personal appearance: “A very small, but elegantly formed man; of almost Napoleonic features, as may be common to many Corsicans; entirely beardless, which was rare in the revolutionary days. The glance of his dark, prominent eyes, brilliant, almost sparkling; his thick, dark-brown hair, long and straight; the color of his countenance rather dark. Notwithstanding his short figure—for he was not taller than Thiers—an impressive appearance.”[102]
An examination of Louis Blanc’s social philosophy is best begun by asking the question: what is in his opinion the aim of life? The answer to it is the starting-point from which all his arguments proceed. Louis Blanc finds the purpose of human existence to be happiness and development. Any acceptable, any tolerable organization of society must make both possible for every single human being. While development may come first, “it is repugnant to reason to admit in the theory of progress that humanity ought forever to be a victim of I do not know what strange and terrible combat between the flesh and the spirit.”[103] But what does development imply? It signifies that every one should enjoy precisely those means which are required for his largest mental, moral, and physical growth; or, to express it in a word, for the perfection of his personality. These requirements are for each individual his needs. The next question we have to ask is this: Does our present society guarantee to every member of it his needs? If it does not, it must be condemned. Obviously it does not. It is a war of all against all, a bellum omnium contra omnes. It is a society whose fundamental principle is competition, and competition means universal warfare. Every man’s hand is against his brother. Individualism reigns, the principle of which is that, “taking man outside of society, it renders him the sole and exclusive judge of that which surrounds him, gives him an exalted sentiment of his rights without indicating to him his duties, abandons him to his own powers, and proclaims laissez-faire as the only rule of government.”[104] The result of this is want and misery, rendering the fulfilment of his destiny impossible to man. This must be corrected by a new organization of labor, which, abandoning individualism, private property, and private competition, the fundamentals of existing society, shall adopt fraternity as its controlling principle. “Fraternity means that we are all common members (membres solidaires) of one great family; that society, the work of man, ought to be organized on the model of the human body, the work of God; and found the power of governing upon persuasion, upon the voluntary consent of the hearts of the governed.”[105]
Let it not be objected that our aim, the abolition of misery, is materialistic. “The most exalted spiritualism reposes on the suppression of misery. Who does not know it? Misery restrains the intelligence of man in darkness, in confining education within shameful limits. Misery counsels always the sacrifice of personal dignity and almost always demands it. Misery places him whose character is independent in a position of dependence, so as to conceal a new torment in a virtue and to change into gall what there is of nobility in his blood. If misery creates long-suffering, it engenders also crime.... It makes slaves; it makes the greater part of thieves, assassins and prostitutes.”[106] The work before us is then eminently moral. It is the work which God would have us do. In Louis Blanc’s own words: “In demanding that the right to live should be regulated, should be guaranteed, one does much more than demand that millions of unhappy beings should be rescued from the oppression of force or of chance; one embraces, in its highest generalization and in its most profound signification, the cause of humanity; one greets the Creator in his labor. Whenever the certainty of being able to live by one’s labor does not result from the essence of social institutions, iniquity reigns.” The first step then is the contrivance of means which shall guarantee to every one the certainty of finding work i.e., the droit au travail. This must be accomplished by the erection on the part of the state of social workshops, ateliers sociaux, “destined to replace gradually and without shocks individual ateliers.”[107] Violence of every kind is deprecated as injurious, as productive of ruin.[108] The poor cannot now combine and produce for themselves without the intervention of capitalists, because they lack the instruments of labor. It is the function of the state to furnish these and thus become the banker of the poor. It must found the ateliers sociaux, pass laws for their government, watch over the administration of these laws as of other laws, and do this for the profit of all.[109] For the first year only the state regulates the “hierarchy of functions,” that is to say, assigns to each one his place in accordance with his ability, his faculties. After the expiration of the first year the laborers will soon become acquainted with each other, and will then elect their own chiefs.[110] This all requires funds. Whence are they to come? The state is to grant its credit in aid of the ateliers, and for this credit no interest is to be charged; it is to be gratuitous. The state will repay the loans by general taxation and by the revenues derived from the management of railways, which must become public property, and from other public undertakings, as mines, insurances, and banking.[111]
The absorption of private industry will be gradual. The public ateliers will all be united from the start into a grand federation, and will form a mutual insurance company, so that the losses of one may be made good by the profits of others. One part of all profits will be set aside for this purpose.[112] Capitalists will at once be invited to join these associations, and will be paid interest on whatever capital they put into the ateliers, besides receiving their wages like other laborers. While no one is to be forced by law to join the social workshops, the competition of the ateliers sociaux, working without the payment of interest and with all the advantages of a vast combination, will before long become so severe that all private employers will be glad to fall in line to save themselves from ruin. Then the socialistic state will have been formed. It is for the interest of the rich as well as the poor. They will then enjoy safety, tranquillity and the satisfaction of observing universal happiness, whereas they are now harassed by all sorts of dangers and anxieties, born of individualism and private competition.[113]
We have finally to inquire what is the principle in accordance with which functions (positions, offices) and remuneration are distributed among the workers in the ateliers sociaux? What is the ideal of social justice?
First, as to the social hierarchy, or social rank. Faculties, powers, abilities, are of almost infinite variety in man. They are, however, all talents meant to be used for others. Have I great strength? In giving it to me God measured thereby my obligations to society. The same holds regarding mental acumen, profundity of thought, poetic imagination, a fine voice, etc. We must then be so placed that we can use to the full our capacities. These are the measure of our rank in the ordering of society. “Man has received of nature certain faculties—faculties of loving, of knowing, of acting. But these have by no means been given him in order that he should exercise them solitarily; they are but the supreme indication of that which each one owes to the society of which he is a member; and this indication each one bears written in his organization in letters of fire. If you are twice as strong as your neighbor it is a proof that nature has destined you to bear a double burden.[114] If your intelligence is superior, it is a sign that your mission is to scatter about you more light. Weakness is a creditor of strength; ignorance of learning. The more a man can (peut), the more he ought (doit); and this is the meaning of those beautiful words of the gospel: ‘Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant.’ Whence the axiom, From every one according to his faculties; that is one’s duty.”[115]
But this is only one half of the formula of ideal justice. It shows what each is to give. What is each to receive? We saw that the Saint-Simonians constructed their social hierarchy in accordance with capacity. They added, however, that reward must be proportioned to works. “To each one according to his capacity, to each capacity according to its works.” But is that a high moral standard? Ought we to complete our formula in that way? Is it not selfish and hard? Would it not condemn the weak and feeble to extinction? Has not God, in our wants, our needs, given us a different indication? So thought Louis Blanc. Not equality, but needs, are to determine the distribution of products. Each one must have whatever he truly needs, in so far and in proportion as the means of society will admit it. “All men are not equal in physical force, in intelligence; all have not the same tastes, the same inclinations, the same aptitudes, any more than they have the same visage or the same figure; but it is just, it is in the general interest, it is in conformity with the principle of solidarity, established in accordance with the laws of nature, that each one should be placed in a condition to derive the greatest possible advantage from his faculties in so far as this can be done with due regard to others, and to satisfy as completely as possible, without injuring others, the needs which nature has given him. Thus there is no health and vigor in the human body unless each member receives that which is able to preserve it from pain and to enable it to accomplish properly its peculiar function. Equality, then, is only proportionality, and it exists in a true manner only when each one in accordance with the law written in some shape in his organization by God himself, produces according to his faculties and consumes according to his wants.”[116] Here we have the formula of perfect justice complete.
We see, then, that Louis Blanc was not an égalitaire. He opposed equality as unnatural and unjust.[117] He was, however, unwilling to adopt works as a basis of inequality. It would, nevertheless, amount in the end to pretty much the same, although the animating spirit might be different. Who would occupy the superior positions in Louis Blanc’s ideal state? Naturally the ablest, the largest natures. But those are precisely the ones whose needs are greatest. The true wants of the ignorant day laborer are simple and easily satisfied. Books tire him, grand music wearies him, while he turns away uninterested from the greatest painting of an old master. How different are the wants of a sensitive, refined nature like Louis Blanc himself; how much larger, how much more expensive to gratify! It is, indeed, pleasant to think of society as one vast Christian family, in which each would gladly contribute to the common good in proportion to his faculties, and in which all would cheerfully accord to every member whatever he truly needed for his most perfect development. But does the attempt to bring about such a state of society take men as they are or presuppose them as they ought to be? It is truly a glorious ideal! but will it ever become a reality this side of the golden gates of Paradise?