Socialism and Democracy in Europe

by Samuel Peter Orth

Louis Blanc (1813-82), the first philosopher of the new movement, struck out boldly for a democratic organization of the government. This differentiates him from Fourier and Saint-Simon, and links him with the leading Socialist writers of our day. He published his Organisation du Travail (Organization of Labor) in 1839. It immediately gave him an immense popularity with the working classes. It is a brilliant book, as fascinating in its phrases as it is forceful in its denunciation of existing society.

He said that it is vain to talk of improving mankind morally without improving them materially. This improvement would not come from above, from the higher classes. It would come from below, from the working people themselves. Therefore, a prerequisite of social reform was democracy. The proletarian must possess the power of the state in order to emancipate himself from the economic bondage that holds him in its grasp.

This democratic state should then establish national workshops, or associations, which he called "social workshops," the capital to be provided by the state and the state to supervise their operation. He believed that, once established, they would soon become self-supporting and self-governing. The men would choose their own managers, dispose of their own profits, and take care that this beneficent system would spread to all communities.

He was careful to explain that "genius should assert its legitimate empire"—there must be a hierarchy of ability.

Louis Blanc believed in revolution as the method of social advancement. He was himself a leader in the abortive revolution of 1848, the revolt of the people against a weak and careless monarch. As a member of the provisional government, he may be called the first Socialist to hold cabinet honors. And, like his successors in modern cabinets, he accomplished very little towards the bringing in of a new social order. It is true that national workshops were built by the French government at his suggestion; but not according to his plans. His enemies saw to it that they served to bring discredit rather than honor to the system which he had so carefully elaborated.[12]

Louis Blanc did not entirely free himself of the earlier utopian conception that man was created good and innocent. He blames society for allowing the individual to do evil. But he does take a step toward the Marxian materialistic conception when he affirms that man was created with certain endowments of strength and intellect and that these endowments should be spent in the welfare of society. The empire of service, not the "empire of tribute," should be the measure of man's greatness.

The doctrine of revolt was carried to its logical extreme by Proudhon (1809-65). He was the son of a cooper and a peasant maid, and he never forgot that he sprang from the proletariat. He was a precocious lad, was a theologian, philologist, and linguist before he undertook the study of political economy. In 1840 he brought out his notable work, Qu'est-ce que la Propriété? (What Is Property?), a novel question for that day, to which he gave an amazing answer, "Property is theft," ergo "property holders are thieves."

Proudhon was a man with the brain of a savant and the adjectives of a peasant. His startling phrases, however, are merely spotlights thrown on a theory of society which he permeated with a genuine good will. He was puritanic in moral principle, loyal to his friends, and a despiser of cant and formalism. But his love for paradoxes carried him beyond the confines of logic.

Property is theft, he says, because it reaps without sowing and consumes without producing. What right has a capitalist to charge me eight per cent.? None. This eight per cent. does not represent anything of time or labor value put into the article I am buying. It is therefore robbery. Private property, the stronghold of the individualist, is then to be abolished and a universal communism established? By no means. Communism is as unnatural as property. Proudhon had only contempt for the phalanstery and national workshop of his predecessors. They were impossible, artificial, reduced life to a monotonous dead level, and encouraged immorality. Property is wrong because it is the exploitation of the weak by the strong; communism is equally wrong because it is the exploitation of the strong by the weak. To this ingenious juggler of paradoxes this was by no means a dilemma. He resorted to a formula that was later amplified into the most potent argument of Socialism by Marx. Service pays service, one day's work balances another day's work, time-labor is the just measure of value. Hour for hour, day for day, this should be the universal medium of exchange.

Proudhon was really directing his attacks against rent and profit rather than against property. He proposed, as a measure of reform, a national bank where every one could bring the product of his toil and receive a paper in exchange denoting the time value of his article. These slips of paper were to be the medium of exchange capable of purchasing equal time values. This glorified savage barter he even proposed to the Constituent Assembly, of which he was a member, and when it was rejected—only two votes were recorded for it—he tried to establish it upon private foundations. He failed to raise the necessary capital and his plan failed.