Socialism and the Social Movement in the 19th Century

by Werner Sombart

Then comes the first consolidation of the new society, the Constitution of November 3, 1791, which, through the introduction, of limited franchise, brings to sharp and clear expression the separation between a ruling class of those well-to-do and a ruled class of the "have-nothings." There are now "full citizens" and citizens of the second class.

Thus it is clear that the revolution of 1789 was not at all a proletarian movement. There may seem to be some doubt concerning the agitation of 1793, for it is this, before all others, which our great historians, as Sybel, like to specify as "communistic." The men of Montaigne are, in their eyes, the predecessors of the social democracy; and, indeed, quite lately in a small book published by the Berlin Professor H. Delbrueck in the Goettingen library for working-men, exactly this assertion is presented—that the leaders of this social movement were true social democrats, and that in fact the social democracy has developed no new thoughts since Saint Just and Robespierre. I cannot recognise this assertion as correct. Let us test it.

I assert that even the movement of 1793 was essentially non-proletarian. We grant that in it an undercurrent of democracy breaks forth, which the French Revolution always had; and it is this which has misled many. This was there from the beginning. It expressed itself already in 1789, in the elections to the States-General, and comes finally in 1793 to its full development.

As you read through the Cahiers with their Doléances of the year 1789, those "papers of grievances" which the electors, especially those of Paris and Lyons, were accustomed to hand to their representatives, you find therein already a peculiar tone which does not harmonise with the honeyed expressions of the men of the "tennis court." These demands were connected with the ruling hard times, for the winter of 1789 had been severe; and they complained because misery could not be lessened by a free constitution. "The voice of freedom means nothing to the heart of a miserable man who is dying of hunger." Already they demanded bread taxes and employment, the overthrow of Sunday rest and of feast-days. Everyone knows how this cry arises again and again in the speeches and writings of Marat. The Ami du Peuple declaims against the "aristocrats," and desires to serve the "people." They found out that, for the great masses of the "poor," freedom and equality availed nothing; and Marat thus concludes: "Equality of rights leads to equality of enjoyment, and only upon this basis can the idea rest quietly." Then come the taxes; the "maximum" comes. But I ask you, does that make this movement a proletarian and social one? Can it be that at all? Let us look merely at its supporters! The chief centres of democratic undercurrent are, as has been said, Lyons and Paris. In Lyons we find, indeed, a proletariat, that of the silk industry. We have the statistics of the year 1789; at that time there were, in the Lyons silk industry, 410 maîtres marchands fabricants, 4402 maîtres ouvriers, 1796 compagnons, and about 40,000 other workers of both sexes. We must allow that here, without doubt, there are indeed strong proletarian interests and instincts; yet they are veiled by the peculiar character of the Lyons silk industry. It had at that time, and has even to-day, a strong hold upon the lower middle-class, and to a degree upon the upper middle-class, for two reasons. One, due to its peculiar organisation, the fact that this work was not carried on in large manufactories but in small workshops under the direction of independent masters, and that this created a class of independent men, between the capitalist and the worker, hard to move to concerted action with the proletariat. A second reason is this, that the Lyons silk industry is a manufacture of an article of luxury. Such industries are in their very nature, even in the earlier times, anti-revolutionary; the men of Montaigne would not use silk stockings. For this reason we find Lyons, naturally, after the first enthusiasm is over, by the side of the Vendée at the head of the counter-revolution, even at the beginning of the year 1790. In general, as Lyons becomes anti-revolutionary the faubourgs of Paris come to the foreground; out of them new masses spring forward, the Sans-culottes. But what kind of people are they? Certainly there are wage-workers among them. But the majority were of a better class; there are traces of the trades out of which they had come or to which they yet belonged. The real mass of the Sans-culottes was not made out of wage-workers. It was rather the Parisian lower middle-class; it was, first, the guild-excluded master mechanics who dwelt in the Faubourg St. Antoine and Du Temple; secondly, the journeymen; thirdly, that element which the French call la boutique, retailers, tavern-keepers, etc., an important category. These, then, are the great hordes who clustered around Danton, Robespierre, and Marat. And what of these leaders themselves? Of what spirit are they children? They are, essentially, of the lower middle-class by birth. They are extreme radicals, extreme individualists. They are in their ideals and aims entirely unsocial and unproletarian according to our ideas to-day. The Constitution of 1793, in Article II., proclaims as Droits de l'Homme: Egalité, Liberté, Surété, Propriété. That is not proletarian and is not socialistic; thus all the assertions of a communistic movement at that time are thrown out. I have dwelt thus long on this revolution of 1793 in order to show how premature it is to speak of social democrats and of a social or proletarian movement wherever there is any outcry and disturbance.

I can but briefly touch upon other movements of this early history. The insurrection of Babeuf, 1796, bore certainly the communistic stamp; but, as we now know, it was without any response from the masses, who were finally tired of revolution.

Conspicuously of the upper middle-class were the July revolution of 1830 in France and the agitation of 1848 in Germany. In both cases we see citizenship in strife with feudal forces. Less clearly appears the civic character of the revolution of 1832 in England, and of the February revolution of 1848 in France, because these agitations were directed against forms of government sustained by citizens themselves. Yet even these movements, of 1832 in England and the February revolution in France, are not proletarian; they are rather the struggle of a part of the middle-class, the radicals, against another part, the Haute finance. This very opposition is now to be found again in Italy in the struggle of the North Italian industries against the rotten, half-feudal Haute finance which Crispi represents.

These are the agitations of our century which have been definite and conscious of their aim. In all of them the proletariat has been involved, behind all the barricades from 1789 to 1848 lie proletarian bodies; but of all those movements of which I have thus told you, not a single one is proletarian, or in our sense a social movement.

Where now the proletariat fights for itself and represents its own interests we discern at first mere muttered, inarticulate sounds; and it takes long for these tones to rise to cries, for these cries to grow to general demands, and to become crystallised into programmes. The first proletarian agitations—movements of the unhappy, deeply buried mass—are, according to Carlyle's word, like the movements of Enceladus, who as he quivers in his pain causes an earthquake. These are movements of an entirely instinctive kind, claiming that which lies next, and attacking that which seems to them evidently to stand in the way. These are deeds which originally and largely assume the form of robbery and plunder. They have as their object to injure in some way the enemy in his power of possession. In England towards the close of the preceding and the beginning of the present century there was much destruction and plundering of manufactories. In the year 1812 the demolition of factories was punished in England with death, the best proof of the frequency of the fact. In other lands we have similar occurrences. I think of the factory-burning in Uster in Switzerland in the year 1832, of the weavers' riots in Germany in 1840, of the Lyons silk-weavers' insurrection in France in 1831. This last distinguishes itself from previous events of a similar character by the fact that it assumes as its great motive the motto which indeed we can think of as written over the portal of the proletarian movement: Vivre en travaillant, ou mourir en combattant! That is the first timid formulation of proletarian struggle, because the battle-cry is negatively and positively an expression of true proletarian-socialistic effort: negatively—no one shall live who does not work; positively—those who work shall be able to live. Thus this is the first development of proletarian agitation: attack upon the external and visible forms in which the opponent is incorporated—upon the manufactories and machines because in their coming lies competition with hand-work, upon the dwellings of the employers which appear as the citadels of the new dictators.

It is a step in advance when, in place of the immediate and visible object, there come into view the principles which lie behind these things, upon which the capitalistic system of economy rests—free competition in production. It is therefore advance in proletarian agitation as this begins to direct itself to the abolition of modern institutions. Thus the proletariat in England, towards the end of the previous and the beginning of the present century, struggled long for a revival of the Elizabethan trade law. This had specified that every master should have only one apprentice for three workmen. The time of apprenticeship should also be limited to seven years, the wages should be settled by a justice of the peace. This is an instinctive clutching after a protective barrier which seems to be disappearing. Even this is not at first clear; but essentially we find this trait common to all the antecedents of proletarianism, that the movements hold fast to what was in the good old times. Thus, for example, in Germany, the working-man's agitation of 1848 was largely an attempt to reintroduce the old guild system. But it all belongs to the antecedent history of the social movement, because there was no definite aim before the proletariat.

Also to this antecedent history belongs that great and well known movement, frequently specified as the first typical, socialistic-proletarian agitation; I mean the Chartist movement in England in 1837-1848. This differs from the brief outbreakings of the masses which we have just now specified in that it was carried on systematically for more than a decade, and it seems to us like a well organised movement. Without doubt it is a true proletarian agitation: if you wish so to call it, the first organised proletarian movement. It is proletarian because the great masses of the Chartists were of the labouring class; also, because its demands grew immediately out of the condition of the proletariat, and it exerted itself immediately for a material betterment of the oppressed factory-hands. Thus at that time the maximum day's work was presented as a demand; also, let me remind you of the celebrated phrase of the Rev. Mr. Stephens, who cried out to the masses: "The question which concerns us here is only one of knife and fork!" The Chartist movement is also proletarian because in it the antagonism between labour and capital arises often and sharply. The "government," the "ruling class," is identified with the capitalist. This finds expression in a genuine hate against employers which at that time possessed the masses and became a battle-cry. O'Connor's word, "Down with the wretches who drink the blood of our children, take pleasure in the misery of our wives, and become satiated by our sweat!" reminds us of the phraseology of the proletarian assemblages of the present day. Further, the demand for the right to work is thoroughly proletarian; so also the right to a full profit from the work, to the "increase" which flows into the pockets of the employer. A symptom of the proletarian character of the Chartist movement is seen in its growing indifference to political questions that do not immediately concern it; as, for example, concerning the abolition of the corn tax. It is interesting to see how gradually the Chartist movement became indifferent towards the most pressing interests of the middle-class; these, though originally included, were finally and completely thrown overboard. Also, in the form of the struggle we find the proletarian character. Thus, at that time the general strike appears as a means of warfare, an idea that can rise only in a true proletarian movement. So without doubt, for these and other reasons, we have in Chartism a proletarian agitation. But I place it in the antecedent history, because I miss in it the clear programme of the proletarian-social movement, a clearly defined aim towards which it works. The only programme of the Chartist movement is the charter, which contains no true socialistic postulates, but only a collection of parliamentary reforms. It is nothing other than a platform upon which a man stands because he knows nothing better; a programme that had been taken up by the radical middle-class democracy. It is O'Connell who transferred it to the proletariat: "universal suffrage, secret ballot, equal representation, payment for members of parliaments, no property qualifications for representatives, annual parliaments." Therefore, though the kernel of the Chartist movement seems to be proletarian and though the spirit which rules it is proletarian, it must be distinguished from later definite proletarian socialistic movements on account of the uncertainty of its platform. I speak thus emphatically, because frequently, even by such a distinguished student of English history as Brentano, the Chartist is classed with the German social democrat. This conception holds too largely to the external form, which has similarity in both cases so far as these movements aspire after political power; but it is the inner character which is the determining feature of a social movement.