Socialism and the Social Movement in the 19th Century

by Werner Sombart

There is no doubt that, even if this in its peculiar form gradually disappears, it will be of continued influence upon the further development of the social movement. What the English working-man has left as a lasting inheritance to the agitation of the proletariat consists of rich experiences in the sphere of trade-unionism, and a steadiness, a calm, a business-like clearness of procedure on the part of organised labour. It is, in a word, the method of agitation that comes over from the English type and will remain in the proletariat, even if the direction of agitation becomes essentially different.

And now we leave British ground. Now we step over the Channel, and go into France. What a change of scene! Out of foggy, smoky England, with its earnest, capable, dull populace, into the charming, sunny, warm land of France, with its passionate, impulsive, hasty population.

What kind of a social movement is this in France? I have already given some indications. All ferments and boils there, all bubbles and breaks out uninterruptedly since the "glorious" revolution of the previous century. Parties are in a state of constant flux; a movement divides itself into countless factions. With haste and pressure single acts fall over one another. Parliamentary struggle is set aside, now by bloody street fights, now by conspiracy, now by assassination. To understand clearly this general characteristic, which runs to-day in the very blood of the French proletariat, but which is becoming modified, we must go back to the earlier decades. We must think of the activity of the clubs and companies of conspirators in the third and fourth decades of this century; we must recall the awful street fights which the Parisian proletariat waged with heroism in the June days of the year 1848, and, later, in the May days of the year 1871. There is, as it were, a smouldering, inner fire that glows constantly in the masses and their leaders, and that, when any nourishment comes to it, breaks out violently and devastates all around. The social movement in France has always had in it something morbid, excited, convulsive. Mighty, magnificent, in sudden outbreaks; again faint and flagging after the first repulse. Always looking forward, always with inspiration; but often fantastic, dreamy, uncertain in its choice of ways and means. But always filled with a faith in quick accomplishment, in sudden action, whether with the ballot or with the dagger; always filled with faith in the miracle of revolution. In this I present its motto: the characteristic of the French type lies in the word "revolutionism"—by which I mean belief in revolution-making. Involved in this revolutionism lie all the other peculiarities, as seed-corn in the sheath. Let me specify them—pardon some of the harsh word-making! Factionism, clubbism, and Putschism. Factionism is the tendency to separate into innumerable small parties; clubbism is the desire of conspiracy in secret companies and conventicles; Putschism, finally, is the fanatical tendency towards street struggle, faith in the barricade.

Whence all this? One thing springs immediately to the attention of the student of French history: what we here have learned to recognise as a characteristic trait of the movement of the French proletariat is to be found almost without change in all the actions of the French middle-classes. Indeed, it is evidently an inheritance that the proletariat has assumed. Unnoticeably the one movement passes into the other. The French proletariat is led into history by the hand of the bourgeoisie. Long after the proletariat in France had begun an independent agitation, the influence of this former movement was conspicuous. Not only in the method of strife; as well in the programmes and ideals of the French proletariat, this middle-class spirit stands even to our latest time, so that we can understand why Proudhon, the greatest theorist of the revolutionary movement, as late as after 1848 had influence in the circles of the French proletariat. That Proudhon was really a bourgeois theorist is often denied, but is none the less true; however revolutionary his phraseology may be, all his proposals for reform—whether the exchange and credit banks, or the wage theory, or the "establishment of value,"—point to an upholding, a strengthening, an ethicizing of individualistic production and the exchange of individual service.

But no one who looks at the matter will wonder at the long predominance of middle-class influence in the French proletarian movement. What prestige the French, especially the Parisian, middle-class has won in the eyes of the populace, in the course of later French history! How many chaplets of fame have been laid upon its brow since the days of 1793! In no other land, Italy perhaps excepted, has it proved itself so valiant, daring, successful. If the French bourgeoisie, as no other in the world, has made a free path for itself in so short a time through the overcoming of feudal institutions, truly the iron broom of Napoleon has done a great share of this work. But we must not forget that it is the revolution of 1793—the uprising of the middle class—which has levelled the ground; that is the historic significance of the Reign of Terror, and with it of the middle-class that since those days has borne an aureole upon its head.

But it is not only this rather ideal element that is responsible for the preponderance of the middle-class influence in France; we must add the weighty fact that a great part of the specifically French industries, owing to the peculiar organisation in ateliers, bears a half-individualistic character, and that these are largely industries of the arts. Thus the Lyons silk industry and many of the Parisian manufactures of luxury. These are in sharp contrast, for example, to the great English staple industries of coal, iron, and cotton. The French ouvrier, in Lyons directly called maître ouvrier, assumes, through the tendency and organisation of many French industries, a more individualistic, and so middle-class, appearance than the proletariat in other lands.

But to understand the characteristics which are stamped upon the social movement in France as an inheritance from the middle-class, to explain that enthusiasm for revolution of which I have spoken to you, we must look at the whole history of France. That people!—a sanguine, enthusiastic race, with a volatile temperament, with a dash which is not to be found in those of northern lands. Perhaps the French type of the social movement, somewhat modified by German influence, is again to be found in Italy; there we must learn to see its peculiar characteristics, the quick response of large masses, the straw fire of momentary enthusiasm—in short, we must understand clearly an entirely different mode of thought and feeling in order to comprehend this French, or, if you will, Roman, type of the born revolutionist, in its heaven-wide difference from the English workman. Victor Hehn says somewhere, in his striking way, concerning the Italians, but it can be applied to all of the Latin races:

"Completely strange to him is the German, and even more so the English!—Philistine, quite unthinkable, is the temperament of those unimaginative and well-meaning sons of habit who, arrayed with all the virtues of the commonplace, are respectable through the moderation of their claims, are slow in comprehension, ... and who drag after them throughout their lives, with pathetic patience, a burden of social prejudices received from their fathers."

Thus one of Latin race strives after a far-off object, and does not shrink from forceful means of reaching it. This heaven-storming temperament has been given to him by nature for his mission in history. Further, in order to understand the character of the social movement in France, think of the preponderance in this land of the capital city, Paris! If Paris is not exactly France, as is often asserted, yet it is strong enough to dictate on occasion the laws of the people. Paris, this nerve ganglion! This rumbling volcano!

Further, I have always the impression that the French people stand even to-day under the influence, perhaps we may say the ban, of their "glorious" revolution. The influence of such an event—the most tremendous drama of history—cannot in one hundred years disappear from a people. So I think that this nervosity, if I may so express it, which clings to all public life in France, may be, in large part, a heritage from those terrible years of general overthrow, an inheritance that has been most carefully fostered in less glorious revolutions since then—ah, how many! And out of that time springs something else: an overmastering faith in force, in the availability of the political riot. The history of France has developed itself since the July days of 1789 rather from without to within, than from within to without; the change of régime has played a mighty rôle, has often worked decisively upon the progress of social life. It is not strange that always they rest their hope upon it, and seek to use further, as a means of development, the political revolution which has often wrought so mightily. This belief in revolution stands, however, in close connection, I think, with the specifically French, optimistic, ideal-socialistic philosophy of the eighteenth century, of which I have heretofore spoken. In France is the classic ground of that belief in the ordre naturel, which can come over the world "as a thief in the night," because it is already here and needs only to be uncovered.