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FRANCE, 1830-48
Also by Paul E. Corcoran
Edited by
Paul E. Corcoran
Senior Lecturer in Politics
University of Adelaide
Adelaide, South Australia
© Paul E. Corcoran 1983
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1983 978-0-333-31498-2
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without permission
Introduction 1.
PART I RADICAL SOCIALISTS AND COMMUNISTS
1. Louis-Auguste Blanqui: Oath of Membership into the
Societe des Saisons ( 1830) 33
Defence before the Court of Assizes ( 1832) 36
2. Richard Lahautiere: A Brief Catechism of Social Reform
(1839) 48
3. Theodore Dezamy: Philosophy of the Current Crisis
(1840) 61
4. Jean-Jacques Pillot: The People (1840) 68
5. The First Communist Banquet (1840) 72
6. Etienne Cabet: Communist Propaganda (1842) 80
Vll
viii Contents
Bibliography 224
Index 232
Preface
The central aim of this book is to bring for the first time to the
English reader an original documentation of socialism and com-
munism in France when the movement was in its creative stage and
earliest phase of popular propaganda. This is to rule out, from the
outset, socialist thought of a later period, when it had developed
into an international political movement and the writings and
organisational efforts of Karl Marx had been stamped indelibly
upon the tradition. This documentation is comprised of selected
texts from a wide range of radical political literature in France
between 1830 and 1848. The authors of these articles, tracts, defence
briefs, workers' writings and other rare items are largely unknown
to modern English, indeed even French, scholarship. The texts have
never been translated into English, and very few of them are
available in French apart from their original publication.
The guiding interest of this collection is the presentation of the
ideas, as well as the rhetorical style, of early French socialism. The
materials presented here are intended to provide answers to questions
that have been largely overlooked by the literature which has focused
on Marxist thought and the socialist movement so closely associated
with his works. What were the central ideas, themes and issues of
the original socialist movement? Upon what intellectual and political
sources did it draw? How did the movement articulate itself, and
to whom? Who were the leading figures, and what kind of men and
women were they? What did it mean to be a 'socialist' or a
'communist' in the original sense before the establishment of political
parties? What literary and political strategies were undertaken?
Part of the interest of this study must inevitably be the context
it provides for the development of Marx's thought. He arrived in
Paris in 1843, at the age of 25, having only begun to read socialist
writings (from France) the year before. During his stay in France,
and then later in Belgium, his growing familiarity with socialism
derived from his encounter with the very literature represented in
lX
X Preface
* * *
My interest in this subject grew out of a period of study in Paris
at the Bibliotheque nationale, where the original documents are held
by virtue of the continuous tradition of that institution as the legal
depository of all French publications. I also benefited from a period
Xll Preface
Paul E. Corcoran
Adelaide
South Australia
Introduction
Early French socialism was already a richly elaborated political,
intellectual and literary movement when Karl Marx was still a
student at the University of Berlin. With its roots in the Revolution
of 1789, the movement took itself to be a uniquely French contri-
bution to political science. Its moral precepts were those of the
Revolution: liberty, equality and fraternity. Its organisational prin-
ciples were association and community. Its method was science.
These general characteristics were coloured by many other ideas,
not all of which were shared by different elements of the larger
movement. Yet the central tenets of socialism and communism were
widely agreed. The impoverished masses were the primary object
of moral concern. The laisser-faire economy, with its inevitable
social degradation ensuing from competitive and disorganised indus-
trialism, was to be replaced by centralised management of production
and distribution. All manifestations of privilege, individualism and
inequality must be abolished. Education, marriage, the family and
religion were to be appropriated as social institutions devoted to
communal aims. These early socialists also noted the division of
society into antagonistic social classes, with an urban proletariat
arising from industrial expansion. It was generally appreciated that
a new capitalist class had established itself as an oppressive aris-
tocracy of wealth, and it followed that a socialist transformation
implied the destruction of private property.
The proposed means by which this transformation was to take
place ranged across the spectrum of political action. A number of
socialists belonged to secret societies which plotted the violent
overthrow of the State. Others saw the organisation of international
labour unions as the crucial first step. Some, but not many, hoped
for socialist legislation, administrative reforms and a restructured
economy. Others anticipated a spontaneous transformation by the
propagation of a new social 'system' with victory being assured by
the success of practical experiments and the demonstrability of the
1.
2 Introduction
science on which the system was based. Whatever the tactics, the
common assumption was that the new age of socialist community
was at hand and its victory was assured by the inexorable progress
of humanity.
The documents which have been collected here are representative
of the early French socialist movement. The leading names -
Saint-Simon, Fourier and Proudhon - are absent. Their works are
more readily accessible in English, and their ideas are widely
discussed in the literature. The present collection, therefore, endea-
vours to reveal the breadth and depth of the movement, illustrating
how Saint-Simon's and Fourier's ideas had penetrated so many
minds and in turn stimulated a remarkable theoretical creativity.
At the same time, the diversity of this material - inflammatory
pamphlets, learned articles, hurried screeds, 'catechisms', banquet
toasts, secret oaths, etc. - conveys an impression of the rhetorical
style of the movement, at once a continuation of the Revolutionary
tradition and a conscious participation in what was taken to be a
new science of society, a science which assured the accomplishment
of socialist community irrespective of the vagaries of the 'old politics'.
It is not generally appreciated that socialism was this clearly
elaborated as a social theory in France prior to the publicity and
organisational efforts so closely identified with Marx and Engels. 1
What is even less understood is that socialist ideas had gained a
wide currency in France by 1840. A common and identifiable
vocabulary pervaded the 'advanced' intellectual press and workers'
publications, and served as a commmon theme in numerous literary
and artistic manifestos. It is probably true to say that socialism is
now unduly regarded as 'Germanic' in origin because of the impact
of Marx and Engels, and particularly their translation of socialism
into a neo-Hegelian and German scholastic idiom of idealist and
materialist historicism. It was this translation, after all, that effec-
tively enabled Marx and Engels to relegate the French tradition to
the inconsiderable categories of 'utopian' and 'bourgeois' socialism.
In fact, French socialism emerged as a singularly French intel-
lectual movement. Its only important foreign influence came not
from Germany, but from England and Scotland. It was the reaction
to British classical economics and the advance of urban capitalist
industrialism which provided the socialist movement with its the-
oretical rigour and moral fervour. Far from being a collection of
eccentric and romantic copies of Robert Owen's communal exper-
iments, French socialism at its very inception was a methodical
Introduction 3
The egoism of each, war between all, privilege for the rich,
eternal misery for the poor. This is what [political economy]
proclaims as the normal state of society. Competition, which it
celebrates as the very law of justice, is nothing other, indeed, than
a game of cards where on one side are a few privileged idlers, on
the other the great population of workers. 11
* * *
The socialist perspective was universally understood by its advocates
to be the product of scientific inquiry, la science sociale. This too
was virtually a fanatical viewpoint. Socialism, for its French orig-
inators, was a movement of ideas, a triumph of the human mind.
But they did not understand it to be, as Marx and Engels argued, 25
a revival of discredited idealism or the sheer invention of genius cut
off from material life and historical forces. The French socialists
saw their 'scientific systems' as being based upon an understanding
of quite specific stages of historical development. The scientific ideas
themselves were seen as the product of man's naturally inventive
mind coming to grips with the experiences of real life, such as, for
example, a thwarted Revolution and the depredations of competitive
capitalism.
The leading thinkers shared this faith in science with lesser-
known ouvrier writers such as Jean-Jacques Pillot and Achille
Roche. 26 Even the most popular and aggressively radical communist
literature expressed its obeisance to the leading lights of la science
sociale. 27 Communal organisation, a new industrial and agricultural
economy, the principles of education and a reformed domestic life
were all accepted as scientific propositions or demonstrable truths
of an emerging social science.
The poetic and artistic expression of this scientific evolution did
not seem at all contradictory to the early French socialists. 28 The
scientific character of a system was in no way seen as diminished
or vulgarised by poetic expression, which enhanced its propaganda.
Since an entirely new system was being advanced, poetry and song
8 Introduction
* * *
Marx and Engels, of course, denied that their French predecessors
had a valid claim to science, 36 and Engels argued that this was due
to their ignorance of the concept of surplus value, their failure to
see the materialist basis of class antagonism and their lack of a
scientific understanding of the dialectical development of material
historical forces. 37 Marx and Engels concluded that the French
thinkers were 'utopian' because they were, in effect, attempting to
stop and reverse history when they proposed to mitigate or overcome
class divisions. They were guilty of thinking that the material
contradictions of historical development would be healed by charity,
fanciful ideas of perfect communal organisation and the good will
of a few minds susceptible of moral suasion. They were, in short,
Introduction 11
Achille Roche placed himself amongst those who have 'a lively faith
in the future and the development of humanity'.
the future. Let it attack the Harlequin's robe and wig. And, in
spite of us, it will spread widely amongst the people. We know
that the play has its denouement, and that a new drama will
succeed the old. Let us understand, from this day forward, what
must be accomplished beyond Communism. Beyond the rums,
there lies reconstruction. 63
masses, it is far from true to say, as Marx did, that only 'from the
point of view of being the most suffering class does the proletariat
exist for them.' 69 No one reading the works of Blanqui, Dezamy,
Pillot, Roche and any number of working class socialists and
communists could agree that the urban proletariat and the whole
working class were viewed as a passive, suffering mass to whom
sentiment is extended but from whom nothing was expected. When
Cabet wrote The Social Cataclysm, or Conjuring up the Tempest,
he predicted 'one of the grand crises of humanity', in which 'we
will see the outburst of a great storm which will make Europe in
its entirety tremble'. 70 When Pillot introduced his new journal, La
Tribune du peuple, in a most inflammatory style, the revolutionary
implications were clear. In La Communaute n 'est plus une utopie!,
his description of the rightfully destructive power of the will of the
people is frightening. Speaking of the people's right to 'destroy all
the works of generations' - tradition, culture and even language -
Pillot says 'their tribunal is raised up in the midst of ruins, the
imperishable monument of their sovereign power'. 71 In 1840, Pillot
declared the people 'king of kings' and offered them this advice:
'The parasitic species which devours you is cowardly and few in
number. You are more than two hundred against one!' 72 Flora
Tristan appealed directly to the poor for their own redemption. 73
On the other hand, the disciples of Fourier explicitly intended his
science to address 'our miserable and criminal societies', and the
object was not a charitable amelioration of the masses. Rather, their
social science was intended 'to introduce a major amelioration in
the constitution of the social mechanism'. 74 Most early socialists had
a heroic view of individual roles in the progress of humanity, 75 and
virtually all of them romanticised 'the people'.
However, for some French socialists, the poor masses, or any
urban proletarian part of them, were not assumed to be a necessary
or even probable direct political force in shaping and applying
revolutionary ideas, systems or practices, although exceptions to this
were numerous. 76 For these socialists, la plus nombreuse were more
likely to be just the opposite. They would act as a mass, hysterically,
irrationally and counter-revolutionarily, as in fact they had done
after the Revolution, in support of Napoleon, and would again in
support of re-establishing the Second Empire after 1848. The
inevitability and necessity of human progress was a general assump-
tion of early French socialism - as it had been an assumption of
progressivist theory before the Revolution - but it was understood
16 Introduction
are examples of ouvrier publications which counselled respect for the great
figures of social science such as Saint-Simon, Fourier and Proudhon.
28. See the introduction to T. Edmond, Voix d'en bas: La Poesie ouvriere du
X!Xi"eme siecle (Paris, 1979). Also, C.-A. Fusil, La Poesie scientifique de 1750
a nos jours (Paris, 1917), esp. pp. 97-125, 'La Preparation de Ia poesie
scientifique, !'ecole romantique (1820-1850)'; and Victor Hugo's Vingtieme
siecle, a poem in his Ugende des siecles (Paris, 1859). It is instructive in this
regard to read L. Vitet's definition of romanticism, 'De l'independance en
matiere dugout: du romantisme', Le Globe, I, no. 89 (2 April 1825), p. 443:
'romanticism, obviously, is neither a party nor a literary doctrine. It is the law
of necessity, the law of all things which occur, change and exist in this world.'
Poetry and song played an important part in the meetings of the Saint-
Simonian society.
29. 'Any doctrine of reform ... must be submitted to experiment and verified. ...
We intend to make it triumph by the very fact of its superiority, of its
excellence ... Also, we declare quite frankly that if our system of reform, once
it has been well and truly tested, does not lead to imitation, does not come into
being spontaneously and freely, this will be peremptory proof that it is not
preferable to the present system.' La Phalange (2 Sept. 1840), pp. 11-12.
30. Fourier was very reluctant to move forward with establishing a phalanstere
or even propagandise on behalf of his ideas, which had been published some
years earlier: La Theorie des quatres mouvements et des destinees generales
(1808), Traite de /'association domestique-agricole (1822) and Le Nouveau
monde industriel (1829). Lechevalier and Considerant, after their disillusion-
ment with the Saint-Simonian society, were the major forces in organising the
first 'Colonie Societiare' in 1834, but it was not until several years after
Fourier's death (1837) that the major experimental efforts took place. For an
account of their transition to Fourier's doctrines and the concerted effort to
undertake active propagation, see H. Louvancour, De Saint-Simon a Fourier,
pp. 294-310.
31. It is argued below that these thinkers would regard this as a false dichotomy.
32. Saint-Simon wrote, 'It is evident that the regime industriel, being impossible
to introduce by hazard or routine, must be conceived a priori, and that in
consequence it must be invented as a whole before being put in operation. It
is moreover evident, by the very fact of the production of this Catechism, that
the human mind is elevated to the conception of the entity that is the regime
industriel.' Catechisme politique des industriels (1824), Oeuvres completes de
Saint-Simon (Paris, 1832), pp. 71-2.
33. This point is made in a pamphlet written by a genuine working-class publicist,
Adolphe Boyer, Les Conseils de prud'hommes au point de vue de /'interet des
ouvriers et de l'egalite des droits (Paris, 1841), p. 5. His larger work, De l'etat
des ouvriers et de son amelioration par /'organisation du travail (Paris, 1841 ),
was an impressive analysis of the effect of free enterprise on working conditions,
unemployment and the fall of wages. His death in 1841 by suicide caused
considerable disappointment amongst socialists, who had seen in Boyer a
promising example of a person emerging from the sufferings of proletarian life
to make an impressive contribution. See the notice 'Adolphe Boyer' by Gustave
Bonin in La Revue independante (Nov. 1841), pp. 262-7.
34. While the September Laws only partly succeeded in inhibiting socialist
Introduction 25
68. La Tribune du peuple, I (1839), p. 37. This phrase is nearly identical to many
of Marx's in Theses on Feuerbach and The German Ideology.
69. Marx, Communist Manifesto, I, p. 134. Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men,
p. 266, argues that the 'constitution of the proletariat into a class' of which
Flora Tristan spoke in 1843 of her Union ouvriere was an influence on Marx's
'discovery' of the German proletariat as a revolutionary force. Both M.
Dommanget, La Revolution de 1848 et le drapeau rouge (Paris, n.d.), pp.
20-22, and D. Desanti, Les Socialistes de l'utopie, pp. 307-8, argue that the
Communist Manifesto was influenced by V. Considerant's Manifeste societaire
(1841) and Manifest de la democratie (1847), although Dommanget shows
that Marx's work had no impact upon the revolutionary workers in Paris in
the 1848 revolution, p. 20.
70. Le Cataclysme sociale, ou Conjurons la tempete (Paris, 1845), p. 3.
71. Subtitled Consequences de proces des communistes (Paris, 1841), p. 4. La
Tribune du peuple first appeared in 1839.
72. Ni Chateaux ni chaumieres, p. 24.
73. F. Tristan, Union ouvriere, 3rd edn (Paris, 1844), pp. 3-4, calls for a universal
union of working men and women.
7 4. La Phalange, I (2 Sept. 1840), pp. 8-10. The article goes on to say that any
doctrine of social reform must be specific, experimental and verifiable. Its
reform is in 'Ia base', in the 'commune' and not in 'I'Etat'. Ibid., pp. 11-12.
75. This was true for both worker publicists and such figures as Blanqui, Cabet
and Dezamy. Proudhon boasted that his ideas were unprecedented in science
or philosophy, but it would be fair to say that he had a heroic notion of his
own importance. P.-J. Proudhon, Qu'est-ce que la propriete? (Paris, 1840),
PP· 1-4.
76. Tristan, Boyer, Cabet and others were active in organising workers and
propagandising for national and even international worker unions. Working
class writers also emphasised the common interests and common enemies of
the working classes across national boundaries. La Ruche populaire (Nov.
1840), p. 15. An article probably written by V. Considerant was intensely
aware of 'an intestine war of the classes', between 'capitalists and wage
labourers. Now between these two classes, there remains a flagrant hostility
of interests.' La Phalange, I (1 Oct. 1836), p. 277. But a later Fourierist paper
rejected the idea of the inevitability of class struggle: 'The desperate struggles
of capital against capital, of capital against labour and talent. .. of workers
against the bosses, of each against all and all against each are in no way
conditions fatally attached to life and humanity. They are only related to the
current structure of industry and the system of anarchic and disordered
competition.' La Democratie pacifique, I (1 Aug. 1843), 'Manifeste sociale',
p. 3.
77. For detailed accounts of secret societies under the July Monarchy, see L. de
Ia Hodde, Histoire des societes secretes (Paris, 1850), pp. 11-17 and passim
for a contemporary, and very entertainingly unsympathetic account; and G.
Morange, Les Idees communistes dans les societes secretes et dans la presse
(Paris, 1905), pp. 3-16. For a survey of compagnonnage and workers'
mutualist societies, see J. Bron, Histoire du mouvement ouvrier francais, t. I
(Paris, 1968), pp. 46-52. Boyer and Tristan's propaganda for legal recognition
28 Introduction
33
34 Radical Socialists and Communists
property owners whom the entire society must clothe with its power,
they are two or three thousand idlers who calmly devour the billions
paid by these thieves. It seems to me that we have here, in another
form and between other adversaries, that earlier war of the feudal
barons against merchants, who were destroyed right on the main
roads. Indeed, the present government has no other foundation than
this iniquitous distribution of charges and benefits. The Restoration
instituted it in 1814 at the pleasure of the foreigner, 2 with the aim
of enriching an imperceptible minority of the leftovers of the nation.
A hundred-thousand bourgeois formed what they called, with a
bitter irony, the democratic element. 3 What is to be said, for God's
sake, of the other elements? Paul Courier4 has already immortalised
the typical stock pot, that steam engine which crushes the material
called people, in order to suck up the billions incessantly poured
into the coffers of a few idlers. It is a pitiless machine which
pulverises, one by one, twenty-five million peasants and five million
workers to extract their purest blood and transfuse it into the veins
of the privileged. 5
The cogs of this machine, assembled with an astonishing art,
touch the poor man at every instant of the day, hounding him in
the least necessity of his humble life, and the most miserable of his
pleasures, taking away half of his smallest gain. It is not enough
that so much money travels from the pockets of the proletariat to
those of the rich, arriving via the abysses of the tax collector. Still
larger sums are raised directly from the masses by the privileged,
by means of the laws they have the exclusive right to fabricate which
regulate industrial and commercial transactions.
So that the landowner may withdraw a huge rent from his fields,
foreign grains are hit with an import duty which raises the price
of bread. Now you know that a few centimes more or less on a loaf
of bread is life or death to several million workers. This legislation
on cereal crops is especially crushing to the maritime population in
the South. To enrich several large manufacturers and proprietors
of forests, we are burdened with enormous duties on German and
Swedish metals, to the extent that peasants are forced to pay dearly
for inferior tools when they should be able to buy good ones cheaply.
Foreigners in turn take revenge on our prohibitions by banning
French wines from their markets, which, combined with the tax
placed on this commodity at home, reduces the richest regions of
France to poverty. It kills viniculture, our country's most natural
product, a truly indigenous culture, the very one conducive to the
Louis-August Blanqui 39
greatest use of the land and favourable to the smallholder. I will not
even speak of the tax on salt, the lottery, the monopoly of tobacco
- in a word, this inextricable network of taxes, monopolie~, pro-
hibitions, customs duties and tolls which envelop the proletariat,
shackling and withering its members. Suffice it to say that this mass
of taxes is always apportioned in a manner to spare the rich and
exclusively burden the poor. In other words, the idlers exercise a
base plundering of the working masses. 6 This pillaging is, indeed,
indispensable.
Isn't there an enormous civil list for defraying the royalty, to
console them for the sublime sacrifice they make in their repose for
the happiness of the land? And, since one of the principal distinctions
of the younger Bourbons of the royal line consists in their huge
families, it will not do for the State to be stingy with things by
refusing life estates to the princes and dowries to the princesses.
There is also the immense army of sinecures, diplomats and func-
tionaries which France must furnish in a large way, so that their
luxury can in turn enrich a privileged bourgeoisie, since all the
money taken from the budget is spent in the cities. It would not do
to return to the peasant a single sou of the billion and a half francs,
of which they pay five-sixths.
Isn't it also necessary that this new financial wizard, this
nineteenth-century Gil Bias, courtesan and apologist for all the
ministers, favourite of Count d'Olivaris and the Duke de Lerme,
must sell the top jobs for a tidy sum of cash? It is indispensable to
grease the big wheels of the political machinery, richly endowing
sons, nephews, nieces and cousins. And courtiers, courtesans, intri-
guers, the brokers who give quotes at the stock exchange on the
honour and future of the country, the go-betweens; mistresses, the
government contractors, the intelligence officers who speculate about
the fall of Poland, all this vermin of the palaces and salons, shouldn't
we stuff all of them with gold? Shouldn't we help along the
fermentation of this dung-hill which so happily fertilises public
opinion?
There is your government which the golden-mouthed ministry
offers us as the masterpiece of social organisation, the last word of
all that is good and perfect amongst the many administrative
mechanisms since the Flood. There you have what they vaunt as
the nee plus ultra of human perfectibility in matters of government!
It is all too plainly the theory of corruption pushed to its outer
limits. The strongest proof that this order of things is instituted
40 Radical Socialists and Communists
than devoted to the law!' Gentlemen, would you agree that all of
our laws are good? Don't you know of a one that is ridiculous,
odious or immoral? Is it possible to hide behind so abstract a word
when applied to a chaos of forty-thousand laws, referring equally
to the best and worst of them? They reply, 'If there are bad laws,
ask for legal reform. In the meantime, obey ... ' Here is an even
more bitter mockery.
The laws are made by one-hundred thousand electors, applied
by one-hundred thousand jurors, enforced by one-hundred thousand
urban national guardsmen. The rural national guards have been
scrupulously disbursed, because they too closely resemble the people.
Now these electors, jurors and national guards are the same indi-
viduals. They have collected the most dissimilar functions, finding
themselves at the same time legislators, judges and soldiers, in such
a fashion that the same man spends the morning as a deputy making
the law, applies this law in the afternoon in the guise of a judge,
and executes it of an evening, in the streets, in the costume of the
national guard. What are the thirty millions of the proletariat to
make of these evolutions? They pay.
The apologists of representative government have principally
based their praise on what this system has consecrated as the
separation of three powers -legislative, judicial and executive. They
simply haven't enough admiring phrases for this marvellous equi-
librium which was to have resolved the long-standing problem of
reconciling order with liberty, of motion with stability. But it so
happens that it is precisely the representative system, such as the
apologists apply it, which concentrates the three powers within the
hands of that small number of the privileged, who are united by the
same interests. Isn't this a confusion which constitutes the most
monstrous tyranny, even by the admission of the apologists?
And so what happens? The proletariat is shut out. The Cham-
bers,7 elected by these hoarders of power, imperturbably carry out
their fabrication of fiscal, penal and administrative laws, all aimed
at the single goal of robbery. Now should the people begin crying
out in hunger, asking the privileged to abdicate their privileges, the
monopolists to renounce their monopolies, and all of them to abjure
their idleness, they laugh in their faces. What would the nobles
have done in 1789 if they had been humbly petitioned to set aside
their feudal rights? They would have chastened such insolence. One
goes about such things in another fashion.
The most cunning of this gutless aristocracy, sensing the menace
42 Radical Socialists and Communists
with which these men of the Corruption 11 strive to make the nation
fearful, knowing well that the nation desires it almost unanimously.
They have disfigured history for forty years with an unbelievable
success, with a view to causing alarm. But the past eighteen months
have exposed them in so many errors, dissipated by so many lies,
that the people will no longer stand for it. They want both liberty
and well-being. It is a slander to represent them as prepared to give
up all their liberties for a morsel of bread. We must fling this
imputation back at the faithless politicians who have uttered it.
Haven't the people, in every crisis, shown themselves ready to
sacrifice their welfare and lives for moral concerns? Wasn't it the
people who, in 1814, asked to die rather than see the foreigner in
Paris ?12 What material desire pushed them to this act of devotion?
They had as much bread on the first of April as they had on the
thirtieth of March.
The privileged, by contrast, one would have supposed so easy to
move with the great ideas of patriotism and honour, thanks to the
exquisite sensibilities they owe to their opulence. They should at
least have been able to calculate better than others the disastrous
consequences of the foreign invasion. After all, they were the ones
who donned white hats in the presence of the enemy and embraced
the cossack's bootsY The classes who applauded their country's
dishonour, who loudly profess a disgusting materialism, who sac-
rificed a thousand years of liberty, prosperity and glory to three
days of repose/ 4 purchased by infamy: these classes would have the
exclusive custody of national dignity in their hands! Because they
have been brutalised by corruption, they can only recognise the
appetites of a brute in the people, thus arrogating to themselves the
right of dispensing the food required to maintain the animated
vegetation which they exploit!
5. This passage was altered by the Court, and held in contempt. (L.-A. B.)
Original notes by the authors will be denoted with their initials.
6. Passage condemned by the Court. (L.-A. B.) No emphasis in text.
7. The Charter provided for a Chamber of Peers, appointed by the king, and a
Chamber of Deputies. Those eligible to run for the latter, due to qualifications
based on wealth, numbered only about a tenth of the electorate, so that often
more than half of the Deputies were noblemen.
8. The year began with the beheading of Louis XVI, the moderate Girondins
were overthrown (2 June), and the newly formed Committee of Public Safety
under Robespierre, with the revolutionary tribunal, intensified the Terror,
closed the churches and began official dechristianisation.
9. The term refers to Carolingians, i.e., the partisans of 'legitimacy' of the
Bourbon line of the dynasty dating to Charlemagne (reigning 768-814) and
opposed to the Orleanist line then reigning in the person of Louis-Philippe,
due d'Orleans, invited to the throne after the July Revolution of 1830.
10. This was the day when the insurgents in Paris took over the Hotel de Ville.
11. A play on the world 'Restoration'.
12. Louis XVIII returned to restore the Carolingian dynasty after Napoleon's
abdication in 1814.
13. With Napoleon's armies in total collapse and the British occupying Bordeaux,
Russian and Prussian troops, led respectively by their Tsar and King, entered
Paris on 31 March 1814. A provisional government, headed by Talleyrand,
was formed, Napoleon abdicated on 5 April and Louis XVIII was proclaimed
king the following day.
14. The reference is to 27-29 July 1830, the 'trois glorieuses' days of the July
Revolution, when a provisional government invited the Due d'Orleans first to
be Lieutenant-Governor then, when Charles X abdicated on 2 August, to be
king.
15. A group of moderate partisans in the Chamber of Deputies led by Francois
Guizot.
16. This is a probable reference to Guizot.
17. On this date the textile workers in Lyon revolted, but it was sharply suppressed
by 3 December.
18. The moderate republicans and liberals.
19. The jury deliberated for three hours, and returned a unanimous verdict of not
guilty on behalf of all defendants. The chief prosecutor, M. Delapalme,
requested a prison sentence for the inflammatory nature of several parts of
Blanqui's defence. Found guilty of two articles of the Criminal Code, Blanqui
was fined 200 francs and sentenced to a year in prison.
2. Richard Lahautiere
RICHARD LAHAUTI:ERE (1813-82), born Auguste Richard de
la Hautiere, was a Paris lawyer. A follower of Babeufand Buonarroti,
he contributed to neo-Babeuvist journals such as Dezamy's Egalitaire
and Albert Laponneraye's l'Intelligence. He retired from political
journalism after the revolutionary events of 1848-9. The 'catechism'
format was used by nearly all socialist and communist writers of the
period. 1
I. Of society
48
Richard Lahautiere 49
vital principle. All duties, all arts, all crafts converge on this
imperious need of nature. To the extent that, in the entire world,
a single man cries out: 'I am hungry! I am cold!', society is to that
extent not organised.
Once society has assured the satisfaction of natural needs to all,
won't it, according to a hierarchy of wealth or nobility, give hardtack
and a thatched hut to some, and a gleaming palace and fine delicacies
to others?- This inequality of rights can only result in an inequality
of duties, and yet we will see below that all duties are equal.
What are social rights? -Equal distribution of the light of reason
and the opportunity for anyone to elect and be elected to public
office.
What are the duties? -They may be summed up in one word:
Work. All members of society must work together, through indi-
vidual labour, for the general well-being. While a single idler
vegetates in this world, society will be in peril. While there exists
a single worker acting only for himself and not with a view to the
masses, monopoly and poverty will threaten us. If the baker only
kneaded bread for his daily needs, if the tailor sewed only his own
vestments, if the scientist were only studying for his own personal
satisfaction, the baker would have neither clothes to wear nor the
knowledge necessary to perfect his own industry, the tailor would
be sunk in ignorance and cry out in famine, the scientist would die
cold and hungry. If on the other hand the baker, tailor and scientist
were to sell their day's product or the fruits of their past labours,
our gnawing poverty would still deprive most men of bread, clothes
and education. In a well organised society, which assures life in
body and mind to each of its members, all individuals must, in
return, work freely for society and cooperate, each in his own
sphere, in satisfying the needs of all.
Will each person's share in the public wealth be equal? -Abso-
lutely. Nature has given men hands and a mind. Such are the
instruments that they place in common. Society uses these instru-
ments according to its needs, assigns to each his task. The investment
is the same for all; the benefits ought to be equal.
But don't those with powerful arms or superior minds make up
a stronger contingent than those who are weak in mind or body?
-Yes, if one were to speak of absolute equality, but we are suggesting
a proportional equality. The contribution of each should be meas-
ured according to his ability, and his share in the common store
shall be determined in proportion [fixee au prorata] to his needs.
Richard Lahautiere 51
III. Of religion
the satisfaction of his needs and forbidding idleness, will kill crime.
Today, we kill the criminal.
What is the difference between law and religion? -Law rules
external conduct, while religion inspires internal and moral senti-
ments, the guides of our actions. Religion persuades, law commands.
How are they related? -Both law and religion are built upon
equality and tend to social well-being. What law decrees, religion
already preaches. Religion, leaving behind its imagined loftiness
and descending to earth,6 will join hands with law. As sisters, they
will guide humanity in the same path. And so the struggle between
the spiritual and the temporal, which has torn the world asunder
since the beginning of time, will cease.
Who will preach religion and execute the law? -Government.
V. Of government
VI. Of education
VII. Of property
others are fed and are at leisure, one may cry out against monopoly.
In society as I conceive it, where general ownership replaces
individual monopoly, everyone living and working will have an
equal share of rights and duties.
What is the family? -The union of man and woman, and of the
race issuing from their blood.
What is its foundation? -The attraction between the two sexes
and the instinctive and natural fondness which unites parents to
their progeny.
Is this parental tenderness for their children real? -It cannot be
denied. As others have said, to desire an end to the family would
be to show oneself deaf to the voice of nature. Anyone who claims
that mutual and reciprocal love between fathers and children is a
paradox is clearly not a father. If we often see discord seated at the
paternal hearth, one must still take note of the divergent opinions,
the despotic ideas that the old society has planted in fathers' hearts
and the desire for freedom which animates the coming generation.
One must emphasise cupidity on the one hand and avarice on the
other. Once the vital part of the family is no longer money, but the
heart; once the voice of nature alone is heard, peace and love will
resume their places in the father's home. Say to the savage in
Canada that he does not love his son and he will call you a
blasphemer. His religion, to him, is observed under the branches
from which dangles the corpse of his dead son. The family, among
primitive men, is so respected that the cemetery where their parents
are buried is better defended and guarded than the lodges of the
living.
What is the family's bond? -Marriage.
Is this bond indispensable? -No. To engage oneself for life is to
violate human freedom. I bind myself through love. A difference of
mood or the impact of different personalities may one day bring on
hatred and antipathy. Marriage without divorce to temper its
constraints would be a yoke as heavy for individuals as a government
established in perpetuity would be for society. Why prescribe for
members individually what one rejects with regard to the social
body?
Nlay we permit the temporary union of man and woman outside
the bonds of marriage? -This would be to fall from one excess to
Richard Lahautiere 59
another. The two sexes are fulfilled only by their alliance. If instead
of that holy and solemn bond one were to admit a passing embrace,
a brutal coupling, one would reduce man to the level of the beasts.
What distinguishes us from other animals is the constancy of our
affections and wills. And then if one is convinced, as I am, that the
mutual love of children and parents is natural, can you not see what
perturbations these sacred instincts would suffer from the negation
of marriage? Marriage is a second birth, the birth of a family, a
new citizen come to life and proclaimed to the nation. Spouses must
therefore declare their union, maintaining it so long as peace and
concord may reign between them. Divorce is a violent remedy only
to be employed in the last extremity, because divorce kills the family.
You will never have a more powerful ally than the family in your
views on social well-being. Public education teaches children, but
the family's caresses refine their character and make them fit for
social life. Fathers animated by sentiments of liberty, fraternity and
equality, as they were themselves inspired from youth, will com-
plement the professors at school and the ministers of religion.
Having reached the age of twenty-one, strong in the patriotic and
paternal nourishment of mind and heart, the new man will in turn
be suitable to rear a race of wise and devout citizens.
In this brief catechism we have only managed to skim the surface
of the vital questions. So it is very incomplete. On another occasion
we will speak, as openly as is possible today, on morality and justice
such as we conceive them. We draw our convictions from the needs
of the suffering class. May they forgive our imperfections!
5. The verb editer is not often used, and can have the sense of 'editing a text' or
'publishing a book'. The present context is ambiguous, providing little indi-
cation of which sense is intended.
6. See Introduction, note 68.
7. Boyars is a reference to the ancient Russian nobility. janissaries were the elite
guards of the Turkish infantry serving as bodyguards for the sultan.
8. The masculine orientation of this catechism is striking.
9. The term used is gymnase.
10. Not with such poor analogies as this. The farmer's personal right to the fruits
of his labour stated here directly contradicts the earlier case against private
possession in favour of common wealth, p. 50 supra.
11. Under the July Monarchy, tradesmen, manufacturers and professionals were
required to have an official patente in nearly all fields of endeavour.
3. Theodore Dezamy
THEODORE DEZAMY (1808-50) was born in Luqon, the
Vendee, the son of a wine merchant. He taught in a local college
before going to Paris around 7835, where he became headmaster of
a free school. His first work responded to the 7838 theme of the
Academie des sciences morales et politiques, in which he expressed
admiration for Owen, Buonarroti and Fourier. His communist ideas
led to his becoming secretary to Etienne Cabet and a period of close
collaboration with him, until they parted over Cabet's lcarian
utopianism. Dezamy's own communaute resembled Fourier's phal-
anstere, but was distinctly materialist and egalitarian in the tradition
of Babeuf Dezamy was a principal organiser of the first Communist
Banquet in Belleville (7840) and a member of Nouvelles Saisons,
the secret society. Dezamy's pamphlets and 'little books', notably the
Almanach de la Communaute par divers ecrivains communistes
(7 843), which led to a prison sentence, were among the most
effective works in disseminating materialist communism among the
working masses in faris. His propaganda efforts included editing
his own journal, L'Egalitaire,Jrom which the following article was
taken. His clandestine political activities culminated in his active
role in the February 7848 Revolution in league with Blanqui's
Societe republicaine. Soon after, he disappeared and was not heard
from again until the announcement of his death.
61
62 Radical Socialists and Communists
The People*
The people! They are the king of kings, the sovereign dispenser of
sceptres and empires, the producer and the master of all the riches
on earth. It is they who die of hunger, from the cold, or from
*Excerpted from Ni Chateaux ni chaumieres, ou, Etat de Ia question sociale (Paris,
1840), 'Quatre definitions', pp. 22-8.
68
jean-jacques Pillot 69
* * *
jean-jacques Pillot declared the meeting open with the following
words.
Citizens,
We have come here with the aim of raising a flag which will
soon seize the attention of the entire world. Together we shall
contemplate and announce to the world the all-embracing thoughts.
which have occupied our minds each in silent isolation these many
years. The principles which we proclaim here promise to humanity
a happiness it no longer confidently dared to pretend - a humanity
which has long been accustomed to the spectacle of so much
degradation, and has known for so many centuries only the variety
of its sufferings and the anguish of its despair.
*Excerpted from J.-J. Pillot, Th. Dezamy, L. C. Dutilloy and Hombert (eds),
Premier banquet communiste, le 7ere juillet 7840 (Paris, 1840)
72
The First Communist Banquet 73
Deeply imbued with the incontestable truth that the people cannot
enjoy their political rights without having obtained complete satis-
faction in their social rights, I repeat in a firm voice and an
unshakable conviction:
To real and perfect social equality!
man. It does not relieve moral tortures and the physical suffering
of the people, because if the exploited try to exercise their political
rights, the cruel and jealous exploiters will cast them into the streets,
where they will be prey to poverty. In consequence, workers will
sacrifice their right to existence or, more likely, if they cannot
renounce all human dignity, take up arms ...
At ten o'clock, p.m .. .Citizen Pillot took the floor to pronounce the
meeting closed.
Citizens,
Despite the ill will which has tried to cast doubt, fear, disunity
and, in turn, disorder in our midst, the most admirable order, the
78 Radical Socialists and Communists
1. Most of the speakers at the banquet are obscure or entirely unknown. For a
complete text of the toasts, and brief biographical information on several
speakers, see Gian Mario Bravo, Les Socialistes avant Marx, 3 vols (Paris,
The First Communist Banquet 79
1970), Vol. II, pp. 210-32. This is the only published edition of original texts
for several of the early socialists presented in this book. Bravo includes English,
Italian and German writers, and his selections tend to be excerpts from books
rather than from pamphlets and periodicals. The standard reference for
biographical information on early socialists and communists is ]. Maitron
(ed), Dictionnaire biographique du mouvement ouvrier francais, 15 vols. (Paris,
1964-6), Vol. 1-3, 1789-1864.
2. The term used is capacitaire, meaning someone who has obtained lawful
recognition or a certificate of attainment, such as a professional licence to
practise law or medicine or an academic degree.
3. This phrase was understood in socialist and communist circles to mean the
legalisation of labour unions.
4. ]. H. Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men (New York, 1980), p. 584, note
32, notes a downward revision of this figure to one thousand.
6. Etienne Cabet
~
80
Etienne Cabet 81
Communist Propaganda:
Debating Points to Support
or Avoid*
Everyone understands that an idea, principle, theory, doctrine,
system, science or belief does not depend upon our will, nor impose
itself by force and violence. Everyone understands that the Com-
munity/ as with Christianity in an earlier day, can only be estab-
lished by debate, persuasion, conviction, the power of public opinion,
by propaganda. For this reason all Communists invoke propaganda.
But there is propaganda and propaganda: good propaganda and
bad propaganda; reasonable, enlightened, prudent, adroit and clever
propaganda and unreasonable, imprudent, awkward, blind, foolish
and insensitive propaganda. There is useful, engaging, persuasive,
pleasant, winning propaganda, which multiplies followers. There
is fatal propaganda which repels, disgusts, frightens and furnishes
pretexts and weapons to enemies and slanderers, or which sows the
seeds of confusion and division, and hinders and retards conversion
instead of making it easier and faster.
Determining the most suitable method of propaganda and the
errors which must be avoided is therefore a most useful, necessary
and worthy subject to give a moment's attention. Let us make an
attempt.
The Community suppresses egoism, individualism, privilege,
domination, opulence, idleness and domesticity, transforming
divided personal property into indivisible and social or common
property. It modifies all commerce and industry. Therefore the
establishment of the community is the greatest reform or revolution
*Propagande communiste au, Questions a discuter eta soutenir au a ecarter (Paris,
1842).
82 Radical Socialists and Communists
that humanity has ever attempted, from its birth to the present day.
This is the change most wounding to egoistic interests, blind passions
and deeply rooted prejudices. It is the transformation which encoun-
ters the most adversaries, the most ardent and powerful enemies,
resolved to use such means as slander and persecution in order to
protect their iniquitous privileges. The Community has as its
adversaries and enemies the countless army of the privileged and
the exploiters, governors, public functionaries, priests, the sick,
idlers, property owners, the capitalists, the whole army of busi-
nessmen and manufacturers. Even those who should most desire its
coming- the mass of small holders, workers, proletarians, domestics,
soldiers, all who are blinded by ignorance and prejudice, wronged
by lies and slanders - are in their blindness perhaps the most
ardently opposed to a system which has no other aim than to assure
their happiness. This system encounters so many obstacles that
humanity has not yet been able to include it among so many other
great revolutions that have come to pass. Its establishment is so
difficult that people have become used to calling it impossible,
repeating, as if it were an incontestable axiom, that the Community
is a chimera, a dream, a utopia, a thing both impracticable and
unrealisable. In a word, prejudice, opposition, hositility and power
against the Community are such that one must have vigour, energy
and courage in order to take up its defence and hope for its triumph.
We are among those who are animated by a profound belief in
the possibility of the Community. We underestimate neither the
prejudices, obstacles nor dangers, but still cling to an ardent faith
in Progress and the Future. In our eyes the Community shines like
the light, truth and destiny of humankind. But all the confidence
of the most ardent Communists will not prevent the Community's
foundation from being an enterprise of gigantic, colossal and difficult
proportions requiring the most prudence, application and capacity.
We also believe that clumsy propaganda can badly delay the
Community.
What we must never forget for a single instant is that Communist
propaganda is a question of conduct, savoirJaire, prudence, approach
and skill.
Well, in this situation, how should we make propaganda? Must
we minimise obstacles and difficulties as much as possible, or make
them worse? Simplify and reduce questions, or complicate and
multiply them? Avoid everything which might lead to confusion and
disputes, or wantonly seek them out? To concentrate all our efforts
Etienne Cabet 83
I. To simplify
aim of bringing about the most intimate mixing of the race, thus
protecting man from permanent contact with the same creatures,
which would engender individual attachment and so rupture the
harmony of universal fraternity.
One finds Communists who publish, as a law of the Community,
that each man will spend the greatest portion of his time in public
meetings; that he will only need a private lodging for the night and
a few hours in the day; that a little bedroom, a small study and
laboratory with a little fireplace will suffice (as a cell sufficed for
a monk); that women and children will be housed separately (how
they do not tell); that each citizen will tend to his own housework
(as if he had nothing more useful to do for society), and that, for
those who choose otherwise, there will be other citizens whose job
it is to make the beds, sweep, do the washing, etc., etc. (as if this
would not be to establish personal servants, domestics and valets
while, in the family, all these household chores may be given to the
children). In a word, one finds a few Communists who publish, as
a law of the Community, the abolition of marriage, the family, and
the household, and the separation of men, women and children.
Well! Is that reasonable, prudent, useful propaganda? What
necessity is there, today, to propose the abolition of marriage and
the family. For what good? Where is the point in doing so? Might
one not begin the Community with the family? Would retaining
(provisionally, if you like) marriage and the family prevent either
the generation that establishes the Community or the following
generations from doing anything they wish to do? Must we, every
one of us, have the pretension of being more knowledgeable, more
enlightened and more experienced than our descendants and impose
specific laws on them? Should the future not want the family, will
we embarrass the future by keeping it now? If the future wants the
family, wouldn't it be a great hindrance and perhaps cause irre-
mediable prejudice by starting out with its abolition? Is it really
possible to think that the present generations will consent to its
abolition? Would any sensible person allow himself to believe there
is an urgency in demanding this right now? Isn't it evident, palpable,
indubitable that the contemporary world wants the family, and that
there will always be time to debate the matter after the Community
is established?
Taking the point further, isn't it of the greatest impudence to
raise this question today? Aren't there already enough difficulties
for our propaganda in the centralisation of property and industry,
Etienne Cabet 87
II. To centralise
To All*
When we other folk, the people - the vulgar class, to speak in the
received idiom - read a typical publication, we are generally well
aware of who it is that writes, what end the author has in view, and
by what means he pretends to reach it. So we should satisfy you on
these same three points. You have undoubtedly read the title of our
*'A Tous', La Ruche populaire, I (Dec. 1839), pp. 3-7.
93
94 Working Class Socialists and Unionists
1. La ruche is the term for bee hive, and was the figure of speech chosen for the
title to symbolise communal effort.
2. Pierre-Jean Beranger (1780-1875), a poet and song-writer of very humble
origins, achieved fame in established society as well as great popularity amongst
the working class. His subject matter tended to celebrate, romanticise and even
ennoble the life of peasant and worker. He served as a model to which many
ouvrieres poetes aspired.
3. This unctuously subservient tone is revealed to be part of a rhetorical strategy
in the following article by L. ]. Vannostal.
4. The 'three glorious days' of the Revolution of 27-9 July 1830.
5. An apparent reference to George-Louis de Buffon ( 1707 -88), Discours sur le
style: 'Le style est l'homme meme.'
8. L. J. Vannostal
L. ]. V ANNOSTAL, otherwise unknown, was a typesetter.
To the Workers*
The French Revolution, which had the double mission of destroying
ancient feudal privileges and establishing the welfare of the people
on an unshakable foundation, began fifty years ago. If we examine
its results, we see that the Revolution has still only fulfilled the first
part of the task which it had undertaken. The second, which is the
more important, still remains to be accomplished. No doubt the
bourgeoisie have only to rejoice in this first result, because the
greater part of the wealth formerly possessed by the nobility and
the clergy has passed into their hands! They dispose of power as
they will, but the condition of the people who work becomes each
day more intolerable. In order to remedy these evils, the most
generous party of the new aristocracy wants to give them political
rights. But for these rights to be useful to them, it does not suffice
merely to grant them. It is also necessary to teach people what may
be done with these rights in order to bring about their enfranchise-
ment. Otherwise these rights would end, as has already happened
so many times, only in delivering them to the doorstep of political
exploiters.
Recognising that there exists today no publication in which their
needs are really enunciated and, moreover, that almost all current
*'Aux Travailleurs', La Ruche populaire, II (Jan. 1840), pp. 3-6.
98
L. ]. Vannostal 99
101
102 Working Class Socialists and Unionists
Production
woman who buys herself a dress deals with a merchant, and does
not have to go directly to a dressmaker, at least in most cases. But
as women's wages are also going down, to say the least, the question
of women gives us an opportunity to view progress from a different
perspective.
Up to the present time, people have only envisaged certain human
developments in a very vicious manner - that is to say they have
only been considered under a single aspect. Let us therefore examine
the facts as we have so far done in this article, from two aspects,
direct and inverse, material and spiritual, etc. From this point of
view, it will no longer suffice to say that working women are better
dressed than heretofore, as it is said, which is true in the minority
of cases and false in the majority, when one takes into account the
inhabitants of the small towns and in the country. It would still be
necessary to prove that the introduction of luxury amongst working
women has reached a point high enough to satisfy desires created
by shop window displays of luxury items, and that the means by
which these delights are obtained are noble and good.
Now what happens here, I ask you? This: a country girl from
time to time sees elegant ladies pass by, richly clothed, and a sigh
escapes her lips. An ephemeral desire sparked by these fleeting
apparitions will not be a torment. The rarity of this view of luxury,
the nature of her education, and most important of all the absence
of seducers, which swarm about big cities, will allow these desires,
which few things could satisfy, to remain asleep in her imagination
... But in the city! Look at these poor girls, employed in the making
of these objects of luxury, continually excited into coveting these
things by the privations they endure and by the incessant aspect of
this luxury ... See them stop in front of a novelty or jewellery store
and look through the glass at the items placed on display. Ask them
what is passing through their minds, and if they do not tell you,
address yourself to this well-dressed man approaching them, and
ask him which objects they contemplate. Coveting their youth and
innocence with the same eye that girls covet the finery, the innu-
merable roues who infest the big cities might be asked how poor
girls, separated from their paternal home by the need of work, and
thus deprived of the safekeeping of their parents, find themselves
introduced to luxury. Ask such men if it is their amiability which
brings them such success, and on this point they would be able to
tell you something. Or more likely they would not, so accustomed
as they are to lying. I will reply for them. Just as the poverty of
Lenoir 109
workers assures products at a lower price for the rich, the poverty
of working women and the overexcitement of needs for luxuries
assures them less costly objects of prostitution. Yes, prostitution, and
in fact of all social matters making gains today, the latter comes at
the top of the list. Progress here is certainly greater than it is in the
spread of luxuries in the working classes.
Because, don't you see, women do not become prostitutes only to
purchase finery. They also prostitute themselves in order to eat
when work is unavailable or insufficient. I myself know women
who are prostitutes in order to provide food for their fathers and
mothers, and it is not rare to see women become prostitutes to feed
their children. Will you object that they ought to have restraint? If
we make a law of restraint for poor girls, why don't we make a law
for merchants to show their wares only to persons who are able to
buy them? Why not find occupations for poor girls which are
completely foreign to luxuries - a position which would protect
them from the advances of seducers? It is not enough to say that
working women dress with elegance, therefore they do not suffer
in matters of luxury. One must go further and inquire as to where
their desires lead. A savage who goes about completely naked, who
is badly nourished, poorly sheltered, but who desires nothing more
than this, because he knows nothing better, suffers less misery than
a woman or man amongst a people who are passably housed,
nourished and dressed, but consumed with desires ceaselessly excited
by the entrancement of familiar luxuries. It is still worse if they
should lack amidst plenty because unlike the savage, they do not
have the skill to fish, hunt, or gather fruit ... As for the children,
could anyone believe that they profit from the introduction of
machines? Have you seen the poor children condemned by their
poverty to work in factories? How they are tattered, wan, emaciated,
rude and vicious! How poverty and brutalisation belabour these
children of progress! What progress they make, indeed! Men before
puberty, old before virility, for them there is a single step from
birth to premature death. For the brief moment they spend on earth,
they drag themselves through a degraded, abject, ignorant and
miserable existence.
1. The term activite suggests motion, work in progress, an operation taking its
intended course.
2. The term is fabricant, a general reference to an artisan-proprietor of a
small-scale manufactory.
3. The argument becomes particularly strained here. The point would seem to
be that a scarcity of goods would lead to an increase in employment, in turn
improving the general lot of the working class.
4. The 'systeme morcele' was a favourite term of the Fourierist school, referring
to the disorganised and competitive character of capitalism.
5. This is a mocking allusion to the book by Adam Smith.
6. Or 'two well-defined classes': il n'y a que deux classes bien tranchees.
10. Flora Tristan
FLORA TRISTAN (Flore Tristan-Moscoso, 1803-44) was born
in Paris to a Peruvian nobleman, Mariano de Tristan, descended
from Montezuma, and a Frenchwoman, Therese Laine. After her
father's death when she was a child of four or five, Tristan lived in
severe poverty since her mother, having had an improperly registered
marriage in Spain, was disinherited from her husband's estate in
Peru. In 1820 she worked in an engraving studio, colouring perfume
labels by hand, then married her boss, and had three children. The
violent marriage broke up in 1825, and a legal separation was
obtained in 1828. In 1834, after an obscure period, when she perhaps
lived as a 'dame de compagnie' on ocean voyages, she went to Peru
in an attempt to reclaim her patrimony. This ended in failure. In
1835, she met Fourier; her youngest child, Aline Chazal- Tristan,
who would be the mother of the painter Gauguin, was kidnapped
by the father; and Tristan began her career as a writer with
Peregrinations d'une paria, 1833-1834, in which she recounted her
travels and the dilemmas of an independent woman. Her Union
ouvriere appeared in 1843 and 1844, financed by an appeal to
socialist circles as well as juste milieu liberals, and its publication
was followed by a tour of France in which she was enthusiastically
received by working class audiences who responded to her call for
a national and international union of workers.
112
Flora Tristan 113
numbers speak, and you will have an idea of what can be done with
the Union.
There are about five million working men and two million
working women in France. 2 If only these seven million workers
would unite in thought and deed, with a view to a great common
task, to the profit of all men and all women, and each contributed
two francs a year to it, at the end of a single year the Workers'
Union would possess the enormous sum of fourteen million francs.
You might well say: How are we to unite for this great task? By
location and the rivalry between trades we are dispersed, often even
enemies at war one against another. And a two franc annual fee is
a great deal for poor daily labourers!
To these two objections I reply: To unite for the realisation of
a great task is not necessarily to associate. Footsoldiers and seamen
who, through a deduction from their pay, contribute an equal share
to a common fund to care for 3,000 soldiers and seamen at the
Hotel des Invalides are not by that fact associated amongst them-
selves. They have no need of knowing each other or of being
sympathetic in opinions, tastes, and character. It is enough to know
that the whole military, from one end of France to the other, pay
the same subscription, assuring to the wounded, the infirm and the
aged their entry by right to the Hotel des Invalides.
As for the amount, I ask you, what worker, even among the
poorest, would not be able, by economising a little, to come up with
a two franc annual subscription, so as to assure him of a retirement
in his old age. Why consider your neighbours, the unhappy Irish,
the poorest people in all the world, the people who eat only potatoes,
and then only every other day! 3 And such a people (they number
only seven million souls) have found the means to pay nearly two
million in rents to a single man (O'Connell), 4 and for twelve years
running at that! And you French people, the richest in all the world,
cannot find the means to build large, healthy, comfortable palaces
to care for your children, your wounded and your aged? Oh, this
would be a veritable shame, an eternal shame indicting your egoism,
carelessness and lack of intelligence! Yes, yes, if the Irish workers,
going barefoot and hollow bellied, have given, for twelve years, a
two-million franc honorarium to their defender, O'Connell, you are
much more able to give fourteen million a year to house and nourish
your brave veterans of labour, and to train apprentices.
Two francs a year! Who amongst you does not pay, for your
little individual associations such as trade-guilds, mutual benefits
116 Working Class Socialists and Unionists
and others, or even your little bad habits, such as tobacco, coffee,
brandy, etc., ten to twenty times this amount? Two francs apiece
is a small sum to scrape together and each, in giving this pittance,
produces a total of fourteen million. See what wealth you possess
solely through your numbers? But, to enjoy this wealth, the numbers
must unite, form a whole, a unity.
Workers, put aside all your petty rivalries of trade and, outside
of your particular associations, form one compact, solid, indissoluble
Union. Tomorrow, immediately, may all hearts be lifted up spon-
taneously in a single, unique idea: Union! May the cry of union
resound throughout France, and in one year, if you steadfastly
desire it, the Workers' Union will be established. In two years you
will have fourteen million francs of your own in the bank to build
a palace worthy of the great labouring people.
to those who haven't the time to read. I tell myself that the moment
has come to act. And for those who really love the workers, who
want to devote themselves, body and soul, to their cause, a wonderful
mission is there to fulfil. Such a person must follow the example of
the first apostles of Christ. These men, braving persecution and
fatigue, took up a beggar's sack and staff and went from country
to country preaching the New Law- brotherhood in God, union in
God. And so why, as a woman who has faith and strength, should
I not go, the same as the apostles, from city to city, announcing the
Good News to the workers and preaching to them brotherhood in
humanity, union in humanity?
In the legislative assembly, in the Christian pulpit, in the assem-
blies of the world, in theatres and especially in the courts of law,
people often speak about workers; but no one as yet has tried to
speak to the workers. It is a direction that must be explored. God
tells me that it will succeed. That is why I set upon this new path
with confidence. - Yes, I will go find them in their workshops, in
their garrets and even in their cabarets, if necessary, and there, face
to face with their misery, I will move them to tears about their
plights and force them, in spite of themselves, to leave this horrible
poverty which degrades them and kills them.
ourselves, hard, unjust and mean. Such is the normal state of a poor
twenty year-old girl. Then she will marry, without love, simply
because one must marry to escape the tyranny of one's parents.
What happens then? I suppose she has children, and in her turn
she will become incapable of raising her own children properly,
being as brutal to them as her mother and grandmother were toward
her. 12
Working class wives, I beg you to pay close attention. In pointing
out here the realities of your ignorance and inability to raise your
children, I have no intention at all of making the least accusation
against you and your nature. No, it is society that I accuse for
allowing you to be so uncultivated - you, wives and mothers, who
have so much need, on the contrary, of being trained and developed
so that in turn you may train and develop men, as children, confided
to your care.
Working class wives are, in general, brutal, mean and hard. This
is true, but what is the source of this state of affairs which so badly
conforms to the gentle, good, sensitive and generous nature of
woman?
Poor working women! They have so many subjects of vexation.
First the husband. (One must confess that few working class
households are happy.) Having received more instruction, being the
head by law and also by money, which they bring home/ 3 the
husband believes himself to be (as he is in fact) superior to his wife
who brings home a small wage for her day's work and in the home
is no more than a very humble servant.
It follows that the husband treats his wife, at the very least, with
much disdain. The poor wife, who finds herself humiliated by every
word and glance from her husband, secretly or overtly rebels,
depending upon her personality. Here is the origin of violent,
wounding scenes which end up leading to a state of constant
irritation between the master and the servant (or one might even
say slave, because the wife is, as it were, the husband's property).
The condition becomes so painful that the husband, instead of
staying home to talk with his wife, cannot wait to get away. Because
he has nowhere else to go, he goes to the cabaret to drink cheap
wine with other husbands who are just as miserable as he is, in the
hope of drowning their sorrows. 14
This means of distraction compounds the problem. The wife who
waits for pay-day on Sunday to keep her family alive for the next
week despairs in seeing her husband spend the greater part of it at
122 Working Class Socialists and Unionists
the cabaret. Then her irritation is carried to the limit, her brutality
and meanness redoubled. One must see these working class house-
holds close at hand (especially the worst) to form an idea of the
unhappiness experienced by the husband, and the suffering of the
wife. From reproaches and insults, they pass to blows, and finally
to tears, discouragement and despair. 15
The burning disappointments caused by her husband are followed
in turn by pregnancies, sickness, the lack of work and poverty - a
poverty which is always there at the door like the head of Medusa.
The husband, knowing that his wife had rights equal to his,
would no longer treat her with disdain, the contempt one shows to
inferiors. On the contrary, he would treat her with that respect and
deference that one accords to equals. As his contempt is no longer
a constant irritation and, once the cause of the problem is destroyed,
his wife will no longer show herself to be brutal, wily, crabby, hot
tempered, exasperating or mean. Being no longer regarded in the
home as the husband's servant, but rather the associate, friend and
companion of the man, naturally she will take an interest in the
association and will do all that she can to make the little household
prosper.
124 Working Class Socialists and Unionists
Political Economists
11. Jules Leroux
JULES LEROUX (1805-83), a younger brother of Pierre Leroux,
was a printer and a 'working class' member of the Saint-Simonian
society in Paris. A long-time organiser and activist in the printers'
trade, he was elected to the Legislative Assembly in 1849. Following
Louis-NapoU:on 's declaration of the Second Empire in December
1851, Leroux was arrested for signing a letter protesting the coup
d'etat. After serving his sentence he spent the remainder of his life
in exile, first in Britain and then America, where he contributed to
several French-language socialist journals and lived in the dissident
lcarian community in Kansas, where he died.
129
130 Political Economists
works of mankind?
Of Landed Wealth*
According to most of the philosophers working in the social sciences,
political economy is a new science whose origin dates back fifty or
sixty years. One traces it back to this period, they say, due to the
discovery for the first time of the theory of the creation of wealth
and its distribution, and they promise that when this theory is
eventually adopted by men of state, when it has served to illuminate
legislation and administration, human society, guided by this new
*'De Ia richesse territoriale', Revue mensuelle d'economie politique (February,
1834).
137
138 Political Economists
piece by piece, of all that gives value, not to sovereignty alone, but
to life itself. So we say, Et propter vitam, or better still, Et propter
lucrum lucrandi perdere causas. 3
In England, the country which has moved more rapidly than all
others toward the goal of this new science, which has outstripped
all others in the creation of wealth, which exists only to produce,
and maintains itself only by supplanting every other country in all
types of production, the disproportion between the opulence of a
few and the poverty of the great majority; the growth, as rapid as
it is frightening, of a dispossessed class, even of its hopes; the
increasingly precarious condition to which they who do the work
in society have been reduced; the suffering of children, and the
destruction of their minds and their very lives; the rupture, for the
poor assisted by the parish, of all sympathy, of all ties of blood, of
all social duties; finally the spirit of revolt against oppressive laws,
humiliating distinctions, against even the very existence of property,
has reached an extreme which shakes the entire social order.
The fright that one feels here is all the more profound in
considering that if humanity so offended finds its avengers, they
will be neither sufficiently enlightened nor virtuous to be, in turn,
legislators and benefactors. But if England in its entirety today
seems troubled by the fires of a subterranean volcano, other countries
which have adopted the same system, which have followed its path
from afar, are also feeling the first tremors of that convulsive state
it has now reached. These symptoms are the more especially
frequent, and all the more frightening, as the primary aspect of
prosperity in these countries becomes greater, their total wealth
grows more rapidly, everyone's activity is more excited, and finally
as their government more closely approximates what have been
called the good principles of political economy. Coalitions of workers,
which are multiplying today, are a clear enough manifestation of
the suffering and disquiet of the poor classes, ruined by competition.
They are attempting to form a league to overcome the poverty which
menaces them, but time and again they succumb in weakness, or
lose out by their excesses. They nevertheless warn France that it is
time to be wary of them.
Have these new philosophers, then, really taught us political
economy, or in the original meaning of these words, Greek in origin,
the true domestic law of the city, the arrangement of society, when
in showing how to create wealth they have forgotten to demonstrate
how it is distributed for the general good? Have they truly reflected
f. C. L. Simonde de Sismondi 143
upon this home, Oikia, for which they pretend to make laws, of this
republic, Politeia, whose administration they aim to teach? In both
they have forgotten independence, happiness and virtue. They have
paused to notice only the theory of the creation of wealth, a quite
limited science in other respects, which Aristotle, with a very
appropriate term, called chrematistique. 4 But the Greeks, if they
are judged by what remains of the legislation of their republics,
were acquainted with a more elevated political economy. They did
not overlook the advantages of expanding wealth, but they merely
desired it to contribute to the material welfare of all. The happiness
produced by increasing fortune was in their eyes subordinate to
moral well-being and the improvement of all.
The existence of civilisation and the welfare of humankind in
ancient Europe were intimately tied to the triumph of this true
political economy in both public opinion and legislation; to the
development of that science whose goal was man, and not wealth;
which inquired how this wealth might be employed for the happiness
and virtue of all, and not how it might be increased indefinitely.
But to return to his higher moral science, one must entirely reject
the prejudices of the vulgar herd and the philosophers, the illusions
which language has created and sanctioned, and the difficulties
posed by the subject itself, the most difficult to grasp, perhaps, of
all branches of the social sciences.
To try to understand what remains to be done, and to frame our
own clear and practical ideas concerning the economy of societies,
we will focus upon that aspect of the human condition which the
new science has least altered from its prior organisation, that of
farmers. We will see how the science of wealth considers them, and
we will then inquire what the true political economy has to say
about it. However much this might be the clearest and simplest of
all the questions addressed in either science, we will soon see how
their goals are different, how their recommendations are opposed,
and we will present in the case of agriculture how all the problems
of the social order are aggravated when only wealth is considered,
and can only be solved by fixing our regard on man rather than
things.
To the Apostles of Wealth, agriculture is the manufacture of
rural products. Therefore they consider it, much as they would any
other kind of manufacturing, 'as an exchange of all costs of pro-
duction incurred against all the produce obtained, an exchange
which is advantageous in proportion as one spends less and produces
144 Political Economists
more ... A gain is made each time one obtains greater production
for the same expenditure, or the same production for lower costs.' 5
Thus, according to M. Say - and his doctrine is the same as that
of the entire English school - the prosperity of agriculture must be
measured in terms of its net product: it gains in producing more,
or by costing less; by selling more produce, or at a higher price
which takes more from the consumer; or by doing less work, or by
paying lower wages for the same work, thus withholding any gains
from the workers. The landowners in the County of Sutherland
have merely conformed to these principles when, after realising that
the land in this Scottish province was only bringing them a net
product of a shilling an acre, they took no notice of the subsistence
it supplied to the several thousand families of the farmers. They
evicted all these families, destroyed their houses and restored the
fields to fallow in order to make pastures for sheep. Since they no
longer had to deduct the costs of cultivation, these natural products
yielded them a shilling and a half an acre, and they had increased
their return by fifty per cent. Of the thousands of labourers expelled
from their ancient homes, some became fishermen on the shores of
County Sutherland, others left for America, and still others went
to beg for work in the cities of Scotland, there to die in poverty. 6
This is only one example in a thousand of progressive agriculture
according to the Apostles of Wealth.
The English economists, Ricardo and Malthus, are engaged in
a terribly abstract discussion on the origin of tenant farming, or
rent. According to the former, it is the price of monopoly; according
to the latter, it is a levy on working the soil. Neither one, nor
MacCulloch (sic), 7 nor any of their disciples has reached a conclusion
applicable to the plight of the man who cultivates that soil. After
remarking that by the nature of working the fields there are rather
narrow limits to the extent of exploitation or to the amount of
capital that can be put to use, Say renounces, with a certain regret,
the possibility of any other conclusion on landed wealth, since the
progress of political economy, such as he conceives it, has so little
to contribute to its development.
Legislators who concern themselves with men and not things,
who calculate the mass of happiness that a nation might attain, and
not the mass of wealth it can produce, bestow quite a different
importance on agriculture. These alone deserve to be called econ-
omists. They see that no other industry is so intimately tied to
human happiness, nor more directly affects the mass of citizens. As
]. C. L. Simonde de Sismondi 145
price is not an advantage for every worker, since his wage is not
reduced in exactly the same proportion. If he sells his own products,
the lowered price is a symptom of a decline in overall income, which
he suffers in turn. Even for the highest ranks of society, the cheap
prices for all goods is more an illusory than a real advantage. After
the primary needs of life have been satisfied, all the expenditures
for luxuries hardly ever succeed in giving direct satisfaction, but
only relative enjoyment. What the rich seek in clothing, furniture
and servants is an elegance which will impress the public and convey
an idea of their wealth and good taste. It is the appearance more
than the reality; it is, finally, a mark of distinction of their place in
the world. But before all the improvements which the arts have
brought to manufactured goods, there was every bit as much
difference as there is today between what cost an ounce of silver
and what only cost a penny. The rich, in choosing between less
perfect goods, were just as able to show their elegance and good
taste. The ranks were just as well distinguished by their apparel,
or even more so, and each station spent precisely the same proportion
of its income for this clothing as it does today. It is very difficult to
discover what cheaper silks have contributed to the happiness of
those who buy them.
The rule adopted in the Science of Wealth - being concerned
only with the consumer, and regarding his interest as the national
interest - comes nearer the truth, to be sure, when one considers
rural production. Every member of society is indeed a consumer of
these products, and since food takes a larger portion of a man's
income the poorer he is, lower prices for these goods brings more
to the poor than to the rich. But so long as payment for work is
given to the poor in foodstuffs, the price of such commodities is of
no importance to them. Now this payment is still the most equitable,
because there is a proportion between the quantity or the goodness
of the foods and the physical exertion required to produce them
which does not vary with their price. The worker, in order to give
all his might to the task, needs a constant amount of wheat. The
industrial worker in the city would gain in security and in health
by being fed by his boss, or by receiving as part of his annual wage
a set amount of grain, because the whims of the market always turn
against the poor. This payment in kind is almost a universal basis
of farming in the countryside. The farmer is nearly always fed with
the produce which he has raised, with the exception of the small
number of unmarried day labourers. Day labourers, therefore, have
]. C. L. Simonde de Sismondi 147
interests which conflict with the producers. All the others, owners
as well as farmers, have a common interest in good prices. Now
there is a danger for society so long as different classes have
conflicting interests, so long as the poor are struggling against
producers. By contrast, there is security so long as the poor and the
rich are united in a common interest.
Despite the rule in the Science of Wealth to be concerned only
with the consumer, despite the public clamour for cheap bread,
farmers compose such a considerable party in each nation that they
have succeeded in England and France in getting the legislature to
be responsible for sustaining high prices. While approving of the
general aims of these measures, and being careful not to ignore so
universal an interest as that of the consumers of foodstuffs, we
believe we must place the interest of Society even higher, which
insists that the agricultural producer be amply repaid. He who
brings forth the fruits of the earth should retain a goodly portion.
Without this, one cannot count on regularity of production, stability
of prices or independence from other countries in time of war. This
perfect certainty of subsistence is, for the consumer himself, much
more important than low prices.
The Disciples of Wealth have considered the lot of the workers
who bring forth the fruits of the earth only as a means to reach an
end, the creation of agricultural wealth. On the contrary, in our
eyes the happiness of the workers is the principal goal of science,
because they compose the great majority of the nation. The legislator
must therefore think of how to retain for them, from the wealth
which they produce, the largest portion consistent with the contin-
uation of their labours; how to keep the greatest possible number
of citizens in the fields, because, incomes aside, the poor enjoy better
health and a happier life there than in the city; how to improve
their understanding as much as is possible considering their hard
physical labour; finally, and above all, how to cultivate and
strengthen their morality. To achieve this, the legislator must give
stability to the farmer's life, and support contracts which give him
a permanent right to his land, rejecting those which render his
existence precarious and leave him in doubt for his future. Morality
is intimately bound up with our memories and hopes, it is strength-
ened by time and nullified for those who consider only the present
moment. An ample reward, the participation of the vast majority
in farming, and this stability in the condition of country folk will
seem much more important to our legislator than faster creation of
148 Political Economists
work with their hands, but simply supervise the crops. They oversee
and push the workers. They buy, sell, and keep their accounts.
Ultimately they correspond to merchants and manufacturing super-
visors in industrial enterprises. In Rome, indeed, they were called
mercanti di tenute, in England, gentlemen farmers. But to the extent
that their station is elevated, that of their companions in labour is
lowered. When they reserve to themselves the exercise of will, choice
and intelligence, they refuse it to their workers and servants. They
ask only of these the use of their muscular energy, while trying as
much as possible to reduce them to the status of machines. It is
always a misfortune to place the interests of wealth and intelligence
in opposition to the interest of those who have only their hands.
The former, to assure profit, stability and the future force the latter
into an ever more precarious situation. According to the times and
their degree of power, they reduce them to slavery, serfdom, day
labourers or domestic servants. The time will finally come when
they will seek to make them disappear altogether for reasons of
economy.
As in the struggle between the rich and the poor, it is the [Disciples
of Wealth and not the true economists] who make the law. If public
authority does not intervene, the rich keep all the surplus of
production, all the luxuries and all the leisure for themselves. The
wealthy class, in effect, as the most educated, is in a position to
control and insure itself: the nature of property in land, invariably
limited whatever the demand of producers or consumers, gives this
class the power of a monopoly. The small number of landowners
and their rank in the state permits them to gather and work in
concert. Their wealth, finally, gives them the means to wait without
inconvenience until those with whom they are dealing submit to the
conditions they wish to impose. Thus in every country the position
allotted to the worker is most often just what is necessary to maintain
his existence. 11
Several English economists have, nevertheless, demanded that the
legislator abstain from placing any restriction on the right of the
wealthy over their property, or regulating wills and heirs by law,
or by constraining entailed land in favour of the public, for fear
that men will get sick of accumulating, and will fritter it away as
soon as they have acquired it. There will be time, we believe, to put
ourselves on guard against this calamity when the history of human
society has furnished us with at least a single example.
152 Political Economists
1. Moloch was the fire god of the Canaanites to whom children were sacrificed.
2. This passage offers an interesting, and in some respects typical, contrast in
style to Hegelian and Marxist historicism. The historicist elements of inevit-
ability, divisive struggle, moral outrage and eventual judgement and redemption
are all present, but they are expressed in a clear prose of traditional references.
3. 'And thus by avarice do riches lose their meaning.'
4. No equivalent English term exists for the meaning: that which concerns, or
the science of, wealth, from the Greek khrema, wealth.
5. Jean-Baptiste Say, Cours complet d'economie politique, 2 vols (Paris, 1840),
vol. 1, p. 24.
6. Sismondi cites James Loch, Esq., Lord Stafford's Improvements (London,
1820).
7. John Ramsay McCulloch (1789-1864), a Scottish political economist, was a
vigorous exponent of the principles of Ricardo and Smith. He occupied the
founding chair in political economy at the University of London (1828-32).
8. The term used is paysan, which does not have quite the derogatory tone of
peasant which that term has developed in English.
9. Sismondi uses the English word in his text to emphasise his meaning.
10. Here and in the following paragraph is a faint outline of an argument for
welfare state intervention.
11. This is precisely the effect predicted by the wage and rent theories of one
'disciple of wealth', David Ricardo.
13. Victor Considerant
VICTOR CONSID:ERANT (1808-93) was the son of a school
teacher in Satins, near Besanqon, where he attended lycee and the
Polytechnique. He Joined a Fourierist group while still in school.
In 1832 he founded La Reforme independante with jules Lechevalier
and tried unsuccessfully to establish a phalanstere in Conde-sur-
Vesgre. In 1836 he founded the important Fourierist Journal, La
Phalange. An indefatigible propagandist of the school he led after
Fourier's death (1837), Considerant disseminated the master's ideas
in lectures, popular pamphlets and multi-volume tomes. A brief
period of elective office as a Deputy ended in his indictment and
subsequent exile for publishing a call to arms leading to the 13 June
1849 riots. A hardy enthusiast of Fourier's 'commune societaire',
Considerant's rhetorical style sums up his approach: 'It is too
beautiful not to be truth itself, the destiny of man, the will of God
on earth!' Unlike Fourier, he emphasised the importance of class
antagonism, and especially the proletariatisation of the middle class,
as argued in 'The New Feudalism'.
The gravest reality now unmistakably reveals itself, even to the least
attentive eyes. This phenomenon is the rapid and powerful devel-
*Principes du socialisme, Manifeste de la democratie au XIX siecle (August 1843),
(rep. Paris, 1847), pp. 6-13.
153
154 Political Economists
Would you like to know to what point this baneful feudalism has
already taken root in the soil, and how overpowering it is politically
and socially? Without being reminded of its involvement in a grand
scheme of hoarding, which postponed the Russian campaign for six
weeks and led to defeat and the fall of the Empire, haven't we seen,
this very year, the Government introduce the feudalistic Companies
Act for canals, establishing companies which hold in their hand the
keys of trade in our richest provinces. These companies are to
administer, at will, the tolls on our lines of communication, like the
Seigneurs of those crenellated manors of the Middle Ages in the
counties and baronies, laughing at the impotent laments of the
central Government. Haven't we seen this same Government, which
used to deplore this domination by feudal companies ... now let
them have their way and, to the profit of the all-powerful Vassals
of the Bank, shamefully accept the Government's pretended inca-
pacity with respect to the building and operation of the railways.
In the meantime the tiny Belgian government has in a few years
covered the land with railways, which they administer very well
and quite democratically right under our noses. Finally, and this
is the last straw, when the King of the French, animated by a noble
idea, wanted to bring about a Franco-Belgian union, didn't we see
the two Governments, the two Nations, the two Kings submit to the
will of those all-powerful Vassals. Did they need more than eight
days to impose the suzeraine will of these new-style Seigneurs upon
the national Sovereignty? After such an example, isn't it obvious
that government is no longer a function of the King, his Ministers
or the Nation but of the industrial and financial Feudality?
14. Constantin Pecqueur
CONSTANTIN PECQUEUR (1801-87) was born in the north
of France, near Litle, into a solid bourgeois home. Pecqueur was a
brilliant student at the lycee in Douai until his father's death
interrupted his education in 1818. His first book, published at the
age of twenty-six, was awarded a prize by the Academie des Sciences
in Arras. He went to Paris in 1829 to begin a career in journalism,
and immediately became a Saint-Simonian. Three articles in Le
Globe, the Saint-Simonian organ then edited by Pierre Leroux,
brought him to prominence in that movement in 1831, although by
the end of that year the movement's bizarre tendencies led to his
departure. Then he took up Fourierist ideas for three years, until he
denounced this doctrine too ,for its tendency to 'anarchy and licence'.
From 1837 to 1844, Pecqueur concentrated on writing eight books,
the first of which won the 1838 prize of the Academie des sciences
morale et politique and established his reputation as a political
economist. His Theorie nouvelle d'economie et politique (1842),
among other works, is known to have influenced Marx. He resumed
his journalistic career in 1844 for the socialist journal, La RHorme,
in which he published a series of attacks on classical economics. In
1846, he began a series of articles in La Revue independante, edited
by Pierre Leroux and George Sand, on the same theme. This
selection is one of those articles.
159
160 Political Economists
Free Trade*
Today two political economies are in evidence: the one in law and
the one in fact. One aims to introduce distributive justice, order,
foresight and joint responsibility in the production, distribution and
consumption of wealth. The other pretends to maintain inequality,
anarchy, wastefulness, individualism and isolation. Which will
triumph?
matter how little one reflects upon it and steers clear of abstractions.
'One does not sell without buying; one does not buy without selling',
you say? No doubt, but one can produce without being able to sell
one's product. One can sell badly or buy badly, sell well or buy well,
being ruined or enriched by selling or buying, without merit or
cleverness counting for anything in any of these results. One need
only have rivals and competitors at hand; arrive too early or too
late, before or after someone else; be too honest or too needy. It
suffices that the clientele, by sheer whim, go elsewhere, and take
their custom, even in the case of similar prices and quality, to one
merchant rather than another. The odds are longer than at the
lottery. To fail one need only be less favoured by the type of soil
or climate, or have to buy raw materials at a slightly higher cost,
or achieve a bit less style or finish. Now this is precisely what we
are concerned with in this difficult problem.
The famous maxim of liberal economists notwithstanding is
irreproachable to the extent that it is applied to two individuals or
two families in which each member is responsible and equal. In
any other case it is false, or true only in a contingent and uncertain
sense. Already, then, it is no longer of precise applicability. The
same is true for three persons or three families, because one of them
might be ousted from the market because of similar products from
either of the other two. All the more reason, then, that the principle
is not irreproachably applied to one-hundred or one-thousand
persons, much less any probable application to millions. Therefore,
just as with an entire industry or class in the same country, an
entire nation in the world certainly can accumulate bad fortune to
its account under the reign of universal free trade, while one or
several other industries or classes or nations can accrue good fortune.
And this is independent of skill, toil, moderation, vigilance and good
faith. Thus, as an economic method, free trade is in a radical sense
a path of iniquity, waste, discouragement, disorder and corruption
for both individuals and peoples. Who can deny that in reality
competition, at all times and places, leads to numerous victims, and
that great disasters and monstrous inequalities are engendered and
perpetuated within and because of this very system? Otherwise,
how is one to explain the widespread prosperity or pauperism
wherever unbridled competition occurs and simultaneously feudal
privileges and monopolies are suppressed? We shall soon see that
these inequalities and disasters would be infinitely more intense and
Constantin Pecqueur 163
widespread if, in each nation, over and above the sphere of com-
petition the foresight of the State did not soar like a guardian angel.
'But naturally', one might say, 'trade is advantageous to both
parties involved.' One doesn't say always advantageous, but natu-
rally, because there are always numerous exceptions in reality and
in detail. Now this is what unpardonably condemns arbitrary trade.
It is suggested that, once free trade is inaugurated across the face
of the earth, wise harmony, mutual responsibility and ultimately
justice and wisdom will come to live among our greedy merchants
and second-hand dealers, and improvise an earthly paradise. Haven't
we been told that disorder, anarchy, blind production, the ignorance
of markets, the uncertainty of needs and resources, the incoherence
and hurly-burly of the mercantile arena will give way to a universal
and happily resolved calculus of infallible precision which will
assign the proper role for everyone in the apparatus of the common
market? Yes, the deed is done, a great man has said: the Golden
Age awaits us, and thanks to Richard Cobden/ we are now reaching
it, let no one be mistaken! Monopolists, hoarders, the low and high
born and illusory market prices are things of the past. As with
kings, charlatanism is disappearing. The arena has been purified
and blessed by the Anglo-French league. 2 Wages will be abundant,
sustained and always favourable. There will be no more unem-
ployment. No industry will be endangered; no place of business will
be displaced; no special skill will be abandoned; inventors will cease
to imagine economical new machines; cupidity and subversive efforts
will die out. How could one doubt, then, since everyone will be able
to exchange his products freely and do battle with his rival through-
out the world. And so many good things have been promised,
because they were once affirmed by the venerable men of science
whose strong enthusiasm inspired laisser-faire: 'What does it matter
if there are displacements', they said, 'or a succession of various
abandoned industries and the improvement of machines? If you
abandon one industry, another will replace it, because, having the
production done elsewhere, Chinese or Hottentot, others will in
turn require you to produce. Everywhere, you see, man works only
in order to consume and sells only in order to buy. So buy in
complete freedom, and everything will work out for the best!'
Now the radical vice of this thesis is that it makes an abstraction
of time, and discounts the suffering which results for the day
labourer from the lack of work and the never ending accumulations
of breakdowns, disorder and ruination that are engendered by
164 Political Economists
What neither Smith nor those who invoke ideas similar to his are
able to understand when they recommend gentle and easily managed
transitions is that the same possibilities, the same motives, the same
dangers would exist, after as well as before the solemn transition.
When, hypothetically, free trade becomes a universal reality it is
more likely than ever, considering the inevitable effects of compe-
tition, that the domestic economy of each nation, systematically
opened up, will be suddenly inundated with products of better value
than those of this nation, and that, not thousands, but millions of
workers will find themselves deprived of their occupations. Expended
capital will perhaps find- but also will perhaps not find, without
great difficulty - a new application. A more economical technique,
invented by one nation, or a wiser combination of activities or a
favourable local climate to that time unknown or not yet exploited
will eternally and amply suffice to render, in an indefinite and
unequal manner, a superiority of price or quality to one or the
other.
surrender the weak to the strong, the ignorant to the learned, the
honest to the rogue, the good to the wicked, the needy to the sick,
you thereby offer an irresistible premium to the subversive passions
and call forth oppression and defeat. So it is inevitable that this
triple cause of abuse and iniquity will first manifest itself in economic
relations, in trade, in money-lending and the fixing of wages. And
soon, as an equally infallible consequence, it will occur in civil and
political relations: from which necessarily and invariably will follow
the greatest inequalities of wealth, servitude, poverty, ignorance and
abasement for the multitude.
One is simply not an economist if he does not understand that to
reduce all of science and political economy to free trade is nothing
more than the art of perpetuating poverty, sanctioning the causes
and effects of iniquity, starving and indefinitely arresting mankind
in languor and privations. One is equally incompetent concerning
physical organisation to the extent that one ignores that all the evils
inherent in competition result from the independence and instability
obtaining in the different centres of production in relation to each
other. Finally, one is neither a statesman nor a legislator if one fails
to consider the inevitable conflict arising from passions left to
themselves, the result of which is never equilibrium but, on the
contrary, always a victory and fortune for some, defeat and ruin for
another. One is no more a statesman or legislator in failing to
consider shortages, privations, imbecility or the cowardice of wage
labourers in the presence of superfluity, cupidity and the bosses'
power.
they have this same right before men and society. Now he who
wishes the end wishes the means, from which follows the conclusion
concerning natural right that each man has a right on behalf of
society, on the ground of equality with all his fellow creatures, to
all the means or conditions, not only of his survival but of his
indefinite moral, intellectual and physical improvement. The fore-
most rights, by virtue of that sovereign formula of distributive
justice, being life and the right to live'by working, each person has
a right to the means of production which will permit him to live,
so that he can fulfil his destiny on earth.
Therefore, precisely by virtue of the universal right to life, the
interdependence which binds together all work and special trades,
the nature of wealth and the conditions and limits of its formation,
no one can have the right to produce - arbitrarily, blindly and in
isolation- whatever, whenever and however he wishes. No one has
the right to use and abuse the tools of wealth or to dispose of land
and other kinds of capital at whim without regard to the needs and
rights of others and the future of the human community. From this
it follows, still more forcibly, that no one has the natural right of
trading his produce freely, doing it however he pleases or selling at
whatever price he thinks he can get. Certainly everyone has an
imprescriptible right to produce, and to live on the condition that
he does so, but it does not at all follow that anyone has the right
to profit from the weakness, necessity or ignorance of others ...
Thus do we understand how each part - production, exchange and
distribution - must be determined with a view to the whole, the
balance of justice in hand, with foresight, unity, order and harmony,
with thoroughness, proportion and restraint. Association then, of
labour and interests, becomes an absolute duty, being the precon-
dition for the happiness, strength and prosperity of all. This is the
thing that has not been understood by those who make a natural
right of free trade. They believe that each person must think only
of himself, seizing the most he can of the means of production, and
then producing, or having produce in his stead and for his profit
those whom he would directly or indirectly rob of any land or
capital. They have not seen that the problem is complex, that the
right of each is necessarily limited by the equal and simultaneous
right of all; that in consequence, we have a question of balance, of
distributive justice, which ought to be respected and deserves to have
the hand of justice for dispensing the means of production, produc-
tion itself, and distribution. They have not seen that the act of
Constantin Pecqueur 169
1. Cobden (1804-65) was a British economist who, with John Bright, led the
Anti-Corn Law League (1836-46) which in 1846 persuaded Peel's Tory
government to repeal the Corn Laws.
2. Pecqueur's irony is extended here to the classical economists in Britain and
to their French counterparts, such as A.-R.-J. Turgot (1727-81), who wrote
Refiexions sur la formation et la distribution des richesses (c. 1770), and J .-B.
Say, who introduced and publicised the works of Smith and Malthus in
France.
3. This is a curious error of historical interpretation. The complex feudal
relationships, such as entrustments of land and office, chartered trades and
artisan guilds, can hardly be seen as 'complete freedom' of production.
4. The introduction of 'proportionality' is an interesting, but logically weakening,
equivocation by Pecqueur, although absolute equality was a principle espoused
by only the most radical Babeuvists.
Part IV
Utopian Publicists
15. Jules Lechevalier
JULES LECHEV ALlER (born c. 1800) was a graduate of the
Ecole polytechnique and an artillery officer. An ardent propagandist
for the Saint-Simonian society until converting to Fourierism in
1832, he edited several publications for the Fourierist school. In
1834, he founded the Revue de progres social while also establishing,
with two other polytechnicians, a popular school in which Lechev-
alier expounded his social ideas. He co-authored Introduction au
Phalanstere with Victor Considerant, and in 1843 was secretary of
the colonial committee of La Phalange. In 1846, Lechevalier went
to Germany to attend a conference on socialism. His period of study
(1826-28) in Germany, when he learned at least the rudiments of
Hegelian philosophy, is one of the few contacts between French
socialists and the German philosophical tradition. He was listed as
the vice-president of Proudhon 's Exchange Bank when its statutes
were published, and edited Proudhon's La Voix du peuple in 1849,
although in the same year he was deported to London to avoid
imprisonment for his political activities.
Of Association*
Ordinarily one understands by Association any grouping of
individuals accidentally linked together for a common aim. This
aim might be at one time an industrial or commercial interest, at
another a quest for an idea, and at still another the work of a
*'De )'association', Revue du progres social (March 1834), pp. 302-19.
175
176 Utopian Publicists
contrary, that men have had recourse to association every time they
have been compelled to organise any kind of a system of work,
especially whenever they have set themselves the task of planning
and directing the life of individuals in relation to a goal. One need
only think of such examples as the organisation of armies or
monasteries.
Monasteries and barracks are, in effect, the first seeds of direct
association which we find in history. These are undoubtedly rough
examples, but they suffice to affirm two important effects of asso-
ciation: the increase of production and precision of execution, and
savings in manual work and costs. Yet how far monastic or military
life is from the regime of true association! The end of war is not
production or ease, as is true of industry. War is an affair of violence
and brute force. Now that which has violence as its end can only
be maintained by despotism. Military organisation gives to man
only the smallest part of social blessings: family life, as well as civil
and industrial interests, must be abandoned for the regiment. Only
in exceptional cases do we find private property and the consequent
guarantees of independence in the military. One's share is a wage,
an emolument, a payment. An insurance fund or one's savings end
up being a retirement or invalid pension. In a military organisation,
finally, individual liberty is not assured. The work involved is in
no way intended for happiness and the satisfaction of needs. The
domestic arrangement of a regiment is a simple administration of
subsistence, rather than a domestic association. It is therefore entirely
natural that the example of a military association is as frequently
used to deny the benefits of association as it is to vouch for them.
However, it bears repeating that military life, for all its being
incomplete and even contrary to man's natural end, is a much
superior condition to that of the wage labourers in agriculture and
manufacturing industries.
The same is true of the monastic life. Its aim is almost as foreign
to man's earthly happiness as that of war. Nevertheless, allowances
being made for the time wasted in mystic contemplation, the works
of science, art and industry carried out in monasteries render them
much superior to militarism. As for subsistence, the satisfaction of
domestic needs, remuneration and property, all that was blame-
worthy in the military reoccurs in monastic life. The repression of
individual liberty is pushed to the limit, and the generative principle
of human society, marriage, is completely excluded. One finds here
only a few collective advantages: order, thrift, careful use of time
180 Utopian Publicists
1. The term used is societe, meaning in this context the equivalent of association
or company in English.
2. This is a reference to the writings of Charles Fourier and his 'communaute
societaire'.
3. Because of the importance of Marx's concept of the worker's alienation in the
process of production, both from himself and his product, it is worthwhile to
give Lechevalier's original passage: 'l'homme peut s'abstraire tout entiere sur
un objet, meme minime, et se horner a n'etre, dans le tout social, qu'une
molecule integrante ... '
4. The term 'communaute' used here implies 'community of interests' or a
'community of goods' and is an obvious reference to the programme of
communal life envisioned by 'communistes'.
5. It is interesting that this term, 'interet social', is here called a pretended one,
when this same term is used in a complimentary sense on the previous page.
6. The term commune as used here refers to the administrative subdivision,
roughly equivalent to 'parish' or 'town', dating back to the medieval period.
7. The article continues with a brief review of the systems proposed by Robert
Owen and Saint-Simon, and concludes with an argument that Fourier's
phalanstere avoids the shortcomings of these other thinkers.
16. Victor Considerant
CONSIDERANT wrote the following front-page article while he
was editor-in-chief of La Phalange, the organ of Fourier's doctrine.
181
182 Utopian Publicists
divisions. Conflicts often break out before victory, and never fail to
rage after victory ...
How is it therefore possible that some men are still so insensitive,
so narrow, so naive as to proclaim themselves members of a party,
to believe in a party, to be devoted to a party? How can there be
men so deprived of all sense of logic, so deaf to the lessons of events,
so uncomprehending of the experiences and facts surrounding them?
How can they continue to prostitute to worn out commonplaces and
old vacuities, hollow and echoing of faction, that lovely power of
faith which is the highest and the most distinctive mark of man in
all creation? But surely, if this high faculty was given to man, it
was not intended for the use we see at present. It was not meant
to enable individuals to assemble into splinter groups over ideological
stupidities, empty words and theories so ephemeral and narrow that
they cannot crop up without exciting the hostility of other such
theories on every side. However it is fortunate that human genius
is capable of soaring into the social and religious sphere to reach
a large and comprehensive point of view embracing all interests, all
human desires, all the soul's aspirations. In this way the individual
may be united freely and piously in a higher unity with all
individuals of his species.
The party doctrines which fragment society today (if it be granted
that such declamations, struggles and partisan intrigues, based upon
several mixed-up assumptions, merit the name of doctrine) are all
stamped with a spurious character. The obvious and palpable proof
is that each of these so-called doctrines essentially corresponds with
a fraction of social interests and brings against other interests a more
or less complete negation. This is illustrated by the sometimes
violent struggles which each of these parties carries on incessantly
against all the others. The society in which we live is shaped by the
blind accidents of earlier times, and modified each day by accidental
and unforeseen events. Our society is governed not by a superior
and intelligent foresight, but by hazard. Its essential trait, deriving
from its very constitution, predisposes it to placing all the interests
developing within it in bellicose opposition. Many political sophists
sing the praises of modern society, mingling in their constant, but
unreasoning, lucubrations, the terms perfectibility, association, prog-
ress, etc. This trait which repudiates them nevertheless manifests
itself by facts which stare us in the face. Let us examine several of
them.
If we consider the trend of social wealth, it is in the present order
Victor Considerant 183
of every kind which live on these disputes. Above all, the press
serves as the organ of these struggles, opposed interests and divergent
ambitions, serving its own interests by animating, inflaming and
exploiting them. So there you have a brief description of the situation
in our society. It is evident to any man of common sense and good
faith that these parties which argue over authority, power and
government are nothing more than coalitions of specific interests
joined together against other interests, helping each other with a
degree of solidarity until the seeds of intestine division begin to
grow, as a result of victory or other causes. Then the parties split
up into new groups as hostile to each other as the old ones were.
To dream of the definitive and permanent triumph of a party is
thus an absurdity. It is to suppose that one social interest could
succeed in extinguishing all the others, which fortunately is impos-
sible. The achievements of parties are nothing more than miserable
accomplishments of war. One must have given very little reflection
on the state of things and be completely deaf to the harsh lessons
of experience to prostitute one's intelligence, abilities, devotion and
faith to the service of any one of these miserable coalitions which
call themselves parties.
Is it not time at last to recognise as the agenda for human
intelligence a larger and more generous programme than all of these
manifestos of war incessantly launched by each coalition against its
neighbouring coalitions, merely posing the interests of one against
the interests of others? Were men after all placed on earth and
created social beings only to tear themselves apart and devour each
other like ferocious beasts which inhabit the forests and deserts?
And this excellent faculty which naturally impels us to come
together, must it only be used to escalate hostility and war from the
individual level to the level of the powers that be, rallying institutions
and individuals respectively so that they might more effectively
make war as a mass, in parties and in great conglomerations armed
one against another? Are we only able to unite with our fellow men
on the condition that each union be led against other unions?
Shouldn't we rather believe that, if we can unite fractiously and
temporarily in groups and parties for the labours of war, we are
called, one and all, to unite in a permanent union for the great
accomplishment of peace, work and happiness! If slaves and pro-
letarians are men, are not the bourgeois, the aristocrats and kings
also men? Instead of continuing the intestine war of classes, shouldn't
Victor Considerant 185
Any doctrine which does not offer itself as accepting and embrac-
ing all the interests of mankind; whose realisation requires some to
be sacrificed; which sees some raised up only by abasing others;
which takes from many, or only from certain ones, instead of giving
to all, is a false doctrine. It has no right to request that just minds
and hearts, devoted to the interests of humanity, listen to it.
For ourselves, we announce- and one has never before announced
its like on earth - we announce a social organisation which pretends
to serve every existing interest and shows itself favourable to all
men. It accepts, recognises and satisfies the rights and privileges of
all classes, from one end of the social ladder to the other. Far from
offending or compromising any position, kings as well as mendicants
will be participants in its benefits.
This universal character gives a doctrine the right to be called
social. A doctrine which enjoys this character may be understood
as true if it satisfies its programme. Those which do not enjoy this
character, as is true of all the exclusive doctrines of the various
parties, are necessarily false, the more so if they were in fact capable
of realising their programmes. But intellectual anarchy is so wide-
spread, the current of ideas is so troubled, and so many minds err
in their daring in this unhappily disordered society. Thus it is that
so many lively minds are misled and ruined, so many hearts are
filled with generosity and nobility, believing themselves to be rallying
under the banner of humanity, because they have with ardour and
devotion taken up the banner of one of these parties!
17. Theodore Dezamy
DEZAMY broke with Cabet in the same year as he published his
Code, which he intended as a legal charter for the new community.
The book contained a plan of the 'palais communal' and its sur-
rounding gardens, orchards and industrial parks.
188
Theodore Dezamy 189
Basic laws
Art. 1. All men will live as brothers, of whatever race, colour and
climate they might be or might have been.
Art. 2. Nothing belongs individually to anyone, other than the
things which he actually uses.
Art. 3. In the community there is only a single and unique
dominion. The domain is formed of the entirety of goods of all
communes.
Art. 4. The central administration of the domain, with the greatest
care, will keep watch that all communes exist in a constant state of
equal abundance. 3
Art. 5. All products and all the community's riches will constantly,
without interruption, be at the disposition of everyone. - Each
person, with complete freedom throughout the extent of the domain,
may draw amply upon everything he needs, that is to say, what is
necessary, useful and pleasant.
Art. 6. All works which have public utility as their aim are social
activities. The community proclaims them all equally honourable.
Art. 7. Every able-bodied person (man, woman and child) is
invited to take part freely in several jobs in order to bring to the
community the contributions of his efforts and talents, that is, his
physical and intellectual powers, according to tastes, needs and
individual aptitudes ...
Art. 8. The community recognises no one but equals. In all of its
192 Utopian Publicists
Hygienic laws
Political laws
1. The term 'liberte' is most often translated as 'freedom' or, depending upon a
context in which physical action is implied, 'liberty'.
2. Chapter 19 is a 'Dialogue sur Ia regime transitoire', in which a communist,
a reformer, a conservative and an 'lcarian' debate the introduction of the new
'communaute'. Dezamy's 'Communiste-Unitaire' refutes the lcarian's pro-
posed transitional period of fifty years, during which time property will be
respected. The communist proposal is unclear, but appears to involve the
immediate abolition of money and property and the immediate distribution of
196 Utopian Publicists
all wealth and goods from a centralised authority. To the contrary of Cabet's
charge, supra, Chapter 6, Dezamy specifically rules out the immediate destruc-
tion of cities, although this does seem to be a long-range policy.
3. Dezamy outlines how this will be accomplished in Ch. 3, 'Distributive and
Economic Laws'. See excerpt below.
4. This law and the 'Laws on the Union of Sexes', below, are the proposals
which Cabet found so destructive of communist propaganda, at pp. 85-6,
supra.
5. It is important to note that, far from despising and hating one another, in the
Community corporal separation will not at all lead to a rupture in relations
of esteem, friendship and fraternity. (T. D.)
6. Then this word Family will merely recover its original signification: it will be
a truth. Naturalists have never spoken of 'family' as the particular union of
two beings. It is to the entirety of each species that they have given, and still
give, this name. (T. D.).
7. This term defies exact translation. Perhaps the intended meaning is 'sequential'.
8. This article, as is the case with several of the Political Laws, is extremely
vague.
9. It is taken for granted that these divisions will in no way restrain the equality
of rights and the identity of interests. They have no other aim than contributing
to a more efficient execution of work projects and management of the com-
munity's economy. (T. D.).
Part V
199
200 Religious and Philosophical Socialists
To Saint-Simonians Far
Away From Paris*
Dear Children,
Since you were so far away from that spectacle for which the
capital of the civilised world has served as a theatre and the veritable
personality of this brief [27 -9 July] revolution, we must teach you
the role our doctrine has played and the new hopes this revolution
imparts to us.
So much for those whose position gives them influence over the
liberal movement. But do not forget that here more than ever your
words must carry the Saint-Simonian imprint. All these freedoms,
as you know, will be sooner or later claimed and ardently solicited
by men who conscientiously believe they see means of order in them.
But for you they have no other effect than to render less painful,
dangerous and slow the inevitable dissolution toward which we
march with an accelerated speed that would be frightening if we
did not know that this disorder is the necessary condition of the new
social order. It would be still more frightening if we did not know
that its progress will increasingly enable progressively minded men
to detach themselves from the anarchic movement, and rally to the
new hierarchy.
Dear children, remind the liberals what they ought to do as
liberals, but take care that your voice not be confused with the cries
of demagogy. We demand at this moment freedom of religions so
that one single religion may more easily be built on all these ruins
of humanity's religious past. We want freedom of the press because
it is the indispensable condition for the next creation of a truly
legitimate direction of thought, that of morality and science. We lay
claim to freedom of education so that our doctrine may be propagated
more easily, with no obstructions, and be one day the sole affection,
followed and practised by all. We call most heartily for the destruc-
tion of commercial monopolies and every privileged corporation
remaining in existence, but only as a means of arriving at a final
organisation of the industrial body.
Such is our aim in favouring and even exciting the liberals'
demands. Proclaim it loudly, and do not fear that this avowal will
frighten them today, or that they will judge us as they did before
these three great days. Once they saw us as ultras, Jesuits, priests
of Thebes and Memphis, partisans of despotism. Today we are
more likely to be called elitists and demagogues. Yet we remain the
same. We knew well enough how we should appear now to their
frightened eyes. We knew that after having for so long excited
people to revolt, they would shrink back in terror at their deeds and
that, when they feared demagogy as much as they formerly dreaded
despotism, the Saint-Simonians would no longer appear to them to
be ambitious theocrats, but furious demagogues. Didn't one of our
dear sons tell them, when he cried: Glory to him who proclaims the
sole reign of God and the ever faithful happiness of the People! He
was the most human of theocrats, the most divine of democrats.
Prosper Enfantin 205
Children, and all who hear our voice, know that the Man-God
of the Christians has become, in Saint-Simon, the Man-People.
Under this divine name, at once one and many, the sovereigns of
the future, the popes of the new church will finally bring about this
sovereignty of the people - that impracticable dream for those who
see in the people only a leaderless multitude, but the very truth for
the Saint-Simonian pope, because the people are, in him, beloved,
wise and strong, marching as one man towards that future ordained
by God.
19. Pierre Leroux
PIERRE LEROUX (1797-1871) was born in Paris and educated
at th'} lycee Charlemagne and lycee de Renne. His hopes of attending
the Ecole polytechnique ended as a result of his father's death and
having to work, first in an exchange bank, which he detested, then
as a mason and finally as a typographer in his cousin's printing
shop. In 1824, he founded Le Globe, a thrice-weekly liberal literary
paper which eventually became known and respected throughout
Europe. In 1830, Le Globe, now a daily with a new staff of editors,
became the official organ of the Saint-Simon ian society, announcing
'No more impotent liberalism!' Leroux remained a Saint-Simonian
propagandist for a little over a year, then left the society to form the
Revue encyclopedique. His publishing efforts found new outlets in
Encyclopedie nouvelle (1836-43) and Revue independante
(1841-48) with George Sand, who proclaimed herself a devotee of
Leroux's philosophical religion of progress. The excerpt presented
here is from the earliest journal, and illustrates the inclination to
spiritualism in his social thought, which was scorned by some but
nevertheless extremely influential in the socialist movement even
after the decline of the Saint-Simonians. Leroux is credited with
having first used the term individualisme as a counter-distinction
to socialisme, and his voluminous writings provided wide currency
and philosophical strength to the socialist attack on liberal economic
doctrine.
206
Pierre Leroux 207
Of Philosophy and
Christianity*
The idea of society implies a priori and a posteriori the idea of
religion. Look at history and see what society meant in Greece and
Rome or medieval Christendom: society, in fact, wherever there was
society. Everywhere you will find a living unity, realised in politics,
science and art, which taken in its entirety is a religion.
Should you complain of being forced by logic to return to religion
and to broach such problems, then abandon politics altogether.
Everyone who concerned himself with politics on a grand scale
before you came along has addressed himself to what you do not
wish to confront ... You wish to ignore the social problem in its
full extent at the very time the final crisis threatens, when European
society, peacefully or in violent tremors, marches toward the real-
isation of that heralded and so inevitably necessary equality. All
questions have now been posed. The social order has lost every
foundation and point of support. The entire body of legislation must
be remade, and the point of departure for this new society, rather
than individualism, will be association! ...
It is a pity to hear it said that eighteenth-century philosophy
overthrew all religion. The philosophers of the eighteenth century,
in order to destroy Christianity - which had monopolised, in their
view, the name and idea of religion - were plainly forced to take
up another banner, attacking Christianity in the name of religion.
Most of the irreligious things they wrote merely applied to the
religion of the past. But what was the source of their genius,
enthusiasm and influence over people if they did not have the seeds
of a new religion of humanity in their hearts?
And their sons and successors, the revolutionaries, the men of the
Constituent Assembly and the Convention, those who formulated
the rights of man in the name of the Immortal Legislator, were
their souls, burning with the future, deprived of the germ of religion?
The Convention recognised the idea of society, rejected individu-
alism, and decreed that society's duty was to apply itself to the
*'De Ia philosophie et du christianisme', Revue encyclopedique, LV, no. 1 (Aug.
1832).
208 Religious and Philosophical Socialists
It follows that politics, science and art are now all converging
toward the same end. Politics strives for association, which is only
realisable to the extent that art can excite minds in favour of this
goal and science can provide solutions in giving its foundation a
general certitude. Science and art, for their part, tend to furnish
politics with beliefs, that eternal cement out of which society is made
and without which it cannot exist. Our hearts thus afflicted with
the evils of our time, we nevertheless conceive a great hope, and we
have a presentiment of the moment when humanity will recover its
life by restoring its unity.
It is the same for society as it is for all creatures, all works of
human genius, all works of art and all machines. Life manifests
itself only in unity, and disappears when unity ceases. 'In Life',
said Hippocrates, 'everything works together and everything con-
sents.' This is the most profound definition ever given to life, and
it applies equally to collective or social life as it does to the organic
life of the individual. It is as true of that metaphysical creature,
society, as it is of the physiological creatures called animals. It is
true of this secondary creation given to man, whose masterpiece,
incontestably, is society, no less than divine creation, taken either
as a whole or in its details. It is true, in a word, whether you
consider a plant, an animal, a work of art, a machine, a society or
the universe.
Now there are epochs when unity reigns over the human under-
standing, and others when there are discord and anarchy. 3 In the
first case, there is society. In the second, there is a simple agglom-
eration of men and a painful crisis similar to those crises of the
body in which the principles of two different ages struggle in
confusion throughout the whole organism, putting its existence in
danger ...
What life does a member have when separated from its body,
having lost its relationship to the general life of the body? It will
only decay, become decomposed, finally passing, in its elements, into
210 Religious and Philosophical Socialists
a new body. These phenomena which we call death are yet phe-
nomena of life: death is a pure conception of the mind, it does not
exist! And in the same way, separated and having lost the ties
which constitute the social body, what is the life of politics, art,
science and industry?
Industry produces wealth, but wealth badly distributed engenders
every kind of vice and misery. Science amasses an immense erudition
in facts, and uncovers important truths. But absorbed in details and
deprived of a view of the whole, science becomes the blindest of the
blind; without charity it produces every kind of doubt and moral
impoverishment. Art, that is to say feeling, seeing nothing in its
presence but this decomposition of the social body, succumbs to
gloom and atheism, or returns to conceptions of the past, producing
a multitude of monsters similar to those in the nightmares of the
sick who are consumed by fever in a terrible crisis which may
eventually save them.
As for politics, it is obviously worthless, since its function is to
preside over that nonexistent unity and establish in living reality
those mutual ties and cooperation which are no longer present. In
such times, for men who are still called governors, but who have no
feeling for the restoration of society, politics is therefore reduced to
any old kind of egoistic agitation directed to no other purpose than
personal interest and vanity. Nevertheless, however much politics
is veritably empty and completely exhausted, to such an extent that
its essence is negated and its meaning totally obscured, it turns out
that every pain experienced by society almost exclusively turns one's
attention to politics. What is astonishing, but in the circumstances
unavoidable, is that never are people so much occupied with politics
as when politics has become meaningless.
This deathly but life-engendering ferment, this restless and
sombre agitation which occurs in these haggard and insensate times,
especially in the spheres of art and political thought, can mislead
anyone who fails to look beyond his nose, but rather sees things
close at hand as all of life, this era identical to those in the past. But
he who looks with a keen eye will see that this ferment is no less
than the death of the social body, knowing at the same time that
these phenomena are necessary for the formation of the new unity.
It is repeated daily that societies do not die, or at least do so no
longer, in contrast to the small states of antiquity. One could as
well say that nothing dies, since indeed the elements do not die.
Certainly each generation is not extinguished without reproducing
Pierre Leroux 211
itself. The error comes from not considering what one means by
society. Society is not simply so many men, so many individuals
who comprise a people. Society is the general relation of these
people amongst themselves. Society is that metaphysical being, that
harmonious unity formed by science, art and politics. And although
certainly society in this sense has its source in God and rests upon
God, nevertheless society is not a pure abstraction. In the periods
when that general relation of which we spoke does exist, there are
some men, actually a great number of minds, who understand this
relationship and who are, so to speak, the representatives of the
social idea. Not only are there men who especially represent this
idea, but one might say that through them, and society's very
existence, the spirit of society passes down to all people. If we look
at history, we should find a multitude of social geniuses, in all ages,
who embody and who, as it were, sum up in themselves the social
idea. They understand better than all the others the relation between
politics, science and art, and the mutual rapport between every part
of the social body.
Now, to return and complete our thought: it is this social being,
formed, as we were saying earlier, out of the harmony of politics,
science and art, it is this creature which dies. Then all that was a
function of life - all that contributed and consented - becomes a
function of decomposition and death.
Thus a lovely animal, the masterpiece of creation: it walks, leaps
and climbs tall mountains; it breathes, feels, has a memory, loves
and engenders new life. Consider it now under the scalpel of the
anatomist: there are its heart and arteries, but they no longer throb;
its nerves, muscles and bones, but there is no longer any movement
or life. In place of that unitary life in the ensemble, a life of
decomposition - a life of death, so to speak - has commenced
everywhere. Its unity of being is destroyed. 5
3. This sentence indicates how the idea of historical stages alternating between
order (intellectual consensus) and disorder (analytical criticism and dissent)
was broadly accepted, conceived within a larger progression of spiritual and
social evolution. This idea was expounded upon by Saint-Simon, Comte and
Fourier, and had become an accepted view for socialists.
4. Leroux was condemned by later socialists for his idealism and spiritual
mysticism, and yet this argument is a complete adoption of Epicurus's atomist
and materialist account of death.
5. This passage is an excellent example of how the organic metaphor of social
life, traditionally used as a conservative defence of hierarchical society, can be
used to mount a radical criticism of the established order. The organic
metaphor, as expressed here, also illustrates a coincidence between literary
romanticism and early French socialism with respect to the nature of gener-
ational evolution and the priority of communal over individual values.
20. Alphonse Esquiros
ALPHONSE ESQUIROS (1812-76), born in Paris, was initially
known for his poetry ,and novels (1834-40). His first radical
democratic writing, L'Evangile du peuple (1840), excerpted here,
written in the form of a biblical gospel, earned him eight months in
prison and a fine of Frs 500 as 'an offense to religion and public
morality'. In this work, Christ is portrayed as the first sans-culotte
revolutionary. In 1848, Esquiros collaborated on four evanescent
radical newspapers, and his sympathies with the insurgents led to
his move to Marseille in june, where he continued to publish on
behalf of workers' rights. In 1850, he was twice elected to the
National Assembly (the first election of six Montagnard candidates
was invalidated), and his strong polling impressed him as 'the sign
of populations ripe for socialism'. After Louis-Napoleon's coup in
1851, Esquiros went to England in exile, where he remained until
1859.
213
214 Religious and Philosophical Socialists
Now Jesus, the Gospel tells us, went to Matthew's home, where
several tax collectors and sinners came to eat with him and his
disciples. The Pharisees being advised of this said to his disciples:
'Why does your master eat with publicans anQ. sinners?' Jesus
replied: 'I have not come to preach to the just, but to the sinner.
Because I have come to save those who have perished.' Before Christ
came, a great portion of humanity were indeed dead. The slave, the
poor, the publican and the prostitute had nothing from life but its
miseries and affronts. They had perished with all the others in
esteem, fortune, honour - to all that, in a word, makes life worth
living. One might say that a great majority of society did not exist,
had perished. The poor and the prostitute are still with us in this
state of civil death and decay.
Now Jesus Christ has come to resurrect those who were dead
and call forth the sinners, the banished and anathematised to enter
into communion with the righteous. It is for this reason that he
drew to his following that whole family of cripples, beggars,
profligates, lepers and publicans. He wanted this whole band of
Alphonse Esquiros 215
will be the sinners, the publicans, the poor, the women of ill repute:
all those men and women who have traversed the arid desert of our
society these many centuries, in toil and with sweat on their brows.
Jesus did not hide from his disciples that the struggle against the
ancient society would be long and laborious ... Jesus declared that
men will only develop a taste slowly and bit by bit for the revolu-
tionary principles of the Gospel. 'Hewho drinks old wine will not
soon ask for the new', he tells us, 'because the old is better.'
Building the new society is like a new house built on sand. Often
the waves will come in from the sea, the winds will blow and carry
away the walls. Because they were built on sand. We have already
tried, indeed, to found a just and humane society, but the waves of
foreign armies have come, the great winds of despotism have blown,
and they have carried away the work of our fathers. The same will
happen until the new society is founded on rock, that is, on the
opinion and belief of the people. Then the great north winds will
come and the waves will rise up, but they will not overturn it.
Not only will the struggle against the ancient constitution of the
world be long, it will be terrible ... 2
'I am the bread of life', said Jesus. 'If anyone eat of this loaf he
will have eternal life, and the bread which I give is my flesh for the
freedom of the world.' Now, though this speech was repulsive to
those who were listening, Jesus stood firm and persistent, saying,
'In truth, in truth, I repeat that if you do not eat of the flesh of the
Son of Man, and do not drink his blood, you will have no life in you
... He who partakes of my flesh and drinks of my blood dwells
within me, and I in him.'
... This law of humanitarian anthropophagy by which we drink
the blood and eat the flesh of one another, such that we assimilate
ourselves one to another as bodily nourishment, and live with
another ... is in effect the transcendent side and the last word of
socialist Christianity.
'Seek first', Jesus says, 'the kingdom of God and his righteousness,
and all the things of life shall be given to you in abundance.' In
effect he promises us, in this new society, the vigilant administration
of a just and liberal father who distributes each according to his
needs3 and shines like the sun equally upon all men.
A society in which there are members who suffer from hunger,
thirst and the cold is not a Christian society, because Jesus willed
that drink, food and clothing be common to all like the air and light
of the heavens.
masters. He will either hate the one and love the other, or he will
honour the one and despise the other.' You cannot serve God and
money! You cannot be at once Christians and landowners.
Fraternity flows still more naturally from the sacred law of unity.
'You have only one father', says Christ; 'you are all brothers!' The
people of Christ will look around and say of all neighbouring
peoples and all bordering nations, 'These are my sisters and broth-
ers!' All men are brothers because they are all children of God.
Let us not degrade ourselves in the doctrines of a disgusting
materialism which reduces all men to an abject brotherhood, like
all pigs of the same litter. We should remember that, though we
freely oppress swine because they are swine, herding them with a
stick, we do not lightly take on the gods, because, being gods, they
are armed with thunderbolts. This is why Christ named us all, in
James and John, children of thunder. 5
1. Here Esquiros misquotes Matthew 19: 24, 'It is easier for a camel to go
through the eye of a needle .... '
2. The passage continues with a loose paraphrase of Mark 13: 7-23, which
warns of 'wars and rumours of war ... For nation shall rise against nation
. . . these are the beginnings of sorrows ... '
3. Emphasis in original.
4. An allusion to the parable of the servant who buried his talents in the earth,
Matthew 25: 14-30.
5. The reference here is unclear, but the contrast between pigs and gods is an
analogy in which the violent implications are only barely veiled. The passage
is also a critical reply to materialist socialism.
21. Alphonse Louis
Constant
ALPHONSE LOUIS CONSTANT (born c. 1820), of whom little
is known, was from a working class family and served as a deacon
in the Diocese of Paris before leaving the Church. He became an
adherent of theosophy and published theosophical works under the
name of Eliaphas Levi. La Bible de la liberte (1841), excerpted
here, illustrates a youthful conversion to communist views reconciled
with his religious perspective. His work, The Voice of Famine
(1846), led to his having to answer charges in court for 'exciting
hatred and distrust of the King's government, seeking to break the
peace by exciting hatred between different classes in society and
exciting hatred toward one class of people'. The closing passage from
Constant's Bible of Liberty reflects the romantic tone and Gallic
character of his thought: 'France is no longer a Nation, but a great
national idea; no longer a people, but a glory; no longer a republic,
but the freedom of the world; no longer a patch of ground, but the
future of the entire universe ... To say France is to say freedom,
and this name will one day apply to all of humanity.'
Martyrs are men of intelligence and love who protest, unto death,
*La Bible de la liberte (Paris, 1841 ).
220
Alphonse Louis Constant 221
against the brutal tyranny of ordinary men. They are the sublime
protestors who disobey men in order to obey God.
It was Christ who preached a new law and perished for sedition
and blasphemy. It was the apostles who preached the resurrected
Christ, in spite of the high priests, who accused the synagogue of
deicide, insulted Caesar's gods, and died like the worst criminals.
The recluses in the desert were the ones who protested, by their
extraordinary austerity, against the indolent luxury nourishing
worldly egoism.
Many of these servants of God were mad in the eyes of the world,
because God's wisdom, overwhelming them with too much vehem-
ence, had shattered their reason. Such a one was St. Francis of
Assisi, who became a beggar and placed his alms on the altar as a
divine reproach to the evil rich. Such were and still are so many
martyrs to charity who happily go to breathe the infected air of
hospitals and prisons, condemning, by their life and their death, the
severity of the world in human suffering. Such as these are comforted,
in death, by the angels of peace. But contemptuous love also has its
angels of anger, and the unjust laws of the world arouse in nature
and in oppressed righteousness those terrible protestations which
the world calls crimes.
The man to whom egotistical and murderous society refuses the
bread which will nourish him as others are nourished, repulsed in
all his attempts to be seated at God's great banquet, is outraged in
his heart, and says to those who reject him: You are assassins! But,
he says, I have as much right as you to live, and if I can defend
myself against you, I will not die! You assault me with hunger: I
will take up less cowardly and less cruel arms, and I will save my
life with a dagger! ... and he eats a crust of bread stained with
blood, that others would have him pay for with his head. Another
slips furtively through the shadows, and amidst a thousand dangers,
he rips from the stingy hands of the rich a little of that gold which
opens and closes men's hearts like a key. Then he goes out and,
with a blush, buys the bread which society owes him. If he is
discovered, his live body is chained and he is worked to death like
a discarded animal. Meanwhile his wife and daughter are aban-
doned, and to live, they sell their bodies into debauchery.
Do you believe God will not bring justice to these abominations?
Would you say that, after such a life, hell will be the reward for
these unfortunates, whose blood is drunk and flesh is eaten by an
evil society? I tell you that they will be the judges of this world, and
222 Religious and Philosophical Socialists
they will condemn it. Their souls cry out for revenge before the
altar of God, but their God tells them to wait yet a while, until the
cup of blood is full. To console them, he gives them each a robe,
white as innocence.
So I tell you in all truth that those whom you call criminals are
the martyrs of a living God! Their actions have been culpable, it is
true, but it is you who have committed them with their hands. And
you dare to judge them! And you ceremonially assassinate them for
the sake of justice and a good example!
Property
If a rich man asks me: Does this religion of the spirit which you
preach absolve brigands and thieves? I reply, No, it condemns you.
And this is why I beseech you, in the name of this religion, to return
to the poor the bread which you and your fathers have stolen from
them. Nothing on this earth belongs to this man or that man.
Everything belongs to God, that is to say, to us all. The spirit of
usurpation is the spirit of murder, the cause of the very first
homicide.
What, because you have piled up stones around the countryside,
you alone may reap the fruits while I die of hunger at the foot of
your walls! But if I wish to heap up still more stones around your
enclosure, and say it is now mine, who is to prevent me? Nothing
but the sword of thieves and murders such as you, who have banded
together to keep peace while enjoying your plunder. And if, seeking
to defend myself against you, I am weaker, you will call me a robber
and murderer! In just such a way the strong have partitioned the
earth, while the weak die of starvation, homeless. But if the weak
unite and struggle courageously, they will be strong.
Christ protested against property with spiritual power. He hadn't
a stone to rest his head on. He died between two thieves. But his
last sigh convulsed the world. Christ's disciples voluntarily divested
themselves of everything to protest property, and their austere and
languishing life was a sublime cry, demanding justice to the high
heavens. So, if through love of God and men one might give up even
the necessities of life, how should those be judged who fatten
themselves on the blood of their brothers.
Everyone who has understood the law of Christ has sought the
realisation of his singular idea: community ... And the usurpers
... have laughed, drunk and eaten. God has withdrawn from them
Alphonse Louis Constant 223
in disgust. This is why, after loving protests, there must be protes-
tations of anger. They ignored the angels of peace; may they now
tremble before the angels of extermination! You poor and starving,
how many are there of you, and how many are they? Your life is
a slow and shameful death. Exchange it for a swift and glorious
death, or the victory that may be won. That is the cry of the angel
of destruction.
As for me, I weep and cover my head with ashes, and cry out to
God and the people: Grace! And they answer me: There is no more
grace.
Stop, honest people, fattened upon the rapine you imagine to be
virtuous. Stop, you hypocrites, who divide the spoils like thieves
while preaching resignation to those who are pillaged. Allow God's
justice to enter in. Because I say to you, in truth, those whom you
kill are not murderers, they are executioners of a higher justice
... Since you are no longer men, we will chase you like ferocious
beasts. If you managed to devour our fathers, perhaps you will not
devour our children. This is what the people cry with the voice of
a hurricane. And I hide my face in my tattered clothing, and I
shudder at the odour of fire and blood.
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H. J. Hunt, Le Socialisme et le romantisme en France, etude de Ia presse
socialiste de 1830 ii. 1848 (Oxford, 1935)
G. Ionescu, The Political Thought of Saint-Simon (Oxford, 1976)
G. Isambert, Les Idees socialiste en France de 1815 ii. 1848, le socialisme Jande
sur Ia fraternite et !'union des classes ( 1905)
C. H. Johnson, Utopian Communism in France: Cabet and the lcarians (Ithaca,
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J. Juares (ed.), Histoire socialiste (1789-1900), 8 vols (1901-8)
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A. Lichtenberger, Le Socialisme utopique: Etudes sur quelques precurseurs
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Bibliography 231
232
Index 233
class warfare, 27 n.76, 76, 166, 183-4 egoism, 3-4, 7, 9, 66, 73,81-2,95, 115,
in England, 107 116, 189, 221
repudicated, 95, 114 overcome by education, 56-7
Cobden, Richard, 163, 171 and family spirit, 56
communion, 216-17 and revolution, 18
communism, 5, 13-14, 22 n.16, 180 Encyclopedia, 208, 211
criticism of, 17, 28 n.84 Enfantin, Prosper, 133, 135, 199-205
inheritance opposed, 85 Engels, Friedrich, 2, 8, 10-12, 18-19,
journals advocating, 48, 61, 68 26 n.52, 28 n.72, 59 n.1
transition to, 190, 195-6 England, 2, 80, 129-30, 139, 142, 147,
and utopia, 78, 82 150,213
Communist Banquet, Belleville, 72-9 capital, concentration of, in, 157-8
and Dezamy, 61 a corrupt spectacle, 23 n.24, 158
and Pillot, 68, 72-3, 77-8 working class in, 107, 155
communists, divisions among, 87-8 Epicurus, 212
community, communist, 73, 78, 82, Esquiros, Alphonse, 213-19
89-90, 180 equality, 48-9, 85, 119, 161, 167, 171
in Dezamy, 188-96 n.4, 191-2
propaganda for, 84-90 absolute, of sexes, 123, 193
science of, 188, 190 and fraternity, 73, 83, 189, 218
Comte, Auguste, 8, 14, 212 and freedom, 77, 130
Considerant, Victor, 22 n.18, 24 n.30, before law, 166-7, 170
27 n.69, 153-8, 175, 181-7 and natural inequality, 165
Constant, Alphonse Louis, 220-3 negated, by Malthus, 136
Cousin, Victor, 13 a primordial law, 189
crime, 5, 52-3, 66, 100, 102, 110, 113, proportional to need, 50
125 n.15, 183, 218, 221-3 real, and political, 74-5
as religion of society, 51, 53
death penalty, 64, 66, 75 of rights and duties, 49, 58, 123-4,
Dezamy, Theodore, 5-6, 8, 12, 15, 18, 168, 196
48, 61-7, 68, 188-96 in society: aim of, 165; foundation of,
and Babeuf, 61 49; and law, 52, 195
banquet toast, 74 equilibrium, theories of, 105, 132, 177
and Cabet, 61, 80, 90 nn.4 and 8, 188 criticised, 166, 169
inflammatory style, 65-6; and dis- production and consumption, 150
claimer, 67 n.8
and materialism, 17, 28 n.79, 61
divorce, 58-9, 84
drinking, 121-2, 125 n.14, 141 family
Dupre, Jacques, 13-14 Cabet on, 83-8
Duval, Citizen, 75 and children, 58, 192
and clothing, 106-7
education, 55-7,114, 125 nn.ll and 16, in communist community, 84-5,
203-4 192-3
and community, 190, 193 and community one, 193
egalitarian, 74, 77 and divorce, 58-9
futility of, for workers, 140 and marriage, 58-9, 196
and patriotism, 59 one only, in community, 193
a public function, 56-7 and primitive society, 58
of women, 120,122-4,125 n.11 and public education, 59
234 Index
Malthus, Thomas, 3, 130, 132-6, 144, people, the, 44, 77, 95, 157, 201, 204,
171 213-19
on population, 133-4 defined, 69
marriage, 58-9, 121, 133, 150, 179 elevation of, 94
abolition of, 85-6 emancipation of, 190, 201
Cabet on, 84-7 and monarchy, 71
prohibited, 193 and sovereignty, 68, 70-1, 142, 186,
of working class women, 121 205
Marx, Karl, 1-2, 4, 6, 10-12, 17-19, wives of, 120-3, 125 n.12
159, 180 n.3 physiocrats, 136
and Communist Manifesto, 59 n.l Pillot, Jean-Jacques, 7, 12-15, 18, 23
'precursors' of, 11, 25 n.39 n.27, 68-71, 72-3, 77-8
materialism, 5, 16-17,28 n.79, 88,212, and First Communist Banquet, 68,
218, 219 n.5 72-3, 77-8
and historical inevitability, 16-18, 28 Poland, 39, 80
n.53, 152 political economy, 3-4, 8-9, 129-36,
McCulloch,JohnRamse y, 144, 152n.7 137, 142, 159, 166
monarchy,hereditary,3 9,43, 119,189 classical, as liberal quackery, 161
rejected, 53, 70-1 in disgrace, 131
monasteries, 179 in England, 142, 144, 151
monetary system, 83 and free trade, 160-71
monopoly, 41, 57,66-7, 151, 157,163, and French government, 3, 5, 19, 20
166, 169' 203-4 n.8: influence on, 137-9
capital tends to, 157 laws variable, not immutable, 134
More, Thomas, 80 and political science, 130, 160
vital questions of, 131, 165
Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor, 15, 42, redefined as true science, 131-2, 135,
47, 51, 80, 95 144
national guard, 41 not a science, 131, 142-3
nationalisation political reform, 6, 9, 42, 75, 95, 151,210
of banks, 42, 57 population, 149-50, 180
of property, 57 press censorship, 3, 10, 21 n.9, 23 n.23,
of industry, 54, 86-7 24 n.34
of land, 54 production, laws of, 134, 151, 180, 183,
natural rights, 168 191
of production and trade, denied, in agriculture, 150
166-9 and distributive justice, 166, 167-8,
Nouvelle Saisons, 61 192
and division of labour, 177
Owen, Robert, 2, 3, 12, 20 n.2, 61, 80, opposing interests in, 183
180 mistaken by Malthus, 133-4
right to, denied, 167-8
parties, 6, 16 and social wealth, 183
as warring interest, 182-7 progress, 16-17, 19, 101-11, 124,
patriotism, 59 176-7, 18~ 182, 201
Pecqueur, Constantin, 11, 159-71 and child labour, 109
influence on Marx, 12, 20 n.8, 25 obstructed by political economy, 136,
n.47, 159 161
236 Index
and religion, 5, 9, 14, 51, 53, 56, 58, wage reductions, 62, 107, 141, 150, 155
69,88, 118,140,170,180,203-5, and mechanization, 104-5
207-11,213-19,220-3 women
and romanticism, 2-4, 15, 19, 21 as inferior, 118, 120, 124 n.5
n.14, 24 n.28, 212, 220 rights of, claimed, 123-4
as a science, 7-8, 10, 17-19,21 n.15 Tristan on, 117-24
as transitional phase, 13-14, 16, 18, in working class homes, 120-4: bru-
26 n.63, 190 tality of, 120-22
utopianism in, 6-7, 15, 18, 24 n.32, work, 55, 104, 145, 177-8
25 n.38, 74: and association, 178; communal, 192
Considerant, 185-7; Marxist cri- in community, 50, 54-5, 86, 190
tique of, 2, 8, 10-12, 25 n.39; rhe- as a duty, 50, 191
torical importance of, 9-10, 23 honourable, 116
n.23, 218-19, 220-3 effect of, on morals, 108-9
Socialist Union, 80 workers, 37, 45, 50, 62, 66, 69, 74-5,
Societe des Amis du peuple, 33 94,96,113-24,133,138,146,151,
Societe des Families, 33 202
Societe des Saisons, 33 agricultural, 130, 138, 144-51, 192
oath of membership, 34-5 alienation of, 180 n.3
Societe republicaine, 61 and capitalists, 169: opposed, 183,
suicide, 100, 113 186
clothing and luxuries, 106: for
technology, effect of, 104-5, 110, 149, women, 108-9
155: in community, 192 in England, 107, 139
Tristan, Flora, 15, 112-25 exploitation of, 74, 95, 135: by com-
influence on Marx, 27 n.69 petition, 155, 161, 213
Turgot, A.-R.-J. 136, 171 female, 19, 107-9
unemployment, 122, 164 fraternity of, 77, 170
caused by machines, 104, 149 as husbands, 121-2
union of workers, 75, 79 n.3, 95, 112, in Ireland, 115
114-16, 142 life of, compared to military and mon-
advocates of, 27 n.76 asteries, 179
inevitable, 169 effect of machines on, 104-5, 110,
international, 170 131, 133, 139-40, 149, 155-7: in
lack of, 106 community, 192
Universal Union, 114 misery of, 114: and economic 'law',
and association, contrasted, 115-16 133
utopia, see socialism, utopianism in publications, 24 n.33, 61, 68, 90 n.9,
93, 213, 220: Ruche populaire,
Vannostal, L.J., 98-100 93-111
Varin, Emile, 93-7 self-help, 95, 113
Vellicus, Antoine-Marie, 74 and Tristan, 112: mission to preach
Villy, Pierre-Fran~oise, 75 to, 117
Vin~ard, Jules, 93 and wage competition, 104
Volney, Constantin-Fran~is, 14 compared with wealthy and salaried,
Voltaire, F.-M. Arouet, 130 105-6, 133, 148