“Cette confuse aurore qui commence a eclairer les tenebres”

The most well-known critics of liberal political economy were of course the many authors usually gathered under the name of associationists, socialists or sometimes communists, to whom the following chapters are devoted (Sismondi was at that time sometimes included in the group).

There had arisen under the Restoration a kind of empty and subtle science which had dared to take the name of the most beautiful of sciences and which, without heart, eyes or ears, nevertheless claimed to be the rector of society: it was called political economy. Unfaithful to the French school of the end of the eighteenth century which had given birth to it, elaborated in its new form by England, that country of aristocracy and mercantilism, it soon reached in France a degree of vogue and insolence that we can hardly understand today. Its universal principle, its only axiom was free­dom and competition. Every man for himself, and in the end everything for the rich, nothing for the poor, that is it in a nutshell; liberal in appearance, murderous in reality. Thus, the beautiful name of liberty had become the watchword of the material oppression of the lower classes, of the scholars, and of the artists. This so-called science was the very negation of all social science.

(Leroux 1832a, 303)

But the solutions they proposed were radically different: for them, the happiness of mankind had to be realised in this world,^[170] not in the afterlife, and the institution of private property had to be questioned in various ways in order, for most of them, to realise a “socialisation of the means of production”, an ambiguous phrase open to different interpretations.

Many of them showed a rapid intellectual evolution: some were liberal under the Restoration - and even members of the French branch of the secret organisa­tion of Charbonnerie (Carbonari), like Saint-Amand Bazard (1791-1832), Philippe Buchez (1796-1865), Jean Reynaud (1806-1863) and Pierre Leroux - then were interested in the ideas of Charles Fourier (1772-1837) and/or Babeuf or Saint- Simon and the Saint-Simonians, before finding their own way. In this process, the press played an important part and there was a real flowering of (sometimes ephemeral) newspapers and periodicals published by the various strands of asso- ciationism (Bouchet et al. 2015). Some of these authors also (like some liberal economists) had a political role during the 1848 Revolution and the short-lived Second Republic, in Parliament or even in government. They could share the view expressed by Victor Considerant, on the third day of the Revolution: “The Republic of 1789 destroyed the old order. The Republic of 1848 must establish a new order”. “Social reform is the goal; the Republic is the means. All socialists are republicans; all republicans are socialists”.^[171] Some years later, Pierre Leroux could state: “I have carried the Republic into Socialism and Socialism into the Republic; and the union has been so well made and so well cemented, that today Republic and Socialism are appropriate ideas”.^[172] The motto “Liberte, egalite, fraternite”, which had rather been forgotten since the 1789 Revolution but revived during the July Monarchy, was officially adopted by the Second Republic (Borgetto 1997, Peillon 2018) - at Leroux’s instigation in particular - and formed a kind of intellectual framework for many socialists’ reform proposals.

During the second half of the century, after the Second Empire and the Paris Commune of 1871, socialist authors generally held more stable opinions and posi­tions, within more or less recently established institutions (political parties or new disciplines in universities, for example). They benefitted from a rich theoreti­cal background inherited from their predecessors and from a less hectic political context.^[173] But they had also to face the emergence of marginalism, and some of them, like Landry, used concepts made available to them by the new theoretical approach.^[174]

The evolution of the vocabulary

Especially during the first decades of the century, a new vocabulary was emerg­ing along with the new doctrines. The words socialism and communism were part of these novelties, at least in the modern meanings of the terms. “Communisme” and “communiste”, for example, came from an adaptation of the various legal and social usages of “commun” and “communaute”, widely used during the preced­ing centuries. But they only acquired a modern political meaning (to produce and consume in common) at the end of the eighteenth century, in the works of the novelist Nicolas-Edme Retif de la Bretonne (1734-1806), before spreading in the 1830s under the July Monarchy (Grandjonc 1989). In this evolution, an impor­tant moment had been the publication in 1828 of the book by Philippe Buonarroti (1761-1837), Conspiration pour l'egalite, dite de Babeuf which rekindled the memory of Franςois Noel-Babeuf (1760-1797)^[175] - who changed his first name to Gracchus in 1794 - and his project of “communaute des biens et des travaux et des jouissances” (community of property, works and enjoyments): it gave rise to what was called “babouvisme” (Babeufism) or “neo-babouvisme” advocating a first form of modern communism, stated for example by Theodore Dezamy (1808­1850) in his Code de la communaute (1843).

The term “socialisme”,^[176] by far the most widely used label and therefore less precise, was more recent,^[177] even if the word had already been employed spo­radically in the eighteenth century in Italy, France and Germany, but in differ­ent contexts. In Italy, some conservative clerics, fighting against the expanding jusnaturalist philosophies, which were supposed to make the interests of society prevail over spiritual interests, used “socialismo” and “socialisti” to characterise these tendencies. In France, the political philosopher Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyes (1748-1836) used “socialisme” in the 1780s, together with “sociologie”, as a kind of equivalent for “science of society”. But modern meanings of the word only emerged in the early decades of the nineteenth century, for example, in Great Brit­ain in the Owenite Co-operative Magazine, which referred to the “communionists or socialists” -

The chief question... between the modern... political economists, and the communionists or socialists, is, whether it is more beneficial that... capital be individual or in common? We say it is much more beneficial that it should be in common.

(November 1827, 509n)

In France, the word “socialisme” was used once in 1831 in a new weekly Protes­tant journal, Le Semeur, journal religieux, politique, philosophique et litteraire, but with a spiritual meaning.^[178] It was also used almost at the same time in Saint- Simonian circles and in Pierre Leroux’s writings, from which it became popular.^[179] The liberal economist Louis Reybaud (1799-1879) repeatedly claimed that he was the first to introduce the word “socialisme” into the French language, in an article published in 1836 in Revue des deux mondes. His statement is obviously wrong. Leroux also claimed priority, with more justification since, although he was not the creator of the neologism, he was certainly at the origin of its wide diffusion. This was done, for example, through his celebrated article “De l’individualisme et du socialisme” published in 1834,^[180] where socialism was opposed to individualism (socialism was opposed to capitalism only later in the century).

A last evolution happened during the second part of the century, with the words “collectivisme” and “collectiviste”: essentially linked to Marxism and certain major trends in social democracy, they mainly referred to a system where the means of production are the property of the State.

Needless to say, the meanings of all these terms were open to many adap­tations by different authors: for example, Malon noted seven different kinds of collectivism in 1887 (1887, 338-41), and nine in 1891 (1891a, 301-306). In this context, and moreover in the midst of incessant polemical exchanges between the authors themselves, things could certainly appear confused. Especially (but not only) among liberals, a clear distinction between the different trends of thought of their critics was not always easy to make, as can be seen, for example, in the list of authors dealt with in the various editions of Etudes sur les reformateurs ou socialistes modernes by Reybaud,^[181] or Alfred Sudre’s (1820-1898) Histoire du communisme, ou refutation historique des utopies socialistes.^[182] In the Dic- tionnaire de l'economie politique (edited in 1852-53 by Charles Coquelin and Gilbert-Urbain Guillaumin), Henri Baudrillart (1821-1892) tried to define “Com­munisme” more accurately compared to the hazy concept of “socialisme”, but in the end referred to the books of Reybaud and Sudre.

Apart from the attempts, sometimes by the authors themselves, to label the different approaches or new systems, another important development in the vocabulary took place during this period. Social critics and reformers used to divide society into two antagonist groups, the rich and the poor, with some vari­ants. This changed with Saint-Simon and the Saint-Simonians, who opposed those who work (the “national” part of society) and the idle (the “anti-national” part). A decisive evolution happened in 1832, when Reynaud - who, with Leroux, had left the Saint-Simonians movement - published two important arti­cles in the Revue encyclopedique recently taken over by Hippolyte Carnot and Leroux: “De la societe saint-simonienne, et des causes qui ont amene sa dis­solution” (a critique of the evolution of Saint-Simonianism under the lead of Prosper Enfantin), published in the January issue, and “De la necessite d’une representation speciale pour les proletaires”, published in April. In the latter, he introduced a distinction destined to a bright future: that between the bourgeois and the proletarians.

I say that the people are composed of two classes distinct in condition and distinct in interest: the proletarians and the bourgeois. I call proletarians the men who produce all the wealth of the nation, who possess only the daily wage of their work and whose work depends on causes left outside of them, who withdraw each day from the fruit of their labour only a small portion incessantly reduced by competition, who rest their tomorrow only on a shaky hope like the uncertain and deregulated movement of industry, and who fore­see no salvation for their old age except in a place in hospital or an early death. I call proletarians... twenty-two million men, uncultivated, aban­doned, miserable, reduced to support their life with six pennies per day... I call bourgeois the men to whose destiny the destiny of the proletarians is subjected and chained, the men who possess capital and live on the annual income it earns them,... who enjoy the present to the fullest, and have no wish for their fate of the next day other than the continuation of their fate of the day before and the eternal continuation of a constitution which gives them the first rank and the best share.

(Reynaud 1832b, 12-14)

This clear-cut distinction, which Leroux adopted verbatim in the August issue of the journal, did not mean, however, that there was an irremediable and violent state of war between the two classes. Most of the time, compromises were thought to be possible and desirable during a peaceful transition to a new social organisation.

Finally, a last point is in order. Most of the doctrines developed by critics of liberal political economy were described as utopian. This characterisation was, for example, made by Say’s disciple, Adolphe-Jerome Blanqui (1798-1854), who, in his Histoire de l’economie polique en Europe, wrote of Fourier, Saint-Simon and Owen as “utopian economists” (1837, II, 322) - a judgement repeated by Villeneuve-Bargemont in 1841 in his own Histoire de l’economiepolitique. But the phrase “utopian socialists” is above all famous because it was used some decades later by Marxists to oppose the doctrines of these authors to Marx’s alleged “scien­tific socialism”. Friedrich Engels’s book, Die Entwicklung des Sozialismus von der Utopie zur Wissenschaft (the development of socialism from utopia to science) - in which he summed up this opposition, and essentially made of excerpts from his Anti-Duhring (1878) - was translated into French in 1880 by Paul Lafargue (Marx’s son-in-law), with the title, Socialisme utopique et socialisme scienti- fique, which accentuated the contrast even more and progressively disqualified for decades our authors in the eyes of many readers interested in socialism and poli­tics.^[183] This vocabulary, however, was not new. The phrases “scientific socialism” or “scientific communism”, for example, had already been used for a long time in the course of the debates during the first half of the century (Grandjonc 1989, 231-53). No doubt, authors had a natural inclination to describe their theories as scientific, and those of their competitors or predecessors as utopian. A few authors, however, asserted the need for utopia as a useful guide for action. “We tackle here the issue of principles”, Pecqueur (1842, i) wrote:

we seek the formula of what must be, independently of the current envi­ronment of France or the world. Nothing is more important to us than this exploration of the ideal and even of utopia. If the principles are good, they are to the legislator, to the statesman, to individuals and to societies, what a lighthouse is to the navigators in the seas............................................ To reject the principles is to

extinguish one’s lamp in the middle of the night; it is to cut the guiding thread in the dark labyrinth of thought.

A few economic and political features

Unsurprisingly, some of the criticisms levelled by socialists (in the broad sense of the term) at liberal political economy are similar to those already noted in the preceding pages of this Prelude. Some others are detailed in the following chapters. The proposed solutions differed according to authors, but they almost all concern the creation of new structures, or associations, with a view to organising work differently and changing workers into associates. Private property was not nec­essarily to be abolished - provided that it was the result of personal work - but cooperation between workers was generally proposed, in the form of production or consumption or credit cooperatives. “Mutualite” (mutuality) and “mutuellisme” - a term preferred by Proudhon and his followers, meaning an egalitarian relationship in exchanges - were on the agenda. Through specific autonomous associations like mutual benefit societies - or alternatively, for some, the action of the State -, insurance against life’s accidents or sickness, old age pensions, and so on, were also supposed to be developed. To put it briefly, a system of conscious and fair cooperation was planned to form a new economic and social relation, replacing the unregulated market and its negative consequences. In this process, modern sci­ences and technologies were generally praised as useful tools to achieve social ideals - as Pecqueur wrote in a striking formula, “it had been foreseen that liberty and equality would move around the globe; but no one had said that they would do it by railway” (1839, II, 290). As an introduction to the subsequent chapters, a few additional characterisations must be stated, although very briefly.

A first feature is the (sometimes neglected) importance attributed by many authors to the questions of banking and credit. During the first half of the century, the French banking system was obviously under-developed and the object of criti­cism from all corners, socialists included: a new system of banking and credit was therefore thought necessary by social reformers for the achievement of their pro­jects, in order to finance production in an efficient way and, possibly, thanks to a better distribution of credit, avoid discrepancies between supply and demand. In this context, the plan of a reorganisation of the banking system by the Saint-Simonians is a typical example of this approach, as is, in a radically different conception, Proudhon’s Banque du Peuple. Banking and credit were also one of Pecqueur’s significant concerns. An overlooked episode, which happened in 1838, is worth reporting in this context. Andre de Ripert-Monclar (1807-1871) - a legitimist like Villeneuve-Bargemont^[184] - had a project to launch a new bank called “Omnium. Association de credit general”, which was supposed to remedy the shortcomings of the existing banking system and particularly of the Banque de France, which only had activities in some large cities - many producers all over the country could not find adequate credit. The Omnium was supposed to create a large hierarchic network of banking establishments, bringing credit facilities to the smallest places in France, having some branches abroad and issuing domestic “effets de circula­tion” (circulating instruments) - and “effets de change” (exchange instruments) for the needs of foreign trade - both bearing interest and payable at any branch of the institution. The issuing of these credit instruments, moreover, would be based on a large variety of collaterals, including commodities and, according to some interpretations, ownership titles of land. It was also supposed that the abundance of credit would lower the interest rate, and that the reliability and soundness of the collaterals could cancel the risk of insolvency of the bank and allow it, in case of an economic crisis, to expand its issuing instead of contracting it. This was in a sense a partial revival and adaptation of the ancient projects of Land Banks, including John Law’s initial plans. The Omnium, largely advertised in the press, aroused a curious craze among some reformers from different corners. Pecqueur wrote a laudatory article in volume XV, 1838, of La France litteraire, Villeneuve-Bargemont (who was a member of the Provisional Council of Omnium) wrote a series of two positive articles in La revue du XIX^e siecle (19 and 26 August 1838) and even Lamennais published an enthusiastic paper in Revue des deux mondes in the same year (1 Sep­tember 1838), in which he stressed the progressive aspect of the project: any sound property could become money, production and employment could increase, and the working poor themselves could obtain credit at a low interest to develop their own activities, with the result that the terrible gap which existed between the exces­sive wealth of some and the excessive poverty of others could be progressively reduced.

Another feature regards the structure of the future economy, that is, the defi­nition of what is to be achieved. This question is, however, intimately linked to another important one: that of the transition period, that is, the way in which a capi­talist economy could be transformed into a “socialist” one. The specification of this transition and the definition of the final state of things were certainly the Achilles’s heel of many theories, which were confused on one or even both of these points. Two extreme positions can be noted: at one end of the theoretical spectrum was Proudhon’s position, and at the other end, Pecqueur’s. Proudhon insisted on certain means to be used to change society - associations, “mutuellisme” - but also on the fact that describing the future society was almost impossible and should certainly not be attempted beforehand: the workers would themselves invent the new social system through the progressive development of “mutuellisme”.

I do not have any system, I do not want one.... The system of humanity, we will know it only at the arrival of humanity. I do not care about the goal. Call it a community, a phalanstery, or whatever you like: I do not care about that. I tell you I am looking for means.... Let humanity go wherever it wants.... What interests me is to recognize its path, and, if I can, to pave it.

([1849] 1869, 54)

For Pecqueur, instead, while the aim to be achieved in the future was defined, the means to be employed remained mainly unknown or uncertain to the theoretician whose forecasting ability is necessarily limited: they depend on the state of the evolution of societies and the available knowledge, and are likely to be updated and changed (Pecqueur 1839, xv and 132).

As for the means that can successively lead the peoples towards the perfect realisation of the ideal... no one can predetermine them; for it is the work reserved, the share of successive generations.... It is thus necessary to care­fully distinguish between the social science speculating on what must be, apart from times and places, and the social science becoming social art, that is to say, falling within reality and coming to seize the facts.

(Pecqueur 1849, 12)

The position taken by authors also depended on another question: would this tran­sition be peaceful, or would a violent revolution be necessary? The answer had implications for the nature of the future society. A peaceful transition was open to many different schemes leading progressively to the associated workers’ owner­ship of the means of production, while a revolution was most of the time intended to lead to an immediate expropriation of the bourgeoisie and a collectivisation of the means of production in the hands of the State.

During the first decades of the century, only a minority of authors proposed a violent, revolutionary way to change society: the 1789 Revolution, and in particular the episode of the Terror, was a model to follow for the members of the Babeufist movement, for example, and a few activists like Auguste Blanqui (1805-1881) - Adolphe-Jerome Blanqui’s younger brother. But, from the late 1870s onwards, with the diffusion of Marxism, the doctrine ofthe class struggle and the perspective of the dictatorship of the proletariat (not to speak of the catastrophist view of an automatic final collapse of capitalism under the pressure of its own internal contradictions), the idea of a possible successful proletarian revolution rapidly gained momentum among French socialists who, influenced on this point by German social-democ­racy, also subscribed to its orthodox but hazy Marxist economic programme.^[185]

Authors who developed original progressive ideas for a new society, however, - that is, the Saint-Simonians, Jean Reynaud, Pierre Leroux, Constantin Pecqueur, Philippe Buchez, Etienne Cabet (1788-1856), Victor Considerant, Louis Blanc, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Charles Gide (1847-1932) among others - rejected the idea of a revolution. They proposed a peaceful transition protecting the liberty of the citizens who should not be dispossessed of ownership of the means of produc­tion and submitted to an authoritarian State. In their eyes, and to various degrees, the creation and multiplication of associations could be progressively expanded all over the country. “It is through the principle of reciprocity”, Proudhon wrote ([1848] 1868, 130), “that we will arrive without communism, without agrarian law, without terror, with the free will of all citizens, to the satisfaction of the bourgeoi­sie as well as the proletariat”. Leroux dismissed all opinion “which would tend to make the State intervene in the formation of a new society”. This society had to be “realised by the individual efforts of the citizens escaping from the nothingness of individualism and converging through attempts at associations of all kinds”:^[186] the action of the State was not to be rejected, but had to be limited to the creation of an enabling environment for these efforts. Moreover, it was recognised that the forma­tion of this new society would take a long time. “For us, who do not believe in sud­den and miraculous transformations, but in continuous progress”, Leroux wrote, “we can only resort to the successive progress of legislation” (1832b, 260). “All the steps must be progressively crossed, and to want humanity to make a great leap, to throw it without transition into this distant goal that it only glimpses” would be to ignore the nature of progress and evolution (Reynaud 1832a, 11). More than five decades later, Gide stressed the same principle.

Those who tell you that the existing economic order can be changed in no time at all are wrong or deceive you. When it comes to a political revolution, it is possible.... But when it is a question of replacing the whole economic organism by a new one, it requires the work of a long preliminary elabora­tion, similar to that slow and silent work... which makes the coral islands emerge from within the Pacific Ocean, by an invisible and uninterrupted push.

(Gide ([1886-1904] 2001, 123)

For a minority of authors - Cabet and Considerant for instance - the example of small voluntary communist communities - a “realist” adaptation of the model of the Fourierist phalanstery - could be successful and would induce many others to follow their example. For others, by far the most numerous, the best way was first thought to be the creation of production cooperatives, which would progres­sively conquer all branches of production, exchange and credit. A few attempts, fostered by Buchez (Cuvillier 1922), had been disappointing and, moreover, this perspective was threatened by the criticism that such cooperatives would need too great amounts of capital to meet the requirements of modern industrial production; would still have to operate within competitive markets and be deprived of conver­gent interests; and would not, in the end, fundamentally change the status of work­ers. This is the reason why, during the last decades of the century, the focus was centred on consumption cooperatives, the first task of which would be to establish large wholesale stores and operate large-scale purchasing to the benefit of their members. The idea was especially developed by Charles Gide and the (Protes­tant) Ecole de Nιmes.^[187] Consumer cooperatives, Gide argued, would be successful because they act for the common good and are not opposed to each other. But they had to follow certain precise rules: those developed by the British model of such institutions, the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers (established in 1844). Two rules, in particular, were of major importance: (i) to sell commodities for cash and not for credit to avoid a structural indebtment of the workers, and (ii) to set prices higher that the cost prices in order to obtain a benefit which would allow invest­ment and pay at the end of the year a certain sum of money to the members of the association, thus favouring savings habits. Moreover, the association was not only supposed to develop the moral attitude of its members, their instruction and the management skills of some of them. They also had to expand through investment, gradually buying the factories which produce the final commodities needed by its members, integrating them as industrial production cooperatives - Gide was convinced of the economic efficiency of small units of production. Finally, they also had to acquire farms and land and thus integrate agricultural activities into the scheme. In a word, such an association would almost amount to a vertically integrated sector. Over time, the growth of the association and the multiplication of such structures would transfer ownership of the means of production into the hands of the consumers and thus manage a peaceful transition to a “cooperative republic” (Gide [1886-1904] 2001, 79-145).^[188]

Benoit Malon did not believe in Gide’s “generous optimism”. While admitting that the consumption cooperatives are more efficient than the production coop­eratives, he denied that they can multiply to the point of reorganising production and society in a socialist way (Malon 1892, 238). Nevertheless, he believed in the dynamics of associations, but thought that the action of the State was necessary in this respect. Like his Belgian friend Cesar De Paepe (1841-1890),^[189] his approach was a kind of collectivism, both at the level of municipalities and of the State: politi­cal authorities were supposed to obtain the means of production and grant their use to associations of workers in all fields of production and exchanges, with, each time, a clear specification in order to preserve the general interest. But how to be in a posi­tion to carry out this ambitious task? Malon did not discard the possibility that a vio­lent revolution would allow socialists to seize power. But revolution only take place “at certain moments of crisis, rare enough in the history of peoples” (1891b, xix).

Revolutionary explosions, which are in short only evolutionary crises, are... beyond the intervention of the [political] parties; they break out in their own time and all we can do is to prepare ourselves for them. In the meantime, the capitalist machine crushes its victims.

(1891b, xix)

Such events remain “uncertain and painful! In addition to the irreparable sacrifices of human lives... one must always count, in revolution, with the long, inevitable and terrible crisis of transition and general misery, during which everyone suffers” (1891b, xvi-xvii). Finally, a revolution does not by itself solve everything and is just the starting point of a long process: “we will not change overnight from the prevailing individualistic society to a collectivistic society” (1883, 296). This is the reason why Malon opted for a reformist policy of transition - “But how much we would prefer the peaceful solution!” (1891a, 402) - that is, active participation in the political life of the country (1891a, 32) and, in municipalities or in parliament, the promotion of measures which would really change the life of workers and the structure of the economy, and form a gradual transition to socialism. The second volume of his last work, Le socialisme integral. Deuxieme partie. Des reformes possibles et des moyenspratiques (1891b) sets out in detail some such measures.

The role of morals and religion

The very title of Socialisme integral (integral socialism) allows us to stress a final point that is important for understanding the approaches of the main French socialist writers: socialism should integrate all aspects of the human condition. This means that, as it was usually interpreted by Marxists who exclusively insisted on the class struggle and the economic side of the problems, collectivism is a reductionist view of socialism which was thus “amputated of all the sentimental impulses, of all the philosophical and fraternal aspirations which had been half of its strength” (Malon 1891a, 26). As important as it is, the economic side of the social question is only one aspect of the problem. It depends itself on the development of the workers’ moral forces (1891a, 10),^[190] on “the law of solidarity which is to the moral and social order what the law of attraction is to the physical order” (1891a, 44). Socialism refers not only to economic justice and social change, “it is also a mental regeneration, that is... the integral renovation of progressive humanity entering a new cycle of higher civilisation” (1891a, 11). For the establishment and maintenance of the new soci­ety, “a new faith” (1891a, 41) is needed.^[191] As each civilisation has an appropriate, transient religious form corresponding to it, Malon states, socialism will also have one.^[192] “To the religious sentiment [‘sens religieux’] properly speaking, it [social­ism] substitutes the social sentiment [‘sens social’]; to the cult of an abstract entity, the cult of humanity” (1892, 178), “the love for one’s fellow men” (1891a, 41).

Many authors identified with this approach, starting with De Paepe^[193] and some younger socialists like Eugene Fourniere (1857-1914), Gustave Rouanet (1855-1927) or Georges Renard (1847-1930). In a series of five papers on Marx’s economic materialism and French socialism published in 1887, Rouanet for exam­ple insisted on the peculiarity of the French socialist tradition, based on rights, justice and the philosophy of the French Revolution, as opposed to the German Hegelian and Marxist “historical-fatalist” line of thought^[194] (Rouanet 1887, 396­400) which despises sentiments of fraternity, duty, devotion, the spirit of abnega­tion and sacrifice, the high moral virtues - all values that socialism must promote (1887, 531). Gide, while critical of collectivism, appreciated this aspect of Malon’s approach. Malon, he wrote,

exerted on the French socialist school a real influence, and in any case a beneficial one... by bringing it back to its true national tradition, that is, to a certain idealism. He claimed a place for those words of justice, solidarity and love which had been disdainfully removed by Karl Marx from the eco­nomic vocabulary, leaving only the word “surplus value” therein. He is to be thanked for having taught that the class struggle will not be sufficient to solve the social problem.

(Gide 1891, 542)

Hence, there was a movement of positive reappraisal of the authors of the first half of the century. Fourniere, in Les theories socialistes au XIX siecle (1904), criti­cised the reductionist materialist reading of these authors by Engels and Marxists in general - “Engels has embalmed... the socialist innovators, having retained from them only those aspects through which they seem to make contact with the materialist interpretation of history” (1904, ii).^[195] And, writing from a solidarist^[196] point of view Les idees socialistes en France de 1815 a 1848. Le socialisme fonde sur la fraternite et l'union des classes, Gaston Isambert insisted that:

French doctrinaire socialism has a character of humanitarian, fraternal [fraternitaire],^[197] solidaristic generosity and appeals to the collaboration of the various classes of society to achieve social reform Almost all of these thinkers judged that social reform should simply be superimposed on moral reform, and not supplant it: they would have considered their projects unat­tainable, if they had not tried first to master human passions and to channel them into that single passion, love for one’s neighbour.

(Isambert 1905, 3-4)

As a matter of fact, this French tradition had been well developed during the first half of the nineteenth century. Most associationist or socialist authors were convinced that a society could not maintain itself if its members did not share some funda­mental moral values. References to morals usually had religious connotations - also perceptible from the use of some Scholastic vocabulary like “just price” or “usury”^[198] - which did not suddenly disappear during the last decades of the century (Peillon 2008, 2021a, 2021b). The word “religion”, however, was to be understood in a broad sense, that is, according to one of its alleged etymologies: the Latin word religare - to unite, to link together.^[199]

The pre-established relations between [human] beings naturally constitute a link between them: they link with each other. Hence the name of religion given to all the connections taken together. Religion, for us and for social science, is therefore synonymous with ion, association, solidarity and order. And irreligion, impiety, synonymous with isolation, disunion, disorder, license and anarchy.

(Pecqueur 1844, 3)

There was thus room for a wide range of approaches, from the Christian (then Catholic) socialism of Philippe Buchez, to the two most well-known attempts to establish new cults: the Saint-Simonian religion, and Auguste Comte’s Religion of Humanity. References to God, religion, and the figure of Jesus were numerous in the literature and in socialist public opinion. Jesus himself could be seen as a man, a prophet, and not necessarily as God. His figure, a symbol of fraternity, was a reference for the 1848 revolutionaries: he was “the Christ of the barricades” (Bowman 1987). Cabet - the author of the celebrated utopia, Voyage et aventures de Lord Villiam Carisdall en Icarie (1840) - published in 1846 Le vrai christian- isme suivant Jesus-Christ (reprinted 1847, 1848) in which he set out to show that a perfect society could be built going back to the genuine teaching of Jesus (“the Prince of the communists”): contrary to what was claimed by Saint-Simon and the Saint-Simonians, there was no need for a “new Christianity”, but just for a “real Christianity”. Some authors, instead, were in favour of a different, republican form of religion: Constantin Pecqueur and Pierre Leroux for example - two outstanding authors who refused both established religions and the Saint-Simonian theocracy - with whom this Prelude concludes.

References to God and religion are numerous in Pecqueur’s writings, and he devoted an entire book to the question: De la republique de Dieu. Union religieuse pour la pratique immediate de l'egalite et de la fraternite universelles (Pecqueur 1844). Like Benjamin Constant, he insisted on the positive role of the religious sentiment, a feeling alien to animals but always present in human beings and inde­pendent of the various external forms of religion. He referred constantly to “the morals of Jesus Christ” based on charity and love of humanity - Jesus was not a god but a prophet and, with Confucius, the founder of morals. The point is that “the economy of a society rests essentially on the moral and religious beliefs of its members” (1842, 25). It is true that the material progress of societies creates the conditions for a better morality. But the main link is the other way round, and the establishment of a just, socialist society needs a prior moral reform of all its members. “Undoubtedly, the integral association of the faculties of men is desir­able, but this boils down to the question of perfect and universal brotherhood..................................................

Make brothers, and universal association will be accomplished or possible” (1839, I, 445-6).

Let us remember... that an organisation of labour which no longer admits the individual appropriation of the instruments of labour... nor the interest of capital, supposes in the multitude of peoples a high degree of morality and devotion: before attempting the realisation of such a regime, therefore, it must be made possible; it is necessary to discipline generations accordingly, which can only be the slow work of centuries.

(1839, II, 18-19)

Pecqueur also wanted to show that an economy based on charity, love and sacrifice is more efficient than one based on selfishness. Interestingly, his argument is simi­lar to the one that Charles de Coux was developing at the same time: whenever a person sacrifices his or her well-being for the benefit of others, he or she benefits in turn from the sacrifices made by others. In this way, Pecqueur writes, “although sacrifice seems to negate happiness, we can say that the happiness of each person is a direct result of the sacrifices of all, and vice versa” (1842, 41).

Not only will egoism then have its share, it will have it at the maximum.... For [each] will have given all the devotion that the satisfaction of other ego­isms requires of him, and he will have received... all the fractions of devo­tion that others owed him, in order to develop his own egoism. So that he will give infinitely less than he will receive.

(1840, 316)

Leroux thought that the essence of socialism lies in the respect of the dignity and individuality of each human being within the society of which he or she is neces­sarily a member. “It is his dignity, it is his quality of man, it is his independence, that the proletarian claims”, he wrote in “De l'individualisme et du socialisme” ([1834] 1850, 372). This claim is best expressed by the Republican motto “Lib­erte, egalite, fraternite”, which Leroux preferred to change, however, into “Liberte, fraternite, egalite” - to which he usually added “unite” - to mean that, in between liberty and equality, fraternity is the essential cog in the machine for achieving at the same time the unity of society and the individuality of its members.

For some years now, we have become accustomed to calling socialists all those, whatever their principles and plans, who invite men to come out of anarchy and to reconstitute the social order. In this respect, we ourselves, who have always fought against individualism, but who have not fought less against any false doctrine that sacrifices individuality to the collective soci­ety, are today designated as socialist. We are socialist without a doubt, if socialism means the doctrine that will not sacrifice any of the terms of the formula: Liberty, Fraternity, Equality, but which will reconcile them all.

(Leroux [1838] 1846, iv)

If the emphasis is placed on “equality” alone, society runs the risk of being authoritarian, squashing citizens under an all-powerful State: society will be all and individuals nothing. Conversely, if the emphasis is placed on “liberty” alone, society explodes under the pressure of the selfishness of its members: the weak are exploited by the strong, individuals are everything, society nothing. In this con­text, liberty and equality are, according to Leroux’s celebrated phrase, “two pistols loaded against each other” ([1834] 1850, 378). This is the reason why “fraternity” is an essential middle term, allowing the harmonious coexistence of liberty and equality. It must be developed through a secular religion. This approach, which focused both on education and the preservation of individuality, was in particular stated by Leroux in 1838 in his article “Culte” of the Encyclopedie nouvelle, repub­lished as a book in 1846 with the title D'une religion nationale, ou du culte.

We are looking for unity, and we demonstrate the possibility of establishing it. What is the reason why unity has not been established? Because it has not yet been understood that it is possible to reconcile authority and liberty, to have a national cult without religious despotism, a complete society where man is complete. We... demonstrate that the antinomy of the individual and society can cease to exist; that there is not an invincible duality between the rights of man and the rights of society.

([1838] 1846, viii)

The idea of a civil religion was admittedly not new. It had already been stated by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in 1762 in the penultimate and much discussed chapter of Du contrat social. However, Leroux was critical of Rousseau and more in line with Spinoza ([1838] 1846, Chapter XV in particular).^[200]

Five decades later, and with no direct reference to Leroux, Emile Durkheim developed related ideas in a paper published in Revue bleue (Durkheim 1898). He tried to confer a positive meaning on the word “individualisme” (too often confused, he wrote, with selfishness and utilitarianism): individualism, insisting on the dignity of men, demands morals. Contrary to utilitarianism, it is the “religion of humanity”. It consists “in turning our eyes away from what concerns us personally... in order to seek only what is called for by our human condition, such as we share it with all our fellow men”.

The human person... is considered sacred, in the ritual sense of the word.... It has something of that transcendent majesty which the Churches of all times lend to their Gods; it is conceived as invested with that mysterious property which makes the void around holy things.... Such a morality... is a religion of which men are, at the same time, the faithful and the God. But this religion is individualistic, since it has man for object.

(1898, 8)^[201]