Conclusion
Prior to World War I, a body of rich and diverse non-Marxian socialist ideas was formed in France. This diversity can never really come across when examined through the prism of any single aspect - for example, reform versus revolution, or statism versus cooperativ- ism and federalism, or liberal individualist socialism vs collectivist socialism, and so on.
An analysis of the content of these approaches often reveals standpoints that are highly subtle and transcend various preconceived conceptions one might have of these authors (Bouchet et al. 2015). The crossover between socialism and Republic (the “republique sociale”) and the way in which social issues were addressed reinforce the variety of possible interpretations (Bougle 1932: conclusion) - role of universal suffrage, Republic in the workshop, welfare reforms, new forms of property, and so on. However, economic analysis remained relatively underdeveloped, apart from a few exceptions. The analysis of the market as an institution of coordination remained weak and its importance was underestimated relative to the debate about free competition between men and activities. Furthermore, the economic arguments, which support the central concepts - first of association and then of cooperation and socialization or even public utilities - often remained relatively superficial. Social and political struggles, violent uprisings (in 1830, 1848 and 1871) and repressions of social conflicts often led to a simplification of the battle of ideas both from the point of view of socialist ideas and of their liberal opponents: a caricatured battle between individualism and communism. However, subsequent to the emergence of Saint-Simonianism, a recurring attempt was made by socialism to establish economic theories, which did not merely boil down to political economy, but touched instead on “social economics” or “sociology”, thus encompassing human relationships over and beyond the issues of production and distribution of wealth (Fourniere 1904b). This call for a positive science of human relationships also took on very diverse forms, which sometimes hardly proved compatible (Pecqueur, Leroux, Malon, Fourniere and Walras, but also the projects of Durkheim 1895-96 [1992], and of Simiand). Paradoxically, it is this ambition that played a role in the analytical limitations of socialist ideas in the field of economics. One of the key characteristics of socialist ideas in France was this desire to depict a broader picture that might sometimes be relatively composite but integrates a powerful moral dimension, which will then be left aside (Grange 2011: 107). This moral dimension took on a religious and Christian form, or was sometimes substituted for Christianity, or in some cases took on a secular form. It played a central role in Saint- Simon’s 1825 Nouveau christianisme, Buchez’s “Androgenie” (see Buchez 1833, pt VI), Pecqueur’s 1844 De la republique de Dieu, Blanqui’s 1872 L’eternitepar les astres or the socialist morality described by Malon or Andler.World War I marked a new era for socialist ideas. These ideas become less diverse due to the pre-eminence of the Bolshevik reading of Marxism. Revolutionary cooperative socialism tended to become Marxist state socialism (Moss 1976: epilogue) and a nonMarxist socialism of rationalization of the economy carried out through state control (Moch 1927; Philip 1935).
Michel Bellet
See also:
Karl Heinrich Marx (I); Non-Marxian socialist ideas in Britain and the United States (II); Non-Marxist socialist ideas in Germany and Austria (II); Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (I); Jean-Charles Leonard Simonde de Sismondi (I); Marie-Esprit-Leon Walras (I).