Louis Blanc
Louis Blanc played a significant role in the first phase of the 1848 revolution, and in particular while president of the Luxembourg commission. His contribution to socialist ideas is often under-estimated and very frequently associated with arguments in favour of economic statism.
His role, however, is far more complex (Demier 2005). The work organization he suggested aims to address the issue of deprivation and not merely the right to work. This right to work - which was already put forward by Considerant - is dependent on a right to live, a claim initially made during the revolution and used by Leroux. Blanc placed considerable emphasis on both principles, rejected a simple right to assistance and explicitly supported the power of the state to establish this right: “The State is the banker of the poor” ([1839] 1840: 14). He was a proponent of the association principle and opposed competition by granting access to instruction and means of production to all. Social workshops - and not the famous national workshops established by the government in 1848 - in the industrial as well as agricultural sectors were destined to gradually substitute themselves for individual workshops and were thus production cooperatives launched by the state (via credit in particular) for the first year only, and then managed by the members of the workshop themselves.The state is a backer and legislator but not a producer in its own right. Blanc clearly believed that a state bank was required because the Banque de France established in 1803 and controlled by private shareholders did not have a long-term strategy, especially in times of crisis. Credit provided to the workshops had to be interest-free but reimbursed. The state had also to be involved in the commercial side of things by providing warehouses and bazaars to ensure free trade - acknowledgements of receipt of the deposit of products was supposed to be transferable by endorsement and thus could fulfil the role of paper money.
When it came to remuneration, Blanc argued in favour of a distribution of profits in three parts: one part to be distributed between the members of the workshop, another for the upkeep of the old, the sick and the infirm and the third to be used to ease the burden in other industries. As regards individual remuneration, Blanc remained hesitant: wages could be set equal, or proportional to the work performed, but ideally: “Equality is proportionality and it will only really exist when everyone... will produce according to his faculties and consume according to his wants”. The latter formula will remain associated with him for years. It is only later that it is attributed to Marx. Blanc’s socialist system (Blanc 1848) thus combines interconnected production cooperatives, which are destined to eventually take over most of the production, and tight state regulation concerning banking and trade. His state is a republican state under universal suffrage but Blanc opposes the tyranny of the majority through the Thomas Hare single transferable vote system. This state is also unified and its sovereignty is indivisible (political centralization with administrative decentralization in municipalities only), as opposed to the views of Proudhon. On a more general level, this state establishes a common interest, which is beneficial for capitalists themselves and thus is not based on the hypothesis of a class struggle.