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The “Social Question” as a Democratic Question: Louis Blanc's Organization of Labor
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 July 2022
Abstract
Recent studies have identified the revival of the idea of democracy in early nineteenth-century French thought. This article recovers one important reason behind this revival: democracy became a response to another debate that emerged during that period—the “social question.” Although not well known in the English-speaking world, Louis Blanc was one of the most important socialist figures during the July Monarchy in France. Examining Blanc's Organization of Labor, this article shows how Blanc mobilized democracy to challenge the July Monarchy's exclusionary representative government and its reduction of the “social question” to pauperism. Blanc argued that industrial competition created a system of domination and proposed democratic reorganization of labor as a way to promote the common good. Blanc reformulated the “social question” as a democratic question, arguing that poverty and class domination can be solved not by administrative measures but through democratic participation in work and in the republic.
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References
1 Engels, Friedrich, “Reform Movement in France: Banquet in Dijon,” Northern Star 11/530 (1847), 2Google Scholar. Because associations and demonstrations were forbidden in the July Monarchy, reformist campaigns appropriated banquets as a way of publicizing their ideas and mobilizing people. Gareth Stedman Jones, “Introduction,” in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, ed. Gareth Stedman Jones, trans. Samuel Moore (London, 2002), 3–187, at 30 n. 28.
2 Engels, “Reform Movement in France,” 2.
3 Joanna Innes and Mark Philp, “‘Democracy’ from Book to Life: The Emergence of the Term in Active Political Debate, to 1848,” in Jussi Kurunmäki, Jeppe Nevers, and Henk te Velde, eds., Democracy in Modern Europe: A Conceptual History (New York, 2018), 16–34.
4 On the history of the July Monarchy and the “liberal” thought of the Doctrinaires see Pierre Rosanvallon, Le moment Guizot (Paris, 1985); Larry Siedentop, “Two Liberal Traditions,” in Raf Geneens and Helena Rosenblatt, eds., French Liberalism from Montesquieu to the Present Day (Cambridge, 2012), 5–35; Aurelian Crăiuțu, Liberalism under Siege: The Political Thought of the French Doctrinaires (Lanham, 2003); Annelien de Dijn, French Political Thought from Montesquieu to Tocqueville: Liberty in a Levelled Society? (Cambridge, 2008), Chs. 3, 6; Sarah Maza, The Myth of the French Bourgeoisie: An Essay on the Social Imaginary, 1750–1850 (Cambridge, MA, 2009), Chs. 5–6.
5 As Engels reported in another article, the alliance behind democracy had internal tensions that could be observed in different banquets. Some moderate reformists, for instance, toasted King Louis-Philippe. The radical ones refused to toast the king, instead toasting the “sovereignty of the people,” or the “honor of democracy.” Engels, Friedrich, “Reform Movement in France,” Northern Star 11/526 (1847), 6Google Scholar. Yet, because all the banquets demanded reforms, they became a forceful aggregate opposition to the July Monarchy.
6 David Pinkney comments that “it was probably the single most influential socialist publication of the decade.” David H. Pinkney, Decisive Years in France, 1840–1847 (Princeton, 1986), 96.
7 As Holly Case explains, the phrase “social question” consists of two peculiar formulations that became commonplace in the nineteenth century. A “question” meant a pressing problem that requires a timely solution. The “social” referred to the new material and moral condition that emerged after the abolition of aristocratic castes, the declaration of rights, the expansion of the press, and industrialization. Therefore the “social question” signaled a need not only for interventions into social problems but also for visions for creating modern social ties. Holly Case, The Age of Questions: Or, a First Attempt at an Aggregate History of the Eastern, Social, Woman, American, Jewish, Polish, Bullion, Tuberculosis, and Many Other Questions over the Nineteenth Century, and Beyond (Princeton, 2018), 6–34, 78–84. Also see Case, Holly, “The ‘Social Question,’ 1820–1920,” Modern Intellectual History 13/3 (2016), 747–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Robert Castel, Les métamorphoses de la question sociale: Une chronique du salariat (Paris, 1998); Jacques Donzelot, L'invention du social: Essai sur le déclin des passions politiques (Paris, 2003); Giovanna Procacci, Gouverner la misère: La question sociale en France, 1789–1848 (Paris, 1993). The first section of this article offers a more detailed discussion of the “social question.”
8 While Blanc is known as a prominent socialist figure in nineteenth-century France, his idea of democracy and his democratic thought have not received sustained attention. The most extensive work on Blanc's life and thought is Leo A. Loubère, Louis Blanc: His Life and Contribution to the Rise of French Jacobin-Socialism (Evanston, 1961). This work gives a helpful overview of Blanc as a “philosopher of democracy” with a focus on Blanc's contribution to “Jacobin-socialism.” Stephen Sawyer focuses on Blanc's theory of the democratic state, highlighting its “liberal” aspects. Sawyer, Stephen W., “Louis Blanc's Theory of Democratic State,” Tocqueville Review/La revue Tocqueville 33/2 (2012), 141–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In another work, Sawyer explores Blanc's theory of the state with attention to Blanc's later writings on the history of the 1789 Revolution. Stephen W. Sawyer, Demos Assembled: Democracy and the International Origins of the Modern State, 1840–1880 (Chicago, 2018), Ch. 6. My focus is on Blanc's earlier writings during the July Monarchy, and particularly his Organization of Labor. Pamela Pilbeam's work on early French socialism highlights Blanc's prominence but the bulk of its discussion is devoted to Blanc's involvement in the Provisional Government and Luxembourg Commission after the 1848 Revolution. Pamela Pilbeam, French Socialists before Marx: Workers, Women, and the Social Question in France (Montreal and Kingston, 2000). For notable works on Blanc in French see Francis Démier, ed., Louis Blanc, un socialiste en république (Paris, 2005); Jean-Fabien Spitz, “Louis Blanc: La république démocratique et sociale,” in Louis Blanc, Textes Politiques, 1839–1882, ed. Jean-Fabien Spitz (Paris, 2011), 8–75.
9 As we will see, Blanc also appealed to terms such as “fraternity” and “association” that were commonplace among various radical republican and socialist thinkers. The phrase “theoretical constellations” comes from James Farr, “Understanding Conceptual Change Politically,” in Terence Ball, James Farr, and Russell L. Hanson, eds., Political Innovation and Conceptual Change (Cambridge, 1989), 24–49, at 39.
10 This was one of the revolutionary slogans during and after the 1848 Revolution. See, for instance, Louis Blanc, 1848: Historical Revelations, Inscribed to Lord Normanby (London, 1858), 426.
11 This sophisticated scholarship has established how democracy was integral to various debates in nineteenth-century France such as popular sovereignty, the state, violence, freedom, radical republicanism, and political aesthetics. See respectively Pierre Rosanvallon, La démocratie inachevée: Histoire de la souveraineté du peuple en France (Paris, 2000); Sawyer, Demos Assembled; Kevin Duong, The Virtues of Violence: Democracy against Disintegration in Modern France (Oxford, 2020); Annelien de Dijn, Freedom: An Unruly History (Cambridge, MA, 2020); Karma Nabulsi, “Two Traditions of Radical Democracy from the 1830 Revolution,” in Bruno Leipold, Karma Nabulsi, and Stuart White, eds., Radical Republicanism: Recovering the Tradition's Popular Heritage (Oxford, 2020), 118–46; Jason A. Frank, The Democratic Sublime: On Aesthetics and Popular Assembly (Oxford, 2021).
12 Sawyer, Stephen W., “The Forgotten Democratic Tradition of Revolutionary France,” Modern Intellectual History 18/3 (2021), 629–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 632.
13 Ibid., 656.
14 Sawyer's article attends to the “social question” near the end of its exploration of the “democratic tradition” by briefly comparing Tocqueville and Proudhon. Ibid., 655–6. In foregrounding Blanc and debates on the democratization of industry and work, I extend the scope of Sawyer's exploration.
15 Pamela Pilbeam, The 1830 Revolution in France (London, 1991), Ch. 8.
16 Procacci, Gouverner la misère, Ch. 6.
17 Rosanvallon, Le moment Guizot, 50; Siedentop, “Two Liberal Traditions,” 19.
18 François Guizot, Essais dur l'histoire de France: Pour servir de complément aux observations sur l'histoire de France de l'abbé de Mably, 2nd edn (Paris, 1824), 87.
19 Ibid., 86–90.
20 François Guizot, Des moyens de gouvernement et d'opposition dans l’état actuel de la France (Paris, 1821), 146.
21 Ibid., 181–7.
22 Ibid., 151.
23 Ibid., 217–18.
24 J. Madival and M. Laurent, eds., Archives parlementaires de 1787 à 1860: Recueil complet des débats législatifs et politiques des chambres françaises, deuxième série (1800 à 1860), 127 vols. (Paris, 1876), 34: 133.
25 Ibid.
26 François Guizot, The History of the Origins of Representative Government in Europe. trans. Andrew Scoble (Indianapolis, 2002), 57.
27 Ibid., 61.
28 Archives parlementaires, vol. 110, 496.
29 Daniel Gordon, Citizens without Sovereignty: Equality and Sociability in French Thought, 1670–1789 (Princeton, 2017), 5.
30 For example, various drafts of the 1789 and 1793 Déclarations include formulations such as the “rights of man in society” and the “rights of man in the social state.” For examples see Lucien Jaume, ed., Les déclarations des droits de l'homme: Du débat, 1789–1793 au préambule de 1946 (Paris, 1989), 124, 272.
31 Here I follow Jacques Donzelot, who makes a similar claim in the context of the 1848 Revolution and the Second Republic. Donzelot, L'invention du social, 32–3.
32 “Paris,” Journal des débates politiques et littéraires, 20 March 1826, n.p.
33 Guizot used this term “legal country” in his abovementioned parliamentary speech. Archives parlementaires, vol. 110, 494.
34 Robert J. Bezucha, The Lyon Uprising of 1834: Social and Political Conflict in the Early July Monarchy (Cambridge, MA, 2014), Chs. 1–2.
35 “Events at Lyons,” Courier, 20 Dec. 1831.
36 Ibid.
37 Archives parlementaires, vol. 72, 681.
38 As Case demonstrates, the “question” became an “instrument of thought with special potency” in the nineteenth century, as it signaled a problem or crises that compelled thinkers and statespersons to find a timely solution. Case, The Age of Questions, xv–xvi.
39 Archives parlementaires, vol. 110, 493.
40 Procacci, Gouverner la misère, 210.
41 Georges Picot, ed., Concours de l'académie: Sujet proposés, prix et récompenses décernés, listes des livres couronnés ou récompensés, 1834–1900 (Paris, 1901), 5.
42 Honoré Antoine Frégier, Des classes dangereuses de la population dans les grandes villes, et des moyens de les rendre meilleurs, 2 vols. (Paris, 1840).
43 Ibid., 1: 267.
44 Ibid., 1: 296–303, 2: 114–53.
45 While the “social economists” shared the political economists’ trust in the science of social and economic life, they were emphatic that certain paternalistic policies were necessary for correcting certain social trends such as overpopulation. Proccaci, Gouverner la misère, Ch. 5. On the July Monarchy's “sociologist state” see Rosanvallon, Le moment Guizot, 255–62.
46 As we will see later, the July regime promoted two institutions: savings banks and assistance societies. Castel, Les métamorphoses de la question sociale, 231–59.
47 William H. Sewell Jr, Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848 (Cambridge, 1980); Samuel Hayat, “Working-Class Socialism in 1848 in France,” in Douglas Moggach and Gareth Stedman Jones, eds., The 1848 Revolutions and European Political Thought (Cambridge, 2018), 120–39.
48 On the varieties of socialism in the July Monarchy France and their relationship with other radical currents see Maxime Leroy, Histoire des idées sociales en France: De Babeuf à Tocqueville, vol. 2 (Paris, 1950), Ch. 12; Pilbeam, French Socialists before Marx, Chs. 1–2; Loubère, Louis Blanc, Ch. 2; Lovell, David W., “The French Revolution and the Origins of Socialism: The Case of Early French Socialism,” French History 6/2 (1992), 185–205CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jonathan Beecher, “Early European Socialism,” in George Klosko, ed., The Oxford Handbook of the History of Political Philosophy (Oxford, 2011), 369–92.
49 Carné, Louis de, “Publications démocratiques et communistes,” Revue de deux mondes 27/5 (1841), 724–47Google Scholar. Carné used the term “communist” to allude to the revival of Babeuf's and his fellow self-proclaimed démocrates’ radically egalitarian ideas—also labeled by some communist ideas. Thus democracy was sometimes equated with Babeuvian conspiracy and communism. Stedman Jones, “Introduction,” 27–8; Rosanvallon, La démocratie inachevée, 160–62.
50 Louis Blanc, Organisation du travail, IVe édition considérablement augmentée précédée d'un introduction, et suivi d'un compte-rendu de la maison Leclaire (Paris: 1845), 171–3.
51 Louis Blanc, Organisation du travail (Paris, 1840), 94. This is the first stand-alone edition. Blanc earlier published parts of Organization as articles in his journal Revue de progrès in 1839–40.
52 Loubère, Louis Blanc, 31.
53 Louis Blanc, Organisation du travail, 5ème édition revue, corrigée et augmentée (1847) (Paris, 1848). For other editions published in 1841 and 1845 see respectively Louis Blanc, Organisation du travail: Association universelle. Ouvriers—chefs-d‘ateliers—hommes de lettres (Paris, 1841); Blanc, Organisation du travail, IVe édition. I will use various editions in this article and hereafter cite as OT with year of publication in parentheses.
54 OT (1848), 12–13.
55 Ibid., 20–21.
56 Blanc, Louis, “De la démocratie en Amérique,” Revue républicaine 5 (1835), 129–63Google Scholar, at 137.
57 Ibid., 155.
58 Ibid., 153–6.
59 Ibid., 153.
60 Ibid., 158.
61 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New York, 2004), 102.
62 Ibid., 102–3; Blanc, “De la démocratie en Amérique,” 154.
63 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 104, original emphasis.
64 Blanc, “De la démocratie en Amérique,” 154.
65 Ibid., 153.
66 OT (1840), 94.
67 OT (1841), 72–3. Blanc moved these sentences to the introduction of the later editions of Organization. OT (1845), xvi–xvii; OT (1848), 12.
68 Louis Blanc, Histoire de dix ans, 1830–1848, vol 1. (1841) (Brussels, 1846), 198.
69 Ibid., 197–8.
70 Lovell, “The French Revolution and the Origins of Socialism,” 196–8; Duong, Kevin, “What Was Universal Suffrage?”, Theory and Event 23/1 (2020), 29–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 33–9.
71 Louis Auguste Blanqui, “Le procès des quinze: Défense du citoyen Louis Auguste Blanqui devant la cour d'assises,” in Blanqui, Textes choisis, ed. V. P. Volguine (Paris, 1971), 59–69, at 60.
72 Ibid., 65.
73 Ibid., 64.
74 Victor Considerant, Principes du socialisme: Manifeste de la démocratie au XIX siècle (1843) (Paris, 1847), 72. Only after the 1848 Revolution did Considerant decisively embrace direct democracy (as we will see, to Blanc's dismay). For Considerant's ambivalent attitude towards democracy and suffrage see Lovell, David W., “Early French Socialism and Politics,” History of Political Thought 13/2 (1992), 257–79Google Scholar; Jonathan Beecher, Victor Considerant and the Rise and Fall of French Romantic Socialism (Berkeley, 2001), Ch. 8.
75 Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, La solution du problème social (Paris, 1848), 65–6. For Proudhon's changing attitude towards democracy see Edward Castleton, “The Many Revolutions of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon,” in Moggach and Stedman Jones, The 1848 Revolutions and European Political Thought, 39–69.
76 On the divisions among socialists in approaching “the political” vis-à-vis the “the social” see Gregory Claeys, Citizens and Saints: Politics and Anti-politics in Early British Socialism (Cambridge, 1980), 1–14.
77 OT (1840), 94–5; OT (1848), 15–16.
78 OT (1840), 95.
79 Rosanvallon, Le moment Guizot, 39–41.
80 OT (1840), 96.
81 OT (1845), xix; OT (1848), 14.
82 Louis Blanc, “De L’État et de la commune,” in Blanc, Questions d'aujourd’hui et de demain, vol. 1 (Paris, 1873), 257–318, at 278–9.
83 Sawyer, “Louis Blanc's Theory of Democratic State,” 154.
84 Blanc, “De L’État et de la commune,” 285.
85 Ibid.
86 Ibid., 288.
87 Blanc, “Du gouvernement du peuple par lui-même,” in Questions d'aujourd’hui et de demain, 45–143, at 72.
88 Ibid., 67.
89 Ibid., 70.
90 Ibid., 66, 71.
91 OT (1840), 7; OT (1841), 3.
92 OT (1840), 124.
93 Jonathan Beecher, Charles Fourier: The Visionary and His World (Berkeley, 1986), 199–201.
94 Victor Considerant, Destinée sociale, vol. 1 (Paris, 1838), 91.
95 OT (1840), 96–9; OT (1848), 9–10.
96 OT (1848), 20.
97 Ibid., 19.
98 Ibid.
99 OT (1845), xxi; OT (1848), 17.
100 OT (1845), 23–54; OT (1848), 40–73.
101 OT (1840), 57; OT (1848), 74.
102 OT (1840), 57; OT (1848), 75.
103 OT (1848), 19.
104 Considerant, Principes du socialisme, 14.
105 Pierre Leroux, Revue sociale ou solution pacifique du problème du prolétariat (Paris, 1846), 92–9.
106 William C. Roberts, Marx's Inferno: The Political Theory of Capital (Princeton, 2017), 47. While I agree with Roberts that the “vast majority” of French socialists did not engage with political economy, I suggest that Blanc was an exception. In fact, as I will show, Blanc's critical appropriation of the language of political economy created ambiguities in his characterization of class power and antagonism. This is certainly not to say that only Blanc criticized political economy. For instance, Leroux refuted political economy as the science of individualism but through a language of religion and morality instead of political economy. Leroux, Revue sociale, 73–9.
107 OT (1840), 58–9; OT (1848) 76–7.
108 OT (1848), 77.
109 Ibid.
110 Ibid.
111 Procacci, Gouverner la misère, 161–3.
112 OT (1841), 12–13; OT (1848), 31.
113 OT (1841), 12; OT (1848), 31.
114 OT (1841), 13; OT (1848), 32.
115 OT (1841), 13; OT (1848), 32.
116 OT (1840), 12–13; OT (1848), 26.
117 OT (1845), xxii; OT (1848), 17.
118 OT (1848), 48.
119 Ibid., 17.
120 Ibid., 19. For discussions of how freedom (as non-domination) was formulated in opposition to “slavery” in ancient and modern republicanisms of various strands see Quentin Skinner, From Humanism to Hobbes: Studies in Rhetoric and Politics (Cambridge, 2018), Ch. 7; Alex Gourevitch, From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth: Labor and Republican Liberty in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 2015); de Dijn, Freedom, 86–110, 155–68, 184–9. As Blanc's sentences demonstrate, socialists also appropriated this rhetoric of slavery. Roberts, Marx's Inferno, 63–70, 116–25.
121 OT (1848), 18.
122 Ibid., 27.
123 Ibid., 26.
124 Ibid., 77.
125 Ibid., 61.
126 Ibid., 172–3.
127 Ibid., 167.
128 Ibid., 85.
129 Ibid., 86.
130 Ibid., 86–9.
131 Ibid., 86.
132 Ibid., 97.
133 Ibid., 88.
134 Ibid., 89.
135 Ibid.
136 Ibid., 89–90.
137 Ibid., 15, 102–8.
138 Ibid., 112.
139 Ibid., 103.
140 Ibid.
141 Ibid., 106.
142 Ibid., 107.
143 Pilbeam, French Socialists before Marx, Chs. 7–10; Behrent, Michael C., “The Mystical Body of Society: Religion and Society in Nineteenth-Century French Political Thought,” Journal of the History of Ideas 69/2 (2008), 219–43CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Sewell, Work and Revolution in France, 201–11; Loubère, Louis Blanc, 18–19; Samuel Hayat, Quand la république était révolutionnaire: Citoyennetté et représentation en 1848 (Paris, 2014), 51–6; Michèle Riot-Sarcey, Le procès de la liberté: Une histoire souterraine du XIXe siècle en France (Paris, 2016), 41–56; Andrews, Naomi J., “The Romantic Socialist Origins of Humanitarianism,” Modern Intellectual History 17/3 (2020), 737–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
144 Sewell, Work and Revolution in France, 201–2; Duong, Virtues of Violence, 35–7.
145 OT (1840), 115.
146 Ibid., 119.
147 Ibid., 119–20.
148 Ibid., 120.
149 Ibid.
150 Ibid., 105–6.
151 OT (1848), 14.
152 OT (1845), xix.
153 Michel Chevalier, “Organisation du travail par M. Louis Blanc,” Journal des débats politiques et littéraires, 21 Aug. 1844, n.p.
154 “Étude critique sur l'organisation du travail” (23 Sept. 1840), in La Phalange: Journal de la science sociale: Politique, industrie, sciences, art et littérature, 3rd series (Sept.–Dec. 1840), vol. 1 (Paris, 1840), 190–200.
155 Carné, “Publications démocratiques et communistes,” 741.
156 OT (1848), 119–219.
157 OT (1845), xix.
158 OT (1848), 119–67.
159 Ibid., 165.
160 Ibid., 14.
161 Ibid., 103.
162 Ibid., 15.
163 Ibid., 115.
164 Castel, Les métamorphoses de la question sociale, 238–49.
165 Ibid., 250–53; Procacci, Gouverner la misère, 228–9.
166 OT (1848), 58–9.
167 Ibid.
168 Ibid., 181–2.
169 Ibid., 182.
170 Ibid.
171 Ibid., 181–2.
172 Ibid., 21.
173 Ibid., 59.
174 “Étude critique sur l'organisation du travail,” 198; OT (1848), 167.
175 OT (1848), 171.
176 Spitz, “Louis Blanc,” 45.
177 OT (1848), 114–15.
178 Ibid.,117.
179 Faure, Alain, “Mouvements populaires et mouvement ouvrier à Paris (1830–1834),” Le mouvement social 88 (1974), 71–85Google Scholar; Sewell, Work and Revolution in France, 205–9; Hayat, Quand la république était révolutionnaire, 52–3.
180 To what extent Blanc was right to trust the republican tradition's power to give a language and vision to a unified working class and society-wide support for reform is debatable. For different perspectives on the existence and degree of republican militancy and class consciousness among the workers during the July Monarchy see Sewell, Work and Revolution in France, Ch. 9; and Lynn Hunt and George Sheridan, “Corporatism, Association, and the Language of Labor in France, 1750–1850,” Journal of Modern History 58/ 4 (1986), 813–44.
181 OT (1848), 8, original emphasis.
182 Blanc, 1848, Chs. 8–9.
183 Compte-rendu des séances de l'Assemblée nationale, vol. 3 (Paris, 1850), 813.
184 Hayat, Samuel, “The Revolution of 1848 in the History of French Republicanism,” History of Political Thought 36/2 (2015), 331–53Google Scholar.
185 On Blanc and the Luxembourg Commission see Loubère, Louis Blanc, 79–97; Pilbeam, French Socialists before Marx, 157–62; Hayat, Quand la république était révolutionnaire, 141–55.
186 Louis Blanc, Discours aux travailleurs, par Louis Blanc, prononcé le 10 mars au Luxembourg (Paris, 1848), 7.
187 Rapport de la Commission d'enquête sur l'insurrection qui a éclaté́ dans la journée du 23 juin et sur les événements du 15 mai, vol. 1 (Paris, 1848), 118.
188 Ibid., 120.
189 Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, “What Is the Third Estate?”, in Sieyès, Political Writings: Including the Debate between Sieyès and Tom Paine in 1791, ed. and trans. Michael Sonenscher (Indianapolis, 2003), 92–162.
190 In the much shorter second part of Organization, Blanc focused on intellectual property and proposed the establishment of “social publishing and bookselling houses” based on the principles of the “social workshops.” OT (1848), 220–69. He was virtually silent on agriculture.
191 Blanc, 1848, 150–51.
192 Blanc, Discours aux travailleurs, 5–6.
193 Ibid.
194 Maurice Agulhon, 1848 ou l'apprentissage de la république: 1848–1852 (Paris, 2002), 50.
195 Karl Marx, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” in Marx, Later Political Writings, ed. Terrell Carver (Cambridge, 1996), 31–127, at 31.
196 Karl Marx, The Class Struggles in France (1848–1850) (New York, 1964), 44–5.
197 On Marx and the 1848 Revolution see Leipold, Bruno, “The Meaning of Class Struggle: Marx and the 1848 June Days” History of Political Thought 42/3 (2021), 464–99Google Scholar.
198 “Minutes of the Central Committee Meeting of 15 September 1850,” in Karl Marx, The Political Writings, ed. David Fernbach (London, 2019), 333–8, at 337.
199 For example, Proudhon criticized Blanc's statism and plans for organizing labor in La solution du problème social, arguing instead for the organization of credit. Blanc's pacifist reformism also put him into conflict with insurrectionary republicans and socialists such as Blanqui. In fact, his pacifism is one of the reasons why Blanc did not join the Paris Commune in 1871, putting a permanent stain on his reputation among socialists. Loubère, Louis Blanc, 104–9, 195–8. There was also a discrepancy between the middle-class socialist proposals for democratic labor associations (e.g. Blanc's “social workshops”) and workers’ demands for more immediate reforms on unemployment and wage levels. Iorwerth Prothero, Radical Artisans in England and France, 1830–1870 (Cambridge, 1997), 163–5. Most strikingly, the insurgents of June 1848 and the recruits of the Mobile Guard were composed of people from almost identical social background. Mark Traugott, Armies of the Poor: Determinants of Working-Class Participation in the Parisian Insurrection of June 1848 (Princeton, 1985), 69–71.