Thanks to the recent flurry of new research, the revolution of 1848 is emerging as a period of ferment among French laborers in some ways more creative than anything that has occurred since. For a while they felt self-confident; they thought they had won and that the struggle was over. Without much central leadership or planning they set about rebuilding the world of labor as they wanted it, ignoring the warning signs of impending reaction until it was too late. Never again would they be so naive; but at the same time never again would their aims be formulated with such a slim admixture of market language. In the future, escaping from the reign of the market would be relegated to the status of a dim hope. Action would be increasingly planned with an eye to manipulating market forces. Many of the socialist and union organizations that later grew up under the Third Republic encouraged such manipulation. The state accommodated it. Laws allowing for strikes and unions and facilitating collective bargaining were slowly pushed through, at first by a liberalizing Empire, later by the working class' own elected Radical and socialist representatives.