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The Intellectual Origins of French Jacobin Socialism

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The Intellectual Origins of French Jacobin Socialism LEO A. LOUBERE THE INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF FRENCH JACOBIN SOCIALISM This essay was written with the thought in mind that there is need for more clarification in the terminology used to describe certain socialist philosophies of the nineteenth century. It seems clear that the terms "democratic socialism" or "social democracy" have lost much of the meaning they might have had in the past. "Democratic" as an adjec- tive or "democracy" as a noun, have been so abused that today they may convey the idea of either a civil libertarian kind of government or a form of totalitarianism. Indeed, the words made for confusion in the nineteenth century when Jacobins, Babouvians, Blanquists, even Bonapartists, claimed each to be true representatives of the general will, and either executed or would have executed those representing opposing wills. Nonviolent were P.-J.-B. Buchez and Louis Blanc, each of whom claimed to be a democratic socialist. Yet in 1848 they opposed each other with intense vehemence. There is need then, for definition and delineation. The problem of clarification involves a reinterpretation of certain socialist ideologies and a more definite understanding of the forces which brought about the politicizing of them. For France, only one author made this latter topic the subject of a special study.1 However, he fell somewhat short of his goal, especially for the pre-18 48 period, the one with which this essay deals. The purpose of this study, there- fore, is to offer a more precise explanation concerning the origin of one of the currents of early socialist philosophy, called here Jacobin socialism. This task calls for an investigation of the efforts made by certain left-wing thinkers to unite two distinct ideologies: Jacobin democracy and co-operative socialism. The seminal ideas of these ideologies appeared during the eigh- teenth century and were drawn, on the one hand, from the principle 1 See Marcel Prelot, L'evolution politique du socialisme francais, 1789-1954 (Paris, 1939). Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.35.76, on 25 Sep 2021 at 10:34:24, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001437 416 LEO A. LOUBERE of popular sovereignty, and, on the other hand, from two contrasting theories of landed property. There was the radicalist theory which sought to make land accessible to all men by parceling it among them as individual proprietors, and the socialist theory which intended to make it available to all men by transferring it to them as collective owners. The latter ideal necessitated the equitable partition of produce rather than of land. In the eighteenth century these two tendencies - the term "schools" would be misleading here - were not sharply divided. Both were influenced by a rather widespread approbation of limited economic controls. Both were also given to open denunciation of "ks riches", which perhaps heralded the nineteenth century criticism of "Us capitalistes"1. Finally, both tendencies shared a similar ethical foun- dation and outlook that distinguished them from the nascent liberal movement, from the ethics of utilitarianism. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the father of French radicalism, was not at one with most of the individualistic liberals of his time. They pro- claimed that private property was a sacred natural right. It is true that some of them were not prepared to push the doctrine of natural right to an extreme, but Rousseau was more emphatic when he held that regulation and even dispossession were not violations of natural law.2 However, the fact that he condemned the first enclosure of land, or that he advocated in his draft constitution for Corsica a kind of state socialism, did not make him a true socialist. Rather, in his gen- eral social philosophy he defended individual possession on condition that no one owned property in excess.3 As a moralist he held that the economic dependence of the poor on the rich was degrading, the solvent of the individual's ethical conscience. It was the man of mo- derate property, the simple man, who promised to become the virtuous citizen. He therefore attributed to the general will and its agent, the government, the power to confiscate and distribute property so that each individual would become virtuous. The state was not to become in a true sense a welfare agency but a moralizing agency.4 Limited private property, under these conditions, was also to be a moralizing agency. Thus grew up the radicalist distinction between a property right as a natural absolute and possession as a social contingency. In contrast, Morelly and Gabriel Bonnot de Mably took the position that private ownership of land, in whatever form, was the cause of 1 Maxime Leroy, Histoire des idees sociales en France (Paris, 1946), I, pp. 60-61. 2 Andre Lichtenberger, Le socialisme francais au XVIIIe siecle (Paris, 1895), p. 157. 3 Oeuvres (Paris, 1852), II, p. 444. 4 Ernst Cassirer, The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (New York, 1954), pp. 56-64. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.35.76, on 25 Sep 2021 at 10:34:24, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001437 INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS JACOBIN SOCIALISM 417 social evil. They too, based their views on moral considerations.1 Like Rousseau, they were inspired by Lycurgus, Plato, and the Bible, and in seeking the principles of a good society they condemned luxury and laziness and uncontrolled individualism.2 These were the social evils which they identified with inviolable property rights and the gross inequality that resulted from such rights. All three thinkers differed from the liberals in that their society of virtue was one in which general equality was the first condition of liberty. They argued that where there was no equality there could be no social unity, and men would become free only as integral members of a unified society. In addition, they thought in terms of agricultural pursuits and small town craftsmanship, and inclined alike to share a distrust of the rich as well as of the poor of the cities. Mably referred contemptuously to industrial workers as "des hommes vils"? What distinguished Rousseau from the socialists, apart from pro- perty considerations, was his greater concern with the problems of government and his emphasis on popular sovereignty as the political basis of freedom. The socialists were far less clear in this matter. Morelly held that any form of government would be acceptable provided there was no private property.4 Mably was vaguer still; in fact, he despaired of ever having good government, "men are too depraved for there to be a wise statecraft".5 The most accurate state- ment to be made is that the socialist tendency was political-minded in only a vague, rather unconcerned fashion. It revealed hardly any awareness of the relation of an economic system to the power of the state.6 II During the Convention, 1792-95, the heirs of the radical tradition were in control, and their Republic of Virtue assumed a decidedly anti-socialist stand. Laws provided for the execution of proponents of the agrarian law and of any idea subversive of property.7 Many 1 Morelly, Code de la nature, edited by Gilbert Chinard (Paris, 1950), pp. 241 ff. See Lichtenberger, pp. 237-38; F. J. C. Hearnshaw, ed., The Social and Political Ideas of Some Great French Thinkers of the Age of Reason (London, 1930), pp. 237 ff. a Kingsley Martin, The Rise of French Liberal Thought, edited by J. P. Mayer (Rev. ed.: New York, 1956), pp. 202, 237. 8 Oeuvres completes (Lyon, 1792), VI, 525; for Rousseau see Alfred Cobban, Rousseau and the Modern State (London, 1934), chap. vii. 4 Code de la nature, pp. 196, 217-18, 230. 5 Quoted in Lichtenberger, p. 234; see also Hearnshaw, pp. 246-47. 6 See the interesting remarks in Harold Lasky, The Socialist Tradition in the French Revolution (London, 1930), p. 5. 7 A. Lichtenberger, Le socialisme et la Revolution francaise (Paris, 1889), p. 260. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.35.76, on 25 Sep 2021 at 10:34:24, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001437 418 LEO A. LOUBERE Jacobins favored equality, but conceived of it as a general uniformity among men in thought and action rather than common ownership. The most advanced of them, Maximilien Robespierre and Louis de Saint-Just, followed Rousseau in their belief that political equality was a delusion unless based on economic justice. Their proposals, however, were designed to limit individual acquisition of wealth, not to collectivize it. Important was their concept of the relation be- tween individual rights and the role of society. Robespierre, in the tradition of Rousseau, placed property among those rights granted by society rather than among the inviolable natural rights. He then went farther than Rousseau when he gave a marked social orientation to the Rights of Man. He proclaimed that society owed to the indivi- dual the right to work or to assistance when incapacitated.1 It is true that his views were not shared by all Jacobins; many of them, espe- cially the provincials, failed to discern any intimate connection be- tween the humane debt of society and popular sovereignty. They, also readers of Le contrat social, shared its author's distrust toward the plutocracy and the masses, and were not greatly moved by the moderate social organicism of the radical left wing.2 Not even the enrages and the Hebertists attacked the ideal of limited private property, being anti-capitalist petty bourgeois.3 Despite these qualifications the Jacobin experiment marked an im- portant phase in the history of Jacobin socialism.
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