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The French Revolution and the Origins of Socialism: the Case of Early French Socialism

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The French Revolution and the Origins of Socialism: the Case of Early French Socialism THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND THE ORIGINS OF SOCIALISM: THE CASE OF EARLY FRENCH SOCIALISM Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/fh/article/6/2/185/630352 by guest on 29 September 2021 DAVID W. LOVELL* The origins of particular ideas or systems of ideas are difficult, if not im- possible, to establish with certainty. Nevertheless, we regularly employ more or less useful operating assumptions about them. In considering Socialism, for example, the case for Mosaic provenance is rightly over- whelmed by the popularity of attributing its emergence to the combined effects of the French and Industrial Revolutions.1 Illuminating as the latter formula may be it is, beyond a certain point, unhelpful. The historical sym- metry of the coalescing of revolutionary exemplar with proletarian social agency, which it suggests, underpins the self-image of only one (albeit the predominant) current of Socialism, the Marxist. This formula also tends to dim our appreciation of the diversity and complexity of Socialism, especially of its earliest currents; its different developments in France and England, in particular;2 and the minutiae of the Revolutionary legacies and their mode of transmission. As the grand Marxian synthesis unravels, pur- suing such details may allow a better view of Socialism itself. Explanations of the French Revolutionary heritage of Socialism can be grouped into two (not necessarily exclusive) types.3 First is the claim that the example of radical oppositional groups and plots during the later phases of the Revolution fed directly into Socialism. Thus the * The author is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics, Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia. He wishes to thank: the University College, Univer- sity of New South Wales for a Special Research Grant which enabled part of the research for this article to be undertaken in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; and Professor William Doyle of the University of Bristol for his encouragement. 1 See A. Gray, The Socialist tradition-. Moses to Lenin (New York, 1968). By contrast, G. Lichthelm, The origins of socialism (1969), pp. 17-98, saw French Socialists as 'heirs of the French Revolution'. For an affirmation of Lichtheim's view, see also L. Kolakowski, Main currents of Marxism. I. The founders, trans. P. S. Falla (Oxford, 1981), pp. 182-233. 1 Hedva Ben-Israel, for example, argues that 'English socialism was not connected with the French movement nor did it grow from the tradition of the French Revolution': English historians on the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1968), p. 159. 1 Francois Furet embraces both: 'En effet I'idee socialiste, ou communiste ... a recu de la Revolution francaise, avec Babeuf, une sorte de confirmation de I'histoire. II n'est que d'eten- dre I'idee d'egalite au domaine economique et social, en repassant du citoyen a l'homme, pour tomber sur la critique de la propriete privee': 'Revolution francaise et tradition jacobine', The French Revolution and the creation of modern political culture, ii, ed. C. R. Lucas (Oxford, 1988), 329-39 at p. 336. © Oxford University Press 1992 French History, Vol. 6No. 2, pp. 185-205 186 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND ORIGINS OF SOCIALISM egalitarianism of the Enrages4 and especially the hostility to private proper- ty of the Babouvists - transmitted by way of Buonarroti's 1828 publication of the La conspiration pour I'egalite, dite de Babeuf- inspired the early Socialists.5 Secondly, the Revolution is said to have contributed indirectly by beginning a relentless logic of demands for equality and democracy (which actuated the aforementioned plots). Within the 'bourgeois' political and economic framework it created or ratified, those demands were insatiable. Jean Jaures became a Socialist on the strength of this logic. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/fh/article/6/2/185/630352 by guest on 29 September 2021 'Le socialisme', he declared, 'est l'accomplissement de la Republique eten- due de la cite a 1'atelier ... la realisation totale de la democratic dans la vie economique comme dans la vie politique.'6 Whatever their purchase on later Socialism, such explanations are not adequate to account for its earliest manifestation, from around 1830 until 1848, in France. As to their specifics, it is perhaps enough to mention that the early Socialists abhorred and feared revolutionary violence; the aboli- tion of property was generally not among their aims; and their watchword was organization rather than democracy. And despite Jaures's understan- dably French stress on continuity, both types of explanation tend to stress the distance between Socialism and the French Revolution. Both express in different ways Sylvain Marechal's conviction that the Revolution was only the forerunner of a final, and far more profound revolution.7 The prevail- ing Socialist view on which they draw sees the Revolution as, broadly speaking, a struggle of class against class, which led to the ascendancy of the bourgeoisie and the defeat of feudalism and its aristocratic stretcher- bearers. The Revolution heralds capitalist society; Socialism requires a more thoroughgoing revolution, a new break. Yet it will be argued here that most of the early French Socialists saw the revolutionary work as (thankfully) behind them; that theirs was not a doctrine which sought to heighten (the workers' awareness of) class antagonism; and that they saw themselves as fulfilling the Revolution, not attempting to transcend it. In this essay, the transmission of the Revolutionary heritage to early French Socialism will be sketched by way of the writings of Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier, and with reference to the peculiar role and nature of the 1830 Revolution. The Socialist implications of this heritage are brought into sharp relief by contrasting the early French Socialists with their Com- munist contemporaries. Three major issues - the suitability of violence as a ' The claim that the Enrages were themselves Socialists is rejected in R. B. Rose, The Enragis: Socialists of the French Revolution? (Sydney, 1965). ' Marx and Engels wrote: 'The revolutionary movement which began in 1789 in the Cercle social, which in the middle of its course had as its chief representatives Leclerc and Roux, and which finally with Babeuf s conspiracy was temporarily defeated, gave rise to the communist idea which Babeuf's friend Buonarroti re-introduced in France after the Revolution of 1830': K. Marx and F. Engels, The holy family, in Collected works, iv (1975), 119. ' Jean Jaures, 23 Oct. 1902, cited in Jean Jaures, ed. V. Auriol (1962), p. 105. ' See S. Marechal, 'Manifesto of the Equals', in P. Buonarroti, Babeuf s conspiracy for equality (1836), trans. B. O'Brien (New York, 1965), p. 315. DAVID W. LOVELL 187 method of social and political change; the future of private property; and the meaning of 'equality' - will serve here to encapsulate their differences. This article will conclude by reflecting on the complexity of Socialism which is presented by such a study of origins and influences. First, however, the notion of Revolutionary heritage as it relates to early Socialism must be clarified. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/fh/article/6/2/185/630352 by guest on 29 September 2021 The Revolution was both large and intricate, as a cursory glance at its history suggests and specialist studies continue to reveal. To regard it as univocal is an illusion created by distance and fostered by one slogan in particular - 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity' - even though revolutionaries themselves differed over the meanings of its constituents, disagreed about the relative emphasis which should be placed on each, and all the while ex- ploited their malleability. The Revolution had many legatees: its slogans and symbols were appropriated by various causes. It is thus no surprise that the writing of its history was, until fairly recently by some estimates, also an exercise in politics; in the nineteenth century, it was intensely so.8 William Doyle explained the breadth and diversity of the Revolution's ap- peal by arguing that despite its proclamations of principle, 'the Revolution appears to have stood for nothing constant at all';9 it did not stand, it was made to stand. For early French Socialism, as for many other political cur- rents of the time, 'the Revolution' was a touchstone. Given the foregoing considerations, we are entitled to ask: 'Which Revolution?' The Revolution with which the early FrencrTSocialists sought resonance was not the Revolution of 1789, or of 1793,10 though some made that distinction and were enthusiasts for Robespierre (but not for the Terror). It was certainly not the Revolution of Babeuf and the lesser-known 'ultras'. Rather, it was the Revolution of just recognition and reward for contribu- tion to the Nation or society; the Revolution of the Rights of Man, which also recognized that resources might have to be provided to allow all men the ability to exercise their rights; the Revolution which largely accepted private property and earned wealth, and which yielded only reluctantly to the threatening crowd on this and other issues; the anticlerical, but not anti-Christian Revolution, despite dechristianization; the Revolution which conflated French and international interests; the self-critical Revolu- 1 This point is made in various places; sec, for example, N. Hampson, 'The French Revolu- tion and its historians', The permanent revolution: the French Revolution and its legacy, 1789-1989, ed. G. Best (Chicago, 1989), pp. 211-34. ' W. Doyle, 'The principles of the French Revolution', The impact of the French Revolu- tion on European consciousness, ed. H. T. Mason and W. Doyle (Gloucester, 1989), pp. 1-10 at p. 8. 10 Jessica Peixotto argued, by contrast, that on many crucial issues 'the French Revolu- tionists of '93 and the French Socialists of 1900 are scarcely separated in opinion': The French Revolution and modern French Socialism (New York, 1901), p.
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