An Experiment in Socialism

1848,   An Experiment in Socialism

            I am afraid I have fallen somewhat behind in my reading of newspapers, and in a vain attempt to catch up I happened to come across an article in the June 2, 1871 issue of the (New York) World that struck my fancy. This was the time of the Commune in Paris, and the article contained a brief history of  socialism.  They say that history repeats itself, the first time in tragedy, the second time in farce.  In this case farce was already reached by 1848, as can be seen from the following excerpt from that article:

“When the revolution of February 1848 became a fait accompli, it soon became evident that  there was a want of unity in the feelings and purposes of the republicans who had acceded to power. 

One party, headed by Lamartine, desired the republic for its own sake, or at least for the general prospect of good that it held out—these were called the moderate or political republicans.

The other class consisted of those who viewed the republic as a means to an end. Confident that it would come, but weary of waiting for it, they had occupied themselves with the discussion of social questions, the settlement of which they believed would form the first and principal business of the republic when it arrived.”Let others”, said they, “strive in the political arena to bring in the republic. We will assist them when it is necessary to do so, but meanwhile we will rehearse our parts in an imaginary republic of our own.” These were the social republicans. They took part in the struggle but when the fight  was over they stood aloof from their companions and attempted to dictate. “You have done your part, “ they said, “in achieving the republic and now we will show you what to do with it.”

And between these discordant factions the struggle soon commenced. The socialist leaders virtually told their political friends to attend to foreign nations and that they would manage home affairs.

Three decrees were at once forced by them upon their colleagues, and these were: First the adoption of the principal that the state is bound to guarantee subsistence to all its citizens; second, the establishment of national workshops; third, the establishment of a commission to look into the condition of the working-class.   

The National Workshops

The first business of the new republic was therefore the institution of the ateliers nationaux, or national workshops… The number of applicants for admission to these workshops was at once considerable, and more claimants daily poured in, men really in want, (also) the better class of mechanics, clerks, and even professional men, who had held out as long as they could, as well as idle vagabonds of all  sorts who calculated on a franc a day for doing nothing. and finally hosts of workmen from the country who obtained admission by means of forged certificates of residence.

The wages they received at first was two francs a day, if employed, and one franc if not, (which allowance it was after found necessary to decrease.) Unfortunately work could only be found for but a small portion of the men enrolled, and even then some of the labor to which they were sent was of the most useless nature; and thus before many weeks had elapsed a mass of dangerous idlers had accumulated in Paris, and increased daily, the whole number  enrolled on May 16 being 87,942, which total increased to over 100,000 by the end of the month, of which, owing to the difficulty of devising work, not 15,000 were employed, the rest receiving their allowance of one franc a day instead.

The ateliers nationaux degenerated therefore into a mere system of relieving pauperism in disguise, but it would have been imprudent to have told the recipients so, as they had been schooled to believe that what they received belonged to them as a right.

Louis Blanc and the Luxembourg Commission

On the formation of the Commission of Inquiry into the Condition of the Working Classes,… the position of President was given to Louis Blanc and the sittings appointed to be held at the Luxembourg , the other members (of the government) thus hoping to relieve themselves of the socialistic element in their (own) deliberations. With him was associated Albert the “ouvrier” and other acknowledged socialistic leaders.

In this commission all matters of dispute between workers  and employers were arranged, and in its discussions its president had an opportunity of dilating upon his favorite industrial scheme. On one occasion he committed himself to the essential principle of fraternal communism as expounded by Cabet, namely, that the ideal of society is that in which each man producing according to his aptitude and powers, shall receive according to his wants; and he declared that the vicious civilization of the time, which concealed aptitudes and begot factitious wants, was tending toward that state, and that equality of salaries would be a step in the right direction. On another occasion he told the working-classes, when they were in great distress, that “The means of subsistence during periods of difficulty were wages equal to those enjoyed during prosperity, with a participation of profits” and in the future, “the free exercise of their faculties, the entire gratification of their wants and even their desires-- en fin, the maximum of happiness. “

In the terrible commercial crisis that the revolution had occasioned, and the consequent suspension of all kinds of industry, Blanc and his colleagues at the Luxembourg were beset by the heads of bankrupt establishments, anxious for the state to buy them up and turn them into communist ateliers, or whatever they chose; in short the Palace of the Luxembourg became the depot for all sorts of complaints and the theatre for propounding all manner of visionary schemes.

Theory and Practice

            It is a mistake to credit Louis Blanc with the establishment of ateliers nationaux . In fact he condemned as “an insensate project” those workshops in which all trades were huddled together and set to perform work for which nine tenths of them were utterly disqualified. What he desired were ateliers sociaux—large factories in which persons of the same trade should be employed together and divide equally among themselves the entire profits of their industry.

            The position in which he was now placed enabled him to illustrate his theory by actual example. He therefore, along with his associates, started two industrial associations founded on the principle of equality, the one composed of saddlers, the other of tailors. The result of the experiment among the latter affords  such a curious commentary on the workings of the principle of equality as interpreted by Louis Blanc that we … present it (here).

            The tailors had placed at their disposal the Hotel Clichy, which was converted for the purpose from a debtors’ jail to a great national tailors’ shop, and given (to them) free of rent; in addition the government advanced the necessary capital, without interest, and ordered them to begin with 25,000 suits for the National Guard. The experiment was thus inaugurated under peculiarly favorable circumstances.

            As a preliminary step it was ascertained that the price for which the large tailors of Paris, who employed the bulk of the workmen and undertook government contracts, would require for same would be eleven francs each suit, which sum would include the profit of the master tailor after paying all his expenses. The government accordingly agreed to pay the same price to the new establishment, and 1,500 men were speedily collected and set to work.

            There being, however, no capital wherewith to pay the workmen while the order was being executed, the government advanced daily, in anticipation of the ultimate payment,  a sum equal to two francs per head as “subsistence money,” the balance to be paid and equally divided amongst them on the completion of the order. 

            The workmen were so delighted with the arrangement that, notwithstanding the law limiting the hours of labor to ten, the “glory, love, and fraternity” principle was so strong that they voluntarily worked twelve or thirteen hours a day, and the same on Sundays.

            But the result of the experiment was fatal. The first order was completed each man looked for his share of the gain. The riches of communism and the participation in the profits dazzled the views of the 1,500 tailors who had been content to receive the two francs a day for many weeks; and no doubt everyone in his own mind had appropriated his share of the “balance” and had felt in his own person the combined pleasure of “master and man”,

Eleven francs per dress for so many dresses came to so much. The subsistence money had to be deducted. The balance was to be divided as profit. Alas! It was a balance of loss and not of gain. Subsistence money had been paid equal to rather more, when it came to be calculated, than sixteen francs per dress; in place of eleven, at which the master tailor would have made a profit, paid his rent, the interest on his capital, and good wages to his men in place of a daily pittance for bare subsistence. The result was one of consternation and disappointment. Louis Blanc was not a match for the master tailors of Paris.”

(The “Constitutional Monarchy” of Louis-Philippe of Orleans in which franchise was limited to landholders who represented only one percent of the population, was overthrown in February of 1848 by individuals who represented all the rest of the French population. The leader was Lamartine, who however, gave some powers to the socialists, as described above. The first election under this regime was held in April of 1848, the socialists did very poorly, and the atelier nationaux, which had achieved no success and was  bankrupting the government, was doomed. The socialists attempted a revolution on May 12, and again when that scheme was altered in June (The alteration included drafting  the young unmarried men in the ateliers into the army.) The socialists also rebelled when Louis Napoleon was elected President of the Second Republic, and again when he usurped power and made himself Emperor.  Each time the rebellions were quickly defeated,  though in June with considerable damage to Paris. The Emperor made espousing socialism illegal for the twenty years his reign lasted.)

            It seems that in nature, subhuman creatures often act together as communities for subsistence or defense. Ants and bees do so, and so even do bacteria which form colonies and when threatened by the incursion of rival colonies the colonies somehow arrange to lob antibiotics at those rivals. But such creatures tend to do so without central direction, since usually they have no means of direct communication with a center, acting as a sort of distributed communication network and distributed action network as well.

            Human beings on the other hand find it almost impossible to understand the functioning of distributed networks, and find it much easier to imagine that centrally organized systems, though foreign to nature, can be made to be optimally efficient. Louis Blanc was neither the first nor the last to believe that the  concept of organization of industry that flowered in his brain would be superior to that which had evolved over time without him. The same human beings who are incapable of understanding how lowly bacterial colonies are able to produce and deploy antibiotics hope and expect to provide, out of their own brains,  rules for centrally controlling human populations (whose members are vastly more complicated than bacteria are) numbering in the hundreds of millions, more efficiently than those populations would function if left alone without them to their distributed networks.  The ludicrous failure of Blanc’s tailoring adventure provides a perfect model of the typical fate of such schemes and the same result is repeated with monotonous regularity every time such things are attempted.