Alexandre Auguste LEDRU-ROLLIN (1807–74) was a French Republican politician who was minister of the interior in the Provisional Government of 1848. During the crisis of May 15 he sided with the party of order against the working class, although he stood as a socialist candidate during that year’s Presidential election. He opposed President Louis Napoleon and went into exile in London.
Pierre LEROUX (1797–1871) was a French philosopher and follower of Saint-Simon who, in an 1834 essay entitled “Individualism and Socialism,” introduced the term “socialism” into French political discourse. The son of an artisan, he helped found Le Globe, the official organ of the Saint-Simonian community of which he was a prominent member. After the outbreak of the revolution of 1848 he was elected to the Constituent Assembly, and in 1849 to the Legislative Assembly.
LOUIS-PHILIPPE I (1773–1850) became King of the French after the July Revolution of 1830. The elected Chamber of Deputies proclaimed Louis-Philippe as the new French king, displacing the senior branch of the House of Bourbon. He ruled until 1848 in what was known as the July Monarchy. He was termed the Citizen King and was overthrown by the February Revolution.
Thomas Robert MALTHUS (1766–1834) was a Reverend who wrote on political economy. He is best known for An Essay on the Principle of Population which blamed poverty on overpopulation rather than an unjust social system. Much hated in working class circles as his arguments were invoked against social change and even moderate welfare reforms.
Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de MONTESQUIEU (1689–1755) was a French political thinker of the Era of the Enlightenment. He is famous for his articulation of the theory of separation of powers within a state. He also argued for a “confederate republic” to ensure the ideal scale of government required for political liberty (i.e., security against abuse of power).
Robert OWEN (1771–1858) was a Welsh utopian socialist who was originally a successful businessman and philanthropist. In his textile factory in New Lanark, Scotland, he used his profits to improve the lives of his employees by introducing shorter working hours, schools for children and renovated housing. From that, he became one of the founders of socialism and the co-operative movement. He aimed to abolish capitalism by means of model communities and set one up called New Harmony in Indiana, USA.
Jean-Jacques ROUSSEAU (1712–78) was an extremely influential social theorist whose ideas on democracy predominated in radical circles before, during and after the Great French Revolution of 1789. Key works are The Social Contract and Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men. The influence of Rousseau can be seen in Proudhon’s work, both from the terminology used and by the fact that he returned to criticise Rousseau time and time again.
Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de SAINT-SIMON (1760–1825), usually referred to as Henri de Saint-Simon, was one of the leading Utopian socialists of the early nineteenth century. He advocated a form of state capitalism, wherein industrial chiefs would control society as the men who are fitted to organise society for productive labour are entitled to rule it. Class conflict is not present in his work.
Jean-Baptiste SAY (1767–1832) was a businessman and the leading French laissez-faire economist of his time. He expounded classical liberal views in favour of free competition and free trade and in 1831 he was made professor of political economy at the College de France. He originated Say’s law, which is often quoted as “supply creates its own demand.”
Charles Maurice de TALLEYRAND-PÉRIGORD (1754–1838) was a French diplomat who worked with the regime of Louis XVI, through the French Revolution and then under Napoleon I, Louis XVIII, Charles X, and Louis-Philippe. During the French Revolution, Talleyrand supported the revolutionary cause, then he was instrumental in the 1799 coup d’état of 18 Brumaire, and soon after he was made Foreign Minister by Napoleon. After Napoleon, he was one of the key agents of the restoration of the House of Bourbon. After 1830, he became ambassador to Britain where he strove to reinforce the legitimacy of Louis-Philippe’s regime. Said of himself: “Regimes may fall and fail, but I do not.”
Louis-Adolphe THIERS (1797–1877) was a French politician. In his early days, he was well known in Liberal society and was one of the animators of the 1830 revolution. One of the Radical supporters of Louis-Philippe, he become his prime minister. Elected in 1848 to the Constituent Assembly, Thiers was a leader of the right-wing liberals and bitterly opposed the socialists. He suppressed the Paris Commune of 1871.
EVENTS
14th July 1789: The day when the Bastille, a medieval fortress and prison in Paris, was stormed. It represented royal authority in the centre of Paris and its fall was the turning point of the French Revolution. It subsequently became an icon of the French Republic and is a public holiday in France. It is usually called Bastille Day in English.
10th August 1792: When tens of thousands besieged the Tuileries palace in Paris. This insurrection, which had the backing of the insurrectionary Paris Commune and its sections, forced the royal family to shelter with the Legislative Assembly. It was the effective end of the French Monarchy. Its formal end came six weeks later, as one of the first acts of business of the new Convention.
The Eighteenth of Brumaire: Date of the Napoleonic coup d’état of 9th November 1799. According to the revolutionary French Republican calendar this date was 18 Brumaire, Year VIII of the Republic.
July Revolution: In 1830 Charles X’s attempt to enforce repressive ordinances touched off a mass rebellion (July 27–30). It marked the shift from one constitutional monarchy, the Bourbon Restoration, to another, the July Monarchy with the ascent of Charles’ cousin Louis-Philippe, the Duc d’Orléan, on August 9th. It involved a limited substitution of the principle of popular sovereignty for hereditary right. Supporters of the Bourbon line were called “Legitimists,” and supporters of Louis-Philippe “Orleanists.”
February Revolution: The monarchy collapsed on the 24th February 1848 leading to the creation of the Provisional Government in Paris which included state socialist Louis Blanc and worker Albert (the nom de guerre of Alexandre Martin). It immediately issued decrees guaranteeing the means of subsistence of the worker by labour, labour for all citizens, the right of association, and the creation of national workshops. The 25th saw groups of workers return to the Hôtel de Ville carrying the red flag. An attempt to make this the flag of the new republic failed. Also referred to by Proudhon as 24th February.
17th March 1848: Date of a republican march of 150–200,000 calling for the withdrawal of the remaining regular troops from Paris and postponement of the planned elections for the National Guard and Constituent Assembly to allow more time for campaigning. While some radical republicans may have been planning to use this march as the base for an insurrection to purge the Provisional Government of conservatives, nothing came of it. It did gain some concessions from the government as well as frightening the bourgeoisie into seeking action against the working class threat.
16th April 1848: Date of a workers march from the Champ de Mars to the Hôtel de Ville in Paris which, it was claimed by reactionaries, was planning to seize the town hall and proclaim a communist government. It was met by the mobilisation of 50,000 National Guards.
15th May 1848: Date of workers march of between 10 and 20 thousand demanding intervention in Poland and the creation of a Ministry of Labour and Progress. When a delegation of 25 demonstrators was allowed in to petition the Constituent Assembly, thousands flooded into the galleries and the assembly hall. A call was then raised to take the Hôtel de Ville. This ‘insurrection’ was used by the government as the pretext it needed to curtail working class activities, freedoms and organisations.
23rd June 1848: Date of French workers’ revolt after the closure of the National Workshops created by the Second Republic to give work to the unemployed. The revolt was crushed by the 26th June by General Louis Eugène Cavaignac, with 1,500 killed and 15,000 political prisoners subsequently deported to Algeria. Cavaignac was then named head of the ex
ecutive power. This marked the end of the hopes of a “Democratic and Social Republic” and the victory of the bourgeoisie over the working class.
10th December 1848: Date of the first, and last, Presidential election of the Second Republic. The 1848 election saw the surprise victory of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte with 74% of the vote (Louis-Eugène Cavaignac was considered certain to win). His victory was due to the votes of the rural population.
29th January 1849: The election of Louis- Napoléon as President was seen as a victory for conservative principles and the make up of his first government reinforced this. Republican officials were purged at all levels and a campaign against the National Assembly was conducted. This climaxed on the 29th of January, 1848, when the assembly voted for its own dissolution and so a new general election.
13th May 1849: The date of the elections held after the dissolution of the National Assembly. The Conservatives used the campaign to stress a message that the social order was established by God as wealth was the reward for ability and hard work. The left got nearly 35% of the votes cast, with the Assembly having around 75 moderate Republicans, 500 Conservatives and 180 radical republicans and socialists.
13th June 1849: After the President of the Republic, Louis-Napoléon, sent troops to overthrow the Roman Republic of 1849, the remaining Republicans tried to impeach him and his ministers. The Conservative Majority rejected this defence of its own constitutional power and the left-Republicans stormed out. They called a peaceful demonstration on
June 13th to protest the Roman expedition but it was dispersed by troops. Some resistance was organised by the more resolute parts of the Mountain at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers but this failed to gain support. The government used this to declare a state of siege, ban the clubs and further shackle the press. The jails were filled with radical Republicans and socialists.
31st May 1850: When the complementary elections to the National Assembly in March and April 1850 resulted in an unexpected victory for the left, the alarmed conservative majority passed an electoral law to restrict universal male suffrage. To register to vote, proof of three years’ domicile from the record of direct taxes for the canton or commune had to be provided. This disenfranchised around three million working class men (for example, 62% of the electorate in Paris and 51% in the Nord).
24th November 1851: The date when the National Assembly approved the direct election of the President (rather than election by the assembly). This followed on from Louis- Napoléon’s year long campaign to change the Constitution so he could stand for re-election for President. When the vote on 17th November failed to achieve the required two-thirds majority, his plans for a coup d’état were finalised.
2nd December 1851: The date of coup d’état staged by Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte. He dissolved the Chamber which he claimed was taking the power he held by virtue of being the directly elected President, re-established universal suffrage, had all the party leaders arrested, and summoned a new assembly to prolong his term of office for ten years. The limited resistance was crushed by a state of siege. A plebiscite on December 20th overwhelmingly ratified the coup d’état while another, a year later, similarly ratified the creation of the Second Empire. The plebiscites confirming Louis-Napoléon in power disillusioned Proudhon considerably and his faith in the people fell to its lowest level. This is reflected in his subsequent concerns that a centralised democracy made the people susceptible to supporting demagogues like Louis-Napoléon.
INDEX
1815 pact
1830 Revolution
1848 Revolution
and banking system
and financial crisis
June insurrection
1968
A
absolutism
abstraction
Academy of Moral and Political Sciences
agiotage
agrarian law
Albert
Algeria
colonisation of
Aman, Peter Henry
American Civil War
anarchism
anarcho-syndicalism
and collectivism
and communism
communist-anarchism
and government
individualist
revolutionary
anarchy
industrial
versus reform
anti-communism
anti-dogmatism
anti-racism
anti-semitism
approximation
and human progress
Arago, François
Archer, Julian P. W.
Arendt, Hannah
d’Argout, Antoine Maurice Apollinaire
aristocracy
Arkwright, Richard
assignats. See also money (paper)
assistance. See also charity
right to
association . See also workers’ co-operatives
and monopoly
as mythic obligation
communist
mutualist
of commercial interests
the Association
aubaine. See alsodroit d’aubaine
Austria
authoritarian regime
authority . See also power
balanced with liberty
identity with property
necessarily entangled with liberty
autogestion ouvrière
Avrich, Paul
B
Babeuf, François-Noël
Bacon, Francis
Bakunin, Michael
balance of power (European)
Bank of Exchange
Bank of France
Bank of the People
Council of Oversight
General Assembly
General Syndicate of Production and Consumption
Barbès, Armand Sigismond Auguste
Barrot, Camille Hyacinthe Odilon
Bastiat, Claude Frédéric
Bastide, Jules
Bauchart, Quentin
beauty
bénéfice d’escompte
de Béranger, Pierre Jean
Berry, David
bigotry
bill of exchange. See also money, paper
binding mandate [mandat impératif ]. See also imperative mandate
Bineau, Jean-Martial
Blanc, Louis Jean Joseph Charles
Blanqui, Jérôme-Adolphe
Blanqui, Louis Auguste
de la Boëtie, Étienne
de Bonald, Louis Gabriel Ambroise
Bonaparte, Louis-Napoléon
Bonaparte, Napoléon
Bonaparte, Napoléon (emperor’s nephew)
Bonaparte, Pierre-Napoléon
Bonifacius VIII,
Bonjean, Louis Bernard
bookselling
bourgeoisie
Boyer, Adolphe
Brissot, Jacques-Pierre
British Labour Party
Buchanan, David
Bugeaud, Thomas Robert
Buret, Eugene
buy back of assets by the state (rachat)
C
Cabet, Étienne
Campanella, Tommaso
Capetian dynasty
capital
accumulation of
human
productivity of
capitalistic feudalism
Carnot, Hyppolite
Castel, Charles Irénée
Caussidiére, Marc
Cavaignac, Louis-Eugène
centralisation
and corruption
and despotism
democratic
intellectual and liberal
organic
versus despotism
Champ de Mars
Changarnier, Nicolas Anne Théodule
charity. See also assistance
Charles X,
Charter
Charter of 1814
Charter of 1830
Chartists
de C
hateaubriand, François-René
Chevalier, Michel
Chrsitianity. See religion
Cicero, Marcus Tullius
circulation
Civil Code
civil disobedience
class struggle
and reconciliation
clubs
Code Napoléon
Cole, G.D.H.
collective force
philosophical conception of
commandite
commerce
commercial societies
commodities
commons and enclosure
communes
communism,
and inequality
and the state
community [communauté]
commutative
competition
and monopoly
socialisation of
Comte, Auguste
Comte, Charles
Concordat of 1802
Condorcet, Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de
Considérant, Victor Prosper
Constitution of 1848
Constitution of Year ISee also Declaration des droits et des devoirs de l’homme et du citoyen
Property Is Theft! Page 108
