Abstract
This article treats the intellectual problem of revolution, agency, and the advent of liberal democracy from the standpoint of mid-nineteenth century France in the aftermath of the 1848 revolutions. After a discussion of the theoretical and historiographical problem—in particular the relevance for this period in history of science studies—the article discusses the views of former Saint-Simonian and political economist, Michel Chevalier, eventually turning to the debate over the free market of goods and labor between the early French socialist Louis Blanc and Chevalier in Chevalier’s new role of liberal free trade activist who trumpeted the ideology of the mass marketplace. Chevalier’s engagement of the social question turned on a distinctively moral, ideological, and, ultimately, technocratic defense of the free market—this free market utopianism became both starker and more ideologically refined as a result of Chevalier’s engagement with Blanc, especially in regard to worker-education. Both referred to the new mass marketplace of cheap, retail goods created by the rapid advance of mass transport, modern logistics, as le bon marché. French political economists went so far as to invoke a new way of life: la vie a bon marché (literally, “life on the cheap”). This notion of work and life was opposed by Blanc on the grounds of fraternal social solidarity. Finally, and potently, the moral virtues of the free market were conceived by Chevalier as a direct answer to social revolution, a means for affording social stability.
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Notes
Furet argued in this familiar synoptic political narrative of two distinct traditions: authoritarian and democratic (republican). Furet, notably, defined the Revolutionary Tradition, descending from the Great Revolution of 1789 as issuing forth in two streams. Nevertheless, the influence of postmodern critics continued to shift criticism to the Enlightenment project itself. The Frankfurt School, principally Adorno’s, well known pessimistic account of the demobilization of critical agency (Adorno 1966) spawned wide ranging interventions and engagements from scholars in many fields including history under the general category of the critique of rationality or the human subject. As is well known, the more recent generation of critical theorists succeeding Jürgen Habermas have taken more nuanced, non-totalizing critiques of the rational, Enlightenment subject.
Bourdieu’s notion of the habitus has been applied as well to the eighteenth century. The Enlightenment’s elaboration of agency has been amenable to Bourdieu’s formulation of taste and class development. Titus Suck, for example, has argued that Kultur in Germany and civilization in France functioned in the fashion of Bourdieu’s elaboration of the notion of the habitus. See Suck (1987). In regard to weaknesses and known omissions in the application of Bourdieu’s theory of the habitus in the eighteenth century and earlier: Tony Bennett notes that in Bourdieu’s elaboration of taste and esthetics, particularly in their relationship to class, Bourdieu did not pay sufficiently close attention to Kant’s celebrated development of the field of aesthetics (Kant 1790) and, more importantly for the present purposes of this article, for the history of the mass marketplace, Bourdieu paid little note to previous theories of taste as related to the development of the marketplace as offered, for example, by Shaftesbury in the tradition of English civic humanism. See, Bennett (2007). The burden of political economists after 1848 was in overcoming class divisions through an appeal to technocracy and the mass marketplace.
The notion of a “primal history” of the nineteenth-century—the proliferation of material culture—is a key theme in Benjamin’s Arcades Project (1999). The title itself, the Paris Arcades, offers the precursor to the large scale environments for consumption that would be ushered in with the first universal expositions and the founding, at mid-century, of the modern practices of retail and distribution.
This term was often used by adherents of the utopian ideology of Saint-Simon. Scholars in technology studies have postulated the problem of “technological determinism,” where technological developments overwhelm the agency of individuals and polities. Indeed, Bruno Latour (1993) has appropriated the idea: “the parliament of men shall give way to the parliament of things.”
In particular, Rosalind Williams offers a compelling eighteenth-century account of Turgot’s Physiocratic attempt to create a reliable system of accounting as an important control mechanism (Levin 2000). For the purposes of this article, it is important to note that Michel Chevalier was a notable product of l’École polytechnique; he was an engineer by training. His colleague in the politics of the Second Empire, Frédéric Le Play was an alumnus as well. On the influence of the engineers (and technocrats) of the Second Empire, see Bruno Belhoste (2003).
Zeldin stated regarding the be-knighted reputation of the modestly liberal Olliver that, “opinion of Ollivier is not likely to change until the idea that the second empire was capable of being made liberal finds wide acceptance. This cannot happen until opinion on Napoleon III itself has altered and until the view gains ground that he was more than a farcical parody of his uncle, that he has an independent claim to statesmanship, particularly in domestic affairs” p. 212. Certainly, Price has helped considerably to complete this re-assessment. In regard to international affairs, one might note the contribution of David Wetzel in noting the skillful machinations of Napoleon III in diplomacy; see Wetzel (2003a, b).
Indeed, the ideology of this period in European history would only return with the end of another debate cast as a moral contest, the Cold War, post 1989. The post-1989 triumphalism of the “free world” was often described as a triumph of the moral virtues of the European economic recovery and the re-inscribing of an Americanized consumerism in Europe. In this vein, see Victoria de Grazia (2005).
The continuing theme of socialism as a kind of sickness, a pathology was basic to the on going reactions to socialism as these cropped up during in the course of the nineteenth-century—with a crescendo in France during the Paris Commune that echoed across the Atlantic to the United States, see Heather Richardson (2001). The origination of this notion of the pathological masses and the ideology of revolution can be dated to the French Revolution of 1789. An influential twentieth century interpretation in this vein was introduced by Crane Brinton (1965).
The updated version of Adam Smith’s popular homily is Milton Friedman’s story of the manufacture of a single, graphite pencil. The latter anecdote involves the interdependence of different national economies whereas Smith’s anecdote does not.
In his synthetic and classic account, The Great Transformation, Karl Polanyi spoke of a “double movement” in the attempt of workers still attached to the traditional economy to resist, often in open revolt, against the radical reshaping of the labor market heralded by the introduction of mechanization as well as mass distribution. See also Alexander Geschenkron’s early formulation of the persistence of earlier economies under his notion of late development (Geschenkron 1962). His treatment of France is especially notable in asserting that France underwent an unusually long period of self-conscious conceptualization in relating to the new world of work and production during its industrialization.
There were, as nearly all economic historians note, different tracks of industrialization in different countries. Segmented markets developed for different goods and at different rates of speed. The notion, borrowed from Marinetti’s Futurist movement of a radical break with all pre-existing economies—the demonic view of industrialization and modernization—is a troublesome caricature of actual events in different countries. In regard to artisan-industry, there are some similariieses in regard to the persistence of artisanship and traditional economies in the creation of products such as furniture in countries as disparate in size, geography, and culture as France and Japan where artisanship developed an enduring place in the economics, politics, and culture of these countries.
Jacob Viner offered a concise history of the ideological simplification that the free trade idea underwent. See Viner (1960). For Viner, the self-important, starkly polemical—albeit unsophisticated view of laissez-faire—had been captured by the work of propagandists such as Frédéric Bastiat. Viner suggested that the heavy-handed sermonizing was at once an over-simplification and largely without substantive merit. Nevertheless, as a legitimizing ideology—with echoes to this very moment-- during a critical period in French industrialization, this phase in the development of political economy should not be overlooked.
This period of free trade may not have survived regardless of the survival of the Second Empire. Price noted the re-adjustments of policy made during the waning days of the regime to accommodate popular pressure.
This tradition is not inconsequential. Viner had relegated the dusted-off homilies of Benjamin Franklin to the superficialities of the “movement of Bastiat” (Viner 1960). The number of references in the work of Michel Chevalier to Benjamin Franklin’s writings seem to indicate a larger, deeper connection to the free labor model, which would have its day in North America. In particular there are numerous references to Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Alamanc in Chevalier’s published work. The tradition of Benjamin Franklin as exemplar and public personality is a well noted tradition in Franklin scholarship.
Blanc is often placed outside his proper context in textbooks and even monographs of 1848; Blanc was directly engaging the attempt to implement the vast project of the mass marketplace. This would include the practice of financing, production, retailing, and the establishment of new spaces for the establishment of the material culture of the nineteenth century. Walter Benjamin’s kaleidoscopic engagement of this vast project is presented in fragmented under Arcades Project.
As Walter McKay (1933) in his early study of this period has noted, Blanc’s polemics are to be treated with great care particularly for historians. Blanc’s Organization of Work was to undergo many editions. The work first appeared in 1839. I am using the 1847 edition, which references Chevalier. McKay, influentially, translated Atleliers nationaux as “workshops.” Nevertheless, the term is not a precise equivalent for the French. Indeed, atelier might more accurately be translated as “artisan studios.” Indeed, the term atelier has been used casually in the Anglo-American context as a space for artistic endeavors. The term itself registers the specifically French national and cultural context in which ideas of individual subjectivity and work were fraught with contested meaning.
Again, this term is particular to the usage of political economists and free traders. Louis Blanc, who understood exactly what the free traders meant by this term, employed the term, bon marché, to mean the panoply of free trade policies, free competition, mechanization, and mass distribution entailed in a market society (“industrial society”). The term, bon marché, in this sense does not translate simply to the dictionary term, “cheapness” (57). While term “bon marché” is typically translated as “cheap,” this is not its precise English meaning in the given context. Michel Chevalier and Richard Cobden often used the phrase la vie a bon marché, which meant the “affordable life” (literally, “life on the cheap”) promised to workers by the free trade regime. Assuring necessaries, such as bread, was central to the affordable life. Yet Le bon marché referred to the entire system founded on free trade, affording goods at competitive prices through the advance of new transportation and logistics. Blanc, as Leo Loubère (1961) has pointed out, shaped his economic critique of the free market on the theoretical work of Sismondi: a self-regulating free market regime would lead to large scale aggregations of capital and the eventual increase in prices as monopolies were formed.
Adam Smith’s own career falls into phases. Most particularly, there is a seemingly sharp distinction between his early work, such as The Theory of Moral Sentiments and the latter works such as The Wealth of Nations. The influence of Hutchinson is most clearly seen in the early work. In the early work, Smith placed importance on such sentiments as sympathy in ordering social relations.
The terms “Virtue” and “Passion” are taken from a tradition that descends from the Enlightenment and coalesced during the Scottish Enlightenment in the so-called “School of Sentiment.” Frances Hutcheson (1999a, b) described the well-tempered, “virtuous person” (pp. 67-68): “Now he who examines all Opinions of good in objects, who prevents or corrects vain association of ideas, and thereby prevents extravagant admirations, or enthusiastic desires, above the real moment of good in objects, if he loses the transient rapture of the first success, yet he enjoys all the permanent Good or happiness which any object can afford; and escapes in a great measure, both the uneasy sensations of the more violent desires, and the torments of disappointment, to which persons of irregular imaginations are exposed. This is the case of the temperate and the chaste, with relation to the appetites; of the men of Moderation and Frugality, and corrected Fancy with regard to the pleasures of the imagination.” The calculus of passion and informed judgment has also been taken up by Albert O. Hirschman (1997).
Political economists considered moralization to be measured in the increase in the contentment of workers. The metric used to assess this contentment was offered by Villermé in his pioneering description of French textile towns suffering from economic depression and unemployment. The term, however, also implies the maintenance of good order, discipline, and industry among workers.
The Luxembourg Commission was a planning commission during the experimental Republic inaugurated in 1848 to help deal with the social crisis. One of its tasks was to issue a report on the condition of workers during the social crisis. Blanc was a member of the commission.
This term is, in essence, the notion of “flexible labor markets” where workers can barter their individual labor on the open markets (without medieval guild constraints) and move from one locale to another. The free labor orthodoxy was a well developed ideology during the nineteenth century, which helped to shape the politics of industrialization. On this issue in the American context, see Richardson (2001). The notion of cooperation between bosses (patrons) and workers is not only a well established narrative in the labor movement (collective bargaining, etc.) but it also holds an important place in the history of philanthropy, “enlightened industrialization.” See Ian C. Bradley (1987). In the latter work, especial note might be made of the “model communities” promoted by some so-called enlightened entrepreneurs.
That is not to say that the National Workshops that are included in nearly every European history textbook and narrative of the period are not relevant to the development of nineteenth-century socialism, but that the lasting—indeed continuous—institutional legacy of its partner organization, the Luxembourg Commission, was more influential in constituting the tradition of worker commissions that would be a hallmark of the Anglo-French, nineteenth-century Universal Expositions.
There has been extensive research particularly on the 1855 and 1867 Expositions in Paris, those that took place under the Second Empire.
The Universal Expositions that marked the nineteenth century were unique in one particular regard: They were intensely ideological and reflected a transformation in lived experience—the emergence of the marketplace. “Universal Exposition” is one term for these connected, government sponsored events. The term is often abbreviated as “Expo,” or changed to “World’s Fair.” The official institution of the Exposition movement remains in Paris, the Bureau des Expositions.
The Luxembourg Commission served as a model for the “Worker Commissions,” which would help organize and send workers to the Universal Expositions in France and England. These same commissions, overseen by Second Empire officials such as Frédéric Le Play, would write “worker reports” of what they learned or discovered at the Expositions. Previous work on these worker commission reports have neglected their original organization model: The Luxembourg Commission of 1848. These worker reports can be found in the F12 series in the French National Archives.
An incident that occurred during Frédéric Le Play’s active leadership of the Paris Universal Expositions, emphasizes the sense of a controlled, didactic, and ideological message that these Expositions intended to convey and, in regard to which, the authors of this message were acutely aware: To police the official presentation of the Exposition, Le Play sued a publisher of a competing “guide” to the Exposition that included a map. Le Play’s lawyer stipulated that the Exposition was the “intellectual ownership” of the government and Le Play—which included everything bought and sold within the Exposition space. French National Archives (industrial archives). Series F12.
See Le Play (1855). In the literature of the Universal Exposition, the thematic choices in interpreting the expositions and their broader meaning is not relegated to either-or scenarios: The expositions, as they migrated around the world, became representations of modernity with all its attendant sub-narratives.
Chevalier, with his colleague Frédéric Le Play (High Commissioner of the 1855 Paris, Universal Exposition), set up displays to demonstrate how the “affordable life” (la vie a bon marché as the) would work within the context of the nineteenth-century Paris Expositions; see F12 series, French National Archives.
Truesdell is citing from Napoleon III’s Oeuvres (Paris 1869) vol. 3. 344. The speech was also noted and preserved in Le Moniteur Universelle as well as given as circulars to the Prefects in the various regions of France, some of which are preserved in the F17 and F12 series of the French National Archives.
The importance of certain canals, such as the Suez, cannot be overestimated. Indeed, the creation and the possession of the Suez Canal could easily be used to date the apogee and fall of imperial England (1859 to the Suez Crisis of 1956).
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The author would like to thank the anonymous readers as well as the Editors of Theory & Society for their substantial suggestions for the improvement of this article.
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Kim, R. Virtue and the material culture of the nineteenth century: the debate over the mass marketplace in France in the aftermath of the 1848 revolution. Theor Soc 41, 557–579 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-012-9176-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-012-9176-6