286 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
give advantages to popular government which it has not in reality ; or they will forget the examples of today, as we forget those of former times ; for, of all memories, the shortest is the political. I refuse to believe that a form of government of which we say so much evil with justice, in an age of freedom, will be the best and last effort of humanity in the matter of politics. — REN1& DE Kerallain, " La D^mocratie," in La Reforme sociale, June l6, 1899.
Progress of the Socialist Spirit in France.
Recent writers upon the socialist movement, being interested particularly in the action of its leaders, have left the bottom of the question untouched. Interest has centered upon results and passing phases rather than upon causes. But socialism is not the product of the imagination of single leaders more or less deluded, but a widespread social force — an idea of voluntary organization — arising with the mod- ern modes of production and exchange, and with the political and humanitarian doctrines of the French Revolution.
There are three inseparable elements in the movement :
1. The struggle of the proletariat for economic autonomy. This is the basis of all socialism.
2. The struggle of the proletariat for political power.
3. The spread of the general doctrines of human rights promulgated by the theorists.
It is especially in the severe economic and moral conditions of the life of the proletariat that the terms of the socialist problem are located.
II.
In the sixteenth century the workmen of certain industries, in order to escape the burdensome regulations of their masters and wardens, began to form special societies, which had neithei legal nor religious nor social sanction, and were therefore revo- lutionary.
The members of these organizations did not understand how to maintain them- selves in their associations, being constantly engaged in stupid hostilities toward other similar groups. But these were the foreshadowings of the bourgeoisie.
Of these growing shadows the legislature of 1791 seems to have had an exag- gerated fear, passing a law abolishing such corporations. The law, Lt Chapelier, prohibited all association and cooperation among workingmen for the purpose of protecting their own interests, on the ground that such association was an infringe- ment of the liberties of the entrepreneurs, and thus the movement toward autonomy in the labor world was arrested.
In a study entitled Le Mouvement syndical, M. Bourdeau says : " It [the Revolu- tion] had made the workman free, but it condemned him to isolation, prevented him from associating, and from voluntarily limiting his liberty ; between the individual and the strongly centralized government it tolerated no organized force. And this state of affairs has tended to maintain in France the spirit of revolution."
The workmen of the Revolution always conceived of the republic as an exclusively political regime ; they never comprehended that direct action of the prole- tariat with a view to social reforms could exist aside from political action of the whole people. Revolutionary Jacobinism had taken the position that there could be no such thing as autonomous labor organization. But the economic difficulties becoming serious, and obliging them to rely upon themselves for the securing of their immedi- ate interests, the democratic and republican ideas came, thenceforth, to inspire them in their efforts to ameliorate their lot, or, if need be, radically to change the situation.
In the insurrections of Lyons of 1831 and 1834 the conflicts between capital and labor for the first time issued in bloodshed, the causes of which were decidedly eco- nomic. Since 1830 the growing activity of the workmen in favor of the republic, the increase in the number of socialist writers, and the tendency of the proletariat to
