CHAPTER IX LOUIS BLANC

UNLIKE most of those whom we encounter in these pages, Louis Blanc (1813–1882), in addition to occupying a very distinct corner in the development of socialist thought, was also for a time an active and practising politician, having been a member of the provisional government after the Revolution of 1848. This incursion into the limelight was followed by a prolonged period of exile in England, from which he did not return to France until 1870, when he again appeared on the political stage, without, however, getting anywhere in particular. His intromissions with public affairs do not concern us here, and we are accordingly spared the problem of disentangling the connection, if any, between the fiasco of the National Workshops of 1848 and the proposals bearing on the same issue which are of the very essence of Blanc's writings. But, if one may judge from the printed word, it is difficult to imagine anyone less fitted than was Louis Blanc for the trials, the tribulations and the responsibilities of a politician's existence.

On the other hand he had very great gifts as a journalist, and was indeed a supremely successful journalist at a surprisingly early age. He was also professedly a historian, waging war against the Bourgeoisie throughout the ages, and laying up for posterity numerous volumes which at this distance of time posterity, at least in this country, very wisely refuses to read.¹ For the present generation, and for all who come hereafter, he is the author of one book, L'Organisation du Travail, which originally appeared in substance in La Revue du Progrès Social, in 1839. It is a short book, even when expanded with replies to critics which were added in subsequent editions. And of subsequent editions there were many, for in this work Louis Blanc contrived to write a best-seller.

Nor is it difficult to understand the success which attended L'Organisation du Travail. There is a persuasiveness and a glitter about it, which could scarcely fail to turn the heads of those to whom it was addressed. Yet the qualities which made it so effective on its appearance now perhaps make us feel that it has worn rather thin. Never was there a writer given to so violent exaggeration. Few have cultivated so gaudy and flamboyant a style, or been so familiar with the rhetorical question which expects no answer. His pages are cluttered up with marks of exclamation and of interrogation. There are immeasurably far too many Quoi's, and Eh quoi's, and Mais quoi's. The result is a heady beverage which may appear great stuff to a reader in a moment of exaltation, but somehow it sounds rather differently when read in the cold light of dawn. In short, Louis Blanc has neither moderation, nor restraint, nor sense of proportion, and such merits as he possesses seem, on a second reading, to be contaminated with the meretricious and the cheap.

The significance of Louis Blanc lies in the fact that in a sense he represents the transition from Utopian socialism to what, for convenience, may be termed proletarian socialism. We have left behind the wild imaginings of Fourier, the revelations of Saint-Simon and the parallelograms of Owen. For Louis Blanc claims to have a sense of reality, and he would like to be regarded as moderate. ‘To prepare for the future without breaking violently with the past,’ as he once described his purpose, is an excellent ideal. Doubtless, with Fourier and Owen, he is an ‘associationist,’ but the form of association at which he aims has a more modern flavour; nor is it expected that some generous millionaire will by his touch heal and renew this putrescent world.

For, among much that is nebulous, Louis Blanc sees with extreme clarity just exactly whence our salvation must come: Our safety cometh from the State. Blanc may or may not have been original in this, but at least no one before had so clearly taught that the State, with which we are familiar here and now, such as it is, must be used to establish a new social order. Social and political reform are intertwined; if the former is the aim and object, the latter is the means. For it is not enough to decide, according to the rules of reason, justice and humanity, where you want to get to in this matter of the organisation of labour. You must be in a position to give effect to the principles decided upon. Power is needed; and power is ultimately a matter of laws, tribunals and soldiers—in a word, the State. In a somewhat famous sentence he adds the warning that if you do not make use of the State as an instrument, you will encounter it as an obstacle. Moreover, the magnitude of the task of emancipating the proletarians is such that all the power of the State is needed. What is required is that they should be given the necessary tools of production; and here precisely is the function of the government. In a definition, more arresting than just, ‘the State is, or ought to be, the Banker of the Poor.’¹

Thus the State must intervene; there is indeed no other authority to whom appeal can be made. Authority is invoked, it should be observed, in the name of Liberty itself; for Liberty, in the world as seen by Blanc, is but an affair of theoretical rights which cannot be enforced. There can be no liberty where an ‘immense weakness’ confronts an ‘immense strength’. The State must make these rights a reality, and for this purpose it must be a strong State, since there are those who in their weakness need its protection.²

But though a strong State is needed now, it is significant that Blanc regards this as a temporary necessity. When there is no longer an inferior class, no longer any downtrodden, there will no longer be the same need of a strong and active government. At the first blush this is curiously suggestive of the ‘withering-away’ of the State, as contemplated later by Marx and Engels; but of course the reason for the ‘withering-away’ is diametrically opposed in the two cases. For Marx-Engels, the State is the expression of the dominant class, and when there are no longer classes, there can clearly be no dominant class (and equally no class to be exploited), and therefore there can no longer be a State, if the Marxian conception of the State is true. In Louis Blanc's vision, on the other hand, the State is potentially and in design a beneficent agency as the protector of the downtrodden; but when the weak and defenceless are no longer defenceless and weak, though the State may continue to exist, it will no longer require the giant's strength needed to make it an adequate protector.

Such is the framework as set out in the Introduction; and though Morelly may have pointed in the same direction, and though it is possible to find in the noble confusion of Saint-Simon's mind, suggestions of the beneficent State, Louis Blanc may claim credit for having brought socialism into everyday politics, and made it a matter of the ballot-box. Also, for what it is worth, he may be given some credit for realising that the State, whether we like it or not, is there, occupying the ground; and for the rather Fabian argument, that it is better to make use of it than to force it into the opposing camp. There is one other point of interest relating to the framework, as it emerges in the introduction. In intention and profession, at least, Louis Blanc is remote from the class struggle and its implications. In some editions, the opening sentence is an appeal to the rich, since the cause of the poor is their cause also. It is on this note that the Introduction ends, and though the passage is marred by an unusually heavy dose of Blanc's tinsel rhetoric, the intention is clearly to express in moving language the solidarity and the community of interest that link all classes, and to unite the efforts of all in the work of emancipation. If, as has sometimes been suggested, Louis Blanc represents the swing of socialism to the left, it is significant that he thus so completely disowns the doctrine of the class struggle which was later to become the core of scientific socialism.

Much of the success of Louis Blanc as a propagandist is due to the simplicity of his diagnosis. Like Mr. Blatchford in his more robust days, he avoids unnecessary and confusing complications. There is a certain measure of truth in the criticism which suggests that ‘in Louis Blanc's creed whatever is, is wrong.’ And the reason for the wrongness of everything is to be found in the existence of competition. In a sense Louis Blanc was so successful because he set himself too easy a task. Nothing is easier than to show how monstrously unjust is this world, unless perhaps it is to prove how grotesque and baneful may be the effects of competition. Neither youth nor inexperience need deter anyone from enlarging on either of these themes. And in fact Louis Blanc, with his congenital tendency to exaggeration, his exuberant rhetoric, his unfettered loquacity and mais-quoisity, does it remarkably well. He avoids the initial tactical mistake, into which so many fall, of suggesting that some have a good time at the expense of others. In fact, this is a thoroughly bad world for everybody, for rich and poor alike, and no one is really interested in the maintenance of the existing social order. How unhappy are the happy, could you but see into their hearts. For every poor man who grows pale from hunger, there is a rich man who turns pale from fear. Competition may be a system which exterminates the ordinary people; but likewise it impoverishes and ruins the Bourgeoisie. All are interested in putting an end to the existing system: here also is solidarity.

In the eyes of Louis Blanc, contemplating a world inhabited by proletarians with nothing but their labour to offer in the market-place, the fundamental right is the droit au travail. Indeed, with his incessant preaching of the droit au travail, he was probably the spiritual father and begetter of the Revolution of 1848. In considering the effect of competition on the worker, the crucial question is whether it can assure him work. And here in a much quoted and characteristic passage is Louis Blanc on what competition does for the worker:

What is competition, relative to the workers? It is work put up to auction. An entrepreneur has need of a worker: three present themselves.... How much for your work?... Three francs: I have a wife and children.... Good. And you?... Two and a half francs: I have no children, but I have a wife.... Marvellous. And you?... Two francs are enough for me: I am alone.... You get the job. The transaction is ended: the bargain is concluded. What will become of the two proletarians who are excluded? It is to be hoped that they will allow themselves to die of hunger. But suppose they become thieves? Have no fear; we have policemen. And murderers? We have the hangman. As for the most fortunate of the three, his triumph is only provisional. If there should come along a fourth worker sufficiently sturdy to fast every other day, wages will slide down to the bottom: there will be a new pariah, a new recruit for the convict-prison, perhaps!¹

It is to be hoped that this picturesque and dramatic passage sounds better in French than it does in halting English. The view here expressed by Louis Blanc is, of course, merely an extremely rigid statement of the so-called Iron Law of Wages, frequently, but wrongly, fathered on Ricardo. It is easy, and it is true, to say in the case of Marx and many before his time, that they did not foresee the effects of the Trade Union movement in this sphere. Probably Marx, breathing the fetid air of the British Museum, reading round about 1860 the Blue Books of 1810, was at least a generation, if not two, behind the times in which he lived. But the comforting reflection that Trade Unions have probably to a large extent equalised bargaining power, and nullified the foolishly-so-called Iron Law of Wages, should not blind us to the fact that probably at the time when this principle was first enunciated by Turgot (if Turgot it was), it was probably a fairly accurate statement of what happened. For, left to themselves in an eighteenth-century ‘state of nature,’ there is no employer who would not prefer to pay a low wage rather than a high, if given an assurance of equal efficiency in every respect between the employees. This is indeed all that is implied in the original statement of Turgot, who, needless to say, is less dramatic than Blanc. In any case, Louis Blanc is satisfied that under competition a continuous fall in wages is necessarily a general, and in no way an exceptional, phenomenon.

This fall in wages means poverty, and poverty means crime. Blanc proves the extent of crime by producing appropriate statistics, and he illustrates the enormity of crime by revolting reports from the Police Courts. This is of interest only because it is implicitly part of Blanc's case that all crime is due to poverty, and that therefore at one remove all crime is due to competition. Like nearly all the earlier socialists (in this very different from later schools), he showed a touching solicitude for the reputation of the Almighty in this matter. He dare not claim that men are born necessarily perverse, ‘for fear of blaspheming God.’ Rather would he believe that the work of God is good and holy: ‘Let us not be impious merely in order that we may absolve ourselves from the charge of having spoiled it.’² He then refers to certain unnamed ‘great philosophers’ who have thrown doubts on man's free will: in any case it can hardly exist for the poor who suffer from ‘la tyrannie des choses,’ which claims as its victims all who are in need of nourishment, clothing or shelter. There is a good deal of fine confusion in this medley of philosophy and theology, but Blanc's argument is meaningless, unless it means that all crimes can be attributed to our defective social organisation as embodied in the prevalence of competition.

For all this evil Louis Blanc naturally claims that there can be only one remedy, that, namely, devised by Louis Blanc—in other words, a ‘saine organisation du travail.’¹ His rather disgruntled frame of mind, his instinctive abhorrence of all moderation despite contrary professions, are well seen in his attitude towards the proposals of other well-meaning reformers. Take, for example, the whole question of savings and the establishment of Savings Banks as a means of raising the worker. Had Blanc been content to say that it is rather futile to expect savings from a worker, living under the harsh dispensation of the Iron Law of Wages, he would merely have been expressing the reasonably defensible. But, remembering that whatever is, is wrong, Louis Blanc must still be talking. What are these Caisses d'Epargne anyhow? Their deposits are only in part the fruit of honest labour. They are blind receivers of illicit profits: they receive—indeed after encouraging them—all who present themselves, ‘from the servant who has robbed his master to the courtesan who has sold her beauty.’² This throws a startling light on the activities of Savings Banks; and Savings Bank Managers, who have read their Louis Blanc, realising that increased deposits in all probability reflect increased embezzlement and prostitution, would accordingly do well to moderate their annual speeches of self-congratulation.³

But apart from this lurid sidelight, Blanc argues that under present conditions, the practice of saving is a vice rather than a virtue. Firstly, it attaches the worker too securely to the existing order from fear of losing his savings—an argument that springs from the sentiment that has prompted the long-continued opposition of Trade Unions towards profit-sharing schemes. Nor is it an argument that can be lightly dismissed as wholly without substance. The worker who has shares in the enterprise in which he works, who has, in one form or another, given his savings into the custody of the government, has undeniably, for good or for evil or more probably for both, given hostages to fortune. It is part of that process of ‘bourgeoisification,’ later to be so lamented as the grave of revolutionary impulses. Yet it is an argument which requires careful statement, if only because in unskilful hands it tends to become a plea that the worker should be kept unhappy, in order that he may continue to be discontented and revolutionary.

But going beyond this, saving, in an individualistic world, is merely another symptom of selfishness and depravity: he who saves for his old age merely demonstrates how little faith he puts in the goodness of his fellow-men. Blanc here states so clearly what others have hinted at, that he may be allowed to speak for himself:

In itself, thrift is an excellent thing: it would be merely puerile and foolish affectation to deny it. But,—and it should be carefully noted,—when combined with individualism, thrift engenders egotism; it competes with alms-giving; it imperceptibly dries up in the best natures the sources of charity; it replaces by a greedy satisfaction the holy poetry of benevolence. Combined with association, on the other hand, thrift acquires a respectable character, a sacred importance. To save only for one's self is to manifest an act of distrust with regard to one's fellows and with regard to the future; but to save for others at the same time as for one's self, ce serait pratiquer la grande prudence, ce serait donner à la sagesse les proportions du dévouement.¹

This last phrase is best left in the original, because though it may have meant something to Louis Blanc, it is difficult to say what it can mean to anyone else, and mistranslation is accordingly almost inevitable.

But to go still deeper into the depths, poverty, springing from competition, brings with it ultimately the dissolution of the family and all the horrors of infanticide, enfants trouvés, child labour and much more—a ‘homicidal regime which compels fathers to exploit their own children.’² But would factory legislation, by limiting the hours of juvenile employment, afford any protection? The parents have no desire for such legislation, for the simple reason that they cannot afford it: to keep the house going, the wages of child labour is necessary, and thus competition is preparing for the future (it sounds even more horrible in French) une génération décrépite, estropiée, gangrenée, pourrie.³ Lastly, there is education, also advocated by some as a weapon of regeneration. Louis Blanc quotes with approval the view that where you open a factory, you may as well close the school.⁴ Once again, the worker cannot afford it: if he is called upon to decide between the school and the factory, he cannot for a moment be in doubt. For the factory has one decisive pull in its favour; ‘in the school, the child is taught; in the factory, he is paid.’¹ It is here significant as between Louis Blanc and Owen, at whom in all this he is tilting, that Blanc makes the calm continental assumption that beneficent legislation, even if passed, will be broken, whereas Owen proceeds on the humdrum Anglo-Saxon assumption that we are a law-abiding nation, and that Factory Acts and Education Acts will be administered, even if parents are tepid.

Such are the baneful effects of competition on the worker; but it is no less a cause of ruin for the Bourgeoisie. In a florid passage, Louis Blanc shows the evil effects of ‘cheapness,’ which is supposed to sum up the benefits of competition. If, however, cheapness profits the consumer, it does so at the cost of bringing ruinous anarchy among the producers.² And indeed Louis Blanc elsewhere, in what is almost a parody of himself, proves, on the same lines as applied to workers, how destructive competition is likewise to the employer, how ‘where one man stands erect, another has been killed.’ ‘You are going into business: Good: but where will you get your customers?’—‘I will take those of my neighbour.’—‘Then your neighbour will die.’—‘What can I do about it? If it had not been he, it would have been I.’ Thus in bright chatty conversation, he drives home the point.

Thus is the malady laid bare: competition, ruining all alike, transforms the whole of industry into a battlefield strewn with dead bodies. And the simple diagnosis points to a simple remedy. It is merely necessary to eliminate competition, and this task must be taken in hand by the State, having regard to the pre-eminent rôle which Blanc in his introduction has already assigned to the State. The Government, being viewed as ‘the supreme regulator of production,’ should raise a loan and with this should create what are here called ateliers nationaux (social workshops) in the most important branches of industry.³ The State, as the founder of the workshops, will draw up the necessary statutes. To these workshops will be summoned all workers who can offer ‘guarantees of morality’—whatever that may be. Wages would be equal, though on this point Blanc oscillates somewhat, being restrained by the consideration that at the outset the false and anti-social education from which the world has hitherto suffered will offer an obstacle to the immediate realisation of the ultimate ideal. During the first year the government would run the show, at least to the extent of ‘regulating the hierarchy of functions’; but after a year's tutelage, the workers having meanwhile had time to ‘appreciate each other,’ the workshops will be run by popular election among the workers—in short, democracy in industry.⁴ To complete the picture of the internal arrangements of the workshops, the net profits are to be divided annually into three portions, the first to be divided equally among the members of the association; the second to be devoted to the support of the aged and infirm, and also to help other industries suffering from ‘crises,’ since here mutual aid is seemly; and the third to be set apart for the provision of tools for those who wish to join the association, with a view to the indefinite extension of the system. Moreover, while at the outset each worker will have freedom to dispose of his wages as may seem good, yet the manifest advantages of a life in common will soon conduct them from an association in work to a fuller voluntary association in the satisfaction of their needs and pleasures.¹ In short, the social or national workshop will tend to develop into a communistic cell.

It is, however, in the relationship existing between these ‘workshops,’ launched by the State, and the remaining individualistic sector of enterprise that Blanc is most interesting. The State, in taking action, resorts to the weapon of competition in order to secure the disappearance of competition: despite the scriptural warning, it purposes to make use of Beelzebub in order to drive out Beelzebub. The capitalists, if they so wish, will be allowed to enter, and will be guaranteed interest on the capital they bring with them; but otherwise, except in so far as they work, there will be nothing for them. In effect, the individual employers may retire into private life as debenture holders—probably, from Blanc's point of view, had he thought more about it, a weak point in the scheme. If, however, the representatives of private enterprise should elect to continue the struggle, then there would soon be made manifest the pleasing spectacle of competition serving the high end of extirpating competition. For, after a short struggle, private enterprise would be defeated. It could not stand up against a system enjoying all the economies resulting from a communal life, where ‘all the workers, without exception, are interested in producing quickly and well.’² Here indeed would be a competition very different from that with which we are now familiar—a competition designed only to attain the pacific absorption of the individual private workshops in the social workshops. And the outcome would be the happiest imaginable: from all quarters, workers and capitalists would flock (accourir) to the national workshop.

Beyond this, there would later on inevitably be further ramifications. In any given industry, the various workshops could not be allowed to compete against each other: there would therefore be for each industry un atelier central, to which all the others would be subsidiary and supplementary. In short, in more modern or more ancient phraseology (which so often come to the same thing) the industry would be transformed into the semblance of a self-governing guild. Inevitably, also, there looms up the further stage of establishing some kind of solidarity between the various industries: and from this lofty peak in the Delectable Mountains, we can surely descry from afar the ways of pleasantness of Guild Socialism.¹

Agriculture has always presented a difficult problem in socialist theory. Blanc endeavours to deal with it along the lines of his proposals for industry. Collateral successions are to be abolished, and declared communal property. In this way each commune would acquire a domain which would be inalienable and which would presumably be extended, until in time all the available land vested in the commune. Cultivation would be on a large scale, and as the principles of the ateliers sociaux would apply, the net result would appear to be a joint exploitation of the lands of the commune by the available agricultural population.²

Perhaps we have followed Louis Blanc as far as is profitable in an enterprise of this magnitude. In summary, it may be said that his diagnosis was too simple, and that the remedy prescribed reveals the same defect. To attribute all the maladies of this world to competition shows a singular lack of knowledge of the profundities of the human heart and of the many sources from which evil may spring. His remedy is ultimately a strong State in which all property and all enterprise shall vest. Louis Blanc of course denied this, but his feverish denials carry little conviction. In later editions of Organisation du Travail he reprinted criticisms and reviews of his work together with his triumphant replies to his critics. This procedure has the merit of doubling the length of a rather short book, but it cannot be said that it adds materially to the substance of the original statement. One point of interest, does, however, emerge. In these pages, Louis Blanc shows himself almost abnormally sensitive with regard to any suggestion that his view of the State resembles that of Saint-Simon (or should it be that of the Saint-Simonians?). In rebutting the charge that he contemplates a devouring State, he is at pains to show how limited are the powers he in fact assigns to the Government. His view is that the State is to be the regulator of industry: it is not itself to be the entrepreneur. There is to be a mere administrative intervention in the first year. He adds with that naive innocence of the world of business which not unnaturally distinguished Socialism in its irresponsible days: la machine une fois montée, elle marcherait d'elle-même. Unfortunately, there are few things in this life which, even when mounted, march of themselves. As against the Saint-Simonian purpose of transforming the State into ‘le pape de l'industrie,’ in his solution the State merely provides a code of legislation.³ Elsewhere he endeavours to escape the taint of what is assumed to be the Saint-Simonian State by remarking that whereas Saint-Simonianism had thought in terms of L'Etat propriétaire, he, Louis Blanc, had spoken in terms of la Société propriétaire.⁴ But in fact the difference, especially on Louis Blanc's assumptions, is not so énorme as he would gladly believe. Before the critics had wounded him with their suggestions of his indebtedness to Saint-Simon, he had called upon the State to ‘put itself resolutely at the head of Industry.’¹ There is a convenient, if inconsequent, German proverb which observes that ‘whoever says A, says B’: and even if Louis Blanc flatters himself that he would confine the State's intervention to the first year, he would in time have discovered that he had begotten an omnicompetent and omnivorous State.

Louis Blanc's Utopia (for such it is) has also this feature in common with other Utopias that he asks, alas, too much of human nature, forgetful of the Mr. Hyde who is attached to every Dr. Jekyll. It is the everlasting dilemma, the vicious circle of all Utopias, that they are caught between two irreconcilable propositions, firstly, that to inhabit Utopia, man must have a higher moral stature than he now possesses: and secondly, that the only way to attain to this higher moral stature is to have lived for some time, indeed to have been brought up in Utopia, away from the perverse social institutions of this world which are the sole cause of our depravity. Louis Blanc was not wholly consistent in his pronouncements on the problem of distribution. At first he had allowed wages to be graded according to the ‘hierarchy of functions,’ but this was merely a concession to the false and anti-social education which has corrupted us. Later he moved towards equality of reward; but also, as the highest ideal, he advocated remuneration according to needs. He realises the need of a ‘stimulus’—the question that had also troubled William Thompson whom we shall meet presently. He clings, however, to the view, contrary to all evidence and probability, that the mere fact that the worker will share in the prosperity produced will induce him to labour with zeal and intensity. There is here still personal interest, but as all are in the same boat it is purified and becomes ‘an encouragement to fraternity.’² He never faces up to the obvious consideration that this ‘personal interest’ becomes painfully exiguous, when the fruit of a single worker's zeal is shared with a large number of his fellows, and in fact becomes almost precisely nothing at all in an atmosphere of national guilds such as, in effect, Blanc contemplated. This ‘personal interest,’ however it may be purified, must indeed be supplemented by a noble sense of duty in the heart of every worker—one of the first fruits of living in the new Utopia. Doubtless there must be a stimulus; but, he asks with many others, must the reward be a material one, measured in terms of wealth? Positions of authority, it is suggested, are not among the things in which one ought to traffic. By cutting out the emphasis on material reward, authority would be made more worthy of respect and less a subject of envy; such a course would cut out the greedy mediocrity and limit authority to those who have a call. In a phrase of the kind beloved by Blanc, this would transform obedience into an act of gratitude. In the final statement of Louis Blanc's ideal, a man's needs are the indication given by God of what Society owes him; his abilities, on the other hand, are equally a God-given indication of what he owes society. The legitimate empire of superior ability should be confirmed not by the extent of the tribute levied on society, but by the magnitude of the services rendered to society.¹ Here is a standard of conduct which may well bring a blush to the hardened forehead of even the most self-righteous among us. In the last resort Louis Blanc's society is to work through a universal dissemination of the principle of Noblesse oblige, by the glow that comes from the consciousness of work well done, and by an overflowing gratitude welling up in every heart towards those who are so self-sacrificing as to shoulder the responsibilities of life. It is magnificent; but it is not for this world. Noblesse oblige, on this standard, begins to fray at the edges for most of us as we approach the pensionable age. These inhabitants of the national workshops who thus harbour such elevated sentiments on waking up in their Utopia have shed nearly all the qualities of frail and sinful men as we know them. The point would not be worth elaborating but for the fact, so characteristic of a great deal of socialism on the more Utopian side, that, as has been observed in an earlier chapter, it makes its task easy by creating a new unfallen man to walk, transfigured, the golden streets of the New Jerusalem.

By a curious irony, Louis Blanc, more than most reformers, was brought within measurable distance of being given an opportunity of realising his dreams. For, as has been said, after the Revolution of 1848, he was one of the leading members of the Provisional Government, and perhaps that government is now most enduringly remembered by the extraordinary fiasco attending its policy of establishing national workshops. Louis Blanc's reputation naturally did not escape all the retrospective slinging of mud which this gigantic failure occasioned. But it seems probable that he cannot be held directly responsible for a scheme which ended so disastrously, and which, as he protested, was not in accordance with his idea of things. If, however, he was not directly responsible for the scandal of the ateliers nationaux, he can hardly escape a certain mediate responsibility. Louis Blanc's incessant preaching of the ‘right to work’ was an important ingredient in the ferment which produced 1848, and the national workshops represented the attempt of the government to redeem the pledges which Blanc was supposed to have given. It is a complicated story, and those who wish to assess the rights and wrongs of the issue must look elsewhere for the evidence.