levelling tendency, a decided tendency to assimilate human conditions, and make all men socially equal. And yet, in recognizing capital and talent as at all entitled to consideration in the distribution of material advantages, Fourier clearly meant to uphold private property, and to assert some degree of social inequality to be necessary and inevitable. Still, there was enough of absolute Chartism in the system to make it a powerful democratic engine; and, accordingly, among the democratic forces at work in France, before the revolution of February, may be reckoned the whole body of the Phalangsterians or Fourierists, represented in the press by the Démocratie Pacifique, and other journals, and headed in the public eye by Victor Considérant, their ablest man, and the ordained successor of Fourier. How little, however, the Fourierists were expecting the speedy arrival of the democratic epoch that they longed for, or how little they desired a social outbreak at all, is shown by the fact, that only a month or two before the revolution, Considérant, in dedicating (without permission) the third edition of his Destinée Sociale to Louis-Philippe, expressed a hope that the king himself might yet lay the foundationstone of the first Phalangstère, and thereby win an honor for the dynasty of Orleans. A more formidable contribution to the new democratic philosophy than either the magnificent generalities of the Saint-Simonians, or the impracticable schemes of the Fourierists, were the theories of the so-called Communists. The peculiarity of Communism, as compared with either Saint-Simonianism or Fourierism, consists in its total abrogation of all social inequality between man and man. Saint-Simonianism, we have seen, is almost an aristocratic creed: it proposes, indeed, a revolution in the present order of things, but the system of society that it would build up instead, would be a gorgeous hierarchy of functions, spiritual and temporal, in form resembling the Catholic system of the Middle Ages, all authority proceeding from above downwards. Fourierism, on the other hand, would arrange mankind in corporations smaller and larger on a level platform, each corporation, from the smallest to the largest, delegating the powers of government upwards to officers chosen by itself. So far, therefore, it is more democratic, more republican in its spirit than Saint-Simonianism. Even Fourierism, however, retains differences of rank and wealth, and stops short of absolute social equality. To both systems alike Communism says, No. Absolute and entire social equality, in other words, absolute and entire equality, in respect of the material advantages of life, notwithstanding all the natural inequalities of health, strength, talent, virtue, and energy, that do subsist, and perhaps will ever continue to subsist, between man and man; this is essentially what Communism demands. It does not necessarily deny the natural inequalities that have been alluded to; it may or it may not hold these inequalities to be temporary and destined to gradual extinction as society advances; it does not even necessarily deny that they should exert an influence over the mass of human relations; but it maintains, at least, that any such influence ought to be confined to the feelings, to the purely moral relations between soul and soul, and ought to have no issue into the sphere of material things. All human beings, whatever they may be in the eye of the Infinite, are here but citizens of one common planet, crowded, as it were, upon a given weight of earth, and having at their disposal but the limited quantity of material products and comforts that they can extract out of it. Let these creatures of the Infinite regard each other as they choose-with love, admiration, dislike— all as their infinite instincts guide them, soul recognizing soul through the veil of the body; but let the inequality stop here; let not heaven and earth be commingled, and let not any man, in virtue of any advantages that he may possess in the sphere of the illimitable, claim, or be allowed to have a larger interest than another in the limited fund of material wealth that is the property of all. Whatever may be the differences of value between man and man, regarded from the supra-mundane point of view, (which we assume when we exercise our affections,) in the society of this world, at least, and considered as a copartnership of individuals associated to till and otherwise modify to their use a given extent of earth, all men are equally units. Such, in its highest and most abstract form, seems to be the doctrine of Communism. In a vague, sentimental shape we see it lying deep in the popular mind of all ages, producing usually only dumb discontent, but roused now and then, by the force of special misery, into something almost resembling a scientific expression, "Alaboon, Sir Priest, Alaboon! By your priestship now give me to see; Perhaps the first germ of the doctrine, in the modern shape in which it has been since developed, is to be found in the writings of Rousseau. "He that first inclosed a piece of land, and said, This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe it, was," says Rousseau, "the real founder of civil society. How many wars, crimes, and massacres-how many miseries and horrors would have been spared to the human race, had some one levelled the boundary, filled up the ditch, and said to his companions, Beware of this impostor; you are lost if you forget that the fruits belong to all, and the earth to no one."" Among the anarchical expansions of this doctrine that sprang up about the time of the first French revolution, the most remarkable was that of Gracchus Babeuf, who was guillotined in 1796, for an attempt to overthrow the Directory, and subvert the Republican Constitution then in force. Babeuf was the president of a club whose object it was to establish a true and absolute democracy, by means of an equal partition among all of the property monopolized by by the few. The readiest way to effect this in any State, would be to confiscate all the property existing in it at any given moment, and portion it out in strictly equal divisions among the citizens; but the plan of Babeuf, as expounded after his death by his disciple and panegyrist, Buonarotti, was somewhat slower and more cautious. "To establish by the laws a public order, in which proprietors, while retaining provisionally their effects, should find neither abundance, nor pleasure, nor respect; where, forced to spend the greater part of their revenues in expenses of cultivation and in tolls, crushed by a weight of progressive taxation, set aside from public business, deprived of all influence, and forming in the State but a suspected class of foreigners, they should be at last forced to emigrate, leaving their goods behind them, or to seal with their own adhesion the establishment of universal community"-such was the scheme of Babeuf, as described by Buonarotti. In other words, the class of proprietors was to be extirpated, not at once, but by a process of gradual corrosion, This class of Communists, frequently distinguished as the Babouvists, and sometimes also as the Equalitarians, or Equalitarian Communists, is all but extinct in France. The Communism now in vogue is of the species named Fraternal Communism, of which the chief expositor is M. Cabet, formerly attorney-general under Louis Philippe, and member of the Chamber of Deputies, and not long since an exile in England. In essence, the theory of Cabet is the same as that of Babeuf, namely, that all the members of society should share equally the material advantages at command; the difference between the two theorists being a difference rather of spirit and temper. Babeuf was an anarchist, a man of hard and desperate resources, ready for any amount of rigor necessary for the application of his scheme. Cabet is a quiet dreamer, a man of inoffensive character and gentle demeanor, not at all logical or systematic in his ideas, but master of a simple and pleasing style, that seems to suit his audiences. In these respects, and in the boundless faith that he has in his own strange fancies, he appears very much to resemble his counterpart in this country, Robert Owen, who, as he walks in the streets of London, firmly believes, it is said, that in six months they are all to disappear. Cabet's chief production is a work entitled Voyage en Incarie, in which, under the convenient form of a fiction, he describes in rosy hues, his ideal of a society, reconstituted on the principle of equality. In this imaginary paradise, there is no money, no crushing commerce, no private capital; all labor equally with instruments and materials furnished by the state; and the results of the common industry are deposited in public magazines, for equal distribution among the citizens. The consequence is, that there is no want, no weariness, no discord; luxury, such as no Eastern nabob could command, is the lot of all in Icaria; all loll on sofas of the softest velvet, the dark-haired on sofas of crimson, the fair-haired on sofas of blue; all partake of the choicest viands at stated hours; all travel in first-class carriages; all are happy and serene--such, without a word of exaggeration, is Cabet's picture of society as he hopes to make it. Yet, in prosecuting even this dreamy method of representing to himself what he would be at, he seems to have struck against certain obstacles; hence some limitations in his creed to the theory of absolute equality. The institution of the family, for example, is still to exist, a little monoply of pleasures and duties. The partition of property, too, mathematical equality being impossible, is to proceed on a principle of only virtual or approximate equality, that may be thus expressed: "Each man, producing according to his faculties, is to be remunerated according to his wants." This rule of proportionality being observed, however, will in effect produce equality, for although the man of ravenous appetites will certainly according to such a rule receive most, yet, as the man of simple desires will have as much as he cares for, there will be no real inequality in the case. The fair-haired man may not have a crimson sofa like his dark friend, but then this will be because blue will suit him better. Contenting himself with denouncing property and capital in general terms, and with affirming the abstract proposition, that the extinction of misery can be obtained only by the extinction of opulence, Cabet made no direct attempt to subvert the existing order of things. The golden age, he believed, would roll in upon men unawares; and there was horror in all revolutionary courses. Only if one could exhibit to the world a model society, founded on the true principles, the example would doubtless be salutary. Accordingly, the chief immediate use that Cabet made of the Revolution of February, was to carry out a plan previously meditated, and ship off a body of his disciples to found an Icaria in Texas. It is needless to point out how completely Communism, whether in the form of Babeuf or in that of Cabet, is opposed to Saint-Simonianism. Communism requires that the natural inequalities of men, if such exist, shall have no issue into the sphere of strictly social relations; Saint-Simonianism, on the other hand, will organize society in no other way than by the very mechanism of these inequalities. The formula of Communism, as propounded by Cabet, may be expressed thus-"The duty of each is according to his faculties; his right according to his wants;" the formula of Saint-Simonianism is in one of its halves flatly the reverse-"The position of each man according to his faculties; his right according to his works." There is little danger, then, that Communism will be confounded with Saint-Simonianism. The confusion of Communism with Fourierism is an error more likely to be committed. And yet between the doctrines of Cabet and those of Fourier there is irreconcilable discord. The following is an extract from a chapter of the Destinée Sociale of Considérant, expressly devoted to the illustration of the difference between the two systems: So. double of that furnished by Paul, Peter shall draw from the share assigned to capital, a revenue double that of Paul; and justly so. If it is agreed that Paul has worked three times as much as Peter, Paul shall draw from the share of labor a portion three times as large as Peter; and justly If the relations of their talent are as one to four, their shares in respect of talent shall be as one to four; and this also justly. In all this there will be justice, because there will be not equality, but proportion. If there were equal retribution, there would be monstrous injustice. Moreover, they please, consulting their own tastes and the Peter and Paul, and all the others, shall lodge as fulness of their purses, either in a luxurious or in a modest apartment; and so also they shall dine at whatever cost they please; only the one and the other and all of them shall be ten or twenty times better treated for the same money under the societarian than they could be under piecemeal regime." Differing as they do, however, in principle and character, the three systems known as Saint-Simonianism, Fourierism, and Communism, all agree in one respect; in the promise, namely, that they hold out of an indefinite amelioration of the condition of the working classes. Hence the tendency to think of them together, if not to amalgamate them. Filtrating downwards through the mass of the population, modified by the popular exigencies and wishes, receiving sometimes a tincture of bitterness and malevolence by contact with individual misery, and mingling also, it must be added, with much of willful and deliberate profligacy, the three systems of doctrine have at length become diffused, in the double form of a moral restlessness and a special intellectual tendency, through the whole of French society. In Paris, in Lyons, and in all the other great centres of French industry-wherever, in short, there are clubs, reading-rooms, debating societies, meetings of young men, there, based on the general Saint-Simonian expectation of a splendid future for the working-classes, are discussed the means of bringing it about. The French ouvriers, especially the printers, cabinet-makers, weavers, designers, and members of such other trades as usually furnish in this country the more intelligent class of Chartists, are said to have a wonderful aptitude for such speculations. Generalities and verbal formulæ that are here confined to men of special culture, are there familiar in the Atelier. The idea, hardly yet current in the literature of this country, that as the working-classes of Europe have already passIn the Phalanx, therefore, no community, no pell-ed successively through the three stages of mell, no equality. If Peter has brought a capital slavery, serfdom, and hired service, so there "Community is so absurd that no peasant ever submitted to it voluntarily. What man would be so much of a philosopher as to bring to the general stock twice, three times, four times, as much as his neighbor, if he were to receive in return but an equal share of the profits? may be yet a fourth stage in reserve for | anism a third; but all three were included in them, as superior to hired service as hired the phrase, Organization of Labor. Someservice is to serfdom, or serfdom to slavery- what more of precision, indeed, might have is in France the growing faith of the work- been secured by the adoption of the more ing classes themselves. In Paris, especially, lengthy formula-Organization af Labor on such views are common; they are to the the co-operative principle; which, while it Parisian ouvriers what the points of the Char- would have included all the Communists and ter are to the workmen of Manchester or Fourierists, would have excluded hardly any London. Nor is this a fact of yesterday. of the democratic Saint-Simonians. But the While Louis-Philippe was still on the throne, shorter watchword was, upon the whole, and while the Duke of Orleans was still the the best. In converting this watchword, heir-apparent, ideas and feelings that never however, into a name for the party agreeing found their way to the tribune of the Cham- to use it, there was a difficulty. Organizaber of Deputies, and that were unknown in tionists of Labor would have been too clumthe breasts of representatives of the people, sy; it was necessary, therefore, to find a were rife in the workshops of Paris. synonym. The word Socialists here presented itself. Equally precise and equally vague with the practical signification that it was meant to have, it was at once adopted. Whether used by itself, or lengthened, for the purpose of more strict political contrast, into the name Social Republicans, it indicated exactly the hopes and tendencies of the party, their devotion to a particular class of speculations, their eagerness for a social rather than a mere political Revolution. The old Saint-Simonian philosophers; the Humanitarian, Pierre Leroux, and his disciple, George Sand; the Fourierist, Victor Considérant, and his whole school; Babouvists, or Equalitarian Communists, if any such existed; Fraternal or Icarian Communists of the school of Cabet; the political aspirant, Louis Blanc, and whoever were willing to support his scheme-all could co-operate provisionally, and for present ends, under the name of Socialists or Social Republicans. Nay, the name would include men not exactly belonging to any class, not pledged to any system; men, on the one hand, like the ex-priest Lammennais, believing, with hazy eye, in a mystic Future unlike all the Past; or men, on the other, like Ledru-Rollin, already at work in the field of politics, and often startling his colleagues in the Chamber of Deputies, by the unwelcome talk of certain miseries out of doors that it was the business of Parliaments to attend to. Upon the whole, the tendency of the workmen seems to have been towards the most thorough and levelling of the three systems to wit, Communism. The form, however, in which they liked to conceive the doctrines of Communism, appears to have been not the vague, pictorial form of Cabet, but that more specific and practical form that had been provided for them in 1839, by Louis Blanc in his Organization du Travail; the peculiarity of that form consisting, as all know, in its supposed fitness as a means of transition out of the present condition of society into the condition that is to succeed it. Raising a capital by way of loan from the community, the State, said Louis Blanc, ought to expend that capital in the establishment of a limited number of national workshops in various departments of industry; these workshops to be organized on the principle of strict community or equality, so that all the workmen, contributing each according to their power in the matter of labor, should receive the same exact share of the profits. These workshops, forming as it were so many new organic centres, in the midst of a society viciously constituted on the principle of individualism or unlimited competition, would gradually work a change on that society, penetrating it farther and farther the longer they remained in operation, till at length the organization on the principle of association would pervade the whole. Seizing, for the most part, on this swift and simple form of Communism, the workmen of Paris adopted also the phrase that had accompanied it, Organization of Labor. There was in this phrase a convenience for the occasion, as well as an intrinsic aptness. It was general enough to include all the varieties of opinion that it was desirable at that moment to harmonize. Communism meant one thing, Fourierism another, Saint-Simoni Such were the two great parties that rushed forward to seize the sovereignty that Louis Philippe had dropped-the Political Republicans, who wanted only to eradicate monarchy and maintain order till the population of France should declare its will; and the Social Republicans, who wanted, if possible, to confiscate the Revolution immediately in behalf of certain ideas, more or less precise, that they had in their heads. At the first moment of the Revolution, the They, therefore, stepped forward, and relieved their colleagues of all trouble in the matter. "You attend to the foreign nations," they virtually said to Lamartine; we will manage France." Arago, Marrast, and the rest, were taken by surprise or overpowered; and the following manifestoes went forth to the country in succession: two parties, as yet imperfectly known to | Government could say. "DECREE, 25th February, 1848. "The Provisional Government of the French Republic binds itself to guarantee the existence of the workmen by labor; The And now began the struggle between the two parties. From the windows of the Hotel de Ville, Lamartine withstood the crowd, demanding that the red flag should be hoisted as the flag of the Republic, and secured the triumph of the tricolor. The red flag, although not demanded by the minority of the Provisional Government, would have been a symbol that they could have accepted. It was the rough, popular assertion of their own view that, now that the republic was obtained, something thorough should be done with it. But if so far the spirit of moderation prevailed, yet in giving to the Revolution its name and character, in stamping upon it the impress that was to distinguish it in history from all preceding Revolutions, in deciding what were to be its first acts and proclamations, the extreme party won the day This was natural. The Political Republicans, having never looked beyond the act of acquiring the Republic, did not know what to do with it now they had it in their hands. The abolition of capital punishment for political offenses was indeed a splendid inspiration, worthy of a poet swaying the heart of a people. But other things than the abolition of the guillotine for statesmen were required from the Revolution; and what these things should be, only the Socialist members of the "It binds itself to guarantee labor to all citi zens; "It recognizes the right of workmen to associate among themselves for the enjoyment of the legitimate profits of their labor; "The Provisional Government restores to the workmen, to whom it belongs, the million that falls in of the civil list." "DECREE, 27th February, 1848. "The Provisional Government decrees the immediate establishment of national workshops. "The Minister of Public Works is charged with the execution of this decree." "PROCLAMATION, 28th February, 1848. Considering that the Revolution made by the people should be made for them; "That it is time to put an end to the long and unjust sufferings of laborers; "That the question of labor is of supreme importance; "That there is nothing more high, more worthy the thoughts of a republican government. "That it pertains above all to France to study ardently and resolve a problem now pending in all the industrial nations of Europe; "That it is necessary, without the least delay, of their labor; to guarantee to the people the legitimate fruits "The Provisional Government of the Republic decrees: "A permanent commission, to be called Commission of Government for the Laboring Classes, charge of attending to the condition of those shall be appointed with the express and special classes. "To show what importance the Provisional Government of the Republic attaches to the solution of this great problem, it names as Presi dent of the Commission for the Laboring Classes, one of its members, M. Louis Blanc, and as VicePresident another of this members, M. Albert, workman. "Workmen shall be called to take part in the Commission. "The seat of the Commission shall be at the Palace of the Luxembourg." |