Louis Blanc thus belonged to that group of socialists who thought that voluntary associations would satisfy all the needs of society. But he thinks of association in a somewhat different fashion from his predecessors. He dreams neither of New Harmony nor of a Phalanstère. Neither does he conceive of the economic world of the future as a series of groups, each of which forms a complete society in itself. Fourier’s integral co-operation, where the Phalanstère was to supply all the needs of its members, is ignored altogether. His proposal is a social workshop, which simply means a co-operative producers’ society. The social workshop was intended simply to combine members of the same trade, and is distinguished from the ordinary workshop by being more democratic and equalitarian. Unlike Fourierism, it does not contain within itself all aspects of economic life. By no means self-contained, it merely undertakes the production of some economic good, which other folk are expected to buy in the ordinary way. Louis Blanc’s is simply the commonest type of co-operative society.[553] The schemes of both Owen and Fourier were much more ambitious, and attempted to apply the principle of co-operation to consumption as well as to production. Nor was the idea altogether a new one. A Saint-Simonian of the name of Buchez had already in 1831[554] made a similar proposal, but it met with little success. Workers in the same trade—carpenters, masons, shoemakers, or what not—were advised to combine together, to throw their tools into the common lot, and to distribute among themselves the profits which had hitherto gone to the _entrepreneur_. A fifth of the annual profits was to be laid aside to build up a “perpetual inalienable reserve,” which would thus grow regularly every year. “Without some such fund,” says Buchez, with an unerring instinct for the future, “association will become little better than other commercial undertakings. It will prove beneficial to the founders only, and will ban everyone who is not an original shareholder, for those who had a share in the concern at the beginning will employ their privileges in exploiting others.”[555] Such is the destiny that awaits more than one co-operative society, where the founders become mere shareholders and employ others who are simply hirelings to do the work for them.