Whereas Buchez was greatly interested in _petite_ industry,[556] Blanc was in favour of the great industry, and that seems to be the only difference between his social workshop and an ordinary co-operative society. But in Blanc’s opinion the social workshop was just a cell out of which a complete collectivistic society would some day issue forth. Its ultimate destiny did not really interest him very much. The ideal was much too vague and too distant to be profitably discussed. The important thing was to make a beginning and to prepare for the future in a thoroughly practical fashion, but “without breaking altogether with the past.” That seemed clearly to be the line of procedure. To give an outline of what that future would be like seemed a vain desire, and would simply mean outlining another Utopia. It is just because his plan was precise and simple that Louis Blanc succeeded in claiming attention where so many beautiful but quite impossible dreams had failed. Here at last was a project which everyone could understand, and which, further, would not be very difficult to adopt. This passion for the concrete rather than the ideal, for some practical formula that might possibly point the way out of the morass of _laissez-faire_, may be discovered in more than one of his contemporaries. It is very pronounced in Vidal’s work, for example. Vidal was the author of an interesting book on distribution which unfortunately seems to be now quite forgotten.[557] Much of the success of the project, like that of the State Socialism of a later period, was undoubtedly due to this feeling.