The question was whether State intervention is contrary to liberty or not. “It clearly is,” says Louis Blanc, “if you conceive of liberty as an abstract right which is conferred upon man by the terms of some constitution or other. But that is no real liberty at all. Full liberty consists of the power which man has of developing and exercising his faculties with the sanction of justice, and the approval of law.”[559] The right to liberty without the opportunity of exercising it is simply oppression, and wherever man is ignorant or without tools he inevitably has to submit to those who are either richer or better taught than himself, and his liberty is gone. In such cases State intervention is really necessary, just as it is in the case of inferior classes or minors. Lacordaire’s saying is more pithy still: “As between the weak and the strong, liberty oppresses and law sets free.” Sismondi had already employed this argument, and much capital has been made of it by every opponent of laissez-faire.[560] In the writings of Louis Blanc may be found the earliest faint outline of a movement that had assumed considerable proportions before the end of the century. State socialism, which was as yet a temporary expedient, by and by becomes an important economic doctrine with numerous practical applications. The events of 1848 gave Louis Blanc an opportunity of partly realising his ideas. We shall speak of these experiments when we come to discuss the misdirected efforts of the 1848 socialists. But the ideas outlined in the _Organisation du Travail_ were destined to a more permanent success in the numerous co-operative productive societies which were founded as a result of its teaching. They are still quite popular with a certain class of French working men. Though inferior to both Fourier and Owen, Blanc gave considerable impetus to the Associative movement, and quite deserves his place among the Associative socialists. * * * * * Beside Louis Blanc it may be convenient to refer to two other writers, Leroux and Cabet, who took part in the same movement right up to the Revolution of 1848. Pierre Leroux exercised considerable influence over his contemporaries. George Sand’s works are full of social dissertations, and she herself declares that most of these she owed to Leroux. However, one can hardly get anything of the nature of a definite contribution to the science from his own writings, which are vaguely humanitarian in character. We must make an exception, perhaps, of his advocacy of association,[561] and especially of the idea of solidarity, a word that has been exceedingly fortunate in its career. Indeed, it seems that he was the first to employ this famous term in the sense in which it is used to-day—as a substitute for charity.[562]