Louis Blanc demanded that the democratic State should create industrial
associations, which he called _social workshops_, and which were
destined gradually and without shock to supersede individual workshops.
The State would provide the means; it would draw up the rules for their
constitution, and it would appoint the functionaries for the first year.
But, once founded and set in movement, the social workshop would be
self-supporting, self-acting, and self-governing. The workmen would
choose their own directors and managers, they would themselves arrange
the division of the profits, and would take measures to extend the
enterprise commenced.
In such a system where would there be room for arbitrary rule or
tyranny? The State would establish the social workshops, would pass laws
for them, and supervise their execution for the good of all; but its
_rôle_ would end there. Is this, can this be tyranny? Thus the freedom
of the industrial associations and of the individuals composing them
would not only remain intact; it would have the solid support of the
State. The intervention of a democratic Government on behalf of the
people, whom it represented, would remove the misery, anarchy, and
oppression necessarily attendant on the competitive system, and in place
of the delusive liberty of _laissez-faire_, would establish a real and
positive freedom.
With regard to the remuneration of talent and labour L. Blanc takes very
high ground. ‘Genius,’ he said, ‘should assert its legitimate empire,
not by the amount of the tribute which it will levy on society, but by
the greatness of the services which it will render.’ This is no mere
flourish of eloquence; it is to be the principle of remuneration in his
association. Society could not, even if it would, repay the genius of a
Newton; Newton had his just recompense in the joy of discovering the
laws by which worlds are governed. Exceptional endowments must find
development and a fitting reward in the exceptional services they render
to society.
L. Blanc therefore believed in a hierarchy according to capacity;
remuneration according to capacity he admitted in the earlier editions
of his work, but only provisionally and as a concession to prevalent
anti-social opinion. In the edition of 1848, the year when his theories
attained for a time to historic importance, he had withdrawn this
concession. ‘Though the false and anti-social education given to the
present generation makes it difficult to find any other motive of
emulation and encouragement than a higher salary, the wages will be
equal, as the ideas and character of men will be changed by an
absolutely new education.’[3] Private capitalists would be invited to
join the associations, and would under fixed conditions receive interest
for their advances; but as the collective capital increased, the
opportunities for so placing individual capital would surely diminish.
The tyranny of capital would, in fact, receive a mortal wound.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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