The International and the Federal Chamber of the workingmen's societies,
mute and disorganized during the siege, again taking up their programme,
said, "We must also have workingmen amongst those in power." They came
to an arrangement with the Committee of the twenty arrondissements, and
the three groups issued the same manifesto. "This," said they, "is the
list of the candidates presented in the name of a new world by the party
of the disinherited. France is about to reconstitute herself; workingmen
have the right to find and take their place in the new order of things.
The Socialist-revolutionary candidatures signify the denial of the right
to discuss the existence of the Republic; affirmation of the necessity
for the accession of workingmen to political power; overthrow of the
oligarchical Government and of industrial feudalism." Besides a few
names familiar to the public, Blanqui, Gambon, Garibaldi, Felix Pyat,
Ranvier, Tridon, Longuet, Lefrancais, Valles, these Socialist candidates
were known only in the workingmen's centers--mechanics, shoemakers,
ironfounders, tailors, carpenters, cooks, cabinetmakers, carvers.[43]
Their placards were but few in number. These disinherited could not
compete with bourgeois enterprise. Their day was to come a few weeks
later, when two-thirds of them were to be elected to the Commune. Now
those only received a mandate who were accepted by the middle-class
papers, five in all: Garibaldi, Gambon, Felix Pyat, Tolain, and Malon.
The list of representatives of the 8th February was a harlequinade,
including every republican shade and every political crotchet. Louis
Blanc, who had played the part of a goody during the siege, and who was
supported by all the committees except that of the Corderie, headed the
procession with 216,000 votes, followed by Victor Hugo, Gambetta, and
Garibaldi; Delescluze obtained 154,000 votes. Then came a motley crowd
of Jacobin fossils, radicals, officers, mayors, journalists, and
inventors. One single member of the Government slipped in, Jules Favre,
although his private life had been exposed by Milliere, who was also
elected.[44] By a cruel injustice, the vigilant sentinel, the only
journalist who during the siege had always shown sagacity, Blanqui,
found only 52,000 votes, about the number of those who opposed the
plebiscite, while Felix Pyat received 145,000 for his piping in the
_Combat_.[45]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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