Capitalism, Republicanism, Socialism, and the State: France, 1871–1914

Abstract

The Republic is not merely the name of a political institution, but the instrument of moral and social progress . . . of reducing the inequality and increasing the solidarity between men. —Léon Bourgeois(cited in Hayward 1961: 35)Few today dwell on the significance of republican institutions. In the nineteenth century, however, republicanism was a revolutionary ideology proclaiming the right of all people as citizens to control their lives. While associated with universal suffrage, republicanism was not yet confined to a narrow political sphere, and many still sought to extend its values to economic affairs. They questioned whether citizens empowered to decide political questions should not also make economic decisions that affected their lives, and they warned that governments resting on free citizenship were threatened by concentrations of wealth giving some a disproportionate voice in society’s economic life. What sort of republic, one asked, could survive burdened with “this strange paradox of man split in two . . . subject in the workshop, king in the city”? (Diligent 1910: 5)