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- Title
The "Social Question" as a Democratic Question: Louis Blanc's Organization of Labor.
- Authors
Gerçek, Salih Emre
- Abstract
Recent studies have identified the revival of the idea of democracy in early nineteenth-century French thought. This article recovers one important reason behind this revival: democracy became a response to another debate that emerged during that period—the "social question." Although not well known in the English-speaking world, Louis Blanc was one of the most important socialist figures during the July Monarchy in France. Examining Blanc's Organization of Labor , this article shows how Blanc mobilized democracy to challenge the July Monarchy's exclusionary representative government and its reduction of the "social question" to pauperism. Blanc argued that industrial competition created a system of domination and proposed democratic reorganization of labor as a way to promote the common good. Blanc reformulated the "social question" as a democratic question, arguing that poverty and class domination can be solved not by administrative measures but through democratic participation in work and in the republic.
- Subjects
POLITICAL participation; REPRESENTATIVE government; POOR people; COMMON good; MONARCHY; FRENCH presidential elections; POVERTY reduction
- Publication
Modern Intellectual History, 2023, Vol 20, Issue 2, p388
- ISSN
1479-2443
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1017/S1479244322000270