Shoemakers and Fourierism in Nineteenth-Century Paris: The Societé Laborieuse des Cordonniers-Bottiers

The relatively long existence of the Societé Laborieuse des cordonniers-bottiers, a shoemakers' mutual society begun in the early 1830s in Paris, illustrates both the strength and the inadequacy of utopian socialism as a remedy for the misery of skilled urban workers. Like so many of the latter, shoemakers suffered in the first half of the century from declining wages and depended increasingly for outlets on the merchant-dominated trade in slops and in ready-made goods for the export trade. The Societé Laborieuse, under vaguely Fourierist influence, provided some mutual benefits and also found its members jobs, though mostly in the slop-trade, thus reinforcing the system it sought to replace. In the 1848 Revolution it set up a cooperative workshop which went bankrupt in 1852; the mutual society survived with dwindling membership, increasingly out-of-date in modem industry, down to the eve of the 1914 war. La carrière relativement longue de la Société Laborieuse des cordonniers-bottiers, société mutuelle parisienne qui débuta autour de 1830, illustre les forces et les faiblesses du socialisme utopique comme remède aux difficultés des gens de métier qualifiés dans un milieu urbain. Les cordonniers, comme tant d’autres, durent accepter des revenus réduits pendant la première moitié du siècle; ils durent recourir de plus en plus au travail de commission (production de masse pour l’exportation) et de confection (produits bas de gamme), soumis au contrôle du capitalisme marchand. La Société Laborieuse, d’inspiration vaguement fouriériste, fournissait quelques secours mutuels à ses membres. Elle leur servait aussi de bureau de placement, cependant la plupart des emplois qu’elle leur trouva était dans la confection, renforçant ainsi un système que sa propre idéologie condamnait. Pendant la Révolution de 1848, la Société fonda un atelier coopératif qui fit faillite en 1852; la société mutuelle elle-même allait survivre, avec un nombre déclinant d’adhérents, dépassée par les changements économiques, jusqu’à la veille de la Guerre de 1914

Parisian Labour During the French Revolution

Workers in revolutionary Paris did not show the class consciousness nor, with certain exceptions, the organizational skills of the workers' movement after 1830. Nevertheless, an analysis of eighty-five recorded labour disputes proves labour protest to have been a significant form of protest in the capital between 1789 and 1799. Sans-culotte unity has been exaggerated, and wage-earners articulated demands (principally for higher wages) that set them apart from the master-craftsmen and shopkeepers who directed the sans-culotte movement. The response of the authorities to labour unrest was often hesitant and contradictory, and the repressive Le Chapelier law of 1791 was in fact rarely invoked.À Paris, à l'époque de la révolution, les travailleurs ne firent pas preuve d'esprit de classe ni, sauf certaines exceptions, du sens d'organisation que l'on observa au sein du mouvement des travailleurs après 1830. Néanmoins, une analyse des documents relatifs à quatre-vingt-cinq conflits de travail prouve que les protestations des travailleurs eurent un impact considérable dans la capitale entre 1789 et 1799. L'unité des sans-culottes a été exagérée. Les salariés formulèrent des revendications principalement pour des salaires plus élevés, ce qui les distinguait des maîtres-artisans et des boutiquiers qui dirigeaient le mouvement des sans-culottes. Face à ces remous chez les travailleurs, les autorités réagirent souvent de façon hésitante et la loi répressive de Le Chapelier de 1791 fut défait rarement invoquée

L’arrivée de la libération gay en France. Le Front Homosexuel d’Action Révolutionnaire (FHAR)

The Homosexual Front for Revolutionary Action (FHAR), founded in Paris in March 1971 by a small group of lesbians and homosexual men, marked a new direction in homosexual activism in France by breaking with the discretion and respectability preached by Arcadie, a “homophile” movement launched by André Baudry in 1954. The new homosexual activists who joined the FHAR drew their revolutionary rhetoric from left-wing militants of May 1968. They denounced “the dominant heterosexual and capitalist sexuality” and engaged in deliberately provocative actions. Their weekly meetings at the School of Fine Arts in Paris, which managed to continue for three years, turned into chaos and even gigantic orgies, and the lesbians left. The FHAR proved incapable of defending the rights of homosexuals effectively and it disappeared in February 1974. The gay associations that followed it in the 1970s and 1980s laid claim to more pragmatic methods

Mai 68 : le Comité d’Action Pédérastique Révolutionnaire occupe la Sorbonne

The radical gay liberation movement emerged in France in May 1968 in the student-occupied Sorbonne when “Guillaume Charpentier” founded the Revolutionary Pederastic Action Committee (CAPR). With no support from student leaders and finding little response from militant students, the CAPR vanished after barely two weeks. But the CAPR opened a new era, by making homosexuality a political question and homosexual liberation a left-wing cause that challenged the political and social statu quo of the day

L’arrivée de la libération gay en France. Le Front Homosexuel d’Action Révolutionnaire (FHAR)

The Homosexual Front for Revolutionary Action (FHAR), founded in Paris in March 1971 by a small group of lesbians and homosexual men, marked a new direction in homosexual activism in France by breaking with the discretion and respectability preached by Arcadie, a “homophile” movement launched by André Baudry in 1954. The new homosexual activists who joined the FHAR drew their revolutionary rhetoric from left-wing militants of May 1968. They denounced “the dominant heterosexual and capitalist sexuality” and engaged in deliberately provocative actions. Their weekly meetings at the School of Fine Arts in Paris, which managed to continue for three years, turned into chaos and even gigantic orgies, and the lesbians left. The FHAR proved incapable of defending the rights of homosexuals effectively and it disappeared in February 1974. The gay associations that followed it in the 1970s and 1980s laid claim to more pragmatic methods

Mai 68 : le Comité d’Action Pédérastique Révolutionnaire occupe la Sorbonne

The radical gay liberation movement emerged in France in May 1968 in the student-occupied Sorbonne when “Guillaume Charpentier” founded the Revolutionary Pederastic Action Committee (CAPR). With no support from student leaders and finding little response from militant students, the CAPR vanished after barely two weeks. But the CAPR opened a new era, by making homosexuality a political question and homosexual liberation a left-wing cause that challenged the political and social statu quo of the day

Sur Camille Babeuf

D. Sibalis Michael. Sur Camille Babeuf. In: Annales historiques de la Révolution française, n°227, 1977. p. 100