What the pre-Marxist left nonetheless has to inform us | EUROtoday

Book. On March 21, 2025, on the University of Lille, Denis Clerc defended his thesis on “Non-conformist economists in France in the 19th century”. A doctoral scholar like no different, since he was 82 years outdated and had an extended profession behind him. Founder of the month-to-month Economic alternate options and creator of greater than twenty books, he participated in varied public or associative organizations within the social subject.

His thesis, Non-conformist Economists in France within the nineteenth century^e centuryrevised, is revealed by Les Petits Matins (92 pages, 27 euros). It has the advantage of bringing a dozen essential thinkers of the pre-Marxist omitted of oblivion. Journalists, docs, legal professionals or philosophers, usually imbued with Christianity, who, within the midst of the economic revolution, had tackled a mirrored image that was then largely uncared for: how one can put an finish to the distress and struggling of blue-collar work. They sought to construct one other group of the economic system across the thought of ​​the employees’ cooperative.

Only two of them left a hint: Jean de Sismondi (1773-1842), a Swiss who, turning his again on his preliminary liberal convictions, was the primary to defend the position of public energy in regulating the economic system; and the socialist and republican Louis Blanc (1811-1882), who would turn into a member of the provisional authorities of 1848 after which a deputy beneath the III^e Republic.

Social progress

The others have been marginalized after which made invisible within the “novel” of the left. Who remembers Pierre Leroux (1797-1871), Flora Tristan (1803-1844), Charles Dupont-White (1807-1878), Henri Feugueray (1813-1854) or Auguste Ott (1814-1903)? Yet it was they who planted the seeds of the social progress we now have seen because the nineteenth century.^e century: the rise of cooperatives, mutual societies and different reduction funds, then social safety legal guidelines and the discount of working hours. “A century later, most of their recommendations have been implemented or are in the process of being implemented, with Social Security”notes Denis Clerc. And these non-conformists had essential heirs: Charles Gide (1847-1932), Léon Walras (1834-1910), Jean Jaurès (1859-1914), Marcel Mauss (1872-1950)…

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