The Republic is a complex idea that oscillates between two legacies, moderate and revolutionary. Samuel Hayat returns to this antagonism crystallized in the Revolution of 1848.
In May 2015, the name change of theUMPrenamed “ The Republicans », aroused the protest of several intellectuals. The historian Jean-Noël Jeanneney criticized Nicolas Sarkozy for this “ unworthy capture of inheritance » while the philosopher Marcel Gauchet prayed to the former president “ to add an adjective » in the name of his new party. Object of political struggles, the Republic also constitutes a central field of investigation and regularly reinvested in the intellectual field. However, truly historical works are rare. In this regard, the work of political scientist Samuel Hayat fills a gap.
By returning to the historical foundations of the republican tradition, the author carries out an original rereading of the political and intellectual controversies raised during the insurrection of 1848. This “ forgotten revolution », stuck between those of 1789 and 1870, is nevertheless rich in issues. What do the ideas of people, government, freedom, representation and citizenship cover? ? How do different actors compete to try to impose their own conception of each of these terms? ? Where did these clashes come from and what trace did they leave? ?
These are the questions that guide Samuel Hayat’s thinking. More than a factual account of events, the author implements a conceptual and social history of the republican idea. The work, which focuses on the public debates that took place in Paris between February and June 1848, does not provide new sources. But it gives already established knowledge a real philosophical depth by showing how the revolution of 1848 brought about a fundamental break in the history of the republican idea.
The two faces of the Republic: moderation and insurrection
How to characterize the period which extends from the abdication of King Louis-Philippe on February 24, 1848 to the installation of the new National Assembly on the following May 4 ? The dominant narrative assimilates this sequence to a “ transition » between two regimes, the July Monarchy and the Second Republic. However, explains Samuel Hayat, to assimilate the Republic to a simple change in state personnel and its selection procedures amounts to obscuring a fundamental fact: the period in question does not contain a but several conceptions of the Republic. Beyond the confrontation between supporters of the king and promoters of universal suffrage, the fundamental caesura of 1848 separates, within the Republican camp itself, those who defend a representative government backed by economic liberalism and those who fight for the reign of the people and socialism. While the majority of the Provisional Government values the separation between society and the State – only linked by mechanisms of representation –, organized workers intertwine the social with the political because they see two inseparable dimensions of the same revolutionary project.
The work reconstructs step by step the course of events. At each stage a multiplicity of actors with shifting and porous identities intervene. Ideological boundaries and strategic alliances continue to evolve. Ideas are caught in the play of power relations, and vice versa. The chronological story which unfolds in seven chapters intends to demonstrate the following hypothesis: during the revolution of 1848, two antagonistic conceptions of the Republic gradually crystallized.
The first claims to break with the July Monarchy. In reality, it simply replaces universal (male) suffrage with census-based suffrage. This considerable upheaval of the rules of the electoral game nevertheless leaves intact the principles of representative government on which the reign of Louis-Philippe was based. Indeed, if you look closely, the “ Moderate Republic » promoted by Lamartine renews the refusal of State intervention in the economy, the independence of representatives and the political exclusion of those represented. Facing these defenders of moderation stand the supporters of “ Democratic and social republic », like the anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the socialist Pierre Leroux. In their eyes, neither the Provisional Government nor the Constituent Assembly carried out the project of social equality carried out by the February insurgents. The revolution must be pushed to its conclusion, or even carried out a second time. Otherwise the Republic will remain an empty word.
Representatives and represented
The confrontation between the moderate Republic and the democratic and social Republic was brewing from the beginning of the 1840s, even from the French Revolution. It gradually crystallized during the spring of 1848, then it exploded on May 15, 1848 in Paris. The evening before, the climate was extremely tense. Three elements come together: the refusal of the Provisional Government to provide aid to the rebellious Polish people, the bloody repression of a riot in Rouen and the decision to postpone for a week a celebration for which many provincial national guards were mounted. to the capital. On May 15, this cocktail of discontent led to the invasion of the National Assembly by demonstrators. They were then violently repressed and the National Guard restored order by arresting several leaders of the club movement.
This day full of twists and turns gave rise to multiple interpretations. Samuel Hayat sees neither a plot (anarchist or conservative) against the authorities, nor a consequence of the Polish question. The invasion of the Assembly rather constitutes an act of transgression which is itself its own end, in the sense that this act aims to “ force the Assembly to deliberate on certain subjects (Poland, Rouen, organization of work), and under specific conditions (at the request and/or under the surveillance of demonstrators) » (p. 278). Ultimately, this invasion raises the following issue: is the National Assembly intended to listen to the people or, on the contrary, to speak for them? ? In other words, do the representatives of the people hold a monopoly on republican legitimacy or do they share their right to speak with ordinary citizens? ?
None of the forces present deny the need to provide the nation with political representatives. But to an interpretation exclusive of representation – representatives have exclusivity in public affairs – an interpretation is opposed inclusive of representation – which allows cohabitation between parliamentary action and citizen participation. The option defended by moderate republicans generally corresponds to what Bernard Manin described as the main doctrinal pillar of representative government: citizens have the right to consent in power (by voting for whoever they want), but not access.
Citizenship institutions: Provisional Government, National Guard and Luxembourg Commission
Behind these two ideas of representation there are also two approaches to citizenship and its modes of exercise. The victors of May 15, for whom the Republic is reduced to the establishment of universal suffrage, defend an exclusive citizenship (the power of representatives excludes that of those represented), unitary (the citizen exists under the sole figure of the voter) and abstract (the citizen is a universal being devoid of specific characteristics such as his profession or his sex).
The defenders of the Democratic Republic, on the contrary, inaugurate a form of inclusive citizenship (political representation is associated with the direct participation of citizens), plural (the citizen takes on in turn the role of subject of law, fighter, worker and deliberative) and social (citizens are defined by their political activity, but also by their social affiliations). This citizenship “ revolutionary » allows freedom to unfold on the political scene. Nevertheless, recalls Samuel Hayat, this scene remains essentially national and masculine, since foreigners and women are excluded from citizenship in the spring of 1848.
The permanent oscillation between inclusive and exclusive citizenship is not just a matter of ideology. Doctrinal conflicts take shape in all the institutions responsible for embodying the Republic. There is immense uncertainty regarding the mission incumbent on the institutions born from the insurrection. Is the Provisional Government formed on February 24 a territorial administration responsible for restoring order in the capital in order to calmly prepare for the elections of the Constituent Assembly, or is it on the contrary a revolutionary authority responsible for profoundly transforming relations unequal socio-economic ? Is the Parisian National Guard a tool of repression in the hands of the State, or is it the people in arms defending their revolutionary aspirations, even against the will of the State? ? Is the Luxembourg Commission created on February 28 to fight against poverty confined to offering workers a simple place for discussion, or can it take action and fulfill the role of centralized political organization of the workers’ movement? ? Only the final victory of the moderates will put an end to these tensions by consecrating the preeminence of representative government over active citizenship.
Thus, one of the main contributions of this study is to question the generalized assimilation between election and representation. Indeed, between February 24 and May 4, 1848, the numerous aforementioned institutions spoke and acted on behalf of the citizensbut none can claim to have been formed by a national election. Following on from the work of Hanna Pitkin and Michael Saward, Samuel Hayat invites us to take into account non-elected forms of political representation.
The emancipatory potential of the Republic
Another essential argument of the work is that the strictly political confrontation between moderate and radical republicans overlaps ultimately to a class opposition between bourgeois and workers. But are articles, petitions, pamphlets and proclamations enough to demonstrate the economic basis of this political conflict? ? It is here that the initial methodological choice is most felt since, by favoring a history of ideas which practically abandons any recourse to social history, the author deprives himself of the means of establishing a correspondence between political doctrines. and the sociological profile of those who act on their behalf.
However, Samuel Hayat’s work fulfills its main ambition: to unearth the hidden – or rather defeated and then obscured – side of the Republic. Certainly, many changes have affected our institutions over the last hundred and fifty years. But, the author suggests, the principles underlying them have not fundamentally changed. Independence of representatives, separation between State and society, neglect of the social question, exclusion of foreigners, reduction of the citizen to the status of spectator and the reign of abilities remain more or less the ideological horizon of our Republic.
However, the tradition of the vanquished has not entirely disappeared. It reactivates episodically under the figure of “ social movement », which never ceases to remind the Republic of its promises of emancipation.