National workshops

The Paris national workshops (Ateliers nationaux) of 1848 were a measure of job creation , the failure of which contributed to the exacerbation of social differences and the June uprising of 1848 .

In his work "L'Organisation du travail" in 1839 , Louis Blanc called for the establishment of productive cooperatives with state funding and public provision of the initial capital. In the February Revolution of 1848 Louis Blanc became a member of the Provisional Government, which on February 25, 1848 proclaimed the right to work . In order to ensure this, the so-called national workshops were established, which of course only corresponded to the name according to Louis Blanc's ideas and whose activity lasted a mere four months, namely from February 27 to June 21, 1848.

Under the responsibility of the Minister for Public Works, Pierre Marie de Saint-Georges , and under the direction of Emile Thomas , a number of public works in military discipline were started or planned, including the construction of the Montparnasse and St. Lazare stations . The influx of job seekers was significant and growing (21,000 people in March, 94,000 in April, around 115,000 in May).

But there were clear problems with the discipline and effectiveness of the work done, and for bourgeois circles the national workshops were seen as the focus of socialist agitation. For this reason, the constituent assembly elected at the beginning of May 1848 resolved with its conservative majority on May 24, 1848 to end the experiment of the national workshops. The unmarried 17 to 25-year-old men employed there were to be drafted into the army, the rest of those affected were taken to distant parts of the country to work on canals and the like. The publication of this decree on June 21, 1848 led to the June Uprising , which was bloodily suppressed by General Louis-Eugène Cavaignac .

literature

• Emile Thomas: Histoire des Ateliers nationaux , Paris 1848