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Beyond Exceptionalism: Notes on the Artisanal Phase of the Labour Movement in France, England, Germany and the United States*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Friedrich Lenger
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The early labour movements in Western Europe and North America were all dominated by urban artisans, a fact reflected most clearly at the programmatic level by the prominence of demands for producers' cooperatives. This article presents a proposal for and an extremely brief sketch of a comparative investigation of this first phase of the labour movement in England, France, Germany, and the United States. Different aspects of class formation, such as the economic situation of the trades, the social relationships within them, or the role of artisanal and corporate traditions in artisanal politics and trade-union organization, are discussed. Comparative labour history, it is argued, must employ such a theoretical framework, one that allows the integration of the many dimensions of class formation; otherwise it will have to sacrifice whatever progress the last generation of labour historians has achieved.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , June 1991 , pp. 1 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1991

References

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18 On London see Thompson, E. P. and Yeo, Eileen (eds), The Unknown Mayhew. Selections f rom the Morning Chronical 1849–50 (Harmondsworth, 1973)Google Scholar, and particularly Taylor, Barbara, “The Men are as bad as their Masters … ': Socialism, Feminism, and Sexual Antagonism in the London Tailoring Trade in the Early 1830s”, Feminist Studies, V (1979), pp. 7–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On Paris see Johnson, Christopher H., “Economic Change and Artisan Discontent: The Tailors' History, 1800–1848”, in Price, Roger (ed.), Revolution and Reaction. 1848 and the Second French Republic (London, 1975), pp. 87–114Google Scholar, and Scott, Joan W., “Men and Women in the Parisian Garment Trades: Discussions of Family and Work in the 1830s and 1840s”, in Thane, Pat et al. (eds), The Power of the Past. Essays for Eric Hobsbawm (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 67–93.Google Scholar On New York see Stansell, Christine, City of Women, Sex and Class in New York, 1789–1860 (Urbana, 1987)Google Scholar, and Wilentz, Sean, Chants Democratic. New York City & the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788–1850 (New York, 1986).Google Scholar

19 See for example Hobsbawm, Eric, “The Making of the Working Class 1870–1914”, in Hobsbawm, Eric, Workers: Worlds of Labor (New York, 1984), pp. 194–213Google Scholar, esp. p. 195; Eisenberg, Christiane, Deutsche und englische Gewerkschaften: Entstehung und Entwicklung bis 1878 im Vergleich (Göttingen, 1986), esp. pp. 30–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also on early eighteenth-century shoemaking the example given by Rule, John, “The property of skill in the period of manufacture”, in Joyce, Patrick (ed.), The historical meanings of work (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 99–118Google Scholar, esp. p. 101.

20 On Baltimore see Steifen, Charles G., The Mechanics of Baltimore. Workers and Politics in the Age of Revolution, 1763–1812 (Urbana, 1984), esp. pp. 44–45Google Scholar; on Philadelphia see Laurie, , Working People, ch. 1Google Scholar; on New York see Wilentz, , Chants Democratic, pp. 108–129Google Scholar, and for a study of developments in general see Laurie, , Artisans into People, ch. 1.Google Scholar

21 On Lynn see Dawley, Alan, Class and Community. The Industrial Revolution in Lynn (Cambridge, MA, 1976)Google Scholar, and on Ross, Cincinnati Steven J., Workers on the edge. Work, Leisure, and Politics in industrializing Cincinnati, 1788–1890 (New York, 1985).Google Scholar

22 On Augsburg see Bettger, Roland, Das Handwerk in Augsburg beim Übergang der Stadt an das Königreich Bayern (Augsburg, 1979)Google Scholar; on Berlin see Bergmann, Das Berliner Handwerk; and on Paris see Johnson, “Economic Change and Artisan Discontent”.

23 See the case studies cited in notes 18, 21, and 22, and also Aminzade, Ronald, “Reinterpreting capitalist industrialization: a study of nineteenth century France”, Social History, IX (1984), pp. 329–350CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. pp. 344–346 on Toulouse, and Friedrich Lenger, “Polarisierung und Verlag: Schuhmacher, Schneider und Schreiner in Düsseldorf 1816–1861”, in Engelhardt, , Handwerker in der Industrialisierung, pp. 127–145Google Scholar, on Düsseldorf.

24 Sewell, William H., Work and Revolution in France. The language of labor from the old regime to 1848 (Cambridge, 1980).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 See Alain Faure's introduction, “A propos de Perdiguier: qu'est-ce que le compagnonnage?”, to the informative autobiography of Agricole Perdiguier, Mémoires d'un compagnon (Paris, 1982), pp. 7–33.Google Scholar See also Kaplan, Steven, “Réflexions sur la police du monde du travail, 1700–1815”, Revue historique, CCLXI (1979), pp. 17–77Google Scholar, and Truant, Cynthia M., “Solidarity and Symbolism among Journeymen Artisans: The Case of Compagnonnage”, Comparative Studies of Society and History, XXI (1979), pp. 214–226.CrossRefGoogle ScholarCoornaert's, EmileLes compagnonnages en France du moyen age à nos jours (Paris, 1966)Google Scholar is a disappointing study.

26 A good recent survey of the repeal of guild regulations in the German states is Steindl, Harald, “Die Einführung der Gewerbefreiheit”, in Coing, Helmut (ed.), Handbuch der Quellen und Literatur der neueren europäischen Privatrechtsgeschichte, vol. 3, Part 3 (Munich, 1986), pp. 3529–3628.Google Scholar On the role of the unmarried journeymen in early-twentieth-century Germany see Ehmer, Josef, “Das Heiratsverhalten und die Traditionen des Kapitalismus. England und Mitteleuropa im 19. Jahrhundert” (forthcoming, Göttingen, 1991).Google Scholar

27 Eric Hobsbawm, “Artisans and Labour Aristocrats?”, in Hobsbawm, , Workers, pp. 252–272Google Scholar, and especially p. 259.

28 On the United States see Rorabaugh, W. J., The Craft Apprentice. From Franklin to the Machine Age (New York, 1986)Google Scholar, although the unstructuredness of the book makes it somewhat difficult to draw conclusions from the material presented. On the clandestine curriculum see Eisenberg, , Deutsche und englische Gewerkschaften, pp. 67–72Google Scholar, and particularly Behagg, Clive, “Secrecy, ritual and folk violence: the opacity of the workplace in the first half of the nineteenth century”, in Storch, Robert D. (ed.), Popular Culture and Custom in Nineteenth Century England (London, 1982), pp. 154–179.Google Scholar

29 See Pallach, Ulrich-Christian, “Fonctions de la mobilité artisanale et ouvrière - compagnons, ouvriers et manufacturiers en France et aux Allemagnes (17e-19e siècles), Première partie: De la fin du 17e siècle au début de l'époque révolutionnaire en 1789”, Francia, XI (1983), pp. 365–406.Google Scholar Although not being obligatory tramping seems to have been very common in France: see Michael Sonenscher, “Journeymen's Migrations and Workshop Organization in Eighteenth-Century France”, in Kaplan, and Koepp, , Work in France, pp. 74–96.Google Scholar

30 See Kaplan, “Réflexions”, on France, and Lenger, Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Handwerker, pp. 16–18 and 63–64Google Scholar, on Germany.

31 This is demonstrated in Sewell, Artisans, esp. p. 58. See also Garrioch, David and Sonenscher, Michael, “Compagnonnages, Confraternities and Associations of Journeymen in Eighteenth-century Paris”, European History Quarterly, XVI (1986), pp. 25–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on the differences between and the regional distribution of those alternative forms of organization.

32 See Jürgen Kocka, “Craft Traditions and the Labour Movement in Nineteenth- Century Germany”, in Thane, et al. , The Power of the Past, pp. 95–117.Google Scholar

33 With regard to the language of class in England see, for example, Hobsbawm, Eric, “Soziale Ungleichheit und Klassenstrukturen in England: Die Arbeiterklasse”, in Wehler, Hans-Ulrich (ed.), Klassen in der europäischen Sozialgeschichte (Göttingen, 1979), pp. 53–65.Google Scholar

34 See Wilentz, Chants Democratic, on New York, and Dawley, Class and Community, on Lynn; on the latter town see also Faler, Paul G., Mechanics and Manufacturers in the Early Industrial Revolution. Lynn, Massachusetts, 1780–1860 (Albany, 1981)Google Scholar, Lenger, Friedrich, “Class, culture and class consciousness in antebellum Lynn: a critique of Alan Dawley and Paul Faler”, Social History, VI (1981), pp. 317–332CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Blewett, Mary H., “Work, Gender and the Artisan Tradition in New England Shoemaking, 1780–1860”, Journal of Social History, XXVII (1983/1984), pp. 221–248.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35 See Maurice Agulhon, “Working Class and Sociability in France before 1848”, in Thane, et al. , The Power of the Past, pp. 37–66Google Scholar, and Lenger, Zwischen Kleinbürgertum und Proletariat. Cf. from a somewhat different angle Eisenberg, Christiane, “Arbeiter, Bürger und der ‘bürgerliche Verein’ 1820–1870. Deutschland und England im Vergleich”, in Kocka, Jürgen (ed.), Bürgertum im 19. Jahrhundert.Deutschland in europäischen Vergleich, vol. 2 (Munich, 1988), pp. 187–219.Google Scholar

36 See for example Lenger, , Zwischen Kleinbürgertum und Proletariat, pp. 117–127Google Scholar, on Düsseldorf and Zwahr, Hartmut, Zur Konstituierung des Proletariats als Klasse. Strukturuntersuchung über das Leipziger Proletariat während der industriellen Revolution (Berlin, 1978), p. 60Google Scholar, on Leipzig.

37 See for example Cynthia Truant, “Independent and Insolent: Journeymen and Their ‘Rites’ in the Old Regime Workplace”, in Kaplan, and Koepp, , Work in France, pp. 131–173Google Scholar, esp. 134.

38 On New York see Rock, Howard B., Artisans of the New Republic: The Tradesmen of New York City in the Age of Jefferson (New York, 1979)Google Scholar, and Wilentz, , Chants Democratic, esp. p. 49.Google Scholar On Philadelphia see Salinger, Sharon V., “Artisans, Journeymen, and the Transformation of Labor in Late Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia”, William and Mary Quarterly, XL (1983), pp. 62–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. p. 64, and on Rochester see Johnson, Paul E., A Shopkeeper's Millennium. Society and Revivals in Rochester. New York 1815–1837 (New York, 1978), p. 46.Google Scholar

39 On New York see Rock, Artisans of the New Republic, and Wilentz, Chants Democratic. On Philadelphia see Laurie, Working People of Philadelphia, on Cincinnati see Ross, Workers on the edge, and on Albany see Greenberg, Brian, Worker and Community. Response to Industrialization in a Nineteenth-Century American City, Albany, NewYork, 1850–1884 (Albany, 1985).Google Scholar

40 Leeson, R. A., Travelling Brothers. The six centuries' road from craft fellowship to trade unionism (London, 1979)Google Scholar, and Dobson, C. R., Masters and Journeymen. A Prehistory of Industrial Relations, 1717–1800 (London, 1980).Google Scholar

41 In addition to the local studies of Rock, Wilentz, and Laurie cited in note 39 see also Bernstein, Leonard, “The Working People of Philadelphia from Colonial Times to the General Strike of 1835”, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, LXXIV (1950), pp. 322–339Google Scholar, and Salinger, “Artisans, Journeymen, and the Transformation of Labor”.

42 See Hirsch, , Roots of the American Working Class, p. 48.Google Scholar The obviously important strength of nativism within the American working class in this period is one of the many aspects neglected in this paper.

43 See in addition to the literature already cited Hans-Ulrich Thamer, “Arbeit und Solidarität. Formen und Entwicklungen der Handwerkermentalität im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert in Frankreich und Deutschland”, in Engelhardt, , Handwerker in der Industrialisierung, pp. 469–496Google Scholar, and Lenger, Friedrich, “Tradizioni artigiane e origini del movimento operaio. Alcune riflessioni sulla recente letteratura tedesca”, Movimento operaio e socialista, VIII (1985), pp. 477–485.Google Scholar

44 See for example Sewell, Artisans, esp. p. 58Google Scholar, and Kocka, , Problems, esp. pp. 330–333.Google Scholar

45 Sperber, Jonathan, Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth Century Germany (Princeton, 1984), pp. 31–32Google Scholar, has called them the “mass organization of the proletariat, long before the existence of working class parties or cultural organizations”, but that does not imply that they were direct precursors of the latter.

46 At least in the French case the parallel between the weakening of the compagnonnages and the emergence of organizational forms overcoming craft boundaries seems well established. See Agulhon, “Working Class and Sociability in France”, and the case study by Ronald Aminzade, “The Transformation of Social Solidarities in Nineteenth Century Toulouse”, in Merriman, , Consciousness and Class, pp. 85–105.Google Scholar On Germany see the interesting case study by Neufeld, Michael J., The Skilled Metalworkers of Nuremberg. Craft and Class in the Industrial Revolution (New Brunswick, 1989).Google Scholar

47 See for example Prothero, Artisans and Politics, and Laurie, Working People.

48 For the United States see Lynd, Staughton and Young, Alfred, “After Carl Becker: The Mechanics and New York City Politics, 1774–1801. (Introduction)”, Labor History, V (1964), pp. 215–224Google Scholar, and Staughton Lynd, “The Mechanics in New York City Politics, 1774–1788”, ibid., pp. 225–246, as well as the brief survey by Young, Alfred F., “Revolutionary Mechanics”, in Buhle, Paul and Dawley, Alan (eds), Working for Democracy. American Workers from the Revolution to the Present (Urbana, 1985), pp. 1–10Google Scholar, and the case study by Steifen, The Mechanics of Baltimore.

49 Address of the “Sans-Culottes” section to the National Convention of 2 September 1793, quoted in Soboul, Albert, Les sans-culottes parisiens en l'an II. Mouvement populaire et gouvernement révolutionnaire (1793–1794) (Paris, 1968), p. 70.Google Scholar See also Sewell, , Artisans, pp. 100–113Google Scholar, and the more recent critique by Sonenscher, Michael, “The sans-culottes of the Year II: rethinking the language of labour in revolutionary France”, Social History, IX (1984), pp. 301–328.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50 See for example Prothero, Artisans and Politics, and particularly Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class.

51 London probably came closest to having an artisanally dominated movement: see the excellent study by Goodway, David, London Chartism 1838–1848 (Cambridge, 1982)Google Scholar, and the summary by Dorothy Thompson, The Chartists, esp. part II.

52 Neither E. P. Thompson in The Making of the English Working Class nor Gareth Stedman Jones in his “Rethinking Chartism”, in Epstein, James and Thompson, Dorothy (eds), The Chartist Experience. Studies in Working Class Radicalism and Culture, 1830–1860 (Basingstoke, 1982), pp. 3–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar, succeed in explaining how the Chartists managed to overcome this oppostion.

53 On France see besides the literature already quoted Moss, Bernhard H., “Parisian Workers and the Origins of Republican Socialism 1830–1833”, in Merriman, John H. (ed.), 1830in France (New York, 1975), pp. 203–221Google Scholar, and Bernhard H. Moss, “Parisian Producers' Associations (1830–51): The Socialism of Skilled Workers”, in Price, , Revolution and Reaction, pp. 73–861Google Scholar, and on the American Workingmen's Parties the brief survey by Franklin Rosement, “Workingmen's Parties”, in Dawley, and Buhle, , Working for Democracy, pp. 11–18.Google Scholar

54 On Lyonnais silk weaving see for example Bezucha, Robert, The Lyon Uprising of 1834: Social and Political Conflict in a Nineteenth-Century City (Cambridge, MA, 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and George J. Sheridan, “Household and craft in an industrializing economy: the case of the silkweavers of Lyons”, in Merriman, Consciousness and Class. On cigar making see Zwahr, Zur Konstituierung des Proletariats, and on metalworking the case study by Neufeld, The Skilled Metalworkers of Nuremberg.

55 Quoted in Thompson, , The making of the English Working Class, p. 778.Google Scholar

56 See Jones, Gareth Stedman, “Die Grenzen proletarischer Theoriebildung in England vor 1850”, Archiv für die Geschichte des Widerstandes und der Arbeit, I (1980), pp. 79–84Google Scholar, and ibid., IV (1981), pp. 105–123, and Thompson's, Noel W. more recent study, The People's Science. The Popular political Economy of Exploitation and Crisis, 1816–1834 (Cambridge, MA, 1984)Google Scholar, which also stresses that the ideas of Hodgskin and others of the 1820s were not further developed later on. See also Claeys, Gregory, Machinery, Money and the Millennium. From Moral Economy to Socialism, 1815–60 (Cambridge, 1987).Google Scholar

57 See Haupt, Heinz-Gerhard and Lenger, Friedrich, “Liberalismus und Handwerk in Frankreich und Deutschland um die Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts”, in Langewiesche, Dieter (ed.), Liberalismus im 19. Jahrhundert. Deutschland im europäischen Vergleich (Göttingen, 1988), pp. 305–331CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a French-German comparison.

58 Sewell, William H., “Social Change and the Rise of Working-Class Politics in nineteenth-century Marseille”, Past and Present, LXV (1974), pp. 75–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The quote above appears on page 105.

59 Rule, “The property of skill”. This juxtaposition should make clear that my argument does not depend in any way on the notion of skill, which has recently been vigorously criticized by Rancière, Jacques, “The Myth of the Artisan. Critical Reflections on a Category of Social History”, International Labor and Working Class History, XXIV (1983), pp. 1–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar, with nineteenth-century tailors and shoemakers in mind.

60 But I would insist on treating this artisanal phase as a stage in the formation of a working class. I cannot support those who attempt to interpret it as a populist movement or who separate it categorically from later developments, as Hobsbawm in “The Making of the Working Class” does. On the populist position see Calhoun, Craig, The Question of Class Struggle. Social Foundations of Popular Radicalism during the Industrial Revolution (Oxford, 1982)Google Scholar; Calhoun, Craig, “The Radicalism of Tradition: Community Strength or Venerable Disguise and Borrowed Language?”, American Journal of Sociology, LXXXVIII (1983), pp. 886–914CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Calhoun, Craig, “Industrialization and Social Radicalism. British and French Workers' Movements and the Mid-Nineteenth-Century Crises”, Theory and Society, XII (1983), pp. 485–504Google Scholar, and the critical comments by Gareth Stedman Jones, “The mid-century crisis and the 1848 Revolutions”, ibid., pp. 506–519.

61 Such scepticism was of course widespread before the recent developments in Eastern Europe. See for example Gorz, André, Adieux au Prolétariat. Au-delà du socialisme (Paris, 1980).Google Scholar

62 In this respect Marx's distinctions between the appropriation of nature and the appropriation of the product and between the formal and the real subordination of labour possess considerable explanatory power. For two convincing applications to labour history see Jones, Gareth Stedman, “Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution”, in Jones, Gareth Stedman, Languages of Class. Studies in English working class history 1832–1982 (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 25–75Google Scholar, and Richard Price, “Structures of subordination in nineteenth-century British industry”, in Thane, et al., The Power of the Past, pp. 119–142.Google Scholar

63 There is clearly a consensus emerging on this point. See for example Zolberg, “How many exceptionalisms?”, or Breuilly, John, “Artisan Economy, Artisan Politics, Artisan Ideology: The Artisan Contribution to the Ninenteenth-Century European Labour Movement”, in Emsley, Clive and Walvin, John (eds), Artisans, Peasants and Proletarians, 1760–1860. Essays presented to Gwynn A. Williams (London, 1985), pp. 187–225.Google Scholar

64 See Dawley, , Class and Community, p. 70.Google Scholar For a far more nuanced and convincing version of this argument cf. Amy Bridges, “Becoming American: The Working Classes in the United States before the Civil War”, in Katznelson, and Zolberg, , Working-Class Formation, pp. 157–196Google Scholar, and her fine case study A City in the Republic: Antebellum New York and the Origins of Machine Politics (Cambridge, 1984).Google Scholar

65 I do not intend to enter the debate about an appropriate conceptualization of class formation here - see Zwahr, Zur Konstituierung des Proletariats; Kocka, “Problems of Working-Class Formation”, and for my own view Lenger, Zwischen Kleinbürgertum und Proletariat - but I cannot see any justification for criticising the Marxian dichotomy of a “class in itself vs. for itself” as rendering “thinking about the links between the social organization of class, class dispositions, and collective action superfluous”, as does Ira Katznelson in “Working-Class Formation: Constructing Cases and Comparisons”, in Katznelson, and Zolberg, , Working-Class Formation, pp. 3–41Google Scholar; the above quotes are taken from p. 20.

66 Sombart, Werner, Warum gibt es in den Vereinigten Staaten keinen Sozialismus? (Tübingen, 1906).Google Scholar See the excellent critique of many of the comparisons implicit in answers to Sombart's question by Foner, Eric, “Why is there no Socialism in the United States?”, History Workshop Journal, XVII (1984), pp. 57–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

67 Only such an integrated approach promises to yield results that constitute a significant advance on earlier typologies of labour movements, such as the excellent attempt by Mommsen, Hans, “Art. Arbeiterbewegung”, in Sowjetsystem und demokratische Gesellschaft (Freibürg, 1966), vol. lGoogle Scholar, columns 273–313. Interestingly enough Mommsen at the end introduces “national temper” as an explanatory variable in much the same way as Werner Sombart had done in the late nineteenth century. See Sombart, Werner, Sozialismus und soziale Bewegung im 19. Jahrhundert (Jena, 1896).Google Scholar

68 For an early attempt see Briggs, Asa, “Social Structure and Politics in Birmingham and Lyons”, British Journal of Sociology, I (1950), pp. 67–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

69 Among the few comparative studies we have which look at two countries Anglo-German comparisons are the most numerous. This may be explained by the strong interest in and sympathy for a seemingly peaceful and integrated British working class among German observers and social scientists during the second half of the nineteenth century. This is not, however, a sufficient reason to continue the tradition. French-German or American-French comparisons may prove to be more profitable.

70 On American exceptionalism see for example the overdrawn attack of Wilentz, Sean, “Against Exceptionalism: Class Consciousness and the American Labor Movement, 1790–1920”, International Labor and Working Class History, XXXVI (1984), pp. 1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On the German Sonderweg see especially Blackbourn, David and Eley, Geoff, The Peculiarities of German History. Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Oxford, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Caplan, Jane, “Myths, Models and Missing Revolutions: Comments on a Debate in German History”, Radical History Review, XXXIV (1986), pp. 87–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and, with respect to the labour movement, Tenfelde, Klaus, “Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiter und der Arbeiterbewegung - ein Sonderweg”, in Der Aquädukt 1763–1988. Ein Almanack aus dem Verlag C. H. Beck im 225. Jahre seines Bestehens (Munich, 1988), pp. 469–483Google Scholar, and Eisenberg, Christiane, “The Comparative View in Labour History. Old and New Interpretations of the English and German Labour Movements before 1914”, International Review of Social History, XXXIV (1989), pp. 403–432CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which clearly demonstrates the limits of a two-country comparison.

71 Thompson, E. P., “The Peculiarities of the English”, in Thompson, E. P., The Poverty of Theory & Other Essays (New York, 1978), pp. 245–301Google Scholar; the quote is taken from p. 247.