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128 VIOLENCE AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT
revolutionary element was concerned, was that it lost
once again, nearly everywhere, its press, its liberty of
speech, and its right of association. It was driven underground;
but there germinated, nevertheless, in the innumerable
secret societies, some of the most important principles
and doctrines upon which the international labor
movement was later to be founded.
In France socialist theories had never been wholly
friendless from the time of the great Revolution. The
memory of the enrages of 1793 and of Babeuf and his
conspiracy of 1795 had been kept green by Buonarotti
and Marechal. The ruling classes had very cunningly
lauded liberty and fraternity, but they rarely mentioned
the struggle for equality, which, of course, appeared to
them as a regrettable and most dangerous episode in the
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great Revolution. Yet, despite that fact, this early struggle
for economic equality had never been wholly forgotten.
Besides, there were Fourier and Saint-Simon, who,
with very great scholarly attainments, had rigidly
analyzed existing society, exposed its endless disorders,
and advocated an entire social transformation. There
were also Considerant, Leroux, Vidal, Pecqueur, and
Cabet.
All of these able and gifted men had kept the social
question ever to the front, while Louis Blanc and
Blanqui had actually introduced into politics the principles
of socialism. Blanqui was an amazing character.
He was an incurable, habitual insurrectionist, who came
to be called Venferme because so much of his life was
spent in prison.* The authorities again and again released
him, only to hear the next instant that he was
leading a mob to storm the citadels of the Government.
His life was a series of unsuccessful assaults upon au-
* The dramatic story of his life is
wonderfully told in L'Enferme
by Gustave Geffroy. (Paris, 1904.)