The Politics of Survival: Artisans in Twentieth-Century France

268 Pages·1990·17.16 MB·English

by  Steven M. Zdatny

The Politics of Survival
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THE POLITICS
OF SURVIVAL
Artisans in Twentieth-Century France
STEVEN M. ZDATNY
New York Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1990
Oxford University Press
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Copyright © 1990 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
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is made to French Historical Studies
and European History for permission to reprint
previously published material.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zdatny, Steven M.
The Politics of Survival:
artisans in twentieth-century France
Steven M. Zdatny.
p. cm. Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-19-505940-9
1. Artisans—France—Political activity—History—20th century.
2. Middle classes—France—Political activity—History—2()th century.
3. Fascism—France—History—20th century.
4. France-Politics and government—20th century.
I. Title. HD2346.F8Z38 1990
322'2'09440904—dc20 89-36983 CIP
2 4 6 8 9 7 53 1
Printed in the United States of America
on add-free paper
To My Mother and Father
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Preface
I walked out of the boulangerie on the rue de Flandre, unwrapped my warm
croissant, and happened upon a small surprise. "For the health of your child,"
was written on the waxy paper, "Le Pain Artisanal!" Intrigued, I read on:
Bread is a fundamental part of the child's dietary equilibrium;
There exists, from a caloric point of view, a natural regulation in the
child's diet. If the place of bread, beyond consideration of its simple nutri-
tional qualities, is increased in the child's dietary allowance, he will consume
fewer foods less favorable to his health.
[Therefore] the child must eat bread at every meal from the time that
he gets his first teeth.
From the report of the Commission Pain et Sante,
Etats-Generaux de la Boulangerie Artisanal
It was an advertisement, of course; one more exhortation to buy and, as
such, unremarkable. There was a substance to the message, however, that
made this something more: an artifact, a document, a testimony about the
social and political aims of master bakers in the twentieth century. The "simple
nutritional value," the "natural regulation of the child's diet"—the excellence
of artisanal bread, so the wrapper implied, resides in the special ingredients
from which it is baked. Along with the flour and the yeast the good boulanger
pours a measure of virtue into his baguettes and brioches. Low prices can be
deceiving. Our children's future is at stake. The responsible citizen will there-
fore buy his bread at the corner boulangerie, not at the bakery counter of
the hypermarche. It is good for society. It is good for the Nation. So declares
the Estates-General.
The sentiment is significant because the cities, towns, and villages of con-
temporary France are full of just such small shops and master artisans, spread
along the streets or tucked back in the cours. Yet the bakers and grocers,
the shoemakers and the blacksmiths—that vast territory known as the classes
moyennes—remain largely unexplored by historians of the present century.
It is among these middle classes, in particular independent master artisans,
that this work finds its subject.
V11T PREFACE
The absence of artisans from French history after 1914 seems all the more
surprising in view of their high profile in other times and places. As the most
visible and retrievable of popular elements, for example, skilled workers
dominate the historiography of the laboring classes from the French Revo-
lution to World War I. Here the men and women of trades parade across
history as the victims of industrialization and the leaders of working-class
politics—as sans-culottes, republicans, Communards, or as the avante-garde
of fin-de-siecle syndicalism. After this, artisans all but vanish from the
literature.
There is one reason why this makes sense. From the compagnons of the
Reveillon riots to the glassworkers of Carmaux, new techniques and new
forms of manufacture kept the world of petty production in constant flux.
This provoked a natural response from tradesmen, who fought a continuing
rear-guard action in defense of their independence and their incomes. That
was the great social battle of the nineteenth century and, for the most part,
it was a lost battle. The present century has witnessed the triumph of the
machine over the metier, with the consequent diminution of handicrafts and
the absorption of the industrial workers' "aristocracy" into a more self-
consciously proletarian labor movement. As the artisans of the last century
have become the ouvriers qualifies of this one, labor historians have turned
logically from the workshop to the factory.
In another way, the disappearance of artisans is as much a matter of words
as of things. That is to say, as we move through the Belle Epoque and World
War I, the term artisan undergoes a subtle shift in meaning. Traditionally
ambiguous, "artisan" had loosely designated any worker with a certain degree
of professional know-how and autonomy. With the progress of industrial
methods and the assimilation of skilled industrial workers into the mass of
factory hands, however, handicrafts came to denote specifically a class of
craftsmen who were also small proprietors: members, that is, of the so-called
lower middle classes. And it is as a part of the petty bourgeoisie that artisans
have been implicated in a second historiographical problem: that of the social
bases of fascism.
The inspiration for the social interpretation of fascism derives from Marx's
remarks in the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte about the reactionary
instincts of the petty bourgeoisie. The strictly Marxist analysis has since been
elaborated into more Weberian theories of the "losers of industrialization"
and of the "extremism of the center." For obvious reasons, Germany has
served as the primary object of attention. Here, in work ranging from the
examination of popular antimodernism among Wilhelmine master artisans to
studies of the politics of small businessmen to considerations of the social
profile of National Socialist voters, independent craftsmen have been labeled
as natural and actual supporters of fascism.
The troubling history of the German Mittelstand raises parallel questions
about the politics of the lower middle classes in France: Did the defense of
these francais moyens spill over into fascism? Students of both the "proto-
fascism" of the 1880s and 1890s and of the "mature" fascism of the inter-war
Preface ix
era usually hint at the complicity of the petty bourgeoisie, as infantry to the
generalship of Deroulede, Maurras, Valois, Doriot, and the others. The image
of angry shopkeepers and tradesmen acclaiming Boulanger, denouncing Drey-
fus, and charging the police on the Pont de la Concorde is a compelling but
problematical one, however, for there exists no genuine social history of
French fascism. The history of the radical right in France has remained the
province of intellectual and organizational history and of biography, the po-
litical role of the lower middle classes a presumption rather than an established
fact.
Passed by in both political and social history but so central to the events
of this turbulent century, artisans deserve to have their story told: a history
"from the middle up." My analysis will be guided by three main questions.
The first is empirical: Who were these independent craftsmen and what,
politically speaking, did they do? The second is more theoretical: What does
the example of master artisans say about social class as a political and historical
organizing principle? The third is broadly historiographical: How do the ex-
periences of artisans reflect the evolution of French society and the functioning
of the Third and Fourth Republics?
My main concern is with artisans' politics and my primary task to assemble
the facts of their political behavior, paying special attention to their presumed
attraction to fascism. Suspicions about the character of politics, however,
have forced me to broaden my perspective. I assume, first of all, that the
politics of this social group are intimately connected to its economic fortunes,
which has led me to trace the fate of handicraft production in a developing
capitalist economy. While I find, in this regard, the concept of the "losers of
industrialization" too pat, I have retained the basic sociological perspective:
Continuing industrialization had a profound, if complex, impact on those
whose methods of production were intrinsically nonindustrial, and this nec-
essarily rebounded on their political activities.
Yet the road from interests to politics is not a straight one. To follow it
requires addressing questions of perception and ideology. Why did artisans
interpret their troubles in this particular way and not another? Why did they
prescribe some kinds of remedies and not others? Why, to take only the most
trenchant example, did French artisans prove to be relatively immune to the
fascist contagion? Indeed, I will argue that ideology is central not just to the
tactics but to the very existence of the artisanal movement, which began to
clear a place in French politics only when it recognized itself as a distinct
social entity.
Finally, the tale of the artisanal movement is inseparable from the larger
history of France in the twentieth century. As I pursue the "defense of the
little guy," therefore, I will necessarily reconsider the themes that have dom-
inated that history: the shape of French economic development and the ques-
tion of "backwardness"; the social contract of the so-called stalemate society,
and the ways in which it was preserved and eventually rewritten; the nature
of political populism and the ultimate commitment of les petits to a democratic
republic.