Proclamation of the Sixty

The Proclamation of the sixty , written by the workman engraver Proletarian Henri Tolain and signed by sixty S, presented in 1864 a program of social Revendication S to support a working candidature for a partial election under the Second Empire, denouncing the hypocrisy of the equality such as formulated the Révolution 1789 and requiring true a Démocratie economic Politique, and Social E. It is a text of importance in the history of the Labor movement.

Socialism under the Second Empire

At the beginning of the Second Empire, the workmen, haunted by the failure of the utopian Socialism, the massacres orchestrated by the Middle-class in June 1848, the policy of oppression of the Government of the Second Republic, were not mobilized in political labor movements, thus taking the advice of Proudhon, in favor of a social organized labor and mutualist and of a refusal to take part in the political life.

But, into 1860, the Empereur changes political orientation and adopts a position more Libérale. Napoleon III authorizes a French working delegation with the World Fair of London of 1862. These delegates met a better organized and better remunerated English working class, thanks to the methods reformist of the English trade unions, the Trade-unions.

Henri Louis Tolain, engraver on bronze, formed part and published of it in its return, in the National opinion , a famous letter where he claimed legislative reforms, the creation of employers' federations, the Right to strike… (the latter was granted, with restrictions, in 1864)

The drafting of proclamation

In 1863, Henri Tolain supported the working candidatures for the elections in a booklet “Some truths on the elections of Paris” and wrote in a socialist friend Journaliste, Henri Lefort, a Manifeste intended has to support the candidature of Henri Tolain for the election complementary to February 1864. This text was published the February 17th in the National opinion , ratified by sixty workmen and proletarians, whose Tolain, Lefort, the assembler bronzes Perrachon of it, the hand braid maker the Limousin and Zéphyrin Camelinat.

The Manifeste of the Sixty proclaimed thus that “the equality registered in the law is not in manners and than it is still to carry out in the facts” , by ensuring that the workmen constitute “a special class citizens needing a direct representation” . The will was, from a point of view of continuity of the Révolution which had benefitted only the Bourgeois, to give an autonomy to the Working class, articulated with the construction of a collective identity.

Extract: “One repeated to satiety: there are no more classes since 1789; all French are equal in front of law, but us have of other property only our arm, we which undergo the every day the illegitimate and arbitrary conditions of the capital, we which live under exceptional laws such as the laws on the coalitions and article 1781, which carries reached to our interest at the same time as to note dignity, it is difficult for us to accept this assertion. ”

The proclamation draws up then a program of immediate claims:

  1. the abrogation of article 1781 of the Civil code, thus written: " The Master is believed on his assertion for the share of the pledges, the payments of the wages of the year and for the installments given for the current year "
  2. the abolition of the law on the coalisations
  3. the creation of employers' federations
  4. the widening of the competence of the mutual aid associations
  5. regulation of the work of the women
  6. the reform of the training
  7. the primary and professional education free

Influence text

For much of authors, and for example Marx, this proclamation constituted “the first charter of class of a French labor movement in the process of becoming adult” . Regarded since as the leader of the labor movement, Tolain directed in 1865 the first Parisian office of the Internationale created has London at the end 1864.

The republican S were furious that this proclamation does not tackle the question of the Political regime.

Proudhon, requested to deliver its opinion, recognized the right of the workmen to a representation which is clean for them, but did not persist in about it less recommending the Abstention to them to the elections in front of the illusion from the working Parlementarisme. It then prepared Of political capacity of the working classes , which will appear only after its death. The French section of the Internationale will be formed besides on the initiative of workmen proudhoniens.

To these currents the influence of Blanqui was added which, taking again the tradition of 1793, wished that the revolution is achieved by small groups in secret societies supported by an violent action. These various tendencies will continue in the action of the Commune.

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