BLANC (JEAN JOSEPH CHARLES) LOUIS , French politician and historian, was born on Oct. 29 1811, at Madrid, where his father held the post of inspector-general of finance under Joseph Bonaparte. Failing to receive aid from Pozzo di Borgo, his mother's uncle, Louis Blanc studied law in Paris, living in poverty, and became a contributor to various journals. In the Revue du progres, which he founded, he pub lished in 1839 his study on L'Organisation du travail. The principles laid down in this famous essay form the key to Louis Blanc's whole political career. He attributes all the evils that afflict society to the pressure of competition, whereby the weaker are driven to the wall. He demanded the equalization of wages, and the merging of personal interests in the common good—"a chacun selon ses besoins, de chacun selon ses facultes." This was to be effected by the establishment of "social workshops," a sort of combined co-operative society and trade-union, where the workmen in each trade were to unite their efforts for their com mon benefit. In 1841 he published his Histoire de dix ans, .r83o 184o, an attack upon the monarchy of July. It ran through four editions in four years.
In 1847 he published the two first volumes of his Histoire de la Revolution Francaise (finished 1862). Its publication was in terrupted by the revolution of 1848, when Louis Blanc became a member of the provisional government. On his motion, on Feb.
25, the government undertook "to guarantee the livelihood of the workers by work"; and, though his demand for the establishment of a ministry of labour was refused, he was authorized to call together an assembly of Paris workers' delegates (the famous Commission du Luxembourg) to prepare a plan for the permanent elimination of unemployment. This body, in form an anticipation of the Russian Soviet, became an arbiter in trade disputes and a centre of Socialist propaganda. The alarm and indignation of the employing class was intense and, on the meeting of the National Assembly at the beginning of May, Blanc was not re-elected to his post in the Government, and the plan of the Luxembourg Commission was ignored. Furthermore, the Govern ment had already set up as a rival organization the "National workshops" (q.v.) conducted on a parody of Blanc's principles, intended to fail, and under the supervision of Marie, one of his political enemies. Blanc was forced to fly to England after the defeat of the workers in the revolt of June 1848, and did not return till after the fall of the empire in 1871. He was elected deputy, and, though he did not join the Communards, in Jan. 1879 introduced into the chamber a proposal for their amnesty, which was carried. He died at Cannes on Dec. 6 1882.
Louis Blanc possessed a picturesque and vivid style and con siderable power of research; his political and social ideas have had a great influence on the development of Socialism in France. His Discours politiques 0847-80 was published in 1882. His most important works, besides those already mentioned, are Lettres sur l'Angleterre 0866-67); Histoire de la Revolution de 1848 (1870-8o), Dix annees de l'histoire de l'Angleterre (1879– 81) ; and Questions d'aujourd'hui et de demain (1873-84)• BIBLIOGRAPHY.-See L. Fiaux, Louis Blanc (1883); I. Tchernov, Bibliography.-See L. Fiaux, Louis Blanc (1883); I. Tchernov, Louis Blanc; R. W. Postgate, Revolution from z789 to zgo6 (192o, bibl.).