ANTONINO DE FRANCESCO 

Democratici  e socialisti in Francia dal 1830 al 1851

N.3/1986

Summary — The paper reviews the genesis and the development of the democratic movement in the France of Louis Philip and of the Second Republique. On one side it emphasizes the incidence of the birth of the workers'’ movement or the re-formulation of the republican doctrine; on the other side, in the light of this aspect, it proposes a new political definition of the various groups which made up the democracy party. As regards the first aspect, the essay bears evidence how the new workers’ position of 1830 stemmed from a development of the traditional corporative attitude of mind peculiar to the working class of the Ancien Régime. For this reason the logic of political participation of the people in the 1830 and 1848 revolutions will hold evident analogies with the events of 1792: the insurrectional behaviour still voiced the firm belief of the people to be integral part of the society and to have the power to dismiss those authorities who would not be up to the mandate entrusted to them. These themes are at the basis of the interpretation of the republicanism of the Thirties: the democratic movement developed because it gave a political form to the social requests of the working class through the theme of popular sovereignty and consequently of the universal suffrage. In this context, the a. denies the predominant role of Buonarroti, to indicate in Pierre Leroux the most genuine representative of the democratic movement. At the same time, the essay deals with the political event of 1848 in contrast with the Marxist theses: the days of June were not testimony to class conflicts, but rather the result of the political contradiction of Jacobinism, divided between the exaltation of sound government institutions and the respect for popular sovereignty.