Pierre Leroux

The socialist theorist

Become workman typographer, it is marked by the influence of Saint-Simon (1760-1825), and of various other socialist theorists, such Enfantin, Robert Owen, Charles Fourier and Proudhon. It founds a newspaper of opposition the Earth in 1824, and is at the origin of the new Encyclopédie , of the independent Review , after having collaborated in the encyclopedic Revue and in the Review of the Two Worlds .

For Leroux, the peaceful union between the people, the values of freedom, the collective ownership of the means of production, popular education, as well as the values of the Évangile are the bases of an ideal company in which the recourse to the capital will become useless. It also develops the theory of the " circulus" , by showing that the man is producer of his own subsistence: the seeds germinate, develop thanks to manures " naturels" , harvests are consumed and rejected by the man, thus producing a new contribution of manure, etc This dream of life in autarky leads Leroux to consider the foundation of an exemplary community thanks to which it will be able to put into practice, in a kind of Phalanstère, the ideas which are expensive to him.

It is in 1835 or 1836 that Leroux becomes acquainted with George Sand. As well as the writing Georges Lubin, Leroux subjugates it and " she does not swear any more but by lui". Some of its novels, such Consuelo and the countess of Rudolstadt (1843-44), like the miller of Angibault (1845), will feel influence of Leroux. Since 1843, George Sand had however not been long in losing her illusions on the character, who had largely and wrongly benefitted from his relations to canvass them and obtain subsidies. It will go until qualifying it " sybarite intellectuel" …

The " communauté" of Boussac

The December 20th 1843, Leroux obtains government of Louis-Philippe a patent to create a printing works with Boussac (Digs), that George Sand, " the neighbor of Nohant " , had undoubtedly made him discover at the time of an excursion to the site " the stones jaumâtres ". Leroux settles in Boussac, close to the communal cemetery, and makes come its family, of the close relations, then, with the wire of the months, the " disciples" allured by its theories and lifestyle of the community.

The political activity of Leroux, initiated in the Freemasonry with Limoges, is then almost null. It is indeed especially worried to publish the Scout , the social Review , to republish its own works, to seek orders, while endeavouring, in vain, to develop its machine printing works. Untiring canvasser, it also tries to allure new followers, if possible fortunate, and to collect gifts for his collective company, which is well far from arriving at the car sufficiency. In 1848, according to witnesses quoted by the first biographer of Leroux, Pierre-Felix Thomas, the " communauté" of Boussac would have counted more than 80 people.

In spring 1845, the mayor of Boussac, sub-prefect by interim, had worried about the activities of Leroux near the ministry for the Interior. This one had reassured it via the prefect of Hollow, by presenting Leroux like " a dreamer who forever considered as clean to become a man of action".

A short political experiment

A few days after the proclamation of the Republic in Paris, in February 1848, Leroux is however elected mayor of Boussac. In May, it fails the legislative elections in the Hollow one. He will be elected appointed in Paris at the time of the elections complementary to June 1848.

With the National Assembly, it intervenes in particular in the debates on the new institutions. Its smoky speeches (it envisaged six of them) are accommodated by sarcastic remarks, and it will acknowledge ingenuously that his colleagues " the coasts were held of rire" by intending it to expose the role of the Trinity in the organization of the future company and the theory of the " circulus".

He is re-elected appointed of Paris in May 1849, while his brother Jules (1805-1883), is elected in the Hollow one. In 1850, the printing works of Boussac ceases its activities. After the Coup d'etat of December 2nd, 1851, Leroux is exiled in Belgium, then in England and finally in the island of Jersey. His/her Jules brother emigrates in the United States.

The time of loneliness

In Jersey, Victor Hugo is hardly worried about Leroux, which it called " the philousophe ".

Returned to France in 1860 with the favor of the law of amnesty of 1859, Leroux publishes a long philosophical poem in two volumes (1863-64) the Strike of Samarez (of the name of the beach of Jersey close which he lived), where he begins again, with emphase and in a hermetic pathos, all theories that he erected scaffolding previously. One will not have to him less than 180 pages to wonder about the point to know if a work must or not receive a foreword! That begins as follows: " Prolog . Voltaire did not want that one made use of this expression: to put the hand at the feather . However, to write, it is necessary well to put the hand at something " …

In April 1865, George Sand judges the book severely: “There are very beautiful things, but a so large décousu and so much of fafioteries for a question which is completely mysterious, with as much hatred for some and contempt for everyone, which I do not find worthy the work of him”. It makes on the man an assessment full with commiseration: “Poor Leroux! (...) It is a kind of prostitution which its moral life”. The same year, Hugo shows himself once again cruel with regard to Leroux, while writing: “There is of the informer in this old swindler”…

Disappointed, turned sour, solitary, Leroux survives. He will die Paris in April 1871. The Commune, which had memory, will delegate two of its representatives to its funerals. Then the work of Leroux will sink in the lapse of memory.

June 21st, 1903, however, the town of Boussac raises a statue in the public garden to him to which it gives its name. The following year, Pierre-Felix Thomas publishes a thesis of arts doctorate, in which it especially highlights the utopian side of the character.

Some authors, such Jean-Pierre Lacassagne, him also author of a recent thesis of arts doctorate on Leroux (1989), Vincent Peillon (2003), Jacques Viard (see below the bond with the site of the friends of Pierre Leroux) endeavor today to rehabilitate Leroux and to give to this unrepentant speechifier an importance which it is far from to have had in the formation and the evolution of French socialism.

It should be noted that he wrote in 1846 an article anti-semite, " Jews, kings of the time? " published by the social Review . Work comparable according to Leon Poliakov with that of Toussenel and which he considers more moderate. Indeed, for Leroux, “the Jew will take again a more serene figure, younger. He will cease resembling Shylock and I hope to see it ressusciter under the features of Nazaréen which the Jews have crucifié".

A street of the 7th district of Paris bears the name of Pierre Leroux.

External bonds

site of the Association of the friends of Pierre Leroux Very complete (exhaustive bibliography in particular), but " lerouxolâtre" with promotional excess, and largely car for the author of the site.
Constitution project of Leroux on the site of the Company of sciences of Hollow the

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