Albert the Workers Representative

 

A short video clip from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) popped up on my twitter timeline.

Rep. @AOC: “It’s just really wild to be a person that works in a corrupt institution, which is what Congress is, and to try and be a normal person surrounded by so much decay and moral emptiness, that frankly transcends party, is very difficult.” pic.twitter.com/x9hqvvpq8Y

— The Hill (@thehill) June 4, 2022

“It’s just really wild to be a person that works in a corrupt institution, which is what Congress is, and to try and be a normal person surrounded by so much decay and moral emptiness, that frankly transcends party, is very difficult.”

AOC is clearly frustrated with the realities of the political system in the United States of America. I sympathise but not really surprised. Curiously, reading the quoted snippet my mind turned to an overlooked pioneer in the history of socialism, Alexndre Martin. Alexandre Martin is better known, though just barely, by the name Albert l'Ouvrier, which in English means Albert the Worker. The Worker, is a reference to the fact that he was the first industrial worker, a mechanic to be precise, to become a Deputy of the National Assembly in France. I've even seen a few sources claim he was the first industrial worker to reach such a station in the world, but I'm unsure of how accurate that is.

As to why he was called Albert instead of Alexandre, I have no idea. Regardless, Albert was born in 1815 and held a series of jobs in the workshops of Paris. He was a participant in the 1830 Revolution which toppled the restored Bourbon monarchy and replaced it with House or Orleans. Initially this new King established a more liberal period, but it didn't take long for the July Monarchy[1] to disillusion segments of the population and sporadic demonstrations and minor insurrections soon broke out. Les Miserables has a fictional account of one of these insurrections, the republican revolt of 1832. 

Albert joined several clubs and secret societies during the July Monarchy's existence. At this time restrictions on openly political organisations and workers associations were extreme, so most of the disaffected students and workers had to organise social clubs and secret meetings to compensate. By 1848 when the July Monarchy collapsed into violent street clashes most republican and socialist politicians had started organising open air banquets to get around bans on open air demonstrations. Albert was arrested during this period on at least one occasion but was soon released. Not much is known about him during this period given his obscurity and clandestine activity, but at some point in 1839 he became a leader of the Nouvelles Saisons (New Seasons) Society. Apart from Albert's connections to the society I haven't been able to find out much on it. There is a Saisons Society active in another failed insurrection in Paris in 1839, this could be the same group or the Nouvelles (New) could be an acknowledgement that it was a successor group. Slightly better documented was Albert becoming the editor for the socialist newspaper L'Atelier (The Workshop) in 1840.

Tensions continued to mount and by 1848 they exploded. In February an insurrection in Paris successfully toppled the July Monarchy and returned France to republican rule. Elections were quickly held and a group of radicals passed through the lists to become Deputies in the new National Assembly. Albert was one of them, and the name Albert the Worker is used extensively in official documentation as well as in the contemporary press. Albert was part of a group of socialist politicians that were loosely led by Louis Blanc. 

Albert and his allies were immediately faced with a question quite similar to what AOC is currently struggling with. How do you govern in the interests of the workers, when the very institutions and forms of governance are in open conflict with that aim? Albert and Blanc initially tried to solve this by essentially running a parallel government through the Luxembourg Commission. The Luxembourg Commission was a six man institution established by the National Assembly after armed workers stormed one of their sessions on the 25th of February demanding that their needs be addressed immediately. Chiefly these demands were for right to organise labour and the right to work. 

The Luxembourg Commissions remit was to investigate social ills like unemployment and propose solutions. But due to opposition from the Assembly's conservative and bourgeois deputies and the popularity the Commission enjoyed from the workers' districts of Paris, including the support of armed militias, the Commission quickly became more active and bypassed the Assembly and ran multiple programs on its own initiative. The Commission's main reform was the establishment of `National Workshops` which were in essence an early example of government work programs.

"The provisional government of the French Republic undertakes to guarantee the existence of the workmen by work. It undertakes to guarantee work for every citizen."

But even with the support of the masses and the backing of armed force this state within a state as some historians have called it ran into a series of issues, the payment for work was low, the availability of work was also in scarce supply. And to even be eligible for support from a National Workshop a worker had to get permits and registration from multiple authorities including their landlords, police and mayor. And furthermore the balance of power kept slipping away from the left wing of the Assembly.

By June of 1848 the Assembly felt strong enough to close down the workshops and further weaken the Commission. In desperation and outrage many workers took up arms in Paris. Albert had lost his faith in the political process and joined demonstrations by the workers along with Louis Auguste Blanqui and Armand Barbes. The rebellion was quickly defeated by General Cavaignac, several thousand were killed and more were exiled to colonies. Albert and Barbes were captured at the Hotel de Ville and both were imprisoned. 

Albert was pardoned as part of a general amnesty in 1859. He seems to have lost his support for socialism, as on release he took a job at a gas works and remained there until his death in 1895. During the Franco-Prussian war he was briefly active on the barricade committees established by the Government of National Defence that was established after the defeat and capture of the Emperor Napoleon III. He also stood twice for election to its National Assembly in 1870, he failed on both occasions. From what I can gather, he appears to have played no part whatsoever in the Paris Commune that was established the following year in 1871, and he was not swept up in the bloody repression of radical workers that followed its defeat.

Since 1848 the global socialist movement has attempted to emulate the example of Blanc and Albert. Workers Representatives have successfully obtained high office under all manner of circumstances, from election wins, abdication crises, civil war and coup d'etat. And we have had proponents of nearly every strand of its vibrant tapestry. There have been republican socialist ministers, Christian socialist prime ministers, Deputies representing Fabianism, Fourier, hundreds of schools of Marxism, a smattering of fellow travellers to Anarchism, and curious hybrids of all the above, and a couple that defy easy categorisation. 

And, yet all of them from the 1800s to this very day have just like Albert ran straight into this dilemma, and have struggled to overcome it. This should be a key question for everyone who wants to end the old state of things. But curiously for many it rarely gets on the radar. Thousands, even millions of dedicated people will just bounce from one vehicle to another with barely any reflection. Momentum and the rest of the Labour left wing in the UK and the Democratic Socialists of America are currently stalled and quite possibly doomed movements because they made the political careers of two politicians, Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, the main thrust of their activism and political vision. When both of them failed in their bids for power the movements stopped moving. Despite several years passing these two groups are still struggling to decide what to do now?

But even if these two had succeeded in their quests for power would there be any difference? The plight of Albert is just one of many definitive answers, Non. Partisan allegiance set aside, the socialist movement in its totality is an extremely diverse subject to study. And yet despite it representing the activity and participation of millions of people across the globe and across the centuries, this infinite diversity has yet to provide an example of a Socialist President, or a Communist Parliament, or an Anarchist ministry that means something beyond a label. 

Given Albert's humble background and the context of much of his political development, I'm not surprised he's been regarded as a bit of footnote and trivia. But given that it has been over a hundred years since he made his contributions to socialist politics, and we're still chasing our tails, he might be worth keeping in mind.

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1: So-called because the 1830 Revolution occurred in July