Models, metaphors, and contradictions: the political and social ideology of Frédéric Le Play

Abstract

Pierre Guillaume Frédéric Le Play (1806-1882) began his working life as a mining engineer. Born in Normandy, the only son of a customs official, he was educated at the École polytechnique and the École des mines, and was ultimately appointed to the Chair of metallurgy at the École des mines in Paris. Like many influential people during the July Monarchy, Le Play was perennially concerned with the "social question." His special interest in what we would call industrial relations led to his involvement in the Luxembourg Commission in 1848. Up to this time, Le Play had combined his academic teaching duties with writing and travelling: he prepared a number of investigative reports for French government ministries, and he kept notes on the lifestyle of working families in the many parts of Europe which he visited, from Russia to England. In the early years of the Second Empire, Le Play resigned his Chair and devoted himself to constructing a systematic survey of working class life in mid-nineteenth century Europe. The published result was Les Ouvriers européens (1855), and the following year he founded the Société d'économie sociale. Le Play rose to some prominence under the Empire: Napoleon III appointed him to the Conseil d'état, and then in 1862 to the Senate. In addition, Le Play was instrumental in organising the great Universal Expositions in Paris in 1855 and 1867. Moreover, it was at the Emperor's personal request, as Le Play himself related, that he prepared his general statement on the need for social reform, La Réforme sociale en France (1864). With the fall of the Empire, however, Le Play retired to private life. Up to his death he produced a number of further books and pamphlets on workers' living conditions, family structures, and reform strategies, the most notable being an expanded second edition of Les Ouvriers européens in six volumes (1877-1879). Despite the fact that the Société d'économie sociale is still in existence, and irregularly publishes its journal Les Études sociales, Le Play was not widely known, even in his own country. As a pioneer sociologist, his contribution to the development of that discipline has been greatly overshadowed by that of Émile Durkheim. Few of his works have been translated into English, though some of his writings have occasionally been made available to a wider readership. In the last two decades, however, academic interest in Le Play has revived, both in France and elsewhere. A number of social scientists have sought to rehabilitate him as one of their intellectual forebears; and for social historians of nineteenth century France particularly, the wealth of "empirical" data in Le Play's working class family monographs has proved invaluable. My thesis, on the other hand, looks at Le Play and his writings from a different perspective. The fundamental contention is that we can understand Le Play's life and work only by considering the specific historical context in which he wrote. I take issue with social scientists who attempt to place Le Play's writings in an ethereal world of "ideas", seeking thereby to identify the purely intellectual currents in his thought. Le Play was a social thinker and, in his time, an influential one. But he was also closely involved in the political and policy-making machinery of the Second Empire. As he made plain in his work, he was profoundly interested in, and moved by, the political events through which he lived - particularly 1848 and 1870. Le Play undertook social investigations and constructed his family monographs for a purpose. The prime aim of my thesis is to clarify that purpose. In doing so, I relate Le Play's sociological thinking to his other activities. I seek, in particular, to identify the ideological bases of his thought, and to portray them in terms of the values and ideals for which the Second Empire claimed to stand. By drawing out the political dimension of Le Play's work, I suggest that ideological and historical considerations provide a convincing explanation for Le Play's inability to adapt to the Third Republic. More specifically, I claim that this study offers a framework for understanding the development of sociology after 1870, and the triumph of Durkheim's sociological perspective. In addition, I stress that social historians who utilise Le Play's data uncritically run the risk of misinterpreting the objectivity of his investigations. My primary sources have, of necessity, been limited to four of Le Play's published works. An examination of archival material could provide support for my hypotheses. And much useful work could be done on the social composition, political activities, and ideological outlook of the membership of the Société d'économie sociale - as an example of the "survivability" of the notables who made up the social and political elite of mid-nineteenth century France.