La formazione del socialismo repubblicano in Francia: Storia politica del diritto al lavoro (1789-1848)

Despite its broad legal recognition, many do not consider the right to work to be a genuine right. The reason: its identification with the public promotion of full employment, a goal that is probably unattainable in capitalist societies. The right to work therefore appears as a sort of pious wish, if not a dangerous idea: taken seriously, guaranteeing it would require a state that has little respect for private economic initiative. This book recovers an alternative conception of it. Coined by Fourier in the early 19th century, the ‘right to work’ is reinterpreted in 1848 by a new type of socialism, heir of the republican and democratic thought of the French Revolution. This socialism does not expect the state to control the entire economy, but rather that the world of work be governed by the same egalitarian principles that regulate the political sphere.