Sewell synthesizes the material on the social history of the French labor movement from its formative period to the first half of the 19th century. Centers on the Revolutions of 1789, 1830 and 1848.

A passionate account of how the gulf between France’s metropolitan elites and its working classes are tearing the country apart Christophe Guilluy, a French geographer, makes the case that France has become an “American society”—one that is both increasingly multicultural and increasingly unequal. The divide between the global economy’s winners and losers in today’s France has replaced the old left-right split, leaving many on “the periphery.” As Guilluy shows, there is no unified French economy, and those cut off from the country’s new economic citadels suffer disproportionately on both economic and social fronts. In Guilluy’s analysis, the lip service paid to the idea of an “open society” in France is a smoke screen meant to hide the emergence of a closed society, walled off for the benefit of the upper classes. The ruling classes in France are reaching a dangerous stage, he argues; without the stability of a growing economy, the hope for those excluded from growth is extinguished, undermining the legitimacy of a multicultural nation.

Excerpt from The Working Classes in France: A Social Study In this little book the author has done a useful work in the direction of this better understanding. Many English people visit France, and especially Paris; but very few among them know anything of the actual life of the real people and Paris is still, to the bulk of English men, the gay capital of a frivolous and fickle nation, where vice is arrayed' in its most attractive guise and the pursuit of pleasure is the only serious business. Even those whose experience teaches them better than' this have not thought it worth while to give the public the benefit of their experience. The plain and simple life of the working-class is so uninteresting compared with that of the brilliant adventurer or the successful courtesan that it has been scarcely considered worth describing and thanks are due to our author for having rendered this service. So far as Mr. Steele's general conclusions, based upon his intimate experience of the life of the French workmen, are concerned, I am pleased to find them correspond entirely with those I had myself formed froma much more cursory acquaintance. I have found, for instance, in all my dealings with continental workmen not only Frenchmen - that they were much more courteous, and even cordial, to the foreign workman coming among them than English workmen as a rule are. It has always appeared to me, too, and I have stated it frequently, that there is in public, in restaurants, in the street, &c., much less constraint and much more mutual respect among the different classes on the continent than here; while on the other hand the class feeling of the continental workman, his class-consciousness and hatred of the bourgeoisie, transcends anything to be found in this country, except among the capitalists towards the work man. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Very few authors have addressed the origins of capitalism in France as the emergence of a distinct form of historical society, premised on a new configuration of social power, rather than as an extension of commercial activities liberated from feudal obstacles. Xavier Lafrance offers the first thorough historical analysis of the origins of capitalist social property relations in France from a 'political Marxist' or (Capital-centric Marxist) perspective. Putting emphasis on the role of the state, The Making of Capitalism in France shows how the capitalist system was first imported into this country in an industrial form, and considerably later than is usually assumed. This work demonstrates that the French Revolution was not capitalist, and in fact consolidated customary regulations that formed the bedrock of the formation of the working class.