Proudhon believed that labour should be the basis for social organisation and that all systems of government Proudhon Europe in Turmoil were oppressive. He wanted to replace nation-state with federations of autonomous communes. In - , he was a member of the National Assembly but was disillusioned by his experience. His ideas became popular among the working class of France by the middle of the nineteenth century.
In , some of the followers of Proudhon issued the Manifesto of the Sixty. The manifesto declared that the French Revolution of only brought about political equality and not economic equality. They wanted the working class to be represented by themselves. In the elections, they unsuccessfully sponsored three working class candidates in the parliamentary elections of France.
His views, which influenced the Russian anarchist thinker Michael Alexandrovich Bakunin, sought to overthrow the state by a general strike and replace it with democratically- run cooperative groups. Anarchism: Belief in the abolition of state and organisation of society on a voluntary, cooperative basis without recourse to force or compulsion Louis Jean Joseph Charles Blanc ( - ) An influential French socialist, Louis Blanc, in , started the Revue du Progres , a journal of advanced social thought. His most important essay “Organisation of Labour” serially appeared in . In his writings, he proposed a scheme of state-financed but worker-controlled “social workshops” that would guarantee work for everyone and lead gradually to a socialist society.
Louis Blanc argued that socialism cannot be achieved without state power. In , he became a member of the French provisional government and was able to influence it to set up workshops for the unemployed and provide employment to all who needed it. Louis Blanc Karl Marx and Scientific Socialism Karl Marx Friedrich Engels Karl Marx ( – ) and Friedrich Engels ( – ) made the most profound contribution to socialism. Eventually their ideas came to be known as Marxism or Communism.
They called their views on socialism as scientific socialism. On the eve of the Revolution, Marx and Engels published The Communist