A Social Laboratory for Modern France: The Musee Social and the Rise of the Welfare State (review)

Traditionally, European historians have relied upon an interpretive model of social welfare development that offers only two options: the welfare state or its absence. Consequently, nineteenth-century France is assessed through a lens that privileges Bismarckian social insurance and Britain’s later National Health System, and is accordingly judged woefully inadequate. In this masterful study, however, Janet Horne joins a growing chorus that demonstrates just how sterile that interpretation has become for our understanding of French social welfare. To focus only on the failure of French legislators to enact successful social insurance programs is to ignore the boundless energy expended upon the social question before 1914 and the lasting impacts such activity had on the subsequent shape of welfare in modern France. Indeed, it is the contemporary nature of French social welfare that opens Horne’s study; in particular, she notes both the “hybrid” nature of a welfare state that incorporates both private initiative and state mandates, and the almost sacrosanct status such programs have attained among the French. No ambitious French politician today would openly advocate dismantling even part of this system, for it is deeply embedded in a conceptualization of natural rights that virtually all French citizens share. Horne’s goal is thus to understand the origins of such characteristics, which she traces back to the foundation and operation of the Musée social. In this private association with the quasi-official designation “of public utility,” reformers reached a consensus on social welfare that marked the foundation of France’s welfare state as it continued to develop after 1914.

Founded in 1894, but more firmly rooted earlier in the social economy section of the 1889 Universal Exhibition in Paris, the Musée social was a republican think-tank that brought together reformers from diverse social, political, and ideological backgrounds. As such, it represented the vibrant parapolitical sphere that helped shape the debate on social welfare, for the Musée social operated not only as an institution for social research, but it also maintained an immense library, published reports of Musée-sponsored studies, hosted public lectures on diverse topics, and provided consultation services for those interested in sponsoring reform programs in their own companies or creating new self-help associations like mutual aid societies. In fact, the Musée social’s reputation for expertise in social welfare and vigorous debate on all facets of the social question was enshrined in its unofficial title, “the antechamber of the Chamber.” Virtually every piece of social legislation proposed between 1895 and 1920 had received ample scrutiny at the Musée before being presented to French legislators. Even the deputé Cornudet admitted that the 1919 urban planning law that bears his name was drafted within the halls of the Musée social because of its focus on public hygiene.

The Musée social was more than a mere springboard for legislation, however. Together, according to Horne, the reformers who founded the Musée forged a new “community of discourse” that formed the basis of what she terms “social liberalism,” an ideology that both accepted and critiqued the new social landscape created in the wake of industrialization, and thus acknowledged the need for reform. This community of discourse drew on many traditions, from Christian charity to LePlayist social surveys, but found common ground in a faith in science and bourgeois republicanism. While maintaining strict political neutrality and reporting only the “social facts” that they had unearthed through careful study, they never questioned a commitment to the values of individual liberty and private property. Indeed, their critique of socialism was a useful rhetorical device that earned them credibility among France’s more conservative elite. The only issue that threatened discord was state intervention. And, it is in demonstrating an evolution toward state intervention among social reformers that Horne’s book acquires its true...